WHAT MONSTER IS THIS?

A second Edmund Burke has arisen through the prophetic columns of the Century to discover a new group at work in the body politic: the Fifth Estate. This is composed of those "having the simplicity to wonder, the ability to question, the power to generalize, the capacity to apply"--verily supermen! Each of the old estates was welded together by social cohesion, ecclesiastical unity, economic community, or occupational amity. The nobles, the clergy, the middle class, and the press each have found their vantage point from which to act as a lever upon society. But can this fifth estate of intelligentsia attain any such unity?

The strong intellect applies its own criteria and finds its own solutions. It cooperates unwillingly, and cooperation is the basis of political strength. Only a blind unity of viewpoint can make a group act together, and that blindness the intelligentsia tries to discard. The crude forces which work throughout the state will always laugh at the impotence of the philosophical spirits which

". . . with the incorporal air do hold discourse."

Much as Mr. Arthur D. Little may yearn for a society in which the pure light of reason exercises its true worth, it is highly probable that the power of his newly invented Fifth Estate will remain the hope of an armchair, philosopher.