Selected Prose of T. S. Eliot

by Frank Kermode

  one that may, once we allow our imagination to play upon it, be

  very disconcerting. It gives an importance to our most trivial

  pursuits, to the occupation of our every minute, which we cannot

  contemplate long without the horror of nightmare. When we

  consider the quality of the integration required for the full cultivation of the spiritual life, we must keep in mind the possibility of grace and the exemplars of sanctity in order not to sink into

  despair. And when we consider the problem of evangelization, of

  the development of a Christian society, we have reason to quail.

  To believe that we are religious people and that other people are

  without religion is a simplification which approaches distortion.

  To reflect that from one point of view religion is culture, and

  from another point of view culture is religion, can be very

  disturbing. To ask whether the people have not a religion

  already, in which Derby Day and the dog track play their parts,

  is embarrassing ; so is the suggestion that part of the religion of

  the higher ecclesiastic is gaiters and the Athenaeum. It is inconvenient for Christians to find that as Christians they do not believe enough, and that on the other hand they, with everybody

  else, believe in too many things : yet this is a consequence of

  reflecting, that bishops are a part of English culture, and horses

  and dogs are a part of English religion.

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  It is commonly assumed that there is culture, but that it is the

  property of a small section of society ; and from this assumption it

  is usual to proceed to one of two conclusions : either that culture

  can only be the concern of a small minority, and that therefore

  there is no place for it in the society of the future ; or that in the

  society of the future the culture which has been the possession of

  the few must be put at the disposal of everybody. This assumption and its consequences remind us of the Puritan antipathy to monasticism and the ascetic life : for just as a culture which is only

  accessible to the few is now deprecated, so was the enclosed and

  contemplative life condemned by extreme Protestantism, and

  celibacy regarded with almost as much abhorrence as perversion.

  In order to apprehend the theory of religion and culture which

  I have endeavoured to set forth in this chapter, we have to try to

  avoid the two alternative errors : that of regarding religion and

  culture as two separate things between which there is a relation,

  and that of identifying religion and culture. I spoke at one point of

  the culture of a people as an incarnation of its religion ; and while I

  am aware of the temerity of employing such an exalted term, I

  cannot think of any other which would convey so well the intention to avoid relation on the one hand and identification on the other. The truth, partial truth, or falsity of a religion neither

  consists in the cultural achievements of the peoples professing

  that religion, nor submits to being exactly tested by them. For

  what a people may be said to believe, as shown by its behaviour,

  is, as I have said, always a great deal more and a great deal less

  than its professed faith in its purity. Furthermore, a people whose

  culture has been formed together with a religion of partial truth,

  may live that religion (at some period in its history, at least) with

  greater fidelity than another people which has a truer light. It is

  only when we imagine our culture as it ought to be, if our society

  were a really Christian society, that we can dare to speak of

  Christian culture as the highest culture ; it is only by referring to

  all the phases of this culture, which has been the culture of

  Europe, that we can affirm that it is the highest culture that the

  world has ever known. In comparing our culture as it is today,

  with that of non-Christian peoples, we must be prepared to find

  that ours is in one respect or another inferior. I do not overlook

  the possibility that Britain, if it consummated its apostasy by

  reforming itself according to the prescriptions of some inferior or

  materialistic religion, might blossom into a culture more brilliant

  than that we can show today. That would not be evidence that the

  new religion was true, and that Christianity was false. It would

  merely prove that any religion, while it lasts, and on its own level,

  gives an apparent meaning to life, provides the frame-work for a

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  culture, and protects the mass of humanity from boredom and

  despair.

  [ii

  In an elite composed of individuals who find their way into it

  solely for their individual pre-eminence, the differences of background will be so great, that they will be united only by their common interests, and separated by everything else. An elite

  must therefore be attached to some class, whether higher or lower :

  but so long as there are classes at all it is likely to be the dominant

  class that attracts this elite to itself. What would happen in a

  classless society - which is much more difficult to envisage than

  people think - brings us into the area of conjecture. There are,

  however, some guesses which seem to me worth venturing.

  The primary channel of transmission of culture is the family :

  no man wholly escapes from the kind, or wholly surpasses the

  degree of culture which he acquired from his early environment.

  It would not do to suggest that this can be the only channel of

  transmission : in a society of any complexity it is supplemented

  and continued by other conduits of tradition. Even in relatively

  primitive societies this is so. In more civilized communities of

  specialized activities, in which not all the sons would follow the

  occupation of their father, the apprentice (ideally, at least) did not

  merely serve his master, and did not merely learn from him as one

  would learn at a technical school - he became assimilated into a

  way of life which went with that particular trade or craft ; and

  perhaps the lost secret of the craft is this, that not merely a skill

  but an entire way of life was transmitted. Culture - distinguishable from knowledge about culture - was transmitted by the older universities : young men have profited there who have been

  profitless students, and who have acquired no taste for learning,

  or for Gothic architecture, or for college ritual and form. I suppose that something of the same sort is transmitted also by societies of the masonic type : for initiation is an introduction into

  a way of life, of however restricted viability, received from the

  past and to be perpetuated in the future. But by far the most

  important channel of transmission of culture remains the family :

  and when family life fails to play its part, we must expect our

  culture to deteriorate. Now the family is an institution of which

  nearly everybody speaks well : but it is. advisable to remember that

  this is a term that may vary in extension. In the present age it

  means little more than the living members. Even if living members, it is a rare exception when an advertisement depicts a large family of three generations : the usual family on the
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  consists of two parents and one or two young children. What is

  held up for admiration is not devotion to a family, but personal

  affection between the members of it: and the smaller the family,

  the more easily can this personal affection be sentimentalized. But

  when I speak of the family, I have in mind a bond which embraces a longer period of time than this : a piety towards the dead, however obscure, and a solicitude for the unborn, however

  remote. Unless this reverence for past and future is cultivated in

  the horne, it can never be more than a verbal convention in the

  community. Such an interest in the past is different from the

  vanities and pretensions of genealogy ; such a responsibility for

  the future is different from that of the builder of social programmes.

  I should say then that in a vigorous society there will be visible

  both class and elite, with some overlapping and constant interaction between them. An elite, if it is a governing elite, and so far as the natural impulse to pass on to one's offspring both power and

  prestige is not artificially checked, will tend to establish itself as

  a class - it is this metamorphosis, I think, which leads to what

  appears to me an oversight on the part of Dr. Mannheim. But an

  elite which thus transforms itself tends to lose its function as elite,

  for the qualities by which the original members won their position,

  will not all be transmitted equally to their descendants. On the

  other hand, we have to consider what would be the consequence

  when the converse took place, and we had a society in which the

  functions of class were assumed by elites. Dr. Mannheim seems

  to have believed that this will happen ; he showed himself, as a

  passage which I have quoted shows, aware of the dangers ; and he

  does not appear to have been ready to propose definite safeguards

  against them.

  The situation of a society without classes, and dominated

  exclusively by elites is, I submit, one about which we have no

  reliable evidence. By such a society, I suppose we must mean one

  in which every individual starts without advantage or handicap ;

  and in which, by some mechanism set up by the best designers of

  such machinery, everybody will find his way, or be directed, to

  that station of life which he is best fitted to fill, and every position

  will be occupied by the man or woman best fitted for it. Of course,

  not even the most sanguine would expect the system to work as

  well as that : if, by and large, it seemed to come nearer to putting

  the right people in the right places than any previous system, we

  should all be satisfied. When I say 'dominated', rather than

  'governed' by elites, I mean that such a society must not be

  content to be governed by the right people : it must see that the

  ablest artists and architects rise to the top, influence taste, and

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  execute the important public commissions ; it must do the same

  by the other arts and by science ; and above all, perhaps, it must

  be such that the ablest minds will find expression in speculative

  thought. The system must not only do all this for society in a

  particular situation - it must go on doing it, generation after

  generation. It would be folly to deny that in a particular phase of

  a country's development, and for a limited purpose, an elite can do

  a very good job. It may, by expelling a previous governing group,

  which in contrast to itself may be a class, save or reform or revitalize the national life. Such things have happened. But we have very little evidence about the perpetuation of government by

  elite, and such as we have is unsatisfactory . . . .

  [iii

  I said at the end of my second talk that I should want to make a

  little clearer what I mean when I use the term culture. Like

  'democracy', this is a term which needs to be, not only defined,

  but illustrated, almost every time we use it. And it is necessary to

  be clear about what we mean by 'culture', so that we may be clear

  about the distinction between the material organization of Europe,

  and the spiritual organism of Europe. If the latter dies, then what

  you organize will not be Europe, but merely a mass of human

  beings speaking several different languages. And there will be no

  longer any justification for their continuing to speak different

  languages, for they will no longer have anything to say which cannot be said equally well in any language : they will, in short, have no longer anything to say in poetry. I have already affirmed that

  there can be no 'European' culture if the several countries are

  isolated from each other : I add now that there can be no European

  culture if these countries are reduced to identity. We need variety

  in unity : not the unity of organization, but the unity of nature.

  By 'culture', then, I mean first of all what the anthropologists

  mean : the way of life of a particular people living together in one

  place. That culture is made visible in their arts, in their social

  system, in their habits and customs, in their religion. But these

  things added together do not constitute the culture, though we

  often speak for convenience as if they did. These things are simply

  the parts into which a culture can be anatomized, as a human

  body can. But just as a man is something more than an assemblage

  of the various constituent parts of his body, so a culture is more

  than the assemblage of its arts, customs, and religious beliefs.

  These things all act upon each other, and fully to understand one

  you have to understand all. Now there are of course higher cultures and lower cultures, and the higher cultures in general are 3.02

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  distinguished by differentiation of function, so that you can speak

  of the less cultured and the more cultured strata of society, and

  finally, you can speak of individuals as being exceptionally

  cultured. The culture of an artist or a philosopher is distinct from

  that of a mine worker or field labourer ; the culture of a poet will

  be somewhat different from that of a politician ; but in a healthy

  society these are all parts of the same culture ; and the artist, the

  poet, the philosopher, the politician and the labourer will have a

  culture in common, which they do not share with other people of

  the same occupations in other countries.

  Now it is obvious that one unity of culture is that of the people

  who live together and speak the same language : because speaking

  the same language means thinking, and feeling, and having

  emotions, rather differently from people who use a different

  language. But the cultures of different peoples do affect each

  other : in the world of the future it looks as if every part of the

  world would affect every other part. I have suggested earlier, that

  the cultures of the different countries of Europe have in the past

  derived very great benefit from their influence upon each other.

  I have suggested that the national culture which isolates itself

  voluntarily
, or the national culture which is cut off from others by

  circumstances which it cannot control, suffers from this isolation.

  Also, that the country which receives culture from abroad, without having anything to give in return, and the country which aims to impose its culture on another, without accepting anything in

  return, will both suffer from this lack of reciprocity.

  There is something more than a general exchange of culture

  influences, however. You cannot even attempt to trade equally

  with every other nation : there will be some who need the kind of

  goods that you produce, more than others do, and there will be

  some who produce the goods you need yourselves, and others

  who do not. So cultures of people speaking different languages can

  be more or less closely related : and sometimes so closely related

  that we can speak of their having a common culture. Now when

  we speak of 'European culture', we mean the identities which we

  can discover in the various national cultures ; and of course even

  within Europe, some cultures arc more closely related than others.

  Also, one culture within a group of cultures can be closely related,

  on different sides, to two cultures which are not closely related to

  each other. Your cousins are not all cousins of each other, for

  some are on the father's side and some on the mother's. Now, just

  as I have refused to consider the culture of Europe simply as the

  sum of a number of unrelated cultures in the same area, so I

  refused to separate the world into quite unrelated cultural groups ;

  I refused to draw any absolute line between East and West,

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  between Europe and Asia. There are, however, certain common

  features in Europe, vhich make it. possible to speak of a European

  culture. What are they ?

  The dominant force in creating a common culture between

  peoples each of which has its distinct culture, is religion. Please do

  not, at this point, make a mistake in anticipating my meaning.

  This is not a religious talk, and I am not setting out to convert

  anybody. I am simply stating a fact. I am not so much concerned

  with the communion of Christian believers today ; I am talking

  about the common tradition of Christianity which has made