uperstructure of
privilege and control whereof the sovereign is the apex, and in whom,
under any dynastic rule, is in effect vested the usufruct of the
populace. These two classes or conditions of men, the one of which
orders and the other obeys, make up the working structure of the nation,
and they also between them embody the national life and carry forward
the national work and aim. Intermediate between them, or rather beside
them and overlapping the commissure, is a third category whose life
articulates loosely with both the others at the same time that it still
runs along in a semi-detached way. This slighter but more visible, and
particularly more audible, category is made up of the "Intellectuals,"
as a late, and perhaps vulgar, designation would name them.

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