RELIGION AND THE INTELLECTUALS
III
religious. I doubt this as I doubt that a cow is innately a horse. But
many who believed they were of the non-religious species, or that
the religious are deluded, are learning otherwise.
The genuinely scientific attitude of mind sets its own drastic
limits; among most intellectuals and many scientists, however, one en–
counters fantastic delusions of grandeur.
If
these are losing any
headway, so much the better for Science, and for all of us.
3.
As
Eliot observes, it never has. By every indication at hand
(the American culture is close to secular) I doubt that, barring the oc–
casional individual, any secular culture could ever deserve the name.
Prophets, institutionalists and the neutral mass are as mutually
indispensable as they are inevitable. Christian values, social
and
otherwise, have endured (insofar as they have), thanks to the inter–
action upon them, and upon each other, of the three.
Religion is such a safeguard and discipline and in both respects
(aside from the monstrous suffering and damage which have been
inflicted in its name) has been valuable beyond calculation; and
what a sickeningly paltry justification.
I doubt that anything will prevent totalitarianism. But religion
might honeycomb the totalitarian world with conscious and unwilling
victims and that, quite aside from ultimate revolution, might be
enough. Just so many individuals would preserve integrity, the pos–
sibility of growth, the sense of community; and perhaps that is the
most one can hope for, and matters most, at any time. A non-religious
or semi-religious humanism might also serve this use, for such non–
religious persons as ,are capable of it.
My reflexes are "for" pluralism; in common sense I suppose the
"official" tradition of such a civilization would be a drearily luke–
wann mishmash of polite compromises, presided over by those who
took on religion merely as a historical convenience or necessity, and
who can believe anything because they believe nothing strongly. That
all religions should be free, and respected, is quite another matter.
4. Only, I suppose, that the writer is apt to be more deeply and
constantly involved, than other artists, in critical interpenetrations
of emotion and thought.
The use of myth by such inventors as Joyce, Mann, Kafka, is
obviously connected with religion, though not with the renewed in–
terest, since they anticipate it by a generation, in any save a prescient
