In the Russian terminology, the _people_ includes all the elements of society that are not covered by the term _intelligence_. This latter is a comprehensive designation of all the classes that have some education and can give intelligent opinions on social, political and cultural themes. The vast majority of the nation are the _people_ in the narrower sense, and it is essentially the characteristic of the democratic nineteenth century to regard the intellectual life of this people as worthy of consideration. This is true of the world at large, but, in Russia, preoccupation with the people, down to the lowest strata of society, has become a dominating note in literature. Whatever other causes may have been active in creating this strong sentiment,--and they will be discussed in a later chapter,--the strongest impulse to such a people--worship was received from the unexpected and undreamt-of wealth of that popular literature which has been unearthed by the diligent labours of a few investigators. In the eighteenth century, the term _people_ had a wider significance. All those who did not belong to polite society, that is, all those who were not dignitaries or functionaries of a higher order, were the _people_, and at first the literati were included in that general appellation. Literature was entirely in the service of the higher classes, whom it was intended to amuse and eulogise; there was no other audience, and writers had to direct their attention to filling the demand, as hirelings of princes, and as pamperers of the pseudo-classic taste and Voltairism which held sway in refined society. Though frequently originating from the people, these writers dissevered all connection with it, for they had no longer any interests in common. With a few occasional exceptions, the people had no place in literature, and the inflated style that prevailed in prose and poetry was so far removed from the language of the people that the written literature could exert little influence upon the popular mind, and if there existed anything of a traditional nature among the lower classes, it was little, if at all, contaminated by literary influences. Whatever it had received from bygone ages was transmitted to the nineteenth century and collected just in time, before its certain disintegration.