Transcript

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

...by expression of the divinity of physical love. For pigs, of course, it isn't, because you think that -- when intercourse is described, it must always be sex. It cannot be the apotheosis of mankind. But that's what it is here, where the goddess is good enough to bend over the {lying in years}. And I told you it's one of the oldest traditions of the human race, that in the greatest harmony, it is the goddess that bends over the god, and not as in the animal kingdom.

After this, a man comes and asks me, was he obliged to read more of this poem, or could he drop it now? There's nothing more to be said. I'm very sorry that this man is taking the course. If -- if you think that philosophy can be studied by assignments, gentlemen, you are quite wrong. It cannot. It can only -- done by some voluntary act. I can lead the horse to the water. I can't make him drink. If you don't read more than I assign, gentlemen, the whole course is absolute nonsense. Obviously, any assignment is ridiculous in philosophy, because it means that you don't -- are n- -- have no sense of wonder. Now I tried to sell to you this very simple idea that philosophy is a sense of wonder about the gods, about man, and about the world. -- If you cannot develop any one of these senses of wonder, gentlemen, just don't try to study any course in philosophy. Because philosophy is not a science, and philosophy is not gymnastics. And -- it is only the cultivation of your sense of wonder. Nothing else.

Now the sense of wonder knows of no time limits. And it knows -- knows of no assignment, because a sense of wonder takes you out of the commercial, and out of the scheduled, and out of the measurable reality. Obviously the sense of wonder means that -- are perplexed, and that therefore you do not know whether you sink or swim, as the famous English love song says. "I know not if I sink or swim." That's philosophy.

Now I -- I quite understand to -- that you cannot share this sense of wonder from the beginning. I have tried to introduce you to it, and to show you that it is in every man's life who opens his mouth and has the boldness to say anything, that he must be surprised over his boldness, that he does say something. That's the first sense of wonder about his own logos, that there is by the grace of God in him a power that vitalizes this idiot, which every one of us is, and this dirt, which we are, and this mass of clay, and that we, in our receptacle there suddenly lights up, as in an electric bulb, a current that is not of our making, because it has to do with the truth. And neither you nor I know anything of the truth by ourselves. Absolutely nothing.

So I say it is difficult for you to follow me, except perhaps by the shock

that even you yourself have already something to -- we -- you can cultivate. You have made remarks at home and elsewhere. What are they worth? Were they yourself? Were they just passing remarks? Do you want them to be held against you? Then were they true? Are they good enough to be held against you?

You -- what I can demand from the beginning of this course, gentlemen: that you should not make it impossible for you to get into the sense of wonder. Anybody who asks, however, "Must I read more of this stuff?" has already made up his mind that he will not get into this, obviously, you see.

Because, we shall go on from the last time, where I tried -- I hoped I had made clear, that we are all surrounded by this deep secret which lies between the three divisions of this college. What is the unifying point, the center from which three divisions, as we have them -- humanities, social science, and natural science -- divide? Show me this point, and there is where the real man stands. A man is always more than a man in the social sciences. And he is always more than a man in the humanities. And he's always more than a man, you see, in the natural sciences. Well, he can create all these three, has he not? Who is this strange animal who can go in for nature, in for society, and in for authority or inspiration, or truth? That's our won- -- sense of wonder.

And we s- -- call this point in which the philosopher tries to ren- -- render himself the point of -- from which any moment a new distribution must be made between the forces of the logos, the forces of our ethos, and the energies of our phusis. And I also tried to tell you that what we use today, logic, ethics -- funny enough, here is the plural -- and physics, is already second-rate, and it's limited today to the much more comprehensive, original nouns of logos, phusis, and ethos.

All philosophy, we said, has these three topics, these three themes. They can be mixed in a different way. I can say, "My stomach speaks out of me." Then I am what you would call a clumsy materialist, you see. I would then try to reduce the logos to an appearance of the phusis. I can say the opposite, as the idealist, and say, "All physical things are just appearances, semblances, you -- the true thing is -- the meaning of it is in the mind." And I can say that I know nothing of all these things. I only know of neighborly love, and I only know of my duties as a citizen in the polis. Then I am an ethicist, you see, like a good Stoic.

Today I have to make an attempt to bring this same truth home to you from the other end of the history of the Greek mind, from its very beginnings, so that you can understand why these strange three abstract things, logos, ethic, and physics, today still shake men. This country is today only interested in physics. It cries out for physicists. And it asks physicists whether they believe in

God, as though they knew anything about that. Mr. Einstein was -- is put in a window in the interna- -- inter- -- in Riverside Church. Remarkable ineptitude. What the fel- -- poor physicist who invents atom bombs know about God Almighty, who tells him whether he -- one can throw the atom bomb, or not throw the atom bomb? That's a very different proposition. We all produce nonsense, gentlemen. But what to do with nonsense, that's the problem.

And so I asked you to bring to class the books that go before Lucretius. Lucretius, as I said, is the Nietzsche of antiquity. He goes mad. And in a -- in an ending revolt, you may say, and also lyricism, he -- he's the quintessence of the whole march of -- ancient philosophy from the traditional gods to their explanation by one man's mind, Lucretius himself. And that's the same god Nietzsche tried: abolish the gods by making himself into a god.

And that's a good formula, gentlemen, that the philosopher tries the apotheosis of the philosopher, bec- -- by explaining away the pre-philosophical powers, especially the gods, or the authorities in the city, the kings, the tyr- -- tyrants, everybody, you see. He becomes the king and the priest in his own right. And the -- and anybody in this country who says, "I'm independent, and I think for myself," is the -- same kind of atrocious ass who says that he is god to himself.

Now Lucretius was not such an ass. He went at least mad over this issue, gentlemen. He paid with his whole -- own life, as Nietzsche did. And that's the greatness of these people, that they went to the end of the road, into the deadend street, and -- warned you and me that if we follow there, that must be the result. These great people, gentlemen, serve a great purpose, as any criminal does. Any murderer spares you -- to have -- you have to become a murderer. Any crime is there to deter you. -- I'm sure that all great sinners are mighty useful in the kingdom of -- of ends, because without the criminals, you see, we would commit all the crimes.

So without philosophy of antiquity, gentlemen, many impasses and many dead-end streets would be traveled again. But how did it all begin? I asked you to read Homer. Every Greek philosopher down to Lucretius is shot through with Homer. And Homer's poetry, gentlemen, then is that nourishment out of which a philosopher tried to make philosophy. Homer deals with the logos, the ethos, and the phusis not as a philosopher. His sense of wonder is there. Any poet has a sense of wonder. But the answer which he gives, gentlemen, is not a philosophical answer. And if he can now, by reading Homer, define his sense of wonder, in contrast to the philosophical sense of wonder, we'll know better what philosophy is.

So my second voyage, so to speak, into philosophy will come from the

times when there was no philosophy. Homer is not a philosopher. But he was treated by all the Greeks from -- who came after him, down to the days of St. Augustine, to the end of the -- of antiquity, as their teacher. Homer is in Greek not th- -- a poet. He is the poet.

As a matter of fact, I read here a textbook by -- written by an old Greek on the history of Greek philosophy. And the man quoted a list of books written by a famous Stoic. And I read on the right-hand side, in the English translation in the { } edition, on Homer. And I said to myself, "Has he written a book on Homer?" I -- and I looked on the left side, into the Greek text, and it said, "on the poet." So then our translator, you see, in order to be -- make clear what it was, had said "Ho-" -- says, "Homer," where the Greeks just had to say, "the poet."

In the Middle ages -- if you read a commentary of St. Thomas on the Bible, and he says "Apostolus," you know who is meant? Wie?

(Paul?)

Always. Paul is never quoted by name. But it's -- Aristotle on the onehand side, in the Summa of Thomas, and on the hand, Apostolus. "Apostolus" is a different rank, you see. Aristotle is just a philosopher. But Apostolus -- he has authority, you see. He doesn't speak for himself. You treat Paul as Paul, and therefore you have no apostolic church left. If Paul is -- is a man, he is of interest to you and me. He's an apostle.

Well, however this may be, Ho -- Homer was not Homer for the Greeks, but he was the entrance door to Greek, to the -- what made the distinction between a barbarian and a Greek was Homer. And therefore, what enabled a Greek to be a philosopher and to claim, and they did claim this, that only in the Greek language could you philosophize, and that the word "philosophy" therefore had to exist -- in 1956 in Dartmouth College, because you can't translate it. And I'm still in -- a member of the department of philosophy here to this day. That comes all from Homer, because Homer set apart the Greek language from any other language in the world.

We will then read a little bit of Homer in the next weeks. Some decisive books, the second book of The Iliad for example, and the 24th book of The Iliad, must suffice. I'm sorry, I would re- -- like to read it all. Especially if you understand the second book of The Iliad, which the liberals of the 19th centuries called spurious, and which we now again think to be the heart of the matter. The center part. They have done with all the important books, as you know, of antiquity -- in 19th century they have declared the Gospel of St. John to be spurious. And they have declared the Gospel of Matthew to be spurious, and Genesis to be

spurious. And now we think that the critics were spurious.

We'll see why it is not spurious, because we will -- I can prove to you, gentlemen, that without the second book of The Iliad, there would be no Greek philosophy, because it would not have been necessary. We'll come to this in -- after the recess. Now I want to go to the rest of the literature. We then will have to read some of the parallels in The Odyssey to show you that Homer was so powerful, because he wrote one poem on p- -- war, and another on peace. It's a little bit like the two world wars. As you know, the First World War was not -- unable to shake America out of its deep sleep. And there had to be a second destruction of the world, with perhaps 20 more million people killed, because in this country, the people wanted to go home, and not mix and not meddle with entangling alliances. They had to go again. Now the world, however, is destroyed. It was too late.

The same way, Homer is invincible, and is permanent, because he has written two poems -- in my conviction, it's the same man who wrote them. As a young man he wrote The Iliad, and as an old man he wrote The Odyssey. And people are very strange in the modern world, since they all want to be boys -- up to the age of 85. They insist that a man of 85 must have the same tastes, and the same convictions as a man of 30. Now that's impossible. So Homer is a true human being, because he writes two poems with two different moods. And that seems to be -- a man changes in his own life much more than two different people. But that's -- you see, according to modern animal psychology, rats do not change. But Homer is not a rat. He is a person who has sweated out his o- -- one poem, and therefore became free to write the second. Otherwise we would never be able to explain how Shakespeare could write The Taming of the Shrew and Hamlet. If you go by psychology, it just couldn't happen, you see. But that's the -- the essence of man, you see, that you can write Timon of Ath- -- Athens as a disappointed old man. If you know Timon of Athens or the -- the Winter Tale, and you can write Love's Labours Lost as a young man, you see, because it's still great fun to live, and you have still all your teeth, which in Shakespeare's days, you know, was the decisive break between youth and old age, because they -- had no dentist. They couldn't eat in old age.

Well, that's Homer. Homer is the full life of two generations, youth and old age, hovering over the mind of every Greek schoolboy, of anybody who learned to greet -- and write Greek. I have asked you then to look in -- to buy this book here, which contains the awakening of the necessity to replace Homer by something different. The essence of the pre-Socratic philosophers is their struggle for a non-Homeric truth, and a non-Homeric sense of wonder. Poetry Is Not Enough, you may also entitle this book. You all have it, I suppose. Poetry is not enough. You may say it's a negative statement at first, but if we can understand

it, then we also have learned the method of philo- -- of philosophy, gentlemen. Any sense of wonder must make clear what it does not wonder at. That is, negation. To say "no" to something is a condition of philosophy. Poetry doesn't have to deny anything. You just sing, you see. It's purely positive. But philosophy always is a second voyage. It is always the denial of something that has gone before in my or your mind, and which we dismiss as not philosophical enough, as not-yet philosophy.

So all sense of wonder in philosophy, gentlemen, contains an element. It has been called a "dialectics." It has been called critic- -- criticism. You have several expressions -- it's very important for you to know it today, the American mind in general is pre-philosophical, because it is purely positive. Keep up with the Joneses. It's a very good feature. This country is positive. It is not critical. The Russians, as you know, labor terribly under what they call "dialectics," because they can enjoy nothing what they do un- -- until they have proved that the wicked capitalists don't do it, you see. It's a very hard, searching performance. They are only satisfied if their thinking is evidently critical. That is, if there is something to which they have said "no," before they are allowed to say "yes." And therefore it's very foreign to our manner of thinking. We -- the sun rises. We jump out of bed. We say, "It's wonderful." That's poet- -- poetical thinking. You aren't surprised that I call you poets. But -- in a way, anybody who is satisfied with the positive statement is still in the poetical mood. To be poetic means to say -- affirm, to say "yes" to your first impression.

Philosophy, gentlemen, then deals with second impressions. Very important. Homer is still first impression. The philosophers deal with second impressions. And we find there this painful road to second impressions traveled in this book. And it's a story -- gentlemen, if you travel with me, you will, I think, rise to greater heights than you could -- personally, because these very great men -- from Thales of Miletus, the first philosopher of Greece, about 600 B.C., to Plato or to Socrates, to 400 -- they traveled this road which you think you don't have to travel, but which has opened to you as -- as a college student. You are all the heirs to this pre-Socratic stammering, to search for second impressions. And you all are sophisticated, because you are college students. To -- you don't want to be taken in, you see.

I have such a hard time to -- understood by you, gentlemen, because I love to be taken in. I still side with the people who lived be- -- who you were 10 years ago, you see. Because then you were geniuses. You still lived by first impressions. All -- any genius in this country is wiped out by 11 years, or 12 years of age. Of course, there are as many geniuses in this country as in any other country. Only after 12, we don't find them anymore. They are carefully wiped out and destroyed, because everybody is afraid to be taken in, to be called na‹ve. And as

soon as you go to school, you meet -- mix with other people. You must be -- look sophisticated, and you must have a poker face. And poker is against -- is unpoetic, as all games -- card games are, you know. That's for very old and cunning people, card games. Play bridge at the age of 95.

Young people shouldn't play card games. I think it is melancholic -- a melancholic business. You can run; you can play tennis. Don't play cards, gentlemen. I had to play cards in the ditch -- trenches of the First World War for years, because we had wet feet, and we couldn't get out. And there was no light, except a candle. And it's a very, very bad business, to play cards. Ruins your character. You have a sour taste afterwards in your mouth. In -- in an emergency, I don't mind. I -- these are not very serious things. I say it in passing. But card games are notting -- nothing for young people, except for those -- well, there are young people who play golf, too. I can't help that.

Second impressions, gentlemen, and the road through these sev- -- second impressions, that's the road of this book. And then we come to the great pe- -- men, Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, and Epicurus, who have no longer to grope, to search for the -- what a second impression is, how it should be formulated, what a philosophy is, that it is a second impression, and it begins with a bang! You know, the first of these philosophers is Plato. Socrates never wrote a book, so we have no idea what he really was like. He is like a nightmare. You can't catch -- it's a ghost. There are as many Socrateses as there have been people who have lived after him. And we shall see that Socrates is more a dream of our own times than of old Athens, because we don't know who he was. We know so very little. We know his caricatures. We know his disciples. But we don't know him, because he was -- intelligent man, so he didn't write.

But Plato was less intelligent. He was not intelligent as you think "intelligent" is. He was a poet who brought poetry into the shape of philosophy. That's very important, gentlemen, that in Plato, the whole preamble of philosophy -- Homer, becomes subservient to the represen- -- to the presentation of philosophy. The -- the dialogues of Plato are great poetry in disguise. And therefore Plato turns against Homer and says, "In my future estates, and states, and families, and cities, Homer must not be read."

And you have there -- the first man is always the most radical, gentlemen. Christ is much more radical than a modern cardinal, or a modern Methodist minister. And in the same sense, the first independent philosopher, Plato, was much more radical against Homer than my friend Lucretius, you see, who -- again admitted him, you see. But the first man has to be absolutely adamant that a new s- -- day has begun, and he cannot admit, you see, this. In the days of Moses, no temple -- could be built in Israel. Four hundred years -- years later,

Solomon was allowed to build a temple, you see. It was no harm done by that time, they thought. Because you could again t- -- build temples as the Egyptian pharaohs, after you had established yourself.

The same is true, gentlemen, of Plato. If you want to know the story of Greek philosophy, always remember that it begins with Homer. That then people tried to struggle against the Homeric world of first impressions, of poetry; and tried to create a school, a tradition, a world view of second impressions, of getting behind things, you see, of knowing better, of not being taken in. Plato is the first who feels he has the recipe, how to get -- people together who will be independent of first impressions. And the symptom, the seal under this new discovery, or under this com- -- completeness, this fulfillment of the march of philosophy through the Greek ages is that he exclaims, "No Homer for me. And no Homer for my academy. And no Homer for anybody who wants to be a philosopher." You understand? That's the radicalism that is as radical as the command in the Ten Commandments that thou shalt have no other gods, and make yourself no graven image.

Homer is the graven image of the Greek mind. Very important for you to know. We all have, I am afraid, graven images. If you don't know yours, gentlemen, you will be an idolater. And I'm afraid we have as -- just as much idolatry today as we have in any century. Your idolatry is not Homer. And your idolatry are not the graven images, gentlemen. I leave it to your own ins- -- self inspec- -- introspection to say what your i- -- idols are. But you certainly have them. And I know.

The graven image is in everybody's mind, because it hasn't to be graven on a wall, you see. You are unfortunately the -- the wax on which this -- this thing -- these things are engraved. And the -- clean slate, which the Ten Commandments try to make, so that the man can start as a new creature, they always have to go against the graven images.

Now in -- in Greece, the graven image is -- the first image that befalls every human being as a Greek is Homer. And therefore Plato says, "No Homer." And he hides the poetical power in his dialogues in the beautiful form of his own writings. That is, gentlemen, from Plato on, poetry takes second seat to prose. And you can now reformulate our whole story, as I tried to give it at this moment by saying: in the first 400 years, from 800 to 400, poetry leads, prose follows; from 400 on, prose leads, poetry follows. You compare the age of Shakespeare, and Milton, and Spenser, and your age of the Marx Brothers, and you will know that we have the same story to tell. Down to 1700, poetry leads, and prose follows. And from 1700 down today, prose leads, and there as admitted in The New Yorker, auf and an -- doggerel, which they call "poetry."

Poetry to- -- in -- is enslaved in this country. There is -- are still poet- -- poetical natures. And there are people who write into their prose something poetical. A nice story, or -- read the editorial in The New York Times on the weather, you know. That is poetry, very often. Clean-cut poetry, but has to hide in the form of a prose editorial. Who knows these editorials in The New York Times? They are really great stuff.

But today, we -- we must -- you must know this, gentlemen. In an -- today prose leads, and poetry you think comes afterwards. It's a -- it's a second thought. Now I told you that poetry is formulating first impressions. And philosophy is formulating second impressions. So you can imagine that in a normal nation, poetry should come first and philosophy should come second. And this is such a prosaic country, gentlemen, that the boys have told me that they stop writing poetry at the age of 12. That's why I say, then they stop to be geniuses, because any genius is a man who believes in his first impressions. But in a Rotary Club, you'd better not do this, because that's bad business. Because my first impression of many of my fellow Rotarians would be such that I wouldn't come again.

So from Plato to Aristotle, gentlemen, and to the -- Epicure, and Zeno -- the founder of the Stoic school -- we have prose leading poetry. But now something more happens. At this moment, I have only to say -- you have texts here to read from Plato and from Aristotle. And they are so plentiful that I advise, especially this gentleman who was so anxious about not reading even the first book of Lucretius, that he better starts reading Aristotle and Plato now right away. I shall not make them an assignment, gentlemen. It is a privilege to read philosophy. It is not an assignment. And I'll -- I tell you, I am not treating you as children. You are 20 years of age. You could command a battleship. You'd -- 150 years, people of 20 did command battleships. I do not see why you could not command your own mind and read something on your own steam.

I'm not interested in any assignment. I repeat this, gentlemen, it's a -- just up to you whether you afterward will blush and say, "I have wasted my time." You are 20 years of age, as I said -- once more, so -- I have to repeat this, gentlemen, and you will never be 20 years again. It's such a glorious moment in your life, gentlemen, that I wouldn't -- shouldn't have to say anything more.

But now comes my problem, gentlemen. The Greek philosophy is a -- very much an American problem, because we also have 48 states. Greek philosophy has to deal with the plurality of the human states, and governments, and religions. In -- in The Odyssey and in The Iliad, gentlemen, the first impressions which the poet makes so tyrannical, so overwhelming that nobody who reads poetry -- Homer is a barbarian afterwards, for one simple reason: that he takes all

the Greeks together on one single expedition. And he shows them in a situation in which they have never lived in fact, together.

If you look however, we have no map here, but I think that much geography may stick in your minds. If you look -- please don't smoke, gentlemen. It's -- it's too hard on my throat. I shall plead just partial, I mean. I'm terribly sensitive at this moment with my throat. So I'm -- should be very grateful if you wouldn't smoke.

The situation of the Homeric poems is that perhaps 271 Greek entities, the city of Sparta, and the city of Athens, and the island of Euboea, and the city of Thebes, and all the various 70 different cities of Crete unite in one campaign, on one purpose: to get back the goddess of beauty, Helen, which the Easterners have -- have robbed. The unity, gentlemen, of purpose, beyond the religious and political unit of one church or one state, is in our world war an experience that has been repeated. Something like the Trojan War happened to this country twice in the 20th century. Don't forget that even the -- the Eng- -- the British, whom the Irish in Boston hate so much, were our allies at that time, and that we were allies of the Russians, not to speak of the Italians and the French.

Now gentlemen, you overlook that in peacetime, as you have now lived through the last 10 years more or less with some consciousness, is -- is much more normal to think of a man who lives under another constitution as an enemy. The -- Russians have been treated as enemies, simply by the fact that they live under another constitution. In antiquity, such a constitution was not called just another constitution, but another religion. And the -- our newspaper writers, and our agitators, and all the people who want to make money out of opinions have tried to tell us here too that Bolshevism was not a political thing, but a religion. Because then they could say, "That's a crusade, and we must throw the atomic bomb on Moscow." And the Catholic bishops went to Mr. Truman and said, "We have no objection against your throwing the atomic bomb on the antichrist, in Moscow."

If you can build up -- even the Russians, who have the same Christian tradition as all Western men, against the Chinese and against the Hindus, who are much nearer to us than any Japanese, certainly -- if you can sell the people of this country at least for three years the ridiculous notion that they are the enemies of the human race, then you can imagine how normal it was in antiquity that Jupiter, as worshiped in Athens, and Jupiter as worshiped on -- on Crete, you see, had around them people who could only fight each other, and could only cut their throats.

Now the Greeks in -- in discrimination, or in distinction, I should say,

from the Egyptians, and the Babylonians, and the Jews, and the Phoenicians, no perhap- -- not so much the Phoenicians, but certainly from these people in -- in Asia, lived as you know, on little promontories, on little peninsulas, by the hundreds. Every of these so-called city-states, as we call them, were called a polis. Now the Greek word "polis" has something to do with {polymos}, with war. A polis is an entity that can wage war independently. I won't go at the moment into the details of this etymology. There is debate about this. But it is a good definition that a Greek polis is an entity that can wage war.

Any entity that can wage war against the rest of the world, gentlemen, must have its own religion. It's impossible not to have a religion, because you -- religion is the power to estimate things higher than your own life. And if you go to war, there must be values that -- transcend your own life. Otherwise there can be no war. War is always a religious fact. A purely -- a really materialistic society could not wage war. From this you see that the Russians are not materialists, because they have waged war, and they still are going to. War is a always a religious thing -- because you cannot bring any soldier to enter the Marines, except if he knows that it is more important that there are Marines than there is my own life, and that's why it's correct that the sergeant was pardoned.

That has also in the -- talked out in this last 30 years, where everything has been abandoned in this country. It is a very simple thing, gentlemen. Any entity that wants to wage war must have a religion. Because religion is the power to conquer death. That's all what religion is. You and I die -- if we have no religion, it is perfectly meaningless. There must be something that ties us to reality, whether we are -- happen to be -- be -- out the grave, or in the grave. It makes no difference. A good man is not killed when he dies. If there is no such thing, then there is no religion. And religion therefore is not a luxury, gentlemen. It is the only point in your own life by which your own existence does not depend on the accident of an idiotic truck driver, or a drunken other student who kills you. Is this all you are? Just his own, arbitrary victim? You don't believe this for a minute.

But it -- everybody of course in Dartmouth College is obliged to believe it officially, because we are under the domination of all these crackpots who say that man is just an animal. But all these gentlemen in psychology, and all these other nice departments, are quite sure that -- there were -- would be soldiers to defend the United States against Hitler 10 years ago. And they all have their nice salaries and their nice houses on the basis of the fact that 100,000 boys were willing to die for their country, which makes all this talk absolutely absurd, what these people tell you what man is. They tell you that man is, I don't know, how many electrons.

So gentlemen, religion is pre-philosophical. And if every city in Greece had its own religion, then there cannot be philosophy. Because the strongest impressions on any child are the loyalties to his family, and on any citizen are the impressions made in his own city and his own country. Now in -- in Greece, people lived so tight-knit in these little harbor cities, like -- like Athens, or like -- like Argos, or Corinth, that they were quite overwhelmed with the fact that they were members of this one society. And there was the goddess of Venus perhaps worshiped in Corinth, and the goddess Hera -- Juno worshiped in -- in Argos; and Zeus worshiped in Olympia, and Athene worshiped in Athens, you see. And nobody knew any better, but this was their religion for which, for whom, and for whose gods it was the great privilege of a citizen to die. And to beget children, to educate them, and to dedicate them in the honor of the gods of the city.

So gentlemen, first impressions are always religious. Would you take this down? Again, this is today wiped out. And people give -- gave you -- give you sex enlightenment instead. They don't tell -- teach the children to pray, but they -- teach the children who are not interested in it at all where their genitals sit. They know this, by the way, all -- very well themselves. It is very terrifying today, gentlemen. We have abolished all -- power to be Americans, to be citizens, because you think that citizenry has some -- something to do with life. Unfortunately it has something to do with death, with the meaning of death. You can't be a citizen through a good life, gentlemen. You can only be the citizen if you are willing to give your life for your country. It hasn't to be in war, by the way. But in some form. If a child drowns, somebody has to jump into the river, get it out. That's enough to show that your -- your life is very little compared to the continuity of the entity to which you belong.

This is then the first impression, gentlemen, which Homer has dinned into the ears and hearts of every Greek, that they belong to one religious community. The first impression is not what you think, sense impressions. If -- if this were so, of course, you and I would not be human beings, but just animals, you see. But the first word which you have learned to say -- speak, the first -- the -- your own name, that's your first impression. Now you all believe that this is your real name, you see.

I came at the age of 45 to this country, gentlemen. It's quite a shock when people then suddenly do not pronounce your first name as you have heard it pronounced for 45 years at home, because every -- even a first name, as you know, is pronounced in an -- in another language very differently. It isn't -- it isn't Pe- -- Peter when you go to France. It's Pierre. So you wake up one day and you have lost your name. That is a shock, because your own name is the one religious foundation on which your soul rests. If your name is denied you, you can just as well be shipped -- shipped to a concentration camp, where they took

away all names, and made people into numbers, and then gassed them, because they had ceased to be human beings.

The first step always, gentlemen, is that we are numbered when people want to deny us our religious status as children of God. As you know that -- when -- at every birth now, we are given a name, Arkansas Number 2,400. Very dangerous procedure. Then you are fingerprinted, you see. Then that's the end.

Man is not a number, gentlemen, because man must hear by what he is called, and he must agree to that. And this secret agreement between what people have done to him, and what he knows about himself, is our first fixed point in reality, in this great universe which consists of logos, ethos, and phusis. If there is no name inside you, you are crazy. You are insane. You must recognize, identify yourself by a name, and it isn't of your own making. Somebody else called you by this name. Society says, "His name was given to the sheriff, so it is true. It's his name." And you are recognized all over the globe under this name. And if you disappear behind the Iron Curtain, the American consulate will search you, and will insist, "That's his real name."

Very strange thing, underestimated today by -- by modern rationalists, who s- -- do not live by first impressions, and do not admit that everybody has a religion, gentlemen. Your first religion is not the belief in God or Jesus Christ, of who -- Him -- them -- if you haven't been preached this, you know nothing. But you know very well that you have a name.

Now a name, gentlemen, makes you a member, because anybody who has a name knows that somebody else may have another name. And we all share in the -- in Heaven the fact that every one of us has his own name. So one name, gentlemen, allows for all other names. That's very strange, because they are all related. In English, for example, you can relate all names to each other. Where there is a mas- -- male's name, there is also a female's name. You have John and Jean. They are obviously the s- -- or Joan, or Jane. You can, of course, vary this nowadays. It is always the same problem of -- of the feminine to John. And they all take you out of England, and they take you out of New England, because "John" and "Joan" come from the Bible. And therefore in every such name, there is always a -- more than national -- this is always a religious story. And if you have "Harold," even this is a religious name. People today try to em- -- eliminate the biblical names, perhaps, but then they go back to pagan name, which in this country is rather funny.

But what I tried to say, gentlemen, is that first impressions are names. And by everybody's name, he is tied to that society which has given him this name. Now the Greeks had this terrible problem -- and it is terrible, that they were 300

such warring communities giving their own names, but constantly trading, constantly going back and forth to Egypt, to the mouth of the Nile, going back to the Tigris, to Damascus, for example, you see, to the trade routes of the great empires of Persia and Media, and Assyria, and that -- therefore a Greek was a man of more than one country by actual experience. Every Greek who is a Greek cannot be confined to his religious place. When he goes out and -- across the sea from one of the Greek islands -- think of all these islands Del- -- Delos, and Thasos, and {Skiros}, and O- -- Euboea, and who -- give me names of -- of Greek Islands? Who can give me the name of a Greek island? Where is the island of St. John? Which is the island on which St. -- St. John the Evangelist was confined? Nobody ever read the New Testament? It's a -- quite a good book. You don't know where -- where -- St. John spent his old age? What?

({ }.)

Nearly. Nearly, yes. The first three letters are correct. Patmos, yes. On the island of Patmos. Go there. It's a beautiful little island. They have a special tour now arranged for 12 interesting islands in the Greek sea. Patmos. My first independent book was published in a publishing firm which we founded for the very fact -- for -- with -- by this very name, Patmos publishing firm, because we wanted to say that the end of the old Europe had happened and the -- after the First World War. And that's a very incisive name for -- in my own life. Patmos. But the Greek arch- -- it's called the archipelago, gentlemen, the -- the -- our fundamental sea, so to speak, this part of the Mediterranean which is now so much in the paper that you don't even know where it lies -- between Mr. Tito and Mr. Nasser. This is today again the struggle for the domination of the world. And we, as you know, have sold out by the nervousness of Mr. Dulles to Mr. Nasser, and to Mr. Khrushchev, because we haven't -- we have allowed Albania to be a submarine base for the Russians. And we have Mr. Tito allowed to go without our planes and get his planes now from Russia. It's very bad, gentlemen. Who has -- Eastern Mediterranean governs the world.

And therefore these islands there are of no small importance -- importance to the history of the human race, gentlemen. On these islands there was bred the spirit of philosophy. We will see that most of these philosophers have something to do with the shores of this Greek archipelago. "Pelagos" means ocean. "Archi-" the -- the -- arch, the sea, the genuine sea, the most important sea. Because gentlemen, on an island, 4 -- 6 square miles big -- take Desert Island here in Maine, you cannot forget that there are people on the other side of the isthmus, on the other side of the water. You see, you see the land, you see. Therefore all attempts of the Greek priesthood, of the Greek religious people, to confine a man's loyalties to his own homeland alone were abortive. You just could not convince a man in Athens that Salamis was not -- also his concern. Now Salamis, gentlemen,

is an island in front of Athens. Has anybody been to Greece? Where have you been?

(Athens.)

Where is Salamis?

(It's an -- an island off the -- I haven't been { }.)

Have you seen it?

(No.)

You flew. Oh, of course. Well, the island of Salamis is quite famous, as you know, because it is the battle of free- -- for freedom of -- of Greece, which was won there against the Persians. So it has -- we, you and I, are the heirs of this battle to this day. And that there is a course in Greek philosophy is only based on this battle of Salamis. When was the battle of Salamis?

Now, you look this up next time, and tell me. Every one of you look this up, gentlemen. You can't enter the kingdom of Heaven without knowing when the battle of Salamis was.

But Salamis is a Phoenician name. "Salamis" means peace, the island of peace, as Solomon. Now in front of the city of Athens then there was an island in which the great victory was fought over the Persian king, in -- and yet the name was not Greek. I think that's terribly important, that the Greeks -- the Athenians had to love an island with a non-Greek name, you see, where their mother tongue came second, came too late to replace it. Just as we here have to put up with "Connecticut" and with all the Indian names, and try to mix "Eleazar Wheelock" in as best we can.

So gentlemen, the problem of Greek philosophy is the unique situation of Greece -- any Greek, that he was faced with a larger universe than his political and religious loyalties explained. Any -- Greek looked beyond his state. That's not normal. An American has so -- places to go, from west to east, you see, that you don't have to go abroad without -- you see, you -- your total- -- can be here -- remain immersed in America without -- our -- means of transportation, as you know. Innumerable people, after they had landed here, never got out of this continent again. It was quite impos- -- technically impossible, far too expensive. And communication before 1865, as you know, didn't amount to anything. How could you get out? You were glad that you were here. And you tried -- that's isolationism. You did not look back, because you said, "It was so -- such a costly

affair and so terrifying ever to get here, I was so seasick, I shall never go back." Because seasickness for three months on a boat is quite a serious thing. And half of the people on the Mayflower died in the process. And half of the people who made the transcontinental journey, as you know, the -- Oregon Trail -- hit the Oregon Trail, they died.

In a friend's family, the descendants of the first chief justice of California, there's a private print, in which this first chief justice who, at the ripe age of 23 graduated from Yale Law School, made the journey. And he describes how they, from June to October, journeyed west. Well, out of 72 people who went on the Oregon Trail, 26 arrived. The rest had died. That's a -- the real story, gentlemen, of a total confinement to a religious entity called the -- "the West." So the -- you see, the Manifest Destiny. And such an experience is hard enough to create an American religion. It has created Mormonism, for example, which is an attempt to give America a completely separate religious status, you see. That was the great enthusiasm of the Mormons, that they said the spirit of God hadn't made the detour over -- through Europe, you see. There was an American, original revelation. Quite plausible, gentlemen, for people who had undergone such hardships, to forget the world from which they came.

So the American scene is not quite the same as the Greek scene. We have a tremendous continent. And we have many countries from which the people have come into this continent. In Greece it is the opposite story, gentlemen. You have a tremendous continent surrounding you called Egypt, called the -- African coastline, where Carthage is. Where today you read about Algier, and Tunis, you see, Tripolis. And you have the Phoenician coast. And you have Asia Minor. And you have the big island of Cyprus. And in between comes the -- on their little boats, these Greeks, founding city after city, from Marseille, you know, to the Black Sea, where they have, you see, Byzantium, later our modern Istanbul, Constantinople, and {Cappitsom}, and these innumerable hundreds of cities, religiously found their own temple, bring their sacrifices to their own goddess or god, and try to bring the children up in the worship of the local deity, and try to teach them that their city deserves, you see, to be defended to the last breath, and to the last drop of blood. And at the same time, these people see and live by commerce with other cities, you see, of Barbarians, and of other Greek tribes -- Dorians, and Ionians, and Aeolians, and -- and -- and the -- the people from Boeotia, and Attica who had mixed descent from these various tribes, Macedonians.

And therefore, gentlemen, you will perhaps begin to understand that the Greeks were just as predestined to become philosophers as the Jews were predestined to become prophets. The reason for the Jews was that they found a place at the crossroads of the old world in which they could live by themselves. And

therefore, in -- say that all this -- dispersal of many creeds and many religions was nonsense. That was the Jewish situation.

The Greeks were in exactly the opposite geographical situation from the Jews. They were not in one place united, but they were in many hundred places dispersed. So their question was, gentlemen: what about second impressions? Is it really true that we have a god in Athens that differs from the god elsewhere? Is my language -- my Attic- -- Attic dialect really so different from the Egyptian language which these Egyptian priests tell their people?

Gentlemen, second impressions are the necessity for the existence of the Greek -- many Greek cities. Will you take this down? Because here I give you the material explanation, why the Greeks became predestined to build upon their first religion -- the first impression is always our religion -- on their first impressions, on their religion, you see -- a second one. And we learn something important, gentlemen: all philosophy is second. It is never primary. It cannot be primary. You first have to be told. Then you can wake up and say, "But I say." That's philosophy. That's this dealing with your second impressions.

When you learn by waking up that the world in which you prayed, the world in which you worshiped, the world in which you fought, the world in which you wish to die, in which you are ready to die, the world in which you think it is a privilege to give your life -- as Nathan Hale -- and I'm -- you are only sorry that you have one life to give to your country, then you wake up and say, "But there are more countries. So my sentence -- I wished I had more than one life to give to my country -- must be balanced by the question, but are not there other things to be done outside my country?" You see. That leads you to second values, to second impressions.

And these second impressions, gentlemen, of philosophy then -- now comes the important statement which unfortunately our modern textbooks have -- have embezzled: philosophy always presupposes an existing religious and political order. Law and religion must already have entered your experience before you can become a philosopher. A lawless person and an irreligious person cannot be a philosopher, because he has no experience by which he knows what has to be generalized; what has to be made by your second impression has to be extended to more than your hometown. The whole problem of philosophy is, you see, to extend that which is true in your own family, and in your own home, in your own nation to more. Because your family is not the only family; your nation is not the only nation; the geography and the climate of your own country is not the only climate; and therefore you have this problem in Argentina: when do you celebrate Christmas? Do you celebrate Christmas in the midst of summer? It's a great problem. I don't know how they deal with it. Has anybody

been to Argentina? Does anybody know how these poor people do it, with the Christmas tree? Without snow? What do they do? Ja?

(Well, in Australia, they { } the same thing.)

What? What do they do?

({ } lamb chop { }, do the same thing.)

Lamb chop prize?

(Lamb chop { }.)

What do you mean by that?

(Well, it's -- they have trees. They have pine trees. And it's Christmas { } in the middle of the summer.)

They have it in the summer. And what do you say of lamb chops?

(Well, they get a big mess of lamb chops and divide them up, and { }. But it's Christmas.)

Have you lived there?

(Yeah.)

Now, a philosopher, you see, or good philosophy would enable the Argentineans to have Christmas in their winter, you see. And say, "Our 24th of December is wintertime," because the winter is more important for the celebration than the name of the day, wouldn't you say? So it's just superstition that they must have Christmas on that which in the calendar is called 24th of December. They have no philosophy. They have no power to get out of first impressions. The first impression -- now you see what is the first impression. I told you the names are first impressions. Your own name. All language is a first impression. That something is called 24th of December is such a superstition with these poor people on the southern hemisphere that they cannot look through this name. Can't you see it? They cannot generalize the name December, and look into the meaning of the December, that it is the month in the -- heart of winter.

Well, I have my -- my special ideas about the superstitions of the South Americans.

From this example, I'm quite serious, gentlemen, you see the quandary in which the Greeks lived. It wasn't that they had discovered so much the other hemisphere. As you know, they hadn't. But they do -- did live in such a dispersal, and in such a variety of places, and with so many different substrata of population, they were colonials, you see, living with people who talked -- spoke another language around them, as the people in Trieste, who are Italians today, and are surrounded by Yugoslavs. And therefore we Americans, as you know, have destroyed Istria by carefully dividing it so that it can neither live nor die. But the problem of Istria and Trieste was -- it was the mo- -- most wonderful harbor founded by Italians, surrounded by Yugoslavs, and serving the Germans in Austria.

That's a typical Greek situation, the -- as a -- matter of fact, the Italians of Trieste, on Venice, you see, are the heirs of the old Greek trade routes, and of the old problem of the city. That's why Venice was such a proud republic in the Middle Ages, because it carried on the Greek tradition, you see, of a city within unlimited territories of other people's government.

So we -- from the problem of Homer, gentlemen, down to the geography of all philosophers after him, you see, that the Homeric poetry was only possible because he showed the -- all the Greeks united at war, and he gave them this one memory which never occurred again, that all the Greeks were of one religion, that all Greeks had the same purpose, that all Greeks died and lived for the same cause, that all Greeks could therefore be on peaceful and friendly terms {with} each other.

But we shall see that this tremendous creation of Homer's passionate imagination, that you could have one religion beyond your own temple, beyond your own priest, which was larger than what you saw in your own hometown, that this even extended to the non-Greeks. When we read the 24th book of -- of Homer, we will see that Homer created humanism. Today, as you know, we have the so-called humanities, and we have rationalism, and that's called "humanism." Gentlemen, the humanism of Greek brand -- the real humanism of antiquity is something much more practical and something much -- I think much greater. Modern humanism means you understand everything and you do nothing. But the problem of an ancient humanism was, as I told you, to see in the man, against whose city you made war, your brother.

It is very easy to love all people outside war. There are many good Americans who are pacifists and therefore think they are very kind to the human race. When it comes to war, they may become conscientious objectors, but it doesn't help anybody. The war goes on just the same. The problem is, gentlemen, to obstruct something like The Naked and the Dead, and to see in the man against

whom you go to war, your brother, and who is a courageous man on the other side -- chivalry is something quite different from pacifism. It is much more difficult to understand that when two nations go to war, they are the best people -- on -- of both nations who confront each other on the battle lines.

When I was in the -- First World War, I wrote a pamphlet -- I wrote -- I never published it, of course. I would have been arrested -- "Soldiers of All Countries, Unite." And I wanted of course to unite against the profiteers at home. We were disgusted with the -- our people at home. And so were the French disgusted with their peoples at home. But we people in the -- in the trenche- -- trenches, we loved each other. And we didn't hate each other. That's only an idea of ladies at home, that soldiers hate. No soldier hates. Newspapermen hate. And a -- and people at home hate. Perhaps women's clubs hate soldiers in war. No soldier who's a good soldier ever hates his enemy. It's unknown. He has respect for his enemy. And he feels a tragedy that he should fight such a good man.

As long as you do not understand this, gentlemen, you cannot be humanists. And I think Americans are pacifists, but they are not humanists, because you think that outside the conflict, you can be of one religion. Gentlemen, obviously if there are gods who send wars, and famines, and earthquakes, and tragedies, and death, and your sick- -- polio -- think only of polio. And -- didn't I tell you the story of the lady who ran away from her husband because he had polio? It's the same thing, you see. If she cannot see the same soul in the man after he has polio, she is not a human being. Isn't that true? That's humanism, you see, to see unity despite conflict.

So the Greek problem of humani- -- humanism was to recognize in the enemy on the battlefield, you see, somebody who had at -- the same merit, and the same right as you had. And wars can only be fought as long as you have this faith that on the opposite side, the people are just as good or better as you are. Because a war is not -- fought by people, but for causes, and for important causes. And I think I have been a good soldier, and -- I have been a soldier a very long time. I have been in uniform for six years. But it has never -- I -- I mean, I have -- I -- really tell -- say it to -- this to you because it is simply true, that I have never felt anger, or aversion, or hostility against anybody except -- against the home war- -- warriors, the people at home with the big mouth. Those I have despised and hated.

This is then -- is the Greek problem of humanism. "Humanism" is the most general expression for philosophy. Any philosophy will have to bring out in you and me the power to -- not to be confined, you see, to those who already fall in line, you see, who already act in such a way that you can understand.

So gentlemen, the fact that you and I are immersed partly in nature, that people live in Russia and just by the land mass over there happen to be di- -- separated from us. For -- any mind who thinks twice, obviously that's no good reason to be very estranged from him, you see. And this must be made relative. Philosophy, gentlemen, makes the religious divisions of mankind relative.

But philiso- -- philosophy cannot create religion, gentlemen. And philosophy can never create first impressions. It has been said, and take this down, gentlemen. It's a very important sentence which I only quote from a great Swiss historian, Jakob Burckhardt, who warned men against their glorification of Greek philosophy in the days of Nietzsche, and rightly so. He said, "Not one Greek philosopher has been able to close one Greek temple." That is, one superstitious idolatry of a -- one of the many gods of Greece. Philosophers are unable to replace first impressions.

Once you know this, gentlemen, you will not expect too much from philosophy, you see. Nobody can live by philosophy, except fools. Philosophy can extend your love, and your charity, and your faith, and your hope. But you must first realize this faith and hope in other ways, because you cannot wait till you have second impressions. No way, you see. If you teach your philosophy to your child, it is this chil- -- child's religion. It is not his -- its philosophy. Parents -- modern par- -- the enlightened people have abolished the fairy tales, and the legends, and the -- Bible, and -- and tell them scientific stuff. As I said, this genital enlightenment, and so on. Well, for the child, it becomes its religion. It's usually then a -- a valueless religion, because religion must be given us in a different manner from philosophy, you see. But -- the modern heresy is that people think philosophy can take first seat. That's impossible. Philosophy is -- after you are committed to certain loyalties, to certain truths, you see, to certain methods of dealing with reality then, is there? -- after you have been made to share the life of truth, and the life of your neighbors, and the life of the earth around you, and the sky around you, that then you can be taught that this isn't the whole story. There is something second. There's something more. Philosophy, gentlemen, generalizes.

The famous story with which I would like to end today: I have a friend in -- in Boston, who is a Congregational minister. Is now a very old man. When he was still in -- in his offi- -- in his -- serving his congregation -- First Congregational Church in -- in Cambridge, he received the visit of a man and his son, and -- who -- and the man was widely known as a free thinker of the first order and is a violent enemy of the Church. And my friend, Mr. {McNair}, was puzzled, because the man brought his son to enter Sunday school.

And he -- screwed up his courage and he said to this man, "Sir, isn't that a

joke? What -- how shall I take this? I am hesitant to accept y- -- this child from you, because you have said so often how you feel about us, that you were -- we were just monsters of superstition and obsoleteness."

And the man said, "Well, it's funny. I agree. But I mean it. Don't be afraid. Take the boy. Because after much consideration, I have felt he must have something to liberalize upon." He must have something to liberalize upon.

This is the problem of philosophy. Philosophy generalizes. You can also say it "liberalizes upon." But there is nothing, you see, to liberalize upon, the whole liberalization makes absolutely no sense. And you all are the victims, you see, of a liberalization before you have ever been committed to love, faith, and hope. Or to adoration of the -- God Almighty and His son, and the Holy Spirit. Now that's very pure order. You are just -- you are just emancipated before you are mancipated. It has come too early, you see.

At one -- I have a- -- my doc- -- my son has had a case where the parents had a genius of a baby, very musical child. And showed signs of enth- -- and delight, and enchantment when it heard music. When it was a little baby of 6. So they insisted that this child had immediately to be fed music, and to know all the names of the composers. And by the age of 2 it was a vegetable. They had dared to liberalize upon, before the na‹ve, quiet growth of the child had taken place. And the child is destroyed, for good. Nothing can help it.

That's a tragic story. Of course, that the maximum of idiocy and crime, committed by philosophy. And most girls who come from our colleges, of course, are in great danger of doing this, gentlemen. You, as the husbands, must then protect your children against their mothers. They must be kept away from this -- idiocy, gentlemen, of enlightenment, too early. It comes early enough that we wake up and know that our world is limited. But first give them a limited world, as best as you can. Woe to you if you begin with philosophy with your children. They are not to philosophize unless they -- do not come up to the rough corners of their little haven, you see, of certainty and security. You have to -- first give them the certainty. And of course, you have to live it yourself in this manner.

Philosophy is second -- the second voyage through life. It is never the first. It generalizes upon -- and never forget that "to generalize" means you must start with a particular. And the particular is not this stone, and is not this house, and is not a thing. The particular is your commitment, that you are tied to people who tell you the truth. Your parents, for example. That is a first experience, you see.

That's why I say, gentlemen, the first environment of a child is not his soil,

or his -- the air, or the weather. It is what he's told. Because upon any child's heart, what he is told falls as a religious rele- -- revelation. And if he doesn't make this experience, that his name is true as gold -- his own name, that his parents will never give him up, because he is their child and they have named him, then the child has no religion.

Religion is nothing, gentlemen, which we choose. Religion is something that saves us from complete confusion, from the night, that we do not know who we are. Withdraw from a child its name, then it has no parents. That's why it is not the same to be born out of wedlock, or in wedlock. It makes all the difference whether you have a father who has confessed that he is the criminal, or a father who doesn't.

It is very important to have a father, gentlemen. And any adopted child, and any orphan knows this. You have -- there are of course many orphans who make up for the father they don't have, by hook and crook, by being loved by other people. But it has to be made up in some way or the other. This is first commitment. Because -- you can -- {laughter} would say philosophically that all men have one father in Heaven, that we should all be brothers. Gentlemen, the first experience must be that you have a father, poor as he may be. A real father is still better than no father. And then the thought of a father, which would be philosophy.

So I hope I have shown you, gentlemen, that the Greeks were in this unique situation, to fall for second impressions. That is, they could never -- is it clear? -- they could never be satisfied with first impressions. Now gentlemen, there have been the great people, like the Chinese or the Egyptians, who didn't -- or the Incas -- who didn't get outside their own country, and therefore had no need for philosophy. Philosophy is only necessary whenever we go beyond the edge of our own, you see, God-given, so to speak, environment. At that moment, we must enlarge on those loyalties to nature, to men, and to the powers that be, who govern our steps, you see, and must try to find out when we should celebrate Christmas in Argentina.