The modern intellectual is not simply a man of ideas. He is a type that has been formed by the age itself. He treats thought as a free-floating activity, detached from any higher measure and from any real order of rank. His work is horizontal. He analyses, criticises, and rearranges the material of the world without ever acknowledging a vertical dimension that would judge him.
This type appears under many names: journalist, academic, commentator, progressive thinker. The common trait is the same. He has no interior hierarchy of his own, so he cannot recognise hierarchy outside himself. What he calls freedom is usually only the refusal of any form that would demand something of him. What he calls critique is often only the solvent that dissolves whatever still stands.
A young man who wants to keep a vertical orientation must learn to recognise this type early. The danger is not that the modern intellectual is always wrong on particular points. The danger is that his entire stance is already a surrender. He has already accepted the premise that nothing higher is allowed to command. Once that premise is accepted, the rest of his activity follows automatically.
Refuse the premise. Keep the sense of rank. Then the intellectual products of the age can be examined for whatever limited use they may have, without ever being allowed to set the standard for your own life.