RELIGION AND THE INTELLECTUALS
241
ly among the intellectuals migrating into the academy, who easily
discern a desirable connection between tradition, in its purely ideo–
logical aspects to be sure, and their newly-acquired social function
and status.
The pity of it is that not a few gifted writers are plunging
from one debauch of ideology into another without giving themselves
time to sober up. Actually, what they need is not more of the same
medicine but a dose of skepticism so strong as to make them stand
fast against the solicitations of ideologies whose chief function is that
of mythicising the world-the essential prerequisite of subjecting the
mind to some form of authoritarian discipline. The intellectual con–
verts to myth and dogma, some of whom formerly adhered to a
social-revolutionary position, fondly imagine that they have under–
gone a total change of outlook. That is the typical error of abstract un–
historical thinking.
What was it, in fact, that disillusioned those people with Soviet
Communism, for so long the dominant version of the secular-revolu–
tionary outlook?
It
was the discovery that Soviet Communism had
nothing in common with the classic socialist ideals but that, like
fascism, it was a form of revolutionary reaction, that is, a form of
reaction devoid of norms and standards, arbitrary in its violence and
boundless in its hankering for power and mastery. Yet this discov–
ery, however painful, has not led them to reject the authoritarian
approach, no matter what its source. To accomplish such a rejection
is beyond either their need or desire, for what they want above all is
to be possessed by the spirit of consolation and to be lured by the
promise of metaphysical certainty and social stability. Hence if they
abjured revolutionary reaction
it
was only to go over to the tradi–
tional reaction of ideologies much older than Communism, a re–
action richly endowed with norms and standards, embellished with
the .achievements, real or imaginary, of past generations, and in–
stitutionalized in the Roman Church and other conservative organi–
zations. The difference between the two types of reaction must ap–
pear to them like the difference noted by Hegel between the shock–
ingly bare and matter-of-fact social relationships of ·modern society
and those of the ancient city-states, where "the iron bond of necessity
was still garlanded with roses." But Hegel's insight is not applicable
to the realities of our epoch. The iron bond of necessity is what we
