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

({ }.)

Wie? Well --.

({ }?)

Pardon me?

(Can you say a little bit about { }?)

I can't...

[tape interruption]

Well, it's -- they are up to them, just -- just to take them. We have time, you see. Why don't you wait? I -- talk to you as a group if you want to, after -- at the end. Wie? Don't you think? The rest just wouldn't be in- -- well --.

Very briefly, I mean, the -- what I have here treated as the question of religion everywhere is there shown in its unfolding; it's an -- a universal history of mankind, you see, how these various spheres were really taken up. One first driving out the other, and were -- how we finally have managed in our own era to bring all these things to a mutual, although gradual, recognition. What I -- I have -- I mean, so to speak, I'm leading up to this course in 58, but with much more massive material, so that you really come to know the life of any one of these groups, not just in its religious aspect, but politically, socially, linguistically, and so on. It's a universal history, as I think it must be done.

I'll -- I'll tell you frankly what the -- the ambition of 58 has something to do with the state of affairs in this college and in -- in our western world today. And you very well know that there are these books like Toynbee, or Spengler, or -- and there are others in Europe; they are not so well known here. It's -- everywhere there is an attempt to say what is a unity in all these tremendous facts which our departments of history, and literature, and linguistics, and archaeology, and prehistory have developed. And as you know, there is a great zest for unity, if you look at these cheap books which are now sold at the newsstands for 65 cents or 35 cents. You always find some Mystery of Man, or Prehistoric Man, or The Beginnings of Mankind and such things, you see.

I think the courage that has been lacking is to see that for a hundred years, gentlemen, we have dropped the Bible as a -- the only universal history of mankind which served for the last 1700 years. The last great universal history in this country which was still based on the order of the Bible, it was written by Jonathan Edwards. It was only published after his death. He died in 1758. He was the great preacher here in Northampton before there was any Smith College. And a very great man. And the first American to get universal recognition in Europe as a -- a leading thinker. And he wrote a strange book, The Economy of Salvation. That is a kind of household of human energies as unfolding through time. And he took the Bible; and the book, you may say, is a flop. That is, the materials which--even in 1758 were already known--were too rich, compared to what he took from the Bible. And compared to the many -- much knowledge we had already about primitive man already in the 18th century really--Chinese, Persians, and so--didn't seem to -- to be permissible to limit the whole story on the few facts mentioned in these few chapters of the book of Genesis, in the Bible.

So people, as you know, for the last 200 years in this period which we call the Enlightenment, have gathered facts. We have encyclopedias, with the -- thousands and thousands of data about humanity. But in the scramble, there was lost the tradition of -- a purpose, of a unity, of something that all men would learn from each other, and that would lead to a -- a common story. And if you today go into a history department, you must be very well armed, or you must be perfectly indifferent. Or you go crazy, because all the facts are contradictory. Here is French history; it says one thing. There is Russian history; says another thing. All these stories make no sense, if you compare them, I mean. They are all very interesting by themselves, you see. In French history, you celebrate Ludwig -- Louis XIV, and -- and -- and Napoleon. And in Elizabethan age, you cele- -- cele- -- celebrate Elizabeth, and then you come to Cromwell, and that's different again. And all these things--as far as I can see; I have grown up, after all, in this confusion--can only lead to this feeling -- 1066 and All That, you see. These are all just -- is all -- just all rubbish. "History is bunk," Mr. Henry Ford used to say.

Now a -- a society like ours, under the onslaught of a future gospel, the communistic gospel, which disparages its own past as just rotten, and bunk, and rubbish, and tyranny, and mistake, and battles, and -- has absolutely no place to go. It has no future, because the future seems to be that Vietnam falls to the East -- red Chinese, and then Thailand will fall, and then perhaps -- probably India. How long will this fantastic man Nehru last? We don't know. And you -- how bad the shape of the world is you can really in Mr. Nehru's own book, Glimpses of World History. Has anybody seen the book? That's a pathetic book, because it shows what we give an eastern man today to live by. And nobody can live by these glimpses of world history. He just takes Greece under Pericles, a very nice

-- and then some other great age--Renaissance, you see. And then he takes his own emperor Akbar. Again another period of history. And these are the few nice times, so to speak, in which it was worthwhile, you see, to live. The rest is just too terrible.

Now I cannot see that this -- there is a word of truth in all this. There's only this total lack of faith that man at all times was the same man, and has deliv- -- furnished us with the powers to master the situation. We owe them to our ancestors, after all. And 58 is simply an attempt with modern means, gentlemen, with the modern equipment of science, and knowledge, our museums, our excavations, our texts, our literature, to go back to the same simplicity that in all these tremendous masses of material, there is really a very simple red thread running through. But it isn't a simply logical thread, but it is something which I have tried to show you in this -- in this course, that man at all times tries to master space and time, and to survive death. And to line up with all other men of all times and all places so that we all together stand for one person. The gre- -- all -- great idea of universal history is that mankind more and more, out of innumerable little groups, coalesces into one conscious being who can have a biography, just as any couple has that marries, and has children. And there you are also not surprised when you say your family has a history, although your father is one man, born at some -- one time, and your mother has another; it would make quite good sense after their marriage to write a common history.

Things are equally simple between Europeans -- nations, or the West and the East today. All these wars are not fought for nothing. They drive -- they drive us together; they glue us together. Take, for example, the two world wars. Through the two world wars, America and Europe have re-acquired a common history. In the 19th century, America lived a history all by itself. But it is obvious that after 1945, you cannot write American history omitting the other nations with whom we went to war. So something has happened. That is, the horizon of American history has changed. The carrier, the bearer, the character who plays the par- -- this drama is now not just the United States, but it is a larger entity of man.

Well, all this I think I have simplified. I bring down -- out the volume in the -- during -- these two volumes in which I have settled this in Europe for the time being, and during this year and the next year. So I'm quite satisfied that I have reached a stage in these -- in this long and very difficult struggle against the powers that be in -- in our tradition of the last 200 years, by which I think it can be shown that we all need a very -- straightforward universal history, that French history and English history make no sense unless they are seen within some context.

Has any one of you read my -- seen my Out of Revolution? Probably not. You have? Well, that's -- there is an attempt made for the last thousand years. What I'm now trying to do is to do it for the last 6,000 years, you see. But it is again -- I'm just have -- my method is very simple, you see. I just have asked the people: what did they say themselves? And -- all these peoples of the past--just as we speak of a better world to come, or democracy--all have some flag by which they show their decent respect for the opinion of mankind, as the Declaration of Independence so rightly says. And by this one sentence, the American founders -- founding fathers turn to the rest of mankind and say, "Understand what we are doing," you see.

So as in any play, or in any family, gentlemen, every member of the family says what he wants, and wha- -- where's he going. The others answer what they're doing, and we understand each other. And so the group life consists in everybody's giving a monologue. And all the monologues put together forming a drama. You cannot put into the American people an im- -- an idea like Mr. -- or the -- the -- the Arabs or the Byzantines, which is Mr. Toynbee's idea. The only decent humility which a man has is to ask the other people, "What did you want to achieve?" and then to say what we want to achieve, and then see if this doesn't make sense together. So the -- I mean, the principle is -- I think the method is there, and the material is there.

Down to -- 1890, gentlemen--that always has struck me as an important date in this college here--the president of this college used to give a senior course in -- on universal history, which was very much in the Jonathan Edwards' wain -- vein of the Bible, you see. But it was a universal history. It didn't end with the Gospel, but it ended with the spread of Christianity, and with the future, you see, what's the -- remained to be done to unify the globe. And this course was the last remnant, gentlemen, of the universal meaning of "education" in this country. In 1890, it was sacrificed, when President Tucker came in and we built the physics laboratory. And this last -- phase, as you know, then ended in the Great Issue course. In the Great Issue course, you have an attempt of our president--and I think very rightly so, at a very unfortunate moment--to replace the old universal history by at least a survey of the world's great issues at this moment. As -- you can see that one is an historical view from beginning to end, and that the Great Issue course is a survey of things in space, at this moment. All simultaneous, you see. But honor where honor is due, the Great Issue course is a great attempt to combat a lacuna in our -- in the meaning of a liberal arts college, which cannot consist just of three divisions and 97 departments, but which must have somewhere the ambition to show every member of the group where we are going and whence we are coming.

As you can see from the Great Issue course, it is very short-lived. It has no

long breath. It is of the moment. As you can object to Mr. {Bartlett's} -- President {Bartlett's} course in 1890, it had no contact with the vast expanse of knowledge in our own times. It was too limited in -- in scope, so to speak.

So what I have felt since I am here is that we must take the third step: use all this tremendous material of the last hundreds of years of research and knowledge, and -- but go back to the same problem: to give man the -- his place again, you see, of whence and whither. And in this sense, 58 is the -- is my corollary to the Great Issue course. Is -- does this satisfy your curiosity?

(Very.)

Wie?

(Yeah. I mean, but you know the catalog says one thing which -- and after the semester in here, why -- you know that there is a -- a definite plan here, in -- in everything you do. And I'm trying to find out what it is { } your general plan.)

Now -- can you now understand?

(Yeah, I understand.)

But it's -- you see, the syllabuses in the catalog, I think it seems to me they aren't worth great effort, because it is impossible to express in a few lines, you see, what you are really trying to do. Isn't that true? I mean, it's just impossible. So I've talked about this with a former dean -- {{ } -- Gordon Bill}, when I introduced the course. And we agreed that this announcement in 58 -- it is not wrong, you see. But it cannot say really what's given there. With such remarks that I replace President {Bartlett's} course and so, this you cannot -- print in a syllabus. Isn't that true?

So I am -- I am in agreement with you that this is a great obstacle. The time is -- we are -- it's pretty early. People still bury their heads in the sand of -- of daily events. And I don't blame them. And what else can you do when you are president of Dartmouth College and you have these departments where every member of ev- -- all these departments simply fights for his own piece of knowledge and declines to accept any common direction, you see?

And I try to show you what the religion of the academic mind is, you see. It's a mind that has no connections with the past, and no connection with the future. And no con- -- you see, the -- the spirit of the schools has this strange, philosophical religion. You remember what we said. And -- but you cannot live,

gentlemen, since you are not going to be scholars, and historians, and specialists yourself, without some comfort. I have always felt that 58 is a -- should be a requirement for any educated person in this country to give him this -- this support, that he has a good conscience, that our faith in time is not just accidental, or idiotic, or passing, or wanton, or --. It isn't. It is a great honor, gentlemen, to live, once you grasp that you are on a certain place on the tree of life, and not at all just driftwood. But most of you just take it for granted that everybody to himself, and everybody's an individual, and everybody has to build his own little philosophy.

Perhaps I -- I should say one more word in this context about -- an experience in Philosophy -- 9. There I made the -- asked the boys to read a poem by Robert Frost. And I thought that was not too much of an imposition, to make them realize what religion was, by indirection. I didn't say a word about religion, of course. But I just asked them to read the -- the poem. Has anybody read "Westrunning Brook," by Robert Frost? "West-running Brook." No. I think it's -- one of his profoundest poems. I advise you to read it. I shall use it today--only one line of it--to show you how difficult it is for even a -- a well-meaning, open, young fellow today to get the first glimpse of the religious problem. That's why I'll do it. It has -- not directly something to do with this course. But I think it sums up very well the -- the hopelessness of giving a course on other people's religion to people who do not pray, who do not know what prayer is, who laugh, or are silent, or indifferent to this whole problem that in our veins the sap of thousands of years of mankind's history is running, who really think their sap is theirs.

Robert Brook -- Robert Frost there describes a brook which runs westward when all the other brooks run eastward, and a young couple that's going to settle there. It's on their farm, this water, look at it. It's their honeymoon, and she's going to tell him that they -- she's expecting a baby very soon--or not very soon, I mean, but that it's going to happen--and so they found their family on this day, consciously. There is a future ahead of them. And they look at this water and they think it is so strange. There is an eddy forming. And Frost, musing, says, "How strange, this water," like any living thing--really -- animistically really speaking--says, "This water has the power to turn toward its source." And "that seems to me," he says, the farmer says, "the most human thing about human- -- humanity, that we, while most things just run downhill and come to their consummation, you see, by gravity, and by drive, and by instinct, and by push, we, while we are still going westward, we are able to turn back and take a look at our source."

Now it seems to me that everything we have told -- spoken about here in this course, gentlemen, has given you a -- glimpse of the fact that man wants to be empowered to understand, to enact, to remember, to be capal- -- remain

capable of all the phases that have lived -- have been lived before, in his own life or in the life of the group. Think of the calendar, you see; think of the other spheres--which are ju- -- this moment absent from my life--in which the spirit of man tries to recover, and to have present, and to make available, despite the fact that we are here in the classroom. We want to remember the battlefield. And we want to remember the family. And we fill ourselves here, you see, with situations which are not here, in order to become more complete. Isn't that right?

Now -- Frost has put it in a very simple way. I -- really, you should read the poem. And I think this is -- makes him great, that he has tried there to put in the simple movement of the first living process on earth--water running downhill--this strange double feature, this -- this infraction, or refraction, or reflection of this element to look back, to turn back to its source.

Gentlemen, if you can look back to the source -- the Bible says, "Remember Adam and Eve," that's just another way of putting exactly this problem of water looking, you see. You wouldn't be man if you were just -- would just run, run from one engagement to the other. You run, yes. We all march forward. But at the same time--that's another topic in 58--we also remember. And the -- the balance between how much we remember and how much we achieve in the future makes us men. You have -- just have to think of the Renaissance men who dug out Athens and Rome in order to lead the good life of modern man, you see, and get rid of medievalism. And so they dug out the old, ancient relics, and at the same time created modern machinery, and modern railroads, and modern radar, you see. And we -- so man, in Frost's poem is here seen to be man only if he covers more than one time, and more than one space in his soul. If he can look back to the source, honor the source, and say, "Although I'm now 20 miles away from the source," brook -- westward-running brook, you see, "I have still -- I am not the brook only here. The brook itself wants to be comprehensive. And it is only the brook if the source, and the mouth, and the moment at which you meet this brook are all in some way real, active, energe- -- energizing, and making the brook into its whole."

Now of a brook, of course, you may say, "That's fancy." We don't know anything of the consciousness of the brook. This little eddy which juts back, like a backwater and -- and seems to turn to the -- to the source, of course, that isn't true. I mean, we know nothing of this water. Although I would say any such water is -- is something strange. But Brook -- Frost of course only uses this -- this example to remind the young farmer and his wife, you see, of their power to stabilize life, gentlemen. While we are marching from our gra- -- birth to our grave, you see, we can at the same time--we must at the same time--look from the end back to the beginning. And it is this double feature, as you may call it with a movie expression, this -- a strange attempt --. If here, this is your birthday, gen-

tlemen, and this is your dying day, vitally speaking, compared to the biological problem of the brook, running downhill, our life is very much the same. It runs in one direction; it is irreversible. Life is irreversible. But if it were only irreversible, gentlemen, you and I would just be nature. We would just simply be matterof-fact. There -- would be no use talking about anything, because everything would just happen, as it has to happen. Our teeth would fall out, and our hair would grow gray, and one day we would be put in the grave, and this -- this the end. And why worry? Because the -- death comes. You may be sure of that. And therefore, in a way your life is so absolutely predetermined, that -- why bother? Why care?

Now obviously, gentlemen, the -- the west-running brook people there suddenly discover that man reaches the -- his own sphere of majesty, of power only, when while he is running down, and while his life is obviously doomed, he at the same time develops this freedom to penetrate before his birth, to the origin of the species; something -- Mr. Darwin also naively did. Every one of us wants to know what has happened before our birth. And everybody wants to influence the time that will be after your and my death. And this is the first beginning, I tried to tell you, of our divinity, of our being not just what we are. Every one of us reconquers a part of the past through your family name, through your nationality. You -- you cannot help being a part of the historical process, you see, which started long before you started. And you have to honor these elements of yours. You have to honor the Constitution of the United States. The people in 1860 had to go to war three -- you know: "Three scores and ten, our forefathers" -- very tragic. They suddenly were overtaken by something they said they -- they didn't want to do. But there they were.

And the more we can keep alive these sources of our being, the freer we are in this present hour not to be identified with -- with just going on at this moment. The more profound the sources of our life will spring, and the more variety you get into your actions. If we today dig up the old prehistoric men, gentlemen, with their tribal dances, it may free us to overcome the drabness of our factory life, and to enthuse us again, because we will dance like these people, and we will perhaps sing like these people again, and we'll -- there will be a -- a refresher course in vitality to be gotten out of the -- our occupation, you see, with these prehistoric peoples. That's not a luxury. It's not just curiosity. It's a necessity today, because without bringing -- luring up these spirits of the past, our own spirit is too much crushed by the moment.

So man is only man, gentlemen, when all spirits of all times are at our disposal. Life must be empowered in every generation to generate life. Now a generation is only life as it is. But to generate life, we must step outside our own generation. We must regenerate this generation.

It has been said, gentlemen, that the life of life is love, and the life of love is the spirit. And I suggest that this is simply true, that all life of all times comes from the creative source which has created all phases of civilization, all geological strata, all the types of vegetation and animals. It's the same creative power that at one time said to the plesiosaurius, "Be a sauria -- saurus," and to men, "Be men." And today it says to people, "Be Europeans." And yesterday it said to Americans, "Be Americans." Obviously to be an American is something different in kind as to be a European. Yet it is one creative process which in 19- -- 1776 could say one thing, and in this century says something else. Can you see this?

People have called this power with dif- -- different names. I think our era has to call it the "spirit." As you know in the Trinity, the -- you can speak of the same power as "Father"; you can speak of it as "Son"; and you can speak of it as "Holy Spirit"; and it's one god, just the same. If you want to agree today with the Russians, or with the Germans, or with the Hindus, I think we are forced to try how far we can express this unity of creative power: spirit. The reason is, gentlemen, where there is one spirit, it will unfold in love between people. If we are here of one spirit, it would show in our mutual love. And our mutual love would form each one of our bodies.

So the religious story of mankind is not that life's life is love, and love's life is spirit. But I would reverse the process and would say: there is one creative process that has gone on obviously for millions of years. This one spirit has unfolded in love, in procreative power. The whole mankind was -- is obviously older than you or -- and I, the whole tree. And then it dismisses every link, every member into its own character, its own time.

And to -- connect this with what we have said, gentlemen: you remember that we had the saturnian, or the catastrophical sphere as uppermost. We had the sphere of love and passion. We had the sphere of will and purpose. We had the sphere of organic life. And we had the sphere of corpses, of life that has passed out. As you know, the secular view of all this is: first to collect the corpses and call yourself a physicist or an astronomer. The second is that you collect the organic thing and call yourself a biologist. The third is that you say, "Oh, there is purpose." You come to the humanities, and to literature and sociology or psychology, education. And then you come willy-nilly to ethics. That would be the love, so to speak, which is conceded by our gentle friends. And then somewhere there is this -- this bottomless pit called religion, and theology, and catastrophes, and rise and fall of civilizations, and prophecy, and -- and all this kind of unscientific stuff. That's how it looks to Mr. Oppenheimer, who by the way, is a firstrate man. But he has -- of course represents in our civilization the Princetonian point of view. And science looks there as though we know all about corpses; we know little about life; we know still less about politics and will; we know still less

about love; and we shall know nothing about God.

I don't believe this, gentlemen. I still think that Mr. Oppenheimer is only allowed to be in -- in Princeton despite his mishap with Mr. -- with Admiral {Strauss}, that -- because we have a religion. Otherwise he would have been killed, you see. It's miraculous that the man is still head of the Institute of Advanced Studies. It shows that we believe in Christian freedom. And there is one God and one spirit. And we say Mr. Oppenheimer personifies one type, and the admiral another. We just allow them both to work it out. That's quite an achievement, gentlemen. I have great respect for both men. I think they both had a -- have -- have done with -- a very reasonable job; one a minimum of statehood, a minimum of -- as in the Rosenberg case, a minimum of -- well, "statehood" I have to say, or political--how would you say?--integrity, you see, power for this republic, you see, that it could keep up with the Joneses and have a minimum of that discipline, which all other states had to have through history. And on the other hand, our ideal of a real free world, which cannot be identified with state power. And I think the solution of our president is quite wise when he said, "Mr. Oppenheimer is an excellent man, first-rate man. But he is a scholar. And I do not wish to mix metaphors. To be -- live as a statesman and a military man is one thing," you see. "Don't lead me into temptation. Mr. Oppenheimer is not an ammunition fac- -- manufacturer. And he shouldn't be tempted to consider this dilemma. So we'll solve this dilemma by saying, One is one thing, and the other is another." I think there's great wisdom in this, gentlemen.

But, if -- you follow the argument at this point, this is not so important. I only want to throw out that what has happened in the last 80 years is the naive surrender of all the traditions of the human race, that the spirit must be first before there can be a people. And a people must be first before there can be individuals. And individuals must purposely act before we can have bread, and organic substance, and -- and weaving, and all the materials of life. And that this must be secured before we can deal with the highways and byways of the -- and raw materials. Do you really believe that the first human act is gold rush? Can't you see that you first must have the United States in Washington giving land grants to the people in Colorado? So what's a -- what's primary? The political entity which allows people to gold-rush in Klondike or Colorado? Or is the individual who lands in this country and rushes to Colorado--is he the first? If the gold rush comes first, you see, our physicists are right, that the physical is the first and the spirit is a luxury, and we know nothing about it. But if you look at the facts of your own existence in this country, gentlemen, how you came here, every one of you--or your ancestors--you must admit that the spirit is your first experience, and everything else comes later. That is just the incarnation of the spirit.

So the -- that's what I wanted to come to, today, gentlemen. After all, we live in the Christian era. And the Christian era has tried to s- -- do this, to say it is not enough to live in the Maya civilization, and to build pyramids, and to have { } for every 20 years, and to conquer eternity. And it is also known that it is not enough to make sacrifices for hunting. And you rapple -- grapple with -- with the tribal group and its intensive life of -- of identification, and marriage, and funerals. And it has also said, Christianity, that the schools are highly interesting with regard to new ideas, and science. But that they cannot cover the ground of common humanity, that all these nice philosophers have no respect for women and children, for the common man, for hard work. They are just interested in ideas. And their religion shows it. Their religion ha- -- treats all these people objectively. And you cannot treat children objectively, you see. They have to be loved. Otherwise they die.

And we -- I told you about homosexuality as a criterion of this kind of mind. There is no criterion for the good life outside the mind, because it's a religion of the mind which the Greek tradition only has cultivated. And what to do with our body and soul, you just don't -- have anything to say about it. That's arbitrary. You have a new idea? You try something else. And you get this -- society -- you get Mr. Andr‚ Gide. Who knows who Andr‚ Gide is?--who -- goes around in Paris with his -- or went to -- used to go -- he is dead now, isn't he? -- finally--he -- he took his -- his boy always to every party, and insisted that wherever he was invited, this -- this, his -- his mistress -- his main mistress had to be invited, too. That was a breakdown, gentlemen, of our era. That was a -- refresher course in paganism, in Greek religion. Just as Mr. Hitler was a refresher course in tribal religion.

That is to say, gentlemen, the era in which we live can be given up and break down any minute. When any one of the religions so far described to you--of the first, second, or third sphere--become sovereign again, and say, "Ha! We Germans have our own religion." Or "we Greeks," I mean, "We writers of France have our own standards of morality, you see: for the artist, everything is sacred, whatever his pleasure should drive him to." Or when you get the Chinese or the -- or the Russian welfare state, where Mr. Stalin or the em- -- old emperor of China can just ask from everybody to work on January 1st this way, and on January 2nd this way, and on January 10th this way, et cetera; where you have to dance when the commissar says so, and where you have to -- sing, loudly, "I'm so happy, I'm so happy because Father Stalin is -- tomorrow to behead me."

That is Egyptian darkness, gentlemen. That is -- also what has been lived through many ages. The Aztecs did it, you see, and their victims, they went to death with great enthusiasm, you see, in order to foster the fertility of the Mexican plain. Christianity says, "This is all incomplete." The real life of the human

race, gentlemen, cannot be contained in either cosmic calendars, or in tribal animism, or in Greek pride of the mind. This is all very nice. They all add some point. There is one sphere in which they are very active, in which they do something. The scientific purpose of the Greeks is tremendous. And the Chinese or the Bolshevik efficiency of econ- -- -nomics is tremendous. And the skill of a hunter of a primitive tribe is -- we all envy them for their -- for the development of their five senses, and their closeness to all living beings, you see, and their power to hear the -- in the leaves of the tree, and in the waters of the brook, you see, the -- the great spirit. That's wonderful, gentlemen, but it is incomplete, incomplete.

And -- so let me say one word today on the condition of -- of this course, and of your being students here, gentlemen. The condition is that neither the Greek mind, nor the primitive mind, nor the cosmic, astronomical universe of the stars can tell you and me what to be -- do today. And it cannot tell us how much to retain and how much to reject of what we have gotten. It cannot give us -- they cannot give you and me direction. Obviously I need to be told, and you need to be told when to go to college and when to join the army. That's everybody's problem today.

Now at this point, gentlemen, where you are at the crossroads, you choose between the Greek life of the mind--that would be college, you see--and the bodily life of the tribe, of the law of the jungle, wearing the uniform of the United States and the Star-Spangled Banner flying ahead of you -- in front of you. Gentlemen, man becomes only interesting when he has to make a decision: where is a place for your army service? and where is the place for your college life? And when do you marry? That's Number 3. And when do you start to ma- -- earn a living? That's your fourth proposition, isn't it?

So here you are. That's the real human problem. Inside the profession, you can just have a Greek mind. Once I am a physicist, I can say, "All my -- the physicists in the world are my friends," as Mr. Oppenheimer said. So he visited his Communist friend in Paris, because the Communist friend was a physicist. "All physicists are my friends." For the Greek mind, you see, all the people who think about the same problem are friends. That's the scientific fraternity, the republic of scholars, isn't it? For the people in -- in the labor union, all the people who receive the same wages are friends. That's the group, you see, for which you work and with whom you live. You can see, it's quite a different group. They don't do the same thing, but they live under the same conditions of wage-earning. And in your family, you say, "All the S- -- Browns and the Smiths are my friends. They are my relations," you see. "And all the Blacks and the Whites, I hate them, because one White divorced my sister." That's a tribal relationship.

Now interestingly enough, of course, man only begins at the point where he is not satisfied with being just Black, White, or Brown, or Smith; where he's not satisfied with being just a physicist, or a chemist; but where he says, you see, "What do I owe to chemistry and physics?" and "What do I owe to my family?" and "How much do I owe to the United States government?" The dosing of these various loyalties.

So Christianity is a religion, gentlemen, superior to any individual loyalty, superior to any individual sphere. And therefore it has the wisdom to say, "I begin with the catastrophe." Christianity begins with the Crucifixion. That is, with the end of the Roman loyalty of Jesus; and the end of the Jewish loyalty of Jesus; and the end of His -- of His life of an artist, and a genius, and poet, which He also was. And what has to be done to unify all these spheres? How do we draw it together, this, gentlemen? How do -- do I teach people when to do--you remember my problem of when-ness--when to do one thing and the other?

This is Christianity, gentlemen, which stresses the holiness of the spirit, if the spirit is manifold, if all the apparitions of life --. When and if I shall become a physicist, gentlemen, is a decision which I do not make as a physicist. The decision whether to emigrate to America, or to remain in Italy, I cannot make this decision as an Italian, and I cannot make it as an American. Therefore my nationality does not give me the orientation for choosing between two nationalities. Isn't that obvious? Yet if you ask modern psychologists or modern men in their atomization, they do -- never give this a thought. They actually think that you become a physicist as a physicist, you see. But obviously the man who says, "I'm going to be a physicist," has inside himself a power which is neither the power of the physicist, you see--can you see this?--nor is it the power of the man that I was yesterday, when I was in high school. But it is obviously the -- that part of me which stretches out towards my fulfillment, that is responsible for my fulfillment; that says to me, if I now miss out on my right choice, and if I become a physicist at the time when it stinks, because it's so well paid and so destructive that a decent fellow cannot become a nuclear physicist, who said this inside of me? Who said this?

Gentlemen, the future says it. The threat of a tremendous catastrophe. If all the bright brains in this country now become nuclear physicists, we shall have nothing but bombs. If we have nothing but bombs, the bombs will be thrown. The very best people of -- obviously must not become physicists if we want to prevent the next world war. You must have an avant-garde of people who devote themselves to this tremendous restraint: to have bombs, and not to throw them. But you don't develop this capacity by constructing bombs. You can only develop this capacity, you see, by something quite different, which you -- we shall have to invent, so to speak, a new status of man. A new type of man.

Well, gentlemen, the catastrophe which threatened the Roman world in Jesus' days was that there was a tyrant at the top, and there were all these various loyalties for every one in part. One was a Jew. The one was a Greek. The only man who commanded Jews, Greeks, Romans, et cetera--Egyptians--was the emperor. So he was the only god.

Jesus said, "This divine spark of deciding between these loyalties, is in every man. Every one of you can, in scenting the destiny of the human race, cast his lot in the direction of the creative future."

If not so many people in this college go in for physics or economics now, but for new jobs--be it international relations, or be it -- whatever you call this, this new proposition, you see, that there must be people who can work in -- in underprivileged areas, in 4-H countries for -- and so on--however you call this--all the- -- in all these people there would be alive something that is not their own self. Because once you came to this college, your old self was just the result of the past, you see. It hadn't been kindled by any future necessity, not by the threat of this catastrophe.

The Christian Gospel is very simple. It says, "A catastrophe is inevitable unless sufficient number of people are drawn into new ways of life to prevent the catastrophe. They must in the middle of their life be -- converted." And the conversion of a Christian, gentlemen, is not the confession of sins. That's all -- for children and { } is a matter for children and old women. The power, gentlemen, of the Apostle Paul was that he said, "I'm so encouraged by the death of Jesus in Jerusalem that I'll match it by being crucified in Rome." And by going to Rome, as you know, he changed { } history. He did, you see, because -- that nobody had dared to do.

And the Christian is -- what has the Christian Church done, gentlemen? It has to give -- given every man the powers of Caesar. The powers of the one man who was God when Jesus came into the world. He was the only God. Gentlemen, you and I are as divine today as Caesar. Why? Under what condition? If, to my last dying day, I'm ready to give up what I have for the sake of the better by which I could prevent a catastrophe. It may be I have to resign from Dartmouth College. It may be I have to give up my -- my private property here. If I can feel called, you see, then I must develop a new strain, so to speak, as we have new cultures in bacteriology, you see, and become a different bacterium from what I have been.

Every one of you, gentlemen, has this problem. You will be faced with it. The more successful you are, the more you will feel that success alone is not justification, because the -- just as the great success in your life usually is -- comes

from the past, you see. That we -- every one of you has to develop a certain--and I think that's a typical, biological creation, just as in -- in -- in plants and -- and--a different {style}. You have to take in some non-American friend into your life. Either you befriend one Negro, or one -- befriend one Chinese, or befriend one Abyssinian, I don't care, you see. But that's the point -- { } the problem: who are your friends? That doesn't mean that you have to join Marxian movements, or write letters, you see, to the president, or to the New York Times. But in your own circle. It's a religious decision which you have to make.

I once got a boy s- -- from -- he lived in Newburgh, New York. He wanted to go back to his father's family and factory. The father was a very wealthy man there, and the son was offered the position of his successor. And he wanted it. And he -- I sai- -- he said, "Can I do this? May I do this?"

And, of course, you can do it, but the question of "may" -- I'll put it before you very clearly, gentlemen. If you, after having been to college--and was engaged, too, with a girl out of town--if you feel strong enough to live in Newburgh, and establish there your own circle of friends quite independent from your parents--see ministers and people of social groups which would not come to your father's house because your parents don't want to meet these people--if you feel strong enough to have your own commun- -- unity there, you are allowed to go back. If you cannot do this, you are decadent; you are degenerate. Because you then just live parasitically on your parents' form of life.

And I told him further to do, that to live in Newburgh as the son of your parents, in the same little town, and to avail yourself of this tremendous creative freedom of creating a new environment, a different friendship, you see, a different meeting ground in your home would show greater character than to go out to Africa and hunt the elephant. That the escapism of modern man never comes to make this choice or to bring it to the test, that the people don't go back to Newburgh. But they haven't changed, and they haven't developed the creative power of meeting other people really, you see, because there isn't this pressure. You can see this.

So gentlemen, every man--in -- in -- the man in Newburgh--could just as much be a good Christian if he has this independence that the love of the future, of the peace of the human race--and its destiny, which is greater unity and more divinity to all men, if he can implement this. Don't believe that this has anything to do with { }, or Union Now, and so. It's given to every one of you in every moment to make a little bit, you see, room for the future or to drag on the past. Because it is of course easier to go back to Newburgh and to say to Mother, "We only see Mrs. Smith, and Aunt Elizabeth," you see, "and certainly this Negro preacher shall never come to our house because you don't like him." That's

simple. But you are dead. You can see that he has -- the man has died who does this.

But gentlemen, this is very serious, because it means: if you look at your own life up to this point of -- as being made -- caused by the past, your "me," your "poor me," at any one moment in your life there comes this decision: I against me. If it were only "I" who makes the decision, gentlemen, you would always let ha- -- the win "me" -- the "me" would always win out. If you put Mother Brown in -- in Newburgh against John Brown, John Brown will always have a bad conscience and say, "It hurts Mother." Perhaps if his wife is very strong, she'll -- he'll then -- obey his wife's orders. But it still wouldn't be a religious decision. It would just be pressure from both sides. So I mean I take "I" to have a "thou" next to it.

What is a religious decision, gentlemen? The religious decision is to be drawn by the inevitable catastrophe if you just let the past and the existing spheres, so to speak, run amok and thrive. There is always a new element which is waiting to be embodied in the world. This -- we know this from -- I mean, just go to any biology department. The creation of all the types and all the kinds has been incessant. It goes on under your noses, gentlemen. You just see there is a man like Albert Schweitzer. Well, in 1908, there was no Albert Schweitzer. There was just a professor of theology called "Albert Schweitzer." That was all. Today at his 80th birthday, everybody says, "Ah, he's different from a professor of theology," you see.

How did this happen? Well, as you know, 40 years ago, he was just disgusted with theology. And he did worry about the question: how could he take one step that would fit into an uncreated pattern of human behavior that did not yet exist?

What I have to try to say, and which is so difficult, gentlemen, is that the decisions which a religious man makes are not made in his self-interest. And they are not made against his self-interest. They are done with regard to the indispensable future that must be achieved for all men. That is, once you are grown up and we -- you have received this wonderful education here, gentlemen, you cannot make a decision ignoring the fact that your decision is not for yourself, but for the destiny of the human race. It is impossible to say, "I become something." "I do that," and go in for -- for -- running a racetrack, or something like that, without your asking, "Is this what I'm meant to do?" And this question, what I am meant to do, suddenly changes the aspect of the word "I," gentlemen.

This word "I," on which we have lived so long, gentlemen, is doubleedged. There are two people in you who say "I." "Poor me," who has gone to

school and ta- -- taken all the examinations, is just one of the boys, says "I," when he's through with this. But then he says, "No." The first "I" in you is determined by the past, and is obstructioning it -- I mean, it is just barking. All of you have, I hope, this man inside yourself who says, "But I won't do this any longer." That's negative.

There is a negative "I" in us, gentlemen, which is at -- dissatisfied with being caused by causes, being molded by mores, being produced by environment, you see, being the product of things past. Can you see this? This "I," gentlemen, is your "I." You think that's the only "I." The "I" that argues, the "I" that of -- ma- -- can oppose, can doubt, that can discuss, can debate, that can write petitions. It's the "I" that is fed up with things as they are.

[tape interruption]

...she used to sit down at every Sunday at 11 o'clock and take out her yarn, and her thread and needle, and said, "How wonderful! They all go to church, and I can work." She was just childish. She was just "I" with a -- with the negative, you see, content. She lived this way to a ripe old age, to her 70th year, and was quite famous on campus. And that is the childish person, you see, these children of ministers--they are very frequent--who love, you see, to show their agnosticism by saying, "My poor father had to pray too much, so I won't pray at all."

It is too simple, gentlemen, this "I." But there is quite another "I." The other "I," gentlemen, really would never call himself "I." But in your jargon, I think I should call -- say this "I." It would be the person who hears in- -- inside himself some very clear voice saying that if you don't do this, gentlemen, nobody's going to do it. "If you don't do this, nobody's going to do this." Somebody has to stick his neck out. The wa- -- world is waiting for some action. And as I said, the man who goes back to Newburgh, and with his impli- -- freedom that he can establish there a new community practically, in his own home, has this voice inside himself, because he has standards which do not hail from the past. The -- that family which he is going to found has never existed before; and does- -- isn't run by the -- his mother's standard. It isn't.

Now who is this man, gentlemen? I think -- our modern -- your modern -- your own thought, gentlemen, your modern psychology has betrayed us by -- or cheated us, or cheated themselves, I mean--I think they were all bona fide, but they were very blind--they thought that it comes from my own will, that I make this decision.

Gentlemen, it doesn't. This boy can only do this in Newburgh from a

greater love than to his mother, or to his family -- old family. He must have a tremendous passion to establish a finer and freer community life. Without love, and without faith, and without a tremendous hope that this is the thing to do, he cannot do it. That is, gentlemen, an egotist, a man who really wants it for himself, has never got this power. He just hasn't the guts. The good conscience, gentlemen, which a man has, when he pushes aside the prejudices of his group and says, "But this has to be done," comes obviously from his feeling that he's meant to do this, that the world is waiting for someone to start this, that everybody will see very soon that this is the thing to do. Isn't that simple? I mean, you see the question in the fraternity very clearly arises here in this -- in this whole discussion, you see. The boys -- the eleven boys who resigned have a very good conscience that this has to be done. And it isn't their own free will or their own rational planning, but their deep responsibility that if we go on like this on this campus, we make a laughing-stock of the Constitution of the United States. Just a laughing-stock.

Now what is this feeling that we make a laughing-stock of the Constitution? We do not add this amount of creative power to change in the next generation the forms of life. So I would think, gentlemen, if I look back on my life the free decisions which I have made--and there are very few, gentlemen. You make three or four great decisions in your life, the others are routine questions. But if I think of my -- I think I have made -- had to make more -- decisive steps in my life than most people are demanded to do. It so happens when you live through two world wars, and two revolutions, and -- and so on, you just can't pick and choose. You are exposed to more dangers. The important thing in every case is that you feel: although you will have to act, the action is within a much larger context. You only do in your little -- sphere and place what you know has to be done, you see.

So I invite you to see that this word "I", gentlemen, in this positive decision of the boy who goes to -- back to Newburgh, is not the debating, the discussing, the doubting ego determined by the past through opposition, through reason. But it is the creative individual, determined by faith. That's quite a different quality, because nobody can prove to you beforehand, you see, that you are right. That's why it is called "faith," and not "reason." The boy who sets foot in Newburgh will, for the next 30 years, be in great danger to be overwhelmed by tradition. Obviously. He cannot prove to himself, and to his wife, and to his mother, and to his neighbors, and to me, that he will succeed, beforehand. He just has to succeed. That's all. What keeps him going, gentlemen? What gives him cheerfulness? Why does he know that he will succeed?

Gentlemen, he cannot prove it to anybody, and he cannot prove it to himself. But he knows, just the same, that it will be easy, that he can do it. He's --

lives on the wings of faith. And that is like living winged. Just as a boy who is in love, gentlemen, lives on wings. All the other people will see that this girl has two eyes, a nose, and a mouth, you see. But he thinks she's beautiful. He cannot prove his point.

You must -- discover, gentlemen, that in fact your -- your faith in the future is 50 percent of your existence. And your faith in the order of the past is the other 50 percent. That's as it should be, gentlemen. We bestride this dilemma between future and past by two different energies. One is faith, and the other is reason. And I think: use every bit of reason to analyze everything that is fact, that is past. But never encroach this reason on any element that isn't yet in existence, that has to re- -- created. Nobody can create by reason.

If you take Michelangelo, gentlemen, who wrote his "Pinxit," "I have painted this," under the Sistine Madonna, and the -- the -- the -- I mean the Sistine Chapel, the -- all the pictures in the Sistine -- Chapel--Raphael painted the Sistine Madonna, as a matter of fact. He only painted the prophets, and the Apostles, and the si- -- sibyls, as you know, Michelangelo. Well, this "I" of the painter, gentlemen, is done as an act of faith. That's not in opposition. That's not by doubt. That's as -- by creation. The artist, of course, is a very pure simile of a missionary, of Albert Schweitzer, of any man who does it with his whole life, with his whole existence. What the people today call "existentialism," gentlemen, is just another way of rediscovering the balance between future and past.

There are three things, gentlemen, in your existence at this very moment. There is your "me," which is the object of psychological analysis, and statistics, and sociology. There is your being bored, being doubtful, being harassed, being tempted, being seducible, being willful--that is, your individual, rational ego, also object of much discussion on this campus. But gentlemen, there is in fact quite a different person in you: the person whom we shall bury 3- -- 40 years from now. And some of you, I hope, will get a eulogy which says that nobody, while you were in college, could expect you to become what you have become. That's an unknown entity inside yourself. If this wasn't, it wouldn't be worth lov- -- living. If -- if I could write your biography, gentlemen, at this moment, please don't live it, you see. Give up.

When I was your age, gentlemen, I went to school with very rich and influential -- with boys from very rich and influential families, I should say. The court in -- in Germany, and the high finance, and the army. -- Everybody had a title, and everybody had his life -- meted out. And I said to my -- and that's literally true, I said to my colleagues when we graduated, we -- from the Gymnasium--that's earlier than your age--"Well, you all -- we all live here in this big city of Berlin. And I can write the biography of most of you now." And I gave them

their titles, so to speak, their respective titles. You know, everybody has seven titles in Germany at that time. And I said, "I'm bored with this. I'll leave Berlin. That's the first. I shall bury myself in the countryside. I'll come back to the big city if I -- with success. But certainly I shall now make my career in this city, because everything here is -- is predetermined. Everything is too clear. It's too obvious."

And gentlemen, of -- the catastrophes that befell Germany were of such a character that all these people, who wanted to be inside their environment, and remain where they had been, just perished. They -- didn't -- hadn't developed the stamina to fight and to survive. They just perished as -- like fishes who had lost the power to swim for themselves.

And -- well, I -- I won't go into the details. But it's a very strange story, how these leading families of course perished first, because their -- their members had become decadent. And decadence is something spiritual, you see. The pressure from the past, and the draw, or pull from the future were not in balance. If your parents have achieved much, you see, it's very difficult to feel so much pull than if you are a nobody, you see. Then the future of course will work much harder on you. But the mistake in this country, gentlemen, where people without background became very rich very quick, and very successfully, that they all have assumed that what pulls you towards the future is "I," is your own self-fulfillment. I have never believed this, and I will not believe it. What really pulls a man forward is that something has to be done. And that he finally volunteers to do it.

The future, gentlemen, is impersonal. That's very strange. But it makes you into the person if you agree to do it. This is the last and most important--and it seems to me, most absent--doctrine in this country. If you read my friend Riesman's book, it is -- he has no idea of this. He doesn't know what the future is. He thinks the future is your and my future, privately. Gentlemen, the future is always the common future. The environment of the -- is always a partial past. The past is always partial: Newburgh, you see. The boy who comes back must create a larger { } in Newburgh some element that haven't existed there { }.

Therefore, gentlemen, the la- -- future is also common. But it differs from the past, that it must be less idiomatic, less partisanship, less partial, less tribal, less clannish, less separatist, and less secessionist. The future must bring in more elements of life than the past. Can you see this? Then it will dawn on you, gentlemen, that our whole secular tradition, gentlemen, has completely missed out on the conditions of creating future. The religious task of Christianity has been to say, "People will not wake up except to catastrophe." The fifth sphere, the catastrophical sphere, has one merit. When this little town of Newburgh fails,

when it be- -- goes decadent, when it becomes a ghost town, you see, some form of catastrophe, people will wake up to the fact that they have to refound it. When the piers of New York are filled with perverts, then they will have to do something of the fall -- for the Port of New York Authority; otherwise they'll lose all trade.

The catastrophe then, gentlemen, is the act by which the future stands revealed as having to be larger than the past. So you have a -- a group existence out of which the "me" comes. You have gone to school. You have lived in Pelham Manor. You have some background, that's your environment. Then here you find yourself, gentlemen, waking up to the possibility of rejecting Westchester County. And the idiocy in this country, or the poverty -- the impoverishment of the spirit has led you to believe that this poor "I" now must make a positive choice. Let me tell you, gentlemen: no "I" can make any positive choice. It cannot. He cannot. She cannot. If you choose to marry, obviously you choose a common future that, you see, commands to take your place in a new environment. That isn't the community then, what -- what is really in -- behind this decision. It's not -- you who makes it. You can only join into this potential future of which you then will be a member. That is, gentlemen, the positive "I" comes only to pass as a member of the next larger unity.

We all create "we" units. So if you want to have a -- a word -- the man in Newburgh, who comes to his mother, and she growls and she says, "How could you invite this Negro creature to your house?" she says -- he must be able in his heart to say, "We do it this way." He cannot say, "I do it this way." If he says only "I," he's only debating. He's argumentative, and he will always break down in the end, because she has the whole environment in her favor. And you will find that -- I have seen this -- people --.

I have -- I know, for example, a young boy, went to Exeter, and he -- took for -- up abstract painting. And he was attacked by his family for this craze. And he -- he defended abstract painting, you see. And they were all the old school, and he had a very hard time. And you always heard this very fine boy defend his position by saying, "We." He meant his one teacher and himself. But it had to be "we." Because o- -- if he had said "I," he wouldn't have had the good conscience to defend, you see. Anybody -- if you have only one other person, you see, who sides with you, you can face the whole world--your wife, or your best friend, whoever it is, you see. "I" cannot claim to represent the whole future.

This is quite interesting, I think, and quite important, you see. You must have the good conscience that you are already doing it as the appointed member of the next generation, the next group, you see, the better people, the future. Can you see this? And you will -- must admit that in -- this is the distinction, gentle-

men, between religion and secularism. The philosopher, for example, thinks that he can trim his whole life by saying "I" to the bitter end, which is funny. So they all end in disaster.

I -- I -- you know. I'm not a friend of pure philosophy. I don't believe that philosophy can frame lives. And it never has. It cannot, because it has only the "I" viewpoint. It can never transcend the Greek mind's objectivation that all the rest of the world is just world. Gentlemen, if I say, "We do it this way in Newburgh from now on," I say this because I hear the grass grow. I hear that all the good spirits and powers are on my side, and that the world will be a better place to live in if I only do my part. But I -- in order to keep my mental health, I must see myself as acting one part in a process in which other energies can also be solicited, you see, and be awakened. And say, if I only set the example, there are many others who are just waiting to do it the same way.

I don't find in your vocabulary, gentlemen, I don't find in our textbooks, I don't find in our novels, I don't find in any of this modern stuff that is written any inkling of this fact that all positive action in the future depends on this good conscience that I am an agent of a process that is larger than me. And why -- because you do not have this, you are today turned into mass men, and into psychological cases, and statistically customers of -- of the big corporations.

Gentlemen, that's not you. The real you is the man who decides not which car to buy, but whether to buy a car. Aren't you free to go without a car? Can't you get married without bribing your -- boy -- girl with a Cadillac? Is that the standard of living, or the standard of your decision? I mean, you must feel free, gentlemen, to have a television set or not to have a television set, to have a car or not to have a car. As soon as the girl whom you marry says, "Oh, we must have candles and doilies on our table," don't marry her, because she is not free. She has no vision of the future. If the -- you have to be a missionary in Africa, you won't have candles on your table, and you won't have doilies.

I told you the story of the young man who wanted to be a doctor because his IQ was high, and he -- he had all the abilities, the aptitude to be a s- -- a butcher, called "surgeon." And -- he said, "I can't do this."

And I said, "Why?"

"Oh, I can't do this. You see, I'm accustomed to have my physical exercise and my shower-bath every morning from 6 to 7. If I am a doctor, I may be called away at that time. That would not -- I wouldn't like that. I must first have my physical exercise. So I must have a, you see, a routine vocation in which I cannot be called away from -- between 6 and 7 in the morning."

Well, this man may be a bull or a calf. I suppose he is an oxen. But -- but he cannot be a free man, because he cannot put first things first, you see, and second things second. For your decision, what you have to become, obviously this is absolutely no tenet, no conti- -- you see, it has nothing to do. You see, the same with your girl. If she believes in you, and you have to be a general in -- in the South Sea or in Korea, then you can't have a car, perhaps. Or you have to be separated for a year. If she loves you and wants your fulfillment, she has to go through with this. But to argue the other way, "Because we must not be separated, I cannot become first an officer, second a sa- -- traveling salesman, third, this not and this not," that's no argument. She doesn't believe in your future, gentlemen. She only believes in the yesterday, in what she knew from other people's happiness. She is not able to brave the future.

And most of you marry this way: that the doily, that the candlelight come first, and the bridesmaids, et cetera. Gentlemen, perhaps you have bridesmaids in your -- at your wedding; perhaps you have not. All depends on what your fate is, you see. I married the first day -- outbreak of the war. I -- we had no bridesmaids, I assure you. I had such a headache and went to bed. Most bridegrooms, by the way, are sick on the day of their wedding. So don't be afraid. If they only would be honest, they would say that. It's a terrible day for a man.

Now really, gentlemen, all your values are -- completely stand on their head today, because you do not know that you are an agent of the future. If you are an agent of the future, you are cast in this fiery furnace of time, gentlemen. Not because of you, but because of the future, because of that common life which the community must establish, and that will always in every generation have to be in new forms. And you are responsible that you do not deny yourself to this task. That's all we can hope from every one of you, that we do not refute our collaboration. Most of you refute it. You {do it} because you aren't told -- nobody tells you that your decision about your choice of profession and so is not your choice of profession.

The freer you are, gentlemen, the more you know very well that something has to be done. And the question is -- it may come to you more derivatively -- I mean, a man who go- -- gehs into radar work, he may have a feeling of -- of the future, you see. A man who goes into missionary work, he will do something obsolete, because missionary work in the old way is -- is over, and he may be -- do something revolutionary, because we need of course missionaries only perhaps they will -- will -- may not even be called "missionaries." They may have a different name. Mr. Schweitzer doesn't call himself, as you know, a missionary -- any longer, because he's so much of a missionary that he would be hampered by the word.

So gentlemen, it is very difficult for me and for you at this mo- -- juncture to agree on any outer table of -- list of professions which are -- have future { }. Every case is different. But this -- I can assure you, gentlemen, that the people of whom we speak in the life of the race are the people who had as much their antenna in the free future, you see, as their roots in the ground. Modern man has been told that he has no roots in the ground, and no antenna in the future, that all he has to read is the turnover on the stock exchange.

I once wrote a very prophetic book. The prophecies have all come true. And I went to a publisher--of course, it -- I shouldn't have done this. It was in New York. And I was introduced to the man. It's quite an important man. You all know him -- by name. And he had the guts to tell me that he would take the book, whose importance he didn't deny, if in the next fortnight the turnover at the stock exchange would be more than 2 bil- -- $2 million sha- -- 2 billion shares. That was long ago. you -- can -- that's why I tell the story. And when 2 million dol- -- 2 billion shares at the stock exchange was a tremendous turnover. He said, "Then there's money; then I print the book."

But I said, "My dear sir. This book is important. I appeal to your conscience. This is not a question of -- of the turnover in the stock exchange. It is a question whether this book can influence the next 10 years."

"We -- that's not a question for me. I go by this turnover of the stock exchange."

Well, if you had heard the voice of this man and his gruesome laugh, you would know that -- have known that this man was a cor- -- living corpse. He was. Very gruesome, cruel man, very powerful. And of course very distinguished in modern life. But a man who had written off the future, who thought that the future was his {whip}, you see. Not service.

This I -- much I wanted to tell you, because the -- Christianity, gentlemen, is a strange thing. It is not a religion. But it is an attempt to put all the religions in their place. Therefore it takes a new shape every generation and every century. Christ did not come to found a religion. That's the He- -- content of the Letter to the Hebrews, that Heb- -- Jesus is a secular man. That's very important. He's a secular man. Even the pope has to celebrate, gentlemen, the service of the secular man. The priests of our era, gentlemen, have to recognize that the founder was not a priest. Very important. He was the complete man who could alternatingly be called our high priest, our sacrifice, our king, our prophet, our teacher, our head. Because the complete man, gentlemen, can decide, as I told you, when to become a priest, and when to become a legislator, and when to become a leader, and when to become a teacher. That's up to you. When you go teach Sunday

school, you are one thing. When you go -- in for the Boy Scouts of your children -- of your son, you are another; you are a leader, you see. When you become a businessman, you are this. You can go into politics, and become king-like. And you can preach -- teach.

Any man takes upon himself this divinity, gentlemen, to alternate between these loyalties, doesn't he? You are s- -- you are so -- only you are so, so to speak, deluded and disillusioned that you think this -- these words, "Every man a priest," "Every man a king" is not true. It is true, gentlemen. Everybody is a priest, and everybody is a king. Only he isn't, because he has to decide when to be it.

It is very -- simple to -- modern secular talk, "Everyone a king." Gentlemen, that is mob democracy. The problem of de- -- the real democracy is when a man comes up and says, "Now it's time for me to act as a king, because all the others don't," and then you reform your city government, or then you run, you see, for president or something like that. This word, "Everybody a king," makes no sense unless there is a day in your life where you concentrate on becoming a king. King is king, gentlemen. King is not just an animal among millions. But that's how you use the term. "Everybody a king" in your term- -- terminology means "Nobody is a king." That's what you say. You say, "Nobody is a priest," "Nobody is a king," "Nobody is a genius," "They are all equally stupid."

This we are, certainly, gentlemen. But at times, every one of us in the name of the future is called upon to enact one of these tremendous four freedoms, gentlemen. The four freedoms of the Christian era, gentlemen, is that you can enter the sphere of physical, massive, technological action -- sphere 1, cosmic action; that you can enter the sphere of organic life; that you can enter the sphere of love life and friendship; that you enter the sphere of purposive work and organization. But the fifth sphere tells you when to enter any one of these. And this goes, gentlemen, as the New Testament calls it, by the one great word "unum necessarium." At any one moment in the history of the human race, one thing is the most important. And if it isn't done, all the others are of no avail. "Unum necessarium," one thing is necessary.

But gentlemen, what is necessary always differs. You have to hear once in your life what is necessary for you to stand the test of belonging to the future. That's your conversion. This -- you know -- have you heard this word, "unum necessarium"? One thing is necessary. Gentlemen, not the same thing is necessary at any one time, you see, and in any one place. But Christianity, coming from this fifth sphere of cross-shooting, of shooting into the four spheres, and having this total neglect, you see, of any one special loyalty, says, "Now you have to become monk, or a priest, or a prophet." "Now you have to become an engineer, or a doctor," you see, "or an agriculturist." "Now you have to become

this." And He says it to all of us.

In every generation, gentlemen, the appeal can be perceived. It's an appeal: "For Heaven's sake, don't let me down. Don't annul all the achievements of the past by not knowing that at this moment something decidedly new has to be created." You know very well this temptation for a young man today to become a physicist. This is a very -- a very obvious temptation, gentlemen, is it not? Who is tempted to become a physicist here? A physicist. Well, so -- we have no high IQs here.

Can you see this, gentlemen? That's the whole problem of Christianity, gentlemen, that there -- the founder included religion as one of the possibilities, and therefore admitted His Church as one of the forms of life in our era. But that He never, never, never admitted that by being in a Church you were a Christian. That's not good enough, you see. You have always to do something which shows your freedom that the other spheres appeal to you, too. That's the story of the Good Samaritan. The Good Samaritan, as you know -- who is the Good Samaritan? Does anybody know the story? You know it? You know the story of the Good Samaritan? Can you tell it?

(Well, it was told previously in this class...)

Here?

(Yes, you told it once, but -- but it's a little different from what I had heard. The idea was the same, except that it -- this man was in the road, injured. And two men passed him...)

Who?

(First was -- { }.)

The priest, you see. He was so religious that he had of course Ma- -- to say Mass. And the second?

({ }.)

That's the professor, in -- in other words. The man who knows -- of knowledge, I mean. You can take him as a college professor. He had a class, so he couldn't stop. And?

(The Good Samaritan was the third and took him to a home. And paid for his lodging, and his healing. And, let's see. -- I don't -- well, I don't --.)

You see, it's an exceedingly puzzling story. Does anybody know who then -- how the story ends?

(Well, wasn't it the man who gave the aid was one of a class that -- wasn't supposed to touch the other? The class of the fellow that was injured?)

No, the man who fell between -- among the thieves was obviously supposedly an -- an Israelite. So there would have been no objection for the priest of Levi -- they had no such -- no, no, no, you are wrong. No, no, that would make it -- no, no, the story is very simple. But the strange turn of the story in the Gospel is very strange, because the question is: what -- how does it end?

(Now, I was --)

(I was -- I was under the impression the Samaritan himself was an outcast; he was a member of a different group that had hated { }.)

Ja, ja, certainly.

But gentlemen, the main point is, of course, of the story, that it costs a price to do th- -- the new thing. You have to break away from another loyalty, from one other sphere of life. I'm sure that the Samaritan angered his wife because he didn't come home in time. And she may have scolded him. That is, gentlemen, what I try to say in -- the story of the Good Samaritan is of course Christianity summarized, if you understand it. But it is not a light-hearted story. It's a very tragic story, because it means, gentlemen: Christianity has set this one law against all existing laws, that the good is the enemy of the better. You have never heard this sentence. You have heard that the better is the enemy of the good, perhaps. But take this down, gentlemen: the good is the enemy of the better. This professor and this priest, who let the man lie, were good, efficient, you see, in their business, duty-bound, and therefore were the enemies of the better. You see, you think -- history consists of crimes, and downfalls, and -- and -- some -- breaks of the law, and so; it is nonsense. Who cares for crime? That's just backlogs, backwash. I don't care for criminals, I don't care for feeble-minded. That's not interesting, gentlemen. Let me ...

[tape interruption]

...the defenders of the existing order are always the best men. Robert Taft was a wonderful man. No doubt about it. But he just was wrong, not with regard to his goodness, you see, but with regard to the times in which he lived. And -- the president has learned it to his great amazement, I mean, that after two years, he suddenly sees that the { }. Very strange. He just learned it. That's

nobody's {whim}.

Gentlemen, but--will you take this down, gentlemen?--in -- any catastrophe, the representatives of the old order are the very best; and the new order is represented very often by rascals, by scoundrels, by people of the second rate, third rate. And yet the scoundrels win very often, because they are on the side of the future, of the better. And the so-called good men, you see, they are good. But they are within a limited context.

This is the tragedy, gentlemen. You can look into any catastrophe of history, and you will find that the defender of the existing order -- are usually the more correct, the more --- better people, the more dutiful people than the advocates of the overthrow of government, you see.

Louis XVI was a good monarch; no doubt about it, you see. And that's why the test of the necessity of the French Revolution was in the fact that although he was not a -- you see, a -- a wicked man, the -- the future had to -- had to come in and overthrow him. It was, so to speak, the test, that a good man, you see, was not able to save the old. And this is the story of the professor and the priest in the story of the Good Samaritan. Their schedule, their loyalty is good; nothing to be said. But it is too narrow, you see. It is too narrow. And that's all, but that's very tragic.

Gentlemen, the Athenians who condemned Socrates were not wicked people. They were not wicked people, you see. There was a conflict of two justices: Socrates and the Athenians. If only wicked people had condemned Socrates to die, we wouldn't think the story was interesting, you see, because scoundrels have always existed, and murders of justice have always been committed. But there was a conflict of the good and the better. You see, the good, old order of Athens could not contain free discussion of the gods. It couldn't, you see. And Socrates { } been heeded. So they said { }.

Gentlemen, this is the solution then of today -- for today, I think this should be all. The -- if you cave in to this, you know why religion is not a luxury, gentlemen. The amount of faith that is needed to wear down goodness in favor of betterness will show you that in every one moment, one of the spheres of reality is so engulfing you and me, so overwe- -- -bearing--be it our geographical unity, the nation, or be it our departmental unity, our profession, you see, or be it our family by our blood relation, that we think this is too wonderful. I -- we have to do everything to save it.

God says, "That's very nice. But more is needed." If you keep the United States as they are, as an independent, sovereign nation, and all -- every other

sovereign nation at this moment, you can see that the end is impossible. That is, we cannot live on a world in which you around -- around which you can fly in 72 hours, with all the frontiers sky-high. So we hear the rumbling of some future in which all mankind must have one religion, and one {policy}, and one trade -- in the next 50 years, { }. Or we will smash up, you see. But the better is waylaid, or humbled by the -- by the good. It is the very best of the past, gentlemen, which we obstruct the bet- -- the better of the future.

-- So gentlemen, in religion, we discover that the conflict is not between good and evil. That's for philosophers, for ethicists and moralists. The real conflict of life is between good and better. That makes it so fantastically tragic. and very {strenuous} for you and me, you see. The choice is not between good and evil. That's -- for a decent person is no choice. I always wonder how schoolboys can waste their time on this interesting -- this { } of -- of good and evil. And -- the real debate is between good and better. It is nice to go back to Newburgh and to make -- you see, find out 10 years later that you have made your wife the slave of your mother, you see, and not created a free future. That's good. You didn't know that you had to do something better.

So I wish you all, gentlemen, that you will drop your "I" and you will do something better. Is my time up? Oh, long ago.

[thundering applause]

Then -- let me say one thing. I had some -- some palpitation when I started this class. And some of you know that I had good reason for this. I mean, I think at the end, I'm very pleased that I did -- did give the course, as I know I shall not repeat it. So I have a very pleasant experience. Thank you very much.