IVA The Modern as Ideal 1 Walter Gropius (1883-1969) 'The Theory and Organization of the Bauhaus' The author was the founder and first Director of the Bauhaus, established in Weimar in 1919. The reputation of the Bauhaus rests largely on its early promulgation of integrated modern design principles with a view to their industrial implementation. The institution's origins, however, were in the confused conditions of the end of a world war, the eruption and failure of a revolution, and the establishment of bourgeois democracy in the Weimar Republic. Accordingly a utopianism inseparable from this moment coexists in tension with a more orthodox technological and rationalistic element, particularly in early Bauhaus pronouncements. Originally published as Idee und Aufbau des Staatlichen Bauhaus Weimar by the Bauhaus Press (Bauhausvertag), Munich, 1923. The present extracts are taken from the translation in Herbert Bayer, Walter Gropius and Ise Gropius (eds.), Bauhaus 1919-1928, New York (Museum of Modern Art), 1938. The dominant spirit of our epoch is already recognizable although its form is not yet clearly defined. The old dualistic world-concept which envisaged the ego in opposition to the universe is rapidly losing ground. In its place is rising the idea of a universal unity in which all opposing forces exist in a state of absolute balance. This dawning recognition of the essential oneness of all things and their appearances endows creative effort with a fundamental inner meaning. No longer can anything exist in isolation. We perceive every form as the embodiment of an idea, every piece of work as a manifestation of our innermost selves. Only work which is the product of inner compulsion can have spiritual meaning. Mechanized work is lifeless, proper only to the lifeless machine. So long, however, as machine-economy remains an end in itself rather than a means of freeing the intellect from the burden of mechanical labor, the individual will remain enslaved and society will remain disordered. The solution depends on a change in the individual's attitude toward his work, not on the betterment of his outward circumstances, and the acceptance of this new principle is of decisi ve importance for new creative work.
IVA The Modern as Ideal 339 The 'academy' The tool of the spirit of yesterday was the 'academy.' It shut off the artist from the world of industry and handicraft, and thus brought about his complete isolation from the community. In vital epochs, on the other hand, the artist enriched all the arts and crafts of a community because he had a part in its vocational life, and because he acquired through actual practice as much adeptness and understanding as any other worker who began at the bottom and worked his way up. But lately the artist has been misled by the fatal and arrogant fallacy, fostered by the state, that art is a profession which can be mastered by study. Schooling alone can never produce art! Whether the finished product is an exercise in ingenuity or a work of art depends on the talent of the individual who creates it. This quality cannot be taught and cannot be learned. On the other hand, manual dexterity and the thorough knowledge which is a necessary foundation for all creative effort, whether the workman's or the artist's, can be taught and learned. Isolation of the artist Academic training, however, brought about the development of a great art-proletariat destined to social misery. For this art-proletariat, lulled into a dream of genius and enmeshed in artistic conceit, was being prepared for the 'profession' of architecture, painting, sculpture or graphic art, without being given the equipment of a real education - which alone could have assured it of economic and esthetic independence. Its abilities, in the final analysis, were confined to a sort of drawing-painting that had no relation to the realities of materials, techniques or economics. Lack of all vital connection with the life of the community led inevitably to barren esthetic speculation. The fundamental pedagogic mistake of the academy arose from its preoccupation with the idea of the individual genius and its discounting the value of commendable achievement on a less exalted level. Since the academy trained a myriad of minor talents in drawing and painting, of whom scarcely one in a thousand became a genuine architect or painter, the great mass of these individuals, fed upon false hopes and trained as one-sided academicians, was condemned to a life of fruitless artistic activity. Unequipped to function successfully in the struggle for existence, they found themsel ves numbered among the social drones, useless, by Yirtue of their schooling, in the productive life of the nation. : With the development of the academies genuine folk art died away. What remained was a drawing-room art detached from life. In the 19th century this dwindled to the production of individual paintings totally divorced from any relation to an architectural entity. The second half of the 19th century saw the beginning of a protest against the devitalizing influence of the academies. Ruskin and Morris in England, van de Velde in Belgium, Olbrich, Behrens and others in Germany, and, finally, the Deutsche Werkbund, all sought, and in the end discovered, the basis of a reunion between creative artists and the industrial World. In Germany, arts and crafts (Kunstgewerbe) schools were founded for
340 Freedom, Responsibility and Power the purpose of developing, in a new generation, talented individuals trained in industry and handicraft. But the academy was too firmly established: practical training never advanced beyond dilettantism, and draughted and rendered 'design' remained in the foreground. The foundations of this attempt were laid neither wide enough nor deep enough to avail much against the old l'art pour l'art attitude, so alien to, and so far removed from life. [... J Analysis of the designing process The objective of all creative effort in the visual arts is to give form to space.... But what is space, how can it be understood and given a form?... Although we may achieve an awareness of the infinite we can give form to space only with finite means. We become aware of space through our undivided Ego, through the simultaneous activity of soul, mind and body. A like concentration of all our forces is necessary to give it form. Through his intuition, through his metaphysical powers, man discovers the immaterial space of inward vision and inspiration. This conception of space demands realization in the material world, a realization which is accomplished by the brain and the hands. The brain conceives of mathematical space in terms of numbers and dimensions.... The hand masters matter through the crafts, and with the help of tools and machinery. Conception and visualization are always simultaneous. Only the individual's capacity to feel, to know and to execute varies in degree and in speed. True creative work can be done only by the man whose knowledge and mastery of the physical laws of statics, dynamics, optics, acoustics equip him to give life and shape to his inner vision. In a work of art the laws of the physical world, the intellectual world and the world of the spirit function and are expressed simultaneously. The Bauhaus at Weimar Every factor that must be considered in an educational system which is to produce actively creative human beings is implicit in such an analysis of the creative process. At the 'State Bauhaus at Weimar' the attempt was made for the first time to incorporate all these factors in a consistent program. [... J The theoretical curriculum of an art academy combined with the practical curriculum of an arts and crafts school was to constitute the basis of a comprehensive system for gifted students. Its credo was: 'The Bauhaus strives to coordinate all creative effort, to achieve, in a new architecture, the unification of all training in art and design. The ultimate, if distant, goal of the Bauhaus is the collective toor]: of art - the Building - in which no barriers exist between the structural and the decorative arts. The guiding principle of the Bauhaus was therefore the idea of creating a new unity through the welding together of many 'arts' and movements: a unity having its basis in Man himself and significant only as a living organism.
IVA The Modern as Ideal 341 Human achievement depends on the proper coordination of all the creative faculties. It is not enough to school one or another of them separately: they must all be thoroughly trained at the same time. The character and scope of the Bauhaus teachings derive from the realization of this. The Curriculum The course of instruction at the Bauhaus IS divided into: The Preliminary Course (Vorlehre) Practical and theoretical studies are carried on simultaneously in order to release the creative powers of the student, to help him grasp the physical nature of materials and the basic laws of design. Concentration on any particular stylistic movement is studiously avoided. Observation and representation - with the intention of showing the desired identity of Form and Content - define the limits of the preliminary course. Its chief function is to liberate the individual by breaking down conventional patterns of thought in order to make way for personal experiences and discoveries which will enable him to see his own potentialities and limitations. For this reason collective work is not essential in the preliminary course. Both subjective and objective observation will be cultivated: both the system of abstract laws and the interpretation of objective matter. Above all else, the discovery and proper valuation of the individual's means of expression shall be sought out. The creative possibilities of individuals vary. One finds his elementary expressions in rhythm, another in light and shade, a third in color, a fourth in materials, a fifth in sound, a sixth in proportion, a seventh in volumes or abstract space, an eighth in the relations between one and another, or between the two to a third or fourth. All the work produced in the preliminary course is done under the influence of instructors. It possesses artistic quality only in so far as any direct and logically developed expression of an individual which serves to lay the foundations of creative discipline can be called art. Instruction In form problems Intellectual education runs parallel to manual traimng. The apprentice is acquainted with his future stock-in-trade - the elements of form and color and the laws to which they are subject. Instead of studying the arbitrary individualistic and stylized formulae current at the academies, he is given the mental equipment with which to shape his own ideas of form. This training opens the 'Nay for the creative powers of the individual, establishing a basis on which different individuals can cooperate without losing their artistic independence. Collective architectural work becomes possible only when every individual,
- 342 Freedom, Responsibility and Power prepared by proper schooling, is capable of understanding the idea of the whole, and thus has the means harmoniously to coordinate his independent, even if limited, activity with the collective work. Instruction in the theory of form is carried on in close contact with manual training. Drawing and planning, thus losing their purely academic character, gain new significance as auxiliary means of expression. We must know both vocabulary and grammar in order to speak a language; only then can we communicate our thoughts. Man, who creates and constructs, must learn the specific language of construction in order to make others understand his idea. Its vocabulary consists of the elements of form and color and their structural laws. The mind must know them and control the hand if a creative idea is to be made visible. The musician who wants to make audible a musical idea needs for its rendering not only a musical instrument but also a knowledge of theory. Without this knowledge, his idea will never emerge from chaos. A corresponding knowledge of theory - which existed in a more vigorous era must again be established as a basis for practice in the visual arts. The academies, whose task it might have been to cultivate and develop such a theory, completely failed to do so, having lost contact with reality. Theory is not a recipe for the manufacturing of works of art, but the most essential element of collective construction; it provides the common basis on which many individuals are able to create together a superior unit of work; theory is not the achievement of individuals but of generations. The Bauhaus is consciously formulating a new coordination of the means of construction and expression. Without this, its ultimate aim would be impossible. For collaboration in a group is not to be obtained solely by correlating the abilities and talents of various individuals. Only an apparent unity can be achieved if many helpers carry out the designs of a single person. In fact, the individual's labor within the group should exist as his own independent accomplishment. Real unity can be achieved only by coherent restatement of the formal theme, by repetition of its integral proportions in all parts of the work. Thus everyone engaged in the work must understand the meaning and origin of the principal theme. Forms and colors gain meaning only as they are related to our inner selv-es. Used separately or in relation to one another they are the means of expressing different emotions and movements: they have no importance of their own. Red, for instance, evokes in us other emotions than does blue or yellow; round forms speak differently to us than do pointed or jagged forms. The elements which constitute the 'grammar' of creation are its rules of rhythm, of proportion, of light values and full or empty space. Vocabulary and grammar can be learned, but the most important factor of all, the organic life of the created work, originates in the creative powers of the individual. The practical training which accompanies the studies in form is founded as much on observation, on the exact representation or reproduction of nature, as it is on the creation of individual compositions. These two activities are profoundly different. The academies ceased to discriminate between them, confusing nature and art - though by their very origin they are antithetical. Art
IVA The Modern as Ideal 343 wants to triumph over Nature and to resolve the opposition in a new unity, 'and this process is consummated in the fight of the spirit against the material world. The spirit creates for itself a new life other than the life of nature. Each of these departments in the course on the theory of form functions in close association with the workshops, an association which prevents their wandering off into academicism. The goal of the Bauhaus curriculum... the culminating point of the Bauhaus teaching is a demand for a new and powerful working correlation of all the processes of creation. The gifted student must regain a feeling for the interwoven strands of practical and formal work. The joy of building, in the broadest meaning of that word, must replace the paper work of design. Architecture unites in a collective task all creative workers, from the simple artisan to the supreme artist. For this reason, the basis of collective education must be sufficiently broad to permit the development of every kind of talent. Since a universally applicable method for the discovery of talent does not exist, the individual in the course of his development must find for himself the field of activity best suited to him within the circle of the community. The majority become interested in production; the few extraordinarily gifted ones will suffer no limits to their activity. After they have completed the course of practical and formal instruction, they undertake independent research and experiment. Modern painting, breaking through old conventions, has released countless suggestions which are still waiting to be used by the practical world. But when, in the future, artists who sense new creative values have had practical training in the industrial world, they will themselves possess the means for realizing those values immediately. They will compel industry to serve their idea and industry will seek out and utilize their comprehensive training. 2 Paul Klee (1879-1940) from On Modern Art Swiss by birth, Klee spent most of his working life in Germany, latterly at the Bauhaus, ~ntil forced into exile by the victory of the Nazis in 1933. For much of this time he was Involved in a creative dialogue with Kandinsky. 'On Modern Art' was first delivered as a lecture to the Jena Kunstverein in 1924. It was first published, as Paul Klee: Uber die moderne Kunst, by the Verlag Benteli, Bern-Bumpliz, in 1945. The present extracts are taken from the translation by Paul Findlay in Herbert Read (intro.l, Paul Klee: On Modern Art, London, 1948, May I use a simile, the simile of the tree? The artist has studied this world of variety and has, we may suppose, unobtrusively found his way in it. His sense of direction has brought order into the passing stream of image and experience.
344 Freedom, Responsibility and Power This sense of direction in nature and life, this branching and spr eadin g array, I shall compare with the root of the tree. From the root the sap flows to the artist, flows through him, flow s to his eye. Thus he stands as the trunk of the tree. Battered and stirred by the strength of the flow, he molds his vision into his work. As, in full view of the world, th e crown of the tree unfolds and spreads in time and in space, so with his work. Nobody would affirm that the tree grows its crown in the image of its root. Between above and below can be no mirrored reflection. It is ob vious that different functions expanding in different elements must produce vi tal di vergence s. But it is just the artist who at times is denied those departures from nature which his art demands. He has even been charged with incompetence and deliberate distortion. And yet, standing at his appointed place, the trunk of the tre e, he does nothing other than gather and pass on what comes to him from the depths. He neither serves nor rules - he transmits. His position is humble. And the beauty at the crown is not his own. He IS merely a channel. The creation of a work of art - the growth of the crown of the tree - must of necessity, as a result of entering into the specific dimensions of pictorial art, be accompanied b y distortion of the natural form. For, therein is nature reborn. What, then, are these specific dimensions? First, there are the more or less limited, formal factors, such as lin e, tone value, and color. Of these, line is the most limited, being solely a matter of simple Measure. Its properties are length (long or short ), angles (obtuse or acute), length of radius and focal distance. All are quantities subject to measurement. Measure is the characteristic of this element. Where the possibility of measurement is in doubt, line cannot have been handled with absolute purity. Of a quite different nature is tone value, or, as it is also called, chiaroscuro - the many degrees of shading between black and white. This second element can be characterized by Weight. One stage may be more or less rich in white energy, another more or less weighted toward the black. The various stages can be weighed against one another. Further, the blacks can be related to a white norm (on a white background) and the whites to a black norm (on a blackboard). Or both together can be referred to a medium grey norm.
IVA The Modern as Ideal 345 Thirdly, color, which clearly has quite different characteristics. For it can be neither weighed nor measured. Neither with scales nor with ruler can any difference be detected between two surfaces, one a pure yellow and the other a pure red, of similar area and similar brilliance. And yet, an essential difference remains, which we, in words, label yellow and red. In the same way, salt and sugar can be compared, in their saltiness and sweetness. Hence, color may be defined as Quality. We now have three formal means at our disposal - Measure, Weight, and Quality, which in spite of fundamental differences, have a definite interrelationship. The form of this relationship will be shown by the following short analysis. Color is primarily Quality. Secondly, it is also Weight, for it has not only color value but also brilliance. Thirdly, it is Measure, for besides Quality and Weight, it has its limits, its area, and its extent, all of which may be measured. Tone value is primarily Weight, but in its extent and its boundaries, it is also Measure. Line, however, is solely Measure. Thus, we have found three quantities which all intersect in the region of pure color, two only in the region of pure contrast, and only one extends to the region of pure line. These three quantities impart character, each according to its individual contribution - three interlocked compartments. The largest compartment contains three quantities, the medium two, and the smallest only one. [... ] This shows a remarkable intermixture of our quantities and it is only logical that the same high order should be shown in the clarity with which they are used. It is possible to produce quite enough combinations as it is. Vagueness in one's work is therefore only permissible when there is a real inner need. A need which could explain the use of colored or very pale lines, or the application of further vagueness such as the shades of grey ranging from yellow to blue. Leaving this subject of formal elements I now come to the first construction Using the three categories of elements which have just been enumerated. This is the climax of our conscious creative effort. This is the essence of our craft. This is critical. From this point, given mastery of the medium, the structure can be assured foundations of such strength that it is able to reach out into dimensions far removed from conscious endeavor.
346 Freedom, Responsibility and Power This phase of formation has the same critical importance in the negative sense. It is the point where one can miss the greatest and most important aspects of content and thus fail, although possibly possessing the most exquisite talent. For one may simply lose one's bearings on the formal plane. Speaking from mv own experience, it depends on the mood of the artist at the time which of th~ many elements are brought out of their general order, out of their appointed array, to be raised together to a new order and form an image which is normally called the subject. This choice of formal elements and the form of their mutual relationship is, within narrow limits, analogous to the idea of motif and theme in musical thought. With the gradual growth of such an image before the eyes an association of ideas gradually insinuates itself which may tempt one to a material interpretation. For any image of complex structure can, with some effort of imagination, be compared with familiar pictures from nature. These associative properties of the structure, once exposed and labelled, no longer correspond wholly to the direct will of the artist (at least not to his most intensive will) and just these associative properties have been the source of passionate misunderstandings between artist and layman. While the artist is still exerting all his efforts to group the formal elements purely and logically so that each in its place is right and none clashes with the other, a layman, watching from behind, pronounces the devastating words 'But that isn't a bit like uncle.' The artist, if his nerve is disciplined, thinks to himself, 'To hell with uncle! I must get on with my building.. " This new brick is a little too heavy and to my mind puts too much weight on the left; I must add a good-sized counterweight on the right to restore the equilibrium.' And he adds this side and that until finally the scales show a balance. And he is relieved if, in the end, the shaking which he has perforce had to give his original pure structure of good elements, has only gone so far as to provide that opposition which exists as contrast in a living picture. But sooner or later, the association of ideas may of itself occur to him, without the intervention of a layman. Nothing need then prevent him from accepting it, provided that it introduces itself under its proper title. Acceptance of this material association may suggest additions which, once the subject is formulated, clearly stand in essential relationship to it. If the artist is fortunate, these natural forms may fit into a slight gap in the formal composition, as though they had always belonged there. The argument is therefore concerned less with the question of the existence of an object, than with its appearance at any given moment - with its nature.
IVA The Modern as Ideal 347 I only hope that the layman who, in a picture, always looks for his favorite subject, will, as far as I am concerned, gradually die out and remain to me nothing but a ghost which cannot help its failings. [... ] Certain proportions of line, the combination of certain tones from the scale of tone values, certain harmonies of color, carry with them at the time quite distinctive and outstanding modes of expression. The linear proportions can, for example, refer to angles: movements which are angular and zigzag - as opposed to smooth and horizontal - strike resonances of expression which are similarly contrasting. In the same way a conception of contrast can be given by two forms of linear construction, the one consisting of a firmly join ted structure and the other of lines loosely scattered. Contrasting modes of expression in the region of tone value are given by: The wide use of all tones from black to white, implying full-bodied strength. Or the limited use of the upper light half or the lower dark half of the scale. Or medium shades around the grey which imply weakness through too much or too little light. Or timid shadows from the middle. These, again, show great contrasts In meaning. And what tremendous possibilities for the variation of meaning are offered by the combination of colors. Color as tone value: e.g. red in red, i.e. the entire range from a deficiency to an excess of red, either widely extended, or limited in range. Then the same in yellow (something quite different). The same in blue - what contrasts! Or colors diametrically opposed - i.e. changes from red to green, from yellow to purple, from blue to orange. Tremendous fragments of meaning. Or changes of color in the direction of chords, not touching the grey center, but meeting in a region of warmer or cooler grey. What subtleties of shading compared with the former contrasts. Or: color changes in the direction of arcs of the circle, from yellow through orange to red or from red through violet to blue, or far flung over the whole circumference. What tremendous variations from the smallest shading to the glowing symphony of color. What perspectives in the dimension of meaning! Or finally, journeys through the whole field of color, including the grey center, and even touching the scale from black to white.
348 Freedom, Responsibility and Power Only on a new dimension can one go beyond these last possibilities. We could now consider what is the proper place for the assorted colors, for each assortment clearly possesses its possibilities of combination. And each formation, each combination will have its own particular constructive expression, each figure its face - its features. I would like now to examine the dimensions of the object in a new light and so try to show how it is that the artist frequently arrives at what appears to be such an arbitrary 'deformation' of natural forms. First, he does not attach such intense importance to natural form as do so many realist critics, because, for him, these final forms are not the real stuff of the process of natural creation. For he places more value on the powers which do the forming than on the final forms themselves. He is, perhaps unintentionally, a philosopher, and if he does not, with the optimists, hold this world to be the best of all possible worlds, nor to be so bad that it is unfit to serve as a model, yet he says: 'In its present shape it is not the only possible world.' Thus he surveys with penetrating eye the finished forms which nature places before him. The deeper he looks, the more readily he can extend his view from the present to the past, the more deeply he is impressed by the one essential image of creation itself, as Genesis, rather than by the image of nature, the finished product. Then he permits himself the thought that the process of creation can today hardly be complete and he sees the act of world creation stretching from the past to the future. Genesis eternal! He goes still further! He says to himself, thinking of life around him: this world at one time looked different and, in the future, will look different again. Then, flying off to the infinite, he thinks: it is very probable that, on other stars, creation has produced a completely different result. Such mobility of thought on the process of natural creation is good training for creative work. It has the power to move the artist fundamentally, and since he is himself mobile, he may be relied upon to maintain freedom of development of his own creati ve methods. This being so, the artist must be forgiven if he regards the present state of outward appearances in his own particular world as accidentally fixed in time and space. And as altogether inadequate compared with his penetrating vision and intense depth of feeling.
IV.'\. The Modern as Ideal 349..'" These unsettled times have brought chaos and confusion (or so it seems, if we are not too near to judge). But among artists, even among the youngest of them, one urge seems to be gradually gaining ground: The urge to the culture of these creative means, to their pure cultivation, to their pure use. The legend of the childishness of my drawing must have originated from those linear compositions of mine in which I tried to combine a concrete image, say that of a man, with the pure representation of the linear element. Had I wished to present the man 'as he is,' then I should have had to use such a bewildering confusion of line that pure elementary representation would have been out of the question. The result would have been vagueness beyond recognition. And anyway, I do not wish to represent the man as he is, but only as he might be. And thus I could arrive at a happy association between my vision of life [Weltanschauung] and pure artistic craftsmanship. And so it is over the whole field of use of the formal means: in all things, even in colors, must all trace of vagueness be avoided. This then is what is called the untrue coloring in modern art. As you can see from this example of 'childishness' I concern myself with work on the partial processes of art. I am also a draughtsman. I have tried pure drawing, I have tried painting in pure tone values. In color, I have tried all partial methods to which I have been led by my sense of direction in the color circle. As a result, I have worked out methods of painting in colored tone values, in complementary colors, in multicolors and methods of total color painting. Always combined with the more subconscious dimensions of the picture. Then I tried all possible syntheses of two methods. Combining and again combining, but, of course, always preserving the culture of the pure element. Sometimes I dream of a work of really great breadth, ranging through the whole region of element, object, meaning, and style. 'rhis, I fear, will remain a dream, but it is a good thing even now to bear the possibility occasionally in mind. NOthing can be rushed. It must grow, it should grow of itself, and if the time ever Comes for that work - then so much the better!
350 Freedom, Responsibility and Power We must go on seeking it! We have found parts, but not the whole! We still lack the ultimate power, for: the people are not with us. But we seek a people. We began over there in the Bauhaus. We began there with a community to which each one of us gave what he had. More we cannot do. 3 Hart Crane (1899-1932) 'General Aims and Theories' The author was an American poet. This theoretical essay outlines a characteristically Modernist view on the relation between the contingencies of history and the apparently timeless demands of aesthetics. It was written in 1925. This version taken from Philip Horton, Hart Crane: The Life of an American Poet, New York, 1976. It is a terrific problem that faces the poet today - a world that is so in transition from a decayed culture toward a reorganization of human evaluations that there are few common terms, general denominators of speech that are solid enough or that ring with any vibration or spiritual conviction. The great mythologies of the past (including the Church) are deprived of enough facade to even launch good raillery against. Yet much of their traditions are operative still - in millions of chance combinations of related and unrelated detail, psychological reference, figures of speech, precepts, etc. These are all a part of our common experience and the terms, at least partially, of that very experience when it defines or extends itself. The deliberate program, then, of a 'break' with the past or tradition seems to me to be a sentimental fallacy [... ] I put no particular value on the simple objective of 'modernity.' The element of the temporal location of an artist's creation is of very secondary importance; it can be left to the impressionist or historian just as well. It seems to me that a poet will accidentally define his time well enough simply by reacting honestly and to the full extent of his sensibilities to the states of passion, experience and rumination that fate forces on him, first hand. He must, of course, have a sufficiently universal basis of experience to make his imagination selective and valuable. His picture of the 'period,' then, will simply be a by-product of his curiosity and the relation of his experience to a postulated 'eternity.' I am concerned with the future of America, but not because I think that America has any so-called par value as a state or as a group of people... It is only because I feel persuaded that here are destined to be discovered certain as yet undefined spiritual quantities, perhaps a new hierarchy of faith not to be developed so completely elsewhere. And in this process I like to feel myself as a potential factor; certainly I must speak in its terms and what discoveries I may make are situated in its experience.