My Message

If we have lost the harmony between body and soul, we have lost, as well, the power of discrimination. And the power of discrimination is nothing other than that which appraises things and then sets them in their proper place in the ranks of values.

And so it came about that everything, in our eyes, became like everything else, the two distinguished only in form, not in essence: persons are distinguished by the money they hoard, or the standing they inherit, or the power they impose; principles are distinguished by the success they attain in the world of fact; and deeds, finally, are distinguished by the profit and private interest they bring in.

Thus we found ourselves in a society where none have influence but those of money or inherited standing, where nothing has value but opportunist, utilitarian principles, and where nothing wins esteem but the works behind which gain and a livelihood are assured. And what was the upshot? It was that we proved unable to embrace those of our sons who are gifted in spirit and mind, so they went off in search of whichever of the peoples of the earth would embrace them; that we turned away from the principles which alone can make us a living, creative nation that enters history and shares in raising the great edifice of human civilization; and that we fell short of undertaking mighty works of progress and construction that build up what has been torn down, and tear down what was built, in our yesterday, upon corruption.

Yes! We have lost the power of discrimination. And we shall never rise to our feet in any matter of the free, fitting, true life until we acquire this power of distinguishing among things. And we shall not acquire this power unless we bend ourselves, with effort and pain and sacrifice, to study, research, and inquiry, and so grow practiced in knowledge and trained in understanding. For I have known no enemy of discrimination like ignorance. We shall never be able to distinguish between corrupt values and sound values unless we know them all. And it has been our ill fortune that, in this country, we have rarely had the chance of intimate contact with sound values; so we lost our confidence in them and allowed ourselves to drift with the current. If we do not distinguish among persons, it is because we have not yet come to know well a person who lived and embodied the personal virtues — humility, love, ardor, joy in deep spiritual pain — and thereby showed us the difference between himself and the persons who hold sway in our society. If, again, we do not distinguish among principles, it is because we have come to know, only rarely, a principle that arose among us and persevered in keeping itself clear of the hidebound conventions of partisanship and the chaos of "politicking." And if, finally, we do not distinguish among deeds, it is because we have not yet come to know a mighty work that grew up among us, aimed at the good, the true, and freedom, and succeeded, and had partisans and supporters.

Our calamity, then, in losing the power of discrimination goes back to ignorance. And our salvation, then, will come only through knowledge — knowledge deep, conscious, comprehensive, living.