Transcript

{ } = word or expression can't be understood
{word} = hard to understand, might be this

Gentlemen, the problem for the exit of Greek philosophy i- -- in its own -- his- -- time, or in its own cycle is to understand why it did not satisfy, why it didn't grip anymore. I tried to tell you that in 300 the Stoics already said something very un-Greek. They said that the directing force was the heart, and not reason. And I tried to show you that you misunderstood this, and that the man who wrote on the Stoics, in his flippant way, just assumed that a Greek had to say that reason was the directing force, and so forged the old issue. It was a very poor paper for this reason, because he couldn't even read the text. Now most of you assume that the Greeks were reasonable people, and that -- Greek philosophy means rationalism. But that's the pitfall of rationalism, and of your -- idea of Greek philosophy, and perhaps of the -- the Greeks' own idea of philosophy, that we -- that even the du- -- duchess of Windsor, who certainly is not a model lady, knows that the heart has its reasons.

Now it is terribly important for us today to get the chronology right, gentlemen. This is Zeno the Stoic, who introduces as a Cypriot, from Cyprus, as a man of the -- certainly is somehow in touch with the prophetic tradition of the people of the Semitic languages, and the Semitic tradition, knows that the heart has its reasons, and thereby breaks the identity of goodness and logic. Plato said that that what was true was good, and that what -- who -- who knew the truth had to be a good man. And that's your own faith in education.

I say the more a man is educated, the more imperiled is he for becoming a scoundrel. You say the more a man is educated, the better he must be. He's much more risky, gentlemen. You -- run a greater risk when you get educated. But the American dogma is the Greek dogma. From 1800 to 1950 in this country, we were all Greeks. Greek philosophy prevailed. Plato prevailed. Aristotle prevailed. The teaching of philosophy prevailed. And the -- the dogma of Greek philosophy in this sense -- in this limited sense, from 600 to 300 B.C. and from 1800 to 1950 in this country is that the good man is the true man, and the true man is a good man. That is, the true man in the sense: he who knows the truth.

The identity, gentlemen, of beauty, goodness, and truth is what makes the Platonists. And that, because we know we will act right, is the dogma of any philosophy that says it is enough for life to have philosophy. In 300 B.C., there was a knocking at the door of Greece. Alexander had gone to India, and had met there with the fakirs, and the yogis, for example, and the Buddhists. And he brought back the knowledge of the so-called gymnosophists. If you read anywhere in a Greek -- in a Greek text the word "gymnosophist," it means influence of Hinduism. It means asceticism. "Gymnos" means naked. And a gymnosophist

is a man whom we would call an ascete. That is, a man who, in order to be wise, chastises his body. You see that there enters a -- something of which the Greeks were perfectly unaware, that to be immersed in physis, in one's own nature can prevent oneself from knowing the truth, and that you have first to get out of your own physis before you can see the rays of hope, you see, of the true sun.

"Gymnosophist" is a -- a Greek -- the Greek expression which of course we have to approach in connection with sophism, sophists, and philosophers, the word "soph." In Greece, you see, the idea is to learn -- to love wisdom enables you to become wise. The love of wisdom is the positive step towards wisdom. It is this funny idea, you see: you are already somebody, and you add an inch to your stature by becoming wise. By love, you become more than you are. The gymnosophists, gentlemen, and any -- modern monk, and any modern puritan, if there are such, will tell you that in order to become better, you have to reduce something inside yourself. You have to s- -- cut out something. The -- I told -- always tell it in this way, that the good is the enemy of the better. I think we -- we talked about this here, ja? The good is the enemy of the better, you see. That is, you cannot become better because you are only 5 feet 8 inches tall. You cannot add to your stature one inch, neither morally, nor scie- -- nor in knowledge, nor in ethics, nor in anything. You can only, by omitting certain advantages given you, you see, you can grow. Because there is a certain sense of proportion in your being. And the idea that you evolve into more and more, and -- larger and larger bank account, so to speak, of virtue, is a mistake. You cannot have more virtues. You are who you are, you see. But you can shift the economy of your inner household. You can replace one item in this household, you see, by another item. And that's gymnosophistry. That's asceticism.

And therefore, with -- not only does -- Zeno, the Phoenician, enter the scene in 300, from Cyprus, that's one of the reasons why the Greeks have absolutely no claim to Cyprus. One of the idiocies of America is that we support the claims of the Greeks on -- for the island of Cyprus. They have absolutely no business to get it, more than the British. It's an error of judgment. Typical, I mean. You did everything. You -- you gave the Czechs the poor Slovaks and Magyars in Czechoslovakia and drove out the Germans -- from America, everybody who shouts loudest always gets the -- his -- his view in Ge- -- in Europe supported. Mr. Benes had no business to -- to get Czechoslovakia. Two-thirds of them who were not Czech- -- were not Czechs; and so the Greeks have no business to get Cyprus.

I offer you this in the history of philosophy as a good example, that the -- the greatest man from Cyprus was not a Greek; 300 B.C. And has -- Cyprus has always been peopled by non-Greeks, by Phoenicians, from the very first day.

You fall for every craze here in this country, and all -- always wrong. Pseudo-nationalism this is. You -- this country cannot be nationalistic, but you wish the evil of nationalism on every spot in Europe. You support the Irish. You support the Albanese. The -- Albania, which is now a Soviet colony, as you well know, was created in Lynn, Massachusetts, by the immigrants from Albania, who of course got a hearing here, and all the Americans said, "These nice cobblers in Lynn, Massachusetts, must get their state at home in Albania." With the result that in Albania, the submarines of Russia prepare the Third World War.

Just typical of Cyprus, by the way. And that's why I lay some stress on the fact that 300 B.C., Mr. Zeno came into Greece and introduced a foreign motive of philosophy. The moral motive, gentlemen, that the heart breaks the re- -- conclusions of the mind.

And the gymnosophists, the Hindu influence, comes into Greek, which we now have today still in our monasteries, in our Christian monasteries. That is already the form in which wisdom was allowed to enter the Christian Church, only as a blend between In- -- Hindu and Greek, craving for wisdom. The -- Hindu said, "If I want wisdom, I must pay a price." That's the price, asceticism, renunciation. And the Greeks said, "Craving, eros, love." So out of this plus and minus, gentlemen, our modern Benedictine monasteries, for example, exist. You read Mr. Thomas Merton--why is he a monk?--you see, because the wisdom which a -- monk in this world today represents is a combination of Hindu and Greek mentality. Very important to know.

Of course it is -- the Church has fructified and has profited from any of the previous streams of life. But the Greek way of philosophy has not been allowed to enter the Greek -- the Christian Church unchanged, unmixed, so to speak, you see. And the price which the Greeks did not want to pay, the gymnosophists, the naked sophists, so to speak, you see, paid. And the combination of Buddha asceticism, and Greek philosophy has -- this splendor ha- -- created of the medieval monks, who represented the wisdom of the Greek and Latin tradition, copying all their manuscripts, studying Aristotle, you see, Virgil, keeping the ancien- -- classics alive, under the condition that they led the ascetic life with the three vows of chastity, and obedience, and poverty, which no Greek philosopher in itself connected immediately with knowledge.

So the price of knowledge and goodness, gentlemen, entered the consciousness of the Greeks through Alexander the Great, through this combination of India and Greece. And I'm very sorry to say that all your textbooks on Greek philosophy therefore make no sense, because these 300 years, from 300 to 0, are not understood as an exchange of two streams of thinking. The stream that says, "Before a man can acquire knowledge, he must purify himself, he must leave

nature," and the other stream that says, "He must crave wisdom," you see.

And perhaps this sign helps you a little bit. The plus sign is Greece, the Greek mind, stretching out, longing for. Without yearning, gentlemen, without expectation, without hope, you cannot achieve anything. But without faith, with- -- that is asceticism, without forgoing immediate advantages, your -- your hope and your yearning is in vain. You are all full of hope. You are all Greeks. But you do not ask under what condition does your hope make sense. It can only make sense if you exp- -- pay the excise tax. If you ex- -- cut out that which stands in the way of your hopes -- ever be fulfilled, and there's very much in -- very many beams in your eye, whom you do not like to see. You only see, of course, the little -- what does the Bible s- -- call it? in your neighbor's eye?

(The mote.)

The mote.

So gentlemen, we have beginning in 300, the combination of the plus and minus of Greek and India. And we have in Zeno and the Jews of Alexandria the combination between Israel and the Greeks. That all begins in the same year and goes on till the coming of Christ, until--to Saint Paul -- because here we have the limitation, whereas for the Greeks, their mind covers the universe, gentlemen. For Israel, the human mind is just a speck of dust. That is, well what's the--how should I say it? The Greeks are pantheists, aren't they? And the Israelites are monotheists. Now what's the difference, gentlemen, between pantheism and monotheism on the surface of things? "Pan" means all. Everything is divine, you see. Therefore nothing is bad. Nothing has to be rejected. Nothing has to die. The Greek mind in a -- looking at the universe, cannot distinguish life and death. There's no criterion in all of Plato between life and death. The dead things are used as yardstick for explaining the -- the living things. The stars in Timaeus, are used, you see. The ideas: beautiful, good, and true -- all dead things, just dead ideas, you see, who do not speak, who do not breathe, who do not live. They are used to explain you and me, living beings. Incredible idea.

The Greek mind, gentle- -- explains life out of death, which all the modern physicists do. Silly asses. Li- -- life explains death, gentlemen. But death can never explain life. Because I live, I must die, gentlemen. But not because I die I -- must I live, or because I'm dead. Dead things stay dead. And therefore most of you will remain dead, because you have -- don't know that you have to fight for your life in order to escape death. So you just remain unborn. You never even enter the danger zone of living.

Now, in your speech, you don't -- today again at lunch, somebody told me

that -- that it was impossible to hear a word of truth said between students on this campus. I don't know if this is true, but he said it at least. And that shows that he feels that the life which only comes when people speak the truth to each other is held away -- off from you. You never know the good life, the full life. Full life is only be- -- when we speak to each other, gentlemen. Before, you do not know who you are, and you do not know what you think. Do you think you think? The best you can say is -- the best I can say that after I have spoken to you, I know what I think, because you do me the favor to listen to me. You love me enough to be patient with me, to believe in me; and so my truth comes to me.

I told him at lunch, this boy, the story of the Arabian tribe. To this day, in -- in Arabia -- the proper peninsula of Arabia, you cannot eat meat, except as a fest- -- at a festive meal, because meat is too next to humanity, to you and me. A single individual is not entitled to eat meat. Only the group, the inspired group of people who have a good talk to each other, who -- against each other, mutually, who can mutually allow each other to share at a meal the best of food and drink, you see. They are allowed to eat meat.

So where you draw the line between vegetarian -- one group being vegetarian and the other group being meat-eaters, you see, the Arabian is much more sensitive and he says, "At times, I am allowed to eat meat, because I am inspired. I live the full life," you see, "of the waked mind of the group, of my community. And at times I'm -- I am limited to vegetarianism," you see, "to -- because I am not in the spirit." Can you see this? "I'm not inspired." That is real { }. If you would know this, you would be able to cure yourself, because I think a man who lives alone should live on -- or know that he is on a lower plane, so to speak, if he isn't creative. If he is creative, he speaks for the whole community. Then he is of course filled with the spirit of this very community for which he writes the next great drama or -- you see, or the Gettysburg Address. And then the -- can have all the camel meat he wants.

Did -- do you begin to see, gentlemen, that philosophy is a state of your own -- of your own nature, of your own life? And the Greeks have this strange limitation, that they only see in the working of the mind its plus sign. They do not see the price they have to pay that before you can know the truth, you have to forgo certain things, like homosexuality, like any perversion of the -- your body. And the second thing is: the Greeks say, "All which the mi- -- eye sees, indifferently, since it is natural, is full of gods, is full of the div- -- logos, and is full of ethos. It's pantheistic." The Jews say that God is the Lord of life and death. And since He is the Lord of life and death, God -- the true God, gentlemen, is not like the Olympian god, ever to be represented in statues, in stone temples. You can't, you see. That's not the living God, because the living God proceeds all the time against that which must die into the living of the future. He declines to be

captivated in dead matter.

And therefore the word "monotheism" for you should acquire a new quality, gentlemen, today. You should see that when we speak of monotheism, we do not mean one god against many gods. But the Jewish prayer and the Christian prayer is: "It is the god who can save us from our death. And can open our eyes to the fact that we are dead in our sins at this moment, that we are just animals by ourselves," you see, and that it takes a special act of grace meeting a brother, meeting a sister, meeting the Church, meeting a community, meeting an opportunity, you see, meeting a task to make us into the children of God, monotheism means that there is a universe that can be empty of God, that the world is not simply identified with -- by God, because part of the universe is less alive than it should be.

And you know who is less alive in the universe -- than he should be? Man. Man. Man is that part of -- you cannot say of the sun that she -- he is less alive than it sh- -- he should be. We have no judgment in the matter, you see. It's just as hot as can be, it seems to us, you see. We can't argue the point that the sun should shine more. But we can argue with every one of us, you and me, with ourselves that we should be more alive, and less dead. And the whole problem, gentlemen, of Christianity, of the Resurrection, of the -- of the dying to our sins and rising with Christ, is a very simple thing. It's the verdict that the dead Christ is still 10,000 times more alive than you as you sit here at this moment. And that's simply true. We are dead. We just dream that we are alive. You don't know what it means to be alive.

If you can speak like Nathan Hale on the sh- -- scaffold, the words he said, "I wished I had more lives to give to my country," then you know that you are alive. What you say -- call "alive" is shitting, and urinating, and eating. That's not alive. That's just mechanical movement. You mistake your idea of life totally. You don't know what the good life is; have no idea. You think three meals a day, that's living. Gentlemen, that's below, that's -- I call this anabio- -- anabiotic -- suspended animation. Suspended animation in this country stands for living. It's a mistake, gentlemen. It's good for the refrigerator business, but for nobody else. You live all refrigerator lives. And you want it this way. Your psychologists sell you suspended animation.

They prove to you -- now I come back to the last lecture. And it -- I -- it joins. You remember that I said that the ordinary time is always the time of logic. And the extraordinary time is this time of the myth, of the creative, founding moment, you see. Now the time of reason in your sense of the word, of using your brain, is the time of suspended animation. In your five senses, if you remain in your five senses, and don't let the heart speak, you can never propose to a girl,

because it is always foolish to do so. Always, you see. Absolutely never any excuse for you to propose to a girl. It's foolish. It may lead, and usually does lead, to disaster. But anyone -- he wants to live, has to take the plunge. He has to. It is unreasonable, but very wise. Because the heart has its reasons. Yes, young lady -- it always is unwise for a young man to get going with a girl. Always. But it is very wise from a higher point, you see, if he wants to live better. He must live more. That's the only reason why he cannot stand this state of being a bachelor. Bachelors are clever. They're much more clever than husbands.

Gentlemen -- philosophy is always right if you de- -- reduce it to the state of today and omit it to the problem of fecundity, of bearing fruit. That's why the New Testament has conquered the whole realm of Greek philosophy with this one simple sentence, "By their fruits ye shall know you." "By your fruits" only, nothing else. It's the difference between Christianity or religion and fruitfulness and philosophy. All Greenwich Village is much cleverer, gentlemen, than the people in the other suburbs. But in the other suburbs, fortunately the children are born, and in Greenwich Village the cocktails are produced. That's fruitless, totally fruitless. In- -- the intellect is fruitless. The intelligentsia is a bastard of life. Philosophy is a bastard. If it doesn't know that it is, like Mr. Collins says -- like Mr. Wilson says, an -- an outsider, who wants to instigate life to become higher, you see, by its getting outside society and illuminating it -- about its future greater vitality.

The cultural critic, who abounds in this country, is a nuisance. Good for nothing. If you -- if you would close the Saturday Review of Literature and all the Mr. {Galletts}, et cetera, absolutely nothing would happen. No harm done. They don't produce anything. They are unproductive, because -- it has no consequence what they say, gentlemen, except perhaps negative.

Well, I want to say that the difference between pantheism and monotheism enters the Greek scene from -- to -- from 300 to the coming of Paul. And I would like your permission today to explain to you why, from Saint Paul to Saint Augustine -- that is, from the days of Seneca, the Stoic--that's the contemporary of Paul--to the days of the end of the Roman Empire, that's the 5th century--Saint Augustine died in 430 of our era--why the Greek philosophy is on the retreat. And why at this moment in 1950 again Greek philosophy has to undergo its limitations by monotheism against pantheism, that any philosophy that says that it can replace religion, it can replace faith, is already judged -- prejudged by an historical cycle in which the Greek philosophers had the run of the place. For 600 years they -- after all, they had it, you see. And broke down the first time in 300, by the con- -- checking -- being checked by the Hindus and the Jews. And then after the coming of Christ, they were themselves suddenly faced with their own limitation.

The way in which I think you should be equipped, and I feel very strongly on this point for many decades, is that you should read and bring to class for the next time, but we'll read it today right away--perhaps you'll read it at home then yourself--the famous attempt of Paul to compromise with philosophy. You know when he tried to compromise with philosophy? You ever heard of it? The story of this compromise is a very important one. You can today say to yourself and to -- any mod- -- you -- Greek, "The way I decide on the -- this speech of Paul, the way I stand in this whole question of the rank and role of philosophy in life." Therefore I think it's a -- it's a personal task on yours. It's not something you can learn from the book. Most books in the last decades have been written by the Greeks. The so-called theologians in this country were nothing but philosophers. They even called the Greek phil- -- Christianity a philosophy. They misunderstood the whole point. And therefore the last three -- three years -- three decades or four decades, as a matter of fact, this speech by Saint Paul has been praised as a tremendous academic oration, so to speak, as the ideal of a philosophical argument. Poor Paul himself has thought that it was a derailment, that it was a scandal in his life, that he failed to do his duty, and that when he went to make this speech, he was defeating his own ends, that he was deserting his Lord, and he promised that he would never do it again. He has never done it again, as far as we can tell.

So the thing is very dramatic, gentlemen, because half of the commentaries which you read are written by Greeks. And they want to show that after all, Paul could philosophize if he wanted to, and that he was a very nice man who m- -- under the circumstances one might even have granted the master's degree at Dartmouth College.

And he said, "If so, then I am faithless. I betray the Lord again," as Peter did in the night before the Crucifixion. "I shall try not to betray him again. It's bad enough that I once did."

Now I keep you perhaps in -- in expectation. But all the Christian martyrs and saints, as you know, have one hour of defeat. Jesus said on the Cross, "My Lord, why hast Thou forsaken me?" If He hadn't said that, He wouldn't have been a human being. He would just have been a -- a phenomenon, you see from the other world. Any human mortal, gentlemen, wavers. Jesus' temptation comes when it doesn't matter. He comes after the act, when we can be weak, you see. Any courageous man is frightened after the daring, after he has dared, you see. That's unknown. You -- you people think the difference between coward and -- and fortitude is that the -- one is -- never trembles, and the other does tremble. But the real difference between a coward and a -- a courageous man is that the coward is frightened in the moment of danger, and runs away. And the courageous man is frightened afterwards, when it doesn't matter any

more. But if he isn't frightened, he's just a bull, not a human being. -- He's good for nothing. He's just a big noise, I mean. There is no human a- -- humanity in himself.

Any man who does something daring, must tremble afterwards, then he is courageous; or he trembles in the danger, then he is a coward; or he trembles before, then he is timid. Timid people can be very courageous. That is, they mean not to be cowards. I think I am very timid. But I have learned by experience that it doesn't help me to be -- timid in the moment of danger. And then I am not. The -- the coward is -- is frightened by -- in the act, you see; the courageous, after the act; the timid before the act. Somehow you must be frightened. If you are not frightened, you are not human. The Lord wept when Lazarus was dead. And the Lord cried from the Cross, "Why hast Thou forsaken me?" But He couldn't get down from the Cross anymore. It was done. So why shouldn't He be frightened, you see? He did -- didn't interfere -- His weakness didn't interfere with His vision. With another man, however, it does interfere with his vision. He is so frightened that he, you see, avoids the process. He runs away from him in the last minute.

This is quite important for Paul, gentlemen. Every human being that is -- has a -- deserves the quality of "human" must undergo the emotions of the heart. And that is Mr. Zeno's and Mr. -- and Israel's contribution to the correction of Greek philosophy, gentlemen. A philosopher who always believes that he is right, you see, has no truth to sell, because we demand in the Christian era from the man who holds the truth, that at one time he must doubt his own truth. Otherwise we call him a fanatic, don't we? A man who never doubts his truth is not a human being. A man who always doubts his truth is a coward. Can you see the connection? Most of this -- people in this country now, in -- from the anxiety of being fanatics, are cowards. They never hold any truth. That's nothing, gentlemen. You must fight for your truth, but after you have fought, you one times -- wonder, you see, why you did. But it doesn't matter.

I always tell the story of a friend of mine who was a professor of philosophy at Duke, and wrote a very wonderful book on Nietzsche. Took him -- cost him 10 years of his life. And when the war broke out -- the Second World War, he volunteered, and entered as a private, although he was 40 years of age, and he could have secured a colonelcy, like so many of my colleagues in this nice college have done. And he didn't. He thought that was -- would be a coward's action. And he didn't become a co- -- colonel, but a private. And he served up, and became a captain at the end, which was quite a career for a private.

But he came home after six years. In the process he lost his family. Got a divorce. Everything was destroyed. He gave up his pro- -- professorship. He's

now in Tokyo with our embassy. And -- everything changed; everything was sacrificed. And he came to me in '45 and said, "I'm" -- oh no, '46, or '47 even -- many years had already been invested in this venture, gentle- -- of serving up from the ranks. And he said, "I'm disgusted with myself. I've made a fool of myself, and a mess of things. If I had gotten a colonelcy in 1941, which I could, then I would have been a brigadier. And in the administration of the foreign countries, I would have played a -- outstanding role. And with my knowledge of French, and German, and of the country, and the {mind} of the people, I could have prevented many stupidities and follies of the -- of the occupation. This reeducation to democracy, and all the nonsense that has been done, and estranged Europe from America so totally, and why didn't I do this?"

And we had an argument. And man- -- many things devi- -- developed from this argument. I wrote a whole book on this stor- -- on this problem. And the gist is this, gentlemen: that he -- he cultivated at that moment, in '47, as we all do, the -- "Oh God, why hast Thou forsaken me?" philosophy. I call this the "philosophy of the ashcan." When the fire is burned out, it is obvious that we all -- disgusted with the whole process, you see. We have the -- the hangover of the next morning. Fireplace is burned out. All the drinks are over, you see. It has cost a lot of rum and whisky, and very expensive party. And you hardly understand, with a headache on the next morning, why you ever did it. But that is no -- absolutely not of any more authority, your judgment the next morning, than the mo- -- judgment in the evening. You are not the wiser man, or the more -- more entitled to judge, because the next morning you feel empty, and take an aspirin.

The philosophy of the aspirin -- of the ashcan has absolutely no more authority. Quite the contrary, gentlemen. If you consider that my friend entered the army as a private, and enthused thousands of college -- boys to do the same, I can say that we won the war by the -- Mr. -- who made the right decision at that moment, the decision of not asking for self-aggrandizement but humbling himself to becoming a private. And if I think of his judgment in 1947, I say it doesn't matter. It's his private opinion. It absolutely -- absolutely of no -- no interest to me, because it doesn't -- isn't infectious. It's just private reasoning. And so, he's very important with his decision in '41; he's utterly unimportant with his opinion in '47.

You -- of course, are so clever, and so rationalistic, and so intellectual, and -- you are the cream of the nation, and therefore you think that while you're sitting here on your fannies, and sitting in judgment over events and actions, that you are the people to make the right decision, and to judge -- critically, wisely, because you are out of luck. You are not swimming in the -- in the stream of events, and that when you volunteer for a noble deed, that you are

fools.

It's the other way around, gentlemen. Fools we are in this classroom. We all are, because we are less alive to our responsibilities at this moment. We have nothing to decide of importance at this moment. We just -- if you don't use this time rightly and see yourself in proportion, as we are here, that we are far away from responsibility, we cannot really think right. We -- you must be aware that at this moment, we play. We play with ideas. That's very irresponsible. And I can only, by reminding you that we are in danger of being irresponsible, harness your energies of thinking at this moment, to the great moments in which my friend had to enter the army, that -- moment for which we are -- here are preparing each other to think right. Can you -- see this?

And so forth. If thought is not in the less vital moments of your mental life harnessed to the great moments, where you are more alive, it must go wrong. And then logos must become mere logic. I've tried to tell you this through the whole course, gentlemen, that the logistic, the syllogistic problem is the problem of subduing, of making subservient the working of mere logic, and mere mentality, and mere reason, to the great moments where you are fully alive, where body and soul are required to stand up and to fight. If you do not at this moment resolve to resist a bribe, which you are offered as a judge, you see, you -- and you just say, as you will hear in Romeo and Juliet, you see, the nurse propose to Juliet that she should marry the Count Paris, because after all, it's a very practical idea, you see: "Just be practical, Julia -- Romeo is dead," the -- nurse says, and, "So please, Juliet, let's go on with the next match." I don't know if they have cut out -- who saw it yesterday? Is it played?

(Yes.)

Well, there comes this tremendous line in Juliet, gentlemen -- by Juliet, this 14-year-old woman. But she's a real woman, great person. She says, you see, she's resolved at that moment that there shall be a wall between her and the nurse; they will be twain, cut in twain. Not a word of confidence anymore will be exchanged between her and the nurse. That's the most -- the greatest line in the whole play. Because here rises this young woman, you see, to the -- her full solitude of her thinking. She knows that her thinking no longer is now promiscuous, you see. But she, with her -- with her great privilege of loving Romeo, must put the mind, you see, no longer on the level of this -- of this {plebegian} boy, but has to think in terms of service to her love. And there the mind is -- exactly that happens to Romeo, that she -- to Juliet, that she suddenly sees that all her reason, all her rational powers have to be kept ready for the great moment which then comes where she is willing to -- to drink the vial, and to go to her, you see, potential -- to her death, as -- as it really turns out, to go to her

death.

And that's the -- I think the -- the wisdom of -- Shakespeare of course is always just -- make you feel very low yourself, that he could put in this one line, this use of reason by a noble soul, that we think in our -- in our abstract moments, in our classroom moments, in our mod- -- moments as students in preparation for the real life.

Never think that here we live really, gentlemen. We prepare to live, or we postpare. I report to you what life has thrown on the beach of life -- you see, as -- as its jewels, and you collect these jewels so that you are not naked when the great moment arrives. But the terrible thing of yours is that you -- the critic today in this country is that he thinks he is more alive than the poet, the creator. And -- and the -- the nurse thinks she's more alive than Juliet, who's aglow, who's in love. And this dead, damnable creature, this nurse, is nothing. Dirt. But she has more of a mind, of course. She talks 20 lines when Juliet speaks one-half. One of the mysteries of the -- Romeo and Juliet is that -- that Shakespeare didn't care to make Juliet loquacious, you see. One line of hers, and 20 lines of the nurse. And one line of hers is 20 times as good as 20 lines of the nurse.

If you can't hear this in the play, you can't read Shakespeare. It's all -- everywhere the same, gentlemen. And of course, Shakespeare had this great advantage over the Greek world that the women could speak in -- in mod- -- in Christ- -- in the Christian era, that Juliet can rep- -- come forward, instead of Zeno from Cyprus. The heart speaks, and the heart has its reasons. And it has much better reasons than all the philosophers of the world.

So the philosophy of the ashcan, gentlemen, is the -- the philosophy in which philosophy is not ex- -- as they call it today, existential. That is, in which the state of aggregate, during which we philosophize, is not seen to be less vital, less filled with zest, you see, of living, than the life of love, the life of politics, the life of warfare, the life of heroism, the life of sacrifice, the life of asceticism, you see, the life of passion.

Jes- -- Mr. -- the Apostle Saint Paul preferred, as you know, to be -- remain incognito all his life. Nobody knew in his days that there existed such a man in the educated classes of the Roman world. He was just negligible. Seneca was a great man, you see. Every -- he was prime minister. And always, ever since Seneca and Paul, people have been intrigued by the relation of Paul and Seneca. And they even forged a whole correspondence between the two in antiquity, because they couldn't imagine that two people could be contemporaries, you see, and not be in the same -- society, so to speak, move in the same limelight. And, as I said, we have now the letter -- the speech of Paul in Athens, before the

philosophers of Athens, in which he tries to accommodate, and to -- to compromise. And it is the structure of this speech, gentlemen, which was his downfall in Athens. The structure is academic. In -- you know where this speech is to be found? Wie?

(Acts 18.)

What did you say?

(Acts 18.)

Wonderful, yes, Sir. Quite. Ja. Right you are. It's the 17th chapter. And, as I said, if you -- are not careful, and read one of these Greek commentators, to these philosophizing commentators to -- they will say it's the high point in -- in -- in Paul's career. To him, it was the -- the degradation, the -- the -- the desertion. Because what happens is this:

"When Paul expected his comrades to come to Athens, he was -- incited by the spirit in this -- inside himself -- because he saw that the whole city was given over to idolatry. And so he first -- dis- -- disputed with the Jews and their adherents in the market place, day after day, to anybody who was willing to hear it. But there were also Epicureans, and Stoics, philosophers, who discussed -- debated with him. And some of them said, `What is this {semini verbius},' this thrower-out of germinal thought, `saying?'"

When a man here s- -- in this country doesn't want to have to do with any new thought, he calls me, for example, a "germinal thinker." That is, "It is before it is successful, so I don't have to care for it." I have seen this ver- -- in a very funny manner with some of my -- the people here, and so forth. They call me "a germinal thinker," they think they honor me. And that's then a good reason to say, "Well, it's too early," you see. "Fifty years later, we'll quote him."

It's a very strange word, gentlemen. It's a -- as important as "gymnosophist," and a -- perhaps I may even give you the word, because it is the New Testament. It's a good word, and I assure you that at this moment, where the philosopher- -- -pher's isolation and paganism is again to be brought back to the fold of our Christian era, where this is a very important moment, gentlemen, in the history of the human spirit. The cycle of the Renaissance has run its course, and we have now to encompass, and comprehend, and bring home Greek philosophy as only an element of reality, but no longer being sovereign, no being -- longer being able to tell you and me that you can live by philosophy alone, ever.

Since this is 1957, a great year, gentlemen, in which Bolshevism and

pragmatism both have to be conquered, unless there -- must be a Third World War, and both are philosophies, gentlemen; pragmatism is a philosophy, and -- and Communism is a philosophy. And both are unable to rule the life of nations. You cannot run America as a pragm- -- pragma- -- by pragmatism. And the Near East crisis shows it. It is a scandal that we now -- in all practice we will join the Baghdad Pact, but by our vanity, we are obliged to say, "No, not the Baghdad Pact, but something -- the Eisenhower Doctrine," you see. That is, the other good nations in these -- Near East have done their duty two years ago. We had an election coming; therefore, we couldn't act. So now we have to boast that we invent a new policy. Because we simply say after two years, "You have been right." The Baghdad Pact, which says exactly what the Eisenhower Doctrine says { }, that is, the Russians try to go into the Near East, it will be a { } war. But { } the Baghdad Pact. But of course, we are so vain that we cannot say, "Now finally we will subscribe to the Baghdad Pact." We have to humiliate the English. We have to humiliate everybody else, and we have to say, "Now we invent a new doctrine." Two years too late. After all the mischief has been done.

Because we want to live by pragmatism. Solve things as they come along. The elections come first. Everything else comes later. That's pragmatic.

This country has a philosophy, gentlemen. It's a purely secular country. It goes from one sensation to the next. It's sensationalism, you can call, or sensualism. That's pragmatism. It's just another expression. It's a satisfaction that what the eye sees is good enough for the mind to make -- to feed it.

Now -- pardon me, what was I going to say? I wanted to give -- tell you this strange word with which Paul is charged. From the point of view of a Greek philosopher, gentlemen, all Christian mission, all Christian apol- -- literature, the New Testament, Saint Augustine, they are {spermo logoi}. It means sowers, just as the parable in the New Testament calls it, you see, "sowers." And the sower is told -- "We don't believe you. We haven't seen the -- the seed go up," you see. If you throw -- the sower cannot demand faith by the unbeliever, you see; he will wait to the harvest. You understand. If I call a man "a sower," from the outside, a "spermo logos," that is, "spermo" is -- you know, sperm, and "logos" is -- is a speaker of sperm, or thrower of -- sower of sp- -- sperm. The sower of which the New Testament is full, which you expect today in a -- not today, which you accept in a pious mood on Sundays as a very nice parable, gentlemen, is a very serious explanation of the cultural lack of this country.

You see, if you be- -- only believe in logic, you will always come too late for all events. The whole problem of the secular mind is that it is always too late. Bill Mitchell came in time. The country came 10 years later, at -- after Pearl Harbor, you see. Because no sacrifice for the secular mind. No risk. You have to

stick your neck out, and you have to be persecuted if you want to be in time.

I may mention this, perhaps it's a small matter compared to the sacrifice of Bill Mitchell -- but I received a letter today, and -- from Germany. And there had been a conference. And there was -- the speaker -- the main speaker was a man who has always called me a "spermo logos," a sower, and said "impractical, absolutely impractical, this man," me. And he's a man -- a very famous high- -- up in the -- political science. And -- the adviser to the Bonn government. And for seven years, I have beleaguered this man's mind. That is, he has been fee- -- felt very restive. Has ves- -- visited me here and so on. And has never said anything but, "Not for me, what this man thinks. Impossible." And seven years it has had this incubation. He is secular, and he thinks rationally, and logically. And you would all got along with him wonderfully, you see. He never says anything important. And -- and he's always on top of the world, because this kind of diluted rationalism is of course always acceptable. He's -- never ahead of anybody, you see, so everybody can agree with him. And this conference had made him the -- the central speaker.

And in the discussion, a man got up. By the way, an ex-Nazi, not my friend at all. I just got the report today in the mail. And said, "What you said was said in this place in 1950 by Mr. Rosenstock-Huessy."

Well, he was put on the spot. And he said, "Yes," he said. "It has taken seven years before I have understood it. He was right," because I had accused then the Germans, that they were lagging in understanding of the events of the last 30 years, because they used their mind as an American will use his mind to think about things that had already happened. And always come too late, of course. And -- I had advised -- a kind of scheme by which perhaps the next generation might be spared this cultural lag, by which of course it would take a conversion of the intellectuals, if they would not conclude logically from what the eyes see, from the facts.

Zeno the Stoic, and Jesus, and Paul, and the prophets have always known that to judge by the facts leads nowhere because that's all past, you see. You cannot judge reality from the past only. You must know your destiny, your destination, the goal to which -- toward which you live to know what you have to cut awa- -- out of a present condition, you see. Half of the past is rotten. How can you know if the past is master, if you only think because you know the past?

Now the interesting thing is, my correspondent who writes me the letter says, "Why must it take seven years before he will admit that you are right? In '50, he condemned you; in '52 he condemned you, in '56 even, you see, when I met him last summer, he wouldn't accept a word. He would never quote you in

public. Now suddenly, in January '57, he has broken through the shell, and he is willing to give you the honor of having had the right -- this right insight, you see, and recommended a new meth- -- method in political science."

Well, I thought I might tell you this to explain the fate of {spermo logoi}. The sower usually is condemned never to hear who heeds his word, you see. There is no physical connection, usually, between the sowing and the -- and the reaping. And therefore, of course, much sowing isn't done, because most people say, "Why should I go to this effort? I don't see any results." No results. Mostly no results. I mean, I would still at this moment think that -- I have taught for 20 years in this college absolutely nonsensically, uselessly, no fruit. You forget it all. At this moment, you may be interested, gentlemen. Tomorrow you hear something else, and you forget it. And that's of course the worst that can happen. I sow on blacktop. You are all blacktop in your minds. No -- no soil. No topsoil. You have no topsoil left, because you hear too many things, you see too many things, and one follows the other, and you have no time for me, gentlemen. It's not your fault, perhaps. I don't say it's anybody's fault. But as the construction of your mental life is today, you cannot bear fruit. You all want to be clever, gentlemen. You won't be astounded.

Gentlemen, if a man is astonished, he sinks into amazement, and -- we talked about this. Philosophy means to have time to be astonished. You have no time to be astonished, gentlemen. You say, "So what?" On to the next. Gentlemen, if you cannot be astonished over one little question, one single question, so long that you stand like Socrates, after the Symposion, for 12 hours on your feet, you see, without tiring, in the throughfare of Athens, and then find out that the comedian should be the tragedian, and the tragedian should be the comedian, the same person -- if you can't do this, gentlemen, you can't philosophize. And you can't live.

You are lived. You are lived from one stimulus to the next. And you even say that you want to be stimulated, gentlemen. If you only would pray every even- -- "Dear God, don't stimulate me," that's the reasonable prayer of any human being of your age, gentlemen: "Don't stimulate me," don't you think? Because you have too much to -- to digest the stimuli- -- -li which you already have. You want to be stimulated, gentlemen, so how can you bear fruit? Do you think that a woman receives more children if she sleeps with 10 men in one night? Well, that's what you think. Your mind is, after all, a womb of -- of chastity and fruitfulness, or it is nothing.

Paul, of course, knew all this. And he was a sower. And he was ap- -- approached by the Epicureans, and the Stoics in the 17th chapter of Acts -- as a sower. They tried to -- not to dishonor him by calling him a philosopher. The

word "philosophy" occurs in the 18th verse. You see, some Epicureans, and -- some Stoics, both philosophers, debated with him. And some said, "What is this sower of words here intending to perform or to achieve?" And others, however, said, "He seems to be the announcer of a new kind of polytheism, because he speaks of Jesus and of His resurrection." So they approached him and led him to the {Areopag}, and said, "Are we allowed to know what are these new -- what is this new doctrine which is spoken by thee? You bring -- seem to bring something new to our ears. And we want to know whatever it could be, because all Athenians are hospitable for -- against -- towards any stranger. And they always seem to be ready to give up every other occupation, if there was something new, either to say or to hear." I need not tell you where this happens, too.

And so, Paul was standing in the center of the {Areopag}. That is, the -- the -- you would say--how's the place in front of the -- of the Supreme Court in -- in Washington?--where is this -- something, I mean, is the geography so to speak, of -- of Athens. And the {Areopag} was the Supreme Court of Athens.

And he said,

"You have more religion, O men of Athens in every respect than anybody I know, because when I went by, and I looked over your various stiles, your various pillars for worship, I found an alta- -- altar in which there was written, `To the unknown god.' Now that which you, without knowing it, already cultivate, I now am going to announce to thee -- to you. God, who created the world and everything that is in the world, since He is the Lord of Heaven and earth, does not live in manmade temples, cannot be cultivated by human hands, because He Himself is the one -- the giver of life to all, and of our inspiration. He made--ex uno--out of one act of creation the whole humankind, and gave them to inhabit the whole globe. And He defined the -- the eras, the -- the lapses of time," you may say, "the -- the prescribed periods, the length of time, and the boundaries of habitation for every part of our race, and in -- charged them to seek God, if they might attract Him, or might find Him, as indeed He is not very far from every one of us in our heart. Because we live in Him; we are moved inside of Him; we exist within Him. And this already has known by some of your poets, we are God's kind" -- {genus} -- how would you say? "kind" is right?

(Breed.)

"Breed." Ja.

"We are God's breed. Since we are God's breed, we must not show our esteem with gold, or silver, or stone, or the art of sculpture" -- no, pardon me. I -- I'm wrong. "Since we are His

breed, we must not compare the divine as being similar to gold, silver, stone, sculpture, or even any human thought. And since God looked down on the times during which this ignorance prevailed, and we did compare -- the divine to gold, silver, and human thought, He now proclaims to all men that we all should do peniten- -- penance, and has stated the day in which He is going to judge the earth in equity. In a man in Him he has laid down the power to give faith to all of us, since He suscitated him from the dead."

That's the speech. The logic of the speech is academic, gentlemen. It's unChristian. It begins with the known, and goes to the unknown. It begins with the unarguable, and then deduces, you see, the arguable. It tries to avoid the scandal of the Cross. As you know, Christianity is foolishness to the Greeks, and scandal to the Jews. The Jews say it's a scandal to say that a man could become -- God could become man. And the Greeks say it is foolish, you see, to say that God could -- no, pardon me. The Jews say it's a scandal that a man can say a man can become God, and the Greeks say that it's -- it is foolish to say that God could become man. The incarnation is a scandal to both. I mean, when Jesus said, "I am the Messiah," the high priest rent His garment and said, you see, "That's blasphemy. He has to die," because he said, you see, "He, the ma- -- mortal man, was God Almighty." And on the other hand, for a Greek, that is no blasphemy at all. All God -- men can claim like Caesar that they should be deified. They were, you see. But that the immortal gods who live on -- the Olympus, that they could take -- become incarnate and be satisfied to go to the Cross in their loneliness, and could be deprived of their eternity and could die voluntarily, that's impossible for a Greek to understand.

So the criss-cross between Judaism and Greek, of course, is a secret of the Christian message. And the problem of the speech of Saint Paul, gentlemen, on the {Areopag} in Athens is that he tried to avoid rid- -- the ridicule. He tried to be not ridiculous. He tried to sell his wares as a good professor of philosophy, and be respected in the process.

Now gentlemen, I called him a {spermo logos}, and the Greeks called him a {spermo logos}. The sower cannot be known for his seed at the moment of the sowing. He has to wait for the harvest. Paul didn't have time at that moment. He hoped against hope that he could sell his truth in the hearts of men, you see, before it had taken root in the hearts of men, before they were willing to step down and live the life of the -- suffering, and ignor- -- you see, and incognito, themselves. They wanted to know the things of life, the facts of life as you call it so nicely. And that's always of yesterday. The facts of life are always life, minus my own willingness to be eclipsed, to give up something, to be not recognized at this moment for what I think I already have the right to demand. You have always to add this voluntary minus to your position if you want to

increase the future, because you must be extraordinary at this moment, gentlemen. And the mind can only see the ordinary.

You remember that we had this -- this strange situation, gentlemen. We have the mythical time, the -- God, theo- -- as an example, I give you Zeus and Heracles. And you have our time, human time, which is normal, reasonable, you see, and ordinary. This is all extraordinary. Now, the Christian, gentlemen, problem of Saint Paul was to say that the future cannot be reached by people who want to live the ordinary life, because they omit that their own ways of life have been created in extraordinary time. And since as much has been created today as was created yesterday, since creation, as I tried to tell you, is a process in which you believe as still going on, as opposite to nature, you see, since, to be a creatura means to be that we are unfinished at this moment, and we still, you see, have to expect the outcome of our own creation, tomorrow. We need those extraordinary elements of the mythical time, because everything we know: fire, railroads, and radio have been created by extraordinary people, like Mr. Pasteur, or whomever we take. Or D‚scartes. And they have not been created by an alumnus of Dartmouth College. Therefore -- except Mr. { }, who seems to have been a decent guy, and { }.

Well, don't you see this point of Christianity is to say that Adam and Eve were ordinary people. That is, in the days of Zeus and Heracles, there was no Zeus and Heracles. They were just common folks. But in our days, they are extraordinary people like Heracles and Zeus.

It has been said by a little Quaker woman some years ago that a Christian is not a person who does anything extraordinary, but who does ordinary things in an extraordinary manner. That's a very good definition of the problem of creating the future, gentlemen. If you cannot do your paper to me in an extraordinary manner, although it is an ordinary paper, you see, you cannot do your share to the restoration of life on this earth. In every moment, you have to do the ordinary things of life in an extraordinary way. As though nobody had ever done them, you have to do -- do them with the emphasis as though they had to be done now for the first time as a precedent, you see. If you cannot do the ordinary things in this extraordinary manner, the energy with which they are done will, you see, lose -- may be lost, the energy. Must be lost. It's a -- the famous thermodynamic law of humanity: by mere repetition and routine, the vitality is lost. You have to do everything as though it has never been done before. That's why most marriages end in divorce, because they do not celebrate the day as their wedding day. They celebrate the wedding day 25 years behind. Dead. Out goes the marriage. No one is interested in what happened 25 years ago.

So gentlemen, this is the con- -- collision between Christianity, and Paul, and Seneca, the -- the attempt to make the future the seat of the highest vitality, instead of the past. It's that this burning up of energy, which creates the solar systems, or which creates the republic of the United States of America, which creates anything, you see, is waiting to come. It wasn't, yesterday. Anything we know of the past is lacking in grace. That's why I do not see how any one of you can pass by -- over the old doctrine of original sin. It is obvious that you are all guilty of it, every one of us. Original sin means the loss of energy by inheriting something.

Now, all America is just crowded with these softies who have inherited too much, and get an education for nothing, beca- -- and have less energy than their fathers, who got no education. And that's original sin, gentlemen. You can call it in -- terms of physics the loss of energy. Now you know very well that in every process of -- where energy is spent, there is this loss in volume, you see. And why don't you -- why do you laugh off -- your head off when you hear the word "original sin"? I think it is always the -- the -- the end of this country. When I hear this, I feel cut up, because I feel that you have become bastards of your own nation, of your own tradition. A man who laughs at original sin doesn't know that pioneers have founded this country, and had always faced -- to face the question of the second generation, where people would not, you see, have the same energy as their forefathers. That's original sin. That is, by your having inherited something, that's original, you see. By your having -- finding something already, you see, you -- you are no longer under the full pressure of having to do it yourself for the first time.

So gentlemen, Paul tries to reconcile these Greek philosophers, and tries not to be a {spermologist} -- a sower, but a teacher of philosophy, a systematizer. So he says, "Well, everybody in Greece said it just -- already. It's a wellknown truth." Well, if it is a well-known truth, you see, then why -- he is of course superfluous. He first, of course, already sterilizes himself. He says, "You know it all. I only repeat the performance. Now, I told you that's anti-Christian, because the coming of Christ is something unheard-of. He comes into the world, because He never came before. If you can't make feel this -- make people feel this, that this has never happened before, it will not happen now, you see. It will not happen with the same -- with the same impact, with the same originality, with the same martyr, readiness to -- to die for it. It has never happened before. You must -- that's the first thing a Christian must say. Then of course, as soon as he says this, the Jews are scandalized. They say, "We have the revelation." And the Greeks laugh and say, "Prove it." Now, of course, if you prove the n- -- new thing, you see, by the old, it is no longer the new thing. It's deducted from the past.

So you cannot reconcile the Greeks and the Jews, gentlemen, when you want to live. You cannot. The scandal is inevitable. Bill Mitchell had just to be court-martialed. There is absolutely no other way of convincing Mr. MacArthur. You know, MacArthur was a -- one of his judges. He has to do it.

And you'll see the problem of Paul--compared to Plato, and Aristotle, and Socrates--is a very simple one. That he has before him all the time this great sentence, which no other philosopher has, and Paul is as much a professor of philosophy if you like as -- as any -- as any Greek one. Much learned. Modern Greek theologians have always said he wasn't. But I mean, you just read one sentence; he's more learned than -- than all the Greek philosophers of his -- of -- who were his contemporaries. And he says this--will you kindly take down this sentence? The decisive distinction, gentlemen, between Christianity and Greek philosophy is in these three words: which you will read in the liturgy of the service of Saint Paul on June 29 in the prayer book. It's of course in the -- one of the letters of Saint Paul. I've forgotten at -- at this moment in which. And there he does repentance for his superciliousness and sophistry in this speech on the {Areopag}. He says, "The Greeks have not known it. But I -- {scio cui crediti} -- I know in whom I have believed."

The basis, gentlemen, of a Christian is that he has forbears. He has an author. He has authority. The basis of Plato is that he has ideals. Ideals, I told you, are waxen no- -- have waxen noses. That is true what you think is true. That is beautiful that you think is beautiful. And that is good that you think is good, you see. Ideals don't talk, you see. But the Lord talks, speaks very energetically to you. And if you look at Him, gentlemen, under His searching eye from the Cross, nobody is justified, as yet. He still has to do one better, because -- the problem of Christ is, as you know, that He opened our eyes to our own death, which is un- -- still in front of you and me. We have not seen it, yet. In Him, it is -- becomes known to us what it means to die. And -- since we are all cowards by nature, we don't want to figure our life in the direction of our death. We think we can find ways and means by saving accounts or something else, of escaping death.

I can't go into this. The -- the three words, however, mean, gentlemen, that for the Christian, the only mil- -- endowment towards the future is the vitality of the founder, that we have to be as vital as he, with complete freedom what to do. We have no system; we have no code; we have no ethics; we have no physics; and we haven't even logic. We have only the logos. That is, we have the power in us, which He had, you see, to remain faithful to His cause, regardless of the consequences.

Can you see the difference between having the problem of vitality

between -- before you all the time, you see, or the problem of some code of ethics, or some system of philosophy? The replacement of a -- by an -- of an ideal by a forebear, and of a code by a sacrifice by a victim, is tremendous. Because, with the victim before our eyes, we concentrate on our power of freedom, to be totally free. Self-interest, or illusion, or what-not, you see. And if we however have as our forbear a book, a text, a rule of -- set of rules, you see, we try spasmodically to compare what happens today with what happened yesterday, which is useless, you see. Nothing that happens tomorrow is of -- in any way the same as what happened yesterday.

That's why Christianity has -- always boasts that it is the doctrine of total freedom, of complete freedom. You can't understand this, why the spirit of Christianity is so much freer than the spirit of Gre- -- of the Greeks. But it is, because the Greeks at best could sell you a system. The -- the -- Christianity gives us the power of the creator of a system, so that you can create your own system at this moment. The power of creating a system stands higher than the system. Most people can never -- a whole life understand this. They think that a system is higher than the power to create a system.

I give you this example, gentlemen. If Freud and Marx in our days had their way, then nobody after Freud and Marx could be a genius, and could preach a new doctrine, because Freud says that all doctrine comes from obsessions. You -- all -- ideas, therefore, it isn't worth to believe them. Saint Augustine has a mother complex. And Moses had a persecution mania, you see. Or the Israelites -- has the persecution mania. They killed Moses. That's the origin of Israel.

And so, gentlemen, if you believe Freud, the one consequence is that no Freud cannot be born, or can at least preach. Because you can't believe any man anymore. They all have ulterior motives. Mr. Freud, too. And the second thing is, with Marx, the same. Marx was a man who lost -- left his class and went over to the proletariat. If anybody was not a proletarian, it was he. He was a prophetic Jew of a wealthy family, and he married the daughter of a nobleman, of a count. And these two men set out -- two people set out and said, "We give up nobility, we be -- give up religion, we give up philosophy, we give up bourgeoisie, we give up al- -- our country, we give up our native language, and we become the workers' champion." If Communism is right, that's impossible. The Russians killed all people of the upper class, because they were impossible. They couldn't be converted.

And therefore, gentlemen, I fight for Freud and Marx against the Freudians and the Marxians, because I say it is more important that people like Freud and Marx can be born in every generation than any beautiful system Mr. Freud

and Marx can erect. Can't you see this? I'm interested in Karl Marx; I'm not interested in Marxism. I'm interested in Freud. I hate him, but I'm interested in him. He's important. Such people must be born. In their system, they can't be born. They can't be produced. Therefore, down with the system; up with Freud.

If you cannot understand this, you do not know the case of Christianity. That's the whole case of Christianity. Christianity came into the world for no other purpose but to say that it is more important that people like Jesus are born than that the whole system of the law is preserved. And therefore Christianity is a sequence of Jesuses. It's a sequence of saints. It's a galaxy of stars. It's a sequence of martyrs, confessors, missionaries, and nothing else -- of geniuses.

It has been said of -- of Christianity that -- compared to the Greek philosophy, gentlemen, in Greek philosophy, the genius was the free enterprise, private enterprise. And in the Church, gentlemen, of our era, genius is incorporated. That is, all the geniuses know of each other, and can support each other. I told you that in antiquity there was no university, because every school -- head of a school had to keep alive by, you see, in separation from the opper- -- opposite school life. The first thing the Christian era had to perform is to create this consolidation of all the geniuses. What we today believe of a human mind is that he works in collaboration with all other spirits, you see. That's the problem of our era, you see. That's what is called a university. In every generation it is again back -- relapses into paganism, sloughed off. Marxism is such a temptation. Freudianism is such a temptation, to -- to bury the unity of the human spirit by claims of one little gang, you see, to know it all by themselves.

So we are at this moment at a very low point, gentlemen. The era -- the year zero, in which Christ came into the world and said, "Let the spirit free everybody, so that we don't have to have the -- the war of all the systems against each other, but the fertility that all these systems may correct each other, you see, because I give you the spirit that shall make you free." This moment, gentlemen, is -- amongst us. It is not yet decided whether the United States shall not go the way of Spain, because in your great fear at this moment, and your great cowardice, and your timidity, you may end in utter -- either confusion or indifference, like the Greeks. The Roman Empire died from the in- -- indifference of its citizens. The only survivors were the Christians. The rest, just -- I mean, indifference, you see. Retreat? "Oh, I'm just a human being." You can't do anything. Everybody has a little private cult: Lions, or Rotarians, or what-not. And -- and that was all. Gentlemen, the agony of the Greek philosophy, from zero to Saint Augustine, from Paul to Saint Augustine, is something I recommend to your great attention. You are on the best way of entering this path.

The abyss between the people who believe, and the people who don't

believe, the people who are up to date, and the people who are lagging culturally, is as deep today as it is always, of course. But we can say today that if you believe that it is enough to have a philosophy for life, you are at this moment embarking on the venture of Mr. Hitler, Nero--that's exactly the same period, you see, in -- in significance. And because you say the individual has not -- bring the time up to date.

The lag of the mind, gentlemen, that is the problem of our day. And that means the limitation of the operations of the mind. Sum of it all: philosophy comes too late, by its -- left to its -- own devices. Philosophy as a system of its own, always comes too late. And that is the crushing conflict between Christianity and philosophy, you see. Philosophy is not wrong. But it comes too late. Because it says, "Everything -- all the facts are equally good," it remains indifferent to the disgust with half of the facts, with the power to say, "Half of the facts have to go out of existence, because they're dead." The decision between life and death, gentlemen, is not made by philosophy.

Thank you.