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the writers whom he treats at length on a wide, and usually careful,
reading. His avowed intention, to define conservatism, is, however,
10
little realized that one has to examine his neglect of some conservative
thinkers, and his attacks on liberals, to discover the definition of con–
servatism implicit in the book. Either he has not read these men at all,
or he has misread them unpardonably. Let us survey briefly his omis–
sions, some of his claims for the men he studies, and his polemic against
liberals.
With the exception of Tocqueville, whom he appreciates greatly,
Mr. Kirk has limited himself to English and American thought. Three
English thinkers who should
be
important in a book of this sort are
either maligned or neglected. Lord Acton, whose deep religious con–
viction and aristocratic liberalism should attract Mr. Kirk as Tocqueville
does, is dismissed cavalierly, probably because of his later antipathy to
Burke, who is Mr. Kirk's great hero. Bradley and Bosanquet, who
created a systematic philosophy of conservatism, are not discussed at
all. Their names occur in a single sentence and they are lumped with
T.
H.
Green as a direct offshoot "from the blasted trunk of Benthamism."
Mr. Kirk speaks of "the Idealism of Green, Bradley, Bosanquet, and
their associates, mingling Hegel with Bentham, retaining the democratic
and reforming proclivities of the Utilitarians, but exchanging the Ben–
thamite happiness-principle in society for an idealization of the state
derived from German philosophy."
Here, by exclusion, some of Mr. Kirk's implicit theory comes to
light. Bosanquet, of course, was a student of Green's, whose path he
followed a long way before he found his own. But the great influence
on all three men is Green. Green relied essentially on Kant, not Hegel,
among modern philosophers, and was, in many ways, a liberal, whose
ideas bore fruit in early Fabianism. He was, too, a pre-Benthamite,
in–
troducing again the doctrines of natural law and of consent (in terms
of the "ideal" rather than the "natural") which Bentham had done so
much to destroy. Bradley and Bosanquet are true conservatives, defend–
ing a hierarchical, ordered society based on the moral will. Why does
Mr. Kirk treat them as he does? Perhaps just because it was the moral
will and consent that they made the ground of society. Mr. Kirk's treat–
ment, as themselves Benthamite, of perhaps the two most powerful and
systematic of the minds that opposed Bentham and Mill, combined
with
his approving comments about the primacy of force, reveals much about
his
notion of conservatism. But the choice of force rather than consent
and the moral will is not a happy one for a man who emphasizes the
moral basis and providential guidance of society.
