Transcript

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

(Number 21, 13 December 1956. Okay.)

...of all Greek or all philosophical thinking, at any time, gentlemen. This problem is called the problem of the universals. The universals. And as you see from its -- that it has only a Latin term, it was not discovered before the Middle Ages, under this term, "universals." That's a Latin word, and the {medievalist} philosophy was Latin, and not Greek, when it came into the -- into the Occident.

However, it is a Greek problem. The Greeks had the problem, and it appears in the relation between the sophists, Plato, and Aristotle. And in other words, when I talk to -- now of this problem of the universals, I talk of the relation of Plato, Socrates, the sophists, and Aristotle. And I want to stress in this history of Greek philosophy, obviously, the unity between the various thinkers. I'm not interested so much in their separate systems. And the me- -- relation of Aristotle, Socrates, and Plato is a -- very mysterious. And before telling you the story of the universals, as they were called in the Middle Ages, and as we now rediscover them as the permanent question of all thinking -- it is perhaps worth your while that you first for a moment stand in some amazement before the three men, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, in their common achievement. The Greek mind is predicated on single names, on individual men. Everything we have said before pointed either to the single philosopher or to the founder of a school. And the tragedy of all dialectics, of -- of men, gentlemen, of all thinking, is that when you disagree with your master in antiquity, you had to de- -- secede from him and found a new school. Even Aristotle, although he always called Plato his friend, in his Nichomachean Aeth- -- Ethics, he especially says, "They are friends," he set up his own school, against the successors of Plato. The Peripatetic School against the Academy.

So the tragedy of antiquity is, gentlemen, that they had no universities. They only had schools. A university is a place where different schools can exist -- coexist. And -- ancients had no universities. In many of the popular American books, gentlemen, on Greece, or on modern times, or on -- on t- -- education, you find this baloney that the -- first university was Plato's Academy. That's not true. That is not true. The condition of a university in the Occident in the Christian era is that opposite schools can teach in the same institution. And that a student is exposed to -- a Platonist as well as to Aristotelians, you see. That's the Christian spirit. In antiquity, that wasn't so. You had to break with one school if you wanted to go to another. There was -- no room for opposition. That's why Plato's state and the Bolshevik state have so viel -- much in agreement -- in common. The Greeks did not know that the mind had to be left free. They

wanted the truth, the whole truth; but they wanted then forced down everybody's throat who entered the sacred grove of -- of the school.

Yet, gentlemen, despite this pagan attitude -- we call "paganism" gentlemen, that -- the impenetrability, the relative impenetrability of -- of one man, one people, one nation, one city, one religion against the other. That's pagan. Paganism is a very definite thing, you see. Any divine force, you see, is impenetrable. Therefore there are many gods. If you see that the divine is one, you be- -- know that there must be one god. Paganism is something you all have. You are pagans in many respects. All your department thinking, that something is a biological fact, and the other is a psychological fact, that's all paganism. All what you call -- your departmentalization. That's the modern form of polytheism. You all are polytheists. Something is true in medicine. Something else is true in religion. On Sundays you believe one thing. On Saturday another thing. In Smith, one thing. In Dartmouth, another. And on it goes. In your family, something else again.

Most of you are pagans. What is paganism, gentlemen? It's departmentalization. It is the splitting up of the universe, you see, according to -- to the accident of space or time, you see, in one thing, and then you move elsewhere -- another time it's different. Most men today are polytheists. There are very few people who believe in one god. It's so cheap today to say, you see, "believe in God." The deists, the -- these philosophers -- the philosophical believers, allegedly, on God. They don't believe in one god. They believe just in one world; but they don't believe in one god at all. You see, they have -- the double standard of truth, which you have abolished allegedly in sex, exists in every -- every other respect. One thing is right for Negroes, and one thing is right for white men, and one thing is right for Jews, and one right is -- thing is right for Christians, and on it goes.

To believe in one god, gentlemen, is an act which you have to daily perform. It doesn't help you to say, "I believe in one god." I want to see it. And the -- Greeks had -- they -- were pagans. And therefore they broke in parts. And every school had a different ideal, and a different wall around it. And you either had to be an Aristotelian, or a Platonist, later on. What I, however, want -- I'm driving at, is that for us, the unity of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle is the miraculous thing, not the diff- -- difference. There is a contrast in the teaching of Aristotle and Plato, to be sure. Plato believed in ideas, and Aristotle did not. Plato believed that before man is born, there is already the eternal good, beautiful, and true somewhere, you see, in Heaven. And that we all are only the special editions, the particular editions of this universal idea of a man, a good man, or the idea of a lion. These are his eternal ideas. As we shall see, Aristotle rejected this. This is a very minor matter that he rejected it. Of course, two people will

never agree on everything. Why should they? That's the question, you see.

The -- assumption of philosophy -- pure philosophy, misunderstood philosophy is that all people should agree on all things. And that is the besetting sin of the -- Plato's politics, that he thinks that in a city, all men should agree on everything, you see. But they couldn't live if this were so. It is part of our life, gentlemen, that we disagree. We cannot live by agreement. It's nonsense. We must live by contrast, you see. I mean, a marriage in which husband and wife always agree would go to pot after half a year. The whole interest in marriage is that the people disagree. You see. You come -- can come to an agreement, but there has to be a struggle. If you agree, just -- don't marry. That's homosexuality. You see.

Homoerotic is when equals love each other. But real love -- of course leaves -- loves a person of absolutely different mind. That's just the -- the incentive to { } her. It's the only way you can penetrate a girl is that you marry her although she is a sweet idiot. Or vice versa.

Now the philosophical idea was that you had to agree on everything. That this was an ideal state. If we brush aside, gentlemen, this presumptuousness of philosophy that men should be like mathematicians, you see, be able to figure out the world as a -- in -- so that everybody had to agree with everybody else on everything, there is still this miracle of the sequence of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, as a meaningful sequence producing something in unity which not one of them represents by himself. You can see it in music, in our history of music between -- Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven. That obviously the three together are a greater achievement of the human spirit than any one of these three genius by themselves. You can't have the Ninth Symphony without the Jupiter Symphony of Mozart. And yet the -- Jupiter -- of Mozart had nothing to do in itself, it seems, with the Ninth Symphony.

This happens in great periods -- you have the same thing in Spenser, and -- and Shakespeare, and he is -- their contemporaries, Ben Jonson, that a number of people are needed and -- to constellate, you see. And the real miracle, obviously, is the constellation. And this is not in our books.

I read yesterday a book of Beeth- -- on Beethoven, a very good book, as a matter of fact, a very famous book, by {Riezler}, and--it's a German book--and it's a fruit of 40 years of -- of work with Beethoven. There are two things which I do not approve of, which disappointed me. There is not this unity seen in the whole work of Beethoven. There is -- every work is analyzed, you see, and very well analyzed, and very wisely analyzed, but nowhere is it said that the great miracle of -- of -- of Beethoven, of course, is his life work of 133 oper- -- -us. And

that that is the miracle, that you could write one quartet after another, and one symphony after another, and one sonata after another. What do I care for the individual sonata? There are too many to enjoy this in a book. What I would like to read in a book on Beethoven is the unity of this effort. That's much harder to express, gentlemen, because the title page says "Sonata, Number So" -- and you go on to another, and you say you can leave therefore -- you can leave one sonata out of your mind and go up over to the other. The same is true, of course, with Plato's dialogues. You can like one of the dialogues. I'm not interested here in this classroom with the individual dialogue. I'm interested in Plato. Therefore I have to try to show that all his work forms a miraculous unity.

Now we take one further step. In Beethoven, obviously, it is more interesting to figure how Mozart, Haydn -- or Haydn, Mozart perhaps is -- that's a better sequence, and Beethoven form one unique musical constellation. Like Child's Wain in the sky. And how the same way Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle are much more important because they are three in one. I mean -- could add some others, like Theophrastus, you see, or -- or Xenophon, or so, and even form a galaxy of such bright stars in the sky of Greek philosophy. But with Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, it seems to me, the unity is overwhelming for this reason, gentlemen: that although they live after each other, one after another in our understanding, they fill a space in three different places of this space, of this realm of thought, which is -- are eternal, which had to be occupied. It is as though one man who writes poetry pushes the other in another direction. You know -- remem- -- has anybody read the poem by Milton about Shakespeare? Who knows it? Can you tell me? What does Milton say?

({ }.)

What?

(About Shakespeare wrote his own mind { }.)

Does nobody know it by heart? Gentlemen, who goes into -- for writing? Nobody here? Gentlemen, anybody who writes should learn this by heart, because it's the comfort of the successor of the {epicoron}, of the later comer. It's a deep sigh in which Milton complains that Shakespeare has taken away all place for him, all liberty. That's the real -- the real greatness of the poem, gentlemen. And it's already preoccupied. What do you do if you come after Raphael and Michelangelo, ja? You have to paint abstract. What do you do if you come after -- yes, of course. I pity these people.

Hindemith said to me -- the famous composer, here in this town, he said to me, very charmingly -- he's a very charming man. You have heard of Hinde-

mith?

He has written nothing for the trumpet. He said to me, "I'm -- I'm fed up with Mozart. I can write any -- Mozart sonata myself. I have to write atonal just to -- not -- to keep awake. I go to sleep with Mozart. This is my -- this is too boring. After 150 years of Mozart, I can't hear it anymore. That's all given away."

So these people are driven into a corner. Don't think that atonal music is arbitrary. On the other hand, don't think it's beautiful. It is just an act of despair. The same with abstract painting. The -- the -- the world has been given away. It has been done. You can't repeat it, the performance. Where -- who tells you that there is an infinity of possibilities? There is a finite -- sequence of possibilities. Once they are exhausted, they are exhausted.

This is very serious, gentlemen, very serious. You have to understand these artists. They want to be real artists; that is, they have to offer something new. But there are so many innovations that have been used up. Out they go. Harmony has been used up. You see it in Epicurus, and -- and Lucretius, I mean, and -- and the Stoa. Anything that -- that had to do with the concrete single city had been done by Aristotle. He wrote 100 -- 158 different cities. You don't find in Epicurus or in the Stoics any interest any longer in the individual city-state. It's over with, you see. That has been done. Can't repeat the performance. That's why the Stoics, as we said, were cosmopolitan, you see, and the Epicureans were private. That was the two ways out of the achievement that already was done.

And there you see, gentlemen, you are -- you think, "History is bunk." But Greek philosophy can show you what it is. It is the taking possession of poss- -- potential steps of the mind. Once this is done, it is done. The history of the Greek mentality is a complete story of the human mind. You cannot think one idea, and one thought, gentlemen, as a philosopher, and as a circumstance of generalization, and universal systematic thinking, which has not been thought in Greece. We cannot be original. We can only be original in patching together different thoughts. I think I am very original, gentlemen. I had many new ideas. But -- that's why I do not -- don't stop to be a philosopher. I'm a sociologist now, because there is still a field where something new can be th- -- thought. But not in this physis business, you see, in this business of a general, you see, world of one space and one time as the Greeks' mind was fumbling with, or thinking for.

Well, if you understand, gentlemen, that every thought the Greeks took is a finite conquest, final conquest of some possibility of the human mind, it is very important that we should ask ourselves what Socrates, what Plato and Aristotle together have conquered or occupied forever, why any one of us whose -- mentions philosophy has to know a little bit of Socrates, a little bit of Plato, and a

little bit of Aristotle, because they come back in us, you see, when we think. And therefore, we don't have to repeat their effort, if we make them evident to us; it's simpler.

So I already put on the blackboard once before these figures. I -- only to remind you, Socrates dies in 399; Plato dies in 347; and -- if the same age had been reached by Aristotle, it would have been 304. That is not quite it. Socrates was 70. Plato was 80. And this man was 60 when he died. But in order to compare, it is quite wise to see that they cover -- the years of their deaths cover a whole century. Now this one century of Greek philosophy places Socrates at the point of questioning the questioner, the asker. I remember -- you remember I insisted that you should see that Socrates -- the Socratic system is not the schoolboy idea. In America, where all schoolboys think they are philosophers, and treat all philosophers as schoolboys, you always mistake the Socratic me- -- method with the schoolboy method. But Socrates doesn't ask children, and he is not a child that asks questions. But he asks the -- the sophists, he asks them to question everything. That is, a new system of questioning the questioner. That is, questioning the troublemaker, asking the man who disturbs the cult of the city, and the laws of the city, you see, the unity of the city. Ask the outsider. You can put it in the terms of Mr. Colin Wilson today, who wrote this book, The Outsider, this collection of fragments. You can take his expression and say, "Socrates is the outsider agai- -- for the outsiders." He asks the outsiders. All the men -- the heroes of his -- of his -- of his dialogues are philosophers, are mathe- -- are scientists, are lawless people, or whatever they are -- sophists; they are outsiders. They are people who have already asked themselves.

Now. So Socrates brings the individual anarchi- -- anarchist, gentlemen, back into the fold of a common tradition of thinking. Without Socrates, there would be not a history of Greek philosophy, sondern -- but scatterbrains; one in Syracuse, and one in Miletus, and one in -- in Crete, and one in Athens, and one in Sparta, you see, would have his own philosophy. As they had in the 5th century. I haven't mentioned all of them, like Empedocles. You find them in Mrs. Freeman's book. The erratic people who starts something { }. Socrates is the first -- I couldn't say brain trust. That would be -- obviously wrong, because there's nothing of a trust in him, brain trust, has no recipes. But he is the brain for the brains. I don't know how to express this, you see. He invites all the people who have something to say, to say whether -- where do they lead? what does this lead to? is it good? is -- is -- are they -- are they responsible in their criticism, in their doubt, you see?

So doubting the doubt, gentlemen, it seems to me is perhaps at this moment a valuable interpretation of Socrates. You hear so much about doubt, and about intellectual curiosity, and -- it is all so flimsy, and so cheap, gentlemen.

Intellectual curiosity is worth nothing. And doubt in itself is also worth nothing. We are forced to doubt. That's very painful, you see. And -- the place of doubt is the return into life. We have to doubt enough to regenerate -- to restore the goodness of our existence. Doubt is necessary. And a man who -- who cannot face doubt is a coward. But just to recommend doubt as a pleasure, that's wrong. It is not a pleasure to doubt. And -- in this country, everything is treated so -- all the parts of the mental life are treated as so arbitrary, they are recommended as "fun." Gentlemen, I can do nothing for fun.

Yesterday, a young lady said to me, she was so overwhelmed when she fel- -- found that -- her parents, when she was already 70 still had fun with each other, because she found them handing each other's heads. I would have liked to slap this lady in the face, to call the sacred love between her parents "fun." That's not fun. That's a great story that after 18 years of marriage you feel really then is a great thing that you have this other person. Is that fun, gentlemen? It's a sacrament.

Don't reduce therefore all these things to nothingness by calling Socrates the eternal -- the eternal doubter. The -- he -- his discipline is that he makes the doubter aware what -- where he doubts, in what context he doubts, what it should lead to, to doubt. This is then much more positive, but much more difficult, you see. And that is the grandiose scheme under which he lived and died, that he should coerce the whole doubting community, you see, to see what they do when they doubt. Then they also teach us how to proceed in such doubt, once it is made fruitful.

But please take this from this course, gentlemen: don't mistake the schoolchild for a philosopher, and the common-sense man for a philosopher, and the philosopher for a schoolboy, and Socrates for the -- one of these quiz kids, which is by and large the mental state of this country, that the higher -- quite a different level in the higher power is squared off with the childishness of a man who -- who -- like my 2-year-old grandson who all the time asks questions, because he is afraid to be left out in the cold otherwise, from the rest of the family.

The second -- gentlemen, that's an eternal necessity. Here you are. Your questions must be channelized. They must be made fruitful. They must be pressed into the service of the future. And that's Socrates' merit of the -- treatment of the question. The question which he only -- deigns, so to speak, to let pass, and which he purifies, and which he sets up is the question that if, unanswered, jeopardizes, endangers the future of the city, of mankind, you can say today. That's something glorious, gentlemen. That's a problem of purifying the question, and only letting those questions stand that are of superior -- the supe-

rior order of -- of--what do you say in English?--of life value? I mean value for -- for the regeneration of life, I mean, valuable, I mean, necessary. Not sales value, but the opposite, I mean. Value that -- without which -- "indispensable" perhaps is the best word, you see. They are indispensable.

So the indispensable doubt, that's Socrates. I think that's quite a good term to describe what he -- I have tried to tell you about it. It's not doubt in itself, but indispensable doubt.

This is not Plato's manner. I said to you, Pla- -- Socrates asks for the better. Plato asks for the best. His best city is the absolute, is an attempt to put men under the stars of eternity. It is not this doubt at this moment, in order to find the better. But it is absolute order. What is the order for which we are created in all, forever, always, without change?

Aristotle sees and overlooks the world in a different manner, gentlemen. He does not -- he takes the Socratic doubt for investigation. He keeps it. He keeps also the idea of the best and then he compares what we have. That's why he's called a realist. When he writes these 158 constitutions, of which we only have one volume, on Athens, that has been found as a papyrus in 1892, and we are very lucky to have at least one of these books, he measures the -- in a concrete, particular, the specific, as against the -- the best thing, of which he gives a theory in his Politics, where he has this mixed-government idea, that you should have a government mixed out of, you see, democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy, as we have it in America, here Mr. Nixon is the crown prince, and is -- represents the monarchical element; the judiciary represents the aristocratic element; and the House of Representatives, the demagogical element.

Any cit- -- government, gentlemen, of the Christian era is a mixed government. It is not true that America is a -- simply a democracy. It's just the accent on democracy. But without the common law of England, and the -- without the judiciary and the -- without the -- the fight of -- of Marshall for the Supreme Court, and his right to test the constitutionality -- constitutionality of laws, we would have a mob rule, you see. Ja. You cannot deduce this judiciary from the democrac- -- democratic principles. It's an aristocratic principle.

And the sooner you learn this, gentlemen, that the United States also have a mixed constitution, the -- the sooner you will understand your -- the slogans of this country as in great danger of dying -- killing us, you see. America can only win the -- the Cold War against Russia if it insists that it is not a democracy of the 19th century brand, which the Russians had every right to supersede, but that we have a mixed government and that therefore we can laugh about the -- the -- the -- the dictatorship of the proletariat, you see, because in wartime,

we have also the necessary dictatorship of the -- our exec- -- chief of -- executive. Dictatorship at times is inevitable, is indispensable. It's absolutely indispensable, you see. Out of the blue, Mr. Roosevelt, without any money, with -- anybody knowing it, spent $2 billion on the atom, and half a billion dollar on Mr. Donovan's cloak-and-dagger organization. That has to be in wartime. I am very grateful that we did. But that's dictatorship. And fortunately you can't win a war without dictatorship. If you try to, you get the United Nations.

You ha- -- the sooner you see that's Aristotle, that's Plato's insight: mixed government is the best. And so he could write on 158 governments in the light of his best insight.

So we have, you see, if you have the -- the world as it is, the commonsense world of yours, Dartmouth College, et cetera, there are three philosopher -- -ical attitudes: better, which means--how did I call it?--indispensable criticism, indispensable doubt; best, the creative power of our mind, or of our imagination--can al- -- also say of our hope, of our own; and then you can have in Aristotle, you see, the sound judgment about the existing order.

Now that's -- would be the critical attitude, gentlemen. That would be the idealistic attitude. And this would be the realistic attitude. Now in Socrates, and Plato, and Aristotle, they develop one after the other, and you can't have one without the other. Realism -- Plato -- Aristotle's realism is not your realism. What you consider a fact is a prejudiced fact. That's just common sense. That is -- as it is, cannot be judged, because you are inside of it, and you have no judgment. You have neither gone through the doubt, critical doubt, nor through the wish to have the best; you have not desired, you have not hoped, and you have not looked back and say, "How does my hope -- my criticism compare to the reality?" And therefore you cannot judge the reality with regard to its abuses and its uses. What is good and what is bad in the reality you cannot know from the inside -- would be the -- Aristotle's claim.

(What is the relationship of the way you use the word "logos" to the meaning that Aristotle uses in his -- works? Same meaning?)

The word "logos" is untranslatable. And therefore I use it in order to shock you out of your idea that you understand it -- what I'm talking about. You must first notice that you don't understand it. We have killed this, you see, by the idea of thought. Where modern -- you think that you first think, then you speak, gentlemen. This is not true. We have taught you to -- speak, and most of the words you say are repetitions of things you have heard. You have -- can add -- you can re- -- refrain from saying some- -- passing something on that you have heard. You can mod- -- modify by thinking your speech. But you can -- thinking

is not preceding speaking. You could not think if you hadn't learned to speak. Every thought is in words. Every wor- -- and if it isn't, it is hazy. And thinking is nothing but talking to oneself. It's a dialogue within oneself. It's a conversation you carry on inside of yourself. And as long as you believe that thinking is -- precedes speaking, it's look -- there's no understanding of the word "logos."

Logos in -- in the Greek tragedy is conversation, is dialogue. And for Heraclitus, the same. A logos, in -- for Heraclitus, the word "logos," the logos which dominates the world, of the word logos in the gospel of St. John is the conversation which God carries in -- on with -- -ide Himself.

Richard Wagner has said of the Ninth Symphony, of the last -- of the last movement of the Nin- -- who has heard the Ninth Symphony? Good, then we can play with this. I just read in this book on Plato that Goethe expressed his admiration in these words: "When you hear the coming-up of the melody on joy, it is as though God-Father and God-Son had talked to each other before creation, still -- before human language was created, in the depths of their divinity, so primeval is the -- this melody."

Well, gentlemen, that's the logos. The logos is conversation, creative conversation. We -- and since you ask me the question, I have to make -- that's the, as you see, sidestepping my own question. But frankly perhaps you're entitled to an answer, and perhaps it helps you others, too. Logic is the attempt to treat the logos as a part of physis. That is, what you call "logic," gentlemen, a syllogism, all the -- wonderful forms in -- who has taken a course in logic? Well, don't do it. And -- logic is the dead part of the logos. It is the repetitive part of the logos. All logical conclusions, you see, the logical things are the things that can be foretold, you see: Socra- -- all men are -- are mortals; Socrates is a man; therefore, Socrates must die. That's a typical, logical conclusion, you see. Not one of my -- lectures, gentlemen, is built this way, as you very well know. Yes, I -- but I represent the logos to you, and not the logic. And the logos is the power of the truth to reach you, gentlemen. And it is not the repetitive process by which you can prove that 2 and 2 is 4. That's logic.

Your over -- you ta- -- in this country people think that the whole mental process should be caught in the -- in the strait-jacket of logic. But logic is only the -- the di- -- dead part of the logos, that which has already been thought before and therefore now can be reproduced. Unfortunately, my logos is still alive. I am not dead, gentlemen. And you demand a dead mind. That is, in a dead mind, the logical processes can run off mechanically. You can repeat them ad infinitum. Mathematics -- lower -- arithmetic, at least, geometry are the lower parts of the logos, because they deal with dead things. Of you and to you, gentlemen, I cannot talk logically. I must take sen- -- talk sense. If I want to convince

you to -- what profession to choose, gentlemen, I must not deduce anything logical, but must make -- it must make sense to you. In which way I achieve this is left to my creative effort, and your creative listening. Obviously it's -- quite obviously it doesn't make any more sense to you, you see, when I convince you by a- -- by arithmetic, or when I convince in some other way, by a simile, by an analogy, you see, by an example. There are a thousand ways in which a man can be convinced, you see.

If you read Aristotle's Rhetoric, you find a very good display of his insight into this higher logic of eloquence. Any good speaker knows that, you see, he gains his audience in -- not by logic, but by a- -- applying to the whole man, to every mental faculty in you, in all imagination, you see, in all the emotions, everything. No, the relation of logos and logic is such, gentlemen, that for the last hundred years in -- in the western world, logic has replaced logos. Logic has replaced logos. That's the story of the last 150 years. When you read Marx, or when you read Hegel, or when you read the -- the English logicians like -- like Bradley -- Brad- -- ja, Bradley, these poor people thought that the logos was restricted to logic. But logic is only the predictable part of the logos, that which already has oc- -- been used, has occurred, you see, that which therefore can simply be repeated. And that to me is very uninteresting.

Of course, I can prove to you that 2 and 2 is 4; but I won't waste my time on this. That's for children. Logic to me is child's play. The log- - what you call "logic," gentlemen, is that element of the logos which every child can immediately apply himself to. It can -- any chi- -- any man in high school, any boy in high school can use logical rules, how to prove a point, you see. But that's not the way -- how the existence of God is proved to you, my dear ge- -- people. You -- I have to prove to you that I believe in God. How I state this, you see, I may not have to say one word. You -- just realize that I do. And I hope that makes an impression. Otherwise, I am lost. By any argument, I cannot prove the existence of God. If I try, I am a fool. Because God we call that power which is always alive, always ahead of us, never -- never repeats Himself, and therefore if I would try to prove God's existence by argument, I would condemn Him to be dead. And to belong to the past and to be just a thing. And I could talk of God then as "it." Don't you see this?

So I only obey the orders of God if I treat Him as very much more alive than you and I are. If He is more alive than you and I, I cannot prove him by logical argument, because logical argument is known argument. But He is unknown, gentlemen. Or I -- or you don't believe in God, if you don't think that God is still unknown.

It's very serious, gentlemen. The same is true about the Am- -- United

States. If you love this country, you cannot prove by argument that you must be a patriot. If you don't give the United States an unknown future, a grand future far beyond all reasoning, you cannot prove any love of country. It's -- cannot be proven. And yet, that doesn't mean that -- the less it can be proven, the more hope is there that it is alive. And that I can convey to you the beauty of this -- the potential of this country.

So -- make a distinction, and that's my answer to you, { }. First of all, logic is not logos. Logic is that part of the logos that already can be traced, retrieved, and traveled over again and again, because it is already dead. It is that part of the logos that has already been incarnate, embodied, and done with, you see. When God said, "Let there be light," gentlemen, the logos is in action. Something imaginative, a tremendous creation takes place. Today, the solar system is already on its way, getting cold -- and colder. And therefore you can now use physics for that which once came into being by the logos. Now it's there, it's embodied. Embodied things can be -- the deader they are, the more easily can they be proved, and examined by argument, and logic.

In this sense, gentlemen, this famous sentence, "Socrates is a mortal, therefore he must die," is only a half-truth, because we still speak of Socrates as very much alive in this very moment. Therefore logic says he's dead, you see. But the logos says he is not. Now what's true? Both are true, you see. As far as his physical existence goes, he had to die, you see. As far, however, as his -- as his immortal part goes, he -- has not died. Why should we talk about him -- every day, you see, all over America? That's a fact. How -- we don't deal with dead -- with dead donkeys in the same -- we don't mention a dead donkey who died 3,000 years ago. But we die -- do speak of Socrates. How did he do it? Because the syllogism of the logic, that all men are -- must die, and therefore Socrates is a man and therefore he must die, is only a half-truth. Because as carrier of our divinity, as carrier of the logos, you see, the syllogism doesn't -- isn't pertinent. It's just not true. You and I keep Socrates alive. And therefore, we deny that he's mortal.

(Sir, -- I've seen quite often that Aristotle is { } discovered the 13th country in Europe and { } with the organization of theology, that is, that his logic was found in { } was -- apply to { } best theological material that accumulated, and { } classified. Well, in -- in this sense, in the utilitarian sense, it is useful. Well, isn't that true? The theology was not dead material, really; { } but it -- it's reoriented the theological argument so that -- so that Aquinas could -- could { }.)

Oh, you -- you want to save the -- the -- the serviceability of -- of logic. Certainly, Sir, gentlemen. I think there -- as all -- everybody today praises logic,

and says, "Be logical," and he wants you to say something very stupid, then -- so I have to talk against logic as something cheap. I don't say that it isn't necessary. I don't say that it isn't useful. But I say it is cheap. It has noth- -- very little to do with philosophy in the higher sense. That you must understand, you see, because it -- only deals with the dead u- -- part of the universe. And I have -- at this moment, a defense of logic is all right with me, but it wouldn't be however in place here in this context. Ri- -- I have nothing against using logic, ob- --. We -- we shall see immediately that part of Aristotelian logic is far superior to what is called "logic" today. And I think that was useful.

So we may use this. Gentlemen, the logos that is poured out in Socrates, in Plato, and Aristotle is the living logos. In making -- one asking the skeptical question, or what you call, "critical question," the other raising the standard of the ideal, and the third making the criti- -- the judgment -- apply the criticism and the ideals to reality, you see immediately that the logos is above the individual, that this one logos disperses, as a spectrum of colors disperses the light, in these three brains, in these three geniuses, in these three great men. I think that is something to be admired. And philosophy is admiration, or it is nothing. It is astonishment. And I'm astonished that once, in the history of the human mind, in the last 10,000 years on this earth, in one century, the three possible steps of any mental process--doubt, you see; laying down the law of the highest standard; and then measuring all the facts in nature and politics by this standard--that this has once been united as one process.

To me, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle form one person. That's my trinity, my human trinity. And if you want to understand the divine Trinity, you better study this unity first in Socrates, in Plato, and Aristotle, to understand that the Trinity is not a superstition, gentlemen. It is the admirable experience of the universe, that we, poor mortals, cannot have in one -- in one moment the whole story. And -- you could think of a man, like Socrates, or Plato, or Aristotle, being all three during his lifetime. First, a critist -- you see, and then an idealist, and then a realist. But it is much more merciful, isn't it, for you and me that we have this great right now to rest on the three names. -- I think a -- a boon for us that these two -- three men were good enough to remain separate. You understand. If one man had run through the whole gamut, we wouldn't be able to recognize this.

I have a friend who is a biologist and who -- for 30 years has fought this thesis, gentlemen, that every phase of the life cycle, has to be in {the} { } by a story of the ki- -- species on this earth to be lived out by one person.

I had a discussion with one of you the other day -- who was it? -- on this topic. That anything that is in one -- in you as 5 percent or 1 percent, has to be

lived out as a whole man in some form so that you can get hold and master your own 1 percent. That what is in Kierkegaard, gentlemen, for example, is in every one of us a little bit, you see. The poor man was nailed down on his cross of being just S”ren Kierkegaard. That is, something that is a passing mood in any one of us became flesh in him as a whole person, in order that we can get hold of this 1 percent in us, you see, which otherwise would go unnoticed, you see, and just call a -- cause a ripple.

This is the great -- labyrinth, gentlemen, of -- the human solidarity. What we have as one-tenth of a pr- -- percent in our blood, you see, takes shape in one person. And the larger the -- the person lives, the greater his importance, like Van Gogh, or Gaugin, or whoever you take, anybody, Christ Himself, included, the more we can master our own destiny. You need these people around you, so that the criminal in you, and the genius in you, and the idiot in you, and the son in you, and the father in you, the brother in you, the lover in you, that they can become aware of what is in y- -- -side of you. The rascal in you.

Once you see this, gentlemen, you get -- gain a -- quite a different -- perspective in the human history. Human history is exactly a creation of species as biology, only it's service- -- made serviceable. The animals don't serve each other. We do. Every great man -- of whom -- whose name I have mentioned here, gentlemen, has something to tell you about some niche and nook in your undiscovered corner. -- You are much richer than you know. You are all sound asleep. You are -- perhaps you never wake up. Most Americans go to their grave after having traveled 70- -- and 100,000 miles, and after having eaten all the vitamins in the world, by the kilo, by the pound, and having never discovered themselves and all their own potentiality. -- But for you it's all external movement, Cadillac, or what-not. But real people, gentlemen, love these names, because these names, they are all you: Socrates, and Plato, and Aristotle are in you yourself.

And why -- why I say this is, gentlemen, that you must understand the economy of salvation, the economy of our human history is that if Socrates had al- -- also been Plato, and Plato had also been Aristotle, at one time in their life, they wouldn't affect you. There -- would be confusion. The very patience of our creator is that He creates elephants, and oxen, and lions, so that alternatingly you can be an oxen, a lion, and an elephant. But if one animal was all three, you see, the human species wouldn't benefit.

Let us have a break here.

[tape interruption]

...gentlemen, we now come to the logos in Aristotle, gentlemen. When you speak of a realist, you make the same error very easily as you do when you think that Socrates just asked silly question, "Is there a god?" like any schoolchild. Or "How are the children born?" or -- you -- you confuse question and Question. I tried to tell you that Socrates asks on a -- quite a higher plane: the meaning of any question, that's his question. Now the same is true about Aristotle's realism. And what I'm going to tell you now is the story of the so-called categories. You have heard the word "category," and you know that you -- if you put a man in a category, it's very dangerous. You categorize a man, and he is out forever, you see. He's just a controversial person. If you want to get rid here in this country of a man, you say, "He's controversial," which should be a great honor, you see, but it doesn't help him at all.

So gentlemen, what's a category? Aristotle is the father of the categorizing. He invented this term, "category," just as Plato invented the word "ideas." And perhaps you put this down: the Socratic question, the Platonic idea, and the Aristotelian category can remind you of the essential unity of this process by which there came to be first Socrates, then Plato, and then Aristotle. And that's the unity, as I told you, that I wanted to -- to make important for you. And therefore, we have still to pin down Aristotle on his return to reality. Plato and Socrates have taken man outside reality, outside the city of Athens, to be sure. Socrates dies for this, and Plato goes into the Academy, the grove -- beyond the walls, the precincts of Athens.

Aristotle now comes back to the city of man, to the cities of man, to the plants, to the animals, in a- -- in al- -- in ev- -- to the poems. And he says, "I shall now apply what I have learned from Socrates and Plato, by laying down the rule, how we have pincers to pick up reality." That's the category. The categories, gentlemen, are the ways of the mind to meet any reality. I've tried to categorize reality in my book, The Multiformity of Man. That's a categorial book. I have tried to discover that all men are either treated as duals, or as singulars, or as plurals, you see, or as infinite. -- Who has read the book, The Multiformity? Well, so I can't use it as an example for the -- most of you. But cate- -- to categorize, in Aristotle means something so simple that you may wonder what there is special.

If -- he says that if I want to deal with, let us say, a lio- -- lion, I have to ask, you see, how many--singular or plural?--and thereby already predicate what I'm asking for. That's in the -- my -- I cannot invent this. -- It's either plural or singular. Perhaps dual. But you have to fall into one of the categories. You can't leave it indefinitely. You have to ask which lions? That is, where -- African lions, Asiatic lions. You have to ask "where"? You have to ask "when?" Lions in prehistory, lions in the Christian era, lions at this moment, lions in the future.

So when-ness is a question, is a category. When-ness, you see. So the -- the quando, when, is an eternal category of the human mind. And if I want to fully understand anything, I must be able to give it its date. Without the date, the fact is not in. The where, the when, the how many, the what-action, what does it do?--and there has been a debate, and still is going on: how many of these final categories exist? Has anybody his book on Aristotle here, by any chance? There is in the preface -- in the preface a list of these categories. And you -- well, we better leave this. I think it's page 30- -- Roman xxxi, or xxvi, something -- like that. You can look in the index under "category."

No, that's the other introduction. { } are Mr. Wheelwright's { }. Do you have it? Ja, very good. Aristotle distinguishes 10 types. I -- and that has been debated. There have -- he -- later people have thrown out two of them. The first is its specific thing-ness, its essence. The third -- second thing is its quantity. The third, its quality: warm, or hot, cold, or green. Its relatedness. Where do you find it? In which connection? Lions probably in a jung- -- a jungle, or in a zoo. Its place, its time, its position of posture. That's -- has been debated, I mean. Vertical and horizontal, I mean. Such things. They may not be fundamental. What it possesses, that is, adjectives, gray line, great line, big line, you see, such things. And in what way is it active? That's the verb that goes with it: a lion roars, you see. As you know from the Midsummer Night Dream, you see. There is nothing but roaring, and it is the lion. And in what way it is being passively affected.

These are the categories, the 10 ways in which anything can be said to be. Gentlemen, this is the most ingenious return to reality. The man who is immersed by common sense and reality is not aware that he always says, "the state," but in fact he always means the plural of states. The categories are very important, gentlemen, in -- in all political doctrine, for example. In Europe, any man -- boy who goes in Europe to school, is taught something about the state. But if you go to Holland, and in Belgium, it is very wise to teach the children that there are several states in relation to each other, and Holland is only there because there is Belgium, and Belgium is only there because there is Holland. That is, the categories can teach you that a -- alleged singular is really predicated on a plural, that it is only among many states, "civilized states" as we call them, or nations today, you see, the individual nation has any standing.

Nationalism says, you see, has identified the singular of "nation" with existence. And nationalism is a lack of categorization. The world of states is one world of states, or the world of nations. And our United Nations, they are a desperate attempt to bring home to the French, and the English, and the Americans, and the Russians that they cannot judge the world from -- from their nation outward, that they have to see their nation as being inside a world of nations in the plural. This is an Aristotelian category, you see, because the word

"nation" was invented as a plural. And the singular of "nation" is quite artificial. And anybody who says, you see, that he is only part of a nation, and denies that this nation is part of the society of nations, you see, or the unity of nations, or a world of nations, is fict- -- living under a fiction, because the United States, as you well know, came into being into a world of states by a decent respect for the opinion of mankind. Therefore, the United States added only one, you see, new nation to the existing nations. That's very -- difficult logic for you. You think that any man has the right to decide whether he should treat "nation" as a singular or as a plural. Today, the whole world is in flames, because this hasn't been decided. The category of "nation" has been na‹vely, you see, sometimes been interpreted as "nations." The "Gentiles," as the Jews call it, you see, and your own nation as "Zion." And then you see what happens. Zion against the Gentiles, you see. Now every -- every church people sing about their own nation "Zion," you see. Jerusalem, the golden one, et cetera. That is, you see, we all treat our nation as the messianic kingdom. And the other nations as the Gentiles, as the { }. Very difficult practice -- dangerous practice. It has to do with the category of number -- of number 2, its quantity. If you know that the word "nation" should always be used in the plural, that's the way out, you see. Then you are safe. That's why the word "United Nations" is quite hopeful, if you learn what it means. But you have to study Aristotle in order to understand what it means.

It means that the plural, "nations," precedes logically any one-nation structure. That's why we can impose, and must impose on Libya, or on Saudi Arabia that it has a parliament, and has some human rights. Otherwise it isn't a nation. They can call themselves a nation, as long as they want, you see. But Mr. Mandaville, Saudi Arabia is not a nation to this day, and probably never will be. It will just be oil, you see, and Mr. Mandaville. But that's all. It is not a nation. And -- however, if you import into these poor people's heads the notion that they can be a notion -- a nation from the inside out, you see, without fulfilling their requirements that go with the nations of this world, you see, we get into deep -- very great trouble, as we do now with Russia, of course. Same thing. Ja?

({ } the case today, the nations or -- are actually countries, the people who live in a geographic area { } the Wahabi, the Wahabi sect of -- of Islam. Now { } most of them believe in Wahabism { } because they all have the same { }. { } Wahabi sect religion. Is that not enough to make it a nation?)

No. I do think that it -- for a civilized nation, there must be a certain degree of religious liberty. That is, if you have a state cult, it's not a nation. That's an old pagan state, you see, where the gods -- if Athens has its own temples, and you can't be an Athenian if you do not worship the gods of the city, I think it couldn't be a nation. I mean, you must allow in any modern

nation that a man cannot be forced to pray to gods that are not his own. I think there is a minimum. I resent very much that your oil company has a green flag over its camp there: "Allah is great, and Mohammed is his prophet." That's -- that's {bad dollarica}, you know. That can't be done. That's a sin, Sir. It's very serious, because you allow then as an American, who has founded the United Nations, you see, the fiction that Americans will for the dollar sell out their own Christian faith, their freedom of religion in other words, because it makes -- it's better business. The English have not done this, Sir. But only the Americans. It is terrible. It's high treason.

(And {then you would say} that Russia really wasn't a nation.)

What?

(Then you'd say that Russia wasn't really a nation.)

Oh, they say it themselves. That's why they have given up the word "Russia" in the title of USSR. They are quite aware. They fight nationalism, don't they? They certainly are not a nation. They don't want to be. They are the Soviet Republic -- of Republic, the Soviet Union of -- of -- or the Union of Soviet Republics. That's very serious with them. It -- takes some courage to drop your own country's name. The name "Russia" is not in the title of the government which Mr. Khrushchev represents. Have you never thought about that? That's a tremendous thing.

Now, the categories, gentlemen, bring us now for -- to the uni- -- question of the universals. Sin -- since Aristotle is able to judge or -- the abuse of terms by his categories, for example, when must "nation" be used in the plural, and in the singular. I recommend this to you as one of the deepest insights today. It's much better than all semantics, Sir. Somebody talked to me about semantics--who was it?--in the intermission? Ja. You see, this -- no semanticist has even grasped, that Aristotle knew much more. The -- use the same term, but tell me whether you use it, you see, as fundamentally and existentially plural or singular. The same problem is true about man. You say "man" is unequivocal. It isn't, gentlemen. If m-e-n is older than m-a-n, you see, the result would be quite different, from your individualism, where you treat Robinson Crusoe as the normal human being, you see, as all physicists and all scientists, you see, seem to do. They start with one, you see. I start with all. I say "all" {when asked} -- have solidarity. I can under- -- only understand you because you are your mother's son, and I have to include in my humanity your mother. Just because I meet you. -- I see, you see, a qualification in the use of the word "man," which the -- the -- which the man only sees the visible, what's in front of him, doesn't see. The same is true of the nations. I see that the nation is a very painful process, gen-

tlemen, under Christian- -- Christendom, in Christendom have sprung up one after the other, always talking to each other, always relating what they did to the competition of their neighbor. So I cannot explain in a Frenchman without knowing something about the British; I cannot explain the British without knowing something about the German. Shakespeare is German, a German influence in England, because German drama, I mean, made it -- German Reformation did it. And on it goes. That is, the nations are fragments of a whole, of -- of mankind. And men, the same {way}, you see.

These are the serious problems. And the categories of Aristotle allow you to discover, gentlemen, how to take your pincers and when you pick out seemingly only one leaf of a tree, you already decide whether you know that it's a part of the tree, or not. You are -- your own prejudices come clearly out. You see, you find a green leaf. You can treat it as a thing by itself, you see. But if you use the right -- the categories of Aristotle, you will find out its belonging, that it is only -- has fallen down from a tree. You can't say anything correct about this leaf if you haven't seen the tree. If you do not presuppose that's part of the tree. That's the -- true of the nations. That's true of men. If you treat men as not a part of the tree, as not an acorn from the oak, you mistreat him. That's all. And so liberalism has mistreated men by treating him as somebody who's uprooted, who has no -- who has no -- is not sitting on a branch of the human tree.

You all, gentlemen, come from a -- a century in which Aristotle has been despised. It's all a Platonic century. The natural sciences--perhaps you take this down, gentlemen--the natural sciences of the last centuries have neglected Aristotle, have despised him. In the 16th century, there was a great man, Pierre Ramus, who said that he would pay $10,000--it wasn't dollars, it was ducats, gold -- I mean, gold sovereigns--to anybody who could prove that any sentence in Aristotle was true. So dis- -- they tried to make Aristotle despicable. But Aristotle is -- for politics, that was a time when science came to the fore, and things. And Plato's ideas seemed to be all right. But Aristotle warns us against our own na‹ve use of singular and plural, for example. And most political errors, like the treatment of nation, of state, of men, are predicated on these very slight tours -- legerdemain--how do you call them? somersaults of your mind--where you do not tell us whether you have first made acquaintance with the plural or with the singular, for example.

This is -- I -- I think Aristotle's lasting greatness: the warning from his pure philosophy, that when you steep -- step back into your own reality, your own city, your own garden, your own kitchen, you have acquired tools which allow you to treat your own backyard as though it was Madagascar. Montesquieu has said he wanted to treat France as though it was as far distant as Madagascar, in his -- "Spirit of the Laws." That to this day has remained the

Aristotelian attitude, you see, that you can objectify the nearest of kin. You all try to do it in your -- and it's a great thing, but you have to learn how to do it, gentlemen. The categories of Aristotle are a doctrine, or are an inventory of the mental means of getting hold of the -- your closest part of your self, your own prejudices, and hanging, you see -- you see, so to speak, putting them in front of you, holding them out of the window, and looking at them at a distance.

(Isn't this objectifying even the things closest to you as dangerous as a Platonic idea?)

It is. It is, very much so. And that's why I'm also -- I think that -- I have always warned you against philosophy. But at this moment, I've just to tell you what philosophy is. I mean, that's what it is. It is not the whole story. I -- allow me at this moment now not to now criticize philosophy again, you see. It is certainly in one direction a tremendous achievement, you see. It isn't the whole story. It doesn't help you when you have to go to war, and -- for your country, you see, that you have objectified its prejudices.

Now gentlemen, we come to the universals. Aristotle said, "No ideas live somewhere in the sky." The sophists, which are the enemies of all three men--Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle--had said the mind can generalize at will. That is, if I have a donkey, and I have a lion, and I have a horse, I -- it is my mind that says "three animals." There are, in fact -- one is a donkey, one is a lion, and one is a--what did I say?--a horse. The word "animal" is a generalization of the human mind. That is the first universal. It says, first form of universalization, or generalization, the first ru- -- first form of universals, gentlemen, is a sophist's form. It says, "All things in reality are specific, particular. My mind generalizes," you see, "arbitrarily, at random. I can call these three animals `animals.' I can call them oddities. I can call them my property. I can call them my -- my whim, you see, or God's whim. But I cannot be forced to generalize. They have not in themselves the power to convince my mind that I must subsume them under one general- -- common denominator."

And this is the story of the common denominator again. We found that Thales of Miletus, when he said "water," was inventing the common denominator. Now we are with Aristotle, and the sophists, and Socrates, and Plato faced with the fact: What is a common denominator? When do I have to -- form a common denominator? And when I can leave it. The sophists say, "You can always leave it. It's perfectly arbitrary."

This first rule of universal is, gentlemen, that the universals come by the mind after the fact. The Latin word is "post rem." They come after the facts are in; then I do as I please. And after the facts. Latin, "post rem." That is the sophis-

try. That would show you, you see, that you can do as you please. You say, "Here is a -- hu- -- here are 65 men. That I call them human beings is just a kind compliment I pay you. I don't have to mean it. I can't prove it. You can't prove it. You can't demand that I call you humans, you see. You have no right -- no human rights, because you are just { }. And you are nothing else. You are just specific, you see." And therefore you have absolutely no claim to be treated as a part of a common denominator. The common denominator is the mind's arbitrary decision. And everybody ha- -- can make a different decision. I can call you, you see, "a New Yorker." Or I can call you "an American." I can call you "a Dartmouth student." And I can -- alternate at random, and you cannot derive any claim from my statement so that I should be, you see, bound by it. Because you say, "But you called me a Dartmouth student. Now I -- you have to treat me as a Dartmouth student."

"Oh," I said. "I'll just treat you, you see, as a New Yorker. And of course, as a New Yorker, you have no claim to any decent treatment."

Gentlemen, Plato said this, and said, "This is not true -- cannot be true. Sophistry is so terrible, so arbitrary, so unjust. The just man, after what Socrates has asked into us," so to speak, has -- "by his inquiries made certain, must be for the good of the city. The good of the city must be eternal, it must be lasting. Therefore, my statements about what is right and wrong, and how I should call you, if you are an Athenian citizen and a human being, must be predicated from time immemorial. The world has its eternal laws of order."

And therefore, the idea of Plato, gentlemen, the general, the universal, the common denominator, that man must be good in order to be a man, in the true sense of the word, you see, that means that the idea is earlier than the facts. First, we know what a man is. The common denominator, gentlemen, precedes the particular. Before a child is born, the parents already know that if a child is born, he has to be treated as a citizen of the divine kingdom. And therefore, the idealist says, gentlemen, that we already know before any particular happens, how the particular should be treated. It's the very opposite from the sophists.

Now gentlemen, that's very tempting. All idealism, gentlemen, says that the facts do not alter the rules, that the common denominator is already known. Before any child is born, before any mountain is discovered, we already know what a mountain is. And therefore, the rule -- the second form is, of the universals, the Platonic form, put this down: sophistry, or skepticism, or nihilism. Sophistry: the universals are arbitrary performances of the human mind after the facts are in. Idealism: the universals are necessary before the facts are in. The true, the good, and the beautiful, are always there. And that a man must be just, you see, we can tell him before he's even born. We can call him therefore, you

see, "the just," so to speak. To encourage him, to fulfill his own idea of himself. All our name-giving is idealistic, you see. If you call yourself "Paul" and "Peter," we hope that the vestige of Paul and Peter will appear in your own -- in your own personality.

So we are all Platonists when it comes to the people we love. Because you give your sweetheart of course that name which you hope is truer than she now is. She must become "Honey" if she isn't yet honey.

So gentlemen, the -- the -- the great temptation to say that the second form of the universals is the Platonic form, which is stated in -- simply: the universal precedes the individual, the particular. It precedes it. It is eternally there. Man is man -- the type -- arche- -- Mr. Jung, Carl Jung -- you have probably heard of him -- more -- heard more of psychoanalysis than of anything else in your life, and it's the only field perhaps where you are -- have noticeable information. And so it may help you that Mr. Jung is -- is an -- Platonist -- because of his archetypes, he has the -- the idea that we all run through certain archetypes in our development. I think it's a gross exaggeration, but it is the Platonic idea, that the mold of youth, and childhood, and -- and adolescence, you see, that this is all there expecting us. And we simply, like liquid metal, run through these molds, and cannot help it. We -- if we don't, we are hurt.

Gentlemen, Aristotle gave the third form of the universal. He said that while I recognize the city of Athens as a city -- as a city, I make two experiences: one of a general, and one of a specific nature. I study inside my experience of the city of Athens something general, what a city is; and something specific, what this damn city is, which is dirty, and corrupt, et cetera. And he says, "The general and the specific are like a fork, or like a bifurcation of my experience of reality. I carry into my experience of the city of Athens these pliers, or these -- this fork, by which I mark off what strikes me there as the lasting and that what strikes me as the transient. Or the accidental and the necessary." Or however you call it.

And therefore, the third form, gentlemen, of the universals is: the universals are contemporary with the facts. Our mind applies in itself in order to live at all, to get going, in this twofold manner, that it gives some attention to the particular, and some attention to the general. That's called the universals "in re," in Latin. If you now see the -- the argument, there are three ways of dealing with an experience, gentlemen, of -- with -- with what you have to categorize in order to know that you live in any real world. You can say that I have my universal ideas before the facts. That's "universalia ante rem," before the thing. Aristotle says you have the universals while you are observing -- in the thing, contemporaneous with the thing. And the sophist would say, or the skeptic, the modern

thinker of the last 300 years has -- all been sophists, all the natural scientists, they say, "It's arbitrary. I call this a class. I call this a species. I call this a specimen. I call this a family."

And let me end with the great story which happened here in Dartmouth College some time ago. The sophists say, "Universalia post rem," which means that they come after the -- this world of individual things is around us, we go out and label as we please. It's just a label. I have heard people say, "This which I arbitrarily call God." This which I arbitrarily call -- call God. He even wrote it down, this man. He had unlearned to blush. And -- he should at least have used red ink for this sentence. And it's a great sentence written by a Dartmouth student. It really predicates the end of civilization. "Which I arbitrarily call God." That can be written down in this college, and nothing happens. Not -- the earth, however, gentlemen, shakes when such a thing is said. Because he treats even the es- -- "{essence} realissimum," the one great reality of all men and all times as something that he arbitrarily calls God -- that is sophistry. That is universalia post rem, you see. "It itches me, I call it arbitrarily God."

And mon- -- many Americans do not even know that they are counted out of the realm of living speech if they ever say such a thing in earnestness, because obviously, gentlemen, the name of God can only be used in dire necessity, if you have to. Otherwise it's blasphemy. That's what the Second Commandment says in the Bible, that you can abuse the name of God. Now if you say "arbitrarily God," you have -- not only said that you have abused the name, the serious name of God, but that the name of God, it's always an abuse to use it. "Which I arbitrarily call God" means, you see, that "God" is always an abuse of human language, the name of God. That's really the limit. I mean, the -- the author of the Ten Commandments didn't think that this could ever happen. Otherwise he would have probably said something to that { }. It is remarkable. This man is dead. He can no longer be helped. I would count out this man for any creative or any important purpose in life.

You see, an atheist is a great man. He fights God. He takes him seriously. But this man who says, "What I arbitrarily call God" cannot be him -- helped, because he hasn't learned English. He cannot speak anymore. He has curtailed his -- the dimension of his speech, by one whole third, by the whole third of the logos, because the logos is the power to say something unheard-of, gentlemen, to say something new, with necessity, because it is true. And if I say that the power of the logos, God, you see, is arbitrarily introduced by me, I'm no longer bowing to the spirit that moves man to discover the truth.

So the -- I only mention this to show you it is a very practical question, gentlemen. In the year of the Lord 1956, Aristotle's problem of the universal is

suddenly the foremost problem of all modern philosophy. After having been dismissed as -- as indifferent, as insoluble, as uninteresting for the last 200 years, 250 years, even, suddenly the problem of the universals has become the burning question of botany, of biology, of psychology, of -- as I told you, psychoanalysis, of Mr. Jung, you see: Is what we live, and what we think necessary? And are the terms which we use necessary? Or are they arbitrary? Do I have to call you a human being, gentlemen, or can I deny that you are a human being? That's by and large involved in this. Do I, by approaching you, have at the same time, in other words, gentlemen, to have religion? Can I deal with anything in the universe without obeying a higher authority which compels me to acknowledge where you belong?

If I only meet John Smith, and limit myself, in never saying what I mean by "John Smith," that I mean a member of the family of mankind, that is -- would be the modern, matter-of-fact way. John Smith? No commitment. You -- know very well that when I speak of "John Smith," I already say that he must be a -- has an Anglo-Saxon name. He probably belongs to the British commonwealth, or he is a citizen of the United States, because the name is given him within a linguistic area, in which, you see, there must be nations who -- who give the -- him citizenship. And of course it intimidates me, the -- the American consul may come down on me if I slap this man in the face. So John Smith acquires immediately with his name, status. He belongs to a common denominator either of Britain, or of America, or of white men, or of Western men, or something.

Therefore, gentlemen, whenever I open my mouth and predicate an individual fact, whether it's an act or whether it's a fact, it's a thing or a process, it makes no difference, John Smith or the World War, the -- Aristotle says, "I have to apply myself," as the Bible calls it, "with my whole heart, my mind, and all my powers, to place this man in the realm of the divine order." That is, "I cannot speak of any little fragment in the universe without giving away my conviction of the appropriate order of the whole." To speak, you see, means therefore to re- -- make a confession of faith. It is always an act of faith that I say of anything in this world how I'll treat it. Because by naming it, I already treat it. You see, I give it already this place in the universe. I cannot help it.

The sophist says, "Oh no. I take this little thing, and I am -- I'm absolutely noncommittal about all the rest of my convictions. You can never know what I think about anything else." That's sophistry. That's what you would like to do. You hope to get away, gentlemen, by never saying anything about your religion. That's not true, gentlemen. You open your mouth, and that's your creed. Because you cannot speak of a man without already making him -- or me, the onlooker, feel what you think of mankind in general. Where they belong. Are they children of God? Children of the devil? Atoms of nature? You cannot help

expressing this right away.

Therefore, the problem of the universals today, gentlemen, the Aristotelian problem, is the -- today the problem of the peace in -- in the world. If people must, when they speak, take down their visor and show their face, then we can speak to each other. If, however, they all live on Madison Avenue, and only think that the buyer must show his face, but the advertising man does not have to, then we live in a jungle and not in a civilized society.

And so the problem of universals is now returning. Aristotle gave it its -- its final twist. He showed the three possibilities. The sophist, the Platonic, or his own. And you can't get out of this. When you speak, gentlemen, you decide over all your common denominators. And your common denominators are your religion.

Thank you.