Between 1913 and 1962 Robert Frost published 11 books ofnpoetry, won four Pulitzer Prizes, established himself as thenunofficial poet laureate of the United States, and acquired annational and international literary reputation. Despite hisnfame as a poet and public speaker, and because of his friendshipnwith such liberal Democrats as Vice-President Henry Wallacenand President John F. Kennedy, few Americans are awarenthat in his social and political philosophy Frost was a highlynoriginal conservative thinker. His thought was wholly unsystematic,nand lacked the coherence and unity of the abstractnsystems of speculative philosophers, but it was wholly consistentnin adhering to basic social and political conservative principles.nFrost distrusted abstract labels and categories, because henknew that such terms as “revolutionary,” “radical,” “liberal,”n”rebel,” and “conservative” often provided the basis for ideologicalntheories and rational systems created by the imaginationnand then identified with “reality.” Like Edmund Burke,nthe poet considered ideology a fictional product of the creativenimagination, often utilized as a substitute for revealed religionnand historical experience, and the chief source of the delusionsnthat led men to dream that they could establish a Utopian socialnorder. The ideologies of such writers as Rousseau andnMarx had no place in Frost’s social and political philosophy.nIn avoiding abstract categories. Frost never referred to himselfnas a conservative, because he feared that other people’s falsenconceptions of this term would be attributed to him. Twonlines summed up his viewpoint on such abstract categories:nI never dared be radical when youngnFor fear it would make me conservative when old.nThese lines express Frost’s characteristic prudent temperamentnand moderation between political extremes; he avoided intellectualndisillusionments by refusing initially to commit himselfnto ideological illusions.nFrost’s social and political conservatism was part of his totalndualistie philosophy, which assumed that “reality” consistednof two basic elements—matter and spirit, each complex in it-nPeter /. Stanlis s most recent hook is Edmund Burke: ThenEnlightenment and Revolution, published by Transaction.nRobert FrostnSocial and Political Conservativenby Peter J. Stanlisnself, but made doubly so by their constant and unresolved interactions.nHe stated that the universe consists of “endlessn. . . things in pairs ordained to everlasting opposition,” and thatn”the philosopher values himself on the inconsistencies he canncontain by main force. They are two ends of a strut that keepsnhis mind from collapsing.” In resolving the dualistie conflictnbetween the one and the many in matter and spirit. Frost believednthat all human endeavors sought to reconcile and unifynthe complexities, paradoxes, ambiguities, and contradictionsnin man’s experience through greater knowledge, understanding,nrevealed insight, and wisdom. Frost’s philosophical dualismndrew heavily on the thought of Aristotle and Kant, andnwas further indebted in many of its complexities and elaborationsnto the metaphorical language of Emerson, and the worknof William James, Henri Bergson, and Alfred North Whitehead,namong others.nFrost rejected as too simple and optimistic the spiritualnmonism of Ralph Waldo Emerson, which explained the problemnof evil as merely the absence of good as the sole reality.nHe also rejected the materialistic monism of Karl Marx, whichntreated spirit as an illusion and ended in doctrinaire atheism.nTo Frost human nature itself was a dualistie compound of matternand spirit, or body and soul. He viewed religion, philosophy,nscience, art, education, politics, and the unfolding historynof mankind in organized society as different forms of revelation,nperceived by the human mind as metaphors that illuminatednwhat is true, good, and beautiful in life.nAlthough Frost did not belong to any church, he identifiednhimself as “an Old Testament Christian,” in the tradition ofnSt. Augustine. He once stated that he was “less churchy” thannT. S. Eliot, but “more religious.” He despised religiosity, butnhe stated that he had “no religious doubts, not about God’snexistence.” His whole object in his poetry, he said, was “to saynspirit in terms of matter or matter in terms of spirit,” so thatnhis major poems are emotionally charged with a profoundnpiety. He believed certain mysteries always remain, and thereforen”something has to be left to God.” Contrary to thenclaims of Joseph Warren Beach, Lawrance Thompson, GeorgenW. Nitchie, Marion Montgomery, and Yvor Winters, Frost wasnnot a spiritually alienated man, an indecisive agnostic or “spiritualndrifter.” These critics fail to understand the dividing linenbetween being noncommittal and uncommitted.nnnAUGUST 1992/19n