Transcript

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

(...7, 1953. Testing 1, 2, 3. 1, 2, 3. 1, 2, 3.)

...to an analysis of the sports so that you gain some insight into what I expect you to do. On the surface of things, nothing is asked -- or required in this paper of yours than to write what you know best, your own sport, or a sport you know well, and -- because I want to prove to you that you know quite a bit about life by just participation in a sport. You will remember that we said to play means to have a first philosophy. A first, because -- the -- the connecting link between philosophizing and playing is that both reflect. To play is a first reflection on life.

Now we saw already that the first reflection is reflecting on reality, because it is -- chooses time and space at random. No serious life, no -- everything real is not under our control. You can't call your own life into being. And you can't call it off. It is given. And therefore its time is given, you see, and where it takes place is given. You're born in this country, and after you have been born, you cannot act -- regress on this, and you cannot go back on this. And you are born in America. And if you are born in -- in Europe, you have a heck of a time in becoming president of the United States. You know, the Constitution threatens even people of pa- -- native American parents with exclusion. Of course, that's a misunderstanding of the Constitution, but it literally reads as though a man who has two American parents and happens to be born in Paris cannot be elected for the presidency, which I think is sheer, utter nonsense. But there have been lawyers in this country, and you always find laymen who pretend that this is really very dangerous, to be born outside.

This cannot be the meaning of such a law, you see. It's accidental. But people in this country, you see, always think -- mistake the idea of a fact. They think to be born in Paris is a fact in itself. { } it's meaningless, of course, if it just happens on a journey.

However, what I'm going to -- to point out is: reflection always changes the direction. When you stand on a -- before a mirror, left is right and right is left. And therefore, I said in playing, end and beginning are under control. In real life, however, the end of something leads to a new beginning. You experience in serious life beginning only because you can state that something is -- at an end, your consciousness only comes into being in the midst of life. You must have lived before you can say, "That is over." You never can begin your life consciously. You come into this world unconsciously.

So in real life, end precedes beginning. In play, beginning precedes end.

Now you are such playboys that you are -- and such rationalists, therefore -- that you always think what you experience in a reflection, that beginning precedes end, can also be handled in life. Therefore you go to Europe with a return ticket. So you can never get to Europe, because anybody who has a return ticket in real life can only, you see -- look at the thing from the outside. When you return from Europe for the summer weeks, you see, you haven't been to Europe, because you knew ahead of time that you had to come back. And you cannot go inside of anything, of any real group, or a situation of -- of life, when you know the end ahead of time. Then you play with it. You aren't serious.

This is very important, gentlemen, because most Americans remain outside life, because they want to have a return ticket, because they want to reflect on life, and they want to say ahead of time what they're going to do afterwards. And look -- think of all the books that are written today in this country, purposively, and then the people make the experience in order to write the book. Such an experience is valueless.

Here was a -- quite a famous writer in the neighborhood in Cornish, who had the notorious name Winston Churchill. And he sometimes crossed swords with the real Winston Churchill, because of some confusion that would arise between the two. Now per- -- perhaps you have never read a novel by Winston Churchill. Have you -- has anybody? No? You have? You -- most people have forgotten it. This man was quite a -- actor. Whenever he wanted to write on some topic, he would for some years go into the profession. He would become a teacher and then write on education. He would become a railroad man and then write here on the railroads -- the famous novel of his is on the New E- -- New England railroad corruption. And on it goes.

Well, that's typical of a writer who plays with reality, and writes then plays, and novels, and fiction, you see, on reality. It didn't mean anything to him to do these things, because he had only in mind to squeeze out the juice and to write a book about it, you see. If you go into something in order to write a book, you are not in it, because the meaning is not in this, what you are doing, but in the plan you have out of this doing, you want to -- gain fame, money, you see, and notoriety, and exercise your pen.

Now many of you, gentlemen, think that's life. That's a caricature of life. It's like Hollywood. It's not real. And I give you here the first criterion, gentlemen, of reality is: that in reality, wherever you are serious, when high school is at an end, you must make up your mind what to do. If you want to go to college or not, you see. So an end forces you to make a beginning, always. In play, the beginning can be planned, and the end can be fixed in this order: beginning first, end later. Now most rationalists in this -- country are so proud of their -- of

their philosophy, but they haven't looked through the first condition of all reflection: that it transposes the sequence, transposes the order of experiences as before a mirror, in space. Anything that is only a play is experienced in the order opposite to serious life. You nowhere hear this, because we -- the -- the -- all the so-called natural scientists are just playing with the outside world. They aren't serious. The physicist isn't serious. Now that we suddenly see that he might explode the universe, he becomes terribly serious. But it's a little bit late. So far he hasn't. You see, it was all just a game, { }.

Gentlemen, with love, with death, with marriage, with war, you cannot experiment. In all these things, something breaks down before it can be renewed. The love of your parents to you proves impotent, so you have to -- become potent in your own right. That's why you have to fall in love, because the love that has carried you over the la- -- first 15, or 18, or 20 years weakens and weakens, and, you see, thins out. So you have to make a new beginning. And that's your honor.

And therefore, gentlemen, don't be afraid of your -- of your sexual urges. That's not given to you because there has nothing gone before. But because you have been loved, you must now fall in love. If you lose ever this connection, gentlemen, you begin to play with sex, and you are very miserable. You become swine. It is a push into the love -- of the love that has gone stale that makes you begin a new story, a new leaf in the book of life. The same is true of war, gentlemen. The United States went to war experimentally in the First World War. Was no good. Wars are serious. You get stuck in them. You can't go home and say it hasn't happened, as they tried to do.

There are therefore, gentlemen, many things from which you can learn, that to play with it means to change the direction, because in play, the beginning precedes the end; in real life, an end makes necessary a new beginning.

Christ came into the world to -- just for this. This is called "revelation," gentlemen. "To reveal" means to make one aware of what is play and what is serious, to draw the veil from one's own mind. You clever boys, you are all -- veiled, because you are so clever, that you think your reason has immediate access to experience. It has not. You have lived and then -- now with your mind you reflect only on living. And you always overlook this first item, that in Christ's life, as in any revealing life, the end of Judaism precedes the founding of Christianity. And in order to inculcate it into you, He stayed a Jew for the rest of His life so that there might be no drop of Judaism left when He founded the Church. But to His la- -- dying day, He respected the authority of the high priest over Him. And He didn't escape from it. And therefore He finished it. And there is the end of the Old Testament preceding the beginning of the New Testament. And that is called revelation.

Revelation, gentlemen, is nothing sentimental. It's not about something sweet, nice, kind. It is the simple re-volution, the turning back of your wrong impression that men, by whim and will, can put the beginning before the end. Wherever people do this, they play with life. It's the same as when you go to -- to, you see, to -- buy your pleasures, whatever these pleasures may be. A man is enthused, because before, he was despondent. You buy alcohol, you can make the beginning of your enthusiasm at random, you see. You are inspired by spirits, but not by true -- the true spirit, but by alcohol. In this way, we play with enthusiasm. That is intoxication. It's very tempting, because we are -- feel so dry, and empty, and depressed that to -- to have some cocktails makes you feel good. Only don't believe that this is anything more than -- than play. Real inspiration of a leader, of a poet, of a hero -- of -- of an adventurer, of a lover comes in quite a different way. He is -- something is -- he is so desperate, he is so emptied, you see, that he makes -- gives room to a new deification, to a new intoxication. But you go and buy liquor in your fraternity house and fill the whole house with rum. There is no spirit, just spirits.

Now I don't say anything against spirits, if you know that it is secondrate. I drink -- love to drink. Nothing wrong about it. But I -- you have to put it in its place. It is very unimportant. It is second-rate. And why shouldn't you drink if you know this? But the way the people here in this country drink in solitude, alone, in order to replace their lack of inspiration, their lack of -- of a belief in God, their lack of being in touch with the Holy Spirit, that's pathetic. We -- we drink together, you see, if we have nothing else to do. That is -- if we have no big agenda; we have no political crusades on hand, and we don't have to save the world from iniquity, so we sit together and -- and play with enthusiasm, you see, in a friendly manner. And therefore, the -- the -- the cup goes around, and we sing, and we are -- everything is okay. But the lonely drinker, gentlemen, that's the devil, because you cannot have inspiration alone. All spirit drives you together with other people. And that this country is sick about alcohol you can see from the fact that people in the movies are always shown to drink in desperation, alone. Whereas in all -- in normal countries, in France, Italy, Germany, even now -- I wouldn't say England, but Ireland -- when people want to be gay and have no big topic, no crusade, or no -- no -- no religious service, or no celebration otherwise, they sit together and drink, and get, so to speak, in a -- in a derivative sense, in the -- into the same spirit, in a playful way. That's perfectly all right.

Beware of the lonely drinker. And the drunkards are always these people who -- you see, who cannot resist the temptation to drink single-handed. They mistake the ways of the spirit, indeed.

So play is reflection, gentlemen, And play therefore overturns the sequence of A and B, of end and beginning. Revelation means to restore the proper

order of things. That end, against all physics, end precedes beginning. That's your true experience. All the rest is bunk. You cannot deny that all you have in mind is -- when you wake up to -- to {living}, you see, that something is shadowy, your childhood, your babyhood, you see, the cradle. That's all over, you see. And now you begin, you see, then -- because it has ended, you enter a new life.

Life experience comes from change. Change can only come when one stage endeth and the other begins. That's why children, when they lose their first teeth, begin to remember about that time. They begin to remember, because it's the first fatality that befalls them. They lose their teeth. They lose their integrity. It's their first meeting with death. The children losing their first teeth are frightened, as you are -- we are by the fear of death in general. It is a small death. And small death, gentlemen, can be followed by a better, a stronger life. The first -- the change of your teeth, at 7, at 6, at 8 is the condition for your consciousness, for your first consciousness. Puberty is the second, you see, a change in your physique. And it makes you think, because you have to look back to paradise, as so many people do all their life, and when they were, as they say, "innocent." Because they haven't the power to affirm that to live means to say, "Good-bye," and to found on this good-bye a new beginning. You are all too sentimental, and you hang back and you think that you at one time were wonderful. You should only have seen you when you were 9. Terrible brats. I hope you are nicer now.

Gentlemen, the second thing is: we gain time when we play. Play is without consequence. That's the second point, because we can stop it at random. We begin it at random. It takes place in a second world. You have a playground inside the real world. And in order to follow up what I said about the -- the manipulation of time in play, let me say a word at this moment about building a second space into the real space. We not only build -- an artificial time, the time of the game, the time of -- for sport, for play into the real running-down of the clock, but we also build a special playground. Wherever we play, we must say, "Here we don't shoot each other," you see. "Here we only play."

Now if you have a playground, or a tennis court, or a golf course, or -- or whatever you have -- if you go into mountaineering, you have the untouched snow slopes of the mountains, which otherwise serve no purpose, you see. That's where you do your mountaineering. Wherever you have a sport, gentlemen, you have an artificial space, a space that is either -- fenced in, as a ring for horses, or a swimming pool, or -- or is -- it is recorded, you see, where the ribbon has to be cut when you run track -- whatever you have, you cannot have a sport without an artificial space. That's a second space, a reflected space. And the reflected space also has something that the real world hasn't: it has orientation. You know from where to where to run. In the real world, gentlemen, you don't know this.

In the real world, the world is round. The world, as a space, offers no orientation.

Now you second unrevealed state, your second state which made Christ's coming necessary, is that most people believe that the playgrounds of life offer orientation, that you can't go wrong when you go from the baseball field to the -- the tennis court, and so on. And most people try to live in this unreal world of society, where you go from a tearoom, you see, to the salon, and from a salon to an athletic field, and from an athletic field to a classroom. And to -- many people rush now into offices, because the offices and business also offer this kind of artificial situation where nothing serious seems to happen.

I know so many women who rush into office space, because it's an artificial space, and their home isn't, you see. Something in the home is far more dangerous. A kitchen, for example, is so much more dangerous than a room with a typewriter. So they leave -- dump their children in a nursery, and they go working, as they call it. They pay twice as much to the person who takes care of their children, compared to what they earn in this business, that they have a limited working t- -- hour, and they have a playground, where to play with work. And that is the situation in America, that most people can't stand the real space of reality, and go into an artificial space. You can't see -- know this, quite, how much you are the captives of artificial spaces.

But again, I come back to your trip to Europe. I mean, the Americans who go to Geneva, they always stay in America. There is no Swiss -- Swiss they come to know in Geneva. Geneva is separated into two watertight compartments. One is -- belongs to Switzerland, and the other belongs as a bird's cage to America. And I had a young friend here, a famous mountaineer, {McLean} -- you may have known him. And -- excellent fellow, really, but very inexperienced. And he wanted to study in Europe and he -- he said, "I go to Geneva."

I said, "Don't do it. You never meet any Europeans there," I said. "It's all for -- for American consumption. It's just the {balcony} of Europe -- of America."

Well, he couldn't believe me. Of course, every American thinks Geneva is -- is the center of Europe. It is nothing. It's a village. It's the most stupid place in the world. But you believe Geneva has anything to do with Europe. It has not. It's ridiculous. And he came back and said to me, "After two years, I haven't met one Swiss."

Well, if he could have known this before, that this is just a playground for rich Americans, or poor Americans, or -- or foreign affairs Americans, or whatever you call these people. But it certainly has nothing to do with real life. If you want to go to -- to Europe, really, and mean business, and -- buy a one-way tick-

et, and don't have the money to come back. Then you will see what it's really like. For then you will find out whether people are helpful, whether people can be sympathetic, you see. As long as you have a return ticket, you live in an artificial space, you see. It's just your playground.

Most of my -- the -- the students I have been able to speak to -- to speak to seriously have found that they couldn't be weaned from their first principle as Americans, to go just refl- -- playing -- with Europe, and go over. And they went a second time, and then the second time bore fruit. And the sec- -- first time was just a kind of a foretaste. It was not real. I hope this will happen to you, too.

Anything real, gentlemen, can be done twice. That is, it can be -- can grow on you. Anything play with, you can have just to do it once, and you don't repeat it. Now if -- most Americans waste their lives doing everything just in a playlike fashion, and therefore never having any faintest idea what real life is like.

This is about the playground, the artificial space. We manipulate space, and you can see space may be contracted in one sport to the point of a needle, so to speak. Take high-jumping. It takes very little space, you see. Take mountaineering, it's the opposite. Skiing -- you roam over the mountains, over the ski slopes. That is, you can distinguish perhaps in sports not only the manipulation of time. We had shortening of time, lengthening of time. We had record time, in short time, lengthening of time, slow procession. We had forget-time, as in a good lecture. And we had compression of many times, as in drama, we shall see; as in art, of time not yet lived. You remember what I said at the end of last -- the last meeting. Because the art allows us to gain time. We are not yet ready, but we read -- a love story, and we prepare ourselves for the future to come, and we com- -- can compress our next 30 years in reading a biography, or reading a drama. And you know in a drama, it may -- you see, you may have decades compressed into one evening.

Let us now look into the sports themselves, as choosen -- chosen by you and analyze their grouping. And you will also find that the sports underlie this law: that man, in order to be man, wants to be able to look backward, forward, outward, and inward. The athlete, gentlemen -- the athlete who has to wear the best dress for this special sport, whose garment has to be cut, you see, so completely that there is no waste -- take the tightness of a -- of a bathing suit in -- in -- in swimming, or some such things, or -- on a sailboat -- you have to be -- to -- to dress just right; your shoes, naked knees, and so on -- means that he wants to be absolutely fit for the outer world, for the world of nature. The first appearance in any sport is that he is outwardly suitable to the job, that he is, so to speak, molded by the nature of the things with which he is wrestling, against which he

is fighting in this sport. The obstacles which you want to overcome dictate your costume.

See how you sit in this class. That's the very opposite. In a study group, you are lo- -- only looking inward, into your mind, into my mind, into the words that go between you and me. And so you sit quite undisciplined. You are slovenly in your dress. It doesn't matter whether you have a tie or not a tie. Everything is -- is free. The picture of a class is mere inwardness, because it doesn't matter how you look, you see. We are quite indifferent here to dress, in a classroom. You go on campus, you have a pa- -- a military parade, or you have jumping, that's impossible. Your dress is dictated to by the external conditions. Can you see this?

So any student experiences two quite different attitudes on campus. In his study, looking inward, he is indifferent to his physical attire. In his sports, he cannot be indifferent. He must have, you see, that which makes him capable of using his body just right. In using our minds, so to speak, we are inside the world. And therefore our -- our appearance -- outer -- view is negligible. I cannot judge you here by appearance. But this is not true in ski-jumping. If your skis are not the right skis, you see, and if you have -- your attire is impractical, and just that of a harlequin, of a fool, you see, with bells or some such thing, you are just not fit for a competitive sport. It has to be reduced there to the requirements of the sport. Ja?

In -- other words, gentlemen, in the outer world, in all these sports that are specifically given to the wrestling with outer obstacles, your attire, your physical appearance is dictated to by the conditions, the obstacles, the impediments, the difficulties which you have to overcome. The more we lean inward, and look inward, the more indifferent this appearance is, and the more negligible it is, till the point comes where Socrates is just a bald head, and the rest of his appearance, so to speak, his ugliness, and his slovenliness, you see, can just completely be forgotten. That's the typical, you see, description, I think, of a thinker, you see, {where} if you concentrate on the appearance, you have lost the thinker. But if you would concentrate on the thinking of a football athlete, you would be quite wrong. You wouldn't find anything there.

So our first lesson is, gentlemen: the more externalized an activity in play, the more the appearance is dictated to by the outer world. That is, when we lean outward, gentlemen, the -- we are impressed. We are not expressive, but we are im-pressed by the conditions, and we try to reply to these conditions, you see, by matching them in our own way by our responses. And the first thing is, of course, the dress by which we express this response. Mountain shoes or tennis shoes, they just show that we have to do with different terrains, you see.

You can't -- there have been Dartmouth boys who have tried to climb the Matterhorn in tennis shoes. But I assure you, it's a wrong idea. They don't want to be impressed by the Matterhorn. It is much better to be impressed by the Matterhorn. Were you present when he gave this talk on his experience on the Matterhorn this summer? Who is the mountaineer here? Were you present?

(No, I've heard about it, though { }.)

Ja, well they were unsuccessful. I was unsuccessful in 1950. But the Matterhorn is a mountain where -- quite proud, even if you haven't been successful, that you have tried it. And -- certainly it dictates the conditions of your climb very thoroughly, I mean. You have just to com- -- comply with its orders.

Now there are obviously sports, gentlemen, who leave something to the imagination, to the inner man. That is, they are not so dictated-to -- as high jump, for example, or wrestling, or stone-throwing -- by the condition of the material which you have. In stone-throwing, the whole man has to go into the throw, obviously, you see, and there's just not -- nothing to spare. But in skiing for pleasure, you find immediately that there is much time for enjoyment, and for meditations, and for what I would call then, gentlemen, "the inward man." And the skier and the football player certainly are very easily distinguished because of this very fact. If he isn't especially racing in skiing only, but if he goes here on the back hills and enjoys skiing, you see, for it's own sake, he is in a very different mood from a football player. And we shall immediately see that it pays dividends to distinguish then inside the sports once more the tendencies by which this sport is distinguished from other sports.

I would say, gentlemen, that perhaps high jump, with its record in altitude, or -- is utter externalized. It is just in your body totally. And so I would give this as one example of a totally outward-looking activity. If I have a football, I would say, "Yes, it's external, too." But it is also meeting very different from high jump, the unexpected, the dramatic. So it isn't just external. It is not just combating a natural obstacle, like a high hurdle or a -- but it is dramatic. And as an example, I give you football. I give you tennis. I give you all team plays, against each other. Two and two, you see, I mean, two sides. There you have drama, you see. You have conspiracy. You have plot. Now where you have plot you have drama. And surprise. In -- in a high jump, there is nothing surprising. If you want to go up from 6 feet to 6 feet 1 inch, you see, this is not dramatic. This is only quantitative. It is physical, and it is -- an attempt to analyze, step by step, the quality of the obstacle. It's an analytical sport, and this is a dramatic sport.

If you go then into skiing, I think you might agree with me that it is lyrical compared to this. Because swooping down from Happy Hill, that is really an

experience which is far larger inside of you. In one minute, you can run the gamut of all kinds of moods. Pessimistic and optimistic, you see, elative and depressed. And since there is room for an inner change of mind, we are inclined to say that this is lyrical, because lyrics are moody. The high jumper cannot be moody. But a skier wouldn't enjoy skiing if he hadn't, through sunset and clouds, you see, made some, you see, change of his feelings -- made inside of him.

So without exaggeration, I offer you the idea that skiing is lyrical. But there are other such sports. Sailing, obviously, you -- you see, because there's plenty of time in sailing, you see, where you just run one course. You're left with your own dreams, you see, because you can do nothing; there is no wind; you just wait.

So the distribution of course is -- is quite shift- -- shifting. If you have competitive skiing, out goes your mood, and down go your legs, and your -- everything is in your legs, and in your tenseness of beating the other fellow -- record. So you can transform any one sport into something of the other kind. Only I think preponderantly there is, I think, an -- an assumption, a kind of presumption that you may make that the -- all -- the high-jumper must be very analytical. He must analyze every one step in order to push on, you see, into a higher record; whereas the skier will take to skiing and { } say, "Well I won't go into competition skiing, itself is so beautiful." And now I don't think there are very many people in high jumping who just jump for the fun of it. I mean, it has to be a sport club which makes him jump, so to speak, you see. Otherwise he -- he wouldn't do it at home. I don't think a happily married couple would just have a horse in their bedroom, and -- so that their husband can -- can jump every -- every evening.

Are there also slow-down sports? Are there epical sports? Well, I think there are. You have to take a pleasure in repetitive movement if you want to be a good swimmer, if you want to be a good walker. A man who is really a good hiker, and loves just to walk, walk, walk has to have a certain joy in the repetitive rhythm of his movements. He cannot quicken. He cannot change the -- the essence of the walk with the enjoyment of smooth-running, repetitive, you see, action of his limbs. And that is a great joy. I mean, in this sense -- I -- I am a -- quite a restive, impatient man. But to walk gives me this -- this antidote against my impatience, you see. It slows me not down so much as that it does me -- enjoy -- repetition.

And therefore, there are sports -- as I would say, like swimming and walking -- which you cannot really enjoy, if you do not enjoy the mere repetition of the movement. Because that is just the precision with which you produce the same stroke. If you have real swimming, you see, in a lake, and want to be out

there for two hours, or want to swim the Channel, what you must enjoy is repetition. You must not think in entering the Channel, or crossing it from England -- between England and France, how to win, because that would take your breath, you see. You must be completely given to the repetitive, you see, slow movement. And you must find some satisfaction in this, first. Then the winning, so to speak, comes by itself. You understand?

So gentlemen, we have made a discovery, which I -- you should really sell to the English department for a high price: that lyrics, drama, and epic, and analys- -- analysis -- naturalistic, as they say in the novel, the naturalistic novel, the French, for example -- that they are manipulations of time, and that they are not at all related to literature, specifically. This is nothing literary, that we are epical, lyrical, dramatic, and analytical. This is in any play -- contained in any play.

We -- you, as sportsmen, you may be illiterates, which you probably are, but you still have these four qualities of a human being, that when he plays, he wants to cha- -- one has to influence time. Since the whole of sports, gentlemen, the whole of playing has this one heading, how to gain time, how to be out of time so that the proper moment can be expected, can be waited for, can come and happen, you see, and that in the meantime, we are in training; we are prepared; we are not ruined, you see; we haven't wasted it, squandered our energy, since playing is meant to keep us fit for the great moments of life, it is obvious that the -- you can play with time in all the directions of the compass. And the four directions are the lyrical, the dramatic, the analytical, and the epical. Here you sink into the mood so completely that you do not look -- forget these purposes. A lyrical poem, gentlemen, is a poem that describes this mood, although obviously any mood is passing and fleeting. And there is something before and something afterwards. The lyricist, however, plunges into this mood and forgets how he came to be on the mountain, to see the sunset, you see, and that he has to come down from the mountain. He sings the beauty of this sunset. But any mountaineer knows that the great problem is how to get up and how to get down. And the sunset is just in addition, you see. A nice -- a nice sugarcoating. The lyricist, however, says, "The sugar-coating is the whole thing. My lyrical poem sings only of this high point," you see, and the coming-up and the going-down is omitted.

Now, that is -- the lyrics only look inward. Lyrics makes you forget time. As I told you about this class, if I am successful and I make you look inward, you forget 2:45 and it is suddenly 3 o'clock and you don't mind, as we so rightfully say. It's a very wonderful way of speech, you see: "We don't mind," you see, because we are looking inward. And we would only mind if we saw the collection of this mental hour, of this lyrical mood, you see, with the rest of the event

before and after. But we go inside so totally, that you are lost in the inside, that's lyric.

We are all therefore lyricists whenever we are happy, because to the happy one there is no time clock; there is no time piece; there is no chiming of bells. The opposition, the analytical is, you see, you try to break the record; you try to win time in this manner, that you say, "I shall do it in a still shorter time." Then you have your mind just on the outer measure of the time element. The lyricist is inside -- inside the sunset. But the man who climbs the mountain -- in record time has no time for the sunset. He just rushes up, puts his caller's card under the cairn there, you see, that he has climbed it, and rushes down so that he can beat the -- the -- the -- the previous record -- time, you see, of climbing.

So you see, the outward-looking man cuts out the lyrical mood totally, as we { }. He just has -- has to change directions: up, down, you see. And there's no room for the poem. No time for the poem. So whereas you don't mind 2:45 striking, if you are really interested inside of the -- my story here, if you want just to get 120 hours' credit in Dartmouth, then of course you are painfully -- aware of the fact that I have robbed you of five minutes' spare time, between 2:45 and 2:50. You didn't -- you see, why should you? It isn't required. Then you have only the record, you see, of doing nothing more than you have to. You can -- there are boys in this college who -- who do -- just treat the whole intellectual part of their life here of course as such a -- outer obstacle, which you have to -- they have to beat in record time, with high marks.

Now record time and forgetfulness of time, lyrical time, are balanced, gentlemen, by two experiences: the dramatic and the epical. The dramatic is based on the surprise. Suddenly something unheard-of, a new element, enters time. That is the opponent, the enemy, in football, you see, the other team. You have thought it all out. You have studied it -- no -- he surprises you, you see. Even if he calls back one good sportsman and sends in a poorer one as Mr. {Dreesen} the other day.

And so we have in the dramatic the element of surprise. The time is split into two phases. The time is broken up by drama. There is something before and hereafter, and it is totally different. Take any tragedy. The hero is the new element. Society is as it is. But is -- the tragedy means there is one man who already lives a different kind of life. And -- take the Crucifixion; it's also a tragedy, you see. There is one man who already is different. And for Him, you see, the old laws only know rejection and -- and -- and tragedy, death. But He survives. He's really victorious, because in His death, He proclaims a society which will consists of Him, the hero, and His brethren. And the old people of His previous world, you see, will die out.

In any great tragedy, take Hamlet, -- Hamlet, The Prince of Denmark, the greatest Christian drama of the last 2,000 years, because here is a man who tells us how to deal with vengeance. To suffer, you see, it is better to suffer than to make suffer. And well, there is no end to -- to talking about dra- -- Hamlet at this moment. But I only want to say this one thing: drama is at its highest where there are two times opposing each other, two eras. Socrates and the old Athenian {city-state} tragedy, you see. There is a new man, the radical -- uprooted, you see, individual thinker, and there is the -- are the laws and the gods of the city, two worlds clashing. Or there is Christ and the temple. Two orders of revelation clashing. The Jews were not wrong with their religion. They believed in the real, living God. But the way in which they represented it in the outer world had become ineffective. It had to be taken outside Palestine. The mere staying there no longer meant anything, couldn't be -- no longer have any effect on the rest of the world. So Jesus had this tremendous task of not denying the truth of the God of -- of the Old Testament, you see, but surpassing it. And that's why the Church to this day still reads the Old Testament, you see, to make sure that the Old Testament isn't excluded and forgotten, but that the -- the lesson is learned, you see, that there is, for any human being, a going-beyond the law, you see, beyond the order that exists.

And so a new type of man is created in drama. And I think that is true about any trick played in football. After it has been done, it has been done, so to speak, and goes on record, you see. And the next great football -- team would have to invent again something surprising. Otherwise these -- these plays become routine. And routine is not as good as drama. That's epical, you see. That's repetitive.

But there is some dignity also on this side, gentlemen. For you and me, it is very different. To a man of my age, it is natural to admire already the -- the return of every day. I'm -- think nothing is more exhilarating to a man of my age than to feel that the sun is -- is rising again, and the night is over, and the day is in peace and shaped there. This organization of society, of social life, is in itself miraculous, that the milkman comes, and the mailman comes, all the things that you -- are not interesting to you at all, because you do not admire the order, but you admire the disorder.

And yet it is both in us, gentlemen. Of course, your childhood couldn't have been lived in for one moment, if your parents hadn't connived, so to speak, in coming down to your very primitive rhythm of eating, sleeping, digesting, you see, playing, which is repetitive. It's purely epical. Children are not very dramatical, you see. What they need is regularity. It's -- you see. And their parents really must sacrifice their own interest { }. Think of all the young mothers who have to give up -- give up drama of their lives, because they have to be on

the spot day and night. And so they go epical. Mother are epicists, of course.

And -- so although this in your own life may sound rather boring, I warn you: there will come a time where you will just be very grateful that you have something that keeps you going in a regular fashion time and again, which is in itself admirable, because gentlemen, the epical is also a created order, which at one time didn't exist. There is nothing in our lives, you see, which at one time wasn't lacking. The milkman didn't come. The mailman didn't come, you see. The -- the house hadn't been built. The heat -- the oil was not in the furnace. All these things at one time, you see, were -- came in as new things, and the admiration which we now give to the epical is that it was possible to make them so smoothly running that they now strike us, you see, as having been there forever.

The epical, gentlemen, is the great impression made by something new that has become perpetual. It's the admiration of perpetuity, but the admiration of perpetuity must not be mistaken for the admiration of the, so to speak, unquestionable. It is -- the more difficult it was to build cars, the more admirable it is that you have a car always, you see, you see. It took 2- -- 7,000 years before we had the combustion motor, and now we have 40 million cars, you see, and a turnover of 4 -- 6 -- 7 million cars a year. This is perpetuity, you see, perpetuity of the most difficult thing which a short time ago didn't exist at all.

And so you see, it goes very fast now, with all inventions. The first inventions however were -- such that at least -- only one man had it at all. And then it took centuries before the rest of the population were allowed to have it, because the first thing to create is one copy of such a thing, you -- to have it at all. But only the second is perpetuity -- is that all have it, you see, and that it looks as though it had always been there. That's the epical. Epical is endless perpetuity, but it is not there-ness without admiration. Mere there-ness, as the philosophers say. It's a poor word. I don't know how to find a better word. It isn't boredom, gentlemen, it isn't -- it isn't indifference. You -- therefore you can only swim and walk, because we still know that you had to oil your limbs, so to speak, and to -- to be in good shape in order to repeat these things. That you had to bring up yourself to a certain standard, you see, of elegancy and -- and {sveltness} before you could undertake to march for 12 hours in a row.

Have I made myself clear, gentlemen? That these qualities of literature are much more -- deeper embedded in our -- in our system, that man himself can philosophize with the help of the fact that he is in himself able to turn in these four directions of the epical, the dramatic, the lyrical, and the analytical.

In Dartmouth, of course, only the externalization is stressed. You are neither lyricists. One class once told me the poems they only wrote -- no longer

wrote after they had been 12 years old. Well, poor people. They have just castrated themselves. A man who doesn't write poem at your age -- there's something wrong with him. Too much of an American, and too little of a human being. The same is true with the epical, and the -- and the dramatic. You may not have to cultivate yourself, but if you go into the players, you have a foretaste of this. I mean, in play, during the dramatic and the epical, keep it open. Don't slur liturgy, don't slur ritual, don't slur the tuxedo. It's a good idea to -- not to be down on the formalities of old age, because at one time you will all enjoy it.

Take hunters in England. By their costume -- the red dress you have in New England, too, in November, you see, for hunting. You have the epical element. That's old-fashioned style, of course. It's the superannuated costume, you see, and just dated, because -- but it makes people fit, you see, into an old army of hunters and hunters -- hunting is, of -- of course, a sport of time immemorial. You see, from the pre- -- pre-civilized times of man, hunting was his livelihood, you see. And so, in wearing the costume of a hunter, even the most dramatic hunter is -- the fox- -- hunting, you see -- is really also connected with the epical, with -- a form of -- humanity as it has existed, you see, since man began to be able to emerge from the forest and to kill the deer.

Let us have a break here.

[tape interruption]

It's perfectly true that I was mistaken when I said that in play we cannot repeat. I think you just have to -- looking at kittens. At play they make endlessly the same movements. And it should be the other way around, but that is the price paid for improvisation -- speaking freely. I -- I was wrong. I was certainly wrong. Real life can -- nothing can -- in real life nothing can be repeated, but in play it can. And that's perhaps one of the seductions of play, that you think that you can repeat it endlessly. And when you mistake serious life for play, you get for divorces. That's playing with marriage, obviously, you see. And it's really cheating the woman of your trust -- that trusts you.

I have this in -- in our -- in our neighborhood now the tragic case where a woman really has -- has two children from a man. And he went out to Korea and came back and just says he never was married, so to speak, and he {doesn't} want to speak to her anymore. Hasn't seen her again, and he has just played with this. But from her point of view, of course, he never knew what he was doing. He cheated in serious life. He can -- you cannot repeat marriage, you see. There is no second marriage, really. But in -- since this is a playboy, of course a Dartmouth graduate, he -- he -- she feels that he never -- they never can have been married. I mean, it is -- it's retroactive, so to speak. He -- she is just of course

completely downcast, because she's ashamed of herself that she threw herself away. She squandered her life, you see, with respect to her parents, and it's a ruined life, because she meant business and he didn't. So by declaring that he -- he wasn't married, he really cancels the event five years back. I attended the wedding when we all thought that he was in earnest. And although he only says now he is not married now, in fact it means that he wasn't married in 1948 in the first place, or 1947.

So that's a -- in this line of his life, he just -- is -- is -- has only been playing with reality. Didn't know what he was saying when he said he wanted her to be his wife. So he -- from this simple example, you already see that I made a mistake when I said that real life cannot -- can be repeated and play cannot. It's the other way around. I'm sorry that I made this gross mistake.

Then I have been asked something which leads us on to a better analysis of this, what I call the -- our first reflection on reality, on life. I was asked whether or not even in high jump there was some dramatic element at the very moment that the man does break the record and jumps higher than ever -- any man ever before.

And this leads us to the very surprising observation, gentlemen, that in playing, we always try to have all men and all attitudes of mankind with us. You have at such a record-breaking jump usually some spectator, but you have an umpire. And you have even perhaps a competitor. They represent the other aspects of the sport. The spectators keep their breath and say, "Will he break the record?" But it is obvious that this dramatic element of the man breaking the record is not in him at this moment, if he is wise. He forgets the record and he does just the best as he can. He is completely in this analytical, you see, situation, being impressed by the -- obstacle, and trying to go with it, you see, as best as any human being can, and win -- win it, so to speak, you see, over to his side, you see, make it conform to -- to his wishes. But the spectator, and the umpire, and the -- the opponent, they are fully aware of the drama, the epics, and the lyrics of the situation. They go not through this one man's performance, but all the others. This is epical, you see. They see 10 jumps performed, so they see 10 jumps. And it's essential that more than one person jumps to make it worthwhile to go there. It's epical.

Dramatic is also all the spectators who keep the record in mind and are { } fans of this specific sport, you see. They want to know if this is the moment of their lives, you see, where they really see a record broken. And so you have the dramatic element. And there is also for the spectators this relaxation. They have their beer bottles with them, or their whiskey bottles, and there is a great -- lyrical element, especially on a November day where it is very cold and you have

to keep warm.

So we learn something, gentlemen, about humanity and the strange passion that in every such performance, where we manipulate time in a play-like fashion, other people are invited and welcome to represent the other aspects of the situation, since in any one play situation, the fullness of time is upon us. And that's an important word, "the fullness of time," is upon us. The lyrical, the dramatic, the epical, and the analytical element are all in a certain way present. Even if you have just a game of friendly partners and not much competition, no record broken, there must be still one man who keeps attendance, who counts how many people turned -- the turnout of today, you see. He's the analyst then of the game, you see, the reporter, for example. He says there was a poor -- a poor crowd attending the football game, you see. And there was nothing dramatic, but he is still analytical, you see. He keeps the record straight.

So gentlemen, in any play situation, if you look carefully, by the addition of spectators, onlookers, umpires, and opponents, you get the full picture. The -- you get all the four aspects of a sport served to you, so to speak. And they of course magnetize each other. The more vigorous the athlete, the more lyrical the spectators, you see; the greater the -- the participation, the more epical, the whole story, the whole event, because it's lengthened, you see, and it's repeated, the same performance. And the same with the dramatic, the more people are looking at this event in its frame of reference to all other events that have gone before and later, the more in itself bears the note of the dramatic, because the reputation of Dartmouth is decided at this game, although in the game, there is nothing that points beyond the game, but the people are perfectly aware -- the onlookers, you see, that we will either be laughed -- out of court, you see, in the future, or we'll be respected.

Now what does this mean, gentlemen? That we are all, even in our plays, hungering for completeness of life. We want to participate totally, but we do it by a division of labor. The groups that participate in a sport, you see, are of a complex nature. The man who performs is only one -- one person. By having spectators, you always have the lyrics of the thing represented with you.

In -- in Scotland, when golf was invented, it was the golf player himself who had to represent the lyrical element. He was alone. Totally alone. At best he had a caddy. Sometime he didn't even have that. And that is the true golf. In America, with this -- rough and rowdy way of playing, golf has become just -- its very opposite. It is only now performance, you see, of the man against the obstacles. And the -- the bystanders and the onlookers represent the other element. A -- a Scotsman, if he wasn't a Protestant, would cross himself, if he thinks that the Americans call this "golf," what is played here, you see. He had no spectators a

hundred years ago. It was totally forbidden. He would, I mean, that was a breach -- break of the rules. He went there in order to be alone. That was his great hope, that nobody would -- would see him play. And the greatest thing was, you see, a man has said the greatness of the Scotch character is in -- all in golf, because he was so alone that if he reported so many holes, so many strokes, you see, he had to be believed. There was no checking. It wasn't necessary, you see. The decency of the man, you see, under the 15th Psalm, you see, and if he promised to his loss, he made his promise -- makes his promise good, is such that if he says he did it, he will not testify wrongly, you see. He will just say what it is. He's his own umpire, so to speak. That's very great.

But it's a different sport from what you call "golf" in this country, and I think there's a -- time has come where you may introduce real golf as a completely different sport now and say it has never been played before in this country. It's -- would be a new experience to you, if you would go out all by yourself on a golf course, you see, and be there all day long all by yourself. It's a new experience. It's like lion-hunting in a territory where there are no lions.

I think however that the main point I had to make here -- the first one is -- is rather -- quite -- rather exciting, gentlemen. The other types of humanity -- the lyricists, the dramatists, the epicists, and the analysts -- they must all be present in a complete sport, even. And this shows that good philosophy wants to be representative of the human race, and not just of you in your division of labor as a cog on the wheel in a very specified -- specialized, you see, manner. We aren't satisfied when we are specialists. To play in a too-specialized manner would take the edge off play, would be professional man, you see. All playing is thirsty for being representative of humanity as a whole. That is, our first philosophy, gentlemen, has a feature which I'm afraid most so-called thinkers and philosophers, and so -- people in bull sessions, do not observe, and do not follow up: that when I think, I must think representatively for the whole of humanity. My truth must be accessible to all others, too. Otherwise my thinking isn't valid. And most thinking in this country, which is called "philosophy," is just daydreaming, wishful thinking, I mean, what I would like to think because of...

[tape interruption]

...if you say you are a conservative or if you say you are a liberal, I am indifferent to you, because you have made a slogan out of something flexible. How can you know when to be -- when it is time to progress and when it is time to hold onto something? You see, it depends on the issue. In Germany they were very progressive by electing Mr. Eisenhower -- Adenauer for the second time. The socialists thought that any government after such a catastrophe in Germany would wear out after four years, and that the new, you see, the young voter

would say, "We need a change." So it was very highly creative and very positive on the part of these younger 3 million new voters to say, "No. We don't want a change. That is just what is progressive today, to be epical, to repeat. To hold onto what we have."

So these are important insights which you can get from realizing, gentlemen, that really, in the reflection of our games, of our plays and our sports, we already are maturing to judgments about the truth of our existence, which are usually much wiser than the judgments you pass when you sit down and try -- whether you have to be an -- an adherent of Hume, or of Socrates, or of Plato, or of Aristotle, or the existentialists, or what-not. Gentlemen, unless you have played, and have been allowed to participate in play, and have really these things in -- dyed into you -- into your wool -- so much so that you are a playful member of the whole of society, you -- the shortcomings of your mentality will be only too apparent. If you are a fighter, you will think all life is struggle, you see. If you are moody, you will say all life is just dirt, it's -- that's a pessimist, you see. If you are an epicist, you say "It is just always the same. It's a machinery. It's a mechanism," you see. That's what it is, you see. And if you are a dramatist, you say, "Men are born free," which they aren't. They are born with an umbilical cord.

It's all exag- -- you see, it's all so one-sided, so lop-sided, and I think that by looking into this strange quadrangle of our behavior in any game, you can learn more about humanity than by looking upon your navel -- navel and developing your own philosophy, because here in your games, you learn that your own opposite number is as truthful as you are. That is, they are all needed to represent the fullness of time and the fullness of your existence, you see. You need the opposite number in order to be -- to be allowed to play your own part fully. You are polarized, so to speak, you see. It's a polarity -- process of polarization that because you have spectators, you can just concentrate on the issue on hand, breaking the record, and they feel the beauty of the thing, and they feel the drama of the thing, and they see the -- the -- you as only one out of the number. But the man who is performing his number, he must not think of the nine others, you see. And he has no time for the lyrical. But he wants, through the -- his good friends, who -- who look on it, or who participate too, you see, to have these other elements of time, of life -- come to life, you see, so then he can be -- devote himself to one aspect fully.

So gentlemen, man is prismatic, if that helps you in -- any way. Man is prismatic, and he misses the truth if he makes one of the colors of the prism, the one that happens to be around him and his action, you see, his behavior, the content of the whole prism. The prism breaks the colors of reality, and so we have a spectrum of time -- a time spectrum, as we have a color spectrum. And the

spectrum of time, as we have stated it, has at least these four aspects: the dramatic, the lyrical, the epical, and the analytical. Can you see this? Time appears to all of us when we sit down, come to think of it, in these four ways, you see, of running away with us -- record time, you see; of standing still -- lyrics; of being the same all over again -- epical; and of bringing in the contrast of old and new time, past and future, in a drama. Can you see this?

I -- I told you some lectures ago that the philosophy of time is just beginning to take over against the -- philosophy of space under which we have -- are now suffering, because it has dominated us for 400 years. All you read about science is only based on a philosophy of space. But all you will have to learn about peace in human society must be based on an understanding of time. And we have already laid down certain laws. One is: time is experienced in such a way that the end is experienced before the beginning. That's the opposite from what the space, you see, philosopher tells you. Second, time has four leanings, four inclinations; it has four, so to speak, cases, as in declension, in grammar. That is, it can be looked upon as something to be speeded up, and something to be slowed down, and something to be forgotten, done away with, so to speak, you see, and as something to be separated, to be broken up into past and future. To be renewed, you also can say, if you understand it. To -- be distinguished into old and new.

What time please?

(Five of 3:00.)

Wie?

(Five of 3:00.)

Ah. That's the end.