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PARTISAN REVIEW
Santayana's observa ti on. Smith 's essays overlap her book in emphasiz–
ing the antiintellec tua lism o f the rev iewers, but this theme does no t fit
Mark Twa in 's escape from " the contro l o f the domina nt popular
culture" by his recourse to a vernacula r, fo lk traditio n , susp icio us of
the "high- sounding abstrac t terms" o f the "decadent hig h culture of
the nine teenth century." In this res pect it is Ma rk T wa in , no t the
gentee l rev iewers, who looks democra tic, and Smith can ass imila te him
to the book's theme only by see ing hi s " lowbrow a udi ence" as a fo lk
element in a soc iety where "middlebrows" represent the majority.
Smith 's stra tegy reduces the democra tic element to a stylistic sea rch for
"traces of infection " from a "dominant popula r culture" pa radox ica lly
identified with a "decadent hi gh cultu re." Detached from a po li tical
sys tem , the term " democracy " becomes too much like Hump ty Dump–
ty's " impene trability, " which he a lways pa id extra fo r do ing so much
work .
One wonders wha t San taya na would have made o f seeing the
skep tica l " perspec tivism " o f modernity opposed to his concept of the
gentee l traditio n. As a rea li st with Ca tho lic sympa thies, he dea lt wry ly
w ith the notio n o f experience as the "only rea l ex istence, the ultima te
o bj ect tha t all thought and theory must regard. " For him this pos ition
refl ec ted the a tmosphere o f German idea lism , which America d id not
need to adopt because "something very like it had grown up spontane–
o usly in ew Eng land in the fo rm o f transcendenta lism and uni ta rian
theo logy ." In his 1911 address on the gentee l trad itio n , de live red a t the
Univers ity of California where Smith is p rofessor emeritus, Santayana
hoped tha t the g iant redwoods o f the sta te would nurture instead a
na tura listic sensibility to rebuke a ll egocentricity, a ll humani sms.
Moderni st perspec tivism, while no lo nge r gentee l, wo uld still be on his
terms an imperia listic con sciousness, onl y ano ther example of the
serpent swa llowing its ta il. H e admired tha t side o f William J ames
which expressed a medica lly tra ined empiricism , capable o f accusing
p hilosophers o f hav ing construc ted a fi c titio us entity of "conscious–
ness" out o f the rea lity o f " brea th mov ing outwards, between the g lottis
and the nostrils." In Santaya na's view, ma teria lists by instinc t, pri va te
gentlemen like himse lf, " whom the clergy and the p rofessors cannot
deceive," bes t escaped the gentee l tradition .
Smith wants to go beyond F.O. Ma tthiessen 's conception o f "wha t
is meant by a writer's concern with democracy," the ideas and a ttitudes
exp ressed in his work, by taking in to account the re la tion between
mas terpieces and " non-litera ry aspec ts of the cultu re." The intention is
