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... fact that the living being tries to become more and more independent of its environment. If you compare the warm-blooded animal and the cold-blooded, you understand that the warm-blooded animal is not obliged to take on the temperature of its environment. It has the warm blood inside its own body and therefore it becomes inde- -- more independent. One essential element of its own life is placed inside of itself. Now with regard to thought, man has not been able to place into its -- himself his independence from his own thoughts. People have, for the last hundreds of years still, depended on the fiction that thought must be there to dominate them. They have believed in logic. You all believe in logic. I do not, because if I believed in logic, I -- logic would be superior to me. But man is superior to his thoughts. And just as the temperature of the environment has to come under my control, of my own body, you see, so that I'm not -- no longer cold just because the environment is cold, but I have my 98.6 degrees or what is normal -- so in the same way, thought only begins to circulate, gentlemen, if you can take up thinking and dismiss thinking at your own will, or at your own -- under your own necessities.

Everybody knows that a person who cannot dismiss his own thoughts will very soon begin to look like a dead man, because he can't sleep. You all, as healthy people, can dismiss your thoughts whenever your soul or --and your heart feels that it is time not to think. So thought only begins to circulate in your own system as soon as you can say, "Now it's enough. I won't worry," you see. "Tomorrow is another day." It's a very strange aptitude. If logic is a master, then you couldn't. But logic isn't a master.

What is a master? That's the topic of this -- of this course. Logic is not the master -- because it would mean that our thoughts would dominate us. The -- topic of the course is to show you how you become masters of your thoughts.

Now from time immemorial, people have known this. I'm not so original as I -- I -- as I -- at this moment may appear to you. They have said that the thought reaches every individual at an appointed hour. In his life, he has to think in order to participate in the common weal and in the life of mankind. As a child, you don't think; then you begin to think; then you think -- supposedly -- at this moment in college very heavily, which of course is fictitious, but is an assumption we make -- and then when you become a Rotarian, you have given up thinking long ago.

So gentlemen, it is obvious, to say the least, and that will occupy our attention in this course quite readily that during your life, there are -- different periods of

thought, of different intensity. If a boy of your age, ges- -- gentlemen, does not think, I think that's an indictment of the whole person, because now you come to grips with what the mind can, and you have to overestimate it at first. Gentlemen, nobody can acquire any quality of worth unless he overestimates it at the time being. You cannot fall in love without thinking that love is the only one thing that matters; or you can't fall in love. But at 60, you will think differently, you see. Sometimes a bottle of champagne then is better.

Therefore, gentlemen, every act of life varies in intensity during your life cycle. And that is another aspect of cir- -- the circulation of thought: that at one time, you must praise thought and independence of thinking -- your own thinking -- higher than at other times. And you must praise it at one time with such an exaggerated energy, that you must defend it -- the freedom of thought -- against all enemies. We see the sad -- spectacle at this moment that this generation of yours doesn't give a damn for freedom of thought, and sees it disappear without shedding a tear.

I'm still young enough, gentlemen, to be sorry for you, because if you don't get excited about thinking now, you'll never do any -- much thinking in the future. It is your privilege between 16 and 25 to exaggerate the importance of philosophy, for example, and of logic, because otherwise, if you wouldn't exaggerate it now, it would never stay with you. It's like those Russian studies with the army, or the Japanese studies -- if you aren't drowned into Japanese or Russian for this -- these terrible -- you know this, these 12 months, they put you under -- under this drug of a new language, you couldn't learn it. Later, you could keep it going on the side, isn't that clear? But at first, you have been threaded into existence with tremendous exaggeration, as though you were going to be a -- a little Russian orator and politician for the rest of your life. Otherwise you can't learn Russian. And the way we learn the other languages in college are very poor and miserable, compared to their system, as you all know.

Who is taking a foreign language at this moment? One man? Oh, I see. The others all know their three foreign languages. Who does not know a se- -- a foreign language? Well, he's honest, you see. He's learning one, and he says he doesn't know it. You have learned, and you have all forgotten it, so --.

So this is the second thing, gentlemen, about thought. First we must -- see that thought is our own doing. The second, however, is the opposite, that thought comes to us at certain times in life with greater demand than at others. The third question, obviously, then is: when, and why, and what for? Must we, at certain times, be swayed by thinking? And why must we, on the other hand, give thinking its place in our life and not recogn- -- recognize it as an eternal taskmaster? If you invite a guest to your house, the house is his for the time being. But you

expect the -- the guest to leave on Sunday night. I've seen some girls hanging around till Tuesday. But that's exceptional. The -- in other words, gentlemen, there is a contradiction in my two statements. One is: we are the masters of our thought. Logic makes -- the thought the master of us, therefore, we must investigate the claims of logic a little more carefully. Perhaps that is -- logic is not the la- -- the highest about thought. And the second is: at times, it knocks at the door -- thinking -- with greater demand than at others.

This seems paradoxical, because in the first place I say, "You are the host. You are the master. You are the lord of your own mansion." On the other hand, I say, "At times the guest has to be welcomed," because without hospitalizing the spirit into your midst, you see, we -- you couldn't breathe, you couldn't live. Is there a contradiction? I don't think so. You see the opposite paradox is in this fact, that you invite somebody to your house, give him the key to the house and say, "Make yourself at home," and yet you remain the master of your own destiny and you assume that the guest knows that he is a guest in your house. But for the -- for the real estate man, it's either "my house," or the -- not the -- the "other man's house," he can -- has a hard time to think of hospitality, to think of the unwritten laws of friendship, as law and invitation. Yet, gentlemen, if you would think of thought as something as nice as a girl which comes down for commen- -- for commencement or for the Green Key, you would not be very far amiss. The spirit of -- that in- -- illuminates your thinking is perhaps even more of an -- evasive than a girl. And only in -- such terms of a living sprite, of a living gremlin, of a living winged animal, little butterfly, will you ever be able to understand what makes you think.

So the circulation of thought is the topic of this course, so in very simple way, it means that thought is only our temporary guest, that every one of us at times must sleep, and God has obviously ordained sleep to warn us that we are not thinking machines. We leave this to these million-dollar businesses. The so-called "artificial brain" is so ridiculous that -- you can use it, but I mean, it has nothing to do with the brain, with your mind. It is something very useful, obviously. But fortunately, thought is something a little more independent from iron and steel. It is an indictment against this country, that these calculation machines can be compared to the human brain. They have absolutely nothing to do with it. If we are relieved of these chores which these machines can perform, that does mean that we are really meant to do higher things. We are meant to build machines and not to be machines. And you will never bridge this -- this gap between making a machine that can think, you see, and be a thinking machine.

But that's a -- aside. It's not very important. We must stick to our topic. The circulation of thought, gentlemen, reaches you in var- -- at various ages with varying intensity. And now, in order to explain to you how we shall -- must

proceed in order to catch this sprite, this -- this Ariel -- this very airy spirit called "thought," I propose that we proceed in two ways. Let us first observe the way thinking enters your mind, actually in your own experience. I shall build on your own first 20 years of life at first, and then go on to the rest of your experience as you will have to face it if you want to stay alive. You need not stay alive. Most people don't want to stay alive after 25. You can achieve this. You can live another 60 years with the Metropolitan Life Insurance instead. But I mean really alive. This will show you that the mind of yours has to think in different ways as perhaps you will admit that in summer we go swimming and in winter we go skiing. That is, one day we handle water, and the other day we handle snow and ice.

Thinking comes to you in various states of aggregate. And our first half of this course will be -- then be devoted to the various forms thinking takes on in your own life. From the child that learns how to speak, to the old man who knows how to make his last will and testament, thinking is handled by you and me in a very different manner. When you are a corporal here in one of these outfits and give an order, you can see that your mind works very differently by giving this order than when -- in the -- in the interim you receive the unpaid bill of a businessman and think up some excuse how not to pay the bill. When you give an order, you think the mind is there to tell the truth. And when you try to find an excuse for not paying the bill, you use your mind for inventing a lie. That's a very strange difference, obviously, of using language. The second thing is, you see, that when you give the order, you believe that there is somebody who wants to fulfill the order, to carry it out. The platoon is -- is expected to pay attention to what you say, so that a thought circulates from you into this platoon in the most miraculous manner, as though they did understand what you were driving at, even if you give a foolish command, which obviously you -- very often do.

When you, however, receive the letter of the -- with the unpaid bill, the -- your first reaction is, "I'm not going to pay." Therefore, the same -- here -- order given by the tailor, "Pay me," probably put in a very polite form of a request, you see, meets with your tenacious resistance, and you delay his payment as long as you possibly can, even if you have -- because you have to kite your check, or whatever it is.

So you see, the circulation of thought obviously at some times meets with no resistance, and at certain other times with tremendous resistance. We have open channels of thought, and we have blocked channels of thought, in other words, and we must investigate what blocks and what opens channels in the circulation of thought in the human society. Obviously Mr. Molotov and Mr. Dulles can talk to each other for 10 years and nothing would happen, you see. They don't listen to each other. It's as though they both presented their unpaid tailors' bills to each

other.

So the the circulation of -- of mind will first deal with your channels of communicating thought, of receiving thought, of operating with thought. And the second half will deal with the great art developed by our human education, schools -- sciences -- to erect this system of channels, of cana- -- canals, this tremendous system of canalization of thought through the human race. Gentlemen, most canals of this type -- most of these channels -- are built, like this college here, with great care, with great, as you know, waste, and tremendously endowed. But very few of you gentlemen know that any of -- one of these channels is bound to be filled with sand, as any canal, if it isn't -- how do you call the machine that takes it out, the sand, of a waterway? Wie?

(Dredge?)

If it isn't dredged. And one of the hopes of this course, then is, that you'll understand that the building of universities -- even if it is the large University of Texas -- doesn't help, unless you know how these means of communication have to be dredged all the time. We have in this country, as you know, a wonderful display of campuses, but we have no system of dredging. It is very much unknown to you that a college like Dartmouth College has to be re-founded every 15 years. It is not known to you that if you have heard of John Hopkins in Baltimore as a great medical school, you may have heard that it has been a great medical school 30 years ago. But that doesn't prove that it is a great medical school now. The -- essence of the circulation of thought is its frailty. You know perhaps from Hamlet, that frail woman -- frailty, thy name is --?

(Woman.)

Woman. But gentlemen, the frailty of a woman is absolutely nothing compared to the frailty of thought. The frailty of thought is as badly secure -- assured against a breakdown in communication as perhaps electricity. You know, just one rubber heel on your shoe, and the electricity will not go through your body. The rubber will stop the conduction.

Now the frailty of thought, gentlemen, is so frightful, that after these two world wars, you may really -- say that there is no circulation of thought at this moment in the Western world. The Russians have replaced the circulation of thought in its frailty by propaganda, by tremendous blows, by cold lightnings, by high voltage which burns down every resistance, every conductor, and you are just made a partisan of this propaganda machine in the East.

But gentlemen, why are they -- have they been so successful? It -- they have

been so, because the dredging of the established ways of thinking has been completely omitted in the West, because you have all relied on Baker Library as a deposit of all knowledge, and you have gone on playing. Gentlemen, your generation has to dredge -- and I mean this -- your own canals of thinking and of your fellow man, or there will be no communication, no mental process left in the Western world. The colleges of America have not been re-founded every 15 years. People have believed that if they put millions of dollars into the buildings, into the libraries, and endow them and imitate what has been before alive in the Western world, that they'll have progress.

You -- we do this again now with physics, gentlemen. In 1940 or '39, as you know, the physicists of Italy, and of Germany, and of Denmark came to this country. And we had the atom bomb created. And now we -- endow and pay these research fellows in physics tremendous volumes of money. It is very doubtful whether anybody in this country at this moment already has reached the insight that the -- the whole science of physics will have to be overhauled before this decade is over, you see, by a new centering on new topics.

Give you another example of this -- I have already discussed with -- some of you before. Mr. Pasteur in 1879 had the bright idea that most illnesses were caused by bacteria. So people began to work on this and by 1900, the illnesses that are really caused by bacteria were really well investigated and known. Tuberculosis, for example, and diphtheria, et cetera. But for the last 50 years, as you know, there has been no dredging of the canals of medical science, and therefore the people waste millions of dollars every year on cancer research, as though cancer were an illness that could be touched with the Pasteur method. That's a typical lack of the circulation of thought, of the respect for the frailty of one idea. This thought was excellent for the -- the direction in which it was sent out, like an arrow into the dark. But today people have sat down on their fannies, as you sit down here in Baker and say, "There is all the knowledge," and there is no knowledge. There are just dusty books. In the same way, the doctors think there is the way to research in cancer laid out in 1879 by Monsieur Pasteur. Well, poor Pasteur is not at fault. He did a wonderful thing. He was a genius. But certainly the people who thought that they could just inherit his axiom, you see, they certainly are not very much to be envied for the waste or -- and the loss of time which their research at this moment engenders.

So the frailty of thought, gentlemen, the circulation of thought, in your own life and in the life of education, and science, and the schools will be our topic. And we always have to handle these two topics. As I told you, you have to remain the master of a thought or it will kill you. If you are logical to the bitter end, your wife will divorce you. In order to be married, you have to be illogical at times, because she is. If she is logical, she'll have to go to the sanitarium very

soon.

That is, gentlemen, thought is so much alive that it comes and goes as life does. The cancer research is bad, because people have thought it is there as a mechanical gadget forever. Baker Library at this college is bad if you think that in going to Baker Library you don't have to know anything, because there is a reference desk at which they are going to know everything. That's usually the case with you. You have no relation to the living content of this. As -- a boy came to one of our friends and said he was interested in the -- my course, but could he hear more about me.

"Well," he said -- my friend said to him, "Have you ever had the bright idea of looking in the catalog of Baker Library? He has written some 50 books or something."

"Oh no. I never thought of that."

He couldn't make the connection between the -- the Fort Knox of knowledge, you know, called the "Baker Library," and my existence here -- before you at this moment. Well, I'm the same person who has -- happens to have written some books and am going now to speak to you. It seems to be very difficult for you to dredge the canal which would make the connection, you see, between the idea that you have -- are taking Philosophy 10 and that perhaps I am also a person who has lived before I give you this idiotic course and after. I hope to live -- survive this course. I hope you will, too.

So you see, this is the paradox. Thought is important, is powerful, and it is short-lived. Can you keep this together? Then you are all ready to go.

There are two schools of thought usually in a -- in the world. One says, "Thought is unimportant. And go to the football game." And the other party said, "Logic -- science is all-important." You doing -- you see, you -- you have this wonderful religion that you believe in both things. You say, "I'll play. Let the others be scientific." And -- both is wrong, gentlemen, because you can neither play nor be scientific. These are two attitudes that are very transient. The real life of yours is that at times a thought must grip you with such power that you do something about it. You must realize thought, in other words, because you know it is very weak, very frail. And if you do not do something about it, it will disappear.

So you are -- have two superstitions rolled in one at this moment. You cannot keep this paradox that the mind gets hold of mortal thought, of passing, of transient du- -- what they call now in psychology "durational thought." It's a poor

word, because it means something that doesn't endure. "Passing thought." I prefer the word "transient."

You see, since we are living beings, gentlemen, you have to drink the milk on the day -- it comes fresh from the cow, and not 10 years later. And in the same way, all this powdered milk, and that isn't the same as fresh milk, at all. And you believe that you can have thought forever, somewhere stored away and then you can leave it to the so-called scientists, which I have never seen, because they are just as transient beings as you and I, you see. There is no scientist as such, you see. There are people who are -- do in science as you do in football. That is, time of their lives. They do this, you see. But they may do it very poorly. They may forget about it, just as you may forget to play.

You have this orthodox, or seem- -- this superstition that there is either no thought, or thought forever. Baker Library, Rockefeller Foundation, Harvard University you are supposed -- you accept as institutions in which thinking goes on, day and night, so to speak, you see. I assure you, the more you believe in this, the less thinking will there be going on. And on the other hand, you say, "I'm -- I'm a thoughtless person. I'm low-brow. I'm one of the boys, and why should I?" {Where}. Well, gentlemen, what happens if you do this? Foreign thought governs you. So now you fall for McCarthy. And yesterday you fell for Eisenhower, and before, you fell for Truman, and before, you fell for Roosevelt. A person who says, "I'm not going to think," only says that other people's thought will rule them. But you are ruled by -- by thought.

If you have a heedless practitioner -- horse-and-buggy doctor, if the -- medical science of two generations ago, which he will apply, because he has forgotten how to study, you see. To do research means to know which thoughts govern your actions. To be without research, your -- of your own, and never have learned this, means to be governed by your grandfather's prejudices, which you all, at this moment do. You prove it by just getting this education at Dartmouth in a moment when it's very doubtful that it's any good to you. It's perhaps too late. Perhaps you all become generals instead. Or -- I don't know. Mechanics.

It may be too late for -- at this moment for getting a liberal arts education. How can you know? I'm going to tell you. I'm going to tell you exactly by the end of this course what could be good about your going now to -- Dartmouth College, despite the fact that it hasn't been dredged for many years, and why it is not good. Because I want to show you how a man must know by which thoughts he is really governed in his actions. He's always governed by thought. Nobody is -- not governed by thought, but some people are governed by their own thoughts, and some people are governed by their great-, great-, great-grandfather's thoughts, you see, who went to -- to Indiana and founded the {Bricker}

family.

This is then the difficulty, gentlemen. We have two enemies. One enemy is the people who say that there is something written somewhere dogmatically called "science," which is there forever, and cannot be lost. We have -- we have gone scientific, so no Dark Ages to be feared. On the other hand, we have the people who say, "Well, why do so much research and thinking? That's not for me. That's for the others. We believe in science, but we believe in science but it's not for us. We have a good time."

Gentlemen, the funny thing is that then you will in truth depend on quite a different stream of thought. You will depend on the Huey Longs, on the {Gerald K.} Smiths, on the McCarthys, on the transient, fleeting thoughts that grip a community, you see, as -- like epidemics. Any man who will treat thought as something in a closet, in a storehouse, in a warehouse, will be thrown down in his own life, and in his own children's life, because they may be then proscribed by the -- by the FBI, or even lose their -- their birthright, as you know -- be deported -- which is now recommended for Communists. They will lose it because {thought} then will take the form of epidemics.

I will give you a medical secret, that epidemics are the form of an illness, you see, when it is not rightly distributed, when it is not distributed so to make it more innocuous. Epidemics is the agglomeration of -- of a disease. And I think that we are in for tremendous mental diseases, because we have not learned how to make you participate in the circulation of thought. Where people do not dredge the canals of thought, there is miasmatic epidemics. There is the danger that this undredged canal of thought, you see, is so clogged that people will only get under the influence of thinking by tremendous epidemics. All of a sudden, people are so bored, they are so empty, they are so unfilled with thought that anything goes, you see, any craze, as we have it at this moment; where the tremendous exhaustion of the spirit, after 1945 has left you completely empty. So anything goes, any stupid idea, you see. Be it television.

It just goes over, because people have nothing to live for. So they live suddenly for the in- -- for the television set. And you see how this happens. These people now think what these television managers put into their heads, you see. They no longer have a thought of their own. It's actually true that the whole family has just given over, you see, to the -- to this receivership. It's a complete bankruptcy of the mental life of the -- of the single family, because nobody in the family is master of what is -- has to be thought every day in this living room. That's the -- epidemics.

And this country, as you know, is the healthiest country physically, and the

country most given over to mental epidemics. Think of Prohibition. That is a typical mental epidemics. The soldiers were away and the ladies of this country put over this -- this Prohibition business, you see. You now try to forget it, but gentlemen, what does it mean? That all the bars were suddenly down, you see, against such a rea- -- an unreasonable legislation. And in this one moment, the Constitution was changed, you see. And I'm not {thinking} so much of the present. I could give you parallels. But the Prohibition certainly is something that could never have happened in any other country, because some people would there have been wise to the human stomach and would have said they go on drinking just the same, you see. But here, no. It was done, as you know, and it had entailed a giving-up of all legislative understanding, of all justice, of all righteousness. People began to lie, and to break the law, and to break windows, too, and to be poisoned by this terrible methyl alcohol, this -- what do you call it -- wood alcohol or -- wie?

(Wood alcohol.)

Ja. And -- and so on, all because of the -- an epidemic in suddenly thinking you could change, you see, man overnight. That's a craze. That's a typical mental epidemics.

And you can see that the people in this country who are just on business, or just played around and give no thought to public affairs were suddenly ruled in their daily actions by the epidemics of no alcohol, because there hasn't been a person in the United States between 1920 and 1933 who has not been compelled to cope with an idiotic situation in some way or other. Nobody was able to keep his brain uncontaminated with the question -- from the question of Prohibition. And I tell you, it would have been a waste of any one of your precious brains, even to give it a thought. In a normal country and in a normal time, it isn't worth your thinking, you see, whether you should take a glass of beer or not. You order it, or you don't order it, and that's all.

Now, today we have the problem of the income tax. Everybody has -- or passports. The whole bureaucracy today is our great problem, because again people are compelled, especially in Europe or in Russia, to give thought to something there should be no thinking done about. It's worthless to think about passports, or about taxes, you see, or about forms, or about questionnaires, or about any of these identification cards or what-not. Life went on very happily in the 19th century without this. And people could concentrate on important thought.

You see what happens if you do not keep the thinking canals alive, you get this dead bureaucracy, or you get the ladies of Prohibition and the Methodist

Church; and you, suddenly, an innocent bystander, are for 13 years forced to think unimportant things, because it didn't matter, you see in 1925 whether you did drink or did not drink. You had to be concerned with it. That is, you had to waste your good life. Once on this planet, here is a person and he is forced to think such stupid things as for or against Prohibition. Isn't this terrible? So you see, it's very difficult to be free.

The circulation of thought, gentlemen, is the condition for the freedom of thought, because if you have epidemics of thinking, you are forced to think about things about which it isn't worth to give -- have any thoughts. And I'm afraid this is the real issue which you always overlook, that because very few people know what thinking is and how it is done, and think it is happening there in a brown study of science, or a laboratory, or research, and they can go without thinking, they are practically overtaken by epidemics of thought, which should -- do not deserve one minute of your lives. And you devote your whole life to it. You are slaves of other people's epidemics of mental processes, unless you know what is your place in this whole process at any one moment of your lives.

So there are more people, as in nature always, who do wrong than there are the people who do right in this way, gentlemen. Nature is very wasteful. The human nature also is very wasteful. And there are, therefore, I would say, more people who make not the right use of their minds than there are who do make. It is very hard to state this very cogently, but as you know, in nature, it is really amazing how many seeds must be sown before one plant really gets to full maturity. It's a tremendous waste. And I recommend to you for one minute to think of every thought as one grain of seed, and then to consider for one moment the ta- -- fact: how many seeds of -- are offered you during your life, and how many come to any fruition in your life? You will be surprised. It is perhaps one in a million.

If you think what you hear, read, listen to every day and how little you follow anything up of what you hear, it is one in a million, and that's generous. One thought in a million, gentlemen, is allowed to bear fruit, because the channels of circulation of thought are not dredged, are not kept open. Any man, gentlemen -- dealing with this most frail matter against which uranium is stable -- and 235 or 239 of the element -- is frightened to death that you may have thrown so much sand already into the machine, into these -- into these life corridors, these gateways of life, that may be too late. The Western man to many observers makes the impression of having declared war on fertility, on fecundity, on fruitfulness of thinking. No -- there are millions of thoughts offered to you. But no consequences. All these thoughts are just replaced by other thoughts. Think of the magazine. Every month, every magazine in America is overfed, overstudded,

over -- there's everything in every issue. You can buy for -- for in Liberty or in -- in -- in Ladies' Home and Gardens -- or what is it? Ladies' Home Journal or in Life, all the arts, all the religions, all the gossip in one week for 20 cents.

That is, gentlemen, we have an over-production today of grains, of fee- -- of seed of thought. And now comes our Point 3 there from this fact. First, the circulation of thought is in danger, because people are divided today in the nonthinkers and the thinkers. The thinkers are believed to think always, and to be always in possession of -- of thought. And the non-thinkers say they -- "We can stay outside. We don't have to think." And I tried to show you that this isn't so. Neither one, because thought is like electricity, like lightning -- a vital power which comes and goes and leaves you dead on the ground as in Prohibition, if you don't watch out. And it catches the scientist's mind just as much as your mind, unawares.

Now the new thing is, gentlemen, something else. If there are let -- one million starts to think, and there is only one in a million a person who gives heed to a thought, who does something about it, we have to ask: what's the destiny of thought, in the human society, in the human -- in human life? What is this, what we call a "thought," destined to become? Is it be- -- meant to become a book? Is it meant to become a thought in another -- in an examination paper? Is it meant to become in an argument -- in dialectical opposition. If I say, "All men are free," what's the destiny of the thought? Well, in this sentence, you all know what destiny is. If all men are born free, what is the consequence of a real thought in this respect? That you have to do what? If it is true that all men are born free and equal, what did we have to do about it? Wie?

(Act?)

Act. Sure, you have to -- to make sure that all men are treated free and equal, isn't that true? Well, nobody in this country now thinks so. That's all over. But for 180 years, your ancestors thought they had to do something about it, because thought had the destination of being realized, gentlemen.

This is then the second great issue of our days, gentlemen: what is the destiny of thought? Well, one is: it can be catalogued, it can be sterilized, it can be held on as Exhibit A in a court, to accuse the man who had this first thought; or it can be made the beginning of action, of realization. And gentlemen, that's the Christian tradition which says that the word has to become flesh.

The problem of th- -- of the circulation of thought is the problem of incarnation. "Incarnation" means not that something is -- is flesh, but that what is flesh des- -- is derived from a thought, from something first thought, first said, first

commanded. "All men are free and equal." By and large, in 1945, this country had achieved the truth, the veracity, the seriousness of this thought. People in this country had actually done something about it. Isn't that true? That's why you're here. That's why I'm here. I couldn't have entered this country in 1933 if people hadn't treated me, not as an American, but as a man. And therefore, I claimed, you see, that I would be able, within a certain time, to become a citizen of the United States. That is, in this country, the Constitution is still ruled by something that is bigger than America, by the idea of what a man is. Isn't that clear?

It's comprehensive. America is still embedded in some thinking that has taken place inside this continent, against your resistance, about the nature of man. If I would, however, write -- send out a questionnaire to you, you would all say man is the result of his environment; man is a result of his glands, or of his digestion, or of his complex, and of his traumas. And the result would be that all of you, and I too, would have to be jailed, because we would be considered dangerous people, very -- with dirty imagination, very deeply hurt, and thereby apt to take vengeance on everybody else, because our mother did not sleep with us. Well, obviously.

So gentlemen, we are in great danger, as Herman Melville predicted in 1852, to become a country in which all men are born in prison, equally fit for mental asylums. You can have the sentence varied very soon, you see: all men are born unfree and equal, or equally unfree. And that's what you believe. You don't believe that man is free. At least you feign not to believe. I hope that everything you hear and you read is not what you really mean, that underneath all the stuff which you allegedly are made to believe in our courses, in our books, in our -- in our plays, in our -- everything, in our radios, that you don't believe it, after all. That would be very nice. Then you would still be real Americans. But on top of this -- of this "All men are born free and equal," there has been creeping in the opposite dogma, the very opposite doctrine. And most of you don't even know that one or the other must go. You can't have it both ways.

So gentlemen, thought is destined to become real. Thought that is not become real is not real. We have now a criterion for the reality of thinking, or the unreality of thinking. A thought may be very frail, gentlemen, in the beginning, but it must become real one day. To give you a very simple example with which we have to cope here: your father gives you a name "Junior," in the beginning of your life. It may take you 70 years before the world says he is really a chip of the old -- of the old -- how do you say?

(Block.)

Block. Then you are "Junior" only in the full sense. It takes 70 years to make

this one little term "Junior" real. Can you see this? Then it was worthwhile of your fa- -- on your father's side to call you "Junior." Otherwise he has wasted his word, his thought, and everything, because you have disappointed him. As you -- probably will.

Formerly people gave to their children the name of their own parent -- fathers, father or mother, according to sex. And so if a man was called "William," his son "Henry," the Henry's son would be called "William" again, in order to have the grandfather come to life again. A very reasonable expectation, which however entailed that William, the grandson, would have to live a long life before he could, of course, show the attainments of his grandfather William, of one { }, you see. The thing that is, gentlemen, the thought which Henry had when he called his own son "William," was that he was allowing his son to look up to his grandfather as his great model. This name-giving process, which, as you know, is still holding -- going on in many families -- only makes sense if the grandson is taken by the thought in any respect, you see, and will do something about it. Otherwise, it's just a waste. It's just like the governor of Texas, Mr. Hogg, who was so fed up with society, because people had always teased him with his name, that he called his first daughter, "Ima Hogg," and the second, "Ura Hogg."

That shows you your own danger, gentlemen. In this country people have declared that all thinking is a joke. Now -- and they have given their life for jokes, for practical jokes. The poor Ima Hogg and Ura Hogg are the leading ladies in music in Texas at this moment, and they have lived beyond the expectations of their father. They are not hogs. Obviously the -- the -- the tremendous coarseness and cruelty of this father, the brutality of this unloving father, has excited these girls, who have much money, to do better. But it has been a load on their way of life -- through life, this name-giving, so you can hurt a person, you can prevent a person from self-realization, by making such a terrible mistake.

To give a name to your child, gentlemen, is nothing arbitrary. As you know, for the first 1800 years of our era, people were very, very anxious to find the right name for their child. Now you take some movie star's first name -- I don't know what -- but names are dangerous, gentlemen, because very often they are the only thought that enters a child's brain, through the whole of his life. I'm sure, gentlemen, that you have never been very serious about your thoughts, but you can't help being very serious about your own first name. You can either forget it or do something about it. It's -- it's there.

If you think that -- when you travel in Europe, or in Yugoslavia, or in Asia, or wherever you go, the -- people recognize that this is an American name. It's an Anglo-Saxon name, at least. I mean, you may think that in this country, you are -- have a name of German or Irish descent. But for the people outside this country,

it's all American. That is, the simple name makes these people think about you as American. And you cannot circulate there in Yugoslavia. You have to really think, because they say, "We know all Americans are capitalists," you see. Therefore whatever you do to -- say, "I'm an original creature. I am just Mr. William Smith," they say, "We know better. You are an American. Your name proves it. Mr. Smith is one thought which God had about -- when He created America. You -- have nothing original in you. You are just Mr. William Smith from Chicago. And nobody's original in Chicago."

Gentlemen, the thought that other people have about you and me is another aspect which shows you that you'd better do something about your name, like Miss Ima Hogg, who became the great authority on symphony orchestra in Texas' musical life. She conquered, you see, because nobody anymore hears "I am a hog" out of her name. They write it I-m-a, and they say very caressingly in Texas, "Ima is our great," you see, "help in building up music in Texas." And if you write I-m-a long enough, you see, nobody recognizes the H-o-g-g at the end.

The same is with Louis Smith. If he wants to be recognized in Yugoslavia as a non-American, he'll have to do something about this idea. He may, at the end, convince them that he's a friend of Yugoslavia, and that he's an independent man, and he doesn't care for one system or the other. He's just a human being, you see. But if he doesn't do anything about it, he cannot prove his -- his word, his protest at all.

Gentlemen, thoughts are not under our control if we don't do anything about them. Any thought must be put through the strainer of realization. Mr. Smith -- any one of you who leaves this country on an American passport is, by a long shot, nothing but an American. Abroad, you will have to see -- say -- show -- give evidence that you are a little more than just a run of the mill, you see, one of the boys. And of course, if you just remain one of the boys, you will make for all this terror that now strikes Europe when they think of us, because they all think they are made to be turned over into Woolworth.

Why do the French hate us? Why the Germans? No, they don't, even, but the English. So. They have seen too many Americans and it has been too easy to think of every one of us as just being the same. What -- so what they think of you and me is only -- me included, by the way, I -- I found out this in Europe last year -- they think of us in general.

Thought that is not realized, gentlemen, is -- becomes an injustice to all those things and people to which it does not apply. Thought becomes only real when it becomes specific. General thought is nonsense. Worthless. As long as it stands -- stays general. This is another thing you do not know. You think if you think of

"union now," or "humanity," of "human beings," or "freedom" in general, that this is wonderful. All the great or -- the great ideas, gentlemen, which are bandied around in organizations of charity and politics in this country -- the -- the -- the Union League for Foreign Voters and the -- the Union against Foreign Voters, and the League of Ladies Who Are Not Ladies, and the League of Ladies Who Are Ladies -- they are too general to be interesting. They are all thought that is sterile, that is not strained by realization, because every thought, gentlemen, that is finally realized, becomes very concrete.

You see, God became one man, in order to show that a real thought is something utterly specific. It's a mysterious way of -- of the -- proving to you the point of the circulation of thought, gentlemen, that Christianity had to take God out of the realm of your universal, abstract thinking. God in general, the whole world, the universe, the -- I don't know what. No, this one child in the cradle gives you a better idea of what thought has to become -- flesh, you see -- than all your wonderful generalities in which you are bathing, and of -- out of which nothing ever happens -- just dead -- dead -- dead-born, sterile seed sown today on -- on the hardtop, on the blacktop of our big cities.

It always seems we have any number of ideas in our libraries, in our magazines, in our periodicals, in our schools thrown at you, for example. I'm trying to make you think at this moment. If only one million -- if one million always has to be spent to move one little mouse to do something about it, it means that really the 999,999 fall on blacktop. Your brain is not soil, gentlemen. But I'm sorry to say, most of you have made it into blacktop. The seed doesn't rot there, as it would have to in order to fall in the ground and bear fruit. It is stored away for an examination, and since the examination is -- already happening in three months, you will then empty this -- this -- and make your brain ready for the next seed -- grains of seed, you see. And so on you live, from three months to three months, always filling your brain with sterile grains of seed, and then emptying this floor of yours -- this floorspace of yours and renting it to the next comer. And that you call thinking.

It isn't thinking, gentlemen. It is the giving step-parents' treatment to thoughts that are not at home with you. You aren't hospitable to thinking when you allow a man to -- just to -- a thought to -- just to enter your brain to the -- until -- you are examined on it, and spit it out again, as in a slot machine.

And that's how you learn. That's what you really think. Many boys have told me that they are no longer interested in a subject, because they have taken the examination in it. And that's the end. Investigate in your own life, gentlemen, how many thoughts -- there from school or college -- you have treasured despite the fact that you didn't have to know them for your exam. It's very few. Not con-

-- very considerable. Most of you now, at this moment, take your notes, not because it is important what I say, but because you are anxious to take these notes into your exam. And because I am not interested in your exams, I -- I always allow you to take all your notes into the exam, so that you may at least in the last moment find out that this is not important. Examinations are not important.

They're quite unimportant with regard to the fate of thoughts in the life of the human race.

What time is it, please?

({2:25}.)

Let's have a break here, five minutes.

[tape interruption]

... new slant on truth, of course. You can see that if thought has to come true it is not so important that what we say is true. That is understood. And this whole debate on truth -- on scientific truth -- for example, is half as important as the question: which thoughts that seem true must come true in reality?

So -- example here -- my opposite -- my friend here was dumfounded when I asked him what we had to do with the sentence, "All men are born free and equal." But obviously, they have to come true. That's the slogan under which you can -- you can, you see, bring this whole problem. What's the destiny of thought? Thought must come true. In science, you know that. It has to be verified. But it is a better expression to make it more general and say, "All thought is only worthwhile inasfar as it has to come true." Verification is a poor way of saying this. If we now, in this country, are all treated free and equal, that's not a verification of the sentence as much as a way of saying it has come true. You see, that's more dense. If we verify an experiment, that's one subdivision of having things come true, you see. Then we have a -- hypothesis come true, in science.

But here, if the sent- -- the dogma that "All men are born free and equal," you see has to come true, more has to be done about it, in fact, than in sci- -- in mere science, with some experiment. We have to pass legislation, and we -- have to go to a civil war, and we have to give the oil lands to Texas so that we can get a Republican president and -- to wash down the relics of the Civil War. This is all connected, you see, all this is connected with this one sentence, "All men are created free and equal," because the South just had finally to be led back into the Union. And obviously the election of President Eisenhower by Texas and the

Southern states was the final peace treaty between the South and the North. And it has very little to do, gentlemen, with the issues on hand -- the oil -- tidelands, or what-not. The main thing that will be remembered in American history is that in 1952, finally, the sentence, "All men -- born free and equal," was recognized by the South and in reverse, the North recognized that the Southern states were free and equal. And as a kind of { } on this, they got this, this loot.

Yes, so -- their kindly -- kind of indemnity. You know the South has always said that taxes, and everything went in favor of the Northern states. And so we gave them something we didn't owe them now in order to -- to buy their -- their re- -- final re-entry into the Union, because as long as they all had to vote Democratic, they were not free states of the Union, obviously, because they had a one-party system.

So I only mean to say, gentlemen, the realization of this little, one sentence, "All men are born free and equal," has still shown its power in 1952. That's a long story, isn't it? And now it has come true. And one of your classmates in Charleston, South Carolina, could deliver a commencement address two years ago, in which he said something which I hope one of you will equal, or match by something equally big. He said, "Gentlemen, parents, and teachers: you believe in the solid South, but may I tell you that my generation believes in the liquid South." Which was a declaration against segregation. And that was delivered in Charleston, at the seat of nullification and the state -- seat of -- of secession. And so the South is far ahead of the North in political life at this moment. They have taken over. And we are here rather dusty.

Which all means to say, gentlemen, that thought must get into reality, and we will have, in the second half of our course, to study the ways in which -- by which thought is realized. And I now will give you therefore the layout of the whole course. We will first see the -- investigate the 10 commandments of your own mental process, of your own education. Or as my friend, Ed Little, who sit -- sitting here and who graduated 15 years ago, always used to call it, "the 10 commandments of our mental biology." I still cling to the old term. It isn't -- the 10 commandments of your mental life. That will be Part 1.

And Part 2 will be the ways of thought into realization, and we'll call this "from ideal to commonplace," because the sentence, "All men are born free and equal," when they were first uttered, were heresy. The South said, "That's an attack on private property," on -- you see, on slaves. So it can't -- must be prevented from its being stated even. And in other countries, of course, the kings and the princes said, "That's not true. People are not born free and equal. They are born as serfs. They are born as Jews. They are born as gypsies. They are born as -- as -- as -- under predicament. They are certainly not born free and they are

not born equal."

So gentlemen, the first idea of this sentence, here which we have briefly tested, is that one man believes it. That's the idea. One idea can only take birth in one man. Then it goes to a few. Then it goes to many. And it ends up as 1952, with all; and then it is commonplace.

So gentlemen, how this is constructed, that an idea can march from one to many, is mysterious. You can see it in an invention. In former times, an inventor had not access to this process of realization of his thought in most cases, because he was burned at stake as a demon, as a sorcerer. So we today have come to this sorcerer, to the -- to some engineer who makes an invention and say, "Thank you. We give you a patent for it," you see, and then it will be applied scientifically in the laboratory, and tested, and verified, and then it will be produced, you see. And finally everybody has a telephone. And Mr. Graham Bell gets a monument. And so we have now today invented for these kind of thoughts -- scientific thought -- a process from idea to commonplace. But not for all ideas. Many of my ideas are resisted and of any man's i- -- any man's ideas. Yours, too.

And therefore, gentlemen, the problem of the common weal is how to dredge the canals that lead from a thought uttered, to a thought believed in; from a thought that is true, to a thought that comes true. And that's a long story. And you will be surprised to find that though even Dartmouth College, and your own fraternity, and your own games are part of this tremendous life of -- of what? Because now I think the moment has come at the end of this first lecture where I must invite you to see that this which lives into these various forms of butterfly, short-lived existences, and finally into a realization like these sentences, you see -- of "All men are born free and equal," or "America is an independent state from Britain," or the -- whatever it is, "Nobody shall be judged except by his peers," or "by jury" -- that all these things are -- belong to each other. If they were contradictory, you couldn't realize them.

Every one of these thoughts has to come true so we can find out with which other thoughts it can be compatible, and with which thoughts it becomes contradictory. If you would only have thoughts, you could harbor in your -- in your brain, you see, as many of you do: "Let there be science, and let there be no thinking in my own brain," you see, but television instead. And -- or "Let there be all men be -- born free and equal, and let us have the tyranny of one world government," which would mean that there could be no freedom and no equality, because if you have one-world government, there would be the greatest tyranny and despotism on earth. It would have to be. It's not a good dream. But you harbor these contradictory ideas at this moment in your head, because you have not learned that thought is not -- worth nothing if it cannot come true. And

how do you have a world government, gentlemen, and freedom and equality? It's just impossible. Can't have it both ways. But you want to, because your thoughts are all unproven. They are just nice.

What time is it, please?

(25 to 3:00.)

The famous story I always tell of the free trader in this college, you see, who thought he could have a -- be a prosperous American and be for free trade. So he was the greatest free trader on this college. He took courses in public speaking, and went all around, made peo- -- speeches on, you see, no tariffs, free trade, world unity, et cetera. Then he -- left college, and had to get a job, and had to be a well-paying one, because his bride wanted to have a pearl necklace very soon. And so he became the champion for high tariffs. He found out, you see, that you couldn't have it both ways, that his so-called thought, that free trade was a good thing was a very cheap thing, and the last thing he wanted to come true. It wasn't false. But it wasn't true, either. It was just empty.

And the -- many of your thoughts aren't worth being thought. For example, you are all pacifists, and say, "Wors- -- wars are bad," but gentlemen, peace is worse than war. It usually is. I assure you the peace in the '30s was worse than war. That's why we had to go to war. As long you cannot admit it, you are slaves of your prejudice. This country lives by wars. It does- -- certainly doesn't live by its empty peaces. Think what we have done now. The -- we have just talked about it yesterday. We have -- in order to please the ladies of America, the mothers of America, the brides of America, the widows of America, the stepdaughters of America -- I don't know which women -- effeminate people in this country -- we had to sign an armistice in -- in Korea, so that now we are faced with the necessity of sending troops to Viet Minh, because all the Russian jets and the -- all the Chinese guns are now free to march from Ko- -- South -- Korea into -- into Indochina. Is this very clever? It's more difficult for us to help in Indochina than it was in Korea.

So we, who had no interest in the armistice, except your stupidity, your laziness, and your being ruled by your mother, on your -- directed from your mothers' apron strings. It would have been much cheaper, much less loss -- smaller loss of life if we had kept on fighting in Korea. But no -- no, that's, you see, because you have two thoughts in mind: the most powerful nation of the world, responsibility for world leadership, and let's have no war under no circumstances. Do you think you can have -- think both things? But you do. You do, because your thoughts aren't worth anything. They are just accidental. "Accidental information" they call it in The New Yorker. Your information is accidental.

You think what you please.

Gentlemen, the logos, the word that keeps you and me alive by giving you a name and -- allowing you to participate in thinking -- that is one for all mankind. And that is not the logic, which I'm going to tell you about, but that's the logos, the distribution of the spirit into millions and millions of people of all times. That is the tremendous process which we are going to look into. What you learn in philosophy otherwise is always interested only in one man's thought: how he hangs onto it and makes it into a system, for example -- that's a philosopher's thought, you see; or in logic -- one idea, how to clarify it inside of itself, you see. If you say that Socrates is a man, you imply logically that he must die, because all men must die; therefore Socrates being a man, must die. You call this logic, you see. You're very proud of this logic. How do you call such a conclusion? Wie?

(Syllogism.)

A syllogism, yes. This isn't worth very much. I mean, if you are not a poor -- absolute idiot, you are -- you know logic very soon. But the logos, gentlemen, which says, "At 18 you must think and be a student, and at 25, you must be so irrational that you get married to one woman, although she certainly is only one among all the many you could love," all these strange demands on the logos on your behavior, that is the topic of the course. And we'll immediately next time proceed to introduce you into the 10 commandments of education.

Thank you.