I Have Always Been - I Think

Criticism Will Need An Injection Of Humility That Is, A Recognition Of Its Role As Ancillary To The Arts, Needed Only Occasionally In A Temporary Capacity. Since The Critic Exists Only For Introducing And Explaining, He Must Be Readily Intelligible; He Has No Special Vocabulary: Criticism Is In No Way A Science Or A System.

A Student Under My Care Owes His First Allegiance To Himself And Not To My Specialty; And Must Not Be Burdened With My Work As If He Followed No Other And Had Contracted No Obligation Under Heaven But That Of Satisfying My Requirements.

Can An Idea A Notion As Abstract As Relativism Produce By Itself The Effects Alleged? Cause All The Harm, Destroy All The Lives And Reputations? I Am As Far As Anyone Can Be From Denying The Power Of Ideas In History, But The Suggestion That A Philosophy (as Relativism Is Often Called) Has Perverted Millions And Debased Daily Life Is On The Face Of It Absurd. No Idea Working Alone Has Ever Demoralized Society, And There Have Been Plenty Of Ideas Simpler And More Exciting Than Relativism.

The Nation In Arms Is Virtually A Communist State: The People Must Be Paid Wages And Fed And Protected And Regimented Behind The Lines As Much As On The Front. Minds Must Be Kept Loyal And At The Right Pitch Of Hate, So That Successive Drafts Of Fighters Are Accepted Without Murmurings. Letters And Newspapers Must Be Censored While The Propaganda Mill Grinds On. As For Decisions Of Strategy And Overall Command, They Must Please Many Masters: Dissenters In The Cabinet, The Heads Of The Allied States And Public Opinion. Hence Failures Must Be Disguised Or Concealed.

We Are Accustomed To The Artist Scoundrel Or Specialist In Vice, And Unaccustomed To The Creator In Whom Passion And Reason And Moral Integrity Hold In Balance. But Greatness Of Intellect And Feeling, Or Soul And Conduct - Magnanimity, In Short - Does Occur; It Is Not A Myth For Boy Scouts, And Its Reality Is Important, If Only To Give Us The True Range Of The Term "human," Which We So Regularly Define By Its Lower Reaches.