Billboards along the
highways of Texas advertise certain towns and cities as "cultural
centers." Yet no chamber of commerce would consider
advertising an intellectual center. The culture of a nine-
teenth-century finishing school for young ladies was divorced
from intellect; genuine civilization is always informed by
intellect. The American populace has been taught to believe
that the more intellectual a professor is, the less common sense
he has; nevertheless, if American democracy is preserved
it will be preserved by thought and not by physics.
Editors of all but a few magazines of the country and
publishers of most of the daily newspapers cry out for brightness
and vitality and at the same time shut out critical ideas.
They want intellect, but want it petrified. Happily, the
publishers of books have not yet reached that form of delusion.
In an article entitled "What Ideas Are Safe?" in the
_Saturday Review of Literature_ for November 5, 1949, Henry
Steele Commager says:
If we establish a standard of safe thinking, we will end up with no
thinking at all.... We cannot ... have thought half slave and half
free.
Pages:
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30