{ } = word or expression can't be understood {word} = hard to understand, might be this [Opening remarks missing] ... we have laid down in this course. It is not true that the truth has to be run -- has to run down in the circulation of thought. Most of you obstruct any circula- tion of thought. As far as you go, you will not enter the state of doubt or protest. You will go on playing. We have seen in the -- your -- in your own papers, you have dealt with people who had not -- no time to play and therefore again for- feited their own bliss, because they wanted to be serious too early. All these Ten Commandments in these papers -- in many of your papers, have been mistreated as though they were natural laws. So gentlemen, today I may -- must first make this statement: in the social science, there may be laws, but they are laws against which every one of us can trespass. As you well know, I have heard something about juvenile delinquen- ... [Tape interruption] ... and you don't want to hear this. You want to identify yourself with nature. And you are waiting for the gospel that will prove to you that sex and every- thing -- digestion, the choice of profession -- can be given you by aptitude tests; that is, by nature. That is, it is unexceptional that any man under certain circum- stances will act the same way. Every one of you knows that this isn't true. But you want to believe it, because you would like to disappear within a classifica- tion. People are very great -- this book, The Lonely Crowd, is -- is full of classifi- cations and it is so enthusiastically read in this country because this country is today satisfied as -- as soon as people can be pigeon-holed, you can in this book rediscover how you are, and then you are happy. I -- as soon as I am found out, gentlemen, I'm terribly unhappy. I don't want to be found out. I want to remain free to do something utterly different. That's why I think a man cannot be a -- for -- for prohibition, and he cannot be for Alcoholic Anonymous, and he cannot be for public alcoholism, because every day I decide whether I want to be drunk or not. And it's a new experience each time. This I said already when I was your age, at the University of Heidelberg. We had a terrific discussion then about prohibition. Even a German university, the prohibition, and the Anti-Drinking League was really quite strong. And the first speech in my life I've ever made in public is on this fact, that a student will neither commit themselves to -- himself to drinking nor to prohibition. But he Circulation of Thought - 1956 Vol 15 - Lecture 1 - May 11, 1956 - page: 1 / 20 must reserve the right to decide this in freedom as he goes along. Why he should have any lasting principles on such a minor question, I could not see. So this is very serious, gentlemen. The first difference between the social sciences and the natural sciences which we have discovered, and for which the new social scientist had to suffer is that all the laws which are true in society, also can be broken. And they are broken, as any divorce shows you. Marriage must be a sacrament, but the people are divorced. That's not a contradiction. That's the beginning of wisdom. Man is absolutely exceptional animal, but it doesn't mean that there are no rules, which is very much against your grain. You would like to disappear behind a cloud of natural laws and then you say, "Isn't it natural that I stole the silver spoon?" Of course, it may be natural, but it is anti-social. So he has to be punished. You -- as you know, the -- the idiocy of the last 50 years has to be said, "No capital punishment. All criminals must be educated until they kidnap the next person." And -- and so on. So we have -- we -- we have concentrated on the criminals and making them happy, and have made society unhappy. Why? Because this was in their nature. What can you do against nature? You can't do anything against nature. You can exploit nature. That's what we do in the natu- ral sciences. We have factories to deal with nature, to break the will of na- -- of natural things. Gentlemen, with human beings, obviously, we not -- do not try to break the will of a human being. What's the way of dealing with the human will? Why is the human will unbreakable, and why does this same human will break all the divine and human laws? It's a very strange contradiction. You s- -- bring up the children. I just was told the sad story of some grandparents yesterday night. They came to our house and said, "We are through with our grandchildren. Our children have deni- -- declined to make any demands on these children. They come into the room. They go out of the room, without asking any question whether people -- when people -- we are there. I bring them some gifts. They don't even say `Thank you.' They won't say `Thank you,' but they will play and break the -- the toy right away." And -- and that's called natural -- natural behavior. Other people call it piggish behavior. Pigs are very natural. This is, by and large, the situation, gentlemen. You have the navy and the marine corps for the boys who have never obeyed for the first 20 years in their life. And you get -- the stricter the discipline the later has to be and the more stupid. Go to a factory. What stupidity do you have to do as a the -- as a clerk in an office today? Because you have never obeyed the first 20 years of your life. Circulation of Thought - 1956 Vol 15 - Lecture 1 - May 11, 1956 - page: 2 / 20 There you are allowed to play, and you -- only your own will. And so you are a natural being and perfectly worthless, and later you are made unhappy. The relation, gentlemen, between the nature in you and your freedom is a very consistent one. It is -- to you it is absolutely mysterious that there are -- should be in the household of the human spirit these powers like exploring, or reading, or obedience or -- or teaching. I tried to show you that they are there total -- always. I told you last time that an explorer who read the book of nature like Humboldt is not -- understood by you, because you think the first three stages of a child's life -- obedience; listening, learning and reading; and playing -- is after all nothing serious. Gentlemen, today in a world where nobody obeys, as a child, and where nobody reads -- nobody learns anything -- you haven't learned anything. You haven't learned any of the languages which allegedly you have learned. There are two men in this class who are able to quote a French text in their paper, writing on a Frenchman. Two out of 160. The rest have never -- their language requirement was of no use to them. So you haven't learned any- thing. You have allegedly covered fictitiously certain requirements, gentlemen, but you haven't learned it. Now, what's the consequence, gentlemen? As soon as you take away this one spec- -- color in the spectrum of the light of the human spirit, and say, "No obedi- ence for children," you have to get the weirdest obedience for some grown-ups. You have to -- you get the slavery of grandparents, or you get the slavery of people in a factory, where they only are allowed, as -- as Charlie Chaplin always used to show in his famous movies, you see, these little -- little movement of -- of the left finger to get the gadget over the conveyor belt. That's in relation. The more you try to make the children happy, you see, the more unhappy you will make the grown-ups. There's an absolute proportion between not allowing a man to live a certain station, a certain mental phase at the proper age, and their -- this cropping up arbitrarily at another place. Human freedom, gentlemen, always is to be had. You can break any law, but somebody always has to pay the penalty. Here we get the answer between nature and men. This thing, if I throw it to the ground, it will fall down; or if there is a tremendous draft in the air, it will -- may float. That's nature, you see. You can decline to obey, in your youth. But then you will -- or somebody else will have to pay the penalty for having to do as much {obeying} in a different situation, at another time. If you cannot get out of the amount of obedience that is necessary in a society, obedience is the carrying- on from one generation into the next, of experiences. If the one generation de- clines to obey to this experience, there is a world war. Circulation of Thought - 1956 Vol 15 - Lecture 1 - May 11, 1956 - page: 3 / 20 This country was -- was bolted, jolted into the world of reality in two world wars, against its will, because it wanted to go on playing. Do you think wars are just a luxury or an error? {War is} a simple way in which the laws of life are brought home to people who like to forget them in peacetime.