322
PARTISAN REVIEW
people have been able to locate themselves in life, to attain their
own image of themselves, and to reach a higher humanity. And their
actions have not helped lead to the enslavement of others. But at the
same time, may I say that I am distrustful of a number of our present
day converts and near converts. It is better that they found tradi–
tional religion than that they remained Stalinists, or that they re–
mained chronically dissatisfied and inwardly chaotic beings who
failed to see the difference between freedom and various kinds of
strait-jackets. And I am more distrustful of those who feel a need for
traditional religion, but who mask their needs by talking of myths
and of symbols of literary darkness. Such intellectuals are crypto-reli–
gious. They are shoddy apostles of an emptiness which they conceal
with cultivated obscurantism. They are the hollowest of the hollow
men.
In
Artists in Uniform,
Max Eastman wrote, "To identify
theoretic knowledge of reality with a program or a struggle for
power is a dangerous self-deception. To identify such knowledge
with a program of bureaucratic boss-rule is a crime against society,
science, art and education."
If
the struggle for power over the
bodies or the minds and souls of man is identified with an ab–
solutistic and unrelenting assurance that one has the correct "theory
of reality," then, whether this identification be political or theological,
it is dangerous.
JACQUES MARlYAIN
I am glad to Jearn from your editorial statement that there
has been, especially in this decade, a "continually increasing" re–
newal of religious faith, or at least of religious sympathy, among
intellectuals. I was far from sure of that, any deepseated trend of
thought being particularly difficult of observation in such unstable
people, and I thank you for the information.
Intellectuals are an unhappy race. To deserve our name, we
should share in a life which is not "in tune with man, but with the
intellect," as Aristotle put it. Except for a few who are genuinely
creative this is too much for us. So we are, as a rule, neither in–
tegrated with human life nor really integrated to the life of the
intellect....
