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

[Opening remarks missing]

... another remark he made on atheism. What is the -- atheism's sense of winness? The atheist says, "There is no God." You know, in this -- there is this famous story of the Chief Justice of England, Jeffrey, who was also the founder of the Edinburgh Review, the great literary center of English criticism in the beginning of the 19th century. He one day had to defend a printer, who had printed an atheistic book. And so Jeffrey was very witty, said in his plea to acquit the man, that he would -- was going to prove that the Bible was an atheistic book. Now of course, great attention in the court, everybody pricking up his ears, under the wig. You know the judges there have wigs, they can't prick up their ears very well. And he said, "Bring me a Bible." Even greater silence, and he opens the book and he says, "Well, Psalm 46: `There is no God.' And it's printed in the Bible." Do you know the place? Wie?

(Could it be { }?)

No. "There is no God."

(Is this the one where the fool says, { } "There is no God"?)

Yes. "There is no God, the fool says." I mean, some of you must have prayed it in church. It's in the responsory of the -- when you read the Psalms. "There is no God, the fool says."

Gentlemen, the fool says, "There is no God." He does not answer the question. He uses the name of God in vain, or the word of God. But why we are forced to used the term, "the name of God," the fool hasn't known. The atheist says, in saying anything, that he believes in himself, gentlemen. To speak means to have faith. The question is only in whom. Nobody can speak and expect to be understood, and expect to be accepted, and expect to be approved, and expect to be believed not to be a liar, unless he believes that this word is true, and that other people are real in their respect for his word. And the atheist, of course, has one great hope that everybody will listen to him and believe that there is no God.

Now whatever statement you make, gentlemen, the power that makes you speak we call God. The power that makes us speak we call God, and this power has first the quality that it -- other people can understand. If you petition in the desert another human being for bread, you believe that he'll understand your plight, even though you cannot speak his language. A baby that is asking for

food can be understood, although it's still completely inarticulate. One man can understand the other. There is a power that makes not only men speak, but also hear, understand. John Quincy Adams once, when they wanted to abolish the right of petition in Congress, said that any human being had the natural right to implore the help of another human being. It's perhaps the greatest sentence ever said in the Congress of the United States of America. And if you would know the great plight of religion today, then -- if you would care for it, you would see that because this sentence is forgotten -- there's now a new book on natural law which doesn't even mention it -- the country is in bad shape. This country is based on the assumption that one human being, being an Armenian, and one other human being, being a Turk, or one Nazi and one Jew meeting in America will still speak to each other, because that's God's country. And in God's country, even enemies can help each other and implore each other's help.

If you believe this, gentlemen, then you have the best of the natural religion, that -- the belief in the brotherhood of man. And the brotherhood of man, of which we said that it is an integral part of American religion, you remember -- one-third of the creed of America means not that all men are brothers, but that men can speak like brothers to each other. That is the only meaning of the word. They can speak to each other. And they can be understood, although in the old country, they would have stabbed each other to death. An Irishman and an Englishman, you see, can live here together. And as I said, an Armenian and a Turk.

The Turkish ambassador -- you know, the Turks massacred all the Armenians at one time. Some escaped and came to this country. And so the Turkish ambassador to the United States was taken to Los Angeles to a famous restaurant. And his host, being not too well informed, as all people in Hollywood are only very superficial, said to him that this was a Greek restaurant to which he would take him, and the kitchen was famous. And he introduced him to the chef. And the Turk only had to hear the man's name and to see his face, and he said, "That's an Armenian. He's going to poison me. I'm a Turk."

And the chef smiled and said, "Your Excellency, you don't need to be afraid. This country does something to everybody."

And that is the greatest gospel of -- or the greatest paean and the greatest praise of America. This country does something to everybody, you see. Enemies can speak to each other again, and don't poison each other.

And so I want you to understand, gentlemen, that to speak means to have faith, and a trinitarian faith. Faith, that what we say is meaningful. Faith, that that -- it has a meaning. It's meaningful. It should be said. It is right to say it.

Otherwise, we can't speak. And we also feel it will be found to be true. And it will -- finally it will be found that somebody listens to it. An atheist wants to be understood by somebody, otherwise he wouldn't have to make such a proclamation of his atheism. He wants to be listened to. And there, that's the end of atheism, gentlemen; because, whenever we speak, we need the three processes by which we institute God in our life: faith love and hope. A man hopes that he's understood. That's -- he hopes for a listener. And the atheist who says, "There is no God," even prints a book on the subject. And so there must be somebody to buy the book.

He also, if he is not megalo-- mad, does not belong in the insane asylum, says it because he feels it is true. That his -- is his heart is rooted in a conviction that man must speak the truth. That's faith. So he cannot speak without these two qualities of faith and hope. And he must reach this other man in some peaceful manner, because if -- it's a difference whether you make a man listen, or whether you club the man over the head. If a man listens, I don't have to be -- to throw him his paper at his head. To listen means to -- to speak in such a manner that you expect the other man to listen in peace is an -- always an act of friendship, or of love. The process between speaker and listener is not that between two warriors who try to kill each other. But it is always an attempt for union. You -- the atheist cannot speak to another man unless he feels that the other man not only will listen, but will let him stand, give him time to speak and not take a pistol and shoot him. Otherwise he wouldn't speak. But he would arm himself to the teeth and go to the police.

It is very strange, gentlemen, that you poor people, misled by a -- I don't say what, really -- by a well, a kind of pride of man in his thinking -- can overlook that to speak is the first religious act. We have religion because we speak. And to tell the truth, gentlemen, we don't have much more religion. What do I care when a man is a Roman Catholic if he lies to me? His lying is much more declassifying in his religious, you see, evaluation than the fact that he belongs to the Roman Catholic church and takes all the sacraments. Isn't that true? The lying simply destroys his religion. And he can tell me 20 times that he goes to the communion. To me he's a scoundrel. And I don't give a damn to {this} boy's religion. Isn't that true? You all do. Now why is that so, gentlemen? Because if a man is a liar -- then gentlemen, that's the first anti-religious action a man can take. Speech -- the truth is not a luxury, gentlemen. And lying is not arbitrary. You cannot afford to lie, because this is your religion. In religion -- in speaking you assume that you can make friends. If you destroy this reliance, you are suddenly alone in the world. And to speak then, gentlemen, means to get into the electric current of the spiritual life in which the truth and the peace between men and the obedience to the necessary laws of life is impressed. A man who listens, gentlemen, is bitten by the spirit. A man who speaks can only speak if he

believes that his heart is able to convey the truth to somebody else, so if he is convinced that he doesn't speak out of self-interest. You are all misled because you think speech is a tool of your will. And as long as you believe this, you are in Hell. And you go usually then to the -- very soon to the psychoanalyst. The psychoanalyst gets before him people who no longer are -- feel the privilege that there is a power that makes us speak, but who think -- I first think something out and then I go to the other man and persuade him to buy my Leica at an exaggerated price, then I'm very clever. Gentlemen, that's not speech. That's just lying. People in this country call it advertising. Or propaganda.

It is an abuse of speech. The greatness of speech is that what you say is true. Now what -- that it is true you can only believe. Because no one person, gentlemen, knows that that what he says is true, unless there is a connection of what he says with the whole universe. If you say, "The weather is fine," the weather must -- and you must be in correspondence. That is, your five senses and your mind must be able to concede that this weather is fine. Your judgment must be sound. It mustn't be arbitrary. You mustn't be drunk. You mustn't be insane. Otherwise you would say, "I'm the Emperor of China, and the climate in New England is the Chinese climate." Maybe it is.

So, gentlemen, whenever we open our mouths, there is a stream of faith by which we connect what we say with the facts. There is always a stream of peace by which we think it is time to speak instead of to hit hard. To an enemy you cannot speak. To a groggy elephant, you cannot speak. To your dog, you can speak, because there is peace. But to a roaring lion, you better take your rifle. People overlook, gentlemen, that to speak is always a decision on the timing of the act. We can only speak where there is time. Otherwise, we must run, or shoot, or act, or eat, or whatever it is. There is no time to speak. Speech is always embedded, gentlemen, then in these three cardinal virtues or these cardinal powers. Don't -- never say "virtue." I hate "virtue," as I hate "vice." They are two dead words in American society. Vices are virtues at the wrong time, gentlemen. And virtues become vices at the wrong time. In order to make you feel this, let's drop these words and speak of powers. Every power in humanity has to be used at the right moment. And to speak means always that we have decided at this moment that there is time to speak. You cannot speak otherwise. Therefore, the atheist, gentlemen, says in truth that he has only faith in himself, love in himself, and hope for -- in himself. This is too much for me, you see. I mean, he can say so. That's the limit, so to speak, the limiting concept of speech. But he then says, "I have created my speech, I have created my understanding. And I'm my only listener." He does not believe that he needs the next listener to carry on his truth. He doesn't believe that the truth has come from far away and has always been true at all times, and he has only now found it. And he doesn't believe that there -- that there is time in the world, you see, to say this. He really speaks {to him-

self}.

So we want -- I wanted to use this example, gentlemen, because atheism is, of course, a very cheap position today and the most general position. Most people are atheists in their practical life. They lie. They cheat their competitor and their workers. And they cheat the government, and that all is called business. And they are very business -- matter-of-fact. But they can't speak to their women and to their children, though they send their children to nursery schools or Sunday schools. And their women go to women's clubs and give lectures or listen to lectures. And the American businessman has nothing to say about truth, about hope, love and faith. Mr. Rockefeller, however, the old one, was still of a different timber. He taught Sunday school. All the great Scotchmen did this in this country. They made money on one side, but they had still something to say. And they knew when it was time to make money and when to speak. And when they spoke, they did not say that they spoke in their own name, but they spoke in Christ's name. And they taught Sunday school. And the children learned something, not because it was what they learned, but from whom they learned. They learned from a free man who believed that when he opened his mouth, some higher power enabled him to contact his fellow man. You don't do this. You only want to sell your own soul. And you say, "I'm just a human being. Who am I that I should know if there's a God or not?" And you have this scandalous humility. You deprive society of your voice. And you have no children. You only have brats. You have offspring, gentlemen. That's what Marx -- Karl Marx prophesied, that modern man would become so speechless that he would only have offspring, but the offspring would not speak his language. His faith, and his love, and his hope would not be re-embodied in his children. The children would just look elsewhere for the murder of the day. And they would find it. And she -- finally they would commit it themselves, like Mr. {Chapin.}

This is the world without speech today in America, gentlemen. That's why I've written this first chapter of my Christian Future, which begins with the fact that the modern American businessman propagates the gospel of atheism or of no speech, which is identical. No speech on any important matter. Only speech for the things on which we can have just as well computation machines. You see, you don't have to speak when you want to buy a ham. You can go to the new market -- supermarket and know where it is spoken. Speech is however necessary, gentlemen, absolutely necessary to assert us that we are in a meaningful, peaceful and growing universe, together with other people.

So from the extreme point of -- vantage point of atheism, it's very good looking at religion, gentlemen. You should take the position of radical atheism in your mind, before you can shake it off as a temptation. Take it. Accept it, and try what it means. It is a temptation, because to lie is a temptation. As you know, we

shouldn't lie, but it's a great, wholesome help. An Englishman wrote into my diary once jokingly when I visited England, you see, "A lie is a terrible thing in the eyes of the Lord, but a wholesome help in the trouble of life." Really. Take it -- laugh, gentlemen. This is as man is built. I mean, we all want to lie occasionally, because the truth is very, very strenuous, isn't it? In a disagreeable situation, you see.

But gentlemen, the step I want you to take at this moment is very simple. Your religion is not embedded in your ceremonies, but in your treatment of your own word. There is our religion. That's --to look back to the trinitarian religion of our Catholic friend last time: He speaks to his children and he tries to educate them well, you see. He speaks to himself, and -- because this is his philosophy. And he speaks in church or listens in church to what is said. We call this his institutional religion. Now am I not right when I say that the unifying bond between all these three attitudes of this friend of mine is that he speaks, or that speech rotates through him. In the case of his children, it streams from him to them. In the case of his own philosophy, that everything is economic, you remember, he speaks to himself. And in the case of the institutionalized religion, the church speaks to him. But speech it is. And he -- in all three cases, this unfortunate man has to believe that it is true? That there is time to speak and to meditate on, it's true. And that there is a loving listener, in the case of the Sunday -- he is the loving listener. The priest has time to speak to him, you see. In the case of his philosophy, he has leisure, and speaks to himself or has his own philosophy. And in the case of his children, the children must have time to listen to him -- their father's ammunition -- admonition.

What I was driving at, gentlemen: for you it is very difficult to see that religion is set with speech, that every act of speech in society testifies to our belief in God. Because God is not an abstraction, but the power by which peace, truth and efficiency are united. Something is true, gentlemen. But if I say it, I hope that somebody else will acknowledge the truth. That is, truth will become a power. That's my hope. My act of faith is that this is true. My act of hope in the same sentence is that somebody will help me to live by this truth. Truth in itself is perfectly powerless, you see. You have to have a witness. You have to have somebody who subscribes to this truth, who sticks his neck out and says, "It is true." Before, it isn't of any efficacy in society. You don't see this, gentlemen, that every one sentence moves in three directions. It wants to stem from the truth into my heart. I want to be out of the truth. I want however to make my -- myself powerful, because I proclaim the truth and I want to be acknowledged for this truth, and other people are going to buy my book, for example, or to go to my lectures, or to support my claim that I have the best -- produce the best camera in the world and then buy it, on my word. Everybody hopes that for power, gentlemen, of his truth. That's the outgoing power, gentlemen. And in the mean-

time, there is of course his own trembling heart, and his own critical mind. And his heart, which feels that we should be good to each other, wants to convince also his own mind that this is a good thing. And in just making this recommendation, it philosophizes and its says, "We have time for this." Even the mere philosopher, gentlemen, has self-love. The teacher has love for others. So without self-love, you wouldn't debate so fervently inside yourself. Am I right? But you do. You love yourself, and you want to -- as all love does -- the perfection of the loved one. And of course you are, at this moment, very much concerned with your own self-righteousness, so you love yourself a little bit more than somebody else. I don't blame you for this. We must love ourselves as our neighbor. You can't love your neighbor more than yourself. And a man who wants to teach, gentlemen, has to love his own self as much as you, as his students, because otherwise, he will not doubt enough before he speaks. It is very strange, gentlemen. The freedom to doubt comes from our love. The power of conviction comes from our certainty that we are in the truth, that the truth is -- we are serving the truth. We are servants of the truth, that we are willing to admit the truth, you see. To let it in, and not to block it.

And it is our hope that mankind is just crazy for the truth. Of course, in the course of time, we find out that Satan, the Devil, is very much in domination in the world, because the liar -- that's his name, as you know, of the Devil, the slanderer -- says, "Nobody says the truth. Everybody lies." And so he puts our listeners in a dead state of paralysis. And you sit here to get credit, but not to know the truth. That's the Devil.

Gentlemen, the Devil is the aspect of speech of miscarriage. We speak of the Devil, because all human speech can be abused in three-fold manner. It can be abused as being a lie. That is, I do not even try to admit the truth, you see, but I block the path of it and I say "I never did this." That's lying, you see. I did it. But I won't admit it. That's the Devil. The first Devil. The second Devil, of course, is "I have -- I'm in a hurry." And so I go to war and throw the atomic bomb over Moscow -- preventive war. Now preventive war, gentlemen, as you know, is not just an act of great politics. We all have preventive war with our neighbors. You can lock the door or you can make friends with your neighbors. The Quakers, as you know, didn't lock the door, because they wanted to be friends. And the other Americans killed the natives. And so there were no red Indians left, or they pushed them into the most dirty and poorest reservations, where they now go rot, as they do. That means that you abuse your power to -- you distrust your power to speak, I would say, you see. You don't love enough to make an attempt to come to terms with the enemy. Wherever we do this, there is again the Devil at work. Speech is omitted. It is declared to be impossible to speak. Now gentlemen, you will have this in your life all the time. We no -- will not only have it with the Russians.

It is a -- I read with great interest sometimes these wonderful "Letters to the Editor," where you really see how belated the human mind in this country is. The other day there was a letter: "The great mistake we made was ever to recognize Russia in 1933, diplomatically." Wonderful lady wrote this letter, ignoring the facts of life, so to speak. I mean, it would be as if your father would have ignored your having been born for the next 20 years. You certainly wouldn't then be in Dartmouth College, if he had done that, you see. You are also a disagreeable addition to the burden of life, just like the Russians. I mean, this lady said, "Don't recognize the Russians. Don't recognize that half of the world exists." Many people love such an attitude because it gives them a sense of freedom. I can deny the fact -- now we do the same with Communist China, as you know. It's a similar attempt not to speak, because to recognize means to speak, instead of to go to war. The fact we have now war with China, but no recognition -- we have no possibility of speaking to them. Nobody sees this as a religious issue, it seems in this country. All -- everybody thinks it's our free will, gentlemen. Do you really think that Mr. Theodore -- Franklin D. Roosevelt used his free will when he recognized Russia in 1933? Do you really think that we use our free will when we treat a 25-year-old man differently from a 5-year-old child? We have to. We have to. We have to recognize China, and we have to recognize Russia. And you are not permitted to do this arbitrarily. You have to find when it is right to do so. That's all. This whole discussion in this country shows the complete arrogance of America that this -- you think you can decide over the fact of -- over creation. Because to recognize a government doesn't mean to approve of it. But to recognize that God in His infathomable wisdom has allowed Bolshevism to establish a government. But there it is. And you are not the judge.

But the natural-religion man, gentlemen, simply has given up all belief in a living God, and despises all institutionalized religion, and makes up the religion of this country, says that he is the judge -- the world's judge, the last judge who says whether a thing exists or doesn't exist. And so you abuse -- we abuse our power to speak, gentlemen, our power to think, our power to enter the stream of truth very considerably.

The point I only want to hint today -- we will see that all religions are centered around this point -- is the relation of your speech to the universal worship of God. But it is always the question of what -- how you treat your own word, which is the only way in which you will ever discover any man's religion. That's why in the New Testament, you know, there's a story of the Pharisee who says to God, "Thank God that I'm not like this other man," you see, and there's the other man who says, "Oh God, have mercy on me, miserable sinner," you see. And the answer is that the man who says, "Have mercy upon me, miserable sinner," speaketh. And the Pharisee doesn't. He judges, you see.

And you, of course, have a third position, neither of the Pharisee, but -- of the abominable sinner. But you have this wonderful position that there is no sin, which is the best position, of course, it seems. But it makes you -- condemns you to complete loneliness, because nobody will listen to your inner statement that you are without sin.

That has to come from somebody else. You don't say you are without sin, I know. You say, "I'm just a human being." But you say that sin is a ridiculous concept. That you say. And original sin is most ridiculous, gentlemen. It's the only reasonable concept I know, gentlemen, because anybody who speaks knows that he can lie. And original sin is this original power given to free -- to the human being, that while he can speak the truth, he also can speak a lie. And therefore original sin means that from the very beginning, man has also lied. And haven't you? And you all laugh -- "Original sin is funniest thing in the world." But gentlemen, with the equipment of speech comes the power to abuse it. Because, gentlemen, speech is this wonderful element of human freedom. Speech embodies freedom, liberty. Without speech, there is no liberty. You -- you're very much surprised, sir, but it's very simple, gentlemen. If I now would commit the obscene act of slapping you in the face, I could make it undone by a word -- by apologizing for doing { }.

Now gentlemen, this you can only do by speech. Speech excuses, gentlemen. Speech excuses men. Now what is the word "excuse"? "Excuse" means to make a cause undone. To excuse means to say that this cause goes out -- ex -- and shall not affect the future. I have hit you, I told you, and I have excused myself. I've made apologies and you have said, "I forgive you." And as soon as you say this, the act of having slapped you in the face, as though it has not happened. So gentlemen, by speech we can make things undone. Anybody who speaks makes an act of war undone, because by speaking, he says there is time to act on peace. Otherwise we would be at war. And so, gentlemen, the next step is we -- because we speak, man knows of peace. And the answer to the natural religionist is, "Nature is at war." Nature means war. There is no natural peace. The heresy of Mr. Benjamin Franklin is that nature is ever at peace. Peace has to be declared by words. Peace is based on speech. All peace has to be concluded. The word "peace" is the same in Latin as the word "pact," or "covenant." That is, it has to be spoken by one and the other and both agree that there shall be peace. Now gentlemen, my worst task in this course is that you don't believe this.

We come back now for a moment, gentlemen, once more, to your firm belief, you know it or not, but you -- there's a natural religion. In natural religion, speech is unnecessary. First tenet. In natural religion, peace is normal. In natural religion, all men are good. That is, they do not want to lie. And since lying is always a question of weakness -- if I'm weak, I lie; if I'm strong, I don't have to

lie; I have the power to speak the truth -- the truth is always a question of strength. Or moral -- you call it moral strength. I call it just strength. And when you are -- we feel weak, we have no time. We get away with the lie. You know sometimes the explanation of the truth is so clumsy. I have to speak so long, so I pass a short life, because it's simpler to say, when I've been invited to a cocktail party and I didn't -- hadn't wanted to go, you see, I say to the lady later, "I have forgotten it," you see. I should have -- it's simpler than to explain why I didn't feel that I should go. That's the question of my weakness, is it not? If I had the strength, the power at that moment, I would, you see, tell her.

I once was asked to write an article on lying in a youth -- Christian youth paper. Oh, that's 35 years ago, but I shall never forget it. When I offered my contribution to the editor, it ran about -- on these lines, that to lie was a question of strength or weakness. It had very little to do with morality, with good intentions. But it had to do with strength, and weakness. And so when we were -- felt feeble, we would lie. And if we felt strong, we would tell the truth. And he hated every bit of it, because he was, of course, one of these YMCA boys, who think that man is just goody-goody. And there are no -- differences in man in the morning and in the evening. But gentlemen, at times, you feel strong and at times, you feel weak. And it depends on your weaknesses and your strength how you act, not on your will. The apostle Paul, as you know, has wondered all the time that it doesn't depend on your will that we -- if we sing. The law in our body and the law of our mind is a very different one. It depends on our strength. You are all poisoned with this idea of the natural religion, that man acts as he wills. Nobody acts as he wills. Everything always comes out the other way around.

So we have another dogma of natural religion: Man is good, and he can speak the truth if he wills to -- wants to speak the truth.

Gentlemen, it's a miracle that we can speak the truth. It cannot be expected that you tell President {Dickey} the truth about yourself and you want to pass and get an examination -- on an examination. You polish the apple. That's the opposite from telling the truth. You make excuses. You try to make things undone. You don't want to stand in the full light of your atrocities. There are very few people who win out that at the end of life they can speak the truth and admit the truth, totally. But you take it all so easy, it's so easy.

You think it's easy to speak the truth about your own country? Or about your own family? And to speak to a divorc‚e about marriage in the proper terms? I fall silent if I have a divorced woman before me and she's unhappy. Certainly the whole chapter on marriage and how it should be lived. I cannot talk to her. I would wound her. I haven't the strength to do so. But I therefore -- I cannot

speak the truth about the matter to her, you see. That any divorc‚e usually has the corpse of her husband in her heart and therefore cannot remarry, even if she does it three or four times. That's the truth. But it's not my business to tell her, in -- usually, you see. It's too hurtful. And so you have many cases. You have a bankrupt or a drunkard. You meet him; you cannot tell him the truth, unless he is very willing to hear it, you see. For example, there is a great experience in my life. You cannot advise a person on anything in his own life, although it is true -- may be very true, very necessary -- unless he asks you for advice. Unasked advice cannot be given. Since unasked advice is perfect -- always produces the opposite, we, in most cases, do not tell our friends the truth. They don't ask for advice, so we see them running downhill to their frustration, and we -- we cannot tell them. It's useless. The lie is like a block between you and me because his eyes aren't open even to the possibility that he's wrong. And as long as he doesn't question the truth of his own attitude, he will not listen to you. He will not. I have given unasked advice too often not to know, gentlemen, that this is no good. Very harmful. Never give unasked advice, except if you want to break with a person and just wash your hands of it and clean your conscience and say, "I've said it. I'm through with them," you see. "I can't stand it any more, the stench of this moral swamp," and so you can tell to a college that nobody learns here anything, so I leave. But then you must be through with it, you see.

The truth can be said, gentlemen, at your dying hour. That's why martyrs die. Not because they want to be martyrs, gentlemen. Because they finally found the truth has to be said, but they can only say it at the very moment they are executed. Or by their execution, they testify to it. The Christian martyrs, gentlemen, were not people who liked to be martyrs. But they knew that if they gave unasked counsel and unasked advice, the Roman Republic would say "Head off!" And so for a long time they didn't say so, but when finally they were cornered, and had to pay a -- throw incense before the bust of the emperor, the truth was stronger then, and they said it. But never believe, gentlemen, that the murdered martyr is a man who loves to die, and is not even a man who loves to tell the truth. But it is only a man who is finally so cornered, that in order to keep his self-respect, he prefers death to an untruth, you see.

The -- as you know, all Christians have always hated fanaticism. Intentional martyrdom is not Christianity, nor any true religion. No, we are all human beings, who -- I have the right to live. But -- ja?

(Well, then why should the martyrs be considered saints, if they-- ?)

Because God has spoken and finally opened our eyes. The grace of God has been with them, so that finally they forgot themselves, you see, and let the truth through them, although it meant the destruction of their own bodies. You know

already that to speak means to serve the truth, you see. And we worship then, in the saints, the grace of God, and who has { } this instrument of history, you see, in order that he may give it to us. But it is a stratagem, that the victory is that through the tragedy of this personal life, you see, the same heals our blindness, because the word that he has spoken, you see, is not his own property, but is God's.

Gentlemen, the decisive thing, however, I want you to discover, is that in natural religion, the great paradox is that if there is -- we -- all parts of nature, there can be no freedom. Freedom is the power to do away with causes. That is all what freedom is. Freedom is the power to do away with causes. If you attack me, I am free when I prove that I can either answer the attack or let you run off and despise you and say, "I'm not going to get involved into this -- into this fight," you see. At this moment, I have proven my freedom. If I have an either-or. To be free means, gentlemen, either to follow a cause or not to follow a cause -- to react upon a cause. It doesn't mean always not to react upon a cause, but to have the choice of reaction and non-reaction. You must always keep the enemy guessing, of life.

And life is always -- I give you an example of high treason committed in this country the other day by Mr. Wilson, our secretary of defense. We were in the last throes of the -- Korean truce negotiations, which were such a scandal and the Russians attacked -- or the Chinese attacked with great power and -- to improve their positions in the last minute. And Mr. Wilson, being a businessman not understanding anything of politics or truth, said to the -- when the truth must be said, or may be said -- said to the press that of course we couldn't counter-attack, since because we wanted a truce.

Now gentlemen, that is slavery, not freedom. Our secretary of defense sold us down the river by saying the necessary reaction of the United States is not to attack, because we want a truce. "Because." You have the word "cause" in "because." Do you hear it? It means therefore that in a war, where freedom of action is everything, where the spirit must move people to surprises, to ambushes, to new -- to new ways of hunting down the enemy, he must never be sure. Our secretary of defense can afford to give away the American strategy in public, because of course a reporter has a right to have his views, Mr. Wilson's very important views on strategy. How should Mr. Wilson know anything of strategy? The first word of strategy is that man is free to choose his way of reacting against an enemy attack. He can counter-attack. He can retreat. He can surrender. He can make a detour. He can suspend action, you see. He can suddenly have a guerrilla warfare, but he can only be at war as long as he's free in his means by which he reacts to a cause. The cause being, in this case, the attack.

And so you see what natural religion does to this country every day. As with the recognition of China and the recognition of Russia formerly or now with the -- with Mr. Wilson, the businessmen in charge of this country, who don't understand that politics is the reconquest of freedom every day. And the reconquest of freedom means that we never say ahead of time how the cause will affect us, because man's freedom is in the new thing. Sometimes you slap me in the face, I slap you back. And sometimes I shall not. And that's my freedom, is it not?

Gentlemen, you live in a machine age today. Your so-called leaders are slaves, slaves to causes, slaves to the standard of living. Gentlemen, a man can sometimes be for the standard of living, sometimes against. All depends on his free choice. On Friday { }, no standard of living. But gentlemen, as good as you say publicly, that the politics of this country must be led on the basis of the standard of living, you are a slave of a proclamation, you see, by which you have put together a cause and the effect forever. That's good for { }. It's not good for human beings. Sometimes you to war against the standard of living, as we have done twice in this generation, have we not? In order to assert American freedom. Or the neutrality legislation, this old-woman legislation, by which we said that we would, you see -- not allow other people at war to buy from us. So we forced all the poor nations of Europe to have their own aircraft industry and France lost the war for this reason, because they had a law in which we said, "We can sell airplanes to the French in peacetime, but not in wartime." Have you ever heard such a legislation? That's called the American neutrality legislation. It was from, you see -- America is such a giant. An Italian once said to the -- me, America was such a giant that he's afraid of his strength and he fetters himself by moral principles. He fetters himself, you see. He has -- he is so anxious of his tremendous strength, that he says to himself, "I'll never use my strength." Now gentlemen, a free man says, "I don't know," you see. "Sometimes I will, sometimes I -- sometimes I {won't}." But anybody saying, "I'll never use my strength," -- never believe such a thing. { } can't get through with it. That's this whole -- again, this whole declarations now, from nations, be it Germany, or America, or Russia, they they never will, you see. It's nonsense. We { } in a human life, because man is free. And a virtue can become a vice at the wrong moment and a vice can become a virtue at the right moment. You never can tell.

The future, gentlemen, must not be caused, because then it is calculable. A calculable future is no longer a religious future. The contrast today is between calculation, gentlemen, predicted -- calculated prediction -- and prophecy. Because the future, gentlemen, cannot be calculated, and be free at the same time. Free men have not a causal future. And everybody of -- in you -- I don't know -- I hope not in your hearts -- but in your mind you are all, for 20 years have been instructed that the future is predictable. Therefore you have lost your freedom, because any one unit, one only single man who does not render an

insult by an insult, or who does not take vengeance, you see, is free from cause, and therefore he cannot be predicted. And you know it. In fact, everybody knows it, gentlemen. But the modern form of slavery is a very intricate one.

You know the story of the Good Samaritan? Who does know -- can tell the story of the Good Samaritan? Not one? Well, I found it so, once in a class, there there was not one who could tell the story without complete misunderstanding. Do you think you can?

(I don't remember exactly how it happened. But I can --)

Now hurry and tell the story.

(As I understand it, some poor fellow got knocked down by a crowd, into the gutter. And a group of Pharisees --)

Oh no. It goes already pretty wrong.

(Okay.)

No sir. Let me tell you the story. A Mexican peon, you see, a Mexican peon walked in the streets of Los Angeles, you see. And he was knocked out. And there was a priest who had to say Mass and saw him fall on the wayside and he hurried on so that the congregation might not have to wait for his Mass. And then a professor of the University of California went by and he had to go to his class. And he also said, "I can't let my 40 students wait, so I better go to class." And this one was called in the Bible, as you know, the priest; and the other was called the Levite. Now the Levite in old Judaism is just a college professor, and the priest is what we call a priest, too. And there came then a black man, a colored man, and he -- into town and he saw this and he took this man -- brought him to the hospital and said, "The bill is mine." And when he came home, his wife scolded him because the soup had gotten cold.

Gentlemen, what is our causation today, our slavery? What did the -- what does the parable mean? The schedule, the timetable is your and my slavery. You all think that it is a greater sin to break a timetable than to help a man. Now you are young and for you this temptation is not so great. But once you are in business, you will know it. The greatest -- the most horrifying thing is the slavery of our ministers. They have no Sunday. I am now fighting with two ministers for their Sunday, which would be their Monday -- the Monday of the week. And their appointment calendar, you see, is so booked up that they hate to say to themselves "I too have a right to an appointment with myself. I too have a right to a Sabbath, to a Sunday." And in our modern society, gentlemen, the so-called

spiritual leadership, the college professors and the priests, again as in old Judah, are the greatest slaves of the timetable. So are you. You wouldn't miss a -- you wouldn't miss a football -- Navy -- because your Grandmother is sick. The other way around. Your grandmother has to miss you because the Navy plays Dartmouth.

We all are in this temptation. I don't know how much and -- every individual is { } -- I think young people are much more -- I told you a story about -- to this effect, didn't I? About the boy who broke his calendar, the other day. We talked about it. But don't think, gentlemen, because we have no legal slavery that you are not slaves. A slave is a man who cannot experience something new outside causation -- very simple -- who says, when he comes to Rome, "I'm disappointed. I thought of Rome quite differently. Now it looks as I hadn't expected it, so I'm disappointed." See? There are such people. They are disappointed of everything because they have in first place --have their ready-made concepts about everything. And then if they are not fulfilled, then they are disappointed. They have no power to experience something new.

Perhaps you have heard of Grimms' Fairy Tales. The -- that's the book in which the brethren Grimm -- the brothers Grimm collected all the fairy tales more or less of Europe, of France and Germany, at least. And you have heard, of course, of Red Cap and all the other stories which are in this book, for the first time down on paper. Well, when this book first appeared, it was dedicated to a woman-friend of the two brothers, a great leader of the romantic movement, Bettina von Arnim. I think she deserves that you hear her name. Bettina von Arnim. And this noble woman received the dedication of the book 50 years later. She was an old woman. And only one of the two Grimms survived. The other had died. And melancholically, or sentimentally, the brother writes, "My brother is dead. Times have changed. We are old. But I can bring to you this book again, as though it was for the first time, because you have kept the power to look into the chalice of a flower as though you saw this flower for the first time in your life." That is freedom. And if you say, "Oh, I've seen all the pictures, I know what a rose is -- looks like," you cannot ever realize freedom, because you cannot look at this rose with the great surprise that you have never seen a rose before.

Now I assure you, you have never seen anything good before. The strangest thing of life is that it is simply true that we have never lived any moment before. Nothing is repetitious, except you. That is, we make life repetitive when we believe in causation. And we make it free when we accept it, that what we thought of the cause of anything is a very poor abstraction. We know nothing about it, in fact. It is much truer to say that this rose is the first rose I see, because I can truly say that before I never saw a rose really. I just saw it generally, or conceptually -- the abstract. Or with the full -- without the full love and affection

and faith and hope of this rose, which will never be repeated.

It looks to -- probably funny, gentlemen, but think about this fact. The first word of religion is "excuse," "pardon," "forgiveness." The famous "forgiveness of sins." The forgiveness of sins means that we hope that we can reacquire the power of freedom after something has been caused and effected. If a man asks for the forgiveness of sins means that the acts of his past must not now enslave him for the rest of his life. That's very simple. You all ask for this forgiveness, quite na‹vely. You claim it, even. You -- that's why you are so long in school, gentlemen. In school, all sins are always forgiven. After you have flunked the course, it's all over. You see, no consequences. It's very strange. You assume even that if I get very angry with you, the next day I have forgotten it. Gentlemen, that's only in school. That's not in real life. In real life, if somebody gets angry with you, he doesn't forget it. He holds it against you, the next day. Isn't that true? And you -- of course live in such a fool's paradise here in these schools for 25 years of your life, that you really come to the conclusion that you don't need the forgiveness of sins, because all sins always are forgiven. You live here in paradise, you see. This is an artificial heaven. And because we forgive you 20 times a day that you don't work, that you don't think, that you are here just as for no good reason, because you lead here a free existence -- a causeless existence. You think time is causeless. And you let other people toil for you. The fire department, and the workers in the coal mines of Pennsylvania, and -- they know nothing of the forgiveness of sins. Because they came on the wrong day to New York, Tammany Hall grabbed them and put them down in the coal mine in Pennsylvania, and there they are for the rest of their lives. Is this freedom?

Gentlemen, freedom is your pipe dream, and you don't pay the price for it. Freedom is something that can only happen to you by breaking the chain of causation, daily afresh. And it is very hard to tell to students, gentlemen, about religion -- I know this -- because you don't know the provocation for religion, which any man has whose acts count against him. In school, that isn't so. School is an artificial life. But in life, your acts count against you. And you want -- you have made mistakes -- who doesn't make mistakes? And since everybody must mistake, everybody must pray that these mistakes are not held against him. That's the question of religion. The question of religion is, therefore, gentlemen, at the beginning, the prayer for forgiveness. Now "forgive," gentlemen, means simply to state that what I have actually done shall not have happened. It's just another word for, you see, "give away," "put out of the way." "Forgive" means "accept this act as not having happened," as not having occurred.

I want to see the man who doesn't need this. There is no such man. The atheist certainly is no such man. Because no -- not one of us can live without mutual forgiveness. If everything you -- we do to each other, you see, is unforgivable,

then the life of mankind is impossible, because man was created in order to make mistakes, because he cannot progress without mistakes. The mistakes themselves -- therefore gentlemen, why must they be forgiven? They must be forgiven in the light of the higher purpose. Ten mistakes are necessary for one step in the right direction. Isn't that true? Therefore the 10 steps must not be held final, you see. We are groping. Animals are not. Animals have an instinct. We have no instinct. Our instinct is destroyed, because we want to go on to better things.

And therefore, gentlemen, natural religion breaks down on the question of speech, on the question of human goodness, and on the question of freedom. Man is not free, but must be made free. As soon as you let man just in nature, he must act from causes. You must a tell a child that it cannot -- has not to react blindly in his wrath. A father and a mother tell their child, "Forgive your brother." The whole story of forgiveness and freedom, gentlemen, is the story of human conquest. Animals cannot forgive each other. They cannot, because the poor people -- the poor animals cannot say, "Excuse me."

It's very simple, gentlemen. But it is so simple that you all have forgotten it in your fools' paradise, in which you live here in Dartmouth College, in your high school, in your family. You don't live in the real world, except two months perhaps in summer when you work. And that's too short to be taken seriously. Gentlemen, we have to forgive each other constantly. It goes too far today. I see people who say, "Excuse me," and then do not wait until the other person responds, "I do," but take it for granted that by this empty formula, "Excuse me," the other person is forced -- compelled to forgive you. Gentlemen, I don't feel like that. If a person wantonly insults me and then, like a penny of charity throws at me, "Oh, I didn't mean it," I am not going to forgive this fellow. He has to make up for it. That is a complete superstition of your -- you are superstitious with regard to "Excuse me." You really think that first you can insult a person for a year and then at the end, when the eyes are open, you can say, "Oh, pardon me. I didn't mean it." That you think then is your claim for forgiveness? It's too little, you know. That's not a slot machine, where you put in your little formula, "Excuse me," and out comes the forgiveness. But most children in the big cities of America believe this, that when they say to their mother, "Oh, I didn't mean it," or "Excuse me," after a long battle, that this is all that is needed. No { }. Not at all.

So I'm afraid with you living in this fools' paradise where -- of universalism where all sins are always forgiven to everybody, you know, and capital punishment is abolished, and war is abolished, and everybody is good -- it's the other way around now. Now it's forgiveness has become a cause, to -- the formula of "Excuse me." That would be slavery again. The poor man who has to forgive the sin would then be under pressure. He has to forgive. Now I give you for the --

what time is it?

(25 to 3)

Wie?

(25 to 3)

I give you a story. Who has read Galsworthy? The British play -- the British writer? What have you read?

[Didn't he write The Forsyte Saga?]

Sure.

[unintelligible]

Have you?

[unintelligible]

Well, he has written a play, Escape.

[unintelligible]

Oh, that also, but that is a different story. He has it everywhere ...

[tape interruption]

... hide themselves in the vestry in the gardens of the Anglican church, the priest of an Anglican church in the village, in the country. And in these { } garments, of course, he cannot be seen, until the clergyman himself comes and wants to dress up for the service and there inside is the ex-convict, or the convict. And the convict says to him, "Now, you'd better save me now."

The clergyman is taken aback a bit. "Why?"

"Well, didn't your master protect the prisoners, and the beggars and the humble in spirit, and so on?"

And the clergyman is hesitant and says, finally, "I'm not so sure. He's incalculable. He is incalculable."

Now Jesus, gentlemen, is the embodiment of human freedom, because not in one case of the Gospel can you predict His reaction. And so the clergyman quite right. He said, "I'm not so sure that in this special case, Jesus would be on the side of the jailbird. He just can't -- we can't know." He didn't feel obliged therefore to protect them, because he said, "That's not true that any clergyman and any Christian minister has to protect in every case somebody," just as little as I have to forgive you because you say sloppily, "Oh, excuse me. I didn't mean it." I won't take this formula. Otherwise I would be a Tibetan prayer mill, where you just have a prayer go on for 10,000 times and then it works.

So I think this story of Galsworthy brings out the real predicament, gentlemen, of natural religion. In natural religion, there can be no difference between cause and effect on the one-hand side and freedom. Because natural religion doesn't recognize our need for forgiveness: Man is good. Therefore he hasn't to pray for forgiveness. And the word "forgiveness" is hateful to the modern man, because he says it's all -- there's neither sin, nor original sin nor forgiveness, because we are all good. We all mean the best. But gentlemen, if you leave it like that, then the war between men and women, and between Russians and Americans, and Japanese and Chinese would go on forever. Because once they have set out to destroy each another, they then are bound to do so time and again, because freedom, gentlemen, is against the conviction of nature that contains you and me. In nature, there is absolutely no other experience, but that "I must."

Let me sum up this in a formula, gentlemen. In religion, there are two experiences embedded, which man has made in order to survive. One is that he can do things, but he may not do them. That means that he can take revenge, for example, or can act on causation, but he may not. That God must be more obeyed than man also means that freedom is above causation.

But I can also say, you see, I don't come home on time, like the black man in Los Angeles and I let my wife scold me, and her scolding, of my wife -- which is quite a threat, you know, to any good man -- will not prevent me from helping this fellow there. So I pay the penalty, but I will not follow causation. The other sentence is -- you also know very well -- is: There are many things that we may do, but we cannot do. That is the powerlessness of the individual, which -- with regard to things, gentlemen. I can say that I would like to dominate the earth, but I cannot, technically. I need the help of everybody else to do so. In dealing with things, gentlemen, we may everything, but we cannot everything alone. In dealing with our brethren, our fathers, our parents, our children, gentlemen, we can do everything. You can murder your father. Of course you can. But you may not.

So gentlemen, religion can also be reduced to a very tantalizing relation

between these two worlds. There are two religious rules and they have to do with human freedom. I can do everything by cause and effect. And it explains -- you can explain any crime, even this boy {Chapin's} crime, by cause and effect. But what of it? Not interesting, because a man can do everything, but he may not do everything. Isn't that true? And there comes this problem of freedom. In the word "may" is implied that we can break away from causation. If I say I can do everything, I say, "Causes have any effect on me and therefore I can run wild, I can be tame, I can be anything." But I may not. That is, certain causes of nature must not have their effect in me. They must not. They may not.

Now the other way around, gentlemen -- this is a step forward I would like to make today. I said to you there are two laws: Obey God more than man. That is expressed by this law, "You can do everything, but you may not everything." The other sentence: "Master things more than men," or "overlord creation, but not your fellow man;" do with -- manipulate things, but not living beings -- means in practical words, of a -- of real life also, that we may do everything with dead matter, but we cannot. That is, man is too weak, created with regard to things. There his brain tells him everything, you see. But he must first line up with his fellow man, before he can do anything with the coal mine or with a tank. He cannot build a tank alone. This leads us then, gentlemen, on into the middle ground. This is the relation to God. This is the relation to things. And here we have these two sentences, "may" and "can" and here, "can" and "may". That is, in -- with regard to the commands of your heart, gentlemen, you can everything, but you may not everything. With regards to your brain, used against nature, of things, you can do -- you may do everything, but you cannot do everything, unless you have made peace with your fellow man. For example, you can fly to Mars, I'm sure as soon as we have peace on this earth. You see, then we will probably have the means and the power to establish an aviation service to the next planet. But one of the conditions of such a service would be peace on this earth. Because now we spend all our money, as you know, on jet aircraft against the Russians. And we just don't have the capital and means to invest in the stratosphere.

Let's leave it at that at this moment. And bring the book, The Christian Future, next time. I think we should read then the first chapter together.