{ } = word or expression can't be understood
{word} = hard to understand, might be this

If you see that the mystic and the rationalist are dealing with conditions of achievement, but not with achievement then you are safe. They are in this world of the in-between, our starting point and our goal. The mystic is trying to keep up his faith in a -- inside a world where his -- emotions, if turning outside, would get him down. The rationalist is more than a man using his reason. As always the syllable, i-s-t, claims the monopoly. A mysticist is a -- would be a man who says, "Mere emotion, therefore I sever the connection with the outside world which caused my emotions. I have my emotions, so to speak, all under my own control. I produce them within myself." The rationalist is a man who says, "I'm not building bridges only. I'm not using spikes. I'm not looking out for better shoes, better cars, better airplanes. But I say that the whole universe is only means." He's a pragmatist, as you know today, because his pragmatis- -- well, a pragmatist is a rationalist who says that the whole world only consists of means. That "I don't -- have to listen to commands. I do not have a destiny. I do not accept orders from history, from the past. But it's always in my own individual reason." The rationalist therefore is a man who commits this famous metabasis eis allo genos. You remember? This transgression into a field where you have to ask, "What's my destiny?" And not- -- -s "what do I mean?" "What's my goal?" "What are the ends of life?"

Well, you can go to the -- every department story in the world. You can read the Sears, Roebuck catalog, and you will not fund -- find any answer. What's the use of all these things? If you do not have the answer to what end you will put all the content of the Sears, Roebuck cata- -- catalog, you are a child.

A friend of mine, a minister, gave a boy -- as I told you, I think, this story of -- a Sears, Roebuck catalog to read, and said, "Make a circle around those things which you wish to have for Christmas." So the boy took his pen and made a circle around every item in a Sears, Roebuck catalog. It was the first time that he was allowed to use ink. And therefore he was very proud, you see, and that's a rationalist. A rationalist is a man who makes a circle around every means in life, you see, and therefore has no ink left to spell out the end.

If you buy the whole of the Sears, Roebuck catalog, you see, you may. But obviously you would stand then in front of all these things arriving at your house, you see, and would be pretty much embarrassed, because obviously no house has been built for containing all the items of a Sears, Roebuck catalog. The house of your life has not been built for any number of means. You have to find those means that are really needed in your life. But for this selective power, rationalism doesn't help you at all. Because gentlemen, rationalism cannot make

the distinction between important and unimportant. No logical conclusion, no syllogism, no analogy, no similarity, no process of thought has ever been able to give you the sense of humor by which you decide whether this is important or not important. The sense of importance and of unimportance is only developed where we deal with past and future, with destiny and origin. Obviously. You laugh with a sense of humor, because you say to the present day and to my own talk, "This is so terribly important," you see. "I'm off in three days. And there I'll meet my girl, and my parents, and get my Christmas presents. And after all -- is much more important." So with a sense of humor, you tolerate my -- my speech here. I think it's speech, and you think it's talk.

Well, means give never any yardstick, any standard, any criterion of importance. You can reason everything out in mathematics, that all the -- you know the amount of numbers between 0 and 1 is more numerous -- is greater than the -- than the -- all the numbers -- the integral numbers from zero to infinity. That's a famous paradox, as you know, in mathematics. But you don't know whether the theorem is of any importance. Mathematics don't tell you the -- there is no distinction between the unimportant and the important in mathematics, you see. Absolutely everything is of equal importance.

Gentlemen, when you know that this is the girl, and the other is not, you can only decide this by a feeling of importance. You can never decide it on any logical ground. If you try, you can't take any one of them. Any girl that can be distinguished by logical reasons, you see, should be indistinguishable. They just should be promiscuous and uninteresting, because they are just means. And you are mean, if you do so.

Girls, attachments, political decisions, your own future, what you are going to be -- well, we have talked about this before, you remember -- can never be met without this yardstick of importance. I gave you the story of the man who wanted to become a doctor. And he said, "Unfortunately that's impossible."

I said, "Why?"

"Well, I am accustomed to have my physical exercise and my shower every morning from 6 to 7. If I became a doctor, I might be prevented from doing so." He was a rationalist.

There is a another saying which tries to express this. But it never gives us any explanation what it mean -- of what it means -- is this famous saying, "First things come first." Poor rationalism, you see, can only admit that there is 1, 2, 3. First, second, and third. That's the rationalistic approach to reality, that you have figures, numbers, mathematical computation. It seems logical to say 1, 2, 3.

I have a colleague who has written a book on the history of rel- -- on the philosophy of religions. He wanted to have it sold all over the country, of course. And to make -- give it a large scale, he arranged all the religions simply by chronology. Now it so happens that Muhammad only flew from Mecca to Medina in 622 of our era. And so the last chapter is on Islam. So I asked my colleague, "Do you really mean to say that Islam is the last religion, or the most important religion?"

"No," he said. "But it's chronologically true that it's the last. And I have to put it there, because this way I don't give offense."

"Well," I said. "I understand. Now the religions are all of equally little importance." Because if the -- Islam of which he doesn't think much is just put there as Chapter 13, because it is -- comes last in time -- in -- external time, then he has said that none of these religions is important, because they are all far away, and he hasn't organized his religion according to their mattering to you and me, you see, but just according to their being equally indifferent for all of us. And he sold, of course, his book, you see. And he killed religion. So he thinks he has objectively transmitted our knowledge about religion. He has not. He has, by dealing with religion as a rationalist, murdered the last shred of religion, which he otherwise might have saved in his students' and readers' heart. And nobody laughs. Nobody takes this man down for his -- this nonsense.

Obviously religion, if it is anything, is something that matters. It matters obviously to have no religion or to have religion. Or whatever you say, I mean. Anything in this realm should have -- least be of some importance. If you put, however, the last religion into the last chapter in order to sell your book, so that nobody should feel that you attach any significance to any one of the 13 chapters, you see, you have not been neutral, but you have done something. You have told your reader that he can do very well without all 13 religions. As long as he is -- buys the book, he will go to Heaven, in the eyes of the writer of the book. All that matters is for the author to have you pay $5. And people in this country, you see, do not make a detour and spit at such a writer, and such a book. Oh no. They make him president of the -- philosophy society in this country. He's not despicable.

In my eyes, he is despicable. For $5, he sells man's belongings, man's membership in the universe, man's cosmic creed, man's destiny, and man's imperatives. For $5. Just because he wants to get the $5, he tells this man, "It is more important that you give me $5 than that -- you should have a religion."

It's -- the funny thing is that you go to these people, who asked you for your money, and deprive you of your attachments, that you run after them, and

that you make them into millionaires. That's so very queer in this country, that because you believe that a man who speaks reason, and he says is a rationalist, could be believed in. That is, he uses reason, you use belief. Isn't that very strange? You are his ritualists. You repeat his motion, his attitude. Where is your reason in this process, may I ask?

The funny thing is that any rationalist demands from everybody else to be a mystic. And every mystic, yes, believes of anybody else to believe -- be a rationalist. Because here is the mystic and says, "I have inexpressible emotions." Unfortunately, however, he tells us of these inexpressible emotions, and he says, "I want to be canonized as a mystic." How do you do that, you see? Can you tell me how you commute with the universe of which you have just said that you cannot be -- commute with? You see the paradox? Can you see it? Not quite. Sir, I mean you. Yes? Can you understand, follow?

(I think so.)

You will always find that the mystic is the man who writes the book on mysticism. And you will always see that the rationalist asks you to do a foolish thing, to trust him. That's a paradox, you see, which you shouldn't demand a man to be placed ins- -- in. They always demand from their publ- -- the reading public the very opposite attitude from the one they assume yourself -- themselves. Whereas in a living society, this is all -- where we are gregarious, and good fellows, there is no such paradox. If I'm not -- neither a rationalist nor a mystic, I say I've accepted something from the -- from my ancestors and my founders. I have to hand it over. I try my best to transmit it. And in this process, I need help. I may make blunders. I may not be able to revive the spirit in you. But at least what I'm doing is something within the process of the society in which I move. Can you see this? I'm not self-contained. Words have been com- -- come into me, streaming into me, thoughts, truth, experiments, experiences, traditions; I'm trying to revive them and make all of us again aware of their meaning, and of their direction. That's after all what I have be -- been trying to do in this course. And there is no miraculous thing. You are potential speakers, you see. And I am a past listener. And therefore it is only natural that every one of us has to carry on both shoulders. Because we are speakers and listeners, we are accepting ritual from the past, you see, and reinterpreting it in our own marriage of love, in our own affections, in our own passions. Can't you see this?

The corollary, gentlemen, of this for the family now has to be shown. If you take these four attitudes of the ritualist, of the lover, of the rationalist, and of the mystic, they are the vicious, vicious disintegrations of the body of the family. Because if you now turn these two -- four people into reasonable, living social members of a group, you will find that the mother is the ritualist; that the father

is the rationalist; that the boy is the mystic, the lyrics- -- -cist; and that the daughter is the bride, waiting to be loved, and to be allowed to say "yes," or "please."

So gentlemen, when you try to have one system of thought as sufficient for your human attitude. As a human being, you will always say, "I have to be either high church, and become Roman Catholic, ritualist," or you will have to be a rationalist, become a Free Mason, or an Elk, or a Bull Calf, or what-not, and -- or you have to be emotional, and get drunk. I mean, your mysticism consists in your Sunday sprees -- Saturday sprees in White River Junction. After all, drunkenness is a way of passing out under the emotions. And the eternal lover is -- that is the bridal attitude of the human soul in which we are still waiting, inviting courtship and inviting -- and if you have it in the abstract, it will read to the harlot. It will read to the whore.

But the real {situation} in a -- in a family, gentlemen, is not one of: 1, ritualist; 2, rationalist; 3, mysticism; and 4, well -- how will you call it? -- making love. That is, this whole thing of rationalism, first things come first even, this whole numbering disappears because in real life, gentlemen, this is the secret against mathematics, against geometry, against Spinoza, and against Descartes, and against all these horrible men who dealt with nature, but not with humanity. It is that you and I spread into these four directions. We go from the kernel of man- -- manhood into bridal state, into a motherly state, into a fatherly attitude, and into a filial attitude at the -- the several points of my -- our -- of our life.

This man, Oliver Wendell Holmes, used to say that of his ancestry, there came at different phases of his life quite different people to the fore. That in his boyhood, he may be nine-tenths his mother, and in his ripe age, he may be ninetenths his father, by which he was implying that we had in us the total man. But according to age, and according to sex, particles, elementary forces, you see, came to the fore. But the others were still there, but they were only hidden. They came -- you see, they stood behind it.

This is very important in sex. As you all know, nobody is unhappier than a male who thinks he has to be all man -- he-man. And nobody is more unhappy who has been told that he is just she, you see, just little woman. And on the other hand, it is equally terrible to say that there is no sex influence in character. If you say, "I'm just a human being," you are licked, too. Nobody is going to marry you.

So please, don't be a capon. But on the other hand, don't be cockerel, a rooster. You have to be more than any of -- you can't be neutralized in your sex. But you can always know that your sex qualifications are relative, that there is more to your life than just being transformed into this special stage of sexuality.

If you take -- keep this picture, gentlemen, as against the atom- -- -mized listing of different types, as you hear today, you are saved. If you know that man begins by being at the same time an introvert and extrovert, you will always know that when you begin to call a man an extrovert or an introvert, he is on the edge of psychopathology, because he is too much of one thing. Can't you see it? I hope to be introvert and extrovert. And you have to try the same. You have to be -- use reason and emotions while you are performing your great -- stride from the steppingstone of the past into your future destiny, to the other side of the river of -- of time. But woe to you if you say, "I'm a mystic," or "I'm a rationalist." Then you become the slave of a passing phase of your own existence.

If you see this relation, gentlemen, then you will also be able to dissolve the tension between mother and ritualist: the eternal, so to speak, man in prayer, the -- the -- the pious, religious soul; and -- and the real human being which has -- who has motherly qualities, yes, but is not com- -- obliged to play the mother always.

There are four simple words in the human language, which show you why the family is the receptacle of creative speech. The mother is thankful for the past. She has accepted something to -- hand over to her children. She gives the background of the family. So she says "thank you." As you know, modern children don't say "thank you." So the child- -- the poor parents have to say to themselves, "We are grateful to God that He gave us these -- naughty brats," every evening and -- because otherwise they would lose patience. The bride says, "please." They all smile at you, as you know, in the post office. They don't mean it. But they smile, which -- to smile at somebody is an invitation. It means "please." For all Europeans, it is very, very surprising, you see, that all the girls in America smile at them and does -- doesn't mean anything. But originally, smile is an invitation. Now the boy has many ideas. He affirms. He asserts. Any one of you makes more assertions a day than he can really guarantee to be true. And the father says, "no."

Very simple. Now these are the four primary words of the human language. And they are never mentioned in a college. That's very strange. Where you deal with syllogisms, and where you deal with scientific probability, and with observations, and what-not. Hypotheses of laws of nature, and so on. Gentlemen, they are the only four important words. If you can use, "no," "yes," "thank you," and "please" in their own time and hour, you live.

(Where does the bride be- -- become a mother? Where does the mother separate out from the bride?)

When she -- when sh- -- the bride becomes a mother, when she stands by

her one "please," and says, "now, no -- no other please," or -- she becomes a whore. Isn't that the difference? That's -- there's your -- there's your breaking point. If -- when the right wooer comes to whom she really can say in good faith, "please," you see, of course she'll -- she begins to go out for dances. She smiles. She says "please," with a rather timid way. She doesn't say "please" for her total future. But she allows this man to show -- prove that he is perhaps the character, you see, with whom she may get betrothed. So when the "please" really is said, then it's final. Then at this moment, it happens as in all life, gentlemen, when do you stop eating? When you have et- -- eaten enough. When do you stop sleeping? When you have slept, you see.

People do not understand that all life begets its own opposite. Bridalhood -- the bride -- the bride begets the motherhood in herself, you see, then she has come to the climax of her love. There is nothing more, you see. When it -- when things are at best, you always have to stop. Never overeat, you see. Never overlove. Never overstudy. Because all these things must beget their own end. Achievement is achievement.

Mr. Spengler wrote a book, The Decay of the West, The End of the West. He could also have said The Fulfillment of the West, because when a thing is fulfilled, it's over. "Fulfillment" means just as much end as you can see, as it -- as it means "achievement." Beyond fulfillment, you cannot go, Sir. Therefore, once the cup of love, you see, has been filled to the brim, the bride would dishonor the fulfillment, if she would not say, "This is he." Ja? "This is final."

(Then it's even more obscure than where the son becomes a father.)

It is. When he denies himself. You see, the -- sonhood becomes fatherhood by a self-denying ordinance. When you say that -- you have to stop with all your wild ideas. You will -- will not go -- keep running to the next philosophy and the next. Can you see it?

(In other words, when you settle down to one --)

Ja. { }.

Now gentlemen, this -- these four powers -- yes, no, please, and thank you -- may not strike you as very important. As long as they do not strike you as very important, you do not know what the difference between talking and speech is, or between thinking and speaking. These four words are all said to the outside, humanity, in encounter, in meeting them. And they take you up on these four words. You may say that the weather tomorrow will be bad. No -- only a fool would remind you tomorrow that you said the wrong thing. That the prognosti-

cation just didn't come true. It never comes true, as you know, when we forecast the weather. This is not an important forecast -- word spoken. It's an opinion. Everybody knows that if you say, "Tomorrow it will rain," it may not rain, or it may rain, and nobody says, "You have lied." If you however have said to me, "I shall come and see you at 1 o'clock," and as you usually do, you do not turn up, I say that you are childish, that you haven't learned to speak with responsibility and power, because you haven't meant what you said. And this means that you -- his -- your "yes" wasn't "yes," because it wasn't given in connection with "no."

Now gentlemen, these four words are what the Gospel calls the logos. And that's the difference between the logic. The logos of the Gospel, which is a word that may have reached your ears, the famous logos, the "word which was in the beginning" is meant by these four terms. If you can enfold, or expand, or ramify the word logos of the Greeks, or the word, "the Word" -- "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word." You have -- may have heard this, have you? Or God said, "Let there be light." "Please." That's an order with God. If you do understand this, you will wake up from treating the Gospel or the Church as ritual. It isn't ritual. It's an attempt to put into you this creative power to determine what in your own life is dead, outside nature; what in your own life is bygone past to be gratefully received and s- -- maintained; what in your life has to be done in the future; and how to deal with your own inner emotions, and the -- your fellow -- your fellow-man emotions, and how to get over the hump, so to speak, in good fellowship when you have sorrow and joy together in good company.

That is, the logos is at the root of our power to found families. Never think that -- that family life is a -- affair of physical energy, because that you can do much better in a brothel.

The shameful empress of Rome, Messalina, I think it was, once held a -- held a -- a contest with some harlots of Rome: how many men they could receive within one night. A shocking story, which only shows you what comes from love and lust when you treat it as some physical process, you see. This is a complete mistake, complete confusion of everything we know. Everybody knows that when he is a -- terribly upset by his own manhood, and he meets a nice woman, a girl, or even an elderly lady on the street and she invites him for tea, that all his problems are solved for that day, because he is at peace. He has the -- been integrated into society again. And I can only assure you that this is much better than to go and have a glass of whiskey.

You have to know these things. Man is led by the word, like a little lamb. And anybody who wants to do well by himself, gentlemen, must know this, that to meet a friend in a take -- a moment of need, in a moment of agony is a lifesav-

er. How many people have been saved from suicide, because there was just somebody who would speak to them? That's all. Gentlemen, that's a physical energy that suddenly enters you. Somebody sets eyes on you, and you forget all your worries, and your grievances. You know there is a society f- -- against suicide -- where they try to supply people who just talk to the men in the hour of need. of course, it's very hard to establish such a society, because a man in such a despair thinks that nobody can help him, and he wouldn't turn to such a society over the telephone.

But you ought to know this, gentlemen, now in your five senses, when you are reasonable, and when you -- can -- are in control of your mystical emotions, and when you can be thankful for sharing the life of this society. There will be moments of bleak despair in your life. Then in the last moment, before you -- you open the -- the -- how do you call the gas --?

(Jet.)

Wie?

(Jet.)

The jet, you see, that it perhaps is -- there is still John Smith, class of '55. And he's a good idiot. And although he is an idiot, and you are much more s- -- superior intellectually, perhaps he can turn the tide. And he can. You just see him. He grins. He doesn't understand. And his lack of understanding of your despair is a great help.

Thank you.