THE FRENCH INTELLECTUAL
487
and Pedagogy
all illustrate the thesis that teachers are directly
responsible for the actions and even the crimes committed by
their disciples. Trends such as these correspond in fact to a
general tendency to devaluate pure intellect. Brunetiere main–
tained that intellectual aptitudes had only a relative value, that
he, for one, had infinitely more esteem for will power and
force of character. Barres liked to parade his contempt for
intelligence as well. Impressed by some remarks made by the
physiologist, Jules Soury, he waxed lyrical about the grandeur
of "uncultivated life" (he of all people!) and repeated by
heart, like a conscientious school boy: "Intelligence! ... what
a tiny thing at the very surface of our personality!" Behind
this attempt to discredit the intelligence of the "simian mam–
mal" (a pet expression of Jules Soury), it is easy to detect a
reaction against the rationalist tradition with its faith in science
and progress, and its intellectual cosmopolitanism. Had not
Brunetiere, in a much discussed article, announced the bank–
ruptcy of science?
To be sure, it was better to be intelligent than intellectual
-but even that was not the ideal. Barres preferred
U['incon–
scient national"
and complained that the nineteenth century
(Hugo, Michelet, Taine, Renan) had been entirely mistaken
about the importance of Reason. "The individual! his intel–
ligence, his ability to grasp the laws of the universe-it's time
to quell these pretensions. We are not the masters of our
thoughts. They do not spring from our intelligence...."
(Scenes et doctrines).
This discrediting of intelligence obvious–
ly also corresponded to the affirmation of a nationalistic
mystique which, in the decades following the defeat of 1870,
called the French back to the cult of their ancestors, exploited
the primitive allegiance to the "soil," and praised instinctive
solidarity with a carnal France. That, unquestionably, is the
significance of Barres pontifical statement that pseudo-culture
"destroys instinct."
It
is of course this very kind of "betrayal"
that Benda had in mind when he later denounced the clerics
