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.