RPF0517-Isaiahs_Job
00:00:00.000 | Today on Radical Personal Finance I have a unique show for you, very much out of the
00:00:07.080 | ordinary for Radical Personal Finance and yet I believe very practical and applicable.
00:00:14.160 | Today I'm going to read to you an essay to which I have alluded at various times in Radical
00:00:19.240 | Personal Finance history called Isaiah's Job.
00:00:23.860 | This essay was first published in the year 1936 in the Atlantic Monthly and is written
00:00:30.820 | by a man named Albert J. Nock.
00:00:34.840 | In essence, it's about the value of not trying to seek the masses.
00:00:40.440 | This essay has been very influential for me personally, very encouraging at different
00:00:44.620 | times and I believe has broad application to you and to your life.
00:00:50.940 | It is not an essay that will specifically tell you how to get rich.
00:00:53.700 | In fact, it may be the exact opposite.
00:00:55.140 | It will tell you why you shouldn't worry about getting rich with your message.
00:00:58.980 | But it is something that I have found to be very stimulating and very helpful.
00:01:04.740 | I'd like to provide more commentary but I may do that elsewhere.
00:01:07.680 | As with many good works of literature, I think it's best to let this particular essay stand
00:01:13.860 | on its own two feet and let you draw your own meaning and conclusions from this.
00:01:20.100 | The essay that I'm about to read for you will be deeply philosophical and probably
00:01:25.260 | challenging to you.
00:01:27.500 | But I would encourage you not to turn it off but to embrace the challenge.
00:01:33.020 | If anything, this should be a point of inspiration to recognize that this essay was not written
00:01:40.540 | to an academic audience.
00:01:42.540 | It was not written in academic ease, the weird language that is totally unintelligible to
00:01:49.420 | those of us who are not involved in academics.
00:01:52.120 | This was written as what would be termed a popular essay to be published in a popular
00:01:56.460 | magazine.
00:01:58.260 | And yet you'll find that the literary quality will be challenging for you.
00:02:02.420 | But stick with it.
00:02:03.780 | The first page or two is a little bit slow to start but the ideas here are very, very
00:02:08.380 | powerful.
00:02:09.580 | So give it a shot and see if you don't find these ideas to be helpful, influential, and
00:02:15.100 | thought-provoking for you.
00:02:16.380 | This essay has been very, very useful for me in my life over the past years.
00:02:22.420 | Isaiah's Job by Albert J. Nock, first published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1936.
00:02:31.300 | One evening last autumn, I sat long hours with a European acquaintance while he expounded
00:02:36.100 | a political-economic doctrine which seemed sound as a nut and in which I could find no
00:02:42.420 | defect.
00:02:44.080 | At the end, he said with great earnestness, "I have a mission to the masses.
00:02:47.660 | I feel that I am called to get the ear of the people.
00:02:50.900 | I shall devote the rest of my life to spreading my doctrine far and wide among the population.
00:02:56.840 | What do you think?"
00:02:58.800 | An embarrassing question in any case and doubly so under the circumstances because my acquaintance
00:03:03.820 | is a very learned man, one of the three or four really first-class minds that Europe
00:03:09.060 | produced in his generation.
00:03:11.040 | And naturally, I, as one of the unlearned, was inclined to regard his lightest word with
00:03:16.980 | reverence amounting to awe.
00:03:19.540 | Still, I reflected, even the greatest mind cannot possibly know everything and I was
00:03:24.340 | pretty sure that he had not had my opportunities for observing the masses of mankind and that
00:03:31.060 | therefore I probably knew them better than he did.
00:03:34.660 | So I mustered courage to say that he had no such mission and would do well to get the
00:03:40.340 | idea out of his head at once.
00:03:43.540 | He would find that the masses would not care two pins for his doctrine, and still less
00:03:49.020 | for himself, since in such circumstances the popular favorite is generally some Barabbas.
00:03:56.500 | I even went so far as to say, he is a Jew, that his idea seemed to show that he was not
00:04:02.380 | very well up on his own native literature.
00:04:06.340 | He smiled at my jest and asked what I meant by it, and I referred him to the story of
00:04:12.660 | the prophet Isaiah.
00:04:15.580 | It occurred to me then that this story is much worth recalling just now, when so many
00:04:22.060 | wise men and soothsayers appear to be burdened with a message to the masses.
00:04:27.980 | Dr. Townsend has a message.
00:04:30.780 | Father Coughlin has one.
00:04:32.780 | Mr. Upton Sinclair.
00:04:34.740 | Mr. Lippman.
00:04:36.020 | Mr. Chase and the Planned Economy Brethren.
00:04:39.140 | Mr. Tugwell and the New Dealers.
00:04:41.500 | Mr. Smith and Liberty Leaguers.
00:04:44.100 | The list is endless.
00:04:45.860 | I cannot remember a time when so many energumens were so variously proclaiming the word to
00:04:52.380 | the multitude and telling them what they must do to be saved.
00:04:57.300 | This being so, it occurred to me, as I say, that the story of Isaiah might have something
00:05:02.340 | in it to steady and compose the human spirit until this tyranny of windiness is overpassed.
00:05:10.060 | I shall paraphrase the story in our common speech, since it has to be pieced out from
00:05:15.340 | various sources, and inasmuch as respectable scholars have thought fit to put out a whole
00:05:20.300 | new version of the Bible in the American vernacular, I shall take shelter behind them, if need
00:05:25.140 | be, against the charge of dealing irreverently with the sacred scriptures.
00:05:31.060 | The prophet's career began at the end of King Uzziah's reign, say, about 740 BC.
00:05:39.140 | This reign was uncommonly long, almost half a century, and apparently prosperous.
00:05:45.420 | It was one of those prosperous reigns, however, like the reign of Marcus Aurelius at Rome,
00:05:52.140 | or the administration of Ubulus at Athens, or of Mr. Coolidge at Washington, where at
00:05:59.060 | the end, the prosperity suddenly peters out and things go by the board with a resounding
00:06:05.740 | crash.
00:06:08.240 | In the year of Uzziah's death, the Lord commissioned the prophet to go out and warn the people
00:06:13.900 | of the wrath to come.
00:06:15.380 | "Tell them what a worthless lot they are," he said.
00:06:18.580 | "Tell them what is wrong and why and what is going to happen unless they have a change
00:06:23.180 | of heart and straighten up.
00:06:25.140 | Don't mince matters.
00:06:26.660 | Make it clear that they are positively down to their last chance.
00:06:30.060 | Give it to them good and strong and keep on giving it to them.
00:06:33.260 | I suppose I perhaps I ought to tell you," he added, "that it won't do any good.
00:06:37.740 | The official class and their intelligentsia will turn up their noses at you and the masses
00:06:42.240 | will not even listen.
00:06:43.940 | They will all keep on in their own ways until they carry everything down to destruction,
00:06:48.980 | and you will probably be lucky if you get out with your life."
00:06:53.380 | Isaiah had been very willing to take on the job.
00:06:57.020 | In fact, he had asked for it.
00:06:59.260 | But the prospect put a new face on the situation.
00:07:02.680 | It raised the obvious question.
00:07:05.340 | Why, if all that were so, if the enterprise were to be a failure from the start, was there
00:07:11.220 | any sense in starting it?
00:07:13.580 | "Ah," the Lord said, "you do not get the point.
00:07:17.660 | There is a remnant there that you know nothing about.
00:07:21.260 | They are obscure, unorganized, inarticulate, each one rubbing along as best he can.
00:07:29.180 | They need to be encouraged and braced up, because when everything has gone completely
00:07:33.540 | to the dogs, they are the ones who will come back and build up a new society.
00:07:38.820 | And meanwhile, your preaching will reassure them and keep them hanging on.
00:07:44.300 | Your job is to take care of the remnant.
00:07:47.620 | So be off now and set about it."
00:07:50.820 | Apparently, then, if the Lord's word is good for anything, I do not offer any opinion
00:07:56.500 | about that, the only element in Judean society that was particularly worth bothering about
00:08:03.660 | was the remnant.
00:08:07.180 | Isaiah seems, finally, to have got it through his head that this was the case, that nothing
00:08:12.420 | was to be expected from the masses, but that if anything substantial were ever to be done
00:08:17.380 | in Judea, the remnant would have to do it.
00:08:21.140 | This is a very striking and suggestive idea, but before going on to explore it, we need
00:08:26.860 | to be quite clear about our terms.
00:08:29.020 | What do we mean by "the masses" and what by "the remnant"?
00:08:36.000 | As the word "masses" is commonly used, it suggests agglomerations of poor and underprivileged
00:08:43.980 | people, laboring people, proletarians, and it means nothing like that.
00:08:49.940 | It means simply the majority.
00:08:52.820 | The mass man is one who has neither the force of intellect to apprehend the principles issuing
00:08:59.460 | in what we know as the humane life, nor the force of character to adhere to those principles
00:09:05.020 | steadily and strictly as laws of conduct.
00:09:08.940 | And because such people make up the great and overwhelming majority of mankind, they
00:09:13.560 | are called collectively "the masses."
00:09:17.740 | The line of differentiation between "the masses" and "the remnant" is set invariably
00:09:23.460 | by quality, not by circumstance.
00:09:27.820 | The remnant are those who, by force of intellect, are able to apprehend these principles and
00:09:34.380 | by force of character are able, at least measurably, to cleave to them.
00:09:40.420 | The masses are those who are unable to do either.
00:09:44.560 | The picture which Isaiah presents of the Judean masses is most unfavorable.
00:09:49.580 | In his view, the mass man, be he high or be he lowly, rich or poor, prince or pauper,
00:09:57.140 | gets off very badly.
00:09:59.520 | He appears as not only weak-minded and weak-willed, but as by consequence, knavish, arrogant,
00:10:07.780 | grasping, dissipated, unprincipled, unscrupulous.
00:10:13.620 | The mass woman also gets off badly as sharing all the mass man's untoward qualities and
00:10:19.460 | contributing a few of her own in the way of vanity and laziness, extravagance and foible.
00:10:26.140 | The list of luxury products that she patronized is interesting.
00:10:30.740 | It calls to mind the women's page of a Sunday newspaper in 1928 or the display set forth
00:10:35.540 | in one of our professedly "smart" periodicals.
00:10:40.180 | In another place, Isaiah even recalls the affectations that we used to know by the name
00:10:44.980 | "flappergate" and the "debutante slouch."
00:10:49.340 | It may be fair to discount Isaiah's vivacity a little for prophetic fervor.
00:10:56.060 | After all, since his real job was not to convert the masses but to brace and reassure the remnant,
00:11:02.680 | he probably felt that he might lay it on indiscriminately and as thick as he liked.
00:11:06.980 | In fact, that he was expected to do so.
00:11:10.780 | But even so, the Judean mass man must have been a most objectionable individual and the
00:11:17.100 | mass woman utterly odious.
00:11:20.860 | If the modern spirit, whatever that may be, is disinclined towards taking the Lord's
00:11:26.420 | word at its face value, as I hear is the case, we may observe that Isaiah's testimony to
00:11:31.900 | the character of the masses has strong collateral support from respectable Gentile authority.
00:11:38.140 | Plato lived into the administration of Ubulus when Athens was at the peak of its "jazz
00:11:44.340 | and paper" era, and he speaks of the Athenian masses with all Isaiah's fervency, even
00:11:50.700 | comparing them to a herd of ravenous wild beasts.
00:11:54.900 | Curiously, too, he applies Isaiah's own word, "remnant," to the worthier portion
00:12:01.560 | of Athenian society.
00:12:03.340 | "There is but a very small remnant," he says, "of those who possess a saving force
00:12:09.900 | of intellect and force of character, too small, preciously as to Judea, to be of any avail
00:12:16.860 | against the ignorant and vicious preponderance of the masses."
00:12:22.560 | But Isaiah was a preacher and Plato a philosopher, and we tend to regard preachers and philosophers
00:12:30.760 | rather as passive observers of the drama of life than as active participants.
00:12:37.580 | Hence, in a matter of this kind, their judgment might be suspected of being a little uncompromising,
00:12:43.980 | a little acrid, or as the French say, "s'engrenou."
00:12:49.120 | We may therefore bring forward another witness who was preeminently a man of affairs and
00:12:54.860 | whose judgment cannot lie under this suspicion.
00:12:58.760 | Marcus Aurelius was a ruler of the greatest of empires, and in that capacity he not only
00:13:04.320 | had the Roman mass man under observation, but he had him on his hands twenty-four hours
00:13:11.020 | a day for eighteen years.
00:13:14.260 | What he did not know about him was not worth knowing, and what he thought of him is abundantly
00:13:21.420 | attested on almost every page of the little book of jottings which he scribbled offhand
00:13:26.180 | from day to day and which he meant for no eye but his own ever to see.
00:13:32.700 | This view of the masses is the one that we find prevailing at large among the ancient
00:13:37.460 | authorities whose writings have come down to us.
00:13:40.740 | In the eighteenth century, however, certain European philosophers spread the notion that
00:13:45.220 | the mass man in his natural state is not at all the kind of person that earlier authorities
00:13:50.760 | made him out to be, but on the contrary that he is a worthy object of interest.
00:13:57.380 | His untowardness is the effect of environment, an effect for which society is somehow responsible.
00:14:06.660 | If only his environment permitted him to live according to his lights, he would undoubtedly
00:14:13.540 | show himself to be quite a fellow, and the best way to secure a more favorable environment
00:14:18.520 | for him would be to let him arrange it for himself.
00:14:22.660 | The French Revolution acted powerfully as a springboard for this idea, projecting its
00:14:27.500 | influence in all directions throughout Europe.
00:14:30.960 | On this side of the ocean, a whole new continent stood ready for a large-scale experiment with
00:14:36.260 | this theory.
00:14:37.780 | It afforded every conceivable resource whereby the masses might develop a civilization made
00:14:42.700 | in their own likeness and after their own image.
00:14:46.580 | There was no force of tradition to disturb them in their preponderance or to check them
00:14:51.420 | in a thoroughgoing disparagement of the remnant.
00:14:54.980 | Immense natural wealth, unquestioned predominance, virtual isolation, freedom from external interference
00:15:01.940 | and the fear of it, and finally a century and a half of time.
00:15:06.620 | Such are the advantages which the mass man has had in bringing forth a civilization which
00:15:11.880 | should set the earlier preachers and philosophers at naught in their belief that nothing substantial
00:15:18.060 | can be expected from the masses, but only from the remnant.
00:15:23.400 | His success is unimpressive.
00:15:26.980 | From the evidence so far presented, one must say, I think, that the mass man's conception
00:15:32.940 | of what life has to offer and his choice of what to ask from life seems now to be pretty
00:15:39.140 | well what they were in the times of Isaiah and Plato, and so too seem the catastrophic
00:15:45.340 | social conflicts and convulsions in which his views of life and his demands on life
00:15:50.440 | involve him.
00:15:52.300 | I do not wish to dwell on this, however, but merely to observe that the monstrously inflated
00:15:59.020 | importance of the masses has apparently put all thought of a possible mission to the remnant
00:16:04.820 | out of the modern prophet's head.
00:16:08.540 | This is obviously quite as it should be, provided that the earlier preachers and philosophers
00:16:13.940 | were actually wrong and that all final hope of the human race is actually centered in
00:16:18.420 | the masses.
00:16:19.660 | If, on the other hand, it should turn out that the Lord and Isaiah and Plato and Marcus
00:16:25.780 | Aurelius were right in their estimate of the relative social value of the masses and the
00:16:31.500 | remnant, the case is somewhat different.
00:16:35.380 | Moreover, since with everything in their favor the masses have so far given such an extremely
00:16:41.360 | discouraging account of themselves, it would seem that the question at issue between these
00:16:46.420 | two bodies of opinion might most profitably be reopened.
00:16:53.700 | But without following up this suggestion, I wish only, as I said, to remark the fact
00:17:00.460 | that as things now stand, Isaiah's job seems rather to go begging.
00:17:08.140 | Everyone with a message nowadays is, like my venerable European friend, eager to take
00:17:14.440 | it to the masses.
00:17:16.780 | His first, last, and only thought is of mass acceptance and mass approval.
00:17:24.000 | His great care is to put his doctrine in such shape as will capture the masses' attention
00:17:30.140 | and interest.
00:17:31.740 | This attitude towards the masses is so exclusive, so devout, that one is reminded of the troglodytic
00:17:38.380 | monster described by Plato and the assiduous crowd at the entrance to its cave trying,
00:17:44.340 | persequiously, to placate it and win its favor, trying to interpret its inarticulate noises,
00:17:50.620 | trying to find out what it wants, and eagerly offering it all sorts of things that they
00:17:55.260 | think might strike its fancy.
00:17:58.380 | The main trouble with all this is its reaction upon the mission itself.
00:18:04.980 | It necessitates an opportunistic sophistication of one's doctrine, which profoundly alters
00:18:12.820 | its character and reduces it to a mere placebo.
00:18:16.860 | If you are a preacher, you wish to attract as large a congregation as you can, which
00:18:23.060 | means an appeal to the masses.
00:18:25.780 | This in turn means adapting the terms of your message to the order of intellect and character
00:18:30.820 | that the masses exhibit.
00:18:33.380 | If you are an educator, say with a college on your hands, you wish to get as many students
00:18:38.660 | as possible, and you whittle down your requirements accordingly.
00:18:43.700 | If a writer, you aim at getting many readers.
00:18:47.700 | If a publisher, many purchasers.
00:18:50.660 | If a philosopher, many disciples.
00:18:54.100 | If a reformer, many converts.
00:18:57.060 | If a musician, many auditors, and so on.
00:19:00.460 | But as we see on all sides, in the realization of these several desires, the prophetic message
00:19:05.580 | is so heavily adulterated with trivialities in every instance that its effect on the masses
00:19:11.220 | is merely to harden them in their sins.
00:19:14.220 | Meanwhile, the remnant, aware of this adulteration and of the desires that prompt it, turn their
00:19:21.340 | backs on the prophet and will have nothing to do with him or his message.
00:19:25.940 | Isaiah, on the other hand, worked under no such disabilities.
00:19:31.020 | He preached to the masses only in the sense that he preached publicly.
00:19:36.340 | Anyone who liked might listen.
00:19:38.380 | Anyone who liked might pass by.
00:19:40.820 | He knew that the remnant would listen.
00:19:43.960 | And knowing also that nothing was to be expected of the masses under any circumstances, he
00:19:48.420 | made no specific appeal to them, did not accommodate his message to their measure in any way, and
00:19:55.020 | did not care two straws whether they heeded it or not.
00:20:00.100 | As a modern publisher might put it, he was not worrying about circulation or about advertising.
00:20:07.660 | Hence, with all such obsessions quite out of the way, he was in a position to do his
00:20:13.260 | level best without fear or favor and answerable only to his august boss.
00:20:21.700 | If a prophet were not too particular about making money out of his mission or getting
00:20:27.420 | a dubious sort of notoriety out of it, the foregoing considerations would lead one to
00:20:32.380 | say that serving the remnant looks like a good job.
00:20:36.100 | An assignment that you can really put your back into and do your best without thinking
00:20:39.660 | about results is a real job, whereas serving the masses is, at best, only half a job, considering
00:20:49.060 | the inexorable conditions that the masses impose upon their servants.
00:20:54.460 | They ask you to give them what they want.
00:20:57.520 | They insist upon it and will take nothing else, and following their whims, their irrational
00:21:03.820 | changes of fancy, their hot and cold fits is a tedious business.
00:21:09.180 | To say nothing of the fact that what they want at any time makes very little call on
00:21:14.500 | one's resources of prophecy.
00:21:18.380 | The remnant, on the other hand, want only the best you have, whatever that may be.
00:21:25.660 | Give them that and they are satisfied.
00:21:28.820 | You have nothing more to worry about.
00:21:31.440 | The prophet of the American masses must aim consciously at the lowest common denominator
00:21:36.300 | of intellect, taste, and character among 120 million people, and this is a distressing
00:21:44.220 | task.
00:21:45.720 | The prophet of the remnant, on the contrary, is in the enviable position of Papa Haydn
00:21:51.660 | in the household of Prince Esterházy.
00:21:54.780 | All Haydn had to do was keep forking out the very best music he knew how to produce, knowing
00:22:00.940 | it would be understood and appreciated by those for whom he produced it, and carrying
00:22:08.180 | not a button what anyone else thought of it, and that makes a good job.
00:22:16.720 | In a sense, nevertheless, as I have said, it is not a rewarding job.
00:22:22.660 | If you can touch the fancy of the masses and have the sagacity to keep always one jump
00:22:28.640 | ahead of their vagaries and vacillations, you can get good returns in money from serving
00:22:34.240 | the masses and good returns also in a mouth-to-ear type of notoriety.
00:22:42.560 | Digito mostrare et dicere, iqu'est.
00:22:47.040 | We all know innumerable politicians, journalists, dramatists, novelists, and the like who have
00:22:54.160 | done extremely well by themselves in these ways.
00:22:59.080 | Taking care of the remnant, on the contrary, holds little promise of any such rewards.
00:23:05.520 | A prophet of the remnant will not grow purse-proud on the financial returns from his work, nor
00:23:12.520 | is it likely that he will get any great renown out of it.
00:23:16.000 | Isaiah's case was exceptional to this second rule, and there are others, but not many.
00:23:23.840 | It may be thought, then, that while taking care of the remnant is no doubt a good job,
00:23:29.760 | it is not an especially interesting job because it is, as a rule, so poorly paid.
00:23:37.020 | I have my doubts about this.
00:23:39.360 | There are other compensations to be got out of a job besides money and notoriety, and
00:23:46.680 | some of them seem substantial enough to be attractive.
00:23:51.260 | Many jobs which do not pay well are yet profoundly interesting, as, for instance, the job of
00:23:57.200 | research students in the sciences is said to be, and the job of looking after the remnant
00:24:01.520 | seems to me, as I have surveyed it for many years from my seat in the grandstand, to be
00:24:06.580 | as interesting as any that can be found in the world.
00:24:11.920 | What chiefly makes it so, I think, is that in any given society the remnant are always
00:24:18.760 | so largely an unknown quantity.
00:24:22.040 | You do not know and will never know more than two things about them.
00:24:28.020 | You can be sure of those, dead sure, as our phrase is, but you will never be able to make
00:24:33.700 | even a respectable guess at anything else.
00:24:37.880 | You do not know and will never know who the remnant are, nor what they are doing or will
00:24:47.000 | do.
00:24:48.500 | Two things you do know and know more.
00:24:51.980 | First, that they exist.
00:24:55.300 | Second, that they will find you.
00:25:00.320 | Except for these two certainties, working for the remnant means working in impenetrable
00:25:07.080 | darkness, and this, I should say, is just the condition calculated most effectively
00:25:14.020 | to pique the interest of any prophet who is properly gifted with the imagination, insight,
00:25:20.580 | and intellectual curiosity necessary to a successful pursuit of his trade.
00:25:28.020 | The fascination and the despair of the historian as he looks back upon Isaiah's Jewry, upon
00:25:36.240 | Plato's Athens, or upon Rome of the Antonines, is the hope of discovering and laying bare
00:25:44.000 | the substratum of right thinking and well-doing, which he knows must have existed somewhere
00:25:50.060 | in those societies, because no kind of collective life can possibly go on without it.
00:25:56.140 | He finds tantalizing intimations of it here and there in many places, as in the Greek
00:26:02.060 | Anthology, in the scrapbook of Aulus Gellius, in the poems of Osonius, and in the brief
00:26:07.900 | and touching tribute Bene Merenti bestowed upon the unknown occupants of Roman tombs.
00:26:14.720 | But these are vague and fragmentary.
00:26:18.540 | They lead him nowhere in his search for some kind of measure on this substratum, but merely
00:26:24.540 | testify to what he already knew a priori—that the substratum did somewhere exist.
00:26:32.260 | Where it was, how substantial it was, what its power of self-assertion and resistance
00:26:38.740 | was—of all this they tell him nothing.
00:26:42.740 | Similarly, when the historian of two thousand years hence, or two hundred years, looks over
00:26:48.540 | the available testimony to the quality of our civilization and tries to get any kind
00:26:53.300 | of clear, competent evidence concerning the substratum of right thinking and well-doing
00:26:58.600 | which he knows must have been here, he will have a devil of a time finding it.
00:27:04.580 | When he has assembled all he can and has made even a minimum allowance for speciousness,
00:27:10.540 | vagueness, and a confusion of motive, he will sadly acknowledge that his net result is simply
00:27:18.940 | nothing.
00:27:19.940 | A remnant were here, building a substratum like coral insects.
00:27:28.560 | So much he knows, but he will find nothing to put him on the track of who and where and
00:27:36.980 | how many they were and what their work was like.
00:27:42.500 | Concerning all this, too, the prophet of the present knows precisely as much and as little
00:27:47.860 | as the historian of the future, and that, I repeat, is what makes his job seem to me
00:27:54.100 | so profoundly interesting.
00:27:57.500 | One of the most suggestive episodes recounted in the Bible is that of a prophet's attempt,
00:28:03.080 | the only attempt of the kind on the record, I believe, to count up the remnant.
00:28:08.600 | Elijah had fled from persecution into the desert, where the Lord presently overhauled
00:28:13.560 | him and asked what he was doing so far away from his job.
00:28:17.660 | He said that he was running away, not because he was a coward, but because all the remnant
00:28:23.860 | had been killed off except himself.
00:28:27.560 | He had got away only by the skin of his teeth, and he being now all the remnant there was,
00:28:33.160 | if he were killed, the true faith would go flat.
00:28:38.000 | The Lord replied that he need not worry about that, for even without him, the true faith
00:28:44.300 | could probably manage to squeeze along somehow if it had to.
00:28:49.180 | And as for your figures on the remnant, he said, I don't mind telling you that there
00:28:53.120 | are 7,000 of them back there in Israel whom it seems you have not heard of, but you may
00:28:58.960 | take my word for it that there they are.
00:29:03.240 | At that time, probably the population of Israel could not run to much more than a million
00:29:07.840 | or so, and a remnant of 7,000 out of a million is a highly encouraging percentage for any
00:29:15.520 | prophet.
00:29:16.520 | With 7,000 of the boys on his side, there was no great reason for Elijah to feel lonesome,
00:29:22.120 | and incidentally that would be something for the modern prophet of the remnant to think
00:29:25.440 | of when he has a touch of the blues.
00:29:28.440 | But the main point is that if Elijah the prophet could not make a closer guess on the number
00:29:35.420 | of the remnant than he made when he missed it by 7,000, anyone else who tackled the problem
00:29:42.680 | would only waste his time.
00:29:45.620 | The other certainty which the prophet of the remnant may always have is that the remnant
00:29:51.820 | will find him.
00:29:53.640 | He may rely on that with absolute assurance.
00:29:57.880 | They will find him without his doing anything about it.
00:30:00.640 | In fact, if he tries to do anything about it, he is pretty sure to put them off.
00:30:05.820 | He does not need to advertise for them nor resort to any schemes of publicity to get
00:30:10.720 | their attention.
00:30:12.160 | If he is a preacher or a public speaker, for example, he may be quite indifferent to going
00:30:17.460 | on show at receptions, getting his picture printed in the newspapers, or furnishing autobiographical
00:30:23.240 | material for publication on the side of human interest.
00:30:27.200 | If a writer, he need not make a point of attending any pink teas, autographing books at wholesale,
00:30:33.160 | nor entering into any specious freemasonry with reviewers.
00:30:37.320 | All this and much more of the same order lies in the regular and necessary routine laid
00:30:43.100 | down for the prophet of the masses.
00:30:45.780 | It is and must be part of the great general technique of getting the mass man's ear,
00:30:53.200 | or as our vigorous and excellent publicist, Mr. H.L.
00:30:57.560 | Mencken puts it, the technique of boob bumping.
00:31:02.120 | The prophet of the remnant is not bound to this technique.
00:31:05.360 | He may be quite sure that the remnant will make their own way to him without any adventitious
00:31:10.520 | aids.
00:31:12.000 | Not only so, but if they find him employing any such aids, as I said, it is ten to one
00:31:17.960 | that they will smell a rat in them and will shear off.
00:31:23.080 | The certainty that the remnant will find him, however, leaves the prophet as much in the
00:31:29.120 | dark as ever, as helpless as ever in the matter of putting any estimate of any kind upon the
00:31:35.720 | remnant.
00:31:36.720 | For, as appears in the case of Elijah, he remains ignorant of who they are that have
00:31:42.560 | found him, or where they are, or how many.
00:31:47.480 | They did not write in and tell him about it after the manner of those who admire the vedettes
00:31:53.120 | of Hollywood, nor yet do they seek him out and attach themselves to his person.
00:31:58.760 | They are not that kind.
00:32:00.800 | They take his message, much as drivers take the directions on a roadside signboard, that
00:32:07.280 | is, with very little thought about the signboard, beyond being gratefully glad that it happened
00:32:13.260 | to be there, but with every thought about the directions.
00:32:19.140 | This impersonal attitude of the remnant wonderfully enhances the interest of the imaginative prophet's
00:32:25.680 | job.
00:32:26.680 | Once in a while, just about often enough to keep his intellectual curiosity in good working
00:32:31.280 | order, he will quite accidentally come upon some distinct reflection of his own message
00:32:37.760 | in an unsuspected quarter.
00:32:40.520 | This enables him to entertain himself in his leisure moments with agreeable speculations
00:32:46.000 | about the course his message may have taken in reaching that particular quarter and about
00:32:51.480 | what came of it after it got there.
00:32:55.020 | Most interesting of all are those instances, if one could only run them down, but one may
00:32:59.900 | always speculate about them, where the recipient himself no longer knows where, nor when, nor
00:33:08.400 | from whom he got the message, or even where, as sometimes happens, he has forgotten that
00:33:13.920 | he got it anywhere and imagines that it is all a self-sprung idea of his own.
00:33:18.920 | Such instances as these are probably not infrequent, for without presuming to enroll ourselves
00:33:24.500 | among the remnant, we can all no doubt remember having found ourselves suddenly under the
00:33:30.060 | influence of an idea, the source of which we cannot possibly identify.
00:33:36.280 | It came to us afterward, as we say, that is, we are aware of it only after it has shot
00:33:42.120 | up full grown in our minds, leaving us quite ignorant of how and when and by what agency
00:33:48.520 | it was planted there and left to germinate.
00:33:51.620 | It seems highly probable that the prophet's message often takes some such course with
00:33:58.220 | the remnant.
00:33:59.740 | If, for example, you are a writer or a speaker or a preacher, you put forth an idea which
00:34:08.640 | lodges in the Unbewusstsein of a casual member of the remnant and sticks fasts there.
00:34:15.940 | For some time, it is inert.
00:34:19.520 | Then it begins to fret and fester until presently it invades the man's conscious mind and,
00:34:27.880 | as one might say, corrupts it.
00:34:31.620 | Meanwhile, he has quite forgotten how he came by the idea in the first instance, and even
00:34:37.300 | perhaps thinks he has invented it.
00:34:39.700 | And in those circumstances, the most interesting thing of all is that you never know what the
00:34:47.000 | pressure of that idea will make him do.
00:34:52.280 | For these reasons, it appears to me that Isaiah's job is not only good, but also extremely
00:34:59.980 | interesting, and especially so at the present time when nobody is doing it.
00:35:04.800 | If I were young and had the notion of embarking in the prophetical line, I would certainly
00:35:10.040 | take up this branch of the business, and therefore I have no hesitation about recommending it
00:35:15.120 | as a career for anyone in that position.
00:35:18.760 | It offers an open field with no competition.
00:35:22.960 | Our civilization so completely neglects and disallows the remnant that anyone going in
00:35:29.120 | with an eye single to their service might pretty well count on getting all the trade
00:35:35.240 | there is.
00:35:38.060 | Even assuming that there is some social salvage to be screened out of the masses, even assuming
00:35:46.240 | that the testimony of history to their social value is a little too sweeping, that it depresses
00:35:52.660 | hopelessness a little too far, one must yet perceive, I think, that the masses have profits
00:35:59.600 | enough and to spare.
00:36:02.980 | Even admitting that in the teeth of history that hope of the human race may not be quite
00:36:07.160 | exclusively centered in the remnant, one must perceive that they have social value enough
00:36:13.400 | to entitle them to some measure of prophetic encouragement and consolation, and that our
00:36:20.080 | civilization allows them none whatever.
00:36:24.680 | Every prophetic voice is addressed to the masses, and to them alone.
00:36:28.480 | The voice of the pulpit, the voice of education, the voice of politics, of literature, drama,
00:36:33.920 | journalism, all these are directed towards the masses exclusively, and they marshal the
00:36:39.400 | masses in the way that they are going.
00:36:43.400 | One might suggest, therefore, that aspiring prophetical talent may well turn to another
00:36:50.880 | field.
00:36:51.880 | "Sat te patriae priamoctatum."
00:36:54.280 | "Whatever obligation of the kind may be due the masses is already monstrously overpaid."
00:37:01.600 | So long as the masses are taking up the tabernacle of Moloch and Qun, their images, and following
00:37:08.360 | the star of their god Buncombe, they will have no lack of prophets to point the way
00:37:13.080 | that leadeth to the more abundant life, and hence a few of those who feel the prophetic
00:37:19.600 | afflatus might do better to apply themselves to serving the remnant.
00:37:26.480 | It is a good job, an interesting job, much more interesting than serving the masses,
00:37:34.840 | and moreover, it is the only job in our whole civilization, as far as I know, that offers
00:37:45.440 | a virgin field.
00:37:50.040 | This show is part of the Radical Life Media network of podcasts and resources.
00:37:55.680 | Find out more at RadicalLifeMedia.com.
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