A writer--a regional writer, if that term means
anything--will whenever he matures exercise the critical
faculty. I mean in the Matthew Arnold sense of appraisal
rather than of praise, or, for that matter, of absolute
condemnation. Understanding and sympathy are not eulogy.
Mere glorification is on the same intellectual level as silver
tongues and juke box music.

In using that word INTELLECTUAL, one lays himself liable
to the accusation of having forsaken democracy. For all that,
"fundamental brainwork" is behind every respect-worthy
piece of writing, whether it be a lightsome lyric that seems
as careless as a redbird's flit or a formal epic, an impressionistic
essay or a great novel that measures the depth of human
destiny. Nonintellectual literature is as nonexistent as education
without mental discipline, or as "character building" in
a school that is slovenly in scholarship. Billboards along the
highways of Texas advertise certain towns and cities as "cultural
centers." Yet no chamber of commerce would consider
advertising an intellectual center. The culture of a nine-
teenth-century finishing school for young ladies was divorced
from intellect; genuine civilization is always informed by
intellect. The American populace has been taught to believe
that the more intellectual a professor is, the less common sense
he has; nevertheless, if American democracy is preserved
it will be preserved by thought and not by physics.

Editors of all but a few magazines of the country and
publishers of most of the daily newspapers cry out for brightness