THE FUTURE
405
European and Western civilization which it was under Stalin, and
might have become permanently if the "Eurasian" synthesis, which
was Stalin's peculiar contribution to Leninism, had been legitimized
by his successors. These successors, in a muddled fashion, show a
tendency to revert to the European sources of Russian civilization.
It seems to me that this trend should be encouraged-not merely on
political grounds, but for deeper reasons. It is going to be difficult
enough to avert the danger of total nuclear war.
If
in addition there
is also a permanent East-West antagonism along lines which threaten
us all with cultural retrogression and eventual barbarization, the
tendencies making for a collapse, on the scale of that which
in
the
fifth and sixth centuries of our era overtook the Hellenistic world,
may become overwhelming. Even as it is, the tone and content of
the ideological pronouncements coming out of Pyongyang, Ulan Bator,
and similar centers of light and learning, suggests the possibility that
parts of the globe may be fated to undergo an artificial rebarbariza–
tion, or at best a kind of pseudomorphosis comparable to the early
Islamic period. I do not wish to be misunderstood. I am not over–
looking the existence of an ancient Chinese civilization. And doubt–
less it is in some sense a tribute to the pervasive element in our own
culture that Chinese scholars should now be studying those curious
Western philosophers, Hegel and Marx. Just so did the learned men
of Central Asia
in
an earlier age make the acquaintance of Aristotle.
But one does not look forward with any hopeful anticipation to the
advent of another Middle Age.
It
is not our business to promote it,
or to entertain any illusions about its probable character. We can
find out quite easily what such an age would be like: we need
only contemplate Anatole France's picture of it in
Thais:
unwashed
hermits from the desert assembling in conclave, under the rule of
barbarian chieftains, to dispute theological points in dog-Latin, or
in the Greek spoken by runaway slaves, while the last surviving
representatives of the older culture wandered about among the ruins.
Anyone who imagines that a similar catastrophe is no longer possible
("the world has been unified, we all speak the same language")
had better study the ideological pronouncements coming from Peking,
and then try to imagine what it would be like having to live under
semiliterate schoolmasters equipped with dictatorial powers. I have
