Intellectual elite

“ What shall we say of the democratic trend of the modern world as it affects the finer sort of intellectual achievement? While the conscious sway of the masses seems not uncongenial to the more popular and obvious kinds of eminence, as of statesmen, inventors, soldiers, financiers and the like, there are many who believe it to be hostile to distinction in literature, art or science. ”

“ Yet the longer I reflect the less am I satisfied with the idea of forming a separate class of mankind on the basis of high intellectual power. At best it is but a higher development of innate gifts common to all. ”

“ Thus early have we seen in action, on the field of English history, most of those primary forces of strife whose play makes the warp of politics, ancient and modern; and the distinct emergence, withal, of that spirit which, rare and transient in ancient times, seems destined to inherit the later earth—the spirit of science, which slowly transmutes politics from an animal to an intellectual process, raising it from the stage of mere passional life to the stage of constructive art, and from the social relation of rule and subjection towards the relation of mutuality and corporate intelligence. ”

“ Such a condition of intellectual subjection is needed for fitting the masses into a society where the many are not expected to have aims or ideas of their own, but to take orders from the few set in authority. ”

“ Do they encourage the universal growth of mind? Do they hold out a common inducement to eloquent and lofty effort? or insure to superior genius an enduring fame? Impossible! when all intellectual influence is confined to the palace. Impossible! when learning in its effect on society is no more than the light of the moon, shining by the side of the noonday sun.
But free circulation of thought and feeling composes the chief influence of free institutions on the mind. The beauty, union, and elevation of society depend upon the action and re-action of mind. ”

“ Given a man with a moderate intellect, a moral standard not higher than the average, some rhetorical affluence and great glibness of speech, what is the career in which, without the aid of birth or money, he may most easily attain power and reputation in English society? Where is that Goshen of intellectual mediocrity in which a smattering of science and learning will pass for profound instruction, where platitudes will be accepted as wisdom, bigoted narrowness as holy zeal, unctuous egoism as God-given piety? ”

“ One sees on every hand to-day persons occupying positions of importance who have been taken through all the motions of education, from the bottom to the top, but who always belong to the intellectual lower classes whatever their positions may be, because they are not masters. They are clumsy and futile with knowledge. Their culture has not been made over into them—selves. ”

“ He is dependent for his intellectual power not only upon his biological capacities but upon the society that sets the framework of interest and attention within which doubt and inquiry arise, and that supplies the very words which both inspire and limit the ideas that germinate within him. ”

“ In no single instance, as far as can be ascertained, has nobility of character, or the possession of genius, or soundness of judgment, or even beauty of diction in literature, been attributable to the grind in grammatical rules, the fact-cramming, and the mental gymnastics which go to make up what is called 'a liberal education.'
In science, where the highest intellectual qualities are brought into play, most of the great discoverers have owed their entire scientific knowledge to self-taught methods of investigation. ”

“ If the influence of wealth in the present day has created a new aristocracy of its own, where they already begin to be jealous of their ranks, we may assert that genius creates a sort of intellectual nobility, which is now conferred by public feeling ”

“ From the leaders, in their indisputable greatness, the intellectual hierarchy descends to the lowest and broadest class of workers who in any measure hang on to the skirts of literature, and eke out a living by writing. It is in the middle ranks of this vast [Pg 47] pyramid that we should look to see most distinctly the signs of the influence of democracy. ”

“ From the pulpit many of us hear from time to time eloquent and well reasoned efforts which tell us how much even the class, necessarily most conservative in its traditions, and confined in its teachings, has been forced by modern tendencies to enlarge its human sympathies and widen its intellectual horizon ”

“ This infidelity to popular government and unbelief in any good results to come from it are not, unfortunately, confined to the English essayists. I am not sure but the notion is growing in what is called the intellectual class, that it is a mistake to intrust the government to the ignorant many, and that it can only be lodged safely in the hands of the wise few. ”

“ In this age, the intellectual forces shall still retain all their dominion and supremacy over the physical world, but the moral shall preside over the intellectual, and move them as God moves the stars, bringing them out of chaos, and wheeling them in circuits of unimaginable grandeur, and for purposes of beneficence yet inconceivable. ”

“ Even those talents which were drawn to the intellectual side of life were absorbed in the efforts which belong to the current discussions of affairs, the daily debate of the world, rather than to literature. ”

“ They set up an ideal before the man and the citizen, which does not depend for its brilliancy upon intellectual endowments, and where their influence preponderates, intelligence can not count upon being accorded the rank to which it considers itself justly entitled. ”

“ I am heart and soul with the Progressive as to the ultimate remedial powers of education. Moral advancement depends absolutely on the humanising influences of intellectual advancement. The foreseeing of consequences is a question of intelligence. ”

“ The State was gradually replaced by the philosophic schools, while intellectual training tended more and more to concentrate itself upon rhetoric, that art which enables the individual to shine before his fellows, and to gain wealth or public preferment. ”

“ Just as the master must possess those moral qualities essential to the integrity of his work, so he must possess the corresponding intellectual qualities. All the liberal arts require, as a condition of mastery, a certain specific and considerable power of intelligence; and this power of intelligence is to be sharply distinguished from all-round intellectual ability. From our present point of view its only necessary application concerns the problems of a man's special occupation. Every special performer needs the power of criticising the quality and the subject-matter of his own work. ”

“ Let us turn to the intellectual aspect of civilisation. Here we have at least two highly important and quite fairly measurable facts to consider: the production of creative genius and the degree and diffusion of general instruction. If we consider the matter abstractly, it is highly probable that we shall declare that no civilisation can be worth while unless it is rich in creative genius and unless the population generally exhibits a sufficiently cultured level of education out of which such genius may arise freely and into which the seeds it produces may fruitfully fall. ”

“ All intellectual arts, of whose excellencies, the understanding and the taste, cloathed with an equal degree of authority are judges, have their points, or zenith of perfection, which when they are once arrived at, he who attempts to advance them, commonly occasions their decline, and puts them in a train, which leads to their destruction. ”

“ No scholar can doubt that they must always form an indispensable element in any scheme of liberal instruction, by which all the powers and emotions of our moral and intellectual nature may be so touched, quickened, directed, exercised, and informed, as to attain their largest measure of capacity. ”

“ Only in the sense that they employ new and more effective methods to attain the same end—that is to [52] say, the formation of individuals who will accept all the conventions, all the prejudices, and all the untruths on which society is based.
We do not hesitate to say that we want men who will continue unceasingly to develop; men who are capable of constantly destroying and renewing their surroundings and renewing themselves; men whose intellectual independence is their supreme power, which they will yield to none ”

“ The major success in that minimal democratic education has made abundantly clear the need in addition for the universal distribution of critical intelligence, a minimal intellectuality which can distinguish between fact and fiction, between principle and case, between opinion and insight, between propaganda and instruction, between truth and falsity. This degree of intellectual training is absolutely necessary for the highest activities of men in democratic society, namely for both individual and common deliberation and decision in practical affairs. ”

“ It is yet to be ascertained whether the communistic scheme would be consistent with that multiform development of human nature, those manifold unlikenesses, that diversity of tastes and talents, and variety of intellectual points of view, which not only form a great part of the interest of human life, but, by bringing intellects into stimulating collision and by presenting to each innumerable notions that he would not have conceived of himself, are the mainspring of mental and moral progression. ”

“ And accordingly, those who maintain that the evolution of society depends exclusively, or almost exclusively, on general causes, always include among these the collective knowledge and intellectual development of the race. But if of the race, why not also of some powerful monarch or thinker, or of the ruling portion of some political society, acting through its government? Though the varieties of character among ordinary individuals neutralize one another on any large scale, exceptional individuals in important positions do not in any given age neutralize one another ”

“ As an outpost of intelligence, of good will, of enlightenment, the intellectual can render an invisible but a difficult and highly useful service. It is here, perhaps, that the majority of intellectuals with an interest in the labor movement will find their true function. ”

“ After having displayed in several departments of the intellectual life a power and originality such as have never been approached by any other people, they became a people of very mediocre capacities, devoid of power of origination and purely imitative. ”

“ Over time, natural qualities lost their determinant role. Characteristics based on human nature, in particular intellectual qualities such as communication skills and management and planning abilities, progressively tipped the balance. Current textbooks defining politics do not even mention natural abilities, focusing instead on the art or science of governing, shrewdness in promoting a policy, and contrivance. ”

“ The more we reflect upon this important subject, we shall find the more, that external circumstances have an influence upon intellect, increasing in an accumulating ratio; that the political institutions of various countries have their fluctuating and contradictory influences; that example controls in a great degree intellectual production, causing after-growths, as it were, of the first luxuriant crop of masterminds, and giving a character and individuality to habits of thought and modes of expression ”

“ Irrespective of the professionalizing of philosophy, the ideas philosophers discuss are still those in which Western civilization has been bred. They are in the backs of the heads of educated people. But what serious-minded men not engaged in the professional business of philosophy most want to know is what modifications and abandonments of intellectual inheritance are required by the newer industrial, political, and scientific movements. ”

“ By the same stroke, intelligence becomes truly liberal: knowing is a human undertaking, not an esthetic appreciation carried on by a refined class or a capitalistic possession of a few learned specialists, whether men of science or of philosophy. ”

“ The intellectual class grows in numbers and in influence along with the numbers and influence of the materially productive population of the State. And not only are the natural 522 philosophers, the writers of contemporary and past history, the discoverers in science, necessary in the strictest sense to the life of such a community as the modern English community, but even the poets, the novelists, the artists are necessary to the perfection of its life. ”

“ There is, however, ground to recognise a slight intellectual superiority in the upper social class, apart from environment, and so great is the significance for civilisation of quality that even when the difference seems slight it must not be regarded as negligible. ”

“ For it were somewhat too much of simplicity, perhaps, to take it for quite a thing of course that the people would always perceive such intellectual accomplishments as would keep them modest or humble in their estimate of their own, and such liberal spirit and manners as would at once command their respect and conduce to their refinement, when they made any approach to a communication with the classes superior in possessions and station. ”

“ And, in fact, it has happened, and it happens, that some men, and especially professional scientists, lay or clerical, have found, and find, the means of intellectual livelihood in the closed circle of the reflex and secondary products of civilization, and that they have been able and are able consequently to submit all the rest to the subjective view which they have elaborated under these conditions; that is, the origin and explanation of all the ideologies. Our doctrine has definitely outgrown the visual angle of ideology. ”