Transcript

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

(This is the introductory speech, Number 1, of a series, "What Future for the Profession?" by Dr. Rosenstock-Huessy, January 25th, 1960, Aspen, Colorado.)

(You remember the { }?)

Well, in this little group, I may perhaps start with a personal remark and tell you a story on myself. When Martin asked me to speak here, I of course felt quite overawed, because I only have been the object of dentistry and orthodontia in my life. And I don't know if you are as hospitable as the theologians. They gave me a doctor's degree for having listened all my life to their sermons. And so I -- I hope you will give me an honorary degree of medicine very soon.

I looked up the career of Mis- -- Dr. {Angell}, {Edward Harvey Angell}, as you know, who lived from 1855 to 1930. And so I thought I might find something in the eulogies and obituaries in the papers of the year 1930. And I went to the index of the New York Times, and the index of the Herald-Tribune and thought they might have something -- something to say on this indeed extraordinary man. As you know, he created the term and the facts of orthodontia. Not at all. There was not -- his death wasn't mentioned in the paper. And -- now that's 30 years ago, and I think we have an anniversary, in 1960, of his death. Thirty years, that's a generation; that's a lifetime. And in -- 30 years ago, he died obviously unknown to the general public. But I did find in the index one single quotation on dentistry. And it has something to do with my own incompetence in dentistry. And so that's why I'm going to tell you the story.

Mentioned -- has been in this paper, from March 22nd, of 1930 in The New York Times, a Mr. {Elvin Bentley}, who at the ripe age of 60, lived as a retired banker in St. Louis. You will certainly have never heard of him. And he had the hobby of treating people for their toothaches. And so he was arrested, because he had promised a lady, a Mrs. -- Mrs. {Rankin}, to clean her teeth, and instead, he pulled three of them. And it appeared -- he was arrested and -- for misdemeanor and assault. And -- he had treated 200 women. And of course all without any knowledge of the things themselves. And he said, "You know, I do this because I get a thrill out of it."

I thought that's quite a good story. And -- but it's a warning for me that you shouldn't dabble with things you don't understand. And so in this sense, I open this discussion by saying that I'm perfectly aware of the fact that I have nothing to offer to you in the field of dentistry. But I think I do have something

that might set me off against Mr. {Elvin Bentley} from St. Louis, by telling you that the -- this rapidly changing world of today threatens the professions. It -- demands from the professional people that they know their place in a society which really has at this moment a -- a kind of grinding -- capacity to grind to pieces the most -- oldest and most venerable professions by the speed with which we change our way of producing things. And so the -- the outcry we have heard in the papers that we haven't enough engineers and enough chemists is only one aspect of the fact that the existing professions in their old setup are changing everywhere in the world very rapidly. And the oldest traditions, you see, don't seem to be able to set the lawyers, the minister, the doctor, and the teacher apart. And they seem to be swamped by the idea of a -- mere occupations, mere jobs.

And we'll come to the -- I think the main -- the red thread that will run through this -- these meetings if we are able to carry them off, will be this very strange tug-of-war between a society which want to have 63 or 66 million jobs available for anybody, and that on the other hand needs expert knowledge from people who don't have job, but have a vocation, and have a calling, and have a specialty, and are professional people.

And the conclusion that I think we -- we can reach today is already from the outset, that there is a contradiction between the cry for professional people on the one-hand side, and a -- tremendous surge for equalizing everything, and turning everything into mere occupation. If you analyze the word "profession" and the word "occupation" on the outset -- on the surface even, you will see that "occupation" is a passive thing: I am occupying. That is, I'm laid on something, and do it, and fulfill it, a task, a job. And a "profession" always -- obviously as a word, contains, means that I am saying that I am going to do something, so that the spontaneity and the initiative comes from the inside the person who -- offers his services and says, "I know and you don't know." If I am only occupied, somebody else--the executive--knows, you see, what I'm going to do, and I don't know. I'm told. And you would be amiss if you would allow somebody else to tell you what you have to do -- you must know it. Nobody else can tell you.

So we have a very simple, but very profound struggle today going on in this huge, and vast, worldwide society of ours of industry. There is one tendency in which the executives try to tell everybody to have job -- a job. For today. Tomorrow, you do something else. And the expert and the professional man who says, "I know what has to be done," you see, "and you can't tell me," that's very profound. And it is -- we'll come perhaps to the result that in a way it can only be solved by every individual on the spot in his own life. It is not soluble generally, in the abstract, by any theory.

And so I propose that today we should consider what a profession really

means, what it is. And then tomorrow, if the stars are still with us, we may look around in the world outside the United States and Europe, in these so-called underdeveloped countries, who make their demands on our riches and our wealth today and say, "We want to have professional people; we want also to have a high standard of living." And we'll see that in -- in having to formulate a kind of code for the expert knowledge which we have to export, and for the training we have to give to people from Argentina or from Africa, you see, we will have to develop certain general notions about what an -- what a professional person should stand for in his own country. And then perhaps on the last day, I may tell you how our society threatens even the standards of the professions which we have attained, how here at home, in every moment the flood, the surf, the -- the waves try to undermine the authority of the expert and of the professional person, and what to do against it.

So we have three things. The topic today will be: what is a profession and why does it distinguish itself from the farmer, from the banker, from the governing politician and statesman, from the soldier, and the men in the armed forces? They are not -- we don't call them "professional people." Then tomorrow, as I said--or whenever we meet again--it would be the outlook on the world at large, and we'll see that when you view the professions that have been created in the Christian era in the last 2,000 years in this western world, the people outside demand from us certain qualities of which the professional person in this country doesn't have -- even to be aware. He represents them. He has received something by his training, you see, which goes beyond dentistry, and goes beyond medicine, and goes beyond ministry. And it's a -- it's a very rich heritage which the professional people, I think, have to bring to India, for example, which has no such experts. And Africa.

And I think you might be interested then to see that the qualities demanded from these countries -- have very little to do with the specialty. They -- there is something more human, something more general. You may say it's a kind of religion, a kind of faith which the professional groups here represent, and which they have to communicate to the rest of the world, which are, after all, 2,000 years behind, who are -- let us call it frankly {pagans}.

And Christianity has created in a -- in a strange stra- -- history something that is a -- must become a universal article of export. And then we shall go back and see -- look at our own drying-up of the sources of originality and creativity, which you can in -- again in all the discussions of our school problem and education problem today, you see, and which of course also threatens the professions. Because the -- where do they get the people like Dr. {Angell}, you see, who -- as a farmboy graduates at the age of 23 in Pennsylvania, and then goes and founds a new school, you see, and -- and has now, I think, conquered so

much that few people have to know about his life. He is just everywhere in all -- all the things you do.

So to come back to our professional problem. What is a profession? I -- there is one law in this country which deals -- as -- especially with the profession of orthodontia. I suppose that not one of us has read the law of Arizona of 1929. It is the one and only law ever enacted on orthodontia. And it defines the profession of the orthodontist and of the dentist. And I think you might be interested to hear its -- verbatim.

"Laws of Arizona: Chapter 11, 1929

"To amend sections such-and-such, so as to define 'orthodontia,' and to recognize the practice of orthodontia as a profession.

So here we have the -- the term, you see.

"To define 'orthodontia' as a profession separate and distinct from dentistry.

So I hope nobody minds.

"Prescribing the qualifications of dentists and orthodontists, and providing for the examination, licensing, and revocation of licenses of dentists and orthodontists.

"Section 2541: 'Practice of dentistry' is defined; and 'practice of orthodontia' is defined.

"A person shall be deemed practicing dentistry who, for a fee or reward shall attempt to, or perform an operation upon, or treat diseases or lesions of human teeth, gums, or jaws. A person shall be deemed practicing orthodontia who, for a fee or a reward, shall attempt to or perform an operation, or give treatment that has for its object the correction of abnormal position and relation of the teeth, jaws, and arches, and the restoration to normal structure and function of such related bones, muscles, and other tissue as are abnormally affected thereby. Unlis- -- unless licensed, it shall be considered a misdemeanor to treat these -- these facts.

"Approved February 18th, 1929."

There it -- again, you see, it's just -- it's one generation ago that this was done.

What does this mean? I think we learn quite a bit about what a profession is, as different from an occupation or a job. First of all, the law has been invoked.

Politicians have written this law. It was a pupil, by the way, of Dr. {Angell} who had settled in Arizona, who prevailed on the legislature to put through this law. So here was one man who went to bat, and he succeeded. But the teamwork needed was between him and the laity, and the political party, and the majority of the senate, and the governor, you see. That is, of instances and of institutions who themselves are not dealing with orthodontia at all. And here we learn the first thing, that professions need recognition. A profession cannot exist in any -- in any society if other people do not expect from the professional person, you see, certain services and say nobody else can perform them.

So there is, you see, the great -- the great cement that builds a -- the body politic means that there is trust, there is confidence, you see, that there is a group of people--at least one, as in the case of this Arizona law--who comes forward and has a -- gained the confidence of other people, that he is the point of reference. He is the man to turn to, and therefore he should be protected, and nobody else should act as a quack, you see, and interfere.

And I think this is neglected very often. Pardon me for saying so. I don't know these -- your -- your -- your special policies in the -- in the orthodontia. But all the professions are inclined to think -- take the lawyer. The lawyer thinks that he has a Bar Association on the one-hand side, and he has the criminal or his client on the other side. So it's a relation between him and the public, as they say. I doubt that this is -- this is not enough. There is a third relation between the professional person and the authorities. The body politic in the sense of a vocal, you see, body that can enact laws, and that can proclaim, you see, rights.

And so the first thing I think we should insist on in defining our -- the situation of the professional group--and I as a scholar, I think I am a professional man in this sense, too--we are dependent on two relations. Take the ParentTeacher Association, where it is very clear. The parents there forming the -- the group to whom the parent -- the teachers have to refer when they want to -- put through reforms, and it's not the children. So the teacher-child relationship is one relationship; and the teacher-parent relationship and school board relationship is a very different one, as you know. And they clash, obviously.

And the same thing is true of the professions, that the professional group depends on a certain faith in the community. And perhaps there is only a certain capital of confidence and faith in any community. And it distributes its capital of faith to the different groups. It will have a certain percentage of this faith invested in medicine, and another to the legal profession, and another to the politicians, you see, and another to the churches. And you could, instead of having only the director of the budget of the United States, you see, in finances, it would be perhaps very wise if we would begin to think of a budget of confidence, of

faith, that any country, any society, you see, has year by year the -- the -- the positions in this -- budget, change. The items, you see, as the amount of confidence ascribed, and -- and given, assigned to the various groups is a very changeable proposition.

And I would think that, for example, the faith and the esteem in which dentistry has been held in this country for the last 70 years far outruns the esteem and respect given to dentistry in older countries, and other countries, because the pioneering of the American dentist, you see, has set him quite apart. And I think we have -- will have cause to mention this occasionally again. I have always held, long before I ever got in touch with Martin Brusse, that in this country, the -- budget of confidence has -- has contained always a very large item in favor of the American dentist, because he rep- -- represented very much of the American genius. The American dentist was an article of export when I was a boy of 14. At the seashore in -- in northern Germany. I met the American dentist who was the -- dentist of the Ameri- -- German emperor. And he insisted that only an American dentist could treat him, because no German dentist had his confidence.

So you see, the confidence to the professions is an international affair. An American dentist was better than any European dentist at that time. And people catered to him. And you may know that Mr. Sun Yat-sen, the first revolutionary leader of China, got his wisdom from a dentist in New York. And he was his political inspi- -- inspiration, because obviously he had treated Mr. Sun Yat-sen successfully for his toothache.

But -- that is not a -- a joke. It is simply true that the professions represent an anticipation of a budget of faith of the real religion of the -- humanity. If you cater today to the physicists, or to the atom physicists--especially the nuclear physicists--it just means that in the realm of -- of -- common thinking, you see, and common faith, he has a certain place which abounds, which -- which excels, and which makes people who have no legal ties with him, who are not his cocitizens, you see, bestow the Nobel Prize on him, or something like it--the Nobel Prize being just a symbol of something worldwide, you see--which pulls people in this direction, and forces them to cater to -- to long for these men's services in this kind of professional activity. And therefore of course perhaps not only en- -- what you call enhances his prestige. I hate the word "prestige," to tell you the truth; I think it's a nonsensical word. But what is behind "prestige" is faith and expectation. It is nothing just for the mirror, and for vanity, and for Life magazine. It's something very serious. Where do you go when your wife is sick? Well, perhaps you go to a surgeon who doesn't live within the borders of the United States, you see.

And in this moment, you transgress your political nationality, you see, obviously for a very important act in your life. And you try to create a unity which otherwise doesn't exist. So always professional people have outrun the borders of religion--as a -- as classified, so to speak, hitherto. The Queen Elizabeth had a Jewish physician at her court for her personal health. She didn't trust any English physician. It was a Spanish Jew who treated her. And the pope, as you know, was saved by a Dutch doctor who was a professor in Basel, Switzerland; the last pope. For several years, he -- he prolonged his life -- the pope's life. And though the pope was -- is an Ital- -- was an Italian, you see, he simply asked this man to help him.

The professions have always anticipated the una sancta. The ecumenic movement is very far behind the professions, because if you had -- could have a good doctor, you see, you would travel thousands of miles to consult him, in which you acknowledge, you see, that you were in a membership, you see, of an anticipated body politic of a unity, which the laws of the country so -- hitherto hadn't cared to recognize.

And I think the professions are--in one way if you -- take -- the oath of Hippocrates--all have been aware of this universality of their service. But on the other hand, I think they aren't proud enough, quite, of this -- their location. And I never hear in the ecumenic movement, where these churchmen went after things that are obvious and that have long -- long since been enacted, that they are far behind the laity. These ministers and bishops, you see, want to stop their quarrels now. But the -- they have to stop their quarrels, because --.

An Argentine boy came to -- to Dartmouth. You may -- don't -- that was before your days. He had eye problem. So he came of course to the Dartmouth Eye Clinic, you see. And he get -- got cured there. He'll never forget it. I mean, that's the unity on which he moved, and in -- on which -- in which he believed, and on which he based his actions. And this case of the Argentine boy who was cured in -- Dartmouth -- the -- made the Eye Clinic. The Dartmouth Eye Clinic at that time, they had a specialty with so-called aniseikonia. You may not even heard -- have heard the term; was the discovery of the man who founded the clinic. And it was the international clientele which convinced the authorities in Dartmouth that there was really something to it. And the prophet has no honor in his own country. This is certainly very true about -- of the profession. And -- that is, the -- an international rep- -- reputation of the Mayo Clinic doesn't do any harm in Minnesota. They couldn't have developed their authority, you see, locally, in -- in Minnesota { }, you see.

That is, the confidence and faith attributed to a professional person just locally is not the faith that is really important for the growth of the profession

and for the achievements of the profession. It is the just the proof that it explodes boundaries of a political nature or a religious nature, which proves the efficiency of the services of the professional person. And -- .

Practically, you all know this. But I want you to -- just to -- to hear it formulated in the abstract. Because with all these worldwide movements--Union Now, by Mr. Streit or -- or ecumenic movement of the Church--this we always forget where the true ecumenic movement, you see, all the time is at work. Wherever an expert is sought from an outside part of the world, you see, you usually can be sure that the man is -- has been ignored at home for quite a long time, you see, and that the out -- the -- other people put him on the map.

Well, this is certainly true about Schweitzer, who had a certain reputation as a connoisseur of Bach in France. But who certainly has all his glory, you see -- here he has it, you see, from this place, here, in Aspen, where he was invited to lecture in 19- -- 1949.

Now the professions have to be professed. And that seems very trivial, but it isn't. Because "profession" is originally a word of relig- -- of religion. You profess to be a monk, you see. The profession of the monk is the origin -- origin of the term "pro-" -- "profess."

And I looked up the -- the great work that Mussolini has left behind. It's the -- the -- really the afterglow of Europe. It is the great Encyclopedia Italiana, in 42 volumes. Giant work, and the Encyclopaedia Britannica can just hide its head in shame, compared to this great work. It's three times as solid, and as grandiose in everything, in -- in illustrations, in maps, and so on. And he invited all the scholars of Europe and America to contribute to this work. And it appeared in his -- from 1933 to 1945. And it has now some appendices in -- after the -- -math in -- in the '50s. And it is only limited in consumption because not everybody reads Italian. But otherwise, I assure you, it is the standard work which sums up the state of western civilization in a solid way.

And so they -- I looked up the articles on professions. And it is very strange. The -- the man -- the people who ran this didn't have my topic--on the future of the professions--at heart. So they simply -- concentrated on the verbal meaning first, and gave the -- all the stories of the profession of faith which a monk has to -- you see, has to offer and to express when he enters the monastery, the vows of a nun or a monk, and of the priesthood. Then the next article says, "{Professioni del -- dei -- centi- -- del centimento}" which means "census." And he -- they suddenly became aware that in a census, you count the professions, too. And they're quite different, of course, from the professions of a monk.

And I think it is for a moment worth your while to -- to go back to the source, to revivify the unity of the professions of a monk, and the professions of the Census. Because my point is that when- -- any man does a job doesn't have to say anything in public about it--I mentioned this before--the professional person has to have a shingle. He has to hang out something by which he professes, you see, to be an expert. He also -- he thereby arouses the confidence of the people, the public that here is the man to help him. But he can only hang out the shingle--that's Number 3, and I mentioned before with -- with -- regarding this law in Arizona--if the society allows him to call himself this way, you see, to call himself a doctor, what are -- what have you in the profession.

And so it's -- the real society always consists of three relations: the relations of the colleagues in a profession; the relations to the public, you see; and the relations to this mysterious body politic. I have no better expression, the Church calls it the Corpus Christi, the body of Christ. It is always the assumption of a spiritual body whose content and whose members constantly change, constantly are in development--there were no dentists 300 years ago, you see--that can produce new names, and new branches, and new lines of communication, but that disposes of all these powers at any one moment with absolute authority. It can forbid your existence, you see. You can say you are subversive. Then you go out, you see, at least in this part of the world. If you have a genuine task to perform, you will pop up in another part of the world.

But this body politic has very little to do with statehood, has very little to do with the government in Washington. It is -- seems to be something irresistible. It seems to be -- mankind organized, mankind moving forward, you see. One step forward, three steps backward--that seems to be the locomotion in general, you see, through error -- trial and error, you see--but always containing these various professions, you see, as elements of a total budget of spiritual elements, and forces, and achievement, and actions.

Now I -- I think I'm -- I'm -- I'm not wrong when I say that in this country, that the pioneers, and the immigrants, and the atomization of our society into 287 denominations had led most people to believe that a country consists of its inhabitants, that 175 million people make up the United States. The professions testify against this. The whole is earlier than its parts. It's the whole that sets the pace for what you are. Of course, in the flesh, as a -- as a human being, I mean, with your -- to be put on the scales and to be put in a bed in a hospital, and so, carnal man is just one out of 175 million. But you as a dentist are a part of a development which is total, and which assigns the right -- your right to be called a dentist, you see, to your branch, because it is a whole tree of actions. There are lawyers; there are ministers.

And without this law of Arizona, I wouldn't be able to point out to you how simple this is, you see, that we wait for being called. That's the -- reason why we have a vocation, you see. Same idea, of course, you see. That somebody else must bestow a title, a name, a faculty, a capacity on us before we really can do it, you see. As long as you work in the shadow of being a quack, you just can't act with the same naivet‚, with the same assurance. The very moment the people call you a dentist, you are one, in a way you can never bestow your- -- on yourself. And just as a child isn't born before it has received its name--and that's why we have the institution of baptism, because that is what nature cannot give, what you yourself cannot do: give yourself your own name, you see--in the same sense, that I think is the reformation I'm -- I'm struggling for all my life, and which I think is -- has not yet come about in this country: the recognition that the political, social names in a society are given, and not self-made.

A man -- the idea that man is self-made is -- is not true, you see. He's only fin- -- a finished product when the society calls him what he wants to be. I always tell my colleagues who are individualists -- who teach the greatest happiness of the greatest multitude, and who think in pragmatic -- -matic terms like Mr. John Dewey, all this modern stuff of modern society--the analysts and all these people--I always warn them that they have been called long before they are -- can call themselves. That before they -- and I always use this very simple example: you take a professor who teaches this, I think, erroneous teaching that man is self-made, you see, and everybody is -- is the captain of his own soul, and you just think what you think right yourself, and then do it. I always say, "Yes, this is very nice, Professor Such-and- -- Smith, but you always insist that the students must believe that you are their professor. There is no skepticism permissible. You can -- they cannot say you are not a professor, and you have no right to examine them. You always assume that in all your teaching, one thing is absolutely confirmed, you say, and stable, that the authorities have bestowed on you the right to annoy and bore these people in these -- six times a week."

And it's very funny. All these professors try to insist, you see, that they take this for granted. It's never part of their philosophy. Now pardon me, but I have made this the starting point of my thinking. And I think before you can have a client in your dentist's chair, you see, you want it taken for granted that this people -- these people don't doubt that you are a dentist. And you can do -- do nothing about this yourself. Somebody else has to make sure that you are a dentist in their eyes.

And this is the mystery that has been omitted, I think, from all political science in this country, and all sociology. And in this sense, I have -- always felt--I'm now 30 years in this country--that the -- this beach of Europe, this tremendous achievement of conquering a continent in a hundred -- 150 years,

and -- and building roads, and building railroads, and teaching this town after town, state after state, has made people forget, you see, that the authority for doing all these things is based on this mystery of a -- oneness.

You -- I give you a very simple example. People always think the -- the West has been peopled by individuals. Well, Uncle Sam held this land in escrow for them. And without Uncle Sam in Washington, not one settler could have settled, you see. And the fact is -- I have now gone through the papers of the fathers of this country, the founding fathers, and it is most startling how, between 1776 and 1783, the Adamses--John Adams--and John Jay, and Benjamin Franklin, being abroad in Europe, never thought of the 13 colonies and their independence, while the war was raging against the British, but of the empire, far out West to the Mississippi, which these 13 colonies would have to wrest from the English. The content of their correspondence is not in -- anything about Massachusetts, you see, or Virginia, but: how do we force the British to give up the Mississippi River from the source to the mouth? That is, from the very beginning, the united Congress, you see, the Continental Congress, and its delegations insisted that the whole is earlier than its parts. And then all the individuals who went out West to settle, did this under the protection, you see, of a -- of a common scheme, of a community inside of which they could hold property, you see, and they could settle.

And it's very hard -- I know I--perhaps it's -- it's too short what I have to say on this at this moment; it isn't quite { }--but it's part of my story, that the professions are part of a large spiritual whole whose anticipation, you see, allows us to pass laws like this Arizona -- laws and say, "Well, of course, we want somebody to take care of teeth, and somebody to take care of jaws, and somebody to take care of surgery," you see. And it is this common spirit, this strange wholeness, this totality -- within which you -- we can only prosper.

Take property. How can you hold property if your neighbor doesn't acknowledge that it is your property? It has to be somewhere in the books. The deed has to be, you see, certified. There has to be a town clerk who says, "This is your property." Very nice that you say, "I'm self-made. I have now the money to buy the whole world." You can't buy the whole world if nobody gives you title to this buy, you see. Somebody, and this is the spiritual unit -- agency that is the rest of the people have to say, "Well, he bought it. So it's his."

And the neglect of this whole aspect of our world I think is understandable, because of the hurry in which this country was settled. But I think the -- the great task before the people of these United States at this moment is to look backward into their European, Christian, Roman, Jewish, biblical past, and to understand that the Gospel of St. John put the finger on the real fact of progress,

that in the beginning was the Word. That is, if you cannot inject faith into the rest of mankind, that what you are doing is what they want you to do, you see, and what they hope you to do, and what they expect you to do, you work in vain. Nobody can develop any step forward without having the conviction that we move within humanity. And this humanity doesn't consist of population explosion of 8 billion people, you see. But it is a quite an organized body politic, you see, because it distributes offices. It says, "There must be mothers, and there must be teachers, and there must be fathers, and there must be dentists, and there must be lawyers." That is, it has some imaginative, you see, picture of the whole.

This can be revised. You -- may have different -- you have engineers today where a hundred years ago, people didn't think much of engineers. But although it can be replenished, and also can be rejuvenated, and can be re-created all the time, it's a growing body. And the professions are in this sense the connecting link between America's pioneering and -- past of mere immigrants as individuals as atoms in the universe--what you -- what is called "democracy," I see often, with misunderstanding: just an agglomeration of individuals, you see, a heap of people--and the real tradition of the human race, that a profession means three things: a brotherhood of the people who do the same thing, a service to the people who are in need of it, and the recognition by the au- -- authoritative, you see, leaders of the community, that this service is done -- executed in the right manner by this group of colleagues; by this guild and craft; by this, you see, metier; by this profession. You see, the triumvirate is very interesting, because the customers--your customers--they are mere individuals. They are this -- this -- these people who just are -- well, they are in pain; they are in need of you. They run. They are in fear, you see. You are at work. That's a different -- you are a professional. You are in a different mood. You know what you are doing. In the morning, you have your appointment book. And you are -- I mean, in most cases, you are only active when you are healthy. So compared to your client, you are not in this same immediate need, you see.

So we can say that the -- the -- your customer is a fan- -- frantic individual, who can't sleep because of his toothache. And therefore he is reduced to the moment. He is a mosquito; he is just there, frantic, pain -- in pain, you see, aching and wants to be restored. You are on a middle range of your own life. You have -- 30 years you have invested in your study, you see. Now you have your board examination. You get going. You have another 40 years perhaps ahead of you. Your time span, which the professional man himself covers, may be -- is a lifetime. And therefore you move on a slow- -- in a slower pace. The individual case doesn't faze you, as it does the people who is sick -- the person who is sick.

I went through this -- my good, dear wife died this last year, and I lived with her in the hospital. And I came of course to the insight very soon that what was to me a unique case is only one case for the doctor, out of a hundred. And the whole problem is to make these two aspects meet, so to speak, and harmonize. I had to do everything in a different manner, because I had only to do it once, you see. And they have to do it in a -- in their professional way as one out of many. But that doesn't mean that I'm superfluous as a husband, you see. And it doesn't mean, you see, that they mustn't treat as -- get so excited as I was.

But now comes the third aspect which has to do a little bit to do with eternity. It's certainly more than a lifetime. Laws should only be enacted if they are still valid for our successors. Any law that's just for the day is a bad law. Frantic laws, you see, against treason. Take the -- the McCarthy business. Why was it bad? Because it was just done on the spur of the moment, you see. It had not in mind the larger future of the United States for several hundred years. Not even for the lifetime. So it is a -- it's a craze. It's -- it's like this fad now that everybody's an executive. And we laughingly said yesterday that five years from now, they'll call these people "birds," and it will be a new term, because it's just a fad, it's just a fashion to call people "executives" today.

So the -- the profound -- well, perhaps you are frightened by the term "revelation," but the -- the -- the opening-up, the vista which opens up when we look into the professions -- is that there are three times within which the human race moves. It is frantic for the day, it's hungry, it's starved, it's cold, it's warm--whatever it is, perhaps sick, {you feel unhealthy}. Then there are lifetime propositions; that's for the professional man. And he represents the solidity, you see, of a lifetime devotion to good work. And only a man who does something all his life will do a first-class work, as you know. And noth- -- what is more beautiful than a carpenter, or watchmaker, you see--they are very rare--and a doctor who knows what he's doing, you see. And this excellency of good work is always connected with a lifetime devotion to it. He cannot -- you cannot expect a man who has -- looks left and right -- that he do -- does a first-rate job in his profession. But then we come to this relation--take the dentist and the orthodontist, take the dentist and the physician, take the physician and the mental-health man, take the mental-health man and the lawyer, and the -- minister--they are all very close. And yet they are all divided, you see.

Now it's up to you. If you think of the -- these professions, as we have been brought up in this country very often, just as little boxes, side by side, you will think that they spring up just as individual activities. I think it is -- would be much better if you would see them as branches of one tree, as members of one body, you see, which at first is embryonic and -- gradually develops all these fingers, and all these hands, and all these arms, and all these limbs, to cover like a

centipede all the necessities, you see, that spring up.

In any case, your honor, your professional status does not depend on your lifetime activity. It depends on what went on before you, before you were born, and it went -- depends on what prevails after you are dead. Mis- -- take Dr. {Angell}, you see. When he came, there was nothing like orthodontia. And it's only today that you take it for granted. I read your papers, and the word is just bandied around, you see. And it's -- it's natural. And it's hard then for you probably to realize that in 1930, it simply was not so. It didn't exist.

Which means that the authorities who bestow on us the title of a professional man are of very long range. And something that Americans, I think, have tried to -- to ignore. Like the founding fathers, who have given us a constitution; there is a deeper constitution, a more profound constitution than the Constitution of the United States; and that's the constitution of the body politic of the whole human race. And there we expect our honor and our blame, so to speak, from generations before us and from generations to come. And the changes in the professions today come of course from a change of the religion of the people as a whole. What do the -- the American people, what do the people of world expect of the future? Do they expect the Third World War? Do they expect peace? You see, do they expect the unity? Do they expect dissension? Do they expect racial superiority, you see? What do they expect? That will define how much free movement is granted to the individual profession. I mean, will you be sent to the black -- Africa, you see? Will the government ask you to produce 10,000 more dentists in here, you see, so that there is a surplus of such dentists? That's very much dependent on communal action on which you have a little influence, of course, but not the whole. Obviously, you see. Because all the relief measures to give passports to a man from Africa, you see, depends on the state department in Washington, and not on us, as you know.

And I think my whole way of -- of seeing this is in terms of time waves. The public is of the moment. The profession is of the lifetime, of the generation, you see. The authorities are of times that connect, that what has gone before our own life, you see, and what must go on after our -- we -- live. So it has to do with birth and death, and goes before birth and after death.

And the fact that we have lost sight of this, and I may prove with one very simple example--and that may perhaps encourage you to listen to me and think I'm not talking nonsense--modern man at the end of the 19th century had so completely forgotten these three wavelengths of time, that he lived in -- on three time axes: on the time axis of the day; the time -- or the year--where you are sick, I mean, or you are in fear, where you are hungry, where you are starved, when you are unemployed, or you see, or -- where you are in love, which is still worse

-- and have to get married; and the time where you are settled, and know what you are doing and as long as you can do it; and the time where your job is put down on the map as something essential now, you see, or when it is withdrawn and canceled.

These three time levels have been completely forgotten. And the simple example I now wish to -- would like to give you of this is Freud's psychoanalysis. Analy- -- -- Freud lived, as you know, in the -- at the end of the 19th century, in a decaying Austrian-Hungarian empire, with Vienna the center of all this disintegration. And so he sensed that man wanted to go before his birth, and after his death. But the analysis -- analyst had the funny idea that in person -- people wanted to know what he thought and when he was two, or when he was an embryo, or when he -- what he was doing in his mother's womb.

This, I think, is a typical misdemeanor, and misnomer, and, you see, erroneous -- metabasis eis allegenos, translation into a -- quite a different rubric of physical existence. We all want to know what has gone on before our own time--but not physically, but spiritually. What the esteem has been, you see, that has been given to our position in society, before, and where we are heading. Will this honor and esteem grow, you see? Or will we have to -- retrace our steps and do something different, you see? And I think fu- -- the future times, they already begin to laugh at this strange error that the desire of man to know what is happening after my death and what has gone one before my birth has been expressed in physical terms, as though the baby, you see, physically, wanted to know what went on in -- you see, when he was in his mother's womb. I think that's just laughable.

But it is true that a boy of 14 or a boy -- a student of 20 wants very much to know how their -- his parents were in love. And that's a spiritual story; that's an histor- -- story, you see. You can't take a -- tell a boy something more interesting, if he's brought up right, than how his grandparents behaved. That's -- he wants to know; but these are people in the -- in the full maturity of life whom he wants to meet on this historical level. And not, you see, how he shit and -- et cetera--pardon me--and when he was just born.

This {complete} confusion of the physical and the spiritual is I think at the -- at the center of our woes, and of our lack of -- what they call "lack of communication." You cannot speak to the legislator of Arizona who has to pass a law on orthodontia in the same terms as you talk to the man who has a toothache, and has to have a tooth -- pulled, you see. The considerations are completely different. They move on a different level. They can never be reduced to any common denominator. And you have this talk of the common denominator, which of course is, I think, stultifying { }. It has quieted down in the last years,

because people seem to have felt that it has not much to do with common denominator. There are no common denominators for a -- the legislator in us, you see, the citizen in you who votes for this law or for this government, and the professional man who has to fulfill his life's task, and for the man in fear and in destitution, you see, who is frightened.

And -- I could enlarge on -- I have written whole books on this -- on these time levels. But I think we live in a world of waves. We turn on the -- tune in, you see, the radio, and we're all accustomed to know that there are different waves -- long waves and short waves. It shouldn't surprise you to think of the professional man as standing in the middle, between the short-lived, you see, customer of yours, who is in immediate need of your own fulfillment, with a lifetime proposition, and of the big society within which any profession, you see, has to change, and has to keep growing, and has to undergo alterations, and certainly is constantly changing its relations to other professions.

This of course is the -- perhaps the best proving point, that although your profession may be all sound. I mean, a doctor -- a surgeon may say, "Well, I have done this since Hippocrates' day; the oath of Hippocrates is the same." Yet it is absolutely obvious that his relations to the priest, his relations to the -- you see, to the mother is completely changed today. Because the mother was the nurse in former days, you see. And she had part of her treat- -- the treatment of any sick person was in the hands of the women of the family, you see. So the doctor has to take over now quite a portion of their task by -- he has to know the sleeping pills, you see. Formerly, any mother could put to sleep her husband and her children, you see. She didn't have to call the doctor. She knew what a nightcap was -- night cup was.

And so the relations of the professions, I think, prove my point that we live on these three wavelengths. And much would be, I think, helped, and the faith that is so lacking today in the American male, especially--that the -- the -- America has no future, or is threatened, or has to go to World War III, or -- or has to depend on -- on shots into the moon--would acquire a different character and a different slant if the -- the relation of the professions would become clear, that any profession had these three directions. You would then see that the public which you -- whom you serve, you see, and the people within which you exist, and the colleagues of the profession are three different human states of aggregate, I should say. Just as there is steam, and water, and gas, and you take it for granted that it's the same H2O, and yet has these completely different forms --. It would be very much worthwhile if you would cease only to speak of public opinion, Sir, Mr. -- my dear Martin, you see. The dentist and any profession has a status in the community as a part of the people of the United States and of the human race. And that's a more compli- -- honorable, or more complicated, and

more venerable, and more respectable thing. It has this problem with the public. But who is the public? And it has a problem inside its profession. You see, you have to get along with each other, and have to understand each other. And that's on a dif- -- you will admit that when one professional man speaks to another professional, he brushes aside all this public stuff, all this { }, all this -- , That's just for another group of people.

Now -- when did I start? How much do you -- more do you give me? Are you tired? Shall I stop here? I think it's better. Do you? You say it frankly.

(No. I'm enjoying it very, very much.)

Wie?

(I'm -- .)

We are all trinitarians. That is, every human being who is efficient in society, who is not just a bum--whether it's a mother, or a child, or a father, anybody who has a position in society--has these three languages to speak. And he should defend this as his privilege. That's human freedom. He must never just speak the language of the best-seller, be it Lolita, or be it Peyton Place. And he must -- he -- he is a mortal, so he is of course the subject of fear, and the subject of anxiety, and the subject of pain, and the subject of danger, you see, and needs immediate help. So he goes to the lawyer when he has to go to court, and he goes to the doctor when he is sick. And that's the -- only one third of {you}.

The mystery is that you and I, who are professional people, are also public, you see, mass. And we are also entitled to provide, through our sac- -- services and sacrifices, for the future of the human race. Every one of us is a priest, you see, and every one of us is a layman, you see, and every one is a professional man. And these are three different attitudes in all of us. And we can only understand the happenings in the world if we are able to translate the professional language; and the public's frantic, you see, demands on us; and the slow process of law, you see, which usually always is overdue, you see, and very retiring, you see, and know that the distinctions between the three processes must be upheld.

I -- my whole claim today was to show you that the professions are in a key position--much more than, as I said, the official churchman--to provide for the trinitarian tradition of mankind, that we move in three states of aggregate. Just as our body has bones, flesh, and blood, so it would be wise for you to understand that the body politic has the bones of historical legislation, you see, and direction. And it has the flesh of the professions, and it has the blood circulation of the -- of the masses of the public, you see, of the fluid. That is, unformed,

and certainly uninformed.

And today, there is a constant demand on our stupidity to believe that they are all one, that public -- that flesh, blood, and bones are the same thing. But they aren't. And just as you know that bones recover much more slowly than the flesh, and the flesh more slowly, I suppose, than the restitution of the blood by a transfusion --. You could put it -- can put blood in very quickly. My little grandchild was saved half a year ago, 24 hours after birth, by a complete transfusion of his blood. It's just a -- miraculous, I think. { }. But the child is the same. It has kept its identity, because the blood is not obviously the center of its character, you see, and of its soul, and of its being.

So what -- what has to come, I think, the layman's and -- scientist's demonstration, that what we have been told in our schools for 2,000 years--that man is in a trinity--is simply true. And the professional man, since he is nondenominational, since he is non-national, since he is not partisan--simply by his very existence, you see, is the stumbling block which proves the truth: that we have bones, flesh, and blood in our spirit, in our mentality, in our mind. And that just means that we move all the time on these three levels. And that before the professional man does not emphasize this, the very one-sided American tradition, that we're all just public, will ruin us. Because it will make for sensations, you see. It will make for best-sellers. It will make for a kind of -- of nervous unrest, which as you know is the -- is the danger of this country, that we run from fad to fad. Because nobody contradicts the fact--it is taught everywhere in the colleges, as far as I know--that we are all of the same type of existence, all our life. We aren't. When we are frantic and in fear, we are the public. Then we are like the blood, you see. When we are organized, you see, in our special function--in our -- the kidneys of the body politic, or the stomach, or whatever we do, and the brain, you see--we have time. But when we represent the question: how to change the organization of the body politic, you see, how to introduce a new law, you see, that suddenly declares, "This is a profession," you see, we move in a light of eternity. And eternity not as an empty phrase, of some eternity beyond the clouds, you see, but the eternity of our destiny, of our simple task: what is to be done now?

Well, let me stop here.

(May I ask a question? This is all quite deep stuff for me, I must admit, right now, because I've never thought about it before. But you say that there is no common denominator between these three phases, or fields, or divisions, that we all as individuals exemplify different fields -- one of these three fields or aspects, and different times--depending upon our condition at the time. Yet isn't there still an overriding, common denominator? As an individual, we might say

for lack of a better term a certain spiritual guidance, or morality, or something? And I think the same thing is true in saying that in a -- in a national scope, you say there is a legislature. The legislative branch is -- is the {governing} group that governs or rules; then there is the -- our colleagues, our group of colleagues; and then there is the mass, on the other hand. Isn't that right, or --?)

Ja. I'm sorry. I don't wish to disparage the mass. I have a -- quite a heart for the mass. Let's call them "public." I think the public is an American idol, you see.

There is a quote by a Supreme Court justice. Let me just say this, just to show you how far this heresy goes in this country. It's a justice of the Supreme Court who, 30 years ago, wrote a book The Public and Its Government. And my answer is that the public can {know} no government, you see. The people and its -- their government, that's the -- right term, you see. But if you say, "the public and the government," it's all kisses to the Negro baby. You see, and it's just the baby then, now. The -- what you have is this degradation of the democratic {government}. This is the error of this just- -- judge. The Public and Its Government. The public is once removed from the problems of government, without the pub- -- the pub- -- the member of the public fulfilling a task, and a service he has no right to vote. As a public, I have no right to vote. A man in fear, a man in distress, a man, you see, frantic, a man facing suicide, he is not a man who runs this -- can influence the government. But a man in his profession, a man as an owner, a man as a proprietor, you see, a man as doing something, a student, anybody, a school chap, he can fulfill a function for the government and advise it. And this book to me is the -- the lowest of the low, you see. How have the mighty fallen! If your founding fathers had heard this title, you see, they would have taken ship to England.

The Public and Its Government! And nobody laughs. And nobody shudders in this country. You can sell this to them, you see.

(Well, you say there's no common denominator? Isn't there some feeling within these three groups toward one point? Isn't --?)

No, there is a hierarchy. You must never call it a "common denominator," you see. Because it means that the thing is healthy as long as a certain loss of blood is accepted by the soldier, because he's willing to die for his country. I mean, there is a hierarchy of values, there is an order by which the permanent future of the United States comes first, you see. The lifetime occupation comes second. And the momentary frenzy comes third. And that's why I oppose the term "common denominator," because there is an order. And woe to the children who are educated for their whims by their parents, and the parents do not insist that for the life of the child, this momentary getting candy is bad, you see,

although the child wants it, you see. And this country, you give in to the public demand. And it has to be fulfilled. It's not true. You have to resist the public demand. Mr. DeGaulle just does it at this moment, you see. That's why we have dictatorships. The degradation of the democratic governor -- you have to have -- minority rule, if the public has been so spoiled that we'll always accept, you see, the pleasant thing for the serious thing. The -- the -- democracy brings in its own end by its own abuses, you see. We have a {high} democracy beginning in 1960, you may be sure. It's -- can't be helped, because if the only cause for the public is that it wants to live more on the installment plan, somebody has to come and pass a law that there will be no installment plan. Because otherwise the currency, and the whole country will be -- go to pieces, will not be able to export, and we'll be -- just lose our position in the rest of the world. Isn't that very simple?

So that's why I have to oppose the "common denominator." The word "common" is wrong. There is certainly a unity, there is a relation, you see, in this. But you cannot say that bones, and -- and blood, and flesh have a common denominator. I mean, it -- you can, but I mean -- .

(Purpose.)

Ja, ja. Quite right. So you -- I -- I think I must resist this temptation. Just -- just for harmony's sake, you mustn't -- must not give into such a -- simplification.

No, no. I think -- to tell you the truth, this is my deepest conviction, that Christianity has developed in the Trinity a much more scientific and profound dogma than the churchmen themselves have any idea of, you see. That in -- telling us that the truth is threefold, they have warned us against any dogmatic simplification that we could see God, you see. God is invisible, and therefore at no moment can you --. There is a child, and asks you for candy, you see. The Holy Spirit only can tell you whether you can give the candy, whether you have to tell the child, you see, that it isn't good for its teeth to eat candy, or whether you have to say that it should make a sacrifice for the poor Italian children in sou- -- in Sicily, you see, which is the third, which would be the legislative attitude, you see, of the child; it would teach it to make sacrifices.

There are three attitudes. Can you ever tell me in advance what I, as a parent, shall tell my child, you see? Certainly at times, I want to give it candy, you see. At times, I'll teach him that too much candy is simply bad, you see. But at other times, I'll appeal to its sense of -- of -- of heroism, you see, and sacrifice, and invite him to do something which is not in its own interest at all, you see. Neither on the long wavelength of his whole life, nor on the immediate wavelength of his pleasure.

And so, is this a common denominator, Sir? The wonderful thing of life is that it is a surprise. You see, you never know what you have to do tomorrow. Three voices are talking into you all the time.

(Professor?)

We have to have a break.

(I know him well. So he -- and he can go all day. And I think that the problem is not his speaking; it's how to shut him up. I think that this is a good time to -- to stop this session. I meant to say that I came to Aspen two or three years, skiing, and in the Golden Horn, and the Red Onion, and thought I knew Aspen pretty well, and always had a good time. But I really didn't get to appreciate it until a few years ago, when I came up to some of these conferences. And now you get the -- their {own stew} of fun, and many things. And I think, this morning, as there's -- I think all of us here have experienced Aspen as it should be, a little bit. And we'll meet a little later on. {Doctor}, you mentioned { } want go ahead, that's something to do.)

In any case, we should all get up and have a break. It's not good to sit ...

[tape interruption; end]