Transcript

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

(Philosophy 10, May 18th, 1949.)

[tape interruption]

...which we have -- of which you have heard as a myth in the Old Testament, perhaps, that man has eaten from the tree of knowledge, after all, is not at all a myth. But you all try to bear the fruits of this tree of knowledge. You are inside yourself, as far as you are a mental being, some organic being, a plant. What is missing at this moment in your own consciousness is that you are yourself an organic substance, a tree that bears fruit in and out of season. That's the content of the first Psalm, that a man shall be planted like a tree standing at the rivers of water, bearing fruit day and night, and talking the law of the Lord. That's not myth, gentlemen.

The discovery of the third cycle, of the non-academic and of the nonscholastic sciences, obviously will be the question of the creative and organic forces of the human mind. Not his conscience, gentlemen, and not his consciousness; not chapel, and not laboratory -- but the attempt of bearing fruit. A teacher, gentlemen, a ruler, and a man who can have heirs is a fruitful person. His thought bears fruit in others.

The first four attempts, gentlemen, of the Middle Age- -- medieval cycle, of the season of theology and law is to prune man's mind, to prune it, so that those four tenets which I dictated you last time will be assured: that man will, as a scientist, love in all other min- -- minds -- his brother--this brotherhood of the scientist; that he will only think what is beneficial for society, that society can progress, that all what this brotherhood of scientists thinks will benefit everybody; and Number 4, that everybody will look up to the scientist as his authority. Will, that is, bear with the scientist, although the scientific truth is inconvenient, and doesn't flatter the mob.

We -- I tried to show you that the scientist has gone haywire today, because he -- they have stripped themselves of the connection with these four dogmatic truths. And at this moment, gentlemen, in 1949, your problem is -- your whole generation's problem is to be very clear on the dogma which underlies the existence of science. The dogmas that underlie the existence of science have nothing to do with the content of science. Dogma, gentlemen, is that which enables man to know. It is the pruning process under which the tree of life is not leading you to using it for mutual destruction. I -- to give you a small example, gentlemen, that science needs dogma. In 1650 in Paris, there was a real epidemics of poisoning. All -- in all families, there were a tremendous fear -- it was a tremendous fear that any member, any day might be poisoned, because people had discovered arsenic. You know Arsenic and Lace. And with arsenic, you can, with a very small dose--as with strychnine--you can eliminate a person and no trace is easily found. Just a tiny bit of -- of arsenic.

So in 1650, there was still a struggle in Europe, or in the world, between the private knowledge of poison and its scientific use, as we have it today with the pharmacopist and the drugstore, where you have to have a prescription before you can get arsenic, you see, and where the doctor certifies that it will only do good, and no harm.

You overlook all these con- -- the connotations, all the implications of science, completely. You think everybody wants to know. No, gentlemen. The dogma underlying the knowledge of poison is that nobody who can handle poison will abuse it for his private prof- -- private benefit. In 1650, however, in Paris, they did poison the man who stood between his rich uncle, and his own -- becoming the heir of this man, you see. If you had an older cousin who was closer to the uncle, you just gave him arsenic, and you got the money.

Well, you laugh about -- of these things, gentlemen, but here you come to those unwritten, and yet central, dogmas of any society, gentlemen: knowledge, devoid of charity and love, is poison. Knowledge, devoid of charity and love, is poison. And the example of arsenic is a very simple example. You can enlarge it on anything. Take a doctor who suddenly comes to a patient -- the patient in good faith tells him all his secrets about his -- his past, that he had a venereal disease. And the doctor goes and tells anybody in the next club that this man had syphilis. And he just is an out- -- becomes an outcast of society. He's indiscreet, the doctor. How can such a -- I take a very mild case of indiscretion. I don't even take the case where the doctor says, "I'm just experimenting now, and I want to find out about this illness that we give this man some drug. It may kill him, you see, but I learn something." That's a stronger case. Of this you hear very often.

But don't you know that any secret you entrust a scientist with is power in his hands, if it is devoid of respect for your personality, and your rights? Unless, gentlemen, charity rules the use of knowledge, the tree of life is not pruned.

That's very serious, gentlemen, chapel prunes the tree of knowledge. The four dogmas, gentlemen, which underlie science are unrelentingly and inexorably conditions of the people -- for the people of any country to support science. Gentlemen, the masses today will not support science if they are not sure that the science is applied to -- for their own benefit. And they will very soon--you see it already--the masses are indifferent to truth. We all are indifferent to truth. At a Dartmouth football game, when you are a mob howling -- you are indifferent to truth. You hit the umpire, if he tells the truth. It takes education; it takes sportsmanship; it takes tremendous renunciation and discipline not to hit the umpire.

You should know this, gentlemen. Yet, as you well know, gentlemen, today's -- the sad state of affairs in the world is that the scientist sneers at dogma. And -- that he says, "We" -- "I am without dogma. I am without prejudice. I am only finding out facts." Nonsense! That's the greatest lie. The condition of science is dogmatic, pre-existing; before there can be any organized science, the scientists all must have renounced their egotism.

Dogma, gentlemen, conditions science, because through dogma, and I -- again--you have it all written down, I understand, these four tenets of last time. Has everybody gotten this? Who hasn't? These four tenets, gentlemen, you simply believe. But if I say that there is gospel truth in them, you say, "No. Science is undogmatic." Science is the most dogmatically prejudiced thing in the world. All knowledge, gentlemen, wants to know whether the man who receives this knowledge, who is an apprentice in physics, who is a -- a Guggenheim Fellow, whether he follows the laws under which science is universal. And the law under which any knowledge can become universal are very severe. He must share his knowledge with all others who want to have it. He must enjoy the respect of the community for which he has it, because otherwise, it doesn't help anybody, you see, if he is not hol- -- held in respect, because they won't listen. They won't read his -- his monograph. And it must be in the direction of the destiny of man. It must have direction. And it must not exclude anybody "regardless of color, race, or creed," from the benefit of this knowledge.

This is dogmatic truth. And gentlemen, what does dogma? The dogma makes its believer out of a poor, isolated individual into that "I," ego, under whose name scientific progress can be registered.

It is -- there is a complete confusion today, gentlemen, in this cycle from Paracelsus and Vesalius, down to the man in the street today who says, "I know all about mathematics, and mathematics -- what isn't mathematical isn't true." This poor idiot down here says also, "I know." The educated Dartmouth boy also says, "I know." Mr. Einstein says, "I know." And Mr. Paracelsus says, "I know." But if you look at the "I," gentlemen, each time, you will discover a remarkable distinction. It isn't the same person in idea and commonplace who does the talking. The "I," gentlemen, who -- in the founder, the George Washington who says, "I am an American," was risking his life. He could have -- if had the things gotten wrong, and he had been captured by the English, he would have been executed for high treason. There was no war. It was just a rebellion. See?

So gentlemen, the founder of an idea, of a new idea is always sticking his neck out, and his head can be chopped off. In other words, gentlemen, this "I" talks and speaks at the risk of his life.

On the second stage, gentlemen, when Mr. Einstein says something, or Mr. Planck, or Mr. Condon, or Mr. Comstock, or Mr. -- Ru- -- Rutherford, they s- -- talked at the risk of their reputation. They talk at the risk of their -- reputation. If they are not -- saying something which they haven't observed, which their research really doesn't warrant, you see, they are not losing their life, but they are losing their career. They are losing their reputation. That's the second risk. This "I" then is still under duress, under pressure. The atmospheric pressure is less.

When you are a Dartmouth graduate, gentlemen, and you say that you have such-and-such a conviction, people will say, "He is an educated man. He ought to know." So there you risk your class. You risk your edu- -- your -- your reputation--not as a scientist, not your career--but you risk your background, your background obliges you to a certain extent, and will cast you out, if you become a quack, or a liar, or a slanderer, because a -- gentleman just doesn't slander, and doesn't lie. If you come to the commonplace man, gentlemen, his "I" is the mass. Irresponsible. I say this; he says this; she says this; and what she says, goes.

So gentlemen, the atmospheric pressure on the "I" decreases here in geometrical progression. The "I" who speaks on the Cross, "My God -- hast thou forsa- ..."

[tape interruption]

...only people who are -- whose knowledge is so pruned, so ennobled, so cultivated that they will bear the brunt of slander, of false appearances, of misunderstanding.

Gentlemen, I once printed a sentence which had a fam- -- a funny echo. I printed the sentence, "A man who has never been misunderstood has never said anything important." Perhaps must take this down. A man who has never been misunderstood has never said anything important. I got a reply from Chicago that if I could convince any American that this was true, I really was a great man.

That's the difference between your generation and the story of science in the last 800 years. You are outside this cycle, because you believe in two things. First, that everybody has the same personality, the same "I"-ness, the same ego -- ego -- which is not true, because the degree of -- in which you are "I" depends on your -- the pressure, the atmospheric pressure on your speech. If you have to say something against all odds, you are, as a fish immersed in the water. If you are a mass man buying a book, Mathematics for the Million, you are like a fish out of water. You don't swim. You just look at things. You don't count. The man -- the mass man, gentlemen, doesn't count for history. He can smash things. He can destroy things. But what he says is just so much hot air.

Most of us spend 23 hours a day in hot air. Very rarely are we in the element in which we swim. The same surgeon, gentlemen, who is "I" when he makes a -- performs this operation and who says under this operation, "I did it," when he comes home and talks about socialized medicine, he's perfectly irresponsible. You see, he just talks through his hat, as we say.

It is very difficult for you to understand, gentlemen, that we all are only at our best in our work. The modern fiction is, gentlemen, that man at leisure is better than man at work. That's the opposite, however, observable by everybody. You are best in danger. You are second-best at work. You are third-best in -- in -- with friends. And you are fourth-best alone, without anything to do. That's terrible. You are just like a fish out of water. You then take to the whiskey bottle, or to girl- -- women, or to anything, just because you can't stand to be out of context, out of life. It's terrible.

So gentlemen -- ja? The ego which enters science must be prepared for the four tenets that he shall only say and sign with his name that which he is willing to share with every scientist; that which he wants to be benefited -- to benefit with every human being; that which commands the respect can in the end command the respect of the mob, you see; and that which is in the direction of the history of mankind. These are four terribly dogmatic standards {to perform}, you see. Before, you cannot really say "I," because it isn't worth it.

Therefore, Jesus, as you know, escaped many occasions of saying "I," and just ran away from danger, because He hadn't found the situation in which people really could respect His statement as coming from His full person. When He decided to say, "I am the Messiah," He was. But before, you can't talk about it in a -- in a parlor, you see, at a cocktail party. So when he was invited and sat with the sinners, and dined and wined, He contained Himself. He didn't say these important things, you see, because there was no risk involved. You don't say serious things in unseemly situations. It makes no sense.

You must always think, gentlemen, that Jesus begins in the childish situation of the -- of the man on the street, carpenter, commonplace, child in the cradle, son of -- of Joseph and Mary. And therefore has to build up for Himself the founder situation in which people realize that He talks at the full risk of His reputation, His life, His friends, everything. As long as He hasn't reached this position of Number 1 here--you remember we put all this -- His {cycle} { }--He wouldn't do this.

Why do I say all this, gentlemen? To emphasize once more the connection between science and religion. Science is based on dogmatic truth. The fifth dogma, gentlemen, on which all science is based is very simple, and it's always overlooked. Every scientist works under the command, or the imperative, or the ethics of "Let there be science. Science itself is good." That's a dogma. I -- can hardly understand that you are so prone to believe it. There has been whole civilizations who said, "Science is wicked; we shouldn't know so much." In the Old Testament, there is a very wise statement, gentlemen, which is dearly needed for us today, where it says, "Don't have statistics. Statistics destroy the future of Israel. And the king who made a census -- took a census is punished by God."

Now I think it is high time that we in this country wake up to this truth, that to take a census of everything is to destroy this thing, the growth of the thing. Census and statistics have their limitations, gentlemen. You must not take statistics on "Whom do you love more, you father or your mother?" and then work it out with the punch -- machinery -- machine, how many people love their father more and how many love their mother more.

Why is that wrong, gentlemen? Why is this question--which is a quite notorious question, asked in many -- in many departments today, an innocent student--why this question wrong? Can you tell me? {Metz}. We have talked about this before.

({ }.)

({ }.)

Ja. Well, it isn't quite -- people will say, "This isn't experimenting-with; it's just a question." Yes?

(Well, you can't break the family into two parts, father and mother, and { }.)

Yes, you remember the {unio prolium}, of which we talked, in the Middle Ages, the union of the {proles}, of the offspring in the medieval marriage. You remember? In matrimony, where the children of -- from three different wives would have the same economic status? This question does away with any possibility of even having parents. Because the essence of parents, gentlemen, is that it is one flesh with two heads, but one heart. They were one heart and one soul: that's the condition of any marriage. And any child that receives orders from his father or his mother must take them as orders coming from his parents, or he has no parents.

As soon as therefore you say, "Whom do you love more, your father and your mother?" you have broken the marriage of your parents. You have committed adultery. Funny, that children can do it, but they do today. They are even invited by the Freudian analysts to commit adultery. They break the marriage of their parents. This question is an adulterous question. Ja. It leads to the breaking of the marriage of the parents in the heart of the chil- -- child. Now since the child lives with the parents, that's the beginning of a rift between the parents, too, because if the child divides, the parents are divided, too.

This is an action, gentlemen: statistics do something to the world. They -- they enumerate. This is what you ought to know, gentlemen. Census-taking is an action in politics. It is nothing, what you call scientific. It's unpruned science. It's curiosity. It's wicked.

Gentlemen, in natural science in Europe--not in this country, which is behind 30 years in natural science, I'm afraid to say, in biology--in biology everybody in Europe knows that any observation of any living body, plant or animal, changes the observed creature. Observation itself, that I see you does something to you. Why shouldn't it? These are rays going out between my eyes and you. How can you for one moment think that it doesn't change? Even if you only isolate the thing so that I can see it under the microscope, I have changed the object. It is a different thing. Well, if you go into -- to our poor zoos where we have these wild animals, and we say, "We look at a lion," do you see a lion in a zoo? You don't. That's not a lion, you see. It has been a lion. It's a dying lion, you see. It's not a live lion.

Can you see this? No, you can't. And that's your blindness, gentlemen. You are thinking not in wholes, but you are thinking in particles; you are thinking in atoms. You really believe that God created lion, but God created creation, gentlemen, in which lion is one stream, and man is another, and water is another, and trees are a third. If you deviate the course of this lion into the zoo, he has ceased to be that which God created him for. He has missed his destiny.

So gentlemen, the lion as failure, you can observe in the zoo. But not the lion as God wanted him. It is a different lion. And as long as you haven't understood this, gentlemen, all what I have said hasn't penetrated. Because what I have tried to teach you here is that thinking itself does something to the things thought. The circulation of thought, gentlemen, means that you take sides. If you listen to somebody, you make him into your father. If you read a book, you make the thing you read about into the world. If you play, you make the world into a plaything. If you doubt, you make it into something you war against. If you suffer, you make it into something you accept. If you rule, you make it into something you love.

Every mental act, gentlemen, does something to the thing acted upon. To think means to do something in the world, and something very radical. The child that's -- is asked, "Whom do you love more, your mother or your father?" does something to his father and mother if he allows this question really to enter his mind -- its mind. He shouldn't. He should answer, "I won't answer this question."

I had a -- one valedictorian of this college send back the questions, and I -- he wouldn't answer it. Which is right.

So gentlemen, at this moment, there are these two confusions. First, that any question shall be answered. Half of the questions you are asked today you must not answer. They are obscene questions. And second, that the "I" that answers all these questions is the same if it is a scientist, or a mob, or a -- a bored individual at leisure, or a man who has his reputation at stake, or an inventor who comes with something new out for the first time and everybody says, "He's a fool. Put -- let's put him into insan- -- an in- -- insane asylum."

Ego is in confusion today, gentlemen, and thought. They -- you don't know that to ask something is already dogmatically only permissible if by the question, you don't destroy growth, you don't destroy the tenets of science. And tenets of science are that you must hold the respect of the lower for the higher, the mob for the scientist. You must hold the solidarity of the human race. You must hold line with the direction of science. And you must hold to the truth that it is good to know. It is better to know than not to know. How can you, however, say it is good to know if you aren't quite sure that this knowledge is not destructive, you see? You cannot hold to this great imperative, "Let there be science," gentlemen, if you have not the other imperative, "Let this science fulfill its task in the history of mankind." Can you see the connection? Is this perfectly clear or not? Science is either, in its proper place, gentlemen, or it cannot be tolerated.

This all, gentlemen, has been developed in the Middle Ages, before 1500. The -- from 1100 to 1500, gentlemen, we have the exploration of the foundations of all knowledge, the conditions under which knowledge can be universal, and can be followed. The medieval mind, gentlemen, from 11- to 1500, developed the intricacies of these four tenets which I have dictated to you. And in 1500, it was written out for the second cycle: "Let there be science." That the -- this sentence, "Let there be science," gentlemen, is, so to speak, surrounded with its four conditions. In other words, gentlemen, the -- the new sentence of the Renaissance, from 1500, under which you naively live--you think science is go- -- good thing--is conditioned un- -- on -- by these four tenets.

In other words, gentlemen, science is an activity inside the Christian era. It is a -- an activity which can only go on within the tradition of Christianity. Because only in Christianity is the complete solidarity of all men, you see, the underground. It's the basis of all processes of any undertaking.

Also this interplay, gentlemen, between laity and clergy. Today this is forgotten, gentlemen, but you can see that the scientist still naively believes that the uneducated person will look up to him. Now you just go with a truck driver through New Hampshire -- for -- for -- and -- for some ride. And you will see that this is fast disappearing. The mob has no respect for colleges or universities in this country. They hate it. They make better money, too. And they say, "Why should we be hampered or restrained by any such things?" You naively still live on the faith that everybody in the land loves science, you see. You will be much surprised. The witch-hunting today is a -- a way of turning against any intellectual activity which -- which makes people different from anyb- -- everybody else.

A friend of mine traveled on such a truck { }--that's why I'm quoting this--from Manchester here to -- to Hanover. And he came into my room, pale, and said, "For the first time, I've met with a real mass man." An adherent of Mr. Curley. And -- oh, if these people, as they feel now after the Truman election, say, "We can do without the intelligentsia, because all the educated people, you see, never -- thought that Truman never could be elected," the intellectuals are counted out. Not only the Republicans, but all the people in the higher brackets of -- you see, of the intellect. And these people there, they just coerce science. Look at this howl that went up because this man got a scholarship for studying physics, the other day, you remember? Just studying -- physics, because he said he was a Communist. The mass just says -- goes into a -- the worst kind of inquisition. They say, "No science," you see. They -- they'll -- you see, every tenet is -- is there -- is there destroyed. This man will go into production of atom -- of -- of -- atomic fission, you see. He just wants to study theoretically. So the -- the mob turned against him and said, "No solidarity of all people," you see. "Not everybody can know." Making science into a secret thing again, with which you poison your neighbor. And no respect for the scientific process, as something that would in itself ennoble the spirit and thereby lift this man probably above partisanship, you see.

Every -- every tenet of these four tenets today is certainly abandoned in this country. Within five minutes it has happened. Everything has happened with -- with such rapidity, that I have to warn you, gentlemen: we could know that this was happening in Europe for a long time; you have lived in a -- very naively in the faith of your forefathers in 1870 with the optimism that everything was going fine. Going to the best. But we saw what the arrogance of the scientist did to the people. In -- in Europe, there is a hatred of all the ethical premises of science, because they are nihilists. They are atheists. They really think that science is power.

I lost my job as the founder of the Academy of Labor in -- in Frankfurt on this very real tenet. I had to educate labor leaders with a university education. It was a new experiment. And I said, "Knowledge is given under these conditions." The labor le- -- the Marxian man however said, from their point, quite rightly, "Knowledge is power; science is power. And we want to give our labor leaders power," you see.

And I said, "I'm not interested in power. The mind has an ennobling quality, you see, but I don't care whether it gives them power."

They didn't understand this, of course. And so there was a real issue for one year--there was tremendous struggle on--on this very real distinction, you see, between a science that is pruned and a science that is private. You have to choose, gentlemen, between science as power against which all societies and all peoples must rebel. If science is power, then everybody will say, "Why should you get the power?" you see. "You -- I make you more powerful than myself. I weaken myself."

That's what happens today when you give your children into the hands of experts. Here, five mothers in New York, in a suburb, got together and had a kindergarten--or seven mothers; I don't know the number--and took turns and educated in this kindergarten the nursery their children twice a week. And they were very happy.

But one of them read psychology. So they invited an expert, and the expert scolded these mothers, and gave them a terrible rubbing, and said -- drubbing, and said, "You have to hire a trained psychologist for this kindergarten, because a mother is either partisan to her children, or she's partisan to the other children. Only the psychologist can be objective."

And these dear mothers, with tears in their eyes, hired an expert, they wasted their money, enslaved their children, objectified these poor guinea pigs, and gave them to a psychologist--I don't know who she was; either she was a normal person, then she was partisan, because every human being likes some people more than others; or if she was objective, to hell with her, you see. She shouldn't have been in a nur- -- in a kindergarten. And they believed it, too. That's so incredible. These poor mothers, against what they had achieved, this was running very smoothly. They sit at home now, and took a secretarial job, or something else equally silly, or typed, instead of educating their children, because somebody had wanted power.

What did the psychology want? Power. Nothing else. Of course, psychoanalysts today, psychologists, sociologists all want power. They want an important place in society. The army at this moment is beleaguered by these -- by these people. They want power. They tell them they can do things which the officers can't do. In every administration, any factory, beleaguered by these -- by these people, and they say, "Give us an office," you see. "Pay us well. Power. Power." They never ask, "Couldn't the thing be done by the normally by -- by anybody?" you see. A good doctor makes himself superfluous. A good teacher -- I tell you, gentlemen, frankly: your parents should teach you what I tell you. It's a pity that I have to teach you this. You listen to me much less avidly, but your parents just don't do it, so I'm only substituting for your parents. But I know that it would be a much healthier society if I hadn't to teach {the students}.

That is, gentlemen, a decent man in the circulation of thought always tries to make himself superfluous. A good scientist is a man who says, "It would be better if everybody knew." Then we wouldn't have to have an expert. And an indecent scientist will always say, "Only I know. You don't. You have to hire me." There you get to -- back to the four tenets. You see, this is a flow -- a constant flow. Any good scientist says, "Well, I'm sorry. Really, you all should know." And so he shouts from the hilltops, "This is true!" and makes everybody, you see, acquainted with it as fast as possible. But the power seeker says, "You can't know. You have to hire me, you see. It's a secret. It's a -- takes expert knowledge."

In every one of you and me, gentlemen, there is this constant battle between devil and God, the angel and the demon. Every one of us wants to hold onto his truth and say, "Nobody else knows." And the better part in us says, "Everybody should know." Can you see this?

Gentlemen, the -- the clear division between the wrong scientist and the right scientist is always very easily found out. If the scientist says, "I should make myself superfluous," he is in the right direction, you see. If he says, "I am -- I shall remain indispensable; we want to have a society run by experts," look -- watch out. He has not the right relation to his own truth. He thinks he has this truth; it's his property, you see. Whereas real science, gentlemen, says, "I'm only starting the circulation of thought through society." Yes? Now we come to the last renewal, gentlemen, of the concept of ego. That ego can say "ego," or "I," which knows that he is only one moment in the -- one phase in the circulation of thought. The painter who creates a new {taste} in his picture, and says, "{Pinxit -- pinxi}; I have painted it," you see, wants you to enjoy it not only, but to share his views, to get his eyes. Fifty years later, everybody will see the blue of Picasso, which { } painted there in the picture yesterday in the exhibition. Today it is still a rare thing to see a person in blue. Have you seen the picture? Well, you'd better go to the exhibition.

And -- in other words, gentlemen, the ego which is sanctified by the scientific and the artistic achievement is the ego which wants to be a link in the -- or a -- the eye of the needle--or how do you call the point in the -- in the -- where the sand runs down? you have this -- the hourglass -- in the hourglass, you see. "I" is a necessary evil. All "I's," when they speak, when they think, when they doubt, when they suffer, when they rule, when they teach, when they play, they all know that the sins have just come upon them, you see, because nobody else does it. That it should -- would be better if you could distribute the load on everybody. "I" is always sanctified when it takes itself as a temporary state in the circulation of thought. It must go on from "I" to "we."

So gentlemen, that's why the mass man's "I" is no "I." He wants to have it all, forever. He has property. He's a taxpayer. He has it all deeded to him. He has it. He owns it, you see. "My idea." The scientist, however, is only that man who says, "At this moment, I am the first to say it," you see. "Then I want some to know, and then they must carry it on that many can know it, and then all." You see the difference between this "I"?

"I" is within context, gentlemen. The moral "I" is an "I" that sighs and suffers under its necessity of saying, "I." It says it reluctantly. It says it only because nobody else will say it. The ego then, gentlemen, is not an egotist to --. If the artist says, "I," and th- -- when Jesus says, "But I tell you," He says it in an emergency, because the old Israel is dead, and the new Church has to be founded, and in His generation, He is the only one who says it. So He becomes the seed. Gentlemen, the ego is the fruit of the old, and the seed of the new. And it takes the form of the "I" in the same sense in which a seed is between an old apple tree and the next apple tree.

Can you see this? Therefore, gentlemen, that hardest part of us, the ego, is the most organic; it's the most fruit-bearing. If you really are only using the term "ego," you see, when you represent the truth in its met- -- transformation, in its moment where nobody else will say it, you are in the great stream of -- you see, of before and after. You represent only this moment in which the truth is only vested in you. But the condition of its being vested in you is that before it was -- belonged to many, and afterwards it belongs to many.

The ego then, gentlemen, is always a social phenomenon. Ego in science is not somebody, as an individual, cut off from the rest of society. Ego is -- quite to the contrary, the most implanted, the most rooted person. He is not an intellectual as they -- call themselves in -- in New York, now. An intellectual and a scientist are as far apart, gentlemen, as a louse is from a cornfield.

Never become intellectuals, gentlemen, but become egos who, in an emergency in your city or so, say what nobody else wants to say, you see. But say, "I have to tell you that you are corrupt." That's not intellectual, you see, but that is taking upon yourself in a personal expression, you see, what before you thought everybody knew, and which has now been forgotten, and which you now have to bring back into circulation. Yes? The ego then, gentlemen, is the transformer of thought. When thought has died out of the body politic, the ego is the re-initiation, or the re-ignition of a spirit in a community.

So please begin to de- -- understand, gentlemen, that the fall of man has -- that has occurred in 1900, and that -- kills your spirit, gentlemen, is that you think that everybody is an ego. But you know already from the circulation of thought that it takes four stages before you -- anybody becomes an ego. Before he can doubt, he must have listened, read, learned, played. You remember?

Therefore the real ego, gentlemen, is the social functionary. Let me have a stop here.

[tape interruption]

...problem, the whole tree of knowledge already stood clearly conceived, St. Augustine. You remember that we talked of St. Augustine before. The relation of chapel and laboratory, the relation of dogma and natural science, the relation of the condition of pruning the ego into a social functionary and then the workings of the ego in the field of research, was understood by Augustine. And he also set the pattern for the future. And I wish to devote today our -- this -- the remaining time to attempt to show you that it is possible in 420- -- -20 of our era, to foresee the next 1500 years, and to s- -- to proclaim what should be done.

And that's very important, gentlemen, because we can know today what we have to do --. If we take this whole picture in, may we begin to believe, gentlemen, that you and I have to become organic substance, bearing our fruit, becoming "I's" in season, thinking when we should think, saying "I" when we should say "I," and saying "we" when it is ripe. This is -- once you treat your own brain, gentlemen, as organic substance, you will feel a new feeling of sanctification, if I may use -- or consecration.

Today I received a letter from Switzerland -- offering me to write a -- a variety of articles. All little -- themes for freshmen, for practice, so to speak. I had offered this man an article which grew out of my life, of my -- the -- of the -- from the point which I'm holding out today. Certain things even mentioned here -- treated here in class. He doesn't understand this, so I have to write him back, "I'm not a journalist. I cannot write for payment. If you want to pay me for that which grows on my tree, in season, I'm very happy, if it just so fits. But you cannot order articles from me at random for 15 francs a page. That's ridiculous. I'm not a man who sells his apples, because I have first to grow them. The people who can sell apples are people who steal them from me."

That is done amply. Most people today are imitators. They think other people's thoughts and wrap them in a nice paper, and sell it as a short story to the Saturday Evening Post. All right. Nobody takes this very seriously. They have a good life in this world, but not in the life hereafter.

But gentlemen, as long as you really think that people like Vincent {Sheehan} or such journalists are the salt of the earth, you don't know what salt is, you don't know what mind is, you don't know what life is, you don't know what the circulation of thought is, you don't know how mankind is kept together. Mankind is kept together by people who grow in season, and bring forth their fruits. Whether they are liked or not; they wait until somebody says, "That's a good red apple. May we taste of it?"

It is incredible, this idea which you have, that you can put the mind to order; you see, you can deliver the goods, because somebody gives you a thousand dollars. I think I told you the story of this man who wanted to found the Peace of Society on the fund of $50 million, put in the middle of the world somewhere, and then given to the big minds so that they would just jump like dogs at this fat bone, and -- in order to get $10,000 from this fund, they would do miracles. { }. That isn't the way miracles are done. The miracle in -- in creation is man. And the miracle of man is that he grows. And the miracle of man is that he grows in season, when the time has come in his life. And if you try to make a child prodigy out of him, you ruin him. And that's what is done here in this country. Everybody says, "Oh, I pay you for this; write a poem." They do; they write poems. But what poems,you see.

It's like the undertaker who says, "If you pay me $50, -- the blessed one looks like an angel. If you pay me 20, he looks like a devil." And they do it, too.

Gentlemen, this is more important than everything I can tell you, this problem of man as a tree. The tree of life, gentlemen, of the Bible takes -- is redeemed -- is real if you and I are bearing fruit in season. If you follow these Ten Commandments of education in your life, and if mankind as a whole goes in his appointed way. If -- as soon as the tree of life becomes something to manipulate, outside of you and me, by will, by mere will, you see, by mere planning, mankind is in an atrocious way. As soon as you -- this -- do this, you get concentration camps, you get war, you get capitalistic exploitation, you get soil erosion, because it isn't organic what you are doing. Your mind is working feverishly outside the organic life of your whole being, gentlemen. When is the mind organic? When the whole man--your genitals just as much as your heart, and your shoulders, and your hands--are in this mental process. And the safest thing is, when a man speaks in the face of death, and danger, you may be inclined to give him more of a hearing than if he says it just in an after-dinner remark, you see, remark.

Cultivate, gentlemen, the organic substance which you yourself are. Don't treat yourself as will and reason. Treat yourself as soil, and you will recover. You will not have a nervous breakdown.

Now St. Augustine said this very simply, and very { }. And he said, "Man must love four -- in four different ways. He must love above himself, he must love himself, he must love that which -- those who are like himself, and he must love below himself." There are four ways of loving, gentlemen: above; below; ourselves; well, neighbors, our neighbors, perhaps. It's a dangerous word, "neighbor." Most people have strange ideas about neighbors. Perhaps we'd better transcribe it: he didn't say "neighbors." He said, "That -- those who are on one level with us." "Our equals" perhaps is better -- better.

Now gentlemen, the four tenets which I have given you--as the -- dogma pre- -- preceding science, basic to science--are nothing but the transcription of St. Augustine's four. Why? You see, the scientist always omits the one tenet, the one dogma without which no scientist can exist for a minute, no academy of science, no laboratory can { }. That the -- the {mere} man in us will look up to the scientist with longing and yearning and say, "This is what I would love to do." The respect in which the scientist is held, you see, which the scientist always ignores as a tremendous social creation, the respect for truth, this willingness of the laity to hear new things which are truer than the old, you see, and not { }.

So gentlemen, we -- I made this tenet Number 4. St. Augustine's first tenet, "Look up to higher truth, and love it," something that goes against your interest, you see, must be loved. Otherwise science has no place in society. Most of you cannot understand this, gentlemen. You all think science is something by itself. But no scientist would have leisure if he had to be a factory worker. So the factory worker must be willing to pay taxes in order that the Smithsonian Institute can go on. Don't you see that the worker first must believe in the importance of truth, you see, before there can be research. If there wasn't -- if you have no respect for such { }, so there is no science today in { }, or in -- in { }, you see. There just isn't. They have no respect for research. Everything is proclaimed by Allah -- by Mo- -- by Mohammed; what is in the Koran is good, and what is not in the Koran is bad; so why research? Can you see this?

It is not true, gentlemen, that the first dogma--that man must love those things that are above him--are natural things. They have to be drilled into every newborn man, because by himself he doesn't have this love. The love of God, gentlemen, is not in man.

And therefore, gentlemen, the whole Middle Ages are concerned with drilling into man these two things: the love of neighbor, here; and love of the above. And I'll give you the reason. St. Augustine said, "This is the first thing you had to do, to make it as normal for a person to love truth for its own sake, and his neighbor as himself"--he adds a wonderful sentence. Perhaps you take this down. St. Augustine said, "We have to live in four -- love in four ways: above, below, equal, and self." Equal and above has to be taught. Self and below is natural. Every man loves possessions; every man loves gold; everyone loves power. That's all below man, the needs. You all love gadgets. That's natural. Nobody has to be taught. Every child wants to have an airplane. The love of lower things is normal. We all want to have things, and love -- we love them. We strut.

So, gentlemen, St. Augustine thought that these two loves would have first to be added to the quadrilateral of the full humanity of a man. Man is man if he has these four affections. You can take this down. Man is man if he has these four affections: affection for that which is higher, affection for that which is lower, affection for himself, and affection for his equal or neighbor.

Now gentlemen, from 1100 to 1500, the additional educational process has been perpetrated, so that in 1500, people could imagine that everybody love in these four ways. As soon as this was completed, that 1 and 3 were seen as normal for a Christian as 2 and 4, you had a new start of the second cycle. Man, the scientist, came to the fore. That is, man who had these four forces in balance, you see, and therefore who could now explore -- what? Four. The below. The exploration of nature, the exploration of the natural sciences--of the academic way, of research--is based on the love of the lower. It's an attempt to show that the lower already is the higher. It's an attempt to show that the cell is already the whole body, that the snake is already the ape, you see. It explains the higher by the lower, which comes from an un- -- you may say exaggerated love of the lower. This love became, however, perfectly reasonable after the scientist seemed to have learned that he himself had to have the love of these four things. Love of truth, higher than my -- my own interest in myself, you see. Love of all neighbors, you see. Love of -- true love of your real self--we come to this in a minute. And love of the lower, the atoms, the stars, the dead things, too.

So gentlemen, St. Augustine said -- still thought that this has to be taught. One and 3 -- in 1500, 1 and 3 have been taught so successfully, that now the exploration of the lower could be reinstituted, you see. under the condition that every scientist would keep the equilibrium of 1, 2, 3, and 4--that's the condition of natural science. Can you see this perhaps now? That the exploration of the lower, gentlemen, is predicated on the co-existence and the equilibrium of all the four affections. One -- what do we see today, gentlemen? The love of self has disappeared. People commit suicide. Hitler did commit suicide. Whole na- -- I mean, thousands of Jews have committed suicide in or- -- to escape from Hitler's torture chamber. Can you blame them? We have schizophrenia. We have disintegration of personality. What is it? No love of self, you see.

True self has now to be discovered in the next phase, in society. The true love of self, gentlemen, depends on this poor self being re-implanted as a functional "I" in society, as an organic substance. The self otherwise disintegrates. The next phase of St. Augustine's great prophecy of the four affections of mankind--of which some have to taught and some have to be -- can be premised--is today that man has so much lost his nature, that he doesn't love self. Most people are unable to love themselves, gentlemen. That's what is wrong with you. You are pathetically uninterested, because you don't love yourself enough, in the true sense of this word. You have no ambitions. You don't want to become president of the United States anymore. You are uninteresting.

Who is uninteresting, gentlemen? Uninteresting is a man who thinks he is already in existence. Interesting is a man who thinks he has never existed before today. I still think so, gentlemen. I am a great surprise to myself every morning. It is very remarkable that we should still live, and live differently from yesterday. But you think it's all known: it's all on file; your fingerprints are taken; your measurements, you see. And so you say you are all finished. Everybody knows all -- everything about you. Gentlemen, if everybody else knows you, you have ceased to live. Gentlemen, a man who is universally known has ceased to live. And he can't love himself anymore. Love is based on secret. You can't love yourself if you have no secret. A man who is kno- -- universally known, universally planned, universally begotten, universally measured, universally standardized is a man who cannot love himself. Because he is looked into from somebody ex- -- from outside, you see. And -- light destroys growth. Light destroys growth. Enlightenment destroys growth of your humanity. Man can only be interesting as long as he thinks he is the head of his environment and says, "I know something which the other people don't know about myself. I'm going to show you." The only interesting people are those who still don't know who they are. And have a deep feeling of shame, and embarrassment, and bashfulness because it will be revealed tomorrow, who they really are. They haven't yet heard what's coming. Most of you, gentlemen, could have this quality; if you would only believe it.

For -- gentlemen, St. Augustine also said the second wonderful thing about this love of self: the love of self is like peace. And peace and self-love have two qualities--the right self-love. Two strange -- have a one -- one strange quality, gentlemen. Whereas in any other ambition or desire, that which you wish is, when you wish it, far away. The -- love of self and the wish for peace enters you because you -- the wish of peace is already the presence of peace. Any man who desires peace has it. That's a very mysterious sentence. You -- you want a million dollars. Well, you don't have it. You have this wish of getting a million dollars, but it is there, somewhere outside. You have to bring it to you. Before, you don't have it; it's nonsense. The wish and the having is -- is separate. Not so with any peace-seeking {individual, gentlemen}. He who longs for peace begins to have it. There is no other peace but that which is longed for.

So gentlemen, the last cycle of mankind has to do with peace and war, and the problem of self-love. The social sciences--of course, what else could they do?--are the { } -- as they are seen. How can man rightly love himself, you see? Under what conditions does he love himself? We have studied how we love the truth in the Middle Ages. First cycle, { } chapel. We have loved in the laboratory; how can man love that which is below, the { }, the animals, the stones, geology, I mean, the land, the stars. That's all below us.

Now gentlemen, the question of the third cycle is very simple, gentlemen. When do we love us best? And you know already when we love us best. Oh, I'm sorry. Put it down. That's below us.

Gentlemen, when do we love ourselves, Number 4 of St. Augustine? Best. We don't love ourselves best when we are lazy, and loafing alone with our own sex troubles and our own appetites in a room. We don't. We hate ourselves. We have no peace at that moment. We have no -- lest -- even -- peace not in -- at a cocktail party. We may drown ourselves -- we may intoxicate ourselves, and thereby have a fictitious peace through alcohol. But we really have no peace, because we are self-conscious. There are five people talking; at least I have been introduced to them, and we don't know what to say. So you eye them; you say if they -- what are they saying? You see, you try to be social, and -- and you are left out in the cold. This may -- mo- -- half of the people who go to any party are terribly self-conscious. And the rest is drunk.

We don't love ourselves in this condition, gentlemen. We love ourselves perhaps at work, when we do a good job. But gentlemen, everybody loves himself in a heroic and self-forgetful moment of -- of generous action. You love yourself in -- and you may love yourself, when you help the beggar, when you act as the Good Samaritan, when you forget yourself, when you are in battle and lead your men across the parapet. This is the only allowed love, gentlemen, when the "I" is functioning in this creative setting in which I have tried to show you, as fruit and seed. At that moment, everybody must love himself. Jesus, and every great inventor, has to fight for his survival, if he is seed and fruit, you see. He has the right to brush aside hindrances, you see, and to do what his genius commands. You see, he has -- is not bound by the law of old. He can trespass. He can go where no other man has gone, because he is responsible for his- -- himself, for his own survival. Nobody else can show him the road.

Gentlemen, that is self-love. All self-love then is justified as to the degree of pressure that is on you and me. That self which is really functional at one moment as the -- fruit and seed of life. A mother that -- that fights for her pregnancy and for the -- the place in which she has to give birth to her child, she must steal and rob, and get her place, and her bread and butter for her child. Otherwise she wouldn't be normal. And you expect a mother to fight like a lioness for her cub. And that is for herself, too, because she must feed this child. She must give birth to the child. A mother is not selfish when she represents this -- this link in the chain of the human race. Can you see this? But this same woman, if she is just a -- a harlot and is selfish in taking money from every man to embellish herself, and to look -- use lipstick, she's terrible. She has a wrong self-love. The same woman, gentlemen, has a righteous self-love and a wrong self-love. Can you see this?

You are all brought up under this terrible tradition that man has to be altruistic, and not egotistic. I -- but I tell you this is all nonsense. Nobody is altruistic. I am not, and I don't wish to be. I am told that I shall love my neighbor as myself. The condition for this is that I must love myself. How can I love my neighbor as myself if I don't love myself?

This is the -- the secular, humanistic idiocy made out of a true Gospel statement. "Love your neighbor as yourself" is truth. "Be altruistic and not -- be not egotistic" is ridiculous. Leads always to a nervous breakdown. All these women who try to be selfless, they take it out in their family and become dragons. Generation of vipers. Beware -- protect yourself against selfless people, gentlemen. The -- the selfless people are just the people who don't let their lower viscera and genitals come into -- the consciousness of their upper mind. Up to here, they are selfless. And down there, they aren't. How can they? -- Hasn't God created you? Aren't you a creature? How can you be selfless? Terrible idea. But this is the -- little red schoolhouse. All these poor schoolteachers who teach you of course can't have self. Poor people.

You have absorbed this so deeply, gentlemen, that the future of society depends on your courage to know self-love. To love yourself, gentlemen, is the tremendous task of the future. And there are four tenets, gentlemen. First, the heroic self is lovable. Self out of context is the beast from the abyss. The opposite, Number 4; just below our self. We fall. Self out of context, you see, out of -- out of loving others, you see. The heroic self is he who is in love with others. In between there is the fellowship of -- of -- of work, and the fellowship of play. And these are moderate, modest stages. Cooperation, which is in this country at this moment considered the highest, is not the highest, gentlemen. Any sacrifice for you -- for -- your comrade is higher than this -- cooperation eight hours a day. That's only second. And cocktail party, "Get along with," "Be a nice fellow" is only third-rate. And fourth-rate is to be -- an individual; that's a dangerous man. A man who wants to -- to be -- to be alone, and thinks he's -- best at his leisure when he collects stamps. Even the president of the United States was a little boy when he collected stamps, and he ruined the whole industry by printing too many new stamps.

What time is it?

(Quarter of { }.)

Well, would you give me just a few minutes to -- to close this up? I have to strain your -- attention; I know it. But you can see the theme is overflowing all the bounds of just one term.

The addition of the above and neighborly love is the achievement of the discipline of chapel. It made, gentlemen -- the Middle Ages made the love of neighbors--think of marriage, think of the -- you see, of the treatment of the woman, there--made the love of neighbor into a reality. It became equally important that the woman should have a voice in the matter than the husband, for example. It's a very small example. That the -- the Church should have a voice as much as the state in all -- every matter.

Therefore gentlemen, the Mid- -- Middle Ages brought the love of truth and the love of neighbor into every human heart. When this has become -- had become commonplace--by 1500, you see--a new cycle starts. The first cycle, concords love of neighbor, gentlemen, and love of myself under the truth of God. "Concording" means to make love of neighbor--you remember, the process of concording, you see--and love of self equally important. That's concordance. They are one heart and one soul. It's literally this, you see: St. Augustine's way of affection: love yourself and love your neighbor. Love your equal. If you do this, you have concorded two different truths, you see, in a super-logic.

So gentlemen, concording or super-logic is the instrument of the Middle Ages. Now gentlemen, the second--love below--is super-mathematics. It's the mathematics of the calculus which says that although the below is below, it already contains an infinitesimal item of the higher. You have an animal; it is already nearly, they say, a man. You have a cell, it is already nearly something psychological. The whole idea of natural science, gentlemen, is: infinitesimal, based on infinity, on the assumption that infinitesimal small is already the beginning of the higher. You love -- we love in natural science, gentlemen, the lowest because we see in it an infinitesimal beginning of the highest. Can you see this? Once you have gotten this, gentlemen, you will no longer idolize natural science, because you will see it's just one attitude, one tendency. Of course you can -- love the lowest. It's a wonderful thing, to love it. But you only love it because you see in it already an infinitesimal step towards the highest, for which you have to know what the highest is. The lowest cannot tell you. Can you see this? The infinitesimal itself cannot explain the highest, if you haven't experienced the highest. A man who hasn't known -- doesn't know what truth is, can never derive it from his glands, you see, because the glands are only an infinitesimal tool for perhaps getting to the truth.

But modern man is lost, because he doesn't see the connection between 1, 2, 3, and 4. Gentlemen, mathematics are really a super-mathematics, or a superarithmetic--put it this way, super-logic, super-arithmetic--because algebra--modern algebra says that in every infinitesimal, infinitely small unit, there is already the germ of the highest, of the complete world, of everything.

Super-arithmetic. Now gentlemen, what we need today is a supergrammar. The super-grammar, gentlemen, of the future, must explain self-love. There can be no society, gentlemen, except composed by people who love themselves. Otherwise the society is a mob. The difference, gentlemen, of the social sciences in the future is based on the assumption that we learn to distinguish between a mob and a people. People or society must consist of people who can love each -- themselves, you see. If you have people who hate each -- themselves, they are very dangerous, you see. Hitler hated himself, you see, so he -- so he destroyed the world. And he showed that he hated himself by committing suicide. It's very simple.

Self-hate, gentlemen, is today the dynamite of society. Therefore, you have to develop a science of which I am going to talk next time--and I'm -- these comprehensives there -- I'm quite resentful that I can't get them into this class, because that's of course in a way the key to everything I have said. Next time, we will speak of the super-grammar of self-love, gentlemen, of the next cycle.