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(Student introduction: Philosophy 58, February 25th, 1954)

[Opening remarks missing]

... report this one great fact, which is unknown to most people in this country and which is so miraculous, gentlemen, that mankind goes forward by heading backward. That is, while the heart is forward-looking into the future, our head is getting -- passion and focus by looking backward. This is very unnatural. If you try -- in this country of course, young people run in circles, because you don't know which -- know where you're going. You just go west, or you go south, or you go to Texas. And you come back, and that's moving in circles. You make no experiences. I have never seen an American boy able to make an experience, because he goes -- just go on -- goes onto the next experience. An experience -- make an experience means to base some action on an experience for which you usually have no time.

The direction of mankind has nothing to do with your way of life, gentlemen. The way of life of the student generation for the last 2,000 years in the world -- be it Russia, or be it western world, or be it India or Chinese -- has been that young people were in their instruction emphasizing one phase of the past and then forced this into a revival, into a renaissance, into the future, and thereby found a shape for their future life. You are so naked, that you don't know what to revive.

At this moment, as we know -- you know, there is one desperate need for us to revive the 18th and 17th century of America in this country, and to get out from under the scientific blatant-ness -- brazenness and impertinence of the last 90 years. On this nobody can live. You cannot bring up your children on pragmatism. And you can't bring up your children on glands or evolution. That's impossible. That's for the pre-competitive society of the robber barons of the '70s, such a Darwinian world, you see. It fits free enterprise. But since you and your children will be only employees, no free enterprise for you. You better look out for some decent ancestry into which you can steep your -- the tenets for your grandchildren. Now I warn you, -- I'm all participant on this revival of Jonathan Edwards and Cott- -- Increase Mather, as some of you who have taken 57 well know. It is highly necessary -- at those -- moment to reunderstand the past of this country. But it isn't -- it's too short-lived. I mean, in here, in 58 I must invite you to look backwards more deeply into the beginnings of our human story. But it is a law of human society, gentlemen, that we go forward, instructed by one special chapter of the past. Now that is a twisted and tormented gait in which we are obviously of -- you see, pre-occupied. Think of a humanity which looks so very

different from your idea of running. I mean, you think a man is a -- just like a runner on track, racing the mile.

This is not life, gentlemen. Life of humanity is a strange combination of looking backward. And there has been this since the New Testament. And Jesus said, "I have not come to change, but to fulfill." He put down this law that we would have to revive every form of antiquity, you see, but make it a part of one whole -- while these ancient forms all have been isolated, and separated. Can you see this -- what I'm driving at? This -- is hard to get, I think, for you. You have never been told anything like it. You know that there has been a renaissance. And that Raphael, and Michelangelo were people who looked to the ancients for their classical forms of their buildings, their columns, their pillars. You also know that Mr. {DeMeyer} has a course in classical civilization. That goes back to this urge of the last 400 years to have something to do with the Greeks and the Romans. Heaven knows why, you see, you may well ask. Yes, Heaven knows why. Heaven knows very well why, because it was necessary that the -- Christians of 1500, 1600, 1700, 1800, 1900 fell in love with their own past. The Renaissance is the story of Christian men for their past, you see, for their pre-Christian past. Very serious business. And you cannot live without this great respect for the red Indians. I foresee a future in 200 years: probably the president of the United States might have to prove he is a descendant of a red Indian tribe. Because I'm quite sure that within 200 years, we will develop a tremendous reverence and awe for these primitive tribesmen, you see. That, I hope it will never reach this superstitious stage, that he actually has to prove that he is a descendant. But that's what the Romans did -- even themselves, when they said they came from Troy, and were descendants of Aeneas, you know, and Hector. And I foresee such stuff, because man cannot live without wanting to be one with all the people who have ever lived. And the so-called "brotherhood of man," gentlemen, is a poor story, as you conceive it, because it has nothing to do with the people who live at the same time on this earth. They are connected by trade, by commerce, by egotism, by fear, by hunger, by all ki- -- by curiosity, you see. But your connection with the people who have ever lived, and ever -- are going to live is a much more frail and much more important thing, because they have only you and your conscience as the advocates of their existence, and therefore you -- they completely depend on your good will. And peace comes only to people of good will, as you know. And your good will must make peace with your ancestors and your posterity. And we are -- every -- the whole -- of history is put in to the frail hands of the living generation, at every moment. It depends on your good will how much room you are willing to give to these past generations and their contribution, you see, and to the future generations and their freedom. But there it is.

It's very serious. And this strange arrangement, gentlemen, that the head

looks backward by -- into history and -- revives, selects some things as most important, as most sacred, as most classical, as most model-like -- great examples, and that we have to march forward from the needs of our heart, from love of life into the future -- that is the great mystery of real existence. And that's, you see, why it is not right, for example, just to look back to your papa -- to Daddy and your mammy instinctively. Many people who don't have the conscious effort of reviving a great past, you see, have still to revive a past, but they don't know it. They imitate, then, you see, in their weakness, instinctively. And you should ennoble this, what everyone has to do, to depend on some past, by choosing your future ancestor and by -- thereby cutting the apron strings with which you are tied to your mother and your father of the flesh. It's the only way, you see, of -- recognizing this need of depending on the past will free you from the accidental dependency of some past.

I'll give you a secret, gentlemen. At the age of 40, or 45, every one of you will begin to embody his father. It just so happens. We all do this. That is, we suddenly get the features of our father or grandfather, whoever look -- we look most like. And people who are taken unawares, people who have only run, run, run for the first 40 years are then apes of life. Because in the second half, the superstitions, the ways, the forms, the decisions, the -- of their parents get almighty in them and over them. A man who has, however, from 15 to 45 known this secret connection of the generations, you see, will not fall into this trap of just being his father again physically, for example, you see, and instinctively and in his decisions, but he will have the -- himself recreated the elements of the past and his own contribution into something new, something third. He will not be haunted by the spectres of the past. And the old Greeks, gentlemen, have given us in The Odyssey a description of Odysseus' going down to the shadows, the world of the shadows, the world of the dead. You may have heard of any -- there are other such stories, of course, in our folklore. This isn't as arbitrary, and as fairytale-like as you may look at these things, you see. They had their Freud, They had their psychoanalysis just as well as we. Freud is just another way of putting the whole problem, you see, before you. And don't think that these people didn't know exactly that if a man did not fight for the place of his own generation between the past and the future, that the past would come and visit him against his will. That's the whole problem, you see.

So please take this down. The Renaissance, the concept of a renaissance, of a rebirth -- Christians speak of rebirth, of a revival, of a resorgimento, as the Italians call the 19th century, the resurrection of the spirit of the nation of Italy -- all these terms are all in the same line: resurrection, rebirth, regeneration, renovation; the centuries have alternated in using these terms, gentlemen -- are subl- -- sublimations of our being chained to the past anyway. They are conscious attacks on this problem. And they are only so dignified and so important because

they fight something that happens anyway. You think that the Renaissance is just a question of taste, you see. It's not. It's a question of rising above accident, of our doing -- when we have to deal with the past, then let us at least know that we are dealing with the past. You can see this from Hitler. Hitler moved throughout 3,000 years of human history and said, "I -- the constellation of Judaism and Christianity is over, and I'm leading us back into the life of the blond beast, of the tribesman." The same people of which we speak now, you see. Exactly he did this, in politics. And he -- had to act immediately and enact the concentration camps. He had to take the name, and the family, and the speech from the people whom he put into -- herded into these concentration camps. He was radical enough to plunge wholesale into such a past, not knowing that it was only one element to go -- look into the past, and that we had to conquer a future.

And therefore, gentlemen, when people, as you, try to live so unconcerned and so in sports, you really prepare the world -- the rest of the world -- of society for tyranny, of this type, of these people. They -- the men like Hitler concentrate in his own talk, and slogans, and tenets the -- some urge that is in everybody and he could win over the -- your liberal mind, because the liberal says "I'm free. I am free, without having fought the ancestors." Gentlemen, no man is free by declaring himself to be free. That's not enough. He has to know where his temptations come from. One of your immediate temptations is to exhaust your youth in 30 years of blind racing, running; and then at 45 being tired; and then finding this ready-made pattern of habits, and tradition; and then becoming -- a daughter or son of the revolution. And you know the -- "I'm a son of the revolution, I have never -- I'm a daughter of the revolution, I'll never be the mother of another." That's the decadence of the daughters of the revolution, you see. I am the Daughter of the American Revolution. I'll never be the mother of another.

That's terror. That's real degeneracy. The problem is the equilibrium between future and past. And therefore, gentlemen, the people who really have a future delight in the past, but they do it with this dancer's attitude that it is not a superstition, that it is not a drawing into an abyss, as it is with people like Hitler, who simply couldn't do anything but, so to speak, staring backwards, you see. But it is a great honor, gentlemen, of yours to love your neighbors in time, and not in space. Your neighbor in time is just as much your great-grandfather as it is your great-grandchild. And Christianity has tried to express it in this simple expression by saying that Jesus was the second Adam, and Adam was the first Christ. That's a good formula for any one of us. We are exactly the same. The first man in us is there. Everything that went on before us, you see. And we have to be the answer to this first man, so to speak, shortcomings in ourselves, by beginning to create that which from today on will be able to reach out to the end of time. So you are the seed of the final man, and you are the fruit of the first man. It's all

very simple, gentlemen, but it's very serious. If you miss out on this, and you think, "I am myself," you immediately are nobody. In the Kingdom of Heaven, there are no selves, you see. Everybody is fruit and seed. In this simple formula, you may be able -- to hold onto this reason why I'm now talking on the tribe.

Now point 2, the tribe itself, gentlemen. I mentioned three elements: speech, burial, and marriage. And that may seem to you at first sight completely arbitrary. Why do I mention these things? They had warpaths. They had masks. They had tatoos. We'll speak of these things, too. They had swords. They had fire. They had initiation. They had circumcision. The young were under terrible tortures. They were introduced into society when they were of age. We'll talk of all these things. I only thought, gentlemen, that I should mention language, marriage, and burial to make it clear to you that history begins only with -- in at least three generations. You can't have anything that matters in history that deals with one man. A hero is only a hero if the -- greatchildren -- grandchildren still mention him. You cannot be a hero in your own generation. That's out. But you have such ideas, that life is interesting in your own time. It is not. It is -- it is maybe biologically interesting as with plants and animals.

In human history, the least that you and I are demanded to do because otherwise we are so frail, so incompetent, so little, natural -- what we have to do is to establish continuity between three generations. Before there is no politics. Before there is no government. Before there is no family. And now comes the miracle, gentlemen: and before there is no speech. The worst part of your equipment at this moment comes from your heresy, from your fallacy that speech is a means of communication between the living. That's not true. Speech is not necessary between people who live together. The animals don't use speech for this very reason. Why should they? They have a pross -- what do you call it, for the elephant? Prospo -- how do you call it? For the elephant?

(Proboscis {pronounced: pro BOSS kiss}?)

Probosci {pronounced: pro BOSS ki}? No. What is it? Pro- -- ?

(Proboscis.)

Proboscis, yes. And the -- they can -- they have their tails to wiggle with, the have snorted -- snorts, and whinnying, and all kinds of noises they can make. But why should they speak?

The difference, gentlemen, between speech and animal sounds is very simple. The animal sound is at the -- of the moment. The essence of speech is that it is the same after a lifetime. And can be recognized as such. Therefore the first event of

articulated human speech has been to give a name to an ancestor who die -- has died, to the -- you may say the leading elephant or the leading -- lion of the -- of the group, I mean, the stallion who led them, or the chamois, or whatever animal you may compare man's horde, or drove, or flock, that when he died, the groups decided to stay put, to keep his memory awake among the whole group and say, "In the name of this dead ancestor, we are going to speak together and hold -- keep our peace." That's the simple origin of the human society as far as humanity goes: that they challenge death. And speech was necessary so that the ancestor could survive, gentlemen.

We speak in order to make the absent present. That's why we speak. You see, when you can go out and report, "He said," after I said, "I say," you have carried this moment into time. And there speech only begins. So you -- perhaps you say this explicitly. Articulate speech does not originate between mother and baby. Mother and baby would have no reason to do anything but to purr. You see, it's -- no speech needed. It's nonsense. All our modern books on language -- please would you put out your pipe right away -- all your speech between -- day -- to books on -- are all children's psychology, they try to place the invention of language to -- into baby's laps. This is nonsense, gentlemen. Don't make such a mistake. You just have to think once. The great achievement of the tribal age is the creation of a language which you and I still speak. Now you -- will perhaps admit that it's absolutely fantastic to assume that this came about by the accidental nibbling of a baby at her mo- -- his mother's breast. We can prove this gentlemen. There are many primitive groups in which children and women -- were not allowed to speak. They were not allowed to speak, and they never learned to speak. I can prove it secondly by the fact that all children's speech is informal. That is, it is the reduction of the great language into some smaller coin, into some cheapness. You say, "Daddy" instead of "Father," but "Daddy" doesn't make sense, except in comparison to "Father." "Mammy" comes from "Mother." "Mother" is the term of which the children make a reduction by saying "Daddy," or "Mam- -- Mommy," or whatever you choose to -- to say.

Gentlemen, what you have to understand is that what you are calling language -- speech -- is not language. You call speech informal noncommittal talk. Talk is not speech. Talk is playing with speech. Speech is language which is to last for more than one generation. That's why all language in the beginning is only vow. The first vow is the name of a person. They vow themselves to the name of the ancestor. You vow yourself to your husband and -- as husband and wife. You vow yourself to recognize children born as your children. So gentlemen, the first wavelengths of speech is something that is at least going to last backward 30 years and forward 30 years. Before there was no reason to create language. Language is the victory over death. It is the defiance of absence, disappearance, of sen- -- nonsensuous -- of merely sensuous existence. Out of

sight, out of mind, we say, don't we? And since this is so, names have been created to combat this proverb. You will admit that wherever you go, your family is with you, that has been conquered, your -- this proverb, "Out of sight, out of mind." As you well know, it's an experience of the psychologist, very rightly made, that many boys who have not cut the umbilical cord mentally and psychologically, that they are more dependent on their mothers -- their mothers' approval in college than when they are at home. That physical presence gives them a little more spontaneity, and independence, and rebellion than when they are away. So much is the name of "Mother" and the order she is given present in a weakling's heart. And it isn't true that by going away a man is already emancipated. Far from it.

I knew a college president who had been the assistant to the previous president. And whenever he made a speech, 20 or 30 years after this -- his boss's death, you could see while he talked, that he was feeling whether the -- his former boss was approving. This man's eyes were still on him.

So gentlemen, it is just as important that we use these explorations for your throwing out some of your worst dogmas. Because you are all, as you know, one of your dogmas is that you have no dogma. Throw that out. Your second dogma is that children speak creatively, so to speak, and then the grownups are stuck with language. That's the famous error of the 19th century, which you are, after all, America always is 50 years behind the times, and so you have still this psychology, although no other parts of the world still believes it. The third thing is that language is invented to express utilitarian views: "Give me this piece of meat," or "Keep quiet," or any such thing. Gentlemen, for these things, language is abused, can be done without language. A slap in the face does exactly the same with a brat.

Language is only indispensable when part of the human being's concerns are away, or dead, or not yet born. So language is by itself a bridge through time. Mr. {Korzybsky}, the Russian, has called it that man is a time-binding animal. I don't like the expression, but perhaps some of you have heard it. It may help you to th- -- -ind that it is simply true. But it is true even in a wider sense, because the smallest unit, for which the languages that today exist have been created in antiquity, are generations. The language connects generations. Otherwise no need for language. I talk to you with a real power, because I have the honor of being the last of the generations that have preceded you as your teacher, and you are the first of the generations that are taught and learn as a beginning of wisdom. You think that I -- you try to get something out of my course. So you can't learn. You can only learn anything in this course if you know that you are the opening wedge into the future. That through you, I try to reach the latest generations. I'm not interested in you especially. But I am terribly interested in

keeping this channel going through time. And therefore you may believe me, because I'm not teaching what is in my head, but I try to put through my head what has been true for the last 7,000 years. And that's obviously worthwhile. But it isn't worthwhile for you privately, gentlemen. It isn't worthwhile for you as the last generation of men ever to live on this globe. That wouldn't -- would be worth the candle. Why should I make such an effort to teach you as yous, as selves, you see? I can't only really interest you, and inasfar as you feel that this must be known by every generation again. Why, gentlemen? Because by speaking, we create the times of history. There is no connection between the generations without it. Baker Library and the pavement of Hanover campus and so -- that's not good enough. That's nothing in time. That's just in space. All the meaning of this library depends on your accepting a certain share in the secrets of time. So that's why history has to be told. That's why you have to have your father's name. In -- in some tribes, they -- they were quite clever. You know what they did when a man married? They gave -- and the child was born -- the father got the name "Charlie's Father," instead of being called Johnson, then but, you see, as the son of John, he was called "John's Father."

You can do this, too. Perhaps that's a good solution for your problem of getting some contact with your children. Give them a chance to feel that you are proud to be their parents. And recall, I mean. We'll have these tribal revivals. I'm sure that some group in the western world will begin to call themselves -- the husband and wife, you see -- by the name of their children by adding "Parents of." Parents of John, you see; we are John's parents. In the P and T association, you already have some touching -- attempt, you see, to become the parents of the children in school. And for some parents, that's the only place where they get a spiritual kick. The parents-teacher association in this country is an attempt of tribal restoration, by saying that the parents want to be these children's parents. That is, they want to be revived, regenerated by their connection with the next generation. Isn't that true? Don't you know such people?

That's very serious, gentlemen. You should -- you should glorify in this. It's a very wonderful attempt in a country without tradition, without history, without past, at least to reconquer, you see, some continuity through time. And you are so mechanized, that you always think time runs from the past into the future. No, gentlemen. From the very beginning time also runs only from the future into the past. Parents can be made over by knowing that they are the parents of these children, you see. Then they {may be able} -- to be able to tell their children about their grandparents, but always in the light of the future.

So names, gentlemen, are -- were created so that something would survive death. And names are created so that somebody would live into the future with some clear consciousness of who he was. You receive a name, so that you

happen to have ten aliases. Formerly, if a man had no name, gentlemen, he would be called by some nickname in every city into which he went with a different name. And he would lose his identity, as many people try to do in this modern society. But you are ennobled by being asked to recognize your identity from the first day of your life to the last. That's a great thing, gentlemen. And you see that names create future and create past, connect the present with generations before and generations after. The Bible has expressed this in a very -- simple manner by calling the days of creation "generations." You learn, with the silliness of modern man, that evolution has proved that geology is right and the Bible is wrong by saying that the earth wasn't created in one day. Do you think that the Biblical people believe that the earth was created in one day? One day, as you know, before God like a thousand years. That is eternity. The Bible writer was never pretending that the -- that anything was created in one day, but was created in one epoch. And they called this toledot. Anybody who knows Hebrew must know that this word means "generation." That is, the mountains were created as one generation of God's generative power -- sun and moon. And the sea was created as one generation. We can't express it more vividly today. It's much more biological than the mechanics of modern astronomy, or astrophysics, or geology, you see. It is a -- living process and every one of these -- epochs, of course, has its own timespan, has its own life. But the problem for the Bible was to say that man should live with the six generations of living creation behind him, feeling the seventh.

There is a strange -- we will come to this later. The tribe was based on the pride to place men at least in the center of three generations back and three generations forward, so that seven generations were the timespan of which a man could be conscious: great-grandfather, and great-grandson was the horizon of time for the tribesman. Of which -- this you find a remnant in the -- Genesis, in the creation of the seven-day week. And we'll talk about this. This is the reason why Moses put in it in this form. He had deep reasons, because he wanted to give this seven-generation principle into his timing. The Sabbath and everything has to do with it.

In -- the problem is neither one day nor a thousand years. It is not -- 500 million years, but it is a problem of the connection of these rings of time as ancestors and descendants, so that everyone is responsible for everything that went on before. By the story of Genesis, man is made responsible for the mountains, and for the sun, and for the fishes, and for the animals as their descendants. If this isn't good Darwinianism, I don't know what it is. It's called the generation, and nobody has -- tells you this. It's just incredible. I mean, the Bible sums up every -- the whole evolutionary theory of the last 100 years. I've never understood that -- I'm now after all quite old man, gentlemen -- I've never been able for the last 50 years of my life since I know of Mr. Darwin to understand why there should be a

contradiction between the Bible and the findings of modern science. I just can't. I still don't understand it. It's only for silly asses who misunderstand both, science and the Bible. Of course, if you want this, you can misunderstand everything. But you misunderstand both. Doesn't evolution tell us that we cannot shun responsibility for what has gone on before? Here we have to limit in -- live in this limited environment, make the best of it. And doesn't the Bible say exactly the same -- that it is one stream of life poured out first in the animal and in the plant life and then in us that we mustn't boast too much of our special role in creation? We are a little higher than they. Exactly what this evolution theory says. So what's the contradiction?

But you will understand it better if you do -- forget the figures of the geologists with their 500 million years, and forget the day-simile, the metaphor of one day, you see, of creation in Genesis and cling to the Hebrew title of the first chapter of Genesis, Toledot, t-o-l-e-d-o-t, which means generations of creation. Because generations is the obsession of the tribe, to think in terms of generations. And this is the first thing I invite you to do again: begin to tell -- think in terms not of 1954, and of election campaigns in four -- within four years, and of plans for two or three years. Try not to think of yourself as a man of the class of '56, which is very diff- -- difficult for you to do, because you do think in these terms all the time. Try to think in terms of your generation between generations. This is enough. And it is a minimum.

So I say to you, gentlemen, to speak today in terms of thousands of years is foolish. You and I -- we are such little cogs on the wheel, that's beyond our understanding. To speak of the moment and of the year is too little. Gives us no direction. The middle course seems to me to speak of generations, and to modestly reclaim the territory of two, three, four, perhaps one day seven generations. If you can feel that you have connection with 1776 and 2100, you have achieved a tremendous security of living. And that's totally lacking in you. But you talk big about 50,000 years before Christ. Gentlemen, give that up. Don't talk about these geological figures. It leads you into insanity. It's absolutely insane to juggle with these figures. Nobody knows anything about them. Totally arbitrary. We don't know how radio or so worked, 50,000 years back. That's all fantasy. That's { }. If it has been so, maybe it has been so. But we can't do anything with these figures. They don't affect you and me. But it does affect you and me to raise your standards, and not always as you do: you speak of tomorrow, and today, and you speak of millions of years. Is this both equally undignified and silly? If you would to begin to speak of generations, you would get breadth and sincerity. You would get still -- realism enough, but you would gain time. There would be a connection between things to be done and things already happened.

The reconquest, gentlemen, of the tribal horizon is the first thing suggested by

our rediscovery what -- why people begin to talk. Seven generations is by and large the utmost of the tribal tradition. When you look into the traditions of the Navajo Indians, or the Sioux, or any one of the great tribes of our -- here, the American West, you will find that they have no assurance about events that go back more than 150 years. Then it becomes -- mythical and that is, they telescope the events of the last 150 years and events of the previous 150 years, and the previous, and the previous.

So gentlemen, will you kindly state the following interesting law: although the tribes that we find today obviously have a history of many thousand years, they -- they still survive sufficiently strong when their own conscious history is about 150 years long. So the -- what I call the "raft of time" on which they swim, you see, through the stream, the ocean of life, is by and large seven generations long. They can go up and down on this raft seven generations right, so to speak, you see, along on this stream of life which carries them down through the ages, and they already have a decent civilized behavior by having an outlook on life of seven generations' length. This is never mentioned, and yet, you see, we all feel that they are barbarians, that they are uncivilized, that they are primitive. But on the other hand, we all -- we all worship them, because they are so archaic; they are so old. Here this is dissolved, you see. These groups are primitive because their time horizon is no -- not longer than seven generations. And yet, with the help of this much of an horizon, they have come down to us for many, many thousand years.

Thank you. Let's have a break here for five minutes.

[tape interruption]

(Student introduction: February 25th, after the break.)

Gentlemen, the content of generations is in our language nearly gone. Those of you who have taken 57 know that in America of the 17th century, there was this great concern with America becoming a matter of one age. The word "age" is -- comes nearest to this sequence of harmonious wholes of time. The other word is "period," and the third word is "epoch." Epochs and ages are then the old terms and they have spent their energy, and I invite you to go back to the simple term of "generation" because it -- makes time rhythmical. Time is not the sequence of moments in history. But time is incisive, i-n-c-i-s-i-v-e. The namegiving process, gentlemen, which tries to get hold of your ancestor and of your great-grandchild is incisive. There is no speech without holidays, without great events, without picking and choosing some moments of time to be lifted above the average run-of-the-mill time. Man's history does not consist of the natural time of the scientist. It is not a sequence of a thousand years, but it is the se-

quence of beginnings and ends, which is something quite different, of epochs, of ages, or of generations. That is, it is instituted time, and the people whom -- are become -- are made time-conscious in the tribe, of these seven generations, you see, have to be lifted into this ring of time, this rhythm of time, of these seven generations, by a stroke of violence, by some incision. That's the meaning of the tattoo. The tribe tatoos its people to -- write the constitution of the tribe on the bodies of the people. Tattooing is the first script. Long before people write on paper, or on papyra, or on stone, they had to lift people into this special ring of generations, of this epoch, in -- inside of which they can get orientation beyond the moment. And so, if these -- Sioux have this consciousness of 150 years forward and 150 years backward, they owe this to the great moment of incisive initiation into this ring of time, into this epoch.

And therefore, gentlemen, the individual does not experience the historical time of -- cycle of its tribe -- in a stupid, accidental manner, but by the experience that it is allowed to enter upon some great creation by undergoing the pain, the entrance fee, as you undergo it when you are hazed for your fraternity. The hazing is the last remnant of the same ritual of initiation. And it has to be painful, because it is meant to lift you out of your rut. Something changes in your consciousness.

And what is a change of consciousness, gentlemen? We learn from psychoanalysis not enough about this, although it's secreted into this -- you and I, everyone as a human being, wants to penetrate before our birth and behind our death, every one of us wants to know what has happened before we have lived, and everyone wants to know what is going to happen after we have lived. This is done by initiation in the tribe. The name of the ancestor is the first beginning of revealing the past before my own birth and my own consciousness. The mistake of the modern analyst is, you know, that he thinks people want to be lifted up into their mother's womb as embryos. They analyze the traumatization that may have happened to the embryo. That is a complete superstition. You and I want to know what happened when father and mother met. That's what we want to know. And how their parents looked. We do not want to know anything physiological, or physical. That's all absolute, as stupid as any superstition of any wild and fancy tribe. It is terrible to say that modern, so-called scientific man is just as idiotically stupid and superstitious as any wild man has been in the past, by saying that we want to know our physical past. We don't want. We want to know how the people lived from whom we have to take orders today. We want to come behind their shortcomings, for example, or their greatnesses, or their prowess. And therefore, gentlemen, every one of you, of human beings, wants to live before his own time, and after his own time, to some extent. We want to be

connected with this.

Now the name of the ancestor was originally only known to the initiate. He had to join in the dirge for the ancestor. The -- the great -- the great complaint, the great dirge, the wailing was the first thing he had by which he recognized that this was his ancestor, that he re-enacted, so to speak, the event of this man's physical death. Here you get to the point of the connection of speech and universe. The importance of the burial was that here was, we may assume that at one time, one group of men really created this. There, this naming business, you see, that in repeating the name, the unborn could be made into contemporaries of the first generation that had buried the hero, or the ancestor, the leading -- leading human being.

So gentlemen, initiation is an attempt to overcome the time that has elapsed between the first moment of the creation of the tribe and my generation. The initiation tries to superimpose the first generation's attitude, you see, upon myself who otherwise would not be able to share in this great decision that the rules, or the behavior, or the attitude of the past ancestor is still valid for me. That this is literally true you can see from any totem post. What do you see on a totem post? What do you see there, the totem pole?

[unintelligible]

Wie?

[unintelligible]

What's carved out there?

(The history of the tribe. The history of the tribe.)

Well, what do you see actually, on the totem pole?

(Animals.)

Wie?

(Animals, birds.)

Yes, but what's always -- the bird is only given there, because, that may be the totem of the tribe. But one thing is identical on all poles, regardless of the special bird or the special animal. The eyes. There are at least six or seven eyes of the preceding ancestral generations on these posts. Don't you remember? Some-

times it's just an eye. One eye above the other. It's not always an animal. They look at you. The ancestors in the tribe, gentlemen, speak to the living. The great secret of tribal religion is that the dead speaks to the living. The dead speak to the quick, as the Bible still mentions it in the Creed -- not the Bible, but in the Creed, you see. That God -- Christ is coming to judge the dead and the quick. In -- the tribe that isn't true. The dead there judge the quick. That is, the initiated young man puts himself under the eye of the father of the tribe. Of the originator of the tribal order. And in this sense, the tribal order is perpetuated. And this is the meaning of the totem pole. And the totem pole, gentlemen, then is the aspect of the funeral which makes it transportable, movable. Without the totem pole, the grave would have asked the tribe to stay there forever. You could have never left the place. So you must see the totem pole as the tomb made -- the coffin, the tomb, the grave, the funeral, the obituary made transportable.

In the totem pole we have no superstition, gentlemen. It is -- I think it is just as understandable as the Bible, or an history book or the Constitution of the United States, you see. The totem pole expresses the real constitution of any tribe. And as you know, there are not many eyes, one above the other; it is the length of generations which in the totem pole speaks to the living generation. This is no contradiction to what I have said that consciously the tribe usually knows of the great-grandfather, and the great-grandchild, because the actions of these people whose eyes are carved out there, you see, are of more than a ring of seven, as this tribe may have had the same kind of totem pole for perhaps 500 years. It is only that what is suggested on this is seven generations. But it may be multiplied by more than seven -- by many times seven. I don't know what the archeologists here say about the antiquity of the totem pole still found here. Does anybody -- has anybody somebody in the family who collects totem poles? No? Does anybody know anything about their age, their antiquity? What I know of them makes them not very old. They don't seem to -- the ones we still find, they don't seem to be older than 2- or 300 years. But does anybody -- has anybody any information on this matter? Probably, by investigating -- examining the wood, we would be able to know if they -- we have in this country any totem pole actually carved out in 1200. This would show you, you see, that cyclical thinking in the tribe, in generations, repeats the process. Seven times, you see -- five times seven, you can have actually and still consciousness expressed is only seven generations in the number of these eyes. I mention this because somebody asked me in the intermission about the possibility of actually lengthening the timespan of consciousness in the tribe.

I give you a -- just a factual example. Some group of the Saxons in England in {1}790, one of these little kingdoms, wrote down -- a monk wrote down the genealogy that was then current about this kingdom. If it wasn't Kent, it was Northumbria. I've now at this moment forgotten the name of this special -- this

special unit of -- of government in -- in England. Written down in 790 that carried the history of the tribe, by genealogy back to 340 of our era. That is, already under the impact of writing, you see, of -- the Bible, and of Christianity, very short. And in 4- -- the year of 330 A.D. it said that these kings at that time were born from Wodan, from -- Odin. You see the na‹vet‚ of this tribe. In 340 the divine spirit enters the scene and creates the first ancestor. This in the light of the -- of the era, the Christian era already, you see, from the creation of the world of the Jews, and the Christian era of the coming of Christ in 0. This man then, this Anglo-Saxon -- chronographer did -- made no attempt to embellish the tribal ancestry in competition with the Biblical story. It would have been easy for you and me to think this impossible. The man must have it -- the feeling, "I must go to -- back to the beginning of time," didn't feel like it. He just placed Wodan in the year 340 A.D. -- B.C. -- what is it? -- A.D., yes -- and he didn't see any contradiction in this. I thought it was a very important example to give you, you see. That has nothing to do with red Indians. But these are good Anglo-Saxons out of which the modern English and American have come. And yet here you see a tribe whose consciousness is completely at rest when he has embroadened, enlarged the widths of consciousness to these -- what is it, 450 years, you see? Four hundred -- exactly 450 years. And that's three times, so to speak -- the usual length, and probably it took him already a great effort to travel the length of this consciousness.

And from this example you may see that there is no need for a tribe to have a greater extension of history. According to the special form of living, gentlemen, the form of memory is limited. If you want to keep a family sane and so, and without degeneracy, a child should know of its great-grandfather and think of its great-grandchildren. That's still valid today. And you go nuts if you become a genealogist who tries to prove that you are a descendant of David Bruce in Scotland, or some such nonsense, as here the people do when they falsify their pedigrees. You can buy it for $10, any pedigree you want in this country. And I warn you, it is perfectly legitimate to be interested in your great-grandfather, still. Everything beyond it is very doubtful, because I tell you why. You know what the secret is of genealogy, why it is such a dangerous cult, and why the -- healthy tribes never wanted to go for- -- backwards? Does -- has anybody dabbled in genealogy -- by any chance? Who has? No? Well, that's very healthy on your part. I mean, you are really at an age where one does look forward.

But I once was the editor of a great -- of a big factory paper, for 15,000 -- 18,000 workers, and engineers, and merchants, and salesmen. And to me came one of these pedigree hunters and a -- a genealogist and said would it be good to advise all the workers in this factory to care for their pedigrees.

And I said, "Well, I myself am an historian by inclination and by deed, and I

certainly -- I myself think nothing is more wonderful than history. But I'm not going to sell my work as your history. Because that is -- a history of vanity. Because, my dear man, I have always found the genealogists only mention the nice ancestors. They never mention the one in jail. The drunkard, the profligate, and so, he's left out of the picture. Now if you go behind, for three generations backward, the number of your ancestors multiplies in such a manner as you may see, 16, you see, 32, 64, that you then always will fall for Charlemagne as your ancestor, you see, and omit the less-famous people, and the negatives. And that's a complete forgery of the fact of life. And it's terribly dangerous. It blinds people to the fact that there are non-entities as much as there are entities.

In Switzerland, one-half of the nobility descends through the von {Meh} of Bern from Charlemagne. It's quite interesting. The -- you -- the country in which the heirs of Charlemagne still really exist in the flesh is of all countries the republic of Switzerland. Neither in France nor in Germany do you find these people. But they are -- abound. There are several hundreds, families who can trace their ancestry back to this man, Adrian von Bubenberg in 1476 who married a Burgundian princess. The Burgundian princess hailed in direct line from Charlemagne, so all -- every one of these families tells you this. My wife's family, too.

And -- but they always omit all the scoundrels, you see, that are also in the pedigree. And so you have always this one luminous ancestor, you see. But the 532 that -- better not are mentioned, you see, they aren't mentioned. And so if you tell your children that he hails from Charlemagne, it's a big lie, you see, because he hails from 532 people who were not Charlemagne. And Charlemagne is just the 533rd. That's too little to count.

So the ignorance of ourselves about our ancestry is better stressed, just as much as our knowledge. With regard to the three generations, we still have an open book there. We know what every one of these ancestors really, you see, was worth. But as soon as you come to the mythology of the genealogists, then -- the forging -- begin in the picking and choosing and the perfectly arbitrary invention of all racial prejudices and so on and so forth. And then every Jew comes directly from King David and Solomon and every -- every Nordic comes from Charlemagne, and on it goes. And then the rest is the world war. And the persecution of the Jews, and the gas chambers, and discrimination, and what not. Because if everybody can think his nice ancestor, you see, then he, of course, omits that one ancestor from which all the Negroes came. Because at one time obviously there were two brothers, Shem -- Ham and Japheth, some kind of such thing, and the one person who got stuck in Africa and the other in Sweden. So -- but that's never mentioned. That's the prodigal son.

Therefore I think there's great health and wisdom in the tribal principle. You

must see there -- there, that with regard to ancestry, if you make ancestry, generation, you see, your way of looking into the past because you have no books, you have no buildings, you have no -- nothing else but just this frail, human body that it is much more reasonable not to go back ad infinitum.

I want to show you that these things have their great tact, they have great equilibrium of -- some delicacy which you always miss because you want more and more and think more and more is better. More and more can be worse in history. It is not true that we can -- must know everything. And it is -- since we cannot know everything, it leads then -- into a complete distortion, as these Mayflower descendants in this country, you see, who abound. But they never mention all the harlots from which they hailed. But they do, because the harlots came bounding -- of course in -- en masse into this country, and the criminals. I mean, compared to one Pilgrim father, there were 5,000 harlots and 10,000 criminals, and 20,000 indented -- indentured servants. And nobody ever mentions this.

And that's America. And not the -- not the Mayflower people. The -- America is the country in which the few Mayflower people were strong enough to prevail on the scum of the earth, and make a decent -- civilization out of it. Isn't that much better? Isn't that much more serious? It's a much greater achievement. It's never mentioned in any book what it took these Pilgrim fathers to prevail over these rowdies and these -- these terrible people.

Very strange. I don't know why it is not more -- more a great achievement. It would -- then -- for example, you would lose all respect before majorities. You would know that this country has always been created by minorities. It would make you feel that it is worthwhile to be the minority that is going to be the majority of tomorrow. Because the Pilgrim fathers have always been in the minority. Never did they have the majority. But they are so impressive that the majority could talk to them and came around. And as you -- forget this, you don't understand the Federalists. You don't understand the deep instincts of the leaders of this country in -- when the country was created, that they had to avoid mob rule, that the majority could not break the Constitution, that mass movement -- mob was worse than tyranny. You can't understand -- Hamilton. You can't understand Washington. You can't understand the division of powers. And you will then give in, like Mr. Stevens to Mr. McCarthy, because you won't -- don't understand that in any one moment the majority, you see, is wrong, that the minority has to convert the majority. That's the whole problem of government. Majority's always wrong, but there is a minority that finally wins out with the majority and then the majority, you see, that -- in itself would be wrong at least does the bidding of the minority of yesterday. That's the secret relation of history.

If the minority of yesterday has an important issue, gentlemen, then it will become the majority of tomorrow, but the majority will at the time, when the law is finally enacted, be already behind the times. Because the reformer will already look out for the next law, and not be surprised that now the majority finally comes around, you see, to something that the minority knew 30 years before. Don't you understand? This is the secret of governing. It is -- as long as you do not understand it, you do not understand, gentlemen, that government is always concerned with -- three generations. You have a minority who knows this should be done. Now it must gain time to get the majority to do it. So at this moment it thinks already of one more generation, or one election campaign, or one period, it really has to work hard to get the people to do this, you see. But during this whole time, new abuses, new problems, of course, arise. The new invention comes up. New political clouds gather at the horizon, you see. So another minority must gather and -- you see, and become very concerned and finally have a platform on this. And while the majority, you see, is -- rampaging around, you see, with terrible noise that finally this law is enacted, the serious people no longer care for this. That's just natural that it should be done, you see. I'm thinking of the year 1960 in this country. Do you think I care what Congress meant at this moment? That's only normal that they have to do these things. That's not important. That's for children. For the mass, for the people who have no political concern. But I, who have political concern, I'm thinking at this moment of 1960. The only interest -- so I can say it snows. Mr. McCarthy is to me like hail or snow. Just let him pass, for example, I mean. That's not my business, that's the natural. People finally wake up against this intellectual shabbiness called -- I mean, fellow traveling, that has prevailed in this country for 20 years.

I'm sorry. My time is up. It's just now becoming interesting. Thank you.