n that we had not arrived at a
perfect understanding of each other. This was due in a great measure to
my unfortunate incapacity for expressing anything exactly by spoken
words. The constant habit of writing, which permits a leisurely
selection from one's ideas, is often very unfavorable to readiness in
conversation. Will you permit me, then, to go over the ground we
traversed, this time in my own way, pen in hand?

We represent, you and I, two classes which in their lower grades are
inevitably hostile; but the superior members of these classes ought not
to feel any hostility, since both are equally necessary to the world. We
are, in truth, the spiritual and the temporal powers in their most
modern form. The chief of industry and the man of letters stand to-day
in the same relation to each other and to mankind as the baron and
bishop of the Middle Ages. We are not recognized, either of us, by
formally conferred titles, we are both held to be somewhat intrusive by
the representatives of a former order of things, and there is, or was
until very lately, a certain disposition to deny what we consider our
natural rights; but we know that our powers are not to be resisted, and
we have the inward assurance that the forces of nature are with us.

This, with reference to the outer world. But there is a want of
clearness in the relation between ourselves. You understand your great
temporal function, which is the wise direction of the industry of
masses, the accumulation and distribution of wealth; but you do not so
clearly understand the spiritual function of the intellectual class, and
you do not think of it quite justly. This want of understanding is
called by some of us your Philistinism. Will you permit me to explain
what the intellectual class thinks of you, and what is its opinion about
itself?

Pray excuse any appearance of presumption on my part if I say we of the
intellectual class and you of the industrial. My position is something
like that of the clergyman who reads, "Let him come to me or to some
other learned and discreet minister of God's word," thereby calling
himself learned and discreet. It is a simple matter of fact that I
belong to the intellectual class, since I lead its life, just as it is
a fact that you have a quarter of a million of money.

First, I want to show that the existence of my class is necessary.

Although men in various occupations often acquire a considerable degree
of culture outside the