Transcript

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

...we are all s- -- indebted to both of them.

[tape interruption]

(This is Side 2.)

...carrying a burden which -- which certainly made them into a caricature of human beings. You wouldn't like to be a Greek, and you wouldn't like to be a Jew of antiquity. The burden was too heavy. But if they hadn't both lived and offered their prophets and their philosophers, we would be poorer off. They are victims for your and my sake. This is so very hard for you to understand because you think there -- are no victims, gentlemen. But your mother is you -- the victim certainly of your upbringing. There are sacrifices, gentlemen, and all mankind is only dovetailed and held together by such sacrifices. And I can -- cannot assure you strongly enough that if you want to study the history of Greek philosophy or any philosophy, you must understand that the philosopher is functioning for your sake, and therefore is an abnormal being so that you can be normal. The Greeks and the Jews are abnormal so that there might be, between these two extremes, a -- a middle road. -- You look at life just as play and think everybody can be happy. That's nonsense. In fact, I would say nobody can be happy. You can all reach your destiny. You can be blessed. You can be a saint. You can be a hero. You can be a mother. You can be a good man. But you can't be happy. The pursuit of happiness is a chimera.

Goethe, the -- perhaps the happiest man that has lived in the last 150 years, has said if he counted all, he had perhaps six years of -- continuous happiness in his whole life, and he got to be 84. Give that up, gentlemen, that chimera. Happiness is a by-product. You can never aim at happiness. As soon as you aim at happiness, you are a nervous wreck. All the people who want to be happy can't be happy. Happy is a res- -- happiness is a result of right living, but it is never a purpose.

And that's your -- your impoverishment, gentlemen. You try to be happy so very hard. So you are the most stifled and frustrated people. Anybody who wants to be happy, gentlemen, is frustrated, because he doesn't aim at what life is for. He aims at a -- a -- a by-product. It would be, as most of you do, you go for the wrappings. I mean, if you have a sandwich, gentlemen, you can be interested in the wrappings or in the sandwich. I'm interested in the sandwich. That's living, you see. You are interested in the wrapping. That's happiness.

I warn you, gentlemen. Philosophy is -- and the Greeks are a tragic people. They are as tragic as the Jews. And both are tragic -- and we owe -- to tragedy, voluntary lived, for example, to the people in Valley Forge and to the people who died in the Battle of the Bulge in 1945, and to the boys who died in Korea, to them we owe our happiness. You have no happiness except at a price. And the price is always paid by the people who renounce their own happiness for the sake of others.

And I -- you -- I am not going to teach philosophy here for people who have a sweet tooth and want to -- just to enjoy life, gentlemen. There is nothing to enjoy about life. Too serious for that. You can enjoy it { }. But who cares whether you enjoy it? But this constant question on this campus, "Did you enjoy it?" means that you can't live. Life is not here for enjoyment. Life is to be lived. It's serious business. It's an act of God. It's a government of the world. It's the creation of the world today. And as you -- little as you are -- will ask a rose that opens its -- its -- its bud, "Do you enjoy it?" She has just to become a rose, has she not? That's all there is to it. She has to fulfill her destiny, whether she enjoyed it or not, it's a by-product.

You see, when -- when Richard Wagner's Bayreuth, the famous center of art, was opened, his wife, Cosima Wagner, who was the -- the mainspring of this great foundation -- you have heard it, it has been revived now, and many people have gone there -- spent the whole first evening in tears. And she wrote into her diary, "That's how all fulfillment looks." That's how all fulfillment looks.

They cheat you, gentlemen, by telling you, "Keep smiling." And "Life is smile." Life is not smile. Life is perfectly indifferent to your weeping and to your smile. You may weep on such a decisive evening, or you may smile. It doesn't alter the fact that Bayreuth had to be constituted, opened, and there it was. And the accompanime- -- -ment, you see, of the grin, or of the tears of the lady concerned, or Richard Wagner, whether it was -- he felt it was a triumph, or whether it was -- he felt it was a defeat, is a very minor matter to the fact that for 90 years people go to Bayreuth. That's the important thing that matters. Can't you see the difference?

And the same is true about getting a child, gentlemen. That's not an enjoyment. And it is -- it is not terrible. It's in between. Some mothers suffer terribly and have a very healthy and -- blissful child. And some people -- means nothing to them, the birth, and the child is no good. The int- -- obviously the important thing is that a good child is born. And the -- the grin on the person's face, who is -- happens to be the mother of the child, is quite second-rate compared to the great event that a living being enters the world.

But you only look -- how does the mother, you see, smile -- does she smile? And then you are satisfied.

Well, I say this, gentlemen, because I have tried to write in this paper something about the serious business, about the tremendous jump into a new dimension which is -- we -- which was done when Greek philosophy got started.

The second thing I want to remind you of: last time, I tried to draw your attention to the fact that philosophy is second impression. Nobody as a boy can philosophize. Nobody as a child can philosophize, you see. You have -- it's a second thought, obviously, philosophy, you see. After we have already been made to think, to write, to read, to live, to breathe, to shit, then we s- -- take stock and we begin to philosophize. It is always second. You understand this. So therefore philosophy is second impressions. It is not first impression.

Once you know this, gentlemen, you know that philosophy alone cannot rule the world. It's an idiocy, Plato's idea that k- -- the -- philosophers should be kings. It's a very terrifying notion. That the philosopher- -- the Greeks in their madness went so far to believe, just as the Jews thought prophecy -- the prophets could run the world. Well, they can't. By prophecy, you see, the present day is -- doesn't get its due. Philosophy comes too late, because philosophy is afterthought. We can't wait. The thing has to be cide- -- decided now.

I once had a case of a real philosophizing lady. I'll tell you the story so that you may never forget the distinction between philosophy and rel-...

[tape interruption]

...I visited a friend. And he had six children from his first marriage, and had married again, had a very conscientious lady who had of course taken all her degrees. And she had a seventh baby, that is, her own, to the six -- her foster children. And they lived in a little cottage -- in a suburban housing development. And three -- steps led down -- stone steps down from the entrance into the -- into the garden, when you went then to the -- to the street, when you came in or went out.

So when I took my leave, it had begun to rain. Not very hard, but -- but it decidedly rained. The steps were wet. And she car- -- had ed- -- her baby on her arm escorting me to the door, with her husband. In this very moment, the child began to sneeze. And she in her great conscientiousness put the child down on this -- on the step in the rain and ran into the -- into the house to look up the book to find out what one should do when a baby sneezes.

That's a good story, gentlemen, and I have experienced this. She had been ruined by Smith and Wellesley. She was so conscientious, you see. And you can classify -- she certainly wou- -- should have gotten her Ph.D., but whether she should have gotten a baby, that's a different question.

I think the story is -- is very important, gentlemen, because you always forget this. You always have in America -- you can always hear people say, if they -- oh, if the people were only educated and if they only had a philosophy. That's modern rationalism in this country, that you think by education you can cure Mr. McCarthy and you can cu- -- cure the slums, and you can cure foreign policy. Just give the people an education. And it -- if you give the people an education, the world would go -- run riot in the meantime. You all come too late. We would all sneeze -- with the mother absent in -- in li- -- looking up the book.

Don't believe this for a minute, gentlemen. I am a philosopher, and I know what philosophy can and what it cannot do. It cannot replace living. It's a second impression. It's a correction of our impressions, and not more. And this country is very sick, because the people have denied this since Benjamin Franklin's days, and have said, "Live by philosophy." This is wrong.

And I have tried to show you why it is wrong by bringing -- and now coming -- going -- getting back once more to this list, and then comparing it to the relation of this -- this tripartition to the problem of first and second impressions. If I asked you at this moment, who are all in this second-impression stage -- you all cultivate second impressions, you make up your mind, you try to have bull sessions, you meditate, you have afterthoughts, you criti- -- are critical of your home, or of the college, or of politics -- you are critical of yourself, I hope, too. That is second impression. And in this moment, you are inclined to say that your only friend is nature. That that's first impression. And so you go into a chemistry laboratory and you think that there you have first impressions. Gentlemen, all experiments in a laboratory are second impressions, because they are all arranged experiments, and they are all theoretically, you see, reasoned out. A laboratory has nothing to do with nature. It's second nature. That's an arrangement. Experience is not experiment. But you all confuse always experimentation with experiences, gentlemen.

Now the decision which every man and human being today and in all ages always has had to make, and that's the decision which philosophy and the other powers of life is: what comes first? Phusis, or logos, or ethos? Is your first friend, your main problem, nature? is -- are you and I first in union, like Mr. Thoreau thought, or { } in union with nature, you see, seeing the sun rise? Or are you -- we first united with society? Is society, which I have called ethos and logos together, or is nature our first impression?

Now this is a real problem of philosophy. And in this country it is no longer discussed, because the scientists have won out and people tell you that this is no longer a question: of course, nature comes first and society comes second. Gentlemen, in your life and mine, that's not true. In nobody -- human being life. Society is your first nature, you see -- if we can call it this way. It's of course a mislea- -- {-leading} term. You should not use it. But we are first made by the words spoken to us. And that's of course what the -- what the New Testament tried to hold against the philosophers. But nobody understands it today.

I'll give you an example of what I'm -- or two examples, perhaps. One is the story -- or the -- are the books of a -- the leading -- European biologist. He's a Swiss, lives in Basle, in the center of Europe. His name is Adolf Portmann: P-o-r-t-m-a-n-n. I think he's a very important man, more important than Charles Darwin, certainly. And he has a great following in Europe, and he is considered the leading man. In this country, where we always are a little in 1750, he hasn't yet been published. A friend of mine is just translating his book into English.

And for -- while the wars -- was raging, of course there was a delay in -- in pe- -- things coming to this country, so his first important book appeared in 1943. That may -- explain why it hasn't been received here. But I think also the whole American trend of -- of mere chemistry and mere factory ideas, mere mech- -- mechanism, is opposed to his simple statement. His simple statement is that all animals, when they are born and leave their mother behind, are relatively rapidly able to stand on their own feet. It takes a few days, or a few weeks, you see, that the nestling can -- can leave the nest and then seek its own food. And it's a relatively short time, compared to the time of gestation that an animal is left to the help of the parents outside the womb.

Man is the opposite. If man would be an a animal, without the logos, without speech, he would have to -- the gestation period of you and me would have to be 23 months. We are born already after nine months. Compared with the situation in the animal kingdom, we would have to be in the mother's womb another 14 months. But we aren't. So he says, Portmann says -- I'm now -- all -- that's all his, not my property, he just -- as a pure biologist, he says, "What is -- what's happening?"

Well, he says the mother's womb in the animal kingdom is cons- -- is constant. And once an elephant in the mother's womb, always an elephant, so to speak. That is, the same breed is hatched -- is born from these -- from the mother's womb. Man is taken out from the mother in -- at nine months in an absolutely helpless state. He would perish, totally perish, if he hadn't a changing envi-

ronment. That is, if not from nine months to 23 months, there would interfere something which he calls the word -- or the -- a worded, a spoken environment, the cradle, the -- the -- the pablum, whatever it is, what is at that moment the fashion, it can -- baby food, you see, or baby clothes. It can change. And it comes under the influence of speech. For 14 months after its birth, the baby is introduced to a society which is held together not by physiology, not by the umbilical cord, you see, but by words. And these words accompany everything that is given him. Whether it likes it or not, the child is surrounded by interpreted action, by directional action, because every one of these acts is accompanied usually with a smi- -- smile and say, "Now, Johnny, come. Let's eat." You see. "Come sit down and shit," and so on.

And as you know, all mental illnesses, all neuroses of your own days, all your problems are of a vocal character. They come because speech has accompanied the action -- has either approved it or disapproved of it. It isn't pure accidental, but it's always directional. Always it is said, "This is right or wrong," you see. "Go or go not." It's forbidden, you see, or commanded. He says that changes the whole aspect. These -- these children of man, you see, are under -- live in a mobile, historical environment which in any genera- -- every generation can be totally changed. But it can only be changed with the help of speech. It is -- not left to automation; it is not left to speechless dumbness, but the child is taken into the streams of speech, and words, and elucidation, and interpretation which the -- adults at that moment just happen to have learned about diet, about calories, vitamins, and what-not. And I wouldn't be surprised if the first word of a human being in 10 years would be just "vitamins," instead of "Daddy."

In a way, it is completely correct to call your father "Vitamin." He has given you life.

It's more than a joke, because our speech, you see, places the whole world into context, the logos. What we say, you see, is -- expl- -- always explanatory, you see. You can make a man into a vitamin, you see, and another into a calorie, if you want to, you see. And vice versa. You can call the -- the food your mother. The Greeks did it. They called it Demeter. And they said, "It is the mother earth that nourishes us." It's not far-fetched, gentlemen. Just as you can call your father "Vitamin," so the Greeks did call the earth, you see, her moth- -- their mother, although they had a -- one mother first, you see, the physical mother; but the wider earth, with her food, appeared as the second mother. So don't laugh at these things. It is -- actually possible by speech to do these things, you see. You can call all Jews "Christ-killers," then they become to the baby the Christ-killer. And are they? They are not. But it's -- the child believes it obviously. It's the first impression. And the first impression is that what matters.

You can change the whole world by the world -- word, for the baby, for the newborn. The power is just incredible. The child will believe -- that's why people were burned, for the religions, at stake, you see, because you can make people believe, you see, that they are the dev- -- the antichrist and the devil. It has been done, even in Salem. Salem is called "peace," as you know, and the -- town in Massachusetts. And you know, all the witch-burning in -- in Salem. Well, these were good people. They were certain- -- probably much better than we are here today, these witch-burners in Salem. And I'm -- it's very easy, gentlemen, within -- within three years I can make you all burn witches. It's easy. Very easy.

Here, I met a young man on this campus. He's an instructor; he's a teacher. And he said to me he wouldn't insist -- resist totalitarian regime. Oh, his generation was wiser than my generation. It was all nonsense. He would compromise and get by.

I said, "So, it -- would you then heads -- burn people, and gas people?"

He shrugged his shoulders and said, "I suppose I would."

Teacher in Dartmouth College. And you aren't any better than this juvenile delinquent. I was ashamed. I said I -- if I had known this, I would have not come to this country -- that this country consists just of cowards. It's very serious. This man is 26 -- of age. He hasn't been hurt himself. Complete integrity. His only handicap is he comes from Wisconsin. So I told him that he probably has eaten too much of McCarthy. But it's a sc- -- I mean, I'm ashamed of this co- -- that I call such a man my colleague, such a scoundrel? -- The majority of -- the American male would tell you they wouldn't compromise, and they would prefer to make other people suffer if that was the question { }. So you can expla- -- can very well see that the -- the modern witch-hunters are just throughout here. They are with us. The people of Salem are nothing which you can look back to as something you have left behind. Because the -- why is that so, gentlemen? Because the word in any generation can change nature -- human nature, you see. In every generation, man has a different nature. We call this the "spirit of the times," you see. And the spirit of the times makes you a creature of your own time, doesn't it? And since you are the creature of your time, if you put the devil into your own time, and he rules, you become the devil's grandson.

And -- obviously, the relationship of the devil's family is much more numerous than the other family, gentlemen, of the children of life. I mean, the -- devil's grandmother has innumerable offspring, because misuse of language is very simple, very { }, very easy, get -- get your words wrong into your throat.

Gentlemen, if this is -- now, Mr. Portmann goes on to say, and he s- -- has another -- interesting thing. That's -- of you -- for you of importance. He said all animals stop to grow when their sex life develops, when they have -- enter puberty. Man, the opposite. All of you have grown after you had reached puberty. Once more, you get a certain increase in size and stature. He says this way only humanity is conscious of its love. The animals are overwhelmed by this passion, but as you know how -- the way they produ- -- procreate is -- is a -- blind passion. They are in heat, and they are in -- in the -- in the oestrus, and they don't know what happens, so to speak. They -- they lose consciousness, you see. You have this great privilege of cultivating your cul- -- your affections, your passions. That's why it is unforgivable, gentlemen, if you don't write poetry, and don't -- don't read poetry at your age. You have to cultivate the nobler feelings which come into you, because your body is more than your individual body. It serves the whole race. And this is again against the animal kingdom. In the animal kingdom, you see, there is a separation of your individual growth, you see, and the procreation of the kind. Portmann says that in man, this is very strange, that he is forced in every niche and nook of his body -- in -- every little finger, so to speak, and little toe, to feel this tremendous transformation which love entails -- affection, you see, sympathy, friendship, passion.

Now I think you need this encouragement, gentlemen, for your own physical -- there is no division between the physical, and the spiritual, and the mental in a real person. We love with all our hearts. If you love somebody, you live -- love -- him or her, as we say in German, "hair and skin." I don't know what the expression is -- equal expression in English is. How do you say it? If you -- love somebody totally, I mean?

(Body and soul.)

Wie?

(Body and soul.)

Ja. Body and soul. Now he says no animal can. No animal can live body and soul. We can.

Now I think these two points may -- may -- may show you that the -- the relation of logos and phusis, gentlemen, of -- with regard to first impressions will make you or break you. Every one of us can be mistaken, and is mistaken for -- usually for many years -- what is nature, that is, what is the prop on which he should lean on the outer world, you see, and what is spirit, or what is logos, and what is -- what he -- what has he been told? What is the -- in his own time the new doctrine, so to speak, which calls vitamin "vitamin," and pablum "pablum,"

you see? And what is really a constant outside your spoken word, you see, like running -- lying there on rocks, without having been articulated, formulated, and abstracted, so to speak, and put into -- into other labels? Actually, gentlemen, we always seek reality through the labels of our parents and teachers. No escape. And it is better to admit it and not to dream up Thoreau {ideal} { } or Rousseau's idol, that he can commune with nature directly.

We can therefore say, gentlemen, that there are always two schools of thought in the world. In any moment, gentlemen, those who are willing to admit that logos in experience precedes phusis, or in other words, that society is your first element, you see, in which you bathe, before you can get outside society into what you call "nature" or "physics," you see -- or the other sect will always try to fight this, like Rousseau, and say, "Let's come to the bosom of nature. Forget society. You can be clean, you see, born, and you can relate to nature sans phrase, without any spoken word, directly. Very tempting, and it has been the temptation of the last 200 years, gentlemen. But I think we haven't -- it hasn't helped us very much. We are now -- landed with an A-bomb, which is -- with an { }, you see. That's the only relation to nature that's -- has been left to us. Very -- this is -- a very necessary result, because a bomb obviously is something technological, done by mind, you see, to nature. But it is not nature in its natural state, obviously.

Now therefore, you see: if you arrange logos, ethos, phusis as a biologist would -- who looks into what really happens to a newborn baby in society, you would come to the arrangement, the logos first, the invocation, that Johnny says, "Oh, Mother. What is true?" That would be an invocation, because he thinks that his mother knows what is true, you see, so he wants her to tell him. We find it in Lucretius in the poem "Venus." She is of course the big mother, you see, who takes the place of the private mother of Lucretius alone, you see. Ethos, your relation to your neighbors to whom you speak or to -- who may -- who speak to you. And phusis as a third impression.

Pardon me. Here. And you can reduce this. And that has been done, I think, wrongly into -- into just a double partition. It has played a great part in Greek philosophy, the division, not in three parts -- logos, the authority that makes us speak, and tells us the truth; ethos, our behavior to our neighbor; and phusis, the contact with the elements of reality that do not speak, that are not related to us through human speech.

The usual division, as you also find it today with most men whom you ask is, both man is a social being and he's a natural being. He moves in society, and he moves in nature. But here I may perhaps show you that this d- -- dualism, society against nature, or nature against society, is a reduction of the true process

that is threefold. And this will con- -- make -- help you consider -- you understand the problems of Plato and Aristotle. The -- the dualism is -- is a reduction of the real experience which any creative mind goes through, like Lucretius, when invokes the -- "Dear Goddess, you see, who makes me speak," you see, when he says -- admits that he wants to be read by his friend Memmius. And then he speaks about certain things that are compellingly true for Memmius, and for himself, and for us, too. You see this?

If you understand that the Greek logos, ethos, and phusis is richer, varied, more careful than what you usually speak about society and nature, you will understand that in this college, my department is wrongly placed. And that it is a great danger that you think natural science, and social science exhausts the field of sciences, you see. There must be a third.

It's very -- I talked about this, before. I only repeat this here, because these are all very difficult things. You can't hear and think about these things sufficiently often. All philosophy, gentlemen, is something that I cannot just deduct and go on the next time. These things must come to you -- us, so to speak, every day afresh. Every philosophical problem is eternal. And what I have tried to say in the first meetings, you see, I have now to repeat, to make you feel it's important. It is still between you and me undecided, you see, whether we can really do with the simple division of natural science and social science, as most people try to do, you see, or whether we haven't to ask ourselves: how come, who gives us the authority to speak at all to anybody else, and to ask him to listen to us? Or who can -- how can I request from you to listen to me? You see, that's authority, that's logos, that's truth.

I just received a letter from a person in Germany who's very downcast. And she says nobody will sacrifice five minutes or a dollar for the truth. Passion, sensation, novelty, bestsellers, you'll go { } way. And the only thing I hear on this campus is, "It's enjoyable," "It is entertaining," "It is stimulating," and int- -- "interesting." I have not one of yours -- you s- -- really lie sleepless asking, "What is true?" It's unknown to you. You are all pragmatists. You say there is no truth, so let's ask, "What's interesting?" Or let's ask, "What is stimulating?"

Gentlemen, the truth has no helpers in this country. Look at these elections. Not -- you don't even expect anyone to speak the truth. It's admitted. Advertising. Psychology. Everybody is out to cheat you. To -- to say something pleasant.

I got a letter and said, "How can -- could you say this?" the other day.

And I said, "It was true."

I got a letter back, "But one doesn't say the truth -- tell the truth."

It is understood today that truth has no champions, gentlemen. And truth never wins by itself. Some people have to witness. I mean, if you don't stand up for the truth, it will not win. Truth is as weak as a -- as -- as the wind is, you see. It -- but nobody wants to serve truth in this country. They want to truth -- serve their career, or a Ph.D., or -- that's not truth, gentlemen. Because your Ph.D., you carefully write only what -- what your professor will admit.

I have run into this all my life, gentlemen. My first book when I was to be a professor, the faculty turned me down and said I couldn't print the book, because it wasn't scientific. So I printed it just the same. And they made me a professor, just the same.

Truth has no champions, gentlemen. As soon as you reduce the three-par -- three-partition of logos, ethos, and phusis, the behavior to your neighbor, behavior to the -- to the truth that makes us speak, that is compelling us against our interest to let the truth stand; and phusis, the things which we debate and which we cauterize, profile, with the help of our notions and our words, gentlemen, if you reduce this, as I said, to two, as it is done at this moment in the whole world, or western world, then you have no way of appealing to anybody for the truth, because society and nature are just there. They mold you, you see. And you must eat -- nature, you see. And you must have friends, you see. So you buy Daley Carnegie. And that's cheating. I mean, I -- I think any man who realizes that the man to whom he talks makes use of Mr. Carnegie's counsel should spit at this man -- at this reader of Carnegie and say, "I have nothing to do with you. You're trying -- to exploit me." Isn't that true?

I have such a rascal living in Norwich. He try- -- I know he wants -- all he wants -- one day he wants to sell me a car. So one day he interests me in some refugee from Europe, and -- and the other day he interests me in the harvest festival, and what-not. And I know the only reason is he has -- is a car dealer. And his only interest in me is that I should buy a car. So but he, of course, feigns the greatest interest in -- in some man shipwrecked on the - -- shipwrecked on the Andrea Doria, you know.

He didn't do a thing for this man, as I found out, fortunately, you see. But he built the case up: I should then sacrifice my money for this man on the Andrea Doria, because my car dealer didn't want to do anything. But he thought if he could get me interested -- talking to him, corresponding with him, you see, meeting him again and again, I would finally be unable to escape his wiles for buying this car. Well, I'm going to cheat him!

This I mean by reducing man's relations, you see, to these two: society and nature, and never to ask, "What must I do?" "What am I commanded to do?" "What's my destiny?" You understand that this -- higher question, a different question, certainly. Because it may be that I have to destroy nature or to destroy society. Do you think that the people who declared the independence of this country, that they were just the product of their environment? Obviously, they criticized the British crown and they felt that neither was the nature of America binding to them, nor the English society. They had to create something third.

Gentlemen, you couldn't do that, because you have deprived yourself of all the 20 years of investment in truth. You have never thought that it is necessary to sacrifice your life for the service of truth. You think we are all fools who do that. This young man from Wisconsin who is my -- whom I have to call my colleague unfortunately, he thinks I'm a fool.

This goes very far, gentlemen. It's very interesting. We have a very great journalist in this country, as you know, she is an honorary doctor at Dartmouth College, that's Dorothy Thompson. And she saved the life of a European. Although she did not approve of his politics, during the last war, she came out. He was to be interned here. He was a broken man and was very sick. And she saved his life, and she said frankly to the authorities, "This man is an able man. But he -- I don't share his political views, but he doesn't deserve to be handed over to the Nazis. They would murder him. So it is better for him -- I think it's his human duty to keep such a man here, because they would kill him, and we will stomach him, although he is not absolutely pro-American." She was very honest about it. And she -- stuck her neck out. It was of course as bad then as today to do anything so difficult, so complicated. This was not black and white. He was not an angel, you see, not somebody wonderful, all on our side, you see, best man in the country. She wa- -- she saw that he was a human being, with its -- shades and -- and neither white nor black, as we all.

Now she's of course an outstanding, great woman, I think, and quite superior person. And she came to me the other day, and she said, "You know our mutual friend?" And I knew only too well. And he said -- she said, "You know, it's funny. Off and on, he nearly weeps." He's -- the man is now very old. He's 75. And he s- -- tell her, "Dorothy, you have saved my life. And I shall never forget it. And I'm eternally grateful."

"But," she says to me, "You know, John at the same time thinks that I was a fool, because he would have never gone out -- all out for a person to save -- to save a person. So he cannot help being grateful. He cannot help even a little bit admiring me. But he can also not help feeling that I'm very stupid."

You understand? The person saved, you see, still thinks that the good angel who saved him is below his own intelligence. I'm -- afraid that's a very common attitude today, you see. You all are debunkers, and you all don't want to be taken in. And you all convinced that you wouldn't be stupid. Gentlemen, in order to live right, you have to be stupid. Believe me, intelligence is a great handicap for getting into Heaven. The scoundrels are all intelligent. I don't think they could have robbed the bank -- the Brink, without intelligence, you see. So they -- are in prison for life. Most intelligent people, gentlemen, can't do good because they don't want to be taken in.

And this is the important thing, gentlemen, between then such a little decision. If you forget that I'm not teaching either in the social science or in -- or in the natural science at this moment here, you see, that there is a third {verse} which decides how much society, and how much nature, you see. You take a shortcut. You get lost in one -- pigeonholed in these two tin cans, Sir. And then you will react like this man -- a very clever journalist, a leading man. He -- he knows all of Europe, he knows America, he knows all of Asia. He -- he was -- he knew Trotsky, he knew Stalin, he knew Mussolini, he knew all -- you know, one of these men for whom the public, I mean, has the greatest respect because he has really intimate -- intimate knowledge, you see, { }.

And -- but the man's shortcoming is very simple in that he cannot genuinely admire a superior {article}. Dorothy Thompson to him is just -- it's a pity, she's -- and -- so please pray that some intelligent people still can be stupid. They do what is right, whether it's clever or not. You live on this.

Any moment then, people would only be clever, they would never do a thing that may cost their lives, because that would be stupid. So you can't have a good soldier who defends you, because it's just stupid to be shot dead. Just stupid. It's absolutely stupid. Asinine.

Sacrifice is always stupid to the intelligent person, gentlemen. And the whole world is run by sacrifice. And not by ethics. You know this very well. The -- the real household hangs -- sticks together by the one person who stays at home, when there is a pleasure at hand, and looks after the babies. You see, if there is nobody, you see -- at least the babysitter, and -- and then there can -- can be no integrated family life. Is that happiness? It's the one person who can renounce happiness who keeps the family together.

Why do I say these things, gentlemen? For the very practical reason that in our first impressions, as -- as children, there is of course already a mixture of logos, ethos, and physics. If your parents do not pray with you, if they do not invoke the logos, if they nowhere show that they are servants to the truth, that

they receive higher orders, if you cannot see your ch- -- parents go down on their knees, or being contrite, or being overwhelmed by authority that is greater than their purely physical existence, you will always misunderstand life. That's why mothers in colleges should -- should make this decision: will they have to teach their children to pray? They shouldn't learn chemistry. It's not very important. What they learn in our girls' colleges is just ridiculous. -- Sheer nonsense. The one thing they never are asked to decide: why do I must pray -- must I pray with my child? And they can't, therefore. Most can't, I mean, these silly doggerels then they teach them. And it's not important that you should teach your child to pray, gentlemen, but the child must see you pray. You don't have to force a child to go to church, but the child must know that you go to church somewhere. You don't have to go to the stone church. You can go into the woods.

But somewhere you must wrestle with the service of -- to the truth. They must know that while everything is social, natural around them, you are still wrestling with the problem how much to nature, and how much to society, and how much to duty, you see. Society always tries to talk you out of duty: "It's not necessary. Join the country club." And nature? Always unnecessary, you see. "Go swimming. Go golf -- playing golf." These are the two simple things a child sees before its parents. Now if it never sees that the parents renounce nature or society for some higher interest, how can they understand reality, gentlemen? The problem is not making children pray, or making -- sending children to Sunday school. That's the conscience money of modern Americans. They send their children to these Sunday schools. That's a scandal. That's sugar. But that's not bread of life. The bread of life is when the children see that the -- parents are contrite, that they feel that any minute they may miss the road. And we -- don't we, any minute? If that's -- I mean, this is common experience of all mankind, that any minute, the happiest man, including President Eisenhower, can make such a mistake that he may jeopardize his whole salvation. You all can, tomorrow, today may -- you can make the decisive blunder of your life.

You feel so safe, gentlemen, that you never admit to anybody else visibly that you are up in the air. This is called prayer, this being up in the air. And if you can't make it -- the younger generation see that you are up in the air, you sin. You disintegrate society. You destroy nature, this human nature which is based on your word about reality which the child must receive from you, because it is born under the authority of the logos, you see, and not just -- physically.

So the thing is terribly important, gentlemen. It is all lost today. It is all lost -- you really believe the so- -- the humanities are a kind of decoration for social gatherings, where you play in Robertson Hall some silly fraternity play. "And Shakespeare, well, that's a kind of inheritance from Europe. We wouldn't write --

have -- we wouldn't have any Shakespeare, but that's just an old s- -- tradition, we -- we still play Shakespeare. Yes."

Gentlemen, Shakespeare is much more important obviously than all natural science taken together. But you can't see that. To you, he is a luxury. And yet, without the emotions of Shakespeare, the sacrifices for the noble life, the -- the perishing of Romeo and Juliet under the law of the feud of their houses, you know nothing about love, absolutely nothing. Whereas whether you know something about the -- chemistry, you can always get some of these chemists. I mean, the whole DuPont family is at your disposal.

We -- we buy these idiots who are chemists, we buy them for high money and make them rich. And that satisfies these people. Poor people who have to be rich in order to be satisfied. I mean, riches -- belongs to nature, to natural man. I mean, he deals with mines, and with chemistry. Don't begrudge him his wealth. He -- he should { } but you can read poetry, you can write poetry, gentlemen. You are much richer. You don't need a Cadillac to be happy.

But I have seen this, gentlemen. Here appeared a man -- a gentleman. He is called Greenwald. You know, he's the head of the Du- -- DuPont concern. And this man is a chemist. And he -- married the right daughter, a DuPont, and so he is very rich. And just these two facts blinded two- -- two- -- two-third of the Dartmouth students. They went down on their knees. That was their idol. And well, it's a very bad indictment against American society that 3,000 healthy college boys give a damn for Mr. Greenwald because he married the daughter of a rich man. That happened two years ago, and then I gave up all hope that it made any sense to teach philosophy in this college.

So in these little things, gentlemen, you really decide where you belong. It's a very simple thing, the first impressions. If you arrange logos first, ethos second, and phusis thirst, then you worship your parents because they are worshipful people, you see. Logos. If you worship them for phus- -- if phusis comes first in your mind, you worship them because they spank you, you see. Not a good reason, obviously, to s- -- to worship your -- your parents. But I think any child will worship his parents and grandparents if they -- he sees that they are worshipful, that they have reverence. I think that's the most important thing that you have to consider when you get married, gentlemen: how to make your children understand that you have reverence. That's all that it needs to be -- have a real family. They cannot understand you in their relation to -- to them, to the children, you see, unless you show that you have a relation to somebody who's your father. Without this, there's no -- no way of their ever understanding your right in family affairs, you see, and your duty, either, that you can -- must educate them, you see.

And then this whole problem of spanking, and of neurosis, and of inhibitions will all disappear. Today, you see, what happens if you have nature and society? Everything is psychology. Here are the two brats: the boy and the girl. And here are the these unfortunate mothers and fathers. And everything is a game between these four people, you see. And so you take out one stone there, and one pressure, and then it reacts on the other; they all get nervous all the time, you see, high tension and blood pressure. And so the boy is sent away to college, and the girl is sent away to camp, and the father goes into a lunatic asylum, and the mother is left with the women's club.

Gentlemen, the -- healthier family -- fortunately there are these families. And I think most of you know something about a real family, and not this damned description of a family which you read in your social science books. The real family obviously goes on like this. Here is a tradition. Here come in these parents. They get married. And they beget children. And the children have a -- the feeling that the parents are representative, are officeholders of this great human race in which the whole truth of the human race, through the parents, reaches the children, so that the parents are nothing but the functionaries, the officeholders, you see, of the great truth of ma- -- life. The mother stands always for the church, the father always for the state; and the children receives what is true about state and church through the ages in some form or other, more or less, through these parents. Isn't that very simple?

But the whole relation is not one of -- here, confrontation. That's the damned sickness of the modern -- American { } by the way, western society. Freud has the same in Vienna, of course, the same problem, as though children were only looking at their parents, and parents only looking at their children. But gentlemen, they -- both look beyond their parents, and beyond the children. Can't you understand, you see? Because they are only agents of much larger forces, of the logos, that must -- goes down through the ages, you see. And that is not the ethos of the neighborhood. And that is not the phusis of the contact, and the weight, and the calories, and what-not. But that's the revelation of our destiny, what we have to say and what we are -- have been told. And that's not of any origin of 1956.

Let's have a break here.

[tape interruption]

...in mind this problem, that logos, ethos, and phusis are working constantly on us. From the newborn child to the dying moment, we cannot escape this commitment to these three elements of which we are ourselves expressions. What is true, and what is therefore represented by us? What's our destiny? What

has to be done, regardless of our happiness, through thick and thin, because that is now the hour to do it, you see? You may call it ment- -- "manifest destiny." Or "This is the time which tries men's souls." Or you may try -- say, "This is our opportunity." Whatever you take -- call the logos. It is that which must be done, you see, even though it seems that it cannot be done. You may say, "Logos has always to do with the impossible." It seemed impossible that God became man. And He became man. And therefore the coming of Christ certainly seemed absolutely impossible. Anything the logos commands us to do, gentlemen, always seems impossible before it is done. The logos has to do with the impossible.

Nature has to do with the possible. And ethos has always to do with the Joneses. Ja, you see. It can be done, because the Joneses have done it. It isn't natural that you should play golf, but the Joneses play golf. So, you play golf.

The impossible, gentlemen, is the -- our relation to the gods. That which has never been done before is divine. Man can do the impossible. When he can do the possible, then he's natural. And then he can do that which other people have made possible, then he's social.

If you use today a cocktail shaker, obviously you make use of a social invention which somebody else did at a time when it seemed impossible, you see, to invent a cocktail shaker, he invented it. Can you see this? Society makes use of former impossible -- -bilities who -- which have become possible by our neighbors, by our brothers, by our society. Nature is that which you feel is possible anytime, that a stone -- you take a stone, it's natural that it should fall to the ground, you see. It's always possible. It hasn't to be invented. Nature doesn't have to be invented, you see. Society is an invention, a discovery, or a sum of discoveries, you see. God is the power to discover what -- there -- hasn't been done, hasn't been discovered, you see. You can also say God is the future, society is the present, and nature is the past; because nature is the world before man spoke. That we breathe, you see, that had to be done before man got dress, and clothes, and -- and midwives. But now we have midwives, so it is social -- a social way of getting a child that you have midwifery, or even the -- the -- the hospital, you see. Obviously that's a social invention, isn't it? It's not natural. But the logos, gentlemen, is the great hope of the world, because it means that things that have not been possible, and have not been inherited as -- as -- as social agencies can become possible.

Don't smoke, please.

If you now reduce this to the problem of the Greeks once more, I told you in the beginning -- last time, as best I could, that the Greeks had a weak society, a weak first impression, a weak speaking { }, because the world in which they

lived was so much larger than the little city in which their children were born. And therefore I said the first great logos for the Greeks has become Homer, because he took all the Greek cities together and made them feel a common purpose. So that every Greek, when he read Homer, could feel that he lived in an environment which was larger than his eyesight, larger than his, you see, than his -- his little city of his; all these cities together formed Homeric Greece.

Now let's take the -- the second book of The Iliad. Please. I hope you have it. It's worth your while, gentlemen, to represent to your mind a little carefully why Homer has remained the teacher of the Greeks for a thousand years. And why, for an American, Homer still has this same appeal. You don't read Homer, gentlemen, but the songs which list all the 48 states, or sing, "From California and New England," and so, do the -- just what -- what Homer did. They enlarge the nature and the society around you to such an extent, you see, that you can try at least to forget the rest of the world, and to imagine that this is all you have to care for, you see. So that your first impressions might coincide with that universe to which you have to pay attention. Then you would be -- have to have no philosophy, you see. You wouldn't have to have -- afterthought. You wouldn't have to have any criticism. You would be perfectly happy to move within this one world, you see, your mother's world, so to speak, you see, the -- the mother country. And so Homer has created a mother country large enough to make the citizens of these tiny little units feel that they have a worldwide home.

Let's begin on Page 52. "The royal ch-" -- on the last line of 51:

"The royal chieftain of the king's council bustled around -- about, marshalling the troops and with them went Athene."

You have a divine -- a divine power creating this -- this social universe. In the feeling of every -- every reader of Homer ever since, especially in Greece.

"Marshalling the troops, and with them went Athene of the flashing eyes, wearing her splendid float, the unfading, everlasting aegis from which a hundred golden tassels flutter, all beautifully made, each worth a hundred head of cattle. Resplendent in this, the goddess flew through the ranks, urging the men forward. And in each of one, she inspired the will to carry on the war and fight relentlessly. Before long, they were more enamored with the thought of fighting than with that of sailing away to their own country in their hollow ships."

In this -- you see, we have disparaged war very often in this country by pacifism. Gentlemen, without war, there would be no nation, as we know, the -- the history of mankind, you see. The only way of creating larger countries has been in this manner, you see, that people overcame their sense of private happi-

ness and were willing to sacrifice their lives for their country. And all country, you see, that have been created to any size have been built on this power of man to seek this larger unit. Will you kindly now {-- Prenzler} go on reading?

(Sir, I do not have the place. No, I have the book. But I don't -- I don't know --)

Page 52.

(Well, I have a different book. It's Book Two, right?)

Ja.

(And what line?)

Well, it -- unfortunately here, I must take my Greek.

(Did you start at the beginning of the book? Book Two.)

486. Second Book, verse 484. You have it?

The poet is so overcome with the importance of the scene that he makes a new appeal, a new invocation to the Muses. You have it? David? No? Richard.

(No, I don't.)

Who has it? Duke. All right. Ed. Go ahead.

("As they fell in, the dazzling glitter of their splendid bronze flashed through -- through the upper air and reached the sky. It was as bright as the glin- -- glint of the flames caught in a {distant} spot, when a great forest and a mountain pike is ravaged by fire. Their clans came out like countless flocks of birds: the geese, the cranes, or the long-necked swans that forgather in the Asian meadow by the streams of Kayster. And mill about, molting, flapping their wings, and filling the whole meadow with harsh cries as they came to ground on the advancing front. So clan after clan poured out from the ships and huts onto the Plain of Skamonder. And the earth resounded solemnly to the tramp of launching men and horses' hooves. As they found their places in the flowery meadows by the river, innumerable as the leaves and blossoms in their season. Thus --")

Now gentlemen, these great similes of Homer show you something -- who is in English? Who is majoring in English? Any one of you? Wie? The assumption today is -- or the Greek assumption, or the Homeric assumption that meta-

phors come late in life -- in language. Here, the -- the soldiers are, as a matter of fact, compared to the leaves, because Homer wants to create the impression of -- that -- that this society is a natural one. And we have to say a word later on -- on the -- on these metaphors. The place of metaphor in human speech is -- is distinctly different in the Bible, and distinctly different in -- in Greek tradition, in philosophy. And you have to -- will to -- have to make up your mind whether metaphor is elementary way of speech, or whether it is really only an afterthought.

And I only point out this, because these are very famous similes, and there is a deep, philosophical problem involved. Could you and I -- you and I commute, parents and children, for example, or I and you without metaphor? Is this a primary necessity, you see, that we -- speaks in metaphors, you see? Or is it a -- a luxury?

That's the -- the Homeric text brings this up, but it's a question that goes through all philosophy. You think that if you have a semantic positivist, who -- who says, "A equals A and B equals B," that this is somewhere wiser as when he says that the eagle of Zeus governs the mind of governors of states, you see. And you think that the symbol of the -- of the -- let's say, for the lion, or for -- for the evangel of St. Mark is just a very dry simile to you. The question is: can we human beings say anything to each other without metaphor? It's not so easy to decide this. You will be surprised if you -- we analyze this later.

But I want to draw your attention to these very famous similes in which the poet achieves one thing, gentlemen. In this nature simile, bees, and bl- -- leaves, the differences of these various cities disappear. They all look like one. And that's the Homeric problem, you see, to make all Greek as one. That's the appeal. That's the patriotic appeal. And that's the cement, the mortar around these -- the -- this variety of men. These innumerable, different shades of religions, of cities, of settlements, of forms of constitution. There were -- Aristotle wrote 258 different constitutions of Greek cities. Now Homer, in these similes, achieves unity by saying, "They all marched like," you see, "natural birds," or "natural flowers," or "natural leaves." Now go on.

("Thus these long-{ } soldiers of Achaea were drawn up on the plain, and facing the Trojans with slaughter in their hearts, as many and as restless as the unknown re- -- flies that swarmed around the cow sheds in the spring, when pails are full of milk. And now with practiced ease, with which goatherds sort out their wandering flocks, when they have mingled in the pastures, the captains brought their companies into battle order. And in among them moved King Agamemnon, with head and eyes like Zeus, the thunderer; with a waist like the war-god's waist; and a breast like Poseidon's. As a bull stands out from the cattle in the herd, con-

spicuous among the grazing cows, so on that day Zeus made the son of Atreus stand out in the crowd and eclipse his fellow kings.")

Here again, perhaps you understand, gentlemen. If I have {listed} the Russians, and the Americans, and the British, and the French fighting in the last world war, the commander-in-chief, and the chaplain, and the newspaper writer, and the historian, they all have to find some language which is neither Russian, nor English, nor French, you see, nor American. And in any such moment, you need metaphor. There is no metaphor { } {and the foist} -- the first metaphor offering itself is nature. He's like a bull, you see, in front of the -- the rest. Because bull is not social, and society is divided, in many societies, many cities.

You can -- here study in this -- in this great famous prooemium, the necessity of rising to the occasion. It was the handicap, you see, of the Western allies against Hitler that he could always speak of the Germans without metaphor. He said, "I mean you, the Germans." Then they asked him, the Germans themselves -- to take in the Ukrainians, too, to -- to promise self-government to the Poles, you see, to be reasonable, to unite Europe.

He said, "No, because I want to have the first impression. You have learned that you are Germans. I'm not going to let in -- anybody in into the company, because then I would have to use a second language, you see, an abstraction, like NATO."

And you must admit, NATO is a very poor word, you see. Nobody can -- will -- wants to die for NATO, you see. And therefore NATO is nearly dead at this moment, because it has not risen to the power of the Homeric speech -- eagle, or bull, or the leaves of the field, or any such metaphor.

So please, those that -- especially the gentlemen who intend to write short stories: get a certain respect for language. Language is under the logos, that is: don't say anything that isn't necessary. But under the logos, always something new has to be said. And therefore something -- so far impossible has to be expressed by your next creation, you see. Any short story, even, has to say something that hasn't been said before. Because it is necessary to say this.

Now -- and Homer has to say something new, because he has to tell these Greeks, you see, that they are one. They mustn't every one go to their own country. He wants to unite them. And -- I mean -- the whole poem, of course, is written around this problem. And for this you have then to find absolutely new terms. Can you understand, that you cannot appeal -- couldn't appeal in 1943 to the Russians, fighting for the capitalists, for the bourgeois, you see, the citizenship of the free world. And you couldn't appeal to the Americans for saving

Bolshevism, you see. So it was terribly difficult to find any common language. And I think it has been the handicap of the -- of the whole war, that it was a speechless war.

And so -- poor President Roosevelt, when he was asked what the name was to be given to the Second World War, made this terrible surrender to -- to impotency, to weakness. But what could he do? He said, "It's a war of survival." But gentlemen, never has anything less inspiring been said about any war. All wars are wars of survival of { }, you see. But that doesn't signify any one war. You can see that. If you -- you -- if -- if I don't kill you, you kill me. That's war, isn't it? The "war of survival" just means, "Let's try to survive, although it is a war." That was the official term in this country. And it showed you -- I think later generations will say that the war has died in the hearts of men, because it could -- it was seen -- proved unpossible to find a common language, which inspired men to see that this war was something natural, and something necessary, you see.

I think war is dying. But war is dying for the -- the symptom of it is that it no longer can be named. You can't name a war a "war of survival" and ask soldiers to die for it. I wouldn't die for a war of survival. That's good for a cattleyard, you see. Any flea tries to survive until I eclipse it.

And -- this is very serious, gentlemen. The "War of Secession," the "War of Independence," the "Revolutionary War," these are all very good terms, very understandable, you see. But you cannot call a war a war of survival without defeating your own end. And -- and you know how Churchill called the Second World War? Is that not known? It's terribly important, because with Homer, the period of named wars begin. What is a named war, gentlemen? A war that is not looked upon only from one side of the fence, from the people -- the little group who goes to war on one side, you see, but -- so that -- a war -- if our history is a book that is -- an event that both sides, vanquished and victors, will call with the same name. Otherwise you have no human war, you see. Otherwise you have your slaughter, or butchery, or whatever you call it. Animal kingdom.

Now modern war has reached its extinction, nearly, because what happened in Homer was the Homeric -- the Trojan War was a war that could be quoted for -- by Trojans, Orientals, and Greeks with one and the same name. Today Churchill has called the Second World War, "the unnecessary war." That's his official term. The unnecessary war. And -- Roosevelt has called it "the war of survival." Both names, gentlemen, are pre-Homeric.

And I'm very serious in recommending to you -- I'm reading with you, and we must devote the next meeting to this again, of course -- I'm reading with

you this second book, because it is the moment in which wars were christened, were baptized, were named. And what is a named war? A war that can make sense for both parties, victors and vanquished, you see. That's something new. The old Egyptians, the Babylonians, they never mentioned the war in terms that -- they wipe out the opponent, you see. He doesn't live to see it. All the people were, you see -- the women and children were made slaves, the men were all killed, as with the Indians. The Indians also here, you see, had to kill their men at the -- how do you call it? the -- pyre, {isn't it}? No. How do you call the -- wie?

(Stake?)

At the stake. -- The Homeric war is a great invention, because it gives man a consciousness of the -- of life beyond the limitations of his own society. The -- all wars of the last 3,000 years, as you have to learn them in the history department, in your textbooks, have a name by which both parties will recognize the same event. Which means, gentlemen, that both parties have survived the event. Before Homer, the enemy -- one of the two, disappears, and he is wiped out. That's the -- it's the idea. And the thing goes on until he is wiped out, so to speak.

Homer learns for the first time that you can make peace between two enemies. That's the world in which so far we have lived. Today I think the time is coming where we must have one world in which there cannot even be war. So we already are launching into this adventure, because we can no longer name the last two wars. The "necessary w- -- unnecessary war," and the "war of survival," to hell with that. I don't want my son or my grandchildren to be mobilized for an unnecessary war, you will admit. Wie? So that's defeating one's own ends. I mean, if the -- if the leading statesman, if the prime minister of England says to his own countrymen, "This is an unnecessary war," they'll say, "Now, please -- then please avoid it," don't you think?

You can't mobilize people for an unnecessary war. And you can't mobilize people for a war of survival, either. Or you get, I mean, into this archaic situation, that the rest -- the others have to be wiped out. And so you got the feeling in this country that the Germans should be wiped out. Many in '45 felt that these were no longer human beings. They were beasts, you see. So -- no Germany. But the Morgenthau Plan.

This is all consequence, when you have no power to name the unit with which you together form the society and the nature around you, you see.

So don't think that Homer is without its actuality. In Homer, the first war has been named, who was a -- the Trojan War for both, people in Asia Minor and the people in Greece.

I'm sorry, we have to stop here.