[514] of "ought to be^a," in contrast to the element of "is-ness." So we must ask: why is there such a thing as ought-to-be at all? This is the first and fundamental question: what does this ought-to-be actually mean? There are a lot of theories about it, but I want to develop my own because it is not the function here to discuss ethics as such, but in ALL these discussions we have had, we discussed the relationship of RELIGION to ethics^b. The basis for the problem of ought-to-be^c, for the moral imperative, as I want to call it now, following Kant^d's "categorical imperative," is the distinction of man's essential being and his possibility

of contradicting his essential being. This seems to me the fundamental element out of which everything follows. This means: man, insofar as he is what he is essentially, or, in religious language, by creation, has no "ought" above himself. He is what he is. You remember---and those of you who know my theological lectures or books know that I sometimes speak of man's "dreaming innocence," of the state in which he has not yet actualized his freedom. In this state he is what he is, but only in terms of potentiality. Adam^e in Paradise before the Fall, or the Golden Age, in other classical myths of all nations, is not a real state which once upon a time has happened and about which we could have information, but it is man's potentiality, his essential structure, he is what he

essentially is, but he is it only potentially and not actually. His goodness is the goodness of not being awakened, of not being actualized, as the goodness of the child who is not yet awakened to special problems of life and is innocent OF THEM---he is not innocent of others, but he is innocent of them--- he is not yet awakened for instance to his sexual potentialities, but once upon a time he WILL be