Transcript
{ } = word or expression can't be understood
{word} = hard to understand, might be this
(Student Introduction: Philosophy 58, March 2nd, 1954)
[Opening remarks missing]
{In order} to participate in the life of these people, and not merely. Gentlemen, when you look at this -- this pictures in the murals of the -- of the basement there, of Orozco, you'd see these primitive people marching to their -- it looks as though they were marching to their doom. Well, obviously, they are marching to their self-revelation. And they are unknowingly great. They are not merely marching into the future unknowingly, you see. But that they are marching at all, this is greatness. And they also march with something in back, with the dead, out of which -- from which they would like to flee. But the greatness, and the not merely, is that they do not flee.
We now come to the problem of the funeral, of the burial. I talked to you earlier about speech. We come back to speech after this. But I think the second thing I must explain to you is that these first people are very great, because they do face death. And they do thereby exactly the same as we do with any renaissance today. Now it {seems with may} -- it would seem to you a funny introduction, but -- so that you see that the facts and not my ideas are what you must learn to contemplate. Facts you know. I would like first once more repeat what was in {Follett's} report already hinted at, that for the last thousand years mankind has in a strange manner re-revealed the Greeks. We have this renaissance idea. Anybody who has taken Latin knows that he begins with reading Julius Caesar, who after all was murdered -- 44 B.C., and that is the first book read by the students to learn -- so this is the end of antiquity which was rediscovered first, and which anybody now today who learns anything about classical civilization is actually learning first. This is for you difficult to understand, because you think, of course, that in history, we march forward. And if Homer perhaps lived in 800, and the Trojan War was 1184, and to -- though you think you begin with Troy and go to Caesar. This is not true, gentlemen. The rediscovery of the renaissance -- of the renaissance of antiquity, which is now -- ended in this course of classical civilization in this college. Everything you know of politics -- this is a Greek word, as you know, for example -- of philosophy, another Greek word; of Plato, another Greek; of Aristotle; of idealism; everything Greek, which you use every day in your vocabulary has been discovered in a strange going-backward from Caesar to pre-Homeric man. The latest discovery which you are facing at this moment is, as you know, the excavations of Mycenae and on Knossos on Crete. Some of you may have heard of these things; that we are, for the last 50 years trying to decipher the Minoan script of King Minos, or the
Labyrinth. And you may have seen pictures of the Lion Gate in -- Mycenae near Argos. This all is pre-Homeric.
So gentlemen, the funny thing is if you read -- has anybody read Dante, or heard of Dante? Well, who is he? Well, it would be better if you hadn't heard of him, because then you might read him. Who is the companion of Dante?
(Virgil.)
Virgil. Now he is the contemporary -- even later -- earlier, as you know, than Caesar. So Virgil lives after Caesar. He -- I think he died in 17 of our era, isn't that right? Something like that. So he already attains to the Christian ages. Now, for Dante, Virgil, to us the last classic, is the first classic whom he meets in the revival of antiquity. So we get here Dante, or let's put it down here: Dante, led by Virgil, you see. Machiavelli is already led by Caesar. That's 1500. This is 1300. And by Aristotle, of course, the -- Thomas Aquinas is led. So that's also 1275 Thomas Aquinas, one of the other {stilted} names you carry in your bosom. Aristotle.
Now comes Plato. Plato lives, of course, as you well know, before Aristotle, but he is discovered afterwards. In 1442, for example, the pope allows a translation of Plato to be made, so that 250 years after Aristotle is discovered, they discover Plato. The Greek tragedy, as you well know, is not discovered by Shakespeare -- who takes Seneca, and Menanda, and Plautus, and Terentius -- but it is discovered by Corneille et Racine -- und Racine, and by Goethe, who writes Iphigenia. So by 1750, we have -- or by 1650, better take the Louis XIV date, we get the great revival of Greek tragedy, which again is 50 years before Plato. Or pardon me, I should write it the other way.
So you see the Roman antiquity with Seneca is still the model for Shakespeare as late as 1600, so that you can see the first half of the last thousand years, from 1100 to 1600 -- you can take this down -- the model is the first half of antiquity -- the later half of antiquity, from Virgil and Seneca, who lived under -- emperor Nero, and is a contemporary of Peter and Paul. You go back to -- just to 400, to Plato. Then comes the great inroad of -- taking on -- so here, by the way, Socrates. We have a special date for Socrates in the history of the Renaissance. In 1515, the famous Erasmus of -- Rotterdam, his name you also may have heard, Erasmus, made a speech in Basel, when he became professor there, in which he invoked "Saint Socrates." That's a famous speech. You may take this down. That was the inthronization of Socrates instead of Aristotle, you see. St. Socrates, Sancta Socrates. {Adduta} nos, that was this man allowed himself to invoke Socrates, as you would invoke a saint. And put him in the vocative. That's the first time this happens. Before 1515, people wouldn't have understood why
Socrates. They would have invoked Aristotle, or Virgil, you see. Can you see the point? You look at me in despair. Wie? Do you understand it?
(No, I don't.)
Well, were you here last time?
(No, I'm sorry.)
Well, then you can't understand it. That's your fault.
Now, we go back -- further back, here we come to 1800 as I said, and we come to the great Homeric question. Since 1800, people have debated whether the Homeric poems form a unity, or how they are composed. That is the great struggle from 1800, you may say, to 1929, when the great -- this last great defender of the com- -- why composition of Homer was given up. You know that is coincident with the great, the debate on the origin of the Gospels, too. The Gospels, the Old Testament, the New Testament, and Homer were -- how do you say? -- torn to shreds by the criticism of 1800 to 1930. Today nobody believes this anymore. People believe that Homer was one great poem. I certainly believe that every one of the Gospels was written by -- as it is by the evangelists. And I also believe that the five books of Moses formed the unity. But so the critis- -- the critics are rather obsolete today. But you still are obsolete. You still believe it.
And what does this mean, however? That all {brain} of the 19th century was given to the debate of the Homeric question, of the Biblical question besides. So that you get the strange parallel each time that one of these ancients is taken up by a century. Each time this has an immediate impact on something in the Church, and in -- in the Bible. When Dante discovers Virgil, he also opens Hell, because Virgil takes him through Hell. When we discover Homer, we also discover the composition of the Old Testament. It's very strange, you see. When Thomas debates Aristotle, he also debates the Apostle Paul, because the {apostlus} is always the man who refutes Aristotle in the discussion of Thomas's, you see, Summa.
So the 19th century, gentlemen, compares Homer with the Bible. And today, gentlemen, we turn to pre-Homeric man. There is a very fine book by Robert Graves. Has anybody heard of Robert Graves? His book is called Hercules, My Shipmate. I recommend it to you, if you want to penetrate before Homer and want to get prepared for that which will accompany you for the next 30 years in educated society. Because in the next 30 years, the debate will begin to start on the origins of Greece, on the pre-Homeric. And Mr. Robert Graves in his great genius -- he is a genius, a very wild genius, but genius, of course, as all poets, is a
prophet. Poets in our days are the modern prophets. And he has thereby scented -- scented and -- you see, the future of our interest and in this book, Hercules, My Shipmate, you are in the midst of prehistory and Greece, so to speak. That is, he is trying to connect Greek genius and prehistoric man -- prehistoric in the sense of before Greece. With the empires of old and the tribes he connects us in this book, Hercules, My Shipmate. The other book is -- he has written, of course, a number of these books. What's his name, The White Goddess? Has anybody seen this? May -- he has really turned himself into a kind of tribesman as painted in the Orozco frescoes. It's quite an achievement, Mr. -- these modern poets have a hard time to steep themselves in the mentality of these old men. And Graves has so remarkably succeeded. Half the time he's crazy and half the time he's genius.
Here, gentlemen, only to see that beginning with the two world wars, or with the Russian Revolution, and with D. H. Lawrence, and with Robert Graves, we are marching into the origins of Greece. So if you here take the times, isn't that astonishing that we have here anything in Greece that exists 1000 B.C. or before? We get here anything that is in this in 700 B.C. We get here what is -- this in 500. Here what in 400. Here what in 300. And then here what would be in 100 B.C. And here what is coincident with Christ. Now, mankind's revival then begins and ends, just as I have told you. One step forward, one step backward. Two steps forward, two steps backward. If you take every century one step, it is obvious that today, 1954, we have to unfold 10 centuries before Christ, whereas in 1100, when we first find these, the stories of the wizard, Virgil, mentioned in Naples, it is only 100 Before Christ that people try to get {off}. This is after all very miraculous.
The Renaissance, which you take just as -- in a lump sum, you have heard of Renaissance not only, but you see the buildings in the Renaissance style in Washington and other places. All the rich citizens of New York have built Renaissance palaces in the last -- 19th century, have they not? This Renaissance -- renaissance to you is a frozen concept. You should see that the Renaissance itself is a constant avalanche -- a march, that every moment, the Renaissance is not something static, that you read the classics, as you think, you see. But the problem of every time is to discover something classic which has been forgotten and which is needed again to intensify life.
Can you see my -- now my point, that it is today still that we are looking backward when we face forward, which is a contradiction in terms, but which explains to you that we will have to look for the same in most primitive -- socalled primitive man. If you understand this, gentlemen, you will never call the people on the Orozco fresco "primitive." You would call them "primordial." They are the first men who have lived like you and I, with the head backward and the
heart forward.
This I have -- now have to prove, and I only wanted to stabilize this. Sir, have you now understood the Caesars? You see, I have propounded this last time, Sir, you see: that we go forward by looking back, or while looking backward. This is very important, gentlemen, because you are haunted by the idea that you have progressed from primitive man to I don't know what, to a Dartmouth student. As long as you think so, my whole course cannot make any sense to you. We are talking of this same human being through the last 10,000 years. Otherwise, why should I bother you with animals? A primitive man in your mind is another kind of an animal. That's nothing with whom we have to deal here. Then you go to the zoology department, please. If it is an animal, we have nothing to do with it.
Man is the same at all times. If I didn't believe -- if we say we didn't believe this, we could not make any progress, gentlemen. Progress is only possible when all men are one man. Otherwise we would go in circles. You can only progress if the first man already wanted to do what you want to do. Then you can go him one better. If you want to do something else, there's no progress. This is your illusion, gentlemen. You think that your generation is not dependent on identity of purpose with all men. But of course it is. There's only hope for you if man has already endeavored to achieve that which you try to achieve. Otherwise you can't continue, you would have to begin from scratch. And that's -- for this you have no time, because before you can even begin to do it, you would be dead.
So all this has just been the preparation, gentlemen, for telling you that the first people were identical in their relation to time. They already moved forward while looking backward, which is, after all, most mysterious, most unnatural. And it shows you that these people knew that God was pregnant with them, that they were embryos, that there was something to be achieved. All people in antiquity, gentlemen, have this strange look, which the people were given by Orozco on their faces. They -- they are half in the Greek, what you call "primitive" is in this sense true, that these people do not live in the Christian era, and they have a veil before their eyes. They look backward while driven forward. Now gentlemen, what I have described as the renaissance, the rebirth, as our own fate, seems the same. These -- we do not known where we are going, if we are just natural beings, today. We revive the primitives, as Mr. Freud does with his term "Oedipus complex." Oedipus is a mythical figure of Greece by and large to be chronologically placed 1200 B.C., you see, as the founder of Thebes, the city of Thebes. So there you have a typical attempt of modern times to be pre-Homeric. Now Mr. Freud doesn't know what he does, because all the people who go instinctively in our time do this, what I have described. The Christian can play with this. If you are fully aware of the difference between our era and the preChristian era, you can play with renaissances, without being swallowed up by
them. If you do not, you have to do like Mr. Freud, or Mr. Marx, or Mr. Darwin, and you just, so to speak, disappear in your revival of the past, totally, without having your head out of water, which is the -- then, gentlemen, the identical arrangement between primordial man and you and me. If you divide the head and the heart, and look backward with your head, then your hopes are pinned on the staying of something with you which has been -- most of you do not know that hopes are always based on pictures, on images, on concepts of the past. You cannot hope of which you have no idea. And ideas are always based on experience, on pictures, on images which you have seen. "Idea" is what I have seen, which you do not know.
The hope, gentlemen, which you entertain is always based on something you have seen before or you have been told that it has existed before, on some rumor of a golden age. All your ideas, gentlemen, are full of pious hopes. You call it "wishful thinking." But you cannot wishfully think without taking something out of the past as a treasure and saying, "That's good. I like to have that." Money or a car. You hope that you -- one day you will have them. Well, why? How? Because you know what a car, and a health, and a road, and money can buy and can perform. Anything that's dealing, gentlemen, with the real, brief future, would not be called "hope." It would be called "faith." The heart of these people marching there in the -- in the Orozco fresco are full of faith, which is the opposite of hope. Faith means that nothing is in your head, but you believe that you must live through the ordeal, or the future. You don't know what's coming. Something utterly new. And you can't -- hope for it, because you have also to dread it. The faith, you see, overcomes the dread of the future. That's all. We trust that it's God's will, but that's all you can say.
Now this country, as you know, has -- is in complete confusion. It is a country without faith and full of hope. And you call it "faith." Most ministers in this country call hope "faith," and you all confuse both hope and faith. That's why this distinction between the renaissance head and the new heart is for you of the utmost importance. If you want to escape the heresies of modern churches in this country, and you don't escape it by going to church, you have to dis- -- learn again that the Lord distinguished between faith and hope. He made it very clear that He -- asked for faith and not for hope, because the -- His world was coming to an end, and I may give you a secret, gentlemen. The word "hope" does not appear in the first three Gospels at all. It's an unknown word there, because Christ was not coming to bring hope to the world. Because the people always hope for some sausage, or some frankfurters, or some hamburgers which they have eaten already. They want to have it again. And obviously Christ starts a new life with something nobody understands, yet, what it -- how it -- what it will be like. You cannot bring anything new on hope. When -- when Christoph Columbus was sent out to -- by Queen Isabel to this country, he had to sell her
hopes, and he had to sail on faith. And the faith has finally prevailed because this is a new continent, but the hope equipped the -- paid the money for the ships. You see the difference? Because they thought it would be Asia where they would come. That was hope. But his holding out against hope, as we say, you see, is belief, his faith. And you don't know this, gentlemen. To you, in this country, you cannot understand that faith and hope are opposites.
Faith is a future cleansed from your clutterings of mind, and opinion, and ideas, and programs. You can be sure that the real history of the world will look very different from your programs, and fortunately so. What a tiresome world it would be if the things would happen which you opinionate. Fortunately God is much more imaginative than we are. And so even your wife is not boring after 30 years, whereas if you -- or she would be all you hoped for, you would have nothing to live with after 10 years. You would know it all ahead of time. But your idea is so much that your hopes are good enough. That you really think that if you get your hopes fulfilled, then you could live. Gentlemen, then you would die from exhaustion. From {inanition}, from anemia. The great thing is if you live on faith, then you know that life is given us. But you think you have to make it. And that's too poor.
Life is much bigger than what you -- than is in your little brain, or my little brain. I told you that history is the content of the unpredicted things, of the miraculous things, isn't it? Remember? The unbelievable things, which you can only, by real faith, accept as part of the story. You see the German {digna}, I know so much of it because we had to learn a lesson. Why I am in this country, gentlemen. Because I accepted the German defeat in 1918. As you well know, the rest of the -- Germany did not accept this, and it had to go to the world war the second time because of its disbelief, its unbelief, because of its pious hopes, which you probably would have done, too. Or take the South, who took 70 years to forego its hopes, and is now, you see, finally in the Eisenhower fold. That is, the -- war, the Civil War waged by the Republicans has been forgiven by the South. They have accepted, you see. They now believe. Before, they only bowed to necessity. See the difference?
Hitler, gentlemen, is the -- the idealistic approach to life. There has been a war; we have not lost it. We don't believe it. We won't believe it. We don't accept it. We hope still, you see, against hope, that this can be changed into victory. It's the same in this country. You went -- committed yourself to the fates of the -- destiny of -- man, and then comes home after the first world war and say, "It hasn't happened." We hope that we -- the war, you see, will have no consequences. And here we are in it, you see, up to our necks because we have thought we could, by pious hope, forego, you see, an act of faith, an act of acceptance, an act of belief that something had happened which we had not hoped
for, our commit- -- you see, of being in. Nobody had hoped for it in this country, of course. But you must accept it as an act of faith.
Now, gentlemen, what -- what mediates between hope and faith, then, in the life of man is the third virtue, the cardinal virtue, which stands between hope and faith. And I'm not going to talk to you about this, because that's only in our era that we know that love has to mediate between hope and faith. The ancients didn't know this. The ancients were torn by -- between hope and faith, but they had these two virtues to the utmost extent. Whereas you have only one -- you only have hope. You have no faith. Nobody in this country at this moment has faith in the year 2200, at least not officially. If you read the editorials, they all think -- by that time there has been a third world war and the whole world has gone out in -- up in flames. Funny thing is today, you see, formerly only Christians believed in the end of the world. But today Christians are the only people who think that the -- world may still have a future, whereas all agnostics believe in the end of the world. All the atheists believe that it is all over. They are all nihilists, you see, that nothing can prevent the self-destruction of the human race. Because you are all basing your whole life on hopes. You don't believe in -- you have no faith. Faith means that this -- that what happens happens meaningfully, although you haven't been told -- told beforehand what is going to happen. One hasn't asked for your consent, and it's just the same, and even moreso meaningfully to -- meaningful to you. When your wife dies, or your parents die, it isn't that you didn't hope that they would live on, but you have to accept their death, have you not?
I just get -- got the {faire partie} of a young woman. She has three children and is pregnant. Her husband was in Russian captivity as a German officer, a doctor for the last seven years. He returned in 1952, began to practice medicine again, and after one year and-a-half, he fell dead: the excitement, 44 years of age. Well, I had to comfort this young woman. The only thing you can invite her to is to accept on faith, which is intolerable in terms of hope. If she looks back on what she has decided, to marry this man, to have children with him, to wait for his return, to re-establish himself in a common household, to go and study with him once more, from one city in Germany to the other, all I have to say is you must be dis- -- desperate, you see. Spero, hope, desperate, non spero: I do not hope anymore, you see. This woman has no hope. She has to live up on -- on faith. Ten years later, she may say, "Although I was desperate, my faith has borne fruit." She cannot say this now. I can only invite her. And you can support such a person to have faith, but there's no hope. Absolutely no hope.
And you cannot tolerate a hopeless life, gentlemen. Go to Italy. There's a nation without hope, but in deep faith. You can learn something from the Italians. Nothing -- the individual -- Italian, or the group of Italy to hope for. They'll
be as poor as they are now for the next hundred years. There will be no standard of living in Italy, isn't that true? But they have faith, and they are very splendid people. And I think they are -- cannot be hurt less than we can. Hopes, gentlemen, are easily destroyed, and then the person who has the hopes commits suicide. Faith cannot be destroyed that easily by disappointments from the outside.
In this then, gentlemen, we are identical with the ancient peoples. And since this is never said, it is terrible, and since in our departments of religion, and philosophy, and history, we have atheism rampant, nihilism. The only religious departments I can see in this college are physics and economy. Because there they believe -- at least economists believe in the business cycle. That's a wrong religion, but it's a religion. And the physicists believe in progress of science. And that's only possible if you believe in God. Progress is something that outlasts my own mortal existence, does it not? But in sociology, and in history, and in philosophy, and religion, it's just blind nihilism that is taught.
Therefore I have to tell you in this course, gentlemen, that man is equipped with these two great forces, hope and faith, compared to which his intelligence is a very minor matter. It's just a harlot, it's just a tool. If you have faith, you will live forward, despite your disappointment. If you have hope, you will let nothing die that once has been proved worthwhile. Now that's exactly what I'm doing at this moment, gentlemen. I'm speaking English, and I'm therefore hopeful that the once-created English language is still good enough for you and me. Every mathematician defies this. He has no hope that the primitive man did a good thing when he created the beautiful word "faith," or "love," or "hope," or "onetwo-three," you see. He tries to get out of this language. He's timeless, anhistorical, the mathematician. He -- he tries to tell you and me that our language isn't good enough. I always feel the language is much better than you and I, which I -- we are privileged to speak. It is still waiting for resuscitation. And to me, gentlemen, this whole process of revival is also a process of reviving the terms, the language, the speech of the first people. I just try to speak as energetically and passionately as they used to speak. And you should learn this. I hope that I succeed, you see. And succeed in this real sense that we succeed as a succession into their power. Just by talking of them, we may also be clad again into their righteous mind.
So gentlemen, hope and faith we share. And this is the common share of all men. With regard to the third passion, the third power, that has alternated. People have tried to do without love. They had courage in this place. They had justice in its place. They had reason in its place. The American businessman had hope and reason. And this he calls Christianity.
That's not, I mean, as an American missionary in Egypt, whom you also know, remember, Mr. {Bedau}. He gave once a talk here. He was a -- is a -- was the president of the American University in Cairo, Egypt. He once gave a talk here on this campus which was very impressive. He said the American businessman is a Moslem. That's all his religion. It's very identical with what the Arabs believe. It's -- all the rest is lip service. But what he really believes is in -- is Kismet. I mean, he hopes, you see, that God has mercy on him, and He is reasonable. { }. { }.
Well, that's -- gentlemen, if you don't know that faith and hope are in balance in every historical generation, then you cannot understand your relation to the -- to primitive man. This is therefore the first thing. And now we turn to the funeral, gentlemen. The institution of the funeral produces this split into hope and faith, because the animals run away when they are going to die. No animal wants to be seen when it dies. All animals disappear in a corner. If you have a cat, or a dog, or a horse, or a cow, it doesn't matter -- or a deer, it goes when it feels that it must die, in a corner. And it tries not to be seen. The great discovery of the tribesman is that the moment of death is a moment to be watched. We call this "observes." When a man, you see, is observant, of a strict observance, this doesn't mean just that he's -- an observatory, as you well know. The original meaning of "observance" is that he pays attention to something outside of him, which to the mere animal is quite impossible. A mere animal is self-centered. To be observant means, you see, to subdue self-interest to an act in the outer world which is more important. It isn't service first, gentlemen, what you are lacking. You have no reverence, because you have no observance. There is nothing that seems to take you out of your life and make it important that you watch what happens in another man's life. You do it when a Catholic today prays for the pope's health. That's -- he's observant of -- because this man's health is more important to him than his own health. Now that's just one form of -- today, this prayer for the pope, which were mentioned yesterday in the paper, I read -- for his health and recovery is a pale form of taking care of older life.
This is unnatural, gentlemen. It is natural, as you know from Mowgli's Jungle Book -- you still know Mowgli and The Jungle Book? Well, that the old wolf is killed, is he -- is it not? It is the discovery of humanity, but not for any sentimental reason, that anything that man has done before us must be observed. Now death is that moment in which observ- -- this observance is preeminent. If you do not take over at the moment of death, you see, something is allowed to die, which is not purely physical, some achievement of the previous generation.
Therefore, gentlemen, all tribes gather the people around a dead man's -- a dying man's deathbed and try to elicit from him his last breath. There's very often the symbol that he really breathes his last breath on the children, that he
puts his hands on their heads, that he blesses them. And that is the meaning of -- "bless," gentlemen. Communication of one's own spirit to those who must receive it, lest they perish. The word "blessing" today has gone the way of all flesh. And you think it is something {fleshery}. But it isn't. The word "blessing" means victory over death. If you say to a person, "God bless you," he -- you mean to say, "May God extract you from the bottomless pit." May He provide that you do not die this -- at this mo- -- very probable under natural circumstances, but that you make evince, conquer, breathe again, and overstep the next danger of death, which is always around us, any moment.
To these people then, gentlemen, uphold the bless thing of God came in the form of the dying man's blessing of his progeny, of his offspring, of his henchmen, of his horde, of his flock, or however you call the people who had been impressed by his cunning, and his courage, and his leadership. We must then suppose, gentlemen, that leadership in the third, this is the animal equipment of the human race. That we were like the chamois, or like the deer, or like the wolves, or the elephants, living in groups. The discovery of men's special task, which may have happened the very moment he appeared, we don't -- I don't know this -- was the decision that this leadership must not be -- vacated. That what this -- the leading -- leader had achieved has to be passed on. There you have the institution of funerals, the break with nature. However you figure this out, in details -- I have my own special ideas about it, you may -- must take this -- this fact, which is against everything you have believed so far, that you will not understand history if you don't follow this. The funeral is an institution that has been once instituted, that is -- has -- is not a general thing. It is -- has been instituted at one moment in history.
There is now a physicist in Europe who has written a famous book in which he says, "There has been one first molecule." The electrons, once gathered historically in one molecule. That is, he has the same insight for the -- even the socalled dead nature. I assure you, gentlemen, that the history of the tribes is the history of man in the singular, creating something first. And all the tribes on earth have imitated this. There is one origin of man, because there is one -- this one stroke of genius. Genius is not wanton, as you have been told by the evolutionists. There isn't -- the reasons are not as plentiful as blackberries, gentlemen. Even Falstaff knew this. You believe this, that you will learn in your own life that not -- there will be a dearth of presidential candidates, you see. The whole idiocy of your theory is that anybody can become president. That has to do with your idea that anybody can make history, and anybody can have created human history in the past. Very scanty. I doubt that we will be very -- will have a very happy time to find any candidate. The Republican Party had Mr. Landon, had Mr. Wilkie, and had Mr. Dewey. I think we may all say that the country will be very happy that they were not elected, because they just were not presidential
timbre. I have nothing personally against any of these men, you see. They were no presidential timbre. And Mr. Truman wasn't. And so we have four presidential candidates in the last 20 years, because there was no better. Now we have a man of presidential timbre. But gentlemen, how difficult to find him. It took a world war to produce him. Otherwise he would be now a brigadier general. It's an expensive democracy in which you have -- have a world war before you can have a presidential candidate. That's all against your upbringing. You think that out of the 155 million Americans, anybody could become president, you see. And I tell you that the old tribes and we today again are faced with the terror of dearth of candidacies. There are very few people in any one moment who can do what is needed. In this college, too. In your class of '55 and '56, too. But you rely on everybody else, and you always say somebody else shall do it, so nobody does it. That's the result of a democracy in which everybody believes that everybody is as good as everybody else. So nobody is any good. That's the result.
You must always assume, gentlemen, that this which has to be done, in a moment of vital significance, this equilibrium between faith and hope -- because that's what it is -- how much newness, how much memory, you see. This is so delicate that very few people can do it. You see it very clearly in a case like Mayor Wagner, who is no man in his own right. But if you want to get the machine of New York, which is the past of New York, you see, the Democratic Party and the necessity of some town -- city government in the future at all, you had to elect the son of the old Senator Wagner, because there was otherwise no compromise possible, and so he was elected. Not on his personal merits, because in him the two lines of faith and hope could meet. Who is from New York? Don't you -- understand that this was the whole problem of the election this time? To find the enough of hope that the Democratic tradition could be, you see, preserved and enough of faith that there should be really a new start. And he did just exactly this and it's a very impersonal thing, you see. He didn't -- doesn't do it because he's personally important, you see. But because he lies in this middle between faith and hope. Can you see this?
You will understand politics, gentlemen, only when you see this -- the Republican Party couldn't elect Mr. Taft. That would have just been hope of a return to normalcy. It had to elect Eisenhower because there was a combination of faith and hope, you see. Something new, some real -- realism with regard to the last 20 years which after all had made this man, this -- man Eisenhower. Who was he before? And the Republicans? Nobody. So in making him the candidate, the Republican Party pledged itself to have -- to recognize the last 20 years, but since he had been a military man, they did not pledge -- themselves to recognize any one special form of the last 20 years, you see. And so they got out from under any identification with the faith of the New Deal, you see, and yet they gave some credit to the necessary faith in a free future, and promising all the Republican,
you see, electorate the fulfillment of their pious hopes of 1913. And that's the problem of politics: the fitting, you see, of the past and the future.
Now you see "funeral" is just what it does. The funeral says the past is not the past. The bless -- bliss has to be upon us. We have to look at the old man's achievements. It's very primitive, gentlemen, but that's how life has begun on this planet. It's this very primitive form that the living generation looks backward and says, "We won't fall behind the achievements of the old leader." Of course then comes something new, you see, and that's the discovery of the spirit, gentlemen. The spirit is the discovery that faith and hope have to be equated. That is, in looking backward, I look at certain specific things the old leader used to do. He used to put out watches at this corner of the pasture and this corner of the woodland, you see, for the hunting ground, and keep out others, or watch the animals. Well, this has to be repeated, you see. But they may have to migrate, and the weather may break, and this may be a very cold season, and they may have to establish fires where they never had established fire. Take a very primitive situation. You may go camping, you see. There's a blizzard. You would have to do something unexpected, which is not in the rules. In this moment, you have to have faith, you see. You have to establish a new authority. Well, the spirit, gentlemen, is the unity between faith and hope. That is, that these people -- why do they have the blessing of the old man on their faces, you see -- still will -- are willing to agree -- to have come to an agreement in his name to the next -- for the next measure? And that the next measure, although never done by the old man, will still be acclaimed as being done in the same spirit, in his spirit. And here we discover the great meaning of the word "in the name."
When people in history speak in the name of Jesus Christ, or in the name of the American government, or in the name of philosophy, or in the name of science, or in the name of medical art, what do they say, gentlemen? They say that this, what they have to do now, and that which has been done before, are of the same vintage, of the same devotion, of the same righteousness, of the same authority. That therefore, gentlemen, the name of the old man and a funeral had to survive in order to allow these people to have faith in the future. The blessing of the old man and the turning of your face towards the past in the tribe, in the family today, in the clan, and your listening to the invocation of his name when somebody proposes something new is the same act of life, so to speak. It is -- one is done for the same purpose as the other. And this you may -- you see, the worst sentence spoken in church today is always "in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit." People don't understand that. They think that's one -- it is usually a formula.
Gentlemen, the most important part of the whole service -- the whole sermon you can do without. Sermons are quite unimportant. They are just elucidations
of what's there already. If you would understand the liturgy, you wouldn't have to hear any sermon. In the Catholic church, the sermon is usually a very bastardized affair. But the worship, gentlemen, in the same spirit, is absolutely essential. Because you must be able to recognize what has done yesterday, what you are accustomed to do today, and what has to be newly introduced tomorrow as being in some form of unity, of having some relation to each other, you see. Before, you are not human beings. Most of you are not human beings. You are all playboys. You only are human beings when you understand the formula, "in the name." You are arrested in the name of the law. You know what that means? When you -- when the law was made, nobody knew you had to be arrested. But there is a new case. And the -- the representative of the law tells you that he's convinced that when the law was made, you see, and when he now stands there, there's no difference -- distinction of time. That this is one time, one age, one era, one and the same moment, one and the same situation. So he invokes "in the name of the law." You always hear, "This is a country under law," and not by men, you see. "Government by law." What does this mean? That there is a way of keeping the past in front of us and still being ahead of the criminal. A law once passed is still valid when a new man commits a new murder, is it not? Well, that's very miraculous. The laws against murder were passed in the days of Cain and Abel. And this is still valid.
Yesterday in New York, you understand, there were three men shot in a Cadillac. Every one of them had a Cadillac. I wonder. And they all seemed to be very much deserving of being eliminated from human society -- from the -- according to what they said in the papers at least. But obviously the police went into action, because they were quite sure that in the name of the law, something had to be done.
So gentlemen, if you want to understand the greatness of names again, you will begin -- have to learn that the name is conqueror of death. In a political sense. Not the man who dies is saved, not the people who live today are saved by the name. The continuity is saved. The unity of purpose, the unity of intent, the plan of creation that the people who act today and yesterday and the day before yesterday are carrying out one great purpose. The name is nothing by name, gentlemen. It doesn't mean that we honor a hero in -- for -- vanity's sake as a -- build him a big monument. If you read Shakespeare's Sonnets, you will find that he said the only way in which -- in which we unify the earth is by speech, that brass and marble do not build continuity, you see. But by saying, "in the name of the old man" we can invoke in everybody else this willingness to continue, to carry on. "In the name" is therefore always said by the middle group, the middle generation, by trying to bring the past into the future.
We'll see that -- how in Christianity this has been very much complicated. In
the tribe, it simply means the old man -- must be with us. It means the turning toward the past in an exaggerated manner. Everything in the future, gentlemen, which people have to do is declared to be the same as what has -- done before. Always the same, so to speak. Every exception therefore, gentlemen, in the -- in the old tribe is considered something to be redeemed. To be remedied. And that's the origin, as we shall see, after the -- after a short intermission, that is called -- the reason for the sacrifice of the ancients. You could -- had to pay for every exception from the rule, for every deviation from tradition.
Let's have a break.
[tape interruption]
Most people however begin with their little momentary will, and their opinions, and not with what they hope, and what they dread, or what they have faith in. And so you must understand that the story which we speak is very different from what you think your own story is. What is in the papers, gentlemen, is not the story of hope and fear. That's the story of intent, and of failure in the sense of the world. That's what they -- people call "worldly" or { }. The real story of mankind has always been a religious story between one's own hopes of that -- that which is ful- -- already done, can be preserved, can be expanded, perhaps, and that, something that is lacking will be created, despite our lack of creativity. In 1939, there was in the city of New York an exhibition called Futurama. Has anybody still -- no, you are too -- way too young. Did anybody go there? Well, that was sheer hope, you see. It was terrible. They tried to preserve everything, you see, that -- and extend everything that didn't deserve to be preserved. Only to show you that technical hope in itself, today, is a very mediocre hope. It is just hope in -- in standards of living and refrigerators. The final issue was, with the Futurama, that the cars would drive in three stories instead of one, you see. We were -- the streets -- cities all would live in three stories so that they could spit into your bed in the third floor, just as much as --.
[laughter]
You understand, that's hope, but not faith, because -- what of it? That's not very interesting that you think more cars. One highway is not enough. Three highways. Gentlemen, hope is always -- can always -- been expressed by quantity. You can say "more" of something. Faith can never be expressed by quantity, because it's a new quality that doesn't exist, yet.
So man is, from the very beginning then, gentlemen, united with this purpose. Nothing ever created, gentlemen, in the spirit of the Lord has been -- can be abandoned. Speech cannot be abandoned. Funerals cannot be abandoned. Chris-
tianity cannot be abandoned. There are -- Jews today as there were for -- 3,500 years ago. Isn't that very strange? We cannot abandon anything once really created. Because part of our humanity is connected with this by hope. Hope then, gentlemen, is the recognition that people before us must be kept alive in their achievement. Will you take down this definition? It's quite a good one. Hope is the recognition that an achievement, you see, already done can be kept alive, or can be revived, you see, because hope means we have a concept of something. We understand it, or we know what it is, you see. And we think it may come to pass again.
This good woman who lost her husband cannot have hope now to marry a second husband. Thereby she would jettison her -- you see, her love for this husband. You cannot believe in second, third marriages the moment when a man dies. But she can have faith that her hope can be revived one day. That's a very different story, you see. She can overcome her despair by simply going on living, you see, and allowing this reservoir of hope to be filled again, which is now dried. That's faith. Life is much -- in a widow, you can study all problems of history -- catastrophes of humanity, because in a woman's life when her husband dies, you have the same as when a country is defeated. Something comes to an end, you see, at this moment there is nothing to hope for, but you can -- may have faith at one time there is a chance to revive. Think of the Poles. You saw in Life this article of this Polish man {Korovski}, perhaps. There is nothing to hope for in Poland now, you see. But you may have faith as a Pole that one day you may have hopes again. You can't have any hopes at this moment.
So gentlemen, now the practical question: the people believed in the old days that the children of the living generation could even better bring back the spirit of the ancestor. That's why the grandson always ca- -- received -- in many cases received the name of the grandfather. Also I told you already in some tribes in Africa the father becomes the name of the son, with the addition, "his father." Which also means, you see, that the son re-embodying the spirit of the bygone past, you see, gives the living generation the certainty of being in the right order. And I told you at the end of the -- moment before, that anything that really deviates from the -- hopes of the past in the tribe has to be redeemed, has to be bought off by sacrifice. Sacrifice is the necessity for the tribe, and we find therefore no human group -- which for you is hard to understand -- because sacrifice is abolished in America officially. There are no sacrifices. Everybody does as he pleases. And everybody is to be made happy. Sacrifice is just not a part of reality here. Is this -- foolishness to you, sacrifice.
Gentlemen, in the tribe, it is the constitution. The constitution reads: "Anything that is not identical with the spirit of the ancestor has to be expiated by sacrifice." You know the word "piety." That means to be at peace with the spirit
of the old man. "Pious" always means to be reconciled to your father, and your ancestors. "To expiate" means to restore this piety when it has been violated. Now "to expiate" is perhaps the best word to describe to you the relation of the tribe to -- into the future. They have the desperate hope that anything that does deviate -- if you have here the run of tradition -- that anything on which the eyes from the totem pole set, and of which they would disapprove, that this by expiation can be straightened out. And there comes -- is the origin of the word "right." "To righten the path of my people," as the Bible says, to straighten again the crooked path, from the past into the future, that is the essence of expiation. "Straighten" and "right" means, you see, continuation. This is right, and is better for you to speak of right and wrong, instead of speaking of law. Law is a very difficult for -- thing for you to understand. But it's simpler if you really actually see that these very primitive people knew what to -- mean by "right." It means a visible continuation of the past so far traveled. Expiation must straighten out the wrong.
Now gentlemen, we get a very interesting figure. The past is designed or -- consecrated by the tomb, the grave of the hero, of the ancestor, and it is -- distinguished when the totem -- the tomb cannot be carried with you when you have to move, migrating -- by the totem pole. The totem pole, as we said, is the list of tombs made available. You remember? At the front every tribe has an altar, an altar, because that is the means of keeping the road straight. On the altar, the sacrifices are sent up so that the spirits may be reconciled and may accept this as a payoff for any deviation from their rule, from their way of life. The word "way of life" is very, very strict connection -- contact with -- of course with "right." You see, a way of life can be crooked, or can be right.
So gentlemen, we have two things for the tribe which we now de- -- still find in every tribe. The problem of the grave is the problem of hope towards the past, the recognition that something of the past has to be remembered. And that is the name of the ancestor, because you can only have peace among the living in his name. The second thing, opposing the tomb, is the altar. Because at the altar, all crooked things have to be straightened out again.
So we can say, gentlemen, that in the tribes, the future is only reached through sacrifice. Because it is the way of reconciling the inevitable change, you see, with the past. The tribe has great difficulty of recognizing change as legitimate. By sacrifice, the tribe pays the penalty for having to change. Because there is no way out. People have to change as time goes on.
Gentlemen, there are two other things -- two other situations in which every tribe is steeped. One we have already mentioned. That is the warpath. Against the world outside, the tribe keeps its unity by arming to the teeth. By holding off
any deviation, any -- any group that says, "We have a better ancestor. We have our own history." It keeps its own history straight. It keeps to itself. It keeps its identity. War, gentlemen, is something never concerned with individuals. War is not killing. The fifth commandment in the Bible, "Thou shall not kill," has nothing to say about war. That's one of your mistakes. War is the sacrifice of my own life in order to keep the way of life straight. Because the way of life is bigger than you and me. Everybody knows this, gentlemen, who dons a uniform, that he doesn't murder a northern -- China -- Korean when he shoots him. He's willing to fight for his country. That's something very different. And this country is a set of rules, is a set of traditions, from time immemorial, in which he has received the revelation of the spirit. And when you don the uniform, you are not interesting, and your enemy is not interesting. But it interesting is that one is fighting for the United States and the other is fighting for North Korea. That's very interesting. Because that's why you are there. And the two represent a set of revealed ways of life. And the ways of life, gentlemen, are bigger than any one generation. Because every generation has to enter upon this way of life to continue what has been started. You can't get away from it. Because otherwise we can't con- -- do anything human. And this is then the warpath, gentlemen. On the warpath, the living generation is willing to keep its own path so straight that it itself is sacrificed. That it is the living victim of this conflict of his tradition with inimical traditions.
Inside the tribe, gentlemen, we said already there is only one way of producing unity and cohesion: the meeting in one place. The tribal meeting place. You can also call it the dancing green. Because in this tribal -- at this tribal meeting, the spirit of the ancestor has to be imparted to a frenzied chorus. The tribal meeting is at a high pitch. The festivals, gentlemen, and the tribal meeting are identical. Political life in any community, gentlemen, must distinguish between weekday and holy day. Take this down, gentlemen. You don't know this again. The meeting is extra-ordinary. The weekday is ordinary. Everyday life, gentlemen, is inept politically. You are very nice in your -- on your weekdays, but you have to have an election campaign to get a little bit intoxicated, to get anything done at all. In these three months of an election campaign, you can get a little of the air -- that was inspiring the tribal meeting. Or at the religious revival, you can get the same spirit. It's extra-ordinary. What is extra-ordinary, gentlemen? What is so extra-ordinary about any tribal meeting? Well, you know people danced. People had their hashish, their soma, their beer, their ale. Every tribe had its own way of getting drunk. Wine, beer, vodka. All -- every political community we know of had its own special {spirited} liquor, spirits, you see, to impart to the tribal members the right spirit. That's not accidental, gentlemen. In the liquor business, you have the imitation of political necessity. That's why it is so immoral to drink alone, and why it is so moral to drink together. Any other country except America knows this and has to be told. But you are -- perhaps
have to be told that it is immoral to get drunk by yourself, whereas it is highly fashionable to get drunk together, and rightly so. Because drinking is only supporting, strengthening the sublimation which comes from the fact, gentlemen, that in the tribe, the spirit makes the -- in every member participate in {spirit}. In the tribe, no living man speaks himself, but they all sing together.
On this we have to stop. A little more the next time. Thank you.