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

We make most sense to those who have taken 57. Who has done this? Obviously, those of you who have been with me in the same course either in the spring of last year or this fall of the current academic year by now know how difficult it is for people who don't take such an introduction to understand history. I try to lay down the law today and next time, and I want all of you, because so few have taken 57, to write a short report on the two first lectures. Right after the lectures you do this best, so that I can find out what you have understood, and what you have misunderstood, gentlemen. Obviously, you will misunderstand it.

That cannot be helped, because, gentlemen, the -- reason why there is a whole course on 57, preceding this course, is that modern American boys are absolutely immunized against the -- understanding of history. You cannot understand history because you will not understand history. And since you are dogmatic about it, it is one of the -- one -- many dogmas by which you live and which are -- all can be summed up in the wonderful statement of every one of you that you don't wish to be dogmatic. Anybody who says, "I'm not dogmatic, Sir", can be sure he has dogmas. It is one of your prejudices and your -- blindnesses that you say you are not dogmatic. But there is a minimum of dogma necessary to understand anything. Because if you have no -- frame of reference which is safe, then you yourself are the only center for referring everything to yourself, and who are you, yourself? A bundle of nerves. A bundle of illusions. A bundle of fictions. Sham. What is man, the single man? He is -- you are not able to understand anything by yourself without a frame of reference toward which you refer things. Could you understand any movement of the earth without having a frame of reference of the planetary system? So how can you understand history -- the human history if you refer history to yourself? But that's what you think -- that's the consequence because you are not dogmatic. And -- a dogma is a point, a fixed point of fixation, the pole -- or the famous point of Archimedes when he said that, "Give me a -- one fixed point and I can lift the universe out of its angles." You have no fixed point. And therefore, history to you is a book with seven seals.

Now we have opened this book in the other course, of 57, the result is, gentlemen, that what I sum up today is more or less the outcome of this first course. But it will simplify {my lot} if you take down these simple rules -- of thumb which we will lay down now. And you forgive me, then, that I am dogmatic now. I only want to reveal to you your own -- the emancipation from the one dogma you have that you can understand history by not referring it to any fixed point. This is impossible. The second thing I have to apologize for is not so much

for the first two lectures where I have to be dogmatic, but for the other lectures, which is history. And stories have to be told. There is no other way of telling a story but telling it. As I well know, you all despise lecturing. You think that lecturing is a necessary evil. You prefer Esquire. This is much nicer to look at a girl who has nothing to wear. But history is the story of how to take off the clothes. That's much -- can -- has to be told. The secrets, the revelation of history can only be told in words. There is no other way of history. It's not as in chemistry. In chemistry you can go to laboratory and you boil something, and bubbles -- and it explodes, and then you know that this is an explosive. Because your nose is blown off. I can't blow off your nose by history. Obviously, you see. If I can excite you, and convince you, it is only by telling the story. History is in no other way to be conveyed to anybody except by listening to the story. So please understand that of all the topics in a -- college, history cannot be reduced to mathematics, to figures on a blackboard. It cannot be reduced to visualizing by pictures. If you look at a pyramid, that's not the story of the pyramids. We'll talk about the pyramids and you will very soon understand why a picture of the pyramids is the last important thing about the pyramid. Now that's again your dogma, that it isn't so. You have one -- more dogma, as you all know, that lecturing is poorer than looking at things or going to things.

The famous story of the Dartmouth student who came to me after he had been taught what psychoanalysis was and there was nothing in his brain that -- that had to be analyzed, but he had just nothing there. But he had money. And time, obviously. So in January he came to me, a few years ago, and said, "Professor," that was already in the '30s. "I'm off."

I said, "Why? The term is in the midst -- we are in the midst of the term. What are you doing?"

"I'm off for Vienna."

"Why?"

"Well, I have taken a course in psychoanalysis and I must see Freud."

So I said, "The man has a cancer of the face. He won't appreciate your looking at him at all."

He said, "But that's the only way in which I can really understand psychoanalysis."

So he went and looked at the cancer of Mr. -- poor Mr. -- old -- Freud, and thought he had understood psychoanalysis. This is what you think, that by

going to see something -- that's how you travel to Europe, for example. Do you think you see anything? You see something, yes, but certainly not what makes Europe tick. These things -- God cannot be seen, gentlemen. And anything divine, or inspired, or great, cannot be seen. But you would like to see God. And people even in this country are such poor theologians that they do not know that it is blasphemy to try to see things. But the best cannot be seen. It cannot be seen. You can go to Vienna 50 times a year and see all the psychoanalysts there, you see, and you simply don't know what psychoanalysis is for this reason. Quite the contrary, I think. If you see these people, you would get frightened. Perhaps you wouldn't -- and know it was nothing for you.

So, please. This is the second thing, then. Today we will say certain dogmatic things about history. But beginning next week, I am obliged to tell you the story and then, please believe me kindly that there is no roundabout way of -- technique of not giving this in the form of lectures. You are today believing that there is something else than lecturing for everything. This is true, as I said, of the natural sciences. Botany, I can take you to the garden, to the arboretum. And I certainly should like to take you to the zoo, to show you the -- well, our poor relations. But the human history consists of something always that goes against what can be seen.

I today have a -- now I have a friend who is -- just going to marry a very rich girl. I know that they marry despite the fact that she has money. But the world can only see that he marries her because she has money. What do you do? All you see is that she has money and he has no money. It takes some intricate understanding of the whole situation to understand that it was a very difficult resolution on his part to marry her despite the fact that she had money and the world might think that he married her for this reason. And since he is a very honorable man, this was a real stumbling block, because he felt he couldn't lower himself, you see, to this suspicion that people would look down on her, because somebody had married her for her money. You see how complicated life is. We always do the historical things against what can be understood by seeing -- looking at it. That this is a marriage, you see, on a higher plane than for money, cannot be seen. But it can be told. If I would tell you the story of this couple, you would believe me. And so gentlemen, history is -- has to be told, because otherwise it cannot be believed. If you see history, then it is just chaff, just -- the human below -- mortal beings having to eat, and having to work, and having to sweat, and having to produce children, and then die. That's a very simple story out of which you think history consists. But the story is unbelievable if not told. Will you take this down as a formula? History would be unbelievable, unless it is told. This is the reason why it has to be told. Christmas story, the New -- whole New Testament is unbelievable unless told, because what can you see? A dirty, Jewish boy, in a manger, lying in a crib. What's important about

this? Isn't the ass and the ox -- next by -- much more important? They fetch a price. The baby fetches no price. All the children are murdered next day. So certainly the children -- child is completely worthless. Unfortunately, when you hear this story, the whole reality is refuted. It's just the opposite. The child is priceless and the ox and the -- and the ass are not priceless. They can be sold for a very miserable price. But for you, who are people of facts, good American boys, only the ass and the ox are important, not the baby in the -- manger. Unless your mother has been wise enough to tell you the story. But if you read the funnies, you only see the ass and the ox. And that's why you are all so asinine, reading the funnies only. Because in the funnies, the people are reduced to ass and ox. There is nothing told about them that is unbelievable. It's only too believable that the timid soul is a timid soul.

So gentlemen, you have never realized this, why we have to tell stories. Because the story is -- would be unbelievable, unless told. That's why any good story has a -- has such a point to it, you see, that wouldn't have expected it. It has to be told. You have never thought about these things, because you even believe that you can smatter, and talk, and prattle, without effort. Your language to you is nothing miraculous. Gentlemen, that I can talk to you, and that you even can talk back to me, occasionally I hope, is miraculous. It's unbelievable. We'll come to see that man has created in his history the unbelievable fact that people can understand each other, for their motives which are are not to be seen, as ass, and ox, and the price on the commodity in the 5-and-10 store. You are not a 5-and-10 commodity. And I am not. And the people of whom we are going to talk are not. And because we are utterly priceless, you and I, the story has to be told. Because, gentlemen, when we tell a story, we mean to say that anything that is important in this story cannot be seen, not be measured, not be weighed. It has no quantity. Usually we say it has -- what? It has a -- ? Quality. A quality. But that's not good enough, gentlemen. It is an act. An action. Acts, as a play, on the stage, which is the clearest action you can have seen. You have seen Henry V, perhaps now, Henry IV, on the stage, have you? Or Harvey. Even the rabbit on the stage, you see, is unbelievable. That's why he couldn't appear, because a 6-and-a-halffoot rabbit is unbelievable. But you can believe it as a story. In so many words.

Now gentlemen, the whole human history is not quantity, but it is quality. And it is more than quality, because it is quality in the process of being created. So gentlemen, the content of history -- first dogma, which I want you to believe at this moment and not to understand, because it is unbelievable -- is that history is the story of how new qualities are created. It is the inheritance of new qualities, the transmission of new qualities. It is the great story of how, for example, you have become Americans, although 300 years not one of you was American. And now you all believe that American is a native quality. You even speak of native Americans. Isn't that very funny? There was no such American 300 years

ago. And the quality of your two long legs has been created. And the fact that you are the best football players and the best ice cream eaters in the world -- this has been created. Now you take it for granted. But gentlemen, that's a story. How did it come about that there was a nation, and is a nation on the globe that has never existed before? Americans! So, history would have to contain, for example, the story of how the new quality of being an American entered the scene. History is the story of the creation of new qualities.

Who is taking science as a major? Anybody? You know that the inheritance of new qualities is the great bone of contention between Americans -- with the Western world, and the Russians at this moment. Have you heard of this? Well, I think the Russians are right, because the Western people have lost their brain completely in their laboratories. Gentlemen, look at yourself. You all take it for granted that physically you can -- spot an American. Not is -- typical -- is a normal American, but you can spot an American all over the globe. Now how -- that's a physical thing. That's a quality which can be seen. And yet, it has been created. How can any American deny that there is a transmission, an inheritance of an acquired quality? It's just impossible for me to see how these geneticists do not see how funny they are. Here they are all composed of -- of themselves, the compound of something, you see, it's something new. All these American geneticists, they are all down on Mr. Lysenko and all these Russians, who in their desperation, because in Russia everybody is a born Russian, you see, for 2,000 -- 1500 years. These people there had to compensate by knowing that there could be something different from Russians. And we, who are newly created, just in the melting pot, we have the theory that no new quality can be created. It's a very funny contradiction.

Well, we'll go into this at much greater length. At this moment, I just want to shock you out of your sleep, so I say something which will seem to you blasphemous. Because the only blasphemy you can perpetrate in this country today is against natural science, because that's your god. So let me blaspheme and say all the natural scientists of this country are very superstitious because they cannot see the forest before the trees. They have special theory in their little field, and they cannot see that they themselves represent a new race. They do. You look it. I could spot you as an American anywhere in the world, you see.

That's the first thing, then, gentlemen. History tells of the unbelievable event of the creation of new events. Now when -- why is this unbelievable, gentlemen? Well, if you take your mind, your brain, and -- then everything that is here can be logically reduced to some other cause, and nothing new can ever enter the world. It is impossible, gentlemen, by your reason, to prove that something new can happen. The Greeks and the Jews said Christ could not be -- have been born. It's impossible that anything new happens. Everybody said, "People will never

fly," until Orville Wright did fly. Then they all said, "We said it, always. That was very simple." Will you take this down, gentlemen? There is a tradition in human behavior. First, when a new thing happens, they say it cannot happen; it's impossible. The second thing is, something else discovered it; not the Wright brothers. Russians now say they invented flying. And the third is, we knew it all the time. That is, gentlemen, today everybody believes: the Americans, well, that's just one of the many races of the universe. Yesterday they said, "Oh, the Americans -- that's not -- they're not really something new." And before, they said, "There could be no new race." That would be an example. The people at home in Spain said to Christoph Columb, of course, there couldn't be another world, a western way to India, you see. When he discovered it, they said somebody else had discovered it, and took all the honors from him, and put him into chains, as you know, and Amerigo Vespucci got the name, even, in honor for his nondiscovery of America. And we call it America now, instead of Columbia. And then third, the -- everybody settled down and they said, "We knew it all the time." And so you have now the Greenland saga, you see, that the people from Greenland discovered it, you see, and it is a purely Nordic hoax, the whole of America. You can -- cannot be people with dark hair who discovered America and has to be the blond beast. Well, all right.

That's the story of everything new that happens history, gentlemen. There are three parties. The first part -- or the first --three layers -- three periods about historical understanding. The first is: the new thing is not new and is impossible, because nothing new can happen under the sun. The second is: oh, this man doesn't deserve the credit for the newness. There is no heroism; there is no genius. When Christ and His martyrs were just beheaded, there came up the famous sorcerer Simon, in Palestine, and said "We don't need Jesus. We don't need the Apostles. We have noses. We have the same wisdom just on our own." You know, and he jumped from a tower in Rome, trying to prove to the emperor Nero that he could fly. And St. Peter and Paul had to come to his -- so to speak, to show -- expose him, and to show him up and he died a very pitiful death.

Gentlemen, in any moment, a great inventor has his caricature next to him who claims the credit from society that he is the true and only new beginner. Always. That's essential to the human brain, because you people will never, at no moment, even at this moment, you will not believe that something utterly new is happening at this moment in the world, because your logic says it cannot. A and B lead to C. But history tells you that C cannot be reduced to A and B. Christ cannot be reduced to Judaism and Greek philosophy. He is something new. A flight by Orville Wright cannot be reduced either to the flight of the swallow or the flight of a kite. It is something third, you see. It's one thing that has never been combined before with these old systems. That's the combustion motor -- engine. You could have a glider, before, you see. But you couldn't -- and you

could have a kite. But you couldn't have the combination of the Wright { } or the engine, obviously, is the ingenious idea -- heavier than air, you see, but movement.

So this is the difficulty of history, gentlemen. The difficulty of history has nothing do with science. History, that's point 3 of my dogma, is no science, and shall never be a science. Because science tells you how one thing follows out of the other. And history tells you how one thing came into life, which was denied by all the others before, which -- of which all the things that were there said it can never happen. History is the story of the unheard-of things. And science is the story of the deducible things. Now you all look into history as though it was a science. Most books even that appeal to your pocketbook, to your money, try to sell you history under the guise of science. But that's a hoax. They know what the -- poor education you have. You only believe in science, so they think they cannot sell their wares, their historical wares, unless they tell you, "I'm scientific."

Gentlemen, the New Testament is a very truthful story, but it certainly doesn't -- perpetrate the hoax of modern historians, who tell you that history is a science. History is not a science. History is the way of convincing you that all the time new elements of life are created. History is the story of creation. Or it is nothing. If you can reduce Hamlet to nothingness, to all the plays that were written before, then it wouldn't be worthwhile mentioning Hamlet. We mention in history only the things that cannot be reduced, and cannot be deduced and cannot be derived at logically from things already in existence.

Take an -- very simple example, gentlemen. As you know, at the -- in Gettysburg, there was a speaker, Mr. Everest -- Everett, from Harvard, who spoke on the battlefield of Gettysburg for three hours. And he was a very famous orator. He was a senator of the United States. He represented Boston, the hub of the universe. The most educated part of the globe, in their own estimation. And he talked for three hours. And yet as you well know, his speech is forgotten. And it is forgotten because you can analyze his speech into Harvard, into Massachusetts, into oratory, into professors, into any -- all the elements that went into the making of the three-hour speech. And that's all there is to this speech. And once you have analyzed this speech, you could write it yourself and improve on it. And then there was, as you well know, a three-minute speech, the Gettysburg Address, which was thrown into the wastepaper basket after it had been delivered, which not one of you could either think up, or compose, or reduce to logic, rhetorics, or any such thing. And that is something unheard of. And that's why we commemorate the Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln, and we have forgotten the senator of Massachusetts, Mr. Everett. And Mr. Everett had the guts to write to the president of the United States after both had spoken and said he could only hope that his three-hour speech had not failed completely to convey

some of the ideas which Mr. Lincoln had so masterfully expressed in three minutes.

He -- do you begin to understand that history must consist only of the things that cannot be rationally analyzed and deduced? Otherwise there would be no history. If you think of chemistry, then you can deduce, and reduce any element -- any compound to its elements, can you not? And now the elements to electrons. That's science. But if you could reduce the Gettysburg Address to the 272 words out of which it is composed, and 172 of them, as you know, are monosyllabic -- one-syllable words -- then it wouldn't be the Gettysburg Address. If you can prove that The Iliad and The Odyssey are only patchwork, and that the Gospels were written by somebody else 200 years later, as the people have tried desperately in the scientific {age}, as you know, then please don't read the Bible, and don't read The Iliad, either. And if you can prove that Shakespeare is really composed out of the unpaid bills of Mr. Bacon, then don't read Shakespeare. That is, once you can reduce something great in life to something else, it ceases to be a topic of history. Can you please -- will you kindly mind this?

There happened a nice story to Mr. Hutchins, a former president of Chicago, the unfortunate inventor of the Great Book hoax. And a friend of mine went to his course of the -- on the Declaration of Independence, and The Constitution of the United States. It was in the great city of Chicago. And the result was that the chairman and the speakers debunked the Declaration and the Constitution as a purely economic document of the interest of the landed gentry of this country. You see, they were all great landowners, so they wrote a constitution for real estate. You know that's Charles Beard thesis. Some of you -- who has heard of this? That's the famous economic interpretation of American history. Well? My friend, who was innocent, and just liked to hear stories, although she was from Chicago, which is a handicap, went to see Mr. Hutchins in person -- who was a friend of the family -- and said, "Mr. Hutchins, do you think that it is a wise idea to have a Great Book course in which it is proven that it isn't a great book?"

He shrugged his shoulders and said in desperation, "Well, what else can you do?"

That's by and large the attitude of Chicagoans towards the greatness, towards greatness. Reduce it to its money value, to its real estate value. Gentlemen, don't bother. If it has only a real estate value, the Declaration of Independence, don't read it. It ceases to be an element of history. Anything that can be reduced to something else is historically non-existent. Non-existent, you see. It's just something else. So why mention it? All the apes of the French Revolution, all the imitators of -- Shakespeare you can forget, because they can be reduced to somebody else. Somebody else was their model. They imitate it. So please, gen-

tlemen, the -- anything that -- would you take this down? That's an important rule, and I -- again, I want you not to miss it. You read it nowhere else. Every year there is a conspiracy of silence about the place of history in your minds. You come here to this course with the na‹ve idea that history is just one of the sciences. Isn't that true? A social science. It is no science. It cannot be a science. Science has to do with things that can be reduced to something else. History is the knowledge of those events that must be known in themselves. You cannot reduce the discovery of America to anything else but the discovery of America. Or it ceases to be. And oh, if you could prove that the -- that America was not a discovery, then you don't have to know it anymore. Then it enters the limbo of forgetfulness. In history, nothing must be known but the unique, the unexpected, the unheard-of, the surprising, the unbelievable. I'm back to my first knowledge that we tell the his- -- story, because otherwise it cannot be believed, you see. It is against all the calculations that everything great in history happens. You are only interested in history because it is surprising to hear that people conquered against all odds. The odds prove, you see, that the opposite must happen. And the -- man proves that something happens that you did not expect. Otherwise it wouldn't be an historical event.

This is so simple that of course every person who hasn't been ruined by -- college knows this. Every -- simple kind of people. But since most of the people here in this country are now shunted through these terrible channels of liberal arts education, you don't know anymore the most primitive thing: that history is the record of the unexpected. And so you have lost sight of the fact that we live in a very miraculous universe. If I speak of miracles, you say I'm an idiot, because I am not scientific. Gentlemen, you are the idiots, because you think that you have your life by science. You have the -- your life by the great miracle that your parents were able to marry, which is most miraculous, because it is against the whole Kinsey Report.

[laughter]

Well, please -- what does the Kinsey Report prove? It proves that we all suffer from unfulfilled poss- -- oppor- -- possibilities. That we have a hundred times all kind of ridiculous ways of not satisfying our real desire, and now we are invited by Mr. Kinsey to believe that because there are hundred failures, there is no fulfillment. But gentlemen, what do you expect in nature? In the nature of the world, it is only one percent that's success. So the statistics of Kinsey prove the great miracle that once upon a time in every man's life there comes the opportunity for doing right, by getting married. And the more he has gone astray, the stronger it proves the case that it is miraculous to get married, that love is really a wonderful thing. And sex is not. Sex is as plentiful as blackberries. So out of the Kinsey Report there emerges the proof that we all owe our lives to two miracles.

The -- I mean, the more difficult a thing is, the more incredible it is that we all, more or less -- you all, too, gentlemen -- must believe that you can overcome the difficulty. That's the interesting thing about it. Everybody -- do you think that's a new invention of Mr. Kinsey to know that most of our efforts to love are aborted? That is since Adam and Eve the case. That's why we are not in paradise. Of course, the -- all the animals know when it is time to mate. We can mate all the year around, so we never know when it is time to mate.

[laughter]

Well, gentlemen, you may laugh, but please accept it also as true. It makes the thing all the more miraculous. The Kinsey Report proves that marriage is a sacrament, because "sacrament" means a miracle, by the grace of God. And it is all against the Kinsey Report, and that's why every marriage is an unbelievable story. It has to be told. Your parents have to tell you that they actually got married, that everybody gets married in his own way. It's the most original story. Every marriage that is really marriage is wrested from these statistics of the Kinsey Report as a -- miracle, as something absolutely unexpected. Did you ever hear such a story? Just like the story of this man who marries the rich girl, you see, not for her money. Have you ever heard of this? Is it to be believed? Well, I can tell you it is true. You understand? That's the whole content of any interesting story.

So gentlemen, history is the record of the unheard-of, the improbable, the unexpected, the paradoxical -- as they say now in philosophy -- in modern times, the thing that can otherwise not be believed. And therefore it is nothing scientific. It is anti-scientific. If this makes sense. I don't put much value on saying "antiscientific," but that's a loan with science. Long before there is any science, we already have a miraculous story to tell, of our own existence: that two people emerged from the -- quagmire of mere sensuousness, and mere sex, and mere -- well I can't give all the details of our troubles, because the lady's in the room, but everybody knows this, gentlemen. We are in trouble. And your presence on the other hand, proves long before you have the trouble that you have gotten your parents out of trouble, by being their legitimate offspring and making them forget all their trouble, and sacrificing for you all their libertinage and all the Kinsey Report possibility.

Now, the second dogma, gentlemen, {of yours}: history is very short. That again is against the dogma -- I once walked -- had to live in Calgary, Alberta. I don't wish you to -- have to live there. It's a wide reach there -- out in the wide -- in the country. And their wonderful rodeo -- once a year, a stampede. But that doesn't make {up for} the other 360 days. They have a new housing development there and they are built so regularly, these oil-drill houses, that if you stand

{and} look out of the window of your own house, you can look through eight other houses' windows!

[laughter]

So you see, it's perfectly scientific, absolutely scientific, all the eight houses in Calgary -- no story to tell.

But I walked out there in -- I had no money. I had to wait till my money came, so I was in a very peculiar position. I had to walk out to the zoo they have there. And -- that's three miles from town. Was a very hot day in August. And I arrived there and found myself surrounded by tremendous concrete rocks, which you always could read, "600 million years," "900 million years," and then they had a little skull on top of this. Or some bones, and they prove to you that this mammoth, or this ichthyosaurus was 900 million years old or 400 million years old. You know that's the hobby today of the sciences. The scientists have -- don't understand history. So they have invented these big periods. I don't believe in them. I think you will live to see that all these epoch -- periods are reduced to very much smaller numbers. But if even not, I want you to understand that real history cannot be longer with regard to the past as it is with regard to the future. If you want to control historians, most of them being only pseudo-historians and calling themselves scientists today, if you want to control them, check their balance between their future and their past. The modern physicist has the shortest future and the longest past. As you know, they have figured, the astronomers, that the universe is 10 -- 10th power of 10 old. One billion years. But they can't say anything about the next moment. About tomorrow. And I hope, of course, that their own fears come true, they all be blown up by their own blast. Hoisted by their own petard. They deserve it. Because the modern physicist has no future. He has no expectation for the second coming of Christ. Certainly not. He has no hopes that mankind will be unified. The only expectation he has that -- is that his atomic -- hydrogen bomb may go off. So his future consists of one minute and his past consists of 900 million years. And that they call history.

Gentlemen, any man has as much future as he has past. Will you take this down? Any man has as much past as he has future. There's a strict balance for any group as -- with regard to his future and to his past. The genuine life is everlasting. And therefore it is as old in the future as it is new in the past. That again is a hard lesson for you to understand. We are talking of history because it was new once. And we are talking of the future because it will contain -- must contain the same old elements of life. And that's why old and new cannot be an absolute contrast. You have a misnomer, "history," today in all your textbooks, for the simple reason that these people elongate, procrastinate, prolongate the past. But if you ask them why all this trouble? Why do we build all this { }

they say -- because it will -- must -- will be blown up tomorrow. Isn't that a funny {vision}? So that the meaning of all these hundred millions of years consist in the hydrogen bomb. And something more deader or more boring is even the stratospheric literature which now your younger brothers are reading. I hope you don't read this stuff. A completely dead stratosphere in which the people are dead, too, who circle around it. Because what you are -- I mean, not one of the idiots which fill -- are filling the columns of these stratospheric journals are worth to live. They are not my brothers. They are just idiots. Feeble-minded. They have nothing in them that -- why shouldn't I crush them like a flea, if I could, these stratospheric animals that populate the -- these novels and these periodicals? Circling, circling, circling, circling at a constantly higher speed, and somebody then firing a gun. That's the best thing they can think of.

Gentlemen, the emptiness of the imagination of these people about the future is terrifying, because the future probably will look as they make it. I mean, they have the upper hand. They dominate your vision. And so 1984, the famous novel, is just a poor, poor example of what you may expect, the -- of this brave new world. The Russians even have a novel, as you may know, The Bed Bug. Heard the story? They have the new order, the brave new world, I mean, the stratospheric non-entities, and inanities. But there's one peasant, left over of the old czaristic times, whom they have preserved by some mystical -- in some mystical way. But he has also preserved a bed bug, next to him, in his rags. And when he comes to life, he feels so miserable that the only being -- living being in which he can recognize his soul is the bed bug. And so the bed bug becomes his most cherished friend of this poor old peasant. And the two, so to speak, are the remnants of the more imaginative and more cherishable era which the machines have to { }. So he is denied entrance into the mechanical future, because his future has no future. Nobody knows why we should live in this mechanized, stratospheric future. Too boring.

Gentlemen, the true history isn't that -- like that. True history exists only since people assume that life was not eternal recurrence, but the entrance of newness into the world. What you call history, what is taught in our departments of history, fortunately is much better than the theory about history. You learn about the Renaissance, because there had been no renaissance before -- no Raphael, and no Michelangelo. You hear about Dante in the -- in such a course on history. You hear about the Declaration of Independence, that is, we actually doing quite a good job in the facts we mention in history. They are all the unheard-of facts. The new facts, the unimportant facts -- the important facts, the surprising facts. Nobody can really destroy history completely. You always mention in history the important facts. There is now a professor in Harvard who does the opposite, and forces his students to assume that a new era began in 1874, because that was the year in which they first had hard-top streets in New York City. But it is unimpor-

tant, gentlemen. It is not an historical fact that there was blacktop in 1874 in New York City. And it hasn't helped them, because the streets are just as dirty in New York as they were before.

But to make out of the blacktop in New York an historical event, that takes the idiocy of a scientist, who has nothing to do with the living history of the human race. Because the living history of the human race is the story in your own life. Think of your own biography, gentlemen. If you want to study the proportion of past and future in a man's life, in a nation's life, in mankind's life, I -- you just address yourself to your own life. And you will find that your life story is as interesting, with regard to the past as you still have a future, which might be interesting. An uninteresting man who has nothing to expect in the future, always has an -- uninteresting past. Isn't that true?

So the interest in any past history depends on the future. Past history can only be interested -- interesting, only as long as the future is interesting. And therefore, gentlemen, you have -- are blocked towards history, because the future which you expect is so boring, so drab, so uninteresting, that of course you are not interested in the past, because you do not assume that the interesting events of the past will have any bearing on your future. To me it's different. I do think that I have to know everything about the past, because my life is still responsible for taking up the slack, for bringing to life again any one of these miracles of the past again. And if it is among my grandchildren, or my great-grandchildren, I am responsible for life -- rebirth on this earth, and you are too, gentlemen, by the way. And therefore, your future could be interesting, as long as you would appropriate the past, the miraculous events of the past, and say, "The future must consist at least of containing all the miracles of the past, and more to come."

Gentlemen, history -- the future of history is always the revival of the miracles of the past, plus those miracles that are necessary to make this revival possible. Will you take down this mathematical formula, which is mathematical? The future must always consist of two elements: the revival of the miracles of the past, or the perpetuity of the miracles of the past, plus those miracles without which the revival couldn't happen. Take marriage. The miracle of marriage must happen in the future again. People must get married. But since, in our modern times it is much more complicated to get married, because the women want to work out of the home, there are more miracles needed now to make a marriage a success than they were 5,000 years ago. It was easy, so to speak, to get married 5,000 years ago. Today it is more difficult. So we need a few more creative actions to build a society inside of which marriages between people who are in business may be successful. And that will lead to a different society. So the exciting thing is, gentlemen, we need in every minute the return of the old miracles and the addition of new miracles. And that's why history is so breathtaking.

Now gentlemen, you already see that history does not contain the recurrent patterns of life that are prehistorical. But it creates -- it turns to the past in order to find newness. You look into the future for newness. The historian does the opposite. You think tomorrow will be sensational. I say to you the greatest sensations have happened in the past. I also say to you the oldest things must happen in the future. People must get married. So the historian, gentlemen, reverses the natural habit of your mind. You think old things are old, and future things are new. The historian tells you that old things once were new -- can you see this? -- and that most of the future things must be old, to prove that they were miracles worthy of your repetition. Gentlemen, take two examples. Speech is old. {We will} -- I will teach you to understand how speech ever came to exist in humanity. It's a great story, the origin of speech. You will agree with me that you cannot deprive your offspring of this miracle of learning to speak. That's a very old story that your grandson must learn English, isn't it? But you are responsible, sir, that this speech be repeated. You cannot die in good conscience if you have voted for Esperanto, or any of these idiotic things which try to kill language by artificiality, because these people do not understand what speech is, how speech is created, how -- what a miracle it is to speak. You are responsible for this. But most American children are all for the United Nations and for Esperanto. I am against the United Nations and against Esperanto. Because I do not believe that something that has been paid for by 5,000 years of sweat, blood, and tears can just be replaced by some textbook or an artificial language. That's not how you can teach your grandchildren to speak really, by basic English. Just the same as Esperanto. Just as awful.

Now, gentlemen, there you see your balance between future and past. If you do this Copernican turn, which you are asked to do in history, then you suddenly see into the future the worthwhileness of the things past. And you look into the past, the sensational character of the future. What -- when do you appreciate history? When you can read Admiral of the Ocean Sea by Mr. Morrison, that is the discovery of America by Columbus, with such breathtaking tension and attention that you think you can't understand how he ever did it. Isn't that true? That's history. The history takes you back into that moment in which it seemed impossible. Perhaps you can take this down -- this formula again. History takes you back into the past to the moment in which the event seemed yet impossible, in- -- unfeasible, and because it takes you back to this moment, you realize that it was a miracle. Because if the historian cannot give you the feeling that it might have come out otherwise -- America might not have been discovered, or the battle of the -- Gettysburg might have been lost -- if you do not get this feeling, then the historian has not done his part. Because what has he not done, gentlemen? He hasn't freed you from the superstition of distinguishing old and new, past and future. A free man -- animal, a free-living being, gentlemen, is as indifferent to past and future as it should be to left or right. If you have to go through

a right door or through a left door, because you want to go to "Men" -- to the rest room, you go either left or right. Wherever it is; it makes no difference to you. If you are very superstitious, you may say, as you know, you don't go through the left door. You only have to go through right door. There have been people who said they wouldn't go left. All the Republicans think so.

Well, if you compare this, gentlemen, it is just as stupid to say that the past is done and the future is not done, you see, as if you say I can never go through a left door, it has to be a right door. But you all have this superstition before you have heard history. That's why your parents tell you the Christmas story or tell you their own love story so that you may understand that the past is just as real in your own life as anything that could happen tomorrow. So, gentlemen, history does something. It does some kind of levitation. You know what gravity is. Gravity is { } if I throw a text onto the floor, the world must grow old and the older it grows the colder it grows, and so we are all going to be dead. That's not very interesting. History tells you that at one time long ago, the world was doomed. And the next time it was doomed. It was doomed every day. And by a miracle of levitation, of going against gravity, the world has always overcome its own self-destruction. It has been saved time and again. And this is the content of human history, gentlemen. The waves of levitation -- you know what levitation is -- { }. But we all live by levitation that America is today a great nation has been done by levitation. Levitation { } as against gravity. { } Levity, as you know, is light. { } And history is the story of the victory over gravity. That's why it cannot be scientific. Science is the story of gravity, of the effect of gravity. And history is this -- is the knowledge of the effects of levity. That's why it is so cheerful, of levitation. Everybody who gets married is an example of frivolousness. It takes, I mean, against all statistics that anybody nowadays should think that he can get -- be happy, you see. Statistics prove that he can't. But he can. That's the funny story about it. You see, when you read a statistic, never say, "Heavens, 99 percent are dead after a year, only 1 percent survive." Always say, "I am going to be the 1 percent." That's the only way in which you can live.

So gentlemen, we have developed a certain number of rules. What time is it now? Wie?

(2:40.)

Let's have a break here.

[tape interruption]

Next time, of course, I'm going to show you the application of this by the short survey. Today let me add some more points to the fact that history is not a

science. And that it is -- no way in which it can be reduced from not being told. You -- history has to be told, we said. History is the acknowledgment that we stand between two fronts, facing backward and facing forward. The man who thinks that he can look into the past without at the same time having formed an opinion on the future is wrong. History betrays one's own vision and expectation about the future of mankind. Gentlemen, why has the scientist no prospective history tomorrow? Why is he only interested in blowing -- been blown up by Mr. Einstein's and Mr. {Debohr's} and Miss Meitner's invention. By their own -- really hoisted by their own petard. Because, gentlemen, nature has no history. Nature is as it is. A horse is a horse. If you do not cross-breed it, always be just a horse. By cross-breeding you can achieve a mule. That is, gentlemen, the change of the universe is entrusted to man only. All the other parts of the universe follow a lawful pattern. In the universe everything except man can be reduced to something else. We can say of an atom it is nothing but electrons. We can say of a molecule it is nothing but atoms. We can say of an animal is nothing but a quadruped. And you can say of a quadruped it is nothing but a cellular -- multicellular being. You can reduce everything else because it is what it is. Therefore, gentlemen, if you have 900 million years allegedly in the history of nature, and you have the scientist standing here at the beginning of mankind and look into the future, to him, the man himself is just one minute. Mr. Einstein or any mathematician or physicist has no normal relation to history, because he stands at which point of time? At the point of time where man crops up amidst the universe -- the natural universe, for the first time. And so our story is { } -- how many years? Well, you say it's 6,000 years. Well, let's make it 20,000 years. Ten thousand years I suppose it is worthwhile telling the story. These last 10,000 years to them are just one minute. Therefore, if we add the atomic blast, it is just one more second, so to speak, of this minute.

Gentlemen, the scientist has no normal interest in the way gone by -- among humans, because he begins -- his interest begins there where the world is scientific. And the world begins to be scientific back of us, behind us, you see, where { } the lawful order and repetition and can be deduced from ecodynamic, thermodynamic, and other laws. The lawful order of the universe, gentlemen, and history, therefore, fall apart. The lawful, deducible order is to the scientist -- that's the general view -- is here. Therefore, whether we say 20,000 years today or 1,000 year or one day to the scientist is of no interest. However my history, of course, is this way: when five -- first five days of creation had elapsed, the miracles begin. Man begins to speak. He begins to court. He begins to marry. He begins to invent. He begins to populate the earth. Finally he builds railroads. Finally he has airplanes. So the story is the story of man's free acts, unexpected acts. That's the real history. And therefore, this little bit becomes terribly large, because, gentlemen, from the first day in which man began to act on this earth, he had a vision what had to be accomplished. And he undertakes these great acts

on earth in order that the whole way may be done, may be traveled. Gentlemen, the first man is the man who had the same vision of what has to be accomplished, as you and I have. We would { } just { }. There can be no other history but the history of those achievements of the past which form part of the ultimate goal. That is, I told you before, that the past must be looked upon as already -- rungs in the ladder towards the goal. Otherwise it wouldn't interest you. Why should we know of anything of the past which we no longer need? But as you know, if you would climb a ladder and you would cut out some of the rungs of the ladder below, it's a very dangerous performance. Finally the ladder would just not carry you anymore into the future. So your future depends on your recognition that any rung which you have to climb from now to tomorrow has just the character of {those} rungs on which your ancestors climbed up first. And you cannot saw off these lower rungs. They are part of the future. Gentlemen, history is that part of the past which is still future. Which other- -- without which the -- your own aims and goals would make no sense. The discovery of America obviously is the condition under which it only makes sense that you can perhaps travel to Mars tomorrow. If the -- earth isn't at least one, you couldn't possibly figure out the idea to fly on Mars.

Therefore, gentlemen, if you cannot imagine that anybody should ever forget that the earth is one, you must assume that every child born from now on is able to understand that the earth is one, although it rotates. And although you have -- you cannot see the whole earth in one -- with {one's eyes}, you and -- although there is summer in Argentina, while we have winter here, all these strange contradictions do not alter the fact that there is one earth. This was discovered one day. The history of this, which is now indispensable for our further action is history. History only contains those elements, gentlemen, which must be considered the rungs of the -- our own ladder into our own future. So we appropriate somebody else's act in the past, as soon as we recognize that our future is at stake. And it's only because of your and my future that we are interested in these dead kings, and dead pyramids, and dead graves, et cetera, you see. Not for their sake. What do we care? If -- as far as they were only interested in their own belly, let them be dead. But inasfar as these people did something which we would have had to do, unless they did it, they are we, in a former chapter. Can you see this? Gentlemen, the past is only interesting as a condition of the future, but not as a condition of the present. This you always read in these boring textbooks which treat history as science, that you have to understand the past, because otherwise, you can't understand the present. Gentlemen, may I make one, bold statement? Nobody understands this state, the present. Nobody. That's why it is so interesting. Do you think Mr. Dulles and Mr. Molotov understand the present? Obviously not. They are in a fog. But if Mr. Dulles or Mr. Molotov would know the counsels of our creator with the destiny of men, they might find a solution for the present-day troubles. But since both aren't too sure about that,

they cannot.

Any man of faith in the future can find a solution for the present. I told you, gentlemen, man is that strange monkey who can look backward and forward in time. And no monkey can do this, because no monkey can hope that all the other generations of monkeys will collaborate with him in the ladder into the future. The monkey cannot do it. One monkey, that's all there is to this monkey. History is not a monkey {business}. Will you take this down? It's {worth} { }, because you believe that it is just the story of monkeys. That's how modern history is written, unfortunately, by this debunking business. It's the story of economic interests in America, the Declaration of Independence. It is not, gentlemen. History is -- are those elements which enter the time, despite the self-interest of man. Despite the self-interest of man. Whenever man has done something which was not in his self-interest, it belongs to history. When mar- -- when Lincoln was martyred, Stanton said, "Now he belongs to the ages." What does this mean? Something very simple, you see. That his physical existence of breathing, of eating, of shitting, of spitting, of vomiting, of Mr. Lincoln he had a very -- he always had obstipation, you know. He had a very poor constitution. He was a very ungainly looking creature. You wouldn't have liked him. At all, I can tell you, physically. He was a very, very -- he had great handicaps. And probably they wouldn't have accepted him in Dartmouth because he couldn't fulfill the rec requirements.

That's a serious story, gentlemen. When Woodrow Wilson came to this college in 1909 to inaugurate a new president, he said, "While I'm looking around here in Webster Hall, I'm asking myself whether such a college could produce a person like Abraham Lincoln. And I'm compelled to say that it cannot." That's your indictment, gentlemen. That is very serious. Abraham Lincoln had a natural relation to history. He read Shakespeare and the Bible. He wasn't a member of any church. He had never gone to college. But since you -- the way you read Shakespeare, that incapacitates you and the Bible, too, ever to become a man as great as Abraham Lincoln. Because you do not read the Bible and the -- and Shakespeare with the feeling that you have to continue what they have done. You don't. You don't read it as miracles. You read it because it is still required. And anything that required reading is dead. And isn't worth being read. Obviously. So I'm sorry for you, because the greatest things in the world, gentlemen, which should make you -- tremble, are required reading in life. And therefore you are in great danger that you miss the best. That's why I cannot bring myself to give any assignments in reading in -- of great books to you. Because it would ruin forever you relation to these great books. Isn't that true? Classroom reading is doomed reading, is worthless reading. If you cannot read this against my will, in secrecy, and pay a high price of -- of the risks, that when you are discovered, you are flunked, you are severed from college, then it is not worth reading. Read

forbidden literature, you see. Read all the Bible as forbidden literature. That will help. But as long as it is prescribed reading, you see, it's worthless, because it is not miraculous. So you -- that's why Woodrow Wilson came to the conclusion that colleges breed mediocrities, but they do not breed Abraham Lincoln. So I -- why do I -- did I say this, gentlemen. Stanton said of this man, "Now he belongs to the ages." He said that Lincoln would live for what he had not done in selfinterest, but for the union, and for the human race. Very simple, gentlemen. That belongs to history which a generation hasn't done for themselves. Anything that people have -- do for themselves is unhistorical, is social. Psychological. Usually psychoanalytical. That's so very interesting, you see. It's the wastepaper basket, your anal- -- what you carry to your analyst. It's worthless. Do it. I mean, wastepaper baskets are quite good, but you have to burn what's in it. And I -- it is to be hoped that something on the best remains important, although the rest goes in the wastepaper basket. In history only that counts which is not thrown into the wastepaper basket.

And therefore, gentlemen, the wastepaper basket is any one man's own time. That's our wastepaper basket. Anything that is going down, in your own time, that perishes with your time is not historical. All the millions, the father-in-law of Mr. Winston Churchill, the grandfather of Winston Churchill did -- lose all the millions. They are just down the sink. You know he was married to a Jerome, his mother was a Jerome of New York. And she had a very terrible father, one of the types of the upper 400, speculator on the stock exchange, and eight horses one day and no horse the next day. And who speaks of him? And even Mrs. Jerome, Miss Jerome, the mother of Winston Churchill, betrayed her Wallis Simpson character when she married after the death of her great, first husband, Randolph Churchill, a much younger man, and has never been mentioned again. She's out of history, because of { }. She was a very good wife of this very great invalid, Randolph Churchill, who was a brilliant leader of the House of Commons, decades ago, and the father of Winston Churchill. When this man died, she was fed up with history, and with importance, and with society. You can't blame her. And she married for love a journalist who was 14 years younger than she. And she was never heard of again, which is correct. She said, "I have now served enough." Randolph Churchill was very sick for years, and so she got her private happiness. But she's out of history. Whereas as the wife and -- of Randolph Churchill and the mother of Winston Churchill, she survives in history. She's important. As the fact -- the great link between this country and England, and the fact is that Winston Churchill is as much an American as he is an Englishmen.

And that's -- is historically important, because it is a step beyond one's own generation. It connects two generations, you see. It gives Winston Churchill a position his father couldn't hold in the world, because he was just --

Gentlemen, anything that is more than one generation is interesting to history. Anything that is limited to one generation is a freak. History is concerned with powers that can face backward and forward, and these powers must be at least of three generations' duration. Nothing is interesting, not even Joe DiMaggio, as far as it goes only in his own generation. All you think -- people think the sensational is not historical, it is just play. All the sports records, for example. It is of no historical importance who won, the Giants, or the Dodgers, or the Tigers. You can dodge that issue. It's not a gigantic issue at all. It is an attempt to escape from history, the sports are. And as long as you are such sports fans, you are quite immune against history. That's why history is made on your back. I mean, the American people are the people, including the president, with whom history just plays football. You play football, history plays football with you. Two wars, world wars, not meant by the {nation}. Isn't that a funny story of a nation that never intended anything that's happening to it? We said we were not interested in Korea. And next day, we defended it. And we were not, you see, the -- {Wilson} was the man who kept us out of war, and next day he was in the war. And Roosevelt on September third, said they would be no blackout of peace in this country and I have told you { } in the Second World War, sometimes. You have forgotten it again.

Anything in this country that happens with regard to history is against the American grain, because you do not wish to belong to the ages, like Abraham Lincoln. You want to go to a college. And colleges are anti-historical institutions. That's the final handicap, gentlemen. This college invited a man, a lawyer, to speak on the future of the liberal arts college in 1943, and I was present. It was in Dartmouth 105, just below, down below here. And he was asked to tell us what the college should do with regard to the world war. And Mr. Roscoe Pound, of Harvard University, stood up there and said, "Oh, you know, wars come and go. And the colleges are there forever. So forget about the world war, and do nothing about it." That was his recommendation. And that -- as long as such a state of affairs prevails in your education, gentlemen, you cannot wonder that you have no understanding of history. History is, of course, the sum of those events which change your education, you see, which make it necessary that the liberal arts college changes its methods, for example, of teaching history, among other things. And so what can you do with a college in which it is the great pride of the alumni that the Nugget must be rebuilt on the same space? You know there was a great debate when it burned down, that the sentimental alumni said, "Well, you cannot go to another place. I mean, we have to come back with our -- in our drunken state and find it there again."

This dreamlike existence of the college, you see, is what many people think is the essence of a liberal -- on education. Gentlemen, history are those events which remould human education. The sum of all the events of history could be

said to be those events after which a child cannot grow up in the same way as it grew up before. Wouldn't you agree? Think of your own children. Obviously the things you would have to understand and know were -- would be those events in history which made it necessary and indispensable that your child must go to school, or should go to kindergarten, you see, or should serve in the United States Army, or should not serve in the United States Army. If you are the history of the Mennonite sect, you would insist that your child not go to the -- you see, to the Army. And if you are -- then decline to belong to a church, you will be swallowed up by the state. And he'll say since you are -- have no religious convictions, I put my convictions of my, you see, ultimate finality in this place, and your child -- son has to be {killed then} for it. Very simple. The state always makes up for your -- the gaps in your own spiritual armor.

But anyway, gentlemen, history is the sum of the events which make it necessary for a child to grow up differently than before. Other events we will not mention. They are not historical. Because Lincoln now belongs to the ages, your children have to learn the Gettysburg Address. Isn't that true? If he had only lived in his own time, like professor Everetts, the senator, you see, your children could grow up without ever hearing of the Gettysburg Address. Isn't that true? So nothing would be changed by -- by Lincoln's life or existence in your child's education. So we call history those events which have made it necessary -- a different way of approach of any man born afterward.

Is my time up? What time is it?

(2:30)

Yes. I'm sorry. We have missed a hanging. You have to run.