More particularly is there a well-kept limit of moderation on any work of indoctrination or intellectual guidance which this class may carry down among the people at large, dictated and enforced by dynastic expediency.

This category, of the Intellectuals, is sufficiently large to live its own life within itself, without drawing on the spiritual life of the community at large, and of sufficiently substantial quality to carry its own peculiar scheme of intellectual conventions and verities.

Of the great and highly meritorious place and work of these Intellectuals in the scheme of German culture it is needless to speak.

What is to the point is that they are the accredited spokesmen of the German nation in all its commonplace communication with the rest of civilised Europe.
The Intellectuals have spoken with conviction and sincerity of the spiritual state of the German people, but in so doing, and in so far as bears on the character of German nationalism, they have been in closer contact, intellectually and sympathetically, with the intellectual and spiritual life of civilised Europe at large than with the movements of the spirit among the German populace.

And their canvassing of the concepts which so have come under their attention from over the national frontiers has been carried forward--so far, again, as bears on the questions that are here in point--with the German-dynastic principles, logic and mechanism of execution under their immediate observation and supplying the concrete materials for inquiry.