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abrupt where secular educated groups, distinguished exclusively by their
education-the
philosophes
in France, the university-educated and uni–
versity-affiliated Romantic philosophers and poets in Germany, and the
literary circles from which the intelligentsia evolved in Russia-pro–
vided the majority with a national consciousness. Thus, they were
directly responsible for defining their societies as nations and fashioning
their respective modernities. Their involvement and influence during
this all-important formative stage of their social orders-or cultures–
allowed them to place their followers in positions of prestige, as the
guardians and the nurturers of these cultures, and both the involvement
and the prestige guaranteed their commitment to their intellectual role.
Far from being ever "critical" of their national cultures or "radical" in
their opposition to them, they dedicated themselves to proving their
societies better than others. Is there any French, German, or Russian
intellectual who doubts the essential superiority of France, Germany, or
Russia, respectively? And not specifically of the French, German, or
Russian high culture, their literature, or science-but of the national
character itself, the characteristic modes of behavior, feeling, and think–
ing of the French, Germans, or Russians? These intellectuals may at
times oppose specific governments, although never uniformly: when a
national administration is opposed by some intellectuals, other, equally
influential, intellectuals invariably rise in its defense; but they are never
critical of their "civil society."
The situation is different in Britain and the United States, where the
architects of national identity, while clearly the most educated members
of their respective societies, were also political and social leaders, and
wielded influence by right of this wider political and social position. In
Britain, the development of the national-modern-consciousness in
the first century and a half of its formation was virtually inseparable
from the religious revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries;
thus Protestant clergy emerged as the most prominent spokesmen of the
new, national, society. In the United States, at least until the Civil War,
the socia l role of the intellectual was performed by clergymen alongside
elected representatives in Congress. When secular educated classes who
claimed influence exclusively by right of their superior education at last
took over, they lacked the unquestionable prestige of their counterparts
in Continental Europe and, in consequence, were less sanguine regard–
ing their society. From the very start of their collective existence, and
long before they became the intellectuals designate of the nation, Amer–
ican literati were very critica l, even contemptuous, of American society
