Transcript
{ } = word or expression can't be understood
{word} = hard to understand, might be this
...{ }, Constantine are the big cities in Thrace. Quite right. So Orpheus would hail from this part of the northern sphere, and it would again be an out -- outside -- outlandish part of the Greek mainland. Now the next, {Museus.} Where does he come from? Mr. -- ja? No? Mr. Mandaville?
(I haven't got it, Sir.)
Oh, you only know Arabia. I see. Is there anybody from Arabia in this? Hm? Have you found anybody from Egypt in this list?
(Oh, of course, Egypt is playing an important part in all these { }.)
Who -- one of -- one of these names comes right from Egypt. Who is it? Who found out about that? Gentlemen, you have -- don't do any work. I can't -- God help you. You see, if you are not interested in the history of Greek philosophy, I won't make you interested. That's your own interest. Why don't you do the work I have assigned to you? Which of these men comes from Egypt? {Dwight}?
(Well, the man from Samos { } was, wasn't he?)
Ach, ach, ach. You think Samos is in Egypt? Very interesting. That's quite an achievement, you know. Really appalling, you see. Polycrates -- Croesus come from -- from -- comes from Samos. Pythagoras comes from there. The -- the Greek of the Greeks. It has nothing to do with Egypt. It's one of the fundamental centers of Greek -- the Greek spirit. Pure Greek.
Where is Samos? Where is Samos situated? Well, I gave you an outline, didn't I, last time? I -- here, I put Italy; I put Sicily; I put Greece, vaguely; and I put Asia Minor here. Here's Egypt, put room here. Here is Crete. Here are all the islands. Now where is Samos? What is Samos? City?
(An island.)
An island. Where is it situated?
(Outside of Athens.)
What?
(Outside out Athens.)
That's Salamis, yes. But not Samos. Heavens! Have you never learned any -- any such geography? What?
(It's near the Turkey -- the Turkish shore.)
Sure. It's one of the main islands in -- in face of Ephesus and Miletus. Here. Here is Samos. And Mr. Pythagoras then went from here to Croton, Italy, and that is the great line from -- of communication. Why do you laugh so much, my dear man, huh? Sir, in the blue shirt, huh?
(Why am I laughing?)
Ja.
(I'm laughing at "Mr. Pythagoras.")
What did I say?
("Mr. Pythagoras.")
Ja. Well, he was a gentlemen. He had a daughter, Thea. He was. Yes.
Now, Mr. {Bollus}, Page 125, Number 78, he comes from the delta of the Nile. But he's a later man. He shouldn't be in this book, anyway. But he is an Egyptian-Greek, who already lives under the Ptolemys, when Greek -- the -- Alexander the Great has conquered Egypt and made it into a Greek subject country, and when Alexandria is founded. So -- the -- the story of -- the name of {Bollus} appearing here as from Egypt bears out, so to speak, the whole story that -- the story of Greek philosophy is also one of expansion into newly conquered country. The -- Alexander the Great brings Mr. {Bollus} about, so to speak. He lives in {Mende}. The old Egyptian city of {Mende} had a -- had a religion of its own, a -- a goat-god was its -- but this man Bollus just belongs to the -- I think to the Pythagorean school. Now, go back.
{Museus} comes from which city? Nobody has done this work, obviously, except myself. What?
(Athens.)
Athens, yes. And that is remarkable. If we now go through the list quickly, I'll tell you who is from Athens. There is one among the seven sages, Solon. I
won't say "Mr. Solon," otherwise the gentleman laughs again. He is on- -- Solon is not listed as specifically. He should have -- as under Number 10, or 73A, the seven sages. There is one man, Solon, coming from Athens. If you go on, you find how small the contribution of Athens is. {Armanias}, 27, supposedly comes from Athens. We aren't quite sure. Damon -- Damon, in 37, is Athenian. Archelaus, Number 60; 65 supposedly is -- {Catilus} is -- is Athenian, {Catilus}. We'll talk about it in a minute. He is a -- a pupil of Heraclitus of Ephesus. So I don't feel very sure about his homeland, be -- here called -- in my -- in the source is now called Athens. And then there is Antiphon, 87, and Critias, 88, Athens. And the 89, the anonymous writer quoted by Iamblichus, might be Athenian. He writes in the Attic prose, in Attic style, but more -- we don't know his birthplace.
I think it is very important for you to put down the fact, gentlemen, that only six of these men are Athenians. Isn't it right? Six. So Ath- -- Athens is a -- is a great center on the crossroads of the Greek world, but it isn't, by no means, the birthplace of the great spirit of the Greek culture. And you -- you mistake the two things too easily. Therefore it is -- I think this is a good list to show you how eccentric the contributions really lie arranged, of the Greek mind. If you see there is only -- there is one Spartan and perhaps Number 90, he may come from a Spartan, Doric environment. And the other man, from Argos, Polyclitus, Number 40, smaller mind. Nothing very -- very great.
You find anybody else from the Peloponnesus? Peloponnesus contains Olympia, Ak- -- and Elis, and Sparta, the great Prussia, the great West Point of Greece. Who else is from this Peloponnesus? Have -- have you anybody? Wie? Ja, {Helis}, very -- actually, very good. Thank you very much.
And so it is to -- to be sure a very small percentage of people who do any thinking of this type, of this independent type, as a reason for this scarcity in Athens and -- and -- and -- and the Peloponnesus, gentlemen, is the wellfunctioning of the political unit.
Gentlemen, for philosophy, there is only occasion if you have to reconcile the existence of your homeland with the rest of the world. If your homeland however is very secluded and very, very { } as in Switzerland, you see, the Swiss have not produced philosophers, because they have produced great leaders in their little mountain cantons. You see the difference? And -- to this day, if you try to -- to philosophize, don't go to Switzerland. They are an anti-philosophical nation, because they are politically sound. And strong. And you don't understand this, gentlemen. There is a cor- -- a constant correspondence between political -- integration and philosophical necessity. If you are in a small political community, and have to live in a big universe, then the question of the universe, you see, is so preponderant that you cannot be satisfied with the ways
of -- of daily life in your little state of Podunk. But if the Middle West -- people in the Middle West think they can be isolationists, and if you are an isolationist, you don't have to philosophize. Philosophy and non-isolation are connected, because then you have to have ideas, you see, which transcend your native political action.
And this -- is of course the -- there is a struggle. Why is the Republican Party today so boring? Because it has no -- it is isolationist at bottom. And it doesn't want to have a future about -- a philosophy about the future of the universe. Now gentlemen, we already live in a universe with one economy. I tried to tell you this. And therefore this so-called modern Republicanism is still simply isolationist. It's nothing else, because it hasn't digested the doctrines of the war. You can still -- even the president of the United States says we can go to war. Now gentlemen, we can't go to war. With the atom and the H-bomb, war is out of the question for any reasonable man. The idea that we just can go to war or not is nonsense. You have seen it in this -- there is no -- you can have police actions. You can have riots. You can have -- you can have bush-fire, so to speak, wars. But this country can -- cannot go to World War III. It cannot. And it won't. And the sooner the Republican Party learns this, the more ch- -- it has a chance ever to elect a president again.
It's very strange, you see. This is all talk here, co-existence so. The question is, what kind of co-existence? In one world? In one economic order, you see? Or side by side as in isolationism? All this is to -- sound -- everybody is sound asleep in the United States now with moral -- indignation as a substitute for thinking. We are back to 1914, because you actually think we can do as we please. We cannot, gentlemen. The United States live in one world in which World War III has become impossible. That's a new -- you have to think very boldly, and very differently from what you think. There is already one economy, as the oil flow shows, and there is still sovereign nations. And they can't get together.
And the talk that go- -- going on now, I mean, over the Voice of Europe -- Free Europe and so, is in total contradiction, as you know, to our real policy. We haven't done a thing to help the Hungarians, but Free -- the Free Radio Europe has told them for 10 years that we are going to do something. So split are we, so torn to pieces. We don't know what we shall do, because there are two different ages in our politics today. One is Herbert Hoover, Sr., who calls himself "junior"; and the other is -- because I think he's much older than his father, and -- who just thinks in terms of America and nothing else. And he's perfectly hopeless and helpless, therefore. He has no policy, as you m- -- read in every report. The good man probably went to Princeton or Yale. And the other problem, the other people who -- see a little deeper, the -- they have no voice at this moment in the
matters and we have no solution. But if you deduct from our real situation, gentlemen, the -- the problem of one-world economy already in existence, and the possibility of -- of war, practically for a practical statesman, out of the question, because you -- he cannot will the total destruction of tre- -- third of his country, then you see that we are living today in one world.
Well, I said this before. I only wanted to explain the -- it's a very strange lie of the land in this whole list. If you come to Southern Italy, you find -- who are the people from Italy represented here? Wie? Ja? Please? Where do we begin, which number?
(45.)
Wie?
(45. 43.)
Ja, I should say. {Abicharmos} is 23, isn't it? Yes, and Pythagoras goes from Samos -- from -- from Asia Minor, he goes across the whole Mediterranean Ocean -- you must think of it as an ocean in terms of those little yachts and -- and sail -- the sailing boats, obviously. He goes over to -- to Croton. Then we come immediately to {Caracops} and {Petron}. They are all southern Italy. {Brantanos}, {Hippasus}. That's -- the numbers 15 -- so -- from -- beginning with 14, you have all people living in southern Italy. Down to 19, {Callifon}, and Demo- -- Democedes live in Croton. They are father and son, {Callifon} and Democe- -- {Parmeniskus} is from Metaponte, which is also in the so-called boot of Italy. You know, this is called the "boot" because of the heel on the one side, in the -- in the -- at the Bay of Tarantum, and {Appolia} forming -- Calabria forming the -- the toes. Xenophanes is -- {Parmeniskus} is from Metaponte. Then comes Xenophanes and Heraclitus, they are not. But {Epishamus} -- Alcmaeon is from Croton. {Echus} is from Tarant. {Paron} probably from Croton. Croton is also in southern Italy. And then comes Parmenides and Zeno, the great heads of the Eleatic school, as I told you, south of Naples. Then Empedocles, we find on Sicily, in Girgenti -- today Acragas. Sybaris of course is again southern Italy. {Ministo} comes from there. Of {Xudos} and {Boidas} we know very little.
Now would you draw a list of -- figure -- just figure out how many on this first page come from southern Italy and Sicily. Also Theagenes, and Number 8. My information says he's from Reggio. That is -- you see, at the -- at the Straits of Messina. What is it? Sir? You have no book? What? Nothing? Absolutely nothing. All right. Your neighbor, will you kindly tell me? How many names did we find from southern Italy on the first page? Wie? No, no, no, no.
(13.)
Six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12. I have 13. I have 13 on the first page. And my -- Pythagoras, Number 14, who transfers his loyalty from the East to the West. I think it's then quite important if you then look at Asia Minor, we have how many, on the first page only? Samos is {Phokus}, Number 5. Tenedos, that's next to Troy. Number 6. Syros is {Parakides}, by the way, a very important man. We'll talk -- I may say the word of -- about him. Thales, of course, our great beginner, our pioneer, is Number 4. Anaximander, Miletus; Anaximenes, Miletus. These are 6. Pythagoras is Number 7. {Chalcops} is Number 8. We don't know -- aren't quite sure of this; so very little known about him. Xenophanes is ni- -- is that Number 9. Heraclitus, 10. And there -- and -- and {Millisus}, 11. So we have -- ja?
(Isn't { } -- wasn't he a member of the Pythagorean school?)
What?
({ }.)
Well, the school certainly is in southern Italy. Is not -- wie?
(Weren't they centered in Syracuse?)
Oh no, no, no. Croton. K-r-o-t-o-n. So we get 11 names here, gentlemen. How many names did we have in southern Italy?
(13.)
Now, so you see this 24, and the whole center has only then given us 10. And that co- -- contains this very fabulous man { } who really also belongs to the outskirts and should really rate with the people in Tenedos. This is Tenedos lying right here in front of Troy. Here is Troy. And this would be -- {Allorphus} then would come from these shores -- from the Dardanelles. Here are the Dardanelles. And therefore I think we should put him off and give this man -- these people 9, and these people 12, and these people 13. And you see therefore that the two wings, you see, really crush the center.
Now I think that is something which we -- we now can follow up on Page 8 -- Roman viii once more. The names partly there are printed. I haven't found the principle of this lady. By -- with some people she gives kindly enough the -- the birthplace, and with others she doesn't. Reason is unknown to me. Let's go across. {Pitsicus} is near Tenedos and Troy. -- Let's go up from Number
74. So will you kindly -- somebody kindly help me figuring this out. {Pitsicus} is east. Abdera is where -- where is Abdera? Where are the Abderites, the famous -- the famous funny people of antiquity, the people of whom every -- every joke is told, so to speak? It's like Podunk here, you know, the stupid people of Abdera. You don't know where it is? Macedonia, in the north. So it is also eccentric. It is like Thrace -- Thrace, not a country really of the genuine Greek character. But there the great come. Democritus comes from there. If you -- look at -- Number 68. {Anaxasius}, 72. Who else?
({ }?)
Quite. So -- so the great men of the Democritean school, of the atomistic school.
So we put them on a special list, these three. Then we have {Pitsicus} for the easterners; Smyrna, Theognis, Number 71; Chios, of course. {Nessas} is of -- from Chios, Number 4. Ephesus: Antisthenes, the Heraclitean. -- {Ideos} -- does anybody know where Apollonia is located?
(Black Sea.)
Ja. So far away, too. Eccentric. Then we come to Lampsacus. Where's Lampsacus? Also in Asia Minor. {Cleidemus} I think is unknown. Apollonia, we have. Will you keep count of this? I won't. Anaxagoras comes from Clazomenae, also Asia Minor. Lycon comes from Eas- -- from Italy. {Simus Mionidas} { } from Poseidonia. That is modern Paestum. We talked about Paestum the other day. That is north of Elea, on south Italian ground, very near Naples. So Number 56, Poseidonia. Damon and Phintias, 55, come from Syracuse. {Protos}, {Amiklas}, and {Klineas} stem -- they are quite important. One from Tarentum, the other from Kyrene. Does anybody know where Cyrene is located, or Ky -- Kyrene, as the Greeks called it?
It's very strange, gentlemen. -- In the whole archipelago, in this whole cosmos of the Greeks, of which there were cosmopolitans, in this wonderful galaxy, we might call it with an appropriate word, of this archipelago of Greek colonies, there is of course in France already at that time Marseille, Massilia. That's a Greek colony, you see, of which they are very proud. It was founded from a country in the east, of Greece, from the -- Euobea, from Phocae. And the other -- colo- -- Greek colony of which they were very proud is in Libya, Cy- -- Cyrene. The Cyrenaica--you have perhaps heard this term in geography--the Cyrenaica is the bay at which also the Pu- -- Phoenicians had Carthage, you see, and at which the -- the modern Libya is -- is lying. Cyrenaica is this big part of the Mediterranean shoving in from the East into the African coast, so that it
bowls out a -- a big bay window into the coast land. Cyr- -- Cyrene, then, is a Greek colony there. And Pindar, the Greek of the Greeks who sang the Olympic victors, you know, one of his most famous odes is in honor of a man from Cyrene. And it tells the story of the Greek settlement In Cyrene by divine guidance, how the gods decided that this north African colony should be -- you see, should come to pass.
If you -- if you read these stories of the Greek colonies, then you understand a little bit of the story of Israeli, gentlemen. If you are -- here, I wa- -- had to moderate a very strange meeting two days ago. And people have no idea how life is carried on, on this globe. It is col- -- carried on by migration, by colonization--like this country, too--and not by legal papers. And the idea of these Arabs, that there can be no change on the map of the world strikes me as very impractical. Effort, and bloodshed, and sweat, and toil -- that's what colonizes countries, and nothing else. And the idea that -- that somebody says, "This is my country" is just foolish. He can defend it. Then it becomes his country. But by sitting tight, and doing nothing, and having a desert left and right, you are not owning your country.
So to me, Mr. Mandaville, your -- your viewpoint is just childish. And you should know better, having lived in these countries, that by sitting in a desert, you are not the ruler of this desert by a long shot. I was very depressed that this is all you had learned in the Near East. If you just read the Bible, you would know a little better. It's just nonsense, what you have seen. Illusions. Colonization, Sir. The whole Greek adventure was one of -- of -- of sacrifice and risking their lives, and doing something, and building cities on foreign soil. The Greeks didn't own one inch of all this country when they began. Not one inch. They were everywhere, however. And they were there, and they colonized this country, and they all became Greek and began to speak Greek. All our -- all the -- southern -- southern Gaul was Greek and -- for 800 years. But you have to do something. And these Arabs in Saudi Arabia have just done nothing. Absolutely nothing for a thousand years, and very definitely so. Ja?
(You advocate then that the -- that the Arabian { } the Phocaeans and the {Syrians} should attempt to integrate themselves into the Mo- -- the Islamic religion?)
I don't advocate anything. I only describe how changes on this globe have happened for the last 50,000 years. And I bow to the evidence, you see. And I know that this is the way life goes on, on this globe. And there is no other. And you won't have life. You just want to have dead order. An order that doesn't exist; empty spaces are not in order.
Well, that's a long story. We may sit down and thrash it out. But I want to say that the whole Greek colonization is a -- is a fairy tale, and you find it especially in this -- in this school in Cyrene, and this was quite a considerable school. The man of whom I'm speaking here at this moment is Theodorus, Number 43, who lived in -- in northern Africa. But I think your picture of Greece is quite wrong, if you do not see that that what you call today "Greek civilization" has very little to do with the motherland only, you see. But it is -- has had this tremendous force because it went outside and there had to face a hostile universe and therefore had to justify the existence of any one city, you see, by a philosophy common to the conquered and to the conquerors; or the colonizers, you may say, and the -- the natives. That's perhaps more friendly expressed, and I think also in a way, very true.
The -- Number 35 comes from an island in the Mediterranean, {Thesos}, near the -- again, near the Asiatic coast. Chios, of course, again, an island like Samos. And like Thasos. Then Damon is from Athens. {Hippon} again is from Samos. Hippodamus is from Miletus; and {Frilius} is from Chalcedon. So {Anopodes} is from Chios. Hippocrates is from Chios. Theodorus we said Cyrene. Then we come to southern Italy. Tarentum is Philolaus. {Arrodus} is from Italy. {Archipus}, {Lyssus}, and {Opsimus} are from It- -- southern Italy. Archytas is from southern Italy. {Ochelos} is from Lucania, which is also near Tarentum. There are three parts in southern Italy: Calabria, Apulia, and Lucania. And then Timaeus is from Locri. That's in -- in -- in southern Italy, a colony. There were Locri of course in Greece. But this Locri is a colony, you see, like -- like the cities here. Hartford, Connecticut, gave birth to Hartford -- Hartford, Vermont. So of course, the names have been carried around.
{Hikates} and {Ekphantus} are from Syracuse. {Xenophilus} is from the north, from the -- where Saloniki now is, from the Chalkidiki, where the three fingers point into the Mediterranean Sea. And -- the -- the people in 53, however, they are a little colony in Phlius, and that's north -- south of -- of Argos. Not south of Argos. That's the -- north -- it's near -- between Cor- -- Corinth and Argos, on the Corinthian gulf.
{Choros}, from Cyrene. I told this al- -- told this already. Now, would we take then the sum of this all? How many do you put east, and how many do you put west, and how do -- many -- have we in the center? What is the statistics? Did anybody kindly check it?
(12 east.)
Wie?
(You've got 12 on the east side.)
East side. Lower East Side. And -- on the west? Wie?
(I was keeping 10 in the East.)
What?
(10 on the east.)
Wie? Only 10? And in the middle? How many?
(Are you counting the islands as part of Greece or --?)
Sure, sure. Asia Minor, not Greece. Because that's -- you see, that's -- are considered -- they felt themselves as being so near the Persian Empire, you see, that they never rated with the -- with central Greece before Athens stepped in and conquered them. So Samos, Chios, all this is -- is -- we have always figured to be on this side, here.
(There must be more than 12.)
Quite.
(You got -- you got seven more islands over there.)
Well, let's -- let's do the -- Thasos, 1; Chios, 2; -- Hip -- Samos, 3; Miletus, 4; Chios, 5; Chios, 6; then for quite a while nothing. Anaxagoras, 7; Metrodorus, 8; Antisthenes, 9; Apollo- -- 9 -- Apollonia, 10; {Nessas}, 11; Metrodorus of Chios, 12; Smyrna, 13; and {Pitsicus}, 14. Here is 14.
So on the other side, in Italy, how many there? Made the count by now? You understand, I'm anxious to -- to spend some time. All these things will slip your mind. But I think this very primitive work which we are doing here should nail down in your mind the fact that the history of Greek philosophy has something to do with the sociology and the politics of the Greek people, that it is a problem of mental colonization, and that philosophy has something to do with dynamics of political migration. It's no use of looking -- your looking at these philosophers, impractical men living somewhere in a brown study. They didn't. They represented the way in which these new cities and new foundations tried to find their place, through a decent respect of the opinions of mankind in the universe. When there is already a settlement in a certain -- and new, additional settlements are needed, then there comes a need for a philosophy, for a critical
assessment of what the new order should do in comparison to the old. Then ideas play their part.
So what -- how many on the left -- on the -- on the western side?
(Thirteen.)
Wie?
(Thirteen.)
Thirteen. That sounds reasonable. Ja, we had this already. Fourteen and 13. And in the middle? How many are left to the middle? Wie?
(Twelve.)
Now see, as we -- as we go on, the middle part is strengthened. The -- the -- the effect of the movement on the wings, on the sides presses home, to the homeland. And of course, you get in 400, when this list ends, you get the center of thought planted into Athens. And you get the acad- -- the academy of Plato. But you would do wrong to this Platonic Academy if you simply said, "Plato is an Athenian, therefore his school is an Athenian thing," you see. It is the result of pressures from the wings on Athens that finally Plato comes to the -- you see, to the decision not to become the mayor of Athens, which he could very well have become, you see, or the prince of Athens, like Pericles, but that instead of being the sec- -- Pericles II, Plato becomes Plato I, and founds this philosophical school, which then can rule the -- the world empire of the Greek mind in Athens, you see. But with all the other cities having made their contribution, so that Pl- -- Plato, as we shall have to say -- state then in considering his works a little bit more, that they -- all these cities from West and East are represented in his Academy.
Gentlemen, the speakers in the great political dialogues of Plato are nonAthenians. That's very important, you see, that the contribution is made: one, by Crition; in his Timaeus, the man is a Pythagorean from southern Italy, you see, who speaks. This we have to understand, because the Academy is the antidote against the parochialism of the Athenians, against the 100-percent red-blooded Americans of our days, gentlemen. You can't have an academy supported by Mr. McCarthy. That's against the academic spirit. The academic spirit is that element, that -- what I tried to show you, you see, there that reaches into a nation, into a polis, you see, as a responsible voice for the larger universe. And the story of this table of contents then therefore is a very dramatic story, because if you read the end, the last four names -- 87, 88, 89, and 90, they probably are at
home in Athens, and the last in Sparta. That is, at the end of these so-called preSocratics, before Socrates enters the scene, you see, the philosophy does come home to the center of Greece, you see. But only under this gigantic pressure from the wings.
If you look at the last page now, you see, you find that Mr. Protagoras, and Mr. Gorgias, and Mr. Prodicus, and Mr. Hippias, that they all visit Athens. And we know of their visits through the Platonic dialogues. And of course there is before, already, Anaxagoras, that's a little older, 59. And it is the visit of these people, and the -- the information from these -- of -- from the existence of these people, which brings up the center, the homeland, the Greek homeland to the level of discussion, and to the -- to the fiery life of the philos- -- philosophers who first woke up to their task at the outskirts of this Greek civilization.
And in this sense, you perhaps now understand why I feel that you understand this history of Greek philosophy, if you really compare to the military dream of the catalog of the ships. That was -- here was once done in the body of soldiers, a great vision of unity, you see, was now once more accomplished by a great unity of minds over a vast body of sea and land, under the most un- -- unpropitious circumstances of separatedness, from island to island. And these islands there were -- of course, were far apart. It was each time a journey with a question of life and death. It was like coming to this country in the 17th century. You didn't know if you would arrive. It was dangerous.
Yet they established this great unity of the mind, these great philosophical schools, and this common approach to dividing man's thought into logic, physics, and ethics, in such a way that the living generation would know what laws to pass, would know what uni- -- what physical parts of the universe to discover, and what gods -- what the ritual should be by which we should worship the gods.
And therefore, I -- you must look at this history of Greek philosophy perhaps better as a history of Greek philosophers. And the philosophers were bold pioneers in action. And they were the wonders of the age. And you remember--this is all perhaps now coming back to you--I tried to tell you that the wonder in philosophy is always threefold. You wonder about the man who philosophizes. He is the first wonder. The reason for aston- -- Pythagoras is a mighty mind, and you stand in -- in admiration before such a man, who thought that the whole universe could be explained by numbers, and by harmonies of numbers. That's a tremendous idea, and we still dream of it. And I think it is an eternal idea. It's a wonderful idea.
I had a friend who was the son of a man who published in 1878 a book.
He was a great mathematician. And it was called The Divi- -- The Laws of the Divine Order of the Universe. He was a professor at a technical institute in Germany. And has the same name as Mr. Wiener -- Norbert Wiener, this man in cybernetics in MIT. His name is also Wiener. And this man Wiener in 1878 published this book which is strictly Pythagorean in an attempt to explain the universe and all its laws in purely mathematical terms, as very harmonious and very beautiful. Gesetze der g”ttlichen Weltordnung. Laws of the divine order of the universe. Written still in the style of Lucretius, you know, "divine" and "universe" put together in -- as though they were, you see, compatible.
Now, so, if you see the -- the one miracle, gentlemen, which you can get here from this table of contents, the philosophers themselves, that there should have been this electrifying stream that every one of these philosophers represents a new combination of the three problems: God, man, world; or the -- the cult of a city, the society of man, the laws of -- outside nature.
All -- every one of these philosophers, so to speak, has another key to open this door of the relations between the three. So he is a miracle. That's the first miracle. The second miracle is the universe around us. And the third miracle is the formation of a public that is willing to listen to the truth, and willing to reform, and willing to be te- -- taught. And they are represented in -- in the case of Parmenides and the later schools by this group of young men, like yourself, who fall in love with truth and sacrifice everything to truth, and cease to be in the first place either jewelers, and blacksmiths, and miners, on -- or hunters, or soldiers, or citizens, you see, or sons of their parents, but become something other: students. Students of the truth. That which we try to make you into, and which we do not succeed, because your extracurricular activities prevent you from being real students.
Nobody in -- in our Dartmouth is a real student, because the intellectual endeavors here are held in contempt. You are playboys, gentlemen. You are not students. Because a student is -- what is a student, gentlemen? By definition of the word, a student is a man who is willing to do more than his teachers ask him to do. And you all try to do less than I ask you to do. You are pupils, 6 years old. Because you all try to do less than I expect you to do. You can never be a student, because "student" comes from "studius," from being -- being excited. And to study means to be excited, and to be so excited that what I say is only half of the story. The other thing is what you do. But you all expect me to be more interested than you are. Gentlemen, that I cannot achieve. It's a misproportion.
So, three reasons for wonder, gentlemen. The philosophers, the universe, and the student group, this free republic of studious people who are anxious, eager, and excited enough to forget their immediate interest. Gentlemen, a
student who cannot forget is -- his immediate self-interest certainly cannot be a student of the truth. You have to--and, of course, in any good moment obviously you are able to do that--you have to forget your immediate aim, your immediate goal. The goal -- which you are devoted as students are not what you get out of this course. That's always the ruin of all your st- -- studies that in all your na‹vet‚, you put this impertinent, infamous, and criminal question, "What do I get out of this course?"
Gentlemen, you have the great honor of becoming -- forming a new public for the next truth, for the philosophy of the time now needed. And therefore, you are needed, gentlemen. You are in demand. Therefore, you have to give yourself. You have to surrender. Unconditional surrender. And if you cannot unconditionally surrender your mind to the truth, gentlemen, I have nothing to offer you. Philosophy has nothing to offer you. The history of the -- Greek philosophy makes absolutely no sense. Perfectly worthless to you. It's perhaps nice for a -- smattering at a dinner table, or at a -- in a club, but that's a -- different.
Like the businessman from Chicago who was asked by a friend of mine in Harvard why you -- why he went to Harvard, and he said, "It pays to have been to Harvard when you live in Chicago."
Of course, you see. Who is from Chicago? I have nothing to add.
So this list for you -- antecedes the -- the central philosophers of Athens: Plato, So- -- Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. And you must never forget that these names, which overshadow today in most people's mind the prehistory of Greece -- of the Greek mind, are not greater names in the sense that they were greater men. They stood on the shoulders of these achievements of 200 years, from Thales of Miletus to Hippias, to {Trasimaus}, to Prodicus. And they are unthinkable without the greater sacrifices of these founders of Greek philosophy, gentlemen. In -- under much greater danger, many of these people were persecuted like Socrates, and executed, by the way, too. Had to flee for their lives. And the pioneers, the founders, gentlemen, always have a more heroic task than the classics.
I have written a pamphlet, "A Classic and a Founder," in trying to distinguish the role played in any movement between these two phases of life. Ma- -- and the -- I treat there the founder of physics and the classic of physics. The classic of physics is Michael Faraday. And the founder of physics is Paracelsus. Know -- you don't anything about Paracelsus. You know very little of Faraday, but you swear by Mr. Einstein. Now Mr. Einstein is not a hero. He's a classic -- a late classic. Very late classic, as a matter of fact. Faraday is the greater man in my mind. And Paracelsus a much greater man, and had much greater hardships to --
to -- to overcome.
In the same sense, I want you to understand that these first 90 names here in this booklet, gentlemen, are the hall of fame of Greek philosophy, you see. And the classics get all their halo, Mr. Plato, from the sacrifice of these people. And you will never understand then Plato or Aristotle if you look at them not at the harvest of lives lived before them, you see, but as -- are, so to speak -- independent thinkers. They didn't want to be.
The difficulty for you is to -- that's why I've wasted so much time seemingly on this geographical business. I didn't mean the geography, gentlemen; I meant the spirit. The -- the concentration of the Greek sp- -- mind in Athens, is only of one moment when Plato's name shines brightest, and Socrates is executed there, and so -- so to speak, Athens itself tries to become intellectual, which it had never been.
The inheritance, or heritage, gentlemen, of glory by such an outstanding figure like -- well, like Goethe in Germany, like Shakespeare in the Elizabethan age, you see, like -- like Plato in the -- in 400 is a phenomenon which you must understand in order not to fall into some idolatry. I think the great danger today is that you say, "Greece, that's -- Plato, a great man." Then you better should know anything of Plato. Because if you do not see the tremendous economy of -- and patience of the spiritual history of mankind, you think there was -- just one man who had a great genius, you see. I think you -- you will waste your time in reading any of -- one of his dialogues. And there is no direct access to Plato without seeing him in the middle of this ocean of thought, emerging and trying to organize this thought -- these thoughts, these various schools. The work of Plato, gentlemen, is the attempt to organize the miracles of the human mind that had -- had gone before, into one galaxy. It is like the calendar of the saints of the Church, where all the gui- -- feats of the first 300 years of the Church are collected, you see, from All Souls, to All Saints, to Christmas, to Easter, to Pentecost.
So Plato is the mental -- not the calendar, of course, of the mind, but the mental star, or constellation in which all these stars, you see, are placed. And that's why his various dialogues take up one of these great stars after another. There are the Pythagorean dialogues, there are Eleatic dialogues, there are Heraclitean dialogues. There are dialogues from all the digesting, the contributions made in all these various cities, from southern Italy to Asia Minor, to Macedonia to the north. And therefore Plato himself is an encyclopedia, but not in your sense of the word, of an alphabetical character, gentlemen, but of a -- well, it's a kind of symphony of biographies, symphony of lives of thinkers. You understand? It's an attempt to force into one inherit- -- one heritage, into your and my mind something that had happened in various cities lying apart. And of
course probably living in -- in splendid isolation, more or less, you see, having not enough intercourse, yet.
Plato li- -- tries to put them all in one field of force, and make them all fruitful so that they could beget each other, could -- how do you say? not "beget" -- how -- fruc- -- fertilize each other. That's the -- cross-fertilization, that's what Plato is. He is a cross-fertilizer, his philosophy. And only if you see this can you understand the daring of the man to settle in a city like Washington, D.C., certainly the most demented city of -- bureaucrats I have ever known. Where 1 million people do nothing but write regulations for other people who live elsewhere -- yes, it's an -- perfectly unnatural city, you see. It's an -- it's a purely idealistic city, I mean. It is -- it has no basis in fact, has only basis in government. It's a very strange city. One million people, you see, writing rules and regulations for others.
And -- well, Athens, at that moment of 400 was ruling a big empire. It owned the islands from which these philosophers came, more or less. It was at that moment dreaming of going to southern Italy and conquering Syracuse. And that wa- -- that broke down, however. But it owned the whole Mediterranean east of the mainland of Greece. And it was in the -- and it owned the north. It went up to the Khalkidhiki, to Abdera and those regions. And we have now excavated Olynthus, and other cities of the north only in the last decades where Athenian colonies were established on the way to Macedonia, from where later Aristotle educated Alexander the Great.
So you must think that Plato is a counter-move against the political domination of Athens. It is the recognition on the part of a man from Athens that this vast empire contained germs of wisdom, and germs of thought which now had also to be, you see, made available in the center, in Athens itself. And there in a school, in a university, fertilize the thinking of these very, very egotistic bankers and farmers of Attica. It wa- -- it would be as if the Chase National Bank and Mr. -- Senator Aiken from Vermont, who is a farmer, would try to govern the Near East, the Far East, South America, the -- Middle America, as we try to do, and without any instruction, without any enlightenment. And then somebody like John Dewey, or other, would come and say, "Now let us digest all the wisdom from the East, and the South, and the North, before we put over our government over these outlying territories."
With -- with this, I think I -- I can only recommend you that you read fragments of these -- this book here as you go along--for example, Democritus and--yourself. You are very easily understood. {Loicoepus} and Democritus form one school, that you also look into the tradition of the Pythagoreans. Those of you who write on the Pythagoreans anyway in their term paper, will of
course have to do this anyw- -- anyhow. But I think it's no use for me demanding any one of you to read this whole book in a -- one stretch. One cannot do this fruitfully. But consult it. And you will find that if you take some trouble, you may not succeed in every one case, but in 70 out of these 90 cases, you might find that the fundamental position held by these people is still today valid. It is valid within a larger concept, just as it is valid on one moment to laugh, and the other to weep, and the other to be indifferent. These are mental moods, I told you, that recur.
The Greeks discovered the mental appetites and the mental attitudes which are part of a nu- -- normal human mind, of a full-grown complete human mentality. And you will find that not one of these positions can be forgotten. The history of Greek philosophy is not in your sense history, be- -- that it is bunk, and that it is dust, and that it is in the Hades. You can today read a prophecy from Isaiah and it strikes you as absolutely valid, and tomorrow you read Ezekiel, and the same; and then you read Amos, and you are struck that all these prophets have something lasting to say. This very -- the same -- much the same with these philosophers, gentlemen. Every one of them has, for a certain problem of y- -- ours, today, still to -- something to say. You cannot say that they are wrong. You cannot say that they are obsolete. They are still important. They are -- still give you a cue.
I mean, this whole modern physics, gentlemen, you have to go back to Democritus or to Pythagoras again and again to sharpen your wits and to know what you want to do when you explain the electrons, you see. On -- you know, on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, they are waves. And on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, they are corpuscles. And that's already the problem of the -- Democritus, and it's the problem of the Pythagoreans. The Pythagoreans thought they were harmonies of -- the numbers; that would be the wave theory, you see. And the Democritus said it is the corpuscle theory. But we haven't decided it, yet. We are still half between the Pythagoreans and the Democriteans. And you will never decide it, because the human mind discovered there its own operations. "Electrons" is just your and my way of looking at the universe. Don't believe for a minute that the universe consists of electrons, you see. It's only our necessity of ex- -- of speaking about the universus. But what the universe is, gentlemen, don't believe for a minute that it is electrons, you see. It's you and me. And I am not an electron; you are not an electron, you see. You are just who you are. And you are much more complicated than is good for -- for the physicist.
All simplifications, gentlemen, today, in trying to say that a man can be explained by electrons, ha- -- the people have tried to do it. After the -- atomistic school, and after the Pythagorean school, you see, which tried to run politics on
-- on physis- -- physicists' lines, back comes some ethicist and says, "That's all nonsense." You see, "The laws of the city," you see, "are the first -- we have to revise. And then we have to give laws to the universe, as though we were legislators of the universe."
So you find this all on these pages. And I can only whet your appetite. But these few lines -- after all, the whole book has 150 pages, you see, are just as important as the bigger and the smaller prophets in the Bible. They are the whole history of the human mind, believe it or not. Nothing can be thought that these people have not already started thinking about, because they were exposed to serious thinking, and you only fool around. I mean, for you it's just a plaything in your bull sessions. It's not a question of life and death. But to these people, for their political survival, the question: what is the small community and the large universe, you see, to me? and how do the two fit together? how much have I to be loyal to the laws of my country? do I have to go to war for my country? do I have to become a citizen of the world?--all this has been thought out here -- very carefully, and much better than you think it out.
And you better dip then into these pages, if you want to sharpen your wits, gentlemen, because your wit is very blunt. Compared to these Greek people, you cannot think. There has been a great regress. The -- the intelligence of the American and of the European at this moment is I think at an all-time low. The primitive way in which you consider the questions of the universe can't be beaten. It's just all trash. It's on the level of -- of things that can be sold immediately by the millions, gentlemen. A -- a newspaper that says by -- 5 million copies like Life, can only be stupid.
So the miracle of these men is -- remains very great, gentlemen. In antiquity--may I say this before we have a break, gentlemen?--in antiquity, the individual achievement is greater that in our time. Our time, our -- the last 1900 years have the -- have the task of combining. Here you have to combine the Old Testament and the Greek philosophy, for example. We -- we combine. And you have -- Hindu and Greek philosophy, and German, and -- and French, and so on. Combination is all we con- --. We can do many big things by combination. But the original thinking, gentlemen, the stroke of genius is much greater in antiquity. There has been no progress as to the quality of genius. It is the same at all times. The man who brought fire down from Heaven, Prometheus, certainly was a greater mind than anyone in this room. Your idea is the opposite. You think that you are a greater mind than Prometheus. You are not. We are much smaller, gentlemen. But we cooperate better. These people were more isolated. They had not the men and the machinery to make their -- you see, to fertilize millions of people with one thought. They had to be satisfied to -- to -- to -- tell 10, or 20, or 50. That's the only difference, gentlemen.
The quality of mind, gentlemen, is to this day -- and I -- anybody who knows the Greeks will agree to you -- the genius of the Greeks, gentlemen, is greater than any genius of our own era. And that's why we have to deal with them, you see. They -- they couldn't come to fruition, because they were isolated. It was just this little Greek -- was these little cities. And that's why I tried to place them in their -- in their tiny, small environment of islands in the sea, in the Mediterranean. It's all just to you now specks. You fly over them -- over 20 of these islands in two minutes. That doesn't alter the fact that the quality of the minds, you see, who lived in these islands, was -- was a tremendous one. The fundamentals have all been thought there. If you think that modern physics had just to go back straight to the discussion of the Democritean and the Pythagorean school, only to know what they were doing.
Mr. -- Mr. Mayr, of the department of biology from Harvard came up two years ago. You probably haven't heard him speak about the -- the problem of species in zoology. And -- it was pathetic. My colleagues in the biology department, and all the students, were not up to his question. His question was the question of Aristotle, "What is species?" They had learned something, what species is, but they didn't know what they were talking about. It's a question of questions. What is a species, gentlemen? And you may speak about the origin of species, and not yet know what a species is.
And -- so we are very great barbarians, and the discussion was, as I said, quite tragic. Here was a whole department of zoology. They knew all about the individual animals, but they hadn't idea what they were talking about with regard to the philosophy of their zoology. They didn't know what a species really ought to be. And he spent a whole evening trying to explain to them that the problem already had been put very clearly by Aristotle, but it had been forgotten.
Let's have a break.
[tape interruption]
...could solve this problem. And at the end of Greek philosophy, I think it's a very fitting climax. We have said we know only as much as we love. You cannot love -- know things of people without loving them. This the Greeks did not want to know. And because second impressions are not the loving, but the indifferent impressions, the ones by which you are sober, by which you are objective. Objectivity, gentlemen, does not know lo- -- la- -- lend you -- lead you to knowledge, to real knowledge. It leads you to exploitation. You can use things which you know by your reason. But you know -- don't know what to do with it. It's purely pragmatic.
So my -- Mr. Mandaville, the -- the answer to Mr. Somerset Maugham's student would be, you see, that it isn't enough to study under a Hindu teacher, and it isn't a study -- enough to study with Plato, you see. But you have to do things. You have to serve. You have to sacrifice. You have to love. You have to aban- -- renounce. Where you love, you know.
(Yes, but the point is this fellow { } abandoned the -- he loved a woman, he considered that part of his life, he gave himself entirely to { }, he sacrificed everything { }, and yet he still wasn't completely satisfied.)
Ja, the question is whether the search of truth is not bigger than your personal satisfaction. Why do you have to be satisfied? I hate people who are satisfied. They are disagreeable people.
(In other words, happiness --)
I mean, the real people are the people who are very dissatisfied, first of all with themselves, don't you think?
(How can you be content?)
Wie?
(How can you be content? You were talking --.)
I say you mustn't. You must never be content. No reason why you should be content. Wie?
(You said at the beginning of the course that you can't be -- that you shouldn't always run after happiness. But you said also that people can be content. When { }?)
Oh, as a by-product. I said you probably will be content if you do what is right. But to -- to -- to be -- to -- the attempt to be happy, or to become content, you see, is silly. It's just silly.
(Running after { }.)
It's a by-product. It's a result. Or, it's whatever it is. But certainly we can't aim at it. Anybody who aims at it is like the man who goes to 50 doctors in order to be healthy. He can never be healthy as long as he doesn't throw out the 50 doctors.
(Well, the story of John Stuart Mill's life, he was brought up by his father and { }. But I suppose the -- the type of education is closer to what you call seeking the truth, very strictly { } school and all the Greek philosophy { }, and as a matter of fact, strongly {schooled in} everything, mathematics at that time. And when he reached the age of 21, he almost had a complete and nervous mental breakdown because of this. And I was just wondering, if you don't think that there is also something besides the search of truth necessary for {wholeness} in human life.)
Well, I mean, there -- there are victims on the -- on any battlefield, and if 20 people study and two go nuts, that's the usual price. Well, I mean -- what do -- what do -- you mean? Here you see that poor {Lamnes} has given up running the mile. I mean, he is a victim of the -- of the -- of the track. What -- what does this say against the running track? Do you see it in the paper? He broke down, all right. Let him break down. Victims, everywhere. It's ridiculous what -- the question's perfectly worthless, with regard to the -- obviously, anything we do we can do wrong. Anything we do we can exaggerate. Anything -- there are always victims. And you have to have victims in order to get the -- run the -- reach the goal. Some reach the goal. Franklin perished at the North Pole, and was never heard of again. And the pole was finally conquered. I mean, what else is there in life?
(Well, what I'm -- what I was trying to point out, Professor Huessy, was that these men, who were not victims, was -- necessarily had something else in life besides what they were famous for. There -- that balanced out their life. I don't think -- I -- maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think human nature has so -- has changed so much that they, unlike us, would not have something else --.)
My dear man. I may say some triviality. But nature is terribly wasteful if you look outside into the natural world. In order to fertilize one -- one pl- -- flower, you mean -- any number of pollen is wasted. And so it is with all our enterprises, gentlemen. Hundred have to try so that one may succeed. There's just no other way of doing it. All these hundred find their satisfaction in the heroic task of participating in this venture, you see. They also run -- ran. But the -- the one man then who is -- that's what I tre- -- tried to tell you about Plato -- without these hundred heroes here, you see, no Plato. Yet you don't have to -- now to learn the system of any one of these men, you see, at full length. We don't even have their writings. And we harvest where they have sown.
Life is, in this sense, tragic, because obviously the better man may be killed. And the less-good man mince their laurels. We have to be aware of this, so that you never must despise the victim. What is so terrible in this country is that you identify the successful man with the martyr and the saint. And you
won't have -- you don't wish to have -- think of the martyrs; and you then glorify the cheap heroes, so to speak, who only harvest what the other have sown.
And therefore, I -- I want you to understand that in God's eyes, I think, in our maker's eyes, these people who don't have success are just as much loved by Him, much -- as much His children, perhaps even more so than the ones He allows to reach the goal. And they -- if they were not greater souls, they wouldn't have stood the agony, you see, of perishing, and of missing out in the eyes of the world. And they probably reached their goal in -- in- -- inwardly, so to speak, you see. And I think in the eyes of God -- in the eyes of the -- His faithful, they deserve a niche.
That's why I think some relation, gentlemen, to the spirits of the past is necessary for you. I'm so sorry that you don't have it. You have no ancestors, no spiritual forebears, because you don't dare to read these people with the earthshaking and heart-shaking experience. Heavens! What greatness to sacrifice, to go through this darkness, you see, and to hope -- to come out and -- and to -- not to fe- -- you see, not to give up, not to feel frustrated.
But life is serious, gentlemen. You may say tragic, in this sense, that the individual can only find his peace, you see, by knowing that many must run the race, and only one wins. This is your problem, isn't it?
Before we now turn next time to the story of Socrates and Plato in somewhat more detail, I would like to say one thing about the Pythagoreans. I have tried to tell you that the problem of the Eleatic school is to make the mind independent from first impressions to such an extent that the laws of the city, the laws of Elea, or the laws of Samos, or the laws of -- of Miletus cannot be anything but illusion, or transient, or--you may say "trash"--compared to the lasting truth which the philosophical group tries to face -- as the laws of the universe.
I tried to introduce you to this notion of a universe which was so -- pan, all, you see, that it would not be shaken by any phenomenon of a purely local, or a purely temporal character. And Parmenides put these two worlds one against the other, and says, "The language, the talk of the town, the logos of the city, the words of the co- -- religion and of the intercourse of the citizens must not influence our study of the laws of the universe." And I told you that against him Heraclitus rants, because he says, "This man destroys the loyalties of citizenship, the loyalties of piety, because he says this is all just limited, temporal, and local. And I -- have lasting and universal truth only, not only with regard to the dead, physical world, but even with regard to my loyalties towards this city, and towards the gods of my city." And, for example, take the very practical
question of service in the war. From the Parmenidean standpoint, there is no way of ever explaining that a soldier should fight for his country, because that is not being, you see. That's unreal; it's illusion.
And so the Hindu attitude, for example, of nonresistance, of nonfighting which you love so much, goes very well together with this Parmenidean philosophy, because it says that wars are illusions. The parts of the universe are already united, and if we don't -- can't unite them, we go to war; we misunderstand our position with regard to the true laws of the universe.
What I'm driving at is, gentlemen: the destruction of the normal language of man is the first result of philosophy. And in my paper, I have tried to show you that Heraclitus is opposing this destruction and this replacement of pronouns like "being" and "that" and "this," and "the thing" for the named orders of this city of Miletus, or Ephesus, or Elea, in which I say, "I'm a -- not a citi- -- a citi- -- -zen of a city, but I'm the citizen of Elea, and I'm very proud of this." And if you say, "I'm -- Eleatic," you act differently from when you say, "I'm just a citizen of one city," you see. If an American says, "I'm American," he's proud. If he says, "I'm a citizen of a little place in Illinois," that's quite a different feeling, you see, because he even suppresses the name, because he assumes that you don't even know the name.
So you see, you -- we today have this experience: always the philosophical is, "I'm a citizen of a little town there -- there." That's one out of many. But "I'm an American," that's of -- not one out many. That's what you are, you see. You can't get out of this, by saying "I'm a citizen of one of the nations of the world." You'll never say that. You always say, "I'm" -- you are an American.
Philosophy put -- making every city, only one out of many, reduces patriotism, reduces religion to relativity, and reduces also the love of family, and the love of friends to something which can be exchanged for a hundred other things. And it weakens man. And it makes you into these mental decadents, which you are. In your head, the abstractions rule. You really think that a nation, a city is as good as your nation, and the city -- my city. It isn't, gentlemen. It's something totally different. For your city, you have obligations. For a city, you can do city planning. You can be hired as a city planner. But you can go to any city to plan it. And it isn't your city. Something quite different. And your family is one thing, and families in sociology quite another thing.
But that's a constant thing introduced by Parmenides into the world. And it destroys the first language of mankind, the native language, the idiomatic language, and -- which is always -- religious, which always begins with the word "God," with the word "prayer," with the word "devotion," and then goes
onto praise, and thanking, and scolding, and judging, and so on.
Now gentlemen, Pythagoras -- this is what I'm driving at, steps into this dangerous zone. He says, "If we could find a language of the universe, we would not have to have an idiomatic language in our hometown. We could abolish Greek and Egyptian. We could abolish Doric and Attic. We could not and would not have to speak dialect, because there may be a universal language of the universe." And the great temptation of Pythagoreanism, is, gentlemen, is always that you can perhaps hope to find numbers, and to express the secret of the universe in numbers only.
If you say that an octave relates as one to two, you see, in music, you feel there is no contradiction possible. It's valid, you see, for all. And therefore, gentlemen, I thought I might make this point, that whereas Parmenides destroys language, Heraclitus tries to save it; Pythagoras tries to replace it. He is the only -- or the first man of rank who sees that when you abolish your first impressions--and that is your native language, and its power over your heart and mind--then you have to find a second language. The -- Parmenides doesn't find the second language. He abstracts to -- to say being is not a language. That's just thinking. That's inside language, so to speak. It is without force, without -- into the outside world. Well, you can never hope to tell a farmer what being is, you see. It's only for philosophers, so to speak, the Parmenidean language. The language of thinkers is a language of thinkers. But the language of Pythagoras, that's what Pythagoras hoped, might be expected to penetrate everybody, if it -- and as far as it is possible.
So Pythagorean teaching of numbers is a remarkable venture. And it has the great temptation in our time again. And Pythagoreanism has never died out and will never die out. And it is a very wise -- it has great wisdom, under one condition that you understand it a little better than it is understood today. Pythagoras says that everything can be expressed in figures. But the second sentence is always omitted from your brain. You don't know that figures have qualities. I've written a whole book on this, The Multiformity of Man--some may know it--in which I've tried to show that 2 is not just 1 and 1. It has a quality of its own; 3 has a quality of its own; 4, 7, 9. You laugh at this. Today, it is considered a superstition that the -- there are nine gifts of the Holy Spirit, or that there are -- the Church has always considered seven sacred, like the Jews, with the seven-day sabbath, which has very profound reasons that it should be seven days. And -- you laugh, and call "superstition" the quality which the ancients felt to be in the various numbers.
In order to explain to you what I -- what this means, I have great hardship. Give you an example of the Pythagorean thinking, which is adopted, by
the way, in the Catholic Church to this day, that if you want to speak to the world, of the nondivine part of our experience, the -- the created world, the universe, in the -- in the sense of -- without the -- the logos, without God speaking, what you call "nature," that it can only be covered by the figure 4, and not by 3. Divine is -- is the Trinity; 4 is the world; the two together are 7. To you, that is mere bunk. If you talk to a Unitarian, if you talk to a modern rationalist, if you talk to a Free Mason, they cannot understand this. To me, it -- has simply the full ring of truth, gentlemen. It means not that 1, and 1, and 1, and 1 make 4. And then you should stop and say, "Worship 4." That would be superstition. The -- the reason for the Pythagorean, so-called tetractys--who has already read about the Pythagorean tetractys? Who's writing on -- on Pythagoras? Who's writing on Pythagoras? Well, you'd better get going, Sir. It's very exciting.
If you have the word "God," gentlemen, the Trinity means that we have to make three starts before we understand what can be meant by God. If you do not bring yourself into three different positions, the best you can say of God -- that is, in your mind, like a man. A man you can conceive of by { }. Ja, I meet you, and that's one. Now obviously, the divine majesty, who has created the world before we were, who lives at this moment, gentlemen, who is to be at the end of the world en- -- accomplished, will use us as His instrument in the process, cannot be had in one breath. You have to allow yourself time, before you are aware of the divine majesty. It's just disrespectful to deny the Trinity, and to speak of God as one which you can have in one concept. God is not a concept. God is more alive than you and I. And He is at least three -- what you think of three different people: your -- the founder of your race, perhaps; your best contemp- -- best-loved contemporary, that's your wife; and the final product, the last man. They together may give you an idea who God is. That's a minimum. So the Trinity, gentlemen, is not really God Almighty himself, but it is that minimum--perhaps I should put it this way to explain my thought--before you can dare to say that you have a right to take the name of God into your mouth without -- without blasphemy, is that you may -- take the trouble of giving it time. And you have to make three starts.
That's a very simple explanation of the Trinity. Before, you haven't breathed three times, you -- you aren't even near the divine spirit. For human affairs, you can spit out all your words just at once. But if you deal with something -- somebody so superior to ourselves, we have to give it this amount of time that three times, we have to break down our little logic, and are willing to see the same truth in three different sides and three different manners: Son, Father, and Holy Spirit.
Now, the same true -- is true of the world. The Church and the Pythagoreans agree, that before you could know what the universe was, you had to look
into four directions. That comes from the very primitive experience of north, south, east, and west, you see, that there are four directions of the globe, and it comes from the very interesting fact that nobody, except man, can move in all four directions of the globe. The sun can never get north. The moon can never get north. The stars in the -- in the North which you see, never move. They are the polar stars, you see, who move around the pole. And therefore the cleavage in the real world is, gentlemen, that its parts can never get to each other. Only man can bring -- can, so to speak, move in this universe.
That's one of the reasons why the four was chosen. The other reason is, of course, that we have one -- the world is -- is not God, because it contains death. And God is not subject to destruction, to death. The world is. So the element of death, you -- you see, is -- enters -- wherever you want to distinguish "world" and "God," it's very simple. That which is mortal belongs to the world. That's -- another consideration.
What I'm driving at, however, is simply this: reality has to be looked upon at least in four parts before we are -- can be sure that we have reached its tremendous abundance, its multitude, its plurality. William James has rediscovered this. He was a { } Pythagorean. He said, "I'm a pluralist." It is impossible in one system, in one mathematical equation, in one physical, you see, theory to ex- -- exploit the wealth of the universe. It's just nonsense to say, "all is electron." I -- one of you asked me why it shouldn't all be electron. Well, if it -- I'm also electron, but I'm so many other things, too. I'm vocal, Sir. Electron doesn't speak. If you describe me as being electrons, you omit the best feature about me, you see, that I can prattle.
So the four means that a whole, a total, a globe, a -- a universe can come to your and my experience only if you make four attempts, you see. Four then is the minimum for understanding holism, as General Smuts in South Africa has called it, a whole. You understand. the problem of the four then is that it is that minimum of effort to get hold of a universe, of a whole. You can't have it just by going logically, as you think you can, in a system, in a nice system. Most physicists think this, too, most so-called philosophers. Begin with A, and then come to B, and then by syllogism, you see, work it up to C. And Pythagoras said, "That's good for logic. That's for your brain," you see. But your brain never gets into reality, if he doesn't break away from your -- this inner logic, you see, which is dualistic, you see: object-subject. The reality is illogical. It is translogical. It is so { } that you certainly are only containing yours- -- confining yourself to brain operations inside yourself, if you do not look out of the window and say, "There are four directions of the globe. There is life and death." That's perfectly logical, you see. One thing is here today. It isn't there tomorrow. Perfectly logical, you see. In logic, I saw this thing here. Why isn't { } us again, you see? Because it
died. What's death? I don't understand. The first thing the philosophers try to say, "Death doesn't exist," you see. "You are immortal." Just fiction, you see. Very bad philosophy, but it has been held by many philosophers, like the Stoics, for example.
By which I mean then that Pythagoras was very superior to the logicians. Pythagoras wanted to limit logic. And so he said the tetractys is the beginning of wisdom. I may say a word about this next time.