Transcript
{ } = word or expression can't be understood
{word} = hard to understand, might be this
[Opening remarks missing]
... every one own decision. The question has to be answered: does there exist a Christian era or not? Fifteen years ago in my little town in Norwich, over there, there came to the Women's Club a speaker who said that now it had been proven that there was no such thing as -- a Christian era has never existed, and that we still live just in cycles, and therefore we should give up this notion of a Christian era. There might be a new Dark Ages coming now, or something like that. That was even before the Second World War. Now you all, gentlemen, think that the -- either our era, this famous A.D., is a fact or it isn't. And therefore you don't give a damn. You don't know that with your own decision, you decide in which epoch you live. More and more people today, since they absolutely decline to take a side in this issue, let the epoch slide, and most people in America speak, for example, of the Judeo- or Hebrew-Christian tradition as something that's there. And then there is a Greek humanistic tradition, then that's there. It's all in the mind. One is one philosophy. The other is the other philosophy, which just means that you are back in antiquity.
In America at this moment, the Christian era is destroyed by this attitude, gentlemen, of pluralism. And it is the -- very difficult to see that it can be remedied except by a real crusade of your generation. By "crusade," I do not mean going outside your own bailiwick, but I mean that you must clarify in your own mind this question: what is an era, or what is the epoch in which we live? In this country, you have not made peace in 1865. You have not made peace in 1918. You have not made peace in 1945, and that's why most Americans still live in the year 1850, because, gentlemen, epochs are explicit. And the whole life of the Christian era is based on the assumption that to break with one calendar, to break with one order, can only be done explicitly. You can only say, "I -- today I don't go to church," by saying "I don't go to church." Because if you simply don't go to church, you live still in a time, as a brute animal, before there were -- was the law of going to church, you see. A man -- you remember, I put in the center this little story of the Lord saying to a man whom he sees working on the Sabbath, "If you know what you are doing, you are blessed; if you don't know what you are doing, you are cursed."
Now, gentlemen, obviously most of you don't go to church on Sunday, but they -- you also don't even think that it is Sunday, so you are just brute beasts. You have no calendar. You live by accident or by invitation. And therefore you don't count at all. You are a pre-historical animal. Most people try to be animals today, and they are very proud of it. I mean, I think the sum -- sum of -- the fra-
ternity life can be summed up in this -- into this glorious attempt to have a sex room and -- and become an animal.
I know that the individual members are much better. But the fraternity as a whole is in great danger of trying to make this effort in reducing you into this state, of below -- below the animal. The animal has its laws. It knows when to mate. It knows when to die. It knows when to eat. It knows when to drink. We don't. Man is not even beginning to be a human being unless he has one calendar which he absolutely -- like any red Indian, for example, you see -- solemnly follows. But in our era, we all have the choice between various. But you only the choice explicitly, consciously. That is, if you know that you have the choice, and unless you say it -- you state it, you are not members of our era. This is the only reason why a man has to say whether he believes that -- that there is a Christian era and Christ is a Messiah or not. If he doesn't say this, gentlemen, he is nowhere. He has no orientation, or he is just a Greek, as so many people in colleges, and thinks that the art and the sciences are everything. Many of you try to indulge in this frenzy for music, or poetry, or what-not. That's very Greek -- or you can -- or go out for philosophies -- or you can be a good family man, or you can be, as I said, an -- high Episcopalian, or a good Roman Catholic, and repeat the -- the works of the synagogue, of the Temple of Solomon, or you can be an imperialist like Mr. -- Kennan or -- or some man in the state department.
Because gentlemen, if you want to act at all in this world, you have either to go one of these -- of these four courses which have really been created: a country, you see; a family; a business, you -- you see; and a school. In order to commute, we -- you and I -- we cannot sit just on our fannies and -- and in the sun on the beach in -- in Florida, you see. As soon as we get going, you can talk about politics, you see, you can talk about business, about your love affairs -- the family, founding of a family, and your children, and your parents; and you can talk about -isms, about ideas. This is Greek, you see, Egypt, Judaism, and tribe. Politics is -- has always the future at heart. And business has always the -- cycle -- the business cycle at heart. And the family has always -- deaths and birth at heart, and marriage, you see. And schools have always ideas at heart, comparing and contrasting and having a theory about them. Generalizations.
Now the strange thing is, my -- my attempt in these two weeks here is to make you aware of the grandeur of our epoch. An epoch-making event, gentlemen, is an event by which we organize our thinking. And a mere fact is an event, which we organize into our thinking. That is, today is an -- is -- this year is a -- is a -- let's say politically a quiet year. As I say, in the epoch between the World Wars -- Second and Third, this year was relatively quiet. What do I do? I attribute to the world wars the category of an epoch, and I say this year, 1956, inside this epoch, you see, has such-and-such quality measured by the standards of world wars. I
can also turn around and say, gentlemen, since the year of the world wars, since the decades, we must think differently. America cert- -- certainly has a foreign policy. You hear this -- that all the time. This means that the world wars changed our thinking.
So will you -- kindly take this down, gentlemen? There are two kinds of historical facts. One, are those facts which change our thinking; and the other, facts are judged by the epoch-making events. An event that happens today is judged by the world wars. But an event in 1820 was judged by the Declaration of Independence, and by the leadership of Europe. Everybody in 19- -- 1825 linked the independence of Argentina to the leadership of the British on the oceans, and Argentina owed its independence as you know, to the British. Not to the Americans. And the same with the Monroe Doctrine, in the whole 19th century. It just meant that the British navy would kindly protect the United States. That is, the Monroe Doctrine was only one-half of the reality, and the -- the British navy was the other half of the reality. And therefore the victory over Napoleon by the British was the matter-of-fact business. The loss of the War of 1812, when the Americans were allies of the French, the loss of this war for America made history.
What's your question?
(The facts which change our thinking -- and what is the second one? There are two kinds.)
Thinking which -- which places the facts. An epoch-making event places all the later facts of the following century. Take a very simple question, gentlemen. You are haunted by this decision. In the -- from -- 1783 to 1918, it was American policy to entertain the hope that every place on the globe would be -- have a sovereign, independent, little, free nation. And there was great enthusiasm for it. The first mildew came when we -- when we annexed Cuba -- not Cuba, Puerto Rico, and The Philippines. And then we made another effort to come back to our 19th century foreign policy and we freed The Philippines, and we gave them independence in 1907, didn't we? {Suddenly for} -- fi- -- we are finding a little fault with this doctrine, gentlemen. We are now building up this tyrant, this bloody tyrant, Ibn Saud in Arabia by paying him $750 million just for mere pedantry, because we think we get the oil, and he is the state there. There is neither a nation, nor is there freedom, nor is there any sense. He's -- he makes war against the Israelites. He prevents the -- them to have the Suez Canal. He is in -- in cahoots with the Russians. The Russians now have an interest suddenly in the Near East, after we have fought this for 150 years, that they shouldn't. And it's all done because we still think that wherever there is a spot on a map, we assume that there is a little, free nation. So we are in sympathy with this -- really
this monster, this Ibn Saud of Arabia. And we are dug -- digging our own grave. Every cent we have sent there for 10 years now, is $700 million -- -$50 million a year, are preparing war against us. And rightly so, if we are such fools. Now the people in the Ama- -- Ama- -- Am- -- what's the name? ARAMCO, in the four great oil companies who work in the Near East, went to the state department 10 years ago and said, "This is wrong. What strings should we attach to this incredible amount of money, which gives this bloody tyrant political power?"
"Oh," the state department said, "that's business. That's not power." You see, another epoch-making event of 1815 making history now, still when it shouldn't. Money is not power -- political power. That's just business.
Gentlemen, as long as Eng- -- Americans believe that "business as usual" is a -- is possible, you don't understand what politics are for America at this moment. $750 million a year are armaments of an enemy, or an ally. And there is no third position possible. But you can't talk this way to the American people. They are absolutely children with regard to the fate that has befallen this nation -- or this continent since 1918. Since 1918, you cannot send $750 million to a foreign country without asking for what it can be used. We have now built up a tyrant who is independent of his subjects, who doesn't need their taxes, who has no reason to treat them like human beings, you see, because he has money. And he can have any -- he bribes the -- he breaks the Baghdad Pact at this moment up. He finances the Egyptians. He does all the trouble you find in the world. It's all our money which pays for it. He would be an absolute nobody if we had sent a warship instead of $750 million to his -- his port, as it should -- we should have done. But that's -- cannot be done, because you believe in free nations. There is no nation. There is no freedom, but you still believe in it. That is, you believe that you can't go there. If you need the oil, gentlemen, take it. But then it's your responsibility, and not this -- this tyrant's. Now everybody in the rest of the world sees that we are cheating ourselves, because we have a schoolboy's attitude. We have learned all in school that America is anti-imperialistic. And you bring on the next war. The only group, gentlemen, that's preparing the next war are the Americans, by their blindness against what it means to be responsible for one's own actions. One hand does this, and the other hand does the opposite.
It is absolute fantastic. And the few people who see this here in this country are -- are absolutely overcome with fear and dread, but you live happily here and -- I told you, your grandchildren will see no liberal arts college in America. You are destroying this, because you're just all daydreaming. You use this existence in this college here for idling away your time until you get married. That's all.
Because this should be burning in you. What is politics? And what is the relation of your Greek freedom, of your academic freedom to all these things? You
don't want to hear this. You go Sundays to school, when somebody takes you to church, when you { }. Then your parents send you here to school. It is all absolute disparate. What you learn in this college has absolutely nothing with -- with the -- with what's going on under your noses at this moment. We are in a coma in this country. Why? As long as the Christian era is not explicitly written into your hearts, gentlemen, that you know that at every moment these calendars, these working machines, thinking in political ways, thinking in business ways, thinking in family ways, and thinking in scholastic and scientific ways have to be integrated by your knowing the destiny of mankind, and by making sacrifices for it, and curtailing the activity of one branch, and enlarging the activity of another branch, if this is necessary, we will slide back into -- dreams. And you will be all split. You live now four lives, gentlemen. Better you were real Greeks, better you were real Jews, better you were real Egyptians, or better you were real Ind- -- red Indians than to be what you are now. You are jellyfish, and you bring no -- no pressure to bear on any one of the things, except destruction. Your vote in the election, gentlemen, prevents this year the American people to have a foreign policy. Because Mr. Eisenhower has to run for re-election by such a group of people as you are, every issue is falsified. No true issue can be mentioned. You -- the whole election issue is absolutely fake. And who cares who is elected? The poor man is a prisoner, whether it's Mr. Stevenson or Mr. Eisenhower -- Kefauver -- do you think it makes the slightest difference? That's all fancy, because you have not said that you belong into our era. More and more people say, "That's the Hebrew-Christian tradition. I choose it occasionally on Sundays. And there is the Greek tradition. This is when I read The Atlantic Monthly or The New Yorker." You are all split. The essence of America is schizophrenia. And that means split personality. And you want to have it this way.
Therefore, gentlemen, the -- religious issue today looks very funny. Religion, you know, can never be -- or faith can never be pigeon-holed by inherited slogans. Today it is absolutely indifferent whether you are a Jew, or a Christian, or a Catholic, or a Protestant. Not the slightest difference it makes for your -- for the real history of America. It is absolutely un-interesting, gentlemen, whether you undergo a conversion and become a monk in a monastery. Of no importance. Absolutely no importance. It's a play of your own imagination. It's very beautiful.
I went to the ordination of a priest yesterday. And this is certainly a long life of suffering. The man is 40. And in his case, it is a great story. And he is now a priest. And we are -- he is one of our -- our most intimate friends. Now his personal life -- this is a real, very true story. And it is necessary that there are churches. Don't misunderstand me. But this man is humble enough to know that this is a very small part of the real decisions he has to make in life, because he has also to have the power to go against his church, if it is needed. You are not today
going to Heaven just be -- by being a priest in a church. Nobody can say that because he's a priest in a church he's already saved. Obviously. I mean, that's even good Christianity. It doesn't help anybody to say, "Lord, Lord," 10 times a day. But in antiquity, the people didn't know this, gentlemen. That's the difference of the Christian era, that we know that none of these trite ways which we can professionally pursue is safe. There is no security.
Popes can go to Hell. No safety for -- for them. By becoming pope, you are not going to Heaven, even according to good Catholic doctrine. But this is what you like to believe. You are back to the pre-Christian era in which you -- you have of course made arrangements, with the help of modern sociologists. The modern sociology tells the American people, and these books are all best-sellers, that you are pigeon-holed as middle class, middle-town, or the lonely crowd, or the healthy few, or whatever it is, and -- and therefore you are what you are. It's the most terrifying book I've read in a long time, this book by my friend David Riesman. It's a scandal. Just classification, like in an animal kingdom. You are that way.
Gentlemen, you and I are not that way, because we are in no way. We are on the way. And therefore you don't know what the way tomorrow is to be. As soon as you allow yourself to be classified and pigeon-holed, you have ceased to live. And gentlemen, what happens to those who -- who do not live? They become dead weight. And dead weight is always pulling backward, because it's constant friction. Why are the election issues dead dodos? Why are they unreal? Because there is so much dead weight. There are so many people who do not understand that they are on a way, which they determine. They say, "Well, this is my way of life. I don't wish to be disturbed." That is, they have a former way of life in which they do not wish to be interrupted.
But now to speak of more visible and -- and -- and conspicuous things. The first question is then: what is an epoch-making event? An epoch-making event changes our consciousness. In any epoch, that which was the goal of the previous epoch has become the base. The Messiah was the goal of Judaism, was it not? Now it becomes the foundation. Greek philosophy had run its course when the Greek thought -- thinking tried to compare everything with everything. This was the goal. Christ comes and says, "Everything has been compared with everything, and the living soul is still a greater poem than the greatest poem that ever can be written." We talked about this last time, you see. So all poems, you see, have been written, so to speak. And we know already the outcome. They'll all be -- be second-rate. They'll always live in an ivory tower. A book is only a book. And the child in the cradle in Bethlehem is still superior to the greatest piece of art. That's the end of the Greek era. As soon as the Greek mind, so to speak, had to break down and confess that a living child is better than the Ninth Symphony,
art was put in its place. The mind was put in its place. Some of you have to write for Mr. {Cooley} ontology, of ascetic ontology. Who has to write this? Isn't that true? That's your problem. That's exactly the problem. Is there an ontology for art, you see? Where does it go? You lose your soul in writing it.
One day you must wake up to this fact. Are your games -- is football really important, gentlemen? Where are your sports? We have dealt with this in Philosophy 9. Many of -- many of you have been in this. Who has been there? Well, you'll remember. I mean, this is the whole problem. Where do these plays belong, you see? They are there, but they are not the first -- the first insight for the Greeks and for all the Greek elements in us, the gladiatorial combat and the -- is the football -- is --. At first -- it was very interesting. I went to the hospital yesterday, and there were two boys in the room. One talked to me about St. Augustine, and the other boy listened to the -- to the Cleveland -- what's their name?
(Indians.)
Wie?
(Cleveland Indians.)
Ja. And we were happy and he was very unhappy.
What? What did you say? What was it?
(He must have been losing.)
Wie?
(They were losing --)
Now gentlemen, you come from such a Greek century that to you, you have -- it is quite unknown that historians cannot make epochs. Our textbooks in this country are written by a -- very insolent Greek minds who say, even the epochs, the chapter headings in their history books are of their own scientific invention. Epochs are greater than men's minds, gentlemen. The world wars are no invention of historians. Historians serve epochs. They write within an epoch. If you only could understand the difference this is -- makes, gentlemen, that there was a new epoch by this -- the Reformation. No scientific historian has the -- the power to dilute or to renege on. They try today. They have absolute megalomania. Today the historian and you, who {readed} their -- his books, think that historians make epoch, or determine epochs, that they can falsify history backward and just say the Christian era was not an epoch-making event. Well, of course, you
know the contemporaries of the Christians thought the same way. It took the Christians 300 years of suffering before the epoch was recognized by the others, you see. But we think that since they did it for 300 years, you see, and their pertinacious -- tenacious, we now call the Christian era a real era. It changed man's minds.
So the Greek mind says, "All facts of history are under my control." The Christian mind says, "We distinguish between epoch-making events, and single -- facts inside the eras." An epoch-making event -- it's century. It is reasonable to speak of the Renaissance. You all do it, by the way. And the Renaissance is a -- was an attempt of the French mind in 1800 to replace the 16th century as a century of the Reformation by an -- secular expression. And therefore you all, as good Americans and secularized minds, speak of the Renaissance.
So you remember what we did last time. I tried to show you the four epochs of the Church. Soul, culture or role, mind, and nature I said to you -- or body -- I said to you, are the four periods of the creation of the Church in the last 1956 years. Now this is the year 1500, and you live happily hereafter in a -- in a -- in a period called the Renaissance, and after the Renaissance. Modern times, you also say. And the Americans come on the scene as ultra-modern. Gentlemen, the {truest} epoch within the history of the -- one spirit is of course the Reformation. But -- since 1500, people have always spoken of the Reformation as the dawn of a new era, or a new chronology, or a new epoch. The Reformation is an epochmaking event because it split the unity of the Church which had existed, by hook and crook, for 1500 years. In your textbooks, which is written by the -- by the megalomania of college professors, or university men, you are -- they have replaced. They found the epoch at 1500. An epoch it had to be. But they didn't want to label it with the name given by the contemporaries. So they have replaced the name "Reformation" by your term which you like to use, "Renaissance." Most of you don't even know when it starts, and it has been ambiguous, you see. Even the year of the Renaissance is rather arbitrary. In America, for example, the Renaissance usually starts in the 17th century; for all normal thinking, it started in 1450.
Whatever I mean is: the epoch was, in this case, acknowledged by the peoples of the world before the scholars gave it a new name, that there had to be -- recognize a deep break around 1500, you see, was already a fact which the people who introduced the term "Renaissance" had to cope with. And then they invented this counter-term, "Renaissance," because they all were people who only believed in paganism, and humanism, and therefore, had to omit the constituent which would have made it an ecclesiastical event, too. A worldwide event. Renaissance, you see, is something for schoolbooks. The farmer in the -- in the -- in the field -- doesn't care for Renaissance, you see. And the woman in the
-- in the -- in the infirmary, or in the nursery. But for professors in college, it's very important whether you read classical Latin, Cicero -- that's the Renaissance, you see; or whether you read St. Augustine, that's medieval.
And therefore the term "Renaissance" is a very good example of the fog in which you live. Your fog is that you think that the people who say "Renaissance" are scholars who have invented a pe- -- an epoch and sell it to you {from} research. What they have done is, they have bowed to necessity -- that is, they have bowed to the necessity that 1500 marks an epoch. And then they have replaced the real epoch, this schism between Catholics and Protestants of which this room here is riddled, which is really a break inside you people -- they have replaced it by this schoolbook difference: whether you read classical Greek or whether you read New Testament Greek, which is very unimportant.
(Sir. In a question of epoch, does the Christian era -- could you call a -- an epoch, for the whole { }?
It's an era of eras, you see. In the Bible, it says, "eon of eons." I have told you this, already, that the word "world without end" is a forgery of the English, King James Version of the the Bible. The original -- the text in the New Testament says that Jesus has come to open and close era- -- epochs. And therefore He is the Lord of a new era into which different epochs can be built. Anybody who has read my -- my book, Out of Revolution, knows that I have there described the epochs of the Christian era, that Jesus is the lord of the eon of the eons. He can make -- has assured that whatever fashion befalls you, whatever nationalism, whatever fad, you can already know that it will not reach you higher than your -- here, your collar. The -- the head of man is above water, so to speak, of these centuries. A man -- I'm a member of this club of the 20th century. We are all members of the 20th century, but I decline that I have now to be just a man of the 20th century. I am a human being who is condemned to live with people who believe they only live in the 20th century. I -- live in an eternity. That is, I live in the Eon of eons. I can introduce into this epoch the saving elements by which the 20th century will not end abysmally in nothing, in destruction. I have not been able to save the 19th century and the nations of Europe from this total destruction. I know what I'm talking about, because -- Europe was at the end of the century, fin de siŠcle. What is fin de siŠcle in French, you see? The end of -- our era, you see. And we have lived through this. It has ended in absolute destruction. Centuries do end. Your word "century" comes nearest to the word "epoch." But I think the word "epoch" is a little better than the word "century" for a very simple reason, gentlemen.
The whole problem with which you have to wrestle is that the time into which you are born is decided by your own explicit allegiance. You belong to the
Christian era by an act of allegiance, by an act of will, by an act of decision. If you do not make this decision, you belong not to the Christian era, and you add to the forces that have to be converted to the Christian era. You are a pagan. You are a heathen. You -- you reinstate the pre-Christian era. In other words, gentlemen, there runs since the birth of Christ -- there run two streams of time. One is the old eon, the pre-Christian eon. And the other is the new eon, and the men who make history are those who -- know this, their ultimate freedom, and the man who prevent history, and make for -- for the -- constant anarchy and decay in this world are those who say, "I'm just living in my own time, by accident of birth, or by inheritance of -- of money, or by racial supremacy," or whatever.
Take the people in the South. They try to live before 1865, but much more. Since in 1865 a highly Christian issue was decided, one that -- could only be decided, because certain people took the doctrines of Christianity to heart, that there could be no slavery. Anybody who in the South now, has Mr. Martin King condemned to prison by a law of a so-called state, which is just a band of robbers -- Mississippi is -- to me is no state, and Alabama as long as they have such laws. That's not a state, gentlemen. That's just a presumption. As long as these people band together and -- and in their good tribal style of -- of Sioux Indians, prevent the laws of the United States to prevail, you have a tribal society. Of course, there is a tribal society in the South. They are very proud of their way of life. It is a way of life. And the only wrong thing about this way of life is that it is only one way of life. One way of life is never good enough for any human being. You have to be able to integrate the various ways of life.
So the -- old eon, gentlemen, which -- of which the Old Testament speaks, contains all the eras of antiquity, all pre-Christian eras are -- epoch, are ended. The Gree- -- the Jewish, the Greek, the Roman, the Egyptian, the Chinese and the -- you see also that before Christ is preached in China in 1911, when the last emperor of China -- empress of China went, they were still living in antiquity. Can you understand this? Antiquity is everywhere in the world where the eons are lived per se, in separation. When you come to an island in the South Sea, where there has been no white man, and no -- no mission brought, we live in antiquity, in archaic times, and these people have every right in Honolulu -- before Americans came there, or missionaries -- to believe that they have a wonderful order by themselves. It is a wonderful order, by the way. Don't misunderstand me. I praise those -- those tribes very highly. They have done their best. Don't shoot them, he does his {damnedest}.
Still, ja?
(What I'm trying to get to: an epoch develops, or doesn't { } develop out of an historical events which by themselves --)
An epoch does not develop. An epoch is a creature of God. What we know of the presence of God in history only through epochs. You don't make epoch, you see. The event makes an epoch, yes.
(Well, { } modern events.)
Ja. Well, the story of the -- of the next -- of an -- of a so-called -- how would I call it? era, ja -- or century is the gradual recognition that an epoch has been made. That is, any epoch is gradually recognized. In -- take 1792, or 1789. The French revolution was first only recognized by the Jacobeans themselves, you see, or the Russian revolution in 1917 obviously was {of course} only recognized by the Bolsheviks. Today they are recognized by us. We have social insurance. We have all kinds of things. We have junior executives. You are -- you are { }, why? Because in the last 10 years, Russia has been a real threat. So American business has { }. We have no depression. We have no business cycle, you see. The Russian revolution has become an epoch-making event. I wouldn't see -- say it's the Russian revolution. I still hold that the world wars are the epochs, in our case. I don't like to -- to exaggerate the importance of the -- this member of the event, what we call the Russian revolution. I think really the two great wars have brought about a change of heart in everything. And when you talk today to a businessman and he speaks of free enterprise, you all know that he doesn't mean the free enterprise of 1930. But it totally changed "enterprise," you see, in which modern free enterprise in the United States has become a public utility. That's all what it did.
And it's good this way. I think we have solved the economic problem in a very dramatic manner and in a very positive manner. And the Russians thought they -- they had all to become, you see, the -- the businesses had all to become civil servants, so to speak, and -- and state-owned, which obviously doesn't work, you see. We have simply charged the businesses with a kind of communal responsibility, now. And therefore they have become parts of our organized society. The { } railroad { }, they had to go, you see. And now General Motors cannot close down. It cannot. It's obvious. As soon as a -- gentlemen, as soon as a business must function, it is a public utility. A private business is only private as long as you can shut it down at liberty. It's a very simple definition. Anything that must function, you see, is a part of our public estate. Or our {public} order. You see this, the difference from -- the railroad, you see, and a -- and a private car. You have a car, you're private, because you can drive to White River or you cannot. The bus line of Mr. {Kaplan} has to go. Mr. {Albert} has to go to White River at 3 o'clock, you see, so -- because it has public franchise. It's very simple. Most of you don't know this simple difference between public and private. But the private is able to say, "I'm superfluous. Nobody has the right to rely on my existence," you see. Public means, "I can rely on your existence."
That makes it so interesting. People have tried in the 19th century to treat business and marriage as private. Now obviously, gentlemen, as soon as you have children, marriage is a public institution. We must rely on your being parents. If you do not act as parents, you see, society is lost. Therefore parents are not a private enterprise. It's a public enterprise, you see. Marriage can only be something in public law, and not in private. But -- the 19th century had this blindness to say, "Marriage is private, just by contract," and then it said, "Labor is private. It's just a commodity." It's all nonsense, gentlemen. Even materials are, as you know, today public, because vanadium, and titanium, and radium, and uranium, they are -- you see, the government says this is public property.
So we have undergone a great change of mind and a great change of heart, and therefore I think that in America it will be recognized that, except for Mr. {Bricker} from Ohio, the world wars has been -- an -- earthshaking and epochmaking event. They have made epoch. Not one American today connects with the word "private enterprise" or "private property" the same notions he connected with it 40 years ago. And that's an epoch-making event when your own words, you see, are re-colored by the event. You can see this.
I'll tell you a little story from Europe to show you it has nothing to do with the special scene here in America, or any will or whim. I was a -- the friend of the -- of the president of -- of all the employers' corpora- -- associe- -- associations -- how would you call them, the people who deal with the unions in all the indus- -- for all the industry? We have no quite -- not quite such a thing here. We have the chambers of commerce, but they don't deal with the unions. Now in -- the German industry had been organized in such a way that the metal industry, and the electric industry, and the textile industry had -- had committees which would go in -- together with the unions, you see, and -- and write the tariff for their -- for their industry. You have nothing like -- like this here. Westinghouse has to negotiate by itself, and General Motors has to negotiate by itself. In Germany, that wasn't done. The whole mining industry would negotiate, you see. In the mining industry, by the way, it is this way here in this country, too, as far as I know. Isn't that right? I think the fear of Mr. John Lewis has brought them all together.
Now, what happened? In 1913, this -- this my friend. He's dead by now, who was, of course tremendously rich person. General {Koenig} stole all his furniture in Berlin from his castle, because it was so beautiful. I mean, the Amer- -- the French general, who was billeted there in 1945. This man wro- -- made a speech in 1913, that he would never stand for -- how did you say? -- for anything that would do away with individual bargaining. Yes, individual bargaining. The idea being, you see, that the individual worker makes his contract with his boss, you see, and he can offer him what he likes, and there is no collective bargaining. In
1929, the same man made a speech, now in his high-ranking office there as -- as leader of the whole business world like Myron Taylor here, perhaps. And he said -- was at that time afraid that the government might introduce for- -- compulsory arbitration and that they might write the ticket. And industry and workers felt that the government shouldn't have so much to say in this way, that this was still left to -- to economic forces themselves, you see, to decide; and they didn't like the idea that the government could fix the wages, by kind of compulsory arbitration.
And so he said, "We will defy anybody who breaks up our free bargaining" -- it was the -- the expression from 1913, by the way, and today -- "free bargaining. We will not have any interference with free bargaining."
I met him after this and I said, "Do you know that you have used the word `free bargaining' within the little space of time of 16 years in the opposite sense? In 1913, free bargaining meant the boss and the individual ironworker. In 1929, you have defended free bargaining as collective bargaining of the unions against the government." And he used the same term, "free bargaining," you see. Or "freedom of bargaining." I -- now I, you see, it is a question of how I translate the German term into your language. But the essence was that "free" meant, in 1913, you see, every worker to himself. And in 1929, it meant only the union, and he had forgotten even that there was a possibility that an individual worker could bargain, you see. That was in his -- in his {thought} in '29, that was all over, you see. Germany had -- learned a lesson between 1919 and 1929 to such an extent that no industrialist even thought back to the days when he had called "free bargaining" an individual labor co- -- or a workm- -- worker's contract. Do you understand the point? That I call an epoch-making event. The loss of the world war and -- in Europe -- here in this country, the Depression, have made -- brought about an epoch.
Gentlemen, you -- if you were interested at all in your own -- the workings of the national mind, here, on September 27th, 1955, this country recognized that it hadn't stretched out its own soul under the pressure of this epoch-making event of 1929. America has lived the epoch of the world wars in the form of the Depression. The wars here were too insignificant -- it just cost money. The people who were lost in these wars are negligible compared to the car accidents in -- in the -- in 30 years. You lose the life of -- of -- of a -- one million and-a-half people in 30 years, and you lose the life of perhaps 200,000 people in a war -- in two wars. You see, obviously the wars have made no dent on the American consciousness. Even -- even all -- all banner-waving, flag-waving cannot alter the fact that the war has not interrupted the continuity of American life. It hasn't. But the Depression has. Whole classes were wiped out. And in whose family is the Depression important? In whose family here? Would you be frank about this? I would be
{just} interested. Where has it made a difference? Well, I thought even in a lar- -- it would be an -- larger number of cases.
Well, gentlemen, in September 27th, Mr. Eisenhower had his heart attack. And the -- stock exchange went down more rapidly in one day as it had only done in October of '29. What does this mean? There was absolutely no reason. It just cannot be logically explained. Now of course, the stock exchange is not to be explained logically at all. Gambling is nothing logical. But the profit -- motive is -- is passionate. And if people want to get rich, they are not rational. But they had a bad conscience. Conscience is connected with gambling. And the conscience of the United -- of the people of the United -- of this country since {2009} has been waiting for the next depression. And in 1955, it was found out that in some ways, the boom-bust cycle had been broken. But it was tried on September 27, as perhaps it hadn't. It was a kind of superstition, a kind of mental transference. If you know psychoanalysis, they tell you that it is necessary before a feeling is finished, it has to be transferred and there become conscious, and then it can be laid to rest. Now that's exactly what happened in the September of '55, that the whole country, represented by its businessmen at the stock exchange, had waited for this question: are we still in the clutches, you see, of this tremendous Niagara, of the boom-bust cycle? And in September of '55, the proof was given that in some marvelous way, the lessons of '29 had been learned. And although the mind tried to have a crisis, the body couldn't. The economy was sound. It is a purely mental crisis, a real -- crisis of transference, and so therefore I think it's a very great event.
Now you may understand what an epoch is, gentlemen. An epoch is, for example, the event of '29, because it works on the minds of people in the year '55, quite regardless of what the papers say. They don't have to know this. They are stupid. They live from day to day, gentlemen. What really happened in September '2- -- '55 was an analysis, so to speak, to react of -- act of this -- act out this scar, which has been wrought on this conscience of the nations in '29. You must study these things, gentlemen. Then you are really beginning to understand life as it really is. Mr. Freud, you know, has discovered for the individual conscience which I -- what I think is even much truer for the group conscience. I think my whole problem in my Out of Revolution has been that I -- I see much fewer -- many -- much fewer the individuals dealing with these pressures, and with these scars, but nations. The French revolution to this day still splits Frenchmen into red and -- and black, as you know. And you still call "left," you see, a man who is to the left in politics. That's French. As you know, since the Russian revolution, it no longer makes any sense, because a Communist is not left in any liberalizing sense. He's a fascist. He's a slave-market man. Yet, in this country, you still can call yourself today a liberal, because you are communist, which of course, is -- to a European is absolutely fantastic. You speak today here of a man of liberal
ideals, and you mean that he is a friend of the fellow-traveler. A friend of Mr. Hiss.
Liberal, in the true sense of the epoch, of the world wars, is today the conservative expression. Anybody who still a cons- -- you see, a liberal today is a man who does not accept the epoch of the world wars. And the man who does, as a Communist, or as a fascist, or as an integralist, or as a -- as an organic thinker, or as Mr. {Kirk} with his new conservatism, you see, he is trying to -- to accept the epoch. We haven't yet a term for -- in America for those people, who together accept the epoch-making character of the fact that all business today has become public. Public utility. It's a fact. It is there, you see. We haven't yet found an expression for this epoch-making change of all your terms. If you speak of free enterprise, you never mean today your own enterprise. You mean always somebody else's enterprise. But in 1800, when Mr. Jefferson spoke of free enterprise, he meant that everybody had an enterprise. Did -- don't you know this? And now you have lost 2 and-a-half million farmers in the last five years. So you will understand that there is very little hope { } free enterprise, in the sense -- old sense of 1800. Only the big enterprises, which we have, you see, are, so to speak, directly responsible to the public now for their functioning, and not via Congress. The people -- Mr. {Fairless} or whoever it is, is a public -- servant in his own right, and as he understands the public interest. And it hasn't to go through an election, or Congress, or -- or the - the mill of the bureaucracy in Washington. The corporations have their own bureaucracy, which is also quite ferocious.
So here we are, gentlemen. You have experienced an epoch-making event. And it is your business to put it through into -- as an epoch-making event. The sooner you bury the old slogans of the 19th century, you -- the sooner you will make peace. But this country is a laggard. At this moment, the cultural lag in this country is, I think, only excelled by France in recognizing the epoch-making character of the two world wars, you see. It is not said. I told you that "foreign aid" is an -- an expression of the 19th century. It is not foreign aid if after two world wars people say that the allies of these world wars belong to each other. What's foreign about that? That's allied aid, at least, is it not?
So you experience these things, every day. But you don't know it and you don't want to know it. And the papers do everything to -- not to allow you to know it. You see, a newspaper is a creation of the 19th century, and therefore it capitalizes on this situation, between 1789 and the First World War. Modern newspapers are just obsolete. They still have a type of news reporting that is -- goes together with the development of the bourgeois class, you see, new enterprise -- free enterprise in the old sense, you see -- free flow of capital, free flow of wor- -- labor, free flow of goods across, you see, new markets. It's a time of the
formation of new markets, for which the newspapers were invented. Once you have settled, as today, where you have quotas, where you know how much wheat is produced all over the globe, where you have surpluses, where you have to -- where you have to pay the people not to raise corn, we live in a new era. And the paper -- newspapers, I think, are far behind the people today. I think every common man is today superior to the content of his newspapers in his own experiences of life.
He knows that -- what the corporations mean in his own life. I mean, I -- look into my little village. We have 1300 inhab- -- oh now, it's 1500 inhabitants, you see. When I came, nine-tenths of the people in this town made their money in Norwich. Today one-tenth of the people make their -- earn their living in Norwich. Nine-tenths make it by belonging to big corporations, with -- which reach into this Norwich, simply by the way of the -- by the fact that people live in Norwich, you see. But they get their money, their paycheck from elsewhere. So there is no Norwich. What you call "towns," gentlemen, doesn't exist anymore. If nine-tenths of a -- of people who live in a community don't earn their living in this town, the town has ceased to be a town. You see, that's not a town anymore. It has no common economic interest anymore. And that's -- goes -- that's in your -- all your hometowns the case, is it not? Who is from Montclair? Anybody from Montclair? No? I mean, it can also be something else. White Plains.
Very important for you, gentlemen. Again, an epoch-making event: the majority of people today no longer live in communities, in the old sense. The word "community" is used for -- bandied around by you for absolutely something that has an absolute different meaning. And that has all come about by the two world wars, by the whole process of -- of tremendous public orders all over the country. The industry has become nationwide in every respect, and even worldwide. The sooner then you know that every word you use is tainted, or re-colored, or rewritten by an event that separates your use from the use in the 19th century, you see, the more you will be up to date. It -- there is not one word in your vocabulary of communal life -- of common life that has not lost its old meaning. In -- whole word groups have been lost, like the word "adolescent" or "virgin." It would be no sense to speak of you as adolescent, gentlemen. You aren't. A man of 1950 in -- in our modern industrial society no longer recognizes this -- this situation, gentlemen. A -- a -- a biologist has written a whole book on the disappearance of this -- of this stage in modern life, because urbanized people, gentlemen -- urbanization cuts out this impressionability of the adolescent and puts it in -- puts in its place -- I don't know how you call the male teen-ager? Is he also a teen-ager? How do you call a man between 14 and 20?
[unintelligible]
No, I thought that was reserved for ladies. Ja?
All right. The -- "teen-ager" has replaced the "adolescent." And this goes very deep, gentlemen. It goes into your body. It goes into your physiology. It goes into the length of your legs. It goes into your whole building. The type -- teen-ager type is as far apart from an adolescent as though you belonged to a different species. The 19th century young man and the 20th century young man is an absolutely different being. I won't go too far to go into this, not in this connection, at least I can do it.
Now to come back, gentlemen. It took the Christian -- the Church themselves, the first 500 years to be aware of the new era. The great event of the coming of Christ was only ratified in 534, which coincides here with my break in eras. When the Christians began to count from the coming of the Lord, Anno Domini, the Christian era itself is a product of history. Christ came, but the Christian era only came 500 years later. The century from 534, gentlemen, to 650 is the century in which eras were introduced. It is very interesting, I think, for you to know, that the Jewish era and the Islamic era were all created in the same century. When the Christians said, "We no longer go by Greek history, by Roman history, by Roman emperors. We will now count -- beginning in 534, only by the years of the coming of the Lord, and we'll forget antiquity," you see. They had finally made, you see, room for the new Christian era, and uncluttered, so to speak, the consciousness of the people now living from their allegiance to the Roman Empire, you see, or to the Egyptian temple, or to anything else. It took 500 years. And there you have, by and large, an impression of the majesty of real history, gentlemen. When I read in The Times -- papers always these little cheap articles with an event -- somebody in- -- invented DDT, and that's an epoch-making event. It isn't, gentlemen, except for the flea.
Yes. Mr. Schlesinger, Jr., in Harvard, or -- insists that in -- 1873 was an epochmaking event because there was the first road -- street blacktopped in New York. Again, I say it is very bad for the horses, of course, when the blacktop comes into a town. So it is an epoch-making event in the life-story of the horses in New York, but otherwise it is not an epoch-making event, gentlemen, because the whole 19th century was based on inventions. So the problem of the 19th century was that every year there was an invention made: the telegram, and the railroad, and -- and needle, and, you see, everything. And therefore you cannot take out the blacktop road in 1873 and call this an epoch-making event, because people expected it. They were ready for progress. They were ready for change, you see. The whole 19th century was just wallowing in such discoveries and inventions.
(What about the electric -- bulb?)
Again, again. Ja.
(What about the -- atomic energy?)
What?
(What about the atomic bomb? How would that --)
Well, that's a typical American technological error. With your {families,} you always confuse the means and the end. The world wars are the epoch-making event, and the atomic age is just the { } part of it. It is not the thing. I'm not -- have never been impressed by the atom bomb or the hydrogen bomb, gentlemen. I'm very much impressed by physics, and by the -- by the reverence you have for science. These are dangerous things. The atom bomb -- who cares for the atom bomb? I mean, it's an externalization. You are all extroverts. You don't want to know the real reason, so you fling it and project it into something utterly external. I mean, the atom -- the atomic age to me is the compliance with stupidity.
Epochs can only be made where the ways of men are actually, you see, totally changed. Since there is conscription in America, that's epoch-making. But how is it treated here? You dodge the draft. Everything is done to conceal from the country that a man owes his country now military service. That's not talked about. That's the real issue. So the draft is full of injustices in this country. It is absolute, to me, intolerable the legislation on draftees and -- and -- and draft boards. But it cannot be pursued, because everybody, you see, uses his empty brain for discussing the atom bomb of which he knows nothing and of which he shouldn't know anything. But { }. And this is a weapon. What's interesting about weapons, gentlemen? Who talks about weapons? It's a means, but you -- since in this country there is a conspiracy, you see. A good American is a man who declines to discuss ends. He wants to discuss means. That's -- has very much to do with our minority question. If you have a country that consists of 300 minorities, 300 denominations, you see, 300 languages, you can only discuss means, because you 'll never agree on ends.
So we have no foreign policy, because nobody agrees on ends. Do we support Israeli, or do we not? Nobody knows.
[Tape interruption]
... means and ends. All the unimportant things -- which car you buy, you study this for six months. Yes, you do. But other -- the -- the important decisions of your life, pure accident. Just -- just this way {to start}. You meet a girl, "Will
you marry me?"
She says, "Let me ask this question."
Now this serving-up, gentlemen, slow serving-up of human consciousness to what has happened is inherent to all epochs. As I said, the -- it is obvious that in England, down to the First World War, there were still people who had not quite realized that the Americans were a great nation. There were still people condescending. The Irish in Boston to this day have sti- -- not yet realize that they have left Europe. They still have a paper, a weekly, in which they list the massacres of the Irish by the British centuries ago.
Now I -- Christianity is -- is a very human affair. It starts from our human weakness. The spirit of God is killed every day. That's the first great assumption of Christianity. We are all killing the Christ -- the spirit of -- the divine spirit, gentlemen. And the great story is that we are allowed to survive this, if only once in our life that we come to this awareness that we are murderers, that we have always killed the prophets, that you now read -- Soren Kierkegaard, because he lived a hundred years ago, and wouldn't be heard in his own time. I mean, it is with every spiritual experience. Now you have a movie on Bill Mitchell, but first he had to be court-martialed. And you wouldn't even like the idea that you had recognized him there. The -- the -- was so much nicer to see now a man suffer in retrospect, you see. We all have this -- have this lag. It's wonderful to read of old martyrs and --.
I met a very good English person here the other day in the library. And she was so furious when she looked at the Orozco frescoes, at the -- Christ there coming down from the Cross. And she said, "That's really a comforting picture." All these people -- these so- -- alleged Christians I meet, they take it for granted that the Lord had to go to the Cross. The whole lesson should be that we must prevent Him from going to the Cross. Otherwise, we have not learned anything. And that at least Mr. Orozco tries to tell the people. That it -- as long as we insist that always the spirit of God has to be murdered, you see, we of -- of course live in antiquity. She was quite angry, really, with the world.
You just sit down and accept the Cross as -- as a necessity, and you don't take an oath and say, "I -- as far as I'm concerned, I shall prevent the next crucifixion."
So, because Christianity however is very realistic, {has} no illusions about you and me, gentlemen, it -- it also has made all the faults, and all those -- these -- the slowness of Christian history. Five hundred years before the Christians demanded from every member of their church to shake themselves off from all prejudices of secular, ancient history, to say the only event that matters now -- from now on
for your consciousness is the era of the Lord. You understand? It is the same as if we would suddenly free ourselves from our American environment, you see, and only concentrate on the spread of the Gospel in the world. It would be a -- very hard for you.
Now, what I have to do today, and you must allow me this, because my time is, of course, limited, is to show you the very miraculous march of events in our era. If -- if you look back, I have every right to say that this was the first group of organized life on -- on this earth, of conscious life, and this was the second. And then the world flipped into Greeks and into Jews. Now, with the coming of Christ, you can see that the first carrier of the message is the Church. And that is just -- let me put here the word "Israel" to make it even more stringent. The Church is a new Israel. Now in the second cen- -- thousand years, gentlemen, there has been created one world -- you cannot deny this -- out of innumerable empires. That is, whereas in the first thousand years of the history of our era, the main interest lies on the fact that the place of the old temple in -- of Jerusalem is taken over by the new Israel, by the Church. In the second thousand years, the reception on the Renaissance is of the empires of old. Out of the Chinese, and the Egyptian, and the Roman Empire, as the Mexican Empire, in -- from the Crusades to the world wars, we have made one world, one world out of empires. Now an empire is a world by itself. You'll remember we said it is an earth brought under direct control of Heaven as a -- as a simile of the universe. It is a cosmo-{praetor}, a ruler of -- of the universe, what we call "emperor." We live today in 1956, or 2000 without emperors. And therefore we live in a one world. There is not yet an empire of America. It may be tried. As you know, Bernard Shaw wrote this beautiful play on {the new} coming emperor of America. Who has read or seen The Apple Cart? No, Bernard Shaw? The Apple Cart? You only go to Hammerstein?
Now gentlemen, today begins the racial question to be important. And the question of marriage, and the question of intensity of living in the family group. The family is destroyed today. The community is destroyed today. The neighborhood is destroyed today. And therefore, obviously, gentlemen, today the problem shifts again after the world has become one. And after the new Israel has been created, we will have a revival, a renaissance of tribalism. Mr. Gaugin went already to the South Sea to {start it}. Who has seen Gaugin? Picture? Well, I'm serious. That was his experience, that he had to -- to -- no longer to serve the countries, you see, of Europe, but to introduce a spirit that was lost. And that is the problem of the old {natives}.
Now all this time, gentlemen, the Greek spirit, which is the -- is the spirit of the schools, has gone on the side. You have -- you have the fathers of the Church, Origen and St. Augustine, reading Plato and reading Aristotle. You get
the scholastics, and you get the so-called modern philosophers reading Greek philosophy again. And you may have, of course, some such scientific school, system paralleling. In other words, gentlemen, in our era, there are 3,000 years to be discerned. The first thousand years, you put all the lamplight -- how do you say it? Yes, the -- no -- the floodlight -- the floodlight on the true Church. The story of the new Church is that Israel didn't make for -- didn't {proselytize}. The Christian Church is mission. We can put the word "mission" here, on this. What is mission, gentlemen? Mission transforms all the gods into the service of one God.
So I -- I -- one could call the first thousand years of our era as the story -- give it the title, "God of gods." The -- Jahweh, the god of the Old Testament, is now really in the mouth of all the Gentiles victorious over their gods. That's the story of the Church. You know -- have heard of all these -- of these compromises made there. The saints entered the Church, because the -- some remnant of the divine powers developed in these various groups, of course, can -- could not be overthrown. Christianity has absorbed all these {stories}. And this absorption is its great merit. It has been held against the Church, but you just have to think of your own papers on Halloween, on your own papers on any {frost} festival, of Easter or Christmas. Of course, when you go to people who already have festivals, you see, you can't do anything else, but make them aware that they are a part of the larger, you see, divinity, inside which they move.
Now gentlemen, the second thousand years has been the -- the age of discovery and of revolutions. All revolutions of the last 9- -- of the last thousand years have been secular, worldly. The history of the first thousand years is ecclesiastical history, in its in- -- main interest. The history since the year 1000, however, has become the history of secular revolutions.
What is this, gentlemen? What's a revolution? A revolution is an attempt to make out of separate worlds one world, to put it mildly, or to put it succinctly. That is, gentlemen, for the word "revolution," the term "world" is important. For the term "mission," the term "Church" is important. Now the Church has a relation to antiquity as the old Israel has to the new Israel. The combining link is that the Church also prays the Psalms and also reads the Old Testament, and also praises Zion and recognizes that the Jews already believed in the living God and in the coming of the Lord.
With world revolutions, gentlemen, today we say the ancients also lived in worlds, only they were separate worlds. The Hindus still believe in many worlds. And -- hard to prove that there is only one world, you know, mathematically. You cannot. I mean, the -- the -- it's an assumption of science, you see, that you go -- come -- it's the best solution, and with the Copernican system. It's simpler to
believe in one world than in many. But if you wish to believe in many worlds --. In your head there are many, many worlds. Most American people, gentlemen, have watertight departments or compartments in your -- in your own head. I mean, I told you already last time that you were able to write a paper without even thinking one moment that I talked about this content of this paper all this half-year here in class, which is quite an achievement. And it shows that many worlds have room inside your -- inside your skull. I have not -- do not understand it, quite, but it is a fact that you can absolutely separate various impressions, what we call -- with several worlds. A man in Egypt and a man in China just simply bow to the fact that they lived in different worlds. And I think this is the same -- true -- a man in Ohio, who says, "What is the rest of the world to me? I mean, I won't send my boy to -- to the Near East for soldiering. That's not my world. I don't live in this world at all, wouldn't you agree?" Practically we still don't believe in one world, gentlemen. So I think the next hundred years will see the consummation of this faith in one world, but don't think that you already believe it. You know it, but you don't believe it.
Therefore, the epoch of the second thou- -- millennium is, I think, very incomplete. In Europe, everybody believes in the oneness of the world, because they have American and Russian soldiers, and they have the jet planes over their heads, and they are not of their own nation. You don't believe in one world. You know it. I told you the story, I think, of Mr. Stefansson, did I? Mr. Stefansson, when the war broke out -- here, our Arctic explorer -- went to Washington and said, "You have known that the world is round, have you not, for 400 years?"
"Oh," they laughed and said, "What do you mean? That's just a joke. Of course, we know that."
"Yes," he said. "You know it, but you have never believed it. Otherwise you would fly to Japan via Alaska and not via Hawaii, because it is shorter, since the globe is round. You have known it, but you have not believed it."
Gentlemen, it's the greatest -- a very great saying.
Will you take this down, perhaps, for your own satis- -- your learning? That faith and knowledge have nothing to do, as you think, with first having faith and then knowing. You think people are in their childhood religious, and go to church, and then you go to science, and then you know. No, gentlemen. You are the terrible people who know things, and don't believe them. And that's really the -- with most people. You know that you shouldn't -- that you are married for better, for worse. But you go, and don't believe in it, so you get a divorce.
Gentlemen, a colleague of mine had the misfortune that his wife had --
underwent the great trouble -- mental pain and agony in her years of change. And she -- he has a sister. This sister is a high-church lady. Very, very, very pious indeed. And the first thing she did when this good wife got in trouble, she went to her brother and said, "Now you must divorce her. She's no longer of interest to you as a woman, is she not?" There you have a person who confesses, you see, who knows that marriage is a sacrament, but she doesn't believe it.
And most of you, gentlemen, are in the -- in the predicament which you do not even know exists. You would always hold that a man first has faith, and then he loses his faith, and then he gets knowledge. I assure you, gentlemen, that you have so much knowledge, that you cannot implement it by your belief. And knowledge is no good if you don't believe in it. It is -- your mind is in the -- quite opposite state from what you think. You -- you know too much, and you believe too little. But that's not a different content. I don't ask you to believe anything which you do not know. But I would like you to believe what you know, you see. It's much more difficult. You know that the world is one, but you don't believe it. Otherwise it would be impossible to call foreign aid "foreign aid." And so many other things.
So I would like to say it will be the hardest thing for the Americans, whose cities have not been destroyed in this war by bombing, to believe that we live in one world. It will only happen probably after -- before it has been destroyed, because people won't learn without feeling. They just don't, I mean. They won't believe. You will not act upon the lessons of this world war. I don't know why, but all my friends tell me that all the measures that should be taken in this country are politically out, because the electorate will not vote for them. It will not, because it doesn't believe what it knows to be true. And it doesn't want to be reminded of what it knows. We are in a coma, today, a total coma called "prosperity."
Now gentlemen, the third era -- millennium is, as I said, only just starting. It's the problem of -- not of mission. It's not the problem of revolution. It is the problem of re-vivification, revival, in the deeper sense of revitalization. Man has -- is in danger by his own great achievements in matters of the unity of the human soul, of -- or religion, and in matters of unifying the -- the world to lose his vivacity, his vitality. You are bored, you are decadent, you are indifferent. The -- the slogan of America is, "I don't care." You even think that's polite. Now if you ask a child, "Do you want some ice cream?" And the child says it to -- "I don't care," that's a very bad sign for civilization, gentlemen. A child is a person who cares. And when you introduce this slogan, " I don't care," into your soul, gentlemen, it's rusty. You kill it. The whole problem of life is to care. As soon as you introduce this as the standard slogan, "I don't care," you have no long- -- no approach to these people. They -- they just fall apart. And the loneliness of the American
soul comes from this -- from this training in -- in saying to others, "I don't care." Still have no approach.
Gentlemen, you can only get along with other people in intimate terms if you care for the same thing. You see? Gentlemen, people belong to the -- each other who have the same future. Anything that belongs to the future is of intense importance. Anybody with whom I have no future I have nothing to say to, either. I have nothing common with people with whom I do not share the future. There are very few people, therefore, with whom I am really interested to speak, because I do not share your -- your vision of the future. I do not. And you do not share mine. I try, of course, here to -- to -- to get you to see that there is perhaps a more important future at stake than what you think your future, gentlemen. But that's a condition of my interest in you, because you cannot help --. It is -- the end of life, gentlemen, is determined -- is determining your grouping. It cannot help. Only from the end are we assimilated. America, as a melting-pot functioned, because all America has the same future. The great epoch-making event of the two world wars is, gentlemen, that this is no longer the case. All Americans, down to 1917, had this same great future of America at heart. The independence of America, for example, from English and foreign capital, which was achieved just at the outbreak of the First World War, you see, we ceased to be a debtor nation here. That has made everybody very proud. Every achievement before the First World War was the common achievement of all Americans.
Now pardon me, but I no longer share the {condition} of -- of Mayor Wagner of New York to have one more taxpayer in New York, on Manhattan. That's his great obsession. It's not my future. It's not your future, you see. It's Mr. Wagner's future. Now that's just a little example of the fact that the future of America, gentlemen, today is no longer epoch- -- epoch-making for all. I think one world today is much more drawing -- a drawing card for uniting people in serious devotion.
I had a visit -- two days ago from a businessman from Baltimore. And he said to me that he had sold his business, and he wanted to get into the international economic agency of our government. He was a first-rate man, a wonderful character who sees that the future of America is in this field of international cooperation with whom I can talk immediately on any issue -- you see, religious, philosophical, artistic, anything -- literary, because he has the same future. But I cannot, for example, talk to the people who do -- who think this man is a fool. And I think still the American -- majority of American businessmen would think he is a fool. And with who -- them I have nothing in common. They live in the 19th century. Against all reasonableness, they still think that their own business can get bigger, without the whole world being at peace, or integrated. It cannot. They betray themselves. They'll have -- and make inflation. And they make infla-
tion, for this reason. They want to see on paper that they get richer, gentlemen.
Today nobody can get richer in money values. You can only get richer in productivity. Anything that is trying to make money is destructive today, of the future, because the whole emphasis has shifted from the monetary side -- from the dollar side to the productive side. It is today important where you get uranium. It's not at all important how many dollars you have. That hasn't seeped in. In America today, gentlemen, the battle today is fought between the money side of the ledger and the -- the commodity side of the ledger. Products, services, you see, they are today the real val- -- wealth of a country. Physicists, you see, inventions, and such things. Money? We can create money. We can -- we can abolish money. On one day, with a pen -- stroke of the pen, Mr. Roosevelt devaluated the American dollar from 100 percent to 60 percent. Now, after you have done this, you see, nobody can believe in dollars. Yesterday Mr. {Lawrence} -- this great -- this great prophet of -- of capitalism prophesied that we would have an inflation, so he abolishes all saving capital. It's just done. The money side today doesn't command respect. There are many people in this room who haven't learned this lesson, gentlemen. One of the epoch-making changes of the world wars is that when you have to fight with real planes and real bat- -- real -- real soldiers and real ammunition, and allies even, and planes, you don't ask, "What does it cost?" you see. You only ask, "How do I get it?" As soon as you ask, "What do I get?" you see, the question of money is overshadowed by the question of {quality}.
And you can, I think for your own consumption, gentlemen -- I think the way of noting the epoch-making event, that we have become one world is: in one world, money loses its importance. Money is necessary between empires. It is necessary as a coin that can, you see, im- -- impress people of different sovereignty. If you have to send gold from one sovereign state to another, you are a Greek who can trade. As soon as you have anything international, like the Western world, or like the -- the NATO, the movements inside are not money-dominated, or money-explained, anymore. You have to get the money, because you have to get the planes. But the planes comes first. And they -- how they are built, where they are built, who builds them, you see, what's the training of the man is -- who builds them -- all these things take first seat. So social insurance is much more important today for the economy of America, you see, than a big bank account of anybody. The big bank account you will water down by inflation. If you need the social insurance, that's what we are doing.
An epoch-making event reshapes even your economic thinking. You wouldn't believe it. But that's just what's happening under your noses, gentlemen. You all -- not one of you is an old-time capitalist anymore. You cannot. Just doesn't exist anymore. The thinking has just gone by default. The difference between capital-
istic system, gentlemen, and world war thinking is -- is not socialism and Communism. They are dead dodos. I've never been a socialist, gentlemen. I've never been a Communist. I've been attacked by both. I have never been interested in an issue. Socialism and Communism is not an issue. The issue is between money and goods. That's the real issue of -- as long as you have many communities separate by sovereignty and trade between, every interest focuses on the balance of payments, you see. As soon as you integrate the economy, your whole interest is the { } {worker}. The availability of the people who produce these surpluses. You suddenly see the worker behind his wages -- paycheck, you are no longer interested in how many dollars the mineworker gets. {But does he live in a flat}, you see? Will he be infected, will he be in- -- if then unable to serve in the army? His teeth you suddenly become very interested in, because he can't be a good soldier if he has no teeth, you see. And that's a very important put in the -- point in the budget.
And this is happening under your noses, gentlemen. And I think you will all -- agree, that if you analyze, you begin to learn, despite the Tucker -- Tuck School that good business today is dealing not with money, but it is dealing with production. And it is dealing with the eternal, the perpetual production. And for perpetual production the first thing is no strikes. And the satisfaction of the people in the -- in the business, you see. And the money side can be manipulated. And it is manipulated, in an -- incredible fashion already today.
Very unscrupulously, by the way. And again, I feel, gentlemen, this great issue of our time, which you have the great privilege to live through, is one of the greatest experience of the remaking of the human mind, in the face of great events, of epoch-making events. Why is there no poet who writes this, no novelist? They deal with -- cope with homosexuality, and cocaine, and drug -- dug -- and juvenile delinquency, and all this nonsense, gentlemen. Does anybody deal with the real, great transformation of the human soul and the human spirit? It's happening, just the same.
So what I've tried to show you here, gentlemen, is that if this is Number 3, then the great shame is in our own era that we have gone backward. The first -- last thing we'll see from antiquity -- Israel, the Old Testament, the prophets -- is the first thing received into the consciousness of humanity. The new Israel replaced the old Israel. That's the story of the Church. Then comes -- the one world replaces the old empires. That's the story of the second millennium. Today, gentlemen, how can we call the Tribe of tribes? The society, the great society of the future will have to replace the -- the first layer of human order in which mankind began his -- in his -- their march 10,000 years back. Isn't this a very miraculous story? In our era, we have re-opened the trial, we have re-opened the due process of law of these frozen layers of geology, of human history. These
were the first -- the three great layers, you see, of antiquity. And we have opened them by digging down. The third thing is -- that we -- { } therefore -- we read the Psalms to this day in every Church, even the Baptist Church.
The second thing is, gentlemen: we go into these great countries and force them open, and say, "You are under one sky, therefore you must also be one land. There cannot be many lands, you see. You have all -- have occupied, have monopolized the sky for your calendar, for your work. We must unify this. Now we have one calendar, and therefore one world." And -- this is however the year of the Lord 1956. Here we stand on the verge of the transition of the second millennium to the third, gentlemen. And therefore the {light} of humanity now goes into a new direction. Our factories, gentlemen, must become sociable. They must take the place of the old family, of the old tribe, of the old groups on the warpath. If you have now one world which produces -- the enthusiasm in producing, in working must equal the enthusiasm, the intensity, the loyalty of the warriors of old.
And so gentlemen, there is a new chapter to be written. What I have -- what I am proud of, what hasn't been done before, gentlemen, I'm able in this -- in this scheme to place you in our place in history. That is, we have as much future as we have past. I do not say that history can limit itself to bring up events to today. That would be no history. That would have -- explain nothing, gentlemen. History is not the past, but history is our determination of where we stand: between the future and the past. There are -- is still unfinished business. You still have the Amazon -- Stone Indian tribes, dying now from consumption. And you still have -- or you already have a completely disenchanted humanity living in one world, and having one theology; but having no warmth, no affection, loneliness, lunatic asylums. And no {teeth}. The old tribes had very good {teeth}. Excellent {teeth}. They had very great families, and very great loyalty, and very great affection, with the care to reproduce them.
So the last thing I would like to say is: God of gods, World of worlds, and Tribe of tribes would be then the problem of these three millennia. The God of gods, is called the Trinity. Because the Trinity is the constant process of making one more god part of the living God. Trinity is {mission}. You must speak of Trinity in order to make people conceive of the living God as {greater} than anything they knew before. World of worlds, gentlemen: you go to the Hindus, and you go to Washington, and you have to tell them that Alaska is nearer to Japan than Hawaii. And you have to do something about it. And so, World of worlds is a clear -- I think a clear formula. The whole process of a thousand years was, beginning with the Norsemen, with the Greenlanders, to create one world out of -- many separate, { } separate worlds. And today you have to create one society out of these different tribes of men -- "races," you can call them. { } is
more agreeable to you. I prefer, of course, "tribe." You can also say a Family of families, which is very typical, gentlemen. A Family of families, you see. The modern family is -- where it exists, it is too egotistical, too integral. Clannishness is not -- is the problem today, you see. Can also { } Clan of clans. Now clannishness is {static}, and it is -- doesn't open. Obviously, gentlemen, the great society must have the power to work, to connect many families without destroying, you see, their intensity.
So that's the theme of a real universal history.