I46 RENAISSANCES

'Gershenson, however, insists upon Primitivisrn like the true blue
Ronsseauite that he is:

' "I would give up [he writes] all the factual knowledge and all the
ideas that I have gleaned from books, and would sacrifice, into the bargain,
the whole of my own intellectual superstructure that I have succeeded in
erecting on those academic foundations, in exchange for the joy of per-
sonally achieving, entirely out of my own experience, one single original
act of knowledge. It might be as simple as you please, but it would have
the freshness of a summer's morn."

'The discussion is then carried to a deeper level by Ivanov's passing
beyond the limits of a merely cultural ideal and introducing the transcen-
dence of the Absolute.

' "A man who has faith in God [he writes] will not consent at any
price to see in his faith merely one of the constituents of Culture. On the
other hand, a man who has become a slave of Culture will inevitably
diagnose Faith as a cultural phenomenon, whatever may be the exact
definition of Faith that he goes on to work out. He may define it as an
inherited outlook and an historically determined psychic habitus, or define
it in terms of Metaphysics and Poetry, or define it, again, as a socially
formative force and an ethical standard: it all comes to the same thing. . ..
The real point is this: our faith in an Absolute—in which we are already
in touch with something that is not Culture—is the issue on which our
destiny hangs. If we have this faith it gives us an inward freedom which
is veritably Life itself; if we do not have it, our unbelief condemns us to
an inward enslavement by a Culture that has long since become godless
in principle through the effect that it has had of imprisoning Man in him-
self (as has been definitively expounded by Kant). Faith alone—and, by
'faith', I mean a complete renunciation of the Fall of Man, for which
'Culture' is another name1—will enable you to overcome that 'temptation*
of yours which you have felt so deeply. But Original Sin cannot be
eradicated by a superficial obliteration of its outward marks and mani-
festations. To un-learn our literacy and to *expel the Muses' (to apeak
with Plato's words) would be merely a palliative; the letters of the Alpha-
bet would reflect, all over again, the old unalterable spiritual constitution
of the prisoner fettered to the rock in the Platonic Cave,a Rousseau's
dream is the offspring of unbelief. On the other hand* living in God
means living no longer entirely in the realm of Relativity which is the
realm of Human Culture; it means rising above Culture into Freedom in
one part of one's own being."

'The two friends did not succeed in arriving at an understanding with
one another; but Ivanov's way of working out the idea implicit in Human-
ism is a clarification that is of such truly decisive significance for ourselves
that I will take the liberty of quoting one last utterance of his,

' "Culture itself, in the true sense of the word, is, as I see it, no dead
level, no plain bestrewn with ruins, no field sown with dead men's bones.
Culture has in it, moreover, something veritably hallowed; for Culture is
a recollection, not only of our forefathers' terrestrial form and outward
appearance, but also of their spiritual achievements in dedicating Man-
kind to ideals. It is a live, everlasting recollection which, in souls that
become participants in these dedications, is undying. These dedications
have been bequeathed by our forefathers for the benefit of their remotest

* See the passages of works of Plato's that have been discussed in the present Study,
IV. iv. 585-8.—A.J.T.

z Plato: RespuhUca, SI-JA-SZIC, quoted in this Study in III, iii. s&49~5»,—-AJ.T,