VARIETY
THE HAPPY TIME OF
GOTTSCHALK AND VERONESE
There has often in these pages
been occasion to speak of "cul–
tural freedom." It is then no
unnatural cunoslty to wonder
whether there is something like a
philosophical analysis of its prin–
ciples, or simply a good historical
chronicle outlining the course of
the human spirit from ancient
Ionia to present-day Siberia. The
difficulty is that each generation
needs to rewrite the past in the
light of its own historical exper–
ience; and our own generation is
still too deeply enmeshed in the
complex new terrors of our time
to find leisure for perspective. Cul–
tural freedom, or intellectual li–
berty, today is no longer confront–
ed with the mere threat of au–
thority which was the bane of
free minds throughout all the pre–
vious centuries. The horrors of the
past seem petty: censorship, ban–
ishment, burning of books. The
menacing evil today is deeper,
more comprehensive. Consider
what one distinguished historian
of cultural freedom was able to
write a generation or two ago.
On the very first page of his
A
History of Freedom of Thought
( 1913) , Professor John
B.
Bury
set down the "natural liberty of
private thinking ..." Writing in
605
the time before the dictatorships
flowered out of the soil of world
wars he could note:
A man can never be hindered from
thinking whatever he chooses so long
as he conceals what he thinks. The
working of his mind is limited only
by the bounds of his experience and
the power of his imagination. . . .
Here, indeed, is the mark of the
dividing-line between the Author–
itarianism of the past and the To–
talitarianism of the present. The
possibility of "choice" and "con–
cealment" has been systematically
narrowed. "Experience"
is
no
longer a private affair, but a com–
modity to be rationed by the
state. The "imagination" has be–
come subject to collective control.
Private thinking is almost every–
where an unnatural liberty; more
and more indistinguishable from
public propaganda, it
has
become
a "natural enslavement."
So, for the new historian of the
mind's struggle for independence
the past may well appear less
of
dark record than a series of very
minor and even amusing cultural
irritations.
Were, then, the "Dark Ages"
after the fall of the ancient world
such a total black-out of the free
spirit?
"The songs of the poets are the
food of demons," said St. Jerome.
The Dominicans were not alone
in their intellectual austerity when
they forbade the brethren to read
the classics. "We are in danger,"
said Nicholas, Chancellor of the
