Note 2 — JOCASTA

The adultishness of the individual-real is an abhorrence (as Mr. Lewis shows it to be) of intellectualism (organized fear) in the up-to-date White mass, which to Mr. Lewis is sentimental Bolshevism, Bohemianism. But such an abhorrence of intellectualism in the up-to-date White mass, if one is not careful, becomes (as in Mr. Lewis) an adultish championship of intellectualism (organized bravado) in a privileged White few (as any system of individualism must mean by individualism the individualism of a few)—a sentimental Toryism, in fact, Academianism. And in what few? The few, of course, swept aside by the time-current; the few, indeed, who might be truly individual were they not organized into a system of individualism. Mr. Lewis’s Toryism would be perhaps apt if he were trying to be only politically, not philosophically right as well. But in the circumstances his satire is as irrelevant to his right, which is philosophical, as Swift’s would have been, had it been philosophical, to his right, which was political. The only satire relevant to a philosophical right is a satire like Blake’s: Blake’s faith showed the people who were wrong to be enemies, it was not a system organizing himself into an enemy. Mr. Lewis does not like Blake because he said that the roads of genius (right) were crooked: Mr. Lewis believes that the roads of right should be systematic, that the person who is right should be an enemy, a righteous, sentimental Tory rather than a sad though angry spirit.