384
PARTISAN REVIEW
common sense was before; and this does not mean that it
is
a
symptom of mass society or that "intelligent" people are
exempt
from it. The only difference is that stupidity remains blissfully
in–
articulate among the non-intellectuals and becomes unbearably of–
fensive among "intelligent" people. Within the intelligentsia, one may
even say that the more intelligent an individual happens to be,
the
more irritating is the stupidity which he has in common with
all.
It seems like historical justice that Paul Valery, the most lucid
mind among the French, the classical people of
bon sens,
was the
first to detect the bankruptcy of common sense in the modern world
where the most commonly accepted ideas have been "attacked,
re–
futed, surprised and dissolved by
facts"
and where therefore we
witness a "kind of insolvency of imagination and bankruptcy
of
understanding." Much more surprising is that as early as
the
eighteenth century Montesquieu was convinced that only customs–
which, being mores, quite literally constitute the morality of every
civilization-prevented a spectacular moral and spiritual breakdown
of occidental culture. He certainly cannot be counted among the
prophets of doom, but his cold and sober courage has hardly
been
matched by any of the famous historical pessimists of the nineteenth
century.
The life of peoples, according to Montesquieu, is ruled by laws
and customs; the two are
distin~ished
in that "laws govern the
actions of the citizen and customs govern the actions of man." Laws
establish the
realm
of public political life, and customs establish the
realm
of
society. The downfall of nations begins with the under–
mining of lawfulness, whether the laws are abused by the govern–
ment
in
power, or the authority of their source becomes doubtful and
questionable. In both instances laws are no longer held valid. The
result is that the nation, together with its "belief" in its own laws,
loses its capacity for responsible political action; the people cease
to be citizens
in
the full sense of the word. What then still remains
(and incidentally explains the frequent longevity of political bodies
whose lifeblood has ebbed away) are the customs and traditions of
society. So long as they are intact, men as private individuals con–
tinue to behave according to certain patterns of morality. But
this
morality has lost its foundation. Tradition can be trusted to prevent
the
worst
for only a limited time. Every incident can destroy cus-
