Screwballs and firebands

Title

Creator

Dennis, Nigel

Language

English

Year

1966

Rights

In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted

Abstract

Heretice is the usual name given to non-conformiste.

Fulltext

■ Heretici ii tip ufipl name given tn non-conformisti. SCREWBALLS AND FIREBRANDS Barrows Dunham was head of the Philosophy Depart ment at Temple University, Pennsylvania, when the Com mittee on Un-American Acti vities haled him before it for questioning. "When I fell silent before these gentle men,” Mr. Dunham tells us, ”my employers dismissed me, alleging ‘intellectual arro gance’ on my part.” To fall silent in court Be fore one’s accusers may be> judicious, but is it sensible, 12 years later, to remain si lent before one’s readers? Prof. Dunham doesn’t say what crime the Committee accused him of: we suppose it was membership of the Communist party. He doesn't tell us whether he was guilty of the crime: we suppose he was. But it would be nice to know, because where a reader’s sympathies are concerned there is a great difference between a man who is an underdog and. a man who is just lying doggo. Impressed by his persecu tion, Prof. Dunham with drew into reflecting upon similar occurrences in history. The Heretics is the fruits of his brooding. It is a fairly long, interesting and infor mative examination of select ed heretics from Socrates to Marx, with close looks at the forms their “intellectual ar rogance" took and the char acters of their accusers. As is inevitable with such records, one is left with the impression that history’s end less repeating of its own in justices is about the most mournful and tedious ele ment in the whole story of mankind. But this impres sion is strengthened rather too much by the fact that Prof. Dunham is a strongly opinionated radical, to whom all persecutions look suspi ciously alike. Such an atti tude does not allow either history or human nature a sporting chance to express its diversity. Heresy, however, as we can nearly all agree, is usually 18 Panorama what Prof. Dunham says it is — the screwball’s refusal to play ball with the team. The fact that the former (at least v in the more famous cases) is often acknowledged later to be the hero of the game should not blind us to the fact that he has not had hemlock poured down him in the first place just because all heretics are good and all authorities are bad. To grasp the real drama of heresy and get a clear idea of why heretics are burnt with such monotonous regu larity one must at least make an effort to see that some thing beside the heretic is at stake. Pharisees, elders of the people, Calvinists, inquisitors and police-chiefs all believe that a few personal bonfires are' preferable to a general conflagration. Religions whose whole foundations rest upon unquestioning faith in revealed truth believe inevi tably that the stake is the best place for those who want to open their religion to dispute. If Marxism was the science that Prof. Dun ham believes it to be, and not just another ideology, its leaders would long since have made a policy of cosseting the best brains instead of blowing them out. What Prof. Dunham has no difficulty in showing is the heretic’s repeated advan tage over the organisation man in the matter of intel ligence and good sense. He also touches on, but does not stress broadly enough, how much extra pugnacity, wit and nous the heretic develops as a result of being badger ed by hostile mossbacks. Socrates’ defence before his accusers is such a model in this respect that his capi tal punishment for it comes as no surprise, while Vol taire’s "English Letters” are still living evidence of the folly of releasing such a tar tar from the Bastille and allowing him to visit a free country: "Go into the London Stock Exchange, a place respectable than many courts. There you see re presentatives of all nations, gathered on behalf of use fulness to mankind. There the Jew, the Mohamme dan, the Christian deal with one another as if they belong to the same reli February 1966 19 gion, and call a man in fidel only when he is bankrupt.” That was written in the good old days, of course, be fore the heretical Marx spoilt the fun by insisting that busi nessmen did just as much evil as clergymen. But one doesn’t blush to read it, as one does whenever one reads the words of an organisation-man strug gling, as always, to deny to others the privileges he enjoys himself: “In every constituent body throughout the em pire the working class will, if we grant the prayer of this petition, be an irresis tible majority. In every constituent body capital will be placed at the feet of labour; knowledge will be borne down by ignor ance: and is it possible to doubt what the result must be?” This is Macaulay, begging the House of Commons not to grant the Chartist petition for universal suffrage and a secret ballot. But it might well have been spoken only yesterday, in Rhodesia. He retics are often wrong, but they are usually original. But the spokesman for or ganisations are in a much worse fix, because the horse they elect to flog is usually dead and the cause for which they would die has usually gone bad. Prof. Dunham records all this in a low, rather sorrow ful tone. That is not a style that readily does justice to the numerous springy, lively heretics who sizzle through his pages. Wilful, headstrong and as much of a nuisance to the sleeping as bread crumbs in a bed, their legacy is more of high spirits than of invalid port. — By Nigel Dennis in The Listener. 20 Panorama,

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