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PARTISAN REVIEW
against which it was supposed to defend us. Historicism was converted
into relativist indifference and left us in the same spiritual desert it
promised to fertilize.
This desert is comfortable, but it is heavy to live in. People have
always needed the belief that the world can be not only dominated but
made intelligible as well; this need, we may presume, makes a component
of their being human. Therefore, we notice now, in our brutal century,
various attempts to rediscover a way that might perhaps lead us to the
lost meaning. It is improbable that traditional historicism will open this
route and persuade us again to trust history as it actually is. One observes,
rather, a new yearning for the archaic historicity. In defiance of all ratio–
nal expectations, the need
to
find oneself again in the tribal belonging,
to define oneself by national culture, seems stronger and not weaker.
There is no need to stress all the dangers that this quite understandable
need brings about when it degenerates into bellicose chauvinism. Above
all - again in defiance of rational expectations - the quest for religious
self-identification is coming back to life. It is not inconceivable that,
once the profane history has been dismissed as the ground of meaning,
people will rediscover the archaic religious roots as a means, more reli–
able than any other, of coping with their disarray and uncertainty.
