514
PARTISAN REVIEW
claiming a truth and acting to bring about the truth it proclaims.
It is a powerful though primitive form of thought containing an
inner logic, and differing from rational thought by not being bound
by the laws of consistency or the facts of experience, even
if
related
to logic and experience.
The romanticism of what I have called "integral conservatism"
displaces rational thought with mythical thought, just as its counter–
part did in the nineteenth-century counter-revolution against the En–
lightenment. Conservative irrationalism may have a strong appeal to
many of us who are offended by over-rationalized life in dehuman–
ized and impersonal industrial society, but it cannot command in–
tellectual respect or provide a complete guide to political decision.
For example, Mr. Kirk assures us that Providence manifests itself
through "prejudices and traditions" and not our appetites. But we
cannot help asking,
which
prejudices and
which
traditions? We can–
not follow them all because there are cases in which they conflict.
If
reason
is
not to be trusted, how may we choose among them?
Furthermore, in some cases it is difficult to distinguish our prejudices
from our .appetites.
If
reason is not the judge in these cases, how can
we tell them apart?
The "logic-chopping" concerns of liberals, reformers and radi–
cals, who may be painfully aware of the extent of ambiguity and
complexity in the world, are scorned by the romantic conservative.
Carping liberals and radicals with their labored discriminations might
consider themselves bound by the rigorous requirements of evidence
and the iron laws of consistency, but the romantic conservative is
legibus solutus.
Thus he sees utilitarians, positivists, radicals, reformers,
socialists, and everyone else who is not identified with his own posi–
tion as fused together in a single principle of evil. Perhaps the most
unusual of these mystical unions is the marriage of John D. Rocke–
feller with Karl Marx; Mr. Kirk assures us that "Rockefeller and
Marx were merely two agents of the same social force." Such sweep–
ing fallacies of composition lead one to suspect that the "terrible
simplifiers" whom Burckhardt feared are not .all in the radical camp.
Some of Mr. Kirk's paragraphs are like gas chambers, executing
in one operation whole platoons of heterogeneous non-conservatives.
In one notable place, Saint-Simon, Comte, Louis Blanc, Rathenau,
Mannheim, Tugwell, Ewing, Bowles, and Sidney Webb are disposed
of in a single paragraph.
