An Inquiry into the Nature of Peace and the Terms of Its PerpetuationVeblen, Thorstein
Philosophy
An Inquiry into the Nature of Peace and the Terms of Its Perpetuation
Veblen, Thorstein
Peace; World War, 1914-1918 -- Peace
These are they who chiefly communicate with the world outside, and at
the same time they do what is academically called thinking. They are in
intellectual contact and communication with the world at large, in a
contact of give and take, and they think and talk in and about those
concepts that go in under the caption of the humanities in the world at
large. The category is large enough to constitute an intellectual
community, indeed a community of somewhat formidable magnitude, taken in
absolute terms, although in percentages of the population at large their
numbers will foot up to only an inconsiderable figure. Their contact
with the superior class spoken of above is fairly close, being a
contact, in the main, of service on the one side and of control on the
other. With the populace their contact and communion is relatively
slight, the give and take in the case being neither intimate nor
far-reaching. More particularly is there a well-kept limit of moderation
on any work of indoctrination or intellectual guidance which this class
may carry down among the people at large, dictated and enforced by
dynastic expediency. This category, of the Intellectuals, is
sufficiently large to live its own life within itself, without drawing
on the spiritual life of the community at large, and of sufficiently
substantial quality to carry its own peculiar scheme of intellectual
conventions and verities. Of the great and highly meritorious place and
work of these Intellectuals in the scheme of German culture it is
needless to speak. What is to the point is that they are the accredited
spokesmen of the German nation in all its commonplace communication with
the rest of civilised Europe.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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