Higher Destiny Research Articles

ДвоеВерие Евгения Иванова: к изучению роли В.Ф. Комиссаржевской в истории символистского жизнетворчества

The article, based on materials from two archival funds of the Manuscript Department of the Pushkin House, recreates in detail one of the most significant components of the spiritual life of Evgeny Ivanov (1879–1942), a writer and religious thinker, a close friend of А. Blok. It is the history of his long-term worship of Vera Komissarzhevskaya, which influenced not only the formation of his worldview but also his work (first of all, his unfinished articles about H. Ibsen’s female characters, about the high destiny of theatre actors, about religious faith). Ivanov found himself in a situation of religious dual faith (Orthodoxy and the rudiments of the Khlystism, Christianity and the interest in Slavic paganism), being at the same time in platonic love with two women under the name Vera — Komissarzhevskaya and V.N. Dyukova, his cousin. The materials presented in the study, including previously unpublished fragments of the diary, can be considered as a kind of backlight to the history of the creation of the poem “On the Death of Komissarzhevskaya” by A. Blok (1910). Most importantly, they explain the appearance in this text of the image of “promised spring.”

A Queer Heavenly Family: Expanding Godhood Beyond a Heterosexual, Cisgender Couple

A Queer Heavenly Family: Expanding Godhood Beyond a Heterosexual, Cisgender Couple

Н. Я. МЯСКОВСКИЙ: ПРИТЯЖЕНИЕ ТАЛАНТА

The article is dedicated to Nikolay Yakovlevich Myaskovsky, whose 140th birthday will be celebrated in 2021. Myaskovsky's role in Russian and world culture is unique. A composer, teacher, music and public figure, who had an indisputable literary gift, critical thinking, inclined to scientific understanding of historical facts and artistic potential of art, he was a defender of the Artist's high destiny, a creator who, at a time when the country was collapsing, cutting off the deep ties of culture and tradition, remained faithful to these traditions and believed in the continuity of culture. And this was at a time when deviations from the course set for Soviet music were severely punished. N. Ya. Myaskovsky did not escape this fate either. During that difficult period, he was supported by his work and immersion in the world of Old Russian church music in connection with the writing of the Twenty-sixth Symphony. The personality of Myaskovsky, who had an indisputable authority, attracted; he was constantly surrounded by students, in direct creative dialogue with performers, conductors, close-minded figures of musical art, as reflected, among other things, in many "musical dedications" to the master that are stored in his archive.

ZrO<sub>2</sub> Ceramic Composite<sub> </sub>Added with MgAl<sub>2</sub>O<sub>4</sub>: Thermal Shock Resistance and Corrosion Resistance in Molten Uranium

A kind of ceramic composite consisted of Mg-Y co-doped ZrO2 and MgAl2O4 was prepared as candidate material to replace the high destiny graphite crucible which was often used in nuclear industry. When the addition of MgAl2O4 was 7 wt%, samples with good thermal shock resistance were obtained. The obtained samples were tested up to 12 h in molten uranium, and no apparent cracks were found on the corrosion surface. Meanwhile, the corrosion rate decreased significantly from 30 mg·cm-2·h-1 to 3 mg·cm-2·h-1 as the corrosion time prolonged from 2 h to 12 h due to the formation of a protection layer consisted of UO2, Al3Zr2 and ZrC during the uranium corrosion test. These results suggested that the ceramic composite prepared in this study owned both good corrosion resistance to the molten uranium and thermal shock resistance at high temperatures,so it’s a high potential material to replace the high density graphite crucible in nuclear industry.

Web Based Embedded Robot for Safety and Security Applications Using Zigbee

This project proposed an embedded system for safety and security purpose robot using zigbee communication and web server. The robot has sensors for detecting Gas leakage and intruder detection. MQ6 Gas sensor detects the presence of bio hazardous gases like LPG, iso-butane, propane, LNG and alcohol, and the PIR sensor detects only the living organism (Intruder). The sensor details are first sent to the microcontroller which resides at the robotic side and then sent to the local system through Zigbee. The system also provides an audio and visual alarm to alert about the critical situation for the safety and security purpose. This robot also has a battery powered wireless AV camera which provides robotic in front environment information to the Local and remote system and performs the audio and video streaming through web server. The robotic movement is controlled remotely from the local system by using the front end application VB 6.0. The Zigbee (IEEE 802.15.4) supports a frequency range of 2.4GHZ, 9600 baud rate with 256Kb of flash memory. It supports the range of 400m in open-air, line-ofsight, outdoor environment. This proposed system is used wherever people cannot go or where things doing too dangerous for humans to do safely. That is the robot can move and reach to the high destiny gas leakage region.

Decoration of electro-reduced graphene oxide with uniform gold nanoparticles based on in situ diazonium chemistry and their application in methanol oxidation

Decorating graphene with high destiny and uniform size of noble metal nanoparticles is very important for a number of applications including sensing and electrocatalysis. Herein, a novel approach based on in situ diazonium chemistry was reported to design gold nanoparticles/graphene hybrid materials (Au-NPs/G). Graphene oxide was firstly electro-reduced on the glassy carbon electrode, and then this modified electrode was grafted by aminophenyl diazonium cations, generated in situ from p-phenylenediamine. Subsequently, gold nanoparticles (Au-NPs) were deposited on the p-phenylenediamine grafted electrode by a potentiostatic method. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy, cyclic voltammetry and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy were used to characterize the Au-NPs/G. The results demonstrated that the Au-NPs with high destiny and uniform size were dispersed on the electro-reduced graphene oxide. In addition, the obtained Au-NPs/G was utilized in electrocatalysis toward the oxidation of methanol showing excellent catalytic activity.

Beyond the Veil: Indeterminacy and Iconoclasm in the Art of Robert Hayden, Janet Kozachek, and Tom Feelings

Robert Hayden employs innovative modes of signification to unveil and expose race-based violence in United States. In Night, Death, Mississippi (1966) he defies bildverbot (1) traditions, or customary injunction against representing sacred or, in secular times, secret. This policy pertains to what must not be shown because it lies reach of representation (traditionally, God or Shoah) and also applies to what must not be shown because its portrayal undermines hegemonic ideologies that maintain and naturalize systems of oppression (as in phenomena of lynching and slavery). Some topics are designated unspeakable, beyond veil, or simply lack first-hand witnesses. Yet, this barred access or knowledge gap due to iconoclastic tendencies in culture does not inhibit a poet accustomed to poetry's mode of meaning by indirection. While we live in a time of relative freedom of speech and expression, vestiges of prohibition against depicting unrepresentable subject matter have led writers and artists to seek alternate aesthetic strategies that insist on historical and contemporary realities even as they dismantle conventional realism. Hayden's innovative portrayal of ostensibly obscene (ob scaena) matter of a death by lynching works according to ambiguous modes that depend on materiality of medium (language), rather than materiality of desecrated body itself. By treating language as a revelatory concrete substance--a clay of sounds, a stack of stanzas, a shifting web of syntax ruled and unruled--Hayden calls attention to his creative activity, and by extension, to hidden or forbidden subject matter as well. Thus, medium's material qualities anchor poem as does space/time referent: U.S.A., in mid 1960s. From this fixed point, poet then raises metaphysical questions about society and human suffering. In defiance of restrictions against using art to signify certain categories of experience, Hayden tears away rhetorical veil that falls over episodes too terrible to recount (to use a common collocation from slave narratives), employing a poetics of indeterminacy that both tempers and intensifies truth with its rhetorical power. The poet's insistence on subject matter, examining a generalized episode of a recurring event, serves as a call to witness for both those who follow his line of vision and those who avert their eyes. Dispersing perspective among at least four entities, Hayden offers a polyphony of internal and articulated voices that stage a quasi-narrative spanning past, present and future experience, both actual and imaginary. The trope of veil occupies a central position in U.S. literary history, due in part to ways W. E. B. Du Bois uses it in The Souls of Black Folk (1903) as a sign of mourning, an instrument of separation or concealment, and a marker of prophecy. Werner Sollors explicates Old Testament references to demonstrate metaphor's function to separate Afro-Americans from American culture at large but also [to give] them a more profound vision and higher destiny (49; qtd. in Gates and Oliver xxviii): Du Bois imaginatively adapted two biblical images of veil as a division within Temple [Exodus 26.33] and as cover that divinely inspired Moses wore when he came back from Mount Sinai and spoke to people [Exodus 34.33-35]. (49) Hayden transposes this metaphoric configuration into an aesthetic strategy as he writes Night, Death, Mississippi, using language to obscure and reveal in delicate tones of lament that ultimately solidify protest nature of his poem. Hayden twice evokes notion of iconoclasm, literally the breaking of icons, in his essays on Harlem Renaissance-era activism (Prose 46) and on later aesthetic innovations (Recent Poetry 69). According to Hayden, Harlem Renaissance artists shattered inauthentic images of Black experience, asserting their own new depictions in place of old stereotypes. …

In the light of evolution IV: The human condition

The year 2009 marked the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of his most influential publication. Darwin transformed the biological sciences in much the same way that Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, and Isaac Newton, centuries earlier, transformed the physical sciences—by demonstrating that the universe operates according to natural laws that fall within the purview of rational scientific inquiry. In 1543, Copernicus published De Revolutionibus Orbium Celestium (“ On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres ”) that challenged conventional wisdom that the Earth was the center of creation and instead promoted the idea that natural laws govern the motion of physical objects in the universe. In 1859, in On the Origin of Species (4), Darwin developed the equally revolutionary concept that a natural but nonrandom process—natural selection—yields biological adaptations that otherwise can give the superficial impression of direct intelligent craftsmanship. Actually, Darwin barely mentioned Homo sapiens in On the Origin of Species, cautiously stating only that “much light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history.” More than a decade later, however, Darwin addressed human evolution at considerable length in The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (5) wherein can be found many thoughtful passages, such as, “Man may be excused for feeling some pride at having risen, though not through his own exertions, to the very summit of the organic scale; and the fact of his having thus risen, instead of having been aboriginally placed there, may give him hope for a still higher destiny in the distant future.” Of course, much has been learned about humanity’s evolutionary origins and biological conditions since Darwin’s time, not least from the evidence of paleontology, comparative vertebrate biology, and genomics. An emerging field known as “anthropogeny” (6) seeks to understand the evolutionary origins … [↵][1]1To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: javise{at}uci.edu. [1]: #xref-corresp-1-1

In the Light of Evolution IV: The Human Condition

The year 2009 marked the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of his most influential publication. Darwin transformed the biological sciences in much the same way that Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, and Isaac Newton, centuries earlier, transformed the physical sciences—by demonstrating that the universe operates according to natural laws that fall within the purview of rational scientific inquiry. In 1543, Copernicus published De Revolutionibus Orbium Celestium (“ On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres ”) that challenged conventional wisdom that the Earth was the center of creation and instead promoted the idea that natural laws govern the motion of physical objects in the universe. In 1859, in On the Origin of Species (4), Darwin developed the equally revolutionary concept that a natural but nonrandom process—natural selection—yields biological adaptations that otherwise can give the superficial impression of direct intelligent craftsmanship. Actually, Darwin barely mentioned Homo sapiens in On the Origin of Species, cautiously stating only that “much light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history.” More than a decade later, however, Darwin addressed human evolution at considerable length in The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (5) wherein can be found many thoughtful passages, such as, “Man may be excused for feeling some pride at having risen, though not through his own exertions, to the very summit of the organic scale; and the fact of his having thus risen, instead of having been aboriginally placed there, may give him hope for a still higher destiny in the distant future.” Of course, much has been learned about humanity’s evolutionary origins and biological conditions since Darwin’s time, not least from the evidence of paleontology, comparative vertebrate biology, and genomics. An emerging field known as “anthropogeny” (6) seeks to understand the evolutionary origins … [↵][1]1To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: javise{at}uci.edu. [1]: #xref-corresp-1-1

"I Am Isabel, You Know?": The Antipodean Framing of Jane Campion’s Portrait of a Lady

"I Am Isabel, You Know?": The Antipodean Framing of Jane Campion’s <i>Portrait of a Lady</i>

Love, Friendship, and Beauty: On the Twenty-fifth Anniversary of a Magisterial Document about Religious Life and the Apostolate

IN THE 2007 FESTSCHRIFT ESSAY that I offered to Fr. Matthew Lamb, I made reference to commission of American prelates that was appointed almost twenty-five years ago to inquire into sharp decline of vocations to religious life in our country after Second Vatican Council (1962-65). (1) It was within context of Extraordinary Holy Year in honor of Redemption, on Easter Sunday, April 3, 1983, that Pope John Paul II sent a message on this matter to bishops in United States. In this letter, Pope expressed grave concern over the marked decline in recent years in numbers of young people seeking to enter religious To address this grave concern, John Paul, in spring of 1983, appointed Quinn Commission. This circumstance forms proximate background for a document that affords occasion for this article. It was on May 31, 1983, that Holy See issued document whose twenty-fifth anniversary we observe in zoos: Essential in Church's Teaching on Religious Life As Applied to Institutes Dedicated to Works of Apostolate. Whereas findings and recommendations of Quinn Commission have come and gone, work of institutes and organizations that took seriously recommendations of Essential Elements continues to bear fruit. (2) Within this same time frame (1983-2008), John Paul began to speak frequently about a evangelization. The original mention of this phrase may date from his first apostolic visit to Poland on June 9, 1979, when John Paul in Nowa Huta vehemently lifted Cross and, deeply moved, proclaimed, A new has begun! From early 1980s, evangelization became a leitmotiv of rhetoric that we have come to associate with John Paul's papacy. This history may explain why Pope Benedict XVI chose ad limina visit of Polish hierarchy in 2005 to express his conviction that secret of new lies in sound collaboration among bishops, priests, religious, and laity. (3) In teachings of post-conciliar popes, we discover that new is intended to enact sanctification of culture. For John Paul, post-Communist European culture; for Benedict, post-Christian Western culture. Both popes however have emphasized actual urgency of renewal task, of promoting new evangelization, even though it must be acknowledged that Church has always been faced with daunting challenge to transform secular culture of a given period. Take, for example, church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence. Within church and cloister walks, one still sees fading frescoes that depict Dominican priests encouraging early Renaissance Florentines to look beyond richly material world of capitalist-humanist period we call Quattrocento. These Dominican friars urged citizens of Florence to consider instead spiritual values of eternal life. Fifteenth-century humanism constituted what one might call a distraction for Christian believers; certain figures of period give evidence of espousing misplaced values and of pursuing exaggerated directions. By contrast, new of late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century encounters a culture that has been deformed by ideologies generated out of philosophical errors of modern period. In short, we find ourselves in a more disadvantageous position than did contemporaries of artists such as Donatello, Fra Angelico, and Botticelli. Today, Church asks Catholics to persuade a people wedded to technocracy and committed to expediency of truth that Christ alone reveals to us our high destiny and that Church alone provides what is required to pursue this destiny. To put it differently, to a world of technocratic utilitarians, Church announces way to highest wisdom; and to a culture dominated by allure of expedient, Church insists on life of virtuous excellence. …

In the Valley of the Shadow of Books

Matthew Arnold suggested part of our challenge when he announced in his general introduction to The English Poets (1880) that future of poetry is (1) Arnold intended to bestow on poetry a metaphysical immensity, one defined by taking up the work that dogmatic religion could no longer perform. But by proclaiming poetry's high destiny in this particular bibliographic setting, Arnold bore clouded witness to a counter-history featuring poetry collections that were physically immense. I want to recall that obscured history and suggest how the study of Victorian poetry in the future will benefit from more careful and curious thinking about Victorian books and Victorian readers. The English Poets, the four-volume for which Arnold provided a general introduction, was a particular kind of book, a historically organized collection aiming at a comprehensive coverage of the national tradition or some widely accepted chapter of it. Like Arnold, we have all grown up with this type of book, and David Latane's recent review essay about our ample options exemplifies a professional fluency in anthologese. In the meantime, we have been tempted into thinking that books such as The English Poets have always been around. In a recent special issue of this journal, Golden Treasury and the Victorian Anthology, Jonah Siegel was right to say that it has been easy to forget the novelty of the genre--at least as it is currently understood. (2) Indeed, we ought to remember that Francis Turner Palgrave's famous collection is not an in the same sense as The English Poets is. Palgrave did not aim for his collection of lyrics to be a historical Anthology, but one such collection--Alexander Chalmers' The Works of the English Poets (21 vols., 1810-1814)--he did identify as the essential resource for the project. (3) And, as we now know, such immense books only became possible following the 1774 House of Lords judgment on the case of Donaldson v. Beckett, which effectively ended a common law right to perpetual copyright. Before 1774, any design to publish a large series of complete texts involving a wide range of authors would have been extremely costly, if not simply impossible, given the difficulties arising from the fragmentary pattern of ownership of the copyright scattered among protective booksellers. The 1774 ruling has long been recognized as an important event in the history of British publishing, but it took the work of Thomas Bonnell, Trevor Ross, and others to establish in detail how the ruling stimulated the proliferation of a new literary super-genre that deeply influenced future critical and poetic practice. (4) The appearance of Hugh Blair's The British Poets (44 vols., 1773-76), John Bell's The Poets of Great Britain (109 vols., 1776-82), The Works of the English Poets (with biographical introductions by Samuel Johnson [58 vols., 1779-81]), and Robert Anderson's The Works of the British Poets (13 vols., 1792-95) made the last quarter of the eighteenth century a time when the poetic canon was materially embodied in an unprecedented way. Many more collections were to follow, and the rapid journey they made from bookseller's innovation to cultural staple constitutes one of the great bibliographic transformations of modern British literary history. Anthologies and literary miscellanies, of course, predated that period. But they were rarely organized upon historical, author-centered principles, and they rarely attempted to put forward a canon. The primary connotations of anthology today--as an authoritative gathering--suggests how the ancient meaning of the word--a gathering of flowers--was crushed and obscured by the weighty pretensions of those expansive Poets of the 1770s and later. From this perspective The English Poets of 1880 marked an important transition in the history of the modern English literary anthology. It was the first to include the contributions of many different editors, a collection of readers gathered on the threshold of institutionalized English studies. …

Sniffing for success

For all its interest in olfaction, Senomyx may get its start in modifying taste. The simplest of all its proposed projects involves blocking the response of bitter taste receptors to products such as processed foods, nutraceuticals, antibiotics and artificial sweeteners. The number of bitter taste receptors appears to be manageable (perhaps 20–40), and any given bitter chemical may target only one receptor. “It’s more like a classical target,” says Zoller. In contrast, devising something new — say a tofu with meat flavor — involves creating new volatile and non-volatile components, and “that’s a really difficult problem.”Projects for the future include novel sweeteners (based on proposed sweet receptors isolated by Zuker and Ryba), and modifiers of possible receptors for salt and umami (the flavor of monosodium glutamate). Senomyx is interested in doing further basic biology in these areas, including expression cloning of any receptors that may still be out there. “Since a lot of the work is done by homology and informatics, there is a lot that you can miss,” says Zoller.The motivationThe meaning and goal and purpose of his life had a higher destiny: nothing less than to revolutionize the odiferous world.As a refugee from pharmaceutical science, Zoller has certainly thought about the contrast between his old and new goals. “When I tell nonscientists what I’m doing everybody thinks it is unbelievably cool,” he says. “When I tell scientists they think, ‘You’re not curing osteoporosis or cancer’.”The new science “is very much targeted to enhancing the enjoyment of life,” says Stryer. “It relates to day-to-day living rather than the amelioration of suffering.” More serious applications may come, such as the modification of plant smells to repel insect predators. But with the current fuss over genetically modified foods “we’re not even going down that road,” says Grayson. “We’ll revolutionize one industry at a time.”

Daniel Webster (review)

BOOK REVIEWS361 dimensional, complex personality: "a pacificist turned soldier, an educator turned politician, a preacher turned economist, a man of essentially literary tastes cast in the role of party chieftain, a husband who, at length, fell in love with his wife, and a man racked by self-doubts who was, at the same time, convinced of his high destiny." Peskin's biography does not resolve these contradictions; it explores them. Each of the crises in Garfield's life is examined thoroughly and objectively. In many cases Peskin's verdict is unfavorable: Garfield did maneuver to oust his rivals and become head of the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute; he married one woman while he was in love with another; he lent his name to the fraudulent schemes of an oil swindler, exhibited a "disturbing lack of candor" about his relationship to the Credit Mobilier, and was guilty of influence peddling in the DeGolyer scandal. On other, and perhaps more significant, points Peskinfinds that the evidence exonerates Garfield. In undercutting his commanding officer, General William S . Rosecrans, his conduct was "not . . . dishonorable , only somewhat disingenuous." On the silver question he put principle ahead of self-interest. And "by most standards" Garfield was not guilty of undercutting John Sherman in order to promote his own presidential candidacy in 1880. If Peskin's judgments are mixed, it is because Garfield's character was mixed. Those who knew him well spoke of his warmth, his charm, and his learning. John Hay thought that his years of service in the Congress made Garfield "the best-trained, best-equipped president since John Quincy Adams." But even those who admired the man had to recognize "his old weakness, lack of moral pluck." "Smooth, ready, pleasant . . . , not very strong," was the verdict of Rutherford B. Hayes. Henry L. Dawes concluded that hewas "morally . . . invertebrate. Hehad no bony structure." Echoing the same idea, President Grant judged that Garfield "has shown that he is not possessed of the backbone of an angleworm." Since Garfield was such a creampuff character, one is bound to ask whether he is worth the extraordinary amount of attention that has been lavished on him during the past few years. The answer clearly has to be "No." But, equally clearly, until the publication of Peskin's definitive biography it was not possible to be sure that there was less to James A. Garfield than met the eye. David Herbert Donald Harvard University Daniel Webster. By Irving H. Bartlett. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1978. Pp. xii, 333. $12.95.) Since 1966 no fewer than five book-length, scholarly monographs have 362CIVIL WAR HISTORY appeared, dealing with various aspects of the career of Daniel Webster. Irving Bartlett's book represents, in part, a gathering together of the findings of at least four of those studies in a single volume. As such it is largely successful. Using as well the invaluable Microfilm Edition ofthe Papers of Daniel Webster, Bartlett produces a readable, generally accurate account of Webster's public life from the time he first entered politics as a young Portsmouth, New Hampshire lawyer, opposing Jefferson's Embargo, until his death 44 years later in 1852. In this respect the book should certainly supersede the earlier full-length biographies, including those by Henry Cabot Lodge, Claude Fuess, and Richard Current. Bartlett's purpose, however, was to do something more: in fact to add a completely new dimension to our understanding ofhis subject. Noting at the outset that Webster was many things to many people, but above all to his admirers the "Godlike defender" and to his enemies "Black Dan"—a deeply flawed and finally corrupt défiler of all that he claimed to stand for—Bartletthopes to come to terms with both sides of this dual "image," no less than with "the man behind the image, who succeeded, failed, laughed, loved, and sometimes found himself ensnared in webs of his own making but beyond his understanding." This is a tall order, and a variety of strategies are called into play to fill it. In a manner surprisingly reminiscent of Lodge's treatment almost a century ago, Bartlett appears to find both parts of the Godlike-Black Dan construct about...

The evolutionary advantages of being stupid.

It is generally accepted that the highly developed brain of man with its associated high degree of intelligence represents a decisive difference between man and other animals. It is frequently suggested that a high intelligence from the evolutionary standpoint can be equated with superiority. This type of thinking has resulted in an anthropocentric view in which man because of his intelligence is re- garded as the pinnacle of evolution. This opinion was expressed by Darwin in the conclusion section of The Descent of Man as follows: Man may be excused for feeling some pride at having risen, though not through his own exertions, to the very summit of the organic scale; and the fact of his having thus risen, instead of having been aboriginally placed there, may give him hope for a still higher destiny in the distant future. But we are not here con- cerned with hopes or fears, only with the truth as far as our reason permits us to discover it; and I have given the evidence to the best of my ability. We must, however, acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like intel- lect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar sys-, tern—with all these exalted powers—Man still bears in his bodily frame the in- delible stamp of his lowly origin. (1)

THE PRESIDENT'S PAGE

I am in receipt of your form letter to all members of the Academy dated March 2, 1948 with the appended report of the American Academy of Pediatrics' "Committee for the Improvement of Child Health." I note with despair that this report was approved by the Academy's Executive Board, Chicago, February 8, 1948. I cannot tell you how stunned and staggered I was as I read this vicious document which has received official approval by our Executive Board. I could not believe my eyes. Now that I have recovered from the initial shock somewhat, I wish to inform you of my complete, total, uncompromising disgust with this stupid and visionary report, and the clear implication that control of Academy affairs and of the pediatric survey have fallen into the hands of persons committed to the collectivist social philosophy. No one is more desirous of the "good life" than I am. No one is more anxious than I for every child in America to have the best of pediatric care and guidance, and an ample share of all the other attributes of a full and abundant life. But only an impractical dreamer could write a report such as this or believe for one instant that adoption of any part of its recommendations could lead to anything but compulsion, coercion, bureaucracy, stateism, and despotism. The report clearly, baldly, and unequivocally cleaves to the communist social philosophy. I don't! Therefore, please be advised that through my own personal sense of responsibility to the young men and women who choose medicine as a profession, to our honored profession itself, to the American children under my care now and in the future, to the concept of the dignity and worth of the individual, to my conviction that mankind can attain its future high destiny and maintain progress in that direction only through personal liberty under law, I am compelled to proffer my resignation from the American Academy of Pediatrics to become effective immediately, when and if this disastrous report or any part thereof is adopted by the Academy.