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(Student introduction: Philosophy 58, February 23rd, 1954)

[Opening remarks missing]

... don't know that much about culture. And one small correction in this report, gentlemen. Important in your notes. Don't say that the Chinese are a people. They're aren't a people to this day. The people in Canton to this day cannot understand the people in the north, that they are an empire. And that's geographical. That's a unity in space. They have a wall around themselves. You don't know this, but there are still many tribes and many peoples in China. So don't call the Chinese so simply as a, you see, a people in our specific sense of heading toward the future. If you go -- went to China in 19- -- 1800 as the -- or 1700 as the Jesuits did, there was no expectation of any future in China. Just the cycle, you see, of eternal recurrence, of return. That's typical of the empire, you see. So you should think all China empire. It's quite important to make this distinction, you see, because never has there any -- been any messianic, you see, prophecy in China. And I think already now you may begin to understand that these words cannot be bandied around arbitrarily.

I had a friend who was a Harvard graduate. He was in process of graduating. In June of his graduating year, he came up to my place and he said, "In Harvard, I have been taught one thing in political science. There is no such thing as people. There are just individuals." And he grew up with the healthy contempt of the sophisticated people in Harvard, that "people" was a sentimental fiction the -- of the old-timers in this country, who still believed that there was a people of the United States. Certainly that was the time when Harvard had no future. And on the other hand, I forced this boy, who wanted to learn something to stay with me. When he entered Harvard, I said, "I'm going to talk to you, but only if you stay three days and two nights. I'm not going to give you an interview," as he wanted to have. I said that's the curse of our time that people do not know the quality of time. If you want to learn something in a new environment, the minimum today, as things stand in this country is two days and three nights, and we have never allowed any visitor from the cities to come up to our house for a shorter stay, because it's a fact that men are so space-minded that they can drive to seven places in one day, by -- with -- in their car, you see, fall upon these un- -- innocent inhabitants of these seven houses, have a cocktail or lunch and drive on and then say they have seen seven people. They haven't, you see. They have not. They have the illusion that they have met these seven people. They know nothing about these. That's how you travel through Europe. Great harm is done because you come back and say you have been to Europe. You have not been to

Europe. You have carried all your blindness, your illusions, your prejudices into Europe, and come back with the same. Like the boy who went through 16 countries in six weeks in Europe, and then got brawling with his comrade on the boat home, because he said, "Yes, we have been to Austria."

And the other said, "No, we have not been to Austria."

So, he said, "Yes!"

"Well, how can you prove it?" said the other boy.

"In Austria, the porter had a blue cap."

So that was Austria.

Now, I'm quite serious, gentlemen. I tried to sell you this proposition that time is of the essence, today. And people who do not know how to time their lives are licked. They have a neurosis. They have a syndrome. They will break down. They will go to Brattleboro. And you see, the lack of understanding of the time problem goes to such small things as your visits with other people, or visit of other countries. You are -- you have no friends, you have just roommates, you have chums -- you are chummy. You are nice to everybody. Do you have friends, gentlemen? In order to have friends, you have to give them time. And the -- as I said, I would say this is not a -- this is a mere experience, a rule of thumb. A very queer one. That, if -- before I will talk turkey to a man, I must have his time for two nights and three days in the same place with me. And before, it's no use talking, because he -- I must first talk to him. Then he must be allowed to get in -- up his opposition. The second day must be a complete failure; he must discover how far we have misunderstood each other; and we, of course, have totally misunderstood each other, you see. And so on the third day, we may then draw the synthesis, and we may come to some agreement. That's why sermons are no good today, because the minister usually -- he's obliged to preach one sermon. So the whole sermon is one big misunderstanding. The Archbishop of Canterbury came 20 years ago to this country and said, "Out must the sermons go. Mis- -- misunderstood things come over the radio now, in editorials, and in magazine articles. So the -- so the church must always offer the opposite." So he told the people in -- in -- at Harvard Divinity School, begin to preach long sequences. Never preach a sermon that lasts less than six weeks. And that's very serious, gentlemen. For 20 years, I have never given a single lecture in this country, although this is the country of the single lecture. I certainly could have earned a million dollars. I don't give single lectures. Because in a single lecture, I can only just begin to learn how this man, who listens to me, uses a different vocabulary. And everything is different with him. You see it from

this case here with China. You said it doesn't matter to say -- call this, you see, a people. It matters very much, because the Chinese just aren't a people as we think of them in the West, you see. So we can't treat them right. They want to become a people now, you see. That's why they need some tremendous promise like Communism. It doesn't matter what the promise is, but at least Communism has a long- -- range future, you see. So this hasn't happened for 4,000 years in China. And so if Christianity is to have the coming of Christ, you see, the coming of the Lord in its Gospel, our missionaries would have kept China in the Christian fold, and they tried it seriously. But unfortunately our ministers -- our missionaries were all told at home that they should become doctors and teachers instead. So we did. And there was no Gospel preached, you see. But just schools, and education, which you think is wonderful. But gentlemen, no country can live on education, because education has no future. Future is for the adults. Future is a promise what -- what's this country heading for. Who cares what you're heading for? You're heading for a career. But the career must be inside of some move -- body politic that moves forward, that has a mission, that has a destiny. Now a hundred years ago, everybody in this country had manifest destiny, you see. So hundred years ago, Japan and China took our Gospel, you see, because they felt we were going places. But the last 50 years, we abdicated ourselves. We said, "We give you science." Well, science has no future. Science is a technicality. You can't live by science. If you are scientific, you'd better not marry, because you may make a mistake, you see. You better not write poetry, because what's -- there's no money in it. If you have science you are licked, you are inside the present only. The useful things of today you can know what to do by science. Can you ever create a new conscience by science? Can you ever create -- create a new hope? You can't.

So this is very serious, this little distinction, because I'm very determined to stand my ground in telling you that I and you are invited to embark on this watershed, on this great divide between a thousand years of mere space-consciousness in the West, you see, and suddenly waking up to the great mysteries of time. If you would not laugh, but take seriously my proposition that human beings today cannot meet, really, at a short -- in a shorter time than two days and -- three nights -- three nights and two days, or how is it? Two nights and three days, it's a minimum, really -- it should be longer -- then you understand the weekend. Why, instead of the Sunday of our ancestors, the weekend is now the sanctuary of the human soul, because there you have two nights and three days, you see. Because people feel that such a weekend is already worthwhile, whereas a Sunday would be too short, you see. Nothing could happen then.

As you know, in California they go out every fortnight, the employees of the stores into the mountains or wherever they want to go from Friday -- from Thursday evening to Monday, because it is so im- -- preeminent the need to have

one coherent span of time, you see. So they are away from Thursday night to Sunday, and they walk the other -- work the other weekend. Which is better, you see, than to have each time such a fragment of hours. Can you understand? This is all in the center of everybody's life today. And it is also central in the life of the nations.

So now I am in a position to put before you our program. We'll have the fate of the tribes, of the empires, of the Greeks, of Israel. And we'll have Church, state -- or let us call it the world of states, and the great society. And I tell you once more here, quite modestly and humbly, we can say that we stand here. We have seen how the world was filled with states. We have seen how the Church entered the world. We have not -- we have yet to see how society will organize work all over the world in all men, in all tribes, in all -- the whole family of mankind. So this we do not know, yet, but we are waiting for. And these two things, how the Jews were replaced by the Church, the old Israel by the new, and how the world became one world of civilized states. We have -- have this in our bones. This has happened. And before our entry into this first chapter -- just make it seven chapters -- we will now add one more distinction between antiquity and our own era.

There were innumerable tribes. A hundred thousand is a low guess. And hundred thousand languages. There were at least 30 different empires, that's going by the score, so to speak, not by the hundred thousands. And then there have been -- has been the philosophy and the poetry of -- and the art of the Greeks, and there has been the prayer of the Bible, people of the Bible, of Israel. Now in all these four cases, gentlemen, every member of the group was encased and imprisoned totally into its own {grouping}. If you were a Greek, you couldn't be a barbarian. If you were a Sioux -- Sioux, you couldn't become an Apache -- Apache without -- there was some ceremonial, but it was very difficult. If you go to the -- into the history of this continent, you can see that the Indians were quite incapable of becoming civilized. It hasn't worked. Our attempts, you see, to civilize these people -- make them into city-dwellers was impossible. Once a red Indian, always a red Indian. And you know now how they -- sick they are now in their souls because they are slickered, so to speak. The government supports them on the worst possible land, which we have been good enough to leave these poor people, you see, and they can't live and they can't die. It's a really very pitiful sight, because they are still ancient people.

I had a friend among the Indians, a chieftain, who said to me that he managed to make his whole tribe turn Lutheran, because he said it was the only way, Christianity, of making these tribes able -- his tribe able to change into a new era, to give up the rituals, the chants, you see, the magic, the dances -- but at least be free again to be people like you and -- me. Very serious, and very fine man. And

he himself became the first minister of the church inside this whole tribe. The Stockbridge Indians who now live out in, I think, in Wisconsin.

This is very serious. Take this down, gentlemen. In antiquity, every man was only one thing, and not -- no other. There are to this day, in the empire of China, tribesmen, who are strictly tribal, who have never settled, who do not recognize agriculture or -- private property of land. They cannot be absorbed by the Chinese. The empire has proved incapable of mending the ways of these nomads, who live inside, so to speak, the wall of China, you see, but tend their own hunting ground and their own move- -- free movement still there. Ancient -- the antiquity, gentlemen, was unable to change a tribesman into an empire builder, or an empire man into a Greek, or a Greek into a Jew, or a Jew into a Greek. At least not in large numbers. It was felony, it was high treason, it was desertion if you did go over. Individual cases have happened, and people were always very unhappy in such cases. If you go to Egypt, to this day there are 40,000 Bedouins, dwellers -- desert-dwellers, who have not taken on to the ways of the Egyptians, ever. And to this day they represent in the Valley of the Nile an element that is pre-Egyptian, that is pre-pharaonic, that have -- they have the same ways of life as the Arabian nomads have in the peninsula, you see, of Arabia, and they go back really to the first awakening of man's political urge, 7,000 years back; that is, considerable time before the first pharaoh of Egypt built his first pyramid.

If you are encased, imprisoned, but also molded and formed by one order of things only, gentlemen, then you are very much a whole man. There is nothing that yearns beyond it. In America, any man has enough received of Christianity to sympathize with something out of America. You sympathize with Raphael. You sympathize with the English Parliament, or English tennis playing, with Wimbledon. You sympathize -- any one in this country has some lasting interest either in the country from which he came, you see, or into the country to which he wants to get, you see, some connections for travel. We all are not simply Americans. It is the distinction of an American, to have the right to love nonAmericans, to admire them and to know of them. This was not the case with the ancients. The ancient group is self-centered, and therefore it is intense.

Take a family relation between a son and his parents in antiquity, that is so total that parents had the right to slaughter their children as sacrifices, as Agamemnon did with Iph- -- Iph- -- with his daughter when he wanted to -- to show his Greeks that he meant business with the Trojan War. As you know, he was asked to give up the life of his daughter, and she thought that was quite all right. There was never a doubt in the daughter's mind that her father had this right over her, if it was necessary for the well- -- the commonwealth, then she -- the victim went to its death in great dignity, just as Isaac also did not object when his father first thought he had to do the same and slaughter his son.

We today, gentlemen, every one of us lives in at least two orders, church and state. Even you have heard of the alleged freedom of the Church in this country from the state. Which means that you contain both, which most people never think of. Even the atheist in this country can occupy with his own ego this second realm of freedom which otherwise is given to you as member of a church. If the Church is free, it also means that every one has inside of him some province, some territory which is not state; that is, which is not worldly. He may make no use of it. You may say, "To me, this is a pipedream." But others are allowed to realize this pipedream, you see. So the man in this country who is in- -- not interested in the -- in the Church is still benefiting from the Church by being given a tremendous amount of leeway about his thought, about his speech, about his reading, about his way of studies, because the Church and the state cut two different territories out of your heart, which you -- most of you never think of. When I hear here -- people today repeat this formula, Church and state, or free Church and a free state, or whatever you -- you have passed on as a slogan, I always find that you are completely dead to the great statement involved in this: that you are state and church when you say this. The whole sentence, "Church and state," you see, makes no sense whatsoever unless you recognize that you are at the same time in the Church and in the state, and that they are kept apart. Most of you -- you will admit, speak of state and church -- something here and there. But it isn't. There is you -- nowhere in America can you find any place that is only church, because even every building of the church stands within the territory of the United States of America, and is protected by the military might of this country, is it not? You can look everywhere, gentlemen. Church and state are not divided visibly. They are divided inside of every member of this great commonwealth of the United States of America. We'll see that is true of society, too. The society is another such thing of first magnitude, which is in every one of us as far as we must work. As far as we are unemployed. We don't care who gives us work. I work for a Cuban.

So gentlemen, these three seemingly superficial statements, Church fills the first thousand years, state fills the second thousand years, the world of states, and -- instead of empires, the replacement of empires, you can also call this second chapter -- by states, and society. These three things have been planted into you and me, and nowhere else. You look at the world occasionally as a world of states. You look occasionally at it as a world of souls, as a world of one people with a common destiny, that's the Church. And you look at it as a tremendous division of labor, and then you include the oil in Arabia, although we have -- very little to do with Ibn-Saud, and you include it, you see, the uranium mines in the mountains of the Eastern part of Germany where the Eastern Germans now are allowed to slave for the Russians. Because society is the whole order of men having to grow up from non-working to working, to non-working again. From earning a living, from changing their place, from finding occupa-

tion and activity from one day to another, in constant change.

If you see this, gentlemen, then our era is hampered and impaired by one simple factor: by pluralism. Every one of us is half a patriot, and half a Christian, and half a career-man, a worker, a job hunter -- one-third of it. So we are divided in our loyalties. And divided loyalty makes people weak. And the Christian era has accepted this weakness in honor, in humility for the power of growth. If you are very strong, you are fixed, you are in a rut, as we say today. Whenever when an American man says, "I'm getting in a -- into a rut," he blames himself, isn't that true? But that only means he's only one thing and not also another. So this -- this slogan, you see -- "He was getting into a rut -- high time for him to get out," means that he acknowledges that it is better to be pluralistic than to be onesided. Now the ancients would have thought that was terrible. Once a baker, always a baker, you see. Once a president, always a president. Once anything, got you completely, and swallowed you up. And therefore, gentlemen, there is a very wonderful division of labor between the ancient pe- -- em- -- and our era.

Any inhabitant of this great era of ours for the last 1954 years has had to be educated in the intensity, in the singleness of purpose by learning about the ancients. The Christians had to learn the Old Testament in order to get the full jealousy of the God of Israel into their bones. Because if the brotherhood of man is preached only, you would -- they would all have become already a hundred years ago so lackadaisical as you are. You don't care for any creed, you say everybody is all right. Gentlemen, that's nonsense. It's not true that all people are equally right. Therefore, China. Therefore is China -- went communistic, you see. That's the whole reason, because we were, you see, very willing to say we don't know. We are no better. We don't know -- no better. Christianity is not better than Confucianism. But the Chinese said, "It isn't true. Confucianism is not as good as Christianity, because these Western devils come to us. They have done something, and we haven't." So now they go communistic. It's a competition between two Western offers of a future, which are now, you see, spreading out over China.

This is very serious for your understanding of the problem of China. The China -- Chinese don't care for Communism, but they care very much for the intensity with -- of belief into something real to come. And therefore they put up with the low standard of living and they laugh at us, who sell out the future for the high standard of living. This -- they say the Americans have no future. That's why they must have bathtubs. The bathtub has no future, gentlemen.

What is the future, gentlemen? That for which it is -- it is right to sacrifice the present. If a soldier in Korea dies, he does it for the future of the United States. And you know how hard it was for these people -- out there to understand this,

because the people at home just don't understand. They don't believe in the future at home, how can these boys out there believe in it? This is the future, gentlemen. There is no other future, except that future which is able to make a man give up his present benefits. Any girl does it who gets engaged with you. She always gives up a nice life, you see, for a very uncertain future. Otherwise, she couldn't get married. But, you see, the word "sacrifice" has been eliminated out of your thinking, out of the teaching in this country, out of the public discussion. The word "sacrifice" has been tabooed. And gentlemen, that's why we have lost all sense of timing. Future and present are not connected automatically; they are only connected through sacrifice. Any one who -- takes at this moment less than he earns, than he could ask for, creates the future. Anybody who tries to get something for nothing thrusts the whole country into the past. Any thief who takes a gold watch, what does he do? He -- forces us to waste money on a police force. Decent people would do with the least police force, you see, because they wouldn't -- they wouldn't -- they have to think so much of restoring the order already in- -- installed in the past. But we, what do we do? All the interest centers around all these miserable juvenile delinquents. They are not interesting. They keep us back. They drain our resources. They chain us to things and orders which we already know, you see, as having been established. Every delinquent, every criminal is an accusation against our educational system, these children. They haven't been brought up right: into the order. Nobody else told them to obey. So they don't.

Why, yesterday I heard a tremendous case. Very interesting. The chief of police in a little midwestern town had this very successful father, and he had wanted to rebel, so he committed armed -- armed robbery. He got 15 years' imprisonment. And a doctor -- psychiatrist in the prison saw this case and he got him out by pleading a neurosis, by saying this boy just had to enact this crime in order to get even with his father, you see. And since the father happened to be the chief of police, he had to be the chief of the gangsters, of the robbers. But what does it -- does this mean? That all this family, the prison, the law, the judiciary, the psychiatrist, who happened to be my own son, that they all were chained back to something, that everybody knew how it should be, you see, done. And they all plunged into dealing with the backwash of life. And that's the terrible thing about criminality, gentlemen, that it delays life. That it takes every one of you back into something settled 2,000 years ago. Because that you can't have armed robbery. That's really -- was settled 2,000 years ago, more or less, wasn't it? This is so uninteresting, all these deaths -- these are the headlines of your papers, gentlemen. This country is so afraid of the future, that the headlines are only dealing with the wantonly conjured-up past. This is the term, gentlemen, wantonly conjured-up past. It is wanton what these news -- Hearst press does to you -- to your brains and your hearts. Absolute unnecessary. You're filling yourself with the filth and the scum of the -- of life. Nobody knows for

what purpose. Oh, I know, because the newspapers sell it.

Now gentlemen, because -- if there is in any time this lack of stamina, this lack of certainty of what is to do, that you say, "Oh, I don't know. How -- it's too difficult," as one of you, first course, I respected this very much. I understanded this. It was in the other course, and he said, "Well," he just -- "it's too confusing." He just want to be left alone. So the individual in this world at this moment, gentlemen, is easily excused for not knowing what is the central thing to do. But you must understand that history -- if it means to include this continent, if we are not be -- to be left behind, which is still very possible, that it must make an appeal to you, so that you give your whole heart and soul. As the old saying is, "All your soul, all your heart, and all your power" to that which is necessary next. That's usually the voice of the divine life. That's why it is said, your neighbor you can love as yourself, that's good enough. But God you must love with all your power. Now give me one man in this country who knows what this sentence means. They always quote only the neighborly love. And since I don't love myself so very much, so I don't have to love my neighbor very much, at all. I don't have to love him more than myself, you see. I hate myself, so I hate my neighbor. There are many people who hate themselves. But this is not true with your relation to your maker. He wants to make the world, and if you do not do His bidding totally, it can't be done.

Creation, gentlemen, is not happening with hypocrisy, or with the split personality, or with schizophrenics. This country consists -- as they say, the doctors must know it -- 90 percent of schizophrenics, so it -- creation doesn't happen. Creation is based on your total dedication. And here comes in the mystery of our relation to the ancient peoples, gentlemen. The Christians get their fervor from reading the Psalms of the Old Testament, and the history of the patriarchs of -- Abraham, who had faith when there was no pope in Rome. What's this today easy to believe in Christianity with all the cardinals, and the Vatican, and the Bible translations, and the theologians, and Mr. Tillich, and Mr. Niebuhr preaching the Gospel everywhere. But Abraham, he was utterly alone in his faith. If you read the story of Abraham, you know what faith really means. It doesn't mean to recite other people's creed.

So the Old Testament is today still necessary to shoot, to inject into Christianity this total dedication of the single member. The same is true about the empires, gentlemen. Why -- what have we done during the last hundreds of years? We have revived Rome. You have learned Cicero. Your an- -- at least you haven't, but your father read Caesar, and Cicero, and Horace. Why did they do it? Because this was still an empire with total dedication. When the emp- -- when Rome, you see, got -- went despotical and tyrannical, Cato took his life -- as you know, the great Cato of Utica -- because he would -- didn't want to survive the

free citizenry of Rome. Well, that is total dedication. And we -- then -- then your forefathers for the last five, six hundred years have read avidly the story of the Greeks and the Romans, because they were undivided in their loyalty. And we are divided, and so it's like a refresher course. When you read, or go to the stage and see Coriolanus enacted -- as they do now in New York, as you know, by Shakespeare -- William Shakespeare, you know? -- and -- you see total dedication. And you see the consequences of a man even trying to break way from Rome, you see. Can't be done. He tries to go over to the enemy. There's no third meaning of pluralism. No church to which he can flee, you see. Cannot become a Quaker or Mennonite, Coriolanus. He just can go over to the enemy, which is just another city, you see, trying to swallow him up. Have you -- who has read Coriolanus? Is that all? Who has seen it? I'm sorry. How about Julius Caesar? Who has read it? Ah.

So gentlemen, what we call the Renaissance, the Renaissance is a permanent problem of our era. In any one moment, any member of our era has to refresh his oneness by being confronted with some ancient way of life. You see this very clearly when you today see how people no longer learn Greek and Latin, but instead they take to pre-history, to anthropology, to ethnology, and to primitive life all over the world. This means simply that it is just as I told you, that while this world of states were developed, people studied empires and the Greeks. But now, in preparation of the third millenium, in the preparation of the year 2000, people begin to study avidly the tribes. If you read Margaret Meade or any one of these wise men, then you know that this is today the food of any number of -- of freshmen. I think it is done in a very slipshod manner. People don't know that they are playing there with dynamite. But one day we will wear these masks again of these wild tribes, just as Hamlet of Shakespeare re-enacted the Greek tragedy, after a thousand years of no tragedy in the West- -- Christian world, you see.

So we see today the rise of another chapter of antiquity, and what I'm then -- now am going to try to do in this first chapter of my story will be to conjure up, not wantonly, but necessarily, that which is past. So, you remember that I use this formula: just five minutes ago I told you the newspapers conjure up the past wantonly. Crime, and no punishment. And divorce, and sex, and drunkenness. That is everything that is prehistorical is conjured up there, but it is -- conjured up commercially, wantonly, for curiosity's sake, for obscenity's sake, for entertainment. Gentlemen, my task here is very simple. It's an antidote. I try to conjure up before you that which necessarily must be remembered in order to give you the intensity of living again, so that you know that this is -- nothing is done in the world even in the next thousand years, if you do not find some people of total devotion, of obsession, of dedication, however you call it. Most of these words are so terribly worn that one doesn't like to use them. But that doesn't

matter. With regard to your own decision, you must find some point in your life where you are without reservation, where you are committed. This business of being non-committal, gentlemen, is very good for nine-tenths of your life, as long as you know where you have to be committal. If the nine-tenths of your life where you are non-commital, where you play, and fool around, and get the upper hand and you don't have the one -- tenth, you see, where it is worth living, you are the most miserable of creatures. You have lost everything. You haven't lost yourself. There is no such important thing about self. But you have lost your relation to the meaning of your own existence. You have lost the part- -- participation in the march of the spirit through the ages, of God in history. That's nothing moral, gentlemen. The most ethical and moral man, who never steals, and never commits fornication, and never gets drunk can be just as imbecile, just as split, just as schizophrenic. The morally good people are not very interesting in history. The people are interesting who dare to to sh- -- exhibit themselves as they are, without hypocrisy. Because you cannot get going in this strange world without being there with all your deficiencies, you see, for all your worth.

Anybody who wants to be -- appear a little better than he is, is a misfit in --. I to- -- yesterday went, no -- two days days ago I went to the ordination of a minister near Bellow- -- a place nearby and this was the ideal man for the public speaker's bureau. He knew always ahead of time what he was going to say and he said nothing. And he entertained us with the story of his life for 20 minutes. Once in my life I still have listened to a man who put himself on his -- in his word totally. That was Al Smith, of Brooklyn. And when he opened his mouth, he flung himself upon his words so totally that you felt he was in it. And he was quite a different speaker from any other speaker I have heard of, you see, because he was in his word. And you could very -- well see the weaknesses of the man, that made him so strong. But he didn't, you see, didn't -- have no hypocrisy, no curtain, silky or iron, for that matter, behind which to hide. He wasn't any better than he was. And he took this daring risk that he says, "God sees me, anyway, so then since my maker sees me, the others can see me, too." But you always think God might just be absent, and so others should be protected against your real being.

You see, when Jesus on the cross said, "My God, why hast thou for -- forsaken me?" He knew that His maker looked into His heart, anyway. So why couldn't He also say it, that He was in despair? In His last act, He confessed His tremendous {pride} against hypocrisy, because He came all out. You wouldn't have said this. You would have enacted the role to -- perfectly to the end, you see, with a bow to the { } -- to the public and say it doesn't hurt. As you all do when something hurts. You are -- have been educated to say -- to keep smiling, and doesn't -- most people who in this country have kept smiling too long, they

all end up in the lunatic asylum, where they must then weep for the rest of their lives. Because if you suppress your tears, you see, that's another way of escaping your -- your frankness. Weeping is a part of reality. You are told you must never weep. You end up with this chapter, with a story.

We had once a Russian movie here. It's long ago, 20 years ago. And it was on Peter the Great. And he was in love with Catherine, a very -- waiter -- waitress from a simple tavern, and she had -- he had married her. And he's very sick and she thinks that he's going to die, the man who has made her. She is, as you know, she became {empress then}. But at that time, that was not clear. And she throws herself in despair in the stage play, in this movie, over the body of this ailing czar, and begins to weep unendingly. Well, my eyes were moist certainly, but the boys in the Nugget laughed. So I was very angry, and next day I asked the -- the class, "Why did you laugh?" They, of course, were embarrassed. But they said they -- I said, "This is important to me. I must find out how in the highest moment of this play you could laugh." I said, "Think it over there. Please take this very seriously. I must know this." And they came back the next day after some consideration and they made a very fine statement, which I think was true. They said, "We think we laugh because we felt at that very moment that this would never happen to us. We would never weep."

You see, if you, by your own will want to preclude certain potentialities in your own emphasis, you really play God, and so you deprive yourself of your creative faculties. Creation cannot take place as long as your own will enters anything you have to do. You see, it must be stronger than you, yourself. When Dante meets Beatrice in the {fay} world, in the -- on the new love is somebody stronger than I entered the scene. Vene aliquis fortior me. Somebody came upon me who was stronger than me. And only the things that are stronger than we are the things that deserve to be done.

Let us have a break here.

[tape interruption]

Will you do me the favor, then: to store away this explanation of this enterprise, or this explanation of why we have to have the Bible? That the past before our emancipated world of Church and state, that the past has to be conjured up to remind us of the intensity of living, of the singleness of purpose. Our era knows of unity of all men, but in order to have unity, the individual had to be given a share in various {ways of life}. The ancients had no such unity for all men, but they could keep everyone united on his specific way of life. As I said, once a baker always a baker. All professionalism has this great dignity that the

man is this and nothing else. To give you a -- the Germans, who are very professional, and very special -- great specialists, excel in this dangerous habit of being one thing forever. And when I came to this country, a year later I was -- rang up at Harvard by a young man from Germany, who said he had also left the country, and could I help him to find a job. And I said, "You come over." He came, very young, 23, and he said what his interests were.

And I said, "Well, I think the obvious thing for you is to become a chemist." I don't know why -- what the circumstances were that I -- made me say that.

He said, "I can't do that. I can't become a chemist."

I said, "Why?"

"I already have studied two semesters -- two terms of biology." So he had to become a biologist, you see. And that all -- was all he could think of. He couldn't give up the two -- the one year in which he had become a specialist.

This is very hard for you to understand, because you learn everything, French and German, so for one year and then you give it up. With a German, once he begins to learn a thing for one year, he thinks he has to go on for another 50 years with this. And that's the archaic type. But -- obviously your way of learning a language is very poor, too. That you learn every one language for two or three years, and then you ask -- when I ask you, "Do you know German, you said, "No, I learned this three years ago." And you imply that since you learned it three years ago, you no longer have any obligation to know one word of German. Isn't that true? I mean, that's what you call a language study. So the problem with you is to keep what you learn, and with the Germans, it's to learn a little more. Something different, at times.

In other words, this is what I want you to store away for all these chapters which we are now going to live through. You must know of these people not for curiosity's sake, not because they belong in the museum of pre-history, but because you and I will have to kindle our own flame of intensity of living. They develop one way of life. We, who have to go on various ways of life, must get some shot in the arm that, for example, you take these things which these people have established seriously. And now let's turn to the first chapter -- we'll see that with the empires it is very similar. We have lost much of the great faith and intensity of these people. We must stay out of their rut. We cannot go Egyptian, and we cannot go Sioux. But the Sioux, and the Egyptians, and the Chinese, and the Apaches have to offer us something terrific in the way of inspiration. Nothing of their individ -- specific way of life, you see, but everything in the power with which they have created this way of life.

Now what do we learn then in the first place from the old tribes, gentlemen? These tribes -- how do they reach us today? In two ways -- in three ways, perhaps. We speak in this country something that comes from the Anglo-Saxons. And the Angles and Saxons were tribesmen, long before they ever had a civilization and a city, they spoke. And we still speak their language. So they reach us today through the fact that they created a very wonderful language which we are very fast hacking to pieces. Which in a short time, if the Americans cling to basic English and other such nonsense, will no longer be a language, but just bricks, with which we have slogans, hitting each other over the head, in headlines and what-not. Really. You must feel, gentlemen, that language today is for the first time no longer handed over unimpoverished from father to son. You have not been taught English by your father. That's very serious. You are the first generation that has learned an impoverished English. Go to Pennsylvania and see what the -- how the Pennsylvania Dutch to this day speak 17th-century English, and then you'll know that the children there have been taught English. You have not. Your father had no time for that. Mothers cannot see -- teach you really, they teach you the nursery rhymes. That's not English. That's the -- deteriora- -- that's the cheap English. That's for children. But the great language you may have learned in Sunday school. Or you may have learned, by learning by heart the Gettysburg Address. You haven't even read Coriolanus. So how much Shakespeare has gotten into your vocabulary? And your father hasn't read you -- to you The Constitution of the United States. He hasn't made political speeches. He hasn't conveyed to you his creed. He has no time for that. He's -- supposedly busy all the time, with making speeches. But by making speeches, you don't learn -- the children don't learn a language convincingly. When your father would have cried in agony to his creator, on his knees, you would have known why we speak, for example. Or if you had seen him contract with a friend on a serious deal, instead of just going to a lawyer's office and not taking you with it, then you would have -- know what -- know what the language of the law is, how dignified it is, how important, how rich. Do you know the language of the law? Of the common law? Do you know the language of religion? Do you know any of these words? As I said, when you say "state" and "Church" it never dawns on you that you are state and church. You think they're somewhere. So you haven't -- your father -- would have been his duty to tell you that you are state and you are Church. And that there is no other state and no other Church except in you. Now, who has been told this by his father, may I ask? By his father?

So gentlemen, speech of the tribes will be one serious consideration, because we are going to lose it. The second thing is: what do we know of these prehistoric tribes, gentlemen? What do the excavators excavate, usually? Will you tell me? Where do they go to find traces of the caveman? What do they find? By which

means do these people still make themselves known to us, that they have lived 7,000 years ago?

[unintelligible]

Wie?

(Things.)

Well, what -- where do we find these "things"?

(Habitation.)

Wie?

(Their habitation, buildings.)

Well, what kind of buildings? The tribesmen. They had no palaces, they had no pyramids. They had no settlements. They were nomads. Think how -- if you want to find anything, any trace of the Mongolian tribe who now sit in the center of Brazil and probably came across the Bering Strait, and went through all of Asia before they passed over -- how do we know anything of their ancestry? Well, you all know it, of course. What do we excavate?

(Bones, burials.)

Tombs. Graves. Isn't that true? Now gentlemen, it's very strange. These poor people, as you think, who couldn't write or read, had one way of reaching us, over thousand of years, by burying the dead. Whether they thought of us or not, they certainly did not know who -- how we would look, and who would be -- they instinctively found one way of telling us who they were, by burying their dead, by writing into the earth the story of their lives. Because in this way, we find everything they used. Everything, you see. It's there. Horses, their bones, weapons, amulets, little babies' toys. So gentlemen, the graves of the tribes are something that must make us meditate why people bury the dead. Again, I'm very -- I mean it, gentlemen, with my whole heart. You may laugh when I say that speech is no longer reaching your generation in its full power, but only as a trickle. The same thing is true about funerals.

I have a friend who is a minister in this state. And he was out in Saipan, as a chaplain of the Army. And he and another chaplain, two good Christian gentlemen, stroll -- took a stroll. And they found three naked Japanese bodies lying there in the field, killed by us. And they stared at these bodies and went home

again. And he told me the story. And I gave him a sleepless night, because I said, "You think you are a minister of the Gospel. You think you have the right to preach God's word, and you have not known that the first duty of any human being is to bury the dead?"

"Oh, but that was the Japanese."

So here he was his own judge. "But this was a Japanese." This could not have happened with any wild man in the past, because gentlemen, why these people felt that they entered history by graves is the thing we have to explore. Mr. Sartre -- you have heard of this interesting, preposterous writer called Sartre in -- in France, the existentialist, have you? Who has not heard of him? The others know him because he allegedly is so obscene, you know. But that's not all. He has written a very serious play, "Les Mondes sans Sepulchure." Can you translate this? Wie? Les Mondes sans Sepulchure."

[unintelligible]

Ja. Ja. Now that coincides with my story of my friend the chaplain { }. And they -- he didn't bury the dead, and Mr. Sartre writes the play on the fact that this -- we live in a time in which the dead are not buried. That's not a mere coincidence. That's the truth. The dead die out of sight. Who has seen an older member of his family die? Well, I'm glad that it still exists. It's nothing to laugh, sir. That's very serious. These are the great experiences of life. If you haven't seen a child born or your father or your mother dying, you have missed something. If you allow your wife to bear a child without your being present, you desert her. That's not a business for doctors and midwives. That's for you, because there you reach the ultimate extreme opposite from your love for your wife, when you see her in agony. And if you can't stand that, you are a weakling, and she will always resent it, without knowing that she resents it, you see. You can do nothing more effectively to assure a woman of your real devotion as a -- as your -- her husband, and not as her lover, when you stay -- stand by at this very hour. But our doctors have -- prevent you from this. You have to force your way in. You have to be there. This is very serious, gentlemen, for your married life. Why do we have all these divorces? Because people only want to have fun together. When -- either one of them has a misfortune, the businessman doesn't tell his wife, and then has to shoot himself instead, and the wife is put in a coma. And that's life. Married life. That means that they are one body, doesn't it? For better, for worse. Always for better in this country. Never for worse.

These ancient people knew that life in history begins with -- when the living set eyes on the dying person and the dying person sets eye on the living. That is the strongest tie between the generations. As it is the strongest tie between you

and your wife, when you see that she braves the great danger of dying -- death. Because any birth is -- entails this danger for this body that gives birth to the new life. You cannot have life without death, gentlemen, and you cannot have future without past. You receive your future when you are present, when your ancestors die. And you can't say, as the people here in this town now is -- usually say, "It is indecent for a person to die at home." I have heard people say this twice in my presence, "This man had the indecency to die in his own home. He didn't go to the {hospital}." And they meant it! They meant it! They are absolute, brutal barbarians today. Anybody who can say this is, of course, just as bad as my chaplain friend who didn't bury the Japanese. No relation to the honor and the dignity of dying. You will have to cope with all this in your own family, you see. The old -- why do we the racket of the undertakers? Because you don't know what to do with death. You would save a thousand dollars at each funeral, if you would know how to behave yourself in this case. And you would have a wooden coffin of six boards, and not one of these elaborate, idiotic things which the undertaker tries to bribe you, to show your affection for the dead. Don't you think you show more affection when you prevent your people to die in a hospital, in a cold hospital bed, instead of dying at home, and then pay nothing for the funeral? But instead, you allow them to be shipped out into the hospital, which costs a lot of money anyway, you see, out of sight, and then comes the undertaker with an onion, and says, "Spend $1200 on the coffin." And you pay it. Because you have -- that's conscience money. You have to do something for the dead, when it d- -- makes no sense anymore. This is going on in this country all the time. The minister gets 15 percent, and the undertaker gets the rest. And the debts are with the widow. Now who is equipped to say, "I saw my -- the soul of my father or my mother depart, therefore you, Undertaker, get out, Satan. I have my -- I have a clear conscience. Everything has been done between us in life. Therefore what happens to his body has to be done in the simplest terms. And six boards of oak or of pine are just right." Isn't that simple? But who has the authority, you see? Only a person who has been present at the beloved's death, because he's ahead of the undertaker.

Gentlemen, the ancients invented -- invented history by burying the dead. We shall see -- that will be another chapter. And the third thing, of course, they invented the family. They invented the fact that children must have parents, and parents must have children. And they must call each other mutually by their rank and title. So speech, language, has been created; funerals have been introduced; and the family has been instituted in the first thousand years of human history on this earth. And you will admit that the family, and that language, and that the relation between the past and the future are still our great topic of conversation today. That's why I think it's important, I think, to nourish one's own courage, to do these things right, by looking into their story.

There have been as many tribes as this tree of the languages in Dartmouth Hall hints at. As I said, we have reason to believe that there are at this moment 9,025 languages counted in Africa alone. There are in Europe, of course, only perhaps 40 or 50 languages spoken. In this country and in South America, if you do not in -- count in the -- the Indian languages, there is just Spanish, Portuguese, English, French, which is really dominant. I mean, then they are -- Yiddish, and Polish, and Italian, but they do not claim a literary existence, and they are all, so to speak, on the way out. The second, -- third generation's probably not going to cling to it. So you see, we live today on this continent with four languages. Would you -- is there any other which you -- which I should mention? I may be wrong. Is there more than four? Wie?

(Well, the fact that the -- many of the radios and newspapers in the small -- bigger cities still carry many more languages I think, and so you have Italian spoken and --)

Well, I'm very -- I mean, I'm -- you see, I'm -- have no { } any number will go. I'm just interested to say that in Africa there are 9,000, because Africa is still a purely tribal continent, you see, of prehistoric character. Whereas we, who have passed through the church and state history, you see, and u- -- union of the world has already reduced this number to a tremendous extent, you see. This is quite interesting, the contrast, is it not? Forty languages in Europe, four languages in America, and 9,000 languages in Africa. It's quite important, just as a useful example, you see, what has been done.

If then -- I use now examples -- you must understand that all the tribes have a -- the same principle of formation, although they have many varieties and diversities. For example, you have ten tribes that are monogamous, and you have one tribe that is -- has a -- the superiority of the woman, and they are -- she is allowed to have more than one husband. This is an experiment which one tribe made. And you must understand that the main creation of the tribe is identical in all the cases, despite all the variations. This is important, because this explains why it is not necessary to tell you the story of all the hundred thousand tribes, you understand. The tribe is a group from 500 -- from 200 to 5,000 people. It's -- that is long- -- largest size possible, because it must be able to get the warriors of the tribe together in one spot. Without the meeting -- we would say today the town meeting -- or without the meeting of the whole tribe at any one spot, no tribe. But it is an occasional meeting. That is, the tribe has to meet once upon a time, but not always. The tribe consists then of small families, drawing together at tribal meetings and then dispersing again. And the tribal meeting is the time and place where the families are created, where the people learn how to speak, and where the dead are treated as living.

In the tribal meeting, you have then the three approaches which we have to undertake: the creation of language, the relation to the dead, and the founding of families. These three acts, however, are sporadic. The tribe cannot eat, and fish, and live in one place. But these people, as soon as possible, already for fear of famine, disperse. And the little group created in the tribe -- the family, husband, and wife, and children, and perhaps an unmarried sister or brother and so -- move off and try to make a living, as best as they can. So the tribe is in a constant polarity, gentlemen, between the small group and the total group. Without this you have no picture of the tribe, that there is a constant coming and going between the central meeting, you see, or the festivals you can also say, you see -- you know something of these dancing festivals. And these dispersals. The dispersal is the economy of the tribe. And the union is a policy of the tribe -- the politics of the tribe. And the economy and the politics are related in such a way that the politics is the large unit and the economics is the small unit. We'll see that this is different in the empires. We will see there that the economy is the big unit. But in the tribe, the economy is a house -- husbandry -- husband, and wife husband their resources together. As I said, they may have there their grownup children with them and the children may already have children again. Then it is the grandfather -- parents, you see, with all their children, and -- and the clan as you still find in The Philippines, for example, very decidedly so, and other many places, of course. But what I want -- you rarely read in the books is the dynamism of the tribe. They describe all these things in the books, but they never show you that there is a constant dynamism between the political meeting where speech, ancestors, marriage is celebrated, and the economic -- hunt, fish, et cetera, where small parties go. You may have a raiding party of more than one family, but then it would be just the addition of two, three, four families banding together. It would not interfere with the political decision of the total group which calls itself the Sioux. Or the Apaches, you see.

And only one occasion at which the whole group moves right from the central meeting into the world, that's the warpath. There is --on the warpath the whole tribe sticks together. But that, as you can see, is something unnatural, because the warpath is the defense of the tribe against other tribes. That's not given in nature, that's in history. The warpath leads the people of one tribe into the exposure -- the competitive exposure to the forces, abilities of another tribe. Man is this strange animal, gentlemen, that has made war from the very beginning of time. And if you want to be cured from pacifism, study the tribes. It has been as much tragedy for the tribes to have to to go to war as it is for us. And there have been many diversifications. There have been tribes, gentlemen, who have tried to become pacifists. For example, the Eskimos. That is, people who try to get out, you see, get into a place and -- forbear with everything, even with the igloo, in order not to have to bear arms and to fight their neighbors. We have in the tribal layer of history all the movements of our own time. We have anti-alcoholics, and

we have pacifists, and we have vegetarians, and we have all -- Christian Scientists, and everything you want. That is, man has always tried all -- every way out of his misery, you see, of war, for example, or of famine. And I warn you, therefore, I have to say these things right ahead so that you do not think that I want to -- to make the area of their history smaller than it is. It is a very wide area. And there have been in the tribal history these special groups, which you can compare to the modern sect. The tribes also already had their sectarians, their people who didn't want to have speech to create, or families to found, or especially not to go on warpath, and who tried everything to get out of the whole problem of staying in history, and carrying the whole armor of life.

What makes therefore these -- this problem of the archeologists and the prehistorians rather complicated and which have confused men, because you find all kind of oddities in this tribal history. But the tribes which our anthropologists today describe for having, for example, peaceful ideas like the {procreandas}, you know, from Mr. Malinowski -- you may have heard of him -- people who allegedly thought that the pig begot the next children. They of course, just tease Mr. Malinowski.

But you find all kinds of such ways out of the pressure of the full life. But you will also find, gentlemen, that these people which the anthropologists today find because they were pacifists or vegetarians or had some sectarian attitude towards life, that they did not make history. We come from those tribes, obviously, you see. Every one in this room comes from tribesmen 7,000 years back, who did not go pacifist, who did not go vegetarian, who did not become Eskimos, but who stayed in some strange way in the central stream of life. And therefore what we discover now in these special forms are obviously the ramifications, the extremes, of one way another, who in one -- survive in their way, but they couldn't get on. They {got} -- any sect in any such special tribe, gentlemen, was unable to transcend his own form of life, to go on to anything further.

All of you have heard so much about anthropology that I thought I had to make this remark beforehand to set your mind at rest. I'm fully aware of all these specialties, but that's -- doesn't at all alter the fact that there is one and the same principle running through the whole -- this whole first layer of several thousand years of human history. Thank you.