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PARTISAN REVIEW
itself: and so, if the doctrine itself is unattractive, its typical repre–
sentative is a sitting duck. But to shoot him is no kind of sport. For
in the first place, in politics we seek primarily truth, not charm or
glamour. And secondly, if our political views are charmless, then,
in some ways, so much the better. For this will bring home to us
a fact of great importance and one which otherwise we might easily
lose sight of: that the correct place for the satisfaction of the senti–
ments is outside, not inside, politics. It is undoubtedly useful that
there should, in periods when there is much to be done, be people
who feel and think like the Webbs: but it seems to me both more
human and more desirable to approach things in the spirit of Keynes:
Chiefly do not let us overestimate the importance of the economic prob–
lem or sacrifice to its supposed necessities other matters of greater or
more permanent significance.
It
should be a matter for specialists–
like dentistry.
If
economists could manage to get themselves thought of
as humble, competent people, on a level with dentists, that would be
splendid.
For "economic" and "economists," read the more general words, "po–
litical" and "politicians," and you have the central liberal or radical
attitude to the managing of the affairs of many people in big com–
munities. Indeed one way of meeting Oakeshott's dialectic would be
to point out (perhaps rather priggishly) that the Rationalist can be
distinguished from the Traditionalist as one who expects far more
from politics in the way of universal happiness but far less in the way
of personal satisfaction.
Ultimately the appeal of O akeshott is to that strain of tired
romantic realism which is such a significant constituent of the Eng–
lish mind. (Particularly, it must be added, of the English upper-class
mind. Would it not be an agreeable stroke of irony if Oakeshott, who
ill such a scornful critic of all attempts to better oneself "by the
book," who has diagnosed Rationalism as the attempt to fit out a
parvenu class with ready-made political wisdom, who can find no
better image to convey his idea of vulgarity and ineptitude than that
of a shopkeeper who, having bought an estate, takes a correspondence
course in estate management to control it and its tenantry, should
find his vocation in providing members of the new and aspiring
classes with a
vade-mecum,
of a subtlety and efficacy just not to be
