Selected Prose of T. S. Eliot

by Frank Kermode

  Socrates believed, and whether his legendary request of the

  sacrifice of a cock was merely gentlemanly behaviour or even

  irony, we cannot tell ; but the equivalent would be Professor

  Babbitt receiving Extreme Unction, and that I cannot at present

  conceive. But both Socrates and Erasmus were content to remain

  critics, and to leave the religious fabric untouched. So that I find

  Mr. Babbitt's humanism to be very different from that of any of

  the humanists above mentioned.

  This is no small point, but the question is a difficult one. It is

  not at all that Mr. Babbitt has misunderstood any of these persons,

  or that he is not fully acquainted with the civilizations out of

  which they sprang. On the contrary, he knows all about them. It is

  rather, I think, that in his interest in the messages of individuals -

  1 I wrote hecomi11g, but to me it seems that Buddhism is as truly a

  religion from the beginning as is Christianity.

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  messages conveyed in books - he has tended merely to neglect the

  conditions. The great men whom he holds up for our admiration

  and example are torn from their· contexts of race, place, and time.

  And in consequence, Mr. Babbitt seems to me to tear himself

  from his .own context. His humanism is really something quite

  different from that of his exemplars, but (to my mind) alarmingly

  like very liberal Protestant theology of the nineteenth century : it

  is, in fact, a product - a by-product - of Protestant theology in its

  last agonies.

  I admit that all humanists - as humanists - have been individualists. As humanists, they have had nothing to offer to the mob.

  But they have usually left a place, not only for the mob, but (what

  is more important) for the mob part of the mind in themselves.

  Mr. Babbitt is too rigorous and conscientious a Protestant to do

  that : hence there seems to be a gap between his own individualism

  (and indeed intellectualism, beyond a certain point, must be

  individualistic) and his genuine desire to offer something which

  will be useful to the American nation primarily and to civilization

  itself. But the historical humanist, as I understand him, halts at a

  certain point and admits that the reason will go no further, and

  that it cannot feed on honey and locusts.

  Humanism is either an alternative to religion, or is ancillary to

  it. To my mind, it always flourishes most when religion has been

  strong ; and if you find examples of humanism which are antireligious, or at least in opposition to the religious faith of the place and time, then such humanism is purely destructive, for it

  has never found anything to replace · what it destroyed. Any

  religion, of course, is for ever in danger of petrifaction into mere

  ritual and habit, though ritual and habit be essential to religion. It

  is only renewed and refreshed by an awakening of feeling and

  fresh devotion, or by the critical reason. The latter may be the

  part of the humanist. But if so, then the function of humanism,

  though necessary, is secondary. You cannot make humanism

  itself into a religion.

  What Mr. Babbitt, on one side, seems to me to be trying to do

  is to make humanism - his own form of humanism - work without

  religion. For otherwise, I cannot see the significance of his

  doctrine of self-control. This doctrine runs throughout his work,

  and sometimes appears as the 'inner check'. It appears as an

  alternative to both political and religious anarchy. In the political

  form it is more easily acceptable. As forms of government become

  more democratic, as the outer restraints of kingship, aristocracy,

  and class disappear, so it becomes more and more necessary that

  the individual no longer controlled by authority or habitual respect

  should control himself. So far, the doctrine is obviously true and

  �So

  THE H U M A N I S M O F I R V I NG B ABB ITT

  impregnable. But Mr. Babbitt seems to think also that the 'outer'

  restraints of an orthodox religion, as they weaken, can be supplied

  by the inner restraint of the individual over himself. If I have

  interpreted him correctly, he is thus trying to build a Catholic

  platform out of Protestant planks. By tradition an individualist,

  and jealous of the independence of individual thought, he is

  struggling to make something that will be valid for the nation,

  the race, the ,.,·orld.

  The sum of a population of individuals, all ideally and efficiently

  checking and controlling themselves, will never make a whole.

  And if you distinguish so sharply between 'outer' and 'inner'

  checks as Mr. Babbitt does, then there is nothing left for the

  individual to check himself by but his own private notions and his

  judgment, which is pretty precarious. As a matter of fact, when

  you leave the political field for the theological, the distinction

  between outer and inner becomes far from clear. Given the most

  highly organized and temporally powerful hierarchy, with all the

  powers of inquisition and punishment imaginable, still the idea of

  the religion is the inner control - the appeal not to a man's behaviour but to his soul. If a religion cannot touch a man's self, so that in the end he is controlling himself instead of being merely

  controlled by priests as he might be by policemen, then it has

  failed in its professed task. I suspect Mr. Babbitt at times of an

  instinctive dread of organized religion, a dread that it should

  cramp and deform the free operations of his own mind. If so, he

  is surely under a misapprehension.

  And what, one asks, are all these millions, even these thousands,

  or the remnant of a few intelligent hundreds, going to control

  themselves for ? Mr. Babbitt's critical judgment is exceptionally

  sound, and there is hardly one of his several remarks that is not,

  by itself, acceptable. It is the joints of his edifice, not the materials,

  that sometimes seem a bit weak. He says truly :

  It has been a constant experience of man in all ages that mere rationalism leaves him unsatisfied. Man craves in some sense or other of the word an enthusiasm that will lift him out of his merely rational self.

  But it is not clear that Mr. Babbitt has any other enthusiasm to

  offer except the enthusiasm for being lifted out of one's merely

  rational self by some enthusiasm. Indeed, if he can infect people

  with enthusiasm for getting even up to the level of their rational

  selves, he will accomplish a good deaL

  But this seems to me just the point at which 'humanistic

  control' ends, if it gets that far. He speaks of the basis 'of religion

  and humanistic control' in Burke, but what we should like to know

  is the respective parts played by religion and humanism in this

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  basis. And with all the references that Mr. Babbitt makes to the

  role of religion in the past, and all the connections that he perceives between the decline of theology and the growth of the modern errors that he detests, he reveals himself as uncompromisingly detached from any religious belief, even the most purely

 
'personal' :

  To be modern has meant practically to be increasingly positive and

  critical, to refuse to receive anything on an authority 'anterior, exterior,

  and superior' to the individual. With those who still cling to the principle of outer authority I have no quarrel. I am not primarily concerned with them. I am myself a thoroughgoing individualist, writing for those

  who are, like myself, irrevocably committed to the modern experiment.

  In fact, so far as I object to the moderns at all, it is because they have

  not been sufficiently modern, or, what amounts to the same thing, have

  not been sufficiently experimental.

  Those of us who lay no claim to being modern may not be

  involved in the objection, but, as bystanders, we may be allowed

  to inquire whither all this modernity and experimenting is going

  to lead. Is everybody to spend his time experimenting ? And on

  what, and to what end ? And if the experimenting merely leads to

  the conclusion that self-control is good, that seems a very frosty

  termination to our hunt for 'enthusiasm'. What is the higher will

  to will, if there is nothing either 'anterior, exterior, or superior' to

  the individual ? If this will is to have anything on which to operate,

  it must be in relation to external objects and to objective values.

  Mr. Babbitt says :

  ·

  To give the first place to the higher will is only another way of declaring

  that life is an act of faith. One may discover on positive grounds a deep

  meaning in the old Christian tenet that we do not know in order that

  we may believe, but we believe in order that we may know.

  This is quite true ; but if life is an act of faith, in what is it an

  act of faith ? The Life-Forcers, with Mr. Bernard Shaw at their

  head, would say I suppose 'in Life itself' ; but I should not accuse

  Mr. Babbitt of anything so silly as that. However, a few pages

  farther on he gives something more definite to will : it is civilization.

  The next idea, accordingly, to be examined is that of civilization. It seems, on the face of it, to mean something definite ; it is, in fact, merely a frame to be filled with definite objects, not a

  definite object itself. I do not believe that I can sit down for three

  minutes to will civilization without my mind's wandering to

  something else. I do not mean that civilization is a mere word ; the

  word means something quite real. But the minds of the indivi-

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  duals who can be said to 'have willed civilization' are minds filled

  with a great variety of objects of will, according to place, time, and

  individual constitution ; what they have in common is rather a

  habit in the same direction than a will to civilization. And unless

  by civilization you mean material progress, cleanliness, etc. -

  which is not what Mr. Babbitt means ; if you mean a spiritual and

  intellectual coordination on a high level, then it is doubtful

  whether civilization can endure without religion, and religion

  without a church.

  I am not here concerned with the question whether such a

  'humanistic' civilization as that aimed at by Professor Babbitt is

  or is not desirable ; only with the question whether it is feasible.

  From this point of view the danger of such theories is, I think, the

  danger of collapse. For those who had not followed Mr. Babbitt

  very far, or who had felt his influence more remotely, the collapse

  would be back again into humanitarianism thinly disguised. For

  others who had followed him hungrily to the end and had found

  no hay in the stable, the collapse might well be into a Catholicism

  without the element of humanism and criticism, which would be a

  Catholicism of despair. There is a hint of this in Mr. Babbitt's

  own words :

  The choice to which the modern man will finally be reduced, it has

  been said, is that of being a Bolshevist or a Jesuit. I n that case (assuming that by Jesuit is meant the ultramontane Catholic) there does not seem to be much room for hesitation. Ultramontane Catholicism does

  not like Bolshevism, strike at the very root of civilization. In fact, under

  certain conditions that are already partly in sight, the Catholic Church

  may perhaps be the only institution left in the Occident that can be

  counted upon to uphold civilized standards. It may also be possible,

  however, to be a thoroughgoing modern and at the same time

  civilized . . . .

  The last sentence somehow seems to me to die away a little

  faintly. But the point is that Mr. Babbitt seems to be giving away

  to the Church in anticipation more than would many who are

  more concerned with it in the present than he. Mr. Babbitt is

  much more ultramontane than I am. One may feel a very deep

  respect and even love for the Catholic Church (by which I

  understand Mr. Babbitt means the hierarchy in communion with

  the Holy See) ; but if one studies its history and vicissitudes, its

  difficulties and problems past and present, one is struck with

  admiration and awe certainly, but is not the more tempted to place

  all the hopes of humanity on one institution.

  But my purpose has been, not to predict a bad end for Mr.

  Babbitt's philosophy, but to point out the direction which I think

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  it should follow if the obscurities of 'humanism' were cleared up.

  It should lead, I think, to the conclusion that the humanistic point

  of view is auxiliary to and depend�nt upon the religious point of

  view. For us, religion is Christianity ; and Christianity implies, I

  think, the conception of the Church. It would be not only interesting but invaluable if Professor Babbitt, with his learning, his great ability, his influence, and his interest in the most important

  questions of the time, could reach this point. His influence might

  thus join with that of another philosopher - Charles Maurras -

  and might, indeed, correct some of the extravagances of that

  writer.

  Such a consummation is impossible. Professor Babbitt knows

  too much ; and by that I do not mean merely erudition or information or information or scholarship. I mean that he knows too many religions and philosophies, has assimilated their spirit too

  thoroughly (there is probably no one in England or America who

  understands early Buddhism better than he) to be able to give

  himself to any. The result is humanism. I believe that it is better

  to recognize the weaknesses of humanism at once, and allow for

  them, so that the structure may not crash beneath an excessive

  weight ; and so that we may arrive at an enduring recognition of

  its value for us, and of our obligation to its author.

  from THE I DEA OF A

  CHR I STIAN SOCI ETY

  [i

  . . .

  The attitudes and beliefs o f Liberalism are destined to disappear, are already disappearing. They belong to an age of free exploitation which has passed ; and our danger now is, that the

  term may come to signify for us only the disorder the fruits of

  which we inherit, and not the permanent value of the negative

  element. Out of Liberalism itself come philosophies which deny

  it. We
do not proceed, from Liberalism to its apparent end of

  authoritarian democracy, at a uniform pace in every respect.

  There are so many centres of it - Britain, France, America and

  the Dominions - that the development of western society must

  proceed more slowly than that of a compact body like Germany,

  and its tendencies are less apparent. Furthermore, those who are

  the most convinced of the necessity of itatisme as a control of

  some activities of life, can be the loudest professors of libertarianism in others, and insist upon the preserves of 'private life'

  in which each man may obey his own convictions or follow his

  own whim : while imperceptibly this domain of 'private life'

  becomes smaller and smaller, and may eventually disappear

  altogether. It is possible that a wave of terror of the consequences

  of depopulation might lead to legislation having the effect of

  compulsory breeding.

  If, then, Liberalism disappears from the philosophy of life of

  a people, what positive is left ? We are left only with the term

  'democracy', a term which, for the present generation, still has a

  Liberal connotation of 'freedom'. But totalitarianism can retain

  the terms 'freedom' and 'democracy' and give them its own meaning : and its right to them is not so easily disproved as minds inflamed by passion suppose. We are in danger of finding ourselves with nothing to stand for except a dislike of everything maintained by Germany and/or Russia : a dislike which, being a

  compost of newspaper sensations and prejudice, can have two

  results, at the same time, which appear at first incompatible. It

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  may lead us to reject possible improvements, because we should

  owe them to the example of o�e or both of these countries ; and it

  may equally well lead us to be mere imitators a rebours, in making

  us adopt uncritically almost any ·attitude which a foreign nation

  rejects.

  We are living at present in a kind of doldrums between opposing winds of doctrine, in a period in which one political philosophy has lost its cogency for behaviour, though it is still the only one in which public speech can be framed. This is very bad for

  the English language ; it is this disorder (for which we are all to