BOO KS
701
"The son of a worker, subjected to such an education," Milosz ex–
plains, "cannot think otherwise than as the school demands. Two times
two equals four. The press, literature, painting, films, and theater, all
illustrate what he learns.... It would be wrong to assert that a dual
set of values no longer exists. The resistance ... is, however, emotional.
It survives, but it is beaten down whenever it has to explain itself in
rational terms. A man's ... opposition to this new philosophy of life is
much like a toothache. Not only can he not express the pain in words,
but he cannot even tell you which tooth is aching."
Yes, but what about the intellectual? How can a sophisticated mod–
ern intellectual fall for an explanation of the world that is finally (as
Milosz also points out) that ot Monsieur Homais? The answer is that,
no matter how immunized against intellectual simplification, most mod–
ern intellectuals are also immunized against the notion that a personal
toothache can make any difference when it comes to questions of power
and historical action. The difference between them and the workers is
that they may well know which tooth is aching, but they are unwilling
to admit that it makes a difference. Among them, worship of power
and the accomplished fact, contempt for weak-mindedness and admir–
ation for tough-mindedness, are much stronger than among the workers.
In other words, they are far from being convinced that consciousness
is the most decisive of all realities; they believe in consciousness only
to the extent to which it manifests itself in a series of practical con–
sequences logically derived from a Prime Mover. They are, that is,
even more subject than the worker to the fascination of stern orthodoxy,
provided the orthodoxy be a doctrine of perpetual change, rather than
of some old-fashioned immutable truth. The difference between them
and the workers is that, while the workers' mind will "stick" to official
truth in good faith even although uneasily, the intellectuals' adhesion
will be both easy and in bad faith. Orthodoxy, to them, can never be
more than an official vocabulary they adopt with the hope of being
able to alter its definitions precisely by accepting them.
This finally brings forth the phenomenon of Ketman, which Milosz
analyzes in some of the most brilliant pages of his book. He found the
notion in Gobineau, who describes Ketman as the attitude by which Mos–
lem intellectuals, confronted with the superior power of religious con–
formism, not only hide their true opinions, but feel authorized to deny
them and "to resort to all ruses in order to deceive one's adversary. One
makes all the protestations of faith that can please him, one performs all
the rites one recognizes to be the most vain, one falsifies one's own books,
one exhausts all possible means of deceit."
