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

...who lives here together.

Can I have your reports?

Wait a second. What?

Brian, is this a report on your special sport, or is it on just last lecture?

(This is last week's lecture.)

Ja. Will you kindly read it to us?

[tape interruption]

...remember that I asked you to consider our games, our plays as a first philosophy, and that it only was a second philosophy which you learned in schools and which philosophers try to sell to us. We have reflected reality all along, as -- so long as we play. And it is only reflection on reflection, on this playing, which is the cradle of the second philosophy. A studied philosophy. A reflection on reflection.

I shall today try to organize the whole picture of this infinite regressus, this infinite reduplication of reflecting on reflection, of playing with play. It isn't enough for man to play with war in a peacetime army. But then we get football games that play again with the {peacetime} army. And you can, so to speak then, write a philosophy of football in which you would again reflect on some reflection of reality, which has -- is all -- already twice removed from full reality.

And you'll remember that we have a very fine meter, a very fine yardstick for grading reality. Something is real when its time and its place are inexorable. And something is unreal when we can at random call it into existence, or call it off. We have complete playfulness when the hour and the place are under our control. That's arbitrary.

A boy once wrote in a paper to -- for me, "What we call arbitrarily God." You may use this sentence as the me- -- a yardstick for the lowest possible thought a human being can have, the most stupid. One, if there is a God, it is "He," and "I," and certainly not "What." But you really think you can ask, "What is God?" because there is no answer to that. It's just stupidity. But you all ask this question, "What is God?"

I got a letter -- today from New York, where a lady describes that a Columbia professor had sat next to her at a tea party and had -- had asked this very question, "What is God?" The only answer she could give, in order not to be unpolite is -- let smile -- keep smiling, if you hear something very stupid. But most professors today are that stupid. Don't be so stupid. You cannot ask about some power that puts this mou- -- {void} of which I am speaking now into my mouth. That's -- either is God or the devil. There's no way out. Either I try to cheat you or I try to tell you the truth. When I'm -- if I should try to tell you the truth at this moment, I owe it to that power which makes me speak. That's not of my making. If I try to cheat you, it is the anti-power, the devil. Again, it's not my -- in my -- in my power to be that wicked. Some higher power makes me then cheat you.

Everybody -- who speaks, gentlemen, knows who God is. God is the power which makes you speak, or makes -- which makes you fall silent. But He's serious, because God makes you decide when to play and to be serious. He gives you this tr- -- tremendous freedom that you can say, "Now I will play," and "Now I won't play." This is business. And this is not business. It gi- -- He gives you the freedom when you are provoked by insulting a -- a challenger to say, "That isn't -- not for me. I cannot be challenged." That's the freedom, you see, which any challenge contains, or, so to speak, must be maintained in the face of any challenge.

Now this very freedom, that you decide whether this challenge is serious, you see, or is just ridiculous, you see, makes you always realize that there is a power beyond your environment and outside your world. But it is -- the most serious one.

The highest powers, gentlemen, are the ones who allow us to distinguish play and seriousness. The second-highest powers are those that are serious. And the -- the third powers are those that allow us to play, or that we follow in play. Most people only know of a dualism. But anyone experiences in life three levels of behavior. The first level is to determine when there shall be play, and when there shall be seriousness; or when there shall be peace, and when there shall be war. You are at the highest level if, at your own decision, you can say, "With this man -- with this woman, I am at peace," or "With this woman, I am at war." It depends on your -- on your { } superiority. That is not human, gentlemen. That's not natural. That's divine.

The power to make peace or war is divine. The power to wage war, or to work in peace is human. And the power to relax, to dismiss yourself from the battle, to forget whether this is peace or war, to be unreflected, organic matter, so to speak, this playlike ani- -- bliss of the natural animal in us, plunges us into

the animate world as an organic being. It is neither human nor divine. It is natural. Man in his serious business is not natural. A factory in Detroit is not a natural entity, you see. But it's serious. But it isn't the highest. If you go to Detroit and make a pile of money there, you must act as Mr. Weldon, who's now the director of alumni activities in this college. He retired at 42 in Detroit and came to this -- our town of Norwich and is now doing a lot of -- for this college. Well, it takes something out of a man to decide at the age of 42 to give up Detroit, you see, and making money, and to live here in this countryside, where the only thing he is -- can meet is college professors and college students. And some cows.

This decision always can -- is divine. Or devilish. That is, it always brings him in touch with his own meaning, with his own destination. To determine, "I have had enough in Detroit; I'm coming to Norwich," is a decision which is superhuman, because it goes against the -- the -- the fellowship with which he has been living in Detroit { }, you see. He must dissolve one relationship -- human relationship and found another.

Now the group in which you live, your family, you see, is human. But to found a new family is supernatural. And therefore you always have to invoke some blessing. Either you say -- you write a poem to free love, or you go to the minister to get your marriage -- certificate. Or you go to the sheriff. Always you have to bow to some higher authority, to some more-than-human authority to get your marriage consecrated. Before, you aren't married. You can turn as you like. You have to make up your mind one day, you see, that from now on, you create a new beginning. You want to be married.

Gentlemen, new beginnings of situations that have never existed before, come under the heading "divine," or "diabolical." To begin -- a new existence can never be in itself normal. It is always bold. It always strikes out for something, what you call "creative." Only I have found that most students think it is creative to make doggerels. That isn't creative. Creative writing, which I have seen in Dartmouth, always amounted to doggerels. We have a whole quarterly, The Dartmouth Quarterly, which is allegedly filled with creative writing. I think this report of today was much more creative writing than anything I have read in The Dartmouth Quarterly for the last three years, because you do not believe in God. And nobody who doesn't believe in the divine can write in- -- something inspired. You always think that creative writing is something you fry in your own frying pan by will. Anything arbitrary, gentlemen, is anti-divine. If you think you can write a short story under your own steam, because you are clever, and you have a dictionary with synonyms, you are -- you can write a short story. But it has nothing to do with creativity. It's an imitation of creativity. And you live an imitated life in your -- in your mental endeavors, unfortunately.

(Well, how was his paper creative, then? It was -- it was a report of what you said last meeting.)

Because Jerome's translation of the Bible is also creative. You see, translating is always creative. A good translation is the highest any man can, because since Adam and Eve had been cre- -- has been -- have been created, all that man has done is to translate. Read Dante. It's a translation of the Christian faith into a new era, with Heaven, hell, and -- and -- and purgatory, you see. Read Goe- -- read Goethe. Read anything.

I -- I just read today a wonderful commentary on The Merchant of Venice, where it is shown that the last act is a translation of the great service of the Church on Holy Saturday, of Gre- -- the Great Week of Easter. It's something unbelievable, but he -- man proves it, chapter and verse, on -- there is a great celebration in Belmont in the last act where Lorenzo and Jessica have this tremendous encounter on music. You may remember. This is a great verse: "The man who hasn't music in himself" -- who does? Who has read this?

Heavens! You barbarians! The greatest -- the greatest verse in -- in Shakespeare, perhaps, the -- the -- the utterance about music. "How clear the moonshine -- moonlight on this -- sleep is on this hills." I have forgotten it in English, because I only know it in German.

Well, Shakespeare, the -- the author of The Merchant of Venice, wanted to redeem the Jews in this play. And he makes the daughter of the cursed Jew, the -- Shylock, marry the Gentile. And he blesses this with the same verses, only translating them into secular love song, which the Catholic Church still today prays on her -- in her greatest service. The greatest service the whole Cath- -- the Catholic Church is through the -- has through the whole Church year is the service of Great Saturday. If you want to know the real secrets, the heart of Christianity, you must study the prayers and the songs sung and prayed on Saturday. That is, between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. That's the heart of the matter.

And there is this wonderful, one prayer, you see: "O happy guilt, that has found this redeemer." The greatest explanation of, you see, the forgiveness of sins. "Happy guilt." "O happy guilt, because through thee we have found this redeemer." And -- among other things, there is this great proclamation of the redemption of the Jews, of -- of final peace in humanity.

Now I only say, the greatness of the Merchant of Venice depends on this poet's relating himself to the greatest prophecies and -- expectations of the human race, inside the Church, taking it outside and translating it into a secular

event, and into a secular poem.

And this is going on all the time. The son of Lloyd Wright, the architect, wrote a book, My Father Who Is on Earth. Well, he just translated the Our Father, you may say in a kind of frivolous manner. From "Our Father who art in heaven," he wrote, "Our Father who are -- who are -- is on earth." I don't like this. That's done in bad taste. But only to show you that wherever you write, the fuller you are of a topic, the more you will be driven to translating. Don't believe that you can say anything original. To be original means to translate faithfully into your own time and day; and then you will be as original as Shakespeare, because there is no greater originality than what he has done in this love scene in the fifth act, you see. There's not a word of imitation; but there is translation.

(Sir, is it not true that the Bible can mean all things to all men? Different things to each man?)

What do you -- that's a commonplace, Sir.

(-- Whether there would be many, many different translations --)

Well, that's why we -- what we live by. Sure, sure. That's how we live. Every day another translation. That's the story of mankind: that the Bible has to be translated by you, and by me, and by everybody into his own life. And that's not so cheap as you think, by brushing it aside, you see. Your un- -- unfortunate manner is only that as soon as you think you know this, then you brush it aside, and therefore it cannot be, and therefore it's unimportant. Therefore it is so important! It's a tremendous truth which you have tried to utter, but you have said it with a kind of negli- -- you see, negligence, as though the -- "Well, if this is the whole story --." This is the whole story. Fundamentally you cannot be anything but a human being, as anybody else. But the greatness of a human being is that he can freely translate the fate of the race into his own terms. And woe to him if he doesn't.

You see, the Dartmouth student kills his life by saying about everything important, "Oh, that's just that." And if you cannot wake up to the fact that you have the great honor to be allowed to say, "Indeed! That's what it is," I cannot help you, Sir. If you talk down everything I tell you by this little word, "Oh, just that; nothing else," you see, then it's -- it's no use my talking to you at all. It is so simple that you have to admire it. That is the combination, you see, that we have to pay the greatest admiration to the simplest things. A baby is -- admirable. It's commonplace, you see.

Hollywood is not admirable. It's very complicated. But you -- want to live

the other way around. You want to admire only that which you cannot institute or translate yourself, or create yourself. And as long as you do this, you will be the unhappiest people -- running, and throwing away your money for every sensation, for television sets, and what-not, because you believe there is your secret, far away, somewhere in the sky, in the stratosphere.

This word "translating" now will -- must serve us to show you that wherever we move, we translate this thirst of being the complete person free to decide serious and playful at all times. To give you a very little example first, before I go to this rather annoying schematic drawing on the blackboard. Let me look at this relation of our having to be always on the alert so that we may play and be serious in alternation. You have now battleships, tremendous battleships, $40 million battleships, as you know. And yet, any sailor, any Navy man will know that there is still canoeing, there is still rowing -- still sailing in nutshells, in things that really seem to serve no purpose. Because man must play with the serious things. The battleship is in earnest. The sailboat here on the Mascoma Lake is not serious. It's sport.

And what is now the relation of the two? No state -- stage of the game of humanity ever lived can ever disappear completely. There has to be a sailing sport and a rowing sport to the end of days, I'm quite sure. And if we once no longer have battleships, people will have toy battleships, as the children already have, you see, because there is a tremendous thirst of translating in permanent forms anything by which man ever has lived by. The history of mankind is a first philosophy, just as in the history of philosophy, Hegel has said, all philosophies enter, you see, and form together the full philosophy. From Plato to -- to Whitehead, so to speak, you must know the history of philosophy in order to know philosophy. Who -- who is in this unfortunate position of taking Philosophy 11 and 12? Well, isn't that the -- the problem there? Hard to believe.

Gentlemen, any serious form of life forces us to play with the previous forms of life. If you supersede your former existence, and live in a city, you go out camping in order not to leave touch with an opposite way of existence as it prevailed a hundred years ago in this country. Your camping, your scouting, or the -- campfire and everything else -- your going to a rodeo, or your liking to see a -- a -- a Western movie has very much to do with this constant thirst of man to convince himself that while he is serious, he is able to go and play. And while he is playing, he is able to recover or to become serious. This is your experience of freedom.

The law, gentlemen, of our modern society is very strict. It works out in big factories, in capitalism, in banks, in international loans, in export trade, in the going-out of existence of all the sheep on Australia, because we now begin

to make textiles out of plastic, you see. That's very serious. It's revolutionary, you see. Once Vermont -- the state of Vermont lost its dignity by losing its sheep. And all the sheep, you see, went to Australia, and we only have now the city people instead.

These revolutionary changes are constant today. They are rolling on in tremendous waves and that's the serious business of life. Nobody can stop the sheep to stay in Vermont. Nobody can save Australia in its wool trade, you see. This is inexorable. It cannot be stopped. What's the word for something that cannot be stopped? Give me a good word. Not "inexorable," but -- wie?

("Unarrestable.")

That's perhaps the cor- -- the best, ja. "Unarrestable." "Unarrestable." It's not so -- dead.

This unarrestable character of seriousness, you see, provokes in you and me a thirst, a hunger for the arrestable. And our divinity is in creating always the arrestable, side-by-side with the unarrestable. The arrestable is the -- our playful existence, where we relax, where we aren't serious, where we are like young kitten -- young lions, young lion cubs, you may think. And the Dodgers, the Giants, the Cardinals. They are neither cardinals, nor are they -- dodgers, they are; but they are not -- they are not cardinals, and they are not giants, you see. We call them this way playfully, you see, because we are quite sure they are not. That is playful, and that's as in a zoo. It's man as an animate creature. Serious business: it's man in groups of fellowship, in teamwork, and gnashing their teeth in hard work, sweating it out. And the divine is that you can join the te- -- serious group and the play team in alternation. And you can decide when it is time for one thing, and when for the other.

Timing is divine. Serious life is human. Playful life is natural. To repeat this. I can't say it often enough, because you do not believe, gentlemen, that you live in any -- other situation but the natural, because you are so imbued with the spirit of play. Nothing is serious. You can -- always think you can answer, "I don't care."

Gentlemen, serious business -- is no answer to this by saying, "I don't care." Great decisions over a woman you care to pray for, and you cannot say, "I don't care." But it's the style, as you know, of this country to say that -- you laugh at patriotism and you go as a volunteer to Korea and fight it out. I mean, American -- the American male always is better than his philosophy. And all I can do here in this class is to try to break this jinx and to tell you that it is not necessary to have a -- a mind that is poorer than one's life. Your mind is the

ugliest part of your anatomy, because you only admit arbitrariness into your mind. You really think that you can believe in God arbitrarily or not. It's an act of your will. This is so na‹ve and so silly. It makes the -- your mind uninteresting. You are uninteresting -- you see, above this part of your anatomy. I don't wish to know what's up in here. For the rest, I think you are more perfect specimens of the human race than any -- any other nation. But not for your mind, because your mind is worse than your actions.

And your mind is worse -- than your actions, because you actually think that the level of mere me, the level of mechanics, the level of -- of tools, pragmatic tools is the only level for which the mind has been created. But the mind has been created to distinguish, gentlemen, seriousness and play, life and death. Every word you speak, you decide life and death. And you say, "Oh no, I do not decide anything. I'm just a hu- -- human being," you see. It is just like saying, "I'm a corpse. I'm just a cancer. I'm just a cantankerous cuss."

The mind, gentlemen, put to its proper use, has these three levels: dead things, he can play with, he can manipulate; human beings, he must work with, and live inside of them; and the divine decision of the right hour he must implore to come down and to enlighten him, and to illuminate him so that he might not miss the bus, that he might make the right decision, when he has to get out of his groove, and his routines, and create a new one.

Not one man uses his mind rightly who doesn't distinguish these three levels. And I can say without exaggeration that you abhor these three distinctions. You think it is all on one level. You think that your thought always has to do just with understanding some machinery, some mechanism. But to understand when the hour has struck for you, to graduate and to leave this college, or to marry, is of a -- quite an absolutely different quality than -- to understand how to destroy a wristwatch. Or how to analyze a wristwatch. But you think that a man who knows how to analyze a wristwatch, or a rhinoceros inside, or his soul, his psyche inside, as a psychoanalyst, that he has any knowledge of politics or religion. He doesn't, gentlemen. The political issues in any group -- of work, or love, or play -- are decided by criteria, and by insights that the mechanist just has never heard of. Obedience is not known in mechanisms. But if you do not obey in your platoon, you are -- cannot become a member of the United States armed forces.

So these three levels, gentlemen, must be at our disposal at all times before we can say that we have struck out for reality. Before, we are not real. The animal, the human, and the divine. Now, since we all the time then produce these three levels of behavior, we are not at rest if we cannot create new situations, if we cannot remain serious, if we cannot relax into play. The relation of

these -- worlds may now become a little clearer. We had already the sports on the outer forms of life; the studies on the inner; the arts on the creative front of newness; and the dignities, or honors, on the part of the lived life of history, of tradition. I could now overlay this level of play with the serious level obviously, by showing you that the result of study is better work efficiency, so we study in order to renew our working habits or science is -- has led into the industrial society, and industrial production, and scientifical -- scientific production. We have the sports as remembrance of our struggles, of wars. We have the arts as training us for love. And we have the dignities of reminding us of law and order in society, of the law, or the order.

So that the level of play reflects in these four tremendous processes of sports, arts, ritual, and -- and studies. Here, I shall put the ritual. That was { }, the serious businesses, which we transform into play by our freedom.

Obviously we should now reserve the right -- but it -- I will not do it right away, but I'll do it in perhaps six weeks -- to superimpose a third cross of reality, a third crucial, quadrilateral situation, which we would then call the div- -- our connection with the divine. You can see already that by -- prophecy would belong there, you see, and prayer, and sacrifice, or the -- the problems of a religious existence, you see. They would have to be considered as -- also probably have -- being divided into these four directions of our connection with the divine purpose, with the divine creative power, with the power of God to co- -- re-create His world through us at any minute, because obviously if we are -- have to be held responsible for the completeness of the world as it has been created, and is to be finished off finally with our cooperation, you would find in any religious service, or in any religious experience probably, some recognition of what already exists. God in nature, you see, that the skies declare the glory of God, you see. That would be probably respect, you see, for the order already created. Then you would have prophecy, or you would have sanction so that a new messiah, a new savior, a new salvation can be really implored. That would be -- come under the heading which you found in the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," which is the best -- the best hymn in this country ever composed, I think, with regard to the necessity of keeping open the road for this country to a new experience of the divine will. What -- how does the famous -- stanza begin? By Julia -- Julia Howe?

(Mine eyes have seen the glory...)

Wie? Ja.

(I have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.)

I have seen -- ?

(Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.)

You see, he has no future. You see, it's no -- not an accident that you have suppressed this, Sir. People don't understand it today, what it means. I mean, you are not guilty of anything that all these other --- your comrades wouldn't have done, too. People do not even understand the power of this line anymore at this moment, because for the last hundred years, you have tried to live without God, and so that there is a coming of the Lord, you see, people can't understand.

The Germans had to -- to see the destruction of their country as a consequence of the slaughter of the Jews to believe in the coming of the Lord. It all happened very quickly, you see, within 15 years. This country had a -- since 1865, you see, a time of na‹ve selfishness. And it's now very difficult for you to understand one line that the people wrote in 1860 with its { } impact. This whole language has to be retranslated today. That's what I'm trying to do to you, my dear man, because you can no longer speak -- even understand -- even remember the line of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic." It has no power. What it means is that the decision of war and peace has to be made afresh every minute. "I have seen the coming of the Lord." Something unheard-of, something that five minutes before didn't exist. But it is -- nearly impossible for me to prove to you that this line really means this. You say, "Oh, it is an old chorale. It's an old hymn. It comes from the Bible. It's so long ago, it can't be true."

Well, it is -- will be true to the end of days, because you are and I am, gentlemen, standing always in this strange double-cross. And then you -- if you are the devil, you try to double-cross this reality. And if you are a child of God, you try to live it out. The word "double-crossing" is a good word, you see. It is the temptation of every minute in life to double-cross the challenge of existence. Here you stand, and you have to decide, by the danger of being abandoned by the Holy Spirit, which side of life, the past or the future, your inner man, you see, or the outer world make at this moment the decisive demands on you.

You have to go to war to Korea. Is the outer world, you see, right in demanding this service? Just a geographical boundary, you see; the 38th degree of latitude has been violated. Does this any- -- mean anything for an American boy? Well, it has been decided that it does. At this moment then, the outer world got first place. But in other times, you have to uphold the Constitution. Is this full lieutenant of a reserve, is he really to be condemned because his father and his sister are -- are Communists? Well, if he is, gentlemen, we are back to 1619, before the landing of the Mayflower. You don't care. You are so absolutely stul-

tified and blunted in your senses, that you are no longer Americans. You just want to have your good times. You're playboys. You don't know what it means to introduce the -- the reli- -- the -- sibling situation that you are by -- guilty by association.

And the same is -- but you strike out for something utterly new. Must they jeopardize -- jettison their {private} government, their national government? Must they come around at this moment, you see, and allow a supernatural sovereignty to be established? That is a demand never made before. And I don't think the Frenchman ever -- will ever -- will ever do it. They are doomed, and Europe is doomed, because they will not heed this new demand from the coming of the Lord. It has left them. They abolished it, the meaning of this phrase. You don't understand it any longer, and they perish because they don't understand it. But you live in a society which in general still believes it. And therefore, you may be carried along. And inward, I mean, is -- are you a man to step aside and to say, "I don't understand anything of this. I must have time { }. I will not run with these -- these tidings, you see. I must retire like a hermit," you see. "I must become a monk, mentally. I must go inward. I must reflect. I must study."

This is then the cross of reality, gentlemen, which enfolds in these forms of play, seriousness, and creativity the inroad of newness, the serious business on hand, and the relaxation by playing with everything ever done before. You have the three tenses of reality in this. The divine is always creation of something that is either collapsing or ne- -- has never existed yet. It's always the coming of the Lord, because even if you restore a part of the former dignity of man in the war of the sla- -- you see, against slavery, you still think that God created man free and equal, you see, and you have to restore this creation at this moment.

The divine is always in the future. The hard work and -- are -- is always in the present. All play is giving us time to fool around with things already created, with toys, as you call them. Toys, you see. And therefore it is dealing with the world as it exists. It's comes -- from a surplus. You can always play when there is a little surplus. If you are, you see, famine-stricken, you can't play. You have to give every ounce of your energy to just get the necessary -- necessities of life together. You can see this. So play is always a surplus of the past. Seriousness is always coping with the demands of the day. And religion, faith, the invocation of the divine has always to do with our belief in the eternal newness of our existence.

I wish now to have a break here. And in the second half, I wish now to go back to the play cross, of which we have spoken so much, and of which you know most, and to analyze a little more once more the element of our studies,

and organize it; and the arts. So let's have five minutes.

[tape interruption]

I have to subdivide now once more the arts and the study groups. And perhaps for you as students, it is most amazing to see that there is a constant, organized, quadrilateral of studies. And since this hasn't been known, we at this moment are fallen on evil days with education. The educational situation in this country is 90 percent very, very unwholesome, because there's no -- seems to be no direction. We just seem to fool around with interesting texts, Great Books, or what-not. But where are we going?

Now in the arts, it is obvious, gentlemen, I told you, that the drama is the highest art, because it always contains the conflict between a next time, which the hero already represents, and the now-time of the powers that be, to which the hero may even succumb in a tragedy, but which nevertheless are exposed and shown up as not good enough. Any Hamlet goes beyond the order of his time. He's greater than the society in which he moves.

And therefore, here we have clear direction. All the arts are subjugated to the eternal drama. If you think of religious art, it is subjugated to the eternal renewal of the world by human sacrifice. Who? You asked about it. You can see this. If somebody allows himself to be crucified, the world is re-created today, and the religious service reminds you of this direction towards drama. It has tremendous architecture. Think of the cathedrals -- that has sculpture, and painting, murals, in the -- at the -- on the walls, around the walls; and it has song, music, sacred music as the inside of the hearts of the believers who congregate in church. But the greatness of -- religion would cease as -- if there wasn't a drama, directing the energies of cathedral, architecture, of music, and of sculpture, and painting towards the goal.

And today, as you know, this go- -- there is no such thing as drama. There's only A Streetcar Called Desire. And by desire, you cannot reach the future, because desire is inside the chain of created human beings. From desire there comes no freedom. From desire there comes only the chain of gravity, and earthliness. And therefore we have no architecture, except where we know where we are -- shall be going, as on bridges and highways. But we have no architecture as to public buildings. We have housing developments. And if you look at our modern architecture, it is a contradiction in terms, because it doesn't formulate movement. But it formulates the opposite of movement. It formulates seats. You speak of a theater that will seat so many people. And you speak of a bureaucratic building in Washington, you see, that you have there 10,000 clerks, you see, producing 16 copies of every letter that goes out. That is not architecture, you

see, these housing developments, because they try to keep everybody in his little jukebox. And it is not built in order that these people can meet each other and move freely, but so that everybody can be separated and made to sit down on his fannies, you see, and -- earn his salary.

So we have today techture, but not architecture. Architecture is only present where man can feel in the buildings the direction into which we are marching through history. Architecture connects our space existence with the direction through time, with the march of time. You have no history -- no architecture. And you have no arts when you have not drama as the highest art. And since we have not Shakespearean drama, or religious drama, mystery plays, or the transubstantiation at Mass on the altar of the sacrifice of God for his children as a daily reality in our modern society, the arts are all going off on a tangent. And this perhaps deserves some further explanation.

The highest play of man is when he speaks in this play. The more you loo- -- give up words, the less is spoken, the less difficult, so to speak, it becomes to create. The resistance diminishes. It is the hardest thing to bring the serious words of law and order, of the police, and of the military under the control of the playl- -- -ful spirit of creation. It is very hard to create out of words, gentlemen, real drama. That has only been done in our era -- done successfully by Shakespeare, and in the Greek tragedy of the Athenian age. Drama has taken over the lead and explained to us our destiny.

The Church, as I said, in sacred drama, in dramatizing sacrifice, tries to inculcate this into every man's daily existence. But as you know, the arts no longer serve the Church, or serve religion in any -- by any means. They are independent. And immediately you find that they disperse. The strange situation of the various arts today is that they are doing the opposite from what they were expected to do. And they're exploring how far they may -- are able to do the very opposite from what they were expected to do. If you take architecture, I already told you, the problem of the modern civil engineer, whom you call "architect," is how to shel- -- give shelter to as many people as possible. That's the very opposite from what the origin of architecture has been, of great architecture, you see: to make people move in a meaningful direction.

As you know, the story of the Pentagon, where one colonel went down into the certain place, you see, and -- and had his typewriter installed there, where people -- otherwise only go when they are compelled to go. And the others all came and said, "Colonel, what are you doing down here?"

"Well, I moved my typewriter here, because this seems to be the a- -- only place where people know what they are doing."

As soon as architecture means the building up of spaces, you find no reason for any fa‡ade. The fa‡ade of a real, artistic building is explained by the movements that must take place inside. If you have no movements inside, the fa‡ade is arbitrary, just as much as the walls of a cigar box. And you go to Yale University -- who has been there? -- and you look at the library, and you know what has happened there. There is a fa‡ade of a Gothic cathedral. And inside there is a library. That is, inside there are certain books lying, or hanging, or standing around, dead -- in a dead manner. And they will move nobody. In Yale, you see, you are so rich that you cannot be moved by anything. And it's just dry bones inside.

A library is the opposite from a church, but we worship and idolize libraries. By far the best building on campus here is Baker Library. Fortunately it isn't built as a church. So it's perfectly genuine. There are books, and that's -- has a good purpose. And they stand there, you see. And we can take them out of the stacks, and this, as you know, it's most perfect library in America. Perhaps in the whole world. But it is not built as a pseudo-cathedral. The front of this library is not fake.

But if you look at the great art in New York, and other buildings, you see, the poor architect has always to draw up a fa‡ade, and inside there is something utterly different. You just have to look at Dartmouth Hall, which is still a hall from 1795, and inside you have this mausoleum called 105 -- 105, which you cannot detect from the outside, you see. It is hidden. It's concealed. And therefore you have -- you have two things. You have architecture of { }, you see, and you have a space-filling situation as of today. And that's why you are so surprised when you come in that you have to go downstairs, you see, which is certainly -- would have -- if you had developed this as an architectural style, would have given you quite a different front, quite a different fa‡ade. Then you would have been impressed from the outside that you might have to go down. That would be honest art, you see. If the whole outer shell of a building is really complying with that which goes on inside, as it does with any apses in any cathedral, or with it -- as it goes on with this so-called paradise and the portals, you see, in a cathedral, you see, where you enter and come up the steps, you see, to be drawn into this march towards the altar. A cathedral of the Middle Ages is honest. It has nothing outside which doesn't correspond to the movements inside. But our buildings have not.

(Is the fa‡ade of Dartmouth Hall representation of that of Independence Hall in Philadelphia? That's not honest, is it? -- Baker Library, pardon me.)

Well, you see, I don't like to say anything against Baker Library. It's such a wonderful library. So allow me to be silent on this matter, yes.

I don't -- haven't said that you were wrong. But it is this torn to pieces of all Americans, who on the one hand are modern people, dynamic, and on the other hand think that beauty has been established in 1500. And if you want to have something of art, it has to be Renaissance, or it has to be Georgian, or so, you see. You believe in styles.

I have provoked a deep wrath in one of you, one day -- years ago it was, the -- because I said that the George Washington Bridge was the greatest piece of art in our age. And he resented it and said he knew what art was. Art were cathedrals. And art were -- were capitol buildings, and so on and so forth. And a bridge couldn't be art. He knew it, you see. So this poor boy, since he thought that art is not a surprise, and that you haven't to find out what art is in your own living age, you see, yourself, by your own sense experience, the poor boy was down on me, because I -- he -- I -- he thought I was going to corrupt his values, you see. He knew that Michelangelo was art, and that the George Washington Bridge therefore couldn't be art. You understand?

But I assure you if you want to find American art today, it is there. But it is incognito. It's unknown. These people -- we don't know who built these highways, hardly. And yet they are the most living experience any man who comes to this country has. There is life. And there is imagination. This is -- a natural highway would run straight. But the -- a creative, artistic highway, you see, pleases the eye so that we don't go to sleep on the wheel. And therefore it has to wind. Well, it's -- for example, one great discovery, you see, that we are like the cow path in Boston. We are human beings, and all living beings -- horses, cows, lions -- never go in a straight line. Only these idiots and mathematicians do, you see. And we have come out of a -- of a fog of the last 300 years where it was thought that a straight line was -- was better than a crooked line. But the highway builders had to learn that a crooked line is better than a straight line.

Now you take music. I have a friend who is a famous composer. You have heard his name. And he said to me, you see, "I'm full of Mozart. I can play this -- compose this with the left hand." He actually has -- can write as good Mozartean music as Mozart could. I mean, it is in him.

"And so I'm bored stiff, and I must write atonal music, therefore, because I just go to sleep if I would compose this -- this sweet sugar-thing of 18th century music."

Well, I put the question to him: "Don't you think then it would be better not to compose at all? I fully see that music may have run its course, but wouldn't then, if you are quite honest, the answer be that you must transpose your

music into another medium, that perhaps today you should become a bridgebuilder, and have the, you see, the -- the -- symphony, the beauty, and the harmony explained in something else? If you can no longer hear the harmony of Mozart, because it is too trite?"

And I must say, gentlemen, that this is true, that art has its day -- hour and day, and its century. And I am convinced that after this long series of Bach, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Handel, Gluck, Schubert, Schumann, it is very improbable that we can have the same place for music in human society as it has held for the last 250 years. It may -- will still go on, but it will be removed to some smaller place in our reality, you see. And it will -- new composers will have a very hard time to say anything, because our ears are filled with these harmonies. And I can only tell you that 30 years ago, therefore, I struck out. I -- in a small way, I don't think that I would ever have amounted to anything as a musician, but I gave up music, saying that I had tran- -- to translate the music of my inner man into such courses and such ideas as now, because the mind had become ugly in the scientific age, as I have tried to prove to you before, and that I would have to -- to compose music in the field of social life, because I must fe- -- make you feel now the rhythm of living. And that's a musical experience which you have lost, that there is a rhythm between these ex- -- parts -- forms of your existence, these ways of life, you see. If I could do this, I would compose music, and would hav- -- on the other hand, have ceased to be a musician. Do -- have I explained -- made myself clear?

This brings up the question I was asked in the intermission. One of you said he didn't understand this idea of translation, because after this, there could be nothing new in the world, if the -- I was right. I think he -- he used the term "retranslating." In this word "re," of course, he fell short of grace -- fell from grace, I should say. Fell short from what I tried to say. Gentlemen, man cannot create a tree. But Mr. Moses can create a park out of all the trees there are. He can beautify these trees. He can embellish them. Who asked this question? You just are always full of pride, and you don't look for the newness God has allowed us, where it can be seen. God has never made a -- man has never made a tree. And yet all the trees you see on this campus are man-made. That is, the wild trees wouldn't look like this, not one of them. We have translated, transposed, recomposed the -- the world of trees into our own gardens in a very new fashion.

And if I transpose music from its place as art in a concert hall into this lecture hall and try to make you sit up and perk up your ears and say, "There is rhythm in the universe, in my life," I am creating something new, according to certain standards. But in my own mind, I think I am only translating. I am transferring, you see, something that I would do otherwise with the routine means of

-- of a harp, and a lute, and a piano into some other form, but that you can hear it. But you will hear it with a -- with a more refined ear than the ear that is, you see -- responding to the sense-acoustics of -- of the lute, or of the harp.

You just do not know how limited humanity is. We live under the sun. We live under the moon. We live on this soil. What new can we do, Sir? You have not created yourself, have you? Not one part of your anatomy is of your own making. Now what do you expect what we can create? You can re-create the universe, you see. And this is translation. Any psychoanalyst will tell you this, with the -- only he has this -- this blasted attitude of: "Oh, it's just that." He says -- speaks of transference. He says that any love to your mother or -- or father has to be transferred to the psychoanalyst for a while, you see. And he plays with it. And he says, "Well, he is -- routine," you see. "This woman is now in love with me, because she has to transfer her sympathy for her father, and so I'm in this disagreeable state, where I am loved by this woman, who is my patient. But she pays me so well that I accept the love."

Well, gentlemen, by calling this "transference," he admits however that we all translate. This poor woman cannot go to the ma- -- doctor without having some feelings about something. If she wants to get rid of one sentiment, the genuine sentiment of a child to her par- -- her father, she has to, for the time being, you see, to transfer this feeling to her psychiatrist. -- This scoundrel is only so terrible, because he doesn't mean business. Or he only means business. And he doesn't honor her feelings. Which of course, if he was be -- would be a good man, would lead him to marry this first patient and never see another patient again.

If a judge has a -- one criminal and he would get off from the bench and say, "This is my destiny. I have now to live out this man's record into the open, into a new future," he could decide one case, and none other. And that would be the redeemed world. If every judge would only have one case, you see, and say, "This I appropriate now to be my destiny. I have to live with this man, so that we together can change his life." You understand? That's a -- that would be a retranslation of this man's life on a higher plane. You understand?

This is enough, Sir. Admire the wisdom of our creator, who made us into poor creatures, just as we -- what we are, you see, having no originality, depending on everything, on this little bit of clay which comes from the earth, and on this little bit of axy- -- oxygen and spirit, which comes from our breathing power so that we can take in something that is higher than the clay, above us, you see. And in this combination of Heaven and earth, which we represent, you and I, because we breathe into flesh and blood, you see, He has given us the power to re-transpose all the elements of the universe into all kind of new creations. In

play and in earnestness, we can have children. We can have works of art, you see. We can have societies. And it can remold, reshape, re-form these given elements. But don't demand -- don't sno- -- be snupid and say -- snooty, "That's -- Is that all?" you see. Because it is incredible. More we have not received. And if you try to find that we are -- can create out of nothing, you are quite mistaken. This we cannot do. Can you see this?

Our human part is the retranslating of something. Ja? It is divine, however, when something new enters us. And this is only the decision to free ourselves from some previous form of -- of -- alloy, or of mixture, or of -- of formation, you see. We are the one kind on this earth, one species, you see, that can recreate all the species. We cultivate the trees, and we make new species, you see. But more we cannot do. Ja?

Now gentlemen, let me at least put on this -- so -- I could show you about music, that atonal music, and that objectless, abstract painting are attempts to go to the opposite end from where art started, in -- in its religious tie-up with the direct- -- -ing force through time. Architecture without time becomes housing. { }, Mr. Corbusier's living machine, housing machine, you know, because it means the shelter of space without any direction in time.

To show you the two opposites very clearly in architecture: if you admit that man wants to have direction through time, you would give him a -- an apartment even, of four rooms in which every apartment would steep him, would dive, would plunge him into a different time. In his kitchen, he would be up-to-date, 20th century chrome. It would all be chrome, and all machinery, a refrigerator, et cetera. In his living room, however, he would be as ancient as possible, as Victorian as possible, with candlelight, because there's no reason to have chrome chairs in your living room, you see. But there's every reason to have a chrome sink in your kitchen, you see, because that is your technical -- your workshop, you see, your -- the place where you want to do the work of a serious housewife, you see. In your living room, in your bedroom, in your nursery, in your studio, you live in quite different tie-ups, in quite different contact. It would be quite impossible today to go into the detail of this.

But we had a discussion last year, over in Europe, and my -- the architects were very grateful for my suggestion that they should on purpose say that in every apartment, there should be the rhythm of moving through different times by moving just from the living room, to the bedroom, to the kitchen. There shouldn't be one style, the apartment. But they should be composed, you see, into various movements through time, and they should give you a feeling, by moving from the kitchen into the living room, that you entered a different age of humanity. In work, you wanted to be up-to-date. But in play and meditation,

you didn't want to be up-to-date, because you wanted to forget time, you see.

Now if you could only tell this our architects, they might recover the spirit of movement through time, which they completely have lost today. They now are -- tell you they are oriented to the -- to the compass, or that they have much airspace, or that they -- they live in nature out -- through these open windows, you see, where you really -- I { } mean that I have lost my -- my -- my home when I enter these -- these plate-glass window houses.

With music, it is obvious, you see, that the atonal is an attempt to combat the feeling of melody, the complete feeling of rhythm, you see, that you are, so to speak, made to endure noises. Now, noise is, of course, the opposite from musical rhythm. You all love it. The noisier the better, when you go -- but there you redeem yourself by dancing at least. Jazz, plus dance, can still be redeemed by your feet, although your -- your ears are lost.

Well, I think I have to stop here. So we'll follow this some more, and then we'll go over, and I'll show you how strictly the organization of your mental work also is.