Transcript
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(This is side 2.)
My friends, this is the last meeting. And I have to offer you a suggestion: what good your participation in any study of Greek philosophy might have for the future of our society. If it had not some meaning, if it was just a private interest in a -- such a serious time as we live in, it should not be sustained. You think that you are here for your pleasure, or to have a good time, or to get something out of your studies. For a teacher, that's an untenable position. I'm not here to give you a good time. I'm not here to interest you in anything. I'm not here to -- I'm here to try to mobilize you for that which is necessary. That's the only reason why you have the right to be in a college.
And most of you don't accept this challenge and you think you can do as you please. I don't talk to those.
But it is a serious question, gentlemen, why Greek philosophy and philosophy are still needed and -- in the -- predictable future will be needed as an instrument for our own salvation, for keeping society going.
This chapter of the criticism of Greek philosophy, which was started by -- the Apostle Paul, when he spoke in Athens, and which ended in St. Augustine, is the chapter which has now to be written in occidental thinking, in worldwide thinking, you may say. Philosophy itself, now, has suddenly to speak of the spirit. The reason for this is if you -- remi- -- remember what we said in the last meetings is -- I -- you remember, we started last time with this strange book, From the Dead to the Living, or from dead things to those who are alive -- which are alive, this lecture of 12 men in -- given in Mnster in Germany, where I am going to teach this next summer. And I'm going to contradict the sequence, the hierarchy, the order of this book by giving a -- a course from life to death, and not from -- death to life, because I do not believe that the dead things produce the living. But I do believe that all life is finite and leads to death, and can only become life everlasting if one pays the -- the penalty, and knows where -- what has to die -- in order to keep the -- the rest alive.
It's a very serious business, gentlemen, that today the mind has become so natural, so just a part of nature, so logical, so reasonable, so rational, so semantic -- or whatever you call it, that philosophers themselves have now to invoke the fact that the mind is not the story of the logos, of the reason that the word represents, or demands, or requires. And I said to you that the man who -- begins with physics, and then goes on to chemistry, and goes on to psychology,
and ends up in poli- -- then goes on to politics, and finally ends up in theology, perhaps, that this man, who builds allegedly out of atoms his universe, can, when he stands and -- or when he writes his book, as- -- presume that he is alive, on top of this pyramid.
And so these 12 gentlemen of course all pose as though they are on one end of the ladder. They are supposedly alive, and--although they are teachers, which is a killing job--and that the things on which they look down, so to speak, have lifted them up out of the morass. They have pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps, you see, and now they look down on their bootstraps.
That is the funny picture which all these modern naturalists propound. First, they say that everything came out of dead matter. And then they assume that you and I take them for living, you see, without further proof. And I told you that I am in a very much more absurd situation. I know that when I stand before you, that's not my highest life. I have better moments. Grave decisions had to be made. I think I was more myself in such moments. Nobody who can go into any curriculum, into any scheduled activity--no doctor, no lawyer--can say that while he's doing this, he is at the top of his world, of his li- -- vitality. These moments of greatest inspiration come and go; as you know, the spirit listeth where it -- blows where it listeth, or what's the saying? And we cannot -- never know ahead of time whether we are at our best.
And therefore, a man who's -- looks down to the danger of dying, and is grateful for the little life he has, has at the same time to look up to moments in time where there is more inspiration, where there is greater life. And he has to admit not that he is on one side, as dealing with his objects, as the ruling ob- -- subject like these gentlemen, who come from Mr. -- physics and chemistry--but I come from the living word which has inspired me one time, so that I chose to be a teacher--but now condemns me to carry on the routine job of -- of teaching you for 30 or 40 years. Every day I'm half asleep, when I stand here. And I have to wake myself up against all the odds of your resistance.
And so I have to stand, gentlemen, very modestly and say that part of my mind represents more life than I -- to have at this moment. And partly it's part -- now has become part of my nature that is dying, and mortal, and is full of gravity, and laziness, and sloth, and all the encumbrances of dead weight as you call -- we call it rightly, you see. What we say, "dead weight" -- any college carries a lot of dead weight, doesn't it?
That's very serious, gentlemen. The line which I was -- the problem which I am going to talk to you about today is then the final problem of philosophy which is now before -- on the agenda of anybody who is serious in the
western world about thinking -- is that the line between that -- which is below me and Him who is above me, runs right through my mind. Part of my -- mind is natural, and part of my mind is divine. And the mind itself is neither natural nor divine, but is in this transitional stage from life to death, and from death to life, and we know at no one moment whether we are stupid or wise, whether we are inspired or dull, whether we repeat or create. And we are at this moment here in this class also in great danger that I succumb to the temptation of siding with your sleepiness, and your silliness, and your laziness, and only sell you repeatable truths, in which I would commit a crime against the spirit, but would satisfy very much you, because everything I would then say would be of immediate use to -- for your ex- -- final examination. And you would praise me highly, and say, "What a good teacher! Finally, we have got it all in black and white." You see? But the letter killeth, and the spirit vivifies. And I can kill you with my letter when I satisfy your mind. The satisfaction of your mind is the crime, because your -- mind is a natural being, just a part of your nature, which goes by the line of least resistance, which goes by -- always downhill, which follows pressure, and dangers, and ease, and what-not.
So gentlemen, I offer you as the problem of philosophy, and as the reason why Greek philosophy will then form an inherent introductory chapter to our own endeavor: the fact that the logos proposition today appears in this form. You remember we had this division of logos, ethos, and physis. And we said, "Ethos -- are the rules of the game within the group. Physis is that at which all of the members of the group look indifferently." You see. With indifference, because it's outside the life of the group. The ethical behavior, you see, is the condition -- the city, for our having any nature to look at, to contemplate.
And therefore, we -- we recognize that the ethical principles of fellowship, of sacrifice, of integrity, of membership come first. The second -- what you call "physical science," is only possible if all members of this group can look at the outside world with indifference, together. And Mr. -- all these physicists in -- in these various places where they now make these interesting attempts to -- to bomb us, are our servants. A physicist is my country's delegate -- delegation, the society's delegate. He's my domestic servant. Don't respect them so highly, gentlemen. They are our -- technicians. They look at the world of indifference after we have granted them their existence.
Now the logos. This was for the Greeks something that inspired the city, and inspired all the various individuals in their relation. Or it was the p- -- the -- the laws of the universe, the natural law. You see, they had either laws of nature, and -- or they had laws of man, laws of the city, of cities. That's how we started out.
Now, to you and me, gentlemen, and to philosophers of the future, the problem appears again as it appeared to St. Paul. The logos is the law of my own spiritual life. Something third. Of my own spiritual life. I must learn to discern the spirits of sloth and of creativity within myself. I must make this distinction, as I told you, between logic and pneuma, inspiration. If you want to have a Greek word, we -- we -- we shall call it "pneuma." { }, so we need a pneumatology to balance the logic. What is pneumatology, gentlemen? Pneumatology is the doctrine of how creative thought enters the community, and enters you. When are you creative? Not after you have drowned yourself in -- in all kind of dissipation, for example. A certain amount of discipline is necessary for the man to meet his God, to be creative.
But there are many other problems, gentlemen. Fear isn't -- usually not inducive to creativity, if it isn't the fear of the Lord.
So gentlemen, for the first time in the history of the modern mind, the theology of the philosopher suddenly is paramount. And lo and behold! The best book written on Greek philosophy in the last five years is written by a gentleman in Harvard, who's very famous, Mr. Werner Jaeger, on the theology of the Greek philosophers. The reason is -- should be -- to you now be apparent. The only interest we now have in the Greek philosophers is their own enthusiasm. But what is enthusiasm? The inhabitation of the philosopher by God. That's enthusiasm. "Enthusiasm" means "God inside." So the problem today is not the laws of the city, which came before there was philosophy, gentlemen. And it isn't the laws of nature which came after philosophy enabled men to look with -- in spectacular success to compare notes about water, and fire, and earth, and all these things, in common to all citizens, you see, of all cities in the world.
Tod- -- there is a third problem today, gentlemen: the ethos of the thinker. The ethos of the thinker, because the ethos of the thinker is penetrated by a sharp sword -- as the Gospel rightly says, that he is half-dead, and half-alive. Partly as far as he is dead, he belongs to physis. And the mechanism of his ph- -- psychology, you see, is simply that he goes by the line of least resistance, that he will judge by prejudice, that he will be inhibited. And in Yale University -- Yale Law School, they had a course on the prejudices of judges. They studied the stomach ulcers and the hemorrhoids of the -- judges of the Supreme Court. And then they predicted how you should plead in front of these judges to win your case. That is, that's actually true. It was a -- an all-time low. You know, you don't know this, gentlemen, but America is just at this moment coming out of a deep moral depression of 25 years, in which the scoundrels held sway in all our colleges. And they partly still hold sway in our institutions of higher learning, in which you could get away with Proust and Freud as the standards of life. And you still believe that's true. Now you have Sartre.
Well, that's very simple, gentlemen. You bel- -- actually were told that the judges of the Supreme Court could all be bribed if you played on their ulcers, or on their nerves, or on their prejudices, or -- if you only knew the -- the -- the keyboard, you see. Justice? That was -- had gone long out of the window.
This whole group, gentlemen, exists. They are professors of law, they call themselves, you see. They are -- of course, they are professors of injustice. We live in the time of the sophists, again. But the difference is, gentlemen: the sophists mocked the laws of the city. The -- the modern man mocks the laws of his conscience. That is, the laws of the person, the conditions under which a man is a person is, however--and you know it, that this is true, from your own experience, gentlemen--that the line between death and life runs right through the middle of your own intellectual life. In as far as you just have a mind, you are a drilled and trained animal. You jump at conclusions. If I hold the meat, the sausage before you, you see, then you draw the conclusion. You just have to say, "The man is a Democrat," and the other fellow reacts accordingly. All these things, "Jew," "Pole," "Democrat," "Bolshevik," I mean, they are -- can be used for treating man as a circus -- a member of a good circus in which he jumps to conclusions just as the animal runs through the ring. And it is a spectacle, of course, in which our adverti- -- Madison Avenue -- leads. They tell you that everybody can be made to jump. And they play on the mind, gen- -- gentlemen, as a part of the natural law -- order.
You can see, however, the man who says that everybody can be jumped upon by prejudice and can be -- be dragged to conclusions mechanically, thinks that this sentence is true, this one sentence. And with all this one statement, he is already in the realm of freedom. Because anybody who knows that this is so and can state this, you see, thinks that you should accept the statement not as a consequence of his ulcers or his glands, but as true, you see. If this one sentence is true, then there is truth. If there is truth, then there is something superior to your death. Because the truth must prevail, whether you have to die in the process or not.
What is truth, gentlemen? That which is valid whether I like it or not. Whether I benefit by it or not. Whether I profit or whether I am going to hang. The criterion, the ultimate criterion of truth is that a man represents this truth willy-nilly, even if he has to go to the cross. That's the only verification of a great truth, gentlemen, that a man is not fazed by his danger of death, as you all are. A man who is not willing to verify what he says by his death doesn't know what truth is. He may say, "I'd better not fight. I -- I'm not a truth-sayer. I'm not for this martyrdom." But then he should go out of the way and admit that there is truth. But he is only unable to represent it; he's impotent. Most people today are impotent to testify to the truth. That's true. But that has nothing to do with
the fact that all the -- even they still think that there should be mercy for them, and that the truth contains the sentence in which is said, "The untruthful may be tolerated until they become too dangerous."
We all live, gentlemen, by the truth, and not by self-interest, because not one of you has his life in his own hands. We are all tolerated, gentlemen.
The dividing line, gentlemen, in -- goes through you and me. And I -- today I offer you a very practical criterion of how to draw this line. It is of course not my own invention. But it has nearly been forgotten, especially in the last 200 years. It is today forgotten with one very cunning vocabulary, the identification of "mind" and "soul." Whenever today people use the two terms, "mind" and "soul," interchangeably, gentlemen, they deny that the mind is half-alive and half-dead. They think it is only a mechanism. And the -- most of you use "mind" and "soul" indiscriminately. Most of you would, of course, say that if you have to choose, you'd better use the word "mind." "Soul" may -- cannot be found. And on the other hand, you may use then the word "soul" sometimes as though it didn't matter much whether you said "mind" or "soul."
It is very important that this battle was fought already 2,000 years ago. S- -- Paul was very much aware that the academic tradition insists of making the mind a part of nature. And then the soul disappears. Everything becomes mind. The soul is then nothing but muscles, or physiology, or reactions of nerves, or what-not. And the lack of distinction between psyche, gentlemen--the Greek word of "soul"--"mind," that's the Greek {nus}, and spirit is the quandary of the Greek -- of Greek philosophy. As far as logos was degraded to logic, the distinction between mind and soul was lost, and the spirit was extrapolated as something has to do with the city, before the individual came about, or with the gods which were just superti- -- -stitions, and became evil spirits or what-not.
In the Letter to the Corinthians, which I recommend to you as a part of philosophical reading, because Paul was versed in all the -- in all the disputations and arguments of the Greeks. And he has very scathing terms in va- -- his various letters for the emptiness of their psychology. The -- it's a -- they are philosophical letters, gentlemen. Just as much as what you like to forget, I mean, of course, and what you think, they have to be religious, which puts you to sleep.
The -- he says literally in the 15th chapter that--of the Letters to the Corinthians--oh, the first chapter, pardon me--that the -- the bastards, the secular mind, are {psychekoi}, are psychologists. They believe that there is nothing but the psyche with its mind, and that follows certain mechanic laws, certain pre- -- predictable reactions--all the things you have to -- are made to believe, too--and that the pneuma, the spirit, you see, is denied by them. And so he makes the
distinction--I think the two words are worth your new knowledge--between the {psychekoi}, he has not -- no necessity of speaking of psychologists, the word "logos" is quite unnecessary. He makes it direct. The {psychesi}, in Latin you would -- or in -- in English, you would call it the "{psychesi}," the psychics, and the other he calls the "pneumatics." So he says, you have to take your choice, whether you believe that everything is under the understanding of a mechanism of my mind, or whether I am a pneumatic speaker. The psychic speaks according to his own interest. And the pneumatic speaks without any regard to his self-interest.
Obviously, gentlemen, when you go to a doctor and ask for his help, you always believe that he is acting pneumatically, and not psychically, himself; but he is in the service of divinity of his medicine, and that he is dealing the truth out to you, regardless of whether you -- he is making money on you or not. It is no consideration for a doctor to ask himself how long he should prolong your agony, you see, because he wants to keep you as a customer. A good doctor must send you away after the first meeting and say, "I have no need anymore -- you have no need anymore for my cure," you see. And a doctor who would keep you for 20 meetings, you see, would be a scoundrel, would he not? And a good doctor won't do this.
Now what's the difference then between a good doctor, gentlemen, and a scoundrel? That he is pneumatic. One of the seven spirits of the Holy Spirit, the spirit of healing, has taken possession of him, and he is willing to forget his selfinterest. And you all believe this. The same is with any professional man to whom you go. You assume that the spirit of his profession keeps his mind so alert that he forgets the carnality of his flesh, and the interest of his self. And you couldn't live for one day if the {people} were not -- around you were not much better than you yourself, according to your own materialistic philosophy.
But I find today Americans of course are prone to condemn themselves to the bottomless pit of what they call "materialism," but this -- all assume all the people around them are wonderful guys, and -- and obviously in the -- in the service of the -- of the spirit of God. Very strange. It is a complete reversal of the times, I think, of the past. Today the individual American is quite abject in admitting his own materialism- -- -ness. He says, "I'm not an idealist. Oh no, I can't. It's -- would be stupid," you see. "I -- I'm selfish," and he's quite relieved if he admits it to himself, and feels he's a great man. But then he always relies on the community that some people in the community are not this way. He can turn to them for help, for example, and he feels that they won't cheat him. He goes, for example, to psychoanalyst, and he thinks the psychoanalyst will love him, help him, cure him, and send him home, you see, after he has no more money.
So gentlemen, the original new situation of today is that the line between physis and logos does not run through the city, the community, but runs through you. A philosopher is a -- a -- a city in the nutshell. We are all today so highly individualized that you can say of all of us that we are Greeks in the sense that we are, every one of us, a philosopher. And since we are, we must now, you see, distinguish in ourselves the part which is original and alive, and the part in us which is purely mental mechanism. The line of division between logos and physis, in other words, today runs inside the biography of the individual. And for your own salvation, gentlemen, you must inquire when you are inspired, and when you are expiring. I would call all the expirational processes of humanity, the mechanic processes, the "mental processes." They are necessary. Anything we repeat. Anything we learn by rote. Anything we just follow by convention. That's not bad. As much as I have to ex- -- inhale, I have to exhale. As much I have to eat, I have to shit.
So gentlemen, don't mistake me. The mental processes do not stand condemned. A part of our life is death. They are intertwined. The real problem is only to see the inherent necessity, gentlemen, that as much as we can logically conclude from precedent and cause, you see, as much we also must set new -- be ourselves a first course.
So in a very logical, I think, and very -- a very simple manner, once you admit that the line between logos and physis is not now inside the community--the United States, which has a territory, which is physical, rivers, mountains, you see, climate, resources, geographical situation, economic situation, and then the education of the people, you see, and schools, and philosophers, and churches the other way--but if you see that inside you, part of your mind is deadening, is routine, is inherited, is nothing but result, and that for this very reason, it will poison the community, unless you also are the sower of new truth, and the beginner of a new chain, you see, that you can misjudge your own situation within the community. If -- and since we have vulgarized philosophy to such an extent that you, and I, and we all can claim to have a little bit of the habit of a philosopher, forming our own judgments, then it is terribly important, gentlemen, to discover the difference between Plato and the Platonists, between Aristotle and the Aristotelians, between Parmenides and the Eleatic School, between Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans, between the men who thought something for the first time, and the people who repeat what ha- -- they have thought for the first time for years to come, that gentlemen, the cleavage in the future is today -- will be the cleavage between the men, the group of men, the kind of man who is a genius -- are geniuses, and those who follow geniuses.
Now every one of us is in the same boat, gentlemen. At -- in a certain field of your own endeavor, gentlemen, where you are in love, where you are
courageous, where you are inspired, you -- you begin something. And in other ways of life, you learn, and you repeat. And every one of us, gentlemen, is half genius, half inspired, and half routine. Twenty-three hours a day, I would say, we live by conventions, you see, and one hour--it's of course an arbitrary figure--you can see this, you see--you are setting precedent for others. Not more. I mean, that's already quite a big order. Twenty-fo- -- one-twenty-fourth of your time would be spent in the leading { }, you see, where you have no precedent, where you first climb the mountain. But in some little way, every one of us has to know that he has to strive for this balance between inspiration and expiration, between mind and spirit, between psyche and pneuma.
And that is what St. Paul invoked constantly in his letters. He has a very typical way of putting it. And I like to dictate to you this sentence, because I have never found it commented on.
He writes in the -- perhaps you take this down. First Letter to the Corinthians, 15th chapter, 45th verse. Now that's straight philosophy. "The first man"--will you take it down?--"The first man, Adam, became a living soul. The last Adam became a life-giving spirit." This is expressed historically. If you -- we now in philosophy, gentlemen, after 2,000 years are allowed to use these same terms systematically. The first man in you and me, the man of the city, the child of man, the child ma- -- son of the -- man of the world is a living soul -- living soul. But the man who wants to render to his community, to his life on earth, to his historical -- in his historical place what he has gotten, who wants to give back what he has received, must become a life-giving spirit. All the terms are here of which I am talking. It's a wonderful verse, because it's just one verse, two half-sentences. And you have the fact that man is two things. As a member of his community, he is a living soul, just psychic. Can be treated psychologically. He's alive, yes. But soul and life in the New Testament, by the way, "psyche" and -- and "{se}" are interchangeable. Some people translate the word "psyche" from the Greek into the word "life" in English, and others translate it into the word "soul." It is perhaps better to just translate it as "life." It's vitality. That's what it is, psyche.
So man was made into a living being within his community. When he wakes up, gentlemen, and turns around, and becomes the acorn that falls down from the oak tree, and must found the next community, his family, his profession, the next -- city, he becomes the nex- -- first president of Czechoslovakia, or whatever he does; that is, after all, sets out to start a new avalanche of fac- -- acts rolling. He must be a life-giving spirit.
That is, gentlemen, beyond life there is the power that gives life, as we all know physically. And if you go -- the -- the -- the laws of procreation are more
important than the laws of -- of living. Procreation comes first. That's as you know why the -- why the great animals forgo food when they court. For three months, these sea lions don't have to eat. And they go up into the island on the Pacific. You have seen these movies, probably. You remember? What was it? "Sea Lions"? Or what was it?
A great story, you see, that they do not have to -- they forgo self-interest, because the survival of the species is much more important than their own life.
So perhaps I have made this -- my point clear, gentlemen, that you and I are two people. In as far as we inherit an order of our city, we are living souls. And our mind then is working in a mechanical way, because it has been impregnated by an order for which we have not received ourselves the first impetus. We were not responsible for our behavior. We sit down at table. In -- in Turkey, they kne- -- they sit on their fannies, and not on chairs. You will admit, as we all know, that's convention. And although a child may think it is a great crime to eat in -- by -- you see -- kne- -- to sit down, not to sit down, but to kneel when eating, you would laugh the -- with -- and feel that you are superior to this child, because you know it doesn't matter. But of course in innumerable ways, you and I are western people, and of course we have, as everybody knows, our mechan- -- mechanism, and our defense mechanism, and our hatreds, and our animosities, and our prejudices. A -- a man like myself was brought up--to give you a rather innocent prejudice--with such a prejudice against the Jesuits, that it has taken me all my life to -- and friendship with real, specific Jesuits before I could drive out this terror, which I was -- had received into my -- into my blood that Jesuits were just all very wicked people.
And so the mechanism of our psyche, gentlemen, is a reality. It is also a reality, gentlemen, that for the love of the future, we are able to divest ourselves of this mechanism. That's the right word, I think, "divest." D-i-v-e-s-t. And this power of divestiture, you might call it, of divesting yourself, of yourself and of your impregnation of your mold, that is the condition for doing our part of the gener- -- regenerative processes of the human race. Just like -- as these penguins or sea lions are not allowed to eat for three months--that is, give up their daily habit, you see, for this greater purpose--so all of you, gentlemen, when you make a real decision--for example, for whom to vote in the next election, you cannot vote by self-interest. That's not a good reason. Or you are not citizens. As -- if -- if a country, gentlemen, has all the voters only voting for self-interest, it must go bankrupt. It must go bankrupt. The importance in any country is that little group that swings the balance which is not swayed by self-interest. The others -- I mean, don't count these votes of 45 millions, and so on. I'm not impressed. The margin, the people who can be swayed by deeper considerations, they are the ones for whom the whole system of democracy alone is, you see,
feasible and through which it is upheld.
That you do not see, gentlemen. You think democracy works by majority vote. I assure you it only works by the people who are not -- you see, cannot be foreseen, so to speak. This country has been saved in wartime as you know by a man like -- Secretary of State Simpson or Stimson, or Hull who were Republicans who served the Democratic administration. And America has always been saved by such people. We have an honorary doctor of this college, Grenville Clark, who has saved the country twice. Nobody knows of it -- much. He lives here in New Hampshire, so we gave him an honorary degree. He deserves more than an honorary degree of Dartmouth. I don't think that's such a great honor for the man. But -- because we are honored that he accepted it, he created the Reserve Officer Training in Plattsburgh ahead of time, so that the United States were ready in 1917 to enter the war with a -- at least a certain group of trained officers. We did this with General Leonard Wood. And he has created the draft board system, which has certainly de- -- debureaucratized the -- the draft, to a certain extent. And he has many other merits, but these are his two outstanding ones. That is, a -- a voluntary action of total self-forgetfulness, as it comes out in the fact that he -- his name isn't even known for these great acts -- actions.
-- You -- the -- you read a history of the First World War, and Mr. Leo- -- Grenville Clark isn't even mentioned. But only on his existence does the democracy of the United States, gentlemen, rely. As long as you can find this unknown group of patriots, the democracy system can function. The pre- -- -supposition, gentlemen, of everything that's in the Constitution is, that there are people who are not influenced by self interest. As long as you don't have this third group, the whole mechanism must break down. You must have civil war between all the {struggle -- } interests. You always assume there's an arbitrator. If your mind is a mechanism, how can you, if your mind is a mechanism, assume that there is any disinterested person? Impossible.
Now there is no disinterested person, gentlemen. But there are people who are more interested in the survival of the race than in their own survival. Take it very massi- -- massively. Jesus was very much interested--He wasn't unselfish and Paul wasn't--in the sense that He didn't want a certain future to come about. But He want -- was ready to pay the price of His own existence for this future, which any man in love has to do, like the sea lions. They perish in the process, like the drones in the beehive.
This is the mental proposition today of the philosopher, gentlemen. And the strange re-arrangement of forces in the future of -- in the next hundred years in which philosophy will have to be taught, and Greek philosophy will have to be taught, is this: Will you please carefully assay -- assay this great transforma-
tion? Fifty years ago, the philosophers stood for the indifferent things, for nature. They -- all philosophers were philosophers of nature, and the theologians tried to defend inspiration. Today the process is totally reversed. The theologians are so well versed in biblical criticism, that to them the whole Bible has become natural. And they are the pagans today. If you want to hear a real pagan, then go to a theologian. They don't even know what it means to -- to believe in God. They only know of God. They discuss Him. They argue. Just as the Stoics and Epicureans discussed the gods in -- in the Areopagus. The philosopher today, however--take Nietzsche, even take Sartre with his existentialism, who speaks that man is thrown into the future--have more faith than any of these ministers.
I -- receive a -- a magazine, Christian Economics. Such a lack of faith I've never seen.
The terms, gentlemen, in which we are going to speak rationally about inspiration, or have a pneumatology, of course, will look different from the ancients. To give you an example which may clarify the way in which this -- eternal problem between the life-giving spirit, and the life-consuming spirit, between expiration and inspiration, between mechanism, you see, and -- what's the opposite to mechanism?
(Vitalism.)
No. That would be still psychism, you see. But it's very interesting. Perhaps it's shouldn't be -- you -- you find the word, you see. I -- going to say it later.
This -- dualism inside the life of the philosopher I may perhaps explain by a remark of Aristotle. Aristotle was asked what hope was. What hope was. Now the word "hope," as you know, is the American ground word. If nothing is to be hoped for, there is still hope. Hoping against hope, that's a very famous term in this country. And one of my best American friends said me when I came -- told me when I came to this country, he said, "There's no faith in America. But there is much hope." That's very true, gentlemen. And we need -- if you want to understand, gentlemen, the difference between inspiration and expiration, between psychology and sociology, on the one-hand side, and the doctrine of the pneuma, pneumatology on the other, I would say that all what you receive as -- today as the science of the mind is based on hope. One day we will know. One day everything can be explained, you see. It's all wishful thinking. It's all very hopeful. And one day we'll know everything. And so I then say, "So what?" I mean, if we know everything, we will have no reason to live anymore. I don't want to know everything, because I don't -- I want to live. The idea that by
knowing everything, you could still have life on this -- earth is of course nonsense. Once you know everything, life is extinguished, because then everything has become mech- -- a mechanism, predictable. If you would know everything, you see, then God would have become a thing, and life would be neutralized.
I -- we talked about this "who" and -- and "what" business, didn't we. I can also say, "Where I am inspired, I am listening to some one." "Inspirer" -- "inspiring" always means to believe in who's who. That is, in persons. And to expire, to function mechanically believes in so-whats, in whats, in things, you see. Down below, for the natural man, there are only the world of things; and above, for a living child, for a creative mind, for a poet, even the flowers and the stones are personalities, you see, are she and he, because everything is alive. Can you see this?
So the -- you can also distinguish the inspiring faith which goes through your mind, where you have the power to personify, and this other, this sterilizing power of neutralization. Where you neutralize. As soon as you say, you see, "God gave this to me," you are inspired. As soon you say, "Somehow it was given to me," you are a coward, you are expiring, you don't want to commit yourself. You see, the unbelievers call God "somehow." Whenever a man says "somehow," you know that he suppresses a religious phrase. You don't know this individually, you see. But it is just the way in which you still leave open the fact that there is an inexplicable, you see, thing. But you can't anymore make up your mind to call it "God," so you say "somehow" or "anyway," you see. "I did it anyway," usually by an inspiration of the devil. So "anyway" is just as "somehow," very significant for the modern man's philosophical mind who only wants to look down to some mechanical thing. And since he doesn't know the cause, he puts in "somehow" and "anyway," so that he can say, "I didn't say that was a devil, or a god, or an angel, you see. I neutralized it. Of course, I have no idea what did it, you see. But it was certainly a what, not a who." I mean, when a married man says so, you see, you always know that his wife asked him to do it.
Now. We today would then have to say, gentlemen: The mind, who has these endless chains of causation, of logic, of deduction, for example sees how long the road would be to progress. But he says, "Somehow, anyway, one day we shall arrive there." That's hope, is it not? Hopeful thinking. You all live by these hopes. You even think that's good.
Well, Aristotle was asked, "What is hope?" And he answered a very important thing, I think. He said, "It's a dream by day." It's a dream by day.
And I thought about this, and I said, "Couldn't I find a definition of faith which could correspond to Aristotle's say?" And I think faith to you can become
valid if I say, "It's intelligence by night," in sleep. Aristotle said, by the way -- the fa- -- the correct definition is, "A waking man's -- a waking man's dream." That's hope: a waking man's dream. And I would say that faith is a sleeping man's wisdom.
You see, a -- a general who has laid all his plans, like Eisenhower for the invasion of Europe, and he cannot go to bed and sleep, is not a general. That he has the faith to sleep, to for- -- go to bed, you see, that's his -- the wisdom that must take him -- through the night. He's more intelligence by going to sleep than by going on thinking.
This is, I think a very useful help to show you the hinges in which our real personal life hinges, hangs, is suspended. You have to sleep and you have to be awake. Hope is the waking man's dream. And a little bit of dreaming probably in daytime is in order. Without these daydreams, you see, without hope, the har- -- they would be too hard.
Modern psychologists are too much interested in night dreams. I think they should be more interested in the hopes that men nourish at day, where they cannot quite wake up to -- to reality. So I think Aristotle's definition is very useful and very important.
Now the creative mind, gentlemen, is the one who can sleep so deeply that his faith can produce. And when he wakes up, the solution is there. As you know, all the best things come while you are asleep. We grow in our sleep. All inspiration takes place in the early morning hours, when you wake up and it has come to you, like the egg of Columbus.
So I think faith and hope are very much related, like day and night. Now all mental philosophies, gentlemen, of the Greeks have tried to frown on sleep, to praise light, to praise enlightenment, to praise clarity, clarification, and so on. Gentlemen, obviously the balance between night and day, the balance between darkness and consciousness, between extinguishing and -- and enlight- -- illumination is the real problem of your and my life, and of the life of all of mankind. There must be as much darkness as there is light. And the idea that there can always be more light leads to the extinction of the stars in your consciousness. And I think if I had to say something, we would have less night illumination than we have in this country, in favor of the Edison Power Company. It's very serious, gentlemen, that you live in a fools' paradise, because you think you can abolish darkness. And you do not ask yourself why there shouldn't be darkness as much as light, so that light can impress yourself as light. Unless there is darkness, light loses its meaning.
This goes, of course, very far. A -- a zoologist has now come out with the declamation -- and very eloquent declamation that we ourselves, gentlemen, have so abolished the -- the contradictions, the paradoxes as between darkness and light -- death and life, and -- that the -- the human population now increases by leaps and bounds and uproots all lower life. And they say -- he says, "If you would ask the moose, or you ask the nightingale what they think of population increases in -- in mankind, they would say, `That's a cancerous growth.' It's a cancerous growth that these -- these men-bacteria represent, you see, because as in -- with cancerous growth, you see, it -- it strips -- outstrips all leaps and bounds. The proportion is changed. And since man has lost all sense of proportion in his mental thinking, since he has said that mechan- -- mechanization, clarification, statistics, knowing more and more by system, you see, is im- -- is the only solution of everything, it's no wonder that he himself lives in this cancerous way on the surface of the globe, and ruins the soil by chemicals, and water pollution, and what-not, and so undermines the balance between the lessvital and his own vitality.
It's very serious, gentlemen. Wherever you look, you will scent -- feel that the true wisdom today is to acknowledge that before -- unless you have darkness there must -- can be no light. That's why I think this -- we'll take -- say farewell to the child prodigy, where light came too early without any darkness, you see. It's terrible to be a child prodigy, because too early, you see, everything is clarified. The child has not been allowed to sleep, and to daydream, and to slumber, and -- and therefore down with the child prodigy, I would say, because it means that philosophy has lost any sense that before there can be expiration, mechanization, organization, clarification, enlightenment, there has to be inspiration, you see, and creation, and originality, and spontaneity.
So you see perhaps -- at this moment that my line to draw the difference between mech- -- mechanism and creativity within the human -- the human character of the philosopher, of the thinker himself, within human -- thought processes is really today critically needed. We can no longer today ask so outwardly what is mechanical in a community, you see, and what is political there. That will depend on your and my awareness of how much dead wood you represent, and how much life you represent. How far are you a life-giving spirit? How far are you just a living soul that is lived by mechanisms, by psychic, you see, formations?
My answer then is, gentlemen, that our solutions probably will all have to do with time concepts, like night and day, waking and sleeping. That's a rhythm in which things follow each other, you see. And instead of saying, "mechanic," I will say "day thought," you see. And instead of saying, "incarnation," I will say, "night thought," "growing thought," you see, "sown thought."
You remember the sower. And that -- of course, where you -- want to sow a seed in a -- in a student, gentlemen -- think of my situation. When I came to this country, there was still a great respect for vacations. We are now nibbling off this very wonderful gift to the -- your mind, in which your mind is allowed to lay fallow for four months. These four months in summer were the heart of the -- matter. You have such a mech- -- mechanized mind, that you do not understand that the four months in summer are much more important than anything that happens in winter. Because it -- your mind lies fallow, it's a night of your consciousness. And therefore, when you return to college, you can have grown. You might have grown. Some of you do, as you must -- all have experienced.
But nobody has respect for these vacations. The people think you have a rest, or that's laziness, or that's for making money, or going out West, or having a -- taking a trip to Europe. Who is interested in this damned trip to Europe, you see? What we are -- need is incubation. For incubation, there has to be a quiet time. Now what you do in summer is absolutely indifferent to me. But it's terribly important that you do not learn actively in these four months. Can you see this? So that the action of your mind, which is always mechanic, can be balanced by a creative respiration of your mi- -- you see, of your -- of your inner man, in which certain things can protrude, and grow up without your knowing it, without your doing anything about it, just showing their head, and coming to the fore as important as having a --.
You see, today, the women in this country, the men, the students, they are all unimpressionable. I can't make an impression on you, because you are impressed 365 days a year, day and night. And -- you are overimpressed. Too much stimulated, because we have denied any difference between the active, mechanic mind -- mechanically working mind of the psychologist, you see, and the creative mind of the future citizen. And so teaching has become a very sterile business, and the expression are these mechanical examinations with "yes" and "no." They are all for the active mind.
Gentlemen, this whole course, as you -- can see, what do I care that you know anything about the fact that I can ask an examination? As long as a man makes such nons- -- writes such nonsense that logos, physis, and -- and ethos are ideas, and are not his own experience, and his own immersion into reality, I haven't made an impression. And to make an impression on you is much more important then, gentlemen, than to make you so- -- make you know something which I can inquire for in an exam. Can't you see this? Where in your anatomy the thought, "What is Greek philosophy?" is harbored, is my problem. Can I put it into your liver? Can I put it into your spleen? Can I put it into -- only in your brain? If I have only unloaded my whole course into your brain, if it doesn't preoccupy you during the summer, and if you forget it after the finals, I have
not work- -- operated right. Is -- I -- is not clear? Here, it goes in, here it goes out. It evaporates. That's the right word, gentlemen, evaporates. And that's why you think of the mind as something vaporous, as something airy. You say, "Ideas are airy. They are not solid."
Gentlemen, when a thing of the mind gets hold of you, it begins to be embodied by you. And this is called "incarnation," or "embodiment." And that is the problem of philosophy, gentlemen. The problem of philosophy is the question: Can spirit be embodied on this earth?
Now you see perhaps why Plato and Aristotle are more important than the Platonists and the Aristotelians, you see. If you say, "I'm an Aristotelian," I'm not interested, because that part in your anatomy which is Aristotelian is just here, a little thing, placed up here, you see. For the rest, I look at you, and I say that you ma- -- would make a good football player. But you are not Aristotle. But Aristotle is not a good football player. He's Aristotle, right through. He embodies Aristotelianism. That's your question today, gentlemen. That's why I tried to tell you that the line today has to be drawn between the man who thinks something for the first time, and something -- -body who repeats it. That's the problem today of problems. Plato against the Platonists; Aristotle against the Aristotelians; Paul against the Paulinians, and so on. Christ against the Church. Everywhere the problem today is: We all are on both sides. We are all 23 hours repetitive. And we are one hour original. Put it in a -- as I said, a perfectly arbitrary proportion. But we have to say both sides in our thinking. You cannot think because you are 23 hours mechanic, that you all can be ch- -- that you can be cheated, and that you must always take the line of least resistance, you see. And you cannot, because you write a creative poem, or you create a new profession, or you start a new -- a new firm, or -- or what-not, or marry a Chinese girl, for this reason, you cannot say that you are always creative.
The whole problem is in the in-between, the decision that you have to answer for both orders of the world, the world of the law, and the world of freedom; the world of the spirit, and the world of the mind, in other words. It runs right through you, this whole problem, which -- every generation of philosophers. But the new form is that you and I, treated as philosophers, are all at the same time Plato, a founder, founding spirit, and a Platonist, a mere college boy who learns who -- what Plato thought.
As far as you think something for the first time, gentlemen, it must be thought by you with your whole heart, and your whole mind, and all your understanding, and all your powers. In as far as you learn something by rote, you see, it can be lodged up here. The place of thought in your existence then becomes the vital distinction for the -- for the reality of what you think. Where is
it lodged in your anatomy?
You know, Romeo asks this wonderful question, "In which part of my anatomy is my name lodged?" You have heard it? Who? It's wonderful. The poets, of course, know -- has this wisdom long before the prosers have it. He knew it 400 years ago, that for Romeo and Aristotle, you see, their name was lodged in their whole being. They were the embodiment of this. For you it's a passing -- it's a passing flirtation, what Romeo went through. And what Aristotle went through in 63 years for you is one course here in this -- in this classroom, and then you dismiss it.
Now gentlemen, you must learn that Aristotle and you are not akin, even though you think he's true. The mere fact that you say with the mind that "probably Aristotle is right," does not allow you to tap Aristotle on the shoulder and say, "We are comrades in arms." Can you see this? There is a field of endeavor, I'm sure, in your own life, where you are the equal of Aristotle, but not in philosophy. And this is the damned curse which hangs over in this country, that you will not make this distinction, gentlemen, between the first and the repeater, the customer. The customer here of any -- of any motor car ranks, so to speak, with the man who construed the motor car.
To give you -- another example, gentlemen, of this great commiseration today is the story of D‚scartes. D‚scartes is, as you know, the modern, great leading spirit in philosophy. And by my saying "leading spirit," I already put him on the side of creativity, you see. And we have to say "leading spirit" if we want to do him justice. But he was -- the theory of his philosophy was that the mind was all that existed. D‚scartes has no room for the spirit. And he's a very useful example, because D‚scartes was a genius who deprecated the existence of genius, who said "There's just reason." "Everybody can think as I, D‚scartes, can think." And nobody asked him the silly question, the simple question, "But why didn't anybody ever think before you came?" I have today to defend the genius of D‚scartes against the system of D‚scartes. The same with Plato, you see. I have to say, "It is terribly important that people like Plato should be born," you see, "but they must have the right to write their own ticket. And therefore, they cannot be Platonists. It is more important that people like Plato are born, and Aristotle, and D‚scartes, you see. So I must defend genius, you see, against the consequences of genius."
This is what I mean when I say that any philosopher today, who does not make room for the miracle of the philosopher, for this freedom of the philosopher to say something new, is a poor philosopher, because he does not learn from Christendom in its victory over Greek philosophy, what had Paul taught the h- -- the heathens, you see. That he had to bring to the heathens first the
doctrine of the Lord, of the genius, you see, of the free man, before he could make any dent. As long as he wanted to -- draw the conclusions, from their param- -- premises, you see, without preaching the crucified Lord, you see, he left out the miracle, which we represent in this universe of natural law. The miracle is that you and I, in the -- at the high points in our life, make a break, are the first cause. That's our divinity. If Aristotle says, "God is a first cause," what of it? Every one of you, in a certain way--if he helps an Hungarian orphan to come to this country, or what he -- -ever he does--he sets a new beginning. And so, that's our divinity, gentlemen, that we s- -- are a first cause in a small way, somewhere. And nobody, gentlemen, who has experienced that he is a first cause, knows who God is. Isn't that obvious? Before he just talks like a blind -- of the colors.
Most of you do this. But you are much better in your own life I think than you think you are. You are without rancor. You forgive a -- forgive a -- somebody has sinned against you. Anybody who can excuse another man, gentlemen, who can forgive him, is a first cause.
What is excuse, gentlemen? Can you interpret this word? What does it mean to excuse somebody? What is it? It's "causa," Latin, causation. To "excuse" means to do away with the cause which would lead to certain logical, mental, mechanical consequences, you see. If you excuse somebody, or excuse yourself, you say that this cause shall have no effect. Now every one of you, gentlemen, knows that this is possible. You make constantly excuses. And you always ask to be excused. And you always assume that I may excuse you. But I will be a damned fool if I ever let you know beforehand whether, in this case, I will -- am going to excuse you or not. I'm not going to do this, because I must keep my freedom too, you see. I cannot be a mechanism. You cannot say in advance, "He always excuses me." That's why a Christian is not the man who always turns the other cheek. But sometimes. But nobody can know in advance whether a Christian will turn the other cheek. If he would become a mechanism who always turns the other cheek, gentlemen, you see, you can buy him for a dime from Wurlitzer.
We are no mechanisms. You must never know, you see. Man is incalculable. And this is the problem then of your own mind, gentlemen. Your own mind must be able to follow precedent, and must be able to -- not to follow precedent. The same mind in a certain number of cases will say, "Yes, I'll just acquiesce. It has been done this way always; I'll do it again," you see. But not always. Sometimes. And nobody must ever know -- yourself must never know. So when the president in the United States said, "We will never use viol- -- force in the Middle East," I shuddered. How can a president say this? It's impossible. He has no right to say this. It's a free country. -- He's not a free man anymore if he says
in advance what he's ever going to do. He ca- -- he cannot know. He cannot know.
When -- when Wilson said he -- "I -- I kept the country out of war," he was at war four weeks later. That's the law of -- of the real -- of real life, gentlemen.
As soon as you try to -- to turn life into psychology and mechanisms, gentlemen, you will be overwhelmed by surprises, because everybody will begin to act the other way. The self-assertion, gentlemen, of the new beginning of -- of the miracle of freedom, you see, is -- just as with the Hungarian revolt. You see, if you had predicted this, everybody would have logically proven to you that it couldn't be done, that no Molotov tank, you see -- Molotov cocktail could blow up a Russian tank.
So the whole program, gentlemen, of modern philosophy is to take over the role of the fathers of the Church. The -- if you want to have universal truth, you cannot rely today on denominations, and you cannot rely on these petty frogs of the -- theological schools, who -- who are riveted, I mean, in their cleavages. It has to be the free, universal truth by which this great truth has today to be defended, or rediscovered, or stated, that in all of us, there is this combination of freedom and routine. And that our mind is the battlefield of the spirit and the mind.
And therefore, gentlemen, today we do not care for the Greek systems of philosophy, but we care terribly much for the philosophers. The Greek philosophers are the great argument in our fight for the truth of our own freedom, and our own faith, and our own creativity. Every one of these men broke away from one system, which he inherited, you see, and began his own. And in as far as genius today has to be, so to speak, placed, recognized, saved, spared, in an order of Communism, and of pragmatism, which abolishes all genius, which aboli- -- denies all freedom, which precalculates crises, et cetera, in such a predictable universe, we need every free spirit today to defend the incalculable in humanity. And it is today the -- not the system of the Greek philosopher, gentlemen, but his own existence, you see, by which we know that the spirit can be incarnated.
And therefore, the word against mechanism, gentlemen, is a little bit complicated. It is embodiment. If you call the mind "mech-" -- a "mechanism," it is his repetitive part, his expirational part, his dead-end street. But if you call -- the same man "an embodiment of the spirit," you see, then you see all the shortcomings of the mortal who speaks to you or who -- to who- -- whom you read, or from whom you learn. But you know that what I say may be much truer than
the man who speaks here, that through me, the spirit has found a place of efficiency of -- in this material world.
So the end of the story, gentlemen, is quite an overwhelming one in this sense. All the tenets of Greek philosophers, the division of -- into idealism and materialism, I think can be -- have been blown into smithereens. Don't use these terms any more after this course, gentlemen. They say nothing to you and me, in truth. Nobody can be an idealist. Nobody can be a materialist. I certainly don't see how anybody can.
But there is a third party in the history of Greek philosophy. That's the Greek philosopher who created these schools, who said, "You have to be a materialist," you see, and "You have to be an idealist. Follow me." Well, at one time, he didn't follow, you see. He created. He heard something which he had to pass on. And this is today the -- the eminence of the Greek tradition, gentlemen.
Can you still bear with me for 10 minutes? Because in order to -- can you? I'm sorry. It is the last time. It's my only opportunity. I will -- now -- because I want to cement a little bit this historical, tremendous transformation of the importance of Greek philosophy for you and me. I told you already that Mr. Jaeger wrote this book, The Theology of the Greek Philosophers. There is one deep reason, gentlemen--the deepest reason, I think--why at -- this moment is so important that you see the genius in the Greek philosopher and save, therefore, your own faith in inspiration, in pneuma, in spirit, in life-giving spirit, as the Bible calls it so very poignantly, you see, which is undermined in your environment. The reason for this secret is this, gentlemen: From the times of Thales to the times of the Stoics, and from the times of -- of Thomas Aquinas and D‚scartes to our own days, to the world wars, the abject mechanization of the mind by philosophy was always balanced by poetic faculties, by Dante, by the Greek tragedy, by poetry of all arts, and by the arts. And we all, even the worst rationalist, said that philosophy, if it -- he put it on the side of the -- of the mechanism, could be balanced by inspired poetry.
We no longer can rely on this balance, gentlemen. After the experience of the last 50 years, poetry has given up the spirit and has become itself anti-poetic, you may say, rational, logical, analytical. And therefore, because poetry is no longer checking philosophy, and science, you see, we have to become poetical. That is, we have to defend the powers represented by poetry. You have now to think not of what Mr. Sartre writes about putrefaction of the human mind, but who he is. Who is Mr. Sartre that he can say a new word? You see, give us a frisson nouveau. Who is Proust? I do not care for his book. But I do very much care that such men like Proust still exist who say something different.
That is, philosophers, gentlemen, at this moment must defend poetry, because poetry today has become philosophical. That is, it is so rationalized, it only sees the -- the mechanism of life. As long as you have such poetry, and in as far as poetry has given up its spirit and has become, so to speak, preaching the gospel of mechanization, and of nature, of physis, you see, obviously philosophy now has to pr- -- preach the gospel of pneuma. Because the poets are the pneumatics, are they not? They are the inspired people. And therefore it is now up to the philosophers to defend poetry, because it has now become the strange role of the poets to defend the cloaca maxima of indigestion, or whatever they deal with, the -- the itching of -- of your {vargus}, and sympaticus, and -- and your glands, and so on.
They are no longer poets. Never be betrayed by names, gentlemen. The functions of the human spirit constantly are transformed. If the poets cease to be poets, then the philosophers have to be -- cease to be rationalists, or logicians. And therefore we need a metalogic--as it has been called--"metalogic" or "pneumatology" which balances the mechanics and the embodiment processes of -- which permeates your and my strange being, gentlemen.
Partly, gentlemen, your mind is the product of your environment. And partly you embody the spirit. That is, a creative thought which has to come through you into this world. The history of Greek philosophy has at all times served as the great admonitor, that without genius, life comes to a standstill. The question is not between one law and the other law, between system and another system, gentlemen. This -- the problem is always that between unforeseen and foreseen, between laity and professional, for example, you see, you -- there can be no people of God on this earth, gentlemen, and no real people if everybody is an expert. This country is going to hell because there are no people left. There are only now people who have a job, jobholders, you see. The women. They were formerly the people, you see. Now we have class distinctions; the president can have a Cadillac. And I don't know what the vice-president can have, you see. And the worker can have a Ford. In this country there are suddenly divisions. In the last 20 years they had never existed, when we came. Very strange.
In this very moment, gentlemen, where everything becomes mechanized, you see, the freedom of the laity, of the people, you see, in any one moment to break in with a surprise, with something that is not predictable has to be defended by thought.
And therefore, I think that with this course, I should have -- liked to introduce -- to initiate you into the great secret that at this moment, there starts all over the world among serious people a new chapter in the history of the renaissance of the Greek spirit.
Thank you.