They [young scholars] only need on occasion to sit down well to that mixed popular need and curiosity. Such a comfortable act one later calls pretentiously "modest condescension of a scholar to his people": while at bottom the scholar only descended to himself so far as he is not a scholar but a plebian. Create for yourselves the concept you can never think nobly nor highly enough. Were you to think highly of the people you would also be merciful to them and would beware of offering them your historical 'aqua fortis' as a quickening refreshing drink. But at bottom, you think very little of them because you are not permitted a true and well founded respect for their future, and you act as practical pessimists, I mean as men who are guided by a premonition of ruin and therefore become indifferent and careless of the welfare of others and even of their own. As long as the earth will still bear us! And if it will no longer bear us we can accept taht too:-thus they feel and live an 'ironical' existence."
In the age where information is seeping out of every corner, we all become experts at something. And yet our specialized interests are a pile of filthy rags in world that continues to follow the continuum of entropic 'progression'
What are we contributing to the health of our public by simply knowing? cynicism is contagious nad we must contribute positively (spiritually) within a physically deteriorating world (science).
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