Transcript
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{word} = hard to understand, might be this
Ladies and gentlemen, when you take the fact that the living body, be it a body politic or a human being, is a moving -- rapidly moving, furiously rotating skeleton, with atoms thrown around and--field of force, in other words, as we would say in electronics, or in electricity. Then I tried to show you that the field of force which begets every day this mighty nation is composi- -- is a compound of peoples, of public--both of individuals, and subdividuals, smaller than individuals, and not -- neither people nor public--which I tried to call with regard to their smallest unit, "wards," and which we today call masses, the modern masses. And the constant operation of masses, public, and people constitutes then the process -- the social process constantly against your fictitious schoolroom idea that because you sit here as individuals, the life of the community has always to consist of the movement of self-reliant, and self-supporting, and self-contained individuals. That has never been the case, and will never be the case, because God has demanded from us that we should form constantly larger entities and bodies of society; and nobody can live without going insane who is an individual from beginning to end. Individuals go to the lunatic asylum. Or they build castles like Mr. Hearst, whose madness then was so big that he didn't have to go to an asylum, because he built his own asylum.
This field of force then has to be understood, just as you would always allow a chemist to discover -- distinguish between atoms, and molecules, and electrons. It is just fantastic, the primitive state of affairs in the social sciences, that we just go there from what we see in a classroom or in a kindergarten. Although on the other hand, we see these streams of cars moving by the thousands over the highways. These are not individuals. These are people strictly confined to certain lanes, and have -- they have to move in a floo- -- flow, and woe to them if they don't.
So we constantly are dispossessed of our individuality; we regain it. And we are also allowed to form larger units, like families, and churches, and corporations, and governments. But all the time, man is in this threefold stage of being people, public, and--well, masses. I don't like the word myself. Wards, I tried to say -- would be the component of modern masses, if they are somebody's ward, be it the man who electrifies them in front of television, be it the broadcaster, be it the speaker on a platform, you see, who -- or be it the -- the entertainer in a nightclub. At all these times, we abdicate a part of our own sovereignty and behave as we are expected to behave. Where you have behaviorism, you certainly don't have individualism, but you have mass behavior.
Now, as you know, the religion of this country in psychology has been
behaviorism to a large extent. But the strange thing is that you can't be an individual, you can't be people if you come under the laws of these psychologists and behaviorists, because that means just that you can be manipulated.
And -- when Chesterton came to New York in 1919, he was told all about the new psychology, that you could make any person buy anything he didn't want, if you just use the right psychology. And he said, "That's funny. They call it psychology. And in England, we used to call it cheating."
Because that's behaviorism. You see, if you can make a man buy what his wife wants to buy and what he doesn't want to buy, that's -- then he has ceased to be an individual. He's cheated. He's weakened. He does what he doesn't want to do. And this abdication of the will is an essential to any society. Everybody has, on the 4th of July celebration -- abdicate part of his own -- of his own personality. Any soldier who marches in a battalion has to do that. A soldier -- the -- the -- so we get -- to the one great fact that of course, and at all times, mankind has consisted of these three elements: subdividuals, individuals, and people. We have always been mass, public, and people. However, in the 18th century, the people who formed the churches and the families stood out as the -- bearers of the historical process. And they felt it to be. In the 19th century, the individuals and the public felt that they were the people who determined the events. "The individuals had their government," we said. And I told you of this strange book by Justice Felix Frankfurter, The Public and Its Government, which in -- as late as 1926, embodied the creed of 1850. The Public and Its Government.
What was in the 18th century already there in the form of masses? Were there any masses? Were there any wards of the government? Of course there were. There were slaves in the South, and there were soldiers.
[tape interruption]
And where you get military or -- establishment, you see, even -- even passingly so, you have of course mass, because you have uniform. And woe to the man who doesn't obey orders.
And so we get of course already in the -- in the 18th century, the military problem. Take the Hessians in New York, and you take the slaves. Now the only difference is that in the 18th century, these two types were rather looked down upon. Who wanted to be a slave? Nobody. And who wanted to be a soldier? Nobody. These were mercenaries. Only officers here were, so to speak, good enough to -- to go voluntarily. And we had a militia. We had one militia a day -- a year in these colonies, in the town where people would don uniform and show that they could take up arms. But otherwise a standing army, you see, didn't
have to exist. It was -- it did exist against the French. It was very needed. But it was borrowed from the British crown, and these were continental soldiers very often who had no relation to this country.
So I only wanted to draw your attention. We are now going back- -- looking backward from our vantage point of 1850, that there were of course masses. But they didn't arouse much interest. There was no book written in 18th century on the sociology of slavery. And there was nothing said about the military problem. That was just -- as you didn't mention hunting or fishing, you see -- it was just something normal like breathing.
Therefore, we can say that the modern problem of masses had not yet directed our attention to the fact that part of our life is spent in dependency, and in dovetailing, and fitting into larger units of a passing character which take away from our individual character. This subdividual existed -- exists always, but it didn't -- wasn't given notice, so to speak; and the public consciousness did not turn towards it. In the 19th century, you get, of course, coming in from the -- from the 18th century the slavery problem just as much, and -- however it was never considered a fate of the white man as much as the black a danger point, that he might be turned into a mass. Therefore slavery seemed purely exception.
So whereas in the 18th century it wasn't talked about, in the 19th century it -- slavery is talked about, but as an exception, not the rule. The military problem wasn't much bigger before the Civil War, not in 1850. Although it is a fact that even Lincoln couldn't have had -- become president if he hadn't participated in a little bit of a military venture, you know, in the '40s. What did he do?
({ }.)
Yes, exactly. So even he had to don a uniform at times.
What I'm driving is -- gentlemen, that the focus of attention has shifted from people to public to masses. But that isn't true to say it never existed. However, in this pivotal year of 1850, of which I cannot make much enough, so to speak, which is a very important watershed in your history, is the -- that to -- to the slaves there is now coupled a new issue, and that's immigration. Before 1850, the consciousness of this country was not focusing on immigran- -- the immigrant or the immigration because it was very minute. And the proportion of immigrants that came from the British Isles or -- was so preponderant that the difference between colonials and British wasn't very big.
As you well know, from 1840 to -- 1860, immigration reached an unheardof high. And ever since the immigrant have been divided in this country -- tacitly
into the first-, second-, and third-generation American. This was a problem that didn't exist before 1850; and it was a problem of course that distinguished between the native American who could become president, and the man not born in this country who had to go to Tammany Hall to be fixed. And you have heard perhaps still in the wake of all these events the word "Tammany Hall" in New York. But ward government existed of course in Kansas City; it has existed in San Francisco; and the abuses of the San Francisco municipal government in the beginning of the 20th century still reek to Heaven, because of the immigrant problem, because there have always been two layers of people in this country: full citizens and first-comers, who had to -- forgoes political office for this reason in most cases, and had to get help and assistance, and had to be picked up, so to speak, at the waterfront, and be shipped to Pennsylvania to the coal mines; and their sons then could enter the American navy and become admiral. But not the first generation.
So in 1850 -- I'll give you the figures. That may give you -- in 17- -- the country had inhabitants, in 1790, 4 and-a-half million people. And they lived on 867,000 -- let's make it a round sum -- 900,000 square miles. By 1860, the country had grown to 2,900,000 square miles -- that's nearly three and-a-half to four times as much. And the population had increased to 31 million.
This is the important thing, because these 20 years have made the American literature, the American character; and what was not in existence in those years hasn't -- has yet led to make a mark on the real political consciousness of this country. The -- before the -- the -- Depression -- 1829 -- 1929, people went by these standards, so to speak, to judge the life in this country. You understand. It takes so long before the new situation is realized. And the stable situation with regard to immigration seemed to be that there lived, at -- in 1860, 31 million; and in the 20 years, from 1840 to 1860, three and-a-half million emi- -- immigrated. This is a proportion of more than 10 percent. And this is not the whole story, because most of these immigrants were in the voting age -- above -- more than 21 years. And they were not preponderantly -- I mean not absolu- -- exclusively, but preponderantly males. And therefore, if you take 3 and-a-half million immigrants coming within 20 years into a country that only in 1860 was 31 million--in 1850, there were only 23 million people--you have to double the number of the immigrants to realize their influence, their political role, their sudden influx as a violent shock. It has been called the immigr- -- the shock of immigration by the Census taker, General Francis A. Walker in 1880. He coined this phrase of the competitive shock of immigration. Good word. Competitive shock.
This word by -- I want you to re- -- recall the man's name, Francis A. Walker in 1880, because he was the first to draw attention to the tremendous importance of this -- these figures on the situation in this country. Francis A.
Walker in 1880, in the Census then taken by the United States government. The competitive shock of immigration.
He said that for this reason, the old stock in this country didn't have children. He meant by "competitive shock," a shock that influenced the fecundity of the race. So it's a very serious business. Has nothing to do with competition in business. But he meant that the older strain in this country gave up hope and didn't want to procreate. This has been debated. I think it can never be proven. But it is interesting to note that the majority of the populationists in this country are inclined to subscribe to his notion.
Why is this so? Because -- if you take three and-a-half million immigrants on a population of -- average in 1850 23 million, and you add to this the fact that most of them were in the -- in the procreating, and virile, and productive age, working men -- I mean, able to -- to -- not to go to school but to go immediately to the land and do something, you see that the proportion is just incredibly high, because it's 23 million inhabitants in 1850, 3 and-a-half million immigrants within 20 years; if you double their influence, as you must -- these are 7 million immigrants practically in importance, because they are not children, you see, and mostly are -- are -- were not even -- were not even women -- mostly of them men, more at least than one-half men--and all entering immediately the field of -- of work, of competition.
So what does it mean? If you allow me this fantasy for a moment, that there were not 3 and-a-half million immigrants, but 7 million in effect, with regard to the proportionate, you see, pyramid of the population that already lived here, you can see that every third or fourth man whom you met in the streets of this country, of a city, in 1860 was a newcomer. Every fourth.
Now today we have 172 million people in these United States. And there are 23 million foreign-born, that is, including those whose -- who have one parent who hasn't been born in this country, the other being American, you see; that's all added up together into the figure 23 million. So if you look at Los Angeles, which is certainly international, cosmopol- -- -politan as any American city, you see, still the proportion is very low, because it is only 23 out of 172 -- how mu- -- what's the proportion?
Please? Wie?
(Twelve percent.)
Twelve percent, whereas it is -- is it -- is it 12 percent?
(Yes. Yeah.)
Thank you. Whereas at that time it was 25 percent, in its effect, in its moral effect on the consciousness of the country.
Now the -- the way out of the -- of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century of this incredible influx of new people, we will have to study. You can imagine that the addition to the native stock of the problem of immigrants, finally reaching a million a year, has created a society in which tacitly, at least, there was always understood that the immigrant had -- was in a different position from the native. That the political leadership, for example, was unquestionably with the ones who knew already. There were the -- { } didn't belong to the Know-Nothings. You remember, I talked to you about the Know-Nothing Party, which -- who tried to prevent the acquired acquisition of citizenship by the immigrants. That was the -- the tenet of the Know-Nothing Party in -- in the '50s of the 19th century.
With these figures, I only wanted to show you that we had two problems in 1850. The old one of slavery deteriorating into the Civil War as not being able to change the black people into individuals. And we have, in -- from 1850 to -- to this day the problem of first-generation Americans, and second-, third-, and fourth-generation Americans. And it is nowhere found in the Constitution that these two differences should exist, because neither slavery is organized in the Constitution nor immigration is, you see. But they are factual social problems of the first order, of the first magnitude. And their solutions have been, as we shall see, varied.
I only wanted to point out to you that in 1850 already, one old problem of the 18th century, slavery; and one new problem, immigration; far outrun the problem of people and -- and public, you see, because it meant already that there were people who couldn't care for themselves, for whom somebody had to care. For example, Tammany Hall. You understand. Or today we still have rest of this of course in -- in political -- in many ways of -- of local politics. And this should be faced. And why it isn't -- has to be, and why it is very meritorious -- I have never understood the people who were down on Tammany Hall, because I feel that they did a very good job in placing the immigrant. And it's very nice for you people, who come already to college, to -- to look down on -- on these low-brow politicians who -- who buy votes, you see. But I assure you that the men who went to Tammany Hall and paid three dollars and -- in -- and then, you see, and sold his vote, was very grateful that there was somebody who cared for him.
-- You are laughing, Sir. But this is a serious proposition. Wie? You would agree?
(I agree.)
Ja. So it is for educated people, you know, it is very easy to think that's all corruption. If you do not care to study how important this was, how vital, how inevitable, and how necessary. Again, there is not something mentioned in the books, but it is there. And it is vital, and it has made the American character to a large extent.
Now let me turn back for a moment to Herman Melville, who is really the hero of American history, and who has been so terribly wronged, because people have tried to place him in his own times. Herman Melville -- I read you his great sentence: "Woe to him who ple- -- wants to please instead to appall." That's a courageous sentence, and he had to pay a terrible price for it.
When Charles Sumner from Massachusetts introduced a bill in the Congress in 1864 to form an academy of American literary men, he proposed 20 names. And I told you already, I think, that Herman Melville was not among them. He would be the only one whom people would today still read and remember. And that's why he couldn't be named by Mr. Charles Sumner. All the many names are not read by you today. But I do hope that you will stoop to conquer Melville. Why?
Because here you have the resonance of a voice who went from people to public to masses. And the terrible sentence in Pierre, in The Ambiguities is that the man there is no longer knowing who he is, male or female, son or father, brother or lover, enemy or friend; and because he doesn't know this, he kills and cries out with the truly Freudian sentence at the end of the book, "It's speechless sweet to kill you." Perhaps you take down this gruesome sentence, because that's the situation in which we find ourselves today. We have modern nervous wrecks who are speechless. Because they are speechless--take the juvenile delinquents and so on--because they can neither react to the spoken word by others, nor can they speak themselves, that we are faced with the loss of humanity, with the loss of individuality. "It's speechless sweet to kill you."
Now to write this sentence in 1851, in anticipation of a development of 110 years is very great. And to be able to write in strains of Shakespeare--who wrote in 1600--in the year 1851, or in strains of the Bible, that's very great, too. The great -- the incredible feat of Melville is that within 365 days, between MobyDick and Pierre, he walked the plank, from one side of the river of history, the first 250 years of this country, to the other side in -- on which you and I are living today. And I think nobody has ever taken a wider step, a more { } step.
I know -- I think I know the history of heroes -- biographies of literary
men, scholars, philosophers, to a vast extent. It has been my study all my life. And I know of nobody on whom it was so -- for whom it was ordained to go through this calamity, you see, to move from a garrulous, eloquent, hilarious, cheerful, faithful, loving people, into this modern mass of lunatic asylums, schizoids, liberal arts colleges, factories, streetcars, and what-not. The whole Streetcar of Desire is in this sentence, and in this book of Pierre. It's Tennessee Williams, isn't it?
If ever the -- the -- the -- the lightning and the thunder of our creator has struck a man, then it is Melville directly, unprotected, right under the open sky of the spiritual movements of centuries. And that he hasn't earned this reputation yet, I think, is an indictment against our treatment of life, and of literature. Of course, you can't bury him as a -- among the novelists; you can't buy him among the poets; you can't bury him among the scholars; you can't bury him among the philosophers. You can only compare him to the people who wrote the Bible. He has no office in this dipar- -- departmentalized world of ours, where you even dis- -- decriminate between a ma- -- playwright, and novelist, and a lyricist, and all this nonsense. This country is very sick, because even for the -- the voice, the human voice, there is only this subdivision that he's a -- "This man is a playwright," you see. Is Shakespeare a playwright? He wrote the Sonnets. What do you make of this? And the Sonnets are his -- his savings account for the dramas. He took from -- every Sonnet has become a drama in his life. And he had to write the Sonnets first and then he produced the drama out of it.
And so -- what do you make of a man who has to have these two avatars of his -- of his voice and of his spirit. All your divisions in your courses on novel -- the English novel in 1850 -- let it go. It's all against the spirit. All pagancy. Pure paganism, believing in things. Pure materialism. Don't believe that the Russians are half as materialistic as the English departments in this country. The English departments in this country believe in novels. How can you take -- Christmas Carol or Great Expectations of Dickens into the field of literature where you -- where you meet with -- with Lolita? It is all nonsense, all your divisions. The human voice in every phase of its -- of its becoming eloquent and articulate, you see, breaks through all the departments. It's the essence of the writer and the speaker that you can never catch him into one compartment { }, because he has to say that which now has to be said. And you can only do this if you surprise people.
If you use the form -- take Tolstoy, who wrote War and Peace, greatest, so to speak, novel that was ever written. He used the French form of the novel which Balzac had created, and the French novelists. But War and Peace is not a French novel, you see. That's unique. That's as much Homer as it is a novel, isn't it? And therefore, if you sweep -- in -- in a comparative literature Balzac together
with Tolstoy, you go nowhere, because that's just -- you see, has nothing to do with each other, because he uses an existing form to -- to say something of quite a different dimension.
Now I want you to understand that this is the case with Melville. Melville had to anticipate the modern magazine writers, the modern psychologists, the modern sociologists, the modern thinker, and meditator, and -- so he -- you can't pigeonhole him. It's no use to say that he belongs into "PS" in the -- in the university library, fourth floor, in -- American literature of the year 1850.
And I think all of us--I invite you to do this, you see--have to lift him up. The more you lift up -- Herman Melville out of the ruts and the routines of thinking in your departmentalized ways, the more he can rescue us from despair, because a man who has been able to live in these two worlds, and who his last word to us in Billy Budd, very -- mysteriously tried to express the unity of his thought by going back to 1795, I think, and comprise in one heirloom, so to speak, the whole extent of his -- of his insight into the human heart -- who has read Billy Budd? Who has seen it? It was played -- it was -- they made a play out of it. Have you seen it?
(Benjamin Britten also made an opera.)
Wie?
(Benjamin Britten also made an opera of Billy Budd.)
What did he make?
(An opera.)
An opera.
Now this happened, this tragedy of -- it happened to Melville in 1851 and 1852. And as I told you, the -- the step, this jump, this incredible changeover from optimistic history to pessimistic foresight, was not realized by his contemporaries. They left him. I told you that the -- Encyclopaedia Britannica goes so far to say that he didn't -- doesn't seem to be the same man after he has written Pierre, you see. That one couldn't recognize him as identical. Of course not. Of course not. Who could? How could you recognize Benjamin Franklin in a -- in a -- in a movie star today in Hollywood? But it is the same situation, just the same, that every one of us here is -- is moonstruck by this problem: how to follow the ideals of the 18th, the 19th, and the 20th century at the same time.
It is for this reason that we are here in the sanctuary of the American experience, that I want you to understand that 1851 makes epoch in America. There are many other reasons. The immigration problem is one. As we -- when we talk about slavery, I'll show you that there are other reasons. The -- the religious problem changed its aspect in 1851 definitely. But let it be the -- said here, that's the only way I can honor Melville in my small way, that I make him the hinge of the epochable change. Because I told you already about Emerson, that Emerson is the grain of seed out of which all of us who are in the liberal arts colleges have come. And in this same sense, I think Melville is the real American today, in 170 million copies.
And we all have to bear this burden, that we are moving between schizophrenia and -- and self-reliance, and belonging to the people of the promised land at the same time. And in this threefold capacity, every one of us is very hard-put. You are either -- all at the same time members of a healthy body, and -- you are carrying this special mental function of a public, with regard to the whole in the spiritual process of wes- -- the western world. I have tried to show you this. And when we now come to the corporation state, and the organization man, and the hidden persuader, you can see immediately that all of us are also living in this medium, and have to try to -- to survive, or to live in it.
So this much to the honor of Herman Melville. And if you now look at this paper, Mr. {Chad Powell Smith}, an old Yankee himself, has composed the meaning of Moby-Dick into this letter of his, which he has composed, you see, as being that text in which Melville would recognize himself, what he tried to say to America. And it is -- what he objects to is the superficial outer self, which I call "the public," which Mr. Smith here calls the "outer self." And he has tried to write this out in the spelling, and in the bi- -- many capital letters which Melville used to -- in order to create his own style. If you want to do justice to Melville, you must note -- take note of the fact that he had -- felt that he had to speak his own English, and therefore use "Death" and "Rebirth" with capital letters and so on, in order to show that he didn't write the pidgin English of New York.
There has been a -- written a book by a real Bostonian, of course, Mr. Sedgwick--I say "of course" because you'll see it's a typically Bostonian approach--which is called The Tragedy of the Mind, and is Herman Melville. It's one of these -- these Terentine titles. It shows a complete misunderstanding of the brandings of the human soul. Melville's mind didn't undergo any tragedy, because he looked deeper. And you see, his soul was a tragic one. But as long as you do not understand that -- that The Tragedy of Mind is the wrong and misplaced title for Melville, because he didn't go insane at all--he was the one sane man in an environment that went insane and just jumped into the Civil War 10 years later--then I have talked in vain, you see. The indiscriminate use of the
words "mind" where you have to use the word "soul," is a disease of a century where the public dominates us.
When a soul is sick, and wants to cure herself, she'll -- she will allow her mind to go stale, or -- like Nietzsche, H”lderlin -- great genius keeps his soul right by going mad. The madness of mind is a cure for the soul. As it is, you see, our modern psychiatrists don't know the difference between a sickness of the soul and a sickness of the mind. They call themselves psychiatrists with an indiscrimination which is really startling. But I assure you, there is no greater difference -- than between soul sickness and mental sickness. Mental sickness is very often a -- a way of -- of donning a dress of shame around the terrible wound of the human soul. Then there are other places -- if you go to the lunatic asylum and you meet a man who is a -- the emperor of China and he -- is God Almighty, you see, his soul is sick. His mind is completely all right. He's very logical. As you know, these mental patients there have a tremendous mind, you see; but their relation to their human soul is -- is gone, you see. They have lost the -- the -- the heart of the matter. Their heart can no longer tell them that they should go home and stop to play God Almighty.
I yesterday was told such a story of a -- of a man who happens to be a student on this campus, and who off and on is in the lunatic asylum, because he is the president of the universe. And here you -- they have -- you have a man who is a -- no heart and a terrific mind. He proves his point wonderfully.
So The Tragedy of Mind as a book title for Herman Melville only shows you the complete contempt in which a person like Melville is held today by the intellectuals. They cannot understand that he is not a tragedy of mind, but he's a tragedy of the American people. The tragic -- the tragedy is with the people in -- in -- in whose -- whose bereavement, whose impoverishment, whose mental helplessness he tries to describe. And you can pity -- pity Melville for his -- the lack of recognition, you see, which he has received. But there's nothing tragic about him. There's as much tra- -- man -- much tragedy about America. This is what he tries to say in this letter. That's a very sound letter, is it not?
So I think every one of you should take out of this -- this center of my course, the treatment of Melville, one consolation: that history is not -- neither big nor small. Every one of you can play a decisive role with regard to his decision whether he shall put the weight of his life on people, or on public, or on masses. And accordingly, he will be counted in or counted out.
The -- I had two friends to dinner. One was from Madison Avenue in New York, a big advertiser; and the other was just a normal human farmer. And the farmer objected to television on certain things { } kind; and finally my friend
from Madison Avenue turned against the farmer and said, "You are statistically unimportant."
And so the farmer said, "Thank God."
Masses are statistically important, you see. That's why they're so utterly unimportant, because if I am statistically important, I'm only important for somebody else. For the calculation of somebody else who can then manipulate, you see. I'm manageable. That's all.
(Does there really exist --)
What?
(Does there really exist of any importance a area of people that you designate as an individual? I tend to believe not. I think the farmer in this case is really the individual. He relates himself to society, but he maintains his individual integrity.)
I agree with you. Of course, give me -- this farmer any minute to defend individualism. Certainly, Sir. Certainly, Sir. But he is only an individual because he has still obedient -- an obedient wife and children, you see. So he had back of him when he comes in -- out into the open the home life where is a part of the people. And he's healthy as an individual as long as he still has received from his parents and grandparents and towards his children and grandchildren a healthy relationship. So of course he towers as an individual. And we are borrowing our strengths from all the past and from all the future that runs through us.
I'm all with you, you see. These fields -- lines of force which make me appear in this classroom, of course I hope, an outstanding individual. Here I stand, and you stand here, you see. But we -- you must know that we are only at this moment crystallizations, passing forms of individuality which, over the long run of generations, you see, are -- can only be understood as people. These are aspects of humanity. If you would understand my thought completely--of the trinity of man, you see--we -- we can look at each other as individuals, when we spoke -- speak to each other. However, we are spokesmen, really, every one of us, you see, of many things that are not said, you see, that are -- but we represent. For example, truth, you see. And this truth of course is not in our own mind, but it just runs through our mind, you see, just as we are the telegram post of the spirit that runs through the ages. And as far as the two telegram posts, who send each other messages, we appear to each other as individuals, because we just are at this moment not interested in what's behind all this, you see, the power plant from which all this comes. It's enough that you and I can agree or disagree. You
understand?
So don't -- my dear man, you can't be a professor or a student without honoring the individual, you see. Only you have to see the context within which this word makes sense. That's all. So don't be afraid that I want to -- to poohpooh or ridicule individualism. But you must put it there where it can operate. This is { }. Yes?
In 1850, our friend Emerson, in his undaunted idealism and optimism, just very opposite from the -- from this man who writes to Emerson, warns him of the downfall of civilization, has written a very strange poem, which I'm now going to read to you. I think it's a most important poem because it has prophesied the downfall of a mere individual order of things, and has reminded us that mankind consists of young and old, and male and female. It's this very strange poem on love. And in the -- Mr. Emerson, who was a very poor lover, brought it up- -- brought it -- wrote this poem:
"Give all to love; Obey thy heart; Friends, kindred, days, Estate, good-fame, Plans, credit and the Muse, -- Nothing refuse.
"It's a brave master;"--love-- "Let it have scope: Follow it utterly, Hope beyond hope: High and more high It dives into noon, With wing unspent, Untold intent: But it is a god, Knows its own path And the outlets of the sky.
"It was never for the mean; It requireth courage stout. Souls above doubt, Valor unbending, It will reward, -- They shall return More than they were, And ever ascending.
Leave all for love:"
And this poem is the most venomous and poisonous poem that has ever been written, because it is -- goes on like that. It has appealed to the human soul.
Now souls are meant to incarnate, to come true. And he writes:
"Cling with life to the maid; But when the surprise, First vague shadow of surmise Flits across her bosom young, Of a joy apart from thee, Free be she, fancy-free; Nor thou detain her vesture's hem, Nor the palest rose she flung From her summer diadem.
"Though thou loved her as thyself, As a self of purer clay, Though her parting dims the day, Stealing grace from all alive; Heartily know, When half-gods go, The gods arrive."
In other words, the woman here is claiming her right to any number of divorces.
"Cling with life to the maid; But when the surprise, First vague shadow of surmise Flits across her bosom young, Of a joy apart from thee, Free be she, fancy-free; Nor thou detain her vesture's hem, Nor the palest rose she flung From her summer diadem."
It is -- it was such a frightful poem that Rudyard Kipling, when he read it, tried to correct it. And I want you to read up during this week the Chi- -- Children of the -- of the --how is it called?--of the Zodiac, Children of the Zodiac, a tale, very short tale by Kipling, in which he uses these two verses, "When halfgods go, the gods arrive," the end of the poem, and tries to repute -- refute--how do you say?--refute Emerson; that was too much for an Englishman. This free love and typical, of course, of an Emerson, of such an anemic person, that he gives the freedom to the woman. He is not able to live -- love many a time. She can love as -- as often as she likes.
Now here you have the break with the great tradition. You cannot be surprised that if in Emerson this appears, it is Melville's problem, it's the psychoanal- -- -analyst's problem today: faithlessness. Before 1850, however, we shall see the problem of faithlessness was spared out for the male. Polygamy was a problem down to 1850. With Emerson, we enter the phase of American life in
which the female gains the upper hand, and in which the problem is now posed -- put squarely on the shoulders of the women -- fe- -- of the other sex. It's a very strange development.
Will you take this down? Down to 1850, if at all, there is more than one love in life, it is always assumed that it will be the he who goes from one flower to the -- another. With the poem by Emerson, you suddenly enter this fairyland of ours today, you see, which of course is most worth- -- -while -- mostly represented by the Ingrid Bergmans and the Elizabeth Taylors, et cetera, et cetera -- that she cannot believe her own heart; { } doesn't know it, that she goes from one to the other.
It's very serious, because what is the -- that's the -- the demonstration that people make themselves felt in their division in sex and age, whether you talk of individuals and atoms or -- and masses or not. People are always people who consist of male and female, and under the domination of the idea of self-reliance, and of individualism, there must be always either the male favored or the female. This equilibrium between man and woman is the greatest secret of the -- the human relation in which all other struggles and hatreds are comprised, and also all reconciliations. What's the difference between Russia and America compared to the difference between a man and a woman? Nothing. What's the difference between a Negro and a white, compared to the difference between a man and a woman? Nothing.
The greatest division of the human race is between the sexes. And if you try to think of 170 million individuals in America, and deny that they have to belong to a people, you either get the Mormon question of polygamy, as we shall see, you see; and then the male will say that he can flit around from one flower to the other; or you get Emersonianism, which is the loss of -- of incarnation of the human soul in its one destined form. This fooling around, this experimenting with life, and never come to any fulfillment for too many fulfillments: this is what we have today.
So this poem was written just before 1850, "Give All to Love." I think it brings out my point that Mr. Emerson lived in a fool's paradise, or in an ivory tower, or in a liberal arts college. That is just as -- all about the same. That is, in a liberal arts college, nothing that you think or do is held against you. You can write the most perverse poetry; as long as you haven't done it in the street, you don't go to court.
Now Mr. Emerson also thought he could afford this, as a good poetical, you see, stroke of genius. Poetry in the long run makes law. The Irish judges were the poets, or the po- -- Irish poets were the judges, and that's how it always
should be. Poetry and legislation are very intimately connected in serious life. A serious poet is the future legislator of his country. But we -- making doggerels, we are making literature. And Mr. Emerson had, in this country, the lib- -- libertinage, the -- the -- I would say the impertinence, to think that he could write wanton verse without any application. Today every young woman beginning at 14 thinks "Cling with life to the maid; But when the surprise, First vague shadow of surmise Flits across her -- across her bosom young, Of a joy apart from thee, Free be she, fancy-free."
So the devil always comes in the figure of an angel. Mr. Emerson looks very much like an angel. But I'm afraid he isn't. And Mr. Melville looks very much like a devil, but I'm afraid he is a good angel of this country.