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{word} = hard to understand, might be this

[Opening remarks missing.]

... religion is the best that is most easily corrupted. It's a corruption, you see, which then it gets the worst. I'll tell you why. If you do not -- are not aware that religion is the most frail and the most delicate thing, you omit the fact that religion tries to empower us, to realize our life as a unique, irrepeatable, one single -- singular event. Whenever you have something you can repeat, you can do it with less effort, with less presence of mind. There are any -- many instinctive movements in our body, you see, we don't pay any attention to. We are -- they are moved perhaps by the power of our -- of life which is in us. We are not aware of it. Religion always invites us to realize that this moment -- like here in this class is unique -- now you know how difficult this is to realize.

I'll give you an example of this morning. I rode out with a few friends through the woods of Vermont this morning. It was a lovely ride, as you can imagine, in this foliage now. And everybody was happy. But there were degrees of experience, obviously. One of our -- my friends was a young woman, not even half as old as I am. Now I'm in this part of the country for 20 years now and to me every ride is still a -- absolutely a new adventure. And I always forgot -- forget that I have ever been there before. It's a new discovery. And so I was saying to her, "Isn't this indescribably beautiful?" You can imagine the mist and silvery tones on this gold and red, and we moved through hills, where we hadn't seen a human being for a long time. And so we were really pathfinders, besides. And now what does this young lady say? She said, "Yes, among the three-hour rides around here, this is really the best." And I was completely put out, and said she is really good for Macy's. She can classify this ride right away. It's among the rides, you see, three-hour rides, the best. Now obviously, although she also thought it was very lovely, she would treat this ride as a ready-made commodity. Among the three-hour rides, you can pick this, you see. I had completely forgotten that I had ever been over this. Now I took her there. I showed her this ride years ago for the first time, but I -- to me such a ride has never happened before. Just as when I see a sunset, I do not say I have seen lovelier sunsets, you see. I try to have this sunset and I must forget that there is a sunset every day. Otherwise I can't enjoy it. But most of you are so afraid of being taken in by anything that happens, that you must immediately say this is No. 1 or No. 5 or No. 6.

Well, gentlemen, as soon as you number it, it cannot be a religious experience, because it is lacking in uniqueness. God is incomparable, and every thing which forces us to think of Him or to mention His name, is incomparative, incomparable. It cannot be compared to anything else. That's just the difficulty

of all religious communications, that at the end it is only this, you see. As when Moses saw God in the thorny bush, you see, he had to -- God only showed him, "I'm here." That's not very much. It has a unique quality that only He himself could have this event. It cannot be translated. "I'm here." That's the meaning, probably, of the word "Jahweh." "I'm here. And I know, you see, you have never seen me before. And in this way, I'll never come to you again."

You remember what I tried to tell you last time with the boy who didn't realize how unique it was that this girl should cry for him at the railroad station in England, you see. He had already in his head that farewells look like this and this, you see. Now this farewell looked different. She cried and she -- he was put out. And so the engagement was broken. The poor man, I mean, thought that love affairs are so natural a thing that they come 13 by the dozen. So you know ahead of time how a -- your fiance‚ has to behave at the railroad station. Now as long as you think you know how somebody has to behave to you tomorrow, you see, you are moving in a mechanized, repetitive, perfectly uninteresting mechanized world and you have your philosophy about it. And you can always discover this, gentlemen. The difference between philosophy and religion is really very simple. In philosophy your mind is stable. And the things move. And in any religious experience, your mind is overcome, overwhelmed by an experience, you see, you are bold enough to admit you have never made before.

So what this good young woman, whom I -- who is a dear friend, was prohibiting her to experience was that she had never ridden in this manner on such a day in fall, you see, any time. And it was no use comparing this ride, because it led on the map, on the abstract -- geographical map over the same places she had been before, you see, to compare it and to classify it. You must admit -- have you ever found out that the way back and the way to some goal are as different as can be. There is no greater difference I would say, no greater distinction than between the way towards a goal and the home stretch.

Now this should be a lesson to you, gentlemen, that your abstract mind here has the map in mind. After all, there is on the map Wentworth, New Hampshire, and Hanover, New Hampshire. Now you drive on Road 25 to Wentworth. And when you go back, you say, "It's still the same road. I've been over this in going to Wentworth and now I'm coming back. I'm again on the same road." Are you really on the same road? You are not, because you're going in the opposite direction. There's an absolutely different -- it's a new road. If you would only admit it. But you can't, because you have learned in your abstract reason here -- up here, you see, that your mind should be stifled and should be -- get stuck by the abstract fact that you know that some surveyor drew a line from Hanover to Wentworth and measured it. But what is this to the fact that by going from Wentworth to Hanover the whole world appears differently from -- your going

from here to Wentworth. You probably know this road. Do you?

Now anybody who is honest with himself knows that any way backward or home is as different from the way towards this goal as -- that two roads can be. I always think that the way back is more different, as a matter of fact, than any similar road, you see, in going. I mean, if you take -- pick out ten roads from here, away from Hanover, and they look probably more alike among themselves, then the way back to Hanover and the way in-going. That's the real experience. There are many reasons, of course. Usually you are tired when you come home or it's already dark, or whatnot. I mean, everything is different. The light is different, the weather is different, the people are in a different mood who returned. You are in a different mood, you see. But this is the reality. Not at all for the abstract car driver of today. He has measured the mileage and he knows technically, you see, that this is 25 miles in going, 25 more miles in -- therefore it must be the same.

You deprive yourselves that is, gentlemen, all the time by your mind of your power of experience, like this young woman. And whenever the mind does this, gentlemen, you philosophize, and you destroy your religion. That is, you destroy your power to decide at this moment what is mechanical, thing, in this drive; what is divine, you see; and what's just human. Your tiredness on the way home is your humanity, you see. The mileage -- it's true, from Wentworth to Hanover are 25 miles. That is thing, you see. But that's dead. But your inspiration, that this is still something you haven't seen before, that would be your power to discover, you see, which will never -- that which will never happen before and after, that you are on this road at 6 o'clock in the afternoon, on September 29, 1954, and you know very well, since your life is ebbing very fast and you only have 50 more years to live, that this is true, that you'll never have it again. And you can't. Real life is absolutely unrepetitive. It is unique. Your life is. In this quality, anybody who can grasp that there is an element in this moment here in class, gentlemen, where it doesn't help you to say, "Oh, next Thursday we meet here again. It will be exactly the same," you see. This element, if you can grasp it, makes you into the son of God. If you cannot grasp it, you go to sleep. You are just a bundle of flesh and of gravity and of inertia and of laziness, which you -- most of you are.

Now gentlemen, the funny thing which I have to tell you is that this way of living, which this young woman betrayed, is superstition. Superstition is, as you know, that which is surviving from another experience. And you must now -- we must now find superstition, because religion is intimately connected with superstition, as you know. But usually you only know of the superstitions of other people. And that doesn't help you, because you cannot judge a Roman Catholic who goes on pilgrimage by calling her or him superstitious. The only way in which you can judge superstition is by finding it inside yourself. You are super-

stitious, I am superstitious whenever are lazy in heart and mind, whenever the mind says, "I know this ahead of time, I have seen all the pictures." And this we call superstition. Superstition is the attempt of solving the life-problem of today by a maxim of yesterday. You will find this -- that's simply so, you see. That is super-stas. The word superstition is a very necessary term, because it means to live by what is hanging on. Super esse, in Latin, or superstare, it means to be left over. That's really the literal tradition -- or translation of "superstition." The leftovers of yesterday.

So all superstitions, gentlemen, are right at the moment when they come into being. Think of the car -- the mapmaker, who did draw this line. He had an inspiration. What is his inspiration? His inspiration is that despite the hills and the dales, and the rivers and the brooks, and all the obstacles in the way, he can take a sheet of paper and draw a line. Gentlemen, that's an inspiration, you see. He translates reality into some wonderfully condensed form, which for his purposes, knowing the size of the state of New Hampshire, and so on, is wonderful, or for a roadbuilder. So this map is not a superstition for the road builder. And it is not a superstition for the bus driver who has to go over the roads with safety, you see, every day. But don't tell me that the man who comes fifth or sixth in using this map is not therefore sixth-rate. As soon as he only uses, you see -- goes and tries to realize the feeling of the roadmaker -- of the map maker. This is what you do. Look at our maps. They are insulting. Nothing real is on the maps you use, just filling stations.

And you are -- I had a friend who always -- he worked in Wisconsin and he had a foreman and they talked often on Monday what they had done over the weekend and the foreman always used to tell my friend, "Oh, it was a wonderful weekend. We made 700 miles." Well, my friend said, "But where did you go?" And the man said, "Ah, let me see. Yes, we took gas in {Kabuko.}" The only thing he knew, you see, was where he took gas, because in his mind there was only the mileage, as his -- as his Sunday pleasure. And the filling station was the only thing that, so to speak, touched the ground and brought him down to earth. I think that's very much an expression of your own residue living. You live as a residual of other people's inspirations. It is a great thing to draw a map. It's a great thing for the statesman to use a map at a conference, for -- for boundaries and so on. But gentlemen, I doubt whether you are aware of the fact that one has just as much to forget maps as you have to use them. And that also is an obsession for -- with you. If you think that what the map says is what you can realize in driving on the road which the map draws, but usually that's the case today with modern man, that he is so in love with the map and so little in love with the landscape, that he actually only sees on his speedometer 25 miles and he says, "It takes me 20 minutes to go 25 miles," you see. I am a Dartmouth man." And therefore, the whole content of these 25 miles is exhausted in the 20 minutes. And the

20 minutes are the meaning of the drive. That is, the chronology of it. Isn't that true? The natural time element prevails.

Now gentlemen, that's superstition. And I challenge you -- we are all, of course, tempted to see the beam in the -- our own eye never, but see always the mote in the other person's eye. I think that Americans are very prone to think that all other people are superstitious, and that you are not. But I find, by and large, that I and you, we are all superstitious. And I think all men are superstitious -- well, let me say, by 90 percent. That is, the full life is not granted us all -- 365 days a year.

I have -- I'm satisfied with this, gentlemen. I know that I am superstitious, that I'm prejudiced, that I'm dogmatic, that I'm passionate, that I'm unjust. You today, no. You are all reasonable, you are without prejudice, you have an open mind, and whatnot. But you can't make any one experience. I can, because at least I'm aware that all these handicaps, which are centering in me, at certain blissful moments can be overcome. You cannot, gentlemen, have religion as long as you do not admit that you are superstitious, and as long as you do not see that superstition is the shadow of the light. And the illness of American religion today is that it says I must have no superstitions. Therefore you cannot have religion.

This is perhaps for you a hard doctrine, but my young friend, this horsewoman, should perhaps help you to explain what I mean, gentlemen. That she is so sure of her never having a superstition, that she can't have a religion.

We'll see that this is true about prejudice and dogma, that all religion is dogmatic. You have dogmas. Your dogmas are only so stupid, because you deny them. Whereas, I have dogma and I am quite intelligent about it, you know. I can state my dogma very faithfully and very simply, in so many words. And you cannot. But you all do -- every man, every atheist is dogmatic because he says, "There is no God." That's his dogma.

Without dogma, we'll find out, nobody can reason, gentlemen. Without superstition, nobody can live forward, because superstition is simply the former form of faith, the old form of faith. It is never enough. But as long as we are not up to the next occasion, we'll always crouch and creep back into the old shell. There's nothing scandalous about using that which is left over. Before, you have to -- { } the next skin, you have just to stay in the old skin. This happened -- even the snake can only -- how do you say -- shed its skin as soon as the old -- new skin is underneath. So superstition and religion, gentlemen, is a necessary two-step. Superstition is a proof that the next step in religion hasn't been reached yet. It's imperfect. Religion is the -- a power to encounter the unique as unique. Superstition is the weakness to make the unique into something already known.

That's all there is to it.

Now you will say, "But I've never { } philosophy. I am a philosopher. I don't have to be superstitious. I just think." Well, gentlemen, the reason why you never are tripped up on this is: religion only has it to do with the way of life, with a power through life in this direction. That is, from the beginning to the end. Religion always is through time. Your thinking, however, is totally spacious -- spatial. You think -- as we said last time, all around us are allowed or to -- made believe to think that there is a nature of things. And here's man. And that's all we have to know. Here is -- are you, posited as the subject and here is the objective world, of space, the space filled with things.

So gentlemen, this is philosophy, and in philosophy there is no room for superstition, because time is discounted. Philosophy is the reality minus time. Religion is our temporary existence minus space. Therefore, religion is always in this sense an exaggeration. As far as you and I at this moment are willing to adore, and to worship, and to revere, and to encounter something singular, it is utterly -- steers clear from all spatial impediment, because if you have a religion, it doesn't make any difference if you are an American, or a Japanese, or a Hindu, or whatnot. The religious experience is not tampered with by space. Or it isn't a religious experience. Religion is the power, gentlemen, to neglect space. Philosophy is the power to neglect time.

I think that's useful for you. It's the most important handicap for your living, gentlemen, that you never know when you prefer spatial concepts and when you prefer temporary commands. The difference, gentlemen, between a religious and a philosophical attitude is that a philosopher in space objectifies and defines and therefore has definitions, or concepts as we call them. Philosophy uses concepts about -- on everything. And everything outside of you is a thing. There was a famous philosopher, who started his life by investigating the apes in the Canary Islands. He was then a professor of philosophy at the University of Berlin, Germany. He is now in this country, and he told me one time -- he did it at a public lecture, as a matter of fact, but I really felt he told it me, personally -- because I'm a religious man -- and I haven't forgotten it. And I suppose nobody who was present in the audience at Harvard at that time paid much attention to it. And he said, "My real desire is to assist an operation on my own brain in which I could look on, with the operator, how they operated on my brain. That would be my extreme case of philosophizing, of seeing even myself as a part, you see, of nature, as a thing." I thought he -- the man is -- a pity, I pitied the man. If this is his desire, I think he has a very low-grade desire. Not much. I'm not interested. I hope I shall never to look in when they operate on my brain. I don't even want to go to the dentist.

I think it's a sick brain who has this curiosity. It is obvious that we are not meant to forget our short lifetime and to think in actions through time. Now gentlemen, what does religion instead recommend or command? Well, just what I said, it commands. You remember, I have tried to get you away from philosophy by saying religion never describes anything. Religion never conceives. Religion never says, "the world is round" or "the world is square" or the "worker is green," or "the mother is blue." These may be good for philosophy, or for your brain, gentlemen, I'm not interested in any such {descriptive} business. You know these novel-writers today, these naturalistic novels. They have nothing to say, so for pages and pages, they describe the inner { } in the entrails of -- in the viscera of some poor boy who has diarrhea. It's just all nonsense to me. Any living being wants to hear at every moment what he has to do. Now gentlemen, a concept describes something outside of you, about which you have to do nothing. And a command tells you in what relation he who gives the command, you and the act which you have to commit stand in -- to each other, to each other in time. Who is first, who is second and who is third. And what's waiting to be fulfilled, you see. And the command, therefore, gentlemen, is the only content from your birth to your death -- dying day in a life that neglects faith. It's an exaggeration, because we have this gravity. Part of us is going to stay in this world as a corpse, and inasfar as I have a body, gentlemen, and you have a body, you may say, "I cannot neglect this," because here I am attached to the soil, and here I have to breathe air, and the oxygen.

(But, sir.)

Yes, that's space. Very good. Thank you. Very excellent example of my impediments in space, you see.

But if you think of your own growth, gentlemen, always the first religious command is "Stop doing this. Don't go to college any more. Drop college, right away." The second command is where to go, you see. That's a positive command. If somebody has too -- here taken too many courses, and some of you do, and -- or taken to drinking too much. I think a religious person must know at every minute that it may be just as probable that he has to leave college as to stay. If you only think that anybody who goes to Dartmouth College has to stay here four years, you certainly are not a free man anymore. You are superstitious, you see. You are superstitious. It's one of the great superstitions of this country that everybody has to go to college. It's an absolute superstition. You know very well that there are many boys in Dartmouth who shouldn't go to this college. Well, wouldn't it be better if they didn't? But nobody does anything about it, because you are so enlightened philosophers that the concept of college education is there neglecting his situation in time. This man is not meant to go to college. Why doesn't anybody -- everybody tell him so? Why isn't he allowed to think

afresh his singular situation that this is not for him, although it seems to be for everybody else. Because you say it isn't done. You have to keep up with the Joneses. You can't get a job, you say. Is this any good reason that this man should be spilled, like -- and spoiled and ruined? Don't you think more people today are ruined by education in this country today than by the lack of education?

This is superstition. And the next campaign will be to do away with it. Gentlemen, I have a friend -- old lady, who wanted to do something right for the people in Maine, up at the coast where these -- it's terrible, I mean, Maine has always been, already in the 18th century, a very, very barbarous state. Already Talleyrand, the French statesman, describes the people of Maine as a totally disintegrated population. Well, they are worse now. They fleece the city people and that's all they live on. But they have, of course, from this great love for Lafayette and for the fact that the French Navy once donated the "Independence" to the 13 colonies, they have a great veneration for France. And so in the high schools there they teach French. Heaven knows, you see -- then the word "Maine" is French, so that connects, probably. So my friend moved up there and she offered the town to teach sewing to the girls, who know nothing about it, and need it very badly. And they said it couldn't be done because they had to have French. Now what any young woman in Maine should -- could do with French is a mystery.

And as you know, you learn these languages, but you never learn them. You never speak them, you never make any use of them. And yesterday in class, I had a hundred students in class. I asked who had learned a foreign language. They said, all, everyone had. And then I asked who many were reading a newspaper in this language now, and not one did. So I said, that's a superstition, that you have learned a foreign language. And most of you learn a foreign language just from superstition. Because if you really would learn a foreign language, you would carry it on. But you don't. And you know, nine-tenths of your life is lived on these superstitions in learning. You learn absolutely nothing in this college, because everything you learn, you give up immediately. It's not learning. Learning means to come to the point where you can teach it. And nobody who hasn't taught a thing has learned it. If you have -- if you can teach a -- another boy to ski, you can ski. Before, you can't. Before, you still have to learn how to ski. As soon as you can something, really, you are able to tell somebody else how to do it. And that's the point which you must reach with everything, so if you -- if you taught -- are able to will write a French poem to your sweetheart, I'll admit that you have learned French, but not before, because you can say certain things in French to your sweetheart you cannot say in English. So it is very much -- I recommend it highly to learn French to write poetry to your sweetheart. She'll stick longer with you. You may escape a divorce this way, because a woman

wants to be spoken to in her own language, I assure you. Not in her own language which is native, but in a language which is a secret between you and her. And since she doesn't get it in this country, they all must get a divorce, because you treat even your wife, and they treat certainly their husband, just as factorymade, No. 23.

Well, I -- there's much more truth in this than you know, gentlemen. Marriage cannot stand if it is not a unique encounter. And unique encounter, gentlemen, I told you last time, will always lead to unique expression. Therefore you have to give to your wife a name which nobody ever gives her. You have to. Before, she hasn't been spoken to as a unique encounter of your heart. And because you cannot do it, you little -- little ones today, therefore there is no marriage. There is just domineering. She knows this very well, but she never gets it from you. You have to speak to the woman of your choice so that her and your faith finds a new expression which nobody has ever given it. And you must bring the gods into the home or there will be no gods. There will be just women clubs -- women's clubs, and such things, such terrible disasters. They are all substitutes for religion, these political affairs into which the women now -- well, from boredom at home. Because you cannot pray. You cannot convey to them the uniqueness of your lives. And this is very central to you in your own existence. You will all come to grief if you do not mind what I say, that you are all superstitious in regard of love, because you make it into sex. Sex is the repetitive aspect of love. And love is the unique aspect of the same relation, is it not? Very simple.

Now, the whole rigamarole of your troubles now between 14 and 25 is to run up from the degrading, numeral approach of the Kinsey Report up to the singular and unique report -- approach which no report can ever know of, which is your situation, with the person with whom you are going to live. So the basic starting point is always the 14-year-old boy who reads the Kinsey Report. But Mr. Kinsey is just, you know, 14 year old. He's right, on the level of nature, on the level of the repetitive, on the level of things. You know the famous story of the -- newspaper man who goes to see the Kinseys when the first report came out, and he says to Mrs. Kinsey, "Can I speak to Mr. Kinsey?" And she says, "I'm sorry, but ever since my husband has taken up sex, he never comes home, at night." Poor woman.

So you see, the -- the immediate application is that whenever we live repetitive experiences, we not only are superstitious, but we degrade the event to the level of things, to the level of something not fully alive, more or less dead. And a woman expects from you to get in touch with -- we'll see this later at much greater -- in greater clarity -- a woman expects from you the -- make the -- be brought in connection with the highest life. She has a second life, a second-grade life and you in day -- in ordinary life move again on a third level. That is, there

are degrees of aliveness, and religion is the most vital state of affairs to which a woman in her own right cannot attain. That's the misery of the suffragettes, of the woman feminists. They don't -- they deny this. And they deny it, because in American business society, men had denied themselves this privilege of being in touch with the most intensified life. That's very -- I will -- I will show you this in very concrete and very sober terms. There's nothing sentimental about it. But the level of religious living, gentlemen, has sheer uniqueness. The second level of the women, of love, is in the image of the unique. As the Bible says that Christ and His church are the image by which you must explain your own relation to your wife. So there is love, the woman has. And then there is everyday the workday life -- you say what day? What's -- everyday life. I think "workday" is good. In work, gentlemen -- all work is repetitive. All work, you know ahead of time that it can -- you can come out right. I mean, you know how to type a letter. You know how make a cabinet. You know how to stamp out something, you see, from an engraving press. Work is always, you see, secure. Otherwise you wouldn't call it work. Work is the success of which you can predict, you see. Therefore, usually work -- hard-working American gentlemen -- oh no, not gentlemen, but husbands, you see, who only limit themselves to work, and perhaps then to hobbies and such things, who lives on this level and not on the level of uniqueness, will always be -- falls below his wife.

You see, the power to experience something unique lifts a man above women. And the power to sink down to the level of a working bee, lowers him, degrades him below his loving and affectionate wife, because to be affectionate to your husband is more than being a beaver for the husband, you see. Work is less religious, because it is without any risk. Work is predictable, gentlemen. Now the superstition of work in this country is very great. And you all are superstitious because you think, once you get married, it's { } sufficient enough for you to keep -- to be the breadwinner of the family, and to get the wherewithal, and then you think the wife has to be satisfied. And then you are very much surprised to find that she isn't, that she doesn't give a damn for all your breadwinning -- ability, that she considers you just an oxen. Oxen also can carry the yoke, but they cannot procreate spiritually, and that's just what the woman expects you --. Well, I can only hint at this. This is a long -- longer story.

But what I'm going to try to tell you today was, as I told you, we shall use this -- few hints to get going. This course is called Comparative Religion. We have assumed very boldly that there are more than one religion. And I told you this is only possible to state if we have some yardstick what religion is. The many religions are obviously different emphases, different accents on the power of religion, just as democracy and aristocracy is all still government, you see. So the American religion, gentlemen, we shall now try to analyze and we shall try to find out how far it is a distorted religion and how far it is a true religion. I think it

is both. Nobody, of course, has a complete religion. All governments have handicaps. All religions are, inasfar as they are really lived by all the people, only lived partially. But the religion of this country, gentlemen, ever since the Star-spangled Banner has flown, we may call natural religion. And you will admit that is a very popular word.

Religion is said to be natural. And therefore the word "nature" occurs in various aspects. You can always hear people say that man has -- man's nature is such-and-such. And that we could only -- if we only understood the nature of things, then we would be happy. And we would do without all the superstitions of the Church and of all the denominations, and all of the sects -- that's all unnecessary. I have a friend who stops, when I walk with him, every 10 minutes and say, "I must commune with nature." And then he falls silent and he communes with nature. I think he is an old ass.

I think this very rude. He just, you see, lets me stand there, and communes with nature. Well, that's Thoreau. Who has read Thoreau? Who has read Thoreau? Is that all? Well, Dartmouth was the last refuge for the Thoreau religion. Is that all, what's left of Thoreau?

(Oh, Thoreau.)

Wie?

(Thoreau)

Oh, poor Thoreau. He -- really he deserves better. I mean -- it's nothing -- because there is something about his religion -- nature worship. Have you never heard of his nature-worship? Well, why did you say you hadn't?

Well, once more. Who knows of Thoreau? Well, he is a -- he is still the evangelist of a certain religion which is, I think, the real religion of Americans, regardless of their church obligations, because they don't scratch the skin, Sunday school lessons, you know that. It doesn't mean much. But Thoreau means very much.

Gentlemen, what then is right about nature? And what is wrong? Well, right about nature is that a man's religion, if he has a natural religion, is not handicapped, or should not be handicapped by anything of a national, or provincial or parochial character. The nature is universal. Isn't that right? That's the positive aspect. The natural religion of Thoreau has this one convincing point: that he tries to find out the unbroken unity of the natural world. It's larger than any political boundary.

All the international brotherhoods we have in this country, you see, they are not in existence in Europe because there isn't this worship of nature and therefore the word "international" there has no good ring, you see. People there are all over-nationalistic. They want to have a French brotherhood, and as you know, no Frenchman is even the brother of any other Frenchman. Every Frenchman is nature in -- by itself. It's a nature obviously, you see, of his own. They are very cruel to each other. It's not my invention. William James, the great American, who was a Thoreau, but a natural religionist, you have heard of him -- William James went to France in 1872 and he wrote, "We cannot live with the French, because they have no feeling of brotherhood of man anymore."

And so we come to the second concept of the natural religion: the brotherhood of man. That is a tenet, a dogma of America, natural religion. Nature is one. Nature is one. All men are brothers. And religions are many. Religions are many. That's understood. That's why it was so important to say "nature is one," you see, because you lived in a country with innumerable denominations, you see. And so the real, parentheses, religions are many.

Now by and large, I would say this is the -- these are the three dogmas of your religion. They are. That's what you all believe. Religions are many. All men are brothers. And nature is one.

This is, gentlemen, imitation by contrast, as it has been said of these concepts, which come -- spring up in opposition to another doctrine. The Christian doctrine was, of course, one faith, many things, and different gifts of the spirit. Nobody can say in the Church, of Christianity, or in any other particular religion, gentlemen, that it is enough to say, "All men are brothers." Your mother is not your brother. And your son is not your brother. He's your son. And Jesus was very careful to say not that He was a brother of God, but that He was His son, because brotherhood is just a very highly selective point. You and I are many more things than just brothers. It is not enough to say of our human relations that we are brothers. As you see, you can with a wonderful ideology of all men being brothers, have wars all the time -- as you may know, there is no country that has fought more wars than the United States of America, because it has so many pacifists. That is, this country is torn between his acts and his beliefs. All men are brothers, if they do my bidding. If they don't, they're just shot down.

So gentlemen, it isn't enough to say all men are brothers. That's a very poor religion. It isn't enough that there are -- to say there are many religions. And it isn't true that all things have one nature. But this is very understandable as an antidote against a religion which said, "Everybody can be compelled to have one religion" -- against the Spanish Inquisition, for example, you see. And therefore, gentlemen, this your Thoreau religion is a declaration of protest. It's a protest

against a misnomer -- a state of affairs which you -- everybody who comes to this country has fought. When I came to this country, I also fought the superstitions and the tyranny at home. And your ancestors, most of you, felt the same, that there was no hope at home, that you were -- they were wronged at home. You can imagine, therefore, gentlemen, that in this country, there is a bulk of conviction -- is a protest against the previous concepts of religion. And the concepts -- misunderstandings of religion.

And therefore, we shall not get rid of this religion on nature so easy. You can only get rid of it if you look through its -- character of a protest, just as every American when he comes to England, like Mr. -- this gentlemen from Chicago, you know, who owns the Chicago Tribune -- has to visit at the Court of St. James and see the king and the -- makes the king and even he has to make the Pope in Rome, although he may be a Protestant or free-thinker. And this strange combination that you have to prove to yourself that these dignitaries in old Europe are your equals. Just the same, nature-religion says that I am with my philosophy the equal of the whole papacy and the whole Anglican church, and the whole Lutheran church and all the nonsense that's over there in Europe. And Mr. McCormick is a typical example of the man who constantly stands before the mirror and say, "I'm their equal, I'm independent. Down with the British, so let's visit them, because then they certify, by receiving me, that I am superior even to them. They need my money." Mr. McCormick is one of the most tragic and humorous figures of America, you see. He's much more interesting than this stooge, you see, Mr. McCarthy, because he is torn between an anti-religious bias against Europe -- down with the religion of Europe -- and an attempt to conceal from him his total dependence on the values of Europe. He has -- all the time -- he has to debate them and he has to defeat them, and he has to depict them, and he has all the time to shout, "I'm independent."

Gentlemen, when I see the mental somersault of many American writers and journalists and broadcasters, I always see that they're dancing as though it was the Fourth of July 1774, dancing around -- I don't know around what, probably a fire, and saying, "I'm independent." Now gentlemen, that's very negative to shout, just to prove that you are independent from something. That isn't very much. It makes you very dependent on that on -- on -- from which you declare your independence. And most things in school here and in life in this country are completely dependent on this dream of total independence. And that's Thoreau. Thoreau is the dream of total independence from tradition, because if you analyze, gentlemen, these three sentences: all men are brothers, nature is one, religions are many -- you will see that this is a religion which neglects time and which is -- places all men in space. Brothers are here in space. Your ancestor and you, however, need time. And they have lived in different spaces, have they not? And therefore, gentlemen, the religion of nature has no sense of time whatsoev-

er. A father and a grandson can only meet in time. They may never live in the same space. But that's a very profound religious question. What is the relation of your grandfather and yourself? It's a question through time. Why does -- do you waste the investment of your grandfather in life, in society, you see, and do something utterly -- disconnected. Well, that's a very wonderful way out. All men are brothers. They are just living this short time at this moment. And I always consider America -- a town meeting, not on the air, but on the American prairies, you see, an attempt to individualize all mankind as standing uprooted at the same time in pants or shirts next to each other and being brothers shaking hands. And for a symbol of this religion, you have this poor president who should have a mechanical hand and has to shake hands to a hundred thousand people a year, you see. At the end of four years, he's dead.

Why is that so? That's his -- American religion. That by shaking hands, he symbolizes the brotherhood of man, although he's the president, you see, and you are a simple John -- Joe Smith. By shaking hands with you, he acknowledges your equality, does he not? That's very important.

Now gentlemen, please don't misunderstand me. There is a great element of truth in this. But you must also see immediately that it is only one element. Religion is so incredibly rich that these three tenets -- that all the visible religions are superstitions, because that's what it amounts to. Religions are many, therefore you don't have to care for any one of them. You see, they do not bind you. Now the word "religion" means "To bind," and therefore, if I say religions are many, then no religion is binding. If nature is one, gentlemen, then we all know all about how to use them -- use it. We all are in agreement about nature. Nature is one, and that everybody must agree. And all men are brothers. That digs out every man's present-day life from all its encumbrances, from ancestry, and pedigree, and foreign countries, and racial, and credal, you see, separations. That's a great thing. We all live by this.

So please don't misunderstand me. I have not said that the religion of nature is not a religion. But I have said it's a very one-slanted religion. And obviously our attempt cannot be to deny it, but to enlarge it. You must understand that it came about as a protest. It is an anti-religion. And you will never find peace of heart and mind, gentlemen, as long as you are not completely sure of this fact. That inasfar as it is an anti-religion, it's no good. Nobody can live by opposition. Inasfar as it stresses three great elements of our existence on this earth about God, men, and things, it is -- must be preserved.

Now, you see, the command again goes -- that's why you can't have a course on religion without your inner participation, gentlemen. If I now develop this religion of nature, or this natural religion as not enough to you, I can only do

this, because I must appeal to your sense of fairness, that you must prefer the complete religion to a partial religion. And therefore, it is your case and my case and it is -- we cannot objectify this at all. We have just to do something with the state of affairs which we find in this country. And I cannot admit that any one of you is not just as heavily involved in this as I am. You are more involved. You have a much longer life ahead of you. I'm going to die. I can, so to speak, forego the necessities of enriching the American foreshortening, you see, of religion. You cannot.

These three dogmas are very simple, gentlemen. You will find that most religions can be found out about in these three ways, because religion is, as we said -- once more -- the power to experience unique commands, unheard-of commands. And it means commands given and received, as we have seen. And therefore, there's always this relation of: God is the power who can force us to voice a new command. God is the power that makes us speak things for the first time in our life. Therefore the parents are gods for the child inasfar as they enable the child for the first time to speak. Then it sloughs off up and the parent ceases to be divine. That's in the first year, the parents are in God's stead. They can have it, because for the child, it's a great discovery that the parents enable the child to make an experience. An animal cannot make an experience. It just gets an instinct, you see.

So, God is the power, gentlemen, to make a first experience in an articulated manner -- to speak, say something for the first time, or to hear something for the first time. The second is: the power to admit that there is no man in the singular, but only men, m-e-n in the plural, which the philosopher again will not say. So you see, gentlemen, the difference between the natural religion of Mr. Thoreau, who never had a brother, as you know, but who said that the brotherhood of man was a tenet of his creed. And he lived by himself and tried very hard, as you know. That's very simple, you see, to call all other people brother, as long as you don't see them. But never mind. Thoreau had a religion and not just a philosophy, because he did not simply say, "Man is." Any man, even a Unitarian, who speaks of m-e-n in the plural, is not a philosopher, but a religious man, because the philosopher speaks of man in the singular, you see. He speaks of the nature of man. And a religious man must at least add that all men are brothers. That's very little, because all men, they are just equal, you see, and identical twins, but still, it is a step beyond the pure mental equation, m-a-n equals m-a-n.

Philosophers abstract from reality totally. The Unitarian or the natural religious man or the universalist today, they at least admit that the connection between these many men should be brotherhood. I -- my conviction is that not one of you lives by the brotherhood of man. You live by the patience of your parents. And if they considered you your brothers, they would cease seeing you.

But since they are their -- your parents, they are very patient. But under the heading of brotherhood of man, you could never be justified by your faith in them, you see. But they have to take much more beating than any brother has to.

Well, never mind, gentlemen. We have made a great step forward. Religious treatment of man is everywhere where people have at least admit that there is more than one man to be understood.

The isolation of men through the mind of philosophy is so total that they only speak of one man at a time, so to speak. So, America is not just a philosophical country, but we can see in the brotherhood of man the influence of philosophy. Philosophy has limited the human relations in the human family to brotherhood, because that is the simplest relationship. If all men just are to be found on one common denominator, it is the simplest religious tenet to say that all these two billion people should be treated as brothers. It says nothing about their variety. It says nothing about, you see, their being really very different souls. But it insinuates that they are really very much so similar that they can have no trouble recognizing each other.

You see, for example, today with the Russians. You can only love the Russians if you love your enemy. And you can only love your enemy if you know that your enemies are much more important to your development than your friends. My enemies have rendered me much greater service through life than my friends, because the friends spoil you and the enemies wake you up to your shortcomings. It's very simple. Who can become a great man without enemies? It's impossible. Now you don't know this, you see. You think all men are brothers, so you never become great.

Your enemies are not your brothers. And that's why they help you along. But there is the end of your natural religion. You hate to hear this. No man is an enemy, you say. That's just terrible. I mean, that's wicked.

And obviously, gentlemen, enemies are very important people. In the last nine years, this country would have totally disintegrated and we would have had a depression, and you would have had anarchy without the Russians. It's only thanks to the Russians that we have made some strides. And you should go down on your knees every day and admire God's great works of providence by which He has not allowed this -- this American nation to go to stagnation and to disintegration by having no enemy and no threat, because you couldn't stand that. You would be ruined. And why not admit this? This is so simple. It's the truth everybody knows. Read the schedule of the last nine years in American politics, everything potent, fruitful and [tape interruption], everything important done here we -- was owed to the threat of Germany. So go down on your knees

and pray that you will never have one world government and the tyranny which it implies, but we always will have these two world powers opposing each other, because that's the good life. Do you think you can replace marriage by having just the husband, who isn't homosexual? Isn't it better to have husband and wife, or do you want to live by artificial insemination? The other hand, just matriarchy?

It's obvious, gentlemen, that nobody is the greater enemy of the other than the sexes. They can destroy each other. And yet you all know that all life depends on their being there against each other. Has it never dawned on you that in politics it must be the same, that to have just friends like France is absolutely corrupted and disastrous for America, but to have an enemy like the Russians is a great thing?

They're up against religion, but natural philosophy -- religion cannot understand such a thing, because "brotherhood of man," as you see, is a very poor tenet. It omits the enemy. For example, it omi-- as I said, it omits the ancestors, it omits the grandchildren. It omits any interesting combination of humanity, because what I have seen of brothers, they leave. One goes to Princeton, one goes to Harvard and one goes to Dartmouth. I mean, they bore each other. They have nothing to do with each other. They don't have to meet. They come from the same nest, so they go away. And it's all right. They had their peace. They had their golden age together. So then they disperse.

So the "brotherhood of man," gentlemen, is a very poor concept. The reason is that it is a concept of one moment in space. And it doesn't explain the history of the human race through the ages.