Transcript

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

(Philosophy 9, December 11th, 1953.)

...this report left unread. It is because of the precision which I would like to leave with you on behalf of these two situations of yourself and of everybody with regard to attachment and detachment. I think it's very important that you get yourself completely away from any vagueness on these things. These are things as real as "2 and 2 is 4." And you cannot live as men if you do not know these things, and begin to believe that one can know these things.

Let me put this back once more. From the point of view of age, mere age, mere natural time elapse, from 1 to 70, man is divided in one way. From the relation to the race, to procreation, to love, and being loved, man is divided in absolutely different manner. I have in my own Sociology two chapters. One, the ages; and one, the sexes. And it comes out -- and that is the startling result, that in the chapter on the sexes, man appears in completely different shape. We have prepared ourselves yesterday to just take the step into this point here, where the sexes meet, and attach themselves successfully, and where then, in looking backward, everybody appears to be a -- a suitor, and looking forward, everybody appears like Father Abraham, the ancestor of the tribe. "Suitor" and "father" means that you can look at yourself and -- your -- in learning to love to attach yourself, and in keeping the attachment successfully, penetrating, you see, the world, by your attachment and building it up around you.

You see the picture is absolutely different, as though you go to modern psychology, and you are told these things. These are scattered atoms; they come about by a time not mastered by ourselves. We do not create time, but we are -- live by these periods. They go on from 1 to 20, from 20 to 40, from 40 to 60, et cetera, et cetera. They are very real, because you see it in our wrinkles, but they are very unreal with regard to what we do. This is done to us, gentlemen, that you lose your teeth when you -- eat too much sugar or -- reach -- attain a certain age is happening to you. This is the -- rubrum of happening, gentlemen. And this is the realm of history. And you mistake the two. And modern man says, "All happenings are history. All histories are just accidents, or just happening to us." Well, both is -- is just -- isn't true. That's nonsense. Anybody who has gained time, as you remember, by learning how to play -- does something so that things cease to happen, you see. He makes them happen.

Now the point on which this reaches its climax in your own life so far -- who is less than 19 -- than 20 years old? But who is less than 19 years old? Oh, well, we have still very -- good. We have protected beings. All right. Gentlemen,

that is the problem which so far hasn't -- appeared neither here nor there: the problem of parents. We have here neither used the term "children," nor have we used the term "parents." And in our modern psychology, parents, as you know, are ruled out. They are just people to -- we either want to kill or to rape. So that's a very poor description of parents, obviously. Purely negative.

And you see, the difficulty is where to put the parents in such a humanbeing -- psychology. They tell you --- you tell me -- one boy told me the other day he had to get married very soon because he -- it was absolutely necessary that he could befriend his son and could play baseball with him. This man is crazy. He wants to deny his child a right to have a father, and want to replace it by a playmate, which he can have by the dozen. And that is the general psychology today, that you have to reduce parenthood to companionship, to comradeship, to friendship, to anything of human kindness, but not to parenthood.

Gentlemen, with the -- this is the greatest crime at this moment against the -- the well-being of America. This is at the core of all degeneracy, this idea that parents are their children's friends. This would be very nice if -- children didn't need parents. And it would also be nice if parents hadn't already loved. They are not {suitors}. They must not win the favors of their children. If a man has declared to a wife of his choosing that he's willing to forgo quite a number of further affairs in her favor, his children are small fry with regard to niceties and friendships and -- . What he serves his children for is a bannister, a railing against storm. We said, it- -- it's protection. And what he has to be -- chil- -- children is the great negative pole, the great fence beyond which they cannot go. He has after all to protect them. Otherwise they will lend -- end in Sing- -- SingSing. He is the man who has to say "No," which is forbidden in modern American families, because the children might get a complex. Of course, the parent is there so that children shall get a complex.

I visited a young couple the other day in Connecticut. She is from a French family. I think I mentioned it already to you. And now has only this one queer idea that -- the child must be perfectly happy that she raises. And since she wasn't too happy with the servants, so the child must have no -- see no servant, and see no governess, and see no teacher. And all the other way around.

This kind of silly rebellion of one generation against what it {deems} imperfect in the previous one is to me un-understandable. I have been unhappy as a child in many ways. And I have been very happy as a child in many ways, I think as you -- most of you are. We have it all both ways in some respect, and -- I have never come to the conclusion that this was anything but the real life, and that obviously life was a real mixture, and I have made no attempt to make my son happy -- happier than I, because how can you? That's a ridiculous attempt.

But we live in an era where -- I know so- -- quite a number of your equal- -- contemporaries who sit down, poke their noses, and begin to think how unhappy they have been. Well, what it all amounts to is they have been once spanked, and once they had diarrhea, and then they had whooping cough. And then they say they had a complex. And therefore the child must have no complex. They never count all the hours of perfect happiness. They -- of course, have bliss. But two or three outstanding wounds or scars in their memory induce them then to overthrow the whole system of life, and to say, "My parents plagued me. My child must have no parents. I must be my child's friend."

Mr. Keep was good enough to give me the other day a book by D.H. Lawrence, which I had never read, Fantasia of the Unknown -- the Unconscious, in which he develops the very interesting thesis that -- parents hurt their children if they try to make love to them, that -- or friendship -- woo them. That -- anybody who has lived soundly and fully in his own time of courtship, and suitorship, and bride -- bridal state, must not try to mix in with these feelings when they wake up in a child. That the child -- you have so many American mothers who may love to their -- make love to their children, actually do, I mean, not in a -- as you -- understand, not in -- incestuous way of physical in- -- intercourse, but very much in a moral way of wooing their affection. This is incestuous in the real sense.

You know the physical things in Heaven are quite uninteresting. Every -- all your physical idiocies will be forgive you much more readily than your mental ones. It is much more criminal to woo -- for a mother to woo the affections of her son spiritually. She makes a much deeper scar in this boy's heart than to sleep with him, which she wouldn't do, anyway. And he -- also. That is, the physical has so much repulsion with it, so much repugnancy, that it is so rare it doesn't have to be mentioned. These wishes are not real. I doubt -- I mean, I -- I contest the whole psychoanalysis, it's all -- mere bunk. Mr. -- D. H. Lawrence says very beautifully about this. All -- everything in sleep is the other way around. We are free with our consciousness awake -- we have an indigestion, we don't have to blurt out in good society that they hear us belch. In the sleep, the di- -- stomach presses on our mind, and it's all the other way around. Then we also have these nightmares, and we may have even such ideas that we want to sleep with somebody. But what of it? We dismiss these dreams if we are not dark Egyptians and have sorcerers called "psychoanalysts," like Pharaoh in the Bible, and have them interpret these dreams. Any reasonable person dismisses his dreams as coming from a poor digestion.

Read this book by Lawrence if you can, or buy it, even, because it is very wonderful how he does -- makes these two points, that the great love powers of a youngster are hurt when he has to give any such consideration backward to the

previous generation. He must live protected, but he must not be stirred up to any personal feeling of friendship in this selective way as it is recommended to us today. Parents must be there. That's their great power. That you have parents is so great that you only will realize it when they die. You know what parents are? They are your frontline. You don't know this now, but you have not reached the first trench, where you have to go over the parapet of life, as people who storm a -- fortress in battle, as long a your parents are alive. Every child has the deep feeling that there are still ahead of him two people who just man the trenches. And death of their parents means that you suddenly are challenged to come forward. There is nobody who c- -- will sh- -- -- shield you.

This is the situation between parents and children. Lawrence makes these two points that the alleged nightmares and dreams from which Mr. Freud got his idea are always in the inverse, in the opposite direction of -- from what is true. Because we dream in the opposite manner. For example, you dream that you cannot -- you -- want to fly and you cannot, you see. These things, you see. I must say I don't want to fly, but I can, in -- in normal life. I go to the airport and buy a ticket, you see. I have no intention to fly very much except when I must. I think that's much more normal for human beings.

Well, however this may be. The main point is: these are the two things connected in your mind today with family relations. One is that your nightmares are your better -- truer self than your waking self. Please dismiss this, and if you don't want to dismiss this on my behalf, read D. H. Lawrence who, after all, was a great lover, and is famous to you as allegedly an obscene writer. He's a very pure writer. He is of -- an angelic writer. And he knew what sex was. He has written the famous book, Sons and Lovers, as you know. And Lady -- what is it? Lady ...

(Lady Chatterley's Lover.)

...Chatter- -- these are very pure books. They are not obscene. They are only ob- -- ob- -- for pigs, they are -- they are obscene.

(What's the name of this book again?)

Fantasia of the Unconscious. And the second thing is his point that passion cannot be used a second time. It must not be used a second time. Parent -- parental passions is already preoccupied.

This is your great question, gentlemen. And now I have to enter into this new chapter of the world of attachment, in order to make it understandable to you, what D.H. Lawrence proclaims, that parents cannot be their children's

sweethearts.

We have at this moment, as you know, a whole literature of incest. Mr. Andr‚ Gide, or Mr. Thomas Mann, who has committed incest himself -- or -- Mrs. Mann has. All these swinish situations today are -- today we have in town a man who goes around with his friend all the time, his sweetheart -- no friend. This is today, as you remember, the consequence of the dismissal of St. Paul from the -- from the academic world. There is no minimum known anymore for human achievement. We are really back to the ape. Therefore we must build from scratch. In our own experience, you must just go back and ask yourself, "What has your parents enabled to marry? And what will -- enable you to marry?" May we move this, I think, just a little?

In most languages, the man who proves able to marry is called with the name of his bride. You are called "bridegrooms" in the disagreeable hour. And you faint, nearly. And it is a ridiculous term. And you call him briefly "groom," but the right word is "bridegroom." What does this mean? It means that there is one moment in your life where you b- -- are recognized by somebody else. And that's -- suddenly at this one moment makes you into whom you are. A bridegroom is known by the person who is willing to accept him as her permanent attachment.

Now the old Greeks have one name of their highest god, which expresses exactly this idea of bridegroom. That's Poseidon. "Poseidon" means husband of -- brid- -- bridegroom. It means "groom of the earth," or "husband of the earth." Very important that one of the highest gods of antiquity had exactly this title. He is not like Zeus, or Jupiter, you see, or Jehovah, called for his own sake. But don -- don -- don -- means gai- -- same as "earth." As "the soil," and {posis} is the -- same as in despotes -- as -- husbands are the lord of the house, {posis} is husband. The married man. So Poseidon means "married to earth." And it's the vocative, "O husband -- O bridegroom of earth." That's how Poseidon is invoked. And this you have learned -- you have heard of Poseidon. You think it's the god of the ocean. But it's the ocean that floods the -- the water god, not only the ocean god, that floods the earth, and thereby fertilizes it. It's Osiris, the same as the god of the Nile, who -- who fertilizes Isis.

Very important, that because, gentlemen, religion is nothing to laugh off. You don't have to listen to Greeks and to Jews in order to know what real religion is. Real religion is of course to find -- found among all the pagan religious and pious people. There has been truth everywhere. In Poseidon, you have the truth we need today most: the truth that at one moment in our self-fulfillment, we can only be recognized as fulfilled when somebody else gives -- bestows our name upon us, by connecting it with him. Lincoln had to be president of the

United States in order to become known of who he really was. That's a similar wedding, you see. If you say, "the president, Lincoln," then you have only Lincoln in his attachment. You know, he was a very unhappily married man. And Mary Todd made life miserable for him. So he had to become president to live at all. And the -- his life really is in suspense until he's made president. Before he was, as you know, nobody. And because of this scar in his married life, or this open abyss, she pushed him into the presidency. So he was her bridegroom, Mary Todd's bridegroom, especially when he became president. That he had -- she had hoped for, and that's her marriage, that she kept him ambitious and going. Otherwise she made him the most miserable of mortals, as you know.

Very often you find this, that -- you also find this in D.H. Lawrence, the man who be- -- can become known, by having become the bridegroom of a certain group, a certain land, a certain woman, finally, but Poseidon is the bridegroom of the whole Athe- -- Greek earth. He is not just the bridegroom of a woman. Abraham Lincoln is president of the United States. So that's more than just Mary Todd. Any such man who finally may be reduced to just becoming the bridegroom of {Elly Brown,} {{ } Brown}, must be called by this name in respect by the world, or he has missed the bus.

-- The third thing, why you should read D.H. Lawrence, is that he says, "There has never been a human being in the world, a man in the -- this life, who has been able to marry just for sex." You can only overcome the mere Don Juan, the mere sex and marry, if you plan to do something together with your wife which is more than sex. That is, performance in the world -- become executive in a firm, become president of the United States, become a poet, become a teacher -- has very much to do with our potency of getting married. You keep these two things absolutely separate. You cannot. Believe me. If you now marry before you are anything in life, then you have to invite your fianc‚e to migrate, and wander, and roam the world with you. She has to grow with you into your future position so that you, too, may get this fulfillment. But you have to take her into your confidence, and if she doesn't trust you and keeps you back, you just can't do it.

We had this case here in town. Here was a young Austrian boy from a very high -- great family there. And had to flee from Hitler, because he was one of the captains of the bodyguard of the last president of Austria. And he did everything he could to support himself. He sailed the seven seas, with horses, and pigs, bringing animals from here to Palestine, to Arabia. And he fell into the crutches of a -- clutches of a Hanoverian girl. And her only dream was that Mr. {Cornelius} should come down here and live happily hereafter in Hanover, New Hampshire. She wanted to make him into black beans and porridge. And -- he tried hard. For four years, he tried to -- make a living and to live in Hanover. But he really was a bigger man. He was -- just couldn't see why, because his wife

hailed from Hanover this had to be his future.

I -- I took him around. I -- we tried to see some real estate development, which he might use to develop his talents. Well, I -- so I know a little about his story. Well, the end was that he broke away from her. She had to see it that she didn't want him to be Mr. {Cornelius}, but she wanted him to be just the bridegroom. And there you see -- you see, the -- how dangerous this point is.

We become a bridegroom for one moment under the condition that we do not stay it. Woe to you if you remain this woman's servant and slave! It is only on your wedding day that the papers will call you "the groom." If you are called "the bridegroom" the next day, you are funny. You must have conquered this woman. One day you grant her this attachment, and you -- allow -- are willing to be known by her, through her, in her. But the next day, she must be willing to go with you to the end of the world, and not to stay in Hanover, New Hampshire.

Now what do I see, gentlemen? You are not bridegrooms on the wedding day, but you are bridegrooms for the rest of your lives. Your wife determines who is your friend. Your wife determines what you are allowed to do. Your wife determines your expenses. Your wife determines your pleasures. Your wife determines your church relationship, everything. The illness of the American family at this moment comes from your underestimating the quality of "bridegroom," and therefore being visited by it all your lives. You decline to become a real bridegroom on the wedding day -- I see -- sh- -- -ell you later why -- and therefore you have to suffer from a so-ca- -- so-called -- "bridegroomitis," so to speak, for the rest of your life. It becomes a chronical disease.

Gentlemen, if I list you the cases of fiendish jealousy to a man's spiritual, intellectual achievements from the side of his wife, this young woman who seems -- like loving him, you'll be surprised. Unpurified jealousy is the donation the -- of Pandora, this cursed gift of the old Greek tradition which today enters all your marriages, because there has been no clear distinction between your rights in this marriage, and your wife's rights in this marriage, because you don't know what it is to be a husband, a man, a father, and a bridegroom. You mix it all together.

One day I get a letter from a very dear friend, beautiful boy from the outside. And -- was an -- young architect, and was 30 years old. He was going to be married. Wife was 12 years -- older. They couldn't have any children. Of course not. She had been operated for that purpose already -- upon. She had been married before, psychoanalyzed, everything. And well, she said she was -- 39, but she was 42. And she was going -- would we be good enough -- he were --

we were his only friends here, and she was from California. And would we be the -- so to speak, the host and hostess for the wedding? We un- -- we said to ourselves, "Now there are only two situ- -- two -- alternatives. If we say `no' now, we lose this friendship before the wedding. If we so- -- say `yes,' we lose his friendship after the wedding." So we lost his friendship after the wedding.

That is to say, this lady came -- she lived -- they lived at our house for a week. We -- we -- since she was divorc‚e, I persuaded our minister unfortunately to -- to give them together, just the same. We served as their doormat, as every- -- in every capacity. We e- -- we -- they eat and -- and drank in our house, the wedding meal; we had guests invited. So we were -- had them under our wings. We had never seen this woman before.

And so the next day she had -- left, she said -- she wrote a letter. This was obviously a very nasty letter, but since she saw the friendship which we held for her husband, she wanted to notify us that we would never see him again. And she said, "This is a nasty thing I do." But she was burning with jealousy. Being so old, of course, she was terribly on fire -- much on fire that she might lose him. And we had something to say to each other, this man and we, and she felt she couldn't break into this, and therefore she had to destroy it.

This is one case out of three dozen which I have lived to see in this town of Hanover and Norwich over the last 15 years. Do you think this man is very happy? He's just her slave. We -- we -- we saw him later, and he -- he -- he was just, well, like these -- these red caps are, these milk-and-honey boys, a weakling. And so he said, well, he didn't understand a word. And he didn't know what had happened, but of course -- of course, he couldn't see us anymore.

Was he right? Was he right when he said he couldn't see us anymore? Obviously he was wrong, you see. He had to force this down his -- his wife's throat. But not -- no American man does this. So he is not a man. He's just an ox. He's the eternal bridegroom.

This is very practical news, gentlemen. But how is it when people are really married? It is the one and only event -- first event in your life in which you have to speak, instead of prattle. Now since you all think that you speak every day, and talk, talk, talk, and even write papers, you will be much surprised if I say that all the words spoken in life count for absolutely nothing, except this one word th- -- -ich is said by a bride when she says "yes" to this husband.

I have here an American, old poem, which some of you may know. "Dorothy Q." Who knows it? Who knows "Dorothy Q."? No? Not one of you? Wie?

(Who wrote it?)

No, I won't tell you. Oh, that's my secret. "Dorothy Q." is the poem. Well, a man looks at his fifth-generation portrait of his ancestor, gra- -- great-, greatgrandmother, and sings of it. Don't you know the poem?

And it ends in this way. And I think there are two lines which I -- would like you to copy:

"What if a hundred years ago These close-shut lips had answered No...

Soft is the breath of a maiden's YES: Not the light gossamer stirs with less; But never a cable that holds so fast Through all the battles of wave and blast, And never an echo of speech or song That lives in the babbling air so long! There were tones in the voice that whispered then You may hear today in a hundred men."

That's quite something I think. Though -- "What if a hundred years ago those closed-shut lips had answered No..."

I -- want you to consider this now without any sentiment. But only to remind you that only a word that makes a difference a hundred years later is a word really spoken. Our words are not real words unless they make a difference after a hundred years. That is, you can grade speech accordingly to the power over life and death. Your oath as a soldier, which forbids you to run away in battle, is the only declaration during your own life which you probably have the power to make with the similar incisiveness as this word which a girl says. These are the two outstanding private-citizen contributions to public life, by which you found a new nation. A man -- one man who's willing to die for a cause can save a whole constitution.

In Germany, we had this, gentlemen. In -- I have seen a throne -- 23 thrones fall down, and I have seen a -- republic blown away, because there was nobody in the -- hour of decision found who was willing to be killed in the process. The emperor was unwilling to die at the head of his troops, emperor of the First World War in Germany, William II. The crown prince was unwilling. Hindenburg was unwilling. His chief of staff {Bruner} was unwilling. Everybody was unwilling. I have been through those three months, and have then shouted, "But is it possible?" Before the thing happened, I saw this coming for three months, that all these people, you see, used grandiloquent language.

It had happened to me, I had to give the so-called emperor's birthday speech to the troops in 1915, three and-a-half years before the abdication of the emperor. And I was a very believing, loyal, patriot. And I had made, I think, a quite -- an enthusiastic speech. And afterwards, a comman- -- my commander came to me and said, "Well, I think you are the only man who still believes this stuff."

That was the commander who had asked me to make the speech. Well, he had the attitude of the ar- -- ordinary Harvard cynic. It's exactly the same in this country. When I had some -- Harvard students working with me, they said, they had learned one thing at Harvard: there were no people. "People" was a fiction. Such a thing as "a people," that was just good for -- for 4th of July speeches. "The people of the United States" or "We, the people." That's a kind of detachment which you get in this modern world by these so-called anti-educated people. { }.

It's very serious, gentlemen, because the -- that's why you do not know what speech is. The result of your world in which you live today is that you really think the words in the Valley News or The New York Times are speech. And the declaration of the girl can be explained away by psychoanalysis. Here, these churches who send their brides to psychoanalysts when they -- have to get a divorce, they haven't even found a form, a ritual by which a declaration of "yes" can be changed into a -- acted into -- into the contrary as a "no." In the Greek church, there is a ritual for divorce. Because people know that if you have said with full conviction "yes," something has to happen before you -- yourself can believe that it is no longer true, you see. We dismiss these cases in Reno, and then all these people have -- a nervous breakdown. Because do you think that by going to Reno, you can act -- encoun- -- counteract a declaration made in -- in church, with all the angels singing? It's impossible. This woman forever -- and this husband, too, if he -- if he is devout at all, have -- they have a scar. That isn't removed by telling them that they had the wish to sleep with their mothers when they were 2 years old. But that's only cured when you take under consideration that a vow has been broken. Now it may have to be broken. The -- life is very cruel and very tragic. But you have to find forms, you have to find processes by which people are allowed -- pardon me, by which people are allowed to admit that they had then believed that they spoke { }.

Will you kindly then rate as our first problem, for the problem of attachment. By what means is attachment established? Very simple now. By -- a word spoken, may it be only three letters, "yes," by which a person is willing to stand by this one word for the rest of his life, or her life -- that is speech. To speech -- speak with potency, with fertility, with fecundity, with procreational power comes from our opportunity to throw ourselves behind our own word, to verify

this word. Truth is not true before you and I have verified it. We do not verify it by looking into a {seisto-} scope, or any scope -- of any such scope. But the full scope of the truth is only to be found, gentlemen, in your action on behalf of this word.

You always say, "I verify a law -- a natural law" by looking at some meter, at some yardstick, and saying, "Is it really behaving that way?" And then you think the truth is true. Well, these are all very subordinate truths. They are quite unimportant. It is not very important that uranium is 200 -- 308 and can explode. I assure you, it isn't very important. You should treat it as very unimportant. It's a scandal that the world treats means as so important as we do now with atomic energy. Do you think that all the brains of mankind should really be wasted on this nonsense? There have been guns and there has been gunpowder since the -- and -- and weapons, and arrows, and crossbows, ever. But it isn't very important. You fight with what you have.

But people really think that's the world. Well, it is only the world. But your own life is not in this. Your own life is only at stake when the scope of your declaration cannot be verified by anything, but only by yourself. That's the opposite from what you think the truth is. Truth can never be verified by any objective index. It can only be verified by your own action.

If that word is true, then it has to come true. The English, wonderful phrase for verification is "to come true." You have to make it come true. So the truth is always planted into this world, gentlemen, by a word, and the acts follow. And that's how the spirit becomes flesh. You say, "I am this girl's bridegroom." And it takes you 50 years to become it. And that's why the declaration is so important. The declaration in itself would be nonsense, if you wouldn't do anything with it. It allows you now to make it come true. That's why you have to say it. Before, she will not budge. That's why at that moment you are the bridegroom, because you go at anchor, and you declare which direction from now on your various steps shall have, or in which light they shall be interpreted.

For example, you take two men. One, engaged; and the other, married. And they take -- ship, and sail from New York to New Zealand. Well, the engaged one everybody will suspect of running to New Zealand, so that he has not to marry the girl. The husband we'll investigate and we'll say, "The poor man has to make a living. He can only live it -- make it by selling sewing machines in New Zealand. So now they are separate for a long time." But he got married before to express his willingness to stick it out.

The same act, gentlemen, -- like separation, for a lover and a -- and a bridegroom are very different, because the bridegroom has already declared that

all his steps from now on must be seen as circling around his power to build this nest, to come back, to send money, to raise his children, or what-not, to acquire a new citizenship, if you want, or -- a place in New Zealand. That's all possible, but then the wife and children will come after him. That is, not one step a man takes, for example, after his wedding, can be understood except in the light of this first declaration.

The same is true, you see, with Abraham Lincoln and Horace Greeley. You may remember the famous correspondence about the emancipation of the slaves. You remember his famous letter to Horace Greeley? Who does? Not one of you? That is -- the Union came first? He would do everything to save the Union? You see. This letter only makes sense because he was president. He was no longer a faction man. He was no longer a partisan. Don't you remember this great letter?

(Yup.)

Where he said, "If I can save the Union, I'll emancipate the slaves. If I can save the Union, I will not emancipate the slaves. It all depends." Now that's statesmanship, gentlemen.

Mr. Truman -- Mr. -- did the same, you see. He had to do many disagreeable things when he -- for example, when he had to fire MacArthur. You saw perhaps that Harold Ickes wrote into his diary in 1933 that -- that he felt when he met MacArthur in 1933 that here was a man, if he went to Heaven, he would expect God Almighty to bow out of His seat and ask MacArthur to take it.

Well, it -- we know now that this is so. And Mr. MacArthur had to bow -- be bowed out of -- of God's seat by -- the president. That is, in the light of his presidency, he could take a step which, for a man of the American Legion, and a man like -- of Truman's loyalty to army life, and military achievement, was quite hard to take, because he has this great respect for courage and -- and soldiering. It wasn't easy. But in the light of the first declaration of my faith, I can do things easily, which I cannot do when I am in the throng of daily pressures without such an outstanding beacon of light.

It happened in my own life in a very queer way, because I want to tell you again that to be a suitor or -- and to be a bridegroom, and to be a father of one's country, or of -- the race, has nothing to do with mere sex. That in the light of this one word spoken in the middle of your life, you gain powers which you otherwise do not have, as long as you are single, as long as you haven't made your declaration of your office in reality.

I want to show you that D.H. Lawrence is absolutely right that you cannot get married just for having peace in sex affairs, as so many of you do. Then you confuse the 14-year-old boy with his puberty difficulties, the 20-yearold boy who wills to love, and the -- man who is able to marry who usually is 26, or 27, or 28 -- up to 30. And in all your lives, you find this specter hounding you -- haunting you that you are really a boy when you get married craw- -- creeping into his mother's lap when he marries this girl, which is very obscene. Much more obscene than if you went into 20 brothels. It is much more normal for a man to postpone marriage and to do this than to marry because he wants to have another mother. This is degeneracy. And that's real obscenity. And I know, and you know many boys who just marry to have somebody who takes care of him.

What is this, my story? My story is perhaps far-fetched. But again, I feel that if you do not see the identity of decisions like Lincoln's or Truman's with your own marriage declaration, you really do not know how important you are when you marry. You are much better than you know, when you can perform and achieve this end, by a declaration of your faith, of your attachment.

I am a timid soul. And I have many fears, as we all -- I think have. A famous field marshall in Germany who was quite famous for his alleged courage said, "Cowards we all are." That's the beginning, you see. It's only the second step, that the non-cowards are singled out, those who overcome their cowardice. Now a man who has married a woman, for example, has always courage to defend his children and wife. He's much more courageous, you see, than the bachelor when it comes to such a quarrel.

A -- a -- a lieutenant in the army, as you may -- who has served in the army? Nobody? Not -- none of you, as yet? Well, I assure you, it is very easy for an officer to be more courageous -- to be courageous. It's very difficult for a private, because a -- a soldier has nobody who looks upon him and expects courage from him. But if a lieutenant, who is like a young bridegroom, has his company -- this platoon, you see, looking at him, he just behaves.

I have always felt -- I once was panicky when I creeped into the front lines without any business there. And I came into a tremendous cannonade of the artillery. Thousands of guns really seemed to be pointing at me, and away from me. And -- and I collapsed. I swooned. And the day before, I had been in the midst of fire, with my whole troop. I commanded a -- a -- well, how would you call it? a column? -- well, with horses we had to bring ammunition into the -- into the -- our battery. And several horses were shot, and several men were wounded, and one man mutinied with his -- with his car, and I had to -- so to speak not co- -- threaten him on the spot from my horse -- was all done in a --

and was very easy. I never had any qualms, because the -- I knew all these people were looking at me, then -- you completely forget your own fears, you see.

It's very simple to be courageous, I -- as I say, when you have been appointed, and declared the head -- the captain, you see, that's the word "head" -- of the -- outfit, and that's what you exactly are in your marriage. It's very easy when your wife says, "There is an -- there is a burglar, you have to do something about it," to go out and do something about it. But is -- if there is no wife, you wouldn't do it. We are all more courageous when somebody else has trusting and loving eyes fastened on us. Isn't that very simple?

So we grow in stature as soon as we have an office. Now a bridegroom is an office. I had in my own past -- now comes my own story -- as appointed office of the critic of the academic world, I had left this world in great revolt after the First World War, because I said, they hadn't done anything about this whole thing, just as little as people in this country, the intellectual group, have stood up in the last 20 years for anything important, at sacrifice of their life, or their position. And that's why I -- crying myself hoarse to wake you up to the fact that it is -- a man has to do something, otherwise he's no good.

And so I had reached a certain degree of -- of attention, and respect. And one day, I came out in the defense of a Catholic priest, who was an intimate friend -- of mine, with whom I had written a -- a book on the history of the Church together, as a heretic, as a Protestant myself. That of course had created quite a stir. To make a very, very long story short, he had been threatened by -- being put on -- to be put on the Index, and he was a professor of theology, and so -- but he might lose his office, and his position. And so, since I thought that the whole indictment came from a complete misunderstanding of his position, because he was a great believer, and much more believing than the pope himself, because it's idiotic to think that the pope is always the man who has the most religion. He's just elected to the office of protec- -- defending other people's faith. And this man had to be -- a deep faith. I -- I wrote this -- this pamphlet. And I got a telephone call from the ministry of education in Germany, who run all the universities in -- in -- Germany, you know, they are all state universities. There are no private universities at all. So it would be the Mr. Dickey, so to speak, and the trustees of Dartmouth College.

And having been already in many fights, and having been in the army six years, and having lost -- lost my fortune, as every honorable man -- did in the inflation, we had been through the mill quite a bit. And I knew that I was dependent for any promotion in Germany for the rest of my life, on the favors -- or on the good will, at least, of this office which gave me this telephone call. And

I said, "What's the matter?"

And the man -- the head of this office said to me -- the man right under the -- under the minister, the so-called secretary, said that he wanted to see me, because I couldn't publish this book in favor of my friend.

Well, I thought that was quite something. And I said, "I'm willing to bring the first copy to his excellency, the minister. In person. And that's all I can grant."

"Well, you come and we -- let's talk."

So I took the train and -- a few days later, and went to the capital. And I first saw the minister, who was a very nice man and had always this, you know, this -- this black man for washing his dirty linen. The -- the cruel man. And -- or the energetic man. He was very soft, this. You always govern this way. You see, Eisenhower is very nice; we feel that it is too bad he has Mr. McCarthy. And this division of labor must -- must not betray you, you see. That's the arrangement we -- we always have.

And so I came in and saw the second man. And I had really left the first copy with the minister, who I knew was very anxious to read it. It was the time when the Church and state were deep in negotiations for the concordat, and I had many friends on -- in the Catholic faith, and -- especially among the clergy. And I knew that really I was doing the ministry a favor, because I defended the rights of a priest. And since the state of course has to stand for independence, and freedom of a professor of a state institution, you see, I'm -- my case was really that I strengthened the position of the government. But at that time, the government was completely wax, and wanted to surrender to the Church rather unconditionally. So it was a very clear situation. I did something by defending the political and intellectual rights of a professor at a state university, you see, teaching theology; and the minister therefore felt that I was making him -- his life difficult, because he wanted to have peace at all costs.

Well, that's the background. So I stood before this man who -- as I tell you, I had to assume at that time, in 1927 -- was able to tip the scales for the rest of my life, one way or the other. No promotion, and no salary, and nothing, you see, and no help for the rest of my life one way or the other. And as I said, I am not a hero. I have felt very deeply that this was very disagreeable. And I didn't like to be a martyr -- I had been a martyr several times, and you don't like to repeat the process, and -- really, I mean, you mustn't seek such a thing. I had nothing of a fanatic at that moment in the -- in myself. I only felt that I -- if I could stick to my guns, publish the book, I didn't want to give any more offense

than I had to. Or -- I didn't even think that much. I just -- that's how I acted -- as you will see.

The man said, "You -- aren't going to publish this book."

I said, "Here is the second copy. Privilege for me to let you have it. If you like, I'll sign my name."

And well, he made a -- quite a distasted gesture and said, "You are not going to do this."

I said, "But what are you going to do if I do it?"

"Well," he said, "We can treat you as our enemy from now on."

He couldn't do anything right away. That was obvious. He couldn't go to the publisher, after all, and -- you see, and confiscate the books. But he said this, literally. And then I think I made a declaration which shows you how you are protected, once you are a man of -- man of some faith. As I tell you, I had -- was known to this man as a man who had broken away from routine several times, and who had stood his ground. And the minister who saw me first said, see -- had already told me, "I know you. You won't give in. I -- you have -- it's terrible with you."

So I found this way out. I don't know if it is such a masterpiece. But I only give this as a fact. That's why it is more important than an invented story which would -- couldn't be true. And I do not, I mean, flatter myself that it was the best solution. But I did say, "Sir, I have given pain to my Catholic friends, more often now already than I wanted, and greater pain. They love me; I love them. And yet I had to stood -- stand upright for the truth. Therefore the pain I may give you now can only come in second."

And thereby, I put this whole venture, this whole affair in its place. In the whole frame of my existence, you see, on this planet, I gave this man to understand, this was not the most important encounter. This a man who lives day by day can never say. You could not say, in your way of life, that something could not be compared to a pain or a decision you had made in another context. Yet any husband can do just this. He can say to a girl, "I love you, but I am betrothed to this good woman. And we have just to -- to -- I'll try to make my wife understand that we love each other. And she'll find room for this love in some form in our life, but we won't have a divorce. We must plant this into our marriage life."

And how many people do I know who have had this grandeur of heart

that they knew first things come first, and second things comes second? They haven't denied this second. I didn't deny to this man that was painful to me to go against his will, you see. But I gave it is proportionate place. And this is what I invite you to see, that by making a declaration of faith in the middle of your life, you are -- reach the power, the tremendous potency of letting everything else fall into its place.

I know a man here in this town. He went skiing into Europe. And he took a wife of a doctor with him, and then they came back and were in deep love. And so they -- he divorced his wife, and she divorced her husband, these fools. Why shouldn't, during a ski winter, people fall in love with each other? Do you think that's anything abnormal, whether they are married before or not? But this is something different. That's all. It's not a scandal at all. It's very human. They -- I would have pitied them if they hadn't fallen in love, so to speak, under this exposure. But you always think then the thing is cured by divorcing the first, and then marrying on the -- on the basis of this ridiculous butterfly situation, you see, a second time. Of course, they'll get a se- -- a divorce again.

You are such cowards today that you live day by day. You give every event too much important on the day, and therefore you can give it not its right place in the continuity of your lives. All the people in Newport, Rhode Island, you see, have married around the clock as you know, you see, because every time of course they see a pretty woman and have a cocktail, they kiss her; then they think they must marry her. So it's no end to the story. That's American idea of love. Completely impotent. I call this impotent, you understand, because not- -- they cannot distinguish when the word is spoken with power, and when it is just said on the spur of the moment because they are drunk.

There has been a movie, I'm told -- was it a movie? or a story, a book? -- where a man is made drunk, and then goes to a woman and allegedly has some intercourse, but he doesn't -- hardly recall it, and he didn't like it at all. And then this beast of a wife forgives him. She has nothing to forgive. Obviously he went -- drunk because she bored him. He may have to forgive her. But -- to say that he's guilty, and he thinks he's guilty in this. Is it a movie or is it a book? Somewhere -- it was only half a year ago that I -- I didn't see it and I didn't read it. But somebody came home -- my own wife, and said it's disgusting, these -- these puritanical af- -- idiocies. They -- they think because a man in his drunkenness has some -- makes some foolish thing, this is then crime, or this is a reason for a divorce.

It's really believed in this country. Has it anything to do with the word he said at the wedding? Purely physical aberration. What is -- does this mean? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. She -- he may have to apologize he shouldn't have

gotten drunk. That's another story, you see. But certainly not because he committed adultery or fornication. Because the story was set up in such a way that he didn't even like it. He was just swamped and brought there by his friends.

This is not -- worth to waste a minute of thought on -- worry on such a thing. But that -- are the things that occupy the American imagination, and that lead to the Kinsey Report. Do you think that if I make mistakes in mixing with women 99 times, and I finally find my sweetheart whom I can marry, that the 99 cases are important, which are listed in the Kinsey Report? Isn't it obvious that only the one case is important in which I finally reach the -- the zenith of my powers and of my selectivity, and of my discri- -- discrimination, and before, I have been indiscriminating, and a fool, because I hadn't been trained, I hadn't learned it, yet? How can statistics div- -- prove that this is the wife of your choosing and the 99 are just occasions which you forget?

One of you asked me the pertinent question, how it was with virginity. Well, gentlemen, we are reborn every day. If you wake up and have really slept well, you are a new-made man. And you are chaste again, and you are virgin. I don't believe in the -- in the importance of the physical. Obviously the important is -- thing is that these people whom you are going to marry are not corrupted in their minds in Smith, and in Holyoke, and in Skid- -- Skidmore. Then they'll skid more.

Obviously there is a physical restoration in the full meaning of the word, that something has not happened, because there has been no word attached. Just begin to see, gentlemen, that man creates attachments out of nothing by the power of the word. When you take the ring, you do much less when -- than when you take upon yourself this crazy word of "bridegroom." The ring is, after all, the physical symbol -- expression of this yoke which you take upon your shoulders and are called "bridegroom."

Stop. Full stop. We have a break here. No, you can ask me the question. Open the windows, please.

[tape interruption]

...means to select. And when we chat, and prattle, and talk, we prepare real speech. You must see that the constant flourish of sounds which leave us, and which come to us, are all only -- attempts to keep us on the alert, and to keep the whole thing -- the liquid, so to speak, liquid, out of which there can come the one word spoken with power and conviction. Once you see this relation of decisive speech, or "incisive speech" is perhaps even better, and of talk, you see always that talk is the informal, and speech the formal. And therefore

gentlemen, there would be no talk if there hadn't been first the creation of speech. This I try to show you in 58, by the way. That's built around this great fact which is completely denied in this civil- -- so-called civilization, which is no civilization for this reason, that the informal is better than the formal.

Now gentlemen, you couldn't be Dartmouth students if you couldn't register and formally be called Dartmouth students. You could not have peace here if there hasn't been a concluded peace or alliance with England and France, or armistice with Germany. That's -- all formal acts make us live. You have been registered by -- in the -- with the sheriff as being -- having been born on that-and-that day. That enables you to get a passport and to leave this country. But you are in love with informal living, and you think it's always better to be informal than formal. Informal talk is the luxury added to formal speech. More I cannot say in this connection at this moment.

Now the courtship restores the proper relation of talk and speech. A suitor is a man -- a minstrel, a wooer: Dante in his Divine Comedy, written around his love for Beatrice, Shakespeare in Romeo and Juliet, or any of his plays by -- for that matter, because he loves of course, and woos, and courts England just as much as he courts Ophelia -- and Juliet.

Any man who is a master of the tongue, or which God has put into you and me so to raise us above the animals, is willing to put himself under his own word. I told you, speech is then speech when you understand it. In the literal, physical sense of standing under it, and carrying the crown of what you have said, and confessed, "I have said this, and you can find out. I mean it." You see, that's the difference between the propagandist and the propagator of a faith.

The man who can propagate either a family, or a faith, or a political system, or a science, is a man who proclaims one -- by his faith, and then says, "Now, you can hack me to pieces. Let me find out. I will -- pay the penalty, I -- you can take me up on this. This must come true." And so he is defied, and he is ridiculed, and the people poke fun at him, and he says, "Please. Poke -- do all this. This is a minor matter. The main thing is that my word must come true."

And I told you that speech has this tremendous power of shadowing you, of giving you comfort enough to rest in the shade of this word. Once you have -- I -- as I tried to tell you in my Berlin experience, and as any man -- any woman knows who has accepted a husband, this one word allows her to rest in all the vicissitudes of life, when he loses his life, his reputation, his position, to rest still in the comfort that one time a man had the guts to stand by and to say, "I am around you. I am still there, forever."

So any w- -- speech rising above the -- weekday, gentlemen, creates a holiday through which your life receives what it otherwise hasn't: unity. In this moment, here, where the word is said, everything that has gone on before, and everything that's going to follow, makes sense. This doesn't make sense. That's why these girls and boys are so anxious to stay young at 70 and 72, and go in -- in -- in d‚collet‚, and use lipstick, because they are terribly afraid that their life doesn't make sense; it has just to be attractive. And has to remain attractive. And so they -- they have preponderantly this idea that youth is better than old age. Gentlemen, it isn't. Youth isn't better as -- than old age. The fears of your youth I don't -- wouldn't like to have again. It's too much for me. I had them all. Youth is not happier than old age. And if it were, then it would be obvious that we aren't meant to be happy. Obviously, we have to do something more important in life than just to be happy. I mean, if you really mean to say that at 20 is the high day -- heyday of your life, and everything later is senseless, it would be terrible. Will you really -- think that at 70, we have to try to be boys of 20, because otherwise we would feel restless, and cheated, and -- and disappointed? It's impossible, this. No one moment in the arc of life from 0 to 70 has any special favor to court, except those epoch-making moments in which we speak us into being.

You and I, we speak us into existence. In your youth, you are spoken into existence. Somebody says, "Go to school." Somebody says, "Play with your neighbor's child." Somebody says, "We move out to Barrington Hill." Somebody says, "You go to Sunday school." That is, you are spoken into life, are you not? But when the day come -- comes that you can take over matters, you speak yourself into existence. But please don't prattle yourself into existence. This is a great difference.

In other words, the great thing about living is, that if you have been sufficiently detached from your old attachments, there comes upon you the power to speak yourself into new attachments, which is tremendous, gentlemen. And from that moment on, you will tell your bride, for example, "Too funny. You know, your parents once lived in -- in Lebanon, New Hampshire, and imagine! My great grand-aunt really migrated to New Hampshire in 1780. Isn't that funny?" Because it makes sense. In the light of your new family relation, you will dig out the great-, great-aunt's adventure, and it will make sense in the light of this. Well, all your life is in this way.

You write American history in exactly this same sense, that because you want to be an American, and want to be called one, and speak yourself into your Americanism, the American history suddenly gains an importance which of course it doesn't have to a New Zealander. It's impossible that it should have.

This can only, however, gain substance by your doing something about it. These are all -- is just circumstantial -- evidence to the main problem, gentlemen, that you have to sing to your love because -- before you can speak to her. In poetry, in lyrics, in courtship, in letter-writing, you pr- -- must prepare the ground for her being able to understand your "yes" as speech, instead of prattle, instead of chatter, or instead of legal stereotyping. You are all surrounded by stereotype. People think that it is normal, for example, that a man is buried by the minister. Gentlemen, it is -- of course reasonable to think that a man is buried by his next of kin. I had to give -- make the eulogy of my -- at my father's grave, and my father-in-law's grave. And it was the normal thing. The whole family agreed that since I was able to speak and express myself, it -- was much better that I should speak than some such minister. So the minister is the substitute for the normal situation that there should be somebody in the family to say this. But you have completely forgotten this, and you really think it is normal that the minister speaks and it is exceptional that a member of the family or a friend speaks.

You have perverted everything that should come from the heart into some stereotype, which you find in -- in Macy's, where you buy weddings, and where you buy ceremonies, and where you buy all the forms of life. But the forms of life are the forms that come from power, from -- at this moment, something has to be established for the first and one time. The name of my father had to be established in the -- his last, dying moment forever. So who else should do it, but his only son? I had to take over.

This you have forgotten, and that's why you do not understand why you have to court a girl. The girl is surrounded by lectures today, by textbooks, by everything mediocre, and stereotype. Think of a psychology textbook which -- or family -- sociology textbook speaks of marriage in general. The first thing you have to establish is a secret. We -- you know already why. Because the secret between you and your girl is the one realm upon which you can build growth, life, unity, confidence, anything. Instead you come home and say, "She really has two breasts that can be seen." Out it -- goes. That's not a courtship. But you can make a poem on her beauty to herself, which nobody is allowed to read. That's something. That would establish her -- your -- her -- your -- your position with her.

As soon as you can reach the point where your girl and you know something about God and the world, which only you two have articulated so far, something begins to grow between you. That mustn't be of course anything just of yourself and s- -- her, but it must be your faith in the whole of your relation to the rest of the world, because you must bring to this girl everything you know, everything you have, everything you believe, everything you plan, everything

you hope for, and say, "I'll build it around you, and I'll build it together with you. You are the first to know about this. You are the only person to know about this. Nobody else will believe me if I say that I'm going to be -- a big shot. But you will understand, and you will give me the power to do it."

Now gentleman -- if we only speak prose, then the word spoken in church is, just as I said, stereotyped. It's sacramental, it's religious, it's ecclesiastical, it's -- may be consecrated and sacred, but it is far too way -- far too far away from your everyday speech, as though that girl would ever think it is anything but All Angels, or All -- St. John's Cathedral. -- She'll never impute it to your own power, that this service was held in the cathedral. She will not say, "This is our wedding," but she will say, as these kids do say in this country, "We had a wonderful wedding." A wonderful wedding. Well, then there are many more to come.

This is all talk -- spoken in general. Gentlemen, between a husband and a wife, between a lover and his bride, there is nothing in general. There is something specific which nobody else can even understand. In other words, the secret of human -- the human logos, of speech, is not 9,000 years ago. You find one good woman who is willing to listen to you and to confide in you, you experience the creation of speech as though there had never been a word spoken on this earth. Every word you use, as you just read in a love song by Shakespeare, suddenly gains a new connotation, a new meaning, a new illusion, a new -- it's in another context. And therefore it has a different -- different character, as ever before.

You go lo- -- go to the Merri- -- Oxford Dictionary, what is the story of language? The sequence in which these words -- acquired new meanings by the great poets of the language. Each poet using it in a way it hadn't been ever used before, because he had to make love to somebody, very energetically. You can be sure that if you really trust your eloquence in such a case, you will -- one word will strike home. You will say something, hint at something. Especially the things, the ambiguous words, you see, where you undercover, hint at something, which may be coming, that perhaps next year you will be ready to give her the fraternity pin.

Any illusion suddenly makes the -- your speech or your words in a letter -- make it -- makes it full of meaning. It -- it blows it up, so to speak, and it becomes transparent, as all language should be, you see. That's not good language, where the words have one meaning. In any poet's poem, the word bristles with -- all the connotations it ever had in thousands of years of meaning. Then the word is polished like a jewel, you see, like a diamond, is in all its facets, it's used by the man who speaks with -- in love. And you think, as a logician,

that you should use every word only in one mean- -- with one meaning. "Let me define my terms."

Gentlemen, I can give you only one advice at the end of this meeting. Never say to your girl, "Let me define my terms," because then you may be sure that she will not understand you.