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by The Liberal Imagination (pdf)

  into which they made an instantaneous translation of all that took

  its attitude are of course the environment of the performer, but also

  place on the stage. The problem of the interplay between the emothe performer and his music make the environment of the audience.

  tion and the convention which is available for it, and the reciprocal

  In a family the parents are no doubt the chief factors in the eninfluence they exert on each other, is a very difficult one, and I vironment of the child; but also the child is a factor in the environscarcely even state its complexities, let alone pretend to solve them.

  ment of the parents and himself conditions the actions of his parents

  But the problem with its difficulties should be admitted, and simtoward him.

  plicity of solution should always be regarded as a sign of failure,

  Corollary to this question of environment is the question of in­

  A very important step forward in the complication of our sense

  fluence, the influence which one writer is said to have had on anof the past was made when Whitehead and after him Lovejoy other. In its historical meaning, from which we take our present

  taught us to look not for the expressed but for the assumed ideas

  use, influence was a word intended to express a mystery. It means

  of an age, what Whitehead describes as the "assumptions which

  a flowing-in, but not as a tributary river flows into the main stream

  appear so obvious that people do not know that they are assuming

  at a certain observable point; historically the image is an astrologithem because no other way of putting things has ever occurred to cal one and the meanings which the Oxford Dictionary gives all

  them."

  suggest "producing effects by insensible or invisible means"-"the

  But a regression was made when Professor Lovejoy, in that ininfusion of any kind of divine, spiritual, moral, immaterial, or secret fluential book of his, assured us that "the ideas in serious reflective

  power or principle." Before the idea of influence we ought to be far

  literature are, of course, in great part philosophical ideas in dilumore puzzled than we are; if we find it hard to be puzzled enough, tion." To go fully into the error of this common belief would need

  we may contrive to induce the proper state of uncertainty by turnmore time than we have now at our disposal. It is part of our susing the word upon ourselves, asking, "What have been the influences piciousness of literature that we understake thus to make it a dethat made me the person I am, and to whom would I entrust the pendent art. Certainly we must question the assumption which gives

  task of truly discovering what they were?,, ..

  the priority in ideas to the philosopher and sees the movement of

  Yet another thing that we have not understood with sufficient

  thought as always from the systematic thinker, who thinks up the

  complication is the nature of ideas in their relation to the conditions

  ideas in, presumably, a cultural vacuum, to the poet who "uses" the

  of their development and in relation to their transmission. Too

  ideas "in dilution." We must question this even if it means a reoften we conceive of an idea as being like the baton that is handed construction of what we mean by "ideas."

  from runner to runner in a relay race. But an idea as a transmissible

  And this leads to another matter about which we may not be

  thing is rather like the sentence that in the parlor game is whispered

  simple, the relation of the poet to his environment. The poet, it is

  about in a circle; the point of the game is the amusement that comes

  true, is an effect of environment, but we must remember that he

  when the last version is compared with the original. As for the

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  THE LIBERAL IMAGINATION

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  The Sense of the Past

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  origin of ideas, we ought to remember that an idea is the formulathe world, and what begins as a failure of perception among intion of a response to a situation; so, too, is the modification of an tellectual specialists finds its fulfillment in policy and action.

  existing idea. Since the situations in which people or cultures find

  In time of war, when two different cultures, or two extreme

  themselves are limited in number, and since the possible responses

  modifications of the same culture, confront each other with force,

  are also limited, ideas certainly do have a tendency to recur, and

  this belief in the autonomy of ideas becomes especially strong and

  because people think habitually ideas also have a tendency to persist

  therefore especially clear. In any modern war there is likely to be

  when the situation which called them forth is no longer present;

  involved a conflict of ideas which is in part factitious but which is

  so that ideas do have a certain limited autonomy, and sometimes

  largely genuine. But this conflict of ideas, genuine as it may be,

  the appearance of a complete autonomy. From this there has grown

  suggests to both sides the necessity of believing in the fixed, imup the belief in the actual perfect autonomy of ideas. It is supposed mutable nature of the ideas to which each side owes allegiance.

  that ideas think themselves, create themselves and their descendants,

  What gods were to the ancients at war, ideas are to us. Thus, in the

  have a life independent of the thinker and the situation. And from

  last war, an eminent American professor of philosophy won wide

  this we are often led to conclude that ideas, systematic ideas, are

  praise for demonstrating that Nazism was to be understood as the

  directly responsible for events.

  inevitable outcome of the ideas of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche,

  A similar feeling is prevalent among our intellectual classes in

  while the virtues of American democracy were to be explained by

  relation to words. Semantics is not now the lively concern that it

  tracing a direct line of descent from Plato and the Athenian polity.

  was a few years ago, but the mythology of what we may call politi­

  Or consider a few sentences from a biography of Byron, written

  cal semantics has become established in our intellectual life, the

  when, not so long ago, the culture of Nazism was at its height.

  belief that we are betrayed by words, that words push us around

  The author, a truly admirable English biographer, is making an

  against our will. "The tyranny of words" became a popular phrase

  estimate of the effect of the Romantic Movement upon our time.

  and is still in use, and the semanticists offer us an easier world and

  He concludes that the Romantic Movement failed. Well, we have

  freedom from war if only we assert our independence from words.

  all heard that before, and perhaps it is true, although I for one

  But nearly a century ago Dickens said that he was tired of hearing

  know less and less what it means. Indeed, I know less and less what

  about "the tyranny of words" (he used that phrase); he was, he

  is meant by the ascription of failure to any movement in literature.

  said, less concerned with the way words abuse us than with the way

  All movements fail, and perhaps the Romantic Movement failed

  we abuse words. It is not words
that make our troubles, but our

  more than most because it attempted more than most; possibly it

  own wills. Words cannot control us unless we desire to be controlled

  attempted too much. To say that a literary movement failed seems

  by them. And the same is true of the control of systematic ideas.

  to suggest a peculiar view of both literature and history; it implies

  We have come to believe that some ideas can betray us, others save

  that literature ought to settle something for good and all, that life

  us. The educated classes are learning to blame ideas for our troubles,

  ought to be progressively completed. And according to our author,

  rather than blaming what is a very different thing-our own bad

  not only did the Romantic Movement fail-it left a terrible legacy:

  thinking. This is the great vice of academicism, that it is concerned

  Nationalism was ·essentially a Romantic movement, and from nationwith ideas rather than with thinking, and nowadays the errors of alism springs the half-baked racial theorist with his romantic belief in

  academicism do not stay in the academy; they make their way into

  the superiority of "Aryan" blood and his romantic distrust of the use

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  of reason. So far-reaching were the effects of the Romantic Revival that

  which has had the effect of leading young students of literature,

  they still persist in shapes under which they are no longer recognized.

  particularly the more gifted ones, to incline more and more to resist

  ... For Romantic literature appeals to that strain of anarchism which

  historical considerations, justifying themselves, as it is natural they

  inhabits a dark corner of every human mind and is continually advancing the charms of extinction against the claims of life-the beauty of should, by pointing to the dullness and deadness and falsifications

  all that is fragmentary and youthful and half-formed as opposed to the

  which have resulted from the historical study of literature. Our recompact achievement of adult genius.

  sistance to history is no doubt ultimately to be acounted for by noth­

  It is of course easy enough to reduce the argument to absurdity

  ing less than the whole nature of our life today. It was said by

  -we have only to ask why Germany and not ourselves responded

  Nietzsche-the real one, not the lay figure of cultural propagandaso fiercely to the romantic ideas which, if they be indeed the rothat the historical sense was an actual faculty of the mind, "a sixth mantic ideas, were certainly available to everybody. The failure of

  sense," and that the credit for the recognition of its status must go

  logic is not however what concerns us, but rather what the logic is

  to the nineteenth century. What was uniquely esteemed by the

  intended to serve: the belief that ideas generate events, that they

  nineteenth century is not likely to stand in high favor with us: our

  have an autonomous existence, and that they can seize upon the

  coldness to historical thought may in part be explained by our

  minds of some men and control their actions independently of cirfeeling that it is precisely the past that caused all our troubles, the cumstance and will.

  ni.neteenth century being the most blameworthy of all the culpable

  Needless to say, these violations of historical principle require a

  centuries. Karl Marx, for whom history was indeed a sixth sense,

  violation of historical fact. The Schopenhauer and the Nietzsche of

  expressed what has come to be the secret hope of our time, that

  the first explanation have no real reference to two nineteenth-century

  man's life in politics, which is to say, man's life in history, shall

  philosophers of the same names; the Plato is imaginary, the Athens

  come to an end. History, as we now understand it, envisions its own

  out of a storybook, and no attempt is made to reconcile this fanciful

  extinction-that is really what we nowadays mean by "progress"­

  Athens with the opinion of the real Athens held by the real Plato.

  and with all the passion of a desire kept secret even from ourselves,

  As for the second explanation, how are we to connect anarchism,

  we yearn to elect a way of life which shall be satisfactory once and

  and hostility to the claims of life, and the fragmentary, and the

  for all, world without end, and we do not want to be reminded by

  immature, and the half-formed, with Kant, or Goethe, or Wordsthe past of the considerable possibility that our present is but perpetworth, or Beethoven, or Berlioz, or Delacroix? And how from these uating mistakes and failures and instituting new troubles.

  men, who are Romanticism, dare we derive the iron rigidity and

  And yet, when we come to think about it, the chances are all in

  the desperate centralization which the New Order of the Nazis

  favor of our having to go on making our choices and so of makinvolved, or the systematic cruelty or the elaborate scientism with ing our mistakes. History, in its meaning of a continuum of events,

  which the racial doctrine was implicated?

  is not really likely to come to an end. There may therefore be

  The two books to which I refer are of course in themselves harmsome value in bringing explicitly to mind what part in culture is less and I don't wish to put upon them a weight which they should

  played by history in its other meaning of an ordering and undernot properly be made to bear. But they do suggest something of the standing of the continuum of events. There is no one who is better

  low estate into which history has fallen among our educated classes,

  �ble to inf�rm us on this point than Nietzsche. We can perhaps

  and they are of a piece with the depreciation of the claims of history

  listen to him with the more patience because he himself would

  which a good many literary people nowadays make, a depreciation

  have had considerable sympathy for our impatience with history,

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  for although he thought that the historical sense brought certain

  virtues, making men "unpretentious, unselfish, modest, brave, habituated to self-control and self-renunciation," he also thought that it prevented them from having the ability to respond to the very high­

  Tacitus Now

  est and noblest developments of culture, making them suspicious of

  what is wholly completed and fully matured. This ambivalent view

  of the historical sense gives him a certain authority when he defines

  what the historical sense is and does. It is, he said, "the capacity for

  divining quickly the order of rank of the valuations according

  to which a people, a community, or an individual has lived." In the

  case of a people or of a community, the valuations are those which

  are expressed not only by the gross institutional facts of their life,

  what Nietzsche called "the operating forces," but also and more

  THE histories of Tacitus have been put to strange uses. The

  princelings of Renaissance Italy consulted the Annals on

  significantly by their morals and manners, by their philosophy and

  how
to behave with the duplicity of Tiberius. The Gerart. And the historical sense, he goes on to say, is "the 'divining inman racists overlooked all the disagreeable things which Tacitus stinct' for the relationships of these valuations, for the relation of

  observed of their ancestors, took note only of his praise of the ancient

  the valuations to the operating forces." The historical sense, that is,

  chastity and independence, and thus made of the Germania their

  is to be understood as the critical sense, as the sense which life uses

  anthropological primer. But these are the aberrations; the influence

  to test itself. And since there riever was a time when the instinct for

  of Tacitus in Europe has been mainly in the service of liberty, as he

  divining-and "quickly"!-the order of rank of cultural expressions

  intended it to be. Perhaps this influence has been most fully felt in

  was so much needed, our growing estrangement from history must

  France, where, under the dictatorships both of the Jacobins and of

  be understood as the sign of our desperation.

  Napoleon, Tacitus was regarded as a dangerously subversive writer.

  Nietzsche's own capacity for quickly divining the order of rank of

  In America, however, he has never meant a great deal. James Fenicultural things was, when he was at his best, more acute than that of more Cooper is an impressive exception to our general indifference,

  any other man of his time or since. If we look for the explanation of

  but Cooper was temperamentally attracted by the very one of all the

  his acuity, we find it in the fact that it never occurred to him to

  qualities of Tacitus which is likely to alienate most American libseparate his historical sense from his sense of art. They were not two erals, the aristocratic color of his libertarian ideas. Another reason

  senses but one. And the merit of his definition of the historical sense,

  for our coolness to Tacitus is that, until recently, our political experiespecially when it is taken in conjunction with the example of himence gave us no ground to understand what he is talking about.

  self, is that it speaks to the historian and to the student of art as if

  Dictatorship and repression, spies and political informers, blood

  they were one person. To that person Nietzsche's definition prepurges and treacherous dissension have not been part of our political scribes that culture be studied and judged as life's continuous evaluatradition as they have been of Europe's. But Europe has now come tion of itself, the evaluation being understood as never finding full