Clearing cut a book-case yesterday, I came across a copy
of Emanuel Ben's Mort de la Pensie Bourgeoise, and as I turned the pages my attention was arrested by two passages which I had heavily underlined. The first was as follows: "I believe that the gravest malady which afflicts contem- porary thought is lack of courage, not lack of universality." The second was as follows: "There remains something which we intellectuals can do in this modern world. We can defend Man." Is it true that the modern intellectual is treacherous to his calling, and do we really lack the courage to defend those humane values in which we were trained and in which we believe? It is not, I think, that we lack courage, since most intellectuals would be prepared to fight, to the point of martyrdom, against any dictatorial suppression of free thought. It is rather that we lack lucidity. We do not realise with sufficient clarity that our standards of thought and conduct are being threatened, not so much by any suppression from above, as by a slow infiltration of dis- belief and ridicule from below. Our enemies, in fact, are not the old regiments of rigid conservatism, but the new hordes of half-educated progressives. We must acquire the intelligence and the energy to save ourselves from those whom we believed to be our friends.
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