If this tender spot is merely irritated, it will make him
rage; but when seized with a firm grip he loses all his defiance and
becomes as aggressive an individual as a good milch cow.
The American intellectual interest demands, consequently, a different
sort of assertion from the American economic or political interest.
Economically and politically the need is for constructive regulation,
implying the imposition of certain fruitful limitations upon traditional
individual freedom. But the national intellectual development demands
above all individual emancipation. American intelligence has still to
issue its Declaration of Independence. It has still to proclaim that in
a democratic system the intelligence has a discipline, an interest, and
a will of its own, and that this special discipline and interest call
for a new conception both of individual and of national development. For
the time being the freedom which Americans need is the freedom of
thought. The energy they need is the energy of thought.
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