And some of our finest sentiments are rooted in bulk thinking. Patriotism, for instance. "All and only those who speak my language – or come from my corner of the world - are worthy of respect." What sentiment could be finer! It has sent young boys to meet death with casual disregard, to write poems of heroism ("If I should die, think only this of me....") and of posthumous regret ("What hope for these that die as cattle...?").
Party loyalty, too, is rooted in this principle. "All Tories are toffs" makes no exception for the grocer's daughter. "All Labourites are beer-bellied" similarly ignores the waistline of the party's present and former torch-bearers.
But the question cannot be postponed: isn't bulk thinking a glaring oxymoron? After all, doesn't thinking imply taking pains, teasing out exceptions, painting intermediate hues, minimising monochrome...? Just like great art, or great music. Isn't a sonata the very antithesis of a martial drumbeat? And so isn't thinking – the 'sweat of the nobles' – the very opposite of bulk thinking?
Yes and No. Arnold Toynbee was unable to conceive of a progression of European history other than that followed by Europe. And Marx had the whole world carved out between workers and capitalists. Liberals today – like Fukuyama - believe there is only one form of legitimate government. These men were not idiots – except to their adversaries.
Bulkiness in thinking can only be forgiven if the bulk considered is humanity. Anything that derogates from this great bulk militates against thought as well as decency. Here is where we turn to the novelist and the poet. They are the enemies of the bulk. They treat each human being as though, well, he were a human being, idiosyncratic, inane, imperfect.... But that must be because novels and poems are born, not of thought, but of feeling. There is a tendency to universalise in all thought; there is a humanising tendency in feeling.
The thinker and the poet, then, constitute two halves of the whole individual. Without their hostile cooperation, we would not have the tension of sympathy. For just as it would be injudicious to venture into certain parts of New York after dark, so it would be inhuman to ignore the residents therein. In direct proportion to the terror they inspire, we are taught by writers, we should empathise with the terrible injustice that accounts for that terror. In this stress of opposing forces lies our humanity.
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