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The Fears of the Intelligentsia:
The Present Slough of Despond
- Abstract
“The people of X. . . . . . have assiduously been excited to declare their loyalty, and to mark every man as obnoxious who is not ready to sign the Shibboleth of the constitution. Money is raised by voluntary subscription to defray the expense of prosecuting men who shall dare to promulgate heretical opinions, and thus to oppress them at once with the authority of government, and the resentment of individuals. . . . Every man, if we may believe the voice of rumor, is to be prosecuted, who shall appeal to the people by the publication of any unconstitutional paper or pamphlet; and it is added, that men are to be punished for any unguarded words that may be dropped in the warmth of conversation and debate. . . . It is to be tried whether an attempt shall be made to suppress the activity of mind, and put an end to the disquisitions of science.”
The country is England. The time is about one hundred and fifty years ago. The writer is William Godwin, in the preface to his Political Justice. But the situation described in the paragraph just cited has a familiar ring to a citizen of the United States in the mid-20th century. Indeed, we are assured by assorted reputable authorities—Robert Hutchins, Walter Reuther, Professor John K. Norton of Teachers College at Columbia University, Professor Paul L. Lehmann of Princeton Theological Seminary, Dr. Carrol Newson of the New York State Commission for Education, Dr. Harold Benjamin of George Peabody College for Teachers, and others—that the free spirits today are being crushed by a “creeping miasma of intimidation.” We are told that “the intellectual tone of student and faculty life is subdued and muted” by the repressive measures now in force; that freedom of inquiry is being smothered in an “atmosphere of tiny criticism, of indecision, of uncertainty, of nagging, of caution”; that the whole life of the mind in this country is sicklied o’er by a “philosophy of fear.”
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