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(Philosophy 10, May 7.)

[Opening remarks missing]

...and I think they should receive a bonus. Who asked a question about defining God? Remember? Not here? It was too much for him. I'm afraid the other may be absent, too, who asked the question about -- calling -- speaking of Americans all the time, and having no right to do so. Who was that?

(He's not here. { } bonus.)

What?

No bonus.

No. I must have frightened them both. Sorry. Rather disappointing.

The -- the -- this -- the question of the universals was tougher sledding as I -- tougher going as I had anticipated. I want to say one more word to convince you that this question of how we have to call people generally, or in general terms, how do we have to -- u- -- to name the universe is a serious question. The last time, the main difficulty was that -- you looked rather unbelieving when I said when we invoke the higher powers, when we speak to the -- of the founding fathers, when we speak in the name of the authority of Dartmouth College when you receive your diploma at commencement, we invoke divine authority, and therefore, we must use the right name. And it is quite clear that these -- the usage is necessary.

This is quite against the grain of every modern American boy in a college who is told that words are something he can look up in the Webster, and he can use a synonym. And you all believe that words are arbitrary. So there is a real fight with your own mentality when I discuss this central problem of all thinking in the higher -- institutions of higher learning for the last 800 years.

I attended a lecture the other day -- I don't know if I mentioned here in class -- of a biologist on species. Did I mention it here? He told us that -- it was a great question for modern biologist: what individual birds one should classify as a thrush. Is a hermit thrush and the other thrushes -- are they different species? Or can you lump them together? Or can you separate them? Must you separate them? Can you separate them? May you separate them? Or are we forced to say

they are all thrushes? You have in the natural world a -- a -- a real question of what a universal is. Is it arbitrary? There are many modern thinkers, all the rationalists who say it's perfectly arbitrary. Every bird is different. We just use human figments of our classifying ability to lump them together.

Mis- -- Professor Mayr of Harvard, who talked on this problem, said that he went to New Guinea and he asked the natives there to bring him all the species of birds they could find. And they brought 138 different species. And they had 137 different names. And he said, "Isn't it miraculous that these allegedly primitive people had exactly as many names as there were species?"

So we didn't -- don't need biology, or in this case, ornithology or zoology to notice that there is something in nature that forces us to order this universe according to its own beautiful shape. And this was the issue last time, that we are forced, compelled to give the right name. And he admired these natives, and the fact that he found 138 species, and they had 137 different names, makes the thing even more miraculous, because this one little slip, so to speak, of -- in a process of name-giving which must have occurred perhaps 3,000 years ago, adds to the miracle of human exactness. If there was not this little one deviation, if these -- poor theologists couldn't discover at least one more species, it would really not be so interesting as with this little margin of error, because I think that is the ultimate perfection, to have 137 names right.

Now to go over to the problem of the universals which are necessary. You will say that hun- -- these 137 species of birds -- that's a very nice feat, but you still will not be convinced that you have to call them by 137 names. We said -- may say that modern English, which is an impoverished language, would do, of course, with 30 names. You lump everything together and -- and say, "Well, however you call it." That's the best you can do.

You have no longer any creative power to give the right name to anything. If you speak of God, you say, "anyway," or "somehow," when you want to -- to invoke the divine providence. You can -- get any American caught when he says, "Somehow I got it." He means always, "By the grace of God." So God also is replaced by this very nice pronoun, an indefinite pronoun "somehow."

So you cannot be convinced easily, gentlemen, that we have to invoke the divinity under great -- great penalty with the right name. This has completely gone out of your system. You don't believe it. And this was my problem the last meetings, and I want to come back once more and put before you a little bit of the environment in which our prayers to God are embedded.

There are two processes, gentlemen, in which you have to in- -- invoke the

powers in the person to whom you speak in the right manner. One is in court. If you appeal to the court of claims, or the court of appeal, you have to say, "I appeal." No other term possible. You cannot say, "I request." You have to say, "I appeal." That is in the law. We are in the same -- world of invocation or appeal.

This is quite lost to -- on you. You think the laws are -- the law is something secular, gentlemen. But there could be no justice, there could be no court of appeals, there could no -- a claim to President Eisenhower for pardon or mercy if you couldn't use the right word. You have to say, "I ask for a pardon." You cannot say, "I ask for consideration." You cannot say, "I ask for a promotion." You cannot say, "I ask for something agreeable." You have to use that term which is -- is the so-called "Open Sesame" in the law. And that's why you go to a lawyer who knows all these strange terms under which you can acquire property, under which you can go to court and appeal, under which you can claim a passport from Miss Shipley, et cetera.

The law, gentlemen is a fragment -- is a chapter in the universals ante rem. That is, in the universals that are necessary, because they are before you and I were born. There is a second -- third -- area. That is education. When I talk here -- and any teacher who talks, gentlemen, appeals to the better instincts in you -- I have to appeal to you in the right manner. I have to awaken in you certain things. And if I can't do this, gentlemen, I can't educate, I can't teach.

Now one of the great heresies of our time is that you think that science is taught scientifically, or rationally. You all think: to teach mathematics, you have to be a mathematician. Well, that's beside the point. That's -- of course, you have to be a mathematician. But not every mathematician can teach mathematics, because he cannot appeal to the best instincts in the other fellow. And I can only teach -- and some- -- sometimes I cannot teach, because I cannot find the right word to appeal to your better instincts which makes you want to know. Usually you don't want to know. You want to get by. And you want to cheat. And you want to polish the apple.

But in your better moments, gentlemen, when you are taught, you discover that beside the subject matter, mathematics, or botany, or geography, there is quite a different language in any classroom going on -- one of persuasion, which appeals to you; just as you -- I appeal in a court of law for justice, so I appeal for your love of the truth, or for your duty to -- to carry Shakespeare's beauties to the next generation. I must appeal to you that if you read Henry IV, you cannot stop, like the famous Dartmouth students in the fourth act, and then ask after 20 years, "Professor, how did they make out? We never got to the fifth act."

Now this appeal in education, gentlemen, is quite unknown to you, this

appeal in law, and they are just two parts of the appeal to God, of prayer. I have here a -- a pamphlet on this problem. And I wanted to give it to the man with the pri- -- $64 question of last time. And in this pamphlet, I have quoted from an examination paper written here in this college: "I have never really prayed, and I don't actually know what prayer is or is supposed to do."

This was an honest man. And that's widespread. So the man who asked me the question -- "How do you define God? And since He cannot be defined, then there can be no God" -- you see, was actually in the same boat as this man. This whole area of appealing language, of invoking, persuading, convincing language is neglected today. You don't admit that it exists. You say you are objective. You state facts. And the other realm is some of -- sugar coating, or something to be despised, or something like advertising or psychologizing, influencing other people. But then you go and buy Dale Carnegie, "How to Make Friends," anyway.

That is, on the one-hand side you practice all the time conjuring tricks. You try to conjure people. You try to ask me for -- to -- to improve your mark. But you may never admit that this is a serious business, and that every one act of invocation, or appeal, or persuasion is only one in a whole stream of speech which -- in which you try to find the necessary expressions of what you want, those which will compel the forces of the world to come around to your rescue. And there you make no bones. You try -- you ask a friend, "How do I address this man? I'm asking him for a loan. So shall I write to him, `Mr. President,' although he's only vice-president?" Of course, you write "Mr. President," "Dear Mr. President." You want to flatter. He's only vice-president. Never will be president. But you'd better call a vice-president "President." And you call a lieutenant colonel, as you know, you have to call him "Colonel."

So if you would clump together the world of prayer, the world of law, and the world of education, you see, that's a mighty world. And then take it together with the world of poetry, when you write a song to your sweetheart and try to persuade her to marry you. There again, woe to you if you don't find the right word, the key to open her heart. That's a -- in danger -- you are in great danger of missing the point there. There again, the -- the act- -- the -- the invocation makes all the difference.

So will you kindly enlarge this whole chapter of the situation in which the medieval scholastics found themselves? It was not only that Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventura prayed to God Almighty every morning, which made them see that words are names, and cannot be omitted by danger of life. But it was also that they were experienced citizens in the courts of the law, and that they were also doctors of patients who came to a doctor and invoked his help because they

believed that he was a doctor. I'm speaking of Salerno, of Bologna, and Paris as the great centers in which people were gathered who carried titles -- professional titles, and who then had to invoke by their title in great trust, and who could -- had to justify this trust of the common people that it was -- why good idea to go to a doctor in Mary Hitchcock Hospital? And you go to Mary Hitchcock Hospital, because these are doctors. And the only thing you really know of these 106 doctors there is that they carry this title, "Doctor." And because you are assured that they carry this title, it doesn't make any difference whether this is Mr. {Gunderson} or whether this is Mr. {Murtagh}, you go to a doctor at the Mary Hitchcock Clinic, it is certified that's a good man.

That is, you appeal, and you pray, and you request, and so you suggest that the name that you give this man will pay dividends. You are all quite na‹ve in this, quite trusting. The terrible thing is, you see, that you have no place in your so-called philosophy for these stark facts of life. What you call the st- -- facts of life usually are no facts of life. They are just things of zoology, what you call the "facts of life." But it is a fact of life that you have to be led in this complicated society by the right names in the -- on the right ways. And you better go to a doctor and not to a quack. And the only difference is that he can write behind his name "M.D." Isn't that strange?

This goes so far, gentlemen, that our modern society could not be run for one moment without the right approach to the universals -- that is, without an approach to the universals as divine, as necessary, as indispensable, and as something you can't fiddle with. Only the difficulty in modern society -- I give you now a further example -- is that the most important names have been reduced to le- -- to letters of the alphabet. If you get a steel company, and they are threatened with a strike, they can avoid the strike only if they know whether they have to appeal to the AFL or the CIO. Otherwise they run into trouble, because the AFL and the CIO don't see eye to eye.

It's now -- we today make nothing out of AFL and CIO, gentlemen. We think that's letters. You don't see that in politics today these are tremendous, explosive powers, that are universals which, if you do not use to -- how to know them at the right moment, you are lost. In your generation, with the rights of the unions recognized you quite -- don't know quite how important they are. You see, formerly an employer could just go and speak to the worker and say, "Now, John Brown. I pay you so much. And you'll work for me. I have -- this is urgent over the weekend. Won't you?"

And you -- man would say "Yes." And so John Brown could be spoken to under his own name.

He can't do this today. He's unionized. The man who wants him to work over the weekend has to fulfill certain rigamaroles which goes with the union contract. And that is: Mr. John Brown has decided that it is no longer practical to be spoken to as "John Brown." He prefers to be spoken to as a member of the CIO. That is, the employer is forced to s- -- recognize that John Brown has a different name in the telephone book for his relation to him. As a member of the union, he has to get overtime payment over the weekend -- 50 percent more, or whatever it is. And therefore the -- Mr. John Brown has ceased to allow his employer to speak to him as "John Brown." He has to speak to him under the letterhead CIO, or under the letter AFL, or if the worst happens, it's under the letterhead of -- of the mineworker, of -- you see. Then he has to -- appeal to Mr. John Lewis.

Now you underestimate the -- the -- the reverence or the respect that in any historical situation, we as members of the community have to render to these names. These names have not existed always, and they will disappear. But as long as they are here, they demand respect. And so you learn something which your little mind cannot encompass very easily, which is the whole problem of our existence on this earth, gentlemen: that we have transient, authoritative names and universals. And although they are transient, although they are temporal, they have a right and you have the duty to use them. They have a right to be used.

Man is an historical animal, an historical being, gentlemen. And the fact that something is valid only between 1870 and 1954 does not detract from its importance, being at this moment representative of the divine author- -- authority. At this moment, an M.D. is preferably chosen when you have an appendectomy than a barber. I wouldn't go to Tony's for the appendectomy; 150 years ago you would have gone to Tony's, because as you know, 150 years ago, the people went to the barber to -- for an operation. The barbers did it. Perhaps they did quite well. But today they may do just equally well, you see, but you wouldn't believe it.

And it isn't true that seeing is believing, gentlemen. That's one of the greatest idiocies. Seeing is not believing. Believing is always something quite different from seeing. But believing is entering into the historical stream of incarnation, of his- -- historical fulfillment. And at this juncture, it so happens that the doctors have the right to take out your appendix and the barbers don't. This -- may be different. Perhaps they do it later with atomic energy, and -- in 150 years. I don't know which profession will take out your appendix 150 years from -- possibly the X-ray man, you see. No operation needed. It's all X-rayed.

And so the difficulty for you is, gentlemen, to recognize that authority, and God, and all the powers we have to invoke -- although they change in time, yet

are they in authority, yet can they claim respect. Your whole generation, gentlemen, has this great difficulty. You are now all for authority. Twenty years ago, everybody was against authority. Your generation is -- is absolutely soft. And 20 years ago, it was all rebel thought. And I'm not impressed. These things come and go. You are obedient, and they were not -- tried not to be obedient. The difference wasn't so great. They said they were not obedient. You say you are obedient. But these are fashions.

But whether you are conservative or liberal, anarchical or dictatorial, you find yourself always in a world in which one-third of your utterances is addressed to powers that are greater than you, which you have not created, but which you have to move. Somebody has to give you the diploma. Somebody has to send you the check. Somebody has to help you out when you are in trouble. And then woe to you if you don't speak to this man as he can expect to be spoken to -- or whether it's a woman. Going to the woman as she can be expected to speak. You have to know this. And your whole attitude, gentlemen, to the universals, and to this strange network in which we live, like the fish in the -- in the -- in the water, to you is non-existent. You think, "Here I sit. And I call the things today this way and the other the other way; it's all arbitrary." And that's how you write your papers. And when I write one of your papers, I just see it and feel it. You have no reverence for the words you use. They're just accidental.

So the result of this repeti- -- repetition, gentlemen, of our problem of the universals is: one, that there are three fields of human utterance. One on things which cannot listen; one on powers who listen only too well and want to be called by the right name, or they won't listen; and one of affectionate conversation with equals. You remember we said God, man, and things have to be spoken to in a different way.

You have lost -- long the -- the -- the notion that God is much more universal spread over the -- all -- every moment of your life than just to be mentioned from 11 to 12 in an empty church. That's not God. God is everywhere, in the law, in love, in the arts -- wherever you have to invoke with necessity and indispensability names that come -- are derived from this relation of higher powers to our small existence. You can only do this with dignity if you see the CIO, and the AFL, and the Supreme Court of the United States within a hierarchy where the highest term is neither the -- Mr. Earl Warren nor John Lewis, but God Almighty from whom all these gentlemen derive their powers. And you are utterly lost if you think that Mr. Earl Warren is an ultimate authority. But his authority is derived from this very wonderful, rich orchestration of all the powers on whom you depend, lest they don't hear you, unless they -- they destroy you, unless they don't heed you and they say, "I don't know you. Who are you, Mister?"

I recommend to you to The Consul, the opera -- they gave in -- in New York, you see. The consul can never be seen. He's always busy, you see. So at the end, the poor people who want -- passport say, "The problem is the consulate doesn't exist," because he doesn't hear them. Today the consul is the only god you believe in, at least when you are a refugee.

The second world, gentlemen, of conversation is one of give and take. That is, the name under which you speak to a friend, to an equal, is constantly changing. It goes from "Mr. John Brown" and "Sir" finally to his first name or his nickname. And so in conversation, gentlemen, I -- I -- we said speech is mutual. And because it is mutual, it is mobile, it is flexible, it is exchangeable. Condition is that the other fellow will also then call you by your first name when you, you see, begin to u- -- call him with his first name.

And the third thing is the realm of the names given to things, and there again you are mistaken, because you think this realm is arbitrary. But it's only arbitrary for mankind united. We spoke of this conference of phy- -- physicists where you -- they determined the use of the word "superon" and "neutron" four weeks ago.

So gentlemen, with regard to things, the term is arbitrary at any one time, but only as long as men can all agree. In the conversation, it is enough that two people agree. It is nobody else's business how you call your sweetheart and how she calls you. There you are free -- because there you are among --- between -- that's -- you are not in the large world, and you are dealing with one other person.

So gentlemen, things demand agreement among all men. Conversation demands agreement with the other person. And prayer and appeal, gentlemen, they demand your harmony with all the times on which man has lived on earth. The law and prayer are older than you, and they are also l- -- younger -- they will live beyond -- beyond you, far beyond you. In -- in the words of invocation, you are taken out of your own time and space. In the terms of conversation, you are at home with your friend. And in the conversation with things, you are in the universe, regardless however of its relation to the past and the future.

So we have three relations, gentlemen, of human understanding. The powers are those that are before your birth and after your death. Woe to you if you don't fit into them, with the right name. And they have names. In conversation, you use words. Every moment a different, because you only live there at this moment. You don't take up much space in your home, and much time. It's of the moment, though you are the priest there, in your usage. In between, gentlemen, is the scientific use of words which the Bible meant when the said -- was said that Abraham named all the things. This you think is an old fairy story. It is

today very necessary for you to understand that when you use an -- the name "a carburetor" in your car, or "steering wheel," you have to use the right term there, as the whole automobile industry uses it, because otherwise if you drive up at a garage and ask instead for the carburetor for a steering wheel, you won't get the carburetor. There again under -- under a danger of defeat, you have to use the right word.

And so we live in three worlds of right speech, gentlemen. The -- technical language always is about things that cannot talk back. And that is human -- under human agreement, convention, science. The conversation is creative on the spur of the moment. You create with your alter ego, or with your friend the terms under which you will whisper to each other. That is the moment in which your language can be renewed between you two. And if you want to enter the stream of history, you are faced with powers that are beyond your control. You have limited your existence to a queer confusion of conversation and technical language. That is, you -- for your -- you it is, so to speak, enough that the next best person understands you somehow, anyway, and a little bit.

I shall try to show you, gentlemen, that this famous Augustinian word, that "in necessaries, unity," "in dubious, liberty;" "in everything, charity, in all ways -- on all ways charity," that was the principle of the higher humanity, of the institutions of higher learning. You can see -- apply the -- this sentence of St. Augustine -- it's inexhaustible -- to the three modes of the universals. In the necessaries, unity. You cannot invoke God in other ways as your ancestors and your successors had to do. You cannot invent names for God. You are forced and compelled, because that's necessary, because it goes beyond your own powers to unify, and to continue, and to bind together the ages.

The second -- "in the dubious, liberty" -- the scientists can define every moment, you see. But only if they all agree. In space, you see, for the universe. That's the dubious one, because that changes. There was no superon and no histeron 50 years ago. Now it is.

And "in everything -- in the -- in the -- on all ways charity," that's when we talk to each other. You have to be charitable. You c- -- have to converse; there has to be a free give and take. But these are three different ways, and they are present with us at every one moment, gentlemen. Here at this moment in teaching, we converse. In order to -- however, to persuade you to learn something, I have to invoke your fear of the Lord. And in order to explain what I'm talking about, I must be quite ready to use any terms that will suggest to you what I want you to see and to understand, you see.

So at this very moment, I also am in process with regard to you to converse.

With regard to the forcefulness, the compulsion of you to learn, to honor the truth, to continue a tradition, I must invoke the powers that outlast you. But in order to make you understand the things of which I am talking, I must try to find at -- at this moment, you see, the most modern, the most fashionable term which will convey to you in your environment and in the momen- -- moment at which you live what it's all about.

Let us stop here with this chapter. I have already given far too much time to it. And let us now compare the ways of the modern mind, of the last -- years from 1500 to 1900 to these -- great struggle of universals from 1100 to 1500. From 1500 to 1900, the ways of science were not the ways of the universities, but it was the academic spirit which came to the fore. And I want to contrast this now as radically as I possibly can, in order to show you that you are the heirs of two different ways of learning. One, that dealt with the necessary, with the invocation of the powers of the law, and of God, and of authority in the Middle Ages and their universities. But you also are, today -- and you think that's the only tradition you really appreciate, the heirs of the academic spirit, of the academic world.

"Universita-" -- "-ty" is a Latin term. Academics is a Greek term. And this only can -- may also suggest to you that there may be quite two different influences on your mentality working at this moment. You are in Dartmouth College partly in a medieval institution. In a college of the liberal arts, and you will see that -- the degree at commencement, all these terms which I am using here are medieval terms of university life. In fact, the Anglo-Saxon college is the best remnant of the Middle Ages. It is not -- doesn't exist on the continent of Europe. Neither the French, nor the Germans, nor the Italians have colleges.

So in this respect, in your dormitories, and in the relics of chapel, it's all just relics, there you are in the Middle Ages, still the supposition that people live together and invoke God Almighty at least once a week together. This college of course did it, usu- -- every day, originally. You know, chapel was only abolished in 18- -- in 1921.

The opposite -- the opposite influence comes from the academic spirit, which is also 50 percent of our present existence in this college. What is the academic, compared to the university? What is an academy? You don't know this. You think it's all the same. Sometimes you speak of the academic manner. And sometimes you say you are a university man. We have clubs that are called "university clubs." And you could just as well have an academic club. It all seems the same.

Gentlemen, the principle of the academy is the opposite from the principle of the university, because in the Middle Ages, the people wanted to find out what they did when they prayed, when they invoked, when they appealed. In our

modern times, we want to find out how we should call new things which we have not known before. From 1500 to 1900, man has discovered the universe, and has been interested not in the everlasting spirit of God Almighty, but in the everchanging appearances of the world. And they do change all the time. The same universe from 1500 looked every decade differently.

Think of Copernicus, who for the first time imagined that it was wiser to think of the universe as moving around the sun. That's a first great change. And you can date from the year 1543 when the book appeared on the revolutions of the astral bodies, by Copernicus -- I hope you know -- all know the man. I'm not so sure. In his -- on his deathbed he was able to publish his book. The book was dedicated to the governing pope, Paul III in Rome, and the book was bought immediately by the emperor Charles V, who read it in the Escorial in Madrid. That's a very important feature of this book, that the people -- pope and emperor alike -- were deeply interested in Copernicus and loved the book.

You have very wrong ideas about the -- the persecution of the scientists by the Church. The violent -- most violent attacks against Copernicus came, of course, from the Protestants. They were the fundamentalists of the time. The Catholics at that time were still rather indifferent. They were curious, but they had no principle. That came much later.

I have to mention this -- the dedication to the pope and the reading by the emperor to introduce you into this new world -- of the 16th century in which people began to accept the fact that the world might be different from what it appeared yesterday, that the world would have to appear to scrutinizing eyes of man different every year, every decade. That is the beginning of the scientific campaign of the last 400 years. The condition of this is that the world may look different every decade. For example, people who believe in evolution today are obsolete, because they believe still in a world that looked so in 1859. But you are obsolete.

Well, that's a common fate of a student. That's the famous cultural lag of our schools: you always have -- inherit the fallacies of the -- two generations ago.

But gentlemen, the grandeur of the academic world then is to find an institution or to find a way in which all mankind can be made willing to put on new glasses every 10 years about the world around us. You see how dangerous this would be if we would put on new glasses on God every 10 years, because that would mean that we would have absolutely no tradition, no direction in which to march. We would have no goal in life. If every 10 years your idea about the destiny of man changed, it would mean that there could be no collaboration between the generations. I could not teach you. All the poor schoolteachers in

the grammar school couldn't teach the three Rs, because the children might come in and say, "Oh, we don't do this anymore, my dear teacher. You are obsolete."

And they do this, by the way, anyway. And -- or they think at least this way and -- look at the poor parents of today, when the children come home and say, you see, "Now, I know everything about sex. What do you -- like to know?" to the father. And sometimes he doesn't know.

So gentlemen, this world view in 1500 made its inroad in the world under one condition: that there was a clear separation between God and world. The natural sciences are great and are victorious if you understand -- which is very difficult for you -- that they are limited to the changing parts of the universe. As soon as you think that, about your soul and about God Almighty, there can be a new fashion every eight years, you mistake the meaning of the academic world. The academic world is planted into the university world after 400 years of fixing all the permanent features of our religious tradition. And as soon as God becomes of nature, you get Bolshevism, Hitlerism, fascism, racism; you get every attempt to make God a part of the changing universe, every day another one.

We have this situation nearly reached today. And that's why I have to bring you back to your senses and tell you -- say, first of all this, gentlemen. The academy has been planted into a world of university thinking. And the knowledge of the changing, the dubious, the mobile, the flexible world has been rooted in a frame of reference in which one knew what could not change, what was necessary for the unity of the human race. If you do not distinguish these two aspects of your own education, gentlemen, you are without any direction. You move in circles. And you do move in circles. Most of you.

So I offer you, gentlemen, this choice. You can either think that everything changes -- then you are counted out. You are just as bad as a -- as a red-Haut -- red-skinned Iroquois, moving in circles.

I once talked to an Indian chief, and he said, "It's terrible. My people are moving in circles. And I have now led them all into a church" -- he had chosen, by the way, interestingly enough, the Lutheran church -- "because I must give them direction."

Gentlemen, you are -- most so-called educated people in this country today are moving in circles, because you have lost the power to distinguish between that which must go on, as an act of cooperation between all generations of men, and that which must change every 10 years, or every five years, as the fashions of the mind. The academic, gentlemen, sets out to discover the world. Now the world is quite something different from the world of authority, and the world of

appeal.

The world of nature, gentlemen, is reality minus speech. The sciences investigate everything and everybody minus what he says about himself. Nature is a minus. I want to formulate it in this paradoxical matter -- manner to shake you out of your complacency, to -- because you think the first reality is a deaf and dumb reality; and that the second reality is that we also can speak. It's the other way around, gentlemen. The first thing you know of your real existence, is that you are a named person to whom someone has lovingly spoken. And you -- where you can lovingly speak and appeal. The real universe, gentlemen, is a speaking universe. The second, the reduced universe, is a universe minus speech. And that's what you look at -- at -- through your microscopes, and your macroscopes, and your telescopes, your every-other-scopes.

To look means to try to understand, minus the common bond of language between you and the other fellow. If you have a good doctor, he first talks to the patient, and then later he looks at him, and then he talks again. That is, the whole machinery of modern science in medicine is only in addition to his understanding his patient, as to what they say to each other.

And I can prove this to you in a very small way. I made quite a success with this among the medical people. If you come to a consultation, you think that you are the -- the -- under treatment by modern science. And you think medicine is a science, which of course it isn't. But you think so. The auxiliary sciences of medicine are anatomy, and physiology, and chemistry, and all the rest of it. The treatment by a doctor is something quite different, because this doctor has to open you up for his treatment, and so you enter this room as a veiled person, trembling that he might find out about your shortcomings, whatever the deficiency is you feel. That is, you enter the -- the room before you have said what ails you.

Now the great thing that happens in the -- in the hour in which you consult him, is that you tell him that something ails you. And all of a sudden, as soon as you have told him, you feel relieved. It's a tremendous thing to allow somebody else to know that something ails you. He didn't know it when you entered. He -- certainly didn't know what ailed you. He may have heard -- assumed something must have ailed you, because you come to him. But the tremendous event is that the patient at the end of the consultation can say, "Now you take care of it. I've told you. I'm -- I'm helpless. I don't know."

So what does happen is that the doctor is -- becomes the head of the new body between patient and doctor who form there a community at this moment, or a corporation. And that only happens because they have speaken -- spoken to each

other in full confidence. What has happened is that the doctor had a -- has a title, a name, a power through this name which induced this patient to open up to him and to say what he knew about his ailment. If this doesn't happen, that the patient feels that the doctor now has taken over, if this implantation of the doctor into the soul of the patient hasn't happened, he cannot be cured. All the rest is minor. That's only dealing with his body. That's not a very important thing. And there the doctors make all the mistakes.

But they never make a mistake in implanting this confidence in the patient that he now has a second head above him. While he has a fever, he cannot think for himself. He would just do the right -- do the wrong thing. If he would go naked -- run around in the room because he's so hot. But the doctor says,"You have to stay in bed." And the patient believes him. And that's the beginning of wisdom, and the beginning of the healing, and it's the condition of medicine.

And this comes from the Middle Ages, gentlemen. And this doesn't come from the academic spirit, but from the university spirit, because it means that people have learned to invoke mutually the right powers that should prevail over them. One of them is identity. One of them is solidarity, that the doctor now -- from now on is responsible for what the patient does. It has nothing to do with science, in your sense of the word. It's a great science of the divine, gentlemen. It is the famous science which the medie- -- the Middle Ages discovered, the science of how the divine spirit is -- en- -- can enter two people, and unite them. Marriage was -- as you remember, was planted this way; just laws were planted this way; and the relation of doctor and patient was founded in this way.

You have forgotten all this, and you do not see that university and academi- -- academy are two aspects of the same thing. The first is that people must unite in one spirit. You must come to this college, because you believe that teachers can teach you something. What has this to do with science? Nothing. That has to do with the situation of mutual trust, that the older people love to hand over the truth to the younger, that I am not here to seduce you, but -- and not to reduce you, but to induce you to do right. It's a very funny propo- -- supposition, because I might do the opposite.

But under the auth- -- ja?

(Sir, I'm confused. In the use of -- your use of universal and academic in that sense --)

University. Not universal.

(University and -- and academy in this sense, and your use of "university" and

"academy" particularly in the teaching of a single truth, or a duality of truths is opposite --)

Wait a minute. I haven't yet given -- I wanted only to water your mouth for academy. Certainly yet I haven't explained what an academy is at all. I agree with you. But you -- just wait a minute. I only thought I should show you that it is perhaps worthwhile to know it.

You'll remember our definition of a university. A university is a place where at the same time on the same topic, two opposite opinions are listened to by the same student. That's the condition of higher learning. That's the opposite from a mere school. Now the academy is a place where all the available knowledge about something from all parts of the world is reported back, and gathered and sifted. The academy then, gentlemen, is the very opposite from a university.

The academies were founded as storehouses of knowledge of the universe. Of this I am going to give you some stunning examples next time. But at this moment, I'm most interested to wake you up to the fact that you are the heirs of two opposite ways of knowledge. The knowledge on the great powers that govern us was developed in the universities of the Middle Ages by opposite authorities. You remember Salerno, Bologna; imperial law and canon law; Arabian medicine and Latin medicine; in Ab‚lard, the -- the traditional school of the archbishop and the free-thinker, the genius, the esprit of the individual great teacher. Their clash and their harmonization: that's the problem of the university.

In the academy, we le- -- leave behind all such dialogue, all such conflict between two. In the academy, you gather news from the Arctic and the Antarctic, and from the Caribbean -- about the temperature, for example. And you have in the academy of science, as we have it in this country, corresponding members who write in any interesting feature they observe in New Guinea, or in New Zealand, or in Africa, or in the queerest and most unknown continent, in Europe. And on the basis of innumerable facts, the academic knowledge is developed.

So gentlemen, by establishment, the academy is based on the assumption that the facts about the universe are innumerable. The university is based on the assumption that the principles are dialectical. That's something quite different.

You see, if you go to a court of justice, the question is "guilty" or "not guilty." That's dialectic. But if you go and ask "How many warblers?" that's a question of collecting the facts. And there may be 137, or there may be 978. We don't know. That is, gentlemen, it's dubious. From the very beginning, the facts about the nature that doesn't speak are innumerable, and they are unprejudiced. That is,

we cannot know beforehand. We cannot predict. The world is unpredictable. And the world is infinite in variation, in variety.

So the -- the academic spirit looks for variety for diversity. And that's what you call the facts. That is, your factual knowledge is based on the assumption that all the facts differ, and that you have to get in all the facts by going there.

The Americans, as you know, don't believe -- if they are from Missouri -- before they have gone there. I once had a young friend in Harvard, and we ate together. We lived in the same house, and he was quite young. He was a freshman -- a sophomore. That's the time they enter {the house} -- and he took a course in psychoanalysis. He was so innocent that he certainly didn't know what he was doing. And but he was a very charming boy and...

[tape interruption]

...and the corresponding member of the academy is its symbol. There is no true academy without a corresponding member. And academies therefore can exist in writing, by correspondence. And they don't need discussion. That's unknown, too. And they certainly don't need students. There have been the ol- -- oldest academies of the middle -- of the modern world have been societies without teaching. They were great institutions of gathering the truth. And that you today are members of the academic world -- in a strange -- it's a strange idea, but it is true. How do you acquire any membership in the academic world, gentlemen? Not by your being enrolled in Dartmouth College. As I said, that's a part of the university situation. It's something quite else which makes you members of the academic world. You have one word which you love dearly, although you don't understand it, and you carry it before you. I always get a little shock -- and nearly ulcers -- when I hear you use it. That's the word "research."

When you go to the reference desk and ask when the Gettysburg Address was delivered, you call that "research." So of course, the word "research" today is absolutely abused. The -- the high school kids do research, instead of telling them they have to learn something.

But however this may be, the word "research" is the academic term. That is, you are in the academic tradition when you are asked to turn over a fact, and to give it a new look. Re-search. Look for the second time. Anybody who enters a laboratory is in the world of the academician, because there he tries to isolate certain phenomena and see how they operate. He takes a second look. There's a thunderstorm outside, that's mixed. He goes in the laboratory and isolates electricity and in this moment he does re-search, because he sees what this electricity does, not as a lightning, you see, in nature where it's blinding, but in such a

dosage that he can follow it through a Leyden tube. How do you call it, a Leyden tube or a Leyden bottle?

(Bottle.)

Wie?

(Bottle.)

Bottle.

(Bottle. Jar. Jar.)

Jar. Pardon me { }.

So research, gentlemen, is your way of participating in the new world of changing facts on things that do not speak, and to whom you do not speak, but about whom you think, and which you measure, and which you weigh, regardless of their size, which you vivisect regardless of their -- their personal utterances as your pet dog or your pet cat.

Nature is the world minus speech, gentlemen -- or "reality" is perhaps better -- minus speech. I can't repeat this often enough, because you see that we at this moment -- where I'm not going -- to give you the details of the academic institutions and their historical development, but want to draw your attention to the contrast between Middle Ages and modern man -- you can see that nature is only then possible as your theme of research when you do not overstep the mark and do not dabble with those parts of reality who do speak. If you put man under the microscope inasfar as he can speak to you, you overstep the mark. And this -- this mark of course is overstepped today all the time. You are made guinea pigs. And all the planning today is such an overstepping of the mark for nature. Nature is reality minus speech. It has no place there where people can speak to you and you can speak to them, because then you know better.

A friend of mine at Harvard, who teaches government there, said very nicely one day to his colleagues in the natural sciences, "You poor people. Since your -- the things which you consider cannot speak, you must be satisfied with counting them, and weighing them. We are much better off. Our people tell us what they think. Even -- they tell us even what they think about ourselves. And so we know much more about them."

You must come back from the idea that -- the naturalist knows more, and you in politics or in the court of justice know less. Of course, any judge and any

doctor, and any minister knows much more about his patient, and his Communion child, or his case than any psychologist ever can know, who looks through some telescope, or microscope, or da- -- gathers data in abstract. But this -- everything is topsy-turvy at this moment on the -- in this country. And you actually believe that these people who look through -- at you without telling you what you -- they think of you know more about you than your wife. Of course your wife knows more about you. She runs you.

In the War College, in Washington, the generals were exposed to this psychology business. If the ladies will forgive me, I'll tell you what happens at this moment in this country. There are $8 million given -- spent for psychology only on the Air Force. And so they -- they were -- the psychologists were asked, "Who sh- -- who is the best leader? We must have a selective -- scientific principle of selecting leaders."

So the psychologists for $8 million were very willing to do that. And so they built a special restroom in which the psychologists could observe all the facts which went on during this activity. And they thought that was a good introduction to the leadership selection of the future generals of the Air Force.

Well, when these facts were discussed at the War College -- staff college in Washington, one of the generals said, "Well, you know, I went to college and I had a -- was exposed to all this, but when it comes to great decisions, we forget it all."

I assure you, gentlemen, when you have to deal with responsible decisions in politics, or in the family, or in a court of justice, that what matters is that the man speaks, or is silent; and that you hear, and that you speak yourself. And that is the surest knowledge we have. And it is much surer than anything you can -- you could know otherwise. A doctor knows whether he can operate this patient because he speaks to him, and not because he looks at his appendix. That is, he can operate anyone, but the indication that this patient might better not be operated upon, he must gather from the -- those things which you can no -- not know in nature, but only in this one real conversation with your patient.

This is today to- -- totally all perverted. And I have to stress it, gentlemen, because it's the same as with the universals. Since you have given nature the rank of God, and you all have, you really believe that God doesn't speak. And you also believe that you cannot speak to Him. "Prayer is nonsense," you say. You want to define God. You can never do, because the only knowledge you have of God is that He speaks into -- in His heart to you, and that you speak to Him. And n- -- otherwise you know nothing of Him. You certainly can't define Him.

And the same is true about your friends. And the same is true about the president of the United States. You vote for him because he makes a speech. And that's the safest knowledge you can have of the man, whether he's a demagogue or a good man. And otherwise, if you know his blood corpuscles, and his blood pressure, and how old he is, and how tall he is, you cannot elect Mr. Eisenhower for these reasons. They are all the reasons of nature. And they are all the reasons that are not pertinent. It's no cause -- not one of -- all the knowledge you have about the facts of Mr. Eisenhower or Mrs. Eisenhower can she -- I understand she has a very poor stomach -- can decide whether she should become Mrs. President or not, has absolutely nothing to do with your decision. And yet you have to make the decision. And you have to base it on very { } {facts}.

Now gentlemen, in reality we are much better off than you think. You know whom to marry, and you know whom to love, and you know whom to go with for quite other reasons than for reasons of nature. Nature is the universe minus speech, and the universe minus speech is the universe that you can manipulate. Wherever you put into this nature living beings, powers that speak -- the law, the history of mankind, the religion of mankind and think that's also part of nature -- you go wrong. You -- are absolutely nothing.

In Yale, there was a -- such a -- such a naturalist trend -- they have given it up now, so I can speak about it without being unfriendly, where I once went there to the law school. You know, I have myself been a lawyer for 25 years, and they had found out that the decision of a court always depended on the digestion of the different judges. And they said, "If you know the -- who has ulcers and who hasn't, you can predict the decisions."

Well, the typical attempt, you see, to reduce a -- a verdict, or a judgment, you see, of the whole person to that part of him in which he is a corpse, in which he is dead. The ulcer part of him are his dying, mortal skin. If a judge cannot overcome his ulcers, he certainly cannot be a judge. You expect from everybody, even from your parents that they overcome their ulcers when they see you.

But we are -- have to come to this since I -- that's why I have tried, gentlemen, to -- shock you out of your complacency. You must learn that nature is a minusconcept. It is not a plus-concept. That is, nature is the decision to look around the shifting universe which can be dealt with without the risk of destroying your own existence, your own life. Nature is at every one moment of human history that which can, if worse comes to worst, be expendable. The word "expendable" is -- at the end of a naturalistic era, has become even the expression for human beings, as you know. It's coincident with concentration camps, and with gas chambers, and with the idea that man has no name, that a member of the concentration camp doesn't have to be spoken to, and that they are just corpses.

We live in a wonderful world where the natural scientist has created the impression that man can be treated, and manipulated, and be known without having any say-so, without being connected with the man who deals with him through the power of the universals, of those gods, divine powers which both invoke together, to whom both pray, under whose guidance both put themselves, which always entails that the psychologist or the sociologist or the concentration camp engineer is not beyond the man whom he puts in the burning furnace or under -- on the table of -- of -- experimentation.

Gentlemen, that's very serious. This country is just as natural-science ridden as Russia. And just as stupid about it. And if you don't stop to mix metaphors and to think that man is nature, you will be surprised what they'll do to you. As soon as you say that you are nature, somebody will come and say, "How do you look without your head?"

Man is not nature. We have produced nature. We have produced natural science. That's our freedom. That is, gentlemen, nature is that part of reality which any period of history man treats as expendable. Any experiment is based on the assumption that this, which goes on in the experiment, can be wasted.

Wars and marriage, gentlemen, are the two events in reality which cannot be experimented with. But in this country, you experiment with marriage, and we experiment with war. The First World War was just a nice experiment. Didn't work very well. Wars and marriages, gentlemen, are the limitations of the concept of nature. There are others. But na- -- the two are outstanding. Revolution is perhaps the third. Degeneracy is the fourth. The degeneration of your child, or of your sister is nothing to experiment with. You cannot be -- be on trial and error, perhaps a little prostitution, and then find out that it doesn't work. You cannot.

(When you say that we "produce nature," could you elaborate on that a little more? Just what do you mean? You say, "we have produced nature.")

Ja. We have produced a campaign into the reality in which in every one moment the scientists decide which part of the universe now should be made expendable and experimented with. Obviously, at -- in this year, 1954, we experiment with nuclear energy. And we have declared that some atoms may die -- have to die to satisfy our curiosity. In the year 1500, people didn't -- didn't sacrifice nuclear energy. They tried it with gold, as you know. The whole mod- -- modern science began with alchemy. So they treated some part of the gold reserves of mankind differently as we do. We bury it in Fort Knox. But they put it to good use, you see. They blew it up in a -- in a furnace and they hoped that they would find how to make more gold. That would be a -- the creation of a

campaign into what can be expended.

Gold was -- became from a sacred thing a natural thing when you began to experiment with it. Before, it was, you see, on the crown of the king. It was sacred. A golden crown -- that was nothing in the Middle Ages you could tamper with. That was not an object of natural science. So if you suddenly look at the gold in the crown and say, "Oh, this isn't sacred," you see. "But let's experiment with it. Let's put it in a laboratory, and to work, and { } the pan, and cook, and boil, and distill it," then you declare that "I treat this now as natural, and it cease to be sacred." When you say there are no sacred cows in -- in Boston, then you mean that all cows come under the law of the vet- -- veterin- -- you see, that now you can study the pedigree and milk production, you see, in a rational manner, and you can experiment with cows.

But if you believe -- in experiment, you see, with marriage, and you experiment with war, you get the state of affairs which we have today. The experiment will never end. Well, we are in a state of nature and can't make peace. And that's exactly what your problem is.

So I warn you, gentlemen, anything that comes out of the mouth of man is of his own creation. The word is the creative power. And when you call the reality "nature," you have decided that you want to treat it for the time being as something that doesn't talk back. That's a decision you make. By calling reality "nature," you have beforehand made this decision. That's why I'm always so -- so frustrated when you go to the natural scientist and try to tell him -- ask him about the meaning of the universe. Well, he is a scientist under the condition that he has given up knowing about the meaning of the universe. He wants only to know about nature.

Now that isn't the universe, because the universe is a speaking, singing, rhythmical, dancing cosmos in which the stars shout -- the morning stars shout with joy and praise the Lord. And you do, too. But their universe -- heavens! That's the universe without the Psalms. That's the universe without the morning star shouting with joy. If the physicist would say that morning star shouts with joy, he's sent to the Bed- -- to Coventry.

But don't they shout with joy? You know that they do. But woe to you if you don't know. You have just then lived in a dead universe. You live in a physicists' universe. Is this the whole universe? It's a -- it's a laboratory universe. It's an expendable universe. It's that universe which we have allowed the scientist, for the purpose of technical progress, to -- to treat for a while as expendable. That gold which goes out of the crown of the -- of the emperor, and can now be boiled there, you say, "All right. That's that part which is natural in the world." But is

this the gold on -- in -- on this ring? I'm married 40 years, and you think that's gold in the scientific sense? Nonsense. I have lived in a different reality than these poor physicists. I pity them. They are the slaves for some technological {progress}. Let them -- I mean, I -- it's very sweet of them that they serve us. But they are all servants, Sir. Your and mine. Nothing else. They do something specific. And you live in the real world.

And since, from the very beginning they are only allowed to experiment in the laboratories under the condition that they treat the things as dead, how can you be surprised that every scientist says, "I can't find God," or "I can't find love," "I can't find faith," "I can't find {hope}." Of course, they can't. You can only get out of something what you put in. Now if you establish a -- a reservoir in which you put in everything except faith, love, hope, speech, song, and so on, how can you get any of these -- these powers back again? They aren't there.

I'm always surprised that you turn to these poor physicists, chemists, et cetera for answers to the real questions, because they only live under the condition that they {will} not -- that they won't find them. They cannot find them. They have eliminated them a priori, before they set out to { }.

So gentlemen, this is serious. The academic mind deals with nature. The university mind deals with authority. You can't have it -- one without the other, because in the academic world, you also need authority. A good man like Einstein, or Mr. Planck, or Newton must be listened to. And the poor quack must not be listened to. So don't think that the academic world is irreligious. All academic people believe in the great names of the scientists. They also believe in a constantly new event in the history of science.

If you -- if Mr. Einstein tells you that he considers the world of nature as relative, that's not true. We all think that it is absolutely true that Einstein -- embodies the progress compared to Newton. That's not relative. That's absolutely true. That is, all the physicists together are great archangels. That is, they are {living} spirits, representative of the divine spirit. Otherwise there would be no progress in science. The academic mind, gentlemen, has taken over from the university spirit the belief in authority. But it has believed -- the belief in authority -- in those people who have convinced at any one time all men of a new phenomenon, of a new discovery.

But don't think for a minute that the academic world refutes what I say. The scientists all believe that they can progress. The universe cannot progress, gentlemen, if it is nature. Nature cannot progress. It's just chaos. The laws of nature don't allow for any new thing, for any freedom, for any discovery. The new -- nature is always the same. Can you see this? Nature is just what it is. But Ein-

stein is not nature. He has never existed before, you see. And he'll never exist again. He's unique.

Now, I'll give you the -- at the end this new definition, gentlemen. Reality where we speak is unique. And reality without speech is re- -- recurrent. That is, if you take out of reality speech, you take out this one element by which the world differs at any one moment decisively, by the new names of people. If you only say, "These are all Anglo-Saxons," you treat the poor English as nature. If you say, "That's the nation of William Blake, and Shakespeare, and Churchill," you treat them as living beings, because in every generation there is a different {man}.

And there you see what happens when you take out the names and the words. You make the poor English into Anglo-Saxons. The only thing they have in common is that they both eat beef. And don't cook. But Shakespeare, and Blake, and Winston Churchill -- that's quite a nice history. But that's a history by sacred names in authority. And that's reality, gentlemen. And that is not nature.

Thank you.