Thefolknving is the text of Russell Kirk’s address at the 1984 Ingersoll Prizes Awards Banquet.nNa I ature imitates art: so Oscar Wilde instructs us. Whethernor not natural sunsets imitate Turner’s painted sunsets, surelynhuman nature is developed by human arts. “Art is man’snnature,” in Burke’s phrase: modeling ourselves upon the noblencreations of the great writer and the great painter, we becomenfully human by emulation of the artist’s vision.nOr such is the upward way. But also there exists the path tonAvernus, the way of degradation. The art of decadence andnnihilism, the art of meaningless violence and meaningful fraud,npresents us with the image of man unregenerate andntriumphant in his depravity. Many in our time are seduced intonthe abyss of the diabolic imagination, taking for their exemplarsnthe creations of the writers and the artists of disorder.nIn our time, the disciplines of humane letters and ofnscholarship are disputed in a Debatable Land by the partisansnof order and the partisans of disorder. In this clash, often thenenemies of the permanent things gain the advantage. Yet theirnvictory is Pyrrhic: for in undoing order, they undo themselves.nPreferring to reign in Hell rather than to serve in Heaven, theynmake a Waste Land, and are condemned to dwell therein. InnBurke’s words: “The law is broken; nature is disobeyed; and thenrebellious are outlawed, cast forth, and exiled, from this worldnof reason, and order, and peace, and virtue, and fruitfulnpenitence, into the antagonist world of madness, discord, vice,nconfusion, and unavailing sorrow.”nThe frontiers of that antagonistic world of the rebels againstnnature and art have been extended, figuratively and literally, innour day; and many innocents have fallen trophy to the enemy.nThe antagonist world of disorder breaks into many a publicnlibrary, where masses of the latest paperbacks of salacity andnviolence are offered to boys and girls—at racks just within thendoors. Through fenatic politics, the antagonist world lays wastenorder and justice and freedom: a Pol Pot, having spentnsuflScient years in Parisian cafes absorbing Marxist dogmata,nreturns to Cambodia to slaughter a third of the population ofnhis own country. Ideas do have consequences. Somewhere innthe pages of Sainte-Beuve we encounter the revolutionarynplaywright who gestures from his window toward thenferocious mob pouring down the boulevard: “See my pageantnpassing!”nRichard Weaver knew this hard truth that our bent worldncringes under the blows of the literature of disorder. As henwrote inModemAg^ a quarter of a century ago, “The intent ofnthe radical to defy all substance, or to press it into formsnDr. Kirk is the 1984 recipient of The Ingersoll Foundation’snRichardM. Weaver Award for Scholarly Letters.n18inChronicles of CulturenThe Literature of Ordernby Russell Kirknnnconceived in his mind alone, is… theologically wrong; it is annaggression by the self which outrages a deep laid order ofnthings. And it has seeped into every department of our life.”nThe literary nihilism of our age has assaulted the dignity ofnman, the human state of being worthy. Five centuries ago, Picondella Mirandola declared that God has said to man, “We havenmade thee neither of heaven nor of earth, neither mortal nornimmortal, so that with freedom of choice and with honor, asnthough the maker and moulder of thyself, thou mayest fashionnthyself in whatever shape thou shalt prefer. Thou shalthave thenpower to degenerate into the lower forms of life, which arenbrutish. Thou shalt have the power, out of thy soul’s judgment,nto be reborn into the higher forms, which are divine.”nThe literary nihilists, the artists of disorder, enjoin us tondegenerate into the lower forms of life, which are brutish. Onenmay discern in any day’s newspaper some item that is evidencenof a widespread “intellectual” hostility toward religious beliefnand toward true humanism. Leading book publishers puff upnworks of fiction meant to convince us that indeed we are butnnaked apes, and works of political polemics intended tonrepudiate our social order and bring on, at best, whatnTocqueville calls “democratic despotism.” Reviewers simpernat the obscene and revile intemperately—or ignore altogethern—books that attempt to work a renewal of mind andnconscience. The oligarchs of the antagonist world, in the realmnof letters, are eager to attract more dupes.nX andering to literary and social decadence has its materialnrewards, even if the iron enters into the souls of such artistsnwith an eye for the main chance. The emoluments of pornographynare sufficiently obvious; few trades in our time are betternpaid. Ideological servility in letters also earns its ounce of goldnat the devil’s booth. T. S. Eliot put this urbanely in his Criterionnreview of books by Leon Trotsky and V. S. Calverton, in 1933:nIt is natural, and not necessarily convincing, to find youngnintellectuals in New York turning to communism, and turningntheir communism to literary accoimt. The literary professionnis not only, in all countries, overcrowded and imderpaid (thenfew overpaid being chiefly persons who have outlived theirninfluence, if they ever had any); it is embarrassed by such annumber of ill-trained people doing such a number ofnunnecessary jobs; and writing so many unnecessary Ixjolss andnunnecessary reviews of books, that it has much ado to maintainnits dignity as a profession at all. One is almost tempted to formnthe opinion that the world is at a stage at which men of lettersnare a superfluity. To be able therefore to envisage literaturen