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

[Opening remarks missing]

... statement last time, which I would like you to reconsider, and to put it so in shape that you can, like anything mathematic -- equation, compare the facts with which we have to deal, whether they come up to expectation, whether these simple laws show their validity. I -- you will remember that I tried to show you last time that what you call "ordinary" and what you call "extraordinary," from William James' point of view, and from my point of view should be labeled differently, that the ordinary was that which was unconsciously done, without recognition, and without risk. You here do the ordinary when you take a ticket and come up to Dartmouth. Obviously Eleazar Wheelock and his first class came here under great danger of life. It seemed absolute folly to go into the wilderness here. And even the barrel of rum could not quite reconcile people to the danger of a pleurisy. And there -- we call this "extraordinary" that they came here, you would agree.

Still this is a concession to our blindness, as everyday people. We forget that we owe this order -- our own order, the ordinary, that we sit here and have this regu- -- this regular course with high deans looking after your -- after your runny noses, that this kind of motherly care which the modern Dartmouth student receives is a result of people who did not care whether they had a cold. Probably they had no handkerchiefs, even for their cold. And certainly no {Dick's} House. And so there was no motherly care, but there was hardship. Can we call this extraordinary? I don't think that -- be called ordin- -- extraordinary because they preceded us. Order -- as we un- -- experience this unconsciously we call "ordinary." Now I don't think that the word "extraordinary" -- I -- therefore I put "falsely called extraordinary," that the man who climbs a mountain first or who founds a college, he's not extraordinary, because there is no order yet. It's just without law. So he is organizing, or ordering, or as I like to call it, founding. And we call therefore the fathers of this country the Founding Fathers, which means that they had nothing ordinary to -- before themselves. Therefore they needed consciousness, the highest amount of consciousness. You can here, so to speak, do it in your sleep.

The first class of Dartmouth men could not. They had to go all out, as we say. And this all out involves, gentlemen, the totality of your faculties of the whole man. And therefore I -- I propose to you that between the ordinary and the extraordinary, the prevailing distinction should be the whole man's effort, total effort, and the partial effort. You are only partially present. The rest of you is asleep. And a man who does something under his own responsibility and

nobody has approved of it, and he has to prove it to the whole world that this is a thing to be done, he has to do it whole-heartedly. And you can do it faintheartedly. And you do it. And most -- the greatest impression anybody gets from an American youth at this moment is your faint-heartedness, your timidity, your mental timidity. You don't wish to be anything but a conformist. And a conformist is a man who is faint-hearted.

And therefore, gentlemen, whole-hearted action involves that all your faculties -- mind, and heart, and genitals, passion, work, handicraft, skill, cleverness, everything -- are wide awake. Partial action means that you imitate other people and therefore don't have to be conscious. So I'll actually prepare for -- for {both}. It's very important, terribly important, gentlemen. You cannot understand history if you cannot distinguish between the whole-hearted life and the faint-hearted life. Even the word "partial" isn't a very exceedingly clear expression. Do you -- have you to propose another contrast to "whole-hearted," I would be very glad to receive it. Can anybody make a proposal -- how we should call the ordinary, routine life that you go, I mean, and come as everybody does? Just to have a -- some clear contrast to "whole-hearted." What would be -- I mean, "faint-hearted" -- I don't even wish to reproach it. I do many things not -- faint-hearted, and you, too, but just -- as we say, ordinarily, you see; that is, without thinking it's established, the { } -- ja?

("Passive.")

Wie?

("Passive.")

It's probably a very good word in fact, but since the modern activist is the most passive man, because he only {does trite} things, he wouldn't recognize himself under the label, you see. Can you see this? That the people -- what we -- you call "passive" means that you skate along on the highways and byways of civilization, but the man thinks he goes 90 hours a -- miles an hour, so he thinks he's terribly active, and we say he's just skidding. You see, that wouldn't -- wouldn't -- would not open his eyes to the fact that he's very ordinary. Can you see this? "Partial" is perhaps the -- I would even say, "divided." Most people are divided in their energies. They don't have all their faculties concentrated.

(What about "natural"?)

Well, the praisers of -- and appraisers of nature think, of course, never that natural is --is -- has this attitude of lukewarmness. You see, they -- they would not --

(How about "prosaic"?)

Ja, but that's a compliment to a banker, you see. He feels that's the only way you should be. You should be prosaic. Poetry is for fools. I mean, I agree. But they -- he doesn't see why he should ever be anything but prosaic.

I know a very rich banker. He married his daughter to a DuPont. You think that's an occasion to celebrate. And he was a rich man. And he went to his neighbors and borrowed the flowers for the wedding. He really was a prosaic man, you see, because he couldn't make a whole-hearted effort to celebrate the wedding of his daughter, even to a DuPont. He only calculated that it was cheaper to have other people's flowers wither on the stem. So he's prosaic, all right. But if I tell him he's prosaic, he says, "That's how I want to be." However if I tell him that he makes only use of part of his faculties, he wi- -- cannot deny that it would be better to make, you see -- or there must be occasions where the whole man is provoked. Obviously if the young man, the son-in-law, of this banker would marry the daughter half-heartedly, as the stepfather-in-law, there would be no children. There would be no children. Potency and power, gentlemen, come from whole-heartedness. Impotence comes from dividedness, you see. Girls are frigid and women are impotent when they are divided in their loyalties and in their interest. Very simple. See? Now the banker says prosaic { } -- if you have children, you can't be prosaic. Just won't work.

So I need something that -- that -- ja?

("Arcadian.")

Wie?

("Arcadian." "Indifferent.")

Well, it is quite a serious proposition, gentlemen. We have -- the oldest is ordinary-extraordinary. As long as William James or myself talk in these terms, we cannot sell the truth, because we make this concession to the ordinary way of life as though it was the primary, and the extraordinary is just a kind of additional folly, enthusiasm, you see, ranting. It's unnecessary. Obviously the Founding Fathers, or the people who came in the wilderness and founded this college are our support. They did something whole-heartedly, therefore we can do it half-heartedly. Therefore we have to find an expression by which the ordinary points toward the whole all-out effort as its condition. Do you see this? Therefore the word "extraordinary" and "ordinary" are built up in the wrong sequence -- as -- look the same -- give you another example. Who -- we have here some Catholics, I'm sure. Now you know, in this country the -- and in

Europe too, for the last hundred years, the children of the darkness have called the Church an international -- institution. If it is an international institution, it is not older than the nations. Then the nations are there first and the "international" is a kind of sugar-coating of the frontiers between the nations. Obviously the Church was nothing of the kind, ever. It's a universal, an ecumenic church. It's the Catholic Church, and it is there at the very first moment in the person of his -- its -- her founder. She is one and all for all mankind. She is total. She is wholehearted. If it isn't, there is no Church. If Jesus was not as much an American as He was an Asiatic, or as He was a Japanese and a Chinese, He has never been, because He has just missed His whole mission. If you can say that He was a Jew, and in -- in -- as the Jews now try to tell you, these modern Jews who try to sell you Jesus as a Jew, then He died in vain. The Cross is perfectly superfluous. The wall, the partition between the different nations then was never torn down. Now the modern enemies of the faith say very cleverly "international," the Church is an international, and therefore a very dangerous, institution. That has been the attack on Christianity right along. First against the Catholics, then by the racists against the Protestants just as well. You can also attack Protestantism as erecting a standard which isn't wholly German. And as you know, Mr. Hitler said, "Christianity has to go or at least I have to be Christ," as he used to say. He did. And this is very simple, gentlemen. The word "international" is a very clever way for abolishing all ecumenic, all humanitarian unity among the human race, because then "international" is second, and "national" is first. Can you see this? There are any number of such words.

Gentlemen, children, and fairy tales, and poetry are called by these logicians "pre-logical." Then it means that they are immature, and they are to be superseded by logic. And so what is creative and what is the necessary foundation for all later logic is declared to be just a little preamble, you see, just a -- an eggshell to be sloughed off. A very indecent, archaic, youth movement of the human mind and it should be as quickly as possible replaced by "logic." I've just written, pardon me, an article on the -- these three words, "pre-logic," and "international," and "extraordinary." That is a very clever way of turning everything topsy-turvy. If you say "pre-logical" for poetry, and for ritual and for liturgy, you come into this category of cybernetics, and you hasten to order a machine to replace you, because then the logic, you see, is the highest, and the necessary; and the prelogic is the causeway to the logic. But it's unnecessary, and it is primitive, and it should go as fast as possible. International: no Church, no Christianity, no common destiny of mankind, the nations are there, and then we patch in some nice international institutions like this international education business of Mr. {Holland}, or whatever goes on in New York for internationalism. Internationalism will never cure nationalism, gentlemen. Don't believe that. But the Americans think so, by the way. It's a very strange -- superstition, which you have, that "international" is good enough -- it will never replace nations, you see. By every

word -- time, you use the word "international," you reaffirm your belief that the nation is there first, you see, and the international is second.

Now Jesus died on the Cross, and Adam was created to show you that first God created man, and then we split into nations. And obviously, if we -- you don't believe this, there's no hope for mankind, you see. If nations are first and international is an afterthought, of course, that may be an error. That may be an -- that is not then in the -- at the core of the human problem. At the core of the human problem however is that we are one, already, from the first day of creation. And then, of course, you can see from the Anglo-Saxons and the Americans, we branch off; but we are branches of one tree. If you say "international," you deny this.

The Church is not international, gentlemen, and the founding of a college is nothing extraordinary, and the marriage is normal. And all the days in which the wife has to wash the dishes -- of course, I should have said the husband has to wash the dishes in the kitchen -- they are the exceptions from the marriage state, because they are not ecstatic. As you say, they are prosaic. And they are subnormal. They are submarginal. And every day in which the husband has to do the dishwashing is a danger to the love affair between the two people, obviously. If the woman overdoes it, and asks too many chores from the husband, he'll run away.

(Are you an American?)

No. Not at all. I hope to be -- become one. All my life. What do you mean?

(I mean, you thought as well as a citizen shall.)

I have tried to -- to immigrate into this country very strongly. That is why I have -- forewent many things I -- at least American horses, I understand, they are raising American horses.)

(Sir, you --)

I mean, why do you ask?

(Well, you speak of we Americans as though you weren't part of us.)

Well, I'm now 20 -- how old are you?

(20.)

I am here in this country now 22 years. Perhaps we are both not Americans.

(Sir, you refer to this whole-hearted man. I don't quite understand this. Do you mean the whole-hearted man in just one aspect, just one thing he does to go above the ordinary? How many are --)

No, your neighbor over there. I don't know if you are -- sit there -- sitting as last time. He -- I tried to convince him that one action, once in a lifetime, you see, that he could marry at 28 and hadn't wasted his -- his powers of love in a dissipated life, would show -- be more important that he could still concentrate on one decision as whom to marry, and as really to marry at 28, compared to all the ordering of ice creams daily -- every day of his life. That's the problem, you see?

(Now, you say that there are a lot of these ordinary men -- not a -- a lot of these whole-hearted men who make these whole-hearted actions, or there are very few in relation with {just the mass of} -- ?)

Everybody -- everybody is -- only he's talked into this situation that he's told that his everyday imitative actions are more important, constitute him more as man than the few acts which really count in his life. I hold that the few acts which count in your life constitute who you are. That they make you or break you. And that is not very interesting to look at your ordinary occupations, if I do not see how you got a job, you see, and how do you carry it out over 10 years, as a whole.

(How { } tell a very great man -- )

Well, the small man, too. I think every -- normal human being is to be found in his extraordinary moments. Can you see this? We are all extraordinary people. We are all, after all, vital people. I don't believe that this whole drabness, which you have thrown -- this -- this -- this wet blanket, which you are throwing over your own eyes when you judge mankind today psychologically, or historically, or legally, you see, is what you really think of yourself. You judge yourself, you see, by your confidence that you will weather a storm, you see, and the everyday thing, you -- thing -- you take in your stride. Here you are four years in college. And you want to go to commencement. Now this commencement overshadows all the -- the acts of the previous four years. Therefore in these four years, you flunk a course. All right. As long as it doesn't endanger your graduating, it is just some sideline, you see, some side issue. It isn't -- hasn't the same status as the one act which con- -- is condensed, you see, which condenses four years of life into its final outcome. You are born into a graduate, you see, and you are an alumnus one day. This birth is more important than all the mishaps that befall you on the way to this goal. Therefore if I look at your ordinary workday, you see, in col-

lege, I do not really know why you are here. You are not here because of this one class here, you see. But you are here for this concentrated result of the birth of an alumnus.

And as you say, that you are grammar school student, and high school student, and finally a graduate of a college, that's how you would sum up if you have to write up your curriculum, your experience anyway. You do it. But when you come to an analysis of what man is, then you are -- always say he has to eat, and he has to breathe, and you describe always the lower echelons of his being as though this was enough. I assure you it isn't. It doesn't -- wouldn't explain any one of your real decisions in life, of your friends, of your loyalties, of your ties with the rest of mankind, if I would judge you just by these lower things which are like the hammer in your hand, an instrument of implementing the others.

I once attended a lecture, gentlemen, on the reasons for history. And they said, "It's all in the glands." And as you know, America has been beset for the last 20 years by this fantastic idea that it's all in the glands. Well, of course, it's in the glands, gentlemen. I hope I have very normal glands, quite strong. And I hope you have. But does this make up our real life? What do we do with these glands? Obviously we do not just create 365 illegitimate children with the help of these glands. When we build a nation, we build up an industry, this -- the glands therefore can serve any number of sublime processes. The question is just -- which. So people in this country really believe, as I said, I'm -- told you, I listened to a lecture where this asinine speaker really said he explained anything by thinking, "It's all in the glands. We understand world history by the glands."

Gentlemen, just come to think -- on this for a moment. Man has had these glands for the last 6- or 7,000 years. And the history of mankind is very varied. At some time, we build railroads; and at others, we build -- we build balloons. And on it goes. And the glands are always the same.

Therefore, the real question is, you see, why these variations? Why every year something different, with the same energy, with the same fluid? Is -- would be the same if you would say the electricity which shines in the capitol building explains the history of Congress, because they have night sessions, and then the electric bulb -- that's exactly like the glands -- enables these people to work. But we are interested -- one year this bill is passed; and another year, the budget is passed; and the next year there is the declaration of war. Now that's the history of Congress, is it not? And not the identity of -- of illumination of the Capitol Hill.

But you are such children, gentlemen, that when somebody comes to you and

sells you this wisdom, "It's all in the glands," that you bow to this man and pay $100,000 and say, "This is a great scientific discovery." It is just nonsense. Nothing else. Absolute nonsense, such explanations. They explain absolutely nothing, but they do away with your respect for what's really happening.

You know, in -- in Union Theological Seminary, a man who is dead by now, he died in his { }, more or less took his own life. No wonder, he was an analytical -- victim of analysis. And he taught on St. Augustine. And so he taught that St. Augustine had a mother complex. And because his mother was a very pious Christian, all his life he was haunted by the mother complex. A friend of mine, whom I have told you the story, said, "Now what of it? If he had a mother complex, we are interested in the great deeds which he did on the basis of the mother complex. You may have a mother complex and amount to nothing." you see. So two people have a mother complex, but it's absolutely uninteresting that both have a mother complex, because one is a great fellow out of -- out of his mother complex, and the other isn't. I don't think even -- he had one. But he said -- my friend said, "Let's assume Mr. Aurelius Augustinus, bishop of Hippo, had a mother complex. What of it? It's -- that's just the same as saying he has glands." It is nothing of any importance, if it is -- if you have a hard- -- a handicap, you are deaf, well, you have to fight it. You have to overcome it. If you have the mother complex, if you are a great soul, you'll overcome the mother complex. You'll put it to good use. You will harness even your deficiency, like Helen Keller, who is a great person because she said, "Well, I'm deaf." Does it explain Helen Keller, gentlemen? You look at 10 deaf people, and there's one Helen Keller, and the nine others don't amount to anything, because they say, "I'm deaf."

The most famous Jew of the last 30 years is a man, Franz Rosenzweig, who was a great friend of mine. He was so sick with -- amylo sclerosis, with the -- a shrinking of all his muscles, that it was incurable. And in 1920, he fell very sick. And the -- the books say that no one man with such sickness has ever lasted for longer than two years, because these people give up, and go to bed, and say, "I'm doomed." He said, "Oh, I knew that I had to die all my life. There's no distinction now because I'm sick." And he decided on the day in which he was told that he had this sickness to begin to translate the Bible. So the most famous translation of the Bible by Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig was made -- done by a man who had no life expectation of more than two years at best. And of course, he had to die, but he lived nine more years. Nine more years, instead of two. And as I said, wrote his most important -- not vielleicht the most important, but the books for which he -- for which he is famous now and known in these nine years. So that's the difference between one man whom you remember and the nine others who die in the first two years, because at the first moment that they are told that they glands, or that they have cirrhosis, or that they have a mother complex, they give up and say, "I'm doomed, because the tension between my

parents and myself is just so great that I cannot pass my examinations." You know these -- these analytical cases. They are not very interesting.

Build on your deficiencies, gentlemen. I have done this all my ti- -- all my life. Everybody has deficiencies. They are your greatest assets. Turn them into -- these liabilities into something positive, and you suddenly become whole-hearted people. A whole-hearted man, gentlemen, takes everything he has as an asset. All his liabilities, like Helen Keller, or my friend, Franz Rosenzweig. And the heart- -- faint-hearted man says, "Oh, somebody else tells me I have glands, so it's no use. The glands just dictate to me." So what's this man? He's split. He lets his glands {eradically} con- -- confound him. And there they go -- the poor man, with his glands, goes two ways.

Any such description, gentlemen, of a man is typically partial. The only description of a man is -- that would not destroy you and me, is if somebody told me I am unique and I'm irreplaceable, and I'm needed. You all want to hear that the world needs you. I assure you that it does need you. But most people tell you, "No. You are just Number 620 of your class." Gentlemen, if I hear this, I go to sleep. I become partial. Any description of a man, gentlemen, that he is a type, that he is melancholic, or sanguinic, or choleric, that he's six feet tall, that he weighs 145 pounds according to the average -- anything that tells you that you have a typical quality discourages you. It means, it should tell you, "Don't do anything. People of their type are just this way." The only thing that helps you is to say, "This man has never existed before. There may have been Smiths in the world, but Wesley U. Smith just has never lived before."

This is the only whole-heartedness, gentlemen. A man can become wholehearted if the rest of the world confides in his whole-heartedness. Now what is a whole heart, gentlemen? The heart is, first of all, full of surprises. It is immeasurably -- it has the power to give infinite devotion, infinite, immeasurable effort. All other parts of our body you can measure. You can measure how many -- much weight you can lift with one hand. You can never measure what a human heart can do, because it is delegated into you from the whole tree of life. All life has its mission, its em- -- embassy, its legation in your building and your person as your heart. Your heart is given you as a participant of the tree of life. It's inside you, yes, but it doesn't come from you. It's there before you are. And therefore gentlemen, anything infinite, immeasurable, irreplaceable, indispensable -- all the words beginning with "i-n," are matters of the heart. Everything finite, definite, determined, pre-determined, explicable, replaceable, typical, are located in your members, in your limbs, in other -- fragments of your body. They are fragmentary. And here, my dear man, what's your name? What's your name?

({Leder}.)

Wie? {Leder}. Instead of "prosaic," I offer you "fragmentary." Fragmentary. Ja? It's fragmentary. I think it's better than "partial." Most our -- of our days of life are fragmentary. They offer a picture of the man that isn't the whole man. He is {there a fragment,} wouldn't you agree? Can you see the point? Do you? While you are here, chewing your -- what is it?

(Gum.)

Wie?

(Gum.)

Your gum. You are only a fragmentation.

Now I think this long detour is not wasted if you keep in mind, gentlemen, that fragmentary man is our normal appearance to the world. In the world of men, in society, we -- from politeness, and tolerance, and timidity, and convenience, and conformism -- we appear to each other fragmentary. You just make -- make sure that I'm right. You meet anybody on the street, you will admit that you always meet only a fragment of this man. His real worries he won't tell you. I mean, if he was just told he has cancer and you meet him on the street and say, "How are you?" and he says, "I'm fine," that's very fragmentary, you know. He's so polite that he will answer this trite question,"How are you?" with the equally trite lie, "I'm fine." Isn't that true? Have you ever thought -- proposed to think what -- how funny that is? It's just a beginning, you see, of wisdom, to begin with a statement that is objectively absolutely a lie. It's wrong, and yet it is only in an introduction. Ten minutes later he may tell you that he has cancer, you see. He can't tell you in the first place. Can you see this? We begin with each other on the basis of fragments of our existence.

Gentlemen, I think it will help you greatly if you say what we call ordinary people are fragmentary people. And I mean it in both senses, that the man inside of him has covered up many of his passions, and doesn't look -- into the abyss of his being, into his real powers, but he has covered it up for the time being, and he is just ordinary. You know in America, if you want to reconcile the rest of mankind to your own existence, you have to say, "I'm just an ordinary man."

Lincoln said, you see, "God made so many ordinary men," as you know, common men. But Lincoln, as you well know, expected every common man to have the power to become an uncommon man. That's his -- that is his democracy, the -- the reliance of the extraordinary power of the common man. Don't think that Lincoln wanted the common man to be just ordinary. But he expected in the common man to find the hero. This is his democracy. He said, "No lords,

and no kings, and no chieftains, you see, and no rich people will save the earth, but the hero that's in every human being." Isn't that simply true? How could a wartime president expect to run the country with common people who would always only do the ordinary thing? Every day, during his presidency, people had to do the extraordinary thing. And he expected them -- do you think any battle can be won by ordinary men? Only by ordinary men who, out of their fragments, rise to the occasion, as we say, and become whole-hearted.

As the old -- the Vermonters sitting together getting the news of Fort Sumter. And there were five boys in our -- may I say "hometown"? Will you forgive me? I think it's a great story. And they -- they debated. And four of them debated of course on the argument, should we go and fight? And the fifth said, "Well, I think I'll just go down to the railroad station." He went to the next recruiting office, you see. And that was his answer to the news of Fort Sumter. And in this very moment, you can see anybody who goes with his whole body and mind to report to the recruiting officer, he is whole-hearted, whereas the others had only the -- their reason arguing out the point, you see. And they didn't take their buttocks along.

So most people, I mean, as you know, it's always very wonderful, the division of mankind. Twenty people debate a question, and one does something about it. And you will admit that all the people who debate Christianity, are -- have nothing to do with Christianity. But the one General Booth who did a very silly thing and founded the Salvation Army has done more to save the world than all the theologians in all the theological schools of America, because he went and did it.

So "fragmentary" -- I think that's the result of this -- I didn't have this expression so clearly in my -- myself before. And I think it's a good expression. It's much better than "partial," because you must see that the whole organization of human society tends to fragmentarize our appearance, {others}, and our selfconsciousness. It makes us polite. And the very curse of politeness, gentlemen, is that it fragmentarizes, because it turns only the smooth surface out, and makes us concentrate { } and you begin to judge people according to the fact whether they have been -- polite to you, amiable, nice.

Gentlemen, if you would take stock of your daily experiences of human beings, you won't do it. Formerly, a hundred years ago, people were very exact and precise in -- in keeping themselves to account and trying to find out whom they had met, and what it meant. They kept a diary, as you know. And the diary was not just trite, and it wasn't just gossip. But it was an attempt to realize what had happened to them, and if you would then try to turn the scales, and to say, "This man was polite to me, therefore I do not know him. This man was frank

and brutal to me, therefore I know him," you would have learned a great lesson. But unfortunately you do the opposite. When and as long as a man is smiling at you and polite, you say, "How nice." And that's a wrong judgment. That's a wrong judgment. A man who honors you with his truth may be brutal. May have to be frank. He may have to break down this cement wall of politeness. Politeness is not good for truth. And it is much better to be able to stand the frank -- brutal frankness of veracity. And therefore, as you know, a father doesn't owe his children politeness, but he does owe them the truth. And you do, too, to your real friends. Instead, you are chummy with everybody. So you have many roommates, gentlemen, but you have no friend. The friend is only the person who is truthful.

One of you wrote a paper, a strange paper last term, in the finals, in which he said that he -- he had mastered every argument on the existence of God, and against the existence of God -- he was a philosophy major -- and of course, they all go to Hell. And he had been able to say to himself, "Argument about the existence of God. That's done. I know everything, every point." And then he had a roommate. And funny enough, in this country you can have a roommate and not talk to him seriously for a whole year, or even two years. And he said all of a sudden there was an evening in which they -- he asked this other fellow pointblank, "Do you believe in God?"

And the other said, "If you ask me, I have to admit, yes, I do."

"Oh," he was of course excited, and said, "Now comes the argument of the other fellow and I'll crush it. I'll break it. I'm ready."

And the other fellow said, "Oh, don't argue. I have no reasons. I just do. I just do."

So he moved from the argument -- from the views of this little bit of a mind, to the existential position of the whole man, we call whole-heartedly -- -ness, by the way, in modern slang -- modern jargon, "existential." Yes. It's just a belated discovery by students and academic people of something the world has known since the beginning of Adam and Eve. Really, existentialism doesn't deserve any special notion.

So this -- I think this story is a great story, gentlemen. It took these men two years in college -- I asked him how long they had lived together, one year-and-ahalf -- before such an occasion arose. And then the story was over, because this poor boy -- the major in philosophy -- had only met people on the basis of argument, and not on the basis of respect. Not on the basis of insight into the real foreign-ness, and strangeness of two human souls, and that he had to re-

spect quite a different value, and quite a different rootedness. This other man lived in reality who said, "I believe, and I don't know why." And he believed -- lived in this empty space of argument, gentlemen. It's a very passing thing. Today you have one argument, and tomorrow you have another.

So frankness, brutal frankness, gentlemen, should be your measure -- yardstick for human relations. But it isn't. You say that politeness is. But that's only true for the Fuller Brush salesman. Because he has to be polite, otherwise he's ejected out of the house. But in your other relations, gentlemen, what do you care for all the people who have been polite to you? The one man who -- who cut up your cataract around your eyes, and who told you the truth. He's just in- -- he cannot be replaced by anybody else. There's usually only one man in a long -- in many years who ever tells you what all the rest of the world says about you. One man is good enough to tell you. You hate him for that. Very strange, because you prefer to live as a fragment, and to live among fragments. And you think the other people don't know what -- who you are. They know very well, but they don't tell you. So you never become whole, because, you see, why do we have to do this -- this awkward term, "repentance of sins," gentlemen? Why has this been introduced into -- into our standards of life? "Repentance," "conversion," all these terms mean very little to you. You are all ready to go to Heaven, anyway, under all conditions.

Gentlemen, "repentance" means the power to include into your existence your deficiencies, your shortcomings, and to know that the rest of the world says, "Oh, he has just this deficiency." And to give up the idea that everybody else has to be polite and gloss over this deficiency and say, "It doesn't exist." It does exist. Ever- -- in everybody, we all have these deficiencies. The conversion consists in your turning towards you and instead of impassionately striving to your eccentric virtue where you say, "But I, at least, get an A in gymnastics." That's usually how people think of themselves. They think of their one high point in life. And the rest they try to forget. The convert to himself, the convert to his reality is -- says quite indifferently, "Yes, this is my handicap," you see. "And there I'm strong." And as you know, every one of us has some points where he comes honest with himself and doesn't blush and doesn't get excited, because he has learned to bear with himself as we have to bear with others. So in all these respects, where you admit a negation in your own makeup, you are whole-hearted. You don't look away from this. That's just the beginning, so to speak, of this whole story of becoming whole-hearted.

Take -- take any reform in the community which looks desperate: city government, bribery, Tammany Hall, anything. You get a -- if you list all your handicaps, you belong of course to one minority. You may be Jewish or you may be a Presbyterian, and the country that -- the town is dominated by the Irish

majority. So you say, "I have not a chance to -- ever to reform this town, because I am in the minority." If you say so, you can't reform the town. You have to say, "I have this handicap, sure; and I will win just the same, despite -- of this handicap." Anybody in politics has many such handicaps, but the winner is usually the man who is an outsider. My rule in life has been: the outsider wins the race. The outsider for whom nobody is going -- betting. Or of -- nobody will put up a cent. If you go -- if you are the whole-hearted person, gentlemen, in human history, it is always the outsider who wins the race. The man the others did not expect to win.

But they must be a man who isn't frightened by his handicaps and admits them, you see. He should be blind. He shouldn't run like a -- like a star-gazing reformer, and say, "I am the white hero, in white-shining dress," you see. The -- but he should say, "I'm really not the right man, but since nobody else does it, the least-fitted man must do it."

Gentlemen, the heroes of history are the people who say, "I certainly -- I'm not the man to do it, but I have to do it, because nobody else does it." That's by and large the -- Lincoln's grandeur. He wasn't the best man in the eyes of his contemporaries, but he was, you see, the lesser evil, or the -- the available man. And he said, "Well, the -- election -- has fallen on me, so I'll do my best," and he did better than anybody else. He's not in this sense the pre-destined hero. You wouldn't pick the savior of the union in the forms of -- of Lincoln. He's -- really was a very ungainly, awkward guy. And his doctor would have said, "Don't run for the presidency. It's not good for your digestion." You know, he had a very poor digestion.

So gentlemen, the hero of history is usually the man who is handicapped, and of whom nobody thinks as a man, and who only does it because there's nobody else to do it, because such a man is perfectly aware of his deficiencies, and can only overcome them by total whole-heartedness. A -- man with deficiencies must be more whole-hearted than even the ordinary noble soul, you see, who is willing to go all out. That's a very strange thing -- story. But if you think about it, I think you would find proof in your own experience why that is so. That the man who is, so to speak, coming forward because there is nobody else to do it, is usually the most sober. And his devotion to the cause is more total. He has to mobilize everything, including his deficiencies, whereas the -- the man -- take the ordinary young man, athletic. He is drafted, he goes out on the battlefield. He'll do well as a second lieutenant. He'll lead his platoon. He'll be a very -- very fine man, as -- for the soldiery. But he'll -- will be in the {coddles} of the army and he'll do what he's ordered to do. He'll do perhaps beyond the call of duty, something to get him the Congressional medal, but you would still feel that there -- that is not the only man who would have done this { }.

But in the case of Lincoln or Bill Mitchell, you will find that, for example, the aggressiveness of Mitchell was a real handicap in dealing with these other generals. He antagonized them, and so on. Finally he threw this antagonism into the breach, and said, "I must get this court-martial" -- he really wanted the courtmartial -- "to get publicity," you see. "I must bank on this, my antagonism to get the public to listen to this whole story. Otherwise it will all run behind closed doors. Whenever man does something which nobody else does, his deficiencies help.

In the course of Christianity, that's a very strange story. Paul was helped by his Jewish fanaticism before his -- persecutions of Christians. And I could {even} show you this about the Lord, and about the Prophets, and about King David, that the whole Bible is shot through with this deep insight that the extraordinary, or the founding, or the whole-heartedness of a man is more provoked when he has to admit his shortcoming, and included into the bill of fare. Then you see, he's all there. The whole public knows also what is -- can be told against him. And the clear issue is not -- you do it for the sake of this man, and his beauty, and his virtue. You do it although he is not virtuous, because he is right in what he tries to do. All revolutions have been made by monsters. Lenin was a monster, but he was right.

And so, it's a -- I have even formulated it in my book, Out of Revolution, in this strange sense that these violent outbreaks proved their necessity and their meaning when the bearers of the flag -- of the standard -- of the banner of the revolution don't deserve it their own makeup, you see, to be listened to, because it's -- that's purely the cause, purely the necessity that somebody must do it which forces the rest of mankind to follow, or to abide by their achievement. Robespierre was such a man, a human monster, but he's -- made France a republic.

That's perhaps too profound for you. At this moment, I am struggling before opening the full machinery of history -- for your eyes. I want to give you one straight yardstick. And I don't know if I have convinced you, gentlemen. As long as you look into human history from the viewpoint of the ordinary, fragmentarized citizen, the great conversions, and the great donations, and the great creations of mankind will look to you as mysteries. And you'll say, "This is to me ununderstandable." As soon as I can get you away from your fragmentary and polite existence as members of the Rotary Club, there's hope that we can agree. Because then you can look into your own life in reverse order. The very few moments in which you are whole-hearted are the moments which count. And the rest is expectation and -- how do you call the -- momentum, I mean, the -- after the machine has come to a stop, that it's still moving, but rather slowly after -- how do you call this last phase?

(Inertia.)

Wie?

(Inertia.)

Inertia. Ja. Very good. Inertia. And modern man has made the desperate effort to judge the great progress in history by his -- from his own inertia. Gentlemen, that's absolutely silly. You have to look into your own power to move before you can understand movement. But here you sit and say, "As an inert mass, as a man who wants to have security, as a man who wants to have children, and a pleasant home, and -- and all the facilities, and a standard of living, and a dishwasher, and a washing machine, I cannot understand Valley Forge. It's just a mystery. They didn't -- even have Vicks against their colds."

And that's how you all -- I can't make you understand history. That's how they have to teach history in the history department, because they do not come out into the open, my friends there, and tell you that you have no access to history, as long as you do not feel that the normal person in you is that person whose heart is beating higher. They tell you that the normal person is the one fainthearted whose heart isn't beating at all. Or at least it mustn't be mentioned that he has heart. He has just a brain, or he has lusts, or he has -- he has passions, perhaps, of the lower order. Gentlemen, really -- do you really believe for a moment that you can understand the creation of the human race which comes by tremendous passions of jealousy, of love, of hate, of -- of imagination, that you can look -- sit there and stare at history by going to a museum and look at the deads -- ends there, the -- the -- the furniture which is left behind, from our ancestors? You cannot. You can only read the textbook of the human race if you are willing -- and I think for a young man this is perfectly normal -- to admit that the real man is the man who's excited, who is exuberant. That the other people in you -- inside you, are the polite fragments which I meet on the street, and which we meet here in class, and which are saving face. We always say that the Orientals want to save face. Gentlemen, never believe it. Whenever you see a newspaper writer in America, especially, pretend that in the Orient it is so important to save face, turn around and say, "But it isn't half as important in the Orient as it is in America." In America, you have to save face all the time. Once you have lost face, out you go. Isn't that true?

Why do we always say the Orientals sa- -- try to save face? Chiang-Kai Shek or some -- or Mao, or Chu? I -- I mean, every American tries desperately to save face. Perfectly normal, by the way, in any human society. I -- it's nothing objectionable. But we should not make it un-understandable by looking at others and say they try to save face. You should see that everybody tries to save face. Isn't

that true? You try to save face at this moment. I do not, gentlemen. That makes a teacher. A man -- a teacher is a man who -- who dares -- that's my risk. A speculator at the stock exchange risks his capital. I mean, I risk my reputation. That is, if -- I cannot teach you if I wan- -- would be -- consider this question of saving face. And that's a worthwhile action therefore. And I teach all the better the more I'm perfectly indifferent of the fact -- to the fact that some of you think I'm -- I'm ridiculous. All right, let you say I'm ridiculous. That doesn't alter the fact that's the only way in which I can try to teach you. I may not succeed, gentlemen, but if I wouldn't take the risk to fail, I would not be able ever to succeed.

Now, most people say you must teach in such a way that you can never fail. I -- my answer would be that you can never succeed. And that's of course the standard of teaching which you have learned in public schools.

I once had an argument with a teacher. I said I have taught all my life since I was 12. And you have taught, too. What's the principle of teaching? Is it to -- to teach one man well, or to teach a class of 30 to 40 children as an average?

And he had gone to seminar, and so he was very violent and against me. And said, "You have to keep a 30 -- a class of 30 going, and nothing much must happen, and you can -- must never fail completely."

And I said, "Then you never know what's good teaching. You always keep this even keel. And I think the yardstick is one father teaches his son. Or one man teaches the other. That's the best, and all the rest must comply, and must -- must behave according to this greatest situation of teaching."

We never agreed, and he was my brother-in-law, and he was very angry with me. And there is just -- you can never argue this point. In this moment at -- in the world, the majority of people tell you that you have to keep going at an average, in society, and that's teaching. At the slightest loss of face, with no excitement on each side, and you are absolutely sure at the end that people will know that two and two is four.

(What would you say the relation was between losing our --)

Pardon me?

(What is the relationship between losing or saving face and shame?)

Not at this moment. Not at this moment. I think we come to this when we describe the origins of human society. So allow me not to go into this.

Gentlemen, what do we -- have done? I wanted to tell you that if you want to participate in the acquired faculties as a -- human being, you will have to admit that at every moment, we have to recognize these faculties. We have to recognize that they are acquired by the risk of losing face, by giving up our fragmentary apparition in society and becoming whole-hearted, and that the quality can only be renewed in you and me, if you renew the risk, and if you take the trouble of recognizing what has happened.

So these four -- these four actions are inevitable if any new quality shall be acquired and transmitted. The man who invents writing or -- must first say, "From now on we shall write." That's recognition. The new quality doesn't come about instinctively. It doesn't become unknowingly. He must know the full risk what it means to write. You see what a risk it is. You have forgotten this. The first people shuddered, should there be writing. The Incas in -- from Peru forbade writing, because it seemed to them dead -- a deadly sin. You have to recognize a new quality, and you have to bring it about whole-heartedly. That's always at the risk of your reputation, at the risk of our polite existence. We have to risk -- how would we call the -- the keep-smiling situation -- the -- at the risk of the -- well, of one's face. The -- you can only acquire this quality yourself at some risk, and at the recognition of the risk involved in the first act. Without the respect, gentlemen, for -- ja?

(Where would the declaration come in, the naming? Where's that?)

What?

(Where is the declaration?)

Well, I meant this hereby. The recognition, re-cognition, that is -- would be the declaration. I can put it much simpler, gentlemen. Our fathers -- again I tread on your toes, Sir -- but I am doing it -- going to do it. { }. And the Founding Fathers of this country, gentlemen, declared in the Declaration of Independence, what they were doing. And they lost face with the 300,000 loyalists who were all the rich people of this country, and the good-situation people. For example, the president of Columbia University, which was then called -- how was it called?

(King's College.)

King's College. He had to flee -- jump out of the window and go to Canada, but he was, of course, the big shot of the time. And the good people, gentlemen, cannot make revolutions very well. They leave. So we lost face in the first generation to all the British established values.

And you can, without the 4th of July celebration, not join into this. The 4th of July in the calendar, gentlemen, is the faint reminder that the ordinary 364 days in which you are not celebrating the 4th of July may make you forget the founding of the United States. Therefore the 4th of July has to bring you back to your senses. The 4th of July, gentlemen, is the very thin cord by which you are connected with the Founding Fathers in re-recognizing their recognition, the act of their recognition, the Declaration of Independence. This is so simple, gentlemen, that modern Americans have completely overlooked it. And the connection which I try to establish at this moment is the following:

The days of the calendar which we call holidays are the days in which the acquired faculties try to make themselves known to you again. They are not luxurious days. You cannot invent Father Day and Mother Day. They are of the Devil. This country at this moment is destroying its heritage by inventing holidays. But a holy day is the day where the whole man has to conquer the common man, or the ordinary man. Therefore, is this whole discussion, gentlemen, which has -- seems to me perhaps to be one of a logical approach. I could not avoid it, because you are trained only in argument of the mind. Ordinary, extraordinary, whole-hearted, and fragmentary. The real story of living people is, of course, in the days which they celebrate and the days in which they forget their origin -- every day. The common -- the weekday, gentlemen, and the Sunday, or the holy day and the working day, are the tension or are the -- are the reality inside which any community lives. There can be no society without holidays. Cannot be. There can be -- will you take this down, gentlemen? There can be no society without holy days, because on the holy day, the recognition of the acquired faculty is brought home to every member of the community. He may know it or not, that doesn't matter. You see, it has nothing to do with his understanding what's happening to him. It happens to him. You have learned to sneer at all this and think that's for children, gentlemen, and you are so far superior because you have learned abstract logic. Well, you are in great danger of losing the connection with the march of history. You are uprooted; you are nihilists; you are skeptics; you are analyzed; you are good for nothing. We are, as educated people in this country at this moment in danger of becoming the dregs of civilization.

I have told Mrs. Roosevelt once at a dinner, I was guest of honor. She asked me what I thought of my new country of adoption. It was 20 years ago. And so I said to her, "The common man in this country is -- is just wonderful. I would have liked to embrace him. But the rich and educated people, they deserve to be shot."

Well, it was the time of Algier Hiss and of Mis- -- Bill {Remington}. And I had a point, I think, because they just played with everything, with Communism, and with anarchy, and with nihilism, and with analysis. A friend of mine came

back from New York and said he had just been at -- to a party where the man said to him, "Oh, you know, let's drink one more at this moment. My wife's just going to bed with a Negro. You see, you have to be civilized, you can't do anything against it."

That's the kind of civilized man we had in this country among the rich. There has never been such a degradation before the -- since the {Roman} Empire, or since the time of Louis XIV, the '30s of this century. Absolute moral deprivation.

And therefore, gentlemen, you are still in this line of succession. You have to redeem yourself. And the one way in which I tried to show you that you can redeem yourself at any minute, that's the wonderful freedom of man, is that you take your discrepancy seriously, between the ordinary life, which you -- we have to live day by day by hard work, and the rhythm of the average 24-hour day, and the great calendar, which reminds us what is expected from us, which we have not yet done, which is unfulfilled. The days of the calendar of a society, gentlemen, are promises, and expectations. Will you take down these words -- they are very strange to you -- "promises" and "expectations." And because they are memories, they are prophecies. Every memory that deserves to be remembered is a prophecy that you may have to say it, too.

I had just to translate a Ger- -- an English book of mine this morning into German. And these sentences stand out. It was written about the Second World War. And I had correspondence with some of you -- older men, of course, at that time in the Navy and in the Army -- and we said {at} all the trite things of common, everyday life would have to come and get their new splendor. Life was trite, and life was boring, so -- before the war, and so people just got new and -- incentives, I mean stimuli, as you say. They want to be stimulated all the time, so -- they got stimulated. And so they went to Hell. On stimulation you cannot live, gentlemen. Stimulated, you become a dope-peddler. Stimulate you can yourself by cocktails, you can yourself by marijuana, and by anything. Stimulation is no criterion, gentlemen.

So I said -- we said -- this was a correspondence which was printed in 1946, that the trite life on Main Street in a little town in America had seemed so trite, so boring, so meaningless, that we never wanted to undertake the impossible, to change the world any more, because it seemed not worth it. So the problem was when we came home, out of this war, these young men wrote, that we would have to look at the things of the past as new things to come, that we would have to look at the words that seemed so used up, as names newly to be invoked. We would have to look at the routines as powers newly to be created. That -- shows you what is meant, gentlemen, by this strange discrepancy between your common-day life, and your holiday. On a holiday, you feel able to create the

universe. And on a workday, you feel able to work in this uni- -- inside this universe, but you aren't responsible for its order. You are fragmentarized. The Marxians call -- make very much, and rightly, out of the division of labor. On a holiday, the division of labor disappears. We are all, before we divide, the whole man. Every one is whole-hearted. Every man could sign the Declaration of Independence. Everybody could go out to Valley Forge. He is not just a blacksmith, or a carpenter, or a student on a holiday. He is the whole man.

So whole-heartedness, believe me, is an essential category, although your courses in humanities never mention this. I'm afraid that the American college professor is famous for his faint-heartedness. And the American man, too. When Mr. Corbusier, the great architect, came to this country, he looked around, and looked at -- at the things and except for Lloyd -- Frank Lloyd Wright he said, "Oh, this is a great nation of 160 million people, and they all are timid souls." Timid souls, gentlemen. And the more -- you are athletic and football heroes, the more timid souls you are. That's so very strange. The fact that you have strong muscles, gentlemen, and that you have a fine body doesn't mean that you are not very faint-hearted, because you only think of physical courage. Physical courage is a very second-rate faculty. It's a very beautiful faculty. I envy people who have it. You can acquire it, however. I have -- I am by nature a coward. But a coward is a man who is frightened at the wrong moment, so you can train yourself not to be a coward. The greatest marshall of Prussia has said, "Cowards are we all. But the difference between the courageous man and the coward is that the -- the courageous man is, beside being a coward, something else, too. A coward is just a coward."

It isn't good, gentlemen, in mental life to be just a coward, I assure you. The holiday is an -- your occasion to do -- to build up this central power. The human heart is never a coward when it is mobilized. It has infinite -- as I said -- infinite strength and infinite resources. And now -- please, the program then is, gentlemen, the holidays, which we have established in history -- you don't believe it, are the days through which you are admonished, and summoned, and enabled to become complete, and to re-acquire all the acquisitions of the human race.

Today I got a valentine. And let me end on this rather joyful note. It was a very nice card, the usual card with a heart in the middle. The 14th of February. Do you know what a great day this was, originally? One of the greatest institutions of humanity -- on the -- in the old world, in the -- of the old system of clans, and totems, and tribes, on every 14th of February the whole community betrothed the -- the -- how would you say -- the mature women and boys of the community. That is, on the 14th of February, they were -- got all engaged to marry. And that was done wholesale, you see. They had mass production of marriages at that time. And the 14th of February was not just Valentine Day, but

was a very great day, because the community, before the boys had to go to war, in spring, got ready. And any boy who goes to war gets engaged and marries before, so that he can -- may leave behind a child, when -- that can grow up to a warrior if he should be killed in war. It was a very simple, and very -- you may say coarse, very primitive order, but a very trem- -- order, a very stable order. It has kept going as you see from this Valentine Day to this day. The dim memory of a Valentine, you see, where you greet the sweetheart of your choice, you see, is the last {remindant} -- reminder if people celebrated this whole-heartedness, where you mate, and where you procreate the race, that they honored this by making it the central holiday of the order of the clans. We have still laws and statutes, gentlemen, in which it is carefully stated how this should be done, and how girls -- or boys, who felt wronged in the choice that was made then might, so to speak, mend this wrong choice, because not everybody was very happy, you know, with the selection that went on in such a way. If everybody has to get married, you see. And all the girls, all the boys -- you may think what a hardship is involved. The last rememb- -- reminder of this is in the dance, when you go to a dance and the girl finds no partner and has to sit there all evening long, because nobody's going to dance with her. They -- they -- this is a very small thing. A great -- a great tragedy when a girl remains unmarried who is -- who is ready and -- and -- and destined to marry today goes on behind closed doors. Nobody knows it. She just weeps in her own bedchamber. But in those days, the people faced the simple fact, gentlemen, that you are whole-hearted when you marry. That is the condition of power. Man is im- -- impotent when he is not wholehearted.

And I think you should therefore respect a little bit history as just your own history written large. History reminds you of wedding days of the human race, where man was potent. Believe it or not, gentlemen, the 4th of July deserves to be celebrated.

Thank you.