The aim of this paper is to reorient the research on the intellectuals through a new definition of its object. Rather than following the usual approach of demonstrating either the criterion for qualifying as an intellectual or what class factors determine intellectual behavior, the author proposes an idea inspired by Giambattista Vico, the seventeenth-century Italian philosopher: Whenever a person acquires a kind of mode-of-being which is called "intellect", that person is an intellectual. According to Vico, "intellect" is an ability to form ideas by combining elements together. This is a kind of Gestalt, or an ability in which can be generated only under a special intense condition called "collective effervescence" (Emile Durkheim's terms). During and after "collective effervescence," a person of ideas is born. We call such an individual an intellectual. Intellectuals can be divided into two kinds according to whether they are self-formed or formed by socialization. Although these two kinds of intellectuals are both critical in character, the latter are more influential in social and cultural movements because of their reification attitude towards ideas. Regrettably, most of the Chinese intellectuals who appear only after the beginning of twentieth century are of the latter kind. They are so impatient to bring those western ideas, such as "freedom, democracy, equality, reason, science," etc., into realization in Chinese society that their character deserves the Confucian derogatory term "small man" (hsiao-jen), in the sense that they are short-sighted in going after whatever results they think good, neglecting important efforts of self-discipline which they have first to do.