292
PARTISAN REVIEW
As for the scientist-well, he sounds a good deal more like H. G.
Wells than like either Newton or Einstein; but his name, especially
in
the United States, is legion. The scientist, as Mr. Wilson conceives him,
is the fellow who has a quick solution, a gimmick, for everything; and
who
does
have a gimmick for so many things that it would be sheer
stupidity to underestimate either his efficacy or his usefulness. But the
scientist, in addition,
is
convinced that he can find a quick answer to
the problems that have always bothered the iguana; while the
truth
is that he does not really understand these problems at all. There is
no quick solution to the problems expressed by Shakespeare, Dante and
Beethoven; there is no solution at all in any sense that science would
recognize; and this is why the scientist will never entirely replace the
artist or the saint. Now Mr. Wilson, so far as he sympathizes with
his
version of the scientist, cannot help regretting this state of affairs.
And the result is that, while he poses a number of cultural and human
problems with all the fine feeling for complexity that we expect of
the iguana, he all too often proposes pre-emptory solutions to them
with all the bumptiousness of his scientist.
Perhaps the most striking illustration of this propensity occurs
in
the section on sex, which, as a matter of fact, is closely related to what
Mr. Wilson has to say on education. In this latter section he explains–
with all his admirable and unobtrusive erudition- the value of Judaic
studies, the disadvantages of beginning the study of Latin with Caesar,
and his profound shock when, during a spell of teaching, he encountered
at first hand the disastrous breakdown of American education that is
gradually beginning to penetrate the national consciousness. Later,
in
the section on sex, he brings up the problem of creating and training
an elite, which at bottoPl is also a problem of education; and the fact
that Mr. Wilson should evoke this most crucial of all problems for a
democracy is a welcome proof of his freedom from cant. But now he
has become fascinated with biology, and the old enthusiasm of the
scientist sweeps away all precautions.
"The pretensions of aristocracies," he writes, "though never en–
tirely justified, were never perhaps entirely false; but that road seems
forever closed. A possible new method has already appeared in artificial
insemination. I find at the county fairs of the dairy country of upstate
New York that the semen of prize bulls is now advertised and sold like
any other agricultural commodity." But artificial insemination, Mr.
Wilson acknowledges, probably would be used by humans only in ex–
ceptional cases. The movement he envisages "might well begin with a
bureau which should ask for volunteers for the breeding of a new
elite and which should make a selection among them based on
both
