Note 143 — III The ‘Clerks’—The Great Betrayal (continued 2)

The French traditionalists condemn the truth in itself in the name of ‘social’ truth. This is the glorification of prejudices, a new thing indeed in the descendants of Montaigne and Voltaire. It may be said that certain contemporary French masters show a zeal in defending the interests of society never seen before in those whose business was to defend the interests of the mind.

The condemnation of disinterested intellectual activity is plainly laid down in this command of Barrès: ‘All questions must be solved in relation to France,’ to which a German thinker replies in 1920, ‘All the conquests of ancient and modern culture and of science are looked at by us from the German point of view before everything.’ (Quoted by C. Chabot, Preface to the French translation of Speeches to the German Nation, page xix). For the cult of the ‘useful error’, see an amazing page in the Jardin de Bérénice, quoted and commented on by Parodi. (Traditionalisme et Democratie, page 136.)