You will, therefore, permit me, without further preliminary, to carry the discussion from the region of ordinary court-room routine to that higher level on which it properly belongs.

The indictment brought against me is an evil and deplorable sign of the times.  It not only offends the common law, but it is a notable violation of the Constitution.  This is the first count in the defense which I have to offer.

I. Article 20 of the Constitution reads:  “Science and its teaching is free.”

What may be the meaning of this phrase in the Constitution, “is free,” unless it means that science and its teaching are not subject to the ordinary provisions of the Criminal Code?  Is this expression, “Science and its teaching is free,” perhaps to be taken as meaning “free within the limits of the general provisions of the criminal code?” But within these limits every expression of opinion is absolutely free—­not only science and its teaching.  So long as they live within the general specifications of the criminal code, every newspaper writer and every market woman is quite free to write and say whatever they choose.  This liberty, which is conceded to all expressions of opinion, need not and could not be proclaimed by a special article of the Constitution as a peculiar concession to “science and its teaching.”

To put such a construction upon this 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.