Transcript

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...Donald Prensner came rushing to me and said, "What's this -- the 3,000 years in Christianity, what do you mean to say? That -- where is this in the Bible that -- by the -- there are 3,000 years to come for Christianity?"

I didn't say anything, but I have to answer his question now, to tell you, gentlemen. If we write the year of the Lord 1957, and we have just come out of a period of 40 years which is called "World War," two world wars. The Russians even call it the "world revolution." And in both -- cases, the word "world" is used as an accomplished fact. And I -- mentioned to you last time the fact that Mr. Willkie tried to become president of the United States by writing a book called One World.

The history of the last thousand years has been the production of one world out of many worlds. And since this has been done, and we now can reduce everything to electrons, and ions, and megatons, and megatrons, we have every right to assume that this history is at an end. That is, nothing very original can be produced, in the strictest sense of the word. World history is an end -- at an end, because it began 900 years ago, after the history of -- the Church had become visible and is now finished.

Most historians don't know this. They still are very proud that call themselves perhaps "world historians." But the word "world" is a perishable word, because in antiquity, there were many worlds. And the whole difference of a world historian to day is that he has -- can show how out of these many worlds, many heavens, and many lands--China, and Mexico, and Peru, and Austria, and Russia--had there come about one world.

So the content of world history being: to produce one world out of many, it is obvious that in 1957, we may foresee the end of this era, the end of this millennium. Now my dear Prensner, since I am still alive--I don't know if you are; that's very doubtful--but I feel that I am alive, and therefore I want to have a future. And my grandchildren also shall have a future. They'll all live in the 20th -- no, in the 21st century, after twi- -- 2000. And therefore, the content of this third thousand years is already of very great interest to me. And so quite automatically, without much metaphysics, or much mysticism, 3,000 years are the minimum of meaning, which has to spring from Christianity if it is to be a force in my and your life. Two thousand years too short. Can't you see this?

So the minimum of history of which you and I have to be a little bit aware is that the coming of the Christian era must still be going on. It must still come.

There must still be something to be done in the world, and in reality. Now it can't be the coming-about of one world, because to any sober-thinking man, with the jet planes in 1960, you can't ask for more than to have lunch in -- in New York, and -- and dinner in London. One more -- or one -- already too much for me to know.

And so the history -- that is, the process of further creation of our existence on this planet cannot longer go in the direction of unifying the universe in space. That's done. And you can improve on it. You can still accelerate. But the -- on principle, it is now done. And I would think that what happens in the next 150 years, in velocity, in speed, in more communication, more telephone, more television, is of no interest to creative minds. That's good for these plumbers who call themselves "physicists." For important people like you and me, Donald, it isn't important. It is not important that we still get accelerated. That's a minor matter, because we know already how it can be done. The important things in history are those things where we still can go astray, and fail. There's -- a real risk is involved, because it has to be created, and we still don't know if it can be created.

So gentlemen, the third thousand years of which you were so suspicious are not in the Bible. But they are in your and my heart, be- -- if you want to believe that it makes sense that you get married and begin a family. That's something has to -- still to -- to be done in a creative, and -- and very difficult and dangerous manner for the next thousand years, for the next 200 years, or 300 years. I don't know dates. I'm not an -- cabalist. I don't believe in -- in any abstruse number racket. I don't say that's -- will take 500 years, or 600 years. But it must be so big, and so large, and so long, and so difficult that it's worthwhile living. And what is offered in a -- in this country at this moment as world history is not worth living for, let alone dying for. You cannot die for freezers. You can make money on freezers, but that's not enough for life.

And so -- what you're asking for, you should be able to answer yourself. Since you live in the year of the Lord 1957, we have to find a goal that goes beyond the topic: let one world take the place of many worlds, which has been the topic of the revolutions of the last 900 years.

This is then today my -- one of my questions, gentlemen. What will follow after the world has become one? Do we have the right perspective? We only know things, gentlemen, that have happened in history. And yet we always know them only because they are important to know for what has -- is bound to happen in the future. In other words, if I look back and can see that there has been an interesting history of the Church in the Christian era, and a history of the world--that out of many gods, and innumerable religions, there has become

the fa- -- come the faith in God and His saints on this earth, and out of the many worlds of the many empires, there has come one world technologically, economically, in communication and in transport--the question comes now, obviously: what has to be unified now, which is so desperate at this moment that it drives us crazy? That it is dangerous to the point of insanity? Is there something left that is in disorder, and therefore apt to destroy our peace?

In answering this question, I want first to draw your attention to one thing which will help us to define our -- our chronological point, 1957, to allow us, so to speak, the -- the -- find the system of coordinates at whose crossing -- crucial point we are at this moment standing. This first question which I would like to answer is: the relation of Christianity -- of the Christian era to the past, and to the future in general. We know already a lot about it, and some of you have written quite good reports on this matter. But let me formulate it at -- once more for you all. Some of you have missed the point rather astoundingly.

As you know, Christianity always speaks of saints and sinners. Now I have tried to -- not to use these stale words at all. You haven't heard me speak of sinners, although I have constantly spoken of your sins. I have never mentioned the word "sin." I have said it is pre-Christian and post-Christian that we are halfand-half. And that's just another expression for "sinners" and "saints," in the terms of the Church. We all can be at one time, you see, indifferent to the coming of Christ, and declare that we live just in the avenue, and -- on the one-way street in which -- into which we are born. We are French, or we are Americans, or we are Catholics, or we are Jews, or we are agnostics. And we think we settle down in our rut, and -- and are very proud that we declare that we -- we are who we are.

Now anybody who says he is who he is, certainly is not a child of God, because he has ceased to be in creation. He thinks that he's a natural. And he sits on his fannies, and that is gravity. And gravity is death, and gravity is space, and gravity is -- is the beginning, but never the end. We all begin as nature. But if this was all -- would have nothing to live for.

So gentlemen, I think the word "sinner" has been so grossly abused by fanatics, that I prefer to draw your attention to the fact that your relation to history is ambivalent, that in any moment, you can wipe away the -- the -- the principle of a Christian era, and you can go back into your nativity, and return to your nature, whatever that is. And this nature is purely accidental. It's the nature of Lowell, Massachusetts, or of Nashua. And it's not a real nature, gentlemen. Has Hanover a nature? Has Dartmouth College a nature? You know very well that this is just superstitional. Ch- -- you change your nature every year if you want to. The college, too, if it is a living thing. But we do this. And we -- that is

the retarding element and the sloth in all of us, that we sometimes assert our socalled nature, which is just the man of yesterday. The man who has ceased to live and says, "It's all that I am, this is my nature."

Nature is yesterday, gentlemen, and creation is tomorrow. If you are a creature, then you are to be created. And if you are nature, then you were done, ready at the beginning, by your genes. And obviously, you can take your choice. You can look at the beginning and say, "Well, it was all in my parents, and I can't do anything about it." Or you can look at the end and say -- say -- say to yourself, "Yet shall they bless my having lived in this society at the end of life, although I am misunderstood, and misinterpreted, and mischievous, and calamitous, and nervous, and psychotic, and" -- et cetera.

Gentlemen, it is your choice whether you belong to the world, or to Heaven. Because we all can look backward; then we are nature. Or we can look forward; then we are to be created. Nobody can take this from you. And I wanted to emphasize that this is the oldest tradition of mankind, that man has these two ways of looking. You can look -- if you are just nature, then you are in hell. If you still wait to be created, then you are in Heaven. Like the two thieves around the Lord at the Cross. I mean, the one insisted that he was a thief and had to remain a thief, and the other was with the Lord in Paradise, you see, on this very day, because we believe that his eyes had seen the Lord.

Perhaps this helps you to understand this course, gentlemen. I have tried to get out of this personal pietism of which "sinner" and "saint" is -- at this moment a -- a poisoned remnant. And I have tried to put you in the gre- -- grand- -- -stand of history, where to belong to our era or not to belong to our era is a man's choice and decision. It is exactly the same thing. If you belong not to the Christian era, you look back to your nature. Any nation is a piece of nature. Without the Christian era, without the task to unify, and to make one man out of all of us, you reduce the United States to a piece of nature. You can, but you have ceased to live. And that -- in religion of the last 2- -- 250 years was especially called "sin." Sin has very little to do, gentlemen, with your petty larcenies, or your lies. They are only impli- -- so to speak, implied. Anybody who is dead will then cling to his personal advantage and use all these little -- so-called sins and crimes for his personal aggrandizement. And anybody who is really interested in the creation of the universe as a creative element just has no time to lie. And -- because he can't destroy the confidence and the trust that in a society -- of the future has to exist. And you cannot stoop to all these minor misdemeanors because -- not because you are holy, but because you are building up a future society. And so you just can't stop at any of these ridiculous misdemeanors, and felonies, and crimes, and what-not.

It is only the higher aim, gentlemen, in life that can en- -- ever keep a man from sinning, from backsliding. By willpower, you cannot be saved--that's the essence of Christianity--but only by the love of Christ. You can only, because you love other things, better things, the goal of mankind, can you forgo all your little advantages. You can't sit here and say, "I'm now resolved to be an evil-doer," like Richard III. What's -- his line in Shakespeare, the famous line where Richard III says, "I am" -- I have forgotten it. I only learned it in German. You see, I can quote it in German to you, but not in English. "Ich bin gewillt, ein B”sewicht zu werden." Vanraalte, what's this in English?

(I don't know how Shakespeare said it, but it means, "I am determined to become an evil-doer.")

Ja, ja. I think nobo- -- we -- we can't -- we can't mean this, you see. We can be dragged down by boredom, and by having no higher goal in life; or the great affection and the great passion we have to achieve something in life will carry you -- us above our small temptations. Can you see this? Love can make us better than reason. But in -- within reason, you cannot improve on yourself. That's impossible. Don't try.

So nature and creation, gentlemen, are in us every minute. And I have tried to tell you that the first thousand years of the Christian era were built up by concentrating on creation of new original men: the saints. And that the second thousand years were built on the investigation of man's possibility by his nature. The last thousand years have built up natural science. They have discovered the nature of the world at large. And so in a funny sequence, gentlemen, man has first discovered in our era how far great love -- the love of God and Christ -- could carry men, to what extremes of achievement. These are the saints. And then we have turned around and have discovered in the revolutions of the last 900 years what nature's potential is: how far you could explode dynamite, or explode people, or explode -- the soil, or what-not. Look at our machines, look at our buildings, look at our agglomerations of society. It is a study in potential.

The world, gentlemen, is the turning-back of man's mind towards that what has been. Whatever you call "the world" is the treatment of reality, gentlemen, for its nature. And whatever you call "creation" or "the Church" is an attempt to view the future, and to be impressed by the future so that you forgo your natural habitat, natural habits, and customs.

Now isn't that a strange era in which man has first explored the future, and then has taken time out to explore the past? The first thousand years, gentlemen, have -- have been concentrating on the creation of new characters of the divinity of man, of the incredible wealth of the "clouds of witnesses," which we

call Christ, the Apostles, and His Saints. They are all unheard-of people, because they all had to outgrow the older orders. Every saint is a man who cannot be pigeonholed either in his nation, or in his school, or in his empire -- his environment, or in his family. That -- you would agree, immediately. That's a good definition of a saint, you see. A saint is a man who is not a tribesman, who is not a co-national, who is not a member of the Aristotelian or the Platonic school -- because he's more. He has outgrown one of the four orders of antiquity.

Now then comes the world history of the last 900 years, and it means that people have dug up the earth down to 20,000 feet, and have found oil. And they have looked up the natural resources of -- of the world. Wherever you look -- speak of "world," it's that what has already been there before we came and looked into it. World is reality before man began to speak, and govern, and rule.

If this is so, if the 2,000 years of the history of the Church and the history of the world have this strange relation, that one deals with the future and the other deals with the past, then any Christian--well, any human being, always--who has parents and children, and who looks back grateful into his chil- -- parents, and ancestors, and grandparents, and will have children and grandchildren--he hopes or she hopes, in the future--is in this strange situation that his head constantly is turning backward and forward in alternation.

Some of you have very well understood that a free man does not live forward in a straight line, like a mechanic missile -- guided missile -- or unguid- -- misguided missile, I would call it. They always speak of guided missiles, but I have never heard anybody's -- mention the fact that most missiles are misguided, and most men are misguided, because you always want to go only one direction. A full-grown man, gentlemen, would be a missile which cannot guided in one direction, but who can move in any direction. A Christian is a man who can just as much appreciate the past as the future. And can make sacrifices just as often for retaining the past as for bringing about the future. And your curse is that you think the only sacrifices worth making is for the future. And that's why the whole United States had to go to World War I and World War II, just to save the status quo. So that to have to learn that it is very much worthwhile to defend the past against, for example, Bolshevism. And that's a new situation for Americans, you see, to become aware of the fact that the past needs as much defense as the future. It's quite new to you, my dear Prensner. You are always running, running, in your mind, forward.

Man is therefore split. We go forward by looking backward. That is the story of man's historical situation on this globe, gentlemen. That's why the last thousand years have been filled with renaissances of the past.

I had to say this first, and to bring to your attention something you all know, that when you speak of the Renaissance, you mean to say that for the last 400 years, people look backward into antiquity in order to give birth to new art and new life. From Michelangelo and Raphael on--and Leonardo, by the way--to the -- till to today, people have looked at old art in order to produce more modern art. So isn't that very strange? It is the same in constitutions. You speak of "democracy," because Plato wrote a book on democracy. And -- yet, what we -- was produced was something that didn't exist in the 18th century. It was something new, but it was produced by quoting something which could only be unearthed by looking far back.

Now I do not understand why our history books never mention this fact, that we behave exactly as an old tribesman who called his son with his father's name. When he called -- when Mr. Thomas calls his son "Michael," because his father's name was "Michael," he means to say that the son must reflect the virtues of the grandfather. And if you have in three generations already this ambivalent attitude that "I look backward in order to give luster to the newborn baby in the future," you cannot be surprised that mankind at large has acted the same way. In the Christian era, we look back thousands of years in order to have a glorious future.

So this is the real man, the man everlasting, gentlemen. Your man, whom -- you th- -- believe in Marxens man, or Hegel's man, or Kierkegaard's man, is a naked little moth flying -- seems constrained to fly always in one direction. Gentlemen, you people are not this way, and I'm not this way. We read books, after all, where -- who were written before our time in order to be -- live -- lead better lives in the future. Every one of you -- once in a while reads a book. That's always already printed before you have lived, isn't it, and written, and conceived. Why? Because the future and the past both appeal to us, and you cannot say one is more important than the other.

You have then, gentlemen, a strange relation -- for which I will give you a -- a lasting term. In order to live forward, in the Christian era, gentlemen, we have to evoke parts of the past. The word "evocation" is in order to understand that this is an achievement. In the liberal arts college, there is an evocation of Shakespeare, or of the classics, civilization--or whatever it is, you see--in order to endow you with elements that have yet to come to fruition in the future. You must be better Homer- -- Homerites, or Achilleans, than we have been.

(Well, on this question, or on this point, Spengler, for instance, says that there are no fresh impulses, that we see --.)

Well, if you had met Mr. -- Spengler, you knew why he didn't believe in

fresh impulses. Stop it. I can't in- -- go into this now.

I appeal to you, my dear man, to your own experience. Just this very little story--I don't know what name your parents gave you--but the simple fact that in any family there is -- are names that recur, that are, you see, meant to be a blessing for the newcomer, shows you that the next man is not just a next man, but he is only a next man if he has inherited the spirit, and if this spirit is reevoked, for example, in his name. That's just one element in which we re-evoke such a thing. What you find in any family, these -- this alternation between na- -- of names within the pedigree of the family is true of mankind at large. And this prepares the point I have to make at this moment, gentlemen. If we want to find what the step is, which is to be taken at this moment between the thousand years of world history, and the next thousand years of life on this -- in -- our human society, you have simply to ask yourself, "What is evoked?" What is evoked today in our books, in our libraries, in our activities, of the past? And you may be sure that this, what is beginning to be evoked now, will color and be the content of the next hundreds of years.

It so happened that I got a magazine today -- this morning, from Germany. And it was at great length there described the discovery of the Etruscan city, the first Venice of Italy, at the mouth of the Po River, called Spina. That was an Etruscan city of 700 B.C. already established on palisades, on pontoons, so to speak, just as Venice today. And the Italians call it, this city Spina, which the are now excavating, the Ve-...

[tape interruption]

...before Rome and Greece, that the renaissance of Rome and Greece is at an end, because everything that is unearthed today, and dug out--the skulls in Babylonia, or the prehistoric man in China--are all older than the war of Helen of Troy.

Mr. Robert Graves--who knows -- who has read something by Graves? he's so unknown? great writer of our day--he's half an historian. His grandfa- -- grandfather was the greatest historian of Europe in the 19th century. And Robert Graves has written a book, Hercules, My Shipmate. Who has heard of this book? Wie? One man. Ja, well, complete illiteracy has been achieved.

Nothing has been evoked in your souls, gentlemen. That's why you are -- will not contribute to the future. You are -- 20 years ago, your fathers learned Latin and Greek.

I'll never forget the story told to me by the president of Berkeley -- Berke-

ley University in California. He came as an exchange professor to Berlin. I was a young student. I was younger than you are now. And it was a -- my first contact with a leading American. And he spoke of re-evocation. He didn't use this term, but he gave an example. And he said that in 1898 -- there had been the -- 1897, when the war between Turkey and Greece broke out, and the Greeks conquered Thessaly, the home of Achilles and the seat of the -- the mother of Achilles, Thetis, and his father, Peleus, the -- seat of the greatest glories of ancient Greece. When this war started, he came to class on the day of the declaration of this war. And the whole class rose in enthusiasm for the Greek cause of liberation, of restoration of the ancient Greeks' glories, and quoted Homer. And they spoke these Greek verses in chorus.

And that's why there is modern Greece to this day, and why there is a Truman Doctrine. He has defended Greece, because of the students who, in 1897, were enthusiastic when the spirit of old Greece was re-evoked. You couldn't be moved to any such thing, because Greek and Latin has no power over you. But I would not say that -- other spirits could not be evoked. Perhaps not in this -- with you peo- -- people, but with uncorrupted minds of your age. Because you will find that men make tremendous sacrifices at this moment, in money, in time, and in effort to dug -- dig out old graves, old mounds of prehistoric people, of tribesmen, of primitive people. We have expeditions not only sent to Peru, but to the Amaz“nas Basin, and the --. It is staggering to think why we should care for these old bones of pre-Homeric, pre-Greek, and pre-Roman man.

My little example of Spina, at the Po -- mouth of the Po, is just one of the facts that at this moment, real people, who want to live into the future, are tremendously interested in anything that precedes the heroes which were celebrated for the last 400 years by the so-called Renaissance of art.

Mr. Picasso cannot be stirred by -- by {Phythias}, or the Olympic gods, in Greek display, a Greek -- in Greek style. He can get terribly excited over the Plastik of a Negro tribe. We today begin to restore the primitive art, for example, of tribesmen. That is, everywhere you find today expeditions sent to unearth primitive men's mores. That's not accidental, gentlemen. We try to re-evoke their spirit. And you may be sure that in Europe already today, and in America perhaps in a hundred years--this is a slow country, gentlemen, and not speedy, as you think; it moves very slowly, America; it's still mostly 18th century--and -- but we will be more and more eager to re-evoke the spirit of the clans and tribes of old.

I always foresee the day that 200 years from now you will have to have Indian blood in your veins in order to become president of the United States, with very high cheekbones. I'm quite sure that will happen, because the spirit of

the tribesman will be re-evoked. And we can also say why.

Now you understand why I had first to state that we go forward by looking backward. When the Church came into being through the Crucifixion, it had to revive the old Israel. And instead of the prophets, you remember I said the Church was the church of the Apostles. And they transformed then the prophecies into fulfillments. Then comes the second step, gentlemen. The world is disc- -- could be discovered. The potential out of which these saints can make a -- a life here, and cultivate the earth, and subject it to the Lord of their own faith. And we saw again that they unified all the empires. They inherited the empires of old. And we live today in a new Egypt. And the president of the United States is responsible for prosperity, just as much as the pharaoh is responsible for the harvest of the Nile.

Now gentlemen, a third phase is dawning. In the modern society, we are reviving the loyalties. We are studying, we are re-evoking at first the loyalties of the tribe, because we are without loyalties. We are individuals. We are scattered. On this I have to speak -- tomorrow. Today, what I have to say is this: that we move forward by looking backward, I said. The first Christians only looked backward to the immediate past of their Church -- of their synagogue, of the temple of the Jewish people. In the second millennium, we look back to the background of thousands of years, until we unearth Babylon and Egypt, and smash China, and made out of all these empires one world, you see. But we were stimulated and enthused by learning hieroglyphs, and learning Cuneiform, learning Chinese, and all these things.

Today there's a shift in emphasis. We suddenly unearth people who never built a city. We find bones of bison and -- and -- and -- and -- and Elch -- elk, and -- and -- and -- and even glaci- -- I mean, diluvial animals. And we wonder how the people lived in the caves in Spain and France. That's today fascinating. There is a spate of books, as you well know, on the -- on the designs and drawings of the caveman. Who has seen such books?

Well, there -- there you are, you see. One man knows a great literary man of today, Robert Graves. And after all, 30 or 40 know these -- these cave designs. That's by and large the -- the proportion of interest today for the pre-Greek, preimperial man, and for the man in which your ancestors 300 years ago would have been interested, you see. You are not reading Plato; you are not reading Aristotle really with the faith that something tremendous is to be expected there. But people spend money, and time, and interest on -- in digging out old skulls. Why should they, gentlemen? Isn't that funny? It is not funny; it is necessary. I'm quite convinced that your dealing with the tribes of old in many ways, even in school--you have to learn everything about this -- the diet of the old Indians in

-- when the people came to Plymouth in 1620. I'm sure it was a very poor diet--still, you have to learn all -- everything about it.

There is a great reason for this, gentlemen. What is lacking in society is the integration--it's the next, second word of every psychologist, and every sociologist. People must be integrated, then they must communicate, you see. What else -- what slogans do you have? They must have loyalty. They must have something to live for, you see. They must be recognized. They must be acknowledged. Well, every one of these virtues, gentlemen, existed in tremendous power in any old society. And it is lacking in our society. Our society is big; it is transient; it is shiftless; it is unreliable; and it is, you see, for this reason cold. And the old societies, they were hot-tempered, passionate, very cruel, but integrated, to be sure.

And so we are faced with a new renaissance which will not be called "renaissance." We need a new word--it will be called -- I'll call -- I think "re-evocation," because we will try to find those same term -- names -- sacred names which will make people jump, and dance, and shout in -- you see, in great enthusiasm. What you are lacking is enthusiasm, gentlemen. So I turn to the primitive man in order to give you a little -- not a blood transfusion, exactly speaking, but a temperature transfusion, that your blood may rise again, that you may not be so sadlooking people who always say, "I don't care," and "Wha- -- what's all about it?," "So what?" The -- the re-evocation, gentlemen, of the tribal spirit is directed against the totally new ill, against your saying, "So what?" If you are just worldly, you must say, "So what?" Man as part of the mere world of nature, gentlemen, has absolutely no reason to do anything but sit back and say, "So what?" You know all -- everything, therefore nothing new can happen.

The break between the third -- second and third millennium is tremendous, because you are now treated as though you were part and parcel of the world. And you know, on the other hand, that this cannot be true, because then you have no future. And so we march forward into the future of an integrated mankind by re-evoking, by conjuring up the heat and the -- red temper, or redbloodedness of the boldest of men, of those people who were so hot-tempered that they could wail for a generation over the loss of their ancestor and would never forget it, who could speak such wonderful languages that they could convey them to us for 5- and 6,000 years.

And this is then the very solemn moment, gentlemen, that instead of conjuring up cities, and empires, and capitols, and Acropolises of old, and statutes, we suddenly conjure up loyalties, and we ask ourselves, "Why were these people so eloquent? Why were these people so energetic when they had so little to look {for}?" And this is the secret, gentlemen, of the change of interest from

history to prehistory. Prehistory being the pre-urbanized man, who did not build empires, but who already foresaw our coming, and left us our precious language.

I'm afraid -- Amlicke, is my time is up?

(About two minutes, Sir.)

Oh, two minutes is endless.

So, Donald, have I answered -- begun to answer your question? We go forward not only by looking backward, but we go forward by -- in a lawful order by first restoring the last of the antiquity and finally re-evoking the first, the primitive, the beginnings of man on this earth. So -- the break in renaissance, the break in re-evocation is only relative.

I told you that in 1100 -- in the year 1000, there was a first pope who called himself "the Second," Sylvester II. He was the first who became conscious of this double-edged march. You go forward into the second millennium -- he lived across this bridge -- or this big year of 1000--which was celebrated in Christendom as a tremendous event, a thousand years of the Christian era--by calling himself, you see, with the name re-evoking a pope of the first thousand years. And we can say therefore of this pope, Sylvester II, that he saw man's plight in our time. Gentlemen, we are late. We live in a second world order. The first world order ended with the coming of Christ. We live in a second world that has been regained, restored. That's why Milton could write his Paradise Regained. It was not just a dream. But he knew that Paradise had been lost, and had to be -- had be -- can be regained, was regained, and was to be regained.

The greatness of the spectacle to which you are exposed at this moment is, gentlemen, that the period and the topic to be re-evoked is shifting under your noses. The theme of your grandparents, of David -- Daniel Webster, was to be an orator like Demosthenes or Cicero. Now you don't read Demosthenes, and you don't read Cicero. Who has read Cicero? Oh, that's -- quite unexpected. In which school? Where did you read Cicero?

(High school.)

Wie?

(High school.)

Scarsdale?

({ }. My high school.)

Ja, but which high school?

(Oklahoma.)

Good for Oklahoma. Well, I take my hat off. I didn't know. I thought that all died out already.

Still, I think our department of public speaking here does not give any examples from Demosthenes or Cicero for public speaking, because the classical model no longer is considered a model. It's an oddity. It's a memory. The shift is to new sources from the past, gentlemen. And because these sources are deeply hidden in the ground of the earth, we go on digging, digging, digging, digging. There is this new book of archae- -- on archaeologists. How is it called? Graves and --?

(Gods, Graves, and Scholars.)

Wie? Ja. It's very superficial, but very significant, you see. Such a book could not have been published, except now.

Thank you.

({ }.)

Ja? One moment. You want to say something, ja? Is Mr. Erving here? I have not -- you haven't completed this course. The same is true of -- three other men. Will you kindly join them?

(Is this Erving?)

Goodnow...

[tape interruption; end]