The American Heresy

Extract

We are forced now to return to an earlier, Pascalian pessimism, to a model of history whose logic derives from a postulate of original sin. We can subscribe today, all too readily, to De Maistre's view that the barbarism of modern politics, the regress of educated, technologically inventive man into slaughter enact a working out of the eschatology of the Fall.” Thus George Steiner in his remarkable In Bluebeards Castle. Unfortunately, the return and subscription mentioned are only a literary flourish, for Steiner does not imagine that anyone would seriously agree with Pascal and De Maistre. He is wrong. Those for whom the dogma of Original Sin is not mere metaphor have always seen the landscape differently. The believer lives in a world he finds familiar but in which he does not feel at home. Where does an alien go to register?