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

I'd like to say something on these -- about these papers that has also some importance for you, because we will go on from this term paper to the finals. I shall demand from every one of you the acquaintance with one other school of thought different from the one you have treated. I mean, here -- someone said to me that he had dealt with Aristotle because he was interested in Thomas Aquinas. Of course, that is not a good learning of Greek philosophy if you just stay -- and cook further in your own stew of scholasticism. The whole problem of the history of Greek philosophy of course is that he should then deal with an opposite man. Who is the man who told me this? Pleading a very poor choice. You learn too much Thom- -- Aristotle already in your Thomism. So -- why don't you check on this? To understand what philosophy really is, you have to know about two different schools of thought.

I shall then require, gentlemen, from every one of you, and the whole examination will be based on this, that you now, for the last month, when I hope you have learned what to look for in these various systems, that you deal with one other system sufficiently so that you can write in the exam about it. Of course the exam's question will be specific. But I -- there will be one condition attached. You will not be allowed to draw on the term paper in the sense that you just deal with -- you deal -- have dealt with the Stoa -- the Stoics in this paper -- term paper, you cannot repeat the performance. It will have to be somebody else. And that's valid for Plato. It's valid for Aristotle. It's valid for all these gentlemen, that there will be some other knowledge necessary. Also, you will bring to your class Mrs. {Freeman's} book. And again, of course, the question will not be about a system of philosophy dealt with in this book. So you must take one of the later schools of thought, later philosophers, as the term paper is also aware -- and however, we'll -- will make use of this book in a -- in the examination question. I will only give one examination question, nothing to choose from. And you will bring this text to the exam, please, to the finals. You can also take your notes, but that's dangerous, because most of them are wrong.

So please be it understood: somebody who has worked on Plato now better look up either Pythagoras, or Democritus, or Epicurus, or the Stoa, or Aristotle, and vice versa. I don't demand a full knowledge of all the philosophers of Greece for the exam, because I hope it's more solid if you understand two. But one is not enough.

May I then say something about the way you have handled this paper? I think one-fifth has done well. And then -- really well -- very well. The other four-fifths I think are partly scandalous. Some of you think that for a student at

Dartmouth College, the Encyclopaedia Britannica is a source of information. Gentlemen, the -- the encyclopedias are written so that on topics where we have no special information, we can get the sum. But it is never the source of information for a topic in which you are expected to do some work yourself. Never. It's all nonsense. It has reached this stage -- and why do you go to college? Buy the encyclopedia. There must be a difference between an educated man and a man who owns an Encyclopaedia Britannica. You aren't educated because you own the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The -- the editors of the Encyclopaedia Britannica may then be educated, but you are not. You're just plagiarizing. I mean, there have been -- are papers have -- handed in to me, just copying the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Never -- I mean, you -- this is too stupid for words. You can learn from any encyclopedia where to begin with your work. That's why I -- if you know nothing of -- about some topic, have never heard of it, you go { } Encyclopaedia Britannica, they give you the first idea, you see, but not the second, and not the third.

So I mean, it just shows the -- the -- the degradation into which all college education has fallen in this country, that you do this. This -- this idea of condensation -- condensations, and -- and finally one sentence is -- is left. That's not an edu- -- education. When on -- to -- to -- to look up the Encyclopaedia Britannica on Plato or Aristotle is really the end of the world. The whole library is stacked full with books on them, from which the encyclopedia after all has just copied. Well, is there any doubt in any one's mind? I'm very glad to enlighten him about the place of the Encyclopaedia Britannica in educated man's mind. But -- or education. But is there any doubt? Do you think I have treated you unjustly? Then I will -- very glad to argue the point.

The -- in Plato's -- case of Plato, who has been treated most frequently, there is one interesting thing I think to remark. And it applies of course, to others -- philosophers as -- as well. But it didn't -- become so practical, because you just didn't the others in their original context. You just wrote -- read books about them. In the case of Plato, one of you has written a very long paper on Plato's Republic, going just from book to book. This is an anti-philosophical treatment, gentlemen, of any book. You cannot render a thought of -- the thought of a man, like Plato in his Republic by simply narrating, like an epical storyteller, the sequence of this boo- -- The Republic, which for artistic reasons and reasons of Greece -- the Greek environment, of course, had to meet a certain pattern of order, of dialogue, of dramatization, and of personification.

The first thing a man who reads a book must do, is that he begins with the last word of the book. Make this a rule, gentlemen. Each time a thing is intellectually treated, the order of things is reversed. If you make a book review -- write a book review, the first thing is -- you must have in mind is the end of the

book. Otherwise you haven't read it. Now to plunge your reader, me, in the position that I have to wallow, like you yourself, once more through the sequence of these books of The Republic, is -- is the most unphilosophical thing you can do. It shows that you don't know what philosophy is. Philosophy is an attempt to see wholes, to see totalities. And you break it -- you destroy this power, this possibility. Is an absolutely worthless paper, and I'm sorry to say this, because the man was quite industrious who wrote this report. But it never dawned on him that he was showing that he had mistaken a movie and philosophy. In a movie, the things follow, and they end then with a surprise at the moment when you see the final kiss.

But gentlemen, any thought has to be conceived, comprehended. All these words mean that you have to take them together in your hand, and hold them up before you and go around them, and see them from many angles and from many sides. And with a book you can only do this if you look at it from the end and from the beginning. And even from the middle. And that's your digestion. And so this minimum wasn't done in this case, I'm sorry to say. And it is therefore -- he -- the man certainly didn't fulfill the requirement at all. If I ask in a course on philosophy the -- the statement of a philosophy, I must ask that much philosophical acumen on your part that you know what it means to think at all.

But this leads to a very central point. I -- I have just published this in a -- my Sociology: the place of philosophy in life, the seat in life, in Greek tradition. One of you has quoted Charmides -- who has Charmides? I had suspected him that he hadn't read it. But he quoted it. Come on. Who -- who quoted Charmides? Who quoted Charmides? C-h-a-r-m-i-d-e-s? Oh, don't -- don't -- I'll find you.

Now this is a very exciting dialogue, gentlemen, because it is the seat of -- in life, which philosophy there is given, the reason why there are philosophers in Greece. And I'm going now to speak a little more about this, after I have dealt with the papers. The seat of life of philosophy forces you to deal -- with any philosophical topic -- or with any philosopher in such a way that you do not simply follow the external line of his argument. But that you master the subject by looking around it, by seeing it from all sides, so to speak, stereometrically, you see, so that you can begin at the end as much as the beginning.

In modern times, gentlemen, the one man who may claim that he comes nearest to a Greek philosopher has been Schopenhauer, because he is the one and only philosopher in the 19th century who wrote decent -- a decent style, a very beautiful style, as good as Plato. And Schopenhauer said to his readers in the preface of his philosophy, that he had to ask them to read the book once,

and then to read it again, after they had reached the -- the end, because otherwise he couldn't convey his thought. They first had to know the whole story, what he was driving at. And then they had, so to speak, critically read it again.

And he said, "I was -- I am very sorry, I'm quite sure I cannot keep up with the -- with the cheap Will -- Will Durants, et cetera, and therefore -- of my" -- his time, "and therefore, nobody is going to read my book. But I must say that the simple condition of reading this book is to read it twice. Because you must have reached the end before you can understand the beginning." And if this sounds paradox, you -- then you -- just -- means that you don't know what to think means. And you don't know what to think me- -- what to think means, of course. And you -- they tempt you to buy a book, because they promise you, you can read it in nine minutes and 10 seconds.

Gentlemen, you are illiterates. You have unlearned to read a real book of any difficulty. And you even disclaim your duty to write -- read a book that is difficult. You say, "I don't write -- read books that are difficult." It's just a denunciation of your own stupidity, gentlemen. Only books that are difficult are worth reading, obviously. Why should you read a book that is light? I mean, then you can go to a burlesque show right away.

But you -- all your values in reading books are distorted. The whole problem of Heraclitus or of the gre- -- greatest minds of -- of Greece is that you have to think about one of these sentences 20 times before the -- understand how deep they are, and how -- how appl- -- wide their application is. And so I must say, I resent this -- this -- these Platos -- papers on Plato. They all show very clearly that not one of the -- you has taken the trouble of reading a dialogue of Plato twice. Perfectly meaningless. No book, gentlemen, of any value is a book that deserves to be read once. If you don't read Hamlet twice, or thrice -- 10 times in your life, you are unable to understand Shakespeare. Hamlet cannot be read once. It cannot. That's the first beginning, to get over the difficulties of who's the play -- what the action is, and who the players are. After you have gotten by this, then you begin to begin just to -- to understand what Plato -- what Hamlet is all about. I have read my -- the -- Homer's Iliad perhaps by now 25 times, and The Odyssey 26 or 27 times. And so on with everything. And I very often do not understand -- even then. But you have no education, gentlemen, because you have not learned anything the second time.

There are three kinds of books, gentlemen. And this is important for Greek -- for philosophy in any case. There are the books that deserve to be read once, and never again; that are the books to be eliminated. A book that only deserves to be read once could just as well have not been read. It's not important. You can read it for a pastime, or you cannot read it. Then there are books

that must be read -- read several times. These are the so-called classics, the good books. Dickens, or Macaulay, or Carlyle, or -- or Robert Frost. And then there are books -- very few -- that can -- must be read always. Like the Bible. And that's the difference of the Bible and the other books. Not that it is a sacred book. There is nothing sacred. That's an -- just an empty word, gentlemen. But it has to be read always, because most of the time, we aren't up to the occasion. Most of the time, we do not understand the Bible, because we have -- we live in such sloth, and sinfulness, and stupidity that we don't understand it. You have to have a pure heart and a clear mind in order to understand the Bible. Most of you don't have that. You are sleepy. And you -- you -- wallow in so much -- sloth and -- and frivolity that of course you cannot understand serious things.

I had just lunch with one of -- a boy from another course. And he -- he admitted that he was 19 years old, but he had admitted that so far, nothing ever had appeared serious to him. A remarkable performance. Nothing. Nothing ever, he said.

These are the three types of books, gentlemen: read -- to be read once, to be read several times, to be read often. We read the books that we read once in order to find among them a book that deserves to be read again. It's a selective process, like a sieve. You have three -- you see, three establishments. And then there are, among the classics, a few that we give such a prominence, that we say, "always." And so that's why we give it, for example, our children as a birthday present, because we think that although it was of our time, we think still that Alice in Wonderland should be read today.

But you -- I mean, the thing you are fed of course, you are very much excused, the children's books that are printed on -- this commercial basis, in -- where people establish themselves as children's books' writers now every day in this country, not one of them deserves to be printed or read by any child. It makes these children only stupid. It's opium. It's a -- it's a drug. Because it is -- any difficulty is eliminated. The child can understand the whole book. A book which you can understand from the beginning, gentlemen, is not a good book. It's an uninteresting book, because that's all -- means that you already are on this level, so it cannot do anything to you. And all these children's book which I happen to -- to see -- too many because I have to deal -- to do with little children quite a bit, I'm ashamed of the human race, that this is printed, and that gets the paper, and gets the money. And it's absolutely useless. If it wasn't there, it's just a pastime. I mean, it's like a babysitter. That's what these books are for, to keep people blinded from -- from experience, and from reality, and from anything.

So gentlemen, philosophy of course claims to have to be thought over several times. You can say obviously that that is not philosophy which can be

understood in one sitting. It is impossible that this would be philosophy. Now if you would and could understand this, gentlemen, this would perhaps be the greatest gain of this course.

The history of Greek philosophy is the history of a process of thought that by every generation has to be repeated, you see. It is not over. All these thoughts -- anyone who has written one paper on any of these men must have at least realized that this is still today a valid thought. I was very angry with you. There -- a man writes on the atom theory of Democritus. And instead of sinking to the ground in reverence, that this man had an idea which today is still tormenting every physicist, of the char- -- character of the universe, he just reports this -- oh, this man, because he hadn't modern mathematics, so he was of course, poorer, a poor second with regard to the expression he could give to the atom theory, the writer of this glorious paper would then say. Gentlemen, he hasn't understood that they are eternal thoughts, but thought for the first time by the Greeks. The atom theory is not dated at all. It's with us today. At -- at times, we all, so to speak, go in this direction and -- and look for a way out of oursel- -- problems, you see, in this simple manner that all matter is of the same. At other times, we'll -- resent this very much, this eg- -- egalitarian scheme, because we feel that dead matter and living matter are not distinguished sufficiently. And there's no hierarchy of values. There is no order. If all atoms are just atoms, you see, then the sentence, "Let there be light," and -- is then as good as the light itself. I think it is better. The creative effort to create life, obviously, must tower over the factual existence of life. Anything that is new enters the world not because it is matter, but because it changes matter.

So the whole Greek story, gentlemen, is thought that must be repeated. That's why these texts -- look at this book. We have these fragments, gentlemen. I have now written this paper -- I have now written a book on Heraclitus in Eng- -- in German, gentlemen, where I have gone into much greater detail with making these quotations alive again. Well, these -- these words, of course, have reverberated in my inner man 50 -- 100 hundred times before they -- they have gotten their full glamor and their full glow again.

So I have not -- I -- I'm quite sure -- I have not given you in this course any thought that is only for once. It is -- essentially stays with us. Only we have this great privilege that we can watch in the Greek story the emergence of these thought patterns for the first time. And we therefore go back to this source material, not because it is superseded, but because it has eternity. Now gentlemen, you watch in Greek philosophy then a thing that is much debated today by the wrong people: the transmission of acquired faculties. The story of the human race, gentlemen, is the transmission of acquired faculties. But the -- acquired faculties are today given to the Mendelians, and the biologists, and the

chemists, and such people. They know nothing about these things. We know -- should know something in the humanities. Our whole problem of hu- -- the hu- -- of a hu- -- human race is to transmit acquired faculties. That is, to transmit faculties that did not exist in the cave man, but in the process of the ages have c- -- entered the race, you see, the bloodstream, and now have to be kept in it, because they now are eternal.

Gentlemen, all the eternity which you and I know of -- in marriage, in justice, in -- equanimity, in humanity, in equality, they are all created qualities during -- in the process of history and then they are kept going. And that's the story of Greek philosophy. The human mind has, in the Greek -- period, reached its -- a maturity and a finality that you are very much privileged if you are allowed to -- to work into your mind the importance of these -- or the eternity, the perpetuity, the validity of these ways of thinking. We cannot get out of it. We can -- what I -- I have tried to do is show them in perspective, so that perhaps you may not simply remain one-sided, and -- the victim, so to speak, of the Greek division of thought, for example, in object and subject. Today we perish if we just remain Greeks. Since the birth of Christ, it is impossible just to have a Greek mind.

There was a man in this country and -- who at the philosophe- -- philosophers' slave market, it's always taking place between New Year and -- Christmas and New Year, you know, the slave markets of all the college professions, "slave market" it is called, because the -- the young instructors are sold there, across the counter, and -- for the various colleges, who go there to hire men. And always -- usually in Washington, or some other of these dreary places. And so there was a debate on philosophers.

And they said -- "I'm" -- one said, "I'm an Aristotelian," and the other said, "I'm a Platonist."

And one man get up and said, "Well, there could only be three answers. You could only be either a materialist, an idealist, or a realist."

And so the fourth man got up and said, "Why they had a conference of philosophers if this was all they knew, from time immemorial, that there only could be three schools of thought?"

It shows you the -- the reverence, or the dogma- -- dogmatism of the American human mind today. You all -- people are down on dogma, gentlemen. But when you use your brain, you're all dogmatic about either being a materialist, or an idealist, or a realist. Now I'm neither one of the three. It has taken me a whole lifetime to break out of this Greek thought pattern. But before, you

haven't thought these Greek patterns, in their temp- -- temptation, so to speak, in their lucidity, you see, you will have a hard time of using your mind in -- as a free man should, so that you know what you're doing when you think. Most of you are just materialists, without knowing that you are. For example, or -- what you call "realism," equally stupid limitation.

Today, gentlemen, we have to make use of any one of these Greek thought patterns. For certain issues, you have to be a realist; for certain, you have to be a materialist; for certain you have to be an idealist. We must be free using any of these philosophies whenever they can serve.

But for this, the first step is that you have to understand that the human mind has its classical period of its birth into a constant {kush} -- a constant form, a constant mold in those -- Greek days.

These were the points I would like to -- to make with regard to the papers. And now let me turn to the seat of philosophy in life once more. Those of you who have taken my course in Philosophy 9--who has -- who has been in 9? -- only a few--know that before man thinks by himself, he plays with other people, and reflects in play on his life situation. When you play football, you play war. When you play chess, you play war. That is, whenever we play, we repeat mentally, you see, and ideally, a serious situation in life which we otherwise would have to experience itself. We can play war, we can play chase, we can play hunt. And we do. So the first philosophy of the human race has been our -- their -- the social games and plays. When we play -- when we go have sports, we imitate, and become aware then of the forms in which we really live. Children -- girls will play christening, and they'll play wedding, and they'll play funeral, and thereby already practice the serious business, you see, of life without being serious.

Now gentlemen, the Greeks of course were great players. And Homer -- we started with Homer -- played on his lyre with the memories of the great unifying past of all the Greek cities. And I gave you also, I think, the date of the Olympic Games in 1776, when all Greeks from Asia, from the mainland of Greece, and Italy, and Sicily began to meet every four years to play together, as they do in Melbourne now, as modern Greeks.

So playing together has been antecedent, has been preceding Greek philosophy. And the Greek philosophers -- represent a strange second adventure of playing with ideas. But that's play, too. And in order to give you the way very precisely, how this came about, I -- like to spe- -- say now something about the dialogues of Plato in this respect.

Many of the dialogues of Plato are centering around the dressing room of the athletes in a -- in a -- in a gymnasium in Athens. There the young men sit down, and rest, and joke, and wa- -- wash up, and take a shower, and refresh themselves. And there's this old man Socrates, this critic. And he takes advantage of their leisure between the games to talk it all over with them. He is, so to speak, the -- the critic of these athletes, and takes them there to task. Now Charmides is a very good example of this kind of dialogue. But there are others, of course. The Ion is of -- a case, which is in your book. And The Euthyphron is one, and -- oh, there are at least five or six of the same type. And they also were imitated in some pseudo-Platonic dialogues -- have taken advantage of this very tempting situation. Here is a beautiful boy. All the old men are eager to meet him because they are in love with him. Going to make love in the pederastic, in the obscene sense of the Greek ho- -- homosexual passion. And Socrates surpasses them all, because he doesn't want anything from this boy except the beauty of his soul. He doesn't want to sleep with him. And therefore, Socrates is shown to surpass these other men, you see, who enter there, this gymnasium, because he wants only to have this man outgrow, so to speak, his physical beauty and go on to the beauty of wisdom, to the desire for wisdom.

And this is so simple that you may say the seat of philosophy in Greece is the intermission of an athletic contest. That's the seat in life, as it is called today with the expression. When you -- today the -- the Swedes introduced this idea, as the Swedish school in theology, who ask about any psalm in the Bible, "Which is its seat in life?" When was it sung, you see? Was it is sung in the -- at a festival, you see? Was it sung in mourning? Was it sung after a victory? It's called the "seat in life" question for any biblical writing. Well, we may ask the same question about the philosophers. The seat in -- of -- in life for the Greek Platonic dialogue is in the intermission between the athletic contests. That is, so to speak, the point, the sociological situation out of which the whole effort of Greek -- of the Platonic, you see, system has -- seems to have grown. He may of course have -- have overdone it in his literary form. And -- I know very well that there have been other occasions, of course, in which people might talk and discuss things.

But the Greeks themselves seem to have felt that if you increase an order of things, you have already war, you have legislation. You have the jury. You have the life of the political, you see, marketplace. And you have games. Then where do you put, so to speak, where do you localize, where do you make room for thinking? Well, you go to the people who will be so tired of their physical exercises that they now like to play with their mind instead, you see. And so the lo- -- localization of this mental, communal effort to philosophize in Greece is the arena, or the -- the benches around the arena, where you sit down, and let all these things pass in review which you have seen, and draw your own con-

clusions about their meaning, and about their best performance.

I think it is quite important that we ask ourselves, "Where is room for philosophy?" If you go to Dartmouth, there is no room for philosophy. We tried to start a philosophical club here two years ago for the students who were majoring in philosophy. And we gave them a very nice room in the library. And I was asked to be -- assist the first meeting. And I said I won't -- we discussed it, and I said, "This -- a very interesting article here in a -- in an American paper. Let's discuss this as a good starting point." Well, we were, I think, 15 men. And I came, and I was the only person who had read the article. So I went home again. Because there is no room for philosophy on this campus. You will do requirements, gentlemen. You will do -- take finals. You will make -- do assignments. That's not philosophy, obviously, you see. The study of philosophy -- as what you think is -- is only imitating philosophy, I mean. If I make you work artificially by assigning you this reading, if you do not sit down and read yourself, that's not philosophy, yet. Philosophy must have some natural place in your own natural life. Before, it isn't. It hasn't taken hold of you. It hasn't, I'm afraid. The papers bear me out on this. You don't believe that ph- -- to philosophize is an activity just like breathing. It is, gentlemen. I assure you. It's like eating.

Most of you, by the way, do a little bit of constant rationalization. You go across the campus, you do something wrong. Immediately your mind begins to work, and to justify yourself. Why you -- why didn't you talk to this guy? Or why were you too nice to him? Or why were you not nice enough to him? I think you all philosophize in a small way all the time. And why didn't they ask you to en- -- to join the fraternity? I mean, every one of you has these problems. That is philosophy already, because it is afterthought. It is an attempt to justify the life that goes on in this campus, you see, in the mirror of your own mind, is it not? But you are not very well equipped to it, and you drop it again, and you say, "Let's forget it." That's the only philosophy you have today. -- That's really more than realism, and more than materialism, and more than idealism, I think; the Dartmouth philosophy is the philosophy of forgetfulness. You must find a good Greek term for it, and then we have a wonderful new theory, a new system of philosophy, the philosophy that tries to crush reflection. Wonderful idea. You can sell it. Ja?

(Philosophy is more than rationalization, though, isn't it?)

I hope it is more. That's the beginning, however. Usually something that is called a pro-blem, something that is -- you know the Greek word "problem" means something that lies in front of your foot, and you stumble. It's a stumbling block. That's a problem. Now I think most reasons why we think are stumbling blocks in our behavior, in our own conduct. That is, we blush, we are

embarrassed, we are self-conscious, don't you think? And then we build around it a whole theory, that we are wrong -- right, and the rest of the world is wrong. And that's called a philosophy usually, isn't it?

The seat in life, gentlemen, then, of communal philosophy in Greek is not your own self-consciousness. That's usually the starting point in modern man's philosophizing, you see. In his loneliness, he begins to rationalize his problem, his stumbling block, and get around it, and build some whole theory in -- because he doesn't want to face the fact that he is a failure. But in Greece, the problem is the intermission, the relaxation of the young man and the attempt of the old to make them serious. That's the whole Socratic method. And it is very -- I have tried to show -- tell you the story of Parmenides. That this was actually the way in which Parmenides tried to convince these boys that he could sell them permanent truth, whereas all the life that went on as they lived there, you see, playing, or -- in the army, was just appearance, phenomenon, you see -- that wasn't true. But what he said, that was the truth, you see.

So we have -- the seat in life, gentlemen, is in the playroom of the young, by the presence of the old. So there is a double situation: teacher and student, old and young, you see; and an attempt of the old to identify himself with beauty, and the attempt of the young to identify themselves with wisdom. And that is why, in the Greek philosophy, this relation of beauty and wisdom is constantly stressed, is the constant thing. Now, the -- the young man, gentlemen, is always the physis representative in this situation. He represents the beauty of nature. And therefore we take now a step that leads us a little bit beyond the physis, ethos, and logos dis- -- you see, distinction which we've made so far. When we go -- come to the seat in life of Greek philosophy, and I think of modern teaching, too, here as we -- you see us together -- you can only study because you have some respect for what I know. And I can only teach you, gentlemen, because I take pity on the beauty of your form, and the shoddiness of your conduct. You are empty, and I am ugly. And that has to come together. I have shape, I have form, I have profile. And you are still shapeless. But you are much more in tune to -- with -- with nature's promise of the next spring. Spring is beautiful, gentlemen. Winter isn't.

Therefore, gentlemen, physis and ethos in Greek philosophy are represented by old and young, or "young and old" is proper. So that -- I have never mentioned this before. I wanted you to understand physis, ethos, and logos as inherent in any man's contemplation of reality outside of him. But the group that does philosophize is in a strange manner arranged. One group, the young, gentlemen, have an immediate access to the problem of beauty. Think of all the girls you love. And you have only a very delayed, and dilatory, and difficult approach to wisdom, because that takes many years of experience and criticism.

And you haven't got th- -- gone through this, really, just because the time has been lacking. And you haven't been disappointed sufficiently enough. A man like myself who has been beaten down by 40 generations of students, gentlemen, has no illusions about the human race.

My problem, obviously, gentlemen, is to like you just the same. And your problem is the opposite, you see, not to fall in love with everybody, which is hard to contain oneself, the girls are so beautiful.

So old age, gentlemen, is skeptical, by nature, you see. Young people are -- I hope you are not skeptical. If you are, it would be artificial. You must be enthusiastic.

Therefore, the line--if I might -- may now show you--when we come to the seat in -- in life of logos, ethos, and physis, physis reaches into the reality of the human society in the form of youth. And logos reaches into the form of the physical realm in the form of old age. Now philosophy, to make bold--you see, to use the metaphor--is this realm in which the two shall meet. And overlap. The physical eros of youth, for beauty, and the experienced wisdom of the old have this common ground where they can meet. Do I make myself understood?

Therefore, physis and ethos are not just questions of objective contemplation outside of you and me--that I say, here are the ethics with my neighbors, you see; and here is physis in the botanic garden, in the arboretum, or in the Rocky Mountains--but in the fact that young and old speak to each other, and try to experience the same truth, there is a already ethical and physical experience in the very fact of philosophizing, because the group that philosophizes, you see, represents to each other an element of perfect physis, and of perfect ethos. Can you follow the argument? On the part of the philosophers' group themselves, on the part of the subject, who tries to get a picture, a system, an order into the -- into the tempestuous three realities of -- of God, man, and universe, you see -- society and universe, there is already an experienced battleground, an area in which the -- the three things interpenetrate. Because the -- the young men who would throng around Socrates, do represent in his eyes, at least, you see, physical perfection which isn't good enough for him and he says, "Where is -- you are demented. Where is your mind? Where is -- are your ethics? You are just physically perfect. Yes, you are," you see. "But what of it?"

And on the other hand, he can't do anything if he cannot implant his truth into these perfect bodies and make them carrier of this truth. He would then otherwise be -- his truth would remain sterile, would remain wor- -- weightless. He would take it into his grave.

The whole problem of the Greek immortality in The Phaedon is of course in this problem. Neither Socrates nor Plato see--sometimes they see it, and sometimes not--that what they call "immortality" is the power of the old to beget in the bodies of the young, you see, wisdom again. It is much more in this rekindling of the flame in another generation than in their own -- their own notdying. They die very much, after all.

So the -- I would dismiss even this whole discussion of immortality in the Greek philosopher -- -ilosophical context as very fruitless. We all do die, gentlemen. And the whole -- I have never understood why people could doubt that we die. Christ had to die in order to rise again from the dead. His crucifixion would just be a joke, if He hadn't died, really. So we are not immortal. We have to die very real. Then we may come to life again, but that's a different story.

The Greeks deal -- dealt with the problem of immortality, because they had a deep yearning, gentlemen, for the eternity of the logos in young bodies. This unity of teacher and student, this unity of two generations in philosophy is, so to speak, the dogma of Greek thought. Not one man thinks, but one man, you see, is -- yearns so much for beauty that what he thinks must enter this opposite number. And so all they think -- I think it's the simplest way of thinking of Greek philosophy as a -- as a sport replacing the physical sport. It is really the metaphysical sport. And it is really the play of a man's mind while the body is at rest.

This has a great consequence, gentlemen. Once you understand that the intermission of the athletic co- -- athletic contest is the seat for philosophy in Greece.

If you get a critic in a theater in the intermission, and you ask him what he thinks of the play, he can only at the first performance say, "I haven't seen the play, yet," you see. He has to suspend judgment, if he is a wise man. If -- if he is a very good critic, he will come for the second time, what I tried to tell you before. After he has seen the play once, you see, and he has seen it whole, he may then come and argue the individual roles and -- because only then does he know -- has the actress done justice to the role, after he knows what the whole role is about. Either he must have read the play, or -- in a Shakespeare performance, he has seen very, very many other performances. He knows already the outcome of the play. He knows what it's all about. You can only judge any artistic or mental performance, gentlemen--take this down--after you have been through the whole of it. I come back to my point, of course, made before, that the man who tried to give me the story of The Republic only point by point can't give me the story of The Republic, you see, because he doesn't know why this point appears at that one certain chapter.

And -- a good critic, gentlemen, then, has to face the whole of a thing. He has to be through with the whole thing. And therefore in an athletic contest, of course, the critic who sits there in intermission, takes advantage of the laziness and of these -- of this -- this sweating -- young men there, and discusses things with them, takes advantage of the fact that such a dra- -- contest has taken place before. They already know the outcome to a certain way. This contest may still, you see, hang fire, and not be finished. But how a football contest i- -- does end, everybody knows, you see.

And therefore, you see that the -- seat in life of a philosophical discussion is a classified one. It is not a unique situation. We philosophize, in Greece at least, in a stereotype situation. Although this special contest may not be over with, you see, we don't expect that this contest will deviate from all others. It is the weakness, gentlemen, of Greek thinking, of all Greek thought, of your thought, of all secular thought, that it cannot deal with the unique things. It can only deal with repeti- -- repeated things. You will find that the whole problem of Aristotle and Plato are ideas or classifications. But never the -- unique thing.

-- When Jesus came and wanted to avoid the pitfalls of Greek philosophy, He was not allowed to write a book. The greatest thing our Lord has done is that He didn't write. There would be no Christianity if He had written a book. Because all books are type-written, in the literal sense, that they deal with generalizations. That's why Thomas Aquinas is not a -- a religious founder, but just a theologian. And theology is much poorer than religion. It is just thinking about religion in general terms. All Greek thought, gentlemen, because it comes in the intermission of something that goes on all the time--athletic contests--is dealing with type. It's dealing with typical things. With things that are permanent, perpetual, so to speak, you see, but never with anything unique. The only unique thing in the Platonic dialogue is Plato and Socrates. He -- these are the only unique figures in the whole story.

So we learned -- if you really follow up restlessly, and tensionally, and -- and incisively such a seat in life, you -- you understand what philosophy can do and what it cannot do. Philosophy cannot deal with unique situations. Now, the -- further, gentlemen, because it is a play, or in a leisure time, it can never deal with the future. The whole Greek thought is unable to think of anything but cyclical repetition. If you think of what we read in The Republic about the abuse of the political forms, it is the cycle. It goes from tyranny, you see, to monarchy; from monarchy to aristocracy; from aristocracy to oligarchy; from oligarchy to democracy; from democracy to mobocracy; and from mobocracy to dictatorship. As we are at this moment in this country. And that's a cycle, gentlemen. Nothing new under the sun.

The strange unreality, gentlemen, of Greek philosophy, because it arises in a leisure moment, is in -- leisure is unable of creating something really new. You have a -- the leisure class, gentlemen, is always the decadent class in any society. And since you all want to join the leisure class, you become a heavy burden on America. Leisure is less real than serious life. And the philosophy, gentlemen, in Greece, a great -- very great historian has said, the -- the Greek philosophy has been unable to abolish any abuse in any city of Greece. It has reflected on them, it has criticized them, you see. But it did never have the power to conquer the citizens. I think I have told you that -- that the last Pla- -- Platonists had to leave Athens, because a man of the same name, Demetrius, a -- a sergeant of Macedonia, was made god in Athens in 304. Didn't I tell you the story? Wie?

(No. No.)

Well, did -- well, the -- the -- the third president of the Academy after Plato had the name Demetrius. Demetrius. And -- from Demeter, of course, the great goddess of -- and he was a very good man. But in the years of the Lord 304, that is only 43 years after the death of Plato, the -- the Athenians were so desperate, that they made a staff sergeant of the Macedonian army mayor of Athens. Erected a temple in his honor and worshiped at his statue, as though this staff sergeant was a god. That was done by the intelligent people of Athens in their despair. They thought that if they bought a Macedonian, they could keep their independence, at least with regard to the other Macedonian mercenaries, who ruled the rest of the world by that time, you see, the so-called -- the successors of Alexander the Great. Well, my -- my Platonist, Demetrius of Phaelerum, took his manuscripts and fled to Alexandria in Egypt. And ever since, the great library in Alexandria contains the real philosophical writings, you see. They had left Athens. What is the story, ja?

(Well, wasn't Demeter one of the -- of the pagan gods? Is -- { } any historical connection?)

No. There is never a god Demetrius. That's just a human name. It means -- just as the adherent, the worship of Demeter. Demeter is the mother of Proseph- -- of Persephone, and is the god of the harvest in Greece, of fertility. Earth moth- -- it means "mother earth." "De" is earth; and "meter" is mother, and that's all there is to it. Demeter is the goddess of the earth. But Demetrius is simply a -- a man who is devoted to Demeter. That's a human name. It's a very familiar name in Poland and Russia to this day, Demetrius. Dimitri -- Dimitri von {Mohrenschild}. He has the name Demetrius, here, Mr. von {Mohrenschild}.

Well, in following then through this business of the seat of life, gentle-

men, we come to the advantages and the limitations of the Greek experience of their mind. The reality of the Greek mind is this crossbreeding of more than one generation. The Greek philosopher, gentlemen, is aware of the contradiction between the physical setup of the universe, in which the young seems to win, and the mental, the log- -- the logos problem in which the older is the better. Now you are torn, gentlemen. In your eyes, on the one-hand side, if a man is over a certain age, dismiss him, out he goes. Business, as you know, is tragic. A man after 65 is just fired. Same as they do in the colleges. Then you go to the Congress, and you have Mr. Theodore {Greene}, the chairman of the foreign policy committee, and you wonder. He's 89. Well, what's the story in this country? What is true? What do you believe? You don't know what you believe. You are absolutely torn, absolutely contradictory. The war was won by a secretary of war whose name was Stimson, and he was 78; and by a secretary of state, who was 82, Mr. Hull. Great people. And obviously very useful to a country that is so crazy, and so fashioned by crazes as the United States. The older the statesman, the better, because he has some wisdom left.

So you don't know what you th- -- to believe. On the -- in the lower brackets, you throw out all the teachers -- who may have -- possible wisdom. It's absolutely a waste. And the other hand in politics, you cater to these people, because you know you feel that otherwise you would be lost, will -- you will have no mores. And the contradictions of the American scene are never more vivid than when you ask yourself, "What do you do with the third generation?" You -- you are only in your mentality, you are -- only think of people from 1 to 30 from 30 through 60. And after 60, they go out of your philosophy. Men after -- over 60 have to go to Florida in your estimation, or to California, be forgotten, or Social Security or something. Out they go.

That isn't the true story, however, gentlemen. The country is only saved by these few people like Elihu Root, or -- or Sim- -- Stimson, or -- or {Greene}, or -- and many such people. And -- it's -- of course, you just see the Senate, I mean. It is appalling. I think we -- there it's overdone the other way. And the same with our just- -- with our judges. As you know, when the pack- -- court-packing plan developed of Mr. Roosevelt, the majority of the justices of the Supreme Court were much over 70. All of them. Now isn't that a strange contradiction? That you can't have a vice-president over 65 in a -- in a factory, but you can have a -- the Supreme, you see, Court just manned by people who -- who cannot move anymore. Mr. Justice Holmes was 90 when he retired. Now, I wouldn't, to tell you the truth, it goes too far. If I have a case pending in Washington, and I would think that the -- the presiding officer is 90, I would have the feeling that I can't get through to him. I can't convey my problem to him. Wouldn't you feel this, too? And I'm trembling over this {Greene} business, you know. That the -- the chairman of the foreign policy committee in this country is 89. But then I

think that the greatest pope of the 19th century, Leo XIII, had his greatest time when he was over 90. And the commissioner to -- to -- to the -- Great Britain of Canada -- from Canada before the First World War, was Mr. Donald Smith. And he had his greatest time when he -- between 87 and 94 of age. He died when he was 94.

So you o- -- may only begin to see, gentlemen, that logos, ethos, and physis may even be transplanted into the ages of man. I would say that the first age is the physical age of yours and mine, you see, in which we represent more or less a part of nature. From 30 to 60, we represent a part of the ethical society, you see, of the order. But from 60 to 90, if we are any good, we represent the logos, because that's the only contribution Mr. {Greene} can make. If you didn't have the feeling that he is beyond his own self-interest at that age, you see, he couldn't make his contribution. A man of 89 with two feet in the grave can have his mind on the interest of his country, you see. If -- if he's any good. And that much you -- you -- you -- there are such people, who have this wisdom then, you see, to forget themselves in the service of their country.

And therefore, what I want -- wanted to try to do is, gentlemen, to make you see that logos, ethos -- and physis are rooted somewhere in our own lifetime experience, preponderantly, you see. A man over 60 should not care. And you have had the great benefit of a president, gentlemen, who got into this age of 60 before time, through illness. Mr. Roosevelt became a great man through his polio. And it shows the depths of Republican depravity that they always spoke of him as a syphilitic. I've heard this myself, high judges of the Republican Party, Somerset Club {members}, just tried to get rid of -- of his greatness by dismissing him as a syphilitic.

Gentlemen, the polio of Mr. Roosevelt has saved this country, because from a mere playboy and a very cheap politician, through his illness, he outgrew his self-interest. A man who has had polio and is paralyzed, you see, has nothing anymore to ask for in this world. And that's the great blessing that this country has had from the sickness of this man. He was far beyond all his opponents, gentlemen, all these cheap opponents. Mr. Hoover had the depravity and the ignominy of inviting the governors of the various states before the election of '32 to Washington, and let them wait two hours standing, because he wanted that Mr. Roosevelt should falter and faint and so that he couldn't be a candidate for the presidency. Mr. Roosevelt survived even this ordeal.

But what I -- am trying to say is that through his polio, you see, a man who certainly was before physically interested very deeply, you see, in life, playboy -- and ethically, that is, politically interested in just cheap advantages of a politician--he was not a very serious man--through the polio was in early age

advanced to the age of -- you see, over 60. It's not an accident, I think, he was finished at 63, you see, and died. Because he had lived, telescoped, into the last two decades of his life, into '28 to '45, you see, from his polio onward. I think he was stricken when? '27? It's very important, gentlemen. He -- he anticipated the third era, so to speak, the third part, the third third of this -- you see, of the man's lifespan. He had already compressed into the life of an active -- where otherwise people are active and passages, and you see, and make money, and get rotund. He had already telescoped the -- into this the logos of wisdom, you see, and -- and indifference to self, this unselfish attitude.

So I hope I have made it plain to you, gentlemen, that we have in the Greek story a very wonderful attempt to cope with the supernatural division of God, man, and universe by natural means of mere growth. The Greeks are the people of nature, of -- of -- the philosophy, gentlemen, does ignore, so to speak, revelation. There is nothing of a higher order. And the Greek mind says, "Everybody can think this." But there is a condition attached. Everybody, if he is complete in his connection with the rest of the human age, and the human experience. The young, if they are in with their elders; the elders, if they are in with their young. And that makes -- remakes the whole story of Greek philosophy. It isn't the single individual, gentlemen, that can think. That's your heresy. You think that everybody can think. Everybody cannot think. You can only think if you are identified with two other situations: the young with the old and the elders; and the elders with the old and the young; and the old with the -- their elders and their youngers. That's a very wonderful story, gentlemen.

We replace then, gentlemen, by natural means the supernatural. A priest is a man who tries to be three ages at one. And so he dra- -- he draws on the supernatural, today. He's a -- originally the word "priest" only means an elder, as you know. Nothing else, you see. But he has to be a normal man, and you have to -- if you -- he is a real priest -- formerly the Church was very ambitious in this sense, as you know. The -- you had first to marry. A bishop was a married man, and when he became a widower, they made him a bishop, because then he had experienced bachelor life, married life, and the third life of the logos, of mere wisdom, you see, where he is alone.

In the Greek church, that's still necessary. In order to become a bishop, you first must be married, you see. A bishop be one wife's man, the old text of the -- of the instruction of the Apostles says.

That's all lost on you, gentlemen, because you -- you live in a -- in a very strange -- estranged paradise. It is always the same problem, gentlemen: how much spirit has God immersed into human nature. And He has not given to any individual human nature much spirit, you see. But when the three natures of

youth, and old age, and -- and elder-...

[tape interruption]

...and the oldest men own wisdom, of logos, from the decision between appetites, senses, and ambitions.

This is in a miraculous way the Greek situation, gentlemen, by which they are a nation taken out of the context. You have no other nation that was placed in the universe in this specific condition, that they were given all the data from other people's lives, and stood between them, and had, so to speak, to try to make a -- a system, or a poem, or an order out of this.

I think this country is at this moment very much provoked to recreate its col- -- its college from the sports. I mean, before the curriculum is not revamped in the same manner as Socrates tried to revamp it among the athletes of Athens, the -- all these humanity courses will -- don't -- won't do you any good, because you won't see their -- their seriousness, their importance. They just hang around you as heirlooms from the past. I think that if you only had the sports at this moment here in Dartmouth, we could reform the college very easily. Because I could make you to -- agree, that you must grow old. And if you once have the fear of the Lord in your bones that it is a terrible thing for an athlete to grow old, because he is so stupid, then we -- you would -- you would find out what you would have to know. What you must know, what you have to inquire into, and what the -- the -- all the plays you are -- intoxicated by, should lead you to. I mean, this -- this boy of 19 there, whom I tried to -- to fathom, there was just nothing to fathom. He was just his own clothes. And under this there was absolutely nothing to be found. And yet he had gone through all the -- I inquired what courses he had taken. Not one of these courses that of course ta- -- done him any good. I mean, if he had taken no courses, I could have reformed this gentleman, you see. But since he already had played with all these courses, he -- he hadn't developed the seriousness which -- I can develop in an athlete who is, you see, absolutely innocent of all intellectual endeavors so far.

Let's have a break here. And then come back and distribute the papers.