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The generalist assumes, as the specialist too seldom does, that he is writing for readers no less intelligent than himself but trained in other areas. How does one prepare to write for such readers? One does so by spending as much time as one can visiting them, intellectually speaking, dropping in on them, observing what portion of what one happens to know seems to "travel," as publishers say, and what portion does not. The born academic, as he begins to do this, will feel that he is wasting time better spent in deepening his knowledge of his specialty. The born intellectual will count such wandering as time well spent on his general education.

It is not that, as an intellectual, one can or should seek to subordinate everybody else's knowledge to one's own grand purposes. Even G. W. F. Hegel arrived too late to do that, and no one has tried since. What is called for, paradoxically, is less a store of knowledge than a "store" of ignorance. By forcing oneself to go where one is oneself the blinking beginner rather than the seasoned expert, one learns to turn one's own narrow intellectual sophistication into a broadened version of itself. A generalist is someone with a keener-than-average awareness of how much there is to be ignorant about.