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

(This is Number 4 of the series.)

Dr. { } asked me to say something on the educational issue on -- and in a certain way, that would have to happen today, anyway. Because after we have been -- gone extrovert, gone far afield and looked into the world outside, and how they look into us, these three powers: to stand settled, stay put; to aim at perfection without a deadline; and to collaborate in such a way that one can take the other man's place, and is not just a medicine man, you see, in his own -- a witch-doctor in his own right, it is also of course immediately clear that when we turn inside, the real rift in society is between the generations. And that if we start our whole look at society, at humanity, at our group of people from the professions, then tradition and innovation make people immediately into members of their generation. And the behavior between the generations--between parents and children--obviously is a crit- -- at a critical point in this country, because we have neglected the professional outlook, and have made everybody just into a member of the public. Now in the public eye, there is no such thing as a generation.

I had a boy who told me that he had to marry very young, at 23 -- the latest, so that he might be able to play with his own children football. I said he was a fool. He didn't know what it -- was to marry, to have children. If this was a reason to marry early, he'd better no marry at all. This is foolish. And you hear this insanity mentioned all the time.

Another man said to me he wanted to be a doctor, but he couldn't possibly decide to be a doctor, because he was -- accustomed to have his physical exercises in the morning, every morning, and a shower from 6 to 7. And he was told that as a doctor, he might have to go to a sick per- --

[tape interruption]

...medicine, you see, because this playboy, you see, wanted just to be a mem- --

[tape interruption]

...a frenzied group of immediate stimulation.

That one has even to debate these things with one's students shows that we are in a very bad way, that these boys are completely outside the rhythm of

gener- -- the generations where fathers and children, together, inherit the earth. No generation can inherit the earth in -- by itself -- by themselves. But that's the idea today, that today is better than yesterday, and there's no tomorrow. And you are quite a courageous man to call your outfit "Tomorrowland," you know. Because a tomorrow means that neither today nor yesterday are in themselves sovereign, and that they only can be judged in the light of tomorrow both: the fathers and the children. And it would be a little better, I think, the world, if the -- the children and the parents would think of the grandchildren.

Now the Bible is a strange book, and a sealed book. Most ministers don't know it. And the laity even less. It is a very simple book, because it has only one topic which is mentioned in the -- in the first chapter of the New Testament, and the last chapter of the Old Testament. Since it's -- I think you don't know it. Nobody seems to know it today, because people have -- the only thing they always quote today in -- in education is: "Let the children come to me, and remain childish." This abuse of the Bible, as you know, has become customary as -- since the -- Devil also quotes scripture. And -- so you never can prove anything from the Bible today, because everything has been proven from the Bible. But I think you can prove something from the whole of the Bible. Never -- never quote one verse in isolation.

Now the last verse in the Old Testament is strangely unknown. It's a very simple verse. I only have the German Bible, pardon me. I'll have to translate it, and it won't be the King James Version. But sometimes that helps, you know, because you don't go to sleep over it.

"I shall -- he shall turn the heart of the parents to the chil- -- their children, and the heart of the children to their parents, lest I come and slay the earth with a curse."

Now you can only unite the hearts of the children and the hearts of the parents if their own time is not of the last importance. If you tell the children that they must make their own life, and if you yourself think that you must only make your own {pipe}, there is nothing third which would make your hearts turn to their children, and turn to the hearts of the children to your -- the parents. There has to be a third thing, a third power on which, in which, by which, and for which they can unite.

In the chapter of the New Testament that takes up this -- this ver- -- prophecy, in Luke, First Chapter, 17th verse, very strangely only one-half of it is quoted, that now the time has come--with the coming of the Lord--where the hearts of the parents will be turned to their children. And so it is up to us, after 2,000 years, to fulfill the other half of the prophecy, that we also have to turn the hearts of the children to their parents.

What our children are lacking today, since they are told that they go -- must go it themselves, and they must do research, and they must not learn anything by heart, and they must always be entertained, and they have organized games in the summertime--when the haying is going on in our fields, the children are taken to town and have to play organized games, because they must not be allowed to help their ch- -- parents in their chores. That's going on in a Vermont community. Complete insanity. These poor children are isolated from their elders, you see, by these silly games which they have to play.

So the -- this is -- has been left to our -- to our time, to fulfill the last word of the prophet Mal- -- Malachi, third chapter, last verse of the Old Testament. "To turn the hearts of the children to their parents" means to make them into professional people. That is, to make them inherit a spirit, which they have invented, and which they do not discover themselves, despite all pragmatism.

Let -- may I leave it at this -- for the time being, at this? I only wanted to assure you, Doctor, that I have taken up your suggestion. And we will perhaps come back to it in a minute. I still think that a -- a {day's work} may show you the -- the threat to the creative life, and the difficulties at home which -- with which we are faced at this moment. Since we -- you really think that the world consists not of three parties--children and parents, or parents and children; and the third group which makes for the unification of the three--but that there are only two. If you here go -- come to Aspen, to the Aspen Institute, you think there are only adults. And when you go to the -- to the grade school, there are only children. And so we have now divided the society into youth and adults.

Now your -- our great-grandparents would have taken it for an insult to be called an "adult." They were grandmothers or mothers, or they were the Lawyer such-and-such, the Judge such-and-such. They were Farmer Smith, you see, and they were -- they were Harness-maker Brown. That is, the profession made the man, when he was older. You had to be somebody in the community. You -- was the selectman. You were the coun- -- the city councilor. You were the mayor. You were somebody. And to be somebody meant that you were -- had a vested interest, that you had a vest -- a vestment, that you were carrying in the eyes of the public, you see, an office. We limit the word "office" always to political office-holders. But obviously a dentist has an office in the community. I have an office as a teacher. In -- and a man who was grown up in former days, always had a vestment in the eyes of the others. He was a father, you see, or he was a bachelor. Even this was an office. And to be a nun or a monk is a declared bachelor. You have -- you say -- said that I forgo marriage, you see, for a good purpose.

And in -- in any way after 30 years of age, a person -- not -- wasn't called

an adult, because that would have left them naked. And this is very strange that our industrial society has made -- denuded man of his position as manager, president, clerk, merchant, whatever it is. And we gather all these stubbles together so -- and bring them to Aspen and call them adults. You should resent this. You are -- { } cannot come here -- suddenly divested of your vested interests. You are dentists, you see, and you are--pardon me, if I say so, housewife, but you are something different. I'm { }. Wie? Wie?

That is, this country of course is very inimical to -- and hostile to titles. But title is simply the reborn name, the name, the sec- -- of the second birth, of what ha- -- a man has become. He was John, you see, and now he is a blacksmith. Well, the blacksmith -- you may not call it a title. Call it as you want. But it is something between a name and a title which gives this man status. And to call him "an adult" means to cross out this dignity, and treat him, you see, as one in the mass, as a -- with your common denominator, Sir.

And at the very moment that we have been able to unify the society in such a way that the older people are not looked upon for what they are -- do, but that -- but for their biological age, you get all these fan- -- fantastic rules that a man at 65 has to be thrown out of his position, you see, because the biological date, you see, is everything that counts for. He's just the physiological item, and he lives by the famous biological time of a Monsieur -- the Comte de {Nouys}. And he is a -- simply a piece of flesh that withers away. That's an adult.

And you must -- I have been chairman of the World Association of Adult Education, so you can believe me that I have no reason to -- to minimize the importance of our -- of this movement for adult education. But I have always felt that it's a terrible word. And that it challenges us to go one better, and to build up a situation in which man can cease to be an adult and can become an elder in society.

Now the word "elder" of course may strike you as having too much of a denominational cont- -- connotation. It hasn't. It's just meaning elder than you yourself. The -- an elder is not old. But he is older than his own selfishness and his own interest. If you talk to an elder in a church or in any meeting, you turn to him, because he's beyond egotism. He's beyond stressing the "I," his contribution, you see. That's not interesting to an elder. An elder is meant to reconcile youth and -- and adults. You see, it's a third group. And just as we talked about the public and the people, they -- you remember the other day, and said that the -- that the public is -- is of the moment; the professional man is of his lifetime, you see; and the legislator is for all times; so the elder is simply the legislator in another connotation. And you can reduce it to the fact which makes man into something so very different from the animal, that with us, the strength of the

body must produce the elder, and the wise man of 70, or 80, or 90 is more valuable to the community than an athlete of 20.

Now how can you explain this in biological terms? It's perfectly inexplicable. But the fruit of living in a human society is not muscles, you see, but wisdom. And the -- wisdom is nothing abstract, and --. It is the power to mediate between strength and weakness. The strength and the ac- -- activity of this -- of the professional man, for example, you see, and the weakness of the public in us, that is tickled to death by Lolita.

In everybody there is this combination. And all of us have to develop this elderness, that we can mediate between our weakness and our strength, because we are both. So in everybody is a child; and everybody is an adult; but there is also in everybody the elder. And -- as our system of education now goes, the term "elder" has been rejected and ejected. And the children never are told that great things are ahead of them. They are made happy as of the moment. They are treated as the public. The terrible thing in our schools is that the people -- the children are not allowed to be bored; they are not allowed to be disciplined; they are not allowed to -- to suffer; they are not allowed to say it is terrible. But all schools are -- at times are terrible. But so is our professional life. Everything is a mixture of happiness and -- and to make people happy is the Devil's business. He has always told people, "You can be happy if you sell your soul to me." The whole content of Goethe's Faust is in this, you see, that he just signed away, with a little drop of blood, you see, his -- his soul, and for this he could be happy any minute. And of course he wasn't. And the -- whole idea, that children must be happy in school, is a most fantastic idea. It's the first discipline, it's the first acquaintance with the seriousness of life. It's the opposite. A child that doesn't suffer in school is -- to me is an abnormalcy. I've been to the best school I can imagine, but I have suffered. Agonies, I can assure you.

To abolish suffering means to abolish the process by which we become elders. Because the suffering--"patience" is another word for it, you see, "receptivity" is another aspect of the same thing--is the way by which we outgrow our mere physical -- merely physical self. If you have only youth and adults, you have no soc- -- no nation, you have no society. There must be three degrees. And it is very simple, you see, what happens in a country that...

[tape interruption]

...you have in this country George Washington, the victorious general; you have Jackson who won the Battle of New Orleans; you have Grant, who drank -- himself to death, and the country, by -- by and large, too, but he had won the war; and now we have Mr. Eisenhower. Because veterans stand for the

sufferings of their coun- -- of their -- of their comrades. A general, you see, who comes home from a war--it's always overlooked here--represents the dead, and the wounded, and the cripples; those who have suffered. It isn't that I only suffer himself -- myself. But it's meant vicariously, so that this man remembers the dead. And so he has the right to govern, because he's an elder.

And there is no competition against such a man. No civilian can stand up against a victorious general for this one reason, that in a society which says, "In peacetime, we all are happy and amused," you see, "and -- and -- forget suffering, and death, and growth, and -- the future," the -- the army has to do it. Just talk to the Marines, what they think of us civilians.

This is the fate of America. It has always been in the last 150 years, that in the decisive moment you have to take that man who represents the actual suffering of the generation, you see, that has been out in the field and has not returned.

The greatest thinker of America, J- -- William James, had a brother, Robertson James, who was a victim of the Civil War. He didn't -- wasn't killed in action, but he got so sick and such an invalid that he died I think in 1872. And Emerson -- Ralph Waldo Emerson, always held that Robertson James was the greatest genius in the family, greater than Henry James and -- William James.

Now in any case, he was an outstanding man and person. And the fact that he went to war and then died has always rankled, obviously, in the mind of his more -- better-known brother, William, who never went into the war. At that time, you could, as you know, stay at home. You didn't have to go. And in 1910, the year of his death, this has jelled, the fact that this man had suffered, his brother. And that he was not represented, so to speak, in the philosophy of William James, and in the philosophy of -- of Mr. Dewey, and the philosophy of this country, which didn't mention suffering, which didn't mention the death on the battlefield; it didn't mention sacrifice; it didn't mention, you see, this investment of our lives into the future, which a war always is. And so he wrote the "Moral Equivalent of War." And in this speech, which he delivered before the pacifist societies of this country, he simply said that wars cannot be abolished, as long as men do not live as elders, and do not sum up the suf- -- their sufferings into the wisdom of their decisions, of their -- the laws they are passing and making. And this is still unfulfilled in this country. The year 1910 to me is always the year of the downfall of this country, when the spirit left it, with the death of William James. It was his -- like his -- his leg- -- legacy.

As you know, from that time on, we took -- we -- our schools went mad and became institutions for happiness. And that's what we have now. And all

learning was postponed to the graduate level, you see. And you mustn't learn anything before, because it might, you see, be too hard on you.

I have a -- a granddaughter, who's really a gifted person. I mean, everything comes easy to her. She always has 100 in every subject. But she was asked at the age of 11 or -- to do -- to do -- to do newspaper clippings, and to paste together the little -- little items, you see. Is this something for a school? It's a scandal! And it is -- comes at the very moment when you concentrate on youth.

This country is a very old country with very much wisdom, I think, from all of Europe here. And it has this fictitious idea that it is a young country. America has the oldest constitution in the universe. It has the oldest population with the greatest inheritance from European countries, you see. Here, this lives on. And you call yourself a youthful country in order to absolve yourself from the responsibility of participating in what? In the one Cre- -- part of the Creed on which all Christian denominations agree: on the universal priesthood of all the believers.

What is a priest? An elder. The word "priest" means presbyteros. The Greek word "presbyteros" is nothing but to be older than others. It's a comparative. "Presbys" means old, and "presbyteros" -- what is the -- now contained in this word "priest," means the elder. And I have only, so to speak, cheated you by speaking of elders when I just as well could have spoken of this universal priesthood of all the believers, you see. Because any -- in any one of us who has to compromise between his weakness and his strength, there is this element of superior decision: how much in -- to give in to your appetites, you see, and your desires, and how much to -- to act, you see, upon others and { }. And in this compromise, we become priests, we become elders, we become legislators, we become rulers, we become teachers, we become prophets, and we become people who leave behind an -- inheritage, an estate.

If you care -- I had to speak on this at great length two months -- in a church school for adults in Los Angeles this spring. I was -- had been -- last spring. And I have written down the -- the -- this process of -- of the three stages: youth, adults, and elders, and very strangely came out with a 12-tone system, parallel to the new -- newest musical, you see, principles. And I have it in -- mimeographed sheets, I put a -- and if you care, I can send it to you. Perhaps you are interested in this -- in this -- strictness, the strictness of these rules, of these 12 tones that a ma- -- person has to develop within himself in order to combine this -- in himself the youthful, childlike person, and the -- that is, the poetic, singing child; the obedient person; and the active and commanding, you see, le- -- person; and the wise person who knows that there has to be command and obedience, but distributed -- both, you see.

Now we have abolished "command" and "obedience" as official terms, you see, because we have abolished the elder. Children must not obey, and -- parents must not give commands. I have cried all my life as a young man for orders. Because a child that doesn't get orders is -- is lost. And this whole idea in America that the child must give orders to itself just leads to schizophrenia. Why are we all split? Because in every minute the -- the -- this double role has to be constituted inside myself. I have to be the ruler, you see, and the obed- -- -bedient servant, you see. That's too much. It is much more human if it can be laid out in two different persons, you see.

I -- I myself -- I have to rule myself now. I am a widower. I have been my own wife -- give my wife's orders to myself. It's a -- it's a bad business. And don't -- don't introduce it into the reality. It's a -- it's a necessary evil, but it's nothing more than an evil. We are measured to play different roles, and we are -- we are not meant to represent in ourselves all these opposite roles, you see. It drives us crazy.

So perhaps you see that -- when we had this tripartition, this trinitarian situation of the peasant with the land; the artisan with perfection of his -- of his object, of his--how would one call it? { } a dress, a -- it's not an object -- would you call it an object--the -- the good things in a society; and the worker, who had the team spirit, and is able to re-organize his team every day according to the new plan of his engineer who wants -- one day to build a bridge, and the other day to build a road, and the next day to build a tunnel; and the solidarity of the worker enables him to do this, you see, this mutual reliance.

If you have this tripartition, perhaps it is just as mysterious to think that man inside himself, as soon as he becomes conscious of the -- the way the world looks at him, and the way he looks at the world, he is -- contains inside himself the child, and the man, and the elder. And that's of course -- I could enlarge on this for the -- for women. And perhaps the salvation of the world depends on this question today, that the sentimental mothers of America, and the girls of our colleges must discover in themselves this third rank, too, but it is not enough to be a girl, and it is not enough to be a mother. But that they also are elders, you see, in this.

I think that the prophecy of Malachi was not taken up by Luke for more than one -- the first half, because the problem of modern society is to impart to the women who have to work in an open field, so to speak, instead of at home, today, this quality of the queen, and the teacher, and the prophet, and the -- and the elder. It has never been mentioned, you see, and it is open today. And the suffragettes went wrong because they only wanted to make a woman into an adult. But it is a much more mysterious question, you see, to become -- to share

in this rank of the universal priesthood of all the believers as a woman. That's a very complex proposition, and I think it would lead to a complete reform of our girls' colleges.

This would be another topic in another -- I mean, I could go on for- -- forever on this problem of how -- how wrong it is to make our young girls polytheistic in a college education, when this is the age where they must be monotheistic, and must be able to devote themselves to their husband, you see, in full strength. And I think the education of a woman must be revamped. And at -- I think at your age, that's the time to learn all the things, I mean. And not -- not at 18.

This has to do with the universal character of the priesthood. I think that the -- the -- the -- the one group in society -- or the two groups in society which have been deprived of their elderness, of their being elders more than anybody else are women and workers -- industrial workers. And so for them, this whole problem, you see, is burning, because they cannot fulfill themselves, and cannot lead the good life unless something special is done. That's why workers' education and women's education for -- in adult age is of the foremost, burning importance.

So I left this out--elders--because the -- neither the word "youth" nor "the adult" is comprehensive enough to make you understand that there is the same eternal question in a new form. Today, if we cannot give women and workers the status of elders, you see, then we do not heal the illness there where it is at its worst, where the cancerous growth, so to speak, on society, you see, has nearly made these two people in just -- into adults. When I hear my minister -- address the old ladies of our -- the ladies' society as "girls," I gnash my teeth, you see. That's impossible, you see. He deprives them of something. He think he -- is nice. But I -- they are not girls at the age of 80.

And so there is some -- today, you see, the interesting thing is that the truth is the same all the time, but the suffering group is -- changes. And I -- at this moment, I think women and workers are, so to speak, carrying the ball. They -- they -- if they are not satisfied, if we do not cure the disease at that point, we'll have a difficult time. Now how can this be done?

To give you one example with which we are -- today faced and confronted, which -- of which I have some experience of my own, and therefore you will forgive me that I -- concentrate on what I really know from experience. It's a very simple relation between the nurse and the mother, when somebody is sick in the family. You can either treat it at home today, in your own -- with your own wisdom, or you can hand it -- hand the patient over to the hospital. Then you

have a -- trained nurses, you see, who work eight hours a day, are unionized, and -- and when you -- when the patient asks, as it happened to myself, what the drug is that she administers, this young gir- -- lady of 18 will giggle and say, "That's not your business." So the patient is just a piece of -- you see, of -- a parcel that's bandied around by this so-called trained nurse.

Now obviously we need trained nurses, and obviously we need mothers. And the whole problem today is--which seems to be not -- people do not seem to be able to think this very simple thing--is, that they have a role, both. This idea that it is either home, or hospital, this is not true. When my wife was sick, we -- I moved into the hospital. The nurses were very nice, and the doctors. And they gave me the run of the -- of the--how do you call it? Pardon me, I'm just very stupid--the room next to the kitchen, where you have your -- the pantry, the run of the pantry myself. And I could cook all my -- the meals for my wife. That doesn't mean that I was not under orders and the discipline of the nurses and of the doctors, you see. I behaved as best I could; I didn't interfere with any of the rules there. But still my wife hasn't tasted one bit of this terrible hospital food in the last eight weeks of her life. And it worked. And the people were willing to -- to wink at my -- this irregularity, and I think we came to like each other very well.

And there has to be -- the house has today to come into the hospital, I would say. And it's the same way with the -- with the factory. You have there already a social worker, and a personnel chap who tries to inject a little bit of this spirit. Usually it doesn't work. I know this very well. But we have today to learn to combine the -- the -- the situation of scientific training, and the situation of personal relations. And it will always take a detour. And my little example of the hospital was a successful example.

Now let me tell you about a failure. In this country, in the last 50 years, there seems to me -- to have happened something that we all have a very difficult time to realize, how far it goes. And it is to me personified in two stories of -- one of which happened to me while my wife was sick in the hospital, in Bur- -- the simple little town of Burlington, Vermont. And the other is the story -- kind of Horace Alger story, which happened -- in 1914. You will perhaps allow me to read this clipping, to show -- to set off this new world in which we have to live, in which the personal and the impersonal meet nowhere, in which you either have the hospital, you see, as -- or in an old-age home, which is still more terrifying, you see, as an old -- you see, just an old woman or an old man, and where you have lost all your honor as an elder, because that's only you, you see, who are the person when you -- once you are old. And it -- you cannot be put on a common denominator, you see. Your uniqueness is threatened.

Well, this is my story:

"George Avery Bunting, founder of the Noxzema Chemical Company, died here last night at Union Memorial Hospital in Baltimore. He was 89 years old."

That's three generations, the man spanned, you see, if you take a generation of 30.

"In 1914"--how long ago is this? This is nearly 50 years ago--"the proprietor of Bunting's Drug Store in Baltimore concocted a greaseless sunburn ointment for a customer, using a coffee urn to mix the ingredients. What resulted has contributed to the romance of American business, for the former schoolteacher hit upon a multi-million-dollar formula. The purchaser of Mr. Bunting's medicated skin cream reported to him that it had cured eczema. Three years later, the pharm- -- pharmacist incorporated the Noxzema Chemical Company, of which he was president until 1949, and thereafter, chairman.

"When the presidency was relinquished by Mr. Bunting in favor of his son"--all this, I think, is part of the story--"G. Lloyd Bunting, the single-product business had attained an annual volume of $5 million. This figure since has been more than tripled with worldwide sales."

I have tried to contribute to it by buying Noxzema yesterday here in -- in the store.

When we had to face this illness in Burlington, in the last summer, my wife was suffering from the dental lotion she used. It was astringent. And she was very dry. She had cancer, and it wasn't the right thing for her. And she -- still, she wanted to refresh, of course, her mouth every morning, and I was on the lookout, what could be done. In the hospital--you see, that's -- was a surgical ward; no interest at all to this problem. What's rinsing your mouth. I mean? That has nothing to do with the great issue of the operation, and the surgery. So I couldn't find any -- any advice there.

So I went to an old pharmacist's, and he lived exactly five blocks from the hospital, downtown. I had already dealings with this man before, for little items. He was a man my age. He ran this whole store -- with his wife. They had no employees; he wa- -- had been very helpful. He had brought up from his storage room medicines that had been forgotten for 40 years, and which he had stored away and dug them up for me. And he had a very wonderful sign in his store: "Woe to the physician or the pharmacist who sees in the patient anything but a creature who suffers like himself." That I thought was remarkable.

And so I told him my story. And he listened, and he said, "Well, I'll mix something." And he took glycerine, and menthol, and something third; I've forgotten now. And said, "This will do it. It will have the opposite effect from your dental lotion which you use now, you see. And it's not -- an astringent, but it will loosen everything."

And so we used it for the last week of my wife's life. And I was terribly grateful, and wanted to do something for this man. And I looked upon him as the customer looked upon Mr. Bunting. I wanted to make the man happy. And I came -- went down to his store, and argued with him.

I would -- said, "I will recommend this in the hospital. There are hundreds of such cases, where people would love to have this dental lotion, and be relieved from this, you see, usual thing, which is for healthy persons. All the people with fever should be -- should have it. And I'm going to propagate it." I didn't know at the time anything about Mr. Noxzema.

And his wife was there. She just smiled. And he said, "My dear man. You have no experience within the drug business. These doctors will not listen to you, if you are just as eloquent as you -- as can be. You are a layman. And I'm just their next-door neighbor. They -- will take it if it is in their big pa- -- paper, and sufficiently advertised, if Merck puts it out, or some other reputable company. I -- in their eyes, I'm just a clerk. That I have experience that has worked, that doesn't interest them. They don't believe it."

So I got very angry with the man. And I -- I said, "You don't tell me that there -- it is not possible to introduce any such item now into -- you see, into real life, because you have a -- a good idea?"

"No," he said. "This is just my experience. That's why I'm here without an employee. I've done such things as for you all the time. I've served my patients. But there is absolutely no relation between what is going on between you and me and the big business of medicine. They'll never, never believe that next door something can be grown that is good. It has to come from Cincinnati," you see. "Then they may believe it."

And I can tell you, I tried it twice with this man. I went back again. Because all of a sudden, I found myself, you see, in a quandary which had very little to do with myself, my -- with my wife, which was of a much more general purport. I became frightened. I said to myself, "Well, if this is so, then we are lost." Because then into this technical, you see, world of the division of labor of modern man, nothing can penetrate of a spontaneous nature.

It's like -- saying that -- that -- all poetry has to come from the anthology of Mr. Untermeyer, and that you can't write a poem anymore, you see, for your sweetheart. Well, it is -- by and large this way, today. It's the only thing my students do write -- is -- are doggerels. Because they have no longer there the confidence that they are just as much a poet as Byron or Milton.

And so we suddenly find that although the professions are not overdeveloped in this country, the spiritual faculties, the creative side of man, the poetical, you see, the inventive, is -- is channelized, canalized in a strange way that this man next door, because he is next door, is looked upon as quite impossible. Well, you just have to think of a big city, or an apartment house; nobody is more distant than your next door neighbor, I mean, you see. All my friends in -- when I -- live in New York or Baltimore, are far away, as your Christmas cards show, you see. And you don't -- send Christmas cards to all the people in a 12-story apartment house, you see. They are enemies, you see. You don't want to know what they are doing, you see. You -- you just turn your back on them. You couldn't stand it, because you want to be alone. You want at least to have the fiction of a house which you can only have if your apartment is, so to speak, enlarged into the feeling that this is the house of your own, and that your nextdoor neighbor has no right to impinge, you see, and to -- to -- and certainly he is not an authority.

I have some experience in my own life about this. I mean, I live in a -- in a community now for 30 years in which people really have no idea who I am. I'm -- that really makes me very happy. It's a very great protection. But it is a funny state of affairs. It's very funny. And I think that's growing all the time. I think people in Aspen -- could testify to this, who have moved in here. They -- have very little to do with the local people. I mean, they may be very friendly on the street, you see. But that doesn't mean that they share their vital interests. In our town, when we moved in, we still became a -- members of the farming community, because we were the first -- we were the first people to build a new house in 50 years. It had been in -- such a depressed area, you see. So that makes it -- of course, was something, you see: a new house. But after this, the doctors from the neighboring town moved in, and the -- and the professors, and all kind of retired people. And now the farming community doesn't exist anymore. Out of 230 farms in 1935, there are 10 left.

And the people who now live in my community earn their living in all different communities. And where you get your bread, you see, you have your sorrow, and your worries. And so that's why churches are so -- inane, you see, because the people who meet in church do not share in the weekday their troubles. They -- they commute. And you -- the church is not at fault. It just cannot do -- have the same effect on people, you see, who have different bosses, and who make a living elsewhere, you see, everybody -- differently.

Well, my experience with this very dear man, this pharmacist, has led me to the following simple conclusion: that we have unified space not by shooting so much at the moon, but by depending on messages, abstract messages through the mails, you see, that we all live in a Sears, Roebuck community. And what is a Sears, Roebuck community, you see? Where the printed word is closer to us, to our breakfast table, you see, than the spoken word of the neighbor. With him, we will exchange nice words about the weather. But never more. And we will be even very careful not to look -- let it look too deeply into our monetary and social affairs, because we feel he has no understanding of what we are up against. This all goes by mail, or long-distance telephone.

So we live in a world in which the -- relations of which the Bible, and of which poetry, and of which literature speaks are in reverse. The -- nearer is the farrer, and the farrer is the nearer. And I think that's simply so. And I don't want to -- to change it; we wouldn't be able to change it. It just ha- -- so happened that Martin Brusse is -- more able to talk to you on dental matters than your next-door neighbor in Wisconsin. You will agree that this is so. It's simply --. Now once we admit this reversal, we have to think of this loss of spontaneity, of creativity, then in new terms. We may simply have to admit it, that my pharmacist, although he has a good idea, you see, cannot work it out with the Burlington hospital. He -- that's just a fact. And I don't criticize it, but I want to recognize it, and I want to -- to know that this is so.

Because I do feel that my children, and my offspring, and my -- but--also the next generation -- I am after all not just responsible for my own flesh and blood at all, but for the future--have to be warned. They have to be told this. For example, I am a sworn enemy of all this good neighborhood associations, which I think are purely sentimental, you see. They base themselves on the Bible, but in the Bible, the Good Samaritan is -- is not the man who lived next door, but the man on the journey who -- the foreigner, you see, and the neighbor is there, the man of the next hour--not of the next house. But all these lies, these sentimental lies are handi- -- bandied around, because it so very -- seems so very difficult to understand the Bible. And our churches are just -- I think, today holding back. They never admit this, what I have told you about Mr. Bunting and myself, this -- this change. If they would, they would be a little more instructive, you see, about the dangers with which we are surrounded. They still preach good neighborhood. And the -- so you get -- you get your raffle sales, and you get your -- the church suppers. And all -- everybody feels that this is not the real thing. It is -- it is very weak. But we all do it. Because we are -- we have not found, you see, the remedy. And it -- perhaps that will take a whole generation before we find the remedy, but we must concentrate on it.

And one of the things which I have to -- can only offer at this -- in such a

short, compressed morning is: once we know that the creativity of our children is discouraged--because a 15-year-old boy already knows that it's no good not to be in with big business, or so, you see, and he thinks more of Madison Avenue than of inventing the right dental water for his mother--we will fight this strange urge today for the vocational training too early. If a mother and a nurse both have their place in nursing a sick person, you see--this is my simplest example, but it is everywhere the same, you see--if you have always to have with yourself the lay- -- the layman's enthusiasm, and care for you as a unique case, you see, and the general training, you see, of the nurse, once you could bring yourself to admit this--and I don't think that mo- -- many people in this country are willing to admit it; most people think that the nurse simply can take the place of the sister or mother; that's the average superstition at this moment, you see--I think that the professional people must be leading in -- in stressing that they cannot do anything. It is the professional group themselves that must, from different angles, stress that there is more than the professional man in themselves, that they also are still the creative man who does something that isn't done, in the profession by routine, which they invent on the spur of the moment. They must sympathize with the layman, so to speak, outside, who wakes up to his responsibility from a child to an adult, from a routine, you see, into a -- into a leading, or into a law-giving person.

Again it is a -- we have to grow beyond ourselves. I ha- -- had to do this all my life in my own professorial or professional position. A German professor is a very conceited gentleman, and what -- very often he is not even a gentleman. And -- but conceited he always is. And -- he is as conceited as an American executive; that's saying much. Executive is by and large the aristocracy, you see, in this country, then poses with the same -- with the same big gesture as the German professor in the old times did. They were -- we were -- we had all kinds of privileges in society.

And -- when the wars happened, the First World War--I had to serve for a long time; I was a soldier for six years--I came back with the definite knowledge that I had to give up my privileges, and that I had to stress within myself the layman, the man who did something not because he was a professor, but because there was a burning need at this moment to which my heart responded, you see, and not the system which I had to represent. It is perhaps only because in Germany, the -- the professional group was so conceited and so arrogant--and still is, by the way--that I was cured. And I want to convey to you however this -- this -- so to speak, the -- the fruits of this conversion.

The -- since there are these three people in us: the action man, the professional man, the adult--and we are privileged, you and I, that we still have a profession, you see, and are not just adults; and the youthful person, the creative

person, today swamping public opinion, everybody is treated as youthful, you see, and so -- since we have difficulties of holding our own, and getting the masses of the people to look forward to a day where they might be elders and might have the right to legislate for the future, it seems to me -- I may be totally wrong--and this -- I'm -- this is all done with fear and trembling -- said with fear and trembling--I think the -- it has fallen upon the professional group--since the churches have deserted us in all these questions, you see, have nothing to say about it, because they haven't understood it--we -- you live by the medical journal. You live by the -- by the appeal through the mail, so the written word, you see, as we all do, you see --. You, however, since you represent the modern order--and I, too, I mean, in this sense, you see--will we be believed if we plead for the existence of this other order, too? It is up to us, you see, because we cannot be suspected of being just peasants, of being just, you see, laymen, of being just uninstructed. They will believe us, if a doctor--as it happened in Burlington--will admit the husband, you see, to the pantry. That's the conversion I'm striving for, you see. Then he will admit that beside his, you see, routine ways, there is always still another way, a sudden way, a u- -- a way that is always exceptional. You can never make a rule out of the privileges I received, you see. But you must tell a doctor that he has -- has this power of his heart still to make an exception. If the people who make the rules are not able to make the exceptions, you see, we are lost.

This seems to me in a nutshell, so to speak, the problem today of the progress in education, or in -- in -- the togetherness of our humanity. It is threatened at the very moment when the -- when the trained man, the professional man makes an idol out of his professionalism, when he doesn't admit that around the corner there may be, you see, an instance where he must break his own rule.

It -- this seems -- may seem to you very simple, but I think the example is the one that our children need most. The children today are torn between professionalism, you see, becoming doctors young, you see, and taking their pre-med through their whole college career, or become engineers, you see--go to vocational school--and between a very sad, diluted pragmatism in which they become literary critics, and intellectuals, and land in Greenwich Village. Or -- at Carmelat-the-Sea in California.

This -- they are a silly -- sad group. Perhaps they aren't very numerous. They certainly -- the sound sense of -- most of the people shove them aside. But the result is that the -- most of the people then bec- -- have the ambition to fit into a profession, to fit into a way of things are done. And the danger of this is today that the code, the rules, you see, are overestimated.

I went to the Air University in Alabama 10 years ago for -- teaching these people something about leadership and leadership training. There were 66,000 officers of the American Army going there during one year in training courses. So it was an important place. They spent $8 million on psychological experiments, how to select the leaders. And these psychologists had to spend $8 million. It was so very difficult to spend so much money in one place. So they had hit on the wonderful scheme of building--pardon me, ladies, but it is the truth, and the truth must out -- come out--they had built mirrors into the toilets of these officers to watch their toilet manners, and to determine by this way who should be promoted.

This goes to show that the scientific urge, you see, the abstract urge, has reached proportions, you see, that we can only hope that there will be no war, so that these people cannot be found out for their idiocy. The leader is the exceptional man, you see. And a general is the man who can ask from his men to lay down their lives. That is, he's -- totally identified with them. So the only way you can find a leader is to find the man who can forget himself within the community, you see, and identify himself with others, because otherwise he has no right to give the order, you see, to be shot dead on the ground.

No, these psychologists, you see, treating everybody just as a youthful, you see, am- -- amoeba, so to speak, a bacteria, an unformed entity, tried to find inside the body of this man, you see, his fitness for the job.

Now this is the thing, which in this moment is in very serious danger. I'm told that at the War College, this problem was debated, in Washington, and -- you know, where the higher-ups meet. And one general, who had listened to this kind of psychological stuff, said to his comrades, "Well, I know nothing about this psychology, but I think fortunately in a serious emergency, we would find the man for other reasons, and in another manner."

He had just this quality which I am advocating, that has to be told and cultivated as a doctrine. It's the whole content of the Gospel, applied to society, that you are never sure of your law. Jesus saw one day a man working on the Sabbath, and He said, "Man, if you don't know what you do, you are cursed; but if you know what you are doing, you are blessed." That is, this -- these routines are all right, you see, as long as the men who handles these routines are also telling the story of the exception to his envir- -- their environment. The teacher, the dentist, the doctor, the chemist, the engineer who only teaches the rules and doesn't add, but there are exceptions, and is not himself a model of being -- having the power of making exceptions I think is the danger of this new business machinery which -- in which we have to live.

I have formulated a -- long ago when I was a young man in this way, that any man who speaks must be a teacher of the law, and an example of freedom. That is, your own teachings must be corrected by the freedom, you see, you prove to have to jump over your own rules. And -- and I think that our schools don't know this. I mean, we have either the teaching of the rules, you see, or we have the shilly-shallying -- just tastiness of -- of good literature, and so. Nip at everything, you see. This is not what I mean, you see: spoil the taste of these children, by letting them read all the good things. There are rules, and the human heart is the exception. And has to make this exception.

And my own pharmacist -- I -- God bless him, I can only say, you see. I'm glad he was there. In my one case, I -- he saved the situation. I cannot make him into a rule, you see. That's perhaps the tragedy today. I cannot make him into the rule, you see, of the hospital there. Somebody else has come again. And somebody else. But I'm -- that doesn't minimize the fact that he was there. That doesn't minimize the fact that this one human, you see, situation was saved. And in -- you all, in your own experience, must have thousands of such cases. It happens to everybody. I -- pardon me for having limited myself to very simple examples. The more personal ones, one just doesn't want to mention.

Thank you.