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

This is a strange day. It's a very joyful day, because it's the last day before vacation. And it is a very serious day, because -- because it is Good Friday. And so that's a very strange combination; it's a very -- a combination of American history, that it is at the same time a secular and a religious story.

And I'm going to prove this to you by trying to persuade you, as you'll remember at the end of the last lecture, that the function of America is a spiritual function. And to you it seems that you are the most natural people in the world. But what an American is in the world today is a highly complicated result of a very great spiritual crusade of the whole western world, to say the least. You may say of all mankind. And I tried to show it to you by saying that America stands for the common man, the commonplace, and for everybody--Mr. Everybody--in an order of spiritual progress in which France stands for one, Germany for the few, England for the many, and America for all.

Now every spiritual beginning has to begin in one. And this day, Good Friday, is as good an example of this as any other inspiration of the human race. It begins in one, with one, by one, and against all. Then it comes to the few. And they are high-brows. That is, they are specialists; they are selective. And they turn, like a guild of craftsmen, as masters, to each other for understanding. They do not cater to the populace. They are not -- do not write best-sellers, and they do not think that they must use the mass media. Then comes a third group that are the many, who can participate as you can in a -- through your college education. You can think that you can feel with the few--like Edgar Allan Poe or Herman Melville--with genius and his sufferings, and that you can also understand expert knowledge and write examination papers on it. And then comes Mr. Everyman, all -- that's the people, the public today, more -- and this is ev- -- all, these are all; it's all-inclusive. And I told you that the whole construction of American society since 1850 has decidedly been built on the assumption that in this country, every topic should be organized first for all.

Take your schools. When I came to this country, I was told that I had to care more -- most for the feeble-minded--last 10 percent--and least for the gifted ones. In my country -- which is a bookish and a high-brow country, it's the other way around. You care for the first 10 percent, and the o- -- others can fa- -- men can fight as they want. And if they're left behind, all the better, because they just can't do it.

And you know the consequences of the school system, when the Sputnik occurred; it occurred also to the people of the United States, that an education of

all perhaps ceased to be education at all. That's what it is, you see. If you want to educate everybody, you can't -- educate anybody.

Question?

(No.)

You have a question?

(No. I'm just -- I'm { } maybe you'd go { } today.)

Well, I'm very { } already.

Now what is new to you, and what you will fight tooth and nail is that God provided the progress of the human race in the way of incarnation. That is, that one has to suffer first with -- in his flesh and blood for a new spirit; that people just don't want to listen; that there are martyrs; and that they are indispensable; and that every day, the more you speak to everybody, the more you train these people to laugh down the one. We'll speak of Herman Melville -- first time either today, or on the day after vacation--I do not know how I shall economize this--and distribute the time. But I want to leave an impression on you that in Herman Melville, you have a good example of a man who has been -- squeezed out from the contemporary scene of America, because he was such a lonely wolf. Because he brought a new inspiration, the first man who was conscious of the full tragedy of the American character, and the whole problem of all and one.

Today -- at this moment, what's your name, please? Pardon?

(Barbara {Neckerman}.)

Yes, thank you. { } Barbara, I want to -- first to convince you or at least to confess to you that this so-called naturalness of the American low-brow is a highly artificial product of this whole stream of thought that goes always from the first to the last, to all; that America represents the commonplace for every invention and every thought. That is, the idea that in the end, anybody must benefit from it.

I give you a stringent example which may perhaps show you how practical this function of America is. I'll give you two stories. One is: when the man -- in -- an American inventor had the bright idea of inventing a very melodious horn for the car, he thought that he should go with his invention to Berlin first and sell it to the German emperor, and thereby, you see, create a real hit, and a

real -- a real -- I mean, interest in this new invention, and that everybody would buy his horn. It played a little melody like your ice car here -- ice wagon, you know. But a little shorter: ta-tee-ta-ta. And -- the emperor was delighted, and bought it; and then the man cabled home: "Made. Success assured."

And then he got a letter from the president of police of Berlin that of course since his majesty the emperor had deigned to buy this horn, nobody else was entitled to use it.

And the second story is that after the war, I was a member of a -- the biggest automobile concern of Germany. And there was much deliberation. They had of course gone into war production and had built airplanes; and now they wanted to go back to their famous Mercedes-Benz cars. You know the Mercedes probably here, too. And the question was: should they continue -- to build these German Rolls Royces, or should they do a job for the general public? And a friend of mine whom we had invited to the deliberations, a professor, got up and said, "Gentlemen, all modern inventions are slated to become commonplace and accessible to everybody. You can't have telephones for some. In the end, everybody must have a telephone. That's true of the car, too." And he warned the people. This was in 1919, and here, Model T was already running. You see, he warned them: don't go on with luxury cars. But first, create the Volkswagen.

Now, they didn't. They went on, because they knew how, and they had their market, you see, and they had their reputation for the elegant and very efficient car, by the way; it was very expensive. And since this -- firm did not produce the Volkswagen, Hitler did. At least he made all the preparation, as you may know. For 10 years, he ex- -- he explored all the avenues. And after the war, the Volkswagen suddenly appeared. It had only been postponed because Hitler thought that war was even more important than Volkswagen. War certainly was a general enterprise and was for all. And after all, good people had been killed, he -- now we have the Volkswagen.

In other words, if the good people do not heed this lesson, that the goods of this earth, you see, and the inventions are for all, then the bad people will take care of this.

And so the story of the automobile in Germany is a tremendous story. It runs through three phases. From 1918 to 1933, the privileged classes insist that there s- -- must be good cars and luxurious cars, but no cheap cars, you see. Then comes the demagogue who promises the German people Volkswagen, but practically takes them to war instead. You signed up a share for the new Volkswagen enterprise in 1933 and '4 in Germany and you were promised in the end, you see, delivery of a cheap car. They never got it, you see. They were first killed, and

crippled, or exiled, or put in concentration camps. But he temp- -- seduced them with this promise, as the Piper of Hamelin does, you see: everybody a -- a car. And instead of delivering the goods, as Henry Ford did in this country, you see, they never did deliver the goods. The dictator came and instead took them all into this universal enterprise of a nice little World War II. And then in '45 with the war machine defeated, the Germans finally had learned their lesson and produced the Volkswagen, of which you know, here; its old -- its examples.

So there are three stages, as you can see, in this acceptance of the law of the universe: that in the end, all scientific inventions must belong to all. Now your fallacy -- the German fallacy was that they could stop this law. They could stop the water from running to the sea, you see. They could be satisfied with the little brooklet, the little torrent that we see at the top of the mountain, and they had -- didn't have to care for it becoming a mighty river, the Mississippi, and finally disgorging in New Orleans into the general ocean of mankind.

The heresy of you people usually is that you think you can begin with the Caribbean Sea, and that you do not do enough to protect the sources, that you pollute the rivers, that everybody can do as he pleases with the water. And here in -- California, I haven't to tell you that half of the water of whose scarcity you complain, is wasted. So you shouldn't complain at all. There is plenty of water, but it isn't used right, because everybody is allowed to use it in any way he likes. It's just fantastic. I mean, I go around and I always want to shut the -- shut the faucets.

Now I'm very serious. If you do not understand that the life of the spirit is like the spring, the brook, the river, and the sea, you will never understand that we incarnate, that we go this whole way from the first idea to the commonplace. And the four stages which I offer you are: the stage in which one man here is dedicated to this all the time, as the spring is, nothing but the spring. The second phase is where some people are paid for doing it professionally half of the time. But they are all on vacation, you see. They do it like a doctor or lawyer, just keep their office hours. And at home, they are good jack-of-all-trades. The genius isn't. He's -- whether it's at night or at day, he is in this. He is representative of it. You can't think of Thomas Alva Edison, or of Herman Melville having a private life. His life is the story, you see. It's an incarnation.

One man embodies the new principle. That's why Jesus had to be the best Christian; and the great heresy of America is that you think that the later things are better. The first is always the best. Otherwise he can't impress people to such an extent that they will follow his example. Leonardo da Vinci was the greatest engineer, and most comprehensive. Now we have specialist engineers. But he did already all the various things in -- in modern engineering, you see. Subma-

rines, and statues, and paintings, and irrigation -- dams, and -- and pumps -- airplanes. There is nothing that Leonardo da Vinci did not think up. And so -- he's the most complete engineer. He should be the patron saint of every polytechnical school in this country and everywhere. Today, this -- this polytechnical school may conta- -- comprise 10,000 students and 500 teachers, but they are only splinters, you see. They are only -- from the old, from the--how do you say it?--from the old stem, I mean.

(Chip off the old block.)

Chips, chips, you see. Just chips. Usually you have chipmunks.

The first is the best, because otherwise men who sacrifice him, and crucify him will not take heed. And everybody in this country knows this, by the way, because we do live in the Christian era, and that much Christianity is known to everybody, and is also in a way respected by everybody. But all your daily teachings and doctrines turn against it, because you are hipped on the idea: you can begin with all. All is the end of the story. If you can give it to all, then it's the finished product, you see. But it has to suffer. As -- just as the spring water takes a long way until it reaches the sea. Believe me, a brook is not like the sea. It is -- has fresh water, and not salt water. As soon as a thing gets -- into common use, it's very salty. It is no longer nourishing, you see. It's there for common use, yes. But it isn't refreshing. It isn't vitalizing, because it's too common. Because if you say, "Well, we know this, and that's understood." And anything that is no longer exciting, you see, does not build up our vitality. It doesn't renew us.

So the thing that is there for all is just the basis of our existence. You take it -- all for granted that everybody has a car. But obviously in India, in China, where only the commissar has a car--or in Russia, you see--the car is still a vital thing. All the other people try to get cars, you see. So they are moved up, so to speak, in the social ladder in order to be allowed a car.

Well, that's a very trivial example. But it is the same of course with all spiritual enjoyment, scientific enjoyment. To parti- -- if everybody participates in everything, it has lost its building power, you see, because it -- it doesn't make you outstanding. You -- you cannot accomplish anything with it. Well, you take it for granted, as you take ice cream for granted. But I assure you, when I was a boy, I didn't take ice cream for granted. It was very rare.

This scale may convince you that I am dealing with realities. One, all the time; some, part of the time; many, some time; and all, a short time, I can say; or a moment. The merit of the last phase, which the American people have in- -- inhabit, have occupied, and have settled on as the last-comers to the western

history, and as the heirs of all the traditions of England, France, and Germany--and other countries, by the way, too--this is a very prac- -- a very great practical achievement. It's just as -- practical as when Luther said all Christians were priests. He did for the medieval cycle of the spirit exactly what the Americans have done. Luther said, "We don't have a pope; we don't have Catholics; we don't have the council. We have the laity. And everybody's a priest."

And in this same sense then, after one, after a few, and after many in Protestantism, they tried to reach rock bottom, you see, by saying, "Everybody is a priest." That's the same story once done in the rhythm of the Middle Ages. Well, we have done the same in the history of the modern times by running this gamut from one--like D‚scartes, or Paracelsus, or Newton--to the many -- to the few who organize science, as in the academies, or the royal society, you see; and then to the schools, where people are educated; and finally to the broadcasting, and to the paperback -- -bou- -- -bound books, which you can buy and just deal with, you see, within an hour or so and say, "Now I know all about it."

Let us now concentrate on the American quarter of these four cataracts, or of the river Spirit. The Americans call this phase the preference for the low-brow, that a man -- a decent fellow is a low-brow first, and all the other etiquettes of a doc- -- Ph.D. are rather funny. And they are funny, I mean. My colleagues, when they put on their gowns there for the commencement, they try to get it -- put it on in the last minute, and try to get rid of it immediately after the celebration. The never are seen on it -- on the street. In Germany, the people walk in procession, and in England, too, with great pride. And they can't dare to leave off their gown, you see. They wear it as long as possible. And this is here an embarrassment, the gown. And Mr. Kettering, the great inventor, when he got his diploma as an engineer, he put it in the wastepaper basket. -- I think I told you the story already. That's -- don't -- didn't I? I thought I did. Because formality, you see, that -- something that isn't for all is embarrassing. You want to stay with the lowbrow.

I had a student who wanted to become a doctor, and I had in one lecture spoken very enthusiastically of Homer and Shakespeare. And he came to me and he said, "Professor, you frighten me. I must not read Shakespeare."

I said, "Why?"

"It takes me away from my -- from my friends in town. I am from a little town, and my father there is a doctor, too, and he looks out for all these minority boys -- Polish, and German, and Jewish, and Italian. And if I go and do not speak their language anymore, their low-brow language, you see, I would estrange them. I would be put -- set aside. And I won't do this."

And I was very much touched, because he, you see, felt that he had to choose between an education and his staying low-brow. Now you may not feel this way, but this boy certainly was a -- a -- a very honest-to-goodness specimen of the true American race. And that is American when you have to choose between low-brow and high-brow, and you choose low-brow. All the rest takes you away into a situation of isolation. And most Americans fear to be set aside and be treated as something different, you see. That's already controversial, you see, just by being different. Dare to be different -- that takes courage in this country. Some now do it by -- growing a beard. But very soon everybody will grow a beard and it won't -- will be again commonplace.

So I hope you feel what I'm trying to say is only this: that I'm dealing with your own situation. America is functional, has functionally embarked on this adventure of doing all things so that they may reach everybody. In doing so, they are dependent on the functioning of the other way of life, where the greatest care is taken that the one may do wha- -- the right thing that is now needed, like Bill Mitchell, or -- Herman Melville, or Edgar Allan Poe, and may not be hunted down, and de- -- defeated, and despised for doing this.

And there are of course thousands of victims on -- in this country of this solitude of the great spirit. An Englishman now wrote a book on America, in which he said, "The most cruel thing in this country"--in America--"is to be an original thinker." That is high treason. For this you are just treated as a -- as an -- well, as a foreigner. That is not the American way of doing things. And as you know, a man who gets up and has -- is inspired really by God Almighty Himself, he has to begin and just say in this country, "Well, you of course know -- this all better, but I thought I might perhaps put in a word for this idea."

That's the technique of getting along with people in this country. But it is -- why you should listen to such a man who in the beginning says he -- that they all know better, I do not know. But they go to the lectures, and he uses this formula, and nobody minds, because they think he just has to show them that he is less intelligent than they. Then they might listen to him.

This is quite serious, because it's all right as long as you know that this is Number 4. Unfortunately, most of you are brought up with the conviction that this is Phase Number 1. Now nothing begins -- God hasn't created the world by creating 7 billion people, but by creating Adam and Eve. That is -- that is the great truth in the Bible story, that you can -- must es- -- you see, trace and retrieve all creatures and all creations to first beginnings. And the first beginnings are small; the first beginnings are inconspicuous; and the first beginnings are ununderstandable to all the living except the person who represents them. Jesus was an absolute un-understandable specimen in His own day. Leonardo da

Vinci was. And every first man--or first woman, for that matter--Maria Magdalene, the same--was un-understandable to the people of their own time. And if you do not fear and tremble that you might crucify the anointed of the Lord, you cannot know what human life is. Human life consists of the constant creation of new species. And the first of these species will be trampled down by you, if you do not watch out. You will crucify the Lord, today. And most people do this more than once in their lives, because the story is very simple: from one, to few, to many, to all.

America has in this state made a great Christian con- -- or a spiritual contribution to the speech, to the living word of mankind by creating slang. That is unknown again in this country. Mr. Mencken has written a very beautiful book on the American language. But he has missed, I think, the spiritual impact of the -- what ha- -- we call the American slang. And it -- perhaps it may help you to understand my point of view by listening to what I have to say about the special character, the unique character, of American slang.

The French has spirit, ‚sprit. The Germans are high-brow. The English have public spirit. And the Americans are low-brow. You can add to the list of variations of the human character, perhaps, these four, too: ‚sprit; you see, of a Frenchman you say, "He has ‚sprit." That is, he is at this moment representative of the Holy Spirit. The second is, you see, "He is high-brow." That is, he wrinkles his brow, and is satisfied that only a few understand. The many, they are publicspirited. There is a man coming -- Forc- -- like Wilberforce, you see, suddenly pleading for the abolition of the slave trade 50 years before it was done in this country, and -- public-spirited men undertaking an office in public, however. Public-spirited. Pub- -- the spirit leaves the -- the lonely individual, and he leaves the -- the walls of the ivory tower of the schools, you see, and goes out as a public spirit. And then all are low-brow. And they are the public. They are the day people, the everyman. They are the common man of whom Lincoln spoke. The -- of whom God has made so many.

Slang is a temporal language. That is, whereas other European countries are, so to speak, pre-Christian in that they territorialize their language, and have dialects, and you speak a different language in Pomerania, and in the Rhineland, in the Tyrol, and in Aquitania, in -- in the various provinces of every country, you see. You have the Languedoc, and the Langdouille in France, for example. Or you have Napolitano and Milanese, Lombardy -- and especially of course Tuscany, the -- Italy. In America, despite the Texans, there is one language--they ha- -- may have a drawl--but the ti- -- the language marches with the times. That is, you cannot be a good American if you are out of this country, and out of touch, and do not follow the change of lingo. For every year there is a specific new expression, which you have to know in order to be recognized as one of the

boys--or one of the girls, for that matter. And that's why the superintendents of school in the state of New York have to know the football coach of every year of the first colleges in the state since 1933. Of course, they know nothing else. But they are certified low-brows.

That's the -- recreation { }. You can't become a superintendent of schools if you do not talk the annual slang, that is, you do not go with the times, as we say, you see; and everybody has to go with the times. I don't. Because some people must not go with the times. Teachers must not go with the times. If you -- you just have to think of the dress of the teacher. You can all sit there in your shirts. I have to wear a tie, not because I wouldn't like to go as you, but because a teacher must not be interested in the fashion of the day or in the mood of the -- of the hour of the day, you see. Teachers must be behind the front line -- of the day, of daily living. We must be indifferent to the fashion. If -- I am a prig or a fashionable, you see, a snob, I wouldn't be the right kind of teacher, because a teacher tries to find those things that last, and not the things that change. I'm not interested in your fashions. Or perhaps I am interested. I won't show it.

That's why teachers must be conservative in their dress. Women teachers, by the way, are in -- worse off in this respect. They must be even -- sparing with lipstick. They -- at least they should, because teaching means to be not in the front line of the slan- -- of the day, of what happens today. But on the other hand, it's the first country, nearly 200 million people, in which the country is not divided by dialects -- per mountain and valley, by the regions, you see; but why -- which is only marching through time in -- in an -- in a march, really, in a movie, and where language -- American slang is this wonderful thing in which things are kept moving. All dialects in the valleys of Switzerland, for example, or Holland, you see, are proud of their conservatism, of being the same language. Practically Swiss German is nothing but German as spoken in the 14th century. Or Pennsylvania Dutch, the same thing, you see, a 17th-century German. Or New England English is conservative. The old story, the pre-story before 1850, before the American -- animal was ready, was of course the same here as over there, dialects. But that's now all different.

The first slang word which has been I think incorporated into the American language, of which I think it is interesting to speak is "okay." "Okay" occurred in the election of Harrison and Taylor -- and Tyler in 1840. And it was used by the Anti-Masonic Party in order to beat the Masons. They had this secret "okay," you see, for Tippecanoe and -- and -- and Tyler, too," in placards in New York state. And that's all we can say. The oldest mo- -- the eld- -- the beginnings of "okay," the most important American word there is, you see, it is not a word at all. It's just slang. This word "okay" goes back to the creation of, you see, one campaign of electioneering. It has the color of a secret. People don't understand,

you see. Only the people in the know do understand. It has all the character of the slang word, you see. It of course upsets the British to this day, because they say, "That's not an English word." It isn't. It's an American slang. It is a creation of a day, and then has endeared itself, because I think it's a typical slang word. Meaningless.

I yesterday passed somewhere on the highway a stand, and it would look like this. Now, I was puzzled. But it just meant there was a fork of the road. You see. So --.

Only to show you that these creations are -- constantly crop up in this country. You ca- -- couldn't make this joke in any other country, you see. It's quite impossible. You understand? You look so puzzled.

So. Now wherever any part of our existence is turned out of a thing of space into a thing of sp- -- time, a process in time, we are in the Christian era. Slang is Christian, compared to a dialect, because dialects split the world by space. And space is inferior, for we are temporal beings. We live through -- in time. And because we live as historical beings, from phase to phase, anything that divides us in space is -- is damaging, is hurtful. Dialects are pre-Christian. Slang is Christian. You may be surprised to see this enlargement of the notion of Christianity, but I think it is very important, because otherwise you will never understand that Americans are not natural animals, but that they are very artificial breed indeed of a high type of a very difficult achievement. They are emigrants from Europe. Do you know that? Don't forget it. And because they are emigrants of Europe, the- -- we have summed up the achievements of Europe, and said, "for all and everybody." And as long as you do -- retain this notion, and Americans remain proud that they are -- have come from Europe, and have drawn a line and said, "No kings, no aristocracies," you see, "no guilds and crafts; everybody," I think you are safe. As soon as you now sit back on your fannies and say that you are descendants of the red Indians, you will go wrong. And even if you say that you come from the missions, you already go wrong. You lie. You all come simply from the Statue of Liberty in the harbor of New York. That's where you come from.

And because you came through this narrow eye of a needle, every American has the same character of wanting to improve on what he has received in the mother country, in the old world. And he does it by generalizing, by carrying it out to everybody. I think that's a great mission. But -- at this moment, you have forgotten all this. You deny it. All this American nationalism, which I see in the colleges {more} is against the grain of the American soil. It's an artificial academic hot-house plant. And it stifles you, gentle- -- ladies and gentlemen. Stay with the people, and forget about your examinations and logical semanticism, and

what -- it all is. That's beneath your dignity. You still are bound as Americans to think of all, and then inside of this, to keep the relations with the world of values in which things are created.

But it is a very wonderful story that America is a part of a wider world. And it is not anything by itself. It's the only world that has created -- been created by people who -- whose ancestors--every one of them did not live on these shores before. But why do you forget it now? And you do. All -- every book I open is just rampant with the silly nationalism. And all the greatness of the American soul thereby is destroyed. It's making you smaller. But as a function within a wider world, it's very glorious.

I have learned my lesson here. I respect this fall, but I will not respect it outside the framework of a more general task of humanity. The progress of the human race cannot be lived in departments like Ameri- -- United States of America, and Brazil, and -- and Africa, and India. That's all nonsense. That's all over -- so much water over the dam. You come a little late, after two world wars, to go back to nationalism.

So would you kindly adopt this? And the place of slang may help you to understand that I'm talking of realities that you do every day. We all enact this. This is in our grain. Even I had to learn that "okay" is nothing to vomit. But linguistically speaking, it's a terrible formation, isn't it -- not?

The one man who has embodied the -- the secularization of the American mind is, as you know, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson is the American who has annexed all the ways of the spirit of Europe and translated them into American terminology. And in -- he -- it -- to tell you his dates--most of you know it; he was born in 1819 and died in 1883--he is in all his limitations, and in all his posi- -- positive achievements the private citizen of this country who has invited this whole process of the good life for all by a strange attitude himself of becoming the greatest private citizen of the United States. He was a private man all his life, and he embodies this translation into Mr. Everybody by being a minister and -- first, and then quitting the pulpit and becoming just a private citizen of Concord, Massachusetts, where he lies buried in a very beautiful grave. Ralph Waldo Emerson--he's very often called a Transcendentalist, you see, of Concord. But that isn't important. And I think you should not classify him in any such group of Transcendentalists, or whatever name you give them.

The main thing is: he is the American of the 18th century who translated all the values of the religious tradition and of the European tradition into the nomenclature of the 19th century. And to tell you the truth, most of you are people out of Emerson's loins. They are his children, because the liberal arts

college is Mr. Emerson's creation. He incarnates it before it existed. Just as Leonardo da Vinci is the engineer 400 years before there were engineer schools, and just -- as -- as much as Jesus of Nazareth is the Christian, and we are little, little belated pseudo-editions of His, so in the same sense Emerson is the liberal arts college of America. He has anticipated all the topics, all the departments, all the lingo, all the behavior of the private citizens that gets inside -- who gets inside America an education. That is, he has built education on top of the all. It's not education coming down, you see, from the -- from the top down, as in Europe, but it is an admission that in this vast multitude, the individual should develop, should cultivate his soul, you see.

And he speaks of the infinitude of the private citizen. Will you kindly note this very strange expression? Emerson has proclaimed the infinitude of the private citizen--meaning, you see, that when all are living together at peace, there is still in every drop of dew this possibility, you see, of becoming the prism of all the colors of the rainbow, of cultivating one's private soul. The two words, "private citizen," and "infinitude" are I think two expressions, two terms which you could not ex- -- translate into English, or into French, or into Italian, or into German. Nobody would understand it, because only in a mass civilization is it very important to make room for the private citizen, inside, you see.

Mr. Emerson wasn't more than an infinitely enlarged private citizen. He broke down at the event of the Civil War. After 1856, when he saw that Abolition and war were inevitable, he not only had nothing to say anymore, but made a fool of himself. His participation in the Civil War is ridiculous. That is, he had no room in his philosophy as a private citizen for war, and not for any of the great movements la- -- or problems later. And finally his memory gave out; he grew very senile. His problem is the secularized ministry.

Now you know that most college professors in this country over the last hundred years have all been either the sons and daughters of ministers or themselves ministers who turned, you see, secular, into teaching. And that is a fact which you do not recognize as a specific American trait. In Europe, that doesn't exist. There has always been a tradition of secular scholarship, you see, and secular teaching. Just as honorable as prof- -- as clerical. And therefore in this country, you get in the colleges the dregs of religion, or the protest against religion.

I had a col- -- a colleague. He and his wife used to sit down at 11 o'clock in the morning every Sunday. And they were old people. They were 65 and 6- -- or 60 when I met them. And they say -- said, "Every morning at 11, we sit down with some work, and congratulate ourselves that the others have to go to church and we can work."

Now these were grownup people, and he was professor of English, and quite a good professor of English. But I thought he was very childish, because at the ripe age of 65, he was still simply, you see, barking -- barking like a little dog against the tradition of his family; they were pious people and went to church. So, at 65, he still congratulated himself that he didn't have to go to church. You can imagine how biased a man is, who is all his life against something.

Now I find that modern American secularism--take the logical positivist, or take the naturalist, or take the -- whomever you take, the Sandbergs, or the Walt Whitmans, or whomever you take as the -- the people who talk big about the universe--they always are against organized churchmanship. They have to -- that is the one -- the one point where they get very nervous. I don't understand it. And -- but they behave like runaway slaves in this respect. The -- the church of the -- of their parents is to them such a terrible, you see, 18th-century memory that they have to turn against it. And I think you have in America to this day this type of a college professor and a college student who is glad to have escaped from the discipline of -- of the -- his denomination, and enjoys greatly that he can do the opposite.

Now obviously the truth is not with the opposite. And that's why most Americans are pragmatic and have -- no relation to truth, because they spend all their life by turning against something. And the minister who is against sin certainly is not a good minister. Because to be against sin doesn't help anybody, not even the minister.

To be against. And I think that's never mentioned in your literary history, that most people--like Emerson--are against what they have been. Now you take the immigrant. He is against what he has been at home. That's natural. And I think that's his privilege, you see. He doesn't want to be a peasant again, or a serf, or what-not. You can't blame him, you see. But it is a part of his makeup that he will judge everything here in relation to this, what he is against. And in the educated class in this country, there is not this feeling. They mostly are thir- -- second-, third-, fifth-generation people. They have -- their parents may -- ancestors have come over on the "Mayflower," but still they are against the pulpit in which their own father stood.

And to be against, I assure you, is a very unprofitable attitude. That's why in the tribe the young man has to go into the wilderness and meet the whole -- the Great Spirit himself, has to be initiated. To be initiated into life means to have done with childhood behavior of before -- for and against. Before -- because your parents are for something, you at first are against it. Now the very minute you come to the resolution, that because you are for something, or your parents are for something, or you are against something, or they are against something, that

this is not criter- -- no criterion of truth, you are grown up, you see. At the very minute when it makes no difference whether your parents are right or you are right, then you are -- have cut the umbilical cord, because then you are in contact with the truth.

Now Mr. Emerson hasn't, because he did not believe in anything the Church said. He didn't believe in sin. He was an antinomian. He didn't believe in the law. He didn't think war was -- had any place, until he was overcome by it in later life, you see. And that's why his hour, 1856, when he admitted this is a tragic hour, Mr. Emerson ceased to be important in America 25 years before he died.

The opposite is true of Herman Melville. Herman Melville is important -- became important for America 80 years after he had written his great works, and 40 years after he had died. And I only can wish you that you see the -- your own decision between Herman Melville and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Ralph Waldo Emerson lived backward. In 1872, he became an overseer of Harvard University. And he was asked to take a part in a vote on chapel service on campus. And since he was a runaway minister, everybody assumed that he would of course vote for compulsory chapel -- for the abolition of compulsory chapel, that he would side with the modernists and say, "No chapel for the students," as you have it today here. And lo and behold, Mr. Emerson voted for compulsory chapel.

And people looked aghast and said, "How can free -- the free spirit of Emerson, you see, the man -- who goes against all laws, who believes in the all soul, you see, and identifies the nature and the soul, and to whom no evil exists, how can such a man be for compulsory chapel?" And then the old man's background, of course, came and made its appearance once more and he said, "I cannot deprive the students of such a wonderful experience." You see.

So all the things he had turned against in his life still meant in his own life the basis, the background, the roots, the topsoil out of which his own flower had grown; and suddenly in his old age, at the ripe age of 70, he discovered, you see, that it had been a wonderful experience, which he translated into secular terms. So the whole 19th century in the form of Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson and the liberal arts college is the translation into terms for everybody of the religious experience of the fathers of this country in the 18th century. And Mr. Emerson however, didn't -- had done. When he had translated this in terms of educational structures and endeavors, the serious business of -- life as grownups in war, and conflict was not {for} { }. The public cannot deal with war, we said; Mr. Emerson couldn't deal with war. And it's a warning for you, that the -- the human being described by -- in "The American Scholar," and all the other famous addresses, Nature et cetera, of Emerson, is a very incomplete being. It's a private

citizen, without the tragedy of public and national life.

And that's why he's so ni- -- amiable, as in this college. You see the sun. You go to the cafeteria. And you take examinations. That's child's play. That's toying with ideas. I've never toyed with ideas. I think ideas are not something to be played with. They are serious business. They are dynamite. They lead to wars. If you rink -- think wrongly, you'll go to war the next day without knowing it. The United States' people thought wrongly in 1917, so they were in a war, before they knew why, and elected a president because he kept the country out of war. That's the blindness of the educated man.

And we shall see after the vacation that Herman Melville was crucified by the people of the United States. But he represents something eternal: he represents the fullness of life that has to be lived on this continent. And Herman Melville has a future, and Emerson has not.