Survival in Age of Revolution

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This is a very personal book. It contains the thoughts of a man who is considered to be one of the eminent living philosophers and thinkers, Dr. Charles H. Malik. Originally, the ideas that fill these pages were shared by Dr. Malik with officers of The Coca-Cola Company, who had gathered at Sterling Institute in Washington, D.C., to study today's business and social environment. Dr. Malik discussed the current social, cultural and political scene, viewing the changes taking place as a revo1 ution; but more importantly, as a challenge to the human spirit. There was no doubt that his remarks drew from a life­ time of educational and political experience, as president of the United Nations General Assembly, Security Council, and Economic and Social Council; as Chairman of the Com­ mission on Human Rights of the United Nations; and as a signer of the charter of the United Nations in 1945. He spoke, too, as a respected educator; author of books and articles in English and Arabic; and now Distinguished Pro­ fess or of Philosophy at American University, Beirut, Lebanon. 3

His intensely personal observations extended well beyond the scope of the meeting; and, in fact, Dr. Malik seemed to be addressing every citizen of the Western world. For that reason, we felt that others might want to share Dr. Malik's thoughts as we had done. And we present them here as one more part of the continuing dialogue all of us need in order to learn how to make the human spirit soar in our modern world. You may agree with Dr. Malik's feeling and his con­ clusions about how and who will survive in what he terms an "age of revolution�' Maybe not. As we see it, what matters is that he be heard. The Coca-Cola Company January, 1972 Atlanta, Georgia

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Nothing therefore is more unworthy than to be flip­ pant and clever. He who has nothing to say of an ultimate nature had better remain silent. I ask you to judge what I shall say not by the standards of diplomacy and pleasantness, but by the standards of the truth. Judge it also by whether it is deep enough. For there are truths and truths, and I care only for the truth that makes people free. To ask about survival in an age of revolution is al­ ready to reveal that we are not quite free. We are not sing­ ing and dancing with rapture and joy. On the contrary, we are troubled, and we do not seem to be sure of our ground. The words of the Psalmist could possibly apply to us: "They know not, neither will they understand, they walk on in darkness: all the foundations of the earth are out of course�' (Psalm 82:5) And so I approach my task with the utmost fear and trembling. I know only a few things and my ignorance 7

otherwise is abysmal. But what I know is enough to make me speak. First, then, let us set forth in the briefest possible terms the dimensions of the revolution. Time there was when the English-speaking world was protected by seas, continents and oceans. Whether in the British Isles or in North America or in South Africa or in Australia and New Zealand, people were given plenty of time to defend themselves before actual physical danger struck upon them. As late as the Second World War, Churchill took full advantage of this natural margin. Nei­ ther the French nor the Germans nor the Russians have been so fortunate. This privileged position of the Anglo­ Saxon peoples, so far as physical attack is concerned, is now completely gone. There is an equalization of possible danger for every square inch of the globe today. This is merciful, because if we cannot be brothers in culture or outlook or law or the good things of life, we are at least brothers in the possibility of sudden devastating attack. If the unity of mankind cannot be affirmed as to content, let it at least be asserted negatively by equalizing all men before danger and death. Nay more: the nuclear countries are in far greater danger in this respect than the rest of the world. All this is humbling and sobering. When you consider that an accident of geography had much to do with deter­ mining the view of man of the English-speaking peopies, their fundamental values, their whole outlook, you will realize that you are now before a new and revolutionary situation. Everybody is profoundly jolted by it- the rulers 8

consciously and at every moment of their existence, and the common folk at least subconsciously and through the taxes they have to provide to support an adequate defense estab­ lishment. One reason why people are nervous and jittery is precisely this unprecedented situation. And the whole concept of war has changed as a re­ sult. Who could with impunity have insulted America or Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries, or even in the first half of the 20th? Today hardly a week passes-I almost said a day-without somebody in China or Russia or the Middle East or Africa or even Latin America, or indeed Europe itself, not only hurling one insult after another upon America or England, but actually encroaching upon their interests-without their daring to lift a finger against him! The strange developments in recent years in Viet Nam, in Cuba, in the Middle East, in Berlin, as well as the arrest of the westward march of communism beyond the line drawn at the close of the Second World War, can only be understood on the background of the nuclear deterrent. It is a revolutionary situation indeed when the classi­ cal calculations of war which have reigned for thousands of years no longer hold. And if you manage to penetrate the Marxist jargon, you will find that this is as upsetting to the communists as to the West. Khrushchev relates that he was shocked once when Mao told him that the atom and the nucleus made no difference whatever to the Marxist revolutionary concepts of international relations, and es­ pecially to the nature of war; and he was blunt with Mao by telling him that, he, Mao, did not know what he was talking about. Perhaps now that he has developed his nu9

clear arsenal Mao knows better. Nuclear and atomic wea­ pons have absolutely revolutionized international rela­ tions. They have forced the utmost restraints upon those who possess them. No,v and for the forseeable future international rela­ tions are governed by three laws: 1. Unless a breakthrough, wholly unknown to the other side, in the defense or in the offense is accomplished, nuclear weapons can have only deterrent and not actual war value. 2. The national interests of the nuclear powers can only be promoted from now on by peaceful competition among them, in relation both to what they can do for their own peoples and for the peoples who do not possess these weapons. 3. Since short of a foolproof breakthrough nuclear powers cannot start wars against one another, the real question today is who is resourceful enough to bring about significant political changes in other countries favorable to himself. The law of war is this: who can act short of war so decisively and so suddenly in other countries as to make it impossible for his opponent to react? The real challenge is this: who can induce a fait accompli in other countries to which his opponents simply cannot react? It follows that in this realm the future belongs far more to what are called "special forces;' "secret operations;' "subversive activities;' or to who can more outsmart the other in ordinary diplomatic relations, than to any con­ ventional war relations between nations. The norm of future wars is indirect rather than direct aggression.

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Another revolutionary dimension is the persisting challenge of Marxism-Leninism-international-communism. The essence of this challenge is philosophical-spiritual and not economic-political. Professors and propagandists have written about what they call the failure or the decline or the disintegration of Marxism-Leninism; and they mean by this that certain economic theories and positions based on Marx have had to be abandoned or changed. But what has not been abandoned by Marxists and what will never be changed is the radical atheistic material­ ist-collectivist interpretation of man, history and society. Not only is atheistic materialism-collectivism not failing­ it is actually spreading like wild fire all over the world. The communist world is dominated by this outlook­ and that is about one-third of humanity. The non-Western, non-communist world in Asia and Africa is being more influenced by Marxist materialism-atheism than by any fundamental philosophy hailing from the West. And in the West itself, even apart from such political develop­ ments as Cuba and Chile, and the persistent strength of the communist parties of Italy and France, materialism­ atheism is capturing the mind of youth and entrenching itself in many a citadel of higher learning. The spirit of Marx is living and hovering all over the world. Man is matter and nature. He is to be reduced without any remainder to his social functionings. Spirit and thought derive from matter, nature and society. There is nothing eternal in man. Only these atoms of which his body is composed keep on moving eternally in the void. There is

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no God. The great Judaeo-Christian tradition is a fabric of superstition-nay, a matrix and a pretext for the ex­ ploitation of man by man. Freedom is a myth. There is no conscience and there is no independent thought. The party is the source of all truth; and churches, universities, homes, thinkers, artists, must all receive their total guidance from it. Therefore the party alone must rule and perpetuate its rule. We thus can only learn from history-from the won­ derful literature, art and philosophy of Greece, from the lives and utterances of the prophets and saints, from the civilizing achievements of Rome, from the great age of the cathedrals and summas, from the marvelous creations of the Renaissance, from the great American experience-we can only learn from all this the unending and ruthless class struggle. I find these motifs, which constitute the far more im­ portant side of Marxism-Leninism than any fluctuating economic or even political theories, penetrating and trans­ forming much in modern life-in the plastic and perform­ ing arts, in contemporary philosophy and literature, in the mores of society, in the underlying tone of academic cir­ cles, in the actual conduct and presuppositions of whole classes of people. And while the whole world is positively indebted to Marx for raising the economic and social ques­ tion with such vigor and effect, and while from this point of view the entire world today is unthinkable apart from Marx, insofar as together with this Marx also means-and perhaps first and foremost means-atheism-materialism,

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the Marxist-Leninist-communist interpretation of truth, society, history and the nature and destiny of man is a principal component of the world-wide revolution of the present. China yields her own distinctive contribution. I be­ lieve for the long run the problem of China is the most formidable problem facing the entire world. It faces China herself, too. For the problem is, when the world has as by magic shrunk into a next-door neighborhood, how will the world digest China and how will China digest the rest of the world? You speak of Inda-European languages and Inda­ European civilization. Persia has always interacted with its neighbors, east and west. Islam would have been im­ possible without Judaism and Christianity. Africa has al­ ways had intimate relations with the Middle East, Europe and America. And Russia, despite its Oriental strains, has always been an integral part of the Western world, cul­ turally, spiritually, and in every sense, for classical Russian literature and art move us all infinitely more deeply than anything that comes from China. You can say none of these things about China. The phrase "China and the world" can be said only of China. You are therefore dealing with a situation completely sui generis. Racially, linguistically, culturally, spiritually, China is a world by itself. That this world has somewhat overflown into its immediate fringes, to wit, Mongolia, Japan and Southeast Asia, does not alter the fact that you have here a heartland with its own original distinctiveness and apartness.

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Four features therefore determine the Chinese revolu­ tionary dimensions: l. Demography. By the end of this century, in just thirty years, at the present rate of growth, the population of China is going to be of the order of 1,500,000,000 human beings. 2. Technology. China is fast becoming a great indus­ trial nation with its own arsenal of atomic and nuclear weapons and with its weapons delivery systems and, at least in the Middle East Chinese consumers goods are on the increase year after year. 3. Culture. Chinese culture and Chinese thought con­ trast sharply with what obtains elsewhere in the world, and will increasingly cast their shadow everywhere, in an age in which all nations live more or less in one another's presence. 4. Revolution. The Chinese doctrines of people's re­ volution, wars of national liberation, guerrilla warfare, and perpetual revolution, are quite different from the ideas either of the American revolution or the French revolution or even the Russian revolution, and are peculiarly relevant to many situations in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and even the United States. I sense Chinese revolutionary under­ tones in many movements in America, especially among the youth. It follows from all this that China is going to be the problem of the world and the world is going to be the prob­ lem of China for generations to come-perhars even indefinitely. You have to spend some time at the United Nations

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to feel the massive impact of Asia and Africa. Fifty-one nations signed the Charter of the United Nations at San Francisco twenty-five years ago; today the membership of the world organization is about 130, of which the n1ajority are from Asia and Africa. If you ponder this situation at its deepest depths you will find yourself before six revolu­ tionary elements: 1. The economic gap between the less developed and the more developed, far from showing signs of closing, is actually widening. 2. The relatively less experienced and less responsible, the relatively poorer and less developed, are making de­ mands on the richer, more experienced and more developed; namely, on Russia, Europe and America, and in the in­ terests of peace and concord these demands, regardless of their stridency, had better be understood. 3. In the moralizing that goes on, especially at the United Nations, there is little correspondence between idea and truth, between aspiration and fact. 4. The philosophical question, which has immense political implications, is this: which can set rules, norms, standards-the less developed or the more developed? The relatively primitive or the relatively advanced? The hungry and destitute or the satisfied and full? Matter or form? Potentiality or actuality? Or, shortly and simply, the less or the more?

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5. Instability in every sense and at every level is going to be the rule in Asia and Africa for a long time to come, and this instability is going to infect the more stable countries, inducing in them a sense of relativism as to values and forms. 6. Exploitative colonialism is gone, but it is an illusion to suppose that Asia and Africa can develop and prosper and stand on their feet without some new patterns of inti­ mate relationship-economically, politically, culturally­ with China, Russia, Europe and America. And one can only hope that these new forms of partnership will neither be ex­ ploitative nor so competitive among themselves as to en­ danger international peace and security. We may therefore speak of a great Asian and African revolution, and these appear to be the basic elements which constitute that phenomenon. And if you ponder the mean­ ing of all this, and the meaning of Marxism-Leninism vis­ a-vis the Western world, you will come to the conclusion that Lenin was most perceptive when he conceived of Asia and Africa as belonging to "the reserves" of his great world revolution. I turn now to revolutionary dimensions in the Western world itself. All these things I have discussed-the new insecurity of the English-speaking world; the new radical restraints on the whole concept of war; the persisting spiritual chal­ lenge of Marxism-Leninism; the revolutionary meaning of China; and the revolutionary meaning of Asia and

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Africa-all these things bear upon and bewilder the West­ ern mind. It finds itself eyed, questioned, challenged, under­ mined, beleaguered, pitted against, attacked from without. But disturbing tendencies are also exploding from with­ in, partly under the weight of these external onslaughts, partly by the unfolding of an inner logic. No man who has drunk deep from the fountainheads of Western civilization-I mean, from Plato and Aristotle, from the Roman Stoics, from the Bible, from the great saints, from Dante and Shakespeare, from the great art of Spain and Holland and Germany and Italy and France, from the great German thinkers, from the hymns and sacred music of the church, from Dostoevski and Tolstoy, from the great love for liberty and man which has always characterized the heart of America-no man, I say, who has really known the West and loves it at its truest and deepest and highest, is not disturbed and pained today at the widespread frustration over Viet Nam and other un­ resolved conflicts; at the burden of the immense world responsibilities which America simply must shoulder; at the absence of really great leadership-political, intellec­ tual, moral and religious; at the endless proliferation of goods and things and stimuli which excite and distract and numb the mind; at the physical and aesthetic pollution and destruction of so much of the environment; at the softening effect of afflu­ ence and ease; at the great temptations of leisure and of not needing to work; at the inordinate power of advertis­ ing both upon the media and upon the public;

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at so much violence on television and in the movies; at the apparent rise in the incidence of crime; at the nihilism of the revolutionaries; at the callousness and complacency of the settled who only react; at the sight of hippies; at the scourge of drugs; at wonderful cities becoming unsafe to live or move about in, especially at night, and thus turning gradually into ghettos; at the decay of the sense of community es­ pecially in the cities; at the inhumanism and impersonalism of so much of urban existence; at the formidable problem of color in America; at the injustices and inequalities and discriminations which continue to plague the world; at the abuse to which these four great terms have been put: "the system;' "the establishment;' "society;' "culture"; at the accelerating succession of fads and fashions and ways of salvation, and what are called "life styles 11 ; at the disastrous divorce in universities and colleges between mind and spirit, thought and character, idea and person, theory and being; at the sad decay of philosophy and contemplation and their replacement by relativism, movement, sensualism, subjectivism and linguistic analy­ sis; at the atheistic interpretation of man in terms of sex and instinct and desires and drives and dark impulses; at the pantheism, monism, atheism, mysticism and immanen­ tism which Asia and Africa are wafting upon the West; at the shameful and indeed shameless spread of por­ nography; at so much promiscuity and permissiveness; at the terrible strains and trials to which the family is sub­ jected-the family which is the most important natural unit for stability, humanity and character;

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at setting up the whole aim of life as producing more and more and better and better goods and instruments; at the bourgeois content of existence as just working your way hard to a respectable position, achieving success in terms of material security, and enjoying the pleasures of life as you may seek them or as they may chance to come your way; at irresponsible and ungrounded idealism, especially among youth; at the disrespect for and the rebellion against the authority of ruler, teacher, pastor and parent; at the phenomenon of the least common denominator whereby people in mixed company-and all companies today are mixed-hypocritically suppress their deepest convictions lest they offend; at the corruption of modern art, where not the whole­ ness and integrity of man, but bits and pieces of him are made to appear; at the decay of the fine art of conversa­ tion; at how spirit, freedom, creativity, man and inner joy are in danger of being overwhelmed by the technical, the useful, the mechanical, at the fading of the power of sim­ plicity and oneness. All these things must be honestly recognized as per­ taining to the inner revolution exploding in America and the Western world. They must be deeply pondered as to their causes and meaning. · But none of them should be inflated out of proportion to its inner worth. I read last week that somebody was getting fed up with all this denigrating of America that is going on, and so he decided to publish a paper in the first issue of which, appearing this week, he will show "that in the United States

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last year 196,459,483 people did not commit a crime; 4,896,720 college students took no part in riots or demonstra­ tions; and201,489,710 Americans did not use illegal drugs�'* There is thus plenty of strength and health around to put these things in their place and to deal with them. The re­ cuperative forces of the spirit are still rnost active-to heal and to restore. �Time, Nov. 2, 1970, p.6, col. 1.

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Cfufllt 1JJ

Nor is there any certainty that survival is directly proportional to merit. There will be many casualties, and some who deserve to survive and inherit the earth will nevertheless perish. God's ways are inscrutable, and this is one reason among a thousand why we should fear Him. The problem of survival in troubled times never meant the survival of everybody. It was always the survival of a remnant who, by carrying on the torch, redeemed their own generation and those who had to perish. I will settle for seven thousand godly men surviving, but I trust there will be many more. But if we must lay down a general rule, it is this: those are more likely to survive who in their thought and in their life return to first principles. And the first of all first principles is that first principles exist, that they are given and natural, that we do not create them, that they can be sought and found, and that the truth is not a matter for each one to determine for himself.

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In fact, the deepest characterization of the revolution in all its dimensions is that it is a rebellion against being, an affirmation that the will creates everything, including the truth; and that the truth therefore is arbitrary and sub­ jective. Nothing given, nothing to seek, nothing to fear, everything a determination of the will-this is the revolution. This is all Nietzsche, the real prophet of the revolu­ tion, and none of the other self-styled prophets, before or since. They are all imitators and half-hearted and super­ ficial by comparison. This is Nietzsche's will to power, his Umwertung aller Werte -transvaluation of all values. While there is a much deeper spiritual interpretation of Nietzsche, no man is spiritually behind the revolution more than Nietzsche. For the entire 2000 years during which the Bible was conceived and written, the spirit that was responsible for it contended with nothing more than with this arrogance of the will. "God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble�' And yet those kids around us, whom we love and who despite everything are pure and wonderful, conceive of themselves as the measure of all things; and we their elders, who ought to know better, bow and abdicate be­ fore them and spoil them and speak of the generation gap and of changing life styles. Commenting on President Nixon's repudiation of the report of the Commission on Obscenity and Pornography, a writer has recently editorialized: "This country, indeed the whole of the Western world, is in a period of dramatic cultural change in which 22

folkways and, indeed, moral values are undergoing critical reexamination. The tastes of the past or of the present cannot be frozen into perpetuity. Standards of 'decency' are in flux no less than fashions in dress or in dating�'* I do not know whether the writer in his heart of hearts holds that everything changes, nor can this position be fairly concluded from this passage. But the revolution that we are here contemplating consists precisely in maintain­ ing that everything-notice, "everything"-changes. And in denying that there are "moral values" which no "cul­ tural change;' no matter how "dramatic;' and no "critical reexamination;' no matter how "critical;' can possibly alter, values which are not a matter of "taste" or "fashion;' nor of the nature of "folkways" essentially "in flux;' like "dress" or "dating�' What is at stake today is precisely whether the past has been all in vain, whether it does not yield visions and findings and commandments which are so wonderful and true and so valuable in themselves that they must "be fro­ zen into perpetuity�' What is at stake is the unity and continuity of history. For it is precisely fright from the cumulative, given, posi­ tive values of the past which is the revolution. Therefore, seek and cling to the first principles that never change, and then you are likely to survive. Respect and learn from the lessons of history, and then you are likely to survive. And one of the lessons of history, one of the principles that never change, is that your mind must �ivasliington Post, \\'ed., Oct. 28, 10;0, p. 20, col. 2.

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be perpetually receptive to new situations as they arise, so as to adapt the old to the new. But you never create the principle. You are always before a fresh application of an old one. And in highly personal and spiritual matters, what is new is never the spirit or the personal quality, but the fact that there is another man who catches or misses the old spirit. It is an obvious first principle, I think, that the care­ less and weak and helpless have little chance of surviving; and if they survive, it will be said of them that they did not deserve it. Therefore, in an age of absolute theoretical equalization of danger all over the world, prudence de­ mands that you be strong. And by strength I certainly mean military and econo­ mic strength; but I also mean strength in theory, strength in inventiveness, strength in mind, strength in spirit, strength in character, strength in determination. And these strengths determine in the end every material strength. The strength of the strong lies in this, that he can defend not only himself but his friends, too; and together with others who are also strong and confident he can attempt the creation of an international order in which peace and security, and therefore survival, will be the lot of all. With proper qualifications which I shall not go into, the pro­ position is deeply true that survival today must be sur­ vival for all. It is an obvious first principle, I think, that if your highest values are attacked and undermined, you stand up and defend them.

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Now, your highest values are, I believe, reason, free­ dom, love, God, man, and the tested values of the past; and it is precisely these that are now questioned and re­ pudiated. He is likely to survive who is not ashamed of the deepest he knows, and nothing is more disgusting or shame­ ful than the spectacle of people ashamed or apologetic about the deepest they know. What deeply disturbs me is not your economic and social problems nor your inter­ national posture in the world, for I believe all these things are manageable with the given resources and the available wisdom and intelligence. What deeply disturbs me is that I am not sure you know the deepest that you already know. If you really know and vigorously proclaimed reason, freedom, love, God, man and the wonderful values of the great tradition which made America and the West, and which extends for 4000 years, then you need not fear any spiritual competition from Marxism or communism or any sickly "ism" that may saprophytically sprout from certain urban soils. It is an obvious first principle, I think, that if the chal­ lenge is in terms of quantity and mass, and you cannot meet it on its own terms, you try to meet it qualitatively. Now the ultimate spectre of China is a matter of quantity and mass, and therefore prudence demands that you re­ main ahead of them in terms of quality and depth. I do not mean here only ingenuity and creativeness in science and research, although this is most important. I mean those qualities of fraternity and love and understanding and openness and self-sacrifice which, given time and given 25

the slow workings of the spirit, will move not only the Chinese soul, but even the stone. It is an obvious first principle, I think, that in being moved for whatever reasons to help those who need your help, you are not called upon to cease to be what and who you are. When you inquire about survival in an age of revolution, what is it that you are worried about? Ob­ viously it is something that you would rather die than see disappear. What is this thing? Obviously again it is your highest values. But when others are afraid lest they be corrupted and beguiled if they mingle with you or if they let your ideas in, I wonder if you are equally jealous for your highest values. The problem of your survival with respect to Asia and Africa, when all is mingling with all today, is not the fear that you will squander your substance on them, nor that they will physically threaten you, but the danger that you might one day weaken in your hold upon your soul. For I have known American students and experts on these lands so denatured that they will not be recognized as Americans by Washington or Jefferson or Lincoln or Woodrow Wilson or Jonathan Edwards. There is such a thing as love and helpfulness and absolute respect with­ out surrender of the dearest you have, to wit, your soul. I am not much worried about America's formidable international problems. I am certain America will survive them, to be sure at the cost of much turmoil and estrange­ ment still. Casualties and dropouts there will be aplenty on the road, but the essential spiritual soundness of the

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American people and American institutions will ultimately prevail. The only question is whether America as a nation will drop to second place in the world. When a plague descends upon a country, public meas­ ures are certainly called for; but when you are dealing with moral and spiritual plagues, which is certainly the case today with all the rebellion and disrespect and dis­ obedience eating at the heart of Europe and America and indeed the whole world, there are limits to what the public authorities can do. Here each man, each family, each community, each enterprise, is thrown back upon its independent resources, to shield itself and its own from the evil spirit prowling the land and the rot breaking out in its midst. There is inalienable personal responsibility here before God and one's conscience, and before the judgment of history; and parents cannot blame the school or the government or society when it is the parents' delinquency and fault; nor can the school blame the parents and the government when the school itself has failed within its own sphere of compe­ tence; nor can the government and the church blame the home and the school when it is demonstrably the case that it was the government and the church that were really fiddling. America cannot now and for the indefinite future wash its hands from its world responsibilities, and so you will learn to live with them and take them in your stride. The problem of pollution, after further aggravation, will be brought under control; and those who will let leisure destroy them, morally and physically, will simply perish, 27

and only those are likely to survive who will have mastered its terrible temptations in their own personal lives. For it cannot be repeated too often that individual personal re­ sponsibility is the most important thing, above and be­ yond all determination and enticement from without. The problem of goods and advertising is very deep: it awaits a national spiritual awakening beyond business, beyond politics, beyond the facile concepts of dreamers. And with this expected awakening, violence and crime and nihilism will be considerably reduced. They will never be totally eliminated; for just as the poor, in the sense of those who do not deserve more, we shall always have with us, so will the rebellious nature of man always be around, ready to flare up from envy or spite or bad habit or sheer ennui. In five or ten years, or maybe more, the colleges and universities will have absorbed and assimilated the present shock and learned a great deal from it. Those of them that will perpetuate the divorce between thought and character, between the excellence of the mind and the perfections of the spirit, will simply fall by the wayside, and only those will move from strength to strength which will stress the quality of the person as much as the brilliance of the idea, and which, while attending to their main job, which is the cultivation of theory, will also attend to being. Nor do I agree with those in this Corporate Seminar who seem to hold that the future organization of the uni­ versity is going to be a sort of homogenization of respon­ sibility and voice between trustees, administration, faculty

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and students; for it is one thing to be "involved" in the over-all life of the university in some appropriate fashion, and quite another thing to be "involved" in making deci­ sions on matters in which you are not competent on equal moral and legal footing with those who are. For it appears to me that it is an obvious first principle which will never change that there is a fundamental difference between those who are responsible and those who are not; between those who are competent in a given field of judgment and those who are not; between those who know and those who simply do not; and this first principle which is drawn from the nature of things is itself the first principle of organization of any university. Promiscuity and permissiveness only mean to me that the mercy of God upon those who repent is infinite, for some doubtless will be destroyed by them; but those who will be brought upon their knees will be saved. For we must never forget that God forgives the truly repentant everything, and that "where iniquity abounded, grace did much more abound�' Youth are mighty in raising good questions, but they are pathetically poor in supplying answers. I thank them for the questions they raise, but I resist them to their face in some of the silly answers they propose. Let their parents and teachers therefore blame only themselves for not tak­ ing their questioning sufficiently seriously, for being pre­ occupied with other things more than with their children, for not having the grace and the love to suffer enough for them.

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As for the revolutionaries, representative government is so deeply entrenched in the American tradition that I am sure the needed changes will be brought about by the processes of democracy and not by a revolution that will "destroy the system�'

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They are, as I understand them and as I read Ameri­ can history, the sanctity and dignity of the individual human person; respect for his freedom subject to his re­ spect for the freedom of others; man the end, and not the machine nor the law nor the government nor the "system;' so that systems and laws can change, but always in the service of man; the continuity of history, so that history did not begin yesterday nor even with the American revo­ lution; truth emerges from the interplay of minds in free discussion and debate; man blooms in responsible com­ munity and not alone; the originality of the spirit, namely, there is an independent realm of being called God which is above and other than all the determinations of nature and society; there is something real, certain beyond this whole life of sorrow and disappointment which we can seek and of which we can have a foretaste here and now. If you consider that these things spring from the soil of the Graeco-Roman-Judaeo-Christian tradition you will 31

see that they are at the base not only of America but of the entire Western world. Survival, my friends, without these things is not worth the candle. Let these then be affirmed in thought and in life and the question of survival will not arise. Let people return to the sources that made them and they need fear nothing. Let them remember the rock from which they are hewn and no revolution can overwhelm them. It is because these first principles are forgotten or neglected or derided or paid lip service or replaced by alien principles that people are not sure of themselves and shake and tremble before the unknown. The one per­ petual refrain in the entire Bible is that people who "go a whoring after other gods" shall perish. Nor does America have the slightest need to do this if only she knew who her God is. I am certain America can defend herself; and her eco­ nomic and political system is resilient enough to bounce out of every strain and every squeaking. But the future belongs not only to those who can defend themselves but to those who have a confident outgoing message to the rest of the world. Safely entrenched in their invulnerable fastness and needing nobody outside themselves, people sooner or later rot and decay. This is an unchanging eternal law of man. But no man, no culture, no nation is self-sufficient. We do need one another if for no other reason than our oneness as human beings. Man can never complete him-

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self except in the summing up of all men . Heirs of 4,000 years of cumulative civilization, so that the children of America study in school the Old Testament, the Greek tragedians, Plato and Aristotle, the New Testament Augus­ tine, the thirteenth century, the seventeenth century-they study them as belonging, on top of the phenomenal Ameri­ can odyssey of the last two centuries, to their very thought and being-for such a rich heritage to say that it has nothing of a deep and lasting and universal character to offer the rest of the world, and that all it can do is to retire into its own fortress and defend itself against the assaults of the enemy, and only to exchange goods with the rest of the world, is simply unbelievable. For any one person to be really on top of the dis­ tractions and confusions and distortions of the hour he must, while dutifully attending to his obligations and re­ sponsibilities, impose upon himself the strictest personal discipline. It is the sloppy and undisciplined, especially in their thinking and in their moral habits, who are a menace unto themselves and unto society today. He must keep fit physically; he must take time to cultivate the deepest carefree fellowship with friends; he must converse with the great minds of the ages; he must spend long and leisurely time in prayer and meditation each day. Such a person will always be attuned to truth and reality. Otherwise he might lose all sense of proportion and perspective. I have no fear that technology will not one day auto­ mate and computerize everything, except of course the freedom of man to choose between good and evil and 33

therefore his inalienable personal responsibility for this choice. If the immense technological potentialities of the West, especially those of the media, were mobilized in the service of the highest values of the mind and the spirit, then a spiritual revolution of the first order would be launched in three weeks. And this revolution will cause every other revolution to wonder whether it can survive. The rank of The Coca-Cola Company in Fortune Magazine's listing of last May of the 500 largest industrial corporations was 79. But the rank of The Coca-Cola Com­ pany among its competitors in its own field so far as I can ascertain is incomparably first. Both rankings are perfectly remarkable, considering that its "product is in a very real sense, taste and refreshment, relaxation and enjoy­ ment�' I congratulate you on this magnificent achievement. Who am I to make suggestions about how to improve your product, how to diversify it, how to promote its sale, how to adapt your organization to the changing social and cultural scene, both nationally and internationally? I plead total incompetence here. You are serving man, and if I may venture an observation it is to hope that you may see your way to serving him in the deeper realms of his "taste and refreshment;' his "relaxation and enjoymenf' Because the special "taste" you are serving is patently changeable, you are manifestly vulnerable to propaganda and ill will. And so, may it not be that you will take rP.al insurance against this vulnerability if, on top of your new projects concerning desalination and nourishing drinks, you can diversify into serving man's deeper and more stable needs: in communication, in education, in the arts

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and the media, and in intellectual and spiritual "refresh­ ment and enjoyment�' Perhaps there are here possibilities to be further explored. It is silly of me to hide from you the deepest I know. I could not do that even if I tried to. Nor do you really expect me to do it. Whether it is late or whether it is only serious, the hour is such that only the deepest befits it. And the deepest to me is the principle of the originality of the spirit. It is this that I take most seriously. I do not have the vaguest idea what your ultimate convictions are, but whatever they are I respect them. You will permit me to tell you a word about my ultimate con­ victions. "Tell me what you finally believe and whom or what you finally worship, and I'll tell you all about your­ self' This saying is perfectly true. I believe in God. I believe succor and salvation come in the end only from Him. I believe He will never forsake His own nor even those who do not know Him provided they be men of good will. That is the sure and certain foundation of my lively hope. And that is why I really laugh in my heart- laugh, but with total sadness- when I see people who do not know God, or who know Him but vaguely and distantly, proposing all sorts of ideas and schemes and devices for the betterment of society and the salvation of mankind. Not that there is no value and no truth in all these reports and analyses that are pouring forth upon us these days. There is plenty of value and truth in them and some of them are deeper and superior to others. But they are all superficial, there is an evident strain and nervousness

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about them, they smack of "the blind leading the blind;' and they miss the heart of the matter, which is whether God is there, blessing and guiding and making sure. These economic laws are not as autonomous as the wizards make them appear. They apply to men, and men are subject to the whims and humors of the spirit. If God exists, He must make a difference to men even if they did not know Him. At some point a God-fearing and God­ loving man makes a difference himself to the operation of these laws, at least in the spirit in which he takes them. It may not appear in a day or a year or even a century; but sooner or later the difference which God and those whom He touches make will reveal itself in the quality and su­ preme values of the culture which these laws help create. Let no man fool you. Economics and business are part of God's wider world and He holds them fully and firmly in the palm of His hands. And because I know the foundations on which America was built, I cannot join the prophets of doom and disaster who preach revolution and see no hope for survival. I rather pray that America return and prove so faithful to her first principles and her God that the words of the prophet Isaiah will be truly prophesied to her: "Violence shall no more be heard in thy land, wast­ ing nor destruction within thy borders; but thou shalt call thy walls Salvation, and thy gates Praise. The sun shall be no more thy light by day; neither for brightness shall the moon give light into thee: but the Lord shall be unto thee an everlasting light, and thy God thy glory�' (Isaiah 60 : 18-19) 36