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{word} = hard to understand, might be this

...welcome to talk to me after class -- in which he has -- had to report on Thomas Aquinas and -- and Ab‚lard and he said of the life -- dates -- dates of the life of Thomas Aquinas "uncertain," I mean, instead of writing, "I was too lazy to look them up." I don't know if he meant it, but that's how it seems to look in your brains, gentlemen. Of course, the dates of the life of Thomas Aquinas are perfectly known. We know his -- even the day, and not only the year. He's a saint of the Church. He was a cardinal of the Church. And it only sh- -- goes to show how you paint the Middle Ages: everything uncertain.

I want you very much gentlemen, to go at -- to these dates yourself. The only way in which you ever will begin to in -- know how interesting dates -- is if you look up these men's lives up yourself and note down their main dates.

So may I remind you -- this report brought it back to my memory -- that I had asked you to do this. And I shall take it for granted that after vacation, everybody knows the life dates of those various heroes. And I mean "knows." I don't mean "has them somewhere in a dictionary." This is not wanton; the -- just as little as it possible for you to go through life without knowing when your birthday is. You have -- these days are -- and these years of the men, together un- -- without your knowing it, give you the real skeleton the history of the human mind in modern times. That's -- was Number 1.

The second thing brings back what I tried to do last time and which I wish to complete today, the introduction of a new science. And I tried to show you that it was by acrobatics and changing the meaning of theology, from the science of the gods to the knowledge of God that a new era was opened. And I tried to show you that in the last thousand years, people have not debated Aphrodite, and Aries, and -- and Hera, and Juno, and Jupiter, and Poseidon, and Hades. We have nothing to do with the debate about the many gods, anymore. And instead, we have found a way of dealing with the living God, because every doubt, and despair, and despondency uttered by the poor creature man in his despair about his sins, about his fall, about his deficiency, which today drives the people to the psychoanalyst, has for 900 years been used to enlarge our vision of God. The deeper a man fails, the greater must be the power that can bring him back. All these words to you have lost all their real meaning. If I speak of "saving," you just yawn. Nobody in this country seems to want to be saved. You all are saved. We have the Universalist church, as you know. Everybody goes to Heaven, after some time in central heating, or Dartmouth College. That's the only purgatory that you go through. And you get sinus. That's quite bad. It's quite devilish.

But now, gentlemen, when a man and a woman, for that matter -- or a couple, which is more serious in this country -- together have gone astray, they have manipulated their mar- -- married life, or their professional life, or their political convictions. These manipulators, as we call them rightly, you see, who use the hand where they should use the heart, have to be magnetized, have to be brought back; or the load of people that have to be carried as useless, as -- of insults, really to the human race, increases, increases, increases. I think we have today an incredible load to carry of non-entities. We are told that we can love all these people in a democracy. I cannot. The people who have died at 20 and 25, when I -- run around as living boxes, and I know many, how can I love them? They testify to our fall. I cannot love them, because I know by my own powers, I cannot -- tell these people anything. They have gone overboard. Whether it's, as I said, in politics, or whether it's where they sell out to the highest bidder for Korea, or whether it is a girl that sells out because she's afraid that she mightn't find a husband, or whatever you take, I mean, or the man who advertises in things -- for the things in which he doesn't believe himself. -- You -- the -- you -- the males in this country have lost the integrity of their minds. The women have lost the integrity of their bodies, and they go fumbling on. They seemingly are alive, but they aren't alive, because the greatest powers that bind them into the process of the human spirit is already killed, already dead. Absolutely dead. They seem to live, but they live li- -- like weeds. They live from birth to death, but who cares? They are burdens on the community.

So I said -- this -- one of you made me -- set me thinking, who asked me yester- -- who was it last time? -- who asked about this problem of religion? You suggested that people without a religion couldn't have -- be -- have -- any interest in theology. I tried to show you that everybody has a religion. He may have a religion of the devil. He may say, "I don't care. And my connections -- the connections of my mind are all commercialized. I sell out to the highest bidder." But then he has, of course, a religion of the devil. That is, he has chosen second-rate things for first-rate things, gentlemen. I mean, if you call a Lincoln car a "Lincoln car," you believe in Lincoln, because you want to sell a car that's made attractive by the name "Lincoln." Now that's nothing to be said against. But it is obvious that the dealer who sells the Lincoln car has a second-rate mentality compared to the first-rate mentality of Mr. Abraham Lincoln who forced his name on us, so that we in awe and gratitude speak of him. So I have nothing against a dealer who sells Lincoln cars. But I'm very much against the dealer who says, "Everybody is for sale. Not only cars are for sale, but everyone has his price, even Abraham Lincoln."

As soon as he begins to think that, that the creative part of you and me, you see, is for sale, and he treats me as somebody who can be bribed or psychologically treated to do my -- his bidding, to buy a car by advertising or propaganda,

or -- or from -- with the working of -- up of public opinion, steam heat -- anybody who declines to call a spade a "spade" and second-rate "second-rate," and says all men are venial, all men are for sale, everybody can be talked into anything -- he is the devil. And he has the religion of the devil, but don't tell me that he has no religion. He has a destructive religion. But he certainly has a religion. He says Black Mass whenever he treats his consumer, his buyer, as a man who can be puffed up by money so that he finally thinks he's Abraham Lincoln.

If anybody can believe that he can become anything decent in life on the basis of being bribed, of being bought by the income of the DuPont family, as I have seen people here raging over the speech made by this unfortunate son-in-law of Mr. DuPont, who spoke here -- everybody kneeled before him, because he was such a success. Well, the success was that he married the daughter of Mr. DuPont. Let's hope he married her for love. That's the whole story of this man. But otherwise -- what of it? But just -- I have seen it. It was just the year -- who ha- -- who listened to him? Oh, with glowing eyes, the whole Tuck School was assembled.

As long as you kneel before money, gentlemen, this whole course, of course, makes no sense, because the spirit moves freely. You never know. You cannot buy Thomas Aquinas, and you cannot buy St. Francis, and you cannot buy a Goethe, or you cannot buy Saint-Simon. You cannot even buy Lenin, and Malenkov, and Stalin, and because you cannot -- they cannot be bought, they are to be taken seriously. You can say anything about these people: they are cruel, they are ped- -- pedants, they are terrible, but they cannot be bought.

(But can't they be bought with power?)

No. Oh no. No, no. You don't know the Russians. No, they cannot. This is a mistake you make, you see. In this country you can buy people for power. Power -- at least it's a slogan. I do -- haven't seen people. In this country, I -- the power problem, you see, is not discussed in any country except America, because this is such a denuded country of -- of speech. What is power, gentlemen? The most boring thing in the world. You have to have a bodyguard to keep it. I mean, -- you can't -- the power side of any position in life is the -- is the disastrous side of you -- for you, who has power, you see. Power is given -- what is power, gentlemen, to say a word about this, you see. It is a collected -- it's a perfect of "I can." If I have power, it means that hereditary -- possibilities -- hereditary -- how would I --? potency, potency coagulated is power. Today I'm potent. There -- I want to have power, I try to have a savings account. I try to have a harem for my women. That is, then I have power over hundred women. A potent man doesn't have to have -- have a harem, because the -- he -- the hundred ladies, one after another, fall in love with him. Power is always the perfect, simply, of something present,

you see. And so a man who deals with the future is not interested in power. Jesus was not interested in power, because He knew that to Him was given all the power under Heaven and earth, except in the day of His life.

So power is such -- so boring; it is so indifferent. What is it? You need, of course, if you have -- are a plumber, you need the power to mold some piece of iron to get it going. Now, the power is given to you that you are allowed to carry a torch with you, and to light it, and to melt the lead. That's one pow- -- piece of power. Anybody needs that power which his office requires. Mr. Eisenhower needs power, because otherwise he can't be the chief executive of the United States. If you think that Mr. Eisenhower is president of the United States because he wants power, you must vote him out; because the pope, or the emperor, or the president of the United States, or I -- here in this hall at this moment, gentlemen -- I have the power to cut short your questions, because I have to finish this class today. This power must be given me, because otherwise I can't teach you. But power is a corollary of function. Who cares for power in itself? It melts like snow in the sun. What do you think the DuPont family can make -- do with this -- for their power? They can produce gunpowder, that's all they can do. Now they do nylons. Well, all right.

But they have to produce with it. You see what happens if you give power without function. We do this at this moment in Arabia. We send $750 million in gold every year to one of these pirates and -- brigands in the Arabian desert. And we call him a king, and we call this "conscience money." And we want to get the oil, so we arm this man, because what can he do with his power? Only buy means of destruction.

Take this down, gentlemen: power is a corollary of function. Where there is no function, and the power is given in itself, it must be used for destruction. An -- an Arabian sheik, as this -- as this rascal there, who gets the $750 million by -- from us, you see, which we give without any responsibility, without any strings attached, instead of forcing them -- this man to -- to use the $750 million for his displaced Arabs, for all the refugees from Palestine, the whole question would be solved at one minute.

If you give a man power, gentlemen, without function, and not on the merit of a function, he will always destroy the world. Power coming first, before the function, and not because of the function, will always be used for destruction, because it is just hanging free. And if its -- melts, you see, nobody can -- you can't have these $750 million without investing them. Now -- what can you buy in this world except atom bombs for such high -- much money at once? There's nothing available. If there were $750 million commodities' surplus in the world which he could buy, you see, there would be no going economy. $700 million you cannot

leave in the street, you cannot put in a bank account. If -- there is nothing you can do with it, except order explosives. This you can do. Or guns, because ammunition manufacturers are always glad to expand.

This is very serious, gentlemen. Your whole notion of power in is country shows that you have completely given up any relation to religion. This is very true. The religious ma- -- experience begins with the prayer, "Thy will be done" and not "My will be done." The prayer of the man who seeks power is, "Give me all that, so that I can do my will." What is power -- else as the implementation of your own will? Now, if the will is naked, is not rooted in a functional society, if you have just the will to do what you please, and not to will to cure mankind as a doctor, or to be a judge, and give out justice, mete out justice, or not a writer who wants to write a great poem, not a sculptor who wants to buy marble, or not a merchant who wants to sell brushes -- Fuller Brushes -- at this very moment, when he wants the power, his will, gentlemen, is not rooted in the earth of man -- of creation. He has no imag- -- no -- no business to have -- to use his will. Do you think you -- are allowed to use your will out of context? You are your mother's son. You are your father's son. You are your children's future father and begetter. You are a Dartmouth student. These are the things that mold your will. You must learn what to will. All that's education. Educational process means that you do not know what you want. But all your heresy is that you say, "I go to college and get what I want," isn't it? Then you cannot be educated. We talked about this before, didn't we? It's impossible to get an education if you get what you want, because then the man in you who is not educated sets the standard for what you get. So you can never reach beyond the level of the 12-year-old boy who knows -- thinks he knows what he wants. He has no idea what he should want.

Power is today the -- the -- the other expression for the devil, gentlemen. People are too polite today to speak of the devil, so they allow themselves to say that he seeks power. Former people said he was ridden by the devil, and was possessed, a man who's power-seeking.

This is very simple, gentlemen. The context of power is that it is an adj- -- adjunct, an appendix of the necessity of our duties. The society must give you that much power that you can fulfill the specific duty. A shepherd needs power to slaughter a sheep. Otherwise he is not the shepherd of this flock, you see. It must go so far that he can dispose of one of these sheep, and let's say there are too many, or that one falls sick, or he has to eat; he has to li- -- to slaughter one sheep. That's power -- power over life and death.

Any soldier, any general -- who has been in Philosophy 9? Well, you remember what we said that -- that Patton -- General Patton of course had the right to

shoot a man in the front lines, but he had not the right to slap a man in the face in the hospital in Sicily, because that was not under fire. You remember? He had the power -- any -- man in the front lines has the power to shoot a coward. And he must do this if he wants to win a war. But you sentimentalists, you think that's an objective statement that -- if he -- the -- he has this power always. He has it only under the pressure of fire.

General Patton in the Second World War -- you may have heard this story, got very angry, because a man who had a nervous breakdown was in the hospital, so he slapped him, because he had no wounds; he had no reason to be there. And the whole point in public debate on this was that nobody would have said a word if he had slapped this man in the front lines. But there were hours and hours and miles and miles between the front line and the hospital, so his excitement, you see, at that moment was out of place.

It only goes to show, gentlemen, that you can even have a varying power. In one situation, you have a power, and it vanishes the next moment, because there is no danger. Danger increases power. You need a dictator in an emergency.

So all these debates, gentlemen, on power -- our president is a dictator in war times. Fortunately. How could we have lived through the Second World War without such a -- such a power of the president? People here want to have it cut and dry. You want to have on paper how much power. Such a thing doesn't exist. You have power one day in a special situation, and the next day, you don't have it. Mr. Eisenhower had power in January 1953. He doesn't have the same powers today. They have melted, these powers. They've just melted. He can't do what he could have done a quarter-of-a- -- a year-and-a-quarter of -- ago. Very strange. And they may come back. Two years from now, he may have powers that he hasn't now. But at this moment, the country wouldn't understand if he suddenly would come forward, put his foot down, and make great speeches, or with restiveness, or so, like Theodore Roosevelt, you see. He has spoiled us, you may say, because he has let us know that he can do with very little power. Oh -- { }, I hope he can. I'm not sure.

So pardon me, this is perhaps more than an interruption. It's an eruption.

May I come back to this problem of the sciences? I tried to tell you that at the age of doubt, at your age of 20, you have already three layers of experience: of God; and yourself, where you are superior and can take command, and where you are inferior and have to stand corrected, that's your experience of religion. A man who -- for example says, "I" -- he can -- "I want power," has the devil's religion, because he has not -- never the -- doubted his own capacity of being his better self. Now I know that I'm very often my worst self -- my own worst

enemy, and only occasionally am I my friend. Very occasionally. Most people are their own worst enemies.

Therefore, religion is the way in which you split yourself into service, or obedience, or suffering, or passivity, and acceptance of what comes to you, and obstinacy, and upheaval, and rebellion. This religion every man has, gentlemen. That's your decision. Where is God? Partly He's in us, partly He's against us. Every one of you knows that sometimes it is very good that our will is not done. And sometimes it is very good that our will may be done, because one time our will is in harmony with the -- with divine -- the divine purpose, and another time, it is very little in harmony with it. So don't tell me that you have no religious experience. Only, you don't have any religious experience as you use it in your bull session, where nobody speaks the truth there. Nobody makes use of any experience. But he's -- you talk big, in abstractions. I don't care for that. I mean the fact that every one of you knows that at times you are right, and at other times you are wrong. Oh no, I cannot. Sorry, Mr. { }.

Second, the experience that the things are not what they seem. You touch something in the grass in a -- in a -- in a tropical forest, and it isn't a plant; it's an animal. Now all natural science centers around this thing, that nothing is what it seems in the world of things. We investigate. An atom is not an atom. It's neutrons, and electrons, and ions. Nothing in natural science is allowed to be what it seems to be. We go behind semblance in appearance, in the natural science, don't we? We say the thing is not what it seems at first sight. That's a starting point for the natural science research. Therefore, as long as new children are born, and people think they know, there must be natural science to teach the children that what they think -- for example, that a burning match is wonderful, and you can put your finger into the fire -- that isn't so. You burn your fingers.

As long as there is this mistake of a child about a burning fire, there must be natural science to teach the child that it isn't so. Very simple. That's natural science, to go behind theories. Nothing else, gentlemen. For example, the sun rises; the sun sets. We say, "That's no good. We can't understand the place of the world in the universe as long as we do not," you see -- "as we do not repent and say, `No, the earth is one of the planets.'" That's a typical scientific approach against the appearances.

All natural science, gentlemen, goes behind the appearances. All theology goes behind my own mistake, my own failure, my own despondency. And all social science goes against my misunderstanding of my fellow man, or my fellow man's misunderstanding of myself. There are in your life these three situations, gentlemen: when you begin to doubt that your religion has always carried you in the right direction; when you begin to feel that you would like to use oil in-

stead of coal, or coal instead of -- instead of steam. In this very moment, you must be put on natural research, because the things which lie dead on the ground may be used for something dynamic. They may be put in motion. And in society, the same. If you come to the end of your rope with your former friends and family members, you have to investigate society for what -- when it is alive and when it is dead.

Now, the point you must now try to make, gentlemen, is: that the science always comes in the moment when this knowledge about the di- -- God, about these things, and about our fellow man do not function. Science is always the answer to an experience of incompetency. That is, religion, as long as it functions, doesn't need theology. Will you take this down? Religion, as long as it functions, doesn't need theology. The physical world, as long as you are healthy, you don't need a doctor. As long as people were satisfied with windmills, you didn't need natural science in order to in- -- discover the steam engine. You only have to go and become Isaac Watts and invenge -- invent the steam engine when you are dissatisfied with the supply of power that the windmills give you, or the ramps.

You know a ramp in -- here in New England, how it functions? A water ramp? Very wonderful invention. Does you -- do you know it? What's a water ramp?

(Water wheel.)

Nobody knows?

(A water wheel?)

Interesting. You live in Dartmouth in a vacuum. You are surrounded by ramps. All the Vermont and New England farms, you see, in -- when they have to pump up the water from below, hundred feet lower, so they have a ramp in the brook. And the ramp throws up the water so that you can pile it up, literally, up to -- to -- up to 200 -- 300 yards I've seen it go up. Tremendous invention.

Well, gentlemen, it wasn't made by a scientist. It was -- is an old invention. We have lived happily without natural science down to 1500 in a remarkable way. We had pumps. We had water wheels. We had the lodestone. We had harnesses. We had weapons. We had ammunition. We had clocks. So don't think that it is necessary to -- doubt and despair about things in an organized manner to -- have laboratories. Mankind has done very well without the scientists. Very well indeed. And religion has done very well without theologians. And of course, your family has done obviously very well without a sociologist.

So you must not under- -- you must understand, gentlemen, that the sciences come when the ordinary, individual dealing with these things does not function. Science makes a general issue out of a partial failure. That's the best definition, I think, for the necessity of a new science. Today the failure of society is not total. There are still very healthy spots. There are nice families, and good friendships, and nice colleges, you see, and some political parties that still function, and some good city governments. Still you will admit that the trouble of the masses of modern man, billions living together, have reached a point where we understand that there has to be a social science. The science, gentlemen, in any field is in existence when it can cope with a crisis.

Karl Marx has said of economy that it will only be scientific if it can understand the crisis. An economist is not an economist who describes the functioning of a boom. Only he becomes a scientific economist who can describe the nonfunctioning of society, a crisis, a depression. Before, don't listen to him. If a man tells you how to make money, that's not scientific, you see, because that's only -- means that he wants to make money out of you.

The prophets of doom, gentlemen, are at the root of every science. All modern science, you see, owes its -- its achievement to the courage to say, "This cannot last." There is a deep pessimism at the bottom of every science. "This cannot last. This will perish." Today we have a -- everywhere a society -- a science of the state where the crises of the state are included. What you -- we learn in political science is child's play. That's a normally functioning, nice constitution to be worshiped by schoolchildren.

I just read an article by an Englishman, very significant, written 80 years ago, 1865. And he said, "These Americans are really strange people. First they have exalted a piece of paper into a divine instrument, called the Constitution; and then they have established a school system in which all the children are asked to dance around the flag and to worship this constitution. So how can you break this ring of idolatry?" He said, "It's impossible. The terrible thing," he said, "is not so much the Constitution, but the education of American schoolchildren that the Constitution is anything but a piece of paper."

You know the English have no written constitution, and live happily hereafter. So he couldn't understand it at all, why this country had to be united on a piece of paper, and why every schoolchild is made to dance around it, in frenzy. I mean, liter- -- not literally, but you could put the -- instead of the flag, you could also put in the middle the Constitution. It would make as little sense as the other. There's no other country where you have to salute the flag every morning in school. It doesn't exist in any other country of the world.

So as long as you have this enthusiasm, this optimism, you can't have a science of politics. You may have a science of politics when the first sentence of this -- politics book, it would read, "All societies come to the end of their rope. There is no state that is -- will not be superseded by another state." This is very important, gentlemen, because I want you to -- make aware of the fact that science is not a luxury plant. It is not something for the mind, to get a Nobel Prize, or Pulitzer Prize, or a Guggenheim award, or some research st- -- stipend. You think of science as nice occupation. If a man today says, "research," he thinks the community owes him a living. He's "in research." And so he probably -- in this country when he is in research does something utterly superfluous. I have no respect for this research business at this moment that goes on in America. It's a racket. A great racket, just as education. We are in the midst of the racketeers.

But if a man frankly says, "A society comes to its end," then I'll prick up my ears, because he has the courage of despair, of despondency. You begin with the mortality of the order when you start a science. As I said, Marx and the Marxians have always said the -- economist like Adam Smith is not a scientist. He is just an apologetic, a defender of industrial development, but he has no idea how it functions, because he cannot explain a crisis. You may know that the Russians, since 1945, have expected the end of America -- daily, without a war, because they said the next depression will wipe America off the map. And you see on the other hand that the last Republican -- I think even Mr. Dirksen from Chicago -- is now ready to use all the -- all the fire department apparatus to fight a depression. Well, if you had showed -- told to a man like Mr. Dirksen or Mr. McCormack in 1929 that -- you have to fight the Depression collectively, he would have said, "You are Communist." They are all communists today in the Republican Party. Every one of them, because they have said that prosperity is a common enterprise.

Now gentlemen, this means that there is no freedom -- free business enterprise -- anymore. We have a collective enterprise. The prosperity of the country, you can't have a -- a free enterprise system. We have a collective enterprise system, because I hear always these prophets of doom in the Republican ranks. As soon as ever- -- we -- we find a million unemployed, we'll use all the -- all the pumps, or all the hoses, or the -- how do you call the machine of the fire department? the water -- what's the name for the big --

(Fire hose.)

Wie?

({ } hose.)

What?

({ } hose.)

What is the official name?

(An extinguisher.)

Wie?

(An extinguisher?)

Yes, fire exting- - no, that's too small. What is the big spray?

(Hydrant?)

Wie? Hydrant. Yes. Perhaps. Well, not quite. No! This --?

(Hose. Fire hose.)

Wie?

(Fire hose.)

{Oh, your brains are just dying}. May I tell you when a -- new science was born. I had a strange experience in this country, and I ask you now to be -- listen to me for a minute seriously to find out what has made me very sad. It was in the year of the Lord '45. And at my house, a great man, the founder of the department of biography in this college, and the former minister of the church here, Dr. Ambrose Vernon, and I conspired to put the -- the men in this college in front of the seriousness of this alleged victory: that all the problems only began -- and would begin in '45, because we had made Russia so powerful. And we invited Dorothy Thompson and she also came.

So we three people decided that we would confront the college with the seriousness of the situation. And among other things, I read them from the old Greek writer, Polybius, who was the historian of the Roman power, Sir, and who tried to t- -- explain to the Greeks why the Romans were so powerful.

I read them a chapter, in which the highest moment of Roman history is described, the great victory over the rest of the world. In the year 146 B.C., the Roman Empire was at its zenith, because there was no other power then left in the world. Carthage was destroyed. Greece was conquered. There was no man

on the whole horizon which could -- who could match the power of Rome. And at that moment, gentlemen, and -- began a glorious history of Rome of at least 5- -- 600 years. The Western Rome ended in 476. Eastern Rome ended in 1453. The Rom- -- Holy Roman Empire of the Austrian emperor ended in 1806. So you can say -- and the Byzantine tradition of the czar only ended in 1917. So you may say that in the year 146 B.C., a victorious idea of one Roman Empire was planted and was in existence. It's a great moment, and something else similar might have happened in 1945, if we had had some more wit.

But why didn't it happen? Well, I tried to read this out of this text. Polybius, the Greek historian and a scholar, had educated the Eisenhower of that time, the general Scipio. Scipio Africanus, Cornelius Scipio Africanus, a very great general. Scipio was victorious in Carthage, in Spain, and in -- in Macedonia and Greece. And when he received the keys to the city of Carthage, which was then put to the pyre, and burned, the queen came out -- there was no king anymore -- and the commander-in-chief. And they established themselves in front of Scipio to make their gesture of surrender. And Polybius was seated next to the general-inchief. And he saw when -- as -- he saw that Scipio took his to- -- his mantle and hid his face, and that obviously he was crying, and that he repeated a Greek verse more than once to himself, recita- -- reciting it. He was very much amazed, and after the whole ceremony was over, he said to Scipio, "What was going on in your mind?"

He -- Scipio said, "I repeated to myself the great verse from Homer which is in the -- in the farewell between Andromache and her husband, Hector: "There will be a day when the sacred Ilion perishes. Priam was -- and the people of the -- of the spear-swinging king." And he added, "As you'll see, Polybius, when I saw this surrender, this unconditional surrender, gentlemen, there was before me the fate of Rome."

Now gentlemen, we said at that evening to the the 35 pro- -- professors of Dartmouth College, "Rome lasted 600, and 1200, and 2,000 years, because the general who established the empire wept, foreseeing the downfall of Rome himself. If you foresee your own downfall, it doesn't have to happen." The modesty, the humility of the victor to say at the moment of victory, "This is going to happen to myself," is the only vaccination against defeat. The only one. And there wisdom is born.

If a whole group of people, if the nations of this earth would feel the same, the victors, you could have a science of war and peace. As long as every victor is boasting of his victory, you can have only decorations, speeches, 4th of July firecrackers, but you cannot have a science of politics. It's impossible. The condition of any science of politics is that you are willing to admit your own doom.

Nobody can escape the doom of a political order of any society who doesn't admit its doom, you see. He's blind. He's deaf. What the Bible always says: they have ears and can't hear; they have eyes and can't see. All the Americans have eyes and can't see at this moment, and they have ears and they can't hear; but they are -- make a deafening noise. Because you do not begin with the end of this country. You boast of its statistics, of its productivity, of its wealth, of its standard of living. Don't you see its weaknesses? Are- -- aren't they -- don't they come first? Why haven't -- the decentralization of our industry not even begun? Why do you even live in New York City?

Any reasonable person for the last 50 years has advocated -- the dispersal of the industry all over the country. I have advocated it now in this country since I am here for 20 years, gentlemen. You know the answer? "It doesn't pay." And I went to the military and said, "You know that it is wrong." They knew it -- for 30 years that it had to be done. "Well, we have no political role to play. It's not our business. We can't tell the businessman how to build the -- his factories."

Well, gentlemen, you know now what -- in what a mess we are in. Nobody can protect the United States. It's doomed. If there is a war within the next 20 years, before we have decentralized, nobody can save the settlements in this country from complete destruction. It's our own fault. Who tells us to build skyscrapers? That's madness. That's blasphemy. It's arrogance. These are the Gardens of Semiramis. Babylon had the same. Assyria had the same. That's why in the Bible, Babylon is the great whore and is called down from the throne of -- the domination of the world. If you ever read Revelation in the New Testament, don't you think that's written for us? But you can't have the knowledge, gentlemen, of anything of whose existence you have not despaired.

Therefore -- I come back now to the real topic. The theolog- -- theologians made a dynamic science possible on constant research, on a constant enlargening of the qualities of the divine power on -- in our hearts by allowing every faithful to confess his blatant failure of being hit, or being contained in the divine spirit. The negation of divinity is the condition, or the rediscovery of divinity in a science called "theology."

So you must see the abyss. I -- all I'm trying at this moment, gentlemen, is to tell you that in our era, we have no renaissance of paganism, that if we speak of these things, we are 2,000 years away from Plato and Aristotle, that no decent human being today can be a Platonist or an Aristotelian. That -- are just labels, gentlemen. They make no sense. The real question in our world has been not the many gods, but: "How can I, the abominable sinner justify the existence either of God or myself?" The first answer is: "There is no God." The second answer is: "I must change."

Anybody, gentlemen, in your position must first come out with the bold statement, "There can be no God, because no god would tolerate me in my shortcomings." The second answer is strange. "He bases His whole action on my shortcomings. He made God so -- man so frail, you see, that" -- it shouldn't be in Hamlet, "Frailty, thy name is woman," certainly. It should be: "Frailty, thy name is man." Or "Frailty, thy -- name is a Dartmouth student."

We are obviously so incompetent that the first movement is: no higher power can bear with us, so everybody has to be an atheist. That is the doubt, gentlemen, in religion, which in -- in the year 1100 was established. It's a great thing. And you understand now perhaps that science is not a body of knowledge at any one time. Science is a process of discovery. Science is therefore of theology possible as long as people despair of themselves. And in this sense, gentlemen, psychoanalysis is only the substitute for theology for the last 60 years. Already at this moment, most psychoanalysts, as you know, turn to theology because they are the theologians with the negative sign, with the minus. That is, they are the -- the advocates of the devil, so to speak. If you have a science of theology for -- 800 years, from 1100 to our days, it is very natural that Mr. Sigmund Freud and his ilk came and said, "Now let us try a description of this despair without the answer of God." If you have an either-or, you can of course put the emphasis at one time on the or. We'll see later at the end of this course that we have lived -- had the great privilege in the last 40 years, or 50 years -- to live through a negative phase of the sciences, where the disorder was made the order. The destruction of the family in psychoanalysis is a logical step: "Let's try how far we get when man is supposedly acquitted of his social ties with his mother, and his father, and his sister, and his brother," you see. It's an attempt which I -- is -- just as possible and valuable in the whole campaigning of science, of theology, as any other. It's a typical, negative theology, which is as possible as a positive theology.

Anselm began by saying -- it may interest you. This first sentence is: "Where art thy, God -- thou, God? I cannot find thee. I cannot find thee." That's -- already expresses the whole doubt, you see, of an archbishop of Canterbury. "Where art thou, God? I cannot find You. Will You kindly tell me how to find You, how to speak to You. I have no means of knowing that I meet You." Quite remarkable for an abbot and a monk, and an archbishop, and a theologian. These people were very courageous people. The psychoanalysts are not more courageous. The psychoanalysts only have excluded by a mental weakness of their -- all their own -- most of them were Jews -- they have a -- the Christian solution. The rising-out of the death of despair to a positive answer. But they are coming around to this very quickly. Anybody who is in touch with the psychoanalytical guild knows that not one answer given by Mr. Freud is now acceptable anymore to the psychoanalysts. They have come full cycle, because they feel it's a council of despair.

As you know, Mr. Freud first of all was never analyzed himself. Second, he was happily married. And third, he educated his children. All of these are strong indu- -- indications that people can get beyond psychoanalysis. And he founded a school; and he had disciples. And he therefore lived in a -- in a -- in -- in a -- founded a new social order, you see. He gave a name to a whole new profession. All this far exceeds the boundaries and principles of psychoanalysis itself. That's not negative, you see. That's very faithful. If you -- it is worthwhile to found a new profession, then you certainly are not an atheist, because you believe in the march of the spirit -- through the ages, through three generations. He believes in apostolic succession.

So it's always wonderful. You know, the worse a sect is -- once the time is added to its existence, 30 years, 90 years, 200 years -- it becomes very respected, because it has to -- certainly to admit that it is much more than just an individualism, you see. It is under law. It represents itself, a spiritual, regular course; this water really runs downhill. And take the Frien- -- the Friends today. They believe in the inner light and in heredity. Most Quakers are born, you see. They have some excuses for this, but still, if you are the great-, great-grandson of a Quaker, you are a Quaker, for all practical purposes, as long as you do not give it up. That's in contradiction to all the tenets of an individualistic creed, you see.

Well, the same is true of the psychoanalysts. And I want you to understand that the theology of today is psychoanalysis, not the theology of the so-called seminaries. That's water, without any soil. But psychoanalysis is the negative aspect of theology with the answer, "There is no answer; there is no God." But that's still in the orbit of the question: "Where is my God?" And the answer is: "Certainly not. There is a devil," because these psychoanalysts are paid for comforting you, for telling you that things aren't so bad after all. Now however they give you this comfort, gentlemen, they are then ministers.

And we get then, gentlemen, the solution of the first phase of science. There are always three people, even if there happens to be only one. The man who cries out inarticulately a question or a doubt, "I can't stand it, I'm despondent, I'm out of tune," the man -- the Scipio who cries that Rome will fall -- perhaps it means himself who will fall, or the Heaven and the earth will fall -- that is, gentlemen, the first man cries passionately.

Then there is a second man who hears this cry and wants to comfort him. That's the minister, or the curator of souls, or the doctor, or the teacher, the advisor, the tutor -- however you call -- the counselor, the pa- -- parent. That is, there is a man or woman not hit by this despair, but standing by and not knowing what to do. This second person turns to the expert. You have in Anselm's case, it is very -- very clear and { }. You have then the layman, in religion. And

he is minus. You have the bystander. In a religion it would the priest. In the family, it would be the parents. And they are aware of this despair. You have it with your friends, your roommate. If you are in this position -- I have seen boys who were wrestling with the suicidal tendencies of their roommate. What could they do, you see? They knew that this boy was in great danger.

Well, science, gentlemen, is that endeavor of the human spirit to inform the bystander and to give him the competent answer for the special despair of his -- the man under -- or the child or the woman under his care. What I'm driving at is, gentlemen, that any science, chemistry, the science of manure in the soil, always needs three subjects. If you have a forester and you go to school of forestry in Yale, the forester is told by the school of forestry what to do to the forest. There is -- are three things: the growing forest, the forester on the spot, and the science of forestry. The science of forestry tells the forester, for example: all trees must be cut every 7 years. I don't know, this kind of tree. Another -- 40 years. The forester gentlemen, has quite a different role. He must make sure that there always is a forest. It is not the business of the Yale School of Forestry to sacrifice money for -- for conservation. But it is the business of the School of Forestry to tell you under what conditions you always can have a forest. It is the business of the {Schweikhammer} concern to have the forest. That is, to make the -- financial arrangements and the conservative estimates so that even now, as you know in the West Coast, these terrible woodcutting concerns have learned their lesson and are now reforesting very nicely. And we shall have wood in -- in these -- in these Northwestern states again, after they had really deprived the country of its protecting covering -- cover.

The forest, or the trees, in the case of the forestry science, play the role of the case in theology, or in psychoanalysis. Your mistake is, gentlemen, that you think science is for yourself. That's impossible. When the sick man asks the doctor to come, he asks the doctor to come over: "I have a fever of 103, I'd better ask a doctor, because at 103, I do not know what I am doing."

So the doctor comes in and he's my head. I abdicate my head in favor of the doctor. That's the simple relation in medicine. I remain the body there, but he is my head. He acts. He gives the -- to whom does he give the advice? Not to me, directly, probably but to the nurse or the man who -- the people who look after me, the -- his instruments. But more of this, gentlemen. Where does he learn what to do? In medicine, in the science of physiology, in the science of bacteriology. That is, he goes to somebody who's absolutely indifferent to me, but who has worked theoretically on the -- all these cases. He has not to apply his heart, the scientist, but he instructs the doctor.

Now it's very hard for you to understand this, because you only see the doctor

and think, "He is a scientist." A good doctor is not a scientist. And a good scientist is not a doctor. It is much -- would be much easier for you to understand the whole situation if you would understand that there are three types of human beings at work: the patient, the doctor, and the research fellow. The research fellow is no good doctor. The doctor is no good research fellow. And the patient is neither a research fellow nor doctor. He just wants to live and get healthy again.

This is true about the whole field of engineering of any invention. Any inventor, gentlemen, any scientist in the field of optics feels responsible for all the knowledge about glasses. But the Polaroid factory, which sells all these ladies the glasses, so that all the women in America, be they as beautiful as they like, have to wear glasses at -- at $18 apiece, so that they might not look ugly, and the Polaroid factory may pay high dividends. This whole racket of -- of glasses, is -- of course comes from the in-between man, the man who supplies -- I'm joking -- supplies you with -- with the glasses. Throw them away. Throw them all away. I have squinted myself through life without glasses. If people had had their way, I would have had glasses twice a day. Gentlemen, you can live without glasses. Most of you. That's a racket. I'm lucky, the two ladies in this room have no -- wear no glasses at this moment at least.

Now, will you kindly believe me, gentlemen? Physics is the instruction of the plumber, of the technician, of the fortress-builder, of the Fords -- to build cars. Physics is not for the layman directly, but for the expert who provides the water for you, or the other things of life. You have a completely wrong understanding of the sciences. The sciences come when the expert despairs. Will you understand this, you see? As long as the minister in your congregation can deal with drunkenness and mores of the society in Sunday School, he doesn't need theology. As soon, however, as he discovers that something is wrong in his congregation, he has to go study theology. The religious leader in a community doesn't have to know -- study theology. But the religious leader of a -- community that is no going concern, that breaks down, he has to ask questions. And he has no time, because he is of course in the pulpit every Sunday to study these things. So he puts the -- delegates this research to somebody else. That's a science.

A science, gentlemen, is always a third-story business, a third-story business. It's set up on laity and expert. In the Church, that is on the priest and the laity, the layman asking the troubling questions, the expert throwing up his hands in despair and not knowing the answer in -- on this point, you see, because there has to be -- something new has to be found to give this man his answer.

Once you have understood this very beautiful growth, gentlemen, of sciences, you know why the sciences of theology and of physics only could come after a

long life of man on this earth. They are third-generation things. It's the third era of life in which we go scientific. It's in addition to the individual's vegetative life, and to the political life of a group. The Church lived happily without theology for 900 years, or 8- -- 1,000 years. And then it ceased to function from overload of contradictions and local traditions. And when it was on the verge of breaking down, theology tried to revive the whole Church from one new intellectual source.

The expression of this, gentlemen, is the first great book of the new scholastic science called Yes and No. Sic et Non. It's written by Ab‚lard, the same who invented the term "theology." Ab‚lard is such a very great mind, because he not only coined the new name for the new science of the living God, composed of the real questions asked by real people in despair, but because he said, "We need this, because if I put on one -- in a ledger, li- -- as in the ledger of the one side, the `yesses' given to certain problems by some fathers of the Church; and if I put the `nos' on the other side, I get thousands of contradictions."

You know, as time went on, and the fathers of the Church and they wrote, and they wrote, advised their -- their monks, and their {nuns}, and their people on certain questions, you can imagine that there are any number of contradictions. The man in Carthage -- St. Paul -- St. Augustine said one thing to his flock, and it made good sense. And St. Jerome said something else in a specific case in Jerusalem to his feminine appendices. And -- he was always surrounded by very nice women, and he called that -- well, I won't -- probably "saintliness." Very suspect individual, this St. Jerome. And -- you know he -- he translated the Bible into the Vulgate -- the Latin. So he's a very important man. He -- we owe our real English language to his Vulgate, because the Latin was in all the services for centuries and centuries, and most English words on religion come from Jerome.

So this -- I wanted -- the -- the contradictions of the fathers of the Church are the content of the Sic et Non of Ab‚lard's book. So you have the same man saying the new thing: one theology. And you have the man equally well instructed about the very doubtful picture given by the religionists of the previous thousand years. In a thousand years, so many contradictions pile up. You can imagine. You just follow in your own family the inconsequential dealings of parents with their children. One day they are allowed to eat this, and the next, after a fortnight that's forgotten and they eat the opposite. And one day they are sent to the kindergarten. The first two children perhaps are, then the experiences are very poor. And then there are three more children and they are not allowed to -- go -- the kindergarten. And vice versa. You -- if you see how children are educated in a large family, you'll always find that the younger children are getting the opposite treatment from the first children. And the parents in ev- -- each case are doing their best, but they just have changed their mind. But

these poor five children have a hard time to erect the system of theology on that, of education, you see, because it -- obviously the opposite is true at one time in this family, and at other times.

So we are all this way. We try one thing and it seems right, and after awhile, we try an opposite thing and it seems right, too. And if you now, as the people in 1100, have all this mass of tradition, they are faced with the question: what is then right? It -- it may interest you the -- the cheapness, really, of this whole science of theology. Ab‚lard had as his first contradiction: some churches have the tradition that St. Peter and St. Paul were cruci- -- were executed in Rome on the same day in the same year; and some churches hold to the tradition that Paul was executed one year earlier. It doesn't seem to us very important. But he put it very cleverly, in front, to show that even the most common question in the Church did not have a unified tradition.

Very hard on Irish people today to hear that there are such contradictory traditions. But I'm afraid there are. There is not one fact in the history of the Church that hasn't been contradicted in the tradition itself, because Christianity, from the very first beginning, as you know, is based on contradictions. The -- Jesus has said that the letter killeth. And the spirit vivify. So we have four Gospels, and they all contradict each other. And therefore you must find the spirit. It's very fortunate that we don't have one Gospel, because then we would have the Koran, like the Muslim. And you would repeat them -- the Koran every day by heart. But nothing would ever happen. But now, by -- if you read any one Gospel, and then you read the next, you have to understand them...

[tape interruption]

...this kind of theology. The -- this -- the admission of despair, gentlemen, is forbidden in all other religions. Neither the Chinese, nor the Japanese, nor the Islam people admit intellectual despair into their mix, because they try to tie -- to paralyze it by literacy, by having a sacred text, by saying, "That's all." We begin with the fact that anything written down can be contradicted. As you know, the devil also quotes Scripture, you see, and he does quote it better than the pious people.

So you cannot understand Christianity by reading the Bible. That's just nonsense. How do we understand, gentlemen? What is the great salvation in theology? Your love for your neighbor. The priest, who must help a despondent person, will understand, because he will be guided by this charity and his love for God. They must -- he must strike a balance. He must say something saving to this man at this moment. And it must not contradict the great truth that there is a God for all men at all times. That's very important, gentlemen. If you only bend

over backward to save your own child, you may ruin this child by abolishing all the laws of the universe in his favor. You cannot give up the whole truth from love of your neighbor. But you can be very original, very creative by making room for this neighbor, despite the rules of the universe, you see. You learn how to make exceptions.

Therefore, gentlemen, theology is a Christian endeavor. Natural science is a Christian endeavor. Sociology is a Christian endeavor. You think that science and faith are in contradiction. That is utter nonsense, gentlemen. The best Christians today are the physicists. They believe in the progress of science. They believe in a history of salvation. They believe that Newton is less good than Einstein. Now, they believe in progress, and that's a Christian idea. The -- I have to -- tried to tell you gentlemen, that this is one great campaign against despair, that we are conducting for the last 900 years in our universities. And they are not in any way anything but the -- the blossoms, the buds that come from the tree of knowledge planted in Christianity. The tree of knowledge in Christianity is that at the moment when we are really despondent of our own powers, we are nearest to God, that the revelation that comes to us cannot come as long as we pride ourselves that we know. It is -- if you do not say, "I don't know," you cannot learn.

And now I open you the last point of this, gentlemen. The connection of -- our faith and our knowledge is even greater. The medieval people, and Ab‚lard was the first, discovered the principle of scientific progress. And they said, "Children learn what they do not know." People in research -- "I, Ab‚lard; I, Anselm; I, Thomas Aquinas; I, Paracelsus; I, Copernicus -- I do not progress in my learning as children. We are equipped with all the learning of the century. I -- I think I know what I say. I say -- know what can be known today in my fields. I'm not learning in your sense, that I hear for the first time of these things. But gentlemen, how do I make progress? By forgetting what I have learned."

The story of the little student, gentlemen, in the grammar school, is that here he is, and he serves up to the point of knowledge reached at any one age. Let this be the level of encyclo- -- of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, or the Encyclopedia Chicagoa. It's a very small -- and a low level, I know, but it's still the one that exists today. Now children learn. This is a process of addition. It is not at all a process of progress, because the child cannot learn more than there is to be known at this moment. You get, however, a man who is a scholar. You get a man in science, a scientist. His merit is that he can, at the top of his profession suddenly say, "What we have believed so far, we have to dismiss."

One of the greatest events in -- in the history of physics has been Mr. Planck's admission, you see, that nature did make jumps, that the famous sentence --

dogma of -- of physics, for 400 years: natura non {fax incitus}, nature does not make jumps -- that this is not true; that a quantum is a quantum, that you cannot simply, you see, at random say it has no shape. Mr. Planck's discovery is, as you know, that he subordinated quantity against -- again to quality, and said each quantum is a quality. It has shape. You cannot subdivide it. It is a form, a shape, a -- has a profile, a countenance. It is a creature. It is what it is. And you cannot arbitrarily by your mental effort subdivide it or add up to it. It's just what it is. Nature jumps.

Now gentlemen, this man Planck, whom I knew personally, by the way, and -- I went to school with his two sons, both murdered by the Nazis -- the -- was a very humble man. And it took him a very great struggle of his consc- -- his conscientiousness to dismiss what the centuries had held to be true. It was a very difficult step to take. There is nothing brazen about such a scientist. He trembles that a truth that has been held by eight or nine generations: "{Really} am I allowed to dismiss it, to defy it?" You see. He's not a self-made man, such a scientist. But that he is -- will you take this down? -- a scientist is equipped with the whole knowledge of his century and free enough to dismiss it.

This has been called by these medieval thinkers who for the first time ran into this problem of scientific progress, "the excess of the mind." What Shakespeare says of the poet, "the poet's eye, in holy frenzy rolling," in The MidsummerNight Dream, this medieval s- -- people, the great saints of the Middle Ages said of thinking, that it was in an excess of the mind -- in an excess, in a frenzy of the mind, that people acquired this freedom of dismissing the things so far believed, and so far held to be true.

Gentlemen, science is the discovery that part of which -- what we have believed is only an opinion. Here we come to the root of your evil, gentlemen. You don't know the shades of faith. You think faith is belief, and belief is opinion. Now what we tried to do is to find out what is faith. We cannot forgo that, because we cannot despair. We must put our faith on something that outlasts our despair. Then we have certain beliefs, for example, that it's good to go to a doctor. If Christian Scientists are right, you can have us have faith, but not the belief that you must go to a doctor. That is, something which you have built around your faith as some necessary corollary of -- of faith, you dismiss. Then you have opinions where you know that this is just an opinion for the time being, and that you are not at all sure that it shouldn't form part of your belief. We have a gradation of faith, belief, and opinion all the time in our lives.

The scientist is the man who can discover that a part of our beliefs are not essential to our faith. For example, take the brain tumor operation. It was believed that this would -- would kill man. On the other hand, people had faith of

course in medicine, so they had to discover in the last 30 years, you see, that this -- the belief did not necessarily go with their faith in healing, their faith in cures, and their faith that the doctor was responsible for the life of the patient, you see. The belief was proved to be unnecessary. Today we operate tumors in the brain.

You don't see what this takes as a tremendous act of humble despair. If the man is haughty and arrogant and say, "I can do it," he must fail, because he goes against that which has been the order of things before. He first must therefore discover or admit that if he operates the tumor, he does something killing, murderous. That is, he must be aware of all the negative aspects of his action.

I -- let me finish on this tone, gentlemen. I read the other day the description of how the thorax operations were discovered by a -- with a -- the operator, a surgical man, the -- Dr. {Sauerbruch}, 4- -- 50 years ago. That is, you -- you know on -- all about the pneumoth- -- thorax today you put in when a man has tuberculosis. Well, when he began, people thought he was a murderer, because they knew that the thorax collapsed if you opened it. If any air enters the pulmonary system from the outside, the person dies. And so he describes how for many years, he had to work in a basement, in a secrecy, because his professor was against his -- the assistant -- doing such things, such terrible things, trying to find the {worst}, so to speak, how with his operation he wouldn't make the thorax collapse. He first had to understand why it was so dangerous. Nobody had cared before to say why it was so dangerous, they had just said, "It is dangerous. You can't do it, you see. It's murder."

The man who wants to go beyond any situation in a science, gentlemen, has first to understand why the people to- -- so far said that it wasn't so. Mr. Planck had to understand the principle of the gradual, of the mere quantitative thinking before he could preach the quanta theory. The -- you see, the self-made man doesn't know any -- of any of these conflicts. He is not in the tradition of science -- {field of} ideas. That's what you la- -- by and large, think of an inventor or a discoverer. That's not in the order of life, gentlemen. The man who wants to outgrow any prejudice must have understood the meaning of the prejudice first, totally. He must have shared it. He must have shared it to such an extent, you see, exaggeratedly, so to speak, in order to throw it out. Very strange. Life -- in bi- -- in biology, you see the same with the forms of life, of shells, of animals. The new form comes from an exaggeration of the old. You have to reach the saturation point of knowledge before you can reach the -- the next degree. This is the discovery, gentlemen, of the theologians of the Middle Ages, and that's why we still need them. They discovered the idea of scientific progress.

I have to stop here, which is very bad for me. And I won't take attendance. You have all been here. Thank you.