Transcript

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I hope that by now it is agreed that history is a dangerous article of faith, because it has to be told. Nobody can understand history who hasn't either listened to it, or is willing to tell the story. All history, then, gentlemen, is between speakers and listeners. It is not between professors and students. It is not between a chemist and his assistant. It is not across the counter between a salesman and his customer. I can't sell you history. History is not for sale. The greatest thinker of the 19th century, Frederick Nietzsche, has said that history must always remain an article of faith. That's why the poor man is called an atheist. Atheist. Nietzsche you always hear under this slogan, "atheist," by the poor benighted great Christians of our days, because they don't understand that they had lost faith in history, and so somebody else has to -- had to represent it, so that the belief in God could be restored. Because gentlemen, history in little bits makes God a liar. Will you take down this phrase? History in little bits makes God a liar. There can be no God, if there are 23 civilizations. Or at least if we do not discover what is the meaning of the 23 civilizations as one. Obviously there can -- and no -- can be no god in government of the world. There can be no meaning in the creation of the world and in its preservation and in its redemption if there is not one history. The pluralism of history is the greatest atheistic enterprise of our age. And that's why in this moment America is much more atheistic than Russia. Because Russia, although it officially denies a belief in some three letters -- G-o-d, which after all is a word -- they believe in the power of God in history. And you don't. You believe that you can just do as you please. And you are all atheists. But whether you go to church 20 times on Sunday makes absolutely no difference. Do you think that God can be worshiped by lip service? It cannot. This is an atheistic country, with the help of all the liberal arts colleges of the land, and with all the departments of history that are broken up into geography. Gentlemen, history and geography are opposites. History deals with our patching together all the times of men. And geography patches together all the spaces of men. But what you see around in this country today is geography, not history. It's all geography. They talk of Russia. They talk of America. And they believe that when a man is born in Russia or in America, he is an American and he is a Russian. Don't they? You do. You believe it, too. Which is utterly ridiculous. Everybody who is a human being is it, despite his environment. That is, we are in history, gentlemen, although we poor creatures are licked by always getting stuck in the mud of space. Any decent man is a legend, as Abraham Lincoln was a legend in Siberia. That's why he is a great man. If only the people in Springfield, Illinois, would think that Abraham Lincoln was a great man, he couldn't be one. That would be local, you see, a parochial, a local approach. And that wouldn't make him great, in any case. It's impossible.

Gentlemen, history deals with the fact that it always -- the times always break into tidbits. And that therefore, when you think of the times, of the Dark Ages, and of the Middle Ages, and of the ancient ages, and of the future, as being after all something you have nothing to do with, then you make God a liar. And you certainly declare that there is no God. History in little -- in little bits makes God a liar. It's a very good sentence. Anybody gets 10 dollars who proves to me who has said it. I would like to know it. I had written it down, you see, but I forgot to add the author. I would be very proud if I was the author. But I'll have to tell you frankly this sentence is a quotation. And if perhaps you can help me in Baker Library, it must be somewhere. So begin to read tomorrow.

So the unity of history is our problem. Either there is one story, or there is no story that deserves to be told. Now, we take with us, gentlemen, however, this great experience. The atheist -- the atheist knows all about space. Mr. Einstein knows all about three dimensions, and therefore, because he knows that so well, he declares of time, of all things, that it is a fourth dimension of space, which is the most stupid utterance any human being has ever made. Physicists are allowed to be stupid about time. Because, you see, what is completely extrapolated in the statement of Mr. Einstein, that fourth -- time is his fourth dimension, that's the lifetime of Mr. Einstein himself. That's the lifetime of Mr. Newton. Where they are -- they in this fourth dimension, they don't exist. However, the progress from Mr. Newton to Mr. Einstein is what we call historical time, don't we? Now this is -- that isn't in the -- in this whole concept. It's just omitted. And that after Mr. Einstein, people will rise to criticize Mr. Einstein, which also Mr. Einstein expects. Otherwise he wouldn't be a good physicist and a scientist if he wouldn't expect progress.

So, gentlemen, this is the dead time of the space-man, of your spaceships, which horrifies me so much, because the modern spaceship business is the expression of American atheism. But your youngsters, your younger brothers, have this stupidity in their heads. It's a terrible indictment of their complete lack of any human soul. I just was at the Hanover Inn eating, and there were five mothers, and one brat of 5 years, a boy. Or six years. And they asked him where he would be seated. That's the stratosphere, mind. Here this -- this child was not allowed to obey orders. You can only be in history if you have orders to fulfill before you give commands. But you leave this brat in space, standing there. He stood actually three minutes, because all these four -- five ladies bowed to this stupid ass of a child and asked him, "Where do you want to sit?" Now this boy has no direction. He has no orientation. And you demand from him that he should know where he is to be seated. That's the modern American brain in space. No direction. And that's ed- -- you call education. It's criminal. All these five ch- -- mothers should be sent to a reformatory school. That's where they belong, because they denaturalize the human soul. The human soul wants to fit

into -- to be threaded into a sequence, and where the older people sit, there the young sit -- the child wants to be by. And you have reversed the order, because you think everybody's just sitting on his fannies or standing on his feet. Do you think that in space you know where to go? Do you know in space on the campus I can turn you around and 20 times you wouldn't find your {own way} to Carpenter 13. But somebody told you. That's why you're here. Isn't that true? You believed him. You hadn't heard anything of me, except that you should go here. You had -- you didn't know it yourself.

All important things, gentlemen, in life one knows because one is told. And you deny -- modern education denies the American child the privilege of being told. And therefore time, you see, for all these poor children which in this benighted and darkest of all ages -- man has never dared to do this. This is the first age in which man is left alone in space. That's why you have all the breakdowns. All the solitude. Everybody needs a psychoanalyst to be allowed to lie down on a couch, instead of running in circles. The couch is only the symbol, you see, that he finally has -- can stop running in circles, because he has no direction. The couch, you see, is so wonderful, because at least I can stand here because you kindly listen to me. But a man who has no direction -- he's so panicky, he has to lie flat on the ground. That's the couch of the psychoanalyst. It shows that the man has lost all direction. And therefore, gentlemen, my course here just is an attempt to rescue one or the other in -- among you -- I can only rescue a few -- from this terrible lack of direction, because man has only direction through time. There is no direction in space. You don't know in which direction in space to turn if you don't know what comes next in your life. Do you go -- whether you should go from here to Pittsburg? Or to Europe? That's in space, isn't it? But the command comes, because somebody more mature than you, something that's waiting for -- to be done, tells you you have to go wherever it is. Wherever it is. Where God tells you.

Now look here what you have done to space, gentlemen. This the people in psychology call the past. This they call the present. And this they call the future. And then they tell you that you are here, and that somebody else was there, and that this is in the future. That's the fourth dimension of space, this {time}. Gentlemen, this is how you live, here. That is, here is your present. Here is the future. And here is the past. And you are held in the palm of this hand of time, this cup of time, this beautiful unity, which we call one class lecture. And from 1:25 to 2:45, we have a present. We have a -- this hour, gentlemen. And you know what the essence of presence is, which natural science doesn't know? This presence, of which I am going to build our whole story of mankind, means that we are free. In the real present, man is free, that -- I can prove this to you, gentlemen. I came in. I'm now ranting. I'm now shouting. I'm now saying something to -- down -- as long as you kindly lend me your ears, I can retract. I can confute. I can say it

all was a joke. Until you leave this room, and until we stop this entertainment here, this interim, this interlude, the times are exchangeable. The present is -- those in 57 know it -- must know now -- by now what I mean. Who was in 57? {Collins}. That the past and the future, you see, change -- exchange roles. That it is, at this moment possible to say something at 2:45, and you reorganize your thought and said, "I -- now I understand what he meant when he came in at 2:25." You've never thought of that, gentlemen. But I have to prove to you that this is possible within one hour and-a-half. Now Christianity, gentlemen, is the proclamation that all the wrong alleys, all the dead avenues, all the dead-end streets of the past can be turned into assets, into human freedom, that the present, you see, is so much bigger that there is a -- what they call the remission of sins, that is freedom. We are really free to mend everything. The slums of our cities. The bad races, that -- because they are bad races, you see, not just the illiteracy, but really the physical neglect of the Hindu race because they marry their child- -- their womenfolks too -- too early, you see. So that they are decadent. It can be healed. The healing of the nations the -- consists in the creating of present in which anything that has happened before can be reversed. Former -- generations called this conversion. We call it "reversion," perhaps, you see, because you don't know anymore what conversion means. It means that something that already has happened ceases to have happened. Would you take this down? That which has happened ceases to have happened in the same sense. It changes direction. It -- suddenly becomes meaning -- positive meaning, when it looked as though it had a negative, you see, construction to be put on it. The whole history, gentlemen, of the human race is constantly the turning of liabilities into assets. Of minus into plus. Or of dead-end streets into open avenues, into triumphant gateways. And that's why the ancient times, which -- which did -- wasn't -- were not conscious of this -- of this deep secret of life, that the end had to be turned into a beginning -- why it ended with the crucifixion, why -- with a death, which was turned into a triumph. The end became the beginning. That's why we, in the middle of time, gentlemen, have a new era. The new era in which we live means nothing. It's a very unimportant event there in Palestine {on the way}. Some one man was crucified. What do we care in the time of concentration camps, and mass slaughter, and Korea, and naphtha bombs? Look so stymied. Well, gentlemen, the very tiny event which makes for a new era is just this: that ever since people are free to know that there's freedom, that anything that the human race has befallen before can be turned into an asset from a liability; whether it's a Greek tragedy which today we play in the form of Henry V, you see, or of Hamlet, or of the old Greek tragedy even, you see, it's all back.

Now, gentlemen, this is then the present, gentlemen. Any man has as much history, you remember, as he has future and past. They're must balance -- balance. Nobody has a past who has no future. Nobody has a future who has no past. Self-made men have neither past nor future, and that's why they are so

boring. And always lose their money, as you know, in the next generation. You always get the Gloria Vanderbilts and the Barbara Huttons, and the -- these other nice gentlemen, because from shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves is just three generations. You see, they are out of history. Who cares whether there is a man rich for a while, except we care, because he built Carpenter and Baker. But I mean, we got the money. He's dead. Because we can go on forever, with the help of the alumni fund.

Present, gentlemen, is a very difficult thing, because we people die. And so history is concerned with creating enough space of -- between past and future. History is the creation of an interval between mere past and mere future, in the automatic sense of this kind of time.

Now, in order to fulfill my promise then, to really deal with meaningful history, with a story that waits to be told, because otherwise it cannot be continued, remember that was the connection -- you have to tell the story of the unbelievabilities -- I want to {state} at what moment of time we are at today. What's the future of the human race? I must tell you that there is still a future, because as I said, the people of the atom bomb don't believe this. What is possible, still ahead of us? The earth is known. The wickedness of man is known. The steam engine is known. You have even television, so you think that everything is known. Well, I think it is true that we may say that we had -- ho -- we palled, we pause at this moment between the second and third millenium of our era. The year 1944 is only a few decades away from 2000, and you may just as well say that a whole millenium at this moment draws to a close. Forty years really makes no difference, you see. And what is this? It is concerned, this whole last millenium, with the discovery of America, for example. That is, with things in space.

Now things in space are things which can be made visible. So gentlemen, man in the last thousand years has discovered the visible world. You don't have to take my word for it. That's what the natural scientists tell you. They have discovered the whole visible world, have they not? They have microscopes. We have telescopes. We'll get bigger microscopes. And we'll get more refined microscopes, and so we'll see better and better. So the visible world is more or less discovered. And well, you can say, gentlemen, put it this way: that past which at this moment is what you call your present, and what is made the present of these poor stratosphere kids, you see, who have to know where they should be seated on a table of grownup people by themselves, just out of their own scientific organization, I suppose -- these poor people at this moment prolong the last thousand years, which we will, by and large, date to the year 1000. I have some reason for it. Iceland became Christian in the year 999. And that's the last country in the West that, you see, became Christian and, so to speak, began to march in line with the others. So there is some reason to say that really it -- it doesn't

matter, in the year 1000 -- the world turned in to the discovery of space. Because as you know, these Icelandic people had -- began to discover Greenland and on it went from there. And the Normans then went all around the world, and even discovered England. And otherwise there would be no America. So we have to be grateful to these people who landed in 1066 and all that, in Hastings, you see, and began to unify the visible world. They really did it. I have great respect for this. Has anybody read -- who's the great Frenchman, the great last poet of France? He's diplomat, { } "{Le Bois de Soit de Sauterne}". Don't you know the --? Just -- this moment, slipped my-- the name's slipped. It will come back to me. Well, he showed the -- the de- -- conquest of the Spaniards of the 16th century, in this famous drama. It's like a Faust.

(Candide?)

Wie?

(Candide?)

Claudette. Claudel. Claudel. I {got the second}. But it helps, you see. Every little bit helps. Only to show you that man -- poetry, too, is concerned with the discovery of the visible things. Goethe's Faust is, you see. The -- of course, Shakespeare is. Just the prologue of Henry V shows you. And all the Elizabethans are, Raleigh and Drake and all these people, you see, discovery of the world. Please?

(What was man doing before he began to discover space after he --)

Oh, we'll see that. Just a minute! Just give me time, will you? That's, of course, what I try to be- -- or begin, just to set out to, but I just have to take you and to make the last thousand years very small. And the small -- last thousand years are just preoccupied with one big item: space. And that's all I have said this, so far. Obviously this calls for supplement, you see, implementation. You're quite right.

Now, I suggest, gentlemen, that anything that happened since 1900 which is important, and fruitful, and forward-looking, has nothing to do with space, but with time. Space is only at this moment anybody who becomes a physicist is on the conservative, the reactionary side. That's reactionary to be a physicist today. I hope some of you -- discover this in time, and although they could be good physicists, prefer to do something. Because gentlemen, the best people never do what they are fitted for, but what has to be done. If you shall wait, you see, in history, for the people who -- who are fitted for something, you'll never get the people who are fitted for, because they always have first to be created by the people who hear a command. But this has to be done, even though we don't know it, yet -- how to do it. The type of the next thousand years, gentlemen, the

human being, hasn't been yet created. It's in process. And I know a little bit about these things, you can assure me, because at least for 50 years, I have tried to live out of space into the new topic of history that is time. Time, gentlemen. Today, everything that has to do with something fruitful or with the future has to do with the problem of times.

Give you a little example, gentlemen. How long you in your life should stay on in one -- at one desk, in one office, in one business. Because I suppose you wouldn't be at the lathe, or at a machine so much. You will all be seated somewhere at a desk. Now the most important question of future technology is: when does the soul of man get killed by working at the same desk? The question whether you can stand the same environment three years or five years, or just one week is one of the most vital questions in your own life and in your married life. Because the happiness of your marriage, with -- and your vitality with regard to your own wife will depend on your courage to give notice at the right moment to the boss and say, "Sorry," you see, "I'm no huckster." Who knows The Hucksters? Oh, you all should read this book. Who wrote it?

(Frederick Wakeman.)

Wie?

(Frederick Wakeman. Wakeman.)

How do you spell this man?

(W-a-k-e-m-a-n)

Now, gentlemen, may I recommend this book very highly, because that's the problem of your own life. Wakeman. The Hucksters. I mean it. Because there in a nutshell you have the problem of timing. This man had to know when he had enough. You remember? And it was all very promising. He made a lot of money. He could get very rich. But that wasn't important, because he had to -- you have to live your 70 years, and if you are a moral wreck at 45, the $100,000 you make a year has absolutely no importance. It all goes into the sink of -- either the analyst, or the divorce, or gambling, or something. Usually into all three.

Timing. When to marry. That's the secret today. Most people marry out of season. { }. When to work. When to pause. The whole problem of the peace in Europe is a question of timing. President Roosevelt knew this -- he was a very great man. Not in his dealings with the world so much, but in his deep feeling of the pulse of time. He said in 1943, as I recall, or maybe '42, "This time the peace must under no circumstances concluded right away after the fighting is over."

The great crime of the Treaty of Versailles was the attempt to have a peace when, as the great American poet has put it, in our veins, the storm is running still. When in our veins the storm is running still. Do you know who wrote this? John J. Chapman. John J. Chapman, who lost a son in the Lafayette squadron. And he wrote a number of poems in memory of his son. And of course, you see, in this war it was the same. This country began to hate and to be wild and furious in Christmas 1944. You are too young to know this. The American people never took the whole thing seriously before. At the moment of ultimate triumph the Germans turned around once more and beat them for three days in Bastogne. And that they resented very much. You never know the psychological point, you know, at which the famous straw breaks the camel's neck.

Now, America went to war in a nasty way, as something serious. And not with this kind of overflow, "Oh we'll do that, too," you see. In the -- December of '44, perhaps you take this down gentlemen, because it shows you that we missed everything in this last war, because we had absolutely no sense of timing. In the First World War, the United States tried to make the peace too early. In the Second World War, they entered the war too late. Too early and delayed is the ban of the animal out of history. This country is still like a colt. It has just, you see. In playtime, gentlemen, there is no serious timing. It doesn't matter when you do one thing or the other. In serious life, everything matters on the hour. There is -- how is the famous saying? -- There is a tide in the --

({-- affairs of men.})

That's what it is. That's what the ancients called astro- -- meant when they said that the stars set their course and we have to follow them. Gentlemen, astrology, when it was discovered wasn't as stupid as it is today. It was the recognition, you see, that there is only a once in every decision. And that if you are too late and too early, you are just as dead as Spain is at this moment, or Bulgaria. That is, they have been. They're dead. Corpses. They stink.

Gentlemen, the spirit of life is offered every group and every individual. But once he has passed it by, it never comes back. Never comes back, because the spirit against the Holy Spirit cannot be forgiven. Because it is just destroyed, the very minute you go -- let it pass by. That's the famous word in the New Testament which few people do understand. It just means, gentlemen, that if you at the right moment haven't turned down the bribe, you cannot become commissioner of pol- -- the police of New York. But there is, as you know, a fam- -- a man, I think it was Mr. O'Brien, who -- who was it? -- who was famous because at the right moment, he turned down one bribe. And that was enough. I don't know if he turned down all the other bribes.

That, gentlemen, makes life so interesting. You have your routines. You go in the morning at 8 o'clock and kiss your wife good-bye, and then you have -- you had breakfast, and orange juice and eggs. And what can happen? You have all the vitamins for the day. But you have no idea that perhaps at the next corner there is an accident which involve -- will involve you into lifelong trouble, because you become partner to this accident, you see. And the way you behave then, if you are a hit-and-miss, you see, a hit-and-run driver, you see, may ruin your whole family for the rest of your lives, because you are not prepared to acknowledge that this accident which happens at the next corner has any relevance to your routines, you see. And so you are overruled by the accident, hitand-run, and there comes the police, and everything is taken away from you and your family is made miserable and you go to jail, because you could not face the call of this moment, you see. You had other, more important things to do. You have, of course, rationalized it inside yourself. You have told yourself that you had to go -- be in the office, otherwise they might fire you. Gentlemen, the greatness of modern man is that he must risk being fired if he has an accident, you see. For example. Now gentlemen, the accident doesn't have to consist in something of this type, superficial type. It can be much more serious. It can mean that because your wife is weeping, you have to stay home, although you have to go to the office. You never know. Perhaps she is weeping just from jealousies. Then don't stay home. That's not a good reason. But they have -- may have a very serious reason, because she may have cause to be jealous. This I didn't, you see, assume.

So, gentlemen, we today are just in the same boat as the great nations. Most people are beyond their capacity of entering history when you look at their lives. I unfortunately know many Dartmouth graduates who died, for all practical purposes, at the ripe age of 27. They all were -- are all great objects, of course, for the Metropolitan Life Insurance. But otherwise they are no longer interesting. They are counted out. Nations are counted out. Cities are counted out, you see. States are counted out. Because they do not -- they do not heed the time. You know this in small ways. You know that New England at this moment is counted out in the woolen industry because the unions here can't understand that they must do something to keep -- stay in business. Everybody knows such a thing. That's too small perhaps to strike home with you. But in some such way, every one of you gentlemen can miss the decisive hour, and you take down one sentence, gentlemen. The historical moment never returns. Never.

That's why I'm so pessimistic in -- in -- at this moment with our diplomacy. The -- Mr. Molotov five years ago said to the great powers that he would not undergo the same treatment as they gave him five years ago. You have -- don't know all these things. And he was full of spite and vengeance and vindictiveness at that time in London. And his last remarks were really appalling. So we went

down on our knees for the last two years and asked him for a conference. And now he -- he gets his satisfaction, his vengeance, his vindication because he can wait -- could wait. And we could not. The timing is also a question of waiting. And we have made the greatest fools of ourselves. I have wondered why the French, the English, and the American {insist} that Mr. Molotov should have a day of triumph in court -- his day in court. We all were quite { } understood the situation and they are placing all the traps and all the aces. And they had even told us beforehand. You can read it in the final speech of the London Conference in 18- 19- -- you know this last conference at which they -- was it Paris or London? I'm not too -- absolutely sure at this moment -- where he said, "Gentlemen, the next time, we'll meet on my terms." So Mr. {Bedau} is meeting him on his terms. Very fascinating. The man who has time, and the man who has no time -- always hops in -- into the next airplane as we do.

You see, we have no time. Mr. Hoo- -- Edgar Hoover in April 1946, according to the newspapers, was going to Japan to reform the Japanese police. Very interesting. He's a good man, obviously, in his field, and you know how long it took him? To reform the Japanese police? Thirty days. Thirty days, because there was an airplane. Gone now are the times of camels. They gave you the right sense of time. Nobody could reform a foreign country its police force in 30 days at that time. So it could be reformed. Now it's all done, and nothing ever happens. It's a joke. So all the occupation of Europe, you see. All over in a hurry. Oh, that's all over. So all the good things we did, you see, and they were very good, they are all done in such a hurry. The mothers said, "The boys had to go home." We demobilized, as you know. We sold, we burned, we stole all the war equipment in Europe and in Asia, because -- why not? It has to be demobilized. Why, nobody knows. Nobody knows why this is necessary, gentlemen, that now we are bothered with having no army, because we didn't have -- not -- keep the army in 1946. Can I under- -- do you -- will you tell me? You see, because this is democracy. I can tell you why. Because it is a forgetful humanity which does decline to move in time, but only in space. So when they move from Europe to America back, that's space. Then they saw something else. They saw Main Street and the movies, and so they no longer lived in time. And that's why America is today the most backward country in the world with regard to history. It is. I assure you. Nowhere do we have the initiative. Whether it is Egypt or Argentina with Mr. Peron, we are all -- all cornered. They laugh at us, because we are in such a hurry. We have no time, for nothing. We have the next election coming. As though this was -- isn't -- aren't the elections subordinate to the future of America? No. You subordinate the future of America to the elections. And it is even said in this country! Openly. Frankly. That everything is done for the next elections. Do you think a great country of 160 million people can rule in this manner? It's impossible. So we get some {of course} we get some McCarthyism, some cold dictatorship, because somebody has to rule this country in the long

run. It's all a joke. No time. No relation to time. But if you say Nevada, Nebraska, then it makes the heart beat higher. If you have read the last poems of the last 20 years in America, it always has to be at least -- 48 states have to be listed to make the heart beat higher. Plus Puerto Rico. Gentlemen, is this poetry? It's all space. Dead.

Gentlemen, space is not connected with feelings. It is not connected with the heart. It is connected with your legs, and of course, they are especially long. I envy you. But because I have short legs, gentlemen, I know a little bit of what is interested in timing. In timing, it isn't the long legs, which walk longest. Yes, sir.

Now, we'll say it this way, gentlemen, to give you a little map of the world's history. From the year 1000, to the year of grace 1945 or 2000, I don't care, man was interested in space, and therefore he discovered what is called the world. And we shall call the world the visible things, the things visible. From now on, if we shall have any future, which is still doubtful -- we can burn ourselves to tidbits, if the Americans have their way -- perhaps we'll have to be -- put -- taken under control. In the year X, of the future, the goal will be to make every human being, every nation, every tribe, the stone-age Indians of the Amazonas, the province of Brazil, and even the people in the Bronx, live in the right times. That may be very fascinating. It will be the question of intermarriage. When can a stone-age Indian marry a girl from New York without bad results? Not now. It will take three or four generations before these groups can mix. The same question with segregation and the Negro, you see. It's not a question whether, but when. When. I think when you have Negro princes, you can marry, you see. The white girl can marry a Negro. If you have no princes, and just waiters, and elevator boys, don't do it. There's not enough to marry upon, you see.

All the marriage problems of the human race are problems with timing. And gentlemen, they are problems through the generations. You cannot solve this problem in one generation. It is quite impossible. You have to admit this. Somebody can leap ahead. One white person. It's so wonderful, mysterious. Nobody knows it is perhaps possible that at this moment a white woman from Boston can marry a lift -- elevator boy in Alabama. I have -- know -- I know such a person. She came from one of the best families of Boston. And she married a masseur, a colored man. And they live not very far from here, in the mountains. And it's a daily struggle. And from the outside, it appears as an impossible, and as a wrong, thing. But gentlemen, if this people have known the price, so to speak, it's not up for you -- for us -- for you or me to judge this. It may look from the outside more impossible than it really is.

The wonderful thing about history is, gentlemen, that we march by echelons. You know this expression, "echelon"? There is no other word, unfortunately, and

that's French. We march staggered. So at this moment, already, some people live in the third millenium, in their interests in life. And others live still -- backward, in the second millenium. Some at this moment are space-minded. I think the majority, wouldn't you say? And other people are already time-minded. That is, they give more interest and more emphasis to this deep mystery of timing. And it's high time, gentlemen, that you rescue timing. You know in whose hands it has fallen today, the problem of timing? Who does timing in this country? The politicians. And as long as you have such sneer for the politicians, you see, there will be too few people concerned with genuine time. Because one thing you must admit, the politician times, and you don't. Now he only times superficial things, like elections, you see. So it is a very limited part of life which he times. But he does it for you, because we can't do it. And the way you talk and say, "That's just politics," just shows me that you do not understand life. Because politics is a very small foam, a froth, something on top, the scum, so to speak, of the whole problem of timing, with which the whole world is concerned, since the beginning of creation. So gentlemen, the politician is, so to speak, the proof that something is wrong with timing, because he is in a despicable position with you. You say, what does he do? He just figure out elections. { }, doesn't he? Now, gentlemen, I agree. Timing is a much wider field. But we have allowed it to crumble and to shrink, so to speak, to so little bits of life that the rest of life is not taken care of. When a boy of 19 comes to the -- tells his mother that his bride is 27, she says, "Well, { }" and even arranges for the wedding cake. These tragedies happen every minute here in this country.

The other day, I was asked to celebrate and even to have at my house a wedding of a boy of 27, with a 39-year-old lady who had been sufficiently operated to be unable to have children. Now the hoax of it. Why do they have to marry? They can live together until she is 99. I don't care. But that's not a marriage, a 27-year-old lusty and healthy boy. It's a scandal. A scandal. Nothing but a scandal. But people are so unfree, such liars and such weaklings that they have to get a wedding certificate, because otherwise they can't get one room in a hotel. Why do these people have to be married? Nobody cares. She is not fit for marriage. She is -- and that's the whole story. But you are such cowards. People have the best marriage in this country, the most important are the ones when the man is 72 and she is 79. They marry here when marriage makes no sense anymore. Because they are so eager to have it all, you see, officially organized in space, the one apartment. I told you, I suppose, of the lady who -- 49's a true story. Just now married a man 90 years of age. Marriage.

So gentlemen, all institutions of timing today are perverted in the institutions of space. Why do they marry? To have a one-room apartment together, or a hotel room together, you see. That is, space dictates to the most sacred motions of the heart. Now, gentlemen, the heart is given us as the pre-eminent indicator of time,

of timing. We have no other. When to do something we can only know from here. The brain can never tell you. The brain always sells you the opposite. So gentlemen, the next millenium at this moment is { }, because we will have to start on timing, because today timing is destroyed. Gentlemen, any one era of history -- will you take this, too? -- any one era of history endangers something so much that the whole era is needed to restore the thing jeopardized, the thing destroyed. We come to that. It's a very important law of history. And the most important law today is that timing is so deeply destroyed at this moment, you see, that man will have to concentrate for centuries to come in order to restore the balance. Can you see this? All -- the New Testament has always this expression that, you see, there is more joy in Heaven over one sinner, you see, that does penitence than over 99 just -- that is not just meant for individuals, gentlemen. But the thing wrong, the injury done today by our souls to timing, you see, makes this the underdog, and the underdog has now to become the first, so to speak, you see, the king in the new era. It has -- what has to be minus it now in 1954 will have to be plus. It will have to be put in the center of the map. And have -- timing will have to become pre-eminent, or there will be no United States, gentlemen, I assure you. Your generation will have to learn patience. The one thing you haven't learned, in all political issues. The whole conservation problem -- program, is a case in point, you see. You know that when the Republicans came in, there was great danger that the cattle grazers in the West, you see, would overgraze again. I do not know what is happening. Does anybody know? Who is from Texas? They wouldn't come to my class.

So, let's have a break here.

[Opening remark missing]

... with timing. And the process, gentlemen, of timing are all contained in what is called -- in what is called society. The theme of the future is not the world, but society. And there is a definite opposition between society and world, which we are now going to define carefully. You all confuse the two. World is everything visible and measurable. Society begins where any one of us knows that one day he will also have to be its opposite. An apprentice knows that he -- one day he's the master. In the world of today, there are neither masters nor apprentices, because timing has been neglected. Therefore, this whole social process of how an apprentice becomes a master, or how a disciple becomes a teacher doesn't take place in America, so you have neither students nor professors, but you have only progressive individuals. Yes. Because you don't have the social experience of being first on one side of the barricade and then changing into the opposite. Sons must become fathers, must they not? But of course, individuals become nothing. Mr. {Epstein}, your self-made man. He's never a son so he's never a father. He's just funny. And most males today in this country are

very funny, because they have declined to be sons, officially, spiritually. Heirs, they are all self-made, so they stay put. They are neither one. Society, gentlemen, is the unity of opposites. The Marxians call this in a very limited sense the dialectical method. But this dialectics of Marxism is just as small as a politician's timing is with regard to all timing. The dialectics of Marxism have discovered a great truth: that in society, gentlemen, you never are one thing for all -- ever. You always have one position at a time, and your life consists of finding the right moment when you have to become the opposite of yourself. It's very important that a private becomes a corporal. If he always is a private, he certainly is not a very good private, because potentially a private is only a man, you see, who is fit to become a corporal. You will admit that there is some truth in it. That a man who cannot even one time become a corporal hasn't learned well enough to be a private, you see. That is, gentlemen, as in all birth, as in all actions of life, we beget our very opposite. When I have eaten, I stop eating. I must do something different from eating, because that proves that I have eaten well. If I have not eaten well, I can go on nibbling all day long. I never stop eating. I think it's the same with shitting. if you never stop shitting, something is in disorder.

Don't you see, gentlemen, that society consists of the recognition, the mental recognition that the fact that you think at this moment, here, or at least I try to think in -- in your stead, must be spelled by some game. And vice versa. You cannot play 24 hours a day. You must not. You will play much better if for several hours a day you try to think.

In life, gentlemen, in the life of society, every one role re- -- cries for its very opposite. Now, in the world, gentlemen, when man lives in the last thousand years, lives in the world, he establishes states, and in a state, once an American, always an American. Once a German, always a German. That is, gentlemen, you are all worldlings at this moment. You are all treated as though you could not become your own opposite. You are all treated as though everything was fatal. Fate was, so to speak, you see, the whole -- poor people in Europe really do think that once a Frenchman, always a Frenchman, you see. Now, the people who came to this country didn't believe so. But you are beginning to believe it, too, like the Frenchman, at this moment. You try to forget that the great honor of the Americans is that once they were not Americans, and that they showed the power of being one thing, a European, and later an American. And that's the only superiority the Americans at this moment still have over the European nations, gentlemen, that they changed their allegiance. And that's the real problem of the Know-Nothing party here, called McCarthyism now. But 200 years ago, they were called the Know-Nothing party. They had exactly the same bills in Congress in 1858. Yes. And they said no newcomer to this country can become an American voter. They'll give him property rights and so on, very much like the McCarran bill. And you can deport such a man afterwards. Now they go to

this foolishness and say that the law can decide whether a man can be an American. Do you think that's possible? That's space-mindedness. As though some authority in space can decline life, can state things, you see, which just aren't so. We are saddled with all the uncanny and un- -- disagreeable Americans for good. They are just as much Americans as you and I. No law of the state can do this.

But gentlemen, take this down -- the word "state" is an application of the principles of the world to man. The word "society" is an attempt to give man his specific changeability, his specific character that in difference -- distinction from all men -- things in nature, he is only a man when he goes through opposite phases, stages. The very natural thing for a man is to migrate, for example. The very natural thing for a man is to be at first a bachelor and then a husband. So you must have laws which respect bachelors and husbands. You can't make a law that privileges all husbands. You see, and say, "Bachelors cannot go." On the other hand, you cannot have a society in which only monks must govern, you see, because bachelors -- bachelors are better -- they claim to be better than husbands. That would be a state society, as they had in Spain in the 17th century. And they had it in the colonies, you know, in Mexico. Gentlemen, state is the seduction of the human being, statehood, because it tries to implicate that man {first} behaved like nature. Society is the recognition of something human, of something specific in man, that he begins only to live as a human being when his present state of mind is dismissed as transient, as temporary. You cannot build houses on any man's mind, because it's fickle. They say, "Frailty is -- thy name is women -- woman," but fickleness, thy name is man. That's as it should be. That's why we cannot base life on the mind. It's a mistake. Society must be larger than any one man's mind. That's why you can't have an -ism. You cannot run any country by capitalism, communism, liberalism, idealism, any -ism, you see, because these are all passing fashions of the mind. You know this. That's why Christianity, you see, says man is fickle. Formerly they called this "sinner." But this is just an obsolete translation. It means he's fickle. And he ought to be. This is not in itself an indictment, you see. Not at all. Your mind must change. You know this very well. But you never make any use of this, strangely enough. And you still think that on the transient ideas of your mind, you want to have a philosophical system, on the philosophical system, you wish to build a utopia, and on top of the utopia, you then wish to have a secret police. Because whenever the mind rules, you must have the secret police. Because when the mind rules, you have tyranny. Because it's arbitrary. Because any one-minded stage is transient. If you establish any fixed order on something so transient like your or my mind, gentlemen, you see, then woe to the world. That's what the Russians at this moment do. They make the mind law. But we are not so very far away from it. Only fortunately we have so many diversity of minds, you see, that nobody's quite serious about his own mind.

Gentlemen, the mind in society cannot be master, because the mind must love its opposite. It is only by the marriage of two minds that you can have procreation in humanity. And the people must remain of different minds. The marriage doesn't mean that they are of the same mind at the end. Where is "the marriage of two minds"? What quotation is this? Well, I -- I have stolen this, the marriage of two minds. Huh? the greatest love poem of the human language, it has been told -- called. I think it's Sonnet 82 of Shakespeare's Sonnets. Bring Shakespeare's sonnets next time. We'll read it all together. It is worth it. And it -- has more secrets about history and about time than you -- than you believe.

Gentlemen, let's go back. What's the story from zero to 1000? It is not the story of timing, society. It is not the story of space, spacing, as we now may call it. Spacing, including discovery, technology, placing things -- matter, in the right place, you see, where you can get a -- hold of the source materials. Building railroads, to all the harbors, you see, Panama Canals, Suez Canals. Let's call this the last -- effort of the last thousand years spacing, for the fun of it, ja. Let's call the task before us timing. Then obviously, gentlemen, we have 1,000 years concerned with the world. And 1,000 years ahead of us concerned with society. But it is also known to most of you that before we had world of church history, Christianity came, and as I told you, it came with the Christianization even of the Icelanders. Even of Mr. Stefansson's ancestors. And so many nations were only very poorly baptized. They { }. And it had tremendous consequences. As you know, all languages spoken today are church languages. Instead of Anglo-Saxon, you speak today English, which is Anglo-Saxon, plus the language of the church, of the Bible. Instead of the Germanic, we speak German, that is really Deutsch -- in Germany, you see, not Germanic anymore. But completely changed over by the Psalms, and the liturgy, and the Bible. In Germany. The word "French" shows you -- {tells you the same story}. And Spanish, and Italian. It is no longer the pagan Latin language, you see, but completely done over by the worships, the divine service, and the language of the priesthood, the clergy. That is, gentlemen, the church has since 1000 always been with us as an accomplished fact. And in the first thousand years this has happened. We'll see what the Church has done. It has created one people. The peoples of Europe, the very expression, "peoples," you see, are peoples who are headed in the direction of freedom. We call a people a group that is still free to change. Very different from a "nation," for example. Nationalism means fixation. But when you get people, they are still inarticulate, perhaps, but they are changeable. They are amorphous. They are free from their prejudices. People have a future. Will you take this down? And the church has changed wherever it goes. It changes the given data of the people in the world to poss- -- new possibilities. It makes people. We'll see that there were no peoples in this deep sense, in antiquity, at all. You don't know this. But I recommend therefore that they Church has created those peoples who then are able to space, and must now then become able to time their lives in freedom.

Every one of you can take an air ticket and fly around the globe. Like this poor girl, you know, in 96 hours. You read this in the paper, no? You should. It was a record-breaking event. An airline, for advertising purposes, put a young stenographer on an airship, and she was not allowed ever to leave any airport, and so she made it in 96 hours around the globe. That shows you what we do with regard to spacing. We have -- all the people can do this. She's just a simple girl. No money, you see. And she is sent around it like any king, or any dictator, or world -- world governor today. Space is there for everybody. The people of this world have conquered space, have they not? And now we can only go down on knees and say, "{Dearest} God, don't let us -- don't -- let us not perish, let us not perish because we have conquered space."

So the next order of the day is timing. Because if you don't, this poor girl certainly shows the criminal character of our times. Here she was, with the opportunity of her lifetime to see the whole world, and she had to sit in the planes and go around the earth, you see, and go crazy. She'll never forgive herself for the rest of her life, she has missed her opportunity. You see, that will never come back to her. And she was very sad and just ate sandwiches. Well, she was sandwiched between the two millenia, you see, of space and of time, you see. And space won out. And there was no time for anything, you see. I think such a -- the airline would be condemned to death 100 years from now I hope, you see. Because timing will be all-important. Nobody would care for spacing. Just as little as you now care for the Church, because you take the Church for granted. Because the Church has made peoples. What this means, we'll see later.

Gentlemen, I have tried to show you that we are at this moment vaulting between the second and third millenium of an era, which had three tasks to make all people so free that they could go into the future. To allow them to conquer space. And now to allow them to organize society. We have therefore three great thousand-year topics, themes of history which deserve your attention. Church, for the people. The world, for space, world war, world revolution, world society, world trade, world economy, what not. World geography, world history. And now we have the social problems. Society, as the organization inside which man must be allowed to know when to do one thing and when to do the very opposite. So, you can put it this way, when, what -- and this, gentlemen: how. Or who, perhaps is the better question, you can put it both ways, "how to." As a peoples, you see, that the hero of history since the year zero, is the whole human race. The hero of history is developed as the people in the first thousand years. The carrier, the bearer. Can you see this? The man -- the stem of the tree. Then this tree goes and creates its environment, space, space. All the roots can go into Brazil, as well as into Asia Minor. And now, gentlemen, this tree, after having put down roots all over the globe, must grow into the heavens of the stars, of the galaxy, of the circling suns and moons, because they know the

time. Up there, at least, you have an analogy of our problem, you see. If man -- you and I could move like stars, like constellations, rise in time, and set in time, you could have peace. So I hope you see that -- history is the most wonderful thing in the world. I think it is. It is the self-knowledge of the whole of the human race, shared by every one of its fellows -- members. It is not your story. And it is not my story, gentlemen. But it is the story of how we all entered one story. That is history: the story of how every man born from woman becomes a part of the whole story. That's history. And I think I have proved you a little -- as much that it is perfectly possible without any superstition, and without any denominational or scientific bias, to see that history is a story by itself, in which the Church and the sciences all have their accredited place, of course, you see, but which all underlie one condition, gentlemen: the whole people must move through space and time.

Thank you.