The act of writing about intellectualism (and the lack of it in certain unmentionable places) naturally leads to a consideration of just what it is that fuels a person to whom the label "intellectual" applies. Why are some men more curious than the rest, more open to new insights, intellectually bolder? These are surely questions worthy of some consideration.
Knowing the origins of intellectualism requires that we also know clearly just what we mean by the term. I venture forth here a definition which, while perhaps not entirely orthodox, I believe captures reasonably well what is generally understood by the term. By an intellectual I mean simply a seeker after truth or beauty. For such a person, the truth is beauty, and what is beautiful is "true" even if not in the factual sense. What I have in mind here is a state of mind, a philosophy of living, a spiritual aestheticism.
By my definition it follows that those who seek to know solely because the knowledge they seek will be useful, are, whatever else they are, not intellectuals. For example, if a person wishes to study biology because he or she desires to go to medical school and then help the poor, I would call such a person a commendable, noble soul, but I would never accuse him of intellectualism. If, on the other hand, a person comes out and says "Yes, I am interested in medicine simply because I wish to understand the human body, and any good that may result from my knowledge is simply a happy accident," I would be ready to say that here is a person to whom the label might apply. Intellectualism is an aesthetic not a moral quality.
I will also claim many artists for the intellectual cause -- I say many because there are artists whose motives for creation have nothing to do with the qualities I highlight. Artists are in fact a particularly good example, for the work of the greatest ones is hardly ever motivated solely by the desire for fame, a livelihood or some kind of political impact. These impulses may indeed be there, but always they are subordinate to the artistic vision.
Matsuo Basho, the man who perhaps did more than anyone else to imbue haiku poetry with power and seriousness, is a good example of the kind of artist I have in mind. Basho had already by his twenties made a name for himself as a poet and by his early thirties was a professional teacher of poetry, yet it was not in this period that his most revolutionary work was created. At about age 40 he had an epiphany of sorts, withdrawing from the literary world and beginning the travels that would eventually lead to his masterpiece "The Narrow Road to the Deep North."
Here is a translation of one of the pieces from this period in Basho's life, to give a feeling for the lyrical quality of the form he perfected; one can almost see the scene described, so powerful is the description. "Autumn moonlight -- /a worm digs silently/into the chestnut." And here is one by another true artist, Yosa Buson: "Old well,/a fish leaps --/dark sound."
In the works of these artists we find the germ of real intellectualism. Truth and beauty have an intoxicating quality to the curious mind more powerful than any drink. When one contemplates a beautiful painting, a brilliant haiku, a moving song or even the properties of prime numbers, one feels rather like a lark ascending to the heavens. One leaves behind all the worries and obligations of the world, and all that is left is the idea and the self. Cramped spiritual compartments are replaced by limitless spaces, and it seems there are no heights one cannot reach.
If there is a musical counterpart to Basho's work in evocativeness and visual power, it would have to be Ralph Vaughan William's "The Lark Ascending," and this is no accident. The piece's dynamism is greatly due to it's ability to draw the flight of the lark of it's title. Listening to it, one is almost convinced that one has grasped what it might be like to float serenely like a lark, high above the mundane events of daily life, unfettered. One gets the same sort of feeling as one might get from Basho's poem which goes: "In the midst of the plain/Sings the skylark,/Free of all things."
Need it be said that there are other ways of arriving at the same feeling? It is not hard to imagine that a mathematician contemplating, say, the infinite, might feel the same way. That feeling of intoxication, of escape from the world, the feeling of dizzy happiness at the moment of understanding, all these things are present in mathematics too.
We are now able to see that what sets the intellectual apart from other men is the desire to escape mental confinement, to roam the high places of the mind. It is an other-worldly desire and an assertion that there is more to life than reproduction and one's place in the social pecking order.
