What these thinkers despise in the man of study is precisely the man who … does not predicate the capture of its environment by the species, or who, … - Julien Benda

That teaching according to which intellectual activity is worthy of esteem to the extent that it is practical and to that extent alone.

The modern moralists extol … the cult of practical activity in defiance of the disinterested life.

Since the Greeks the predominant attitude of thinkers towards intellectual activity was to glorify it insofar as (like aesthetic activity) it finds its satisfaction in itself, apart from any attention to the advantages it may procure. Most thinkers would have agreed with … Renan’s verdict that the man who loves science for its fruits commits the worst of blasphemies against that divinity. … The modern clercs have violently torn up this charter. They proclaim the intellectual functions are only respectable to the extent that they are bound up with the pursuit of concrete advantage.