Transcript

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(Philosophy 10, March 5th, 1954.)

...span of the bridge, between beginning and end, gentlemen. And in order to do so, we will have now to see what is implied by doubting. He has already hinted -- Mr. {Dabney} hinted at the fact that doubt is a little more complex than you usually think of it. We'll find that the two other commandments of the man, inas- -- as far as he's a mind, and as far as he's intelligence, and in thought matter to the rest of humanity. As a mental powerhouse, the doubter is also always a protester and a sufferer.

To protest and to suffer we shall have to develop as aspects of doubt. They are necessarily the ramifications of doubt. You remember we said about rule -- that to teach is necessary. Because I cannot always make the right decision, therefore I have to express by some word that this was exceptional, and this should be the rule. And you remember perhaps that I warned you that today teaching and ruling are so separate by the general contempt in which this country holds the teacher, that if you compare what the country accepts from the peop- -- a man who is elected in Wisconsin, and what they will not listen to from a man who teaches at Dartmouth College, you see the utter contempt in which a man like myself is held, and the utmost esteem in which a man like Mr. McCarthy is held for reasons unknown to myself, and unknown to you; because you think that rule has nothing to do with teach, and teach has nothing to do with rule. You think of a schoolteacher as an unmarried girl who is good enough to offer her services at nine- -- the age -- ripe age of 19 for no pay whatsoever, because that's what you practically do with the schools. You don't pay these teachers. We pay in our town, as I may have told you, our -- the head of our school less than the janitor of the same school system. Teaching and the intellectual life is despised in this country. As you know, in Russia every man in a position of teaching gets four times as much as a manager. And you do the opposite.

So with this contempt, you understand that you never understand that to rule and to teach is one and the same thing in a bifurcation. Anybody who rules must say what he means when he says something. That is, he must say, "Excuse me," or "I mean it." Now half of life we have to say, "Excuse me," like Mr. {Stevens} now. And whenever we excuse, we teach. We lay down the law outside our own example, and besides to our own act. In the same sense, gentlemen, when you doubt, we shall see that the doubter is at the same times sticking his neck out. To doubt means to state an exception. He is the exceptional man who doubts what everybody seems to believe, as far as he can make out. That's a -- you -- you are in this position, that you are very proud that you can doubt what nobody else,

you see, seems to find ridiculous. You can doubt that you -- a man should wear tuxedos, so you come all here in this slovenly, you see, dress with no tie whatsoever, because it's your privilege as a Dartmouth boy, to doubt the forms of good society.

Yes, that's your privilege, because you're young. You can overthrow all the forms of life. The terrible thing in America is only that you carry then this into later life.

I received the visit of a former Dartmouth man, Dart- -- editor of The Dartmouth. He's now professor at Harvard, and he thought it was necessary, after 15 years after graduation, to come to my house with his shirt out and hanging over his pants and no -- no co- -- coat. I thought it was distasteful. But he remembered that here, in Dartmouth, he had always been allowed to be -- to act this way. I'm sure in the Harvard -- in Harvard, where he teaches, he couldn't have done that, you see. But he wanted to prove to me that he wa- -- had -- still took the same liberties with me as he did 15 years ago. Very ridiculous.

But it's -- you see what doubting does. Doubting puts the exception before the rule. Ruling puts the rule before the exception. So rule is always accompanied by teaching, because there, the -- the general rule comes first and the exception is an afterthought. But in the doubter, gentlemen, in your own self-consciousness, your little self that doubts, comes first. And of course, the world takes it out on you, and punishes the doubter by asking him, "Do you mean it?" By doubting your doubt. As you say, "It's just an -- a derailment. He's drunk. He's intoxicated."

When St. Paul made his famous speech before the La- -- Roman proconsul, he said, "You're mad," because the -- who could doubt that there would always be pagans and Jews? And so he said, the great art makes you pray. You may have -- has anybody read it in Acts? One. Congratulations.

And the doubter is always thought mad. This is very important, gentlemen, because there has been no -- no state- -- new statement in -- the world from Copernicus, or anybody else, which the man hadn't -- didn't have to pay for with being declared crazy. Either criminal, or crazy, or intoxicated, or something like that. That is the law.

And if you see the connection between rule and teach on the one-hand side, you begin to understand the tremendous problem of doubt in an organized society, that at this moment, neither in America nor in -- in Russia is there room for this doubt, because everybody knows everything anyway. Now when everybody knows everything anyway, there can be not the expectation of a man who

doubts something for the first time, and then to -- to whom you bow and wait for his argument.

This is all -- we live in a very confused world, gentlemen, in which these very simple mental processes are hushed up or forgotten. Will you kindly see that doubt cannot succeed unless the doubter learns to stand alone, that is, to become himself the exception of the general -- of the -- rule. This you will wish to escape. You hate that, the idea. You wish to be one of the boys and have your right to doubt. But that's why all your doubts, gentlemen, are silly. In your bull sessions, you doubt all the unimportant things. It doesn't matter that you say, "There is no God." God is not interested in such silly statements. He allows you all this, you see. It is very different when you say that nobody can know the truth. That you -- your neighbors, you see, cannot know what's right and wrong, or that your parents are fools, or that you can steal. All these statements have tremendous consequences. If anybody should believe, you see, that you can kill your neighbor, the world is in chaos. You don't make these radical statements. Nietzsche did. Nietzsche said, "I may have to kill my best friend." So he {was} a very important thinker.

That is, gentlemen, don't -- don't think that what you call "doubt" amounts to anything. Doubt is when you trespass on the taboos of society by doubting that which is never doubted. In polite society, we never doubt the inherent honesty of the people present. Gentlemen, I think the time has come where we should doubt the honesty of the people present. When I now discuss things with colleagues, or with newspaper men, or with you, I can't help feeling that it's no use being polite and saying, "Of course, you mean the best and you want the truth," because I know too well that the last thing my interlocutor wants is the truth. They don't want the truth. It's not true. It's just a convention in this society that we treat everybody as though he did want the truth, you see. Sometimes you just have to say to him, "Sorry, I'm not going to argue with you, because you don't want to hear the truth anyway. You have made up your mind." And you get much further, you see, by shaking -- the man out of his complacency, by telling him that you don't accept him on a -- as a fa- -- on his face value, so to speak, you see, as an honest thinker.

Yes, o- -- today I had a minister from the northern part of the state at our house, and he asked me, "How do I refute the humanists?" He's an Episcopalian.

So I said, "You don't. You can only prove to this humanist that he never, in his own life, has so far lived on his humanistic values, but always on faith, love, and hope. And you can only draw him out by his life. Never argue with his thought. It's useless."

No Christian can refute a humanist. It's too stupid. The man -- the humanist doesn't want to know the truth, that he's dependent, because humanism means "I'm independent. I can think. My -- if any -- I know that this is silly." But I -- I'm not going to argue this with him. I can only prove to him that he always believes that there are other gullible people whom he can tell the truth. That is, biographically I can tell a humanistic author that he wants other people -- publishers and customers -- to buy his books and to learn something from him, that he -- they are mentally dependent on him, and that's his great ambition. So he believes that the flow, the circulation of thought, you see, should be more important to these other people than their own thought.

Perhaps that's an argument, you see, which you -- which you use. At least it can -- it can certify to yourself that this man doesn't do what he says he believes, mentally. The humanists are fooling themselves about their desire to be loved, or their desire to have power, or their necessity of having been loved, and held over the abyss of life protectively by their -- the older generation, the self-made man. You cannot refute the self-made man by arguing him out of his philosophy, you see. You can only trace in his life the vestiges of where he -- was not a self-made man at all. Usually when he gets intoxicated, he has to ask for somebody to take care of him. Very definitely. So it isn't -- we are not in this way ever really selfreliant.

So I only say, gentlemen, when the man in this community of ours here in America would have the courage to say to his neighbor, "My dear man, let's not argue. You do not want to know the truth," he would stick his neck out. He would become certainly an original doubter, because that is the convention in this country that everybody wants to make his contribution to the truth. Now I feel that most people want to make the contribution to lying.

This is very central, at this moment, gentlemen. I have to shake you out of your complacency. You see, the evil of -- has been denied during the last century by the liberals. They have said, "Everybody is good. You can pardon the murderer, because originally he was a good man, and it's just too bad that he tortured his wife and threw her out of the window. That's just accidental." You deny death. You deny crime. You deny evil. Everybody goes to Heaven, anyway. So we invented central heating, to have at least some purgatory.

Yes, central heating is the reflection on our universalistic faith, you see, that all people go to Heaven, because otherwise we might have this hellfire, you see, for later days. It's always too hot in an American college. Don't you know that? Everybody has sinus. That's a wonderful way of preventing you from thinking. You see, nobody with sinus can think. So they had to invent a special mechanism when they abolished teaching in this college. And they invented central heating.

That's the circulation of thought, you see: central heating, sinus, no thinking.

I doubt, you see, that we will come to light at this moment in the Western hemisphere -- and this is quite serious, gentlemen -- unless we recognize evil. And as Hamlet says, "In itself nothing is good or evil. Thinking makes it so." Therefore I -- you have to look for the seat of evil in thought. And the seat of evil in thought is that you rely on the convention that somebody else will not doubt your mental honesty, your intellectual good will. So today it is -- has reached this point that since evil is denied, the only way of rediscovering evil is not in action, because they have an excuse for everything: "That's environmental," you see, or "It's a mutation," or "It is something." "The man is color-blind," so why argue? "The man had just to kill his mother. It was an invincible drive." Isn't that so? That's how you really explain away all the sins of humanity: "There is no evil."

Well, man -- the man who says these things, that there is no evil, he is the evildoer. He doesn't want to know the truth. And I doubt therefore, and I invite you to doubt in your generation that it is any good arguing with these people. These are the humanists, the humanitarians, who deny evil on purpose, because you then would find out how evil they are. We are all -- are very evil, gentlemen. It's better to admit it.

But today, you see, your organized doubt means what material is the universe composed of, or is there a God? But you never doubt your -- yourself and this man vis … vis. You always think he wants to know the truth. But gentlemen, that's highly improbable, that you find this one man, among 2 billion people, who wants to know the truth. It has been said, gentlemen -- that's a very profound saying for the history of the human race, that if one man at one moment in one place, would tell the whole truth, that then the earth would perish. And that's just the story of the coming of Christ. That the cen- -- the temple -- curtain of the temples burst, and there was an earthquake.

Gentlemen, so rare is it that we speak the truth. And you take the opposite assumption. And I invite you to consider for one moment this whole proposition to show -- give you an idea of how difficult it is to doubt, because what I'm saying to you sou- -- must sound to you absolutely either silly or blaspheming, that you should doubt your vis … vises honesty of intent. Now, it is the experience to which I have come, against all my upbringing, and my education, my antecedents, all the traditions of modern science -- that men hate the truth. And therefore I doubt the tenet which you all hold, that everybody with regard to his life of his mind is of good will. He is not. You do not want to know all the truth about yourself. It's the last thing you want. You wish to be sheltered against it. We all want it. I am nothing -- no exception. We have to be forced to tolerate the criticism of others. It is always very much to our surprise that we understand that

somebody else thinks of us differently.

You remember my triangle. This is not a voluntary arrangement. I introduce you to the problem of our own time very vividly, I hope, by showing you that here, this man -- perhaps the tribe we should look this way, that here myself is hiding in the limelight of the world, and trying, you see, to -- to prevent the others from passing any judgment on me. That would be the best, you see. Or when they pass judgment, give me a B-plus, when I deserve a D-minus. And every one of us makes an attempt, you see, to have this triangle somehow twisted in his favor, because it's really very hard to accept. All want -- the real judgment about oneself; and to have it oneself, it would be truth, wouldn't it? We all wait for some accomplishment to justify our existence in the future. Not one of us can at this moment say that he has earned his salt.

So my proposition, gentlemen, that doubt of the mental honesty of myself and my neighbor is today the -- perhaps most productive doubt. But it's very risky. It's very dangerous. Mr. McCarthy wins because he already has this doubt. He says, "You are not honest." So the president, and the secretary, and everybody else says, "Well, Mr. McCarthy, of course you are so honest; but we are, too." Of course, the only answer to -- Mr. McCarthy is "You are not honest. You are as little honest as you say that we are." But we -- nobody says so, so he makes the race. Because I and he, we are the only people who know this.

He lives by saying, "Of course, I'm honest. But I'm the only honest man in -- on campus. Only honest man in America. The president isn't honest. They don't mean what they say. I mean what I say." Isn't that funny? And as long as he is allowed to do this, is the only man who doubts the oth- -- everybody else's honesty, he'll win. He's superior. It's a very interesting ballgame at this moment, fought about this question that the evil has its place in your mind, gentlemen; but there it is, because it has to do with our shame, our bashfulness, our hypocrisy, our fear, our vanity, you see, or our lack of -- our lack of certainty inside of ourselves. Well, who is certain of himself inside, you see?

Well, only -- I wanted to say, gentlemen, doubt demands the personification of the doubter. In doubting, the proce- -- process of personalization becomes inevitable. The -- the word "individual" formerly had this great meaning of individuation, of becoming somebody unmistakably different from everybody else. But the word "individuum" today has lost this colossal meaning. You use "individuum" as born separately.

Now gentlemen, mentally we are not born in separation from our environment at all. When we are born, the umbilical cord of the mind is only cut by doubt. Before, we are one run-of-the-mill product of the environment, obviously.

You mistake the individuum of today to be there when he has left his mother's womb. But gentlemen, he has only been -- become -- become mentally an individual when he has slain his father's laws, when he has doubted them. You see, the difference between being born mentally and being born physically is tremendous. You are born physically when you have left your mother's womb. You have been born mentally when you have slain the authority of your father inside yourself, and by the way, the authority of your father-in-law inside your fianc‚. But you have only slain them to resuscitate them, but not any longer as the laws of your father or your father-in-law, but as the true laws, as your laws.

Otherwise you can't marry. And you all marry without this. You marry without law, or you marry at your mother's apron strings, because you are most unhappy. You live in this matriarchy today, where you think you are -- individuals, because you think you have been born from your mother. So I have to introduce this word, "personalization," which is certainly not a -- a good word, in order to show you that what was meant by individuation. The principle of individuation has played a great part in philosophy in former centuries. Perhaps you take this down. Principium individuationes, principle of individuation in -- always entails that your doubt is your path into personality, into individuality. You become mentally an individuum only by doubting something that other -- everybody else repeats. "To doubt" means to decline to repeat. That's a new definition which is quite useful to you. To decline to repeat. Isn't that it, you see? Can you understand? That's to doubt. Now, only when you decline to repeat can you cease to be a re-edition of an old type. As long as you repeat, you are typical. As long -- as soon as you stop repeating, you become individuals. Isn't this obvious?

But since everybody in this country says, "We are born as individuals," I have to shake you out of this by saying, "You become persons when you doubt." It's just a change in -- in -- in name, but it's very important that you should wake up, gentlemen, to the fact: the last 200 years of the Enlightenment, of Free Masonry, of -- of -- of mother tongue, of nature worship, of science has all given you the impression that mentally you exist when you are born, physically. This is not true. You repeat. You learn English. You learn logic. You learn to read and write. What's read, and write, and the three R's, anything but repetition? You learn that 2 and 2 is 4. Well, other people have ta- -- said this before. You would be an important man if you one day would begin to say that 2 and 2 is not 4, which I hold. That's why I'm a great man.

Well. This person -- person- -- a person ceases to repeat another way -- an older way of life. And when he's -- enters this old way of life again and is made into his own way of life, he has appropriated it. He says, "Now I don't do it because my father says so; but I now do it, because I know that it is true." And

you can only say this after you have for one moment at least allowed it to be untrue. And then you have ceased to repeat. The whole past goes.

Gentlemen, that's why you and I must believe in creation out of nothing. We are all like God when an old truth -- for example, that you should have one wife, only, that polygamy is not right. Well, gentlemen, in this moment, you don't know this. You repeat that Christian civilization is based on monogamy. But do you know it? In your own life you repeat it. It's very nice of you to repeat it, but that won't help monogamy. It will -- monogamy will only be reinstated in every generation by those who say that the fulfillment of life in one man and one woman sticking it out together -- for better, for worse -- that this is true. If you remain married from mere fear that the neighbors may not like it, I despise you. That's not a good reason not to fall in love with 10 other women because your neighbors think it is not right. It is only your action, and you know it isn't right. Isn't that true?

It's too cheap to do something just because everybody tells you that this is done. And certainly marriage cannot keep -- cannot be upheld as a sacrament by such people who just do it from routine. That has never worked. One day you wake up and you are just bored stiff by your having repeated other people's routines. You and your wife had to rediscover this, under great suffering.

That's why we need -- all live by the remission of sins, gentlemen, because in the doubting stage, we are provoked to say "no" to the truth. But that's remission of sins, that this doubt is not in the long run going to taint us. Once you get over this doubt, that you have doubted is counted in as something affirmative, as something valuable. It's only if you get stuck in this moment of "no," in this diabolical attitude of -- of negation, of nihilism, you see, that the sins remain sins.

The doubter, gentlemen, by taking upon himself the risk of sinning, also acquires the first capacity for becoming a saint. There is no saintliness without sin. If Jesus hadn't been tempted, if He was just a kind of transparent veil of the divine, without suffering, without sweat, blood, and tears, we wouldn't be interested in Him at all. What do I care for some -- what people called in the ancient Church "Docetism," for some -- you may have heard this term -- for some appearance of the divine, you see. You and I can't do anything with an appearance of the divine, because the -- we would all have to say, "But I'm not an appearance, you see. I'm very much of flesh and blood, so I am tempted. So I cannot conclude because there was a divine man living without sin that this has any meaning to me. It hasn't."

But as you know, Jesus feared death; and He was tempted by the -- by the lust for power, and by the greater lust of intellectual curiosity. And -- and He's

conquered these lusts in the service of the whole race. He conquered His personal predilection and loves -- his love for St. John and -- and for Mary Magdalene, by the greater love for which He was serviceable. But obviously, we are only interested in the man, because this problem -- how to transform sin into sanctity -- is your and my problem, gentlemen.

Doubt, from the point of view of your parents-in-law -- your doubting their wisdom, I mean -- is sin. You have to prove to them that it is your way to sanctity, because you are -- you have to make these people's daughter happy. And before, they don't have to believe you. They don't have to believe you at all. There's absolutely no reason for parents-in-law to welcome a son-in-law. The first reaction of a father-in-law is, "Shoot him." It's a sound reaction, gentlemen. And there is no marriage in this country, because this is not felt to be natural. All these parents try to convince themselves that they have to -- sweet to such a Dartmouth man who invades their -- the peace of their home. It's something horrible, very dangerous. Leads to mischief.

No, Sir. Any man who wants to elope with a girl is of course a lawbreaker. But he has to prove by 40 years of married life, or 50 years of married life that he has re-established the law. That's the whole problem. Before, nobody has to believe him. You can forgive a man at his golden wedding day. That's not a joke. But that's the meaning of all actions that they have this double-faced character that by -- if you look upon them as a doubt which follows the obedience and loyalty to the old ritual, it is not in itself of any good. If you get stuck in doubts, no good. But if you say, "My dear parents-in-law, I elope with your girl because you are just excessively strict, and we have to start a new life," they will only know that -- that you did tell the truth tomorrow, but not today. It's nonsense to think that the -- the man who doubts must be believed today. He must be believed tomorrow.

So gentlemen, this explains the two steps he has to take. He has to protest, to stick his neck out. That is, he has to become the man who signs on the dotted line, "This is my doubt." He has to appropriate this general, possible idea -- this can be doubted -- by saying, "I doubt it." And this is the hour at which the "I" is born. And therefore, gentlemen, when we say it is a command of the mind to doubt, we can also say it is a command of the mind to become a person, because you cannot doubt -- you cannot doubt without saying "I." And in this moment you become a Protestant.

All Roman Catholics are Protestants, as all Roman Protestants -- all Protestants are Roman Catholics. This is all nonsense today, gentlemen. After 400 years of the Reformation, do not believe any of these fanatics that -- who tell you that there is a choice between -- Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. There is no

Roman Catholic in this country who is not a good Protestant. And there is no Protestant who is not a Catholic, to a certain extent, both. That is, they are, after all, branches of the same problem of life. And the -- what we have to {fight} at this moment -- you will see in the later process how this whole course is bridging the gap from the last 400 years. Modern Protestants and modern Roman Catholics can no longer afford to exaggerate their -- their differences. This is all nonsense.

The Church has put the greatest doubter, Jesus, in the center of its worship. So that's the element of Reformation in its own midst, in its own center. And on the other hand, the wildest Protestant must admit that the good life doesn't begin with him, the believer, but with his master. And that's good Catholicism.

Therefore, gentlemen, when the Roman Catholic says, "Don't doubt," or seems to say -- I think it's a fiction -- he also demands from him a personal credo, "I believe." Now nobody can say "I believe," as an "I," who cannot also say, "I don't believe."

Before this, "I" is just -- would not be "I," but "we," it would be a chorus, you see. Children can sing in a chorus, "We are so tremendously happy, we're all so tremendously happy," because they are just little sheep. But if a man, as we are, demanded to say, "I believe," gentlemen, he has separated himself from the flock. He is potentially a sinner. That's the greatness of Christianity, to -- accept this fall of man as the opportunity for his rise. That's why the Church prays four weeks from today, or six weeks from today on Easter Saturday, "O happy guilt that has found such a redeemer," you see. But it has to be a guilt made happy by finding the next, accomplishing step, you see, by which it is lifted up.

As soon as you make analysis the last victory of the mind, as soon as you think to be enlightened is in itself the final goal of life -- science is the end -- you are a great sinner. You destroy. You kill. But if you say, "I have to kill in order to rise from the dead again, and to resuscitate the life from the dead again," you are right. It's an intermediary step, Mr. {Dabney} reported today. I wanted to show you that this is the admission of the Church from the very first day that a man has to say, "I believe." And he can only say so after not having believed. Before, otherwise, his faith is of no value whatsoever.

And the Protestant stresses perhaps -- I -- or the modern times at least, has stressed this doubt. But these are two kinds of the same thing -- way. General doubt, abstract doubt, doubt in the crowd is of no purpose and no value. Doubt is only interesting when somebody comes out and say, "I doubt." And the "I" is only interesting when it implies that he may doubt.

This leads us looking backward to a great, great discovery, gentlemen. We had these four commandments of listening, of reading -- or traveling, for that matter -- of learning, and of play. And when we now stress the fact that this is the principle of becoming a person, of becoming a man who can say "I," that is a person -- a person is somebody who has acquired the power of saying "I" -- then you obviously must see that the -- the first mental stage, what we call "childhood," gentlemen, is the power to say "me," or to be a "thee" to somebody else. That's why we say in language, "to thee and thou," because "thee" precedes "thou." First you say to somebody, "thee," you see, then he understands what you mean by "thou."

Because gentlemen, the great story of this moment in our times is the de- -- rediscovery of the fact which the Eastern people have never forgotten, and which the Western world officially has forgotten for 400 years and through which it is now in the -- in the clutches of a dead science: that man doesn't begin his life by saying, "I," but he does begin his mental life by hearing that he is a "thou" to somebody else. You may have heard in the modern discussion, even in magazine articles, they talk of the "I" and "thou." That's a very lazy way of -- of saying this. There -- there is competition between myself and some other thinkers and writers of the day. { } have introduced this "I" and "thou" idea, and they mean that man is "I" and God is "thou." Poor God, who has just to serve, so to speak, as a -- as a punchball: "Here am I, and whenever I turn to God, He has to be there."

This isn't the experience of a living soul, gentlemen. I think the experience of any living child is that the authority of the parents and the teachers and the older sisters and the older brothers and this -- are -- is there, and that he is receiving orders, or directions. That is, we discover ourselves mentally as "thee" or "me." That's why we say, "Poor me." We { } the word "I," when we are in our good senses. It's something obnoxious to have to say "I." When Jesus said, "But I tell you -- you have been told, but I tell you," He knew that He was thereby making for His crucifixion, because He was sticking His neck out, you see, outside this group when you say, "We have been told."

Whenever people can say, "But this is what we have been told," they themselves are not first person singular, but always second person singular. I wanted -- was going to tell you. The "I" and "thou" people today are all asking people to go to church again, and also to the synagogue. And my friend Martin Buber, who was here two years ago, is the great representative of this way of putting the problem, that no "I" can pretend that he doesn't need somebody who listens, who talks back, the "thou." You have heard the "I" and "thou" proposition, have you? Who has heard of it? Ja.

Well, I recognize the validity of this side of the question, but I think that the

discovery, the fundamental discovery must be made in such a way that you and I come to recognize that we have been "thees" before we are able to become "Is." Only by locating the "thou" into your own mental state of aggregate, by admitting that before you become steam, you be -- have been water; and before you have been water, you have been ice, so to speak; that bef- -- only by admitting that you and I represent forms of grammar, and that we pass through the stage of "you" or "thee" to "I" and then to "we," as we shall see, and finally when we are dead to "it" and "they" -- only by going through the motions, you and I ourselves, is this grammatical approach of any fruitfulness. The "I" and "thou" when laid out on -- upon different -- among different people does never explain anything about, you see, the importance and validity of the "thou" for me. But if you and I have all the time to decide how much "thou-ness" and how much "I-ness" exists within you, the thing becomes, you see, an elementary proposition of our chemical -- chemistry, of our mental chemistry. Can you see the difference, or is it not clear?

(It's not clear.)

As long as you say, "Here is -- am I," you see, and "Here is somebody whom I want to love, and whom I -- for whom I pray," in Mr. Buber's perception of God, you would say, "O hear me, O God," you see. Then you hope His voice will come back and you say, "Yes. I have -- I have -- I shall fulfill your wishes." You have -- that's the "I" and "thou" proposition as you read it today in the public discussion usually. That is, "I" and "thou" then are laid upon different shoulders. Yes?

Then you can however ask: well, perhaps the -- the world would be nicer if we only would consist of "Is." This may be a weakness on my part, that I have the "thou," but is it proven that we couldn't have an arrangement, you see, in which everybody would be independent, free; real, rugged individualism, you see. After all, this is the American tradition that the world is quite possible as a society of egos. You see, and by enlightened self-interest, they would regulate their interstate commerce.

But there is no proof in such an argumentation between "I," you see, and "thou," that this is our elementary structure, that you and I are structurized to affirm that the "you" is as real as the "I." And as I said, there are other grammatical peoples, like the "we." At a certain time, you and I want to be able to say, "We have done this."

You know -- remember that Charles Lindbergh, when he flew across the ocean, had to call his book, We, because it's too terrible to be all alone. So he called his airplane and himself together, "We." That's very profound, because he couldn't write a book, I, could he? So -- you know. You have -- who has read the

book? Gentlemen, everybody -- oh, that's a great pity. How can you then understand why he's a general now?

It's a part of the American story, this book title, We. That's a great, great chapter in American life, you see, that the machine comes so much to life that it en- -- enlarges man's existence, you see, to a real community, so to speak, that he is with -- together with his plane, he is more than just a lonely individual. And he made a wonderful speech. And Mr. Hoover, when he received him the second -- both saying that the Spirit of St. Louis embodied the whole cooperative fellowship of America with its ingenuity, you see, its engineers, its -- its plumbers, its metalworkers, its miners, et cetera, so that the machine di- -- really did represent the community which delegated then the pilot, you see, to fly across the ocean. A very profound insight into the living -- living representation of the human society, you see, out of which such a plane could be, you see, produced. That's all in this little book title, We.

So the problem is, you see: when can you say "you" of yourself? You address yourself, or some of you may speak to yourself in the second person. I at least, when I scold myself, I speak to me in the second person. I take myself down in the second person. I do not say, "I am a fool," but I say to myself, "You are a fool." Now you can alternate between the two. You are a fool in any case.

But certainly you will admit that a man is not crazy when he says to himself, "You are." This is very -- quite logical, you see, because when we sit in judgment over somebody, he is the child, and we are the father, you see. He is the son. And anybody who judges himself in this sense has two stories. And on the lower story, he says to himself, "you." That's all right, I think. That's as it should be.

So the great discovery of -- I hope to put this on my tombstone as the only real discovery which I made in the year of the Lord 1916 -- is that man himself goes through grammatical figures, that he is himself structuralized by the human grammar, and that therefore grammar is nothing arbitrary or -- or -- or accidental, gentlemen. The greatest secret of the human spirit is in the fact that we can say, "you," "I," and "we." And -- and -- before you do not understand that the most miraculous, that you can say of any event, "I did it. It was done. We did it," you see, or "It was done to you," or "to me," you see, in the fourth person, that this is the whole problem of life -- you have not understood the great mystery of the logos, of the word that was with God in the beginning, and then comes down and can be appropriated by us, and what God said first now can be said by any living soul today, you see.

The same truth which is already there -- for example, about monogamy, that monogamy is true, you see -- then can come under your heading and you can

say, "I say it is true." And that's some increase of { }, because you become then the god of this -- of this { }, the authority for this { }. You sign, like the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Why do we mention them by names, you see? Because they became these persons who could have doubted, and now did believe. Before, they had just been told that such liberties exist. But they had never said, "I say this."

So perhaps you begin to understand that we ourselves move through these different figures of grammar. As a child, we are "yous." And it is more important that the parents and the teacher should tell us, "Billy, go home," or "Billy, come to school," than that we should answer, "I come to school," because the -- that's just a response, is it not? The command is given by somebody to me. But as a protestant, as a protesting doubter, I begin to say, "I tell you." Isn't {that} what it is?

So response becomes beginning. The child, gentlemen, is responsive. That's why I hate to hear in schools everybody talk about responsibilities. Gentlemen, take a knife, or take scissors and cut the -- syllables, "-bility." I go to sleep when a teacher, or a president of a college, or a doctor, or anybody gets up and say, "Let's talk about our responsibilities." That is a pep talk. And why a pep talk? It's of no interest to anybody, gentlemen. In your youth, you can only be responsive. You can't be responsible. There's -- much simpler to be responsive, you see. But if somebody of power and a body -- person you can love and trust tells you something, you will respond. Isn't that short enough, or long enough? Why do you have then to add this word "responsibility"? I think everybody goes to sleep when he hears "responsibility." He says, "I have heard this so often, and I just want to get drunk, just the same."

It doesn't help anybody to be told that he has responsibilities, because the whole problem of real life is to be responsive when there is somebody who leads. If there is nobody who leads, you have to become the leader. Then you have to say "I." But then you are not responsible, because it isn't re-sponse that you become the sponsor. So it is, you see, your sponsorship which is the problem, not your responsibility. Responsibilities are routine responses, or rout- -- responses that have become routine. That's all. Responsibility is always less than a fresh response. Responsibility is organized response. But what we really have in life, you see, is responses. A child must be responsive. If you have an indifferent child, it has ceased to be a child. The country is full of them. You see, a -- a child must be eager to respond. And we could say, gentlemen, that this person, "thee" or "me" in the first four commandments, is all the responsive child. Responsive, and the eagerness is the expression of its waiting to be able to respond, that's why you make all your children so unhappy when you don't give them orders, because children want to respond. They don't wish to be the first to speak. They wish to be the seconds. The seconds are the "yous," the "thees," the "thous." Do

you follow -- why man is a grammatical figure of speech in every phase? A child, gentlemen, you make them -- drive them crazy when you make them into "Is."

My son, who's a psychiatrist, had this case, a very gifted child. He's born to two unreasonable parents. And they not only made this child listen to music, to great music, but they demanded from this child at the age of one year and-a-half to state who were the composers of all the music. The child is now an onion, which has withered away. It is four years old; there's no hope for its mental -- it is just dead. It has been killed by being -- having, you see, they always then quoted as -- pointed at the child: "Imagine. He already knows who composed this." They made him into an "I," you see, as something -- -body saying something himself far too early, instead of waiting when this would come back at the age of 12 voluntarily, spontaneously.

You can kill people by not allowing them to -- just merely to respond, you see. This is the disease of this country, you see. That you make the children into "Is" at an age when they just should be eager to respond, because the response comes, you see -- the only decision the child has is when to respond. That's his freedom. A child cannot always respond, and it cannot -- respond immediately. Sometimes the response is quite late. But if it has had real parents and real guidance, then it will respond, unless these responses have been overlaid by too much action.

We must have a break here for a few minutes. But only three minutes, and then I'll go on.

[tape interruption]

When you consider that it takes a man 20 to 30 years, and some people never do, to come -- acquire the right in the community of saying, "I," you will understand that the quality of being "you" to others -- has a mental leadership, so to speak, in the first period of life. That doesn't mean that not occasionally and tentatively you already develop your ego. Any child of 12, or 2, or 4 begins to says, "I," and says, "But I won't do this. No." But you will admit that the child at the -- four years of age needs a preponderance of newness in order not to be killed, in order not to be starved, in order not to be abandoned or ruined. It is a proportion. All these mental commandments have this wonderful character, you see, that one is there in the main, and all the others are already there to a certain extent. The man who teaches also still reads a book, also still listens to commands. You can see that in old age, the other things are not -- have not disappeared. But you -- it is right to say that at a certain age a man should teach in order to fulfill himself and -- or he should have some control over at least his own affairs so that he can rule. Some little -- something.

In the same sense, gentlemen, you must not be surprised that it takes a long time to become this "I." And therefore I added to the world of protestation this last word, "suffer." That's a very disagreeable thing for you to under- -- to admit. By phys- -- our physical man does not want to suffer. Physically, you can say that the dentist is the devil, and therefore you use Novocain. That is, physically pain is not justifiable as normal. Pain is an indicator of abnormalcy, you would admit. It's disease. You all confuse, at this moment in this purely physical world, the difference between suffering and pain. Suffering is normal.

If you don't know this, gentlemen, you cannot live. And most of you cannot live, because you have said that suffering is as wicked as pain. And what -- because you try to take Novocain against suffering, you cannot live, because suffering is exactly for the "I" what playing is for the "thou." Why does a child play? Why do -- must you play? Your hour hasn't come, yet. Play, as you remember, fills out the time-lag between your already having learned, between your already having been prepared, between your already knowing all the 10 Commandments, and the hour of appointment at which you are -- required to make a decision, to say something in your own right. We play before we are called.

So gentlemen, play is necessary for the child. Now in exactly the same way, suffering is necessary for the adult, because when Mr. Einstei- -- Mr. Planck, for -- take Mr. Planck, who in 1900 or 1899 discovered the quanta principle, it took him 30 years before it was really accepted. What are these 30 years? They are the necessary time-lag between his being ready and the world being ready. Now to say these 30 years were unnecessary does destroy the fabric of the mental life of society, gentlemen. You have to learn that just as a -- grain of seed has to lie through the winter in the ground before it should grow, you see, that this is only -- inevitable and desirable that the resistance against Mr. Planck's prin- -- new principle should have full sway. But it's very painful for the man's mind and soul who is exposed to this waiting.

And in this sense, gentlemen, mental suffering is the condition for the circulation of thought. You have a sterile mind, because you think a quiz-kid has a mind. It has no mind. It is demented. It has dementia praecox. Anybody who thinks that the response to a mental thing is con- -- con- -- synchronized with the mental proposition, doesn't know that the life of the mind has to go with us through our lifetime, and through the lifetime of mankind.

Now, I would like you to give me a better word for this -- for this lying fallow, for this problem of incubation, because I know you just wince when I say, "suffer." You -- you have abolished "suffering" in your vocabulary, as you have abolished "sacrifice." You think it can be done without these things.

Gentlemen, would you see that if you figure life as animal life, from the birth to death, exhaustion of your vitality, of yourself, of your {skin}, of your flesh, you see, you are right. It is much nicer to live in good health all your life than to live in disease, obviously. But you remember already that the mind is that which doesn't go from birth to death, but which goes from death to birth.

Now gentlemen, the mind anticipates destiny. And just as playing shows that the world will not accept this destiny by calling on this child as a reasonable member of society -- you have to say, "You are too young, David" -- in the same sense, the man who has put down his foot and says, "This is my protestation of faith: the earth is round -- the earth -- sun turns around the -- the earth turns around the sun." Copernicus, you see, he has to wait a hundred years until Galilei, as you know, before his truth is put to the test. Copernicus couldn't become even a martyr of his conviction, because people felt he was just playing. The emperor Charles V, who thought he was a great Catholic in his own days, read Copernicus' book with great interest -- no objection, but nothing happened. The teaching of the old story went on, because they said, "Copernicus has just made a new proposition quite interesting, but..." Then came Kep- -- Galilei a hundred -- exactly 100 years later and said, "You have to think this way, no other way out." He clinched the argument and said, "No, from now on, all our computations of the astronomical sky have to based on the assumption, you see, that the earth turns around the sun."

Then the, as you know, people got very nervous, and tried to condemn him -- his faith. And so it took 110 years for the simple doubt of Mr. Copernicus even to become -- to be taken seriously by the world. Before, the world said, "He's just playing. He's just fooling." They didn't even give him the honor of saying, "This doubt is dangerous. The doubt is real." You see, they didn't even burn him. That's the least you could expect if you have a reasonable doubt, you see, that they treat you as their public enemy Number 1.

This took 110 years before Copernicus', you see, new doubt was even listened to as important. With Mr. Planck, it only took 30 years. And the break produced by Mr. Planck's idea of quantum as quality has even -- is as great as Copernicus'. It's a complete reversal of -- of nature, of what people had to think before, of nature's slow process, because, as you know, the old sentence was: nature doesn't make any leaps. And Mr. Planck's doctrine is: nature jumps, makes jumps. Natura {non fac incitus} was the old theory. Natura {fac incitus} is the Planck doctrine.

I only was going to say, the suffering is nothing but the time-lag, and as timelag, you have heard of {it} speak, but I have to personalize the time-lag. It doesn't mean that it is said to the doubter, "Lag," but it means, "Put up with the

world's time-lag." Isn't that -- that's what it means. Now how do we express this? Formerly people said, "Suffer." That is, "Undergo the treatment meted out to you by the world. The world is not ready." You have a better word than "suffer"?

If I say, "Wait," it doesn't mean that I have done anything to produce this change, you see. If I wait, I -- doesn't have to work out. Therefore, I cannot use the word "wait," because it doesn't imply that I have done something, you see, to create this span between my doubt in my own right as an "I," and the expectation that the world will violently react against this doubt.

So there we are with this word "suffer." The deepest reason, gentlemen, why we have great trouble in rediscovering at this moment the real context of life is that you have given up a word which now, from all corners of the globe, tries to infiltrate into America again, but it has great difficulties of establishing itself. Let me say this as the last. It will take two more minutes than we have time. But perhaps you can suffer.

You remember now that we had first the child. And then we had the -- the elder. And we have now in between tried to establish the middle arc of doubt, of protest, and of suffering as the complete development of the "I." And we can here put the "thou," and we can -- and the "we." Now, why is it that we have such difficulties of making this the necessary step before the learner can become the teacher, before the listener or the obedient, the obeyer can become the commander, before the person who gets his father's name can become the one who leaves his good name behind, which are the three processes of which we have to talk all the time, don't we? Didn't we? Inherited name and acquired name.

And why is it that you really believe in this kind of life? That's what you really think, that a man is first seven years old, then he's 14 years old, then he's 20 years old, then 30 years old. If this was life, gentlemen, you couldn't live it. You would be blind and deaf all the time. And you really live it, as best as you can with this wrong philosophy. This is your picture, gentlemen, of life. That is, what is missing in the language, and what's missing in your thought is the span.

We speak of a span of time, and we speak of a bridge that has some -- several spans, don't we? In Holland, in Dutch, in South Africa, you speak of "outspan." Have you heard this word, "outspan"? It's a famous novel on { }, which becomes quite popular now in English. But you are a little behind the time. Nobody has heard the word "outspan"? I'm interested. Nobody?

It means to take the horses out of the carriage, you see, and then put them in the stable for a few hours, and then -- then drive them in again. That is, it is giving-up of the tension of the road, the horses are spanned in, as with the

bridge -- span of -- of a bridge. And they are intent to go. Now the word "intent," and the word "intention," and the word "tension" are quite new for the psychology in this country. Tension, t-e-n-s-i-o-n, when I came to England first, I could not use; for the word "span," there was no translation possible into Anglo-Saxon. Newton -- Newton and Mill had abolished in English the relation of your life and of time to the end. They have abolished the -- what is called today with the terrible word "eschatology" the encroachment of the future on the present. They have said, "There is no such thing. We go forward from the past into the future."

I have tried to convince you, gentlemen, that this isn't so, that your future makes demands on you all the time -- your destiny -- that you all act mentally by -- from destination. Physically, we shit from causation. The metabolism of your body goes from beginning to end. The metabolism of your mind goes from end to beginning. That is, I only tell you something at this moment, because I expect you in the end to have to say something when I am gone. The only reason why you can get an education is because finally you will be the last generation on earth who can speak, and I'll be gone, we'll all be gone, so we have to make you into the final man who leaves something behind on this earth, as rulers, as teachers, and as authorities for the next generation. You -- only are taught as future prin- -- as princes of Wales, as future kings of England. And that's what we mean by the universal priesthood of mankind. You are in the last analysis at one time the last person to speak.

Therefore, already the baby is talked to. Therefore the first commandment of your -- {life}, experienced in your- -- -side yourself is under the span, the tension from the end. This whole notion exists today only in some theological circles under the term "eschatology." Who has heard this terrible term, "eschatology"? Well, it means the influence from the end. That's what -- really means. Usually it only mean -- means the last things, and people think it's just something very odd and atrocious. Well, gentlemen, it is nothing that exists outside your only -- own daily experience.

You are in this college, because you expect to prepare yourself for the future. You are not in this college from causation, because from causation, you would just at 18 have to try to make a living. But because your parents are good enough to free you from causation and to say, "In order to reach a higher stature, you are at this moment preparing yourself for the future." And so you are allowed to doubt, and protest, and to suffer. And this middle station, gentlemen, of life makes the man, the citizen, the free man. You can always have the child of man and some dictators, some routine priests, or so, you see, telling you -- the middle group is only explained because we look into the child the potential prince of Wales, the potential father, the potential priest, the potential king, the potential teacher. You are all future Platos and future presidents of this republic. That's

the only reason why it is worthwhile to spend any money on your education. Why should I otherwise -- bother, you see? But it's of great concern to anybody who lives now that tomorrow, what he thinks is true, should be continued.

And I appeal to you therefore as your own future man, not as what you are at this moment. Now all this is expressed in the word "span." In the span of a bridge, you have still this feeling that the bridge after all must reach the other side of the river. There is an abyss that has to be bridged. In the word "tension," you also feel the -- how would -- what's your -- how do you call a -- a -- a bow, arrow and bow, when you -- how do you -- do you span it?

(Taut.)

Wie?

(Taut? Taut?)

What?

(Taunt? T-a-u-n-t)

Ja. Do you taunt a bow?

(No. You draw it. Draw.)

What?

(You draw the -- the --)

Well, it's a very poor expression, you see, because the word "span," which is in all Anglo- -- or all other Germanic languages has lost out with you. And you are the poorer. Gentlemen, I must point out that a wrong theory always entails the loss of language. You have lost the important term "span" in all its meaning; as a verb, for example, to span the bow you could still say in 1500, or in Chaucer. You can't say it today. And to draw a bow, is very -- is nondescript, because you can draw something, you see, without creating a tension, can you not? If you just draw -- in "bow," you know that part of the bow stays where it is, and you only draw one part of it, you see. That's the real subtlety of spanning, isn't it? Of span -- that while you extend one -- one-half, the other remains. That's the -- just the quality of the elastic, of the elasticity of this.

So the word "draw" is just a proof of my point, you see, that Americans and English have lost their relation of life to the future. You have been completely

given over by Mr. Newton and by Mr. Mill to space. And you have to know this, gentlemen, from -- put it down -- from 1650 to 1945, the branch of the human race called "the English," or the "Anglo-Saxon," has tried to explain life from the beginning and therefore has identified mind and the body, in their direction. And therefore, you have all these silly books on mind and body, and parallelism. You have heard of psycho-physical parallelism, haven't -- you not? -- that what happens to the mind happens to the body. This isn't true at all. What happens in the body is always the opposite from what happens in the mind. That is, the body grows from beginning to end, and the mind grows from end to beginning.

(What about all these new science fiction novels that are concerned with the future? They're written by English-Americans -- authors.)

Oh, it's -- everybody's waking up. The first was -- you woke up to this -- as you know, was Mr. Alexander in England who was a time philosopher. The second man was of course, in France, Bergson. Nietzsche had done the same. And now it's -- the secret is, you see, whistled from everywhere, but very poorly. Just like the "I" and "thou." When you read these I -- future fictions, that's not genuine future. That's just extended past. Most of these people don't know what the future is, you see, that it is that which -- which creates your present. You -- you -- even you don't understand it. { } quite.

But you are in college, not because of what you are at this moment, you see, but because you have at one time to speak out. That's the only reason, you see. If one out of these 3,000 students at one certain moment in the history of the United States will stick his neck out and say something, you see, of a -- of a new rule, of a new teach- -- doctrine, that's the whole investment -- worth the whole investment in you. The rest of you will just come to reunions, you see. That's childish. That's your childish, you see, the -- the childish share in this; but your { } meet is not important.

The only justification for all -- your all being here is that one out of your number, you see, may rise to the occasion. And therefore, this whole institution, gentlemen, is made -- is founded in anticipation of the death of the older generation, you see, because you must fill their shoes. The founding fathers create education, because we must have people of the stature of the founding fathers, although at -- by God at this moment, you are not of their stature. And you would never reach it without being exposed to this call from the future. We have to -- to summon you into this situation, you see.

Let us stop here. Thank you.