<p>I love my countrys government for its attempt in a pre-
carious world to sustain a peaceful order in which work can
be done and happiness can be pursued, not for the good of
the state, but in a state that exists for our good.
I love my government not least for the extent to which
50 it leaves me alone. My personal ambition has been simply
to live by the work of my pen. This is not a very fastidious
ambition. If I were aware of large amounts of federal money
available to purveyors of the written word, I would attempt
to gain access to it and hope to please the administrators of
55 this fund as I hope to please magazine editors and book
buyers.
But I would rather have as my patron a host of anony-
mous citizens digging into their own pockets for the price
of a book or a magazine than a small body of enlightened
60 and responsible people administering public funds. I would
rather chance my personal vision of the truth striking home
here and there in the chaos of publication that exists than
attempt to filter it through a few sets of official, honorable,
and public-spirited scrutinizers.
65 The realms of scientific research are now inextricably
involved with government funding. Can we fear that the
humanities might become similarly dependent? If I try to
think of who in the last century has most brilliantly illumi-
nated our sense of humanity, which I take to be the end
70 purpose of the humanities, I think of Freud and Kafka, of
Proust and Joyce, of Whitman, of Henry James. I wonder
how many of these brave, strange, stubborn spirits would
have wanted subsidies from their governments.
How can public-salaried officials not think in terms of
75 respectability, of social optimism, of broad and uncontro-
versial appeal? How can legislators, asked to vote tax money
away, not begin to think of guidelines that insidiously edge
toward censorship?
If government money becomes an increasingly impor-
80 tant presence in the financing of the humanities, is there
a danger, I respectfully ask, of humanists becoming
politicians?</p>
<p>17 The final sentence of Passage 2 serves to</p>
<p>(A) emphasize the moral dilemmas that artists face when selling their work
(B) indicate why artists are so often in need of finan-cial support
(C) suggest that the public should not have to subsidize the art preferred by bureaucrats
(D) warn of the likelihood of artistic compromise
(E) link arts funding in the United States with other social programs</p>