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stock in trade is ideas of some kind. His sense of an inert American
mass resistant to ideas, entirely unenlightened and hating enlighten–
ment, is part of the pathos of liberalism in the twenties and thirties,
which is maintained despite the fact that the liberal ideas of the
twenties and thirties are, I will not say dominant-this might, at
the present juncture of affairs, be misleading-, but strongly
established, truly powerful. That the resistance to these ideas often
takes an ugly, mindless form I should not think of denying, but this
must not blind us to the power of ideas amDng us, to the existence
of a very considerable class which is moved by ideas.
From what I have said about the increased power of mind
in the nation, something of my answer to the question about mass
culture may be inferred. Although mass culture is no doubt a very
considerable threat to high culture, there is a countervailing condi–
tion in the class I have been describing.
As
for mass culture itself,
one never knows, of course, what may happen in any kind of cultural
situation. It is possible that mass culture, if it is not fixed and made
static, might become a better thing than it now is, that it might at–
tract genius and discover that it has an inherent law of development.
But at the moment I am chiefly interested in the continuation of the
traditional culture in the traditional forms. I am therefore con–
cerned with the existence and effect of the large intellectual elite I
have described. This group will not be-is not-content with mass
culture as we now have it, because for its very existence, it requires
new ideas, or at the least the simulacra of new ideas.
The social complexion of this new large intellectual class must
be taken fully into account as we estimate the cultural situation
it makes. The intellectual and quasi-intellectual classes of contem–
porary America characteristically push up from the bottom. They are
always new. Very little is taken for granted by them; very little
can be taken for granted in instructing them or trying to influence
them. In some ways this is deplorable, making it difficult to think of
the refinement of ideas, making it almost impossible to hope for
grace and vivacity in the intellectual life. But in some ways it is
an advantage, for it assures for the intellectual life a certain simplicity
and actuality, an ever-renewed energy of discovery.
From this would seem to follow my answer to the question,
Where in American life can the artists and intellectuals find the
