The Traditions of Intellectual Life: Their Conditions of Existence and Growth in Contemporary Societies.

The article presents information on the traditions of intellectual life. The modern outlook - the outlook of independent curiosity, openness to experience, disciplined inquiry and analysis, reasoned judgment and the appreciation of originality - is the common property of the modern intellectual in all countries It is contained, in the most diverse ways, in all intellectual activities - in art, science, scholarship and systematic thought. It is the possession or the aspiration of the intellectuals everywhere in the contemporary world. The modern outlook has grown up with the development of modern European civilization. From Europe it has spread in nearly every direction - into Russia, into the Americas, to Africa, to South Asia and around Asia to all the countries of Southeast Asia and to China and Japan. The modern outlook grew up under special European conditions of a stable but loosening Christian conception of the world. One condition was the approximate unity of the intellectual classes within each national society, through their association with Church and State and through their share in a unitary cultural tradition formed around a classical humanism in a Christian reinterpretation Another condition was the high status of intellectual activity, connected with its association with Church and State and the auxiliary and interconnected institutions of universities, aristocracy, gentry and landownership.