[Not] only is [Sir Charles Snow] not a genius; he is intellectually as undistinguished as it is possible to be. If that were all, and Snow were merely negligible, there would be no need to say so in any insistent public way, and one wouldn't choose to do it…. Snow is a portent. He is a portent in that, being in himself negligible, he has become for a vast public on both sides of the Atlantic a master-mind and a sage. His significance is that he has been accepted—or perhaps the point is better made by saying 'created': he has been created an authoritative intellect by the cultural conditions manifested in his acceptance. Really distinguished minds, are themselves, of course, of their age; they are responsive at the deepest level to its peculiar strains and challenges: that is why they are able to be truly illuminating and...