'The Prophet Isaiah' by Michelangelo (1475–1564)
By Albert Jay Nock
[This essay first appeared in The Atlantic Monthly in 1936]
One evening last autumn, I sat long hours with a European acquaintance while he expounded a political-economic
doctrine which seemed sound as a nut and in which I could find no defect. At the end, he said with great earnestness:
"I have a mission to the masses. I feel that I am called to get the ear of the people. I shall devote the rest of my
life to spreading my doctrine far and wide among the population. What do you think?"
An embarrassing question in any case, and doubly so under the circumstances, because my acquaintance is a very
learned man, one of the three or four really first-class minds that Europe produced in his generation; and naturally I,
as one of the unlearned, was inclined to regard his lightest word with reverence amounting to awe.
'The prophet of the American masses must aim consciously at the lowest common denominator of intellect, taste, and
character…'
Still, I reflected, even the greatest mind cannot possibly know everything, and I was pretty sure he had not had my
opportunities for observing the masses of mankind, and that therefore I probably knew them better than he did. So I
mustered courage to say that he had no such mission and would do well to get the idea out of his head at once; he would
find that the masses would not care two pins for his doctrine, and still less for himself, since in such circumstances
the popular favorite is generally some Barabbas. I even went so far as to say (he is a Jew) that his idea seemed to
show that he was not very well up on his own native literature. He smiled at my jest, and asked what I meant by it; and
I referred him to the story of the prophet Isaiah.
It occurred to me then that this story is much worth recalling just now when so many wise men and soothsayers appear
to be burdened with a message to the masses. Dr. Townsend has a message, Father Coughlin has one, Mr. Upton Sinclair,
Mr. Lippmann, Mr. Chase and the planned-economy brethren, Mr. Tugwell and the New Dealers, Mr. Smith and Liberty
Leaguers — the list is endless. I cannot remember a time when so many energumens were so variously proclaiming the Word
to the multitude and telling them what they must do to be saved. This being so, it occurred to me, as I say, that the
story of Isaiah might have something in it to steady and compose the human spirit until this tyranny of windiness is
overpast. I shall paraphrase the story in our common speech, since it has to be pieced out from various sources; and
inasmuch as respectable scholars have thought fit to put out a whole new version of the Bible in the American
vernacular, I shall take shelter behind them, if need be, against the charge of dealing irreverently with the Sacred
Scriptures.
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