250 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 
subject of modern languages, when the professor of such a subject concerns 
himself, as it is good that he should, not only with the language and 
literature but also with the history and contemporary civilisation of the 
nation with which he is concerned. If the cause of academic freedom was 
fought in the past on the ecclesiastical field, and in regard to chairs of 
divinity, it is likely to be fought in the future on the field of politics and 
economics, and in regard to the chairs which touch those subjects. A 
professor of such subjects cannot stop short of running into the actualities 
of the present. If he were required to do so, he would be stopped from 
reaching what we may almost call the point of fertilisation, where his 
knowledge touches actual life. I would not say that the history of the past 
is the guide to the solution of the problems of the present ; I would rather 
say, with Croce, that all history is contemporary history, and that the 
historian explains what we are by showing to us the living past which 
makes our present life. Even on that basis, the present is the concern of 
the historian, as it is also, for that matter, of the teacher of political theory, 
or of economics, or of modern languages. The teachers of all these subjects 
are handling and interpreting the present. They move in a region of very 
special difficulty and very special obligation. They handle the live stuff 
of which actual political and economic questions, national and international, 
are made. Incedunt per ignes. They may write to the Times on current 
questions, according to our English habit, which has no doubt its American 
equivalent ; they may publish pamphlets and books on current questions ; 
they may even (and this raises desperate difficulties) become parliamentary 
candidates. I cannot deprecate the trend of these subjects and of their 
teachers in modern universities towards what I may call actuality. At 
the same time, I cannot but register the difficulties to which it leads. 
Public attention may be drawn to a university which has become a live 
coal, and public criticism may fasten on its burning. What is more, a 
number of interests may interest themselves in controlling the manner of its 
burning. Universities are always in need of endowment. A benefactor, or a 
group of benefactors, may be very ready to found a chair—and that possibly 
a chair of a certain complexion—in a subject of history, or of politics, oF 
of economics, or of the language, literature and civilisation of a givennation. 
If the professor is conformable to their expectations, all may be well— 
from one point of view. If he is not—surgit quaestio. But this difficulty — 
belongsrather tothe topic of the freedom of the whole academic community, 
and that belongs to another and later inquiry. Here we are concerned 
with the freedom of the individual professor. So far as that freedom is — 
concerned, I can only repeat, with some qualification and extension, the 
conclusions I have already tried to state. My general principle is freedom, 
uncontrolled by any assumption of responsibility by the university, which 
is likely to run more danger thereby than can ever be involved in any 
possible indiscretion which a professor may commit in the use of such ~ 
freedom. My qualification of that principle is two-fold. In the first place, the — 
freedom of the professor is subject to the discipline of the profession, — 
which commands him to seek the truth, the whole truth, and nothing © 
but the truth. If he cannot submit himself with all his heart to that 
discipline, he had better quit the profession and become a politician or a — 
journalist. In the second place, the freedom of the professor, while it is _ 
not subject to the control of the institution to which he belongs, must 
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