THE FRENCH
INTELLECTUAL
485
steter dictionary, 1895-1900, is the first, it would seem, to
include the substantive), it is evident that the word penetrates
into the common language during the winter of 1897-1898. Even
in Marxist literature, it
is
only after this date that one commonly
encounters the word in France: the pamphlets by Hubert
Lagardelle and Paul Lafargue, respectively entitled
Les Intel–
lectuels devant Ie socialisme
and
Le socialisme et les intellec–
tuels,
both date from 1900.
Stigma
I: Voices without a mandate
But Paleologue's text also tells us much about the affective
value, the
color
of the new word. Brunetiere pretends to be
shocked by the presumptuous interference of Zola. Why doesn't
he mind his own business? he asks. The reaction is character–
istic, and soon becomes a cliche: here are individuals who should
be
at work peacefully and modestly in their laboratories and
libraries, who suddenly get it into their heads to meddle in
affairs totally outside their ken. Brunetiere
is
tireless on the
subject. In a resounding .article in the
Revue des Deux M ondes
(15 March, 1898), he asseverates that a "first comer" has not
the right to insult the French army and French justice, that
learned compilers do not know everything, that to have written
a treatise on microbiology (an obvious dig at Emile Duclaux)
does not entitle one to judge one's fellow men, that scholars
are not equipped to understand such "delicate questions" as
individual morality and social ethics, and that (the irony is
somewhat facile) a professor of Tibetan language may not be
the ideal man to govern France. On April 15th, Brunetiere is
at it again; reviewing Zola's
Paris,
he proposes the following
definition of the intellectual: a person who "meddles dogmatic–
ally in matters about which he is ignorant." Brunetiere is not
alone: other voices are heard, and in the same key. "The roster
of intellectuals
is
made up of simpletons," writes Barres in
Le
Journal
(1 February, 1898). And in his
Scenes et doctrines
du nationalisme,
after having defined the intellectual as a
