article of the Constitution
amounts to reading it out of the Constitution, to so interpreting it
that it has nothing to say,--which is in our time by no means a
neglected method of quietly putting the Constitution out of the way.

Now, the first principle of legal interpretation is that a provision
of law must not be so interpreted as to make it superfluous or absurd,
or to virtually expunge it. This, of course, applies with peculiar
force to an article of the Constitution. There can accordingly be no
doubt, Gentlemen, that precisely this was the intention of this
provision of the Constitution; namely, that the prerogative was to be
conceded to science that it should not lie under the limitations which
the general criminal code imposes upon every-day, trivial expressions
of opinion.

It is easy to understand that the legislature of any country will seek
to protect the institutions of the country. In the nature of the case,
the laws forbid inciting the citizens of a country to disorderly
outbreak against the constituted authority.

Indeed, if we accept certain current views of law and order we have no
difficulty in understanding that the law may consistently forbid all
such appeal to the passions as is designed to foster contempt and
disregard of existing conventions, or to stir up sentiments of hatred
and distrust in their populace through a direct appeal to the unstable
emotions.

But what is in the eternal nature of things free, on which no limits
must be imposed, the importance of which to the State itself is
greater than that of any single provision of law, to the free exercise
of which no provision of law can set bounds--that is the impulse to
scientific investigation.

No situation and no institution is perfect. Such a thing may happen as
that an institution which we are accustomed to consider the most
unimpeachable and indispensable, may, in fact, be vicious in the
highest degree, and be most seriously in need of reform.

Will any one deny this whose view comprehends the changes which
history records since the days of the Hindus or the Egyptians? Or even
if he looks no further than the narrow space of the past one hundred
years?

The Egyptian fellah warms the hearth of his squalid mud hut with the
mummies of the Pharaohs of Egypt, the all-powerful builders of the
everlasting pyramids. Customs, conventions, codes, dynasties, states,
nations come and go in incontinent succession. But, stronger than
these,