MURTI-BING
555
One can expect that the new generation, raised from the start in
the new society, will be free of this split. But that cannot be brought
about quickly. One would have to rid one's self completely of the
Church, which is a difficult matter, and one that demands patience
and tact. And even
if
one could eliminate this reverenced mainstay of
irrational impulses, national literatures would remain to e.xert their
malignant influence. For example, the works of the greatest Polish
poets are marked by a dislike of Russia; and the dose of Catholic
philosophy one finds in them is alarming. Yet the state must publish
certain of these poets and must teach them in its schools for they are
the classics, the creators of the literary language, and are considered
to be the forerunners of the Revolution. To place them on the index
would be to think non-dialectically and to fall into the sin of "left–
ism."
It
is a difficult dilemma, more difficult in the converted coun–
tries than in the Center, where the identification of national culture
with the interests of humanity has been achieved to a much greater
degree. (But trouble exists even there, for its youth, despite sensible
persuasion, insists upon reading Dostoevsky.) Probably, therefore, the
schizophrenic as a type will not disappear in the near future.
Someone might contend that Murti-Bing is a medicine that is
incompatible with humah nature. That is not a very strong argument.
The Aztecs' custom of offering human sacrifices to their gods or the
mortification of their own flesh practiced by the hermits in the early
centuries of Christianity scarcely seem praiseworthy. Yet they were
practiced successfully. The worship of gold has become a motive
power second to none in its brutality. Seen from this perspective,
Murti-Bing does not violate the nature of human kind.
Whether a man who has taken the Murti-Bing cure attains
in–
ternal peace and harmony is another question. He attains a relative
degree of harmony, just enough to render him active.
It
is preferable
to the torment of pointless rebellion and groundless hope. The peas–
ants, who are incorrigible in their petty-bourgeois attachments, assert
that "a change must come, because
this can't go on."
This is an
amusing belief in the natural order of things. A tourist, as an anecdote
tells us, wanted to go up into the mountains; but it had been rain–
ing for a week. He met a mountaineer walking by a stream, and
asked him if it would continue to pour. The mountaineer looked at
the swelling stream and voiced the opinion that it would not. When
