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

(Philosophy 57, December 7th, 1954.)

...between the generations. And if you look at Franklin and Cooper, you have a fascinating economy of what they bring in, and on what they tacitly rely in their society as inheritance. You can say, you see, that beginning with Cooper -- and I'll just follow what you said here on -- on Franklin, where is the speaker? Here. Thank you. The -- may I have your paper, too? Fine. The -- let's -- we don't wish to -- to go into the details of Franklin or of Cooper. I -- I accept your pictures. And you know -- every one of you knows a little more, I think, about Ben Franklin, some detail. But we are interested, after all, to economize, that is, to see on what these people naively rely in the way of energies, of spiritual life, of order, which they couldn't create. To me, this is always my important question, you see, to myself, too. If I claim something, if you want to be independent, you still believe in some order inside which you can be independent. Now that always will be visited on us when we do not give, you see, permission to these other elements be- -- who are -- have allowed us to change.

The -- you may formulate it today. It's very important, you see. We have today quite a fascist movement in the United States, obviously -- people who run into -- to the FBI, become members of the FBI, applaud Mr. McCarthy. So they all seem to be very much for discipline, and order, and silence, and intimidation, et cetera. If you however study their story, it is, after all, a fact that they choose to do this. Therefore, the freedom of choice is still one of their constitutional tenets, because obviously if I today may choose to follow Senator McCarthy, then I must admit that I claim a right, which somebody else may also use in another direction. I cannot claim, you see, a free association, without giving an- -- other people the right of free association. I cannot be, for one moment, you see, not being brought up in discipline, but choosing discipline without saying other people may choose liberty.

The first generation of any new order or discipline always represents the still-prevailing liberty. And the first generation in an order, organized -- take a Spartan who, after 200 years of over-rigid discipline, becomes a philosopher, or an artist, I mean, breaks away from Sparta, you see -- well, this man wants probably to build up some new order, so he must allow for one element of discipline in all his freedom. And on the other hand, as I said, a man who establishes a rigid order, like Mr. Stalin and Lenin, today is hard-put to allow the -- for the fact that he was a revolutionary. Therefore, today Russia is by nothing so much endangered and imperiled, but by the fact that Mr. Malenkov is not a revolutionary anymore, but just a routine bureaucrat, who was already part and parcel

of an established order in 1921, you see. Therefore, the -- the whole heroism, the old spirit of the Russian revolution today is in abeyance, because there is no longer anybody in a prominent position who isn't either a general or a bureaucrat. So no Russian revolution, because the Russian revolution must admit that there were 100 years, four generations of Russians who were revolutionaries.

Now this is the problem of the spiritual economy of any one man who opens his mouth. He has always -- whatever he stresses -- emphasized the power of walking the road which he himself had to travel in order to change. Can you see this? Your problem of being independent, you see, of -- of now being -- no, no. Let's take the -- again the -- McCarthy. This enthusiasm of your generation for being regimented -- perhaps not so much in Dartmouth College, but in the country, and for having jobs and for reading the statistics, that the prosperity is secure, and the president will give you a job, and all this childish magic, you see, of the pharaohs of Egypt -- this Egyptian situation in which you are now landing yourself today, that everybody is just taken care of -- you have heard- -- has anybody listened to this -- to the platitudes of last Tuesday?

(Of who? Of what?)

To the platitudes of last Tuesday.

(The Eisenhower speech?)

Yes. Well, that's -- it -- that should be forbidden. I mean, if the man had a good advisor, he shouldn't make such a speech where -- in which he says just, "I -- I am responsible for prosperity," you see. Well, that's -- that's Communism, Sir, you see. Nothing else. It's bla- -- blatant Communism, you see, and taking the place of God Almighty upon yourself: "I am responsible for prosperity." Now think what this means. How about a -- a drought? And how about the famine? And how about all the real acts of God? We human beings, including the president of the United States, are very powerless really to -- to rule the world. It's ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous. But it seems that we have landed ourselves already in such a -- I mean, if somebody had made such a speech as president of the United States, John Quincy Adams in 1825, he certainly couldn't have become president. The people would have sent him to the lunatic asylum, would have said, "This man undertakes to put himself in the place of God." Don't you see this?

It's impossible, {with} such an undertaking. But you expect it, because you have no longer the means of production at your disposal. You are just cogs on the wheel, so you all tremble that if there aren't jobs to go around -- well, what can you do? You can't do anything. You can just be obedient. So you have

chosen obedience. All right. Be obedient, but you have chosen obedience. That is, there -- you can't forget the ancestors who have given you this right for making a change in your generation. It's very much like the half-way covenant, the problem of 1700 in this country, you see, always this going soft, this let-down in the second generation.

Now in the two cases of Franklin, it seems to me, and in the case of -- of our other man, Cooper -- I think we should go a little further and analyze which premise they keep when they give it up. This is a paradox, you see. I think in Franklin's case, I would draw your attention to one fact, that he says, "Worship may be useful." Religion may be useful -- have some utility. Now, as you know, we are still sick with this. We had here a professor of religion who always recommended religion as a good thing; and a real, religious man, Dr. {Ambrose Vernon} here on this campus, who founded the biography department, loathed it, and said, "That's a scandal. He ruins all religion, because if religion is useful, then it is no longer religion." Yes, yes, Sir. But you are all so Franklinized that you do not even hear the blasphemy that the fact that religion is useful would -- must -- shall -- will make an end of religion. If religion is useful, you see, then it is second-rate, because useful things are second-rate. A baby? What's the use of a newborn baby? There's absolutely no use. And when this baby dances around a molehill and sings the praises of God, it's of no use whatsoever. It's just beautiful; it's just right. That is, this child liveth by praising the Lord. The word "divine worship," gentlemen -- whatever you take it to be, I mean, I don't care -- is the way -- final way of existence. It's an end, not a way, never a means. As soon as you say, "Religion is a means to an end," abolish it. Then it's bad. Then it is abused, and then it is degenerate, as it always does.

So if the people recommend religion to you because it keeps you in good spirits, and keeps peace of mind, loathe them. Spit at them. You have thereby debased religion, because religion is nothing but the way of life to which we aspire, whatever that is. I mean, it can be any -- you can go into the woods and say, "That's my religion," but it means that's an end in itself. That is, you're waiting all the week until on Saturday afternoon you can take a walk in the woods. But there's absolutely -- as soon as you say it's hygienic to go on Saturday evening in the woods and have a -- have a -- so that you can work better on Monday, this is no longer nature-worship, you see, but just hygiene. And that's -- so the same act can be made useful, but then it has ceased to be your faith. Then it is just a means to an end.

Now many people go into the woods with -- under the pretext in this country, since everybody -- -thing has to be useful, these poor nature-lovers have to say to themselves, and their -- their family doctor, and their wife, and their child, "It's good for me. It's good for you." So these poor children are told to do

something which is good, which of course is terrible. Which normal child wants to do what's good? It wants to live. What { } wants to do good? I hope you -- agree with me that it is lo- -- loathsome to ask a child to do goody-goody -- be goody-goody. Child doesn't want to be goody. It wants to be per- -- as it has been created. It has -- certainly to be created to be joyful, exuberating, and praise his creator in many ways -- by dancing, shouting, yelling, and sometimes by the -- the hymn, or praying a Psalm. But the divine worship should be and can only be if it is any meaningful the crown of your life. And that's why meeting in church and forming the body of Christ in the church, which no Protestant any longer knows, is the meaning of the service on Sunday. You really think you go to the service to hear a -- a sermon on the daily politics of the nation. Well, that has nothing to do with divine service. That's just a lecture committee, which you can then appoint. You don't have to have a church for that.

But that is all Franklin's doing. Franklin has managed to get all the articles of faith and of life itself -- all the ends -- into the category of means. So it is no longer with Franklin and the Franklinites, and you are all nine-tenths Franklinites when you discuss things with others -- not in your heart, I think, so much, but in the public -- in the marketplace. Everybody has to behave like a Franklinite, and the Franklinite system is very -- cagey, gentlemen. Please take this down: it isn't that Franklin prefers the means to the ends. That is -- why not? We need pe- -- technicians. But that he says that the ends are the means, too. That is unique in this perfection. Worship is useful, he says.

(Well, can't the ends be means, also?)

What?

(Can't the ends be means --)

No. They cannot. As soon as you say a child is a means, you are already on the way to -- to killing the idiots, to euthanasia.

(What about consciously a means, as with religion. Can't religion be a -- a -- a subconscious means to -- to some --)

When it is, throw it out. Throw it out. {Oh sure}, it can be. But then if -- you have to persecute it. If it's opium for the populace, out go -- it goes. Sure, if it -- that's all what the psychologist says, "A good thing, go to church." All these rascals, these scoundrels who haven't the cor- -- the courage to say, "Be an atheist. Defy the religion," which they should. And I would respect them for this. They say, "Use it." Well, at that very moment, it's out.

(But if you don't go to church thinking, "I'm going to church because it's a good thing," you go to church as an end, but yet it serves the purpose of a means, besides?)

Which besides? Where -- how can -- my dear man. Look at all these charity ladies. They have also degraded in this country and everywhere in the world, by the way -- the bourgeois lady -- the ends into means. So, I give you a present. Now this lady has not as her first reaction that she enjoys it -- my present, but the first thought of all these scoundrels is, in -- in the world today: how much will it cost me to give the -- the corresponding present back to this person? Therefore, the whole thing has become part of a bargain. Useless, you see. The condition of a real present on the part of the receiver is that at that moment, he does not give one thought to the compensation. As soon as he even fathoms how precious, instead of saying "how beautiful," instead of joy, when he puts -- and you all do this -- the consideration of "how much?" on this present, although he will only give next Christmas a corresponding present back, you see, he has taken it from the realm of free gift to the realm of bargaining. It is now a bargain. And everybody in this country thinks, "{Do ut des}", I have to give because he has given me, and because I give him, so -- lest he give me." And on it goes.

And therefore you have no joy in life, it's the most bor- -- so boring, all our social contacts, because nobody dares to exuberate. Here, let me give you this flower -- I don't care for it. Give it -- have it, you see. Well, if the receiver who -- whom you give your wa- -- your wristwatch, you see, immediately says, "My, now, I have to give him my knife," well, where's the joy, you see? You have left the platform of ends in itself. This joyful moment is something to be cherished absolutely for its own sake. Has no past, no future. It's just a complete present of the God -- the divine spirit here at this moment. The divine spirit knows of no past and future, you see. It's just omnipresent. God is present, gentlemen. If you can enjoy a lecture, really, imbi- -- drink it in, then it's here. If you ask, "What do I have to remember for the examination?" you have changed the lecture from an end into a means. You can always do it, Sir, most of us -- you do. But it is bad.

They -- all our -- put it this way, gentlemen: all our ends are so frail, that in any one moment, they can be debased into means. It's very important, gentlemen, that you should -- you see, when I hear these discussions about means and ends in this country, they never realize the Devil. The Devil is the man who says, "All the ends are means." It's not the man who's -- recommends you, "I want to be -- have a castle." Well, I'd better get rich. What's wrong about becoming rich, if I know the end for which I want to be rich, you see? But as soon as I say that the castle itself is then a means of social prestige, or that it will bring customers, and so on, you see, then I have no -- no end anymore. The castle itself has fallen down into the second floor, into the basement. And that's what you all

do. You -- means and ends live on different platforms. They are utterly different, you see.

I always make it clear to you, I have done it in other ways, I think, in other classes, when I tell you that, you see, here is Mr. {Silverberg}, and here is Mr. {Niren}, and here am I, and we are introduced to each other, and you take a course with me, and that's my privilege, that I have two decent fellows studying with me. This is important. Then we talk to each other, gentlemen, in class, occasionally now. You talk to me and { } your papers. This is second-rate, compared to the great fact that we know each other, and to a certain extent trust each other. And then comes the third, that we may quibble and argue about some improvement in your paper, and I may say, "You should have called this such-and-such, because I conceive of this, this way." So you get three levels of behavior, gentlemen. I'm talking about the means in your paper for expression. That would be the lowest. This would be the -- how you expressed what you wanted to say about Fenimore Cooper. Then we -- you are going to speak, and read this paper, which you have just done. And that paper deals with a living being, { } the topic -- topic Cooper. And be- -- above this, gentlemen, there is the fun, that we have a class in Dartmouth on January 7th, 1954, in which we can deal with Cooper, in which we can deal with Admiral (Symmes), in which we are masters of the universe, in which we can -- and I hope you have, I always have -- a good time. Now, gentlemen, if you say that this class is a means so that you graduate from college, you can't have fun in this class anymore, because this is an end in itself, if it's a good lesson, a good lecture. Any perfect classroom situation should not point beyond itself, but it is a good life. If it isn't -- many of you decline to accept it as a good life. You say it's just boring. Or the -- you say, "I don't find anything to take away with; it's not useful enough. I can't buy a car for what I learn in this course." You probably can't. But when you buy a car, you are not quite sure that you have one hour even in your life in which you forget everything else and say, "This is life." See the difference?

Now. No -- no -- no -- not yet. {Don't yet}. Not yet. Now, gentlemen, here we meet by name. Here we meet by -- through words. And when we talk of means, we always deal with concepts. For example, you get 10 carpenters or 10 students together, and the students say, "I will need a dictionary in order to write out the -- the paper which is due for this class in so many words. I need concepts." Now we -- you live -- Mr. Franklin created a society in which concepts were declared to be more valuable than words, words more valuable than names. And this is called the "rational," or the "philosophical," or the "humanistic" world in which you all live, the scientific world. A scientist says, "A concept stands highest -- the concept of the atom, the electron." That's a concept, you see. It's the -- by definition, the same for all physicists. Words to them already are just tools to express concepts. And names -- they don't know anything about it. I mean,

they have never heard even of the -- of the assumption.

Now gentlemen, where we move by name, in the world, we are ends in ourselves. When you are introduced to a young girl, "Mr. Smith," and you are any good, there the lesson ends. There's nothing to be said more -- you may smile, you may kiss her, you may embrace her. But the great event of the day is that Mr. Smith now knows Mrs. Bran- -- Brown. He didn't before. Tremendous she knows his name. But if she knows some concrete creature in the universe, which is irreplaceable, which is absolutely single, she hasn't met this man before, now he can go after her like this Mr. Goldsmith who travels all over Europe to get his -- his bride. Have you seen it? No? Well, it's quite a story. Wie?

And something happens. Gentlemen, when you are called by name, always something happens. All escapists {all} hide behind concepts. Only to show you, gentlemen, that in every minute of your life, you throw the rudder, throw -- follow the course; what to you is an -- is an end, and what is a mean is never known. A collector of -- of tools can make the tools an end of the -- of his delight, you see. And the same tool may serve as a tool. And this you do not know. You think that there is ever any line to be drawn that you know what is a tool, and what is an -- an aim, or an end -- a goal. This is not true. The same thing in every changing moment can be treated as end and -- or as means. This is the terror of life. And Franklin has said dogmatically, and you all believe it -- 23 hours a day you believe it -- except when you are in love, you always believe it. O- -- the only person where you say she is unusual is the girl. Now what is unusual? Something that can't be put to any use. What is usual? Something that is in usu -- that is, that we know the use for -- how to use it. A girl, you cannot. It's certainly not a girl that counts for something. The harlot, you know her use. But a real person, you cannot. She's absolutely useless.

Gentlemen, people are useless. That's the foundation of democracy, and this foundation Franklin has inherited, from religion, from the Church. And this is what all the deists, all these people who thought that God was a retired bureaucrat who once in His youth had the loins to produce offspring, and now He had gone to seed, and -- and the man had to take over, so to speak, these retired -- retired idea -- retirement idea for God, which all -- which Rousseau had, Voltaire had, and which Franklin brought into this country. This just means that they take it for granted that Benjamin Franklin is still received by the rest of society as somebody who cannot be used as a means. But gentlemen, you -- you wait 150 years with Mr. Franklin's gospel and you get -- Stalin and you get Hitler, and you get all the dictators who think that people are means. That is, the humanistic era has no guarantee, from 1750 to 1950, that the values which they inherited from the religious age of the Puritans, you see, will not just fade out. And now we know they have faded out. Franklin lived naively in protest against

too much religion, against too much religious education, and in this protest, he was absolutely cocksure that nothing would ever happen to his personal integrity, that Mr. Franklin would always be a respected citizen, although he no longer went to church. You -- but the people treated him with the same delight, as though he was a member of the living body of Christ, that is, one of the angels of light.

This is secularism, gentlemen. The people tolerate anyone in their religious faith only as members of the same faith. When you come secularism, it says, "You will treat me, although I protest against the formulation of your faith," you see, that's very nice for a hundred years. So we get the -- the fact that the laity, and the secular man, and the scientist, and the -- everybody is treated as though he was a Christian, or a Jew. That is, a -- person who believed in the spirit moving all people, you see. But finally, in 1900, you get the uproar from the underworld, and the men s- -- man begin to say, "Well, I am clever. The other man is just a tool for me. I haven't heard the -- the message of the Holy Spirit. I haven't heard that God created all men. That's Bible story. { } Evolution we have. Survival of the fittest. Never heard that God -- man created -- was created by God in His image. That's all {childsuit}, childswear. That's nothing. So hit him over the head." And we have concentration camps. And that's Benjamin Franklin. That is, Benjamin Franklin without the {half} against which he protests, is intolerable, because it's just his own intelligence which makes him into a man. So he says, the other man seems to me rather stupid. So let's cheat him.

Don't you see that the unity inside which all these nice utilitarians move, is something they can never create, the solidarity of the human -- spirit, in all men. One spirit in all, you see. And this is called "revelation," gentlemen. It's a very serious business, that it had to planted very strongly for thousands of years in the world before these damned people who run our liberal arts colleges abuse this and say they have it all from their smartness, from their science, from their thinking. We live in a scandalous environment, gentlemen, in which these people deny which is the premise of their existence. The premise is that my spirit is loaned to me, that I'm trustee of my intelligence, but that I ha- -- don't have any mind to my -- of my own.

If you don't admit that a man must be inspired by one spirit, he's the Devil. What else can you expect from me? I'm intelligent; you are not. Gentlemen, I must take advantage of you, but you feel I won't, because you very well know that any really intelligent person knows that he is not intelligent himself, but it's working through him. Everybody believes this when he speaks to somebody. You ask somebody about the road, and he tells you the truth. You accept it, that the man is -- is committed to the truth. Why is he? Because the great power of speech is not owned by the Dartmouth National Bank, nor is it

owned by the trustees of Dartmouth College. They have the great privilege of being allowed to act as receptacles of this truth. And this is denied by Franklin, because he says, "There is nothing higher than my -- things which I call useful."

In this very moment, the bottom falls out of the world. Don't you see this? If I am the judge of what is useful, I am allowed to lie. He says, "It's not practical to lie." But gentlemen, in this very moment, he says also, "When I say it's not practical to lie, it's not good policy, that I'm free to follow a bad policy. That is, I can lie." Obviously.

The truth is -- and the -- charity, and hope, faith, every quality of unconditional membership in human society can never be reasoned out by people who say that everything has to be useful. This talk about enlightened self-interest is just ridiculous. We talked about this before. You can't send a boy into battle in Korea and say it's in your enlightened self-interest to be shot dead there, on the ground. Can you? I don't see any enlightened self-interest in such a -- in such a -- a death on a battlefield. It's ridiculous. Yes, Mr. -- but Mr. Franklin always assumed that he was quite a brave man, and his comrades would die. They -- he went as -- he armed Philadelphia against the Spaniards. He bought ammunition. The Quakers didn't. He -- said, "My dear friends, if you are Quakers and can't buy ammunition, we have to defend the city, after all, against the Spaniards, stay at home." So he really was a very clever man. But he was a patriot, besides. And he did know -- knew how to fight. And you can't fight if there is not something unconditional, which is m- -- more -- bigger than your own means, you see. The existence of the United States he never put in question. That's why he founded them.

Gentlemen, in Benjamin Franklin you have the great power that has governed the United States and without which no president of the United States so far has been able to be elected. You -- as you know, what has a president to be of the United States?

(Protestant.)

That they say, but that's very doubtful, because Lincoln was not a Protestant. He was -- belonged to no church. And -- Eisenhower, when he was elected didn't belong, as you know. He was baptized later in his li- -- later in life.

(What -- what is your question, Sir? What does he have to be?)

What is the secret which surrounds every president of the United States, the quality which he has to fulfill before he can be president, it's a quality which has never been mentioned, and always exists.

(To be popular.)

That's doubtful. Very doubtful. {Wiggin.} That's in order to be elected, but it's not a precondition for running -- making him a candidate. No, he has to be a Free Mason. He has to be a Free Mason, and Benjamin Franklin was the -- med- -- the great -- grand master, 33rd-degree Mason in America. This is the power of the lodge. No Sir, you don't know this. But Lincoln was. They always boast that he didn't -- he didn't belong to the Church. But he certainly was a Free Mason. A Free Mason. You have heard of the Masonry. Yes. You have to be that. Why?

It's very poignant, gentlemen, because deism is the God of the -- is the religion of the ma- -- lodge. It is this nice, philosophical cost-nothing humanism which says, "We have -- believe in God, too, just like the Church. We believe in immortality, too, just like the Church. We believe in freedom too, just like St. Paul. Only we believe it so that it doesn't cost anything. It's just a question of brain. We think it is a good idea." That is the -- the Free Masonry. And for you it is hard to understand the great power, the lodge has had in our life. But where do you find it daily expressed in your handling business, the -- the belief of -- of the lod- -- of the Masons. In your daily dealings, where is the lodge present? You don't know this. You don't know that the president has to be a Free Mason, and you don't know that every day at least 10 times you use it.

(You mean he actually has to belong?)

No, but that you express your belief in the symbols of the lodge.

(On the dollar bill?)

On the dollar bill, sure. Our whole coinage is based in the image of the -- of Voltairianism, of Rousseauism, and of Franklinism, because it means that you can have the -- the content of religion without its form. That's the belief of humanism, you see. That's secular, you see. I can have it all, because I'm the judge of its usefulness. So you open the dollar bill and you find there that it is all translated, as you know, into nature, the -- there is the pyramid, and the eye of Horus, and there is the astral new order, n- -- ordos -- novus ordo incipit -- and what else is there? There is the eye of God shining -- it's really the eye of Horus -- and a -- a little bit of Jehovah. Isn't there the Star of David on it? I'm not sure now. Have a -- have a look. Well, I have too big -- no, I need a smaller one.

There had been a great debate -- that's the difference between Jefferson and Washington. Washington, of course, didn't care for these, and Jefferson forced him all these symbols -- down his throat, you see. You also see it from the

stars. The stars are five-cornered stars and not six-cornered. The six-cornered star is the Star of David. That is, the Church has only admitted in its symbolism the six-cornered star -- that has very profound reasons -- whereas the five-cornered star is the Egyptian star. The pagan star, in which -- where the stars were deities -- which leads immediately directly to astrology.

Now, in 1776, there was quite a debate in the circles -- of the government about this -- the symbolism of America. There were two problems to be solved. They -- would there be a celebration on the birthday of the president? George Washington was told by John Adams that he had to behave like royalty, and that they had to celebrate his birthday, during his tenure, you see, as a holiday. And then as you know, the outcome has been the other way around, that we have now the 4th of July, the Constitution, the birthday of the Constitution. That's a step again into the Free Masonry: a piece of paper instead of living people. And you like it this way. But it is a very specific religion, which this country -- undertakes, a religion of law. And that has to do with our belief in natural law, you see. The cosmic law and the Constitution were equated to celebrate the Constitution, because man discovered here a part of the cosmic order as applied to human reason. And the natural laws cannot be broken, of course. You have to follow them. So if you -- we celebrate the {4th} of July, we celebrate the power of men to reason. If we celebrate Washington's birthday, we celebrate the power of God to create good men. Man cannot make trees, and he cannot make men. But he can write a constitution, you see. So the Constitution in this sense is manmade and Washington is not. And that's the whole difference, because anything that is man-made is a means. But we people God fortunately -- are creatures of God and He -- as He created the violet, perfectly meaninglessly, so He created us, just from sheer exuberance, perhaps by mistake. But there it is.

We are not means. Once you've -- begin to conceive of other people as means, you are -- end with -- with -- with all the systems of tyranny. You can't have it, you see. It's too tempting. It's too obvious.

So this is Franklin. Franklin has taught every American that after all, all ends are means and can be treated as such. And that was always balanced by a non-Franklin stream. At this moment, it isn't. That's why I give you this class -- course. To -- you have today to revive the pre-Franklin elements in Franklin, because otherwise we -- we land in misery. Can't you see the danger, you see? That when everybody says, "I'm judging the world by my smartness and not by dogma," that then there is absolutely no basis on which this man can meet anybody else. It is dogmatically true that you are not allowed to murder me, Sir. I don't care whether your reason tells you so or not. If your reason doesn't tell you so, we will execute you. This is dogmatically true. And here and every -- what has Mr. Franklin done? He has poked fun at dogma so long that when you hear

the word "dogma" you run away and say, "This is ridiculous. This is obsolete. This is superstitious." Gentlemen, you can't be in this class without dogma. The dogma is that we can't kill each other. That's not forbidden in the penal law, but that's true. That's the will of God, that He wanted to have one race, one human -- humankind, and everybody knows that he can't open his mouth and aim at truth if it isn't a truth which is valid for all human beings. And even if I have to wait for 50 years until you believe it, even if you die in the process, because you are too stupid to understand it, the truth is the truth just -- regardless whether you accept it or not. We can wait.

But your idea is that the -- that the truth can, you see, cannot wait for you, but that you say what the truth is. And if you don't admit it, then it isn't true. This is ridiculous. Nothing is changed because you say, "I don't believe in dogma." You depend on all the dogmas in the world. You believe certainly in the -- every human being practically in his life believes that God created the universe, that his sons, through suffering can redeem the universe, and that the Holy Spirit makes people live peacefully together. And yet everybody in this country says the Trinity is just a joke. No Jew in this country who doesn't believe in the Trinity, practically. Everybody does. Mr. Einstein, or what-not. But they -- you -- you are not interested in what's behind you. You just live heartily and into the open and say, "There is no dogma, there is no premise, no basis for my existence."

No -- I know what you're going to say. I'm not interested. I've heard this too often, Sir. You always say the same thing. Say something original, then I listen to you. This is just all -- what you had in your mind before you heard this.

Now this is Franklin, gentlemen. That's why he's a great power. I -- I have to admit that he is the greatest power in America, to this day. The lodge is it, in all our symbols of life -- "In God We Trust," all others pay cash -- in this whole idea that when you say, "But this is useful," that you have justified even television, and that this is the last analysis. Gentlemen, I don't bow to usefulness. If something is useful it's one reason to -- not to have it, because if you surround yourself with all the things useful, you become absolutely blunted in your -- in your power to live. And on it goes. But these are -- this is dogma. All the rationalists in this country who say, "Dogma, ridiculous," they have one dogma, you see. But they are the masters of -- of telling us what the truth is. To me, it's so ridiculous, because they use speech. They think other people will tolerate them. I -- they -- I -- they expect me not to hit them over the head, and you even expect me to let you speak in this precious one hour which I have here at my disposal.

{ }.

Now gentlemen, the -- the punishment, the penalty for Mr. Franklin is always romanticism. The rationalists, like Mr. Franklin, create such a void that then you have to get as a reaction -- in England you get Wordsworth; and Victor Hugo you get in France; and the Romantic School you get in Germany; and in America we have Benjamin Franklin; and in Scotland, you have Walter Scott. That is, the useless is brought in as of another world. These Scottish knights and these red Indians, you see, are utterly unimportant for your business dealings, you see, they're just nice. So the soap opera comes in and this famous dichotomy, or tripartition that man has will, intellect and feelings, and in order to please your feelings, you have to get -- good feelings, you have to get The Last of the Mohicans, and you have to be flattered, you have to be soaped. And this is what makes America the most sentimental country because it doesn't believe in anything. So if you are so clever, then you give up, in order to be sentimentalized, or romanticized, and you get -- go to the opposite end. You get neon light, and you are just dumbfounded, and flabbergasted, and overcome, and put out, and "fascinated," as the word says, and thrilled, and tickled to death, and how all these flapper phrases run. And, you see, what is fascination, you see? Something that, although it is useless, you cannot help, you see, paying for.

This is Mr. Cooper. Mr. Cooper is the beginning -- Mr. -- I -- Mr. Franklin is the beginning of great things. He's certainly the beginning of Mr. Hitler. But Mr. Cooper is the beginning of the burlesque show, because man cannot live by reason, so he has to create fiction. And the fiction world is -- after all always the exact complementary part to the world in which we actually live. So the heroes of the fiction story are very different from the heroes of great literature. I mean, Tolstoy's War and Peace or Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov, they are we, you see, in earnest. But the -- he -- the -- the -- this Natty Bumpo of course is not Mr. Cooper at all, you see. It's the other half, his -- his wish, his desire.

The heroes of great literature, gentlemen, are the undesirable, real creatures. And the heroes of so-called "fiction" are, you see, our wish-dreams, our wish-fulfillments. They fill out the void. Now, the greater the void you create in -- reality in your philosophy, the more distorted must be the other person. That is the price of empty philosophy. If usefulness is the criterion for the real life, then uselessness must be the criterion of the other half, of fiction, which it is. These Indians are no use to anybody. They can't even be integrated into the -- into the historical existence of society, you see. And therefore, they are so beloved. And the waterfalls, and the -- and the moonlight, and all these things are -- they are, you see, so much on the other side, that the Romantic School says, "This is for the feelings." Can you see this? Half and half. But they are two halves that never get together. The o- -- one is therefore called "fiction." Of course, Mr. Cooper didn't dare to call it "fiction" in his days. This was great art. It was "the novel," as it was called. We call it today, brutally, "fiction."

I would like -- would -- would somebody go to the Oxford Dictionary next time and report back to us how old the word "fiction" is, for this kind of stuff. It cannot be older than Cooper, because before, great literature li- -- was not allowed to just take refuge into the other half of -- into that half of life which the merchant, or the carpenter, or the housewife were not allowed to live out themselves. The great desire of a real writer is to make men whole. And the desire of the fiction writer is to stress that he offers that half of life, you see, which cannot be lived. And the better he does it, the more -- greater is his success.

So I -- have I done injustice to both people? To both men? If I have, that's what I wanted to do.

Now --

[End of tape]