ABSTRACT
A study of the relation of intellectuals to public opinion suggests the outlines of a sociology of the intellectuals as a functioning social group. The libertas philosophndi + has long been asserted by the educated elite, and in pre-democratic days its theoretical relation to public opinion was quite clear. Philosophers have had the civil liberty to criticize government, but the same right was not generously extended to the vulgar conscience, or the common men who composed the "open public." Actually, the rise of democracy has not fully clarified the issue, though the mass or Gnostic movements of modern times have asserted the right to judge the government, the intellectuals, and any other group that might stand in their way. The democratic intellectual can hardly say that the mass in revolt does not have the right to judge him, but he can and does say that public opinion must be reformed, purified, educated, or directed by the latest developments in scientific hypothesis. More especially, however, the modern self-conscious intellectuals have directed their fire against
* Republished from The American Political Science Review, XLVIII (June, 19541, 321 ff.
