Mutual intelligibility is probably a rarer phenomenon now than at any time in history.
The task of intellectual leadership now is to bring about a genuine communion of minds. But this is still the age of discovery. It is, therefore, still the age of the individual thinker, of the specialist. And, as a consequence, it is the age of the digest, with all the incoherence and triviality that much characterizes such an age. The object must be, while retaining and encouraging the drive toward discovery, to restore the conditions of conversation.