One Voice: The Selected Sermons of W. Gunther Plaut

By W. Gunther Plaut

W. Gunther Plaut is an internationally recognized rabbi and scholar, and one of the greatest preachers of the twentieth century. He was born in Germany, but in 1935 fled the Nazis for the United States, where he became a rabbi. He served in Chicago and St. Paul, and, from 1961 to 1977 was Senior Rabbi of Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto. Upon his retirement he was appointed Senior Scholar.

Published on the occasion of his ninety-fifth birthday, this collection of sermons delivered over a period of fifty years includes discussions about religion, faith, and God; ethics and values; being a Jew, Reform Judaism, and Israel; and aging and death. Each sermon is as relevant and meaningful today as it was when first delivered. W. Gunther Plaut is an electrifying speaker who held his audiences spellbound with his charisma and wit. This anthology of his sermons is a fitting tribute to the wisdom and spirit of this great man!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dundurn
• Release date: Oct 30, 2007
• ISBN: 9781459721289

W. Gunther Plaut

W. Gunther Plaut was born in Germany, but in 1935 fled the Nazis for the United States, where he became a rabbi. He was President of the Canadian Jewish Congress and the Central Conference of American Rabbis, and from 1978 to 1985 served as Vice-Chair of the Ontario Human Rights Commission. Rabbi Plaut received nineteen honorary degrees and was a Companion of the Order of Canada. He published twenty-five books. Rabbi Plaut passed away in February 2012 at the age of 99.

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JVP

Religion

The Individual and the Cosmos

I

There can be little question that when the history books of our era are written, the year just passed will get a special rating. Doubtlessly a new chapter will begin with it, and a thousand years from now — which is a safe prediction for any man to make — the arrival of man on the moon will probably be used as the start of a new era in the history of man, although I doubt that the prediction of Wernher von Braun will be remembered. He had said that man’s stepping on the moon was the greatest event since aquatic life had moved onto land. But perhaps something else he had said will be true: Through a closer look at creation we ought to gain a better knowledge of God. Or was it, as Norman Mailer commented, not to look for God, but to destroy Him? So, this morning I will speak to you about what the moon walk may do to us and to our religious outlook on life.

We Jews have had a long acquaintance with moon and stars. At the very beginning of our history, Abraham was bidden to step out into the starry night and count the luminaries in the sky. Like their number, God told him, will be your people. Now, since modern science has told us how many stars there really are in the universe, it becomes quite obvious that we Jews will have to reproduce at a far greater speed in order to meet the ancient prediction.

As for the moon, we Jews have always felt a great affinity for it, more so really than for the sun. Perhaps we have always had a special feeling for the underdog, for that is the way the moon looked to the ancients in comparison to its big brother in the sky. One Talmudic legend in fact compares the people of Israel to the moon. Just as the moon looms faintly by day but shines brightly at night, so it is with Israel. When the nations are basking in the warm sunlight of success, Israel is barely seen. But when things are tough, then the dim and modest light of our people and its faith shine in humanity’s night.

The moon was the guardian and guide of the Jewish calendar. We celebrate this morning the beginning of the new month of Tishri, and our entire Holy Day cycle is primarily oriented to the moon. There are rites and rituals for blessing its appearance, and there are old superstitions concerning its power. Remember the psalm that begins with the words, I will lift up mine eyes to the mountains, whence cometh my help? My help cometh from the Lord who made heaven and earth, and then goes on to say, The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night. Nor the moon by night — this phrase reflects an old belief that exposing oneself at length to the moonlight is detrimental to health.

Well, all these pleasantries aside, there are some very serious questions about this newest human venture and its relationship to our religious convictions. For man’s expanding grasp has now reached into space and this, so it would appear, has not added to the comfort of those of us who believe in God. Somehow, it seems to undermine our faith.

I do not refer to the Russian cosmonaut who circled the earth and reported back that, although he had looked intently around the skies, he had found no sign of God. He concluded on the basis of his observation that God did not exist and therefore was, as many others have long suspected, an illusion foisted as a social opiate on the exploited masses of man. Of course, we don’t have to take the cosmonaut too seriously. Religious believers have felt rather superior to this crude kind of atheism. For where is the believer who ever claimed that one could see God in the first place! So, many of us took the attitude that only communists and other assorted non-believers would pay attention to such cosmonautical drivel.

But man’s venture into space has posed some other and very real and serious questions which we ought to face. There are a lot of people right here in the congregation who, by their training and interest, will not be satisfied with surface reactions to what is in fact an enormous event in the history of man.

II

The first fact we must face clearly is that in many respects God does not seem to matter at all. Modern scientists (whatever their personal beliefs may be) work as if God was not there. They conduct their experiments without reference to Him. They assume a universe that obeys certain and unalterable laws which can be exposed and applied. A scientist may personally believe in God as the Creator of the universe; he may even believe in prayer as a spiritual exercise; he may also believe that God sustains the world in some manner. But when the same scientist comes to his test tube and his charts, he leaves God out of his considerations. God may have something to do with justice and mercy, love, and will, but nothing with gravity and the speed of light.

While the scientist neither affirms nor denies God, the average man who lives by the fruit of science has already drawn his own conclusions. Former generations may have been uneasy with the old Greek motto that man is the measure of all things. Modern man accepts this dictum hook, line, and sinker. If man can walk on the moon, he can obviously do anything, and he who can do anything is in fact the master of the universe. Given enough time, money, and will, man can apparently accomplish everything he desires. The mystery has gone out of the world and pride in man’s accomplishment has taken its place. There is almost an impatience about it all — let’s get on with it, we seem to say. Since we can do everything, let’s go ahead and try it.

This truly awesome reversal of roles was illustrated to me by a young high school student with whom I watched the moon walk. While we older people sat glued to the TV set and followed every motion and announcement with deep anxiety mixed with wonder, the representative of the younger generation took it all as a matter of course. Finally, Armstrong and Aldrin set foot on the moon and the first shadowy pictures were flashed back to the earth in what appeared to me an unbelievable feat of science. At that moment, the young student said, How come it isn’t in colour? How come, indeed? I thought. It seemed such an obvious question — only it hadn’t occurred to me to ask it, for I was absorbed with other matters. But once, like the student, you assume that man can do everything, then of course it is perfectly obvious to ask, How come it wasn’t in colour?

III

My great teacher, Leo Baeck, may he rest in peace, always said, When you preach don’t supply your people with all the answers. Let them go away developing your thoughts rather than swallowing them. So in his spirit I will try.

1. Judaism does not try to prove the existence of a divine being, it takes it for granted. It proceeds from the belief that there is something beyond man and even beyond the physical universe, something we call God who makes possible the laws, which govern the world, and makes possible its continuing existence and prevents its return to chaos. This is a statement of belief, which is not capable of proof.

2. Because Judaism never lost its view of the vastness of the world, it has never lost its understanding of the smallness of man. To be sure, the Psalmist said that man is little lower than the Angels, but it was the same Psalmist who emphasized, Lord, what is man? If anything, modern science has underscored not the greatness of man, but his ridiculous smallness. In the vastness of the universe the earth itself is but a tiny, inconspicuous speck at the outer reaches of one of the minor galaxies. Man’s existence on earth is limited because of the slowly diminishing heat of the sun. It will take millions of years, but they mean nothing in the universe. Man arose and man will die.

3. When I consider the heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars which Thou has ordained, what is man that Thou art mindful of him? This is a realistic appraisal of our position. Our religion teaches that in spite of this utter smallness we can rise to significance because of our relationship to God. This is an act of enormous belief which starts with our tiny stature and which claims that incomprehensibly man’s thought and aspiration can relate him to the universe at large. This is what religion is all about. It is an act of faith in the face of the overwhelming vastness of the world.

As a religious person, I must always focus on man’s persistent weaknesses. I am not impressed with my species, quite the contrary. The moon business leaves me really with more anxiety than happiness.

Don’t get me wrong. I sat immobile before my television set; I stayed up until the wee hours of the night sacrificing sleep to the wonder and thrill of it all. I have my snobbish streak, but it just isn’t that big. My heart skipped a beat when there was the little blackout before Neil Armstrong said, The Eagle has landed. But even then, and certainly not now, could I forget that the United States had paid $20 billion plus for that venture, and I think that says something very important about the nature of man. It is simply this: When we are given a choice between putting all our energies behind solving the pressing problems of our earthly existence or the exploration of space, we human beings opt for the latter.

Don’t say, well, that’s America for you. I can hear some say it, we told you all along that America is a rotten exploiting, violent, capitalistic, racist, system, and so on, and this silly moon trip proves it. (Of course you have to overlook the fact that the Soviets too have put enormous amounts of money into a like venture, and have done it at the expense of consumer needs.) I take the simple position that the people of America who backed this moon venture are just like everybody else, like Canadians and like people anywhere and everywhere.

My conclusion therefore is that when human beings are given certain priorities, they choose one and not the other. They will usually first care for pride, whether it is disguised as scientific impulse, mixed with curiosity and whatever, and only afterwards will they care for others’ needs. Something always has to come first and in this case the choice has been for the moon; it will be for Mars and it will not be for fighting poverty and pollution and the abolition of war.

I hope you know me well enough to realize I am not speaking as a cynic. But I am a realist. We are, as Shakespeare said, plaguy proud. We will not do what is sensible, we will sacrifice for others only when our own skins are involved.

And this is where religion comes in. A religious person is not someone who has absurd beliefs that run counter to reality. A religious person is one who insists on doing what is right, even though he is not likely to succeed. A religious person presents to his fellowmen life’s real priorities, even though he knows that people will probably not listen to him. We may know that we will fail, but that does not absolve us from the responsibility to hold up the ideal. So it will be religious people who put the moon walk in the order of priorities where it belongs. That explains the ambivalence, which a person like myself faces in this matter.

Yes, I am thrilled over the accomplishment once it was attempted, but I am not thrilled over the fact that in the face of so many needs on earth, it was attempted in the first place. So I will hold up my little banner and say, enough, enough for now at any rate, and I will point you in the direction of what we need to do here and now, in this land, in this community. This is what Ralph Abernathy meant when watching the lift-off of Apollo XI he said, This is really holy ground. And it will be more holy once we feed the hungry, care for the sick, and provide for those who do not have houses.

IV

There is another reality that we should not forget. The moon venture has emphasized it so that there can be no more question about it. Seen from a physical point of view the universe is an unfriendly place. The cold environs of the moon are only an indication of what the universe at large holds in store for us. It is not friendly to human existence and human aspirations.

And in the face of this cold, unpromising, empty space, man dares to stand up and say, And yet will I believe that what I do has significance somewhere, somehow. Yet will I believe that there is a God who cares what we do and don’t do. Yet will I believe that my existence is neither the beginning nor the end, that there is something beyond me that is permanently significant. This is a difficult belief, but whoever has said that believing is easy? Real belief that recognizes the great odds against it is very hard. I face the great empty universe around us, yet I join with Jewish tradition, which knowing full well the smallness of man, said, I will believe that there is a realm of glory and meaning, that out of the vastness of the universe there can come a call to me, as it once came to Abraham, a call which says, ‘Where are you?’ To this I will rise by word and deed, and respond, ‘Here I am.’

Delivered on Rosh Hashanah morning, September 13, 1969, at Holy Blossom Temple, Toronto, and originally titled Man on the Moon.

Is Religion Necessary?

Let me start this morning’s sermon with a little personal experiment in which all of you can participate. I am going to say several words and I want you to make a response. Say quietly to yourselves either good or bad, whatever applies. For instance, if I were to say sickness, all of you would quietly respond bad. If I were to say health, all of you would doubtlessly say good. If I were to say mother, the vast majority of you would say good, but of course there might be some who would hate their mothers and who would say bad. Now, we are ready for the experiment.

Freedom… Drugs… Peace… Religion…

I rather think that all of you would say good when it came to freedom. But suppose that at this moment somebody representing the Arab terrorists would stand up in the rear of this hall and shout, Freedom! your reaction would be different, quite different.

Drugs… What was your reaction? Many older people thinking of the drug culture of the young probably said bad. The pharmacists amongst you or people whose health is dependent on certain drugs they take probably thought good. So again, it depends on circumstance, on time, and your own personal experience.

Peace… I think all of you thought that was good. But only a few years ago — some ten years ago — the word peace was so popular in the propaganda slogans of the Soviet Union that anyone using the word was practically suspect of being a Soviet propagandist or at least a fellow traveller. People tended to avoid the very mention of the word in ordinary discussion. Ten years ago peace was a bad word and the result of an experiment such as this would have turned out to be the exact opposite. Today the connotation again is good.

And so of course it is with the word religion. To an atheist religion means superstition, mumbo-jumbo. That is what it means in the official government line in Soviet Russia. Still, to millions of people in that country religion means personal freedom, release from restriction, revolt against authority, and a host of other things. To a young person present here in the congregation it may mean that you have to do what your father tells you, or it may mean Sunday school, while to other young people it may mean something very exciting — a marvellous teacher, a wonderful camp experience, or a trip to Israel.

My point is now easily made. When I ask, is religion necessary? I must also ask, what kind of religion and what does it mean to various people at various times? The same word covers a multitude of meanings and these meanings change from today to tomorrow. For instance, when our people were in slavery in Egypt, religion meant physical freedom, breaking the chains of serfdom. When Christianity came into being, religion meant not breaking the physical chains of slavery, but meant accepting these chains and instead giving the spirit an escape into freedom and into faith. If your body could not be free at least your spirit could be. This was the situation that enabled Christianity to gather millions and millions of converts at a time of great frustration and widespread slavery.

So the first thing we have to do is to find out the kind of time in which we live, and then see what kind of religion is necessary in this time — if it is necessary at all.

I

For the last two hundred years we have lived in what is often called the Age of Reason. That is to say, during these two centuries the majority of people in the Western world have come to accept the proposition that man can solve his problems if he applies his brain properly. If he can reason adequately, if he can find the right means, he will solve both his inner and his outer problems. If you understand your neighbour properly, you will be able to deal with him adequately. If you understand yourself thoroughly, you can face yourself and live with yourself successfully. If you understand your environment then, with the help of science and technology, you can master it or at least a good deal of it. Reason will give you insight and insight will give you the means to solve your major problems. This is what we mean by Western civilization accepting the command of reason and science.

This is nothing to be ashamed of. You and I have grown up with this notion, and whether we know it or not, it is the underpinning of our living. It is basically what all our universities teach and this is also the underlying philosophy of the two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, however much they may be at political loggerheads. It is my contention that they have more in common than is often realized. Both the Americans and the Russians believe in the supremacy of technology. Both nations have a thoroughly pragmatic outlook. Both say, if it works it is good. The only difference is that in the Soviet Union they say that Marxist technocracy works and is therefore good, and in the United States the majority of the people say that capitalist technocracy works and is therefore good. But their basic approach to life is the same, and we here in Canada on the whole share the American approach. We too are children of the Age of Reason.

You know, of course, that this point of view has lately been challenged and challenged seriously. The revolt at the universities is at the very heart a rebellion against technology and reason, and these twin devils are being held responsible for our present illnesses. The rebellion at the university is not so much anti-rational as it is pro-feeling, an attempt to recover the human factor, the one-to-one relationship, the possibility of breaking out of the scientific system or any system for that matter. Outsiders are very often puzzled by the fact that the rebellious students don’t seem to have a system of their own. This is precisely the point: any system is a new chain, a new prison. What many young people want is to be liberated from the Age of Reason and they are satisfied to let it go at that.

Underlying this then is a sense that feeling rather than reason, love rather than science, the individual rather than the group, are the saving elements in human existence. This is why young people find a particular attraction to all movements that call themselves liberationist, even if they want to substitute one slavery for another. This is why they are attracted to the Black Power struggle, because the struggle is at least based on feeling: black is beautiful and black is equal. This is not a scientific stand but a stand of personal worth and personal being and to this White youth are attracted. This is also why so many of our young people are becoming Maoists, because the little red book is not a book on science, but a book on being and feeling. It is taking a certain stand rather than taking a certain count. And this is why so many young people are attracted to the occult, the stars and the charts of astrology, to Zen Buddhism, and similar contemplative phases of Eastern religion. And this is ultimately why they take drugs: to expand the mind, not to find greater reasoning power, but to love more, to be more, to experience more, and to escape the fetters and demands of the technological age in which they find themselves.

So if the Age of Reason brings the United States and Soviet Russia together as most unlikely allies, then the revolt against reason brings together the Blacks and the Chinese, and the student rebels and those who strive to liberate themselves by means of drugs or by engagement with the occult sciences. This is the confused age in which we live, and in this age and in these circumstances we ask the question, what of religion?

II

A religion which is primarily related to reason and science should be very unpopular with the Blacks, the Chinese, and our young people. It should be very popular in the United States and in Soviet Russia. And indeed there are large religious groups in these two countries that support the official system. Those are the so-called established religions. In the Soviet Union it is the religion of Marxism, or if one is allowed a contradictory term, the religion of atheism which has its own pantheon of gods and saints and its own scriptures. In North America the established churches have become identified with the religion of democracy, which is another way of speaking of science and reason. The establishment churches, to which incidentally a good many, if not most of our synagogues belong, support the institutions as well as the philosophy of the community. In some countries, as in Israel, for instance, the establishment religion relies on the power of the state and the police to enforce its rules and regulations.

These are the religions that teach us to be reasonable, to be orderly, to be decent, which teach that what you need is the right kind of approach, perhaps even the right kind of prayer. With these you will turn the key to your personal or communal salvation. God doesn’t really figure too much in this kind of religion. He appears in the prayer book and in the hymns. He is referred to as a kind of last authority. We speak of justice as being divinely ordained, or of our rights as God-given. We call God the Creator of the world, the fountain of human dignity and of love. This is the kind of religion which calls God reasonable and man reasonable. God is the origin of all law and therefore the origin of science. He is, so to speak, the backstop of everything we are and do. This is what I call established religion and if you recognize this synagogue as belonging to this system of thought, you are probably right. We do say all these things, and they do come from our prayer books. They form part of this very day’s liturgy.

But I must quickly say that this is not all there is to religion, and if that were all there is to it, then it would be stale and deserve the disregard in which so many people hold it. If that were all there is to religion, then the young would be right and the doubters would be right — then we would be a skeleton without flesh, or perhaps one should use the opposite image: all flesh without bone. To come back to our earlier experiment, if that is what you think religion is, then you would have said bad or at least you should have said it.

III

But there is more to it, certainly in the religion we profess. I repeat what I said in my Rosh Hashanah morning sermon: the young people can show us the way. They feel instinctively that there is more to life than reason. Take their music. Rock is the most unscientific music there is. It is instant feeling, instant creation, and instant response. In this regard our young people are close to the Hassidic tradition which gave free range to the moment and laid heavy emphasis on spontaneity. It is not surprising that the fastest growing churches in both North and South America are not established churches, but the evangelical churches which stress feeling and individuality and expression of personal love, which preach a direct relationship between God and man in which man counts for the whole world.

Now it is quite true that one cannot always be loving, always experiencing, always embracing, always dancing — even as one cannot be always enjoying. The great emotions in life come after periods of quiet, or even when one has experienced the opposite. No one can live at the pitch of excitement — and therefore those of you who look to religion as one constant orgy of self-forgetting are looking in the wrong direction.

But religion ought to give us the opportunity, at least on occasion. It ought to let loose the bounds of feeling. It ought to make it possible for us to feel compassion to the very marrow of our bones, and it should speak of God not merely as a source of being and a philosophical conception, but as One who is close and embracing; One whose light is shining upon me, and not merely in a distant way and in diffused fashion upon the whole world.

You will say that our Reform service does not really give range to this emotion. You are quite right — it doesn’t, because in the past Reform was bound too much to the nineteenth-century reason and its God was primarily the God of reason and of science. Well, He is that too, but He is more, at least to me. And this is why I see in Reform an opportunity, although we have not fully grasped this potential. Reform must sometimes be experimenting, letting go, and sometimes be holding back. It must do both: at times give free range to each person, to his hope and his feeling, but it must also bring restraint, however uncomfortable. For it must impress us also with duty, with the necessity of doing things we don’t really want to do, doing for others and not only for ourselves, being part of the group when we want to be alone, being alone when we want to melt into the group.

My religion partakes of reason, or at least I would like to think it does, but it also partakes of that which is not committed to reason. It partakes of giving myself without reserve to the unprovable, even improbable. I speak of God, and I speak of Him and say, You and I, or as it is said in Yiddish, Gottenu.

Is religion necessary? My kind of religion is necessary to me and I think to most of you: a kind of open-ended experiment that takes its chances on being, that is not afraid to say no and not afraid to say yes. It is a faith that frees but also makes demands. You older people find it in part uncomfortable because it speaks too much of freedom, and you younger people find it uncomfortable because it speaks too much of restraint. But make up your minds: all this is part of that grand experiment in which we are engaged.

Is religion necessary? It is as necessary to me as are music and love. If my world ended with the reasonable and the useful, I would feel only half a man. Can one live that way? Of course, many live without religion. But I think they live without the vision and the glory, without the sense of boundless feeling and of great peace, of great excitement and of great duty, of great doing and of great abstinence. They live without that final sense that they are part of something beyond themselves and beyond man, that they are part of eternity, and that the heart of existence is not bound in books of logic, nor ultimately in the test tube, but is that part of whom we call God.

Perhaps it is the nature of life that we who are getting older place more and more emphasis on the orderly, on the reasonable, while our younger people place so much emphasis on the unstructured, the love, the experiment. I would like to say to both of you, old and young, that we need the reasonable, but we also need the experiment. We need the orderly rules, but we also need the disorderly experiment, the voyage into the unknown, the attempt to grasp hold of that which we have never seen.

So I invite all of you to say yes to religion, your religion, which has its shortcomings but also its possibilities. But you must make it what it can be, not we who are engaged in maintaining the institution, which after all is only the framework, not the heart. Don’t confuse rabbis with professional religionists. That’s an awful term and an awful concept. Think of us rather as catalysts and helpers who like Socrates try to bring to birth new ideas and new possibilities. This is what the synagogue and rabbis and teachers are for, no more and no less, instruments, not ends, possibilities, not achievements.

What will it be for you? Can you say God to yourself, and if you can what will you call Him? Will He be to you the law or perhaps the unordered? The One to contemplate or the One to embrace? The One before whom you stand in awe, or the One with whom you dance? The One whom you fear, or the One you love? All of these, different for each of you. Infinite possibilities.

Is religion necessary? Yes, our time needs it as you do, each of you without exception. But what kind of religion? That is the question which only you can answer and which in the confines of our synagogue we will help you to give shape and form. See, I have laid before you today life and death, the good and the bad. So choose then the good, that which is good for you, and the life, that which will give you life, with the help of God.

Delivered on Yom Kippur day, October 10, 1970, at Holy Blossom Temple, Toronto.

Faith and Religion in a Secular Age

Allow me to begin my lecture with some personal observations:

I am the only one in this series of symposia who is not a full-time academic. For most of my adult life, I was a congregational rabbi, which is to say, I tried to popularize the insights of Jewish tradition for those who were prepared to listen to me or read me; and much of the last eighteen years has been spent in my study pursuing the same goal but concentrating on the written word. Thus, I have primarily been a commentator and interpreter rather than an original philosopher. There have been several exceptions, but this lecture will not be one of them. What we all share is the objective of the overall purpose of this conference. We want to create a Jewish future.

I

Our title speaks of faith and religion. I take faith to be the personal and religion the communal as well as the organized expression of faith. A community of individual believers may or may not have the same religion, but as Jews we belong to the same overall structure of expressing our convictions. The individual Jew, to use Hillel’s warning, must not act alone, for himself/herself. The separation of too many Jews from the community was disastrous in Hillel’s time and it still is — and I believe those who envisaged this conference have combined the two, personal faith and communal religion.

Both are to function in our secular age. I am not sure what secular means when put in quotation marks. Perhaps it wants to call our attention not to the strict dictionary use of the word, but rather serve as a circumlocution for Western society and its values. For clearly, we do not live in a secular age when large parts of the world, especially in Asia and Africa, make faith the guiding light of their everyday life. But such religious fervor is generally absent from the society in which we live in the Diaspora — and in which the majority of our people in Israel live as well. Of course, there are notable exceptions, particularly in the US.

Therefore, following my habit of popularizing, I shall address myself to the subject as I understand it: what can we say about God and the conveyance of this belief to our increasingly university-trained Jewish people? The old method of the cheder melamed no longer works; we cannot simply say, don’t ask questions, for people will question — or worse, have already come to the conclusion that the answer is no and therefore find no need to question at all.

II

Having gone past the preliminaries, I will now turn to a discussion of religion, leaving the matter of faith (which is more difficult to treat) to the end. If you still studied Latin in your younger years, you know that the word religion comes from two parts: re, again, and ligare, to tie or bind. Though it is an old word, it came into common use as a reaction to the French Revolution, with its desire for allowing