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...disappoint you, at least the reporter of today, because this course, of course, doesn't deal with the World War II, or World War III, which would be the general destruction of mankind. But I only wanted to include the power of destruction into your picture of man, the negative. But we will not give you chapter and verse on the gradual self-destruction of the human race. That is left to the world history, and the departments of history, and I myself in Philosophy 58, do a lot of mental destruction. But in this course, I told you that we have to make room for understanding the place of religion in the process of attachment and detachment, which is man's rhythm on this earth.

So I propose: first of all, that you read this assignment, this paper, you remember, until next week, on the four great religious leaders, which in a mysterious economy exist two of them in our tradition, and two of them in the Asiatic tradition. In a very strange interplay, Jews and Christians have one tradition, and the Chinese and the Hindus have one tradition, because -- you may not know this, but it is true that Buddhism migrated to China in a strange manner. Now you can't even find much of Buddhism in India any more, but it is -- has been incorporated into the tradition of the Chinese, so that they are very much between Buddha and Lao-Tzu as we all are between the Old and the New Testament.

There are many Christians who really live exclusively by the Old Testament, and there are quite a number of Jews who live exclusively really by the New Testament. And this strange hodgepodge exists in Asia, too, where the adherents of the Chinese tradition are apt to be very good Buddhists. The same is true of Japan. Whereas when you come to India, no Buddhism, although Buddha came from -- from India, as you know. And it's very similar to Christianity being expelled from nowhere more than in a -- the countries of its cradle. You have Arabs and Jews now in Palestine, but just a few sprinklings of Christian missionaries there, in a rather unfortunate situation. Not much Christianity in the country of Christ.

So -- as you will see, the attempt of ours to place religion back into its -- into its social setting will have this planetary scope. And it must have if anybody is going to believe us today. The world is one, therefore these great forces of religion obviously have been working in any one part of the globe with the same incessant energy. Why they are needed, that comes from man's power to destroy his own rhythm between attachment and detachment. The anti-religious rhythm, which for example in the West has marked out the last 400 years, is when you go from attachment to detachment, and say that's the last word.

Science is an attempt to live by detachment. And so any sci- -- society that proclaims science to be their god, says, "Let us all end by be objec- -- being objective. Don't get emotional." And in this wonderful s- -- division of men into some various unholy halves of feeling and of reason, you today are as deeply fissioned as the atom. I think we are splitting the atom, because man first has split himself. Because, very similar.

Nobody is able to live detachedly. But the fiction as of today is this way. And then -- you mix some feelings on top of this boredom of your rationalism to -- just to keep going. So you'll always go from fascination and mov- -- from the movies to mathematics, and from the mathematics to movies. But you are not attached to mathematics. And you are not attached to the movies, because both teach you to look at things from the outside.

So this -- the wrong rhythm, gentlemen, has of course -- is -- has been the temptation of all young and vigorous people all the time, because it matches man's pride. If I can tell you that you can be the captain of your soul, then you listen and say, "Oh, that's wonderful. Then I probably -- I'm one of these wonderful boys who are self-made and get rich quick, and buy the rest of the world for -- for their money."

Gentlemen, the rhythm from attachment to detachment is the devil. The full rhythm of man is: attachment, detachment, attachment, detachment, which -- in a -- with less -- less academic way we would call -- is the rhythm between life and death. Detachment is death, and burial, and funeral. Only it's somebody else's funeral. I -- I detach myself from something, I bury it. If you detach yourself from your family, you say, "This family now can -- for all what I am concerned -- can die. Its -- its work is done. This family is over."

Therefore, gentlemen, the funny thing about the objective scientists is always that they do not know that they are grave diggers. Whoever is objective says of the object that he can live without it. Detachment means your declaration of independence. And as I say, it has its place in life. I hope you all declare your independence one day. And you can only do this by saying, "This from which I detach myself is not essential to my own life. I can -- if wor- -- bad comes to worse, survive."

Take the doctor who experiments with his own body for a new drug. He's a hero. Why? Because he can even detach himself from the fate of his own body. He says, "If I could die bodily, my soul is marching on, because the discovery of the new medicine is more important for the progress of science than my own physical existence." That is the sacrifice of his own life, but it means that he is ready to condemn his own body to die. Can you see this?

Gentlemen, perhaps you take this down. There is a -- analogy between attachment and e- -- detachment, and life and death. Only it isn't my own life and my death, but the object's death or life which is determined by your decision to attach or to detach yourself. If you look at anything in the world with detachment, you don't get excited when it dies. If you look at it with attachment, you know -- not only -- get excited because it dies, but you run to its rescue. And you may even, as in a fire, lose your own life in time to rescue the child.

So gentlemen, the great fiction of the detached people and nations -- look at the French who are so detached now from Europe and the world -- their great error is that they have only -- they are the outstanding humanists of our day, the outstanding idealists, the outstanding academic people, the outstanding objectifyers. And detachment has been the god of reason in France. Why can't they live as political units? Because they have omitted the pr- -- they have been so selfcentered that they only speak of "my attachment" and "my detachment," that "you have to be objective," or "I have to objective, because I want to be the subject of all the objects I see."

Now gentlemen, the objects have the fatal capacity of being subjects, too. And when you tell them you look at them objectively, the answer is that they look at you objectively. And so you have no fellowship and no community with them. Not one Frenchman has any fellowship with any other Frenchman. Everyone is a monad -- is a prima donna. You meet a Frenchman, he makes a monologue, then he makes a pa- -- polite -- give you five minutes to make your monologue, then he begins again, and so there are always two monologues. But it's not a dialogue. And so they think of the nations, and so they think of the world. And that is just what you think in your mind, or -- fortunately not in your practical life, but in your theory, which is all French in your heads at this moment, you think really that the individual man tries to look at the world objectively.

Gentlemen, the funny thing is that part of the world looks at you. And resents it very much when you look at them as though you knew them. You can only get along with people -- as you -- everybody knows in this country, by for example, feigning that he's just as stupid as the other fellow. The other fellow resents it very much when you show him that you know more. Be- -- therefore, even in meeting a fellow -- you all do this instinctively, you're very careful to keep in step with him, and to -- admit, you see, that he's not an object of observation at all, you see. But he even -- you all try to keep up with the Joneses. Now who are the Joneses? It's XYZ. Nobody has ever seen the Joneses. But everybody keeps up with the Joneses. So everybody in this country understands that the other fellow doesn't want you to be detached from him, but be so completely attached that his -- his timing, his beat, his rhythm -- makes law for you. So, no

movement, because everybody is as slow as the lowest common denominator in this country, don't you know.

So you can sell the -- the most stupid thing, but you can't sell -- sell anything intelligent, because it's the Joneses who set the pace. And Heaven knows! There may be a Jones who's still more stupid. So whomever you meet, you treat him as the lowest common denominator. And you are hiding your -- putting your li- -- hiding your -- concealing your light under the bushel very carefully, because who knows? He may not understand. So, better not show as a Dartmouth student that you have any intellectual interest. You must keep up with the -- with the football team.

And so -- never show that you are any better than anybody else. Isn't that true? Isn't that the law of life in this college? No? Are you allowed to show that you are cle- -- more clever than somebody else? Yes? Well, it has terrible consequences. You won't be elected for -- to {Pi Elopitus}.

Of course, they have some crackpot positions like Dar- -- editor of The Dartmouth for {intelligence}.

So gentlemen, the -- the -- the religious aspect of life includes the triangle that somebody else has to be buried, who is equally alive as myself when I try to be -- detached from him. It costs a price to declare that some part of society is treated by you as your object. You can treat -- as the people in Chicago do, in sociology -- everybody by questionnaire, you see. But it costs a price, that there is a tremendous abyss between these professors of sociology and the people whom they ask. They have nothing to say to each other. The one is the object of the other.

They don't share their -- their -- their -- I told you the story, didn't I, about this sociologist and his questionnaire?

(No.)

Oh, I must have. Don't you remember?

(No.)

The sociologist who came to this college, and wanted to be a professor here, but he happened to be a professor in Chicago. And he only wanted to do -- to educate his -- his children in the country. So he kept it a deep secret, and came here. And stayed with a friend of ours. And the friend was instructed to tell nobody that he wanted to become a professor at Dartmouth. And that couldn't

be mentioned. Now I -- we are very old friends, too, so we -- the mutual friend with whom he stayed of course was good enough to give away the secret. All secrets, you see, are meant to be told. And -- but on the other hand, I wasn't allowed to let the Chicagoan person know that I knew. So he came over to my house and had tea. And I was very discreet. And said, "How do you do?" And "How nice to see you here." And "What a surprise."

And then he said, "You must help me. I have a real -- a real problem. I have sent out a questionnaire to 1500 people. And I have three people working for me, and they go everywhere, you know, for the sampling. The normal person who has to be asked somewhere. And one of the questions nobody will -- wants to answer. And that's the question about what they expect for their own future. They keep this a secret. They won't tell me. Now what do I do to break the jinx?"

I looked at him, and said, "David, David, wouldn't you act the same way? Here you are sitting," having, you see -- demanded from our mutual friend to keep a deep secret about his prospects for the future. He -- I knew it, but he wouldn't tell me. And he thought that 1500 objects of his curiosity should tell him. Now that is modern science, you see. Here -- he kept -- his future from me who is his -- was his friend. But he thought that every- -- all -- everybody else had to tell him about their future. Now, if you don't laugh, I can't help it. Then you are just as stupid as he.

They tried to keep up with the Joneses.

(We wouldn't want you to think we're stupid. So we all laugh.)

You want me to think that.

Well, gentlemen, that's by and large the situation in this country. The stupidity of the sociologist is that he really -- thinks he can find out about other people what he wants nobody to find out about himself. Every detached man has this arrogance, that he thinks he can know more about somebody else, you see, than they know about him. This is -- the -- the usual attitude of all these people.

But you can only know, as your wife will show you very soon, of her, if you allow her to know much more about you. I mean, women know their men much better than -- men know their women, you see. Yet the Bible is polite enough to say that a man who loves his wife comes to know her. But they -- it's very silent, politely, you see, about the degree of knowledge that women -- the women acquire in the process. That's total knowledge.

So the detachment and attachment process, gentlemen, cannot simply be replaced by life and death, because life and death are natural expressions outside society. They mean somebody's life and somebody's death. But gentlemen, the process of attachment and detachment in the family, in war, in the army, at work, at play -- in all these situations we have analyzed -- what does this mean, gentlemen? Much more serious. That's the detachment from your other half, and that's the attachment to your other half. That is, it is the attachment and detachment, a process of reciprocity, of reciprocity.

Therefore gentlemen, life and death, in real life, of humanity, have nothing to do with biology, of life and death of some cell, of some pig, of some fish. That's his life and his death, whereas in society, it's the life and the death of that by which -- by whom, by -- ja, whom in the plural -- by whom our life is made meaningful, because it is supplemented, it is -- reciprocated, because it is -- corresponds to it. What we call -- say in marriage, that it is our "better half," that is true about all those parts of life which me -- we may lose, although they are physically separable. But spiritually, morally, in -- so to speak, in speaking terms, they are not, because without them, we have to weep, we have to mourn, we have to go nuts, we have to go insane, because they -- we find ourselves part and parcel of them. They are more alive than we.

Now this attachment and detachment business therefore, gentlemen, is much more complicated than anything in any biological description of nature. And that is why these rather pale expressions, "attachment" and -- and "detachment" go beyond the -- the themes of life and death in a biological handbook. Because in a biological handbook, everything is just objectified. And there, you can s- -- describe, for example, in a biological handbook, and in so- -- so-called sociological handbooks, which are imitating biology -- they are, you know, modern sociology, and physiology, and psychology, they are just glorified biologies. They describe, for example, a father as a cell of some fear, authority, and so on -- and then you can read a book here on this campus on the family in which "the family" is -- described in -- in terms of objective -- objecti- -- objects, of definitions.

Now gentlemen, in the terminology of our course, that isn't fa- -- the father. The only interesting father in -- in our discussion is your father. That is, the person to whom you say "Father," under the condition that he will call back and say "Son." That is, in differentiation from the sociologist, who asks 1500 laymen about their prospects of the future, and remains outside, the funny thing about real life is that the other fellow calls you by the reciprocal name by which you call him. And only those situations are of any validity, of any interest. Where do we get somebody to call us "Son," when we are inclined to call him "Father"? Where do we get somebody to call us "Johnnie," because we call her "Elizabeth"?

Where is the soul that calls upon my name in reciprocity?

The reciprocal situation, gentlemen, means a dynamism in which the more I call somebody "Father," the more he will call me "Son." Or the more you will call your girl with her pet name, the more she will also call you by her name. That is, it is a process of mutual increase of polarization, we say. You can say that "Who is a mother?" A mother is somebody who by being constantly called the mother by the child becomes the mother. A father is certainly only he whom somebody calls "Father." And -- the -- your sons, in their relations -- and your daughters even more so, in their relations to their fathers, express this fact very clearly, because you become the father of the child not at all by any physical process. A child knows nothing of this, and it has absolutely no relation to -- between, you see, for your real life together, that there is a physical relation between you and the child's mother. The important thing is that the child looks upon you as her father, and that you look upon her as a daughter, and how do you express this? By saying it more often every day, so that it becomes the standard procedure and finally the so- -- child doesn't know -- differently. She has always called you "Father," and nobody else. And in the end, you are the father.

William James once said that action begets habit, and habit begets character. Now I don't know if this is true. But certainly it is, gentlemen. Your place in the family is first act, and then habit, and finally character. That is, it is done to you by all the others who believe that you are the mother, and you are the father, or you are the son and the daughter. They enact this tragedy of family life, or this comedy of family life, or this history of family life by mutually calling each other into this role every day. This mutual reliance, gentlemen, is the real story of life, and not self-reliance. Nobody can make himself by self-reliance. But you -- we are all made by mutual reliance.

Now to give you a very precise example of this. When a -- a family wants to buy a new car, and now is the time, as you know, because the prices go down, the -- the -- one member of the family can be delegated to buy the car. He's just near Detroit, and -- the father may wire him, "You happen to go through Detroit, bring us a new car out to the West Coast."

This boy has -- when he buys this car -- to represent the interest of the father of the family, the interest of his mother, the interest of his sister, and his own interest in the matter. And a very witty ad one time, of General Motors, showed how the family gets together on this problem. Have you ever seen it? And the father says it has to be not too expensive, of course. And the boy says, "This I know anyway. But is this fast enough?" So the girl says, "It doesn't look stylish enough in my estimation." And the mother says, "But the main thing that -- it is safe on the road."

So gentlemen, what is mutual reliance? The boy in Detroit, when he really acts right, will have to have backward connections. Here he stands before this wonderful new Model T. And -- and here comes in economy. Here comes in speed. That's his own background. Here comes beauty. And here comes safety. So he has, in order to be a full, rounded person, he has to speak with four different voices, because you cannot reduce safety to beauty, you cannot reduce beauty to speed, you cannot reduce speed to economy. Never can you. I mean, speed and economy are mutually exclusive. And yet he -- he has to balance the four if he wants to be the delegate of the family in Detroit. Or they may stay at home, have a salesman come in, and thrash it out between themselves. What would then be the case? All four would be allowed to go to the limit of their claims. They would polarize each other in mutual reliance, because there was the certainty that these four people belong, that they will not fall out between each other, you see, that they will not kill each other off. They can thrash it out by every one of them going to the limit and to the extreme of his powers of conviction and persuasion.

So the interesting thing -- what I mean by polarization, gentlemen -- is that it is passion invited, and assimilated, and integrated. You ask in a family, of the members of the family, to be passionate in order to reach the agreement.

And this is the problem of America at this moment, gentlemen. You want to have agreement without passion. The French want to have passion without agreement. Well, it's very serious, gentlemen. All our problems at this moment are passion and agreement. That's why I'm sorry that President Eisenhower proposed that the Communists should be -- lose their citizenship. Gentlemen, a nation that can neither -- not digest criminal traitors is not a nation. You have to put up with the extreme. It's no -- no solution to say, "He's no longer a citizen." That's too cheap. that's avoiding -- begging the question. No community can say, "I don't like this member, so he's no longer a member." The problem is what to do with the member. I'll shoot the man for treason, in legal forms. I'm all for the dignity of being shot, you see. But to say he isn't -- he isn't so to speak, within the -- the orbit of my interest, that's -- we cannot afford, you see. God has created the nations and the world. We don't make our societies in this cheap manner, that we simply say, "A man who is a Communist is no longer an American." You can't -- never think through this equation. It's just nonsense.

I mean, it seems to be something, gentlemen. I won't say what I think it is. But it -- it's not -- it's -- the old tradition of mankind has always tried to ostracize and exile people. Themistocles had to go, as you know, to the Persians, because the Athenians were -- lost their sense of gratitude to -- he had saved them from Persia. And after all, he -- he was sent to -- into exile. Well, the world is too -- too small today to send everybody elsewhere. You can't send them elsewhere. Every

part of the globe has to do with -- cantankerous cusses. And it is no solution to say this cantankerous cuss -- you see, is -- is -- put over -- across the border somewhere else. No solution. Man is everywhere.

And in a family, you can't say to the -- man with -- the boy with the pure IQ, "We -- you -- have ceased to be my son." Well, why shouldn't Communism be of -- a form of poor IQ?

But the important thing is, gentlemen: passion and agreement are the clear paradox of the family. Because these people belong to each other, they can go to the limit of their convictions. The mother can -- cry and weep, "It isn't safe enough," you see. The father can insist, "We have to turn the dollar twice." The boy can say, "But I have to go along with the others, you see, speedy enough." They make -- how long does it take to go to Smith?

(Three hours.)

Wie?

(Two hours.)

Two hours? Record time!

So gentlemen, what do we learn? Here is the boy's mind. Speed is just a mental attitude. Sixty miles an hour. The mind knows no obstacles in space. And the boy is out for ideas and for his inner life. So he says, "Obstacles are nothing in my way," and he kills himself in the process. The father is here with the wherewithal, with the physical means of existence. The bride is -- the daughter is there to woo the universe with her soul. And the mother is there with the dignity representing the family as it has its place in the history of the country, or in the -- of the church, or of the community. And we already have the -- any role bestows dignity on the mother of the family. The beauty is with the daughter. The ideas are with the boy. And the power is with the man. We can, therefore, with -- in regard to the family, replace mind and body of the individual with idea and power, dignity and beauty for the womenfolks. Now the problem then is -- of real life, gentlemen, to have beauty, dignity, ideas -- or insight, you see -- and power to the nth degree, in unity, in such a way that they go in the same direction in the end.

And there you see then that this possibility, passion and agreement, although contradictory, can only exist as long as these four people face each other and do not face outside. Compare the army, compare the recruit, compare the man -- the -- AWL -- and the -- frontline soldier in the trench, you remember,

and the veteran. Compare these four people in the army, which is one sex only -- the male sex. They don't look at each other. Every -- the -- boy in -- at rest in the movie in -- in Pusan, or in Seoul at this moment, you see, he tries to forget as much as possible his frontline experience. He gets drunk. That's the essence of being on, you see -- on leave. He -- he wants to forget his opposite experience. The same is true: the recruit doesn't think of the veteran, and the veteran doesn't think of the recruit. They have their -- the veteran thinks of his bonuses. The recruit thinks of the draft. And they look therefore at different things.

Gentlemen, in the family, around the table, and across the table, the funny thing is that everybody minds the other person's business better than his own. If he doesn't, there is no family. If the mother, in the last analysis, doesn't say, "Well, I have to sacrifice part of the safety, because I understand this boy must go a little fast," or "My girl after all has a debutante party, and the car cannot be -- look so -- you see, so outrageously poor." If she doesn't, there's no family. And there will -- no car can be bought. It can just be put over. One person can -- the fa- -- buy the car then from her own viewpoint, you see, the mother. But the other will feel, you see, cheated. They have no voice in the -- in the -- in this buy -- in this buying of the -- of the car. You understand?

Gentlemen, the mutual reliance means that we face each other in a vital group. We face each other. In a -- accidental group, we face outside. Everybody.

Have you ever had to hold five horses in your hand? It's a great problem how to hand them, you see. You can go -- and -- have the horses in such a way that their heads are together and the legs are outside. Then you are safe. Then they can't hurt each other, you see. And there are people who try to do the opposite, you see, and have all the heads looking outside of the circle. If you have enough people to hold the horse, you see, everyone can stand there, and the horses then will kick at each other, and at the end, you -- all the horses will be lame.

Yet in our socio- -- social description of mankind, gentlemen, it is never mentioned what a difference does it make if you have a hundred people, whether they are talking to each other, these hundred, or whether they are just statistically 100 whom you have counted from the outside. If you have counted them from the outside, they will turn their back on each other, you see. If you -- however, they are a living people, they will look at each other. And that's -- the statistic doesn't say, you see. Can you see this clearly before you?

Any figure, any number about humanity -- 10,000 fathers, 5,000 wives, 7,000 schoolteachers -- never mention this one simple question, gentlemen: do the 7,000 schoolteachers perhaps talk to each other, and thereby increase this

racket of education every day? Because they talk to each other, and because therefore, they polarize their passions by agreement. Because two people, gentlemen, who talk to each other constantly induce each other to become that more which they already have been, and which the other person is good enough to look into him. Americans, simply by living among Americans, make each other every day more into Americans. Therefore if you count Americans in 1800 and you count them today, you don't get the same result, because they have talked to each other for 150 years. Ja, you see. Okay. That's the only thing we so -- say to each other.

So now we are okay. In 1800, nobody -- did -- understand what "okay" was. Think of this unfortunate time when people didn't understand "okay."

Gentlemen, this is very serious, because the step from attachment to detachment, above psychology, and sociology, and psy- -- -ology, as you understand it today is a state -- a step beyond statistics into what we call with the very poor word, "personal life." Into personal life. All personal life has the man's name on top of him, as -- when you go to the bank, or the postal office, they now have the name of the man there so -- to make it more personal. The Bible calls this "named life," and pays great attention, as you know, to the strange formula which our ministers no longer understand in their churches, "In the name of God," "In the name of Christ," because two people cannot agree if they have not a common name.

Now in a family, as I have told you, one's name depends on receiving from the man you give the name -- your name in back. Nobody is "Jack" for somebody whom Jack isn't good enough to call "Johnnie." It's a very one-sided procedure. And you know how pathetic it is when people love one-sidedly, and they don't get any response from the other side. It's the most tragic situation, you see, this unhappy, and unanswered, and unresponded love.

And the great art of wooing, of courting is not to sell somebody that you love her. The great art of wooing obviously is to make her love you. We have talked about this before, you see. It's not very interesting to a girl to be told by somebody she doesn't like that he loves her, you see. That's not wooing, you see. That's your own impetuosity. I mean, the will to love usually expresses itself when you're 17 in the forms that you tell this girl you love her. Well, she's not very credulous, you know. She says, "How much do you have and how -- on what shall -- are we going to live? And how much can you spend on the next date?"

Well, that's too realistic on her part. Nothing has happened yet between the two. If she says -- he says how -- how -- "I love you," and she says, "How

much?" that's not yet anything, you see. The thing begins to be interesting when he forces her to begin to consider that she's -- he's nice. Then he must completely forget his own will to love, and he must only, you see, try to make sure that she really can love him, like Othello, who forces Desdemona -- by what did he force her to love him -- her? Has every- -- anybody read Romeo and Juliet? Who has read Romeo and Juliet?

(You mean Othello?)

Oh, pardon me. Othello. Wie? Only one-half of you? Oh, no. All right. Well, this -- do you know how -- how he -- he manages --?

(She -- he made her pity him because of his exploits in the field.)

Ja, ja. So complete self-regretful you have to be, you see, in order to be loved. It's a very strange story, that he doesn't gain her by telling her all the time, "I love you." That's not very convincing.

But I -- I -- we spoke about this. -- Your illness -- modern man's illness, that he -- they all -- you all confuse will and love, and therefore you say, "But since I love her, I have to tell her." Well, I think the best thing when you love a person is not to tell her, but to do something which will force her to love you, so that when you have to tell her, she will be well prepared.

This has to do now with something -- more serious, still. Just as will and love have nothing to do with each other, are enemies, and the person who loves has -- give -- gives up his own will, and the person who wills cannot be loved, we are all loved, strangely enough, for our weaknesses. We are never loved for our strengths. In the same way, gentlemen, in the religious attempt to heal the incomplete family, the incomplete army, the incomplete nation, the incomplete factory -- that is, in this attempt of religion to redress the -- life's evils, so to speak, the wrong rhythm between attachment and detachment, religion trying to step in when an attachment doesn't come at the right time, and when a detachment doesn't come at the right time. This religious endeavor, gentlemen is very hard for us to rediscover in this one month of January, because you all think that this religion has a purpose; that this religion has an aim; that this religion is, as we had it yesterday in another course, is useful. It is good to go to church. It is a recommendable thing. And -- it makes America good, I -- read some days ago. Well.

As long as you believe this, gentlemen, I cannot talk to you about religion. It is too good for that, itself. It doesn't make anybody good, because the people who -- who -- or to whom we look as the founders of our way of life, the

constituents who have -- marched in front of us, and tried us -- to show how in any emergency, in any deadlock, in any blind alley, there is still the return into the right rhythm possible. What we call the redemption, or the salvation, or however you call it; it doesn't make any difference, these terms, as long as you know that there is -- has been set by these people the solution of -- of healing a wrong rhythm between attachments and detachment.

These people are not good for anything else. They are the right people in themselves. If we live right, gentlemen, that has its own meaning, and there's nothing beyond it. If anybody go -- do -- does good, for example, in order to go to Heaven, his good will not count. If he does it for any purpose. He has to do it because it is just the thing to do. Full stop. If you play, because you are paid for play, you are professional, but you have -- don't -- are missing in the real joy or spirit of the play -- one doesn't play because there is an ulterior motive.

Yesterday we used the very simple example. You can play for heal- -- reasons of health, because your doctor has told you that you must lose weight. And you can play for the fun of it. And obviously, the right way of playing is the fun, and the other makes the -- the whole sport into a mere means to an end, you see. And then we ask, "What's the end?"

Now, as you know, we all are trying to choose our -- cha- -- to chase our own tail, and we all try to have endless means for no purpose. The purpose of living is to live. There is no ulterior purpose. The purpose of religion is to give an example of the most complete life under the most devastating circumstances. You can be -- these four people in religion, as we shall -- later analyze, say beforehand -- they say, "You can live the good life under the most trying and unpossible deadlocks of -- of reality. When your detachments and attachments are completely wrong, when you have a tyrant as your master, you see, or when you are alone in your heart of hearts, don't despair. You can still live the right life, which is an end in itself, which has no ulterior motive, and no ulterior purpose." That is, you can lead the good life in any minute on this earth, which is quite some promise, and really sounds like a terrible exaggeration. And I think it is in many cases, for the people who use religion as a drug, as an opium, as a sooth -- to -- I mean, like it was against a toothache. It isn't that simple. The cocaine of religion, the Novacaine of religion isn't -- isn't the -- the meaning. But there is a -- a promise in all religion, gentlemen, that men's life can be lived right in any minute.

Now look at the family once more before any religion seems to be necessary. I -- I mean, one of these tremendous religions. And then read the Bible. And you will find that the Bible has always held that man, in his good graces under God, if he is the son, and a father, and a daughter, and a mother -- has these

qualities in him, lives a good life. The bride and the -- the -- of the -- is the human soul, and the son is the genius, and the father is the patriarch, and the mother -- well, she's just the mother. And these four people are blessed, and they are in themselves very wholesome creatures, as long as they have this mutual reliance. You can't detach the bride from her parents, and -- or her brother, or she becomes a harlot. She can't take a mother from -- from her daughter's duty and sense of future, or she becomes a dragon, a viper -- "generations of vipers" as you know. You cannot take the father away from his son's aspirations to replace him one day without the -- the father becoming a bloody tyrant. And you cannot take the son away from his parents or his sister without getting him into dissipation and into a Don Jua- -- Giovanni attitude, or into the attitude of a mere revolutionary for revolution's sake.

Therefore, gentlemen, the mutual reliance problem is the same in religion and in the family. Man lives the blissful life as long as he faces his opposite number in -- in confidence and in trust. You will admit that at five -- in a normal family, the child has a very happy life. Today, I find more and more people who insist that they had an unhappy youth, because they have been told they had to find it. So they finally find it. But I still don't believe it. I can only say that I -- to me still 90 percent of the people seem to grow up in perfect bliss. Of course, when they are naughty, they cry. But that's part of the bliss. That somebody is there to correct me is a tremendous, blissful experience, you see, when I have gone astray. I mean, I need a spanking.

And -- so all this theory today that children are unhappy I -- I do not believe it for a minute. This is ob- -- obviously said by people who neither know what unhappiness is or know what happiness is. They seem to eat too much ice cream and go too often to the movies. Then you have of course only vicarious experience of life. And -- and anybody who -- who would say that he had a miserable childhood -- would anybody venture to tell me?

Well, but this is the theory today. I just -- and when you -- the people -- get to writing, they always seem to -- feel it necessary today to say so. I have now such a couple under my wings. Both insist that they had the most unhappy youths. And you look at them, the only thing you can say is that they haven't been spanked enough. That is -- I mean, has given them some impediments for living.

Religion and the family, gentlemen, have this in common, that there is no purpose beyond them. You cannot say of the love and the passion, and the agreement in a family that it has a purpose. We know nothing about anything beyond this bliss of a family living peacefully together. And I have to stress this analogy between religion, the life in the church, or in the congregation, or in the

community, or in your sect, or whatever it is, and the life in the family, because otherwise, you really will sell out to these devils who tell you that religion is good for America. If religion is good for America, I'm against religion, because religion is too good to be good for anything else. Do you think that Jesus came here to save America? He's really a little superior to President Truman, and to President Eisenhower, both. And if you have a third candidate, Earl Browder, He's even superior to Earl Browder.

Isn't this ridiculous? Well, just put it in personal terms, and you'll see how ridiculous it is. E- -- when you say that religion is good for the soul, or is good for -- for the future of America, or it is good for -- for anything else outside life itself, if it isn't the revelation of the good life itself, which is the highest purpose of all the means of construction, of all the automobiles that can be built, and all the brothels that can be {undertained}, and all the highways that can be paid for and plastered with -- paved with gold, if the life itself is not the purpose, then Jesus is not the way, the life, and the truth. But then He's just a means to get President Eisenhower elected. That's -- I just -- I put it just in blunt words. If the religion or the church is serviceable to the government of any one nation, that -- means exactly the same as though the president of the United States, you see, could enlist the services of Jesus Christ.

Well, that's what they sell you every day, now. We -- we have to be ashamed of this. If they haven't to bow to the lord of creation, and to receive their orders from Him, these presidents and these cabinet secretaries, and these electioneering, auctioneering people -- then where is there the standard of behavior? Where is there hierarchy of values? Where is any order in life?

In the same way it's with the family. The family doesn't serve the efficiency of America, or the future of the corn belt, or anything. The corn belt serves the -- the -- the good life of the family in Ohio. But we have ever- -- put everything topsy-turvy. And there are people in this country who have made a short-circuit in their brain. And they are -- I am afraid they are the majority of the people with degrees. They have learned that everything is useful. And therefore they have formed this -- this ring of usefulnesses. You never know who leads and who is led, you see, because everything is a means. "I'm useful," you see. "I'm a means to an end." If this classroom is useful, this -- instruction which I give you, you see, then we don't -- can't have a good time here, and forget time. As sometimes you actually do, you see, because you think for an ulterior motive, you have to take this course. That's not true, you see.

You experience here some part of completion, of completeness of the life itself, which you otherwise did- -- does- -- don't. Therefore, this has its own -- is an end in itself. If it isn't, don't come. As long as you want to know what at this

moment is the -- is the usefulness of the lecture, you can't enjoy it. It is impossible to enjoy anything if you have an ulterior motive.

I'll give you venison. And you go to the -- cookbook and say, "How many vitamins, and how many calories?" Can you enjoy the venison? You can't. You have an ulterior motive. You want to be healthy. You want to be vigorous. To hell with your vigor! To hell with your -- with your calories and your vitamins! You have de- -- degraded the great -- the great moment in which you are allowed to eat venison. But most of you eat this way. You look at the menu and say, "How many calories? How many vitamins?" Well, it would be better if you had a completely unbalanced die- -- diet, but you would enjoy what you eat.

(I thought you said that religion does have -- have a purpose for the individual, and that it {goes and gives} you an example of a complete life. Could you --?.)

It's a very pertinent question. It is not -- it's very slim, the distinction, Sir. It is already there, the good life. That's what these four men have told us. It is already there. We are already in a larger family. You see it -- thereness. Just open your eyes. Just open up and you will see that it is present. The problem there of all these people -- the word "example" I must jettison. You see. It's not an example. It is a beginning which waits to be continued by you and me. And so the word "example" you are -- in this connection, our discussion here about purpose should even go out, you see.It's not an example. It's a beginning. We adhere. We gather, we -- we link up with these people, you see. Obviously, you see. There must be this mutual reliance, and this reciprocity between them and us in the same manner as in the family. There must be passion, you see, and agreement, in our relation in religion. You must disagree with any one teaching of Jesus, you see, in order to fulfill His teaching in any one moment, because you are free, you see. He has given you so much freedom that you don't have to ape at any one written law. But He has demanded from you, you see, that you have the same passion for the fulfillment of life as He has shown.

So the word "example" is -- is -- is misleading. But the family is already there. And we'll see how true -- how literally true this is, that these four men have created a family out of families and out of nations, inside of which any one actual family finds itself. So I'm grateful. The -- eliminate this word "example." And even perhaps fight it. I mean, in your notes, say it would be wrong to call this -- these men as setting examples, because although this isn't completely wrong, but it's only inside the context of belonging into one unit, you see, one human family, that their example is of -- that we can face them, and see them, you see, is of interest. So -- I mean, you can say to an older brother that he should be a better example for his younger -- younger brother, but that he would be first

a member of the family. And inside this, he could be the example. You see this? This would be the simile.

Before we now go and analyze these four men's strange way with us and for us, and -- in -- ahead of us, so to speak, let me take up one point. The family being the most vital of all the institutions, the most complex -- much more complex than a state, or a church, or an army, or a factory -- contains the greatest -- opponents of each other. It cre- -- it contains the two sexes, and it contains the two ages. Now by nature, when people do not s- -- look at each other, and you sample in a statistic, the opinions of the young, and the opinions of the old, and the appetites of the women, and the appetites of the men, you will find very different results. Obviously, gentlemen, when God created men and women, and old and young, allowed us to become 70 years of age -- that is, live through two generations -- and when He cut us open into male and females, He meant to give us the two most radical divisions, compared with which an employer and an employee are very little divided indeed. And what is a general and a private, compared to a man and a woman? They are less separate. This is not known today. People speak of the complexity of human society. Passion without agreement.

Gentlemen, all the complex- -- so-called complexities, which I do not admit for a minute -- the complexity of modern society are not as complex as the fact that from the beginning, man has to put up with his division in sexes and ages. Because the ages hate each other, are jealous of each other. Any old man is jealous of the power of the young, any -- the -- his physical power -- prowess; and any young man is jealous of the influence and the authority of the old. And in the same manner, as our psychoanalysts tell us every day, the -- the whole life is devoured and -- and ruined by people, because they are of two different sexes. And they would like to be -- have both sexes in -- in themselves.

And so in -- the wisdom of our creator, gentlemen, it's really very -- something to behold. All the divisions of men, on top of sex and age, are less extreme. Believe me. They are less extreme. A man who is born and a man who's dying are more apart in their endeavors, in their aspirations, in their wishes, hopes, and fears, than even in South Africa a Negro and a white man. And that's saying something. You do not understand the Old Testament if you do not read into the second chapter of Genesis the wisdom of the -- certainly inspired author, that he wanted to cope with all the divisions of man. Adam and Eve are not interesting...

[tape interruption]

...but he only consists there where two specimens follow in the same

direction. Otherwise there is no -- no Bible, and there is no history, and there is no mankind, and there is certainly no class on society -- and the individual in society. Adam and Eve, as long as you treat them as -- as just accidental, you do not understand the whole -- the whole unity of the -- this -- these 24 books of the Old Testament, and how many books of the New Testament? How many documents are there in the New Testament? Does anybody know?

(26? or 24?)

Well, there are four Gospels, and how many letters? And then there are Acts, and then there is -- the Acopal- -- the Apocalypse.

Well, gentlemen, the unity of the Bible is written around a very simple thing, the division of man. The division of man. That's the problem, the -- fall of man, the division. There are warring against each other all the time, aren't they? If men all were at peace together -- that's the -- what the Gospel offers: peace on earth to all men of good will, then we don't need a Bible. It's all there, you see. The Bible is written against the division. Therefore, the first chapter of the Bible says there is -- God had the idea of creating men, but then He unfolded him into more than one. And the two-foldedness of the two sexes actually, and then -- pare- -- children and -- parents and children -- contains all the vari- -- variations and varieties of humanity. And if you come to think of it, it is very simple, you see. Man and woman cannot exchange places. But young can become old, and old have become young.

The greatest division is the inexorable division. An employer can become an employee, and employee can become an employer. A slave can become a king, you see, and a king can become a slave.

That is, gentlemen, we have in mankind two different changes: one relative, and one absolute. You cannot change a man into a woman and a -- a woman into a man. But you can change nearly everything else. So we have relative division, and absolute division in man. And above it still the proclamation: one agreement in all passions. Therefore, the family is a much more complex thing as a state. In a state, we feign everybody to be a citizen. Even the women. We give everybody a vote. We have the WACs and the WAVEs. That is, we make even the -- the poor girls don a uniform. That is, we treat everybody as sexless or as males, in -- in the soldiering. In the factory the same, or in the hospital. We treat the people as sexless. That is, we overlook the division artificially, but it's there, as al- -- every doctor can tell who has to deal with nurses, and then sees that they all have dates with students. They just aren't sexless. Far from it.

And any institution, gentlemen, that doesn't go to the root of the matter,

and doesn't admit the created distinctions and divisions of men is of course ha- -- semi-fictitious. So our industry is very fictitious, because it doesn't admit that it is only run by the secretary, and their good looks. Who could run any of these big things, if they really were just paid employees? Their good human qualities -- as daughters of the human race are very much needed. And society will probably come to its senses as soon as we see that society is really run by the family qualities, the daugh- -- filial qualities of the -- of the -- all the women who work in these offices and shops.

Well, that's at this moment too early to proclaim, probably. But it's coming. The -- point I -- have to make here is that the family is the only institution which is above board, because it admits sex, and overcomes it. To feign that there is no sex, as in the army or in the factory, is no solution. You see. This is nonsense. And that's the bad habit about coeducation in many places, that they really try to forget that this is the most important division in life. And -- so you can either go to college and learn something or you can be a coed. But I don't think you can do both. And that's the only reason why it has some -- it makes still some sense that you are here in Dartmouth, because some distinction should be made between studying with your mind, and -- and meeting -- meeting the girls. I am sure you -- you are all on the side of coeducation, are you? Well, you are all anti-intellectual.

Well, really. But this is serious. The family is at this moment in this country and in the Western world -- not elsewhere -- the only institution which goes to the depths of the division in -- because it contains age and sex. If you take the Church, the Church is destroyed today in large part because the poor church divides its activities into -- groups, of the children, of the young, of the nursery group, of the Sunday school group, of the marry -- young married couples, of the old married couples, of the old divorced couples, and the young divorced couples. Don't laugh, my dear man. The young divorc‚es need very much spiritual care. It's very difficult. The Greek church has a ritual for the divorce, and it's very wise about this. And I just had an article from Greece written on this great problem, where the Greek patriarch says that they have felt that there must be a church service, a church for- -- form of church for divorces, and that the Roman church has lost sight of the fact that without such a form and an actual separation, the -- there were people without spiritual care, and without spiritual order. And that's very serious in this country. You get the Barbara Huttons. Now she is {so bad} because she got married. Did you see that?

The complexity, gentlemen, of the family is today destroyed because everywhere else in society it is said that the people of the same age group must be with each other. You don't get the right candidates for marriage, because the people demand from these poor girls of 14 to go to -- for her first formal party

with boys of 14. Which is just a denial of all natural rights of a girl. A girl of 14 has a right to go to -- dance with a boy of 17. If she is forced to go to a dance with a boy of 14 and 13, that's silly and it's -- I won't say what it is. It is obscene. He is a boy, and she is a woman. And that's what is going on in this country in the name of nature, and Rousseau, and Benjamin Franklin, and all the idols of humanity. Gentlemen, it's absolutely unnatural. And so you have to marry somebody of your own age group instead of marrying somebody who's five years younger than you, which in -- all over the world is the only normal thing, because a man needs five more years before he collects himself, and has the same achievement as a woman. A girl can marry at 18, but a man must be -- 23. But now you marry when you are 20 and she is 25.

Yes, you do. Why? because the complexity of the family would -- if you would absorb it, would teach you that there is a twofold problem in -- in the family: the ages and the sexes. It is no good, gentlemen, just to marry a -- your -- a man of the other sex. A woman and a man must synchronize different ages. They must overlap. She must be younger, because she represents so much the history of the race. She brings in her father's and her mother's traditions and convictions, the background. She brings in this, in a -- any real family tradition. She knows how to celebrate Easter or Christmas. She -- you look to her when it comes to deciding with whom to -- with whom to go around, and how to celebrate a party, or how to -- you -- the -- follow the customs of the country. And he is out for the future. So he has already to have a little life of historical experience, some background, by experience inside himself. Otherwise they will completely separate.

Take -- take two people 20 years old of the two sexes. And let us take them to be normally -- one really woman-like, and the other really virile. If he is a good boy, he is still running, running, running forward. That is, to him the future. If the girl is 20 and is noble and generous, she is still able to tolerate the traditions of mother and father. She's not in a -- in an -- rebellion against everything she has received, but she still follows these customs and these habits. Therefore, when they marry, 20 and 20, gentlemen, beware of this. You can of course spiritually make up for this, but you have to know this. It's unnatural, because the one is only looking backward, and the other is only looking forward.

If you have, however, a boy who has lived up to 25, and the girl is 18, he already has made so much of an experience in these five years here, he has already burned his fingers for the first time, he already belongs with some experience to the historical past. He can have the patience, the tolerance, you see, for something established, which a boy of 20 in his impatience just hasn't, because he thinks everything can be changed. Everything -- what do we -- does he care for what has been on before? That's just old -- old stuff. That's a -- the previous

generation. These are his father's.

Therefore, he can already agree with his girl on these five years, they can form a common judgment. He can talk to her, as you -- by the way, I hope, do, of the real experiences you have consciously made, they are not what you lived through when you were 3 years old. That isn't what you lived through when you were 10 years old. But it is just about your college experience, and the last years in high school, and your travels and your journeys to Europe, or whatever it is. Your competitions, your -- yes. These are the things -- will be the topics of your conversation. Isn't that true? Now these topics of conversation are very important, gentlemen. They are most valuable. They cement your lives together.

And therefore you need these five years to -- as the -- as your -- earnest, as your -- what the Romans called the {aerar}, the pay down -- down payment, you see. So to get s- -- already to begin to build your house. These five years' experience are much more important than the money for building the house, because they are the house, they are the foundations of your marriageable house, you see, these five years of your experience on which you can already take the girl into your confidence and say how you experienced them, and -- what it has taught you about the reality which is neither future nor past, but is just the good life in a timeless sense.

Gentlemen, any home and any religion makes the past and the future of equal value. No father will say, "the future is better," or "the past is better." And no son will say, "I'm better than my father." You love your father, and you want him to live long. And he loves you, and he wants you to live even longer than he, and that makes -- that past and future are on the same plane, suddenly, you see. The greatest thing. You, single individuals, gentlemen, sitting here, you think the future, the future, the future. The past? But when you come home, you suddenly realize that you aren't so terribly anxious that your father and mother shall die right away. You give them some years more to live, very gladly. Well, you do. Which is quite miraculous, gentlemen. The wolf doesn't. And the jackal doesn't. And the lion doesn't. They all want the older people to die. We don't. Again, that's the result of the family.

In the family, gentlemen, I assure you, the most complex situation is cured. Age and sex are enemies of the other age and the opposite sex. In the family, by this passionate agreement, we allow the father to be old, and the daughter to be young, and the mother to be a woman, and the son to be a man -- vigorous, because they wish each other well. It looks so very simple, gentlemen, but look at Mr. Freud. He says we want to kill each other. You see, he denied the family. He says this isn't true. He says we want to kill each other. I don't believe it. I have never felt -- found anybody who -- except when he had eaten poorly,

and had a nightmare in his dreams on his stomach.

{ } -- D.H. Lawrence -- Mr. Keep showed me the book the other day, has written very nicely about it. He said, "In our dreams, we dream the opposite from the truth." The -- the dreams go all in the perverse direction. And if you build on dreams, like Pharaoh and his sorcerers, or like Mr. Freud and his psychoanalysts, you -- build on dreams, you get the opposite result. It isn't true that children want their parents to be dead. In their dreams, they may, because they have eaten too much. And they may have poor digestion. The dreams tell us the opposite, because they aren't meant to be dreamt. I mean, they are erroneous, so to speak.

But -- as you know, we live today in a world in which dreams are proclaimed to be the -- the guidance of mankind, and to tell us what we are all abou- -- it's all about. Once you admit this, gentlemen, you try to deny the cornerstone of life, that the most complex form of life, the marriage, has enabled men to live in any number of less divided and distinguishable forms on top of the family.

Well, my time is up.