Transcript

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{word} = hard to understand, might be this

...dealing with Plato as the climax and heart of Greek philosophy. Why is he this? Because in him, the whole of Greece, with all its questions already asked, comes to Athens to try to synthe- -- -ticize all these fundamental movements, all these doubts, all these misgivings about the relation of the local religion, the local law, and the natural universe.

I was asked la- -- yes- -- I think it was yes, yesterday, I think, Mr. {Foerster} was it? is that right? he here? -- the question is -- he's majoring in science, and so he is bothered with the problem of -- by the problem of physis. For you, gentlemen, in your -- in your abstraction, and in your strange mental uprootedness of any modern man who goes too long to school, it is -- always seems that nature precedes society. That's the Rousseau gospel. First there is a wonderful natural world, and then comes man who spoils it with his legislation. Your experience, in Oklahoma City, or wherever you come from, is the opposite: that you first live in a society, and then you look out of the window, and go to -- out to the Grand Canyon, or to Beehive, and that you call "nature."

The whole problem of the relation of physis and nomos, of the law and nature, is: wh- -- which is your own first experience of law? And your first experience is at home. The experience of what a law means is -- must first be made, before you can learn and understand physics. And that's against all your tenets, gentlemen. And that's the struggle of Greek philosophy in antiquity. And today we have to unwind the clock, so to speak, we -- that is, you are so -- philosophized, you only live so much by second impressions, that you have lost sight of the fact that you wouldn't understand what a natural law is if you hadn't had parents who brought you up in a lawful order in society. And you don't believe it me. I am sure that in all weak moments of -- or most moments of your life, you will re- -- re- -- relapse into this, what the Bible calls "original sin," that man is hipped on thinking that what he thinks at 20, what -- at your age, is his first impression. That he can think these truths about nature, you see, and doesn't owe them to an empirical l- -- way of life, in which he -- it was dinned into him what a law is, something that has to be followed, and -- which has dire consequences if it isn't obeyed. Spanking. Now, nobody is spanked in this country; so it's very difficult to understand what a law is.

You believe -- that is, a majority of -- of people today believe, those who are not real Christians -- believe that 99 -- 99 percent, that is, of the living people in this country believe that nature is their first experience, and society their second. And they want to measure society by nature. This cannot be done, gentlemen. Because, what is nature, gentlemen? Nature is that reality which we

view, al- -- when we are already joined together. Nature is a common experience of mankind. All second impressions, which goes through the -- your mind, your -- your reason, are general experiences made by the commonwealth of man. If you are a physicist, you do this in the service of the community, who allows you to study physics, who has divided labor in such a way that you can go into a laboratory, and the fire department in the -- in the meantime looks after the fires. If they didn't -- wouldn't ma- -- man the fire trucks, you couldn't possibly study physics. It's impossible. You are their delegation. You have already agreed then on the commonwealth, and on its functions, long before you can agree on any fact in nature.

So this is the -- for Plato, gentlemen, and for the Greek mind then, the turning point. Discussing the best state, he's hit by this tremendous question: Which is first -- physis or nomos? Or if -- that is, the polis. What is first? And in Plato, it is in a strange equilibrium, his -- what you call his ideas, his famous idealism--that's after all Plato's invention--was an attempt to make the city and physis of the same quality, of the same quality of being original. Plato, you see, is interested in two things: in the mathematics and the good. And he wants to equalize them. In his last -- oration was on the mathematics and the good. Physics -- physis is to be dealt with in -- with numbers, like the Pythagorean. And logos and ethics put together, being the world of the nomos, must be dealt with, with goodness, with "best." This strange word "best" comes in.

Plato is an aristocrat, because the word "aristos" means "best." You think "aristocracy," means, you see, "the few." That has nothing -- no meaning. "Aristocracy" means the rule of the best. And he's haunted -- that in humanity, gentlemen, the best corresponds to numbers in physis. And if you put them both back against their origin, they come from eternal ideas of the good, and the beautiful, and the true. And the ideals then, gentlemen, of Plato are an attempt to establish -- will you take this down? I think it's a good formula I offer you -- find it in no book. Plato's idealism is an attempt to create the -- an equilibrium between our political experiences and our physical experiences, to make them of the same original quality. The modern -- the modern American, being purely pragmatic, thinks that his glands come first, and then history.

I've heard a man talk about universal history of mankind and say, "It's all a matter of the glands." Now, such an idiot is allowed to speak in this country. He's feeble-minded. Yes, he made a public appearance on the American Historical Association in 1934 and he said, "Now we know!" It was just the -- the days, you know, where everything was glands. "Now we know that all world history comes from the glands." Well, of course, we know, since man has a stomach, and genitals, all our history of course has to do with our physical existence. It's nothing new that we have glands. And I have always known that there are

certain glands very necessary to produce children. So obviously history has very much to do with glands, but it is absolutely meaningful to turn to physics, to physis, to the things outside speech, the things which cannot speak, the universe which is mute, and say, "The speaking universe, you and I, you see, is produced by the mute universe, by our own objects."

So gentlemen, the question of -- of questions is: Which is the object of man? Nature or he himself? If you are a naturalist, you say, "Nature has as its object the production of man," you see. If you are a spiritualist, or -- or a logi- -- I mean, a Christian, who believes in the fact that the word creates, that the word is creative, you know very well that you cannot perceive the sun or the moon -- there is chaos with you, before you have given these things names, before you have looked out the window together with your fellow man.

Nature is the common observation of mankind, gentlemen. There is no nature for the individual. The individual, gentlemen, put in nature loses his mind, goes panicky. And if you have ever been in a desert, all by yourself, in the burning noon sun, you collapse. You -- you run wild. You -- you lose consciousness. You are found then, because you have fainted. A man who is really alone in the universe is unable to stand it. I mean, you have to -- just to think this through not with the example of a messenger who is sent through a known way through the desert, you see. That's of course -- he's still on the apron strings of society. You can see this. He's just a delegate into this desert. But a man who suddenly feels that he's cut off from the rest of mankind, really cut off for good, is unable bec- -- to -- to remain conscious. He loses consciousness, because consciousness, gentlemen, is the representation of the kind in us. You have no consciousness. I have no consciousness. But we have consciousness. And when you think, what do you think? You try to think the truth. What's the truth? That -- that which I also have to believe.

So the truth, gentlemen, is always that hold you -- holds you and me in its common grip. The mind is devoted to the -- a common denominator, to something general. Otherwise your thinking is a delusion. Most of you are deluded, because you think you have an -- a mind of your own. Nobody has that. I certainly have not, gentlemen. That's why I have a very good mind, because I have never the illusion that it is my mind. I -- the -- I have privilege and you are privileged to light up, as an electric bulb lights up in this -- here in this -- under this glass. And can only light up where there's the cable and there is a common power plant. The light in this bulb is not of this bulb; and the light in your brain is not of your brain.

That's Plato, then. Plato has -- makes this heroic effort to stabilize, gentlemen, the relation between physis and nomos, the law of man and the law of

nature, in such a way that there shall be, so to speak, no preference for one or the other. That is idealism in Plato's sense. Both are of immediate divine origin. We have in ourselves an idea of what is best between men; that's called goodness. And we have an idea of what is best in nature; and that's called truth. And we have an idea what's good in both; and that's called beauty. And that is the idea of Plato's goodness, truth, and beauty. And perhaps you understand now why I have tried to give you a history of Greek philosophy. This is not a course on Plato, you understand. It's a course in which I want to signify Plato's place in the history of what is called Greek thought, which you also could call "human thought." Whenever human thought tries to respond to a situation of time and space in limited ways with regard to reality, it has to reconcile these -- the first and the second impressions of it. The disharmony. Ja?

(Would you please repeat that -- what you said about the good, and the beautiful, and truth?)

Ja. Goodness is the ethical relation between men. Truth is the relation of reality with regard to nonspeaking, neutral objects, to the world of what we call "physis," the nonspeaking universe, or the world considered as not speaking, but as just being observed, or as being objectified. You can say good is between persons, you see, and truth is between objects, between things. Beauty is the harmony which permeates the whole universe, for Plato. A Christian would reject this. For a Christian, truth, beauty, and goodness are not the standards. But for the Greeks, that was the highest they have ever achieved. The harmony between the world of first impressions--so their society--and the world of second impressions.

Now after Plato, gentlemen, the balance shifts to a preponderance of nature that seems to them possible, following the Ionian first attempt to say that if we understand nature, we then can place the city of man inside nature, according to natural law. But that's not Plato's concept. Plato, who's exactly the middle, he does not decide in favor of nature, or in favor of the city, you see. But he says he has the im- -- matrix of both of them in his access to the good, and the beautiful, and the true as the eternal ideas in some background, in some {Kusch}, in some bed of reality out of which they come. When you have the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost in the -- in the Christian tradition, that is, the life of man through the generations -- Plato is not interested in time, but in space. He sees the inner world of man and the outer world of nature, and he -- as the Christians realizes, that he has to reconcile the age of the Father and the age of the Son through the Holy Spirit, so that the beginning--Adam and Eve--and the last day of judgment are reconciled, you see, as one story; so in -- in Platonism, gentlemen, the world of men, the inner world of the mind, and the outer world of things, of the bodies, you see, is reconciled by a similar trinity. I

always wonder why the humanists are so much down on the Trinity, and say, "That's abracadabra," and "That's a dogma." But when you talk to them, they never admit that "to the true, the beautiful, and the good" is a dogma. I think it's a very -- much more questionable dogma. No -- no -- not one of you has experienced the good, the beautiful, or the true. It's in a -- it's -- cannot be experience. It's an idea; it's a mere faith.

All humanists, gentlemen, believe much more un-understandable things than any Christian. But I'm very glad that they are my brothers in the fact that they must believe something. And they believe in space, in the eternal order of a universe written large--Universe--as I told you, in Greek, the -- the all, pan, in which there is life eternal, undying. There is no death, because things are true -- can be known as far as they are true--"are known how they are in truth" would be the correct sentence. Men are good. And the universe is beautiful. And the word "beautiful" then pertains to the nice bodies of young men, and the stars, and the organization of society; it all can be beautiful.

"Beautiful" then gentlemen, ties together, as you can see here, the political world and the natural world. Ja?

I think what most people in -- who live in Greenwich Village by and large have the same code. That is, they would also say the highest standard, as for Ezra Pound, is beauty. Beauty is so decisive, yet if something is beautiful, it cannot fail to be good for the city, or to be true in nature. You see. The deepest insight of -- in nature for a great poet or artist would be, "That is beautiful." And the greatest insight probably of an act of heroism would also be say -- to -- be to say, "How beautiful."

As you know, the Crucifixion came into the world so that nobody could say this anymore. The Crucifixion was atrocious, horrid. The blood of Christ is not beautiful, and His sweat, and His tears. They are horrifying. The Christians hold that beauty has nothing to do with truth. And -- beauty has nothing to do with goodness. A man can be very good and very ugly indeed.

But the Greek idea is always to paint Christ as be- -- beautiful young man. When you see a picture in which Ch- -- Jesus is beautiful, you know it's by a Greek painter. And we are -- most people today are Greeks.

I had a friend here in town. And he rejoiced very much when the young minister of the church was called by -- by his -- the -- his confirmation class, "the living Jesus." He was a very beautiful man. So next day, he got a divorce. That comes from such idolatry, you see, of beauty. The boys called him "beautiful," bec- -- and they thought, of course, that -- that Jesus of Nazareth had also to be

charming, you see. He wasn't charming at all, gentlemen. He would have made a terrible figure at any cocktail party.

The universe, gentlemen, however, of the Greeks is purely in space, not in time. It is eternal. And therefore, gentlemen, the universe of the Greek philosophy, of Greek idealism--or materialism, makes no difference--of the Stoics, of the Epicure, of the Pythagoreans, is construed as a deathless, as a deathless universe. Because, gentlemen, death is ugly. Death is -- makes you despondent. We talked about this last time, that anybody who has to die in person cannot tap himself on the shoulder and say, "Old boy, it doesn't matter." It matters terribly. And fortunately, you see, all the -- all your wonderful at- -- superior attitudes as Greek young men, that "I don't care," I mean, you are just deluding yourself. Because if there's nothing for which you care, you will end as a louse. Somebody will sto- -- step on you, crush, and you can't complain. You have said all your life, "I don't care." So why should anybody else care for your precious life? Then what about it? You say all the time, "I -- it doesn't matter, I don't care." And then some police chef, Mr. {Serlok} arrives in Budapest and crushes all these students who have said, "I don't care." Well, what of it? Where's your complaint? "It makes no difference," you always say. To the most vital decisions, you always -- I hear you say, "It makes no difference, it makes no difference."

Gentlemen, that is the danger of -- of the philosopher, as you know, who is in constant equilibrium, and who doesn't want to go out in a -- on a limb and who says, "This is all wonderful. It's an eternal order. Everything is wonderful. Nothing can be destroyed. We are all imperishable." Gentlemen, I am perishable, and you are perishable. And we are even corruptible, which is much worse. You see, we don't hold our own. Once you are good or beautiful, you cease to be a {tomorrow}. This is not foreseen in Greece. In Greece, the picture of philosophy is always that once you have attained a certain status of perfection--of truth or beauty--it stays with you. You can hold onto it. It isn't every moment again in danger of total collapse. And that's why the humanist loves the Greek picture of the world or the universe, because he finds there the release of -- of the -- his real fear that nothing is permanent. We -- you and I should know that nothing is permanent. But the mind, you see, once you declare your mind independent, and once you say, "It's my mind," then the first attempt is to stabilize one's own mental picture, and that's -- in your mind, that's called a philosophy, you see, the stabilizer of one mental picture as lasting.

Plato isn't that stupid. Plato is not thinking that man's mind is his own. Otherwise he wouldn't be an important philosopher. This is the common-sense philosophy, that my mind is able to stabilize the world around me. You call this "rationalization." The -- Plato's idealism is of -- of a much more refined type, and a much wiser type. He says that there are from eternity to eternity certain ideas:

the good, and the beautiful, and the true. And that if man uses his mathematical mind, as in his dia- -- Plato's dialogue Theaetetus, or in the Timaeus, he can find out the truth of things, of stars, and of -- of all outer processes. And if he looks up to the idea of the good, and stares long enough, he will know what the good is.

So will you clear -- kindly, perhaps, as a -- as I think it's a useful -- useful handbill for you to -- say, all Gre- -- all philosophy gives the picture of the world -- in antiquity a picture of the world in terms of space. The ideas are somewhere up in Heaven, or in the sky. And man is here -- down here. And the things are outside, and the city is inside. These are all space -- concepts of space. First. Then the equilibrium between the physical world and the ethical world are the great problem, and they are solved in Plato's idealism by the equalization, the equality between the good and the true. And the mediator is the beautiful. Beauty is found inside and outside. Good is only found inside. Truth is found outside. The harmony of the good, and the beautiful, and the truth is the trinity of idealism. And whenever anybody pokes fun at you because you believe in the Trinity of the Church, you can always reply that the other trinity is much more arbitrary.

Why is it arbitrary, gentlemen? Because there is never any agreement possible on the good, and the beautiful, and the true. Not possible. You can -- agree merely on the true. You can -- agree on the true -- on the good. But there is no reason to believe that two people who agree on the good, you see, like -- the colored woman who nurses your baby, you see, and you can -- agree on the good. But she'll never understand { }. You can't make her understand it, you see. It's too much for her. Therefore she'll never understand the -- the elements. It's too difficult for her -- in the universe, in this respect, { }. It takes a specialist to understand the universe. And it takes a specialist of the human heart to be a good {nanny}. And therefore, the people who are good together and the people who know the truth together are not the same, and never will be.

So idealism, gentlemen, is for a -- aristocratic group of people, for the chosen -- few, who have as much brain as they have heart, who know -- who will be in harmony between heart and mind, you see. But the average mortal is not able to study relativity, and -- and be a good witness. It's just asking too much.

And the nurse who is a good nurse, and the -- the -- the mathematician who is a good mathematician certainly are not held together by what is beautiful, gentlemen. They are held together by some quite other quality, gentlemen. If you come to know -- to know what holds together the physicist and the colored nurse of his baby, then you know why Greek philosophy is not the whole story. It is always only for the chosen few.

Philosophy Gre- -- gentlemen, philosophy is the assignment of the common conditions for thinking in all the fields of human knowledge. It's for men, especially for young men, and it is the unity of human research. And I can now define, gentlemen, what -- what this story of philosophy is. Philosophy is the process by which the human mind is renewed under the pressure of dishar-

monious environment. We have seen that's what it is, you see. The human mind is renewed under the pressure of a disharmonious environment, contradictory environment.

I feel also bound once more to repeat, gentlemen: I do not pretend that I have here in this course to teach Plato as he is for all his own sake. I have announced this as a course in the history of Greek philosophy. And history has its own laws. History of the Civil War is not a biography of Abraham Lincoln. You understand that. And that's the reason why I feel that first of all you should take another course on Plato alone. And second, that I know very well what I'm doing. I think it is more important for you to understand the march of history of the mind--it's much more difficult to understand--than to do something you can always do privately, sit down and read these writings by Plato, with a commentary, which is -- which is very good to do, indeed, but which is not the purpose of this course.

Let's now go to the text, please. Will you -- you have your copy? You have? Have you one? Have you? Here. It would be pos- -- true if I show it to you, but it wouldn't be beautiful. Or it would be good, I mean, but it would not be beautiful. Ja. It would also not be physically correct. Where were we?

(221.)

221. We were just -- yes: "...how large a city should be."

Now, gentlemen, you see how bold a step it is to deal with best. I'm very much interested. This is a new chapter for a new aspect of the Greek conflict, gentlemen. As you know, in Christianity, there is a thinking about first and last things. And that is called "eschatology."

Now, from Plato's point of view, he deals with a utopia. And no -- nowhere in -- in -- has anybody read Sartor Resartus by -- by Carlyle? Who has read that? Not one. I'm sorry. Well, utopia, as I told you, means "nowhere."

Now gentlemen, the difference between the Christian eschatology and the utopia is very much like the difference between the Trinity and the good, and the beautiful, and the true. And it is just as -- much worth your while to understand the difference between these, as between the others. The three ideals are: good, beautiful, true. And the Trinity was: Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Now, perhaps you will admit that you can experience a father and a son, or a mother and a daughter, but it's very hard to experience the good, the beautiful, and the true. They are things of the mind. They can be thought. They cannot make the experience. You cannot meet the good in the street. But you

can meet images of fatherhood, and of sonhood on -- on the street of life. You can love them. But you can only aim at the true. It's only here in your mind that you can find it.

So in the same sense, gentlemen, the utopia is aimed at by our mind. The eschatology is an expectation of something -- what has already happened. That's why the eschatology is the second coming of Christ. Christ has already come, and He'll come again. That is, you all only repeat by expectation what your heart has already been shaken up by: the horrors of the judgment of the human race for its crookedness, for its wickedness, for its hardness, for its obstinacy, to see God come down to earth, that we won't -- we don't wish to see that.

All utopia, gentlemen, aims from the point of v- -- on which I live here into some unknown, fantastic space. It's "nowhere" in the literal sense that I am somewhere, you see, and what I think is nowhere. Eschatology is the opposite, is an attempt to make you see that the worst has already happened, and that if you do not anticipate it, you see, it will overtake you. It is already in reality there. There is no eschatology as an idea, or as a thought. Then it is utopian. I d- -- I don't doubt that many Christians are just Greeks in -- when they speak of "the other world," or of -- or of people going to Heaven. That's just another space for them, a really -- utopia.

So today it's very difficult, gentlemen. Most Catholics today are Platonists; and -- they call themselves Catholics, but they aren't, because they have ceased to be Christians. They are just scholasticists. They have a -- they have in their mind a utopia. That has nothing to do with Christianity, gentlemen. When a man tells you he is a Thomist, you can tell him, "Then you are no Christian." Because that's all Plato, and all Aristotle, later too. This ideas -- my ideals in space. So the utopia of Plato comes out very clearly in this sentence, which we read: "We shall determine which is the best city." The best city is not created somewhere as a creature, like -- you see, like any human being, or like -- like the animals, or the trees, like a redwood, that's the best tree you can think of. The -- at least the longest living. No, Plato is going to decide this from where he stands, you see, pro- -- projecting in- -- into nowhere. As you know, all modern philosophy tries to persuade you that you have to live in this disastrous projection business, that we all project our desires, and our wishes, you see, into these pictures. Gentlemen, we can, but we don't have to. I mean, projection is the first attempt of anybody, a fairy tale, a -- a utopia, to construe. But I think you and I can very well distinguish between projection of our own desires, you see, and forceful imposition of God's will on us, which is very different, indeed.

So, let's read there, 221. "Then here is another"--will you kindly--"Then here is another --" Yes, you, Sir, without the copy.

("Yes, I do.")

Where are you? No, we are a little later. We are a little later. "Then here is another injunction."

("Then here is another injunction we must lay upon the guardians. { } guards in every way that the city be neither small nor seem to be large, but be just great enough as a unity.")

The next, please.

("Quite {attractive} injunction for them, I should think.")

Now, Mr. Socrates.

("And another thing--it is more trifling still, I suppose--which we mentioned before when we said that if a trifling kind of son should be born among the guardians, he was to be sent off to the others. And if one showing excellence was born among the others, he should be sent to the guardians. This was meant as a rule, but other citizen, also. One man, one work. They were to bring each man to the work that was naturally his, so that each might practice his own work and be one man, not many men. And thus the whole city might grow into one city, not many cities.")

("Yes. This is a smaller injunction than the other.")

("Really, my dear --")

Now, you see. You see immediately that mentally speaking, philosophically speaking, this is a hard doctrine. He calls them playfully, "trifles." Yet there is the rub -- that's the rub, there's your utopia. Has any man the r- -- the power, the right, you see, first to say that "I appoint this man guardian, and the other," that's the whole crux. We are here. Whenever Plato says, "This is trifling," you may be sure that he means the most important. And you have to learn how to read, gentlemen. It's like America, when they say, "We won't go to war." You may be sure next day they are in the midst of it.

Say one thing, and do the other. Especially when you minimize, as you know, what the Greeks called meiosis. Understatement, you see. Where the is an understatement, there's a very important statement. You can be sure of that. And this is a kind of this. The -- here we are, in your and my central point of decision: Do we follow Plato? Can we be Platonists? And I think in these two sentences is the whole crux of the matter. If you want to be a Bolshevik, then you say, "Hundred thousand Hu- -- Hungarians can be deported." That's what

he says here, you see. That's in this sentence. He can deport them, if he thinks fit. That's what he literally says. You -- you, please read this with open eyes. Here is the seat of the megalomania of the human mind. "Just a trifle," he said. A trifle, most important thing. We'll never concede this. Ja?

("Really, my dear Adeimantus. These -- are not { } or great injunctions laid on them, as one might think, but all trifles, only they guard the proverbial one great thing equal, or rather not great, but sufficient.")

("What is that?")

("Education and training. For if they are well-educated, and become orderly men, they will { } see the way through all these things, and others, too that we have not mentioned yet--the possession of wives in a marriage, and begetting children. They will understand that all these goods, as the proverb goes, must be held in common.")

Wonderful. Gentlemen, if nature is that which the mind perceives for the commonwealth, if I say 2 and 2 is 4, you all have to believe it, because it's mathematics, you see. My mind operates for all minds who are healthy and normal. You -- remember, I said: nature is that which the mind must think in all who are bound together in their observation of nature, in their exposure to a common nature. Now here you see, if you carry this over into the city, then all women must be held in common. Because if you treat the ethical realm, the realm of goodness in the same way as the realm of truth, you see, since you perceive that all things are equal with the mind, there is absolutely no halting, no barrier to concluding, you see, that since all women are there to produce children, any woman is as good as anybody else to produce children. And the famous -- the famous poly- -- how do you call it? polygyny?

(Polygamy.)

Polygamy. Well, no -gamy. Just many women -- of Plato has its -- seat here in his attempt to equalize the outer and the inner world so totally. And that's again a terrific sentence, gentlemen, which of course all our eugenists, they love to -- rov- -- to read. All women -- where is it? what did you read? -- "the possession of wives and marriage, and begetting children, they will -- will understand" -- "understand," wonderful! "They will understand that all these goods, as the proverb goes, must be held in common."

Now the next. "Yes," he said, "that would be --"

("Yes, he said. That would be quite correct. { } when a state once had a proper start, it grows as a circle would grow. Training and education being kept good, engender good natures. And good natures holding fast to their good education become even better than those before, both in the power of breeding like the lower animals, and in other ways.")

("That is likely.")

("Then to put it shortly, this one thing needful, training and education, is what the overseers of the city must cling to. And they must take care that it is not corruptly -- corrupted insensibly. They must guard it beyond everything, and allow only innovations in gymnastic and music against the established order, but guard it with all possible care. And when someone says of songs--what is it people always want to hear? the latest tune that's warbled through the air--they would be anxious, lest men may think perhaps that the poet does not need new songs, but a new way of singing, and may crave this. So we must not praise such a thing, or take that to be the meaning, for to change to a new kind of music is a thing we must be aware of, as risking the whole. For the methods of music cannot be stirred up without great upheavals of social custom and laws. So says Damon, and I believe him.")

("Then you may put me down, too, as one who believes.")

("Then the { } safeguard for the guardians must be built somewhere hereabouts, it seems, in music.")

("Here at least, lawlessness creeps -- lawlessness easily creeps in, unseen.")

("Yes, in the form of play, when it seems likely to do no harm.")

("And it does no harm, if it were not that it makes itself at home, little by little, and gently overflows upon matters and practice. From these, now stronger grown, it passes to man's business agreements. And from business it moves upon laws, and constitutions, in a wanton flood, Socrates. And so at last all public and private life is overwhelmed.")

("Really? Is that the case?")

("It seems so to me.")

("Then, as you were saying at the beginning, our children must hold fast to play of a more law-abiding type than the first, since when play becomes lawless and the children likewise, it is impossible that law-abiding and serious men can grow out of such children.")

Who has taken Philosophy 9? Well, you recall our problem of play and

serious life. That's discussed here. And the interesting thing is, gentlemen, that in play and -- you need fashion, you need fads, you need the latest hit, you need the new play on Broadway, the need a new -- need a new comic strip, et cetera. And the problem that we discussed here is that of novelty, as you can see, you see. Plato tries to arm against novelty for novelty's sake. I don't think -- so far we have seen how he is going to do it. But that's what he's up against. Novelty for novelty's sa- -- sake. Playing is appetizing, because you can in play change all the time without any danger. But can you play in the military establishment, you see? Can you suddenly say that Charles Wilson should be in command of the American army instead of General Eisenhower, you see? Can you delegate to the secretary of defense the -- the commander-in-chief function? That's -- would be something that -- that you could expect to happen in a play arrangement, where the old coach, you see, cedes to a younger man on his -- for the time being and says, "I go home."

Now, go on.

("Certainly they must.")

("Indeed it seems that when children begin by playing properly and receive it into themselves law and order through their music, just the opposite happens. Good order goes with them in all things, and makes them grow. And raises up again whatever of the old state was lying in ruins.")

Ah ha. We have then the worship of the old, the restoration, gentlemen, of the old against -- against that which is changing all the time. Ja?

("True indeed.")

("Then we discover again the custom, even {playful} which they were {thought}, which goes before them and wholly destroys.")

("What custom?")

(Such as silence of the younger in the presence of their elders, which is { }. And giving place to them, and rising before them, and honoring their parents. The cut of their hair, the manner of dress and { }, their whole bearing and comportment, and everything of that sort. Don't you think so?")

("I do.")

("But to legislate about such customs would be silly, I think. For they are not observed, and they would not last if laid down as laws in word and writing.")

("How could they?")

("Anyhow, the fact is, Adeimanti- -- -tos, that whatever way their educations start them, their future ways are of like quality. It's a case of like always causing to like.")

("What else can happen?")

("And in the end --")

You see, here we have already this terrible -- really terrible habit in the end of Plato's dialogues that the poor interlocutor is only allowed to say something totally empty. If you read at the -- these two sentence: "How could they?" and "What else could happen?" I mean, if they weren't there, we -- much happier. But the whole dialogues are filled with this -- these trifles, you see. It's really trash. There the form runs away with -- with, so to speak, with the content, you see. Once he has laid down the form of the dialogue, he has to fill it out, you see,

even when there is no requirement for any response, or answer, or -- and there are very few dialogues in Plato which make you feel that the form of the dialogue is a- -- really necessary. We'll read later as a contrast later the Symposion in which this is true. The Symposion is a real dialogue. And this is not. Ja? This is a book.

(Sir, I was wondering. I noticed that { } one section where Adeimantus begins to talk about -- about the infiltration, you might say, of -- of -- of innovation into -- into tradition, while they're talking about { }. He doesn't { } I was wondering if there's any meaning involved { } does seem to be an exception.)

Oh, that's a very great sentence by Adeimantus, sure. Here, on page 222, what we just read. Oh, I hadn't said that every one of these answers is meaningless. But I gave you two examples, where they're really just fillers. And the proportion, I mean, in The Republic is already that two-thirds wouldn't be missed, you see. But there are other dialogues, of course, in the end in the Timaeus, and in the laws of Plato, in the old work, it is nothing but a stereotype what the -- in the answer, or in this interrupter is -- done. So you may say the story of Plato's dialogues is a story of using up a form, and in the end, it no longer is more than a form. In the beginning, it is necessary. Here we are in the middle, so to speak. Part of it -- I would agree with you, Mandaville, that this -- on Page 222, "And it does no harm if it were not that it makes itself at home little by little," is con- -- is con- -- is elementary, is of great importance. It's central. He -- and probably he wanted to put it into the mouth of this -- of this young man.

({ } I was wondering why it seems like { }.)

Well, I think it's a flattery. Do you know who Adeimantus and Glaucon are?

(No, Sir.)

They are two brothers of Plato. So it's a very nice way, don't you think? It remains in the family.

Now, let's read one more page and then have a break.

("In the end, then, I think you would say it would turn out to be something complete and bold, either good or bad.")

("Of course.")

("My opinion, then, let me tell you, is that for these reasons,

I will not try to make laws about such things.")

("With good reason.")

("Ah, but for goodness' sake. Do say what you think about all this market business, contracts which different -- with different -- which different classes of people make in the margin and contrast with Artesians, if you --")

Oh, oh, oh. Artesians?

(Oh. "Artists." Thank you.)

Artesian wells exist, gentlemen.

("And slander {and assault}. And filing of the declarations and finding juries, for there may be dues to exact or to pay, which have to be enforced sometimes in markets or harbors. The whole multitude of marke- -- market rules, or police rules, or the harbor rules, and all other such, shall we allow ourselves to make {new laws} about these?")

("No, it would not be worth the trouble to give orders to cult- -- cultured gentlemen. They will easily find out themselves, I suppose, most of the lawmaking {needs}.")

("Yes, my dear { }. If only God grants them safe maintenance of the laws which we have described already.")

("If he does not, they will spend their whole lives making such laws, and amending them, and expecting to find perfection.")

("You may { } six men who are too undisciplined to give up their bad manners { }.")

("Exactly.")

("Oh, what a charming life they have, always doctoring themselves with the sole result that they make their diseases worse and more complicated. And if anyone recommends a medicine, always expecting to be cured by it.")

("Yes, that is just what happens to men who are sick in that way.")

("Yes, indeed; and here is another charming thing about them. They hate worst of all -- worst of all the man who tells them the truth, who tells them that nothing in the world will do them any good, not medicines, or burnings, or cuttings, no -- not { } or amulets, or anything else until they stop drinking, and gorging, and wenching, and idling.")

("Not so very charming to be angry with one who gives good advice. There's no charm in that.")

("You don't seem to approve of such men.")

("No, I do not, I do declare.")

("Nor will you approve of the city then, to return to that we were saying, if it does things of that sort as a whole. Do not cities appear to you to do just the --")

Now, that's an important sentence, gentlemen. And we'll go on from there. Please read this paragraph now. Mandaville, there's the case, you see -- who says this? This is Socrates, which is -- this is central here. "Do not cities appear to you --" ja?

("Do not cities appear to you to do just the same as these sick men, when they are badly governed, and forewarn their people not to meddle with their city's constitution, on penalty of death to anyone who tries to do this? But whoever serves them most pleasantly, governed as they are, and heaps favors upon them, and cringes, and forestalls their wishes, and shows himself clever in fulfilling them, there is their good man and true. There is their fountain of wisdom. There's is the man they will honor.")

("They do seem to me to do just the same. And I do not approve of them at all.")

("Then what of those who are willing and eager to serve such cities? Don't you admire them for courage to carry it off so lightly?")

("I do, except those who are really deluded and believe themselves to be real-born statesmen, because they are afraid for the mob.")

Let's stop here. Thank you. Five minutes.

[tape interruption]

As you can see in -- on Page 223, there is -- is a phrase on the bot- -- at the bottom of the page, "Yes, my dear friend, if only God grants them safe men- -- maintenance of the laws." Now to any humanist, this is very shocking that his beloved Plato still has the obsolete superstition of mentioning God. It's not necessary if you b- -- have ideas. Then why speak of God? The difference between ideas and gods is, you see, that we have to pray to God if He is alive. You can't pray to ideas. You just have them. You may stare at them. So you may take down, gentlemen: the distinction between the Father, and the Son, and the

Holy Spirit on the one-hand side--and the true, and the good, and the beautiful--is that the good, and the true, and the beautiful can't be spoken to. They can't be spoken. It isn't meaningful to pray to the good, obviously, you see. It's something you look at, but the good cannot look at you. And the beautiful cannot look at you. And the true cannot look at you. With the ideals, man is all in an -- immobile, speechless universe. In the universe, there may be these guiding stars. But these stars do not perceive you. You are not seen. In Plato, you are not loved. In Plato you are not understood. In Plato, you are not embellished. But you see the beautiful. You see the truth. They are in this sense -- you may say beacons, or aims, or stars, or ideals.

What you call an "ideal" is something very handy, gentlemen. That's why you sh- -- and I cannot be idealists in seriousness. Idealists don't talk back. Ideal -- an ideal is what I make it to be. And no contradiction allowed from the part of the ideal. I say, "I have ideals." Poor ideal isn't asked any questions, you see. It just has succumbed to my will. That's why idealists are funny people, because they first make their god out of their mind, and then they say, "That's a god." It isn't. It's just an ideal. What you call -- we called a projection. Ja?

(Can this -- can these ideals somehow get around it by the process of empathy?)

Of emphas- --?

(Emp- -- empathy?)

But -- but it's arbitrary. You may think it's empathic. But how about -- what is empathic about the good?

(Well, I mean { }.)

Didn't we talk about this communion with nature -- my friend here on campus who would interrupt my -- our social intercourse and stop on -- in the midst of campus and say, "Pardon me, I ha- -- now have to hold communion with nature." I think he was a silly ass. And arrogant, too, because he wanted to be alone. He called this "nature." There's no communion with ideas, or communion with nature, gentlemen. Don't be betrayed. The simplest answer to an idealist is always that he meets no resistance, you see. If you meet Jesus, or His Father, they tell you exactly that you should be ashamed of yourself. But an ideal is of your own making. If you talk long enough of -- to the ideal, it will allow you any crime. Absolutely -- it has nothing -- it's no resistance.

But there's a very -- something very important still to be said. On this --

end of the page, I looked up the Greek text. Gentlemen, the Greeks have of course names for their gods. There is Zeus. And it has always been felt in antiquity that if a man really believed in God, he would speak of Zeus as a father of gods and men, and not of God in the abstract. Do you know what the difference between the Greek word "theos" is, which is -- is -- which goes around in the word "theology," to this day, you see -- and the word "Zeus"? It's a very simple difference as between ideas and between -- a living person. Zeus you can invoke. But the word "theos" -- "theos," which already is old, which is a sum of the gods, whose special name doesn't matter, has no vocative. In other words, gentlemen, the Greek word used here at the end -- bottom of Page 223, is the weakest word for the gods, because it -- it is that god who can -- who is not invoked.

You will not understand this because -- only perhaps if you think of the "Our Father in Heaven." If you think of the most common prayer of Christianity, you will understand that if -- if there wasn't this invocation, "Our Father," you see, there would be no prayer. It is perfectly enough for a man to say in an agony "Our Father," or "for Christ's sake"; that's a full prayer. All the rest is just execution, so to speak, you see, of a minor character. The logic of the prayer does not -- matters much less than the invocation, because you put yourself face-toface with your Father in Heaven.

The Romans felt this very sternly and very heavily. You know the word "Jupiter" is the vocative. The word "pater" is abbreviated in "piter," in "piter," and the word "Jovis" is abbreviated in "Jup". And therefore Jupiter is the form of the prayer. And then it becomes -- became to be the final name of the god. That is, gentlemen, a true god can only be spoken of in the vocative, in the shortest form, in this form, "Jupiter," or "Our Father." Why? Because if you believe in God, He is present. If He is present, you cannot speak of him as though He was absent. If we really believe in God, gentlemen, you must behave all the time as though He is present.

Now, to any present company, you have to address your word directly. I cannot speak of you with -- as "he." It is very impolite while Richard {Siles} is in this room to speak of him instead of taking him into our conversation and turn to him and say, "You will agree," you see. I must not say to you, "He agrees." That's very impolite. And many people make this mistake in conversation, that they speak of present company, you see, as "he." It's -- you mustn't do this. That's always an insult. And it hurts to be called a "he" in your own -- in my own presence. While you're talking of me, here, when I can hear it, you must turn to me and say, "Am I not right, Professor?" you see. That is, by saying "Professor," you reconcile me to hear -- overhear your talking of me, you see, because then you agree that I'm still alive then -- and a part of the spiritual -- conversation that takes place.

All this is lost on you, gentlemen. You live in an inanimate universe. You have been ruined by your schools, and you think that to speak of God is decent. Gentlemen, it's indecent. You can speak to God, and you cannot mention Him. You can be silent. But you cannot speak in bull sessions about the existence of God. That's just funny. And it is insane. And it leads nowhere. Has absolutely no meaning, this discussion about God, because any discussion about God has already made the decision that He doesn't listen in. So it's a -- forgone conclusion. You have already decided that there is no God, then you discuss Him. The result is that everybody goes home and says, "It can't be proven." Of course, not. Because you set out already in a situation in which you had decided that He wasn't there. If you assume one thing, you cannot be surprised that we never get to the -- as a result the other.

That's why all the discussions about God Almighty are so very strange -- meaningless. Any man who opens his mouth believes in God. He may deny it. There are decided atheists who say it's very harmful to speak, and to -- to -- to allow other people to -- to pronounce this fact. That's atheism. But the atheist believes that he is right, and he believes that he is true. And so he always believes that there is a common spirit among men.

You see, anybody who speaks and tells the truth to somebody else is this man's father. And anybody who listens to the -- somebody else and learns something from him is this man's son; because father and son is still -- just the relation of hearing and speaking, of learning and -- and teaching, of instructing and -- and -- and receiving. Whatever you take, I mean. In any relation, you read a book. This author is your authority, you see, and you are on the receiving end. You are in this moment his son. You can be 20 and I can be 70, if you teach me something, you are my father and I am your son.

That is, in the relation of speech, of speaking and listening, there is always the relation of older and younger, because the man who says something knows one minute before the man who hears it, hears it, what is true. You cannot change this, you see. Who says something first is always leading on. And who hears something second is always following. There is nothing to get around about this situation of speaking and reading. And all you people who want to become writers, or teachers, or lawyers, or whatever it is, or salesmen, or advertising men, you always assume that there is in reality father and son, as an eternal category, that we all take turns. Sometimes we are in the position of the son. Sometimes we are in the position of the father. And as long as there is life, you will constantly be switching between these two positions.

[tape interruption]