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

(Philosophy 10, May 14th, 1954.)

...meetings left. Would you close the door? And I want to take you today into the cycle of universal science which will lie beyond the natural science cycle. And the next two weeks however, we -- I wish to devote to something more perso- -- personal. I wish to take you -- to confront you with the people who made these cycles work. We'll go back and talk of the people in the theological, in the philosophical, and in the sociological cycle as persons. I have these two weeks, and I think something can be done to show you how colorful life is when you enter upon the army of thought, and enlist there, even just as supporters of interesting {parties}.

Today I would like you to listen first to a letter. If you listen to it -- it is a very s- -- crude letter, as you will see -- you'll understand why we today are in a profound crisis because treating man, and treating the gods as part of nature, has landed us in concentration camps.

So the dealing with things that do not speak to us, but which have just to be measured and weighed -- is not leading us anymore into any future. The cycle of the natural sciences, as we shall see in a minute, is closed. The best you can hope for is Mr. Einstein. And Einstein has nothing to do -- to say except that everything is relative, which we knew beforehand. But our -- your -- your problem is obviously to decide things and to say they are not relative. And in this moment, you get out of hand, and the natural scientist himself either goes into a monastery, or gets before the -- before the loyalty board. Certainly he's in trouble. And since he is in trouble, and his science is in trouble, you cannot wonder that I got the following letter:

"Dear Professor, I expect you will not remember my name."

I do. He took a course with me. It comes from Orleans, France.

"I write you now to ask you if you could tell me what you meant when you said in class, `Do not die at the Army,' and `Most Americans are dead by 25.' Respectfully yours, Kennerly Woody."

Now, it's quite a letter. I hope you will write it one day, too, but a little more friendly, introducing -- giving a little more background. You cannot answer a letter which just says, "I write you now to ask you if you could tell me what you meant when you said in class, `Do not die in the Army,' and `Most Americans are

dead by 25.'" So I do not know if I can answer the letter by a letter. But allow me to answer his questions before you.

He means to say that I hinted at the fact that man, under the modern tenets of life, is an object of science. And all objects of science are killed in the process, because what is said about them in books, or in science, or in analysis, or in statistics, or in the famous mark that everybody now gets when he is born -- as you know, Arkansas Number 0001, for the first child born in Arkansas and so on -- fingerprint -- being fingerprinted, being labeled -- once you begin to think that the label attached to a person from the outside is more true than what he expects you to think about him tomorrow, you have given up the living triangle, you remember, in which all people move. And you have buried him.

Now most of you are quite willing to say that you are to be classified, and that the day will come when psychology will know who you are -- who man is. That's the great hoax under which you live: that somebody else, at some one time, will know more about men than you know. As soon as you admit this, you are dead, because you expect to be known by somebody else better than you know yourself, without having any court of appeal by which you could force him to think differently of you.

When a man tells me, "I know you," the only answer is either to fall in love with him or to slap him in the face. There's no other solution. You have to do something about breaking down his idola- -- his idea that he knows you, because that means that you're dead. To be fully known is the moment of death.

And I told you, remember, at the beginning of this course, that we must only be known on our deathbed. Or when -- if husband and wife know each other, then that's possible under the condition that from now on they live together, and become an impenetrable secret to the rest of the world, because after having come to know each other, the form a womb of time, a body politic, a unity. And so they can go on from there and become something totally unexpected and new. I know one couple -- he is a scholar and has a very famous professorship. And she says -- said to me the other day, "Of course I write his books. He only gives the brake- -- puts on the brakes." Now, that's a good marriage. Nobody knows this. He is a professor, and she writes the books. That's some such secret, you know, as it prevails in any good household, that nobody outside really knows who does what.

I'm quite serious, gentlemen. In the middle of life we die, if in our marriage we cannot interpenetrate so -- to such an extent that we two together do something that didn't exist for A and for B. But with modern psychoanalysis, and psychology, and with conflicts in the marriage, and so on, and with the woman working

out -- outside, that's impossible, this interpenetration. She has to be herself, and he has to be himself. So sh- -- they'll remain two selves, and of course they are bored stiff after a certain time, because the self is the most uninteresting unit in the world. A man is only interesting if he can absorb and coalesce with other people, and represent them. A man who is elected to Congress and -- becomes more interesting for this reason, because he has to absorb the opinions of his constituency, and in representing them, he is bigger than he was before.

Any teacher or -- his real students is much bigger than he was before, because his students make him think. And he's suddenly inflated. He's 10 times as large as he would be otherwise. But you don't think so, gentlemen. You are natural scientists all in the -- all the -- only in the -- your waist pocket, but you are -- and you believe that everybody is himself, although the Bible, and although every good poem tells you that this is nonsense, that the self is dead, that anybody who tries to save his soul will lose it. You think that's just poeti- -- poetry or sentimentality, and you don't have to heed this at all. And you think, "If he -- I only knew," and so you go for four years to the analyst and he finally tells you that you are dirt, which you knew anyway. And there you are. And dirt belongs to the dungheap. That's where you are placed, and so most Americans are dead by 25.

Or, "Do not die in the Army," that's some other {belief here}, gentlemen. That's not quite the same. In the army, mo- -- many of you -- and of -- even in my generation too, try to put on an oilskin and to say, "If only I can last these two years." And you are not there. And you put yourself on ice. And you say, "During these two years, I'm not responsible. Oh, there's a corporal, there's a sergeant, there's a master sergeant. These damned people put me through the," you see -- "through the" -- how do you call it? -- "the ropes, and so it doesn't matter what I'm doing, if I can only last in boot camp."

And so you write off the most precious experience of your life as not your experience, but as the Army's experience with you. And it's a very sad experience and -- because you aren't there. And I know so many of you who really think the draft consists in being not there, not quite there, waiting until you are out of it again. And then you begin to live again. Isn't that true? Would you -- wouldn't you agree that the ma- -- most of you think of getting by in the army, the whole purpose of the -- this year?

If you do this, gentlemen, you get all the terrible things that have happened in the army in the last year -- in the last years. You know this book, The Naked and the Dead. That is, a man who isn't there will run down the morale of the army. He's not responsible. If there are dead to be buried, he will not bury them. If there are prisoners to be shot, he will have -- shoot them. That is, he will say,

"The war is so bad, the army is so bad that it doesn't matter very much."

He will not instill into this army his whole being, because from the very beginning he is three-quarters out of it. The most miserable soldiers are the pacifists, because they say that war is so bad, and so wicked, that it doesn't make much difference. People are shot, so why not shoot a prisoner?

Gentlemen, a man who shoots the enemy in action is a hero; and a man who allows, as in The Naked and the Dead, that a man is -- the prisoner is shot just for fun, is a swine, and can never come to life again before he has publicly repented. And that this book can be written without consequence in this country is just horrid. A coun- -- countries with a -- with a military tradition just wouldn't stand for this, that this author doesn't chastise himself, so to speak, for having stood by and not done anything.

But this country, you see, as you all know, is split. You live a civilian life, and you don't live in the army. So you are dead in the army, because the army wants to be ennobled. The army cannot live except by the Deans, or by the Wainwrights, the people who are there, and who make the war then different from what it'd be otherwise.

Just hear what some noble Japanese did to our soldiers, coming out with a Christian faith, and alleviating their task under the most trying circumstances. I know such cases. And that is by which humanity lives. Gentlemen, life is always miserable. This class is, too. I could put you to sleep. You could die in this class. I have been responsible to cry you awake. Is -- isn't there a difference between just -- teaching by rote and teaching with the idea that perhaps even a classroom could come to life?

Now it would be just as much -- bad if I and you treated this classroom as something which has just to be gotten by and gone through, as if -- as you do in the army, exactly the same nonsense. The life that you live, gentlemen, you have -- only receive once. There is not a minute of this life that you can say, "I'm not there."

The more you do this, gentlemen, the more impotent you make yourself. And that's why many people in this country are dead by 25, because from then on they leave religion, the arts, et cetera, and society to their wives. And so in part at least they die, because they say, "We have a women's club in town; that's for civilization."

So wherever you look, gentlemen, whenever you think these two things: that there is a way of not being there, and that there is a way in which others in the

end after all are in charge of -- of research and science, and so they'll know you and your ailments, you are -- have lost your own freedom, your own existence, your own reality, and your whole soul, because the soul is that irreplaceable one thing of yours which marches on after they slaughter you, after they torture you, after they analyze you, after they command you to die in an attack. You are still there. But only under the condition that you say, "This moment is irreplaceable, and I'm indispensable."

As you know, the slogan of the American boy is, "I'm just a human being," by which he politely says that he is just a louse. Because -- a human being, gentlemen, is irreplaceable. A louse is not. A louse we can eliminate. A human being you cannot. He has one irreplaceable place. He is called -- being called today by his name, and is expected to do the one thing nobody else does. For example, when a prisoner is in danger of being shot, although he has surrendered, it is this one soul's business to jump up and hit the captain over the head, or shoot the captain and say, "This prisoner is under my care."

Who has read this book, The Naked and the Dead? Well, it's so obscene that of course you have read it.

Yes, Sir?

(Sir, is soul -- is there any other basis for it, other than religion?)

Pardon me?

(This idea of a soul, is there any other basis for it other than religion?)

There's no basis for religion -- in the -- in religion for the soul. The basis for religion is in the soul, but there is no basis for the soul in religion. It's all nonsense. You know as much of the soul of -- as all organized religion put together. You don't depend on religion for your soul, Sir, you see. But religion depends on your soul. It's the other way around, isn't it?

Because we have a soul, we -- we -- we tolerate these ministers who remind us occasionally that we have one. That's -- otherwise you wouldn't op- -- tolerate these people, you see. But you know in your brighter moments that we forget certain things, you see. Religion is the machinery to bring everybody up short to his senses, that's all, because you know that you mostly are not up to your own occasion. But everything you know about your -- this, your own life, you know yourself, Sir, you know much better than anybody else.

No, Sir. Religion is -- is a garment. If you hadn't a body with a soul, you see,

you -- we couldn't put on this garment.

Now nobody, gentlemen, before 1850 would have been able to ask these -- two questions: What do you mean by saying "Do not die in the army," and "Most Americans are dead by 25"? Nobody, because people at Dartmouth at that time still thought -- knew that they had a share in the divine, the everlasting, the eternal life. You need not call this "soul," Sir, if you are nervous about soul, you see. But you knew very well that you could speak with authority, for example, to your children.

You see, modern man doesn't know that any mother and any father are gods to their children. They have been forbidden to talk to them. That's all given to the psychologist. So they do not say anything. But any mother who says to the -- her child, "Let's pray," is God, and Goddess. And so God is a daily experience for any man before our age, through the ages. With regard to your children, you are gods -- you like it or not. You can be the Devil by telling them, "I can't tell you." It's your damned duty to tell these children. And of course, you can say, "I don't know." Then you put them into Hell, because why did you live, if you don't -- aren't there to -- to trans- -- convey to them what can be known.

So today, gentlemen, you are things, because I told you a thing is reality without speech. And I told you that's nature. And I tried to make you understand that the word "nature" is already minus the whole of reality. If I treat you as nature, gentlemen, you are a person -- that's what I said about this classroom -- without a past and without a future. You are called here by the slogan, "Philosophy 10," so you haven't heard anything while you are here. You just have gone astray. You're sitting here as bodies, and you don't know from here where -- where my {voice} will carry you. And they won't carry you anywhere. Then you are nature. But you know very well that you are not nature. You came here for a good reason, to show off for your girl. And you came here also with some faint expectation that there might be something to carry away.

In this very moment, you are, as we said -- you form a womb of time. That is, something that is not visible at this moment, and something that is not visible -- and was not visible in the past is going to come true one day. And that's why you go to Dartmouth, in expectation. And that's why you go to this course, in hope. And if the hope comes true, we have -- you have formed something that is against all nature, because you have formed a wo- -- or a time -- or womb of time has formed around you, gentlemen, and you have lived through some history, or, as people today like to call it, some biography.

I've written a book which is called Autobiography of Western Man, in which I have tried to show that man has no natural history, but an autobiography, which

is something quite different, because the autobiography he's -- tells in a language which is all his own. And the natural history of man is told without -- and he is having to listen and to agree with it. If you take a so-called scientific history of America today, it is written in such a way that not one of the Pilgrim fathers, and not one of the Founding Fathers would have to agree with it. For example, if you read Charles Byrd, you would -- George Washington would say, "But that's not me. He says I'm just a landowner, and I was the richest man in town, and so I wrote this constitution. That's infamous. I never gave it a thought. I wanted to save this country from tyranny and from George III."

But the scientific historian says, "That's not my business. I don't know what you have to say. I don't listen to you. I listen to the facts."

Now such a history, you see, is a scientific history in the sense of the 19th century, and that is a natural history. But my and your history is the story which you can recognize when you are told the story by your friend and he said, "Yes. That's how it was."

So gentlemen, in history the people who have lived the history must agree. They must find themselves in agreement with the historian, or it cannot be their history. But a natural history -- what you people tell about fishes and lions -- these poor lions. They are never asked. I'm sure they would complain.

So we get, gentlemen, three stories. Three cycles. The Middle Ages dead -- dealt with the gods. And so they dealt with the pulpit, and the courts, and -- how do you call the place of which a m- -- person is operated? Wie? Yes, operation table. Any better word? No one-syllable word for the operation tex- -- table? And anybody who has been under the knife of the surgeon knows that at that moment he is helpless. And anybody who has gone to court knows he's helpless, because in a court you don't know the lay -- law's delay. You -- formerly the -- the -- the suits on -- on inheritance possibly could go on for 20, 30 years. So anybody who goes -- gives the little finger to the lawyer, you see, is suddenly under the majesty of a time, of a calendar which is quite out of his reach.

Look at the hearings of Mr. McCarthy. They would like to end them, now, but they are in the hands of the devil, you see. And that is demonic. And that is the wrong thought. That is the miscarriage of justice, because the people in this court have no longer control over the length of time they have to give to this nonsense instead of to their real business.

So gentlemen, today still the gods take care of you when you go to this divine service. And the people can put -- point with their fingers to you and say, "He's one of the superstitious people who goes to Church," because you are willing to

suffer for your confession of faith. In the courts, you are willing to suffer for your litigation, to stay in the clutches of the law as long as the lawyers say you must. And in -- on the operation table, I did not tell you that it is -- suddenly you have abdicated your own will, and you have taken upon yourself a higher will, who decides what to do with you.

Now -- and we said also, gentlemen, that this was established in a -- such a way in the Middle Ages that all lawyers, all judges, and all creatures, or father confessors became aware of their tremendous responsibility, and from being mere magicians turned into free agents who knew that at any one moment, they had to be reborn as preachers, as doctors, as lawyers. You remember the right of resistance? And you remember the rules for epidemics? And you remember the discussion on the universals? That is, any one theologian learned that at any one hour in the life of his parish, some other taboo might be declared to be just a wrong universal, a dead universal, the mere empty name. A nominalist, you see, he had to become in respect to mere things that didn't carry life. And he had to become a realist with regard to those authorities which his parishioners still had to heed.

And with the lawyer, you remember, just laws must be obeyed, unjust laws may be disobeyed, you see, or they must be disobeyed. You see how the lawyer at every one minute of history had to waken up to this question: was the law that he taught just? And so he had to bring in his own conscience.

And you can say, gentlemen, that from the Middle Ages, we have inherited the conscience of the professional man, because in this conscience, he became divine. And he could no longer hand over some -- religion, as you think, Sir, as a dead matter. That doesn't exist. If you and I at this moment do not re-create our faith, you see, there is no such thing. It's an eternal, you see, a perpetual creation -- religion -- or it is isn't. There is nobody who can tell you, if you don't tell yourself.

But we saw that the professional people in the Middle Ages, the people with responsibility for other people, became aware of their tremendous duty to turn against mere magic, as we may call it, or mere tradition, or mere paper, or mere words. And that in every one moment, they had to know that they were in a position of gods.

I told you, the Supreme Court must know this, so that they can rise beyond their ulcers -- these judges, these old men -- and not become impatient with a client who doesn't make a good impression. That was Mr. Douglas' impression when the Rosenberg case came before him, that -- whether he liked them or not, that wasn't the place. They had to get one more hearing. And I think that cour-

age shows you what it means to be a justice. He made himself perfectly -- most unpopular, and perhaps finished his -- his opportunity of being candidate for the presidency of the United States. Now a man -- this is certainly -- is his case. And that was Justice Douglas. And that comes from the Middle Ages, and that comes from the old university tradition.

So gentlemen, from the Middle Ages, we have inherited the conscience of the professional man. And you have -- the greatest fruit of the medieval university is Mr. Einstein, or Mr. Planck or all the -- you -- all these scientists.

Why is Mr. Oppenheimer now under -- under examination? Not because he is a physicist, gentlemen, but because he's a good physicist, a good man from the Middle Ages. He has a soul. He has a conscience. And that's held against him. Here is a man with a biography. He has changed. And that's held against him. But as a living being, as a professional man, he has to have this conscience. And he has to have this biography. Otherwise he would just be a technician, a plumber. And that's what you think a scientist should be, a plumber. But he isn't. You always mistake, as you know, applied science and real science. But real science is exciting. And it takes the whole man into the dark, and always demands from him a break with the past and a new act of freedom. You remember, we have said all these things before.

So gentlemen, the new world of 1500 to 1900 then consists of two things: an inheritance from the Middle Ages are the scientists as educated people, formed in universities and in liberal arts colleges, and being real humans, because they are free and have a soul, Sir. And the other thing is that they have looked into the universe of things, of dead matter -- matter and have referred and reported all the facts on this in the academic world to the files and stacks of our libraries, and our laboratories, and of our statistical bureaus.

Now gentlemen, from now on, to whatever you date the length of time that man is given on this planet, obviously this question of Mr. Woody exists. "Most Americans are dead by 25," or "Do not die in the army." That is, the objects of the scientific analysis, you and I, the customers of the psychoanalyst, the client of the lawyer, the objects of statistics, we have the right not to be just dead, and to com- -- make -- come to peace, to terms with our torturers, and to get out of the concentration camp or out of {marriage}, or hospital as free men, and not treating us from now on as just cases of the man who has treated us, or judged us, or analyzed us. He cannot know more than you do. That's the whole slogan today. That's your problem, that you still think he hasn't the faintest idea of who I am. And whatever he says, it's quite different from what I know about myself.

I have brought it down to a very simple formula, gentlemen, but I want now

to be more specific. These words -- you still are {great} lovers of nature. And so let's begin from where we are. You live in the 19th century. Most Americans do. If you -- would live in the 20th century, we wouldn't have the Iron C- -- Korean question, because only geo- -- geometry could divide Korea into two halves. That's natural science. Korea is a place on the map. You have a line there, the 38th degree of -- you see, of latitude, and you put a united people into two boxes, and that's called politics. Gentlemen, that's natural science. You have done this to Germany. You have done this to Korea. Now it is happening in -- probably in Indochina. It is the victory of the natural scientific outlook on -- on politics, you see, that from the outside you can divide what King Solomon avoided when the baby was brought to him, you remember, and both mothers claimed the baby. He said, "Divide it by the sword." And then the woman who loved the -- her own baby said, "Give it to the wrong mother, but let it live."

And the King Solomon said, "Well, then you are the mother, because you didn't allow the child to be treated as a thing."

Now this we have to learn, gentlemen. We have treated Korea and Germany as things. And we are in the midst of -- you have an imagination which is as dead as a dodo, because you think that you can compromise living units and -- by division, by dividing it up, by taking a vote, and such nonsense.

(Sir, do you think that this division of, say, Germany and Korea, the same sort of thing is limited to the 20th century?)

Pardon me?

(Do you think that this -- the division of countries like Germany and Korea are limited to the 20th century?)

Well, it is certainly limited to people who go to school and learn wrong things about the universe. And the person who didn't go to school couldn't do such a thing. I mean, it is the literacy of our -- of our -- of you, you see, you people who go to too many schools and far too long. So what's the result of your wrong education? Wherever that happens. It can happen probably in other countries, too. But it's only -- a mind that has lived by books and mathematics can do such nonsense. A -- a selectman of a town could never do that, who had not -- never gone to school, except 200 days for seven years in a Vermont -- school in 1870.

No, Sir. { }, you see. Lincoln couldn't have done it. But Wilson might. He was president of a university. That's a very bad preparation.

Gentlemen, let's put the whole thing in a very simple manner. You will agree

that all men -- natural scientists deal with things either at rest or in motion. Now the miraculous thing about nature is then that they not deal with what these people -- these things, these analyzed people say themselves, because that's not trusted, but what can be stated without my or your saying so about us, you see; that's scientific. That's objective.

So one thing however is necessary. Things in space move. And if you come to analyze the natural sciences, you could formulate the law of science in a very strange or simple manner -- both, which is usually not told you. Natural science has the hope to reduce all things to numbers, to curves, except movement. Movement has to be experienced. As you know, the physicists have not been able to reduce waves to electrons, or electrons to waves. They still debate what's earlier. And that's very significant, gentlemen. You and I, with our heartbeat and our breathing, we know what movement is. And movement cannot be proven. You cannot prove movement. You know this story of the -- of the hedgehog -- hedgehog and his wife, when they ran the race, you see. And the lady hedgehog took her place at the goal, and arrived earlier than the hare. You remember the story? You know this fable?

(The tortoise and the hare.)

What?

(The turtle and the hare.)

Oh, you call it the turtle. All right. Motion, you see, this is based on the assumption that the -- that the -- who is the opponent? The hare, or who is it?

(The hare.)

Doesn't know what movement is. He has to run, you see, and so he is all over, because he hasn't the presence of mind to hold against the two turtles what movement is. Movement cannot be proven in natural science. Perhaps you take this down. It's very important. The natural scientist who tells you that he can prove everything by figures and mathematics is wrong. There's one experience, one a priori as the philosophers call this, one thing you have to know before you understand anything in nature: what movement is, because you must describe the world of nature by gravity, for example. What it means to fall, you see, down -- that you cannot prove to anybody who doesn't know what movement is. He just has to know it.

Now this may come as a startling fact to you, but it is very important that we -- we -- I now try to show to you that the people who deal with the gods, the

people who deal with things, and now we who deal with humanity have experiences in common which they cannot scientifically prove. But these three { } of the three cycles of knowledge are of a different content.

The physicist, gentlemen, who talks to the layman in a popular lecture about his findings has one appeal to his customer, that also the laymen knows what movement is. He could not prove movement to the man to whom he gives a popular lecture. His ultimate appeal then is to a vital experience of his audience. The same is true when you come to laboratory for the first time, and are taken into the confidence of your professor that he can rely on your already knowing what movement is. Movement we know as laity -- will you take this down? -- as laymen, not as experts. So there is in all science something that is before science, which we call a priori. Before you can become a physicist, you must be a normal human being. This today is not true, because there are many scientists today who have tried hard to forget that they are also normal human beings. And they succeed. And then they -- they say that very soon the brain will be substituted by machinery. That's the ultimate in devilish -- deviltry, as you know. That comes from people who have forgotten that they have still common sense, before they become scientists. And you probably believe it, too, that this -- this childish Mr. Wiener has a point in his new science. He's just a fool, because he doesn't know that he has to know something before he becomes a scientist. And I know the man, you see. His father sent him to Dar- -- Harvard when he was 14 years old, and so he has never become a normal human being, and he really thinks that he knows everything he knows as a scientist. He's a very poor soul. And you have to have pity with this child prodigy. His father is at fault. I knew the father; I know the son, and it's a great tragedy. But the terrible thing is in this country is that you listen to such people who have been deprived of their normal upbringing.

The second premise, gentlemen, the premise of the theologians, is a different premise. It was brought out by the founder of the medieval science -- by Anselm of Canterbury, and I postponed telling you this, because perhaps only now can you know how important it was that the priest, that the professional man also have something in common with the laity. The scientist must admit that he first must have his five senses and a sense of gravity outside of his expert knowledge. That he is a hu- -- you see, that he is a normal layman before he's a scientist. The same is true of Mr. -- the Archbishop of Canterbury, and of the great philosopher Ab‚lard in the Middle Ages, and of Thomas Aquinas, and Bonaventura, and of Luther and Melanchthon. They also have something, what we may call a universal layhood. Can you say "layhood"? No lay --

(Laity.)

"Laity" is not quite -- wie?

(Laity.)

Well, yes. You have heard so much about the universal priesthood which Luther preached. May I tell you that much more important at this moment is for you to understand that all scientists are ramifications of a universal laity, of a universal character of laymanship in all of us. Now what is the laymanship, which is the presupposition of all medieval thought? Well, I don't have to formulate it, fortunately. Anselm of Canterbury has formulated it himself. He said, "I wish to prove by logical reasoning all things about God, all truth about God except the incarnation, except this strange story of Jesus." He said, "That cannot be proven by argument. That's just history. That's there."

So the medieval university, and I have -- so to speak -- embezzled this great truth to you so long in order to confront you with the same story about the natural sciences. The great theologians of the Middle Ages knew very well that unless the layman in all of us has some connection with the story of Bethlehem and the crucifixion in Jerusalem, the best cannot be proved: that there is a God, or that there is a first mover, you know, as Aristotle that -- that's not very interesting; in fact, it is very little. But if you illuminate the Aristotelian theology, or the Platonic theology, or the Old Testament theology in the light of the life of Christ and the death of Christ, and the life of the early martyrs who went to the Cross or were burned at stake, or killed by lions -- when you first know the miracles, then you understand also the rational reasons for belief in God.

Now, it's the opposite from what you believe. You believe -- you live in such a strange Babylonian captivity of your mind, gentlemen, that you want to be in nature without being in the university. You want to be in an academy and you want to have your natural science, but you don't want to have the divine science. That is, you want to have science without the miracle of the scientist. But gentlemen, the medieval -- Anselm of Canterbury said, "The miracle of being a man, of being free, we must learn from the saints, and then we can understand once we are partner- -- in partnership with this wonderful, free, and miraculous life of these people on earth, what they meant by the merciful, and just, and creative, and redeeming, and revealing God." Before, it would be just a superstition, and just words.

So everything can be proven, gentlemen, except the contagious disease of your love of Christ. Love cannot be proven. It cannot. If you haven't experienced this, you go in vain to a university, perfectly in vain. Nobody can teach you anything about God in the true proportion. But a man like Einstein or Oppenheimer, they have this love of the divine, creative spirit, and therefore they

understand what Aristotle said -- meant as a minimum about the prime mover. Otherwise, if you say, "God is the prime mover," you haven't said anything that's of any relevance to your and my life. But if you know that the flame that's burning in your heart is the same flame that created the universe and said, "Let there be light," then you suddenly say, "Well, I have a very noble pedigree. I am the son of God."

But only if you have this love of the incarnation, of the real story of your older brothers, and your more miraculous ancestors. If you have no such respect at least for the Founding Fathers or for Abraham Lincoln, who are all in this great pedigree, then you do not know what you're talking about when you begin at a bull session to argue the existence of God. And that's why your bull sessions are so empty, because you never dare to say, "But I love Abraham Lincoln. And I'm identical with him. And that's the minimum which I know of the divine spirit. And then let's argue about the outside occasions at which this -- the same divine spirit becomes known."

So we have a second premise, gentlemen. The premise in theology, that nobody can be a good judge who doesn't believe that even a -- in chains, you can adjudicate injustice what is your client's or your -- your plaintiff's right. The great medieval statement, gentlemen, on the freedom of the professional man is found in a book on confession of the year 1090. Now if I say 1090, that's the Battle of Hastings or -- by and large -- 1066 And All That. And you certainly think this is very barbaric.

But of course, these people were much more delightful people than you are, because they believed in God. And they believed in their own miraculous freedom. And you know what this father confessor said? "If a man comes before you with his sin, the only way in which you will be able to cope with it is that you say to yourself, I could have done this, too. I could have done this, too."

That is the thing -- the incarnation, gentlemen, which can never be proven by argument. Nobody can force any man, when he hears something, to say "I could have done this, too," you see. By logic, by reason, you cannot force any man to take this very distasteful step to say, "I could have done this, too." And that's what Anselm meant when he said, "Everything can be proven, except the incarnation," because the incarnation is the spirit that gets hold of a soul, and he says, "I have solidarity with all the sinners." That's what we mean when we say that Jesus came into the world to redeem the sinners. Nothing else. That He thought He might have done it too. {Very different.}

You always look at -- so far away, gentlemen. The things of life are terribly simple, very modest, and very { }. And it is enough that you say -- if a man

comes weeping or repenting to you -- to yourself, "I might have done him -- it, too," that you suddenly know that you are in God's place in this very moment, because you have said this, you are also able to make him say, "I would like to be like you," because after all you haven't done it. You only say, "I might have done it."

So at this very moment, as soon as you say, "I might have done it," he also takes heart and said, "Well, I have a part in this man to whom I am speaking at this moment, and he can help me get out of the water, because he's on the la- -- the mainland at this moment. The next time it may be the other way, but at this moment at least, you see, he's on drier ground than I."

Now the third point, gentlemen. We now move into a new era, because man has to be told that he's not a thing. He has to be told that he's not a thing. So there are two things -- which are in this social science -- of importance. And what is there in any social science which would be different from natural science and from the medieval -- scholastic cycle? Do you know what that is?

Gentlemen, what have we not been able to do after two world wars? We have not been able to do what? To conclude --?

(Peace.)

Peace. Peace must be s- -- told, said, written. It must be spoken. By nature, man is not at peace. Peace is an experience, however, which you must have made before you can understand any movement in society, because if you are indifferent to the experience of peace, you will make for war, like this division of 38 -- at the 38th degree of latitude for Korea. People who have no idea what it m- -- means to have a nation at peace can do such a thing. Take a knife and just cut in between and upset the peace for the next four -- vier -- nine years.

Gentlemen, I would suggest that we have now three things that cannot be proven by arguing: incarnation, because it means that you feel the absolute solidarity with the whole human race, including Jesus, and including the last sinner; and your utter inability to understand anything of the creator unless all men are created by Him. All.

The second thing is that you cannot understand anything in nature unless you know what movement is. How you -- all yourself are inclined to fall down by gravity, or to climb up by enthusiasm. Movement cannot be proven.

And now the third tenet, which our poor, modern natural sociologists do not know yet, and why they lead the world astray -- the Marxians, with their class

war; the {Paritos} with their debunking and their cynicism -- is that the condition under which you make sense in society, is that you know what peace is, as against war, or strife, or jealousy, which is the greatest warfare in humanity, as you know, between women and men. This country is pest-ridden by jealousy. All the girls here in this country think they can be jealous against any influence on their men. And that's why you have so much divorce. If there is a spark in this man left, he must upset the apple cart, because the woman does not include into his being that what he says to other people. It's -- so he wants -- she wants to have him as sheer nature. And she burns up with jealousy.

I have the most -- a dozen of cases in my life who were -- nearly destroyed our own household and our own life, because our best friends were just torn away from us by these little women who thought, because I was their teacher of their friend, they had to turn against us. They wanted to have the husband all to themselves, as a -- as -- like a piece of flesh, like a commodity, like a thing who had no -- didn't bathe and didn't hang in these tremendous networks of human speech that goes through the centuries. They weren't proud that through me this man was connected with history, or with Europe, or with Christianity. Oh no. That wasn't dangerous. They couldn't look into this. And so they took a knife -- the knife of jealousy, and said, "I have -- I hasn't -- do I -- don't I own it for better or worse?" And so they owned it for worse.

Gentlemen, this is all the result when you think of your husband and yourself as selves, as individuals, as nature, as "just earth." That's what you think. So you must think you can have him. You cannot. Nobody can have any other person, because he cannot even have himself. As soon as you try to help yourself, you don't have anything except ulcers, or nerves, or -- or psychoses, or something. This you can have. You can always have something -- this is below humanity, when you try to have it. Then you are obsessed.

And this whole country is obsessed by jealousy. The Europeans are obsessed by hatred. Most countries have their obsessions. The Russians are obviously obsessed by fear, because they have -- been invaded so often. And on it goes. And these obsessions, gentlemen, ignore the experience of peace, because if you know what peace is, you know that peace can only come to the free, where every part is moving under its own steam into a harmony, when you are not eating up your husband or your wife, by incorporating him, like the cannibals, from sheer love. That isn't love. That's simian. The apes, they would like to -- obviously to eat their children or their wives. We cannot.

Peace is, gentlemen, a wonderful recognition of the creature-like character of that whom -- him whom we love, or her whom we love. That is, that long before we love, she already has received a mission, a way of life in her own rhythm, and

in her own -- in her -- with her own {ghost}. And you have to discover -- peace is the discovery of our specific character, which is quite unexpected to you. And this discovery, gentlemen, has to be completed by telling each other.

All natural things exist without their being told. A machine is a machine. But gentlemen, you only love when you finally tell the person that you love them. Love is rounded out in the moment that you say so. And peace depends on this potency of a situation to become open. The affairs of mankind have to be voiced. And once the life becomes vocal, it can attain peace.

So the relation, gentlemen, of life and peace is that life without an organ, or voc- -- vocality of being voiced, of eloquence, of becoming articulate is not life at its highest. The highest life, gentlemen, is the articulate life. And the articulation is the process in the life itself. Here I stand as a pure creature, and yet, by the tremendous challenge of the ages, I have become a -- a mouthpiece of the spirit without which you cannot make peace with your ancestors, and with the history of the {human mind} in the past. I have to tell you. You think I don't have to tell you. You say, "History is bunk, can be dismissed, forgotten." It cannot.

As long as you do not know that long before there was an academic world of laboratories and plumbers, that there has been the medieval university, gentlemen, you have no way as an alumnus of Dartmouth College, as a member of the board of education, as a father in your family, as a teacher in a school, as a judge in a court, as a businessman in the Chamber of Commerce to know that natural science isn't the thing for human beings, for example. And to say Korea cannot be treated by geometry, by longitudes and latitudes, and man cannot be treated by statistics. And man must have the right to change.

And at this moment, gentlemen, if Mr. Oppenheimer is -- stands condemned -- I do not know what's going to happen; is there -- has it -- been in the papers already? -- your right for biography is abolished, because every one of you will say, "Well, in 20 years from now, they may hold it against me." And at this very moment, you will stop living, and this will be true, what this man said, why are most Americans dead by 25? Because they are afraid that in business the boss will say, "What did you 20 years ago, {Mister}?"

(Is it possible to learn to make peace without war?)

I think we learn by analogy. That is, we learn in little doses. You know, man lives by vaccination. That is, if we all had to go through all the diseases totally, we'd all be dead. But we are all immunized in little fractions. If you beat up your brother, you know quite a bit about war. Now if you had to shoot him, and he had to shoot you -- obviously like Cane and Abel, you know, in the story -- there

wouldn't be much to learn, because you would both be the -- victims of the experience of war.

Now, I think that's the only answer in human history that is really stringent, you see: that we learn in fractions, that if you look into the chalice of a flower, and see the morning dew on it, you know all about beauty, you know all about painting, you know all about art, you know all about miracles there is to learn. There is nothing more complex, and more rewarding, and more rich than the chalice of one flower in the morning dew. It's enough. If you can learn at all, you learn everything there, you see. The rest is so much gravy.

But this you have to, some such specific thing. So you have to beat up your brother, I suppose, you see. And an orphan asylum in which the chil- -- the boys are not allowed to beat each other up would be a poor education, you see, because then they would have to wait until they have pistols, you see, and then they would shoot each other.

Is this a satisfactory answer?

(Well, I believe you said one time or another that soldiers in the last war would be the -- were our -- our hope in peace in the future, 15 years hence, or -- after the war).

I'm inclined to think -- if only this damn pacifism in this country would not sterilize these experiences. You see, the pacifist is ashamed of having fought against his conviction. So he has been dead in the army, and he will not utilize this tremendous experience. That's my great fear. In 1960, you are quite right, we may see a great, you see, surge of real understanding of life in this country, because then, 15 years, a half-generation will have passed from the time in which the soldiers went to war -- or came home. It usually takes that long.

But you have to shake yourself free from this blight of -- by your living on principles, and on abstract ideals, that a -- certain events in your life can be excised, and not ha- -- don't have to be digested. That's my great fear, you see, that you say, "This wasn't me. I was just in a uniform."

Now, gentlemen, we have now the back- -- premise of the social sciences: that which is an attempt to prove by reasonable conclusions all the processes in society, except the experience of peace. The experience of peace has to be made. Hitler never had the experience of peace, so he could never make peace. And the only thing he could do was war and murder. If you read Hitler's story, that is just what he was completely missing: any experience of peace. He never had it.

Now peace is a very complicated experience, you may say. But there is one minimum in the peace experience: that an event is only fully ripe and complete when it is articulate. So in the word "pax," which comes from the -- has to do with pacts, you always have formulation, and you know that the Babylonian captivity in which you live, of positive science, pokes fun at formulations; they say, "That's formulas"; and it pokes fun at words, and it pokes fun at speech.

And this whole school today which you have, as the apes of humanity, the symbolic logicians, and the semanticists and all these people -- they try to tell you that you can strip man of his -- this electric field in which we are when we speak and are spoken to. And they want to reduce you to people who analyze this network without admitting that while analyzing it, they still speak. If Mr. -- Symbolic Logician had his way, he would say, "I'm not speaking while I'm speaking about speaking." That's his formula. You can take it down, gentlemen. It's quite a useful formula. This -- the modern logician tries to say that he is speaking about speaking without speaking, himself. That is all nonsense, gentlemen.

Put it now in another way. In the incarnation, gentlemen, of -- in which you have lost any confidence, somebody tells you what to do. You have a conscience. That is, you hear what the psychoanalyst calls the "super-ego," but it is better to call it just the person who has the power to say "I." For example, medicine tells the doctor, "I tell you now to operate," and he has to obey, because that is at this moment, as we said, the state of affairs. And he has to do it or he forfeits his privilege of being, you see, a member of the medical profession. He has to operate once the indications are according to the modern status of science such-andsuch.

And therefore, gentlemen, all the medieval sciences deal with the great egos, the voices who have the right to say "I." All the natural sciences speak of things, of "it." You can always catch a natural scientist when he speaks of God as "the divine," that's it. Any scientist will say, "Oh yes, there's something divine, some thing divine." But he'll balk when you say, "There is somebody who speaks -- says to you, `But I tell you.'" Then he says, "That's not proven, because in my frame of reference, I'm only dealing with its; I'm only dealing with neuters."

So gentlemen, the natural sciences have to do with all neutralized things, with neuters, with "its." For example, I just wrote an essay, "What Is Man?" You find this in many books today. Of course, anybody who asks, "What is man?" can never get a satisfactory answer, because if he is "what," then he is an "it." So he is a thing. So it's all prejudiced. If once you ask, "What is man?" the answer must always be, "He is a thing of nature," because the word "what" predicates the answer "that." And "that" is the third person neuter. So the -- once you ask a wrong question, gentlemen, you will always end such a poor analyzed "it" in a

gas ch- -- gas chamber, or in an oven, or in a prison, or in so- -- in a -- in a...

[tape interruption]

...seers cannot be proven; and poets cannot be proven. You are mad. If you were normal, you would sit quiet, and we would give you so many vitamins and calories, and we would take care of you, and you would get a job, and you would be what man is meant to be: a man well-organized, as you are told, welladjusted. And so this poor, adjusted person, you see, says, "Well, I thought I might be a poet, a seer, a child of God, but they tell me that's all nonsense. Because they say, `What is man?' and the answer is all the time, `He is it. He is something without speech.' And God can't tell him anything that's decided beforehand, and I can't tell mankind anything, because they don't allow me this, you see. They say, `Be quiet. Behave. I'll give you a refrigerator, and I'll give you an electric railroad, and why aren't you happy?'"

So the pursuit of happiness for others, gentlemen, is a wonderful thing, because it makes this man into thing -- a thing.

Now the third person -- then the second -- the -- last situation, however, when you come to this person who can make peace is that he experiences the following fact: that the order in which we live is that we first must be called by somebody "you." Somebody must say to us, "Johnny, go to school." Then we hear what we should say in the name of order and law, for example, when you are riotous, when the oldest gets up and said, "Be quiet, I tell you this is not a class, because { } authority," the senior in the class. And he has the divine right of kings, or of magistrates, of authority. And the third thing is that then you and he together can debate the "its," and you can have a class on some topic.

So gentlemen, the real experience of mankind is discovered only at the end of the human story, it seems. You and I must know what "you" and "I" is before we know what "it" is. This is the sequence, gentlemen, of experience in any real life. Therefore, then you can never ask, "What is man?" because man is he who has been spoken to as "you," and who has spoken to others with authority as "I," or in the name of "I," "I" in the name here of truth or in the name of philosophy. And now we can debate ourselves inasfar as we are dead matter. And I can say, "I have five toes; you have five toes. So with regard to our five toes, nothing can be done -- except to wait till we are dead." But that isn't we -- the five toes or the five fingers. That's just a part of us that is "it."

Will you take this down, without understanding it now, gentlemen? I can't help you. We are -- we have to compress this, but you'll understand later. The error of the natural sciences is that they think that you can experience the char-

acter of an "it" without having first experienced peace, and before having experienced solidarity, or God. Or you can formulate it another way. Things are not accessible to people who are not at peace with themselves, and with the other -- with the rest of mankind. The realm of nature is only accessible to scientists. These are people who are without fear, without greed, without jealousy, who know what the truth is, who are perfectly free to go against their own prejudices, who are at peace with themselves, and who follow the voice of their conscience and of the divine spirit.

That is, the condition of all science is the belief that peace and incarnation are events that have already prepared the scientist to do his share. Anybody who speaks of steam, or electricity, or of wood presupposes, gentlemen, that he has been met as a second person by somebody who has loved him and taken him up, and that he himself is able to love others. For the sake of the truth, he's going to tell them the truth. And for the sake of love, he's going to help them. And for the sake of hope, he's going to go beyond what they and he at this moment know or do. Unless he is in such a position, he knows nothing about the steam, or electricity, or granite, or uranium, or anything.

It is this strange oversight of yours, gentlemen, that you think science -- of nature is here first. And the rest can follow. But you put the cart before the horse. The wide world outside -- of the stars, and the moon, and the fog, and the air, of the elements -- is the third layer into which we can only delve after we have lived together as brothers, under guidance, and knowing our direction, where we should go.

So gentlemen, it is only to be had any clarity about the things we can know, after we have formed a peaceful group, and after this peaceful group has been filled with orientation and direction. Formerly that was called "revelation." If you move in vicious circles, you can study everything. And it won't help you. You must know where you are going. And that you cannot know by looking at the thing, because you must select the things according to the direction in which you want to go off.

So gentlemen, from the first cycle of the scientific work of the ma- -- unified mankind, from the doctors' degrees of the Middle Ages, and from the liberal arts colleges and universities of the Middle Ages, we have received direction. From the social body, which we now turn to in despair -- because it's vanishing fast from our families, and our communities, and our nations -- we have received peace. And from our natural cycle, from our laboratories, and our workshops, and our factories, we have received mastership over the dead things, over dead matter. That's very beautiful, this order.

But once you turn this order and say, "First I must know the things, and then I'll know myself, and finally I'll know God," you break down this order. And that's why we are in with this cobalt bomb, or hydrogen bomb, or atom bomb at this moment, because if you remain in this one cycle, sep- -- in separation from the two other cycles, you have neither direction nor have you peace. The natural scientist in himself is -- must create eternal war. Eternal war, eternal movement, "perpetual revolution," the Russians called it. It's the consequence of his attitude. If you ask, "What is man?" he is the corpse. That must be the answer, because only because we are at the end a corpse do we have the quality of being "it." Inasfar as we are not corpses, gentlemen, you have to ask, "Who is man?" "Who is who?" And once you ask, "Who is who?" it's a different question. And you get a different answer, because "who" is indispensable, irreplaceable, has a name, speaks to you, demands some -- of you to act differently from your follies and your stupidities. He is an authority. That's why you ask, "Who is man?" Every man is in authority with the -- regard to all other men. You don't know who will s- -- -ell the true word, the best word. Anybody. You can get up and tell me -- show -- tell me off here. Just try.

Thi- -- gentlemen, we have made quite a discovery. There is an order in this cycle of the sciences. And because the natural sciences have overstepped their mark and have tried even us, the laity, as "its," we now have to point out that we, as well as all the scientists, have experiences of which the natural sciences do not know. We have direction and we have peace.

The first cycle gen- -- to put it in -- form of a slogan, gentlemen, deals with eternity. The second cycle deals with space. And the third cycle deals with time, with temporal orders of society. Again, you cannot quite look through this, but you understand what must happen to a man -- humanity in which Mr. Einstein was allowed to state that time was the fourth dimension of space. In that moment, we had two world wars, because that's the end of the world. That meant that you -- the time of the scientist was packed away into the refrigerator of things.

Now do you think that this time between Mr. Newton and Mr. Einstein is the fourth dimension of space? That Mr. Einstein, who quotes Mr. Newton and says, "He is a very respectable ancestor of mine," is not contained in a living body of time, in a womb of time, pregnant with new things, with created things? You see, if time is a fourth dimension of space, then nothing new can ever happen. But if time is the element by which we experience peace, then it is the womb out of which something new is created, is born. As you hope from your children. And a woman who is pregnant with child does not think -- or if she does so, she is crazy -- that it is just a -- a combination of genes in her womb, between male and female that will produce this child. It's something much greater takes place.

Life is created there. And that depends on time, and hour, and constellation; has very little to do with Mr. Mendel, because you very well know that the soul of your child depends on the love you have for each other and not on the genes, and the blue eyes, or the green -- the green feet you have. I nearly had said "the green key."

It is scandalous, it's ridiculous, but that's what you believe, gentlemen. The -- the era of the natural science comes to an end, because human time, which is creative of something that has never existed before, has been made into a particle of space. In space, nothing new can ever happen. What's inside space, that's there. And the rest is addition.

But gentlemen, I have never existed before, I assure you this. And as far as you have existed before, you should not exist now. Change. And you can change under the impact of my summon, because the living world is created. And people have changed through the ages, because somebody has told them to change. That's not chemistry. And that's not physics. And that's not nature, because nature is reality without speech. But I can integrate a feeble mind and -- boy here in college; and I have done this. Just because -- by calling upon his name, he suddenly got himself together and became a different person.

The word, gentlemen, connects you with parts of the universe of whose existence you had no idea before. And in the -- very moment that you -- to realize that because you are of Polish descent, you have now the great honor of renewing the spirit of peace which ensouled the Polish nation in the 16th century, when it was the great nation of pacification in Europe, this man can suddenly have a vision in Buffalo.

That is, con- -- speech connects the most unheard parts of the universe with other parts of the universe which physically have nothing in common. I can leap over thousands of years by the word, and you suddenly can get strength -- and what has been your weakness, that you were of Polish ancestry, now suddenly becomes your strength. That's why God is powerful in the weak, because the word suddenly makes people draw on resources that physically in nature are not available, because they are so far away in time and space. Don't you know that? Everybody knows it, but nobody wants to know it. The word is creative, because it defies the neighborhood in space.

So gentlemen, the society is that order of mankind in which we can make peace by drawing on all the resources that are not in space, that are not here tangible, that are not on the scales, and that are not on -- in -- in a storehouse. Inasfar as we must eat, we must go to a storehouse and get the wheat. And inasfar as we must drive a car, we must have gasoline, gentlemen. But with regard to

your own future, you cannot go buy the gasoline, and you cannot go buy the wheat. They don't tell you anything. For what purpose you should eat, and for what -- in what direction you should drive your car -- that's not in the gasoline, and that's not in the wheat.

Let me give you one story to illuminate in what danger you are at this moment. Friend of mine in Wisconsin used to drive over Sunday. And he had a foreman, and they had these cars in the '20s of this century, and it was quite new. Ford cars. And they always competed in distance they made over Sunday. One went 600 miles, and the other went 700 miles, you see. And then they asked each other where they had been, and they didn't know. They had just gone -- one, 600 miles and the other had gone 700 miles.

And that's by and large modern man at this moment, because he believes that he lives by things. And he doesn't believe that he lives by the word. If you live by the word, you would have to go a certain place. But this foreman used to tell my friend, when he asked him in despair -- he was a European, this friend -- "But where did you go?"

He said, "Well, we took gas at such-and-such a place," you see. We took gas at such-and-such a place.

So even the place name was subordinated to the filling station, you see, to the place where you got gas for your machine. It had no meaning. It had no meaning.

Nature is reality stripped of names. When you say that Paris is a filling station for your car while you're touring France, you see, you are treating France as nature. When, however, you take gas in order to go to Paris, then you are a reasonable human being, because you know where you are going.

And this is today always very delicate, the balance. Most of you can be tempted all the time to treat Paris as a filling station. In this very moment, you are in nature, and you have lost direction.

So the social sciences, gentlemen, come to rescue the layman from his treatment as an object, and the one thing you have to fight is that people should treat you objectively. They dishonor you if they do that. That's -- you don't believe that. You want to be treated objectively, and that's -- today the dividing line between the people who will come -- get into the future and the people who will not make the future. And wherever this is denied, that it isn't the highest to be treated objectively -- wherever this is denied -- take this as my last word to you, gentlemen -- you move in the Babylonian captivity of the universe of science.

Anybody who believes that the academic cycle is self-sufficient, and doesn't hinge -- doesn't -- isn't suspended within the two other, destroys peace and destroys authority and direction, because authority is direction. And in destroying -- our direction and peace, he -- man -- lowers man below the animals.