THE FRENCH INTElLECTUAL
497
nearly obsessive fear of being caught on the side of injustice;
nostalgia for the masses coupled with the complexes of a "fils
de bourgeois" ashamed of belonging to the privileged classes
-these constitute only some of the more permanent traits of the
French intellectual.
Toward a literary ((type"
Our intellectuals and those of 1898 are of one and the
same family. Yet it
is
also evident that they existed
avant la
lettre.
The type-intellectual could not possibly have penetrated
so fast and so deeply into literature had he not first slowly
emerged and become aware of himself as a social reality. The
entire nineteenth century groped for the word.
Is Arthur Koestler right in affirming somewhat peremp–
torily that the Encyclopedists, entering the historical stage as
iconoclasts and debunkers, were the first modem intellectuals,
(The Yogi and the Commissar)?
To limit the Encyclopedists'
role to that of iconoclasts and debunkers may seem unfair; it
fails to account for their sense of mission and their positive
idealism. But Koestler is not alone in pointing to the eighteenth–
century
philosophes
as the direct ancestors of modem intellec–
tuals. According to Benda, these
philosophes
with a social con–
science and socially involved, were the first traitors to the
philosophical spirit. Raymond Aron, for reasons that are
also
not altogether flattering, sees in these eighteenth-century
philosophers the first clear example of the intellectual
in the
modem sense of the word: using their pens for a living, they
assume that they have the right to express generously their
critical opinions on any subject.
The danger of such digging for ancestors is that it leads
to the alluring game of anachronistic generalizations. Yet it is
difficult to deny that there exist parallelisms and even family
ties. The
philosophes
of the eighteenth century also considered
themselves guides of humanity. They too were slandered and
sneered at. The word
philosophe
was also discredited. Accused
