Transcript
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(Philosophy 10, May 10th, 1954.)
... the state of affairs in society, I always think of a story that happened to our -- myself in the city in which I taught for 10 years at the university. There was a -- a lawyer, very clever, smart man. Made a lot of money from his practice, but being at -- he also was a tre- -- terrific gambler. And each -- not each night, I do not know this, but obviously he was known in the whole city as somebody who -- who in his evening card games lost a lot of money. Everybody knew this, and I had been told this quite often, because he was a prominent man.
One day he blewed out -- blew out his brain, with a pistol shot, because he had lost too much. The only person in the city who was taken by surprise was his wife. She had had no idea that her husband was a gambler. She had no idea that her husband was a gambler.
This is, by and large, the situation with most of us, gentlemen. Everybody knows our secret. Only we ourselves don't. I see this so often in a little place like this, you see. You say, well really, this person should be told not to do this, or to act differently, or what. Well, there's nobody who wants to tell him -- him or her. Everybody knows that this is go -- going to do much harm, you see, or him. But who can be found who goes to this person and says, "Now, look here. We are all talking -- wagging our tongues, you see. Please, stop this, or you -- you harm yourself."
If you come to think about this in your community, you will find a dozen cases where people are the only people who can't know, because nobody wants to tell them what's wrong with them. Only to give you an example of the truth of the matter, that people do not want to know the truth, you see. And they do not want to tell the truth. And very often I ask myself what -- what society are -- do we live in where everybody can talk behind the back of a person, that -- there is something wrong, and nobody dares to -- to tell this person to his face? This only bears out the fact that it -- it takes great moral courage to doubt, in such a way that the doubt enters the life -- the public life of the community. Because you don't believe this. You think that's taken care of. As you know, because the people in the last 30 years no longer ever had any intent to go to their minister, to confide in them, we have now this -- this wide growth of psychoanalysis, which is a poor second for the confessional. And it certainly doesn't perform the same thing, but it takes the place of an arrangement in which a minister in a Protestant congregation had the right to go to a parishioner and say, "Now, stop this."
No minister can afford this to do now, you see. He has to be glad if the man still pays his dues to the church. So he keeps quiet. And since the minister has no longer the right to go to the family and say, "You are doing wrong," the weeds immediately sprout, and now you have these pseudo-arrangements where people go to the Christian Scientist, or to the analyst, or to the chiropractor, or to the palmist, or to the graphologist, or to some gypsy in order to find something out about their future, which they are ruining every day. Because all this business of astrology, and graphology, and palmistry, and -- and having somebody tell you the -- predict the future from the coffee remna- -- in the -- in the -- your cup, this -- are all just substitutes for the truth, which you could know very well if you would face up, you see, to what is wrong, inside yourself or inside -- with your people in -- education of your children or in your treatment of your parents, or what-not.
Only to -- I wanted only to stress the fact that really you know much more about mankind's unwillingness to face the truth than you care to admit. I don't know if I told you the -- the great word -- the great saying by -- by Planck, the physicist, who discovered the quanta -- did I tell you this, here? -- who said, "No truth has ever made headway by convincing the opponents," and he knew what he was talking about, because of his own great discovery.
The only way in which there -- the truth finally does make headway is because the opponents die. And the younger generation already have heard of this theory by the man who proposed it, and so no -- no longer think it is very revolutionary. And that is a quotation that has been said by other great men before. When Columbus discovered America, you see, the -- as -- his -- his great disciple, Alexander von Humboldt, after whom the Humboldt stream in America is called, put it, "At first people say he is a mad -- he is a fool. The second, they say he hasn't discovered it, but somebody else. And the third position is: we knew it all along." That's the story of all new processes of the mind, gentlemen. And that's your 5th commandment. That's why doubt is such a painful process. First, you are not listened to. Second, you are plagiarized -- somebody else says he has done it. And the third is: well, we knew it all about, why this fuss about the 5th commandment? We find this now in our textbooks, anyway. That's the true story of the human mind, gentlemen, on the -- in the stage of the adult fighter? It is very rare that anybody gets credit for what he has done.
Now today, my proposition is, gentlemen: I -- want to end this personal part of our course in which we go through any individual's creation into an independent speaker. And we have now reached the point where I hope I can show you that man begins as a listener. He learns then to speak in his own right. And finally he is listened to. These are the three stages. The listener always listens to something that already has been said, and which for this reason we may call
"old." The speaker be- -- becomes the speaker by saying something for the first time.
It is better to put it this way for the first time than just to put it "new." Because newness, sensation on Broadway, is not qui- -- has not quite the power to say something for the first time. You only distinguish between old and new. I demand from you that if you become students, you shake off this terrible, domineering superstition of our age that the new is better than the old. Only that new is worthwhile, gentlemen, of which you expect that one day all people will admit the truth. That is, to say something new is only important if you say it for the first time. But you think that if you say something sensational, you see, it sells. And therefore it makes money.
You show a lady standing on her head; well, that makes money. But it doesn't follow that every lady should stand on her head. It's just a sensation. Some obscenity. But you all mistake newness for saying something for the first time. But gentlemen, the great history of the human race of course is con- -- is connected with the problem: how can something be said for the first time which is true, and therefore then come true in the mind of everybody else?
So you become a man if you say something for the first time. For example, you propose to a girl. You are the first to know that she is going to be your wife. The whole process is only important if you do not lie to her, that you say this as a new-fangled idea, but if you force the rest of the world to follow suit and to call her by your name -- then you have said it for the first time, that Mary is yours. But it only is important in the history of -- your own life and other people's life if everybody else from now on has to bow to her as your wife or your fianc‚e. If you cannot force the other people, you see, to take off their hat -- hats to -- to her as your spouse, you haven't done anything, you see. You have perhaps had a very nice affair, but it better be forgotten, because it isn't important. It hasn't make a -- made a dent.
This is the difference between a new sensation with some strumpet and an engagement, where you say for the first time that this lady is to be yours. And you have to learn to distinguish between your real thought, gentlemen, and your pure, play-like opinions, which you cannot do. To you, an opinion is something valuable. To me, an opinion is something horrid, because I feel then the whole weakness of my character, and of human character that we deal with -- we do this shadow-boxing with constantly changing and shifting opinions. Any man among you, gentlemen, any one of you who wants to become a man, must be able to rise above mere opinion. Before, you have not spoken. Before, some other people's words are just passing through you. Before, you are not an individual.
The whole point is again, gentlemen, that the individual in the sense of our philosophy of rugged individualism, of personality, of liberty, of civil rights, of citizenship, of Christianity of course, can only rest on one sure assumption -- that you rise above opinions, and that you speak something for the first time and force the rest of the world to listen to you. If you can never do this, gentlemen, you are not a man. You are a child. And most people in this country boast, even, of changing their opinions every day. They are even proud of it. They say they -- they jump on the bandwagon, don't they? Now, to jump on the bandwagon means never to say something for the first time and wait till all the others follow suit, you see, but just to all the time be after somebody else's opinions, and never know quite what.
Now that's why American society has created, so to speak, the -- its own special frame of reference of childishness, because opinions are this side of speech. Speech always means the opposite from talk. You know what the difference is? When you s- -- talk, you don't want to be quoted. When you speak, you ask people to quote you. If a man says, "Don't quote me," and he is grown up, he is the devil. The whole difference between the devil and God is only this: that when you are -- speak divinely, you are ready to be quoted. And you when you speak diabolically, you make sure that nobody says that you said it. "Don't quote me," they say. That's always -- as in the New Testament, you know the man who says, "I'm legion." You know, that's the name of the devil in the New Testament, "legion," which means 10,000. Any number. And everybody says it, but nobody can be quoted. This is the rumor. This is the defamation. This is the character assassination which is so -- the gossip, which is so rampant, you see, that people say, "I didn't say it. It just went through me. I let -- allowed these words to be carried on through me, you see, but I'm not behind them."
You -- this is so general, gentlemen, that I must demand from you that you now open up your -- your intelligence to this distinction: talk is in the listening stage the attitude of the playboy. As far as we play with life, we talk. Inasfar as you are the founding fathers, be it of a family, or of a country, or of a profession, or of your community, you must demand to be quoted for what you have said. So will you kindly take down these two definitions? "Talk" means you don't wish to be quoted. It's just floating on air, this -- this sentence. "Speech," it is backed up by the speaker's own veracity.
So we have, gentlemen, to add to the word "truth" two very interesting other nouns: "veracity," in the question of doubt, and "verification" in the stage of ruling and teaching. When you rule and teach, you allow something you have said to be verified. When a law is passed, we find out whether the law is good. And if this ruler or legislator didn't do a good job, then his laws about parking in New York City just don't -- don't operate. He's found out that he made a mess of
things.
You don't know this, gentlemen. As children, and you try only to be children, you all think you embrace the truth. You learn the truth, fortunately, from your parents. The 10 Commandments are true. But then comes the problem of veracity. Veracity is only to be had at the price of being quoted for what you say yourself. That's not truth, you see. Truth is impersonal. But veracity obviously allows other people to point with their fingers to you and said, "This terrible man has said such an atrocious thing, that the earth turns around the sun," you see, or that "all men are born free and equal."
This is veracity when the Abolitionist Party could be held up in the South as being those rebels, you see, who raised hell against these good Southern owners of slaves. Then Mr. Garrison, you see, could be attacked and vilified. He could -- still couldn't be verified, because there was no action. It was just the preparation of action. But when he finally got the Congress, I mean got the people to elect Abraham Lincoln in -- 1860, we enter the story of verification. And we learned that the verification took 90 years, and not just the Civil War. And you can know today that the verification of the fact that all men are born free and equal isn't finished, yet. And it certainly wasn't settled in -- on the battlefields of the Civil War.
And all the people who, between 1865 and 1917 in the North, said to themselves, "We have settled this for good. Man is now born equal in this country," just cheated themselves. They just lied. They relied on their forefathers' death on the battlefields. They had all these wonderful war memorials in every Northern city. But they themselves didn't do anything about it. After they had sent down the carpetbaggers, they just forgot about the South.
So gentlemen, we have suddenly, against all theology and all philosophy, gentlemen, in this course on the mental processes, you get the problem of the relationship of truth, of veracity, and of verification. So gentlemen, the truth which we receive splits into something subjective -- veracity -- and something objective -- verification. And the relation is something very different from what you expect. You want to be objective. That is, you want to put the cart before the horse. The real story is, gentlemen, that your subjective veracity is the condition for verification. If you find nobody to back up some law, or some rule, some natural law, or some political law, you see, with his veracity, that he can be quoted, you will never be able to verify it objectively.
You say it's objectively true that there is gravity. Do you think this -- you could know this without Newton? Without the man who stopped to think about an apple that fell down the apple tree? You never stop to think. Now you talk --
boast that science is objectively true. But gentlemen, the scientists had first to be subjectively veracious, before you people can earn the fruits from these trees of life, of knowledge. You are all absolutely crazy, because you want to begin with the objective truth. There is no objective truth among people. Any superstition can re-enter. We see it -- the Dark Ages are with us again, because any one moment where the educated people don't have the guts to stick their neck out and say that they can be quoted for civil liberties, there just are no civil liberties, gentlemen. They may be somewhere in a library on paper, but they don't exist objectively.
Veracity, gentlemen, enters the race between truth, as tradition has it, in the books, in the parchments, in with our -- with our ancestors, you -- there is all the truth in the Bible, gentlemen, but as long as you give up the spirit and say you don't have to testify to its truth by veracity, it isn't there. The Bible is just paper. And it isn't objectively true, because since nobody tries the truth, it cannot be verified.
That's, by and large, the situation in every generation again, gentlemen. As you know, the famous dictum about Christianity: well, how can we say anything about Christianity? It has never been tried. It has never been tried. The -- the word in the Gospel, as you know, that plays a tremendous part as fighting philosophy, and ideas -- and all this nonsense -- of opinions, is the witness. If there is no veracity in the witness, there is no verification about the facts.
And you believe the other way around, gentlemen. And that's why you are such poor thinkers. I would say no thinkers whatsoever. You are driven around by a whirlstorm -- a whirl of dust, which you throw into your own eyes all the time, because every human being, gentlemen, wants to be mixed up with the truth. But you all find this wonderful escape that the truth takes care of itself. This is nonsense, gentlemen. The truth does not take care of itself. The truth waits for us to be introduced into reality. And as long as you do not do it, the truth disappears. It's totally forgotten. The Dark Ages, the superstition, comes back every minute, that one generation withdraws its name, its signature on the dotted line: I am holding onto this truth as its living witness. How can you expect that anything like the truth if it isn't -- enters the stream of life so that people of flesh and blood can live?
In -- do you know that love -- life lives by life, and doesn't live by concepts? Doesn't live by something written somewhere on the printed page. But you are so cocksure, gentlemen, that we are civilized. And therefore, at this very moment, the Western world ceases to be civilized. You have seen that Mr. -- Mr. McCarthy is already proposing concentration camps. That goes very fast. You see, if people are empty in their hearts and heads, the only thing is: they can imitate. So he
imitates his Communist masters. He says it's very nice to have these people just serve the toi- -- clean the toilets, who are Communists. Well, that's the beginning of the concentration camps. That's how it started.
It goes very fast in this country, gentlemen. It has been prophesied 20 years ago to me by an im- -- immigrant who came to this country who said, "This new generation is all out for dictatorship and absolutely indifferent to the sufferings of its neighbors." They -- he meant the graduates of Yale of the class of 1938. It's astounding how far -- great this prophecy goes. The -- indifference is something to behold, because, gentlemen, the very simple thing is: truth, veracity, and verification distinguish in you the child, the man, and the elder.
Let us now in-- -- institute these terms very clearly, gentlemen. The child must hear what has been said. The child is, by its very nature, a listener. The speaker is, by its very -- his very nature, a fighting man. And the third generation, the men from 60 to 90 or what does represent them through examinations, the anticipated old age of a -- of a professional lawyer, of a professional doctor, or of a professional minister, would still be the elder. And therefore now I invite you to show -- say into the child, "The child must be given the truth. The man must learn to be veracious." Not "voracious," please. Veracious. "And the elder must have the guts to verify, to introduce into life that which he has found to be true, you see, and has witnessed by ruling."
That's the difference between Peter and Jesus. Jesus as a man is -- has veracity. And Peter, as the head of his church, verifies His commands. Jesus had no time to verify. But without the Church, there would be no Christ. The mysterious relation is that Peter is old. He's always given, as you know, with the white beard. And rightly so. It's old Peter and young -- the -- the manly Christ, but He was 30. But you all retreat to the child in the cradle, because the -- the Christ-child that's so agreeable, you see -- no obligation for you to be either veracious, or to -- or to verify. That's pure sentimentality.
I would abolish, if I would have to restore the faith in this country -- fortunately I don't have to -- the first thing is to abolish Christmas, in your sentimentality, because you abuse Christmas. You hide behind Christmas your whole responsibility for Easter and Whitsunday, for Pentecost, you see, for the ruling and teaching, you see, of the truth, at the risk of your own life by your witness. You think you have it all by going to the -- Macy's and -- and making presents to other people. That's what you call Christianity, "Christmas presents." Because in Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost, you of course have the three situations, gentlemen, of the truth, that man is God's son; all men together, of the -- veracity that one man tells the truth, that there are no idols, and there are no temples, and there are no laws, and there is no Sabbath, but man is the mast- -- Lord of the
Sabbath -- that's Jesus; and the Church, that is, an elder tries to prevent newborn children from not hearing this truth, you see, but make sure that everybody has to listen to it.
Ja?
(Sir, if you've got elders who have lived through this ...)
Pardon me?
(If you have the elders who've lived through this second stage of man, and they're now verifying themselves to the children, who have to accept the truth, just where are we supposed to doubt as children?)
The child doesn't doubt. The fighter does.
(When he ...)
Wie?
(When he -- when we start the step to manhood, do you doubt the truths that have already been verified by your elders?)
Well, of course. Ja. Ja. You see, we'll come to this, but it's a very pertinent question. Any child -- you know this -- has to kill the figure or the form in which God has been taught this child. Because at one time, you must discover the truth for the first time. The problem of education is, gentlemen, to make you hear the old truths as though you hear them for the first time, because if it doesn't enter on the fifth stage as doubt, your own doubt, you see, your own life, you cannot appropriate it. So Christianity itself demands from everybody to become -- come up to the stature of a man, you see, and to say, "I -- this -- this what my parents told me cannot be right."
The reason is not that the parents are wrong, but that a child accepts the things the parents tell them, you see, in its own mind. You can see this. That's why parents should never acquiesce in telling the children only what they can understand. This is one of the heresies of our days. Parents try to keep from the children the un-understandable things. So they say, "God has a white beard." Now obviously, this child has one day to turn against these parents and say, "You lied," you see. "God has not a white beard." Now the problem is, you see, that the child has to be allowed to think of God as a man with a white beard. And that he must see that his parents have a secret there, that they have a relation to God that is more than just, you see, having a picture of God.
This is the real tension which you have to live, between the generations. If the parents would say to G- -- to the child, "You cannot understand God," that wouldn't help. If they say, "We all believe that He has a white beard," you see, that's impossible. That must would end in disaster, as it has in the Eastern Church. Why are the Bolsheviks turning violently against Christianity? Because as you know, the pictures of the saints, the icons there, this whole iconography, you see, completely overruled all other relations to the divinity, in man's own heart. And therefore the Russians just have a museum of -- of superstition in which they have simply gathered all the pictures of the saints and of God, you see, and say, "Now, do you believe this nonsense, that this piece of wood is -- has anything to do with the divine?" And they're right, because we did this in the West, too, you see. If you were a Russian, you also would be an atheist. You'd have to, because in -- in Russia, theism has been misunderstood as something having to do with pictures. You understand?
So your problem is all the time to allow a child to be childish -- or childlike, and to si- -- insinuate at the same time that parents are not childish. The terrible thing in this country is that child- -- parents want to play football with their children, and baseball, and basketball. That's the only thing the -- the fathers can think up to do with their children, because they don't wish to preach them the Gospel. The -- this is today this vacuum, you see. Parents have been told to be childlike with their children. So the result is that they remain childish in the eyes of their children.
And as this young girl in my neighborhood said to her grandmother, "Grandmama, it seems that you know nothing about sex. May I tell you?"
It's a very serious proposition, what you are asking. I'm glad for this question. Gentlemen, would you take it down? Every truth has to be stated in three different age -- ages. And no member of any one age can afford to mask his own style, his own way of thinking by hiding it from the others. It is impossible to let the child believe that the parents just believe like the child. And it is impossible for the parents to let the child know that it is not allowed to -- to think like a child.
I give you two examples. One is, that a father, whom I know unfortunately, said -- he had to marry at 20.
I said, "Why? It's not so good."
He said, "Yes, it's -- I must be --"
I said, "Why?"
"I must still be able to play with my boy in all the sports."
And I said, "That's not a good reason for marriage -- for marrying and having children." He thought it was the only decent situation that he could still play baseball with his son. It's utterly unimportant. If the boy plays baseball with his classmates, it's perfectly all right, you see. And to make this a law that the father should play with him, it's very nice if you can afford it. But it's a by-product of life. And if you can't afford it, because you lost a leg in Korea, you're just as good a father for your son.
But people do such things in this country that they actually figure the most superficial aspect of their relations to their children and think, you see, playing with their child means that you have to act the child -- with your child. It is not -- not sequitur, I mean. It's utterly unimportant. It's indifferent. If you can, in places, act with your child in going swimming with him, going hiking with him, that's very nice. But that is not the essential relation between fa- -- parents and children. Can you see this?
One moment. Let me just finish this. So the other -- the other thing is that you find people who want to make their children immediately cynical. They say, they -- "That's all legend." I -- I have such a scoundrel of a father in my friendship who says -- said to his children that God was a myth. They were seven and eight years old. "God was a myth."
Well, I know this man. He's very {wicked}. And he tried to do his duty by immediately demanding from the child that very stage of life in which he found himself, as a doubter or, you see, as an agnostic. He did not see that he had become an agnostic, you see. And he monopolized his one stage of the doubter and said, "That's the only way of dealing with the mental processes," you see, in this stage of saying "No," to something. Putting nothing in its place.
So these are always the left and the right side, gentlemen, of the small path of life, in your mi- -- mental life. The mental life must be allowed to be its own -- in its own time. And it must know that it is only this way in its own time. You cannot, because you doubt at 20, forget that you have only reached the -- the time of understanding, because for 20 years, you did not doubt. If you throw out the baby with the bath, if you say, "Because I doubt, the 1-year-old baby must doubt," you see, you destroy this baby's faculty to doubt one day. Is that obvious? But that's what most people do in such a liberal arts college. They either think they have to be -- now, everybody behaves and prays and goes to chapel, or -- or -- and everybody's pious at this moment in this country -- it's made -- to make you vomit. And 10 years before, 15 years when I came to this college, a -- a -- boy -- boy that would confess that he still prayed was just treated as a monster
of superstition.
It's very tiresome, this either-or, which people in this country cultivate. One generation is -- is revivalist, and the next generation is cynical. This is not interesting. Gentlemen, once you see this situation in your own soul -- of child, of man, and elder -- you become superior to your own various moods of the mind. You will not exaggerate either loyalty and obedience, nor will you exaggerate independence and cynicism. They are only passing moods. They are only part of your relation to the truth. Before, you don't count.
Gentlemen, all these mass men who say, "I'm independent; I think as I please," and all the people who go and do as your -- the neighbor does, they are not -- they don't count in God's eyes or anybody's eyes. You see, they are just numbers. You begin to be a person when you admit inside yourself this great ambition to understand what you have been told, which is very difficult; to speak up when it doesn't seem to be true; and to verify the two things -- that which you have kept, and that which you have found, you see -- in your own application to your own business, and to your own realm of action. And that's a great life, I assure you. But it is a very different life from what you think life is, of the mind, because you have, you see, by your fantasy, that you are -- live a natural life, and that the mind is just the same thing as the body, just in another story, so to speak, by your con- -- by your not understanding that the mind is trying to give you direction from the end of your life, from your destiny, you have spoiled it all. You all think that the mind begins when you are born. I have tried to show you that it doesn't.
Now comes the second point I want to make today therefore, gentlemen. That which is the first in your understanding is the last in fact; and that which is the first in fact, in reality is the last in your understanding. You begin to listen to your parents. And you think therefore: listening precedes speaking. I have tried to show you that only because you must die, and rule, and teach, must people teach you. That is, you are the prince of Wales, and you are the next king. And it is only because you must be prepared to speak one day with authority that we allow you to doubt. And before, we make you listen. If you were slaves, if there was always an omnipotent ruler -- the pope in the Vatican, and the czar of Russia, and the emperor of China -- the individuals underneath wouldn't have to be taught to read and write. They wouldn't have to doubt. They would have a very happy life, as cattle. It is only because we need you for the rule and the teaching in this world that all the previous steps are needed.
Everything, gentlemen, that the child receives and that the man is expected to contribute is only needed because we need somebody to rule the world, to teach the world, to hold it together. The verification, the -- the -- the real story of the
structure of states, and governments, and nations is what matters. And your private moods and opinions are only interesting because we need you one day as a reserve force to enter the fray, when everybody else has died, when everybody else has gone away, you see, to fill this gap in the first -- in the leading position, to give a name to the -- to the roll- -- as the old poets said, you see, "to the rolling times," to be put as president with your name on the stamp or on the coin of the United States, when in order to have one president, we need 155 million people going to school, because Heaven knows, who is going to survive so that we can have a president?
Democracy, gentlemen, is the proud idea that we need everybody's education to have one good man finally at the top. But it doesn't mean that everyone gets his education for his own private { }. That would be impossible, because if he has nothing to verify, he's just a playboy, you see. He can never become serious. You must all treat yourselves at this moment as a candidate for public office. In some capacity, what you do or what you don't do will make a difference to the next generation, obviously. If you keep silent, and only go to the movies, and have television, the next generation will grow up as completely barbarian. You will leave the education to movie stars. Do you think it's a good idea to have all the movie stars educate your children? Isn't that fantastic? But you do this. Do you think they are the right people, who sell their looks for money?
That's what you actually have done, because you, gentlemen, your heresy is: you think that because you learn the -- English first, then you learn to read, then you learn to -- to -- you learn a language perhaps, or history or chemistry, then you play, then you doubt, that this is the reason that one causes the next. You believe so much in naturalistic causation, that you think out of listening comes reading, out of reading comes learning, out of learning comes playing, out of playing comes doubting. That isn't true. It's the other way around, gentlemen. I could develop this at great length, but I ask you to do this for your own private entertainment, gentlemen.
Put these 10 commandments in the proper sequence beginning at the end, and you will understand how every one of these steps makes the previous step necessary. Will you take down -- this is a great law which I haven't invented, which is old, but is never taught in this country, strangely enough. The psychological sequence is always the opposite from the real sequence. Psychologically you discover the mental process from beginning to end. But objectively, the -- this mental process only exists because of the end, and it is always built on, and on, and on, you see. This can be proven historically. In -- when first thinking, and language, and rule, and teaching was invented, children and women were not allowed to speak. We have still tribes who do- -- where the children are not allowed to speak at all, because it seemed time enough to allow a young man of
20 to be initiated into the language of the tribe, you see, and to make him speak.
We have -- however, since Judaism and Christianity exist, we have felt that the first moment of a child's life should already be illustrated mentally. So we christen a child at its birth. The Romans didn't. As you know, the Romans give just the name first -- Primus, Secundus, Tertius, Quartus, Quintus, Sextus, to their -- young men. They became men with their own name only when they were initiated. You have heard of initiation. You know what initiation is. You are -- when you are hazed for the fraternity, you still have a remnant of this initiation ritual.
You see, in antiquity, a person did not become a part of the mental process of the whole group at birth. Not at all. It took much later. That's why schools are of such very late date -- that everybody should go to school seemed fantastic. As long as you have princes and nobility, why should everybody be bothered by learning to read and write, you see? You are in a democracy, but why do you read and write? So that one of you can become president of the United States, and the other can become sheriff, because we need you for public office. You don't learn to read and write for your private satisfaction. That would be too costly. And because you believe this, you see how you abuse write -- reading and writing. Just read The Dartmouth.
Nobody in this country any- -- -more has this directive force in himself, it seems. He knows that the end rules the beginning in the mental life. Please take this down: the end rules the beginning; but in your own psychology, the beginning rules the end. And that's why you are such fools. You are subject to this heresy that people learn to speak just for the fun of it. Gentlemen, you are -- learn to speak because somebody must talk before he can speak. But you must know, gentlemen, that you have not yet spoken much in your life, with any conviction. That is, you have just bandied words around. When you propose to your girl, then you should speak with conviction. That's the first speech of a man, when he proposes to his woman. Before, he has only talked -- talked through his hat. You don't know this, gentlemen. Who knows in this country the distinction between talk and speech? When you take the oath on the Constitution, the Freeman's oath in your town, so that you can vote at the town meeting, then you speak.
There are very few acts in speaking, gentlemen. Will you take this down? To speak is a very rare opportunity for any man today. There are only a few occasions in which we speak, because these are the occasions in which we make sure that our name goes with the statement. That's very important in bigamy, you see. If it -- you wouldn't be quoted for having said you married this girl, then somebody else could marry her just the same, because you say, "Don't quote me."
It is very strange, gentlemen. This is perhaps -- don't you think it's true to -- to say that there are one out of a hundred who would be able to tell you the difference between "talk" and "speech"? It's just -- has fallen by the wayside. Yet you all know that there are certain words, when you say them they have tremendous consequences. That's why all these poor professors now are so ridiculous because they invoke the 5th Amendment. That's the first time that they have to speak. Before, all these people just gossiped on politics. They were not Communists, as you well know. They played with words. They were fellow travelers. They're very poor people. They never knew that when they talked, they should distinguish between talk and speech.
This is -- they are making themselves ridiculous. So they -- for the -- the moment they are asked to speak, they invoke the 5th Amendment. That is, they say, "We haven't learned to speak. We have only talked." That's what they actually say. "We only wanted to talk. But we -- didn't mean it," which is true of these men. I know so many of them. They never meant business. They thought it was a good idea.
Gentlemen, whenever I hear the word "idea," I -- I get -- a shiver runs over my spine, because in this country ideas are always perfectly irresponsible. Never say about anything important that it is an idea of yours, you see, because that's just subject of talk. Unfortunately this is so. I have to warn you, because whenever you trap yourself of using the term "idea," you are using it in this silly sense of playing with ideas. Well, neither ideas nor the playing with ideas is of any concern to people who want to grow up. I don't play with ideas, gentlemen. I have no ideas, but I try to find what I have to say, and that is very exasperating, because in 20 out of 21 times what I have to say makes me very disagreeable. But playing with ideas, that's a nicesty, you see -- everybody's welcome at a cocktail party when he plays with ideas. But that's just a fool's paradise.
(Sir, what about John Quincy Adams when they asked him to take a religious oath at Harvard? He -- he wouldn't speak then.)
Whom do you mean? You must be mistaken.
(John Quincy Adams?)
No.
(When he was professor at Harvard, you know, a visiting professor, they asked him to say ...)
But he wasn't. You must mistake him for somebody else.
(No, he --)
John Quincy Adams wasn't pro- -- visiting professor at Harvard, I'm sorry to say. He just wasn't.
(Probably talking about Henry Adams.)
What?
(He may be talking about Henry Adams.)
But he wasn't a visiting professor. He was a full professor.
(I'm sorry. But he -- I mean -- what I meant by that was he wasn't there all the time. He was probably there only when he had time to do that. And they asked him to take this oath and he wouldn't take it.)
Well, you bring me the story, and we'll discuss it. But you bring me the -- I don't know the facts. You bring me the story. Very good story, obviously.
Let's have a break here.
[tape interruption]
... our own soul, when we wait to be listened to, we feel that what happens whenever people comply with what we are saying. A ruler, a parent, must think twice before it gives an order because he -- the child is expected to do it. But a man who has been harrassed by the bigotry of his environment says, "No, I don't believe in all this nonsense," because he just must cleanse his own -- his own soul. He doesn't care what the results of his rebellion are. Isn't that true?
So gentlemen, we have these three stages: talk, speak, and be listened to -- to distinguish. We also have -- can add the -- the situation: the structure of the child is that preponderantly he is talked to -- spoken to. Therefore, what he does is less than speech, because somebody else still speaks for him. To him, not only, but for him. I mean, your guardian, your parents speak for you in your responsible actions. You cannot at the age of 15 acquire property. Somebody else has to acquire it for you.
Therefore, gentlemen, talk always is within the mantle, within the protection of this commandment. If we would put this 1, 2, 3, as it truly should be, you see, we talk as long as somebody else speaks for us. And in every region, where somebody else speaks for us, in every department of life, we only talk. When the
president of the United States says to Russia, "We'll go to Berlin," he speaks. In all -- the meantime, we all have talked about the possibilities with -- about an encounter with the Russians. But we cannot speak, you see. We can only talk about it. It must finally lead up to somebody speaking to them, so that they, you see, must listen. What -- what is useful is that you see that "talk" and "speech" are not just different in your own life, but talk always relies on somebody else's speaking. While we are talking, somebody else at the same moment must speak on the same subject, with authority.
This is so important, gentlemen, because you are so terribly lonely, solitary in your mental process. You really think that what happens to your mind is your private affair. Gentlemen, I can assure you that because you are only shadowboxing and only talking, somebody else has to speak for you. What you think of the foreigners, or of the Germans, or of the Italians, or of the Russians is talk. Somebody else however speaks, by upping the tariffs, or by opening the frontiers to their goods, by embracing them, or by -- by bullying them. Now, the speech may have to be changed. Once your talk becomes speech, you see, you can criticize the speech that's going on.
But always see this, gentlemen: the mind is always in its processes complete. There is never a vacuum. While you are only talking, you leave something to desire. Somebody else rules. Somebody else teaches at this moment. And because you are only talking, wrong teaching and wrong ruling may prevail. As long as you think that your thought is just your private business, gentlemen, you don't see this wonderful universe of the mind in which at every moment there is either right teaching or wrong teaching. Right ruling, or wrong ruling. And your talk is the premeditation to replace anything wrong in the teaching and the ruling of the world by the right. As soon as -- that's why it is so important that you should see that your preparation for the mind -- mental life at this moment leads into some stream that is streaming all the time, because all the time the world is ruled and taught. There's no cessation. You are the contributory stream, but you are brought up in this terrible fiction that what you think is your private business, and that it has no consequences.
Gentlemen, whether you decide that you are blind alley, that you are a one- -- a dead-end street, or whether you decide that the world is waiting to be refreshed by your more correct and more recent, more vigorous speech makes all the difference for the treatment -- for the way you will treat your own mind. If it is all just within this skull of yours, immured, then you have no reason to make any effort. That's why teaching has gone out of business in the last 40 years, gentlemen. If it is only your private property, then the children only must be kept happy. But if learning, as I told you, is the promise of your one day teaching, then you have to learn something.
The whole -- this whole process has gone on in this country that people don't have to learn anything, which is practically the case with you. As you know, I got a paper the other day that Achilles led the children of Israel out of Egypt. Achilles. Have you heard who that is? You know what -- who Achilles is? Well, have you heard of the children of Israel? And have you heard of Egypt? Now, that was the sentence, written by a senior in this college, that Achilles led the children of Israel out of Egypt. You know who did? You know who did in truth? Who did lead the children of Israel out of Egypt?
(It was Moses.)
Well, imagine that!
Now how can this happen, gentlemen? I'll tell you why you are in this terrible mess. Because people have told you that you learn for yourself, that you have just to ask yourself what you get out of it. Gentlemen, the whole mind is the way of getting into something. You get nothing out of the mind -- nothing, absolutely nothing, because the mind is that power of -- which attracts you into the common life of the human race, just as the umbilical cord connects you with the whole physical life of the race, and you are not born unless you come from your mother's womb, and the -- umbilical cord is loosened, so the whole mind is in a way of connecting you with the mental life of the race. And finally, when you are accepted by the community to teach or to rule, you see, and given a name, then the umbilical cord is stitched together.
That is, what you are now trying to is -- you're shipwrecked, you're floundering, you're trying to find -- to be received as a captain of the boat of humanity, or the mate, as a -- as a -- how do you call it? -- as a sailor, so that while you are swimming in this -- in this sound around New York, somebody tells you, "Come up. We need a sailor. We need an able-bodied seaman." In this very moment, you are appointed. In this very moment, you have an office. In this very moment, you become a father, or a teacher, or what-not. A candidate for office. And then the whole mind, which you have developed, refreshes the life of the community, of the crew on the boat. But you don't know this, gentlemen. To you, the mind is something physical as much as the body. And you see that the body of yours separates from the community, and so you think your mind is all the -- constantly in the situation of withdrawing from the community and becoming your own.
Would you kindly try to think through this metaphor: that the umbilical cord is cut at birth in the body, and that the umbilical cord of a human being is stitched together when a man dies and leaves his name behind. Then he is -- belongs to the ages, as -- as Stanton said of Lincoln -- and not before. Then you are connected. You have made contact, you see. Before, you are isolated. If you
could see this, gentlemen, you would see this very miraculous display getting out of connection physically and finally dying, and lying dead on the ground in separation, and getting into the swing of things, you see, by finally being received into the ages with your name.
That's a tremendous story. But you can only learn it when you make -- take seriously, gentlemen -- you must break away from your whole habit of thinking. To you, the mind is a natural. And it isn't. It's -- comes from the fact that this society wants to cons- -- use you up, consume you as a link in its life. And you have to become a link. You aren't by nature. By nature, you are just a -- a disturbance. You are just one more mouth to be fed. You are just one child among many. You are mass-man.
Can you see this simile? That the umbilical cord is the last thing in a person's life, of the mi- -- in his mental existence, in his naming, being named. And whereas in your birth, it is the beginning of your selfishness, of your individuality.
Now the last thing. Gentlemen, man is, in his own life, three structures of grammar. He is a "you" to himself, an "I," and a "we." We have spoken about this before. But then we haven't thought that out, yet, that in your own life, as long as you talk, you always expect that somebody else speaks for you. So you are always to yourself still the second person to whom and of whom somebody else is the representative speaker. When you say "I," you always say it with the emphasis that otherwise nobody else would say it. That is, the "I" always goes with originality, gentlemen. "I" means that because nobody else might say this, you have to say it. "I" is duty. "I" is saying something for the first time. But the "I" can only overcome the shame to break out into the open when it has a good conscience. He has a good conscience that this has to be said by all, that it is true, that everybody in his stead would have to say it.
Gentlemen, to speak for the first time is the honor of the "I." A shameless person speaks wantonly. But a man who is ashamed of speaking at all, still has to speak, and has to overcome his shame. The "I" overcomes shame, gentlemen. Will you kindly take this down? And shame is the conformism of any group. We are ashamed not to conform. The man who wantonly breaks out of the conformism, you see, is just shameless. He doesn't say something for the first time, but he just says something to be interesting, or to be brazen, or to be arrogant, or to be, I mean, different. That's not worth it. But a man who has the real "I," must put down his pinxi, like a painter who sees something in a flower which nobody else has seen and has to paint it, you see, because his eyes command him to paint it this way. That's what the word pinxi, I have painted it, or dixi -- I have said it.
That's why in any political assembly of Switzerland to this day the speaker has to end his speech with the word, "I have spoken," by which he gives his signature, so to speak, orally, you see, "I have said it, and have saved my soul this way."
Gentlemen, if you -- knew only this: that the distinction of real speech is that you speak with embarrassment, but you have to speak. The shameless person speaks without embarrassment, you see. And the coward doesn't speak at all. And the courageous person speaks with embarrassment. And that's why God says that the divine spirit has a small, still voice. The devil has a loud voice. And the insect, the -- the crab in -- in us, the -- the animal has no voice. It's just -- he just shouts with the crowd.
You always will find that if there is a mob on the street, you find the people who cry -- cry loudest -- I mean -- are the most irresponsible, you see. Then there is the cynic who looks at it all and says, "Ha, ha, ha. What is man like? Just a beast." And then there is a small, still voice who does the right thing, the policeman, or the nurse, or whoever has the guts to step forward and say, "Just lift him up. And put this man who you see has been beaten up, or what-not, you see, put him right." He won't shout, and he won't be silent, either. But he will have the small, still voice, which is the decisive voice, because it is hard for him to speak at all, but this much has to be said, and not more.
So the wonderful thing is, gentlemen, once you have the -- re-conquered your relation in -- in "you" and "I," you will find your measure. The "I" is -- is not coming out, like out of a faucet in wild streams. But it comes out under pressure, like a source that gurgitates, you see, that gargles in spouts and spurts. You only -- we only -- are "Is" as much as we have to. That's why a poet, an artist speaks in -- occasionally has to be silent. The people who can write a book every year are not artists, because they only can speak when the spirit moves them. And that's why the spirit listeth where it -- blows, you see, because you cannot dictate to the "I" when to speak. It's bad enough that we have to give our name to some unpleasant statement, by which we are, so to speak -- become the Public Enemy Number 1, in the eyes of the conformists. We can only say as much as has to be said. So it isn't under our own steam.
The funny thing is, to sum it all up, gentlemen, just the "I," which to you seems the most free agent, is under strict pressure, under real atmospheric pressure. He can only speak when it is necessary. The "I" is not doing what it pleases. You can see this? The "I" is not speaking at random, but the "I" must speak, because otherwise nobody else might speak.
If I could only show you, you see. This country has sterilized all its creative
powers by assuming that authors, artists, politicians can speak all the time, can have 379 lectures a year in every college of the land without killing themselves. We once had this very typical Englishman, Auden, up here. You know Mr. Auden? Age of Anxiety? He certainly is a creative man, but he's terribly embarrassed when he has to come to the platform and to -- to lecture. He's a genuine human being. He is "I." He is an artist. But the idea -- every American agency has, that you can sell such a poor spirit every evening to give a lecture, is just impossible. So he takes refuge behind reading or something, because it is just not within the powers of a creative "I" to be always, you see, the master of his destiny, and to speak when he pleases, or when the agent has an engagement for him.
But the cruelty this country commits to the singers, to the artist, to everybody is that once they have a name, they just have to -- to sing every night and to speak every day. Isn't that true? And you exploit these people. Just read the story of Jennie Lind in America, which was the first encounter between genius and -- and publicity in this country. You misunderstand the creative spirit. You cannot buy that at any one moment. But that's what you think you can.
The "I" has this very fine metronome of timing, you see, inside itself. It can only speak when there is something to be said. And otherwise, he just has to wait. Don't exploit your great people, gentlemen. They are all -- the whole idea of a bestseller, you see, is so terrible, because it makes these poor people try to write a book every year, because otherwise they can't make a living.
So the "I," gentlemen, is just not what you think, somebody brazen who speaks in his own right. The "I," as in the -- you find it very clearly expressed in -- in Jesus, who says -- each time when he says, "I tell you," this means that "I have to go to the Cross." You can replace every sentence in the New Testament which begins with "I" with the sentence, "I know that's the end of me. It's my undoing." And it was.
So the "we" is this problem that society has accepted you, and allows you now to expect that others will listen to you. So there are three eternal types, gentlemen, in the human race: the artist, the fighter, and the priest. "Priest" is just the Greek word for "elder." Don't be frightened by the word "priest." It just means "the elder." Presbuteros. "Presbyterian" means the rule by elders. Everybody must become a priest, everybody must be a fighter, everybody has as a child been artistic, because the ar- -- the artist plays with possibilities given to him, you see, with the world as he finds it.
So gentlemen, the artist is the eternal child. The fighter is the eternal adult. The priest is the eternal elder. That is, you can become a priest at 24 -- as you
know, the Church allows you to anticipate this -- although by nature, you are only a priest at 60. You can be an artist at 60, although by nature, you are an -- are an artist only perhaps at 25. You can be a fighter all your life, although by nature, you would be soft as a child, and you would be wise and impartial as an old man.
So we have these three types in society, gentlemen, who represent the plastic "you." That's the artist. An artist is a man who remains impressionable beyond his youth. That is, he still listens to the fairies, to the voices of the world. The artist is enduringly plastic. The fighter is enduringly protesting, resisting, contradicting. And the priest is enduringly overcoming the prejudices either of the plastic or of the hard-boiled age. A priest is completely indifferent whether he uses something old or something new. If -- if you are ruling the -- the community or teaching the community, you must not at all prefer something because it is old, or because it is new. You must always pick that which at this moment is needed. If you have a new man who has -- is the right man, appoint him. If you have an old man, you see, a man of the old way, appoint him. Rulers and prie- -- teachers must be quite indifferent to the question of old or new. A fighter will always preferably go with his own newness. A child, an artist will always play with the world as it is, because he's satisfied with the world as it is. He is not protesting it, you see, because he's so impressed by it. It's so miraculous.
So we get three eternal types, gentlemen, out of humanity: artist, fighter, and priest. And now you can see for your paper -- this much I want to say at this moment. Give me one more minute. If you have these 10 commandments -- and now let me be honest with you and put them in this sequence -- and you have here Cardinal Newman, living to the age of 90 before he makes a name for himself, and you have Plato here as a teacher, and you have John Quincy Adams -- we could also have put Melville here on this -- in the artist stage, because I think he is the most deliberate artist in America -- you will see that all these men must of course contain to a certain extent the nine other phases or chapters inside themselves. Melville also was a fighter to a certain extent. Newman was.
But they find out, the -- the various people, that there is one chapter which needs their representation more than any other. And therefore, gentlemen, in your paper: don't think that I want you to make these people into fools who have done nothing but rule, or nothing but teach. That, of course, isn't the -- isn't the story. They are great people because although they lived fully all the 10 commandments of the mind, you see, they still became important because once -- of these commandments had to be fully represented by them, preponderantly.
So there is a very wonderful interplay in any -- in your life, too, gentlemen. If you become a successful businessman, you will be remembered for Stage 6,
which, by and large, is the fighting stage, you see. That you protest that your bathtubs are the best, so you become Walter Crane and you export bathtubs into the rest of the world. And everybody kowtows to your bathtubs. But certainly not to your rule or to your teaching. Just to the bathtubs.
And well -- any one of us, gentlemen, in order to live the good life, has to taste the 10 Commandments. But everybody who wants to obey God's will must find out what in his own good time is needed most. At this moment I think in this country teaching is needed, and saintliness is needed, much more than politicians.
Therefore, I think Command 8 -- 9, 10 are highly in demand in this country. Eight is very little. The less government the better. You have already too much of it. But you think differently. You think it's all government. Do you think it makes any difference who is in the White House at this moment? They all would have to do exactly the same. It makes absolutely no difference whatsoever. And the White House is waking up to this fact: why are they suddenly coming out against McCarthy? Because he's hindering this insight that this is quite an objective process and that everybody in this country is of good will and really people -- mo- -- in most things, they -- they are completely in agreement. You can take 10 hundred whole bulbs and enlighten this country, and you won't find what the difference is between a Democrat and a Republican. There just is no difference. And so it has to be blown up into something, because we have elections coming. If we had any wisdom, we wouldn't have elections next fall; they are not necessary. Perfectly unnecessary. Absolute waste.
Because in politics we are not distinguished, gentlemen, today. But we are very much distinguished in the people who want to learn something and the people who don't learn anything, because they don't want to stick their neck out, this -- this -- this diffused mass that says, "Let -- give me a car, and give me a refrigerator. Give me a television set. And don't ask me any questions."
That's the -- that's the mass of the people in this country. We have wasted our education on them. The worst are the college boys. It's the -- either they are FBI now, or they are nothing, in -- in their convictions. Perhaps they are doctors. They certainly have no convictions in politics.
It's really a {funny} world, gentlemen. But for your papers, I meant to s- -- tell you this. You understand. This is the life of the mind in which people try to participate. And at any one stage, you can participate in it with honor. As long as you live, you will have to respect all 10, because if you only talk, somebody else must be authorized by you to speak. So you won't get out of this, that each moment, while you are perhaps doing nothing, somebody is doing it for you.
The 10 Commandments are there, gentlemen, because there is no vacuum of the mind. There is no vacuum. Take this down: there is no vacuum. The mind is always working, always functioning. In any group must -- somebody has to speak with authority. Somebody has to teach. Some names are standing out as good names in the community, and some names are -- are left behind as bad names. Whether you like it or not, you -- you make for the life of the community simply by tolerance -- by tolerating bad rulers or bad teachers.
But it is the honor of everybody to scent at any one time what's most needed. And so you get the artist, like Herman Melville, who in a moment when there was no artist in the United States whatsoever, when it was the most barbari- -- barbarous country in the world, became a great artist. And he suffered, as you know, and he stuck to his guns and he lived another 40 years for nothing. He was just dead at 1851, after he has said his word, you see, as an artist, as a young man. And he died in 1891, a broken-hearted, forgotten man. And the 40 years of Herman Melville's afterlife are the greatest, perhaps, exploration in the life of the mind, because having been an artist in this country was a curse at that time. And he was therefore despised, because he didn't become a success and a hard-boiled businessman. He was not a fighter.
So treat these heroes of yours, gentlemen, as normal people. And don't forget that every one of you is represented by Stage 1, 2, 3 -- saint, teacher, ruler, elder, you see. In -- in a nutshell we all are heading for these last three stages. Everything has this preparation. So in a way, gentlemen, these {stages} have not the same dignity as the last three. They all came -- come to their maturity in the last three.