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.... A nation which, in the name of loyalty or of patriotism or of
any sincere and high-sounding ideal, discourages criticism and dissent,
and puts a premium on acquiescence and conformity, is headed
for disaster.

Unless a writer feels free, things will not come to him, he
cannot burgeon on any subject whatsoever.

In 1834 Davy Crockett's _Autobiography_ was published.
It is one of the primary social documents of America. It is
as much Davy Crockett, whether going ahead after bears
in a Tennessee canebrake or going ahead after General
Andrew Jackson in Congress, as the equally plain but also
urbane _Autobiography_ of Franklin is Benjamin Franklin.
It is undiluted regionalism. It is provincial not only in
subject but in point of view.

No provincial mind of this day could possibly write an
autobiography or any other kind of book co-ordinate in
value with Crockett's "classic in homespun." In his time,
Crockett could exercise intelligence and still retain his