Transcript
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If there any questions which you would like to ask at the end of the lecture, I would prefer that you ask them right now.
Nobody says anything? Well, there must be something to be asked. -- At the end of the last lecture, I thought -- I understand there was some disgust because I had spoken of such an obsolete virtue as obedience. And I had also mentioned the fact that mere curiosity is not -- an excuse for many activities, whether it's Esquire or the -- or The New Yorker. You know, there's a great dispute now be- -- in -- in the making between the English and the Americans about Truman Capote and his investigation, his inquisitiveness, or his curiosity in the case of the murder. So I would -- would want -- only want to -- to tell you that I've chosen my terms with some care. I've only spoken of curiosity, yesterday. I have nothing to say against scientific inquisi- -- inquisitiveness, which is something very different from curiosity.
In -- if we are inquisitive, there are obstacles that stand in our way of dealing with things, especially in nature. And we have to enquire what irks us, what is -- stands in the way of developing greater speed, or whatever the question is. But that has nothing to do with curiosity. Most questions of children and fools should not answered. One fool can ask more questions than hundred wise men can ever answer. That's simply true, and you ought to know it. Mere curiosity has no justification -- yes, you may be curious. But there's no reason why you should -- that should be satisfied, your curiosity. If you go to great pains then, and take a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, or -- or do something, save money up to learn, then it is more than curiosity. As soon as you are willing to sacrifice something, then this ceases to be curiosity. But curiosity leads only to crime. And there are many crimes that are not in the penal code, and are just as criminal as those things in the -- criminal code.
Well, but let's have a friendlier look on life. Neither curious nor inquisitive. We don't have to look at life. Life looks at us. That is, we are called into life -- I called this -- this evening today. The word "call" is a very curious one. It has been also -- you can degrade everything, but it still has reserved this funny quality of transforming man into the person treated, the person transformed, the person touched, the person moved.
What I had to say against linguistics yesterday was founded on the fact that the philologist, the inquisitor in philology, seems not to know that to speak means to be changed. Any human being, however, whether he likes it or not, knows that by speech and by listening, we become different people. And this --
since this has been omitted by the whole linguistic staff of experts, we -- our books on language look so very funny. They always assume that they are dealing with things when they -- talk of words and languages. And they always forget that they are called by the honorable, venerable, important name of "scientist," and "scholar," that they expect everybody to treat them as scholar.
I once talked to such a skeptic philosopher, at some length, and he defended his position that nothing for sure could be known.
"Oh," I said, "Oh, Sir. That is not true. I have watched you carefully, and I have found that you are terribly insulted as long as -- if one of your students doesn't call you 'Herr Professor'. So there is one certainty in life, obviously, that you are a professor, and have to be called this way."
And most people who are skeptics insist that they of course, themselves, have to receive all the dignity, and all the honor from their rank and profile in society. Very strange people they are.
You can answer any skeptic with this simple fact, that he insists on his place in society, because he is called by this name, and that's a passive attitude which bestows a quality on him, and he insists that he is created in- -- into this feature, into this quality. He is a member of the club. He is a -- he is an honorable citizen of this town. And he wants everybody to know this. Knowledge of the others and being called in human society hang together. Knowledge may be about things of a -- or nature. But how you call me, on that -- on this, my bliss, my -- life eternal depends. If people deny me the right of a man, of a free man, of a citizen of the United States, that has terrible consequences.
But it's never mentioned in philology. All these philologists think that they should be asked to act as authorities, as experts, as professionals. Now, all these are names.
To -- to put together the whole secret in one sentence, gentlemen, perhaps you take this down, because it is -- seems to be unknown in our professional society today, is: that there are not just words in language; and there are not just concepts in thinking; and there are not just verbs, and adjectives, and nouns. There is one thing that is never mentioned in all these linguistic investigations, and never by the philosophers: that there are names by which we are called; and thanks to which we can breathe, as free men, because it's recognized that we are -- man has a right to be called by the honorable nym- -- name of, for example, as a citizen, of a free man, of a person. And most people act on this assumption quite peacefully. But it -- when it comes to a professional -- knowledge of language, it's omitted. You find no grammar book --. I have this newest book on --
on the philosophy of language, here, and I assure you the simple fact that I call you by my name, and I call you by your name is not mentioned. And yet it is the most important quality of speech, that if you call my name, I respond. And if I call you by your name, you respond. This relation of immediacy doesn't exist with the grammarians, and the literary critics, and all the experts on the arts. They have forgotten this.
Now there is an excuse for this, which you may be interested to hear. The word "grammar," which I attacked last time as obsolete, and pagan, and preChristian, meant in -- in Alexandria li- -- really only literature. "Grammar" meant what is written. And it was the treatment of the grammar of a play of Aristophanes, or a -- the book by Plato which was analyzed by the grammarians. Now in a book, names are not called. The relation of the reader of the book and the author of the book doesn't come into play. Here is just this paper, this book. And if you analyze a literary product, as this one here, then it is -- doesn't matter how the author of this book and the reader correspond, how they treat each other, you see. That's omitted.
So there is a deep secret in our present-day treatment of speech, of language, of writing. The grammar is taken for grant- -- as limited to an objective statement of fact in the text of a book. The author stays outside; the reader stays outside. And their puzzling behavior--whether they love or hate each other, whether they scourge each oth- -- excoriate each other, that is not discussed.
And so it is possible to buy a hundred volumes on language at this moment in America, and not to find any discussion of names. They only know of words. But words are spoken of things and people. But names are said to people. That's a very great difference. That's 180 degrees different. If I call you "Lady," you see, I hope you will -- flattered, you see. But if I only spo- -- speak of you tomorrow to somebody third, and say, "There was a lady in a red dress," you see, then you don't -- are not supposed to listen in. Otherwise, if you were present, I could not say, "There was a lady in a red dress." But I could say, "There is -- is this -- was this very pretty lady in a red dress."
All this is unknown. We have a philology now for 500 years, 600 years, seven years -- a grammar, in which the distinctive character of names is omitted. A name is something between you and me, from face to face. A word is something which -- which I can signify you, whether you are present or absent, dead or alive. That is, 180 degrees in an opposite direction--mathematically, geometrically speaking. Why is this unknown?
Well, it comes from this literary tradition of the old Greeks, that grammar was limited to "graphein" -- "graphein" means writing--the grammarian inter-
preted literature. So what we today call "English literature"--and I suppose 50 percent of you are all dabbling in English literature--was then called "grammar."
And therefore it is quite understandable, if you have texts, that the question of names doesn't come up, because here I sit and read what somebody else has written about other people, and it is always the relation of words to things. And you can really open any book on linguistics today, and the -- they say that words are symbols under which things are named or explained. But the simple fact, that if I don't use the right name towards you, that you can slap me, that you can sue me, that you can persecute me, that you can kill me because I am insulting you, is never mentioned. In other words, that part of speech which is dangerous, which is electric, which is dynamic is not mentioned.
And therefore language appeals to these people as something they can handle, they can manipulate, they can get away with. Whatever they say, paper is patient, and teach- -- students are patient, too, and they write the examination for whatever they are taught. And they'll never find out that's all nonsense. Or they do, later, but they don't meet the -- the teacher who put this examination paper before them, and they forget it. And the best thing, of course, of any life is, as Goethe has said, that we have special organs for forgetting disagreeable things.
And this power of forgetfulness should also be mentioned in speech. We could not live if every stupid sentence we have to learn or to read would stick with us.
Now -- if man is called by his parents first, in his proper manner, in -- by his name, and if then the outer world comes and says, "But you are just a Negro," "You are just a Jew," "You are just a Washingtonian," what's that? And if they suddenly feel that this is hurtful, this is very dangerous--to be called names--then I must try to show you that speech is a process that rolls off under firm, ineluctable, irresistible laws; that he who says, "A," he who calls somebody his father, is thereby already led into a long life. And this name, that he has a father--Mr. Smith--stays with him, and determines his life. And he better learns by obedience to this name how he can emancipate himself. We are not always the sons of Mr. Smith. One day we are our -- fathers in our own right. But this has to happen. That is, the name of being the son of a certain person, of a certain mother and a certain father is upon us. We may like it or not.
I have a story to tell about a Peace Corps friend, who went to Peru. And he was an excellent man, and he told me a story. He went to a province of Peru, in the bush really, beyond the -- the -- Cordilleras, really on the Brazilian side. So the only way of getting there was by plane. There weren't roads; there aren- --
certainly no railroads. And he was well received at first. But then -- they were four Americans. And Mr. Castro, of course, from -- Cuba had his agents there. And they were attacked as Yankees, and Yankee imperialists. And they had to leave. That's -- never gets into the papers.
I met this young man. And he told me that it was a very wonderful place, because there had a great reformer 50 years or 30 years ago--I don't know the -- the number of years; I won't say anything, because I'm not sure how long ago it was--and he had unified this whole educational province of Peru in a single effort, from kindergarten to university. It was all one, big family. And it was a very wonderful man, and he was, so to speak, the saint, the Pestalozzi, of this province in Peru, far away from politics, far away from the mainstream of American life. Always try to keep out of the mainstream. And -- that's an insult to be in the mainstream of American thought, because that would only lead to Sears, Roebuck.
Now what happened to my friend? I wrote a whole chapter in my last book on the Peace Corps, called -- in his name. It is called "Palmer" -- "David Palmer Scott." That's his name. And he failed completely. He was thrown out. He had to leave. And I said, "But why are you so surprised? You brought it on yourself."
"Why? How? I did my job. I was so popular that the Communists, after they had squeezed us out, came to me and said, 'We will hire you again, but privately. You are a very good boy. But we can't have Yankee imperialism.'"
"Well," I said. "Did -- don't you see that you brought it on yourself?"
"No," I -- he said. "We did right."
"No," I said, "You didn't bring right -- do right."
"Why not?"
"Well," I said, "to this day you have not mentioned the name of this great reformer under whose halo you came there. And your -- the -- the people in -- in -- in the Cordilleras had no other way but calling you a Yankee, because they didn't know your name. They didn't know your antecedents. You hadn't made friends with anyone to call him 'John' and 'Bob'. And how do -- can you expect that people have another name for you but the most general, 'Yankee'? You were a Yankee in their eyes, because you hadn't made sure that somebody called you 'David'. And as long as you haven't broken through into your own name, you cannot be surprised that these cheap categories of -- classifications of 'Peruvian'
and 'Yankee' prevail. And as long as they prevail, you will be in trouble."
And the whole Peace Corps of course stands here, you see, under judgment. If these pe- -- people do not become people called in their own name, they cannot break the stink of nationalism and antagonism. And nobody seems to know such a simple story, because in our textbooks on education, the word "Call," "I'm called," is not mentioned.
You know the story of the governor of Texas, who -- his wonderful name was Hogg. And so he took his revenge against society by calling his first daughter Ima Hogg, and the second daughter Ura Hogg. And so he got the name, "He's a Hogg." This is serious. But when Texas is serious -- is a real danger for the United States.
So there is a full quadrant missing on your wheel of language, on your map of the linguistic world, because you omit the most explosive, the most serious, and the starting chapter of speech: where we are called, to our face or behind our back. This is language at the highest degree. And what you call "language" is drivel. Because it omits names. And nothing where the name doesn't come into play is serious language.
Let me give you two examples. Today there is a great problem in our cul- -- society about: shall there be capital punishment? And you will say, "What has this to do with speech?" It has much more to do than you fathom. All questions usually are insoluble in the way in which they are presented in our papers. You will never solve the Vietnamese question as long as you do not call Ho Chi Minh by his name in every article, every day. He is the man we have to talk to, and all the other people are quite indifferent. He is a national hero.
Now America knows very well how to treat national heroes. The whole 19th century, every national hero in any small country in -- in the world has been treated royally by the Americans. I don't see why he hasn't been treated royally. Yes, I mean, we have to talk to him. He is not a Peruvian, as my friend thought; and he is not a Yankee; and we are not Yankees; but he's Ho Chi Minh. That's very serious. That's politics. And politics is dangerous. And you avoid it. You want to have an objective approach. There is no objective approach between real people. That doesn't exist. You are not an object of my love. If I love you, the objectivity goes out of the window. Objects are good for -- for plumbers.
And we try to be objective in politics. That is, we don't use the right name by which these people would listen. It's incredible. The physicist has won the day. The -- all these people I know personally who deal with these political problems are decent chaps. They know very well how to treat human beings. But it --
when it comes to article writing, in world affairs or foreign policy, they just lose their mind. And then become secretary of state.
Well, have you ever heard Mr. Rusk use any human expression for anything he has dealt with? Never. It's all objective. And they ad- -- are -- he is admired for that.
Gentlemen, peace and war are declared from passions, and made by -- and not by objectivity.
Now my -- I -- next example is even more explosive. It is the question of capital punishment. If you say -- many of you will say, "That's -- can -- can't be done." And the executioner also thinks it can't be done. So in San Quentin, as you know, there are three people pushing a button, and nobody knows whose button kills the -- the culprit, so that the poor man -- or his wife, can sleep. And -- obviously there is a crisis. Capital punishment is today under judgment. But why is this so?
Do you know how the executioner had to act 100 years ago, still -- 150 years ago? -- There was a public scaffold, a public execution. And the executioner had to kneel down and ask the forgiveness of the culprit for the act he now had to commit under the law. And -- and when the culprit had said that he forgave him, he proceeded to break the staff over him and to take him out of the legal community of common speech. Because anybody who is still spoken to is a human being, and cannot be executed. There has to be a ceremony in which he is dismissed from this {rim} of human speech and intercourse.
Today the capital punishment is impossible, because the executioner does not ask the forgiveness of the culprit. What would happen if he did? He would change from a pe- -- person called, addressed, spoken to--as a "you," or as a "thee," as a "thou"--into somebody who has now to take the other member outside the community where he becomes a "he," and an "it," a corpse.
That is the living process which I promised you -- to introduce to your thinking today. We are called into life, and I cannot point out to you more strongly that the case in which we are called out of life explains all the others. Birth and death are of course intimately connected. If you can -- can condemn a man to die in a solemn ceremony, and take him out of this circle of human speech, then you begin to understand under which conditions we are human beings. We are not human beings because the state of Arkansas prints on our behind the number "74." Which they do in Arkansas. It's not the behind, but somewhere else.
We are not numbers. We are only human beings as soon as somebody has
given us our patronom- -- -nymicon, and our own proper name. That's very serious. And I -- please, when you discuss capital punishment, do not discuss it in these moralizing terms whether you can or cannot do it. There are members of the community for whom you cannot ask a jailer to spend his life. And lifelong prison is much more cruel than capital punishment. It's intolerable. Because you have jailers who do nothing but do this. And that's undignified. You dishonor the jailers. But of course, if you want to execute a person, then you must be a human being who knows what speech is. You must have this religious reverence for calling -- speaking to this man a last time, and telling him, "I'm terribly sorry, but you have forfeited"--and that's a very strange word--"your membership, and will you forgive me? And don't you share with me the understanding that this verdict is true. That we together have come to the conclusion that you dishonor the community, that you are a blemish on our ex- -- that we are sick." It's the body politic that needs capital punishment as its way of purge, of -- of eliminating eczema.
This is not even mentioned in our discussions. And yet you read in every history of England how the executioner, when one of these noble lords was execut- -- Essex, or somebody like that, you see, how this happened on the scaffold. You think that's just old fairy tales. No. These people were real people who spoke. And you are people who only read the newspaper. And that is not people. As little as it is people to -- to listen to television. Because what is lacking is your own contribution. All these things happen, and you say nothing. These just are engraved on -- on our minds. That is not an attitude which is fruitful, and an attitude which allows you to say that you are participating in the life of the community. You can know all the scandals of this town from the newspaper; I suppose the newspaper is quite honest. But you do not participate by reading on it. You would only participate by calling these -- the people names. If you begin to call them names, you know how difficult it will be for you to survive in this town. You will chased out, because life is very dangerous.
The opposite thing I would like to bring to your attention, the opposite side of this question, is the fact that we create by names the times and spaces which our historians, our politicians, our scientists take for granted. There is no Christian era, there is no 1966 except by our believing word. They are not objective facts. Nonsense. Absolute, not. They -- we, every one of us, determines in which time he lives. And we only speak so that you and I can say of one and the same thing at one time that it is in the future; and at another time that it is yesterday. You and I, we all, because we are allowed to speak, to participate in this one language of mankind all over the globe--what is to be, and what has been--these are the declarations by which the declarations of the power of speech is most clearly developed and revealed. And again, our philologists know nothing of -- of this. They do not know that to say "tomorrow" and "yesterday" is
to be a human being.
On a little island of the Windward Island group in the Caribbean, the most southeastern -- no, southwestern island, Carriacou, there live a few hundred Negroes. And it's a British dominion still, a British colony. And the officer of the British crown who administers this little island, has this to say, and you find it in the Geographical magazine, on page 767 of the December issue of last year. And I recommend it to you. It's perhaps the most important insight into language I've seen in print during the whole last year.
This officer of the British crown said, "Every one of these Negroes knows the tribe from which he came in Africa, by name, and is proud of it. After 200 years, everyone still wants to be called by the -- honorable name of Ibo, or {Kaminda}," or whatever the -- the tribe is.
Such is the promise of a name. Such is the beginning of a long future, by bestowing a name on a person, and calling him by this name, that we cut avenues of time, through centuries. And if you are called an American, if you are called a Christian, or you are called a Jew, that means that you create and are created into a time.
Time and space are human actions. And time is this action of society upon -- a butterfly of one-day duration called a "human being." Nobody seems to find it necessary to observe the fact that every one of you has realized, experienced innumerable times, every morning in ma- -- as a matter of fact. A child knows nothing of time. It's a being of the moment. It is here. It is happy. You change its position, you bring it into another room. It has no connection with what has gone on before. It -- it is here. The child has this complete presence of mind. Every notion of time--the birthday, winter and -- or summer, the seasons--everything is put into the child by the community. Be it the family, be it the school, be it the book. It doesn't matter what medium it is. Time is only to be had by people who share life with others, and thereby are introduced into the same time.
All times are social creations. The scientists of course are guilty of betraying you, of seducing you, of saying to you that they have a -- a time in which the past and the present produce the future. That's the great heresy of a gentleman called Immanuel Kant, and another man called LaPlace, the great naturalist, at the beginning of the 18- -- of the 19th century. And both are wrong. It's an idiotic heresy. Comes all from this Kantian idealism that time and space are forms of our intuition of the individual. Time is nothing but a social creation. In the year 534, the Christian era was introduced. In the year 580, the Jewish era from the creation of the world was introduced. And in 632 the Moslem era, of Mohammed's flight from Mecca to Medina was introduced. All our three eras have -- been
appropriated and created in the midst of history. But by consent. And it is absolute nonsense to say that the future is created from the past and the present. The present is created by the conflict between the future and the past.
Here I am, trying to finish my lecture as fast as I can, because the future is impinging on me. I shall be free. I shall not have to give a lecture for a whole -- next year. And this keeps me upright, keeps me going, you see.
The future and the past, and that's the greatest heresy of our time today, and this is a great -- a great calamity for the statesman, for the thinker, for the poet; the future is something that is not made, but something that is believed in.
Every child that goes to a college, as you shall -- seem to do--I don't know if you are here regularly--but as far as you are students in this college, you are preparing yourself for a glorious future. Now what does the word "prepare" mean? The anticipation of future. It means that you know that four years from now, you'd better have a degree, you see, so that you enter life prepared, so that any educational process is only possible because the future impinges on your acts today. The future is there; it's believed in by you. And therefore you now act as though the future was real, you anticipate.
Now to say that this future, which impinges on you, which pleases you, which threatens you, which urges you on, that this is the product of this present moment in which you are bored stiff and -- try to pass an examination, this is utterly ridiculous. The examination is the product of your fear, or your hope for the future, and not the other way around. There is no future because you take an exam.
But much more so. The names of the great groups, like these Ibos, on the Li- -- Windward Islands, you see, accompanies people through centuries, gives them stiff-necked resistance against slavery, against degradation. There they are. Only basing their -- their faith in the future on this blessing that they have received a name that has singled them out and has given them an avenue through time.
Well, these two contrasts--the executioner who kneels down and asks forgiveness from the murderer, and the sens- -- 10-year length of names cutting avenues from time immemorial into the life of people--may show you that to be called and to bear a name is a very, very real thing, is a power that cannot be omitted from your linguistic thinking without the most tremendous catastrophes.
To make war--Number 3 of my evidence, so to speak--means to be not on speaking terms. And therefore, if we speak again to each other, There is hope
that peace is developing. For three par- --I think I mentioned this yesterday already--the United States have given up speaking to the enemy. We don't speak to the whole eastern half of Europe, although the Russians always have been the allies of the United States--never the enemy, very strange; and we are much more socialized than Russia. And -- Heaven knows why that is. It must be the income tax or something like that. The length of time which it takes to come to peace may be set in relationship to the sacredness of names, that they accompany us through centuries. When you deny a man the name under which he wants to be called, then a great calamity arises. There can be no peace. As long as every man in the South calls a nigger a "nigger," there's war. Because he is not called by his righteous name.
Mr. -- we have a -- a constitution, you see, with wonderful privileges for the individual, and especially in the Congress. The chairman of a committee can never be deposed. And so we have a chairman of a committee on justice who calls the black men in this country "niggers." That's "justice," that's carried on by the United States Senate. This is much more important than all the injustices in hiring and firing. This is the seat of the evil. And since he has the insolence of doing this, and that you tolerate this, and that I tolerate this, this is incredible. Because this man calls these people bad names. And he's the chairman of the committee on justice. And he is never attacked, because they are sacrosanct, you see. Very strange. Princes were sacrosanct. Popes were sacrosanct. But now Congress is sacrosanct. And there's the seat of the evil.
All I have -- I'm trying to do today is that -- to tell you that to call people is life or death, that this is a -- a real power in a man's life. If you -- only call all the Jews "dirty Jews," and all the niggers "cheap niggers," you are belligerent. You are in war -- at war. And how many -- ten thousands of people in this country are at war? Think of the man in Philadelphia, the electrician, who had to give up his -- his home in a white neighborhood a fortnight ago. He stand -- stood it for one year, and then he had to leave. This is a more important event than all the occupation in Vietnam.
The process of speech, if you begin with the appeal to the man's name, is a definite person, predictable and vital process. And because the philologists deny this, they have this funny idea that an imperative exists for six different forms of personality: "Let me die," "Let them die," "Die." That's not true.
The imperative--we said yesterday, you remember my example--the imperative waits until a man has responded to it with his own name, till he has obeyed. If I say, "Come," the sentence only complete when Smith says, "Smith is here." Then I have found a person to carry out my command. This imperative consists always of two sentences. One, "Come, love me"; and the other, "Indeed, I
can't help it. I love you."
This is what I have called the process of speech. And all grammar ignores this, is pagan, because it wants to analyze this sentence, "Come," by itself. It will not admit that this is an incomplete sentence before somebody ans- -- asks -- answers and says, "Here I am." This is speech. Speech provokes people into different roles. It changes me and you in such a manner that in any generation, every one of us can partake in the new offices of society. Whereas all other beings remain lions, bears, wolves as they are, you and I can depose one rank, one office, one function and adopt another, and we are the rejuvenators of creation.
Speech rejuvenates us because after I have listened so often to the fact that I'm my father's son, suddenly somebody says, "Now you are a doctor. Now we listen to you as an authority. Now you are a father. Now you have grandchildren." And as this goes on, we re-create the universe. Don't you see that speech does all this, and nothing else? Speech takes you from a hoped-for future into an accomplished past. Every one of you has made this experience that at one time things were in the future, and you expected them with -- with part of your breath--I mean, excited--and then it happened, and then you can put it to the sig- -- past, and you can remember them.
Now all language is built around this necessity to make things future into things past. And that's why it begins with an imperative. And any great reformer will speak of the future.
Georges Clemenceau, the great politician in France, said of Jean JaurŠs, the great Socialist who was murdered in 1914 by the Royalists in -- in Paris--it's probably forgetten now--who has -- has not heard of Jean JaurŠs? Well, he was the leader of the Socialists in -- France, a very popular man, and a great speaker. And Georges Clemenceau, this "Tiger" of France, said of him, "JaurŠs? That's very simple. You always know that he has written something. All his sentences are in the future tense."
All his sentences are in the future tense. Because he was the great reformer, the great believer in the future. Take this seriously. Only man has this power to make any sentence in the future tense. No animal can do this. That's man. He creates the future by his sentences in the future tense. And then there comes the historians, and transform these sentences in the -- to tense past. And we read the history of the past. But we must never forget that at -- we only read that history which out of the future became past. All the rest is bunk, or technique, or indifferent. It's ashes. You read now too many history books that have nothing to do with the future, because they do not tell you the achievement that something that was lying in the future was brought home, and carried in, and built up, and
became an institution.
Is -- the imperative then begins in the future. There is no imperative which, because it is waiting for fulfillment, doesn't create in a child the power to understand what future is: that which has to be done but hasn't yet been done. The only safe thing for a real human being is the future. But it has also this tremendous pressure on us, that we know it can be missed. You can miss your future. Most -- 80 percent of the people have missed their future, because they didn't believe in this. They are scientists, you see, and scientists have no future.
They don't believe in it. I can't help them, I mean. Of course, they have, but against their -- their own predicament. That's their predicament. They live by their friendship and their love to each other. It's a very human association, these so- -- scientists among themselves. It's a very great family all over the world. And in devotion and in sacrificial attitude, the scientists are today perhaps the finest race we have. But not -- just the same, what they have in their head is all wrong. Their relation to time is really that they think that the past begets the future. But gentlemen, that's such a heresy. Christ came into the world to teach us that the past does not beget the future. That's the whole Christian doctrine. There's nothing more in the Christian doctrine but this simple fact that Jesus said, "I haven't lived, yet; and you have -- know nothing of me." And it's all the beginning, We begin again. That's -- ended Judaism. The Revelation in Judaism is of the past, and the Revelation in Christianity is of tomorrow.
This is all very serious, gentlemen. We have today such a lag of our culture. We are de-Christianized totally and we have instead physics, and techno- -- technocracy, and statistics. This is quite serious. We -- how can you educate your children without great hopes into the -- in the future? And the -- hopes for the future cannot be one more satellite. That's not a hope for their future. That's quite uninteresting for any human being.
The second sentence, which you learned--grammar, language, linguistics--had to form: when you put a man under the pressure of a command in which he believes, "Love your neighbor," now here is this child of God equipped with this one, great law: love your Lord with all your might and main, and your -- neighbor as yourself. And armed with this -- word, he leaves the confirmation table, and begins to live. And for another 70 to 90 years--we don't die anymore--the -- the man has -- is accompanied by this one future sentence, "Love your neighbor."
So a second form of language is necessary in which he expresses his doubt, his despair, his desire. That is the subjunctive, the optative, the desirative -- all the present tense expresses feelings. That's what poetry does. The indicative
-- the conjunctive of the present is the second great form of language in all languages, because while you are under the pressure of an order given, of a command to be introduced, of a religion to confess, you are swayed by emotions. Up and down, pessimistic, optimistic, you see, tranquil, excited, des- -- desperate, hopeful. And therefore the poets and -- now I'm sure your speaker will -- will show you how wonderful poetry is. After the imperative of commands, without which we would have no direction, the poetry in- -- filters into us the strength of sustaining on the road the doubts, the pains, the growing pains, all this interim of our existence, when the fulfillment is far away, but the beginning already has been made, and nobody knows how we make out. I mean, between the freshman's entrance in college and his last day, there are many such moments where he is very doubtful if he shouldn't have better become a barber, because they're upping their price all the time.
The third form is when you look back on an event and can tell people a tale. All tales are in this pass‚ d‚fini, and they have given rise to the form which the grammarians call the indicative, and spread thinly over all tenses: future, present, and past. But believe me, the only tense in which the indicative is the fundamental form is the past.
When Mr. Charles Lindbergh did his masterful flight, he published the experience under the title, We. That's a very wonderful book for the Spirit of St. Louis. And why did he use the term "We"? He was alone. It was a single man's -- and a single engine's flight, even. And he said, "We," because he said, "My machine and myself"--and there's a deeper secret involved--when we look back, we invite all mankind to participate in our joy. We invite you to -- to celebrate our 25th anniversary. We have made -- may have been quarreling all the time. But when we invite them, it's all "we."
The origin of the past tense of the -- indicative in speech is the past. The origin of the subjunctive, or optative, or however you call it, is the present. And the origin of the -- of the future--now we can say, "I shall do this," "I will do this" -- these are auxiliary constructions. And they may take the place of the command, "I have to do this," and this -- what I really say to me, "Do it"--these are processes that follow inevitably once you are immersed into living. To live means to cope with the future in the form of commands, to cope with the present in the form of poetic feelings, and to cope with the past in the form of indicative statements.
And of course, then there comes Number 4, the professor of linguistics, and the analyst, and the anatomist, and the statistician; and this is Number 4, that he is with things and people as "its," and "hes," and "shes." And the -- what you call the normal language of conceptualism, of philosophy, of sociology, of
psychology, of -- I don't know how many -logies there are, is the sentence from outside, the looking-on. You are not in the process, but you can see another man's achievement and say, "That is it." And as far as you say this, you are -- create a fourth tense in speech which is the neuter. "This is it." A conceptual -- any concept is eliminated from the stream of time.
Now we leave behind us today a century in which this conceptual state, the scientific state, the neutral state of "hes" and "its " is declared the normal state, the beginning. It's the end. It's the ashcan. It's the burial place. It's a dump -- city dump. All experiences can one day be lumped together and say, "That's it. Dismiss it. It -- it's gone." Any real life begins with orders. Physics didn't begin with the atom, but it be- -- began with the great command to D‚scartes, "Cogitate." And he did. And he neglected his wife and his child, and he cheated everybody, the whole Jesuit order, and the Cardinal { }, but he did it. And he founded a new science of analytic geometry. And this was his command.
Any scientist, if he's any good, does act under the command, "I want to be a scholar, I must be a scholar. It's right that I should be a scholar." If he doesn't feel like this, and he doesn't feel his command, he's no good. We are under orders, gentlemen. As long as we have any future, we are in commotion, we are poetical, we are inspired. We are, so to speak, rhyming, singing, and full of song as long as we know why we are going, where we are going under the pressure of having a task to fulfill. Soldiers march when they go to battle. That's the simplest expression of this present, you see. The present is a suspended situation between a future that has to be fulfilled because it is ordered--by providence, or by the general, or by the United States government--and by the monumental past in which you then are erected into a -- into a statue, and stand on the -- Capitol Hill in Washington.
That's what life -- the life of language is: the transformation of commands into poems; and of poems into chronicles; and of commands, poems, and chronicles into analyzed anatomy, which they now call "philosophy."
If all these four idioms are fully spoken, the community is healthy. If one of these four great chapters is suppressed, the community withers. We have today a too-big head for the scientists. And the poets are foreshortened, the historians are foreshortened, and especially the imperatives, the Jean JuarŠs tenses in the future are very much foreshortened.
They tell you we must build a -- a satellite to the moon. And immediately the president feels, and rightly so, that he had to develop an ec- -- economic opportunity program in order to satisfy the soul of man. If there was no future on earth in this -- in this community, we could not afford to build satellites to the
moon. It would be a scandal. That's -- in this way, this program is very intimately connected. Because the poverty program recognizes a command. The other is -- is nothing but competition, as you know, and vanity. But I have nothing against it, as long as it keeps the bomb from falling upon us.
But this is how life is, gentlemen. You cannot neutralize, abstract life and say, "We must now construe -- construct"--the very word is very eloquent and very terrible--construe -- wagons that can go to the moon," without at the same moment feeling, "Well, but the common man may not follow us. We must do something for him. There is a higher command for a society than building -- building vehicles for -- to the moon. Can we have this riches, this abundance without including people --?
And to -- as you know, we live in a very lucky moment in which the great industries understand that they nud- -- they need buyers. And so they are quite willing to subscribe to this poverty program. But what I am interested in it -- that at the very moment our luxurious growth and our abundance, something of the future has to be formulated. And this anti-poverty program--you may like the term or not--and the Peace Corps are attempts to show us that there is something that has to be done, and hasn't yet been done. And nobody quite knows how to do it, by the way. The Peace Corps is not in his last chapter, but its first. We don't know how this will come -- out -- will work out. Because I think it is not -- the Peace Corps has interested me since the year 1912, and I have my own ideas about its future. It certainly is not an invention of America. And it's certainly must never be the invention of any one country. And as long as you make it a vehicle of nationalism, it will of course be degenerate. That's not the -- the question.
And so it is all very serious. But it's so wonderful, because it is a command. And people who have no command to fulfill, they go to lunatic asylums. All the intellectuals go there, you see, because they have no orders. They think they are free.
Yesterday I was attacked by some of you, because you said it was so terrible to be obedient. Gentlemen, you obey in order to be allowed to give orders. And -- since nothing in this world can be done without cooperation, and without a collective understanding --. You must understand that the whole process of politics, of creation, of begetting children depends on this very simple fact that we have first to fulfill our parents' desires, and then become the parents of our own children. In any human being, in other words, these four forms: imperative, optative, indicative, and neuter--infinitive, conceptual knowledge--are contained. You go into a house. there is a father; he gives orders. There is a mother, he -- she celebrates the holidays; she keeps the mores. That the whole past is in
any woman present, as the whole future should be present in any man. Then you have the daughter, who is there for the beauty of the things, for the emotions, for the poetic aspect. She has her picture painted by the most famous painter of the day--don't have it -- painted in abstract. And -- and there is the boy, full of inventions, and full of conceptual criticisms, and says, "That's not -- not right." And he's critical. And that's his privilege.
A man comes of age--and now I'm very serious, and again, the linguists desert me there--a man comes of age under the law when they say -- when he is 21. But what does it mean to come of age? To speak these four dialects: of his father, of his mother, of his sister, and of his own. These are the four languages into which all human language is divided and organized. The language of command, the language of retrospect, of mores, of habits--you celebrate Christmas in a certain way. You celebrate Easter in a certain way. Your mother knows how to do it, and how much of the old mores have to be carried on. And in her -- wrestling with her children, she finds out what of it is still pertinent, you see, and which under the circumstances has to be omitted now.
The four people--father, mother, daughter, and son--or brother and sister as I have -- may perhaps preferably call them--are the four carriers of the complete language of mankind. No individual can speak it. No -- no whole nation can speak it. But every family group can -- must speak it. And unless in a family, the son, and the daughter, and the mother, and the father do not play these different roles, the family disintegrates; the family is degenerate. And of course, we have all these schools. We have here this beautiful hall--which I really like to speak in, I must say---because the families don't function. Otherwise the liberal arts could have their home in every family. But we can't do this, so we build this place. But I can only tell you exactly what all mankind has known since the days of Adam, Eve, Abel, and Cain. The unfortunate story about -- of Abel and Cain is that there was no sister.
Yes. You see, great poets have centered around this problem of the sister. Iphigenia, in -- in Goeth- -- Iphigenia in -- in the Greek tragedy, you see, is the sister who brings the peace and ren- -- reconciliation. That's very serious.
And why do we speak? Because we do not allow the father, and the mother, and the daughter and the son to degenerate into incestuous groups. Because they are sacred to each other, they develop this spirit of the power of naming things to each other. If -- if the family group would just be like the animals, there could be no speech. It would be too close. There would be no fron- -- border lines between them.
But I had six sisters. I know very well the whole realm of a sister's lan-
guage, and a daughter's language. It was not mine. I played with soldiers, and built, and so on. And the -- the greatest secret of mankind is the fact that from the very beginning, incest was taboo. What I told you about the knowledge of your own name, in a Negro tribe on the Windward Island, 300 years back as slaves imported, is of course more true about you and me. You know very well whom you can make love to, and whom you cannot. And it's this clarification which makes every family the cradle of the new beginning of the human race. Every reserve, every power is in the -- is present there to go out into the world and to convert the heathen. That is, to convert people to the fact that we march from being a "thee" commanded, into a "me" suffering, praying, doubting, waiting--impatiently or patiently--into a "we," looking back on a common enterprise; and finally being dismissed into a "they" and an "it," and "That's it, put it away."
Man is transformed by speech, or he doesn't speak. And all the linguists are quite sure that they are not changed, but language is changed by their research. Accordingly, their research doesn't bear any fruit. But your and my listening and speaking will bear fruit if you allow yourself to become a different person by this impact, which people make on each other. Everybody knows it; everybody accepts it; that 's why we teach; that's why we learn. The teacherstudent relationship is after all only a little, little image of the father, son or the parents-children relationship. A teacher is a half-baked father, and a half-baked mother. And -- in all humility, still teaching seems to be necessary, because so many parents don't know what great dignitaries they are. So I -- we have to do it.
When St. Augustine was between his worldly lawyer existence and his bishopric, and was -- drifting--he didn't know what was coming to him--he had this one great problem. He had an illegitimate son, Adeodatus, "God-given." He had begotten this from his sweetheart, and the boy was an illegitimate son. And St. Augustine suffered from this. And he began to write a library for the son, of which only the first chapter is -- is available. He never finished it, because then he was called to Hippo, into this provincial town--which was much smaller than Bellingham--and -- and spent the rest of his life in this corner. You must always understand that St. Augustine became such a great writer because there was nothing else he could do in Hippo.
However, Adeodatus, who died when he was 16, and solved his problem in his own -- in this manner very simply, received one dedication. I've written on this at great length, and given talks in -- to the Augustinian Society at Harvard on this matter. It's a very touching document, because there you see the trembling of a father who says, "How can I teach my son, who knows that I did not -- right by him? I did not make him my legal son. So how can he forgive me? Will he -- listen to me?"
You know how many parents today are in despair, because they think sons are not there to listen to them. And -- they are their legitimate sons, but must -- in many situations, I have the feeling that the parents consider themselves illegitimate parents, because they do not claim the right to educate their children. It's very strange. It's a very com- -- much more common today than -- than should be, that parents abdicate. I've seen incredible scenes of devotion of parents to their children, allowing all the insolences to these children.
And one of these men in New York, a very rich man, said to me when he was called by his boy to the telephone, "Oh Father. But Daddy, ta- -- you take my call, will you?"
And obediently the old man got up and went to the telephone. And when he came back, he said to me, haltingly, "You know, I -- of course, that was very insolent. But I think when I am old, he will take good care of me."
Now the one thing I can assure you, this boy will never take good care of his father, because he will despise his father, because the -- father hasn't spanked him. That's -- unforgivable in later days for a -- to a boy. He has not been corrected when he should have been corrected, the boy. And how can he forgive this? The father has just failed him, because the father must know more, and act wiser than the son.
Now this -- to let you -- us end on this tone of St. Augustine--it is quite hopeful. Here, he had developed a program of education and speech, which has something to do with the rejuvenation of the human race by speech. And he said to his son, "My dear son, when we speak to each other, the whole future is present in you, and the whole past is present on -- in me. We do not meet just one generation and the other. Because I can speak, must speak, may speak, are allowed to speak, every wisdom, every song, every truth of the whole past is alive in my language. And I have the great hope that if I do right by you, these songs, these truths, these proverbs, these knowledges, this language, this harmony of the spheres will reach down to the end of the world through you." And that is the teacher-and-student relationship in the power of human speech.
Let me -- stop here. He has said it better than I.