Such creative
writers as have a definite philosophy of composition are equally
categorical. And both are calling upon liberal minds, who are supposed
to have no principles of their own, to umpire the controversy.
The liberal mind, which I believe in, though I hesitate to define
it, has too much work before it to umpire in a dispute over the
relative taste of the decayed and the raw. In literature, as in
pretty much everything else, the central problem is not the
struggle of the old with the new; it is the endless combat of
civilization (which is old _and_ new) against barbarism. Under which
banner our writers are enlisting is the vital question. Whether they
are radical or conservative will always in the view of history be
interesting, but may be substantially unimportant. And the function of
the liberal mind, with its known power to dissolve illiberal
dogmatism, is to discover the barbarian wherever he raises his head,
and to convert or destroy him.
The Greeks had a short way of defining the barbarian which we can
only envy. To them, all men not Greeks were barbarians. By this
they meant that only the Greeks had learned to desire measure in
all things, liberty safeguarded by law, and knowledge of the truth
about life.
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