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EZRA POUND 365
stitution. But the United States and Soviet Russia have proven
that a Constitution offers no barrier to the development of a
monolithic state. The only barrier to such a monstrosity is individual
virtue. Pound discovered the basis for this in two Confucian
principles: ching ming, or precise definition, verbal precision; and
humanitas, or jen.
It was obvious that a mind like Ezra's must be banished, for
who could stand up to it? The intellectually mature person does
not merely receive ideas—he has mental reproductive powers as
well as physical ones. The sperm ideas do not merely lie down and
go to sleep; they get busy and have other ideas. This quality gave
Ezra an unfair advantage over those sterile minds who make up
the intellectual world in America, a world that is prostrate in
shameful obeisance before the state, so off with him!
Nietzsche explains this situation in "Homer's Contest":
"If one wants to observe this conviction—wholly undisguised in
its most naïve expression—that the contest is necessary to preserve
the health of the state, then one should reflect on the original
meaning of ostracism, for example, as it is pronounced by the
Ephesians when they banish Hermodorus: 'Among us, no one
shall be the best; but if someone is, then let him be elsewhere and
among others.' Why should no one be the best? Because then the
contest would come to an end and the eternal source of life
for the Hellenic state would be endangered . . . Originally this
curious institution is not a safety valve but a means of stimulation:
the individual who towers above the rest is eliminated so that the
contest of forces may reawaken—an idea that is hostile to the
'exclusiveness' of genius in the modern sense and presupposes that
in the natural order of things there are always several geniuses
who spur each other to action, even as they hold each other within
the limits of measure. That is the core of the Hellenic notion of
the contest: it abominates the rule of one and fears its dangers; it
desires, as a protection against the genius, another genius." 1
America has twisted this idea of protecting oneself against
genius by setting up another genius, another champion, another
hero, to offset him; modern democracy claims that the best protection
against a genius is to do away with all genius! "Genius is
harmful, undemocratic, psychotic!" cries the American chorus of