Download pdf file - Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy

Feringer Notes - CIRCULATION OF THOUGHT - 1954 16 of 65
asked to be all three....You will not believe a man who cannot show proof that he meant business
in the three different ages of his life. (p.27)
13. Most people live on borrowed convictions.A conviction is that which develops by learning
in your youth, by verifying in your middle age, and by teaching in your old age the same
truth.Otherwise there is no conviction, if you don't do all three things.The rest is opinion. The
rest is just ideas.Who cares for ideas or opinions?...I don't.I want to see people who embody the
truth, because it has stayed with them in three forms of life.
...only those mental things are really essential which reappear in your youth, in your own
mature life, and in your own old age. (p.28)
14. The mind is given us for conviction.But only very few thoughts, and very few contents reach
this degree of density...
...typical is a poor, poor second, because to be typical means not to live, but to be lived by other
people's minds.
The decision in your own lifetime at this moment is: whether you will live by other people's
minds or whether you will really have a mind of your own. And you don't have a mind of your
own by having ideas.You have a mind of your own if that which you now learn will appear so
real that you will do something about it in your manhood, and you will make other people do
something about it in your old age.These are three phases of the mind, and that it means to have
one's own mind. (p.29)
15. approval.That's why I cannot hamper your life...We are not a state of which contents where I
have the right to judge your future, but you have not the right to judge t he whole human past
which I represent here to you.I must give you 10, 20, 30 years to do something, to find out if
what I say is true.That's why I need the authority of this college to be appointed.They find out
who has something to say that is worthwhile listening to...Authorities of the college must know
this.You cannot know. (p.31)
Lecture 7
1/7One must, today, bring together the beginning and the end of the mental life.The middle
section is unseen and invisible from the beginning as well as from the end.
To analyze a thing is fine, but that does not mean to know it,and to analyze means to "kill" it, to
draw a conclusion about it.To analyze means to doubt.(p.2)
2/7To doubt means to have divine power, to kill, and to have divine power means also the power
to bring back to life, i.e. when we validate, practice, and teach ideas.
3.Children(and perhaps adults) need to be turned in the right direction, otherwise they become