Waldo Beach - "Divided Minds and a Single Heart" (April 9, 1967)
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| (piano playing) | 0:06 | |
| - | Once upon a time, according to an old Hindu fable | 0:29 |
| a group of blind men encountered an elephant, | 0:35 | |
| a totally new object to be identified. | 0:39 | |
| One of them took hold of his leg | 0:44 | |
| and claimed that the elephant was like a tree, | 0:47 | |
| another grabbed his trunk and argued that the elephant | 0:51 | |
| was like a snake, another base another theory | 0:56 | |
| on his bit of research by grabbing the elephant's ear | 1:02 | |
| and so forth and so forth. | 1:06 | |
| And as the poem him puts it, | 1:09 | |
| "And so these men of Hindustan disputed loud and long | 1:11 | |
| each in his own opinion, exceeding sure and strong though | 1:18 | |
| each was partly in the right and all were in the wrong." | 1:23 | |
| It's an ancient parable, but it is apt. | 1:31 | |
| It catches a certain condition of mind | 1:36 | |
| in any modern university. | 1:39 | |
| I hear the fable retold every time I go to a faculty meeting | 1:44 | |
| and you who are students are the victims of the predicament | 1:51 | |
| of the blind men and the elephant. | 1:56 | |
| In one morning's run of classes where you are exposed now | 1:59 | |
| to one aspect of the universe in biology | 2:04 | |
| another in psych, another in religion, | 2:08 | |
| another in English and solemnly informed by each more | 2:11 | |
| or less myopic professor that this is it, | 2:17 | |
| that the elephant of truth is explained best | 2:22 | |
| by its biochemistry, its psychology, it's theology | 2:27 | |
| and so forth. | 2:33 | |
| No wonder you're mixed up. | 2:36 | |
| No wonder you save yourself from exhaustion | 2:39 | |
| by the convenient trick of com compartmentalizing. | 2:43 | |
| You leave the integration of knowledge to the educators. | 2:49 | |
| No wonder you end up safe in your major | 2:55 | |
| a well rounded person of a very short radius. | 2:59 | |
| Presumably if the blind man, | 3:05 | |
| all pieced their separate bits of evidence together, | 3:08 | |
| they'd get the whole elephant. | 3:11 | |
| But the trouble with the educators is | 3:14 | |
| their intellectual imperialism. | 3:17 | |
| They read the whole in terms of their part. | 3:21 | |
| There's not only confusion of tongues, | 3:25 | |
| a loss of a common language, | 3:29 | |
| but the strife of systems in schools | 3:32 | |
| each claiming to be the core discipline. | 3:35 | |
| Some years ago at one point the department of sociology | 3:40 | |
| at Brown University delivered an earnest memorandum | 3:43 | |
| to the president recommending that all departments | 3:46 | |
| of the university should be organized around sociology. | 3:50 | |
| The strange biblical myth in Genesis of the tower of Babel | 3:57 | |
| is also fitting to describe the intellectual fall of man | 4:03 | |
| from the time when the whole earth had one language | 4:11 | |
| and few words to the building of a tower of arrogance | 4:14 | |
| reaching to the heavens down to the confusion | 4:20 | |
| of the tongues, the loss of a common universe | 4:25 | |
| of discourse in a multiverse where the scientists | 4:30 | |
| cannot talk with the humanists and the psych majors | 4:36 | |
| and the pre-meds and the pre-law majors | 4:40 | |
| stay in their own circles. | 4:44 | |
| The power of Babel is rebuilt in the modern university | 4:48 | |
| which Robert Hutchins once defined | 4:55 | |
| as a group of separate buildings and schools | 4:57 | |
| connected with a common heating plant. | 5:01 | |
| We've been having our problems around here lately | 5:08 | |
| as have all heavily universities | 5:12 | |
| about the terms of community in the tussle | 5:13 | |
| between students and administration, about our social life | 5:17 | |
| and the setting of the delicate equilibrium of freedom | 5:22 | |
| and order, rights and obligations. | 5:24 | |
| The problem of keeping a sense of personal common trust | 5:29 | |
| is a very difficult one but appearances sometimes | 5:33 | |
| to the contrary we are a school as well as a club, | 5:39 | |
| we are a community of teachers and students. | 5:45 | |
| The problem of intellectual disintegration | 5:49 | |
| of the divided mind, indeed of the splintered mind | 5:53 | |
| of the university is even more difficult | 6:00 | |
| than the social problem. | 6:03 | |
| And what now might be said to this one | 6:05 | |
| from the vantage point of this pulpit in this chapel | 6:09 | |
| which to the nostalgia of some | 6:14 | |
| to the mild embarrassment of others | 6:18 | |
| to the stubborn hopes of still others | 6:22 | |
| is architecturally at the center of this campus. | 6:28 | |
| The first thing to be said, I think is a negative word. | 6:38 | |
| It would be wrong even if it were possible | 6:43 | |
| to try to recover a single mind by imposing | 6:47 | |
| some scheme of Christian doctrine on this anarchy | 6:52 | |
| to find reintegration of the parts of knowledge | 6:58 | |
| by a uniform system of Christian truth. | 7:01 | |
| That's a shortcut solution that would try to undo | 7:07 | |
| what's been going on since the Renaissance. | 7:11 | |
| It would be an attempt at uniformity | 7:16 | |
| counter to the free spirit of the modern university. | 7:19 | |
| Theology is no longer if ever indeed it were | 7:25 | |
| the queen of the sciences to attempt | 7:29 | |
| to recover a common language | 7:34 | |
| and to make Duke a Christian university | 7:37 | |
| by showing how biology, sociology, psychology, history, | 7:41 | |
| economics, geology, are to be taught | 7:45 | |
| and studied as facets of Christian doctrine | 7:49 | |
| would be ridiculous. | 7:54 | |
| There's no Christian biology or Buddhist math | 7:57 | |
| or Jewish economics. | 8:02 | |
| Though each of these disciplines can be | 8:08 | |
| and should be taught always in sight of the great question, | 8:10 | |
| who am I? | 8:17 | |
| What are we here for? | 8:19 | |
| Is it a yes or a no at the heart of the universe? | 8:22 | |
| To stack the answers to these great questions | 8:28 | |
| for the apostles creed or the 39 articles | 8:32 | |
| or any body of doctrine, however ecumenical | 8:36 | |
| that would violate the freedom of the secular university. | 8:41 | |
| If it be your intention | 8:50 | |
| or that of your family in sending you here | 8:53 | |
| that you should acquire a Christian picture of truth. | 8:57 | |
| Or if you come here to chapel Shook up by the psych class | 9:02 | |
| or the sociology encounter or devastated by that senior | 9:09 | |
| who knows all the reasons why God is dead | 9:14 | |
| to have your tidy worldview restored | 9:18 | |
| of a bearded Methodist God presiding | 9:25 | |
| over a Protestant culture, | 9:27 | |
| you're coming here for the wrong reasons. | 9:31 | |
| For better or worse in our intellectual life, | 9:34 | |
| we are committed to plural worldviews. | 9:38 | |
| No one of them, the establishment. | 9:44 | |
| We are committed to feeling out all the different parts | 9:48 | |
| of the elephant in the long agonized inconclusive dialogue | 9:51 | |
| of the minds of men with the booming buzzing confusion | 9:58 | |
| of the universe. | 10:03 | |
| But there is another way of finding community | 10:06 | |
| within the study life of a university. | 10:11 | |
| It has to do with the love of the heart | 10:15 | |
| rather than the sight of the mind with motivation | 10:19 | |
| and the stance of soul that we bear toward each other | 10:26 | |
| and toward the truth we learn rather than with the truth | 10:30 | |
| or falsity of the conclusions we come to. | 10:35 | |
| In so far as we are a community in scholarship | 10:40 | |
| and teaching and research | 10:46 | |
| we are made one by singleness of heart | 10:49 | |
| not a common subscription to a common creed. | 10:54 | |
| That singleness of spirit is best caught | 11:00 | |
| in classical biblical phrases. | 11:04 | |
| Reverence is the beginning of wisdom | 11:08 | |
| and to depart from evil, his understanding. | 11:12 | |
| Or in the great commandment, | 11:17 | |
| "Thou shall love the Lord thy God with all thy heart | 11:19 | |
| and soul and mind and strength." | 11:23 | |
| And the second, like unto it thou shall love neighbor | 11:26 | |
| as thy self. | 11:31 | |
| Or it's put In Ephesians our new Testament lesson, | 11:33 | |
| the bond of community in love. | 11:40 | |
| The terms of community are set in the mandate | 11:45 | |
| of the great commandment. | 11:50 | |
| As requiring a certain slant of the will and a style of life | 11:53 | |
| to the degree that we fulfill the great commandment. | 12:00 | |
| Whatever may be the pictures of truth in our minds | 12:04 | |
| we are to that degree, a Christian university. | 12:09 | |
| There are two parts to this matter, | 12:19 | |
| two reference of the will: one, the love of God, | 12:22 | |
| the other, the love of neighbor. | 12:28 | |
| As enacted in the daily life Of a university, | 12:32 | |
| the love of God means a reverence in the face of mystery. | 12:38 | |
| It means a trustful curiosity, a restless searching, | 12:46 | |
| probing, doubting, affirming wonder | 12:52 | |
| sustained by the confidence that there is an order of truth | 12:57 | |
| beyond the puzzle of this present disorder | 13:03 | |
| that the little parts are parts of a hole | 13:07 | |
| that the whole elephant is there | 13:12 | |
| beyond the part of it that any one of us can possibly grasp. | 13:15 | |
| We are justified as a community of scholars | 13:21 | |
| by the trust of our hearts | 13:26 | |
| that there is meaning in this mystery | 13:29 | |
| and that in its presence, awe or reverence | 13:34 | |
| is the attitude of will the scientist, the engineer, | 13:40 | |
| the human, the poet can share. | 13:45 | |
| As Einstein's word put this shared faith, | 13:50 | |
| "The Lord God", he said, | 13:56 | |
| "Maybe subtle but He is never mischievous." | 13:58 | |
| The love of God in the university means openness, | 14:04 | |
| contrition, a willingness to listen that tentativity | 14:08 | |
| which is the best part of scientific method. | 14:15 | |
| A wise Bishop of the 17th century once said, | 14:21 | |
| "Man hath but a shallow sound and a short reach | 14:25 | |
| and deals only with probabilities and likelihoods." | 14:31 | |
| It precludes the arrogance of closed systems | 14:38 | |
| and final pronouncements. | 14:41 | |
| It fosters the risk of question raising and doubt. | 14:44 | |
| One who seeks the truth out of reverence | 14:49 | |
| is also blessed with a sense of humor and perspective | 14:54 | |
| about his particular segment | 14:59 | |
| partly because he sees it under the aspect of eternity. | 15:03 | |
| Out of the love of God, the community of scholars | 15:09 | |
| can each other by mutual limitation. | 15:12 | |
| In a kind of system of checks and balances | 15:19 | |
| in the democracy of learning a teacher | 15:24 | |
| or student in the sciences may serve to correct any tendency | 15:28 | |
| toward woo or sentimental thinking | 15:34 | |
| in the religion department | 15:38 | |
| while a teacher in the humanities, in religion or philosophy | 15:41 | |
| may serve the sciences | 15:47 | |
| by raising the ultimate questions of ends | 15:51 | |
| like, "Ought we to do all the things we can do | 15:56 | |
| with technical knowledge?" | 16:02 | |
| This is a question which technology cannot answer by itself. | 16:05 | |
| In all these ways, I suggest theology | 16:11 | |
| as the practice of the love of God is not queen but servant | 16:18 | |
| of the sciences and of the university. | 16:25 | |
| The other part of the great commandment is the moral one, | 16:30 | |
| "Thao shall love thy neighbor as thy self." | 16:36 | |
| Reverence is the beginning of wisdom | 16:41 | |
| and to depart from all is understanding. | 16:44 | |
| There is no authentic love of God, which does not entail | 16:49 | |
| moral obligations of commitment and service. | 16:53 | |
| A university is singly Christian in heart | 16:59 | |
| in so far as it keeps its conscience | 17:06 | |
| under the moral mandate of the law of neighbor love. | 17:09 | |
| Knowledge is in order to goodness. | 17:15 | |
| The uses to which technology are put | 17:21 | |
| are not a matter of indifference. | 17:25 | |
| The university is conscious and servant | 17:29 | |
| of the larger society in which it stands. | 17:34 | |
| This moral dimension might be illustrated | 17:40 | |
| by two telling remarks made in the stacks of the library. | 17:44 | |
| One of my colleagues overheard | 17:52 | |
| a mumbled comment of a Negro janitor to himself | 17:56 | |
| as he was emptying waste baskets along the row of carols. | 18:01 | |
| "They just write books about books about books, | 18:10 | |
| don't do no good." | 18:13 | |
| Another comment, I recall from an incident some years ago | 18:18 | |
| was from another Negro janitor who paused at my carol | 18:25 | |
| where I was working on some books about | 18:33 | |
| ethics and race relations and flicked his finger | 18:37 | |
| on the back of a copy of Gunnar Myrdal: American Dilemma. | 18:44 | |
| "Great book," he said. | 18:51 | |
| He illustrated the American Dilemma himself | 18:57 | |
| as a North Carolina college graduate at that time | 19:02 | |
| able to get only a janitor's job. | 19:05 | |
| But he also illustrated the moral imperatives | 19:10 | |
| that surround and impel scholarship. | 19:13 | |
| Myrtle's rigorous scholarship on race was value charged | 19:18 | |
| with a moral purpose, how to close the gap | 19:24 | |
| between the American creed and its racial deeds. | 19:29 | |
| Let his comment stand as a symbol of the link | 19:36 | |
| between (speaks foreign language) | 19:40 | |
| a reminder that however indirectly | 19:47 | |
| the training of persons in whatever discipline | 19:52 | |
| is not that they should be parasites, an ornaments | 19:54 | |
| on society, but servants and insofar as servants | 20:01 | |
| fulfilling the law of love. | 20:08 | |
| This moral mandate may say something | 20:12 | |
| to this besetting problem that seems to plague this | 20:16 | |
| and all other campuses the restless generation | 20:21 | |
| the uncommitted as Kenton's excellent study characterizes us | 20:27 | |
| who seem to regard college as a privilege and a right | 20:36 | |
| to be enjoyed Before it is an obligation and a commitment. | 20:41 | |
| The main question I hear students seeming to be asking is, | 20:50 | |
| "Why don't they make me happier here?" | 20:57 | |
| Which may not be the first question to ask of a university. | 21:02 | |
| This mood is symbolized on many new campuses | 21:10 | |
| in the shift of emotional center of gravity, | 21:14 | |
| from the chapel, the symbol of transcendent responsibility | 21:19 | |
| to the student union replete with TV lounges and snack bars, | 21:24 | |
| the symbol of pleasures and creature comforts. | 21:31 | |
| The chapel is the reminder of the Christian law of life. | 21:39 | |
| We gather here for the university service of worship | 21:47 | |
| not to recite a common creed, but whatever be are confused | 21:52 | |
| are conflicting theologies, we gather here to join | 22:02 | |
| in singleness of heart, | 22:08 | |
| to kneel in the presence of the great mystery that surrounds | 22:11 | |
| and blesses our short days. | 22:17 | |
| To recall That the law of our life is the law of love | 22:22 | |
| and to rise and go forth on our many paths | 22:30 | |
| to acquire skills of hand and mind for an informed heart | 22:36 | |
| renewed in joy made whole by grace. | 22:43 | |
| Amen. | 22:51 | |
| Let us pray. | 22:53 | |
| Restore unto us oh God, the joy of thy salvation, | 23:04 | |
| and renew in us a right spirit, | 23:08 | |
| that in going forth from the height of the altar of vision, | 23:13 | |
| we may honor thee in truth and how thy name | 23:19 | |
| in service to the common good. | 23:24 | |
| Now may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, | 23:29 | |
| the love of God, the fellowship of the holy spirit | 23:34 | |
| be with you all. | 23:39 | |
| (choir singing) | 23:47 |
