630
PARTISAN REVIEW
It
must be pointed out that Jouvenel endeavors to supplement his
formal argument by other considerations. For if people are more likely
to choose error than truth, why expose them to error? But to this argu–
ment there are in existence counterarguments of whose existence Jou–
venel seems unaware. In the first place, there are arguments that refer
to the intrinsic value of human endeavor and experiment; it is, I know,
fashionable to deride these arguments nowadays, and, as Tocqueville saw
years ago, those who do not love liberty cannot be brought to see its
value. Secondly, there is the argument that grounds itself on the awk–
ward question: if all men are highly fallible
and
error is to be eliminated,
who is to effect the elimination?
But at this stage a suspicion may well stir in the reader's mind that
he .has been engaged by Jouvenel in a mere shadow argument. For
it is hard to resist the impression that the Postulate of Convergence, so
far from being a great article of faith enshrined in, though sometimes
filched from, the temple of Western Christendom, is a mere truism. For
surely if men are allowed free access to all opinions, have all relevant
evidence open to them, are not subjected to prejudicial or superstitious
influences, are given enough time to consider and reconsider their
opinion, then it follows
of necessity
that they will arrive at the truth.
If, however, as I have suggested, the Postulate of Convergence is a truism,
then one of the book's chief aims is neutralized: for its acceptance could
not involve, as our author would wish, the acceptance along with it
of a vast and plausible religious orthodoxy.
Bertrand de Jouvenel's book belongs to a class of literature, pe–
culiarly a feature of democratic ages, in which politics, art, science,
whatever may be the great concern of the day, is surveyed from a point
of view rather self-consciously above, and also somewhat further back
than, that generally adopted. By this means certain writers secure for
themselves in their own day a reputation for detachment, irony, wis–
dom.
It
is notable however that their reputations seldom survive. The
isolation they impose upon themselves is enough to prevent them from
having any serious influence or effect upon the products of their age;
while their restless, mocking interest
in
what goes on around or rather
below them deflects them from the path of serious theoretical develop–
ment. Indeed the role and function of this type of literature seems ul–
timately not to go beyond that of providing the cynics of the age with
a store of worldly opinions far beyond their own intellectual station.
Generically this is known as the literature of the
salon.
Richard Wollheim
