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The Daimonic Refers To The Power Of Nature Rather Than The Superego, And Is Beyond Good And Evil. Nor Is It Man's 'recall To Himself' As Heidegger And Later Fromm Have Argued, For Its Source Lies In Those Realms Where The Self Is Rooted In Natural Forces Which Go Beyond The Self And Are Felt As The Grasp Of Fate Upon Us. The Daimonic Arises From The Ground Of Being Rather Than The Self As Such.

-Rollo May

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The Daimonic Refers To

Rollo May

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The Daimonic Refers To The Power Of Nature Rather Than The Superego, And Is Beyond Good And Evil. Nor Is It Man's 'recall To Himself' As Heidegger And Later Fromm Have Argued, For Its Source Lies In Those Realms Where The Self Is Rooted In Natural Forces Which Go Beyond The Self And Are Felt As The Grasp Of Fate Upon Us. The Daimonic Arises From The Ground Of Being Rather Than The Self As Such.

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Sooner Or Later

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Stimulus And Response

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Courage Is Not The Absence Of Despair; It Is, Rather, The Capacity To Move Ahead In Spite Of Despair.

However It May Be Confounded Or Covered Up Or Counterfeited, This Elemental Capacity To Fight Against Injustice Remains The Distinguishing Characteristic Of Human Beings.

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Courage Is Necessary To Make Being And Becoming Possible.

Creativity Occurs In An Act Of Encounter And Is To Be Understood With This Encounter As Its Center.

The Opposite Of Courage In Our Society Is Not Cowardice, It Is Conformity.

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Freedom Does Not Come Automatically; It Is Achieved. And It Is Not Gained In A Single Bound; It Must Be Achieved Each Day.

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Vanity And Narcissism — The Compulsive Need To Be Admired And Praised — Undermine One's Courage, For One Then Fights On Someone Else's Conviction Rather Than One's Own.

One Central Need In Life Is To Fulfill Its Own Potential.

People Only Change When It Becomes Too Dangerous To Stay The Way They Are.

Freedom Is Man's Capacity To Take A Hand In His Own Development. It Is Our Capacity To Mold Ourselves.

Communication Leads To Community, That Is, To Understanding, Intimacy And Mutual Valuing.

We Define Religion As The Assumption That Life Has Meaning. Religion, Or Lack Of It, Is Shown Not In Some Intellectual Or Verbal Formulations But In One's Total Orientation To Life. Religion Is Whatever The Individual Takes To Be His Ultimate Concern. One's Religious Attitude Is To Be Found At That Point Where He Has A Conviction That There Are Values In Human Existence Worth Living And Dying For.

Humor Is The Healthy Way Of Feeling "distance" Between One's Self And The Problem, A Way Of Standing Off And Looking At One's Problem With Perspective.

Good Art Wounds As Well As Delights. It Must, Because Our Defenses Against The Truth Are Wound So Tightly Around Us. But As Art Chips Away At Our Defenses, It Also Opens Us To Healing Potentialities That Transcend Intellectual Games And Ego-preserving Strategies.

The Poet, Like The Lover, Is A Menace On The Assembly Line.

Our Thesis Is That Symbols And Myths Are An Expression Of Man's Unique Self-consciousness, His Capacity To Transcend The Immediate Concrete Situation And See His Life In Terms Of 'the Possible,' And That This Capacity Is One Aspect Of His Experiencing Himself As A Being Having A World.

When One Read's Kierkegaard's Profound Analyses Of Anxiety And Despair Or Nietzsche's Amazingly Acute Insights Into The Dynamics Of Resentment And The Guilt And Hostility Which Accompany Repressed Emotional Powers, One Might Pinch Oneself To Realize That One Is Reading Works Written In The Last Century And Not Some New Contemporary Psychological Analysis.

When We Are Dealing With Human Beings, No Truth Has Reality By Itself; It Is Always Dependent Upon The Reality Of The Immediate Relationship.

The Most Effective Way To Ensure The Value Of The Future Is To Confront The Present Courageously And Constructively.

Physical Courage In Whatever Scene ... Seems To Hinge On Whether The Individual Can Feel He Is Fighting For Others As Well As Himself.

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Humans Have A Habit Of Running Faster When They Have Lost Their Way.

Intimacy Requires Courage Because Risk Is Inescapable. We Cannot Know At The Outset How The Relationship Will Affect Us.

Self Actualization

The Ancient Greeks, As Plato Reports, Believed That We Discover Truth Through "reminiscence," That Is By "remembering," By Intuitively Searching Into Our Own Experience.

Neither Kierkegaard Nor Nietzsche Had The Slightest Interest In Starting A Movement – Or A New System, A Thought Which Would Indeed Have Offended Them. Both Proclaimed, In Nietzsche's Phrase, Follow Not Me, But You!

We Cannot Will To Have Insights. We Cannot Will To Have Creativity, But We Can Will To Give Ourselves To The Creative Experience With Intensity Of Dedication And Commitment.

Many People Feel They Are Powerless To Do Anything Effective With Their Lives. It Takes Courage To Break Out Of The Settled Mold, But Most Find Conformity More Comfortable. This Is Why The Opposite Of Courage In Our Society Is Not Cowardice, It's Conformity.

Hate Is Not The Opposite Of Love; Apathy Is.

It Is Well To Remind Ourselves That Anxiety Signifies A Conflict, And So Long As A Conflict Is Going On, A Constructive Solution Is Possible.

Intimacy Requires Courage Because Risk Is Inescapable. We Cannot Know At The Outset How The Relationship Will Affect Us. Like A Chemical Mixture, If One Of Us Is Changed, Both Of Us Will Be. Will We Grow In Self-actualization, Or Will It Destroy Us? The One Thing We Can Be Certain Of Is That If We Let Ourselves Fully Into The Relationship For Good Or Evil, We Will Not Come Out Unaffected.

It Requires Greater Courage To Preserve Inner Freedom, To Move On In One's Inward Journey Into New Realms, Than To Stand Defiantly For Outer Freedom. It Is Often Easier To Play The Martyr, As It Is To Be Rash In Battle. Strange As It Sounds, Steady, Patient Growth In Freedom Is Probably The Most Difficult Task Of All, Requiring The Greatest Courage. Thus If The Term "hero" Is Used In This Discussion At All, It Must Refer Not To The Special Acts Of Outstanding Persons, But To The Heroic Element Potentially In Every Man.

Inner Sense Of Worth That Comes With Being In Love Does Not Seem To Depend Essentially On Whether The Love Is Returned Or Not.

Power Is Required For Communication. To Stand Before An Indifferent Or Hostile Group And Have One's Say, Or To Speak Honestly To A Friend Truths That Go Deep And Hurt These Require Self-affirmation, Self-assertion, And Even At Times Aggression. ... My Experience In Psychotherapy Convinces Me That The Act Which Requires The Most Courage Is The Simple Communication, Unpropelled By Rage Or Anger, Of One's Deepest Thoughts To Another.

Creativity Is Neither The Product Of Neurosis Nor Simple Talent, But An Intense Courageous Encounter With The Gods.

In Order To Be Open To Creativity, One Must Have The Capacity For Constructive Use Of Solitude. One Must Overcome The Fear Of Being Alone.

Creativity Is Not Merely The Innocent Spontaneity Of Our Youth And Childhood; It Must Also Be Married To The Passion Of The Adult Human Being, Which Is A Passion To Live Beyond One's Death.

Artistic Symbols And Myths Speak Out Of The Primordial, Preconscious Realm Of The Mind Which Is Powerful And Chaotic. Both Symbol And Myth Are Ways Of Bringing Order And Form Into This Chaos.

Science, Nietzsche Had Warned, Is Becoming A Factory, And The Result Will Be Ethical Nihilism.

This Personal Freedom To Think And Feel And Speak Authentically And To Be Conscious Of So Doing Is The Quality That Distinguishes Us As Human.

We Express Our Being By Creating. Creativity Is A Necessary Sequel To Being.

This Is Hard For Parents To Say Genuinely.

Finding The Center Of Strenghth Within Ourselves Is In The Long Run Best Contribution We Can Do To Our Fellow Man

We Must Be Fully Committed, But We Must Also Be Aware At The Same Time That We Might Possibly Be Wrong. People Who Claim To Be Absolutely Convinced That Their Stand Is The Only Right One...is A Dead Giveaway Of Unconscious Doubt. Commitment Is Healthiest When It Is Not Without Doubt, But In Spite Of Doubt.

Those We Call Saints Rebelled Against An Outmoded And Inadequate Form Of God On The Basis Of Their New Insights Into Divinity.

The Rebel Is Committed To Giving A Form And Pattern To The World. It Is A Pattern Born Of The Indomitable Thrust Of The Human Mind, The Mind Which Makes Out Of The Mass Of Meaningless Data In The World An Order And A Form.

Man Is The "ethical Animal" Ethical In Potentiality Even If, Unfortunately, Not In Actuality. His Capacity For Ethical Judgment Like Freedom, Reason And The Other Unique Characteristics Of The Human Being Is Based Upon His Consciousness Of Himself.

The Authentic Rebel Knows That The Silencing Of All His Adversaries Is The Last Thing On Earth He Wishes: Their Extermination Would Deprive Him And Whoever Else Remains Alive From The Uniqueness, The Originality, And The Capacity For Insight That These Enemies Being Human Also Have And Could Share With Him. If We Wish The Death Of Our Enemies, We Cannot Talk About The Community Of Man. In The Losing Of The Chance For Dialogue With Our Enemies, We Are The Poorer.

When I Fall In Love, I Feel More Valuable And I Treat Myself With More Care. We Have All Observed The Hesitant Adolescent, Uncertain Of Himself, Who, When He Or She Falls In Love, Suddenly Walks With A Certain Inner Assuredness And Confidence, A Mien Which Seems To Say, "you Are Looking At Somebody Now." For This Inner Sense Of Worth That Comes With Being In Love Does Not Seem To Depend Essentially On Whether The Love Is Returned Or Not.

Falling In Love

Our Powerful Hunger For Myth Is A Hunger For Community. The Person Without A Myth Is A Person Without A Home...to Be A Member Of One's Community Is To Share In Its Myths.

Courage Is The Capacity To Meet The Anxiety Which Arises As One Achieves Freedom. It Is The Willingness To Differentiate, To Move From The Protecting Realms Of Parental Dependence To New Levels Of Freedom And Integration.

Joy, Rather Than Happiness, Is The Goal Of Life, For Joy Is The Emotion Which Accompanies Our Fulfilling Our Natures As Human Beings. It Is Based On The Experience Of One's Identity As A Being Of Worth And Dignity.

Our Age Is One Of Transition, In Which The Normal Channels For Utilizing The Daimonic Are Denied; And Such Ages Tend To Be Times When The Daimonic Is Expressed In Its Most Destructive Form.

Every Authentic Artist Is Engaged In This Creating Of The Conscience Of The Race, Even Though He Or She May Be Unaware Of The Fact.

The Creative Process Must Be Explored... As The Expression Of The Normal People In The Act Of Actualizing Themselves.

There Is No Meaningful Yes Unless The Individual Could Also Have Said No.

The Daimonic Refers To The Power Of Nature Rather Than The Superego, And Is Beyond Good And Evil. Nor Is It Man's 'recall To Himself' As Heidegger And Later Fromm Have Argued, For Its Source Lies In Those Realms Where The Self Is Rooted In Natural Forces Which Go Beyond The Self And Are Felt As The Grasp Of Fate Upon Us. The Daimonic Arises From The Ground Of Being Rather Than The Self As Such.

... What The Artist Or Creative Scientist Feels Is Not Anxiety Or Fear; It Is Joy. I Use The Word In Contrast To Happiness Or Pleasure. The Artist, At The Moment Of Creating, Does Not Experience Gratification Or Satisfaction... Rather, It Is Joy, Joy Defined As The Emotion That Goes With Heightened Consciousness, The Mood That Accompanies The Experience Of Actualizing One's Own Potentialities.

The Purpose Of Psychotherapy Is To Set People Free.

Something Is Born, Comes Into Being, Something That Did Not Exist Before - Which Is As Good A Definition Of Creativity As We Can Get.

To Believe Fully And At The Same Moment To Have Doubts Is Not At All A Contradiction: It Presupposes A Greater Respect For Truth, An Awareness That Truth Always Goes Beyond Anything That Can Be Said Or Done At Any Given Moment.

Everyone Has A Need For Significance; And If We Can't Make That Possible, Or Even Probable, In Our Society, Then It Will Be Obtained In Destructive Ways.

Creativity Is A Yearning For Immortality

Anxiety Is Essential To The Human Condition. The Confrontation With Anxiety Can Relieve Us From Boredom, Sharpen The Sensitivity And Assure The Presence Of Tension That Is Necessary To Preserve Human Existence.

What Is Courage? This Courage Will Not Be The Opposite Of Despair. We Shall Often Be Faced With Despair, As Indeed Every Sensitive Person Has Been During The Last Several Decades In This Country. Hence Kierkegaard And Nietzsche And Camus And Sartre Have Proclaimed That Courage Is Not The Absence Of Despair; It Is, Rather, The Capacity To Move Ahead In Spite Of Despair.

Recall How Often In Human History The Saint And The Rebel Have Be The Same Person. (p. 35)

A Person Can Meet Anxiety To The Extent That His Values Are Stronger Than The Threat.

They Pursue Meaninglessness Until They Can Force It To Mean.

Creativity Is The Process Of Bringing Something New Into Being. Creativity Requires Passion And Commitment. It Brings To Our Awareness What Was Previously Hidden And Points To New Life. The Experience Is One Of Heightened Consciousness: Ecstasy.

A Historical Perspective Can Also Help Free Us From The Ever-present Danger -- Especially At Danger In The Social Sciences -- Of Absolutizing A Theory Or Method Which Is Actually Relative To The Fact That We Live At A Given Moment In Time In The Development Of Our Particular Culture.

The Hallmark Of Courage In Our Age Of Conformity Is The Capacity To Stand On One's Own Convictions - Not Obstinately Or Defiantly

Terrorism And The Whole Drug Scene Are Vivid Examples Of The Fact That What Persons Abhor Most Of All In Life Is The Possibility That They Will Not Matter.

What Anxiety Means Is It's As Though The World Is Knocking At Your Door, And You Need To Create, You Need To Make Something, You Need To Do Something. I Think Anxiety, For People Who Have Found Their Own Heart And Their Own Souls, For Them It Is A Stimulus Toward Creativity, Toward Courage. It's What Makes Us Human Beings.

The Turtle Only Makes Progress When It's Neck Is Stuck Out.

There Is Nobody Who Totally Lacks The Courage To Change.

Courage To Change

All People Are Struggling To Be Creative In Some Way, And The Artist Is The One Who Has Succeeded In This Task Of Life.

The Mature Person Becomes Able To Differentiate Feelings Into As Many Nuances, Strong And Passionate Experiences, Or Delicate And Sensitive Ones, As In The Different Passages Of Music In A Symphony. Unfortunately, Many Of Us Have Feelings Limited Like Notes In A Bugle Call.

Every Human Being Must Have A Point At Which He Stands Against The Culture, Where He Says, This Is Me And The Damned World Can Go To Hell.

Symbols Are Specific Acts Or Figures, While Myths Develop And Elaborate These Symbols Into A Story Which Contains Characters And Several Episodes. The Myth Is Thus More Inclusive. But Both Symbol And Myth Have The Same Function Psychologically; They Are Man's Way Of Expressing The Quintessence Of His Experience - His Way Of Seeing His Life, His Self-image And His Relations To The World Of His Fellow Men And Of Nature - In A Total Figure Which At The Same Moment Carries The Vital Meaning Of This Experience.

Depression Is The Inability To Construct A Future.

Mark Tobey Fills His Canvases With Elliptical, Calligraphic Lines, Beautiful Whirls That Seem At First Glance To Be Completely Abstract And To Come From Nowhere At All Except His Own Subjective Musing. But I Shall Never Forget How Struck I Was, On Visiting Tobey's Studio One Day, To See Strewn Around Books On Astronomy And Photographs Of The Milky Way. I Knew Then That Tobey Experiences The Movement Of The Stars And Solar Constellations As The External Pole Of His Encounter.

Receptivity Requires A Nimbleness, A Fine-honed Sensitivity In Order To Let One's Self Be The Vehicle Of Whatever Vision May Emerge.

To Love Means To Open Ourselves To The Negative As Well As The Positive - To Grief, Sorrow, And Disappointment As Well As To Joy, Fulfillment, And An Intensity Of Consciousness We Did Not Know Was Possible Before

There Is An Energy Field Between Humans. And, When We Reach Out In Passion, It Is Met With An Answering Passion And Changes The Relationship Forever.

There Can Be No Stronger Proof Of The Impoverishment Of Our Contemporary Culture Than The Popular - Though Profoundly Mistaken - Definition Of Myth As Falsehood.

A Dynamic Struggle Goes On Within A Person Between What He Or She Consciously Thinks On The One Hand And, On The Other, Some Insight, Some Perspective That Is Struggling To Be Born.

By The Creative Act, We Are Able To Reach Beyond Our Own Death.

In Religion, It Is Not The Sycophants Or Those Who Cling Most Faithfully To The Status Quo Who Are Ultimately Praised. It Is The Insurgents.

The Essence Of Being Human Is That, In The Brief Moment We Exist On This Spinning Planet, We Can Love Some Persons And Some Things, In Spite Of The Fact That Time And Death Will Ultimately Claim Us All.

Professors Will Lecture With More Inspiration If They Occasionally Alternate The Classroom With The Beach: Authors Will Write Better When, As Macaulay Used To Do, They Write For Two Hours, Then Pitch Quoits, And Then Go Back To Their Writing. But Certainly More Than The Mere Mechanical Alternation Is Involved.

Artists Do Not Run Away From Non-being, But By Encountering And Wrestling With It, Force It To Produce Being.

Generally, The Shaking Is Consciously Felt In Its Positive Aspects — As The Wonderful New Heaven And Earth Which Love With Its Miracle And Mystery Has Suddenly Produced. Love Is The Answer, We Sing. Our Western Culture Seems To Be Engaged In A Romantic - Albeit Desperate - Conspiracy To Enforce The Illusion That That Is All There Is To Eros.

Falling In Love

One Does Not Become Fully Human Painlessly.

Intimacy Requires Courage Because Risk Is Inescapable.

Self Actualization

Care Is A State In Which Something Does Matter; Care Is The Opposite Of Apathy. Care Is The Necessary Source Of Eros, The Source Of Human Tenderness.

The Danger Always Exists That Our Technology Will Serve As A Buffer Between Us And Nature, A Block Between Us And The Deeper Dimensions Of Our Own Experience.

Does Not The Possibility Or The Power To Do Something About The Situation At Hand Confer On One The Responsibility To Do It?

Human Freedom Involves Our Capacity To Pause, To Choose The One Response Toward Which We Wish To Throw Our Weight.

The Receptivity Of The Artist Must Never Be Confused With Passivity. Receptivity Is The Artist's Holding Him Or Herself Alive And Open To Hear What Being May Speak.

The Individual Human Is Still The Creature Who Can Wonder, Who Can Be Enchanted By A Sonata, Who Can Place Symbols Together To Make Poetry To Gladden Our Heart, Who Can View A Sunrise With A Sense Of Majesty And Awe.

It Is An Old And Ironic Habit Of Human Beings To Run Faster When We Have Lost Our Way; And We Grasp More Fiercely At Research, Statistics, And Technical Aids In Sex When We Have Lost The Values And Meaning Of Love.

In My Clinical Experience, The Greatest Block To A Person's Development Is His Having To Take On A Way Of Life Which Is Not Rooted In His Own Powers.

Reason Works Better When Emotions Are Present; The Person Sees Sharper And More Accurately When His Emotions Are Engaged.

Memory Is Not Just The Imprint Of The Past Time Upon Us; It Is The Keeper Of What Is Meaningful For Our Deepest Hopes And Fears.

Human Freedom Involves Our Capacity To Pause Between The Stimulus And Response And, In That Pause, To Choose The One Response Toward Which We Wish To Throw Our Weight. The Capacity To Create Ourselves, Based Upon This Freedom, Is Inseparable From Consciousness Or Self-awareness. (p. 100)

Creativity Is The Encounter Of The Intensively Conscious Human Being With His World.

Tenderness Emerges From The Fact That The Two Persons, Longing, As All Individuals Do, To Overcome The Separateness And Isolation To Which We Are All Heir Because We Are Individuals, Can Participate In A Relationship That, For The Moment, Is Not Of Two Isolated Selves But A Union

Funny Relationship

If You Do Not Express Your Own Original Ideas, If You Do Not Listen To Your Own Being, You Will Have Betrayed Yourself.

Evil, In This System Of Ethics, Is That Which Tears Apart, Shuts Out The Other Person, Raises Barriers, Sets People Against Each Other.

One Must Have At Least A Readiness To Love The Other Person, Broadly Speaking, If One Is To Be Able To Understand Him.

The Creative Act Arises Out Of The Struggle Of Human Beings With And Against That Which Limits Them.

Mass Communication--wonder As It May Be Technologically And Something To Be Appreciated And Valued--presents Us Wit A Serious Daner, The Danger Of Conformism, Due To The Fact That We All View The Same Things At The Same Time In All The Cities Of The Country. (p. 73)

Ecstasy Is The Accurate Term For The Intensity Of Consciousness That Occurs In The Creative Act.

It Is Interesting To Note How Many Of The Great Scientific Discoveries Begin As Myths.

We Receive Love — From Our Children As Well As Others — Not In Proportion To Our Demands Or Sacrifices Or Needs, But Roughly In Proportion To Our Own Capacity To Love.

Capacity To Love

Insight Comes At A Moment Of Transition Between Work And Relaxation.

All Our Feelings, Like The Artist's Paints And Brush, Are Ways Of Communicating And Sharing Something Meaningful From Us To The World.

Apathy Adds Up, In The Long Run, To Cowardice.

Communication Leads To Community That Is, To Understanding, Intimacy, And The Mutual Valuing That Was Previously Lacking. Community Can Be Defined Simply As A Group In Which Free Conversation Can Take Place. Community Is Where I Can Share My Innermost Thoughts, Bring Out The Depths Of My Own Feelings, And Know They Will Be Understood.

I Learned That Healing And Cure Are Active Processes In Which I Myself Needed To Participate.

Creativity Is The Result Of A Struggle Between Vitality And Form. As Anyone Who Has Tried To Write A Sonnet Or Scan Poetry, Is Aware, The Form Ideally Do Not Take Away From The Creativity But May Add To It.

Creative People... Are Distinguished By The Fact That They Can Live With Anxiety, Even Though A High Price May Be Paid In Terms Of Insecurity, Sensitivity, And Defenselessness For The Gift Of 'divine Madness,' To Borrow The Term Used By The Classical Greeks.

Competitive Individualism Militates Against The Experience Of Community, And That Lack Of Community Is A Centrally Important Factor In Contemporaneous Anxiety.

Creativity Arises Out Of The Tension Between Spontaneity And Limitations, The Latter (like The River Banks) Forcing The Spontaneity Into The Various Forms Which Are Essential To The Work Of Art Or Poem.

A Myth Is A Way Of Making Sense In A Senseless World. Myths Are Narrative Patterns That Give Significance To Our Existence. Whether The Meaning Of Existence Is Only What We Put Into Life By Our Own Individual Fortitude, As Sartre Would Hold, Or Whether There Is A Meaning We Need To Discover, As Kierkegaard Would State, The Result Is The Same: Myths Are Our Way Of Finding This Meaning And Significance.

It Is Infinitely Safer To Know That The Man At The Top Has His Doubts, As You And I Have Ours, Yet Has The Courage To Move Ahead In Spite Of These Doubts.

Artists Love To Immerse Themselves In Chaos In Order To Put It Into Form, Just As God Created Form Out Of Chaos In Genesis. Forever Unsatisfied With The Mundane, The Apathetic, The Conventional, They Always Push On To Newer Worlds.

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Frank B. Kellogg

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