The Complete Prose of T. S. Eliot: The Critical EditionVol. 6: The War Years, 1940-1946

Revival of Christian Imagination

At the twelfth meeting of the Moot in Oxford from 1 to 3 Aug 1941, attended by TSE, Karl Mannheim delivered the first part of his lecture “Towards a New Social Philosophy: A Challenge to Christian Thinkers by a Sociologist.” Part Iwas titled “Christianity in the Age of Planning.” At the end of the meeting, the minutes record, it was agreed “[t]o ask T. S. Eliot to write a paper on the ‘Revival of Christian Imagination,’” mainly in response to Part IIof Mannheim’s lecture, “Christian Values in the Changing Environment,” which was to be distributed to members together with TSE’s paper before the next meeting, 19-21 Dec. Mannheim subsequently published both parts of the lecture in Diagnosis of Our Time: Wartime Essays of a Sociologist(London: Kegan Paul, 1943, 100-65), leaving it “in the original form in order to serve its original purpose of stimulating thought rather than pretending to give final solutions to the questions raised.” Copies of TSE’s three-page mimeographed paper, in the form of a letter to chairman J. H. Oldham, survive in the Moot papers of Fred Clarke (Institute of Education, London) and A. D. Lindsay (Keele).

My dear Oldham,

I am sorry that I have found it impossible to prepare a paper on the subject of Christian Imagination worthy of the standards set by previous contributions to the Moot. I assumed that what was wanted was something which would provide relaxation between the sessions of hard work on Mannheim’s ideas; but even to do that satisfactorily would require more time and thought than I have been able to give. I can only set down a few thoughts as they come to me; and even these, if they are of any use at all, will not provide the light relief desired, because I find Mannheim’s paper very relevant and in consequence a point of departure for whatever I have to say. His three ways of approach defined on pages 4 and 5 give an articulation which I think I had already arrived at: I accept it, anyway. I observe that he associates me explicitly with approach (c): so I should like to make clear that in my opinion there can be no question of accepting any one way to the exclusion of the others – my emphasis was only an attempt to call attention to the one of the three approaches which seemed to be the most ignored. ¹

I take it that one is not called upon in this context to begin by defining Imagination: a task which would have to be prefaced by a definition of Definition. What I have in mind, I think, in this context, is Imagination as capacity for experience (I shall not define experience) in the sense in which “experience” is spiritual experience, and as capacity for experiencing not merely the immediate but the immediate with its relations – so that the highest imagination will combine the maximum intensity of immediacy with the maximum implication of pattern. All one can do is to indicate something of the way in which one is taking “imagination” in what one proceeds to say: what definition we get is through the use we are making of the term, rather than in the prefatory formulation. I am desirous of using it in a way which shall embrace the imagination of the saint and that of the artist. If our references, in either case, tend to be to the written word, that is because it is more convenient for illustration than other forms of expression or other forms of art.

I think that I accept what Mannheim calls his “pluralist” attitude: that is to say, his (a), (b) and (c) are so interrelated that each requires the others for its fulfillment, and so that you cannot affirm confidently that, by aiming at any particular one, we shall attain the others as a consequence. ² It is obvious that individuals who arrive nearest to “personal ecstatic mystical communion with God” do not appear, as a rule, quite without relation...