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can still be an intellectual, a leader of culture, while denying the
law of contradiction and the lessons of history. This in itself would
explain why disappointed, lonely, and frustrated sou ls seek peace and
companiomhip in a community of fellow-believers. When the re–
construction in philosophy has been completed, and people have
become reconciled to time and change and diversity, then conver–
sions to traditional religions may be rarer. That moment has not
come. The present state of the western mind emerged into print
about
1905 .
It took over three hundred years for the Church itself
to be established as the official religion of the Roman Empire. The
naturalistic program promised too much too soon. But unless we
have a reversion to barbarism through war, we may still expect that
the domain of the scientific method will spread rather than shrink.
On the other hand, what is a better agent of war th an the conviction
that human beings are incurably wicked and irrational?
CL EME NT GREENBERG
All the factors you suggest play their part in the present
revival of religiosity among intellectuals- and still others besides.
One fa ctor attracts another, so that they converge in what seems
like a concert, not of individuals, but of the "objective" forces of
society. But you should have pointed out that the religious revival
seems confined largely to literary intellectuals, and that among these
it is the poets who are most affected.
I want to restrict my remarks to the state of mind among these
latter. Nowadays they decide the literary climate.
T. S. Eliot first brought to our attention that "disassociation of
sensibility," that divergence between thought and feeling which, he
says, began to manifest itself in English poetry with Milton. It had,
however, begun elsewhere and its effects were already noticeable on
the Continent before they became apparent in English literature.
Fom1ally, the disassociation dates from Descartes' claim that the
subject receives his surest guarantee of the fact that he exists from
the presence of his own thought. Thought becomes the
prima fa cie
evidence of truth and th rows out of court whatever is reported
