Transcript

{ } = word or expression can't be understood
{word} = hard to understand, might be this

...Easter, { } begin to read something. As you will have noticed, I have concentrated here on -- purely on oral delivery and on your reports. Gentlemen, you cannot read. The things you read are not -- usually not worth reading. They are textbooks. Nobody should read textbooks. Or they are assigned reading. Nobody should -- should read -- great literature under the pressure of an assignment. You read Shakespeare even by assignment. Or -- I understand in the English department, you even read the li- -- the Bible by assignment. Now, anything you read by assignment is ridiculed by this, and is -- is just made small. And so I have tried to introduce into the spirit of life, by not giving you assignment on important reading, so that you might wake up to the fact that it is a great privilege to read something. As soon as I make an assignment, it is destroyed.

However, this policy, of course, has its drawback because you have no hunger. You are blas‚. And nobody can educate -- feed people who are n- -- have no hunger. And so I have no illusions. My -- the fact that I don't give you an assignment just makes this course into a {pipe} course, and it doesn't do you any good. The -- simple negation.

So I have asked you to look up some facts. I've also asked you write this paper on these men where you probably will have to do some copying at least, if you don't do any reading.

I can only tell you this, and this is the -- occasion to tell you this, gentlemen, that I had this tragic case, that two of -- very good students of mine wrote me at commencement, after they had graduated, that I should tell them what to read from now on. I declined. I said, "Nobody can help you. You have been four years in a college, and you haven't even learned what it means to select your own personal food. If I am going to tell you now what to read, this means that you should never have gone to college. This I could have told you mechanically without your going to college."

Gentlemen, in these four years, one great thing you have to achieve: that you have to fou- -- have found your own ways into the great world of books, which is the past and the future of the human race, bel- -- above the investigation committee of the Senate, and beyond it.

You live so absolutely by Bar- -- Barbara -- what's her name?

(Ward.)

Yes. And all the other wards of the government, that you just live -- even the deepest thought has to come you as -- as a last telegram you can have under latest events: Adam and Eve fell, you see. Under news, Hearst can even bring biblical facts. Or the Crucifixion, you see. If it happened in -- in Abilene, you see, Missouri lex- -- yesterday, you can have it as news. You believe that things are only important when they happen now.

Now books, gentlemen, have only to do with the fact that things are important all the time. And you should not read for a year or two, gentlemen, any book which doesn't deserve to be read 10 times. You don't know this. You really think you have read a book where you -- after you had read it once. Of course, you haven't read anything after you've read a book once. The great books begin to speak to you only when you begin to read them again and again. The average book, gentlemen, should be read five or six times. The best books always, and the books that are below parity are read -- read once. They wouldn't have to be printed. They could also have come as newspaper material, to be thrown away and forgotten.

But you actually, you see, live on a subhuman level on -- on -- really, I'm quite serious. For high school kids I very often talk on this topic, and they believe me. It's very easily -- easy for a normal child to believe what you can't believe, that the level of books has replaced the permanent inscriptions on the walls of temples, the stone monuments. And therefore, they -- the books were meant for -- only for those contents which deserve to be read time and again. Otherwise we wouldn't have -- no printing. We would have no copyists in the Middle Ages. We would have no parchments.

You actually live in an era in which this is the normal level, gentlemen. You see, time and again, the book is available during one epoch to be read all the time. The Bible is there to be read everywhere all the time. You cannot say this of the biography of Lincoln, or -- or -- Sandburg's Lincoln, or you cannot think it of his speeches. But the Second Inaugural deserves to be read time and again.

So the classic literature, gentlemen, is the -- the literature for which printing has been invented. And the short-lived literature should not be printed. That could also go from mouth to mouth, or it could be -- go -- go handwritten -- handwritten. It's accidental that you mimeograph-print The Reader's Digest. But to you, you see, life is compressed into this Reader's Digest. And so you never come intact -- in contact with real reading. And we poor teachers in college, by making you read great literature, do not achieve your really tasting it as great literature, but just as an assignment.

So even 51 Shakespeare course doesn't help you, because you read Shake-

speare only as an assignment. Then you don't read it. And then you get students in Michigan producing Julius Caesar, as we saw yesterday. Who has seen it? The -- the second half is just one great scandal. It's a western movie, you see, called "Julius Caesar." Did you see it? It's a mistake. A total mistake. Nobody cares for anything shown in the second half of the movie, wouldn't you agree? It's ridiculous. And they were students at college in Ann Arbor, just -- it could have happened in this college, too. A -- total misunderstanding of great literature, bringing it down to the level of a sensation, that -- what is a sensation, gentlemen? -- which has lost its edge on us, after it has been tasted once. A sensation cannot be repeated.

Now books are not sensations. Esquire is a sensation. Look, See, all the -- all the obscene things -- they are sensations. They tickle your senses. Now obviously great literature doesn't tickle your senses. Takes it for granted that there are men in the world, there are women in the world, there is love in the world, there is embrace in the world. It takes it all for granted. Literature only begins where people are no longer children, but are quite acquainted with the so-called facts of life. But you read books to get acquainted with the facts of life. I'm sorry that -- it could be done much cheaper in a brothel.

Your books are prostitution. Where you deal with books, they are prostituted into whores of your mind, who serve a certain -- quite necessary purpose of -- of quieting your curiosity. And you even say, gentlemen, that you read books for intellectual curiosity. To hell with -- intellectual curiosity. Curiosity is nothing good. If you have a person in the family who's too curious, she gives away all the family secrets. She's just a gossip. What's good about curiosity? And it's praised here, because we -- people in the college, you hear it even praised by my colleagues, I understand it fully. You are so bored. You are so blas‚. You are so indifferent. Your only answer is, "I don't care." So that these people try to at least stimulate you, as you say -- they say, you see, by saying, "Well, use your curiosity."

But gentlemen, on this level of the 1s, you have curiosity. So you remember what we said about the three -- or four levels of the human spirit: the idea, the science, the education, and the commonplace. You can see that on the commonplace, you are only made acquainted with something, you see, for curiosity's sake so that you can know it, too.

I asked a person with whom I had some serious business to talk over. He said he had to go hear Barbara Ward. And I said, "Why do you have to go?"

"Because everybody else goes," he said. And the second answer was -- I looked at him rather estranged -- and he said, "Well, but the next day you have to say

that you had been there."

That's by and large your behavior. And -- so you see, the -- your treatment of intellectual food has very much to do with what I have tried to put before you as a law of life. He is fully alive who can live and meet spiritual goods on the four levels. One, where it is his business to solve the problem, and nobody else will. That's where he is a hero. The second, where he's an expert. We call it "scientist," but you could just call it "expert." Anybody has to know something to perfection better than other people. Some other -- subjects where he's educated enough to share in a discussion. And the last level, which for you is the only level, is that of saying every day that which you are expected to say about everybody else. There are certain terminologies now on this campus -- on Mr. McCarthy. I can repeat -- reproduce them freely from my mind. Three months later, nobody will mention them again. We had the same kind of discussion on the atomic blast. Four- -- three years ago, everybody was hysterical then, before you came to this college -- it happened in '48 -- '47 it was, really. Six -- seven years ago. I know these slogans by heart. They bore me stiff, because I know they go through you like the wind. For three months, everybody is talking this way, you see. In '49, you were stoned if you said there wouldn't be a war with Russia.

I still remember taking an ice- -- a milkshake in the -- in the -- what is it called opposite the coffeeshop? -- the -- not The Wigwam, the --

(Indian Bowl?)

Wie? The Indian Bowl. And -- and this was this Norwegian student here on this campus. And I -- he said, "Well, there must be a war with Russia now. Everybody said so."

I said, "You can -- do- -- quiet- -- sleep quietly. There will not be. This is the rage after every war, and -- that the former allies have to go to war now against each other. It has happened -- there has been no war in which this hasn't happened. So these are just the last waves, the last wind spells of the world war."

Well, he went away and spread on campus that I was crazy. Anybody who doesn't share your craze is crazy. But -- why is that so, gentlemen? Because your food is of this terrible character of chaff. You eat bread without the kernel of bread in it, as you know. The kernel of wheat is taken out. You drink Sanka coffee, and you drink -- you smoke Kool. And -- so a friend of mine once said, "What a world it is. We drink coffee without caffeine, and we have women without feminine."

And you have books, gentlemen, without any bookine -- that is, without any

permanent meaning. But printing, you see, was invented only for this purpose. And it loses all meaning. Why we should -- why the New York Times should kill a forest every Sunday for the curiosity of its readers, I do not know. If I had to -- something to say in legislation, out would go these Sunday papers. They destroy the soil of this country and for Canada. That's all they do. Beside, they destroy your brain.

I was quite interested. I have said this here, very often in this country about the Sunday papers, that this is not right, that for 25 cents you participate in the soil erosion of America. As I said, I was quite interested to find a book written in the year 19- -- 1893, in which a European -- a scholar, who came to this country, described the same thing. And said, "How can you explain the fact in a -- of a country that publishes newspapers -- one edition of which destroys a whole forest?"

If you do this, gentlemen, if printing is so precious, then you have to do something with the stuff that is on the printed matter. But you can't persuade me that anything printed in America 365 days a year is worth printing. We have 160 million books printed in this country every year; 145 millions of this are textbooks. So whether they exist or not makes no difference -- absolutely no difference.

This is a -- simply a commonplace country. Good books cannot be printed. If you get to the New York Times on -- at Christmas time, you will always find the 12 best books of the 12 most eminent Americans -- that is, the 12 best books they recommend for Christmas to you. And there are 144 books usually, and there is not one good book among -- among them. All bestsellers. That's -- all books to be read once and thrown -- to be thrown away. Never to be looked at again. A murder a day.

So you have, gentlemen -- my great hope is that we may improve our college curriculum in such ways -- it would be a great triumph, that after four years in this college, you would know not only, but you would also act upon your knowledge what to read, and how to keep going with your reading, because it's a long life. And you cannot wait for somebody else to tell you what to read. You have to make so much -- so -- have so much ignition inside yourself, and so much direction that one book -- worth -- valuable book begets the next; that you are so hipped on following up some course, whatever it may be -- it may be religious literature, legal literature, biological literature, but you must follow your own track. You must widen your own field.

You cannot leave your reading to accident. Would you take this down, gentlemen? The common-sense reader leaves his reading to accident. Now that's the

one thing, gentlemen, that you cannot leave to accident. Reading cannot be left accidental, because reading is the means of our orientation. Now you all leave reading to accident, and there is -- comes the rub. That is the fourth level, without the three others. And that's a giant -- running in circles. This country is a blind giant fettering himself, because you decline to make reading directed. You say reading is left to the recommendation of the editorial of {Uncle Dudley} in the Boston Globe, or wherever it is, or in a Sunday paper. You read a book review.

Gentlemen, if you knew the cliques that govern the New York Times book review, you would be ashamed to read any book recommended in the New York Times book review. Just all cabal and {things all} commercialized. They know very well whom they recommend, and whom they exclude. Read all the books they never mention, then you will have -- read the good books.

You don't know what's going on, how the truth is suppressed and the good things are suppressed in this country, the noble things. It's all Broadway. Do you think that what you see on Broadway worth -- deserves to be seen? How can anything deserve to be seen by a college man that can be played 5,000 times? It must cater to the lowest instincts, like "Tobacco Road." That was given 5,789 times. So it's sure that you cannot see that. It's not worth your money.

It's a proof, gentlemen. These kind of successes by which you run, after which you run, is a proof that it doesn't deserve your time or your money, because it is billed in such a way that it tickles the outer- -- utmost -- the outer skin of yours. And anything that is -- gains your attention by tickling your senses doesn't deserve your attention, because it is the meanest trick. We all are sensuous, we all want -- we are -- can be tempted. There's nobody a saint. We all -- but any man who plays on our carnality certainly deserves a slap in the face and not your good money. But you pay him your money. You even go to burlesque shows, to -- strip- -- stripteasers, and all such terrible things, which kill the senses, and love, and everything.

So -- gentlemen, this whole course, gentlemen, must apply the principles itself, which I'm teaching you as a historical setting of the human race. This dealing with commonplace condemns you to the accidental. On the fourth level, men get that knowledge -- for example, on mathematics -- which accidentally can be had on the street at a newsstand, because there is a little 25-cent book, you see, Mathematics, you pick it up. You are interested.

Gentlemen, on the side, this is perfectly harmless. I do this, too, occasionally. I -- I bought a whole batch of -- of literature on stratospheric reading. I wanted to know what my -- these youngsters today are fed with. I was horrified, but I read

it. And I shall not do it again, because I -- I have no money for such things. But unfortunately I should have.

But, you see, the fourth level of accidental living of your mind is all right if you have the three -- others. A doctor who has to operate as a surgeon can very well afford detective stories. Why shouldn't he read on the side detective stories? It's like an -- adrenalin. It's like a drug. It's something like a glass of water he drinks, you see, just to take his mind off from his serious work. This surgeon, however, reads seriously only the books on surgery, of course, you see, on medicine.

So if you have this balance, you can very well afford to read even things that are below parity, that are below commonplace, that are just odd, or just queer. You can even read something that comes out in -- in California, which is the worst -- I mean, not only Hollywood, but as you know, every superstition and every infamy is at home there spiritually.

But you -- gentlemen, you have to live on all the levels. Every sin is forgiven. The remission of sins is a -- you have heard this, and you don't believe in it, gentlemen. The great thing of the -- sin is nothing what you see, sin. But it is that you are still moving in the stream of life, in the center, and that you can under- -- distinguish shallow water, and putrid water, and stagnant water from living water. But you live in stagnant water only. And that is, therefore you are cut off. That means sin. You are cut asunder from the stream of life. You are left to the accident of some back water, from -- of some eddies, of some backwash, of -- of -- of stagnating, of swamp water, muddy water.

And you think you can replace it by listening to the latest news. But gentlemen, the latest news are just this accidental water, because what happens in Time is just accidental. And this is the funny thing, you see. You drive out the devil Beelzebub by thinking, "Oh, I'll be the best-informed man in town." We Americans are the best-form- -- -informed nation in the world, because we think the latest is equal to the most important. The way out in this country is people to whom you -- I tell people this, they answer, "But we are so well-informed. Don't we have the latest news? Don't we have all the facts? We have statistics." They have the paper. And with the -- that shows that they want to have the news in sensational form, and thereby covering up the accidental character of their information.

But gentlemen, people who never read the papers know that there will be a world war at a certain time. In 1938 -- I think I have told this story here, have I? -- I lived on a -- in the midst of a farming community out here, west, eight miles from here. And these people didn't have any papers. They just produced milk

from their cows. And one morning, they always had on this milk route, you see, the -- the buses, the trucks coming from Boston to get their milk to the creamery and then to Boston to { }.

And this old man, he was 72 or 73, said to me, "There must be war in Europe very soon." I was very much surprised. It was 1937, as a matter of fact.

And I looked at him, and said, "What do you mean?"

Well, he explained to me in a few words the tensions that were there and hadn't been settled in the First World War. And at a time when this country forbade themselves to arm, as you know Mr. { } Bill Mitchell, we talked about it. And when a -- a man bought by { } the Germans, people -- Senator {Louie} Borah was able to have the Neutrality legislation passed, which -- demanded from the United States to betray all our friends in time of war by not -- allowing us to sell any arms to the French, or to the British at that -- such time. At the same time, this man knew very well that there was to be a war very soon, because he did not read the papers. That enabled him, as a real Vermonter, to have some scent -- s-c-e-n-t, gentlemen.

If you want to have a flair of things, you have to get all the litter out of the way, all the things of artificial perfume, all the sensations, because they throw out a whiff, you see, of { } and harlots and all these nice perfumes, Cobra, et cetera, our ladies wear. You have to get them out of the way if you wish to smell life. The real life, gentlemen, cannot be represented by artificial -- by artificial perfumes and odors.

(What does man get the scent from? I mean, if he didn't read newspapers, or listen to the radio. How did he know there was a Europe?)

Gentlemen, through you and through me there pulsate many waves. If you go by your daily wavelength, you will have --show -- the jitters. That's how the people at the stock exchange in New York live. That's true, gentlemen. All the people who depend on brokers and bankers believe in the daily quotation on the stock exchange. Bear and bull, that's all they know.

And a -- a publisher once said to me, "If the turnover at the American -- at the New York Stock Exchange is more than one million and-a-half shares for eight days, I'm enterprising. And if it goes down below one million and-a-half shares a whole week, I'll do nothing." The poor man, a publisher of spiritual goods, Mr. A. Knopf, told me this quite seriously that his business, you see, depended on the jitters of the brokers. Or the brokers of the jitters.

That's fantastic. He's a leading publisher. Can you live that way? The man is out of all spiritual movement of the times. So he prints of course only Eur- -- thing -- things from Europe and other countries where they have still -- spiritual life and as spec- -- also therefore spiritual ups and downs, which come in generations, or half-generations, or 10 years. Something is built up, slowly, and something is declining, like existentialism or some other great movement, you see, and accordingly, the publishers or the writers live in the rhythm of the death of one movement and the starting of the next movement.

But he -- they live by the 24-hour quotations on the stock exchange, gentlemen. And I think that is, by and large, the picture. The man, my friend, Mr. {Hodgkin}, Sr., who said to me there would be a war, had after all lived to see the First World War. He had seen the shame of Mr. Henry Cabot Lodge betraying Woodrow Wilson. He had seen this country talked into a return to normalcy, and eternal prosperity, and two cars in every garage in the '20s. And so, he had seen the -- the -- he knew that '29, the -- the Depression, was just a beginning of the Second World War, which it was very difficult to know in '29, gentlemen.

So this man knew since '29 that an avalanche was forming. But the -- most people didn't -- didn't -- didn't don't connect these things. There is a depression. There is a prosperity. There is a recession. There is Roosevelt elected. There is some thing called New Deal. It's all out of context. It is -- just happens today. And then perhaps something else happens tomorrow. Do you think that's true? Isn't the curve of the last 40 years a very majestically simple one? Gentlemen, that in 1914, the nationalism of the world, of the French revolution broke down, that the ideas of 1789 came to a catastrophical end, the mind of civilians running political science and constitutions, the idea that you could have peace -- have peace without war, which ruins this country nearly. The -- all this civilian thinking of 150 years sta- -- 120 years standing came to a brutal end. These same civilians suddenly said, "We no longer know what to do." And the generals took over.

And then since 1914, the generals have taken over until we even have a president of the United States whose only preparation for this office is that he was a general. Very logical.

So it isn't so very difficult for me or Mr. {Hodgkin}, gentlemen, if you only give up sensation, of quotations of the stock exchange, as telling you the time. It tells you the time of the day, gentlemen. It doesn't tell you the time of the epoch. This is all. If you are a man of ideas, you live the life of the whole epoch. If you are a man of science, as I told you, you live for a professional lifetime. If you are a -- man of education, you learn what it means to do certain things over years. That's what you learn in college, practically: what it means to be four years at the same thing, in the same situation. How to make friends. Since you are four years

here, it is more worthwhile you come to know certain people, because you can know them better than in a railroad station, you see, where you meet them for five minutes. You don't believe this. You think that you meet a man on the train, and he's your bosom friend, until you -- he steals your {wife}.

Probably from this comes the word "bosom" friend. It is incredible your credulity. You believe that a relation of five minutes is as serious as a relation of a year. The relation of a year is as serious as one of 30 years, and a -- the relation of 150 years to live as Americans in this country, you also do not know what that does to you, that it imprisons you and privileges you. You are Americans.

Gentlemen, what does this mean? You are 180 years old. That's what it means. You lie on a wavelength of 180 years, but gentlemen, there will -- is -- has been no great nation that hasn't been wiped off the map of the world. We still do not know how long the United States are going to last. It's very doubtful now. Very doubtful. If you hear the people talk, we would think that they cannot survive the next war. Have they enough faith? Have the soldiers enough faith to be shot dead on the ground, totally, and disabled, for any cause? Korea is not a very good proof of that. People are -- as we talked -- I think we told -- talked about this -- they are destroyed mentally, because the country is not backing them up.

There's no spirit which tells these men that on the wavelength of American history of 8- -- 180 years, their death means in this sense very little, that they can afford it, that to sacrifice their life for such a great institution is dignified. They have been talked into such a -- sensational wavelength of 24-hour length that all these men come home as corpses, as ghosts of themselves, feeling that they have been wronged, trying to ven- -- take vengeance on their environment, because they feel you shouldn't have been -- you shouldn't have allowed them to go out. The people have gone out there, as you know, for the second time. First, into the war -- world war, and now into Korea. And you have been s- -- allowed to sit at home, because we have no draft. We have no military, compulsory service.

A great injustice has been done, because of this incredible treatment of everything as just an event of the day. We have lived, as you know, in our military system over the last 12 years again from hand to mouth. We haven't done anything to regularize the burden of soldiering. That has to do with this idea: if I have enough soldiers for tomorrow to send to Korea, that's all we need. And we publicize to the enemy even, gentlemen, that we are going to withdraw two corps from Korea.

I didn't believe my eyes, when I saw Mr. Wilson announcing this, that we would diminish our army. That's a deep secret, gentlemen. Do we have to tell the enemy how many soldiers we have in Korea? And the fi- -- a few days before the

armistice, gentlemen. We live so sensational. Mr. Dulles, this great patriot, investigated by Mr. {MacLeod} 10 times for being not a Russian spy, was asked whether we would counterattack, if there were Russian attacks.

"Oh," he said, "we won't. We can't do this. We want an armistice."

Now gentlemen, in any other country, such a secretary of state would have been court-martialed and shot, executed for high treason. A man who says, while the fighting is going on, "We shall not counterattack," gives away the deepest military secret of a country. Nobody even said as much as "yes" or "no," about this telegraph, about this interview -- because the mothers of America had to be made sure that the war in three days would be over, you see.

When the Japanese fleet gathered in the straits between Korea and Japan, in -- near Tsushima where the great battle against the Russians were fought -- was fought in 1905, the Russian fleet approached slowly from Europe, went through the Red Sea, and as far as I remember, they didn't go around the Cape -- {I've forgotten now}. And they finally came up north and they were ambushed by the Japanese fleet, and in one day they were, at this battle of Tsushima, destroyed. And at that time, a member of the cabinet of Theodore Roosevelt -- Mr. Lengerke Meyer wrote, "We had talked -- they had talked to the cabinet on this great battle of Tsushima, and they had agreed that in case of an American emergency, and in the case that an American fleet would have to go, you see, in hiding, to wait for the enemy, it would impossible to make sure that the American press wouldn't print in some form or other the whereabouts of the American navy."

And the gist of the matter was that the Americans would be unable to deliver a -- blow as the battle of Tsushima on the enemy, because your curiosity -- what is curiosity? The -- the -- giving too much importance to the now, to the moment, and not seeing that knowledge came slowly, gradually unfolding at the right moment, in tune with the event itself. You see, the curious man wants to know independently from the ripeness of the event itself. He wants to know, to scoop the news. That's your press idea: I know something earlier than it happens.

But gentlemen, in military things, in spiritual things, in love affairs, anybody who wants to say too early she's going marry this man destroys the probability that he can marry her, because the event depends on your not saying it. Yes, Sir. I hope it will never happen to you, that your best love is destroyed by somebody else talking about it. Mine has, in this country. Other friends of mine have been destroyed by such scooping of the news.

Scooping the news by curiosity means that the curious person is indifferent to the fate of the news, of the content of the news, that he is not sympathetic or

affectionate. Why do our -- our newspapermen in news conferences -- { } put to the test? Because as good Americans there, they have to be silent about certain things they are told, you see, and they cannot scoop. And there you put them to the test, who is a good man? That's a man who does not use all the material Drew Pearson has.

The others know as much as he, but they don't publish it.

So gentlemen, this is by and large the fact which I now offer you as the final explanation of the four stages of the mental life. When a man is really responsible for a great truth, he represents its eternal place in reality, and therefore, he makes sure that it will be represented always, and it doesn't matter if it takes a hundred years until his truth is told. He is not in a hurry. Anybody on the other part of the scale is in a terrible hurry to scoop the news. He is just curious. To him, however, the plague -- the curse attached to this attitude is that he needs a different content for his mind every day. He doesn't stand for the one truth forever, but every day for another truth. That's your motto. You're filled every day with something else.

If you however become a doctor, or if you become a mechanic, or if you become a statesman, or you become a poet, you change at least to one of the higher wavelengths, which carry you over 30 years, and you will keep your secret. If you want to solve some great riddle in your profession, you'd better not talk about it before you solve it. But you've got to work, you see. And for 30 years, you will try to avoid that anybody can scoop this news, although you are dedicated to its discovery, or to the research, or whatever it is. Or you want to organize your profession, or you want to unionize it. Don't tell anybody before you have done it, because otherwise they'll prevent it.

So the -- I think -- I have written a book in German unfortunately, or fortunately, on this topic, The Spectrum of Time. There is as much as -- a spectrum of colors, of light, gentlemen, there is just as much a spectrum of light. One and the same event can live by you by curiosity, it can live by you by hard work, it can live by you by education, and it can live by you by enthusiasm and inspiration. That is, the same fact can strike you as an elec- -- a fire, as electricity, you see, or it can strike you as news, as sensation.

And the same thing is not -- doesn't mean the same thing for two different people, let alone for -- all the millions on this planet. In this course, of course, that what I have tried to tell you is terribly important for me. I have given to this my whole life to find out about it. To you, it means one course. And then a final examination, and then nothing. That has to be taken into account. I mean -- this {house is the world's} { } building, you see. The same intellectual process

appears to one and the other person on quite a different wavelength. What I am -- however owe you, gentlemen, is to tell you that your own life must bestride all four of these dimensions. Before, you do not know what it means to live a mental life at all.

Let's have a break here.

[tape interruption]

...three great names that have been instituted into our nomenclature about the life of the community. They are theology, philosophy, and sociology. I use these words, but I propose to use the nouns. They are the three great questions about the gods, about the things, and about men, with "e," in the plural.

Now gentlemen, our great three cycles have taken up the pagan questions after the gods, the pagan question after things, and the pagan question after men, which already the Greeks, and the Chinese, and the Japanese ask. But in our era, they have tried and they have succeeded in making out of a knowledge of the gods a knowledge of God. Since 1125, theology means the opposite from antiquity. In antiquity, and in Aristotle and Plato, the word "theology" means the knowledge of the gods, in the plural. Of Zeus, and Juno, and Poseidon, and the gods of other nations. In our language, when you speak of theology, you take one thing for granted, that it deals with one god. You have never given a thought to this great miraculous fact that theology by you always is understood as a question: is there a God? Never do you ask: are there gods?

So the whole question, since 1125, gentlemen, is: is there a God, or is there no god? The question of your generation is only that of atheism. You cannot ask: are there gods? Meaningless. If there is the divine, it must be one god.

So all our science, gentlemen, comes after 1100 years, from 0 to 1125, during which, in tremendous catastrophes, the world bought the faith in one god. Theology is the rationalization of this faith in one god. All theology -- and you, too, gentlemen, whether you like it or not -- take it for granted that it isn't worth discussing the many sweethearts of Mr. Zeus. That's for mythology, or for comedy. But that's not for you and me. If you are serious in your bull session, you may say: "I don't believe that there is a God." If you say that, you are the heir of theology in the new sense of our era, where it says theology is the science of one -- the one God. We'll see right away what this is. I only want to perfect this.

When in antiquity, people were philosophers, sophists, gymnosophists in -- in -- Buddhism in -- in -- in India, Mandarins in China -- they asked "How many worlds?" "How many things?" "How many different orders of the universe?"

Seven heavens. One earth. One nether world. The Hindus to this day, as you know, believe that there are many worlds whirling around. Our cosmology, our natural science has again replaced the pluralism of antiquity, by the certainty that there is one nation -- one world only, and nothing but one world. Today a man who speaks of the other world, of another world -- is laughed at, because the science of the world has made this world into undoubtedly one. You may hold different views about si- -- single details of this world, but it is one world. No doubt about that.

You can't even -- not even think that people had to learn that there is one world. To you, the world is always in the singular. But gentlemen, you know what the word "world" means? It means just the opposite from oneness. "World" means to whirl. The word "world," w-o-r-o-l-d in Anglo-Saxon, "worold," actually means that which whirls around like mad, and in which no unity can be discovered. "World," by establishment in its own name, tries to emphasize the disorder, the chaos, the fact that it has no oneness in itself, that it is multiple, that it is betraying us, that the senses are seen one way and the other way, and they are contradictory.

"World" is itself an expression for the contradiction of all things. And our science has solved these contradictions, or at least, pretends to -- to resolve them. It -- it acts on the one assumption: that God created one world. One god, one world.

Now gentlemen, you see the quandary of modern sociology. In antiquity, in Plato's description of the world, there were different peoples. One living off their belly, the other living out of their mind. The Greeks and the -- others living out of their chest and heart. He says the warriors -- they live by -- from the heart, you see. The Egyptians only want to have to eat. They want to have bread, and fleshpots. And so they live from their belly. And the Greeks live like Athene, their goddess, you see, here, from the light of our -- their eyes, by enlightenment, by reason. And you flatter yourself, that you live by reason, because you live by your stomach.

But this error, gentlemen, that there are different people, of different natures, of different character is the -- today the great stumbling block for -- for the socio- -- social sciences. We have not yet answered the question: are all the members of a human society, you see, born free and equal? Are they the same? Can you really speak to the Stone Age Indian? Can you agree with an Eskimo? Usually, when you begin to talk to Eskimo in the second generation, he's already dead. When the white man touches any of the natives, he kills them -- either by liquor, or by syphillis, or by gunpowder, or by some such other contraption which he calls "civilization."

So it hasn't yet been solved, the question: are all men one? But it is obvious that we will never have a society, and a science of society unless we will be able to say, "One God, one World, one Mankind." The problem of the sociology today is that it's being torn between the assumption that men are different and the assumption that men are all, you see, in some way members of the same family.

Our religion already anticipates the answer. It must be that we find some way on proving that all men, after all, are men. In this assumption, there is a famous anthropological periodical which is called M-a-n. Has anybody seen it? Who has seen Man? It's a British publication, very good one, because in its very title, it already proclaims the whole program.

But gentlemen, if you read the publications of people in sociology, you are -- see how far away we are from this faith. Any sociologist thinks that the sociologist and the objects of his science are different people. American sociology is mad, because the sociologists say that they are the doctors of society. But gentlemen, if you are a man, you are just a member of society. And no sociological science can be superior to the society and the members of it, of whom we speak. The problem of sociology is: where does the sociologist belong? With regard to theology, it's very simple, gentlemen. The theologian says that he is under God. With regard to the natural science, this is also very simple. He tries to get outside nature. He wants to be detached. He makes nature its object -- his object. He wants to look at it, to consider it from the outside.

So gentlemen, in the natural science, the scientist is outside his objects, because he wants to be objective. You all want to be objective. In theology, we are under God, or we are above God. That is, the atheist says, "I look down on God. Gods are manmade. They are idols." The believer says, "I'm under God. He looks down on me."

(Are you defining theology as the same thing as religion?)

No. The opposite. It's the opposite. Theology is just a science. Theology is a very second-rate thing, compared to religion.

(Well, by theology do we come under these things? Isn't it more by religion that we come under? And by theology we study about it?)

Now, we'll have -- well, you -- your approach is obviously quite right. I march too fast. I -- I retreat my steps. Thank you for the question. I was so anxious to show you the unity of the three campaigns -- God, man, and soci- -- and nature, that I should have marked more -- better the point of departure in 1100. Thank you. This boy -- just don't -- it's too early. So I spoke too hastily.

I thought I wanted to leave you with the impression that there has been order in our mental enterprise for the last 900 years, you see. We have marched in three directions. And certainly all these directions are scientific. Now, religion is not science, you see. Obviously re- -- science is a reflection on religion -- the science. We think about nature, we think about our worship, you see, and the Church, and the saints and so -- in theology. So your question is most legitimate. I'm -- this is quite different.

All right. Let's therefore -- turn directly to the beginning, which I intended to do. It is al- -- was only my attempt to show you that I -- I'm not dealing with antiquarian things, you see. I'm dealing with the beginning of one great, mental enterprise, you see: first turning towards the gods, then turning toward the worlds, and finally turning to the many, many men, and trying, as a science, to unify the appearances which show -- seem to point to pluralism, you see, to many-ness.

Let's forget then about this whole march and let's go back to the year 1125. Gentlemen, in the year 1125, the first book was written, called Theology, in the new sense of the term, the knowledge of one god, not reached by faith, but by intellectual reasons. This book was written by Ab‚lard. You already know 1079 to 1142 is his li- - are his life dates. And you also know that the other man of the same significance is Anselm, I think it is 1034 to 1130. I'm not quite positive about this year.

Now, Ab‚lard the Frenchman; and Anselm, the abbot of Bec -- in Normandy, Anselm is from -- abbot in Normandy, and Archbishop of Canterbury besides. And Ab‚lard is born in Brittany, near Nantes. You know that's a peninsula jutting out into the o- -- Atlantic Ocean, furthest west, in France. So they are neighbors in a w- -- cert- -- to a cert- -- in a certain way. These two men have founded the science of theology. Anselm has given the content. Ab‚lard has given -- forced the name upon a reluctant world. It was easier for the world to swallow the new content of the science than to accept the new name. Therefore, as I told you before, Ab‚lard's life has been stigmatized. He has been anatomized. He has been -- lived in a -- as a refugee, as a fugitive from excommunication of the pope, in the great abbey of Cluny, because the abbot of Cluny was a saintly man, and respected the great genius of Ab‚lard. And he protected him against this great enemy, Bernard of Clairvaux, the bigot of the 12th century, and a great saint, besides.

But Ab‚lard broke the taboo that there could be a knowledge of the -- divinity outside biblical knowledge, outside the tradition of the Church; that there could be acknowledged by logic, that you could by reason fly up beyond the heavens and know qualities of God. After all, Christianity says, before man became di-

vine, man could not know the quality of the divine. The content of the story of the incarnation is that before man has not become divine, all our abstractions and reas- -- reasons -- reasonings on God are rather futile, because we construe God. All -- gods of antiquity are manmade. And you read many clever books today who say that gods -- the gods are inventions of humanity. That is to a certain extent true of the ancient gods.

Wherever you do not recur to God's real creation fully, you are apt to construe something by your own mind. Now Anselm puts the thing very squarely. He said, "We priests of the Roman Catholic Church," of the Christian Church at that time. "Roman" was no -- no epithet of the Church, of any necessity then. There was only one Christian Church. The -- "We people of the Catholic Church, we pray every day, we priests. But we have to hear confessions of laymen who doubt, who are despondent. And the usual doubt of the -- of the child, of the man in the confessional, of the sinner, is `My sins are so scarlet red, that there can be no god who can forgive me.'"

Very much the situation of the modern man who goes to the psychoanalyst, because the psychoanalyst seem to o- -- be the only man who does -- is not afraid to listen to his swinish stories, because the psychoanalyst says, "This isn't swinish. This is normal."

You know, when a man came to -- Mr. {Friedel}, the historian, came to Freud, he said, "Mr. Freud, I have just murdered my brother. And I want to kill my father. I have slept with my mother. I want to rape my sister."

So Mr. Freud said, "That's wonderful. You are the most normal human specimen I've ever met."

Now, this is what any sinner wants to hear. That's the first great lift from his chest, that he wants to hear that there is somebody who is not so excited over his sins as he is himself. You see, the funny thing about your attitude toward sin is always that on one side, you are very tempted to say there are no sins. And on the other side, you are bowed down by them; which is a contradiction in terms, because if there are no sins, you should rejoice in them. But it takes very old sinners to rejoice in your own sins. Younger people always still hope that they can get rid of their sins. But of course, they pretend, in the face of the world, that they have a philosophy which laughs at sin. And in their own heart, they are very much smitten by them.

Now, Anselm's starting point was very simple: "Here we pray every day to a God that He may forgive us, and may help us, and may be a -- an aid to us in the world of trouble. And we lie. And we fornicate. And we steal. And we are --

blaspheme. And then we see the people who come to us completely split, and they say, `We have sinned against all the 10 Commandments, and obviously we can't do anything with religion.'" You know how many people don't go to church, because they have done something, divorce or something -- and they think the Church cannot forgive them, and so they say there is no God because they cannot admit that they have done something wrong. Many of -- most people who hate the Church hate the -- hate it for a very personal reason, because there is something in their -- on their record of which they believe that the Church is not able to forgive them. If you investigate all the people who say that they don't believe in God, you will always find that they don't believe in themselves, in their own righteousness, and that they have good reason not to believe it.

And now, the answer -- no I must give you Anselm's answer -- not my answer, Sir. Ansel- -- Anselm started the new theology by saying that the one living God of Christianity was so much alive that He always was greater than any concept of God developed by any of the believers so far; that the first statement of God, or about God in theology therefore had to be: God is greater than your concept of God. That is the great dynamic calculus, the invention of the divine calculus.

You know that you believe in mathematics, the infinitesimally small. You know that the calculus means the figuring with the infin- -- infinitesimal, don't you? The calculus is this great discovery that our mind is not able to think the infinitesimal, but we have to believe it. This little jump -- this little infinitesimal degree from the -- from one unit to the next can be still {made} smaller, and always still smaller, and always still smaller. And as you know, the whole modern mathematics is based on this imitation of Anselm's theology.

Modern mathematics is an imitation of theology, because the first step of Ca- -- Anselm of Canterbury was to say, "God is each time greater than the sinner admits him to be able to be. Any sinner who comes to you in the confessional and says, `God cannot forgive me' has to be answered with this one sentence: God is always greater than you think Him to be."

That's a very great sentence, gentlemen, and it's still valid. As a matter of fact, my friend Paul Tillich has done nothing but to revive Anselm of Canterbury's argument in his new book, The Courage to Be. That is nothing but old scholastic theology all over again. It looks very modern, but it is 900 years old. Have you read the book? Who has read Paul Tillich's The Courage to Be? Well, you seem to have all the courage in the world without it. So you don't have to read it. But the argument there is very much in this way: that if a man has the courage to be -- that is, to accept his own follies and weaknesses -- he will find that he can be forgiven, but he has to accept them. He cannot say, "I'm faultless," you see. And

he cannot say, "God is too narrow." He has to admit the two paradoxes of the Anselmian theology: that your sins are as scarlet red, you see, as they are; and that God is greater than all your -- your mind can register about His judicial, so to speak, capacity, and His mercy.

Both you and God are much greater than you think at this moment that you and God are. That's the starting point, gentlemen, of the whole theological process of the Middle Ages. This amounts, gentlemen, to an attempt to define God each time that He's doubted by something that travels -- goes beyond the doubt, the doubter's limitation. Any man says something, you see, "Oh, there can be no God," the answer must always outrun the doubt. God is that dynamic being which is always greater than your mind. So anyone can doubt God. Please do, because by His very essence, God includes your doubt. He is bigger than your doubt. He invites you to destroy all the smaller concepts of God.

This is how theology could become a science of one God. If it was the science of many gods, all the sym- -- single gods: Venus, Bacchus, Dionysus, Aries, they are all well-defined. Mars is the god of war. Venus is the god of love. So they are finite. Love, war -- Pluto is the god of money. So America is a plutonian civilization. But what of it? Obviously, it's only very partial. Some people worship the dollar, you see. And so -- you can also have people who don't. These are all -- pardon me?

({ }, did you say this was a logical, an intellectual theory, because it seems to me more based on faith, than on logic. In other words, he seems to be saying that "I have faith that God is greater than any concept I may have of Him.")

Well, let me finish the argument. I have to start somewhere. Isn't that right? This is the basic step he takes to free God from conceptual knowledge. That is, this -- your question. What's your name, Sir?

({Greenwald.})

Mr. {Greenwald}, it's a very good question, you see, about the difference between religion and theology brings us back. The religious experience, of course -- of course has to precede, before you can doubt, you see. You have, of course -- had to -- have to have the lead. Otherwise you are not talking -- knowing what you're talking about. If you talk about other people's gods, that's nobody -- of nobody's interest. You can only doubt your own god. That is the power in which you have believed. That's a religious experience.

Now there I come back -- one of the reasons why I wanted to put this before you, gentlemen. Anybody who wakes up to the stage of doubt -- you'll remem-

ber, Number 5, the 5th Commandment, anybody has had four -- three impressions made on him. He has lived in the world 20 years. And you have experienced gravity. The condition for becoming a natural scientist is that you have experienced move- -- movement. Nobody can be shown movement, gentlemen. He has to have experienced this. Anybody who has lived 20 years, has been spoken to. That is, he has been loved. Then to -- we speak from love, and we blow each other's brains out from hate.

That is, speech is love. All speech is an attempt to make peace between people. "We are on speaking terms." That would lead to sociology. Anybody who after 12 -- 20 years of being spoken to begins to reason about man, must take into account that he has been spoken to. And gentlemen, anybody who has lived 20 years, and has breathed the air, has walked the earth, has pa- -- passed examinations, has learned to read and write, speaks English, has believed, he has believed for 20 years. That's a religion.

There is nobody who hasn't religion. You don't know this, gentlemen. You are such barbarians. There has never been such a barbaric generation. You actually believe that you have been brought up without religion, because you haven't gone to church. That's nonsense. You may have a very poor religion. But whether you know it or not, the religion of your first 20 years is that in which you believe. And it's just incredible how credulous you are. Your belief it's very -- silly, very childish, but you have a religion.

If you can't see this, Sir, then you do not know how little you know, and how much you believe every day. You believe that you go to Dartmouth College, on -- by some -- no knowledge whatsoever. Or hearsay. You take this course. You do this only on faith. It's your religion that a teacher in Dartmouth College is not going to cheat you, or to do you special harm, or to disqualify you for the future.

That's all faith. You believe in a certain amount of human goodness for which you have no reason in fact, because most people are very wicked indeed. So religion is of course so comprehensive that you can't see it. You all believe in one God. You don't believe in many gods. You are so steeped in the Christian tradition that you don't know it, and that you deny it. I mean, you all live in the -- in a little, little, little strait-jacket cell of a mental asylum in your own b- -- upper brain, because you have isolated yourself from your own reality. So you say that your -- you don't have to have a religion.

But every human being, gentlemen, at the stage of doubt can doubt three things. He can doubt man -- that is, the people whom he has spoken to and who have spoken to him. He can doubt things. That is, the laws of ice, of skiing, of mountain-climbing, of flying -- all the things he has experienced by eating, by

shitting, by urinating, by sleeping. All the things that prove to you that you are under natural law, and that you are mortal, and you're dust, that you're dirt, that you are part of nature. That you follow with the most general thing is the law of gravity: that you fall down by your own weight. That is the simplest expression of your physical existence.

Everyone has the social experience that by being spoken to, he's moved, he's impressed, he's cheered up, he's depressed, he's made to weep, or to laugh all the time. You're frightened at this moment. The minute before, you laughed. Well, what other is this as a social experience that you are exposed to the words of other people? That is making for sociology. You can now doubt that this is right. You -- can say, "I want to be a man on whom nobody can make any impression." Then you would become a stoic sociologist who would investigate all influence of men on each other as mere melodrama, as mere seduction. You would say, "My sociology says how to get rid of any human intercourse," you see. And you become a hermit.

It's a possible sociology. It's -- it would be atomistic sociology leading to establishing huts, you see, as we have them in our -- modern housing apartments already, you see. Everybody to himself with a kitchenette, and a telephone, and a bathtub.

(You said that -- )

No, one -- let me first finish. I can't interrupt here. Don't you see that the third thing now has to be said? That man at the age of doubt, at the normal age of 20 -- at your age -- has also already acted on any number of silly beliefs. You have gone to school. You have ruined your mind. You have ru- -- lost your memory. You have lear- -- you have not trained yourself to work hard. You are lazy. That's all religion, because you have already disposed of half of your life, in advance.

Religion makes -- says what to do with your own life. Under what orders do you live it? Well, you know it all. For the last 20 years, you have been all the time believed -- believed, gentlemen -- that you know what to do with it. You have said to everything, "I don't care." You have said life is unimportant. That's a religion. The religion -- I don't know what it is, but it's certainly the religion of several devils. It's a loveless religion -- dispassionate religion. It's a religion that is down on passion. It's -- it's Moslem -- or, as most Americans are, good Mohammedans. The -- American businessman is, by and large, an adherent of the Koran, of Mohammed. He believes in accident. The Mohammedans called it "Kismet." And we call it "accident insurance." That's the only difference.

But we believe -- that life -- as I told -- proved to you, your mental life is accidental. If your mental life is accidental, your natural life is even more accidental. It's the business cycle. It's all accidental. Work, poverty, war, peace to you everything accidental. It's all Darwinianism. Survival of the misfit, of the accident. Yes, in Darwinianism, the accidents survive. Not the meaning.

This is your religion. But it is a religion, Sir. Theology bases this on religion. Now, it is some- -- one thing is now to be said. Let me say this at the end, gentlemen. The -- theology was, of course, invented, constructed, and developed by priests, who were responsible for their congregations. All sciences, gentlemen, can only become sciences in the hands of responsible people. You cannot become a theologian, Sir, because you are only interested in your own salvation. Anselm was not in the slightest interested in his own salvation. But he was archbishop of Canterbury. He was interested in the salvation of thousands and thousands of other people. So of course, like a doctor, we'll have to become an anatomist, and a bacteriologist, and a physiologist, you see, and a chemist in order to heal his patients. So of course, an archbishop of Canterbury and an abbot of Bec is responsible for all these millions of sinners who come before him and cry, and say "I'm out of tune with God. So there is no God."

So the answer is, "My dear fool, you don't know your sin and you don't know God. Your sin is very small, and God is very great. And of course, He has to deal with decent people who still can be despondent about your sins. You, who say, `My sins are nothing, and God is nobody,' you cannot be helped."

The condition of theology is obviously a religious experience in which you take your own existence very seriously. Once you say that your existence is unimportant, there cannot be a science of the unimportant, gentlemen. The whole creative process of the last 900 years is based on the abnormal assumption -- to you it is abnormal -- that what we believe is important, the things which surround us, over which we -- we -- we fall, gravity is important, and the human beings with whom we speak are important. You cannot have philosophy, gentlemen, and you cannot have theology and you cannot have sociology without a sense of the importance of these three processes in which we are involved. And in this sense -- at this moment, I wouldn't want to start a science of theology. There is no room for this, because you are split up mercilessly into little -- atoms, into little men, the timid soul.

But gentlemen, in the beginning of our era -- of this great campaign of the mind, the archbishops, and the bishops, and the abbots had under their care thousands of people. And they cared. And they had to tell them something. And they had to tell them something rational, and they had to tell everybody something different. And for this they needed this strange, infinitesimal calculus of

the divine transcendence over every concept anybody could build up.

So the -- gentlemen, the theology of the Middle Ages is a repository of answers given to every possible wrong concept -- given -- stated as any possible wrong concept about God. It's the correction of all the cries of despondency of all believers. But of course, the condition was that they were despondent, and that they acknowledged that they had been believers. In this sense, you are disqualified. Nobody will care for you, because you say, "I'm not despondent."

I had the other -- a student in -- in the other course -- or was it here? -- who said, "I shall never be despondent." Well, with such a fool, of course, neither God nor professor can do anything.