Transcript
{ } = word or expression can't be understood
{word} = hard to understand, might be this
(Philosophy 10, March 19th, 1954.)
...after misunderstandings, and this may -- this -- this points to the difficulty of the last meeting. So I don't wonder that Mr. {Friedlander} wasn't able to -- quite to get it.
There are two things. First, I want to clear up the problem of education in England. The word "education" of course in this country rings so loudly in your ears, that I -- I overlooked this fact, and I thought you knew what in England edu- -- is meant by education. It is not the same as what we mean here, with an educated -- education, because here, everybody gets an education. In England, education is the badge of the man who belongs to society. That is, he is superior to the people. An educated man in England is -- belongs to a set -- a clique, you can -- would call it in this country -- and certainly the whole effort of America has been to challenge the English. They get on our nerves.
I mean, the -- the Americans have constantly challenged the English, and the English have, as you know, when they have come home, like Charles Dickens, written terrible things about the Americans. All the books on America, written by English people when they are frank and didn't cater for an honorary degree from Harvard, are not very agreeable reading. Beginning with Mrs. {Henriette} Martineau in 1833, the books written by English on American are rather scathing. The reason is that the Ameri- -- England is an aristocracy, even with the Labor Party. Makes no difference whatsoever.
That is, what is the principle of education, and what is the principle of aristocracy in England? It is that those who belong elect the new members. What you have in your fraternities, as a caricature -- the balloting-in of the people you want, and the exclusion of those you do not want -- is the whole principle of English life. You cannot run for Con- -- for the Parliament in England, except the prime minister says you can. Even into Parliament you are balloted by the party. If Mr. Churchill doesn't give the say-so to a candidate in Berwickshire, he cannot run in Berwickshire, except as an independent. Then he isn't elected.
So gentlemen, we have -- as you know, everybody is his own candidate. If Mr. McCarthy is elected is Wisconsin, the party can't do anything about it. Democratic principle: everybody for himself, and nobody for all. But -- well, it's a terrible principle. It should of course be: everybody for the who- -- for the whole, and -- and nobody for himself { }. But that isn't our principle.
In England, it is the principle for which you even haven't -- haven't a term, and which is the most important principle for you to understand real relations of human beings. That's co-optation. That is, that the people in the doctor -- in the medical profession -- which isn't understood in this country -- are of course an aristocratic body. They are guild and craft. And they shut out the most gifted Europeans, if they possibly can. If you knew what has happened during -- gone on in the last 20 years in the way of ostracizing medical refugees from Europe, you would be surprised what such a medical association can do. They are not only against socialized medicine; they are against other things, too. And they are specially against admitting other people to their profession.
Now, this is exceptional. That is, you overlook this institutional life, because in other countries, many more things are run on the same basis as with the American asso- -- Medical Association. You cannot become a member without the others who already are in acknowledging that you fulfill the requirements.
This has very far-reaching applications even to college life, to politics, to everything, as I tried to -- to -- to point out. But get this principle, gentlemen: there are four principles of office-holding in society, of appointment, of rank. One is election. That's what you believe in. Majority principle, elections. S- -- if you do this, the country has obviously only the minute, the five minutes of the commonplace, because every five minutes, the majority is fickle and can shift. You know, we don't acknowledge this. We have property rights. We have constitutional rights, which no majority can abolish, because it's intolerable to live by majority rule alone. It just can't be done, because a majority -- four -- two months ago was all for McCarthy. And five months from now, they won't be for McCarthy. And all the havoc that has been made in between, who pays for that, the broken china?
So to believe in majority rule alone, gentlemen, is madness, although you find many people who don't know better. When you remind them of minority {rights}, they say, "Oh yes, of course, that's understood." But where does this come from? This comes from the aristocratic principle, gentlemen. You don't call it "aristocratic," because you hate the word "aristocracy," but of course, a minority is an aristocracy. If you can't go against the vested interests of the American Medical Association, as Mr. Eisenhower has kowtowed to them, and withdrawn his -- his -- the policy of his predecessors -- why did he have to do so? Because it's the one profession in this country of real, high standards, except the plumbers. The plumbers and the doctors are the only people who understand their job as well as in any other country. Compare other professions -- you can't compare pai- -- American painters with painters in other countries. You can't compare American poets and these short-story writers in -- in Saturday Evening Post, I mean. People would -- would go nuts if they had to read this stuff, which is it --
to be found in Life, Time, et cetera every d- -- every week. But don't trust. Everybody takes his hat off to American medicine.
So leave the -- let the American medicine for Heaven's sake, alone. Don't interfere with its workings, because it works well. And if you had socialized medicine, we would break into the one professional elite we have established in this country. You see, if you { }, you can always know which is the best profession in a country, if you ask, "Which profession asks the greatest sacrifices?"
Now, the army doesn't. They used to advertise tours through Japan to get recruits. Now can -- do you think that such a thing can be a good -- do a good job? The only profession that can do a good job is that profession that asks sacrifices and no rewards. And that's what an intern has to go through with. And that's why they have -- because they have interns, they have good medicine. That's why a -- Catholic priest is well-educated, because he has to go through celibacy and sacrifice, and why -- our Protestant ministers don't amount to anything. They don't even have to learn a foreign language. No sacrifice for a minister today. He can marry at 19, preach at 20, and learn nothing for the rest of his life.
Well, you can't have a high status of -- statue in a nation for a group that has to make no contribution whatsoever, except talking. That's not a -- you can't have a profession of dignity in this way. But you think you can have a good life, and then be esteemed. That's impossible. You have -- can -- have to buy your way into society by an aristocratic, you see, elite behavior, selective. Or you have no socie- -- social order whatsoever. You have the man in the street. And you have, accordingly, the ways our big cities are run -- by s- -- in slums, by slums, and with slums, instead of by the people, for the people, and with the -- and through the people.
It's very serious, gentlemen. You have to learn from this course that these forces of life, like election and selection, are all there just as much as the fruit of a flower is perhaps, and the blossom.
That is, yes- -- last time my son attended here this class. And he said to me, "It is terrible, these men cannot take in facts in the realm of the spirit. They always want to concl- -- come to conclusions right away. They -- why are they not impressed with the miraculous beauty of the spiritual world which you unfold before them? Perhaps you tell them that these are precious flowers -- France, England, Germany, and America -- and you can't do anything with them before you have not appreciated their beauty, their delicacy, their refinement.
"Such a question as, `Should we have one world?' comes too early. First, you
must live several years with the admiration for these forms before you can begin to understand that you might do something with them, but only after you have loved them so much that they are in your veins that you represent them. What do you understand at this moment of England, or France, or Germany that you can already decide that there should be a united order for these four? You don't even know how they function."
And he said, "Tell them this." So this is his message. Why don't you look at the things I put before you as -- as something -- as in botany? If you -- I tell you about the diluvium in geology, and the Tertiary events, and the glaciers, don't you believe it? You accept it, and you don't do anything with -- to the glaciers and with the glaciers. You just think why are -- how are they?
Well, it isn't to be laughed at, gentlemen. It is hopeless for me to talk about these things, because when I come to this problem of the common man, or democracy, or election, you immediately only see -- either you are threatened in your own dogmatism which is very strong, or you -- you shut your ears, because you are not interested. You are indifferent. Gentlemen, the real world is so that you cannot escape it. Whatever you do -- where you behave as one of the boys -- you still are under this impact of this whole mighty stream, which I then tried to show you, goes from the mountain peak of the single soul, to the brook of the scientific group, to the river of the educated group, and to the ocean of all mankind.
Isn't that as impressive, this river system of water of the spirit, as -- the alpine system, or any geological or geographical system? And is it very strange that you cannot wait, so to speak, to finish it off by your judgment? There's nothing to be criticized or judged about or -- or to say, "That is my opinion." {It isn't} my opinion, gentlemen.
I introduce you -- I initiate you into some labyrinth, it is true, but I -- with a thread, so that you can find your way in. It is true that in this country, most people deny the spirit. They say there isn't such complication -- head off. Oh, of course, head off; what's the result, gentlemen? What's the giant without a head? This is a country -- a giant -- an incredible giant without a head, without direction.
Do you think I mean -- it's -- it doesn't fill me with -- with dismay that all my European friends have as headlines -- for the last -- for the year 1952, "No Government in the United States." So the whole world goes politically bankrupt, because we had to wait until Mr. Eisenhower was elected. Do you th- -- don't you think people think that's very silly, that the greatest nation in the world has no government in 1952, because everybody awaits -- for the elections?
Then we get a gov- -- a year of government where people say they have to learn. It took them a whole year to understand what government is, Mr. Eisenhower. Then again the world thinks very laughable. And then the next year, he has learned a little bit, and immediately, the -- headlines are filled with the most incredible things: a dentist runs the show, who was honest enough to say that he was a Communist. And the country listens to this -- idiocies -- this squabbles. Do you think that's of any meaning, or any importance in the world -- the greatest nation of the world occupied for the last four months with simple nonsense? Where there is something that has absolutely no bearing -- a man made a mistake. Mr. { } says he's a Communist, he's -- introduced in the army just the same. He has to be thrown out just the same. Now what is offered, I mean? We have to fill this tooth or you pull this tooth, I mean, it's still a dentist's job. Dentists are not important enough to go in the limelight. It is just incredible with what this country is occupied: football and dentists.
Nothing -- have I -- ever heard discussion of the Puerto Rico problem? The most burning problem in the Ne- -- in the East we have -- at the Eastern seaboard. Friend of mine was raped in an elevator in New York by a Puerto Rican. Does anybody write that up? Does anybody discuss the political implications of democracy? Where -- where now -- now half a million Puerto Ricans can flood the city of New York? Everybody talks about it. Everybody's frightened by it. That's not a political potato. The potato is Mr. { }.
This is ridiculous, gentlemen. This comes from the fact that anything in a democracy, living isolated from the other processes of the mental life can be made into sensation. I tried to show you that when the common man is left to his own devices, he must live by sensation. You must invent every morning a sensation for the headlines, because otherwise nobody buys the paper. But that's -- is a mental situation, gentlemen, of complete dementedness.
So I invite you to look at the real process. Do you think anything can be created by the discussions that have gone on in this country from December to March? Isn't that a complete waste? What of it? Is this mental life? Is this creativity? It's the destruction of every sober, every fruitful process of thought. Whether it happens or not, it is just dust in the eyes of people. It's a sandstorm. It's like Texas.
We have not only soil erosion, gentlemen. Don't forget that the physical world is only the analogy of the spiritual world ever, always. We have mind erosion in this country. The soil erosion you can fight with the soil conservation service. But how you -- do you fight the soul conservation? The soul erosion? And the mind erosion?
Don't believe, gentlemen, that anything in the physical world you see has not its absolute analogy in the world of the spiritual processes. I'm -- not accidentally had to use this analogy of the water running downhill into the ocean, gentlemen. You cannot understand the spirit if you do not see it as real in its principles as the -- the hydrographic system of water. And where would you be if there weren't words of truth in your mouth, and verses of beauty? Who would love you? Who -- to whom would you turn? You all live by these processes to this day, that somebody should say great -- "Thank you" to you. But it is all disappearing.
Yesterday after class, I was stopped by a man I didn't even know. Some Dartmouth man he must be. He insisted he was. But then how did he -- he even took one hour of my time. I had never seen him in my life -- to help him out with a gift for his girl. And so he wanted to carve something. I took him to the library and kneeled down with him in -- there in the stacks and we worked for an hour. And then he left it, saying nothing.
So I said, "Thank you very much."
And he said, "You're very welcome."
I mean, this happens to -- to -- to a man who lives, who thinks that every money -- -body like himself lives by five-minute sensations. Just what this is. We had no connection. He couldn't {believe it}. It's very typical, I think, of your attitude. You go on from one thing { } {ran} into me. I could help him out, so on he goes to the next, because in order to say "Thank you," gentlemen, you must look back before your own life. And in order to say "Please," you must go forward beyond your own life. By these two mystical words, mankind is always connected with things that happened before their physical birth and that happened after your physical death. Very mystical world, gentlemen. Anybody who says "Thank you," says "There's something I haven't been created -- I haven't created, and on which I depend," you see. "It's there, for Heaven's sake, if it wasn't there, I couldn't live."
That means the word "Thank you," you see. And thanking and thinking of course are just variations of the same situation. And to think means to thank, and to thank means to think. And you try to think for yourself without saying "Thank you." And that doesn't work. And I have tried to show you that this 4th level, the common-sense thinking, is without "Thank you."
This is terribly important, gentlemen. The four -- the course of the water, from the idea to the commonplace, from hero to common man -- through scientists and educated people -- it means just this, gentlemen, that the thinking has
conquered its own antecedents. You see, take an animal, and take the animal in yourself. We all live between birth and death. We all live from beginning to end. The -- man can only think because he can say "Thank you," because he can admit that this -- what illuminates at this moment your inner man here, the electricity in your brain, is not yourself produced, but induced, that it has inst- -- been instilled into you. This we call "inspiration," gentlemen, that you get something that isn't in your physical make-up at all. If you cut yourself up, you have bowels. You have a heart. But do you have a mind? Not at all. That electricity comes into you, and to say "Thank you," gentlemen, is a condition for thinking.
And the terror of independence in this country has been that people have said they are so independent that they can think independently and independence -- the concept of independence for themselves.
Gentlemen, the whole idea of independence is the Christian idea of freedom which has been planted into people -- 1900 years ago and the Pilgrim Fathers came here in gratitude to God's revelation, and not in independence to God's revelation. It's ridiculous.
But you have not understood that thinking is thanking. It is the same word, just with another vowel. In German, that's called an um- -- an Ablaut, you see, just as you have "run" and "ran," so you have "think" and -- and "thank."
And of course, teaching is then just the next step. You have to say -- tell other people what you think. Before, you haven't thought. You'll remember our 10 commandments. It must now begin to dawn on you -- can you see it? -- that these 10 commandments explain to you why thinking is thanking, and why it also trying to {please}, that is, to invite other people to share. Because, gentlemen, the spirit is common to all. Your common sense is nonsense if you do not admit that it already has made sense before it is common sense. This is your formula which you reasonably should apply. Common sense is nonsense as soon as you do not know anymore that it is owed to the few. On no level is sense to be had without gratitude for the whole life process.
Does this make sense? But you understand why it pains me. It deprives you of so many things if you do not know this, if you always think that you think. Gentlemen, don't believe it for a minute. Has anybody ever -- because the files -- the threads of carbon in the electric bulb lighten up? Has the -- anybody ever thought that the electricity is of the thread of carbon? The carbon -- file of carbon lightens up, but obviously the power plant is elsewhere. Isn't that simple?
Again the analogy is very simple, gentlemen. If you are enlightened, the light doesn't come out of you. It shines into you, and enlightens your darkness. You
are the first darkness that has to be enlightened. But you all want to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. This is mentally as impossible as it is physical. No effort of your will will make you know the truth.
(Well, Sir, is an original thought -- something like a new -- new ideology -- is that just a culmination -- an accumulation of outside inspirations? Is an original thought -- say, a new ideology like Communism -- is that just an accumulation of outside inspirations?)
It's a very good question. But if you -- I would prefer to give you the story of socialistic Marxian thought, from Saint-Simon, the first socialist to the Russian revolution, later on, because it's a -- quite a story of -- of various terraces of thought, various levels of thought. It goes also downhill, you see. But one thing I think I should {mention} -- I should settle in your mind right away, gentlemen: the explo- -- explosion -- you have there now an explosion in Kon Tiki, but the explosion which every -- great idea really represents, you see, consumes life. It consumes flesh and blood. It asks -- demands that we -- it has once been said of literary genius in this country, "Our literary men are our sacrifices." That is, Melville's life was destroyed in the process of his becoming the greatest American writer. And it took him 40 years in the desert, you see, to pay the penalty. If you read The Tempest, by Shakespeare, you will know something of the sufferings of genius.
The a- -- you do not understand, you see, that if you give five minutes to a thought, it isn't your thought. But if your whole life is representative of this word -- of this new word to be spoken into mankind, you see, then you can transubstantiate flesh and blood into spirit. That is, for example, the example of the founder of our faith, that He -- from Christmas on, He is the victim. The great Bach -- you have heard of Johann Sebastian Bach? -- well, he has written a Christmas oratory. And the music at Christmas is that of the Crucifixion. O hea- -- or how do you say in English? O Ha- -- or --?
(O Hosannah.)
Wie?
(O Hosannah. Hosannah.)
Pardon me?
(Hosannah.)
No, the opposite. Crucified. "O head of blood and wounds," is it in German,
you see; it's a famous chorale which is sung at the -- at -- on Good Friday in the church. And -- you see, it's the very opposite. The child in the cradle already has to listen to the sound that, you see, lead -- send It to His doom. Send Him to His doom. You understand? He is already in the cradle treated as the victim. His whole life is one s- -- burning sacrifice, you see. One burnt offering.
This is very hard for you to understand that the essence of education is not to make people happy, but to make them ready for the great sacrifice. When one says this in this country, people are horrified. But it is -- certainly is not the aim of -- of life to be -- be happy. Happiness is quite outside purposes. You are happy as a by-product of life, as { }. Any woman who wants to be happy certainly will not be happy.
It's crazy. Happy comes from "happening." And how can we govern "happening"? Happening is accident. I mean, I am happy, gentlemen -- but I've never -- thought in my life one day that I could do anything for being happy, you see. I so happen to be happy. It's {mere happiness}. And I'm sure that at the very moment when I try to be happy, I shall be the most unhappy of mortals.
You must understand that is your -- your dogma in this country is -- is common-sense translation. When you read of the pursuit of happiness, you know what the original formula was? That every man has to have the right to work out his own salvation. It was a religious term. The Free Masons in this country didn't want to -- to have any Christian terminology, so as we have the Star-Spangled Banner with the five-pointed stars instead of the star- -- six-pointed star of religious trans- -- tradition, so we have "happiness" for "salvation." But gentlemen, that's just the common-sense turn or translation of "salvation." That is, you have to fulfill your destiny. That is 0salvation. And the destiny can only be fulfilled if you do it within the framework of universal salvation.
Now, when you then call "happiness" the thing which is exter- -- expostulated under the term "salvation," you know what happens? The terrible isolation of every one.
Always the difference between a secular term, gentlemen, and a religious term is very simple. It's the same thing in splendid isolation of the individual. In religion, nobody can be saved unless all men are saved. Christ is not saved, unless you all are con- -- become converted. You can destroy His whole work, every one of them -- of you. He depends on you, because He's a religious leader. You, in your splendid isolation say, "I can be happy. Let the others do what they please." It's a ridiculous idea of yours, but you have it.
What we call "secular" is always this. You see, if France is secular, she says she
can run her own affairs and not join the NATO. If she is religious, she believes that her contribution to the Western world is exactly as described by me, you see. When America thinks that it is the most -- greatest democracy in the world in its own right -- in the -- her own right, then you begin to have the McCarthys. If England thinks that it is an -- just Oxford and Cambridge, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, you get Neville Chamberlain and Munich, and appeasement.
And each time, this is the secular version of the same topic as in the religious language. The religious language is the language -- that acknowledges that the spirit is one all over the earth, and that every man parti- -- every nation, every institution participating in this spirit, you see, loses the spirit as soon as it declares that the electric light inside of it is self-produced. If it denies the power plant and says, "I, the little electric bulb, 100 volted -- volt," you see, "I am my own producer." This is so ridiculous, out goes the light, as all the Western -- General Electric lights now go out.
These terrible bulbs which they produce now, these people.
But this is as much a law of nature, gentlemen. If you say "happiness," you have destroyed the basis of man's right to happiness, which was that he could work out his own salvation, because -- if a man works out his own salvation, he acknowledges this universal law, you see, that we all must be saved together, or we -- we'll hang together. The fathers of the Constitution knew this. They said this, when they signed the Declaration of Independence, you see. "If we don't hang together now, we will be hanged."
So it's a very simple rule, gentlemen. Perhaps it's worth your while. It has not directly to do with this, only by indirection, that every secular term and every secular behavior of which you are so proud means that the part is declared to exist without the whole. And every religious expression is an attempt to get this individual -- fragment and part back into the whole. And the unfortunate thing is that pious pep-talks and so fail to impress people after a while, if they are just oily and not real conven- -- based on conviction, and then the particles say, "We are bored, and we -- we express it as it looks to us from the inside." You all have mirrors, gentlemen. The secular element is a reflection on oneself, its vanity. And the spiritual language is an attempt to see oneself within the scope and the tapestry of the whole of life.
Now, you are at the age, gentlemen, where your mind is growing. And therefore you are inclined to much introspection, and to much reflection, and to much mirror images -- many mirror images. You mirror yourself, and therefore you are all tempted to really think that your own thinking is self-produced. But if you begin to think on -- about this for one minute a little more seriously, you must
begin to laugh. It is the most incredible idea to think that God created little portable batteries inside of you to deal with the whole history of the universe, and then these old batteries, by some mystical acrobatics can understand each other, on the same wavelength, and can produce science, and cathedrals, and politics, and government.
I mean, this is such an abstruse idea that people all have their own little minds first, and then fool them all. Have you ever seen how election happens? There are two candidates. You have to elect one of them. Do you really believe that 100,000 voters in Bro- -- in the Bronx or in Brooklyn are -- have 100,000 ideas? And then you have then two candidates? Where are the 100,000 candidates, which would have to be the result? It is one stream of political life that reaches into Brooklyn, and there comes to a polarization, and so you have two parties, which is the way in which the light is always polarized in human society, in parties. But I mean, obviously, the candidates which you have to elect come from above, upon you, and you haven't elected them. That's a fiction.
This is very difficult in a democracy, however, to keep track, you see. It's the same as in the Dewey progressive school, gentlemen. Here's the 13-year-old boy, and he is asked what does he elect? And he says, "No, I don't want to take Latin, but I want to take physics." Do you think he makes a choice? It's ridiculous. It is a scandal that he is allowed to make a choice, because he doesn't know either what Latin means, nor what physics means. He's talked into that, but by indirection. Nobody wants to be hold respon- -- held responsible for his choice. So they say he, the poor boy, is responsible. And then afterwards, he has learned nothing, because he has made all the wrong choices. But it's "his project," you see.
The teachers are treated like umbrellas or parasols, or I don't know -- or canes. But certainly not as the people who instruct this -- child and say what to choose. No -- here's the teachers -- just beckon and say, "What do you want, dear Charlie?" He says, "Ice cream." So whatever he chooses, it's just ice cream. He was made happy.
Now you get the 3-year-old boy that -- they go with -- to Mac's with him or -- here, what is the other? -- the -- the Green Lantern, and the boy at 3 -- of 3 gets a menu and he has to choose his meal to -- education of his into independence. Is this -- is this his choice? First of all, who put these things on the menu? Did he? Does he know what cooking is possible? Can he -- does he -- has he any idea that there are other alternatives than any of these terrible meals which are offered?
So the last fiction -- this nice fiction that the {man isn't} said, you have to vote for one candidate, but two -- that arouses in you the fiction that you -- that by election, the whole thing functions. But gentlemen, there is merit in this man
whom you are to elect, he has an idea, he has stuck his neck out in one way or the other -- that's Level Number 1, the -- it's the level of the idea. He has worked in political party -- system as a block -- or other warden politician -- or whate- -- ward politician, or whatever it is. That is, he has been in the group of collaborators, you see. And he has acquired a certain character as member of a join- -- joiner of the Kiwanis, or the -- the Lions, or whatever gives him his background. And then he comes to the 4th stage getting before the electorate, you see, with the blessing of his own demon who gave him the bright idea to come out for the Ham and Eggs Plan. And the second stage, that he is one of the boys of the Republican or the Democratic Party; and Number 3, that he is well-known to his pals in the American Legion and the Kiwanis, which represents in this way my four stages, you see, from idea to commonplace. And he comes before you, and you commonplace people are expected to add your vote to his pre-selection, and his pre-destination, and his pre-formation, you see.
But all these four steps have to happen, all four. And you give them the last -- him the last ointment, you see, and the blessing. But you mustn't forget that he reaches you -- Mr. Taft, Mr. Republican, or Mr. Eisenhower -- after a long process of selection. Do you know who made Mr. -- Mr. Eisenhower? That's another great doctrine, gentlemen.
If you take these four stages seriously, then you may understand. The common sense is always belated. America would only enter the world wars when it was too late, twice. We entered the war far too late, at a terrible loss of European culture. And -- and the whole destruction of Europe was only because common sense always understands things too late. Any democracy is too late in foreign policy.
It makes you -- it's frightful to read now that we shall have 1 million men -- an army of 1 million men in -- I don't know, I think next year, complete second disarmament. Mr. John Dewey { }, all over once more. It will be some rude awakening, because democracy will not pay the price at the right moment. Always too late. You think you are always the first. {Always the latest.} Because you get the news so, you see. The sensation is the -- the -- the blinder behind which you believe you are ahead. But in fact, you are with all your will and decision, always the latest.
In 1947, all the educated people in this country knew that America would have to join the Allies immediately after the begin of the war. But since the common man wouldn't believe it, all of Europe was unnecessarily destroyed. Russia is in Austria. Russia is nearly cho- -- ate -- gobbled up Turkey and Greece, and threatened Yugoslavia, as you know. It is in Hungary, it's in Ger- -- West- -- Eastern Germany where they all shouldn't be, because we could not send a cable
to Mr. Hitler in 1937 saying that we had 10,000 airplanes, in case that he should -- wanted to go to war, when he couldn't have gone to war. Because the airplanes couldn't be built here. Bill Mitchell had to be court-martialed, you see, because he wanted us to do this. And he was the victim with the idea. Bill Mitchell came in time. He was right. If we had acted -- heard him then, all this wouldn't have happened. There you see the time-lag of the mass of the ocean, and you see the time-anticipation of the hero, of the idea.
So gentlemen, the man who -- in whom this idea from love for his country, or from love of humanity or for love of truth explodes, and who goes to pieces for this, and who pays for his life for this, is a very great reality. Bill Mitchell is some such phenomenon. Meteoric, explosive, dynamite, and he himself is blown up in the process. But he's on time.
The timing problem is intimately connected with the workings of the spirit, gentlemen. And now I'm going to tell you how it happened that we have Mr. Eisenhower as president. It's a very -- as far as -- as you know, { } too. In 1948, Mr. Dewey was defeated, although he had been acclaimed by Mr. Walter Lippmann as elected, as you know, on the morning after election. All the papers had already their editorials written to congratulate Mr. Dewey. So Mr. Dewey was so disheartened after this having gone to bed as president of the United States and waking up next morning as -- not as president of the United States, that he wanted to retire from politics. And then Mr. {Aldrich}, of the bank in New York, who is now for this reason our ambassador in London -- well, it is quite meritorious; listen -- this is not so, I think -- if all our ambassadors were appointed for such reasons, we would have no Mrs. Mestas.
That's meritorious. He made Eisenhower. Why did he? He went to Mr. Dewey and said, "You do not retire. We need you." Why? "Well, I have a candidate. We make Mr. Eisenhower president of Columbia, so he'll be like -- mix civilian life with military tradition." We had Mr. Wilson, who was president of Princeton, and he went into politics as governor of New Jersey, and in this combination of former Princeton president and governor of New Jersey, he became president of 1912.
So Mr. {Aldrich} wasn't very imaginative. He turned this thing around and said, "We have Mr. Eisenhower. We now make him president of Columbia. And in this combination he then can be the candidate for the Republican Party in 1952. But there's one condition. We have to deal with the Middle West, with the Dirksens, and so you better stay as governor of -- of New York, because then you are the head of the Republican Party at the next convention for New York, and you can deliver the 72 votes of New York. And if you retire now, we aren't so sure that you can -- we can prevail over the right wing of the Republican Party."
And it is this ingenious move, which I think is perfectly glorious -- I mean, I admire it -- that a man, when you all went to bed and rejoiced, or mourned over the previous election, that this one man thought about the next election. And common sense never worries about the next election, but says, "That's a bridge which -- shall take when I cross it." But usually, you see, when you think so, in democracy, then there is no bridge.
The bridge has to be built long beforehand, before you can cross it. And that's your na‹vet‚, that you live absolutely by the news, you see. This is the best informed and most surprised country in the world. But Mr. {Aldrich} knew what was happened -- would happen in 1952. In 1952, he no longer had to go to Chicago. You had to look at the television there and be excite- -- get excited. He didn't. He knew that Mr. Dewey at the right moment would get up and deliver the 72 votes, or 76 -- how many do you have in New York? Wie? You know what the -- how many votes a delegation of New York can deliver at a Republican convention? Wie?
(90 to 96.)
Well, how many?
(I'm not sure exactly, between 90 and 96).
Even the -- so I must -- I'm off. I mean, I am too low with my estimate. It is 96.
Well, there you have the story, gentlemen, which may explain to you why I dwell on this 1 to 4. If we didn't have the heroes of Number 1, the Bill Mitchells, of the spirit, nothing could be prepared, because genius acts before time, before you -- common sense acts after time. If we are lucky and we have genius and common sense, then we have the middle groups as acting on time. As acting on time. On time is on Stage 2 -- on -- on -- in Phase 2 and 3, you see. Educated man and scientists should act on time. But they will not if there have not been voluntary sacrifices by heroic people who are willing to suffer the disapproval of their contemporaries.
Gentlemen, take a very simple fact, which is never mentioned, for your understanding of the spirit. Why did Christ prove to be the right messiah, and not a pseudo-messiah? Because he acted 30 years before the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem, because 40 years before the Jews had to leave their country, He prepared this, the form in which the Gospel the -- of the living God could be taken out into the world. The Jews were unable to live without the representative form of the temple, and mean to the rest of the world the same, great faith.
So Christianity is that transubstantiation, that great form of transformation which the belief in the true God had to undergo before it became an article of export to all the ends of the world. If He had done this, gentlemen, in -- in 71, one year after the destruction of the temple, nobody would have believed Him. The people would have said, "Hmm. That's just under duress. That's pressure. That's utilitarian."
We have the same story, gentlemen, with the World War and nationalism. The World War has -- certainly the two world wars -- have in Europe spread in many heads the recognition that their nationalism is poisonous. One man who has said this before, freely, is more important than all these opportunists who now know it, after everybody has to know it. That's Mr. Nietzsche. Nietzsche is such an outstanding figure in the history of the human spirit, because he predicted the World War and its consequences. You don't know this, but I mean I, who hail from him, am eternally grateful to this man because I don't care what he said in -- in other things, but he put his finger on the fact that all thinking in Europe was utter- -- and in America, for that matter, exactly the same way it was -- utterly ruined by its progressive na‹vet‚ that automatically the world would go from better to worse -- or from worse to better, pardon me.
And so this belief in automatic progress, as you know, which led then to the great surprise of the -- greatest catastrophe of the world, because nobody was prepared for the catastrophe, to have foreseen the necessity that a blind humanity, believing in common sense only, and in no sacrifice, and no victims, and no Christs -- this he could foresee. And for this he is still in Heaven. And he is one of the great powers of today, because he was the first man who said, "You want to live at this juncture, of the 19th century," on the basis of the 4th level only. "You think that democracy, elections, majority principle, happiness for everybody is able to escape destruction, to foresee danger, to have any policy, whatsoever, to steer away from the Niagara of collision and conflict, this is impossible without people who voluntarily anticipate the worst in their own life, in their own body. You cannot escape destruction." Isn't that simply true?
Think of Bill Mitchell. If we have anybody to make sense of the mad history of the army and navy of the United States in the last 30 years, it's this one man, because he didn't go to sleep. You know who had -- me -- I hope -- who he was and what he did. Is that known still? Who does not know who he was? Please be honest. Well, I'm glad. Wie? You -- you do not? You don't?
(I know who he was.)
No, here is { }. Brave man. Well, but I hope you will be informed. Next time. Will you? Hello, will you take care of -- of yourself, Sir? It's not the pursuit of
happiness, but that is the working out of your salvation.
(Should we have a break here?)
Yes, a break.