unassertive, and selfless, she neither rep- mands upon anyone, nor does she try to small part, may be due to what some resents the virtues of local custom, like distinguish herself in any respect. Her critics have seen as Dickens's limitation: Pickwick, nor strains toward universality behavior is geared entirely to the needs his inability to conceptualize in a style of value, like Myshkin. She is a figure at and feelings of those who are near her. persuasive to modern readers, or still rest, in a setting where everything else is She is a great comforter, which may be more to the point, his lack of interest in turbulent and false; she is sufficient unto all that goodness can be in this world. trying to conceptualize. Dickens makes herself, harmonious in nature, unquali- No one could possibly say of Little Dor- no claim for Little Dorrit, he fits her into fiedly responsive to others. She has no rit, as Aglaya says of Prince Myshkin, no theological or theoretical system, he need to think about, nor in responding that she lacks tenderness and "has noth- cares little if at all about her symbolic to her do we feel obliged to invoke, the ing but the truth." What can truth be to resonance. He simply sees her, a gleam of Categorical Imperative, or any universal- her, who lives by the grace of daily imagination. He trusts to the sufficiency ization of Christian values. Her goodness obligation? of his depiction, a feat of discipline by a is a quality of being without any pres- Little Dorrit is an astonishing concep- writer not always disciplined. sure to invoke whatever might be "high- tion, perhaps the sole entirely persuasive Quite deliberately Dickens shrinks er" than or "beyond" goodness. The figure of "positive goodness" in modern Little Dorrit in size, voice, will, and ges- imaginative realization of this figure is fiction. As against Dostoyevsky's pre- ture. Though clearly an adult, she seems so pure and lucid, mere ideas fade away. scription, she is drawn neither in the almost childlike. She loves Arthur Clen- Little Dorrit is not innocent, and rare- comic mode nor as an innocent. For nam, the thoughtful, melancholy man ly, if ever, sentimental. No one who has modem readers she constitutes a severe worn down by failure. They marry, not grown up in the Marshaisea prison could problem. Some dismiss her as insipid, in a rush of sensuality but as a pact of be innocent; no one who has had to put others find it difficult to credit her reali- "making do," two people bruised into up with aii those wretched Dorrits could ty, and perhaps difficult to live with that tenderness. Other writers seeking to val- long be sentimental. She knows quite reality if they do credit it. Finally, as idate goodness have fixed upon their enough about the varieties of selfish- with all literary judgments, we reach a characters revealing flaws in order to re- ness; that's why Dickens has provided point where exegesis, persuasion, and el- tain some plausibility. Dickens, howev- her with the family she has, to educate oquence break down, and fundamental er, presents a goodness not through the her in the ways of the world. And differences of perception have to be ac- persuasiveness of a flaw, but through though she exists entirely within the knowledged. 1 feel myself that a failure the realism of a price. The price of Little world, she has no designs upon it, nei- to respond to the shy magnificence of Dorrit's goodness, as of her marriage to ther to transform nor to transcend it. She what Dickens has done here signifies a Clennam, is a sadly reduced sexuality— has no designs of any kind; she is simply depletion of life. an equivalent, perhaps, to Billy Budd's stammer. It is as if Dickens had an un- a possibility, very rare, of our existence. How does he manage? I wish there spoken belief that a precondition for What seems to have inspired the cre- were some great clinching formula, but I goodness is the removal of that aggres- ation of Little Dorrit was Dickens's re- do not believe there is—a part of critical sion which may well be intrinsic to the sidual sentiment of Christianity, a sense wisdom is to recognize the limits of criti- sexual life. or memory of a faith unalloyed by dog- cal reach. Part of the answer, a fairly ma, aggression, or institution. This is a "religion," if religion at all, of affection, or an ethic without prescription or for- mula. Dickens himself, as he knew quite well, was far from embodying anything of the sort; but his imagination cherished the possibility, arousing in him the sort LOSING MORE GROUND of upwelling emotions that the vision of Billy Budd must have aroused in Mel- In Pursuit: Of Happiness and Good Government ville. Tlie religious experience had large- by Charles Murray ly been lost to Dickens, except insofar as {Simon and Schuster, 341 pp., $19.95) it might leave a sediment of purity. Little Dorrit is not at all a "Christ fig- If happiness lies only in "justified satis- modest way, to the happiness of the ure." She does not ask anyone to aban- faction," as Charles Murray tells us in species. don the world's goods and follow her; his new book, the pursuit of happiness Though difficult to measure, the con- she could not drive the money changers can easily turn into a pursuit of justifica- tribution of conservative intellectuals to from the temple; nor can one imagine tion. A pig seems happy when merely human happiness must surely be the her on a cross, though she might be satisfied; but the happiness of a human largest. I do not wish to disparage the among those mourning near it. Nothing being, or an entire society, uniquely re- work of liberals, but it only seems fair to even requires that we see her as a dis- quires that its satisfaction be justified. recognize that conservative intellectuals tinctively Christian figure, though noth- Fortunately, justifications are not diffi- have supplied justifications more reli- ing prevents us either. The great demand cult to find, especially since intellectuals, ably and to larger numbers of the satis- upon the reader of Little Dorrit—it can among others, are ever ready to contrive fied. Some might think that the job bring on a virtual moral crisis—is to see them. Intellectuals specialize in supply- would have been finished by now, but in her quite as she is, unhaloed, not at all ing the highest justifications, affording fact it requires constant effort and end- "symbolic," perhaps sublime but in no the deepest and most lasting satisfac- less ingenuity. Ever since the '60s way transcendent. She makes no de- tions, and thereby contributing, in a brought satisfaction under suspicion, 32 THE NEW REPUBLIC and even more so when satisfaction ertarian ones." The first two parts, in Murray slips in assumptions that begin made a comeback in the '70s and '80s, other words, do not exactly lay a logical preparing the ground for his laissez-faire the tasks of conservative justification foundation for Murray's politics. They conclusions. He says that since govern- have had a special urgency. Conservative are, rather, a kind of psychological prep- ment can only enable people to pursue intellectuals have not been satisfied, aration for the political views that Mur- happiness, not achieve it for them, gov- moreover, merely to justify reductions ray anticipates most of his readers will ernment can attempt to meet human already made in obligations to the poor. not readily accept. Several times Murray needs only by creating certain minimum They have gone one step better, showing calls upon the reader to relax, play with enabling conditions. "Minimalism," ac- that because all public efforts backfire, ideas, undertake little "thought experi- cording to Murray, is "intrinsic." His we could do much less, perhaps nothing ments," contemplate basic questions. next move is to stand on its head the at all, and still be justified in our satis- What is happiness, after all? Does mon- hierarchy of human needs originally de- factions. No one has done this work on ey really matter? Is material poverty veloped by Abraham Maslow, Material behalf of human happiness better than such a bad thing? Readers disarmed by wealth, we all know, does not guarantee Charles Murray. these ruminations will only later find happiness, and poverty does not pre- Murray shows in his new volume that, their wallets missing. clude it. Hence, under Murray's happi- if anything, we underestimated from his In the course of these preliminaries. ness standard for public policy, we need last book. Losing Ground, the scale of his philosophical and political ambitions. There he argued that anti-poverty ef- forts were a failure, and modestly pro- Exercise posed to scrap "the entire federal wel- fare and income support structure for working-aged persons, including AFDC, More with Less Medicaid, Food Stamps, Unemployment Insurance, Worker's Compensation, sub- MMORE EFFECTIVE By Because sidized housing, disability insurance, duplicating the motion of NordicTrack is so efficient, and all the rest." Not a man to hesitate cross country skiing, the you burn more calories and when the logic of his argument leads world's best exercise, get a better aerobic workout him into the abyss, he now invites us to NordicTrack provides the in less time. dismantle the whole framework of the ideal aerobic workout. MNO DIETING No modern state, to return to what he de- MMORE COMPLETE other exercise scribes, mistakenly, as a Jeffersonian vi- Unlike bikes and machine burns sion of democracy.