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

(Philosophy 10, April 16, 1954.)

... without recognition by others. That's a fantastic speculation of the scientist, you see. That's why Mr. Oppenheimer is now in trouble, because these scientists have the na‹ve idea, you see, that it doesn't matter what other people think of them. That's an individual. But you and I, gentlemen, we are human beings and we depend on calling each other men, as the fifth chapter of Genesis says, that God was good enough not only to create man, as you think the whole story goes -- or to create a man and woman -- but also to tell him how he should call his playmate. They should all be called with one common man -- name, "human beings," "men."

So the words "individual" in a course of the mental structure of the un- -- mankind is an insult, because "individual" is a term which -- that comes from chemistry and physics. And as long as you treat man objectively, you will have to call him an individual, you see. But this means that you call him wrongly, and inhumanely, because not one of you has a right to -- treat anybody who has a human face as an individual. And I hope you don't treat yourself as individuals.

Strange taste, this idea:

"At the time the individual was receiving his degree, he would place his hand upon the open book and promise to read the book in order to comprehend the {exist} and ideas in the field. The book would then be closed, and the individual vowed that he would ponder and doubt its contents. Finally, only after he had understood the principles and doubted them in his own mind was he free to swing the sword of truth.

"The true university must teach as this old ceremony has illustrated. Only by bringing out the controversial logic in existence is it possible to progress in any ideas. The principle of the university then is the constant excess over knowledge as it exists, and the reversal on the ordinary process of thinking. Progress is achieved by the adherence to the fundamental points of learned ignorance and higher logic. The secret of research and voluntary ignorance -- is voluntary ignorance. And as the individual is willing for the sake of his experimentation to renounce even those principles which seem obvious, he will not be able to banish the prejudice of the mind."

{ } one of you has a paper in which I scribbled at -- on the margin that he uses the word "undoubtedly." You can be sure that when a man writes "un-

doubtedly" -- there's every reason to doubt his statement. You always write "undoubtedly" when you think it's obviously false. It's very good -- if you have a paper or a memoir to read of an -- in your firm or wherever you will be, and you -- come through a -- in a memorandum to the term "undoubtedly," you may be sure that's the sore spot of the {argument}. You always put in "undoubtedly" when there is s- -- in your subconsciousness some reason to doubt it. And you glide over it, skid over it beca- -- by saying "undoubtedly," preventing you from looking into this point. It's a very strange experience you can make. It's a law of the human reasoning.

"Undoubtedly" always means that it isn't probably not true. It hasn't been investigated. It's such, you see, a commonplace which by now has already become the cause, probably, of your -- the fallacy of the whole paper. I -- I've taken a bat -- bet that if you analyze all the points in any book where -- which are there "undoubtedly," you would have the register of the fallacies of the human race. You see, "Undoubtedly, the sun turns around this -- around the earth," you see. "Undoubtedly." So that's why Copernicus had to prove that it wasn't so.

When Mr. Planck in 1900 said that there was no gradual increase of quantity -- you know that's his great discovery in physics -- but that there was a quantum, per se, and -- which had a quality itself, there was a threshold and -- beyond which the -- the quantum had to rise before it was there, that there was no gradation, as the usual evolutionary scheme of your mind, your little brain {commands} that anything can be still subdivided into smaller, smaller, smaller steps. When he broke away with this, he risked his whole reputation, because people had held -- in their primitive logic of the last hundred years, in this schoolboy logic of the physicists -- that gradation didn't have to be proved. "Undoubtedly everything can increase gradually -- undoubtedly."

And when Planck said, "But I see that this isn't so, that there are quanta in physics," you see, he put his finger on the one principle, you see, which had never been investigated, which nobody thought had to be investigated, because it was common sense. Didn't everybody understand this, you see? So he m- -- put his finger on the one item of -- the premises of physics, which had never come under the ruling of higher logic. It's very interesting. If you -- who is in -- in natural science here? Any? Anybody? Majoring in it?

The phy- -- the physicists, gentlemen, only at this moment, since Planck, since 1900 -- and Planck is the revolutionary mind, not Einstein in this field -- since Planck has -- is recuperating the higher logic of the paradox, it is true, you see, that your mind on the one-hand side can divide all things into a line of gradation with an infinitesimal increase of everything. But it is equally true that our think-

ing is forced to think in entities, quanta. And you never can tell, you see, what is what. You m- -- by the primitive multiplication-table logic, you see, this seems true. That's how you know -- that's why you believe in evolution, you see. You have to believe in revolution and in evolution; in volcanoes and in floods, so to speak; in the erosion by water and the conversion by fire. That's -- in geology, the paradoxical logic, you see, which there exists. You have catastrophes in geology, and you have sedimentation.

Now this is a typical case, where geology is a science, because it leaves the solution open: you are not prejudiced in which way this mountain develops, you see. It -- may have happened suddenly. It may have happened gradated.

Only to show you that the undoubted is always the curse of your mind. When you rely on the mechanism of your mentality in one direction, you never know that you can also have the opposite. You -- you are just brought -- educated in the other direction. For Japanese, or math- -- Chinese, our idea of gradation is just stup- --- utter stupidity. They think only life in qualities. They don't say that there are shades of red, for example, as you think it, logically, you see. But every color has its own qualities, and it cannot be the red of a brick, and the red of a rose. This -- are just not shades of red, you see. That's perfectly arbitrary that you call it "shades of red." The other thing is equally true, that brick and rose have different colors.

We come to this because the -- I have been -- it's very important, gentlemen, because the whole endeavor of Mid- -- the medieval mind was concentrated on this Chinese, Hindu, and Western insight which you have lost. You are all simply driven by the routines of your mind in a schoolboy manner. You -- that's why the psychologists say that the American mind has a 12-year boy's mentality. You are not free from your own prejudices, from your own pa- -- passion, from your own bent. That's perhaps the best word. You really think that evolution, for example, is dogmatically true. The whole course here, gentlemen, is an exper- -- an -- in -- an attempt to cure you from your own dogmatism. And as you know, it takes in America the form that you say, "Dogma is bad." You have no dogma, you think, and the Church has a dogma. So the Church is prejudiced and you are free. It's of course the other way around.

We come now to the -- I won't go -- we'll finish this, and then we'll come back to our problem today, to emancipate you from your primitive schoolboy logic, from your idea that you can be free without dogma, and that you are not at this moment the slave of your own dogma of progress, freedom, happiness, civil rights, and whatnot. Very strange, gentlemen. This report brings up this behind the-everyday-life of yours. The discovery of Easter, which we celebrate today, that without dogma about man's enslavement by his own mind, there is no

progress of science. There is no university. There is no student.

So that's the topic for today.

"Only by the critical examination of these truths will it be possible -- those undoubted truths -- to reject those which are prejudicial, and to advance with the formulation of new ideas. Those who do not dare to disagree with the opinions of the majority have no hope in achieving progress, since they can never branch out upon a new and different idea.

"The higher logic consists of a higher step than that of the syllogism. It consists of the admission of paradoxical truth. Just as it is not possible to dismiss our prejudices un- -- until we learn about the crucial issue as completely as possible, so the scientist will be hampered greatly in progress in a certain field unless he understands the controversial points cons- -- connected with his experiment.

"In a true university, paradoxical truth must be taught, for it is only by this method that progress can take place. Advances do not occur by evolution, since this consists only of ..."

Now "consists of" { },

"...since evolution leads to degeneration and decay."

It leads to prolongation. "Evolution" is the same word as "prolongation."

"...By abandoning the old securities and sacrificing safety, the new principles can be brought forth. The agreement between two present-day powers such as Russia and the United States is impossible. Each side is convinced that it is wholly right, and denies the existence of a grain of truth in the opposing argument. The result is a distortion of truth by each side. As long as these conditions exist, it will be impossible for the two nations ever to promote a true reconciliation, since each denies the principles of the other.

"Disagreement is the heart of university life. Opposition is needed to provoke thought. And disagreement must exist if the mind is to remain fertile. Ab‚lard discovered that the same thing may be true and not true at the same time. Only by this admission could progress be forthcoming. The dogmatic assertion of one point of view to the exclusion of active arguments against leads to a state of half-truth and a lack of thought in the matter. Only by opposition can a principle become strong and prove its worth by the test of doubt."

So gentlemen, now let's turn back to the university. Let me first give you an

external picture, and then the inner picture of the attempt to {make} the Trinity at home in human affairs, because the Trinity, gentlemen, is the lived paradox of two truths at the same time. What was true for Christ, and what was true for Pontius Pilate, and for the Pharisees, is not the same truth, and that they were coexistent. The Israelites fought for the -- the -- the temple. The Romans fought for their civil peace. And Christ fought for the future. And you cannot say that the Jews did not represent the holy past. And you cannot say that the Romans didn't pre- -- represent the peace of their own day. And you cannot say that the Christians did not stand for the true future of the human race.

Gentlemen, all great tragedy is the conflict between two truths in which the good is the enemy of the better. The university is an image of Christianity, of this paradox that the Father is right, and the Son is right, and the Holy Spirit is right, although we think they speak different truths. The Jews said, "We are with the Father, therefore the Son is blasphemous." The Christians said, "We are with the Son, and the Father is on our side." And the Romans wanted to have just peace on the surface. Not the Holy Spirit, but the good spirit of the Rotary Club, the agreement, the agreeableness. And so they thought they were right, too.

Great tragedy, gentlemen, is such that both sides are right. Has anybody read the -- Antigone? Well, you know. They are both right. The -- Antigone and who is the op- -- opponent?

(Creon.)

Creon. It's not so simple that one is right. Isn't that true? There it only begins, you see. The Athenians were right to condemn Socrates; and Socrates was right, who went against them. And that's why it is interesting. Your trial and court stories, gentlemen, where a criminal is -- is acquitted or -- or sent to jail, is not in- -- they are not interesting, because a man is a culprit. You are always siding with the culprit. That's what you call the underdog. The whole pap- -- newspapers here are full of uninteresting crime stories. The real, interesting stories of mankind are the inevitable conflicts, where both sides are right.

You don't want to admit it, you see. You cannot see it, that there is not at every one moment one person right, and the other wrong. But life is such that both usually are right. Both are defending something that has to be defended. They haven't yet found out how they can defend their own right, you see, and the -- admit the other. That has to be found in due time. It takes long centuries of martyrdom. Why does a university embody this, gentlemen? Why is it a Christian institution?

First of all, because it contains, or has represented in the whole -- all the

Middle Ages conflicting material, conflicting principles to its students. I'll give you, as I tried yes- -- last time, already -- a picture of the University of Paris. Who has been to Paris? Well. This is the city of the king of France, and the archbishop of Paris. Here is the palace of the king. That's the Louvre. This is the Seine River. Here is the Quartier Latin, le -- the -- the Seine go -- goes this way. Here is the -- Ile de s- -- de Notre Dame, where all the roots of France start from. Here is the cathedral, Notre Dame. And here is the Sorbonne. And the Sorbonne is near the Panth‚on, and the Panth‚on is the heart of the matter of the so-called Rive Gauche, the left bank of the Seine River, where the university people live, the art students, and the Bohemiens. Montmartre is outside there, where the little girls are.

The Panth‚on is originally called Ste. Genevieve. It was the -- therefore the monastery of the saint of Paris, Ste. Genevieve. That was the saint who sponsored, or protected Paris, in a siege. And in her honor then, Ste. Genevieve was built and dominated the Middle Ages, and became the pantheon of all the writers of France as late as 1789, the French Revolution. The French Revolution changed the new building in honor of Ste. Genevieve, and has called it now the Panth‚on. You must know this. Put it down, gentlemen. Modern Panth‚on, since the French Revolution; medieval, Ste. Genevieve.

That's very important, because it shows you how the University of Paris begins as a Christian university and then is secularized as the French Revolution is an event in the history of religion. It's not a political event. It's an attempt to re-write Christianity in secular terms. "Pantheon" being a Roman -- Greek name for all the saints, for all the gods, for all the spirits, and therefore now dedicated to all the genius in France. In the Panth‚on there are buried all the great writers, and all the great scholars, and all the great artists of France. And before, there were to be buried all the saints, and the monks, and the nuns, the angels, angelic hosts of the monastic life.

So anybody who wants to understand France, and the millstone around our neck which France constitutes -- at this moment, and the ridiculous and pathetic worship which people in this country still give to Lafayette, and Fra- -- France, and therebody corrupting all the foreign policy of the United States. This tremendous handicap, and this tremendous tie, and this tremendous loyalty to France all has to do with the University of Paris. And it has all to do with the importance the University of Paris has played for 400 years in the formation of Europe. And how was it done, gentlemen? There was no original university in 1125, when Ab‚lard wrote his first theology. And there was the University of Paris in 1170, when the first student of this university became pope, Alexander III. It's worth mentioning that in 1125, there is no University of Paris, and in 1170 there is already one -- somebody pope, you see, who has studied in Paris. Goes

very quick, like a mushroom growing.

In the meantime, gentlemen, this has -- had happened. Before the foundation of the new university, the students of the Middle -- the old Christian Church were all in the seminary of the bishop, as they are still today in this country. You go to seminary to become a priest. That is, bishopric, seminary; archbishopric, seminary; any archbishop, any bishop had to -- entertain a school for future priests. That was called a "seminary" or a "schola," also. And the scholasticus was the official in this episcopal staff who was responsible for the school for future priests.

So the first school in Paris that existed was the school of the archbishop of Paris. And as you see, that was on the right bank of the river. Archbishop's school. That wouldn't have ever been of any interest. Here were however, on the left bank of the river, a number of famous monasteries. St. Victor is specially famous, and St. Germain is still very famous. When you read a French novel, and you hear the Faubourg St. Germain mentioned, you always know that there is some Catholic aristocrat living; some duchess, you see, has a salon in the Faubourg St. Germain. These are the fashionable royalists of France who live in the St. Germain. That's neighboring to the Cit‚ { } Latin { } -- to the Latin Quarters, here.

So you have St. Victor, St. Germain, and Ste. Genevieve as monastic -- schools for the monks, in contrast to the archbishop's. But originally, that went on for centuries, these Benedictine monks in these monasteries, and the archbishop's school didn't clash. They just had different propositions. One just training monks, and the other training the worldly clergy.

Ab‚lard changed all that. He first tried to teach in the archbishop's school. And he did. Then he was chased out of this. And the legend says that he attracted thousands -- 15,000 students to his free teaching around Ste. Genevieve. And the king of France got the complaints of the archbishop of -- of Paris that his school just was nothing compared to the influence Ab‚lard exercised by his freelance teaching. And the king, it is said, it is not a true story, but a beautiful, illustrative legend, said to -- to Ab‚lard that he could not teach in his territory.

So Ab‚lard climbed on a tree and taught from the tree, because he said, "I'm not in your -- teaching in your territory, but from above."

Well, the joke didn't pass well with the king, and the king said, "No, you have to leave the tree, too."

So he took a boat and rowed on the Seine River, and all the students grouped

around him in little boats and listened to his lectures.

But the king again was not satisfied, and Ab‚lard had to leave once more. That's the beginning of the University of Paris, because it was an attempt to make students of other schools go instead to these opposing, or freelance lectures.

What you do with your elective courses is exactly this, still -- following the course of a university student in Paris, that you can choose between two different masters. That's unheard-of, you see, in any otherwise, in ancient times. You go to the school, and you have just to take the classes as they come. You can't pick your teacher. But Ab‚lard is the first to tempt young men away from their ordinary teacher, and serving as an extraordinary teacher.

Now I can't go into the great battles that followed. Ab‚lard was excommunicated in 1140 and died in 1142, and therefore he himself was eliminated from the picture. Peter the Venerable, the abbot of Cluny, knew that he had a genius there and took care of him, and took him into Cluny, and didn't allow anybody to say a vile word against him. But the great Bernard of Clairvaux, this very passionate devil of the 12th century, whom we call a saint, ranted against Ab‚lard and won. And it is perhaps necessary for any such new beginning that somebody should be crucified. So I don't say that the University of Paris didn't need this victim, Ab‚lard. And so we have probably to forgive Mr. Bernard of Clairvaux.

But the principle was renewed. New people followed Ab‚lard's example and taught on the left bank of the river in challenging -- the archbishop's school. And by 1180, a compromise was reached. The peace was made between the faculty of masters and students. Will you take this down? The faculty of masters and students in Paris, and with the archbishop of Canterbur- -- of Paris that he should appoint a chancellor of the university, as they still call it now, in England, you see, the chancellor, and that under this chancellor, the faculty should be selfgoverning. A university is a corporation since 1180 that appoints its own officers.

This college is not a free institution of higher learning, because we have an administration. The faculty has nothing to say in this college. We have a president. And we have deans. In -- in -- in Europe, the dean and the president are elected office. Year after year, they are elected by the faculty. They circulate. Everybody becomes a dean once, and everybody becomes a president once, but only for one year, just as this mayor of -- of London, you see, who is elected. The city of London elects a mayor, as you know, every year out of their best citizens.

And this kind of officeholding is the medieval principle, to let nobody grow a -- a vested interest in his own position of -- of trust. If you -- as long as they elect

a man every year, it is obvious that he is dependent on the electorate.

So the annual office is a very profound principle of medieval legislation. The corporation which has an officer for more than a year is in danger of becoming his property. In a time when you have no -- little archives, few people know how to write and read, it took the annual election to im- -- express, you see, the common property, so to speak, of the corporation, of every member of the corporation in the university. Nobody could, you see, hold any -- any position there for more than a year from fear that he would claim a vested interest, that he would say, "I am the university."

The suspicion of the medieval men were just as great as in our republic with officeholding, you see, that you are -- but their suspicion was really -- went beyond as I say, after one year already, you had to be elected again, and -- had a new election, because the people there feared so much that anybody who had, so to speak, residence in a house for more than a year could claim already -- how do you call it? A Sitzung. A proscription, I mean, a statute of limitations. So it is a general rule of the Middle Ages. Anybody who can prove that he has been in a house for one year, six weeks, and three days, is presumably the possessor -- has the right to -- possessor of such a house, you see. And he has to be ejected before then the six weeks and three days beyond a year are -- have lapsed; the six weeks and three days are -- just meaning the term for the next court meeting, so there was a measure of precaution to say that six weeks and three days, in addition to 365 days, had to lapse before the legal consequences of taking possession accrued to such an office.

I mention this, gentlemen, so -- because you must understand the great jealousy that in this victory of the faculty over the archbishop is expressed. The archbishop was a lifetime appointee. His scholasticus was a lifetime appointee, and revocable just by the whim of the archbishop. The great compromise at the University of Paris then was that the archbishop had to admit a school, gentlemen, in which teachers could he -- be appointed and elected to office without his consent. Otherwise it would have just remained the archbishop's school. But that wasn't true. You get the new principle of co-optation and election.

Anybody who is a member can be freely elected to office -- that's democratic -- and anybody who is not yet a member can be freely co-opted as a member -- that's aristocratic. Aristocracy leaves -- lives by co-optation. Will you take this down, gentlemen? Aristocracy lives by co-optation. Democracy lives by election. And monarchy, of course, lives by inheritance, by heredity. Now the archbishop represents the monarchical element in the university. The faculty represents the aristocratic element. You can't be a member without the faculty's saying so, through the examination, through the giving the degree. You can't call yourself

"doctor." Somebody else has to make you doctors. There may be self-made men in this country, but there can't be self-made doctors. Have you ever thought about that?

There can't be self-made doctors, because the aristocratic principle means that the doctor is somebody whom other people qualify to be one of their fellows -- members, you see. Membership is always aristocratic. Always. If you are on a waiting list at Dartmouth, it's an aristocratic principle that you are allowed to come here. The democratic principle only prevails within this aristocratic body of Dartmouth men when anybody can be elected for { }. Anybody can be the valedictorian. That's -- depends on your own doing, you see. But once you are -- have not been accepted as a member of -- Dartmouth student, you cannot become the valedictorian. And you can't be elected president of { }. Or of Cask and Gauntlet, you see, because you're just not a candidate.

So you very often overlook the boundaries, gentlemen, of democracy, of aristocracy, or of monarchy. They are all three necessary. There has never been any government under the sun that doesn't need all three principles. And the University of Paris is no exception from the rule. We have aristocracy with the judges, and with the doctors in this country. And the rest are quacks or politicians for the judiciary, and for the -- for the skills, for the professions. That's always an aristocratic {principle}. You can't change that. The AMA is the most aristocratic, exclusive society in this country.

But you hate to hear this. You think you can construe a world which is purely democratic. This is nonsense. The three principles -- monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, and the fourth -- dicta- -- dictatorship -- all have a place in life. In war, you have to have dictatorship. Someone has to give the -- the orders. And if you have no dictatorship, you can't win a war. There is no democratic war.

But you live with the -- these illusions, so I think I should take advantage of this to show you that the real, free man, gentlemen, the free mind is not bent by your dogma, that democracy is the only form of government. That doesn't exist for real people. This country has an aristocratic element, and has a -- has a monarchical element: the vice president is nothing but a crown prince -- the Prince of Wales of America, that's all. Even if his name is Nixon.

But again, there's your dogma, you see. What surrounds you, and you have never looked through here, but always said, "Undoubtedly, demo- -- democracy is the best form of government." Gentlemen, this is nonsense. There is no best form of government for any of these forms. They are all bad if you leave them to themselves. Every one form of government is wicked. It has to be checked. It has to be paradoxically rule- -- made possible to exist by its very opposite principle,

by its paradoxical logic.

So gentlemen, back to -- to Paris. On what did these two schools agree, and on what did they not agree? Now I come to the Christian tenet of a medieval and a modern university, for that matter. All these people in Paris were priests. All these people said Mass, or were going to say Mass if they hadn't been ordained. Most of the students in Paris -- take this down, gentlemen -- were over 30 years of age. They came from all parts of Christianity, from Scotland, from Ireland, from Norway, from Poland. Well, that was much more internationalism than today.

This is -- we live in a nationalistic era, gentlemen. The medi- -- medieval university was really international. It was organized in four nations, but the natio -- the four groups organizing the University of Paris, were containing many nations in one. The Poles, the Hungarians, the Bohe- -- the -- the Czechs, the Saxons, for example, formed one such group in -- six kingdoms for- -- formed the Natio Germanica, six different races, because there was -- would have been otherwise too multifarious.

But Paris at that time really was the center of christendom. There was a center of christendom, gentlemen, so there are certain necessary elements on which to agree. The university, we have said, is based on the discovery that certain things must be different in every generation. New truth must be discovered. But you can only discover a new truth if you have agreed on this very truth: that new truth has to be discovered every moment. That's the dogma. The Christian dogma, gentlemen, behind the natural sciences, and betime -- -hind the social sciences, and behind the theological science -- the sciences of the divine -- is the old Christian dogma, gentlemen: that although God created the -- the world, man became free in the middle of time.

The first free man was Christ. And that we only know who -- how free you and I can be if we live after Him, if we accept the yoke of our era. The -- in other words, gentlemen, the two schools of thought at the University of Paris had to agree on one necessary thing. Everything else could be left open. Anselm has formulated -- Anselm of Canterbury, in advance very beautifully. He said, "I want to prove all the truth about God by logical reasons, except the Trinity."

Will you take this down? "I wish to prove the existence and qualities of God by logical reason, except the Trinity, because that cannot be proved, that Jesus had to be born. Or that you are His brother." Nobody can logically prove an event in history. You can prove all the facts of nature of -- of things. But you cannot prove the coming of one free man into this world of law. In other words, you could also say, "Logic can prove laws, but logic can never prove freedom."

This then is, ever since, gentlemen, the ten- -- dogma of the university, which I challenge you today to rediscover on Easter as your dogma: that you at the moment of discovering a scientific truth are a free agent of your maker, that Mr. Einstein and Mr. Planck, in discovering -- or nowadays it's somebody else -- in making a scientific discovery is something that cannot be deduced by logical reasons. Nobody can predict an invention, a real discovery. Wake up { }.

Gentlemen, we are not to be deduced by logical reasons in our best quality of being new, of being somebody for the first time. Every one of you is -- also as we have said -- able to be in the first stage of the process of thought, of the circulation of thought. You are a spring as much as you are a drop in the bucket or in the ocean of common sense. In as far as you are capable of a new thought, you are a new creature. And this new creature cannot be logically deduced.

Gentlemen, without such a dogma, you can't have science. Be not mistaken, gentlemen. Any one of you who laughs at human freedom, who says, "Man is a product of his environment," says that there can be no science, because then all sciences are just superstitions of an environmental creature, who has to think what his environment describes. You have -- just have to follow this logic. Very simple. We are all dogmatic with regard to science. We -- you all believe in progress of science. The progress of science is only possible by freedom. The scientist is a new creature, and that is the discovery of the Christian ages. He is the brother of the Apostles and of Christ, because they were new men, people who have never existed before.

The second dogma, gentlemen, of the university is the separation of mind and soul. It is necessary, since you cannot be deduced by logical reasons in as far as you are the brother of your old- -- eldest-born free man, the first-born, in as far as you claim to be a Christian, which is a big order, in as far as you do claim this, you cannot rely on your agreement with others mentally, because the action of any Christian is to have a new mind. And this new mind must clash with the old minds. If it must clash with the old minds, the tie-up with your fellow man cannot be based on the mind. It must be based on your s- -- heart. It must be based on a charity that is larger than understanding. If the peace doesn't so- -- transcend understanding, then it hasn't to be wished at the end of the service in the church, because it is something extraordinary that the minister can say that he wants you to be blessed by the peace that passes all understanding.

What is this peace? The peace between people who are of different convictions, who have a difference of mind, who have the power and the courage to disagree. You have probably never thought of that. It's very simple. Down to this founding of the universities, people even in the Christian church had been afraid of being of different minds. They thought they couldn't survive the split of

opinions, you see. They had to agree on everything, as you think you have to, in your -- in your dormitory or your {friendships}. You think that agreement of mind is the nurture of friendship. But anybody who has a real friend knows that the -- that he is not chummy with this friend, but that they criticize each other, and that they are of opposite conviction. And that is the source of real friendship.

And that's why nobody in this country has friends. Everybody has just -- has just -- I don't know what, but people who write him -- who slap him on the back and -- and say, "He's a goo- -- jolly good fellow." You have fellowship, but not friendship in this country much, because your one friend is the one person who scolds you, who takes you down, and who says, "That's impossible. This has to stop. You ruin yourself." It's the only friend you have.

(Would you dispute the fact that however in these friendships there's a very strong base of agreement?)

But it is not the basis of the unity of the mind. That's what I'm driving at. There is another quality which faces you.

Now all this has been anticipated by the last Greek mind of the ancient Church. We have a prophet of the university, gentlemen, in the person of St. Augustine. And St. Augustine is the last Greek of the antiquity, of the ancient Church. And we have, of course, as you know, in St. Paul the first Christian out of Israel. And Paul and Pete- -- and -- and St. Augustine are the two sponsors of the university as it st- -- wherever it functions, wherever that may be.

I'll first give you the Augustinian definition of the way in which Christians are free in their thought. It runs: "In necessaries, unity; in doubtful, freedom -- liberty; in all, charity." The Latin text is -- perhaps you take the Latin down; very simple: In {necessariis} unitas -- you can understand that. In necessaries, unity. In fact, as you see, English is just a dialect of Latin -- which it is. The English which you speak in this country is a dialect of Latin and Greek. No native language.

In {necessariis} unitas. That's just, "In necessaries, unity." The second: In {dubiis} libertas. In doubtful -- in dubious -- in the dubious, liberty. Again, you see this, in -- the Latin is the original, and your English, "in dubious, liberty," is just idiomatic, dialectical, back-hill Pennsylvania Dutch. And the third, In omnibus caritas. In all, charity.

In this, he prescribes the path of any school of higher learning, gentlemen. In a school of lower learning, there is learning by rote. There is tradition of the things that the teacher thinks the student must know. In any institution of

higher learning, there is an equilibrium between those things that are dubious, and therefore left to everybody's own decision, you see, and the necessary, without which unity cannot be achieved. For example, the dogma that progress of science is possible is a necessary. You cannot be a professor in a university if you can deny that you can make progress in knowledge. It's impossible, if you are a nihilist, or a cynic, or a -- or a semantic -- how do you call these people? -- symbolic logician, and these other monstrosities?

It must be possible, gentlemen, to make progress. That's a dogma of Christian life. But it is not a secular dogma, gentlemen, because if it is a secular dogma, immediately it becomes -- gets a {worm} of it that you think that a -- a man who is a Communist must be outlawed, as they did in Texas yesterday, as you have s- -- may have seen, you see. Passing a law that they, the Texans, you see, can do without brain. They really think they can.

Because the essence of the life of the mind is contradiction, is freedom. But the mind is not the necessary basis of our living together friendly in a family. We can -- be charitable, although the son has a different conviction from his father. I mean an obedient son is not the real story; and a rebellious son is not the real story, obviously. But the interesting family is the family in which a son and the father are at odds in charity.

Andr‚ Gide wrote a story on the prodigal son in which he rejected the assumption that the son stayed at home in his father's house and did always his father's bidding was the ideal son, or that the prodigal son was the ideal son, you see. The problem obviously is the third son, who isn't mentioned in the Gospel, you see, who neither has to eat the swill of -- with the pigs, nor has he to be grouchy because he has to obey -- obeys all the time, but who has so much charity and so much freedom that he can stay in his father's house and think, and speak to his father in freedom and in charity. That's the on- -- the only solution {there is}.

You -- most of us miss it -- miss out on it. But that doesn't mean that it isn't very clear, gentlemen, that the story of the peace of mankind, of the human race, depends on both -- the explosive power of diversification of the human mind, and the peacemaking power of a -- human hearts who stay with each other in uni- -- in unison.

St. Paul, of course, said it differently. He said simply that there were three social powers. You always translate this word "social powers" with supernatural virtues, so you cheat yourself out of the very strict and mathematical or sociological or sober process which Paul tried to describe. He said there were three social forces: hope, faith, and charity. And charity was the most important. Faith, hope,

and charity, gentlemen, are trans-individual powers. When you have faith, hope, and charity, you belong with other people. They are therefore not virtues of your own ego. They have nothing to do with ego. -- Hope, faith, and charity describes the way in which you are immersed in the social body, in the life of the whole, or life of mankind. As long as you think of love, faith, and hope as yours for the asking, gentlemen, you don't have them. If you are based, or basked by them, they give you your right relation to your fellow man.

This is very obvious, I think. Anybody who knows what they are -- these {forces} are really knows this, but -- but -- instinctively. But all our philosophies and all our textbooks say the opposite. They recommend you to have faith, hope, and love, when you can do very little about having them by will, as you know. We are -- either sane or we are insane. We are either healthy or we are unhealthy. Anybody who has faith, hope, and -- and charity is safe and sound in limb, and body, and mind, and heart. And so, everybody wants to be this way, but it's very hard to do it by willing, as you know. I can't say it today, "I'm hopeful," if I am not. I'm depressed, you see. And if I can't say I'm faithful when I'm doubtful. And I cannot say that I am char- -- have charity when I hate.

So the thing is obviously a descriptive process. The three supernatural virtues are those which you cannot have by your nature, yourself. They either surround us, like the atmosphere or like the water in which we swim, or we -- they don't surround us. I mean, I -- you can't -- get -- learn to swim standing on land and just making the moves -- the motions, you see. You have to be in the water. And charity -- charity, and faith, and hope describe how we move in the waters of life.

Most of us have these imparted to us. I just have to look at you. Most of you are just very happy guys. They are -- they're -- you are naturally, you are full of confidence, and you are full of hopes. And if I do not irritate you too much, you are even somewhat charitable.

But gentlemen, in a university, this takes now a very strange form. Where is hope, where is charity, where is faith in a -- in a university? Or where is doubt, where is necessary -- necessity, and where is charity according to St. Augustine in a university? I think if you take -- remember the 10 commandments of education, you can immediately see that the child, the fighter, and the elder represent these three supernatural processes by which we are connected in society. The child is charitable, it is loved. Every -- it is lovable, children are lovable. God created them so. And it's very easy to love children. They do not represent anything in- -- hostile, inimical. It's easy to love children, so charity is the element of youth that must be in any higher school and institution.

Gentlemen, the necessity -- that which keeps the order, and keeps any school

from going Communist, or from going sectarian, or from going Prohibitionist, or any such fanaticism, would be the role of the elder. The elders of any society stand for the necessary. Children don't know of the necessary. They play. And gentlemen, the man -- the virility of the race is represented by the dubious group -- the group that says, "No, I'm not so sure. Let us say that `undoubtedly' is a poor word. And let us put the finger on every tenet which is, you see, littered with `undoubtedlys' in the text of tradition."

So I think, gentlemen, St. Augustine, without knowing it, has classified the three ages to -- of the mind -- through which we all run. The old mind of the elder stresses the -- necessary, which -- what has to be ruled, what has to be taught, what has to be suffered. The men in the society do the doubting. That what has clogged up the capillaries of life from too much prejudice has to be eliminated by doubt. The living generation of the adult has to fight the prejudices. The -- that is, the things that deserve to be doubted. And the playlike, childlike element in us which -- for which alone we can go to Heaven, as the New Testament said, is the element of charity by which elders and adults -- the archbishop of Paris, and Mr. Ab‚lard, you see: the elder, the archbishop, and the doubter, Ab‚lard, may still be united in one common enterprise.

As long as you have these three elements, gentlemen, you have progress of the whole human race warranted, because all three aspects of humanity, the child, the adult, and the elder, in their principles of behavior are there.

And we come to -- now to state the profound principle of a university compared to a mere school. In a school, you only have two generations. In a university, you have all three generations present. The distinction between the necessary and the doubtful is not made in a school -- in a grammar school. But in a school of the Western world, in the school of Christianity, in what we call a university, there are three generations present: the elder; the fighter; and the artistic, or charitable, or playful child. We have to be childlike in studying, gentlemen. We have to be men in studying. And we have to be priests in science.

That is, a man who invents the atom bomb is responsible for the use that is made by it. In this sense, you see, the necessary here would be that the -- it's no accident that the atom bomb could only be invented under the authority of the government, of elders. And not by the scientists themselves, who were only the doubters, the physicists, the -- the middle-aged group. Very queer how this always immediately comes out.

Gentlemen, the necessary must be vouchsafed for by the authority. The new, the doubtful, must be vouchsafed for, as we already know, by the protestant, by the protester, by the individual person. And the basis of all this are the people of

God, the cheerful crowd, the children, which we all form -- the, so to speak, preresponsible group. The fluid, which we still must be, that we can be plastic. The "plastic" perhaps is the best term, the plastic man in us, the playful man. What Chesterton has called "men everlasting." Does anybody know his book, Man Everlasting, or Everlasting Man? No? Already died out. Well, very beautiful book, by G. K. Chesterton.

Who has read Chesterton? Gentlemen! How can you live in this era of yours? I owe my freedom and my spirit to G. K. Chesterton, as a young man. And so would you, if you would only read it. The greatest English writer of the last hundred years. Read "The Ballad of the White Horse." My friends learned it by heart, my students 20 years ago. It's 10 -- 15 years ago in this college, there was a group of students, they -- they knew "the Ballad of the White Horse" by heart. It was their national anthem, so to speak. You never even read Orthodoxy, or Heretics? Gilbert Keith Chesterton. He knew this. He has written a very beautiful book on Thomas Aquinas.

On this topic, for example, of the university as an embodiment, gentlemen, of that part of the Christian truth which is -- irreducible to logic, the Trinity, that there came a free agent into the world to progress and to co-create the world with the Father who did it all before -- that is an event which you either deny, or in which you participate. Anybody who goes to a university has a great privilege that he, without knowing it, joins the army of progress. And science therefore, gentlemen, progressive science is a discovery of the Middle Ages. There has been no such thing in antiquity.

The -- you have said that the university of Plato was a university. No, gentlemen, it was an academy. It was not a university. Plato did not believe in the Augustinian "in {dubiis} libertas; in {necessariis} unitas." He only believed in unitas. The -- the calendar of the laws of Plato is an ironclad calendar. You can't get out of it. He would have condemned Socrates a second time to die, if his laws had ever prevailed in his best city. Plato is not a university founder. That's very important for you, gentlemen.

The -- Plato's school, the academy, and the high s- -- higher schools of the Western world are different, to say the least. The principle of the medieval school is: there must be at least two teachers of opposite views on the same topic. In Greece, if you taught differently from Plato, you had to found your own school, the Stoa, or the peripatetic school of Aristotle. You could not stay in the same school. It was impossible to think that one and the same student would be examined by people who held opposite views on -- on the doubtful subjects. Such a freedom was not known in Greece. This freedom is the -- discovery of the Middle Ages, gentlemen. And you don't believe this, because to you the Middle

Ages are something funny, some in-between, some unnecessary time.

My task is very difficult, because I have tri- -- tried to show you that you and I live in a college, because we owe colleges to the Middle Ages, and not to Plato. You and I could not breathe in a -- the academy of Plato. We would have run away. You and I live because the university was the discovery of having at least two academies in one place. Two colleges, so to speak, two academies, two Platos are admitted in the medieval school.

And you take this for granted today, that you have in -- in every science here the possibility of hearing different opinions. But this is a new principle. And it is a Christian principle, because it is the principle which distinguishes, gentlemen, the three persons of the divine life. The one princ- -- principle of the divine life is that we are all the same. We are all creatures. We are all part of nature. The first sentence of the Bible: we are created, you see, from clay, from dust. And we return to dust. We are under natural law. It's all one. In {necessariis} unitas. The opposite is that we are all the sons of God. That is, through us creation or evolution takes place. Evolution passes through you and me. And people always only after you have said your word know what evolution is, because you said it. Evolution is not outside man. Lenin said, "Evolution passes through me." He reconciled the Hegelian, you see, {triad} with his own freedom by saying, "Evolution passes through me." Lenin. That's obviously true.

I once won an argument myself, in a debate where -- it was a question of my being deposed, and losing my office...

[tape interruption]

...selectivity of candidacies, party loyalty. All these things come from the medieval university. There they were created first, and were declared to be possible. People had not believed before that parties were reconcilable with Christian charity. This is the tremendous discovery, you see, that charity -- in Christianity -- demands mental {cleavage}. Demands it. That as long as you have unanimity, you have an- -- the animal kingdom. You are the beehive. You have the ant life.

And many people today have this idea, you see: "Unity at all costs. Outlaw the Communist Party, because then we are all one." Well, what are you then? Animals, because people who are just one in mind as well as in soul are no longer interesting, because they don't make use of their best faculty. People who are just anarchists of thought, free thinkers, are equally uninteresting, because they have lost the great human quality, you see, of solidarity. They have no heart. They just try to reason it all out by their brain, and claim that they have the right

to free thought.

So the distribution, gentlemen, of these qualities of heart and mind, of soul and mind, is the condition of science. And we come to the last point I have to make, gentlemen: that the universities have progressed in the Western world always when it was quite obvious that they were as much institutions of the heart of mankind as of the mind. They are not institutions for the brain only, but they are all the time solutions for the conflict of brain and heart. Only that is important in life, gentlemen, where the whole man is involved.

Now to hold your peace with people of opposite conviction is a moral task, is a virtue which has to be done, because it takes -- it takes a victory over your own jealousy, and over your own pettiness -- doesn't it? And this victory makes a school a good school. If a person in a faculty can st- -- get up and say, "I want this man to teach here because he teaches the opposite from myself," you see, he's a good teacher in a hi- -- school of higher learning. But if you have a school of shorthand writing, he would be a bad teacher, because in shorthand writing, you must all be taught the same shorthand. Isn't that true? And it is no use their having five opposite ideas of how to teach shorthand.

So in technicalities, gentlemen, you will always crave simplicity. A school will not be interested in doubt, or in variety of mind, but the logic of the political community, gentlemen, of the higher, creative state of mind will always be more than a school. A university, gentlemen, has lifted man beyond his school attitude. The school is something in which the nobler passions do not thrive. In a school, you all try to stay away from class -- to cut classes, to do less work, to pass an examination without knowing anything, and all the tricks of the -- of the trade. Isn't that true?

And you are tempted to treat Dartmouth College in such a way, that it is just a school. It is obvious that you are only going to this college. As soon as you see that it is to your advantage, you do more than I ask you to do. You don't do it, but usually therefore wasting your four years of college. It's up to you. Some of you know this quite well, occasionally, that this is the greatest opportunity they'll ever have in their whole life. And the less I have to say about this, the better it is, of course. You sh- -- you can know it all yourself. But you know very well that there are two souls at play in you: the psyche, you see, according to which you are a lower-grade animal; and your soul, according to which you are divine. And you know very well that you can treat the same classroom lecture as an opportunity and as a bore. Isn't that true? Or as a chore. It's just like turning the lampshade by 10 degrees. At one moment it's all shade, and the other moment, it's all light. God and the devil in your own existence, gentlemen, is always very close.

It is this freedom, gentlemen, that man can treat the same situation of any generation as a liability or as an asset, which is the challenge of Good Friday. On Good Friday, this great truth, gentlemen, has been lived first: that a liability is only as long a liability as the eyes of faith do not transform it into an asset. In your college days, you are in a school which imitates the Crucifixion, because at any one moment, you can abuse your inheritance. You can say, "This is boring," and "I'm trying to get by." And you are -- can waste the spirit that is trying to reach you. And most of the time, we do this. And you go to sleep. And you copy somebody else's paper. And you do not the assigned reading, and certainly you do not any better than the assigned reading.

On the other hand, there are always flashes of insight in which you go beyond this and say, "This burden put on me, this schedule, this direc- -- here, this timetable, and so, these examinations are really the minimum, and I have to go beyond it. I have to get beyond it. I have to make this a free appropriation of my future. This is not just an annex of the past, of other people's prejudices taking me into Philosophy 10 or some other course. But it is for me the -- an opportunity which this man here who talks to me -- doesn't even realize. He has no idea what I'm going to make out of what he's offering." That would be your opportunity. That would be the power of liberty in the necessary. It is necessary that you get 120 hours' credit, gentlemen. But obviously it isn't necessary. It would be a wrong dogma if you said the 120 hours are necessary in this college, and the -- there is no reason for you to be dubious, to be doubtful. I mean, a student who would -- who would go five years to college, and only take 20 courses each year probably would keep his brain in better order.

Just to show you that you could even -- be a different student if you wanted, at this moment, that perhaps the organization of our studies needs today your serious doubt, and my serious doubt. That's the problem for the -- the educational community today, you see. Shouldn't we doubt the whole setup of the college courses, where we have 120 introductories -- courses, and the -- you are just introduced into nothing?

Survey, introduction, introduction, survey. Isn't that true? By which I -- only want to bring out, gentlemen, the great processes of the Western world of which we are a part: science, universities, the progress of thought, the freedom of the thinker -- they are not in a vacuum. But they are imitations of -- in the -- of the great struggle of mankind to be free and divine, and be human and a creature, to remain in this balance between what we are already created, and what we have to create in addition.

This sentence of St. Augustine, gentlemen, and the sentence of St. Paul, and the principle of St. Anselm of Canterbury, they all agree in this one thing: that

when the whole man -- child, adult, and elder in you and me live -- come to life together, the world is as new as on the first day of creation. Something tremendous happens. Cathedrals are built. Cities are built. Kingdoms -- nations are rising. There was not one of the nations of the Western world when the University of Paris was formed. There were neither Poles, nor Czechs, nor Germans, nor French, nor English, to speak of. There were Normans and -- and Anglo-Saxons, for example. There was no English nation. The universities, gentlemen, have been at the bottom of the creation of all the medieval nations.

I have described this in a long book, and I can't go into the details of this. But we will, in the next week, give you -- go forward with some doctrines developed in the universities which have given rise to the national life, as you know it, which you think now is just the natural one. And it has been a creation of the Christian era, and of the Christian spirit -- the Christian spirit of combining the Son's liberty, and the Father's necessity, and the Holy Spirit's charity.