Intellectuals and Highbrows

A Distinction Arrived at After Researches Among the Intelligentzia and the Bourgeoisie

SIMEON STRUNSKY

THE few brief truths set down below are not the result of a deliberate research nor the precipitate of years of calm reflection. They are only by-products of a quest upon which the writer has been recently engaged. This has been nothing less than an attempt, persistent, but as yet unsuccessful, to borrow a copy of Mr. Wells's Outline of History.

By temperament I am not a first-nighter, either in respect to plays or books. When I gather from the reviews that a show has been put on which I* should very much like to see, I am quite content to wait. As a result, most of the good plays I have seen I have seen on the opening night of the second season. Many other good plays I have missed altogether, because they failed before I was quite ready for them. Books, of course, do not fail in the same sense. There is always a copy to be picked up in the second-hand shops, which is all the less reason for hurry.

Why, then, my pursuit of the Outline? Because of a strong belief that there is a good deal in the book which I shall thoroughly dislike; and there is no use in nursing a grudge. Better be over with it, and get ready for the next Wells book, which ought to be due almost any day now.

The quest started off unfortunately. I began by heading in the wrong direction. I took it for granted that the place to look for Wells was among my intellectual acquaintances. But the only three persons whom I have so far discovered to have read, or to be reading, the Wells history are (1) a successful lawyer, (2) a friend well up in the railway supplies business, and (3) a stenographer who was reading the book while her employer, an editor, was away in Pittsburgh attending a convention of advertising agents.

I must make a correction. It is not quite true that I was altogether disappointed in my search among the intellectuals. From them I gathered a good many curious details about the Outline. I learned, for instance, that Mr. Wells took up the project on a bet. I learned much about his differences with his editors, Gilbert Murray and Ernest Barker. I learned how fast some of the chapters were composed, how extensively the book circulated in weekly installments in Great Britain, how soon Mr. Wells is expected to arrive in New York, how excellently he gets on with his publishers, how thoroughly the existing methods of writing history would be revolutionized by the book, and other things. But concerning the contents of the book I could get very little information beyond a few vague references to the nebulae, the amoeba, and Clemenceau. Nevertheless, the things I learned from my intellectual friends, pieced out by what I learned from the lawyer, the railway supplies man and the stenographer, have given me a fair idea, I imagine, of the book as a whole.

Reading and Intellectualism

THE first truth, therefore, that I mastered as a result of trying to borrow the Outline of History was that intellectuals, as a rule, read comparatively few authors and these not at all intensively. They do, however, meet authors, and are thoroughly grounded in the fundamentals of their personalities and in their significance for the march of social evolution. I have met, for example, more than one person who was convinced that the Wells Outline had thoroughly displaced the Hegelian conception of history as applied by Ranke, and the materialistic conception as developed by Buckle. This was all the more striking because my informant had never read Ranke or Buckle and had not yet got around to Wells.

It was not until after some time that this, first truth impressed itself upon me. Contrary to the general impression, intellectuals as a class are much more concerned with life than with books, excepting perhaps poetry. Books, as I have said before, are left in the main to members of the business and professional classes and their stenographers.

Intellection and Intellectualism

ANOTHER thing I discovered was the necessity of distinguishing between two terms which common usage employs interchangeably; namely, intellectual and highbrow. There is, indeed, an historical connection between the two terms. But this must not be allowed to obscure the vital difference. Highbrow is an indigenous Anglo-Saxon term whose origins may be traced back to the formative period of the English language as we know it today, perhaps as far back as the year 1905 of the Christian Era. By comparison, the term intellectual is a newcomer into the language. It is doubtful if its origins can be carried back earlier than the foundation of the Liberal weeklies, and it cannot be said to have come into popular use until that other primary historical event, the Russian Revolution. Highbrow and intellectual have this in common: they both connote a certain remoteness from the normal forms of thought and emotion. It is also probable that from the highbrows of the period before the war are descended a large number of contemporary intellectuals. But there the connection ends.

The highbrow is essentially serene as well as high. He is contemplative and static. The intellectual is passionate and dynamic. He is a translation of the Russian intelligentzia, which means more than our word intellectual. The intelligentzia of Russia were the educated classes as distinguished from the uncultured mass of workers and peasants. But that is not all. They were also the enlightened classes. For in Russia, as in this country, the distinction between a college education and enlightenment has been recognized. The Russian intelligentzia were those who were both cultured and rebels. Thus, in the old Russia, a college professor who took no interest in social movements or a university graduate who went into the Government service, was not of the intelligentzia.

The distinction holds with us. It is a matter of common observation that the mere exercise of intellect by an individual, or even the fact that he makes a living by the exclusive play of his intellect, does not make one an intellectual. To do that, the intellect must be pointed in a certain direction, and, namely, in the revolutionary direction. The intellectual type is compounded of mind and revolt, with the latter as the essential factor and sometimes as the only essential factor. For, oddly enough, provided an individual points in the right direction and does not labour with his hands, it is not absolutely essehtial, that he should think straight, or, in extreme cases, should think at all. Provided he feels right, the definition is satisfied. One might almost go the whole limit of paradox and say that rigorous intellection is, on the whole, inimical to intellectualism, if it involves the supremacy of the mind over the heart.

A few examples will make this point quite clear. Mr. Percy MacKaye is not in the least an intellectual, because he never sounds the note of revolt. He is, scientifically and historically, a highbrow. Miss Amy Lowell is sometimes an intellectual and sometimes not. When she indulges in free verse and free imagery she is an intellectual; she is in rebellion against the established law. When she writes in the accepted metres and about commonly recognized objects, she is not an intellectual. In the second phase we cannot quite call her a highbrow because at all times her thought, her emotions and her language are too robust. On such occasions she would most properly be described as bourgeoise.

Mr. Bernard Shaw is obviously an intellectual because he has always been in the opposition. Mr. G. K. Chesterton is the most striking instance alive of the non-intellectual type. Instead of forward-looking, he positively looks backwards. Mr. Bertrand Russell is an intellectual when he writes about the future evolution of society in the Socialist direction; but he is not an intellectual when he writes on logic -or the higher mathematics. Again, Mr. Russell is an intellectual when he goes into Russia, but a non-intellectual when he comes out of Russia. The perfect type of the intellectual is undoubtedly Mr. Wells. Not only are all of his books an expression of revolt, but, as a rule, each of his books may be said to be a revolt against the preceding book. Stodginess, which is the distinguishing quality of the bourgeoise mind, is non-existent in Wells.

The Mind and the Heart

ATTENTION has been called above to the . striking anomaly that the intellectual may be regarded, on the whole, as the foe of intellect. He does not deny to mind a certain role in the play of civilization, but he does emphatically deny it the traditional supremacy which mind has enjoyed ever since men first took to framing philosophies of life and axioms of right conduct. Reason, as the guide of life, is still popular in valedictory orations, on Phi Beta Kappa keys and on the portals of public libraries. In such places, the mind is still exalted as the Managing Director over the will, as Controller-General of the passions and as the official jailer of those very dangerous things, the instincts.

But the intellectual reverses the order of precedence. He accepts the instincts as adult members of the family with very positive claims of their own, instead of things to be bundled in a dark closet when the neighbors come around. The Will is master of the house, and the Will rises to its highest function when it reveals itself as passion. The mind, to mix the figure, is the legal family adviser who is called in when the passions and instincts fail to get along. Very often the mind, as eminent counsel, is called in when the passions would find out the required legal procedure for getting what they want; precisely as a Board of Directors calls in its attorney to devise ways and means for putting through a policy that has already been decided upon, without getting them ail into jail.

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Traditionally, it has been held that the mind issues orders which the Will obeys or refuses to obey at its own peril. The intellectual view is that the Wili lays down the end in view and the mind is summoned to decide whether the end can best be attained under the laws of Delaware or New Jersey, as the case might be.

As I said at the beginning, these few notes do not pretend to be exhaustive. No doubt they could be amplified and more closely focussed if one only knew where to lay hands on a copy of the Outline of History.