for everyone to-day there is a pain "somewhere in the room", but any intellectual, unlike mrs gradgrind, is in duty bound to be rather more precise about it. he need not claim it - or all of it - as his pain (the arm-chair martyr and the arm-chair saviour are bores), still less need he offer a cure for it, but he must know that it is there and have some notion what it is. but once he knows it is there and has even glimpsed what it is, he will never again be quite easy in his mind...what is the escape (as distinct from "escapism")? The "ordinary man", who used to be saved by his faith, is now very often saved by just not thinking too much - which indeed he has little time for. but the intellectual, with the time and duty to think, has to find something more positive.

from the selected prose of macneice.