Transcript

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{word} = hard to understand, might be this

...army, navy, and related forces. I'm very sorry to say -- the -- this has been discussed with the dean, and we can't see our way out. So you cannot -- you can audit the course, but you cannot really take it, if you have obligations on -- on Mondays at 2:30. And so I must ask you just to forgo our company. I mean, you -- you are very welcome here, but I can't give you credit for the course. It's a -- it's a -- it's e- -- real collision.

The second thing -- so these are -- these -- 1, 2, 3, all the wonderful blue and green uniforms: I'm very sorry. But the other thing I would like also to say, technically speaking, is that we shall move to a better place, to Carpenter 103, and -- so we'll not get lost in this too-big audience. So will you kindly make a note and -- in your memory and come tomorrow to Carpenter 103? That's the upper room, of course, the art room of Professor {Packard}. {Will} you find there some good and some poor paintings.

The third thing I'd like to mention is the assigned reading. There is -- there are a number of assignments in these stacks, or at the reserve desk. And I'm very anxious to see you get going with this pamphlet, "Time-bettering Days." It's on a two-day loan. There are, I think, 18 copies. So we are 60 men. There will be then an opportunity for all of you to read it in the first fortnight. And it's very important for me that you have this background for your own term paper. This is my term paper, so to speak, on the topic on which you also will have to write. So please get going -- if you possibly can, today. {Richard}, you already know it, don't you?

(Yeah.)

And -- you may read it again. And -- "Time-bettering Days," it is called. It is this size here, this pamphlet. So everybody please tries to get it. And will those who take it out on a two-day loan help their comrades by reading -- res- -- re- -- bringing it back in time? That's the first assignment. And I cannot wait until the class has been shaken down to its final composition, because the -- it's the basis of all your own work. So please get going right away. The assigned book which I would like you to acquire is at the bookstore, at the Dartmouth Bookstore. It's called The Western -- The Driving Power of Western Civilization. Arm yourself with this book. It's a rather small book, and bring it to class, please, for the next fortnight again, because all -- this is another help for your own work. The Driving Power of Western Civilization. They have it under "Philosophy 58," I -- I -- in supply.

So I think these are the four technical things at this moment. Once I know all of you as final customers, I shall ask you to write reports. The -- extraordinary setting of the course, wi- -- with regard to -- the schedule, gentlemen, has a very simple reason. I have to leave the college at the end of April. And therefore, there -- have to be -- has to be one meeting more during those weeks, you see, previous -- next 10 weeks, so that we come out even with the ordinary college requirements. So we -- you will be free all -- month of May. You can write your girl: she can come up and stay.

And this explains to you, gentlemen, of the -- you see, why I am in this predicament. You see, I cannot -- I used to -- give these courses, you see, Tuesday and Thursday, exclusively. But we have to -- to do it this way, this year.

So, let me now read you a note by a student, which gives you quite a -- I hope I brought it. Because it gives you a -- by and large, a picture of what we are -- shall try to achieve here in this course. He wrote it during the last term, in another course, by the way.

"If we abolish an institution by robbing it of its sacred produce"--that's his imaginative expression--"If we abolish an institution by making it sterile, by robbing it of its sacred produce, then it will come back at us with a vengeance, in the future. No thing on our earth can be completely eliminated or annihilated without its coming back to cause violent repercussions in the future. This is only natural, because we are destroying God's plan. We must expect to be punished basically for so flagrant a violation of His creation. Without our keeping the past in some form, there would be a gap in history. To wipe out any form of the past is to assure that it will return with a vengeance in the future."

I would like you to put this in your notes at the beginning, and I'll repeat it therefore, because it is -- seems to me very important:

"If we abolish an institution by robbing it of its sacred produce, then it will come back at us with a vengeance in the future. Nothing on our earth can be completely eliminated or annihilated without its coming back to cause violent repercussions in the future. This is only natural, because we are destroying God's plan. We must expect to be punished basically for so flagrant a violation of His creation. Without our keeping the past in some form, there would be a gap in history. To wipe out any form of the past is to assure that it will return with a vengeance in the future."

You will admit that this goes basically against everything you are made to believe today. The past, you think, never takes revenge. The past is the past, and history is bunk, as the immortal Henry Ford has said. If history is bunk, then it cannot take revenge. If it makes no difference that the red Indians here were

wiped out by the American immigrants, and that for this reason, we have no right to complain about colonials -- empires who have not wiped out the people in Algier, and Tunis, and Morocco, and elsewhere, because they have acted better than we, and now we claim we have a right to this country without the Indians, and we claim that they have to get out of Algier--because they let the people live there--then something terrible must happen, because we are then involved in a terrible hypocrisy -- in which we are involved. This country is a great liar in this respect, because we have no colonies, because we have just destroyed the people who lived in the 13 colonies first, then in the 40 -- 35 others, too. We have not managed to -- to settle these people, or to transform them into a nation, like the English have done with the Hin- -- In- -- people in India, or the -- in many other parts of the world. But this is only reasonable, gentlemen, to mention, if the past is just as legitimate as the present and the future in certain aspects.

What these aspects are, which have to be kept, is of course a permanent riddle. If we have now tractors, gentlemen, must horses remain, or can they be wiped out? Question, you see: how many horses must remain? Think of the wild pigeons in this country, and of the buffalo, and now of the tiger, and leo- -- panther who is murdered by the thousands by rich Americans in central Africa at this moment, just for the fun of it, from their armored cars. Is that right, because they have the money? Can they destroy the last remnants of the first stages of the creation of life on this globe? Obviously some -- it isn't so simple, as I have tried -- he has put it here; we do not quite know how many tigers must remain, and how many horses. It isn't absolutely not right that the tractor should take over where the -- where the workhorse did the job, you see. But it isn't the whole answer, you see. Somewhere there is still a soft spot in our heart for the horse. And so it is probably with many other things.

And now -- this may -- to explain to you the title of this course. It's a rather stiff title. The former dean of this college agreed with me on it. And I hold no brief, really, for the title. I probably would have never invented it myself. It is called, "The Eternal Horizons of Mankind." And it means, of course, that something that has entered the scene in -- at one time then acquires a certain rank of eternity, of permanency. It has to stay.

There is a poem which predicts that at one time the ocean will be empty; there will be no -- ships on the ocean, because everything will be done by flying. The poem was, by the way, written a hundred years ago. It's quite a remarkable poem -- 110 years ago, in 1946. And the man obviously was drunk when he wrote it, because he said he would then pour a bottle of wine from the -- his airship, you see, into the ocean at -- at the time -- moment that this ocean was totally empty of ships, you see. That would be his triumph.

Now I don't believe this. There will always be a sailboat; there will also be a yacht still on the ocean, you see, even if for all practical matters of commerce or so, we -- we will all fly. You can see this, that it's hard to think that the ocean -- that there will be absolutely no sea-geh- -- sea-going vessel left. Still, you see the change -- already at this moment, that plenty of pers- -- passenger-passages across the ocean is now in the hands of the airlines, and more to come.

"Eternal horizons" is also -- is therefore -- puts this question before us, and that's the -- the topic of the course. Things rightly created, rightly invented, rightly discovered, and rightly produced, you see, have a right to go on. And cannot simply be forgotten. And this question then, of staying for new qualities of the human race, gentlemen, is the question of all questions of history, that the question of the -- permanency and transmission of acquired faculties. This should be the problem, the task of any his- -- course in history. But as you well know, it isn't. In history, most people are told events that are not distinguishable according to the fact: have they s- -- lasted -- -ing effect or have they just happened once, you see? You are told about a battle, but you aren't quite told: what did the battle, in the end, you see, leave behind as a permanent achievement? Even with the Gettysburg Address, you can go to the South and hear them say that they after all won the Civil War. So that even the Gettysburg Address, and the Battle of Gettysburg, you see, we aren't quite sure, that it was really an historical event which acquired a faculty forever.

So that is our problem, gentlemen: the acquisition of new faculties of the human race forever, for good.

This question has bothered me since I was your age and before. And what I'm going to tell you here is what I have found out for myself. It is the thing I wanted to know. Nobody seems to care for this question. Everybody tells you what happened before and has passed away. If you read Mr. Toynbee, it's a very sad story, you see: it's all over. It's all over. And the same with Spengler, and the same with all history books: "Once upon a time," you see, and then they die, and it's all over. I'm not interested in the things that are all over with. I'm interested in the things that -- although now -- please -- you ta- -- please mark and note this paradox: although they happened at one time for the first time, at the -- on the other hand, acquired the power, the staying power of remaining permanent. I'm not interested in freak events. That belongs to nature. If the Mount Pel‚e throws up -- destroys the island of Martinique, that's a geological event, a climatological event, you see. It's not an historical event. Know when it happened? When was Martinique destroyed? Do you know where Martinique is? It's very nearby, you know. There's nobody -- wie?

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By and large, ja. Was a very terrible event, gentlemen. It's already forgotten. No lasting effect. I made the test by asking you, you see. So there is an -- onetime event. But it is outside the quest- -- the whole field which we are -- with which we are concerned, you see. We are asking for one-time events which have a lasting effect. Obviously there can be only very few such events, gentlemen. It cannot be an endless list of the 50 civilizations, or a hundred battles, or wars. Because we -- you and I, as we sit here, we aren't burdened with innumerable things, but with a number of qualities which we call civil- -- which we have to handle as civilized beings, or as children of our maker, or -- or whatever -- even as Americans, although there the burden is very light, as your costume indicates. I mean, just a shirt. No tie.

But the formality, gentlemen, of carrying acquired faculties now has a second -- poses a second problem. The event of the Mont Pel‚e -- eruption is -- of one moment, and belongs to the contemporaries of that event. And let us call it for this reason an event of one age. But as you know, when Stanton, the w- -- min- -- secretary of war under Lincoln, had to proclaim to the world that his president had succumbed to the -- to the assassination, you -- you know the famous sentence he coined? What did he say?

Oh, you know -- all know the sentence. You just can't make -- bring it together with the event. What did Stanton say when Lincoln died? You know, Lincoln is dead. He's not alive, yet. We celebrate his birthday on the 22nd, but the man is actually dead. Why should we celebrate the event--the birthday, of all things--of a man who died--it's very strange, you know--a birthday of a man who died -- when did he die, by the way? Wie? Ja? April? Was it April 9th, wasn't it? In 196- -- 1865? That's, by and large, now over 90 years. And we celebrate his birthday. I -- to tell you the truth, it is funny. We should have -- probably celebrate the day of his death. But that has profound reasons. And in -- in the process of this course, I can even explain to you why it so happens that we celebrate Lincoln's birthday. It's a very clear situation.

But whatever it is, we are not of his time. And you find then that Mr. Stanton realized that even in Dartmouth College, which defies the church calendar and every reasonable thing. It gets worse. We haven't even a Memorial -- no respect for Memorial Day at this -- in this college. On Decoration Day, there is lectures. On Good Friday, there are lectures, you see -- it's a very, very atheistic college. But Lincoln's birthday is at least known to you. We also -- we have classes on Lincoln's birthday, haven't we? Oh ja.

Still, you and I can talk about it, because the government hasn't quite given up the memory. And the mail carrier doesn't have to bring the mail.

There's a break today still in the calendar, because of an event, gentlemen, that happened 90 years ago--three generations ago--and that still reaches you and me. And I'm -- I am now insisting--and this shall be my whole problem today--to sell you the idea that we need a new vocabulary to distinguish between events that reach over its own -- their own time, you see, into other ages, and an event that is of its own time and age only. If we cannot make this distinction, we'll never know what can be called an "eternal horizon" or a "transmitted quality" -- acquired faculty of the race, you see. Anything that would go with you, you see, down to the unfathomable, you see, grave, to the bottomless pit, that would not belong to the ages. And what Stanton said when Lincoln was breathing his last breath was just that. He said --?

("{ } he {just} belongs to the ages.")

"Now" -- please, English is a wonderful language, and he didn't speak as you spe- -- -oke. But you have to speak as he spoke. That's another law, you see. He must make you speak his words, if they should reach these ag- -- this, our age. You cannot just make up the sentence: "Now he belongs to the ages." That's a very classical quotation, Sir. And it deserves to be known by heart. "Now he belongs to the ages." The funny thing is, you see, he had to die before he can belong to the ages. No living being, like Hitler, can belong to the ages. No Nero can be God. That's what we mean when we say, "No human being is God." But through his death, we can become divine.

Therefore, the "now" is very important, because only at the moment of a man's death--or at the moment of a critical test for any new institution, when it is put to the test, and survives this test of a mortal onslaught, and it is still valuable, you see, then it belongs to the ages. It doesn't belong to the ages when you found a fraternity. But when you survive the backball- -- blackballing of your three alumni and become a non-national fraternity on this campus, then you exist in your own right. Before, you are just Number 27 of one silly, superfluous chapter of this fraternity in the country, as you -- most of your fraternities exist. They just exist by the mercy of the filing cabinet.

You don't belong to the ages yet, gentlemen. You don't. You all -- and nobody belongs to the ages, gentlemen, who hasn't survived his death. In one form or other.

So I propose something very simple. It's a -- not a good expression, and I would love to -- to find a better one, but we need the word "age" in this new coinage of a phrase, of a terminology of terms. And therefore, I want you to understand that we wish to -- in this course to try to sift the events of -- which only belong to their own age, and the events which belong to the ages. And I

think that a dignified human endeavor, that you and I -- we cannot really be human beings if we cannot make this distinction. As long as you cannot make this distinction, gentlemen, you are animals. You are just swept away by stimuli and by accident. And most people insist that they should be animals, except then they suddenly have to invite a minister for a funeral, or they have to go to a marriage -- marria- -- to a wedding ceremony, and then suddenly they need the oldest words, and they need the -- the wedding dress, and they need music. And these are all of all ages, you see. And you -- nobody can live in his own age at all times. You need the Star-Spangled Banner; you need a passport of the United States if you want to travel in Asia. That is of the ages, you see, and that's not of your own time.

And of course, all -- all your family relations, back and forth, that you can have legitimate children--and illegitimate children, too, if you want to, and that there is a distinction between the two--has to do with the ages. A legitimate child is a child that belongs to his parents not because of a hot sumer night, but through the ages. That's the difference, the whole -- difference, you see: as of the moment, and as of per- -- permanence.

So my -- my very tentative expression is that there are single-aged events and pluri-aged events. As I said, I won't sell you this as anything linguistically nice. But you see, we live in an er- -- a time when you -- I think you will all agree with me on this--I would like to have your response--the word "eternal" means nothing to most people. "Eternity" is a nice expression, but it -- it doesn't carry any weight with anybody. If you say, "I tell you that you will be, you see, under eternal punishment in hell," you know better. You laugh. It makes no impression. You won't act on it. It makes no difference, you see. But because this is so, whether they -- the people are Catholics, or Jews, or Protestant, it makes no difference. I still have to find a living Ca- -- Catholic of age 20 who fears hell, you see. They just don't. And they can say so, but they don't act upon it. They commit exactly the same acts with and without hell, without eternity.

So I want to be very modest, gentlemen. I'm already satisfied if any event reaches the second or third generation. I don't wish to start with eternity in the blue sky, you see. But my problem is very simple: is Lincoln still alive in 1957? I have proof that he is. This is miraculous in a time in which everything changes every minute, you see. And so I think -- I call this "small eternity," or "short eternity," gentlemen. The problem of decent people today is not to ask for the eternal eternity, so to speak. But if you want to have something productive, and something fruitful, you see, you have to ask yourself: can it at least outlast three or four generations? You will admit that if you take yourself, and you are engaged to marry, and you get a veterans' loan, or something similar, you see--where you don't have to pay anything, and Uncle Sam pays, and you get a house--you

never think that your grandchildren will live in this house. Never. You see, these Levitt houses are not for grandchildren. And therefore, your whole hope is that you will move one to another location after three years, and another, and you -- where your children will live you don't know, and where your grandchildren will live, you don't know. Therefore, the manse or the mansion, or the real estate, or the house or the home, you see, is not your castle, really. It isn't. It is a tin can. And it is -- has to be thrown away like tin cans on the city dump. And therefore we can be sure of one thing: our home does not go through the ages. Stanton couldn't have said, you see, of a house: "Now it belongs to the ages."

And you will -- may ask yourself: how come? Why do we go to Europe, gentlemen? Because there are still places that belong to the ages. St. Peter in Rome is such a place, you see. And the Louvre. There are very few, of course. And Gethsemane in -- in Jerusalem is. But that's fading. We have fewer and fewer places today who bel- -- which belong to the ages. Perhaps we shall have none.

Does anybody recall the Whitman -- poem by Whitman, where he warns of lasting mansions? No. Whitman no longer -- who has read Whitman? Small minority only. You have? There is a poem in which he warns all of us not to build hou- -- homes for -- for the ages, you see, let alone for eternity.

So gentlemen, this is my vocabulary then. I -- this is to illustrate the title of my lectures. When I said, "Eternal Horizons," I meant it in the original sense of the word "eternal," which was very modest. Was a short-lived eternity, more than a mor- -- the -- lifespan of a mortal man, you see. That's the original meaning of the term "eternal": something lasting. But it had not the proud ring and hollow ring of a timeless eternity, you see. But it was a victory through time; a victory over the aging by time, you see; a -- the victory over the incessant collapse of memory, collapse of institutions, you see, collapse of continuity, collapse of permanency.

And so I -- ask you to consider this as the theme of the course, to learn to distinguish this single-aged events and qualifications of all of us, and the pluriaged. And this will explain to you the economy of this historical survey of universal history. This course is a universal history, gentlemen, of the transmitted qualities of the human race. It is a universal history, but it is not the universal history of the United States, and it is not a universal history of Europe. It is -- does not deal with countries; it doesn't deal with states, in this sense, you see. But it deals with those qualities which have to be transmitted from generation to generation, or they woul- -- were invented in vain. They were, so to speak, to no purpose invented. If everything is lost which we create, you see, then it isn't created. You see, then it is just purely accidental. But -- you will admit that a

tiger, and a mammoth, and an American, and a Roman may -- and an Indian may be a species that deserve to be retained. Because in their way, they may be -- they may be one-sided, but they deserve to exist. There is some fine product in an English gentleman. It would be a pity if -- if the Wallis Simpsons would wipe out the last English gentleman.

So it is this selective quality, gentlemen, of a pluri-aged event. And I can specify it very simply, gentlemen: the greatest of all these creations is the human language. We speak today English. That comes from Anglo-Saxon. Anglo-Saxons come from Indo-European. And this goes back to a -- to a time or -- in which we at this moment cannot very clearly penetrate. But there is some guesswork that at one time the Semitic language and the -- Indo-European languages were identifi- -- -able, that the groups Shem and Japheth really separated at one time. The reasons for this we'll perhaps mention later. It's quite exciting. I don't say that it has been proven. But it is absolutely possible that at one time, there was not this division between the Semitic languages, you see, and the Indo-European languages.

I mention this, gentlemen, because you and I are engaged, while you are living here in this college, in trying to procreate the English language. Whatever you do, you have a compulsory course in English. And that's not done because you must write advertising, but because the English language deserves to be handed over from generation to generation. That is a pluri-aged quality of the human race, as we speak. And we can see what happens in -- when people lose the power to speak, you see. They just cease to be human.

So, to speak is a very serious business, and it selects this event that one came into being, because it is obvious that people have not spoken at all times. And the -- at one time, they began to speak. And now you speak, and you take it for granted, gentlemen.

And allow me to say one thing: whenever an American college boy says "naturally"--for example, you say, "Naturally I speak"--then you -- he is confronted with a real miracle. Everything you call "naturally" -- "natural," gentlemen, is absolutely unnatural. I have watched this in all your papers and so. Whenever a man s- -- or also politician or a statesman says, "Of course, we shall," then I always note this with a -- mental -- with a mental red pencil and say, "Obviously there is some deep secret." When a man says, "of course," or "natural," it never is. He gla- -- he glosses over this, because there is his religion. He thinks the world cannot be organized differently. And he says "of course" and "natural" that to which he feels obliged, you see. "Of course, I can honor my obligations." But that isn't, of course, because I know so many people who don't honor their obligations. So if a man says this, he's just an honorable man, and he pledges himself at

that moment, you see, to do the extraordinary, the miraculous. To be an honest man is nothing natural. It's something very desirable, you see, and something excellent. It ha- -- but it has to be done. It doesn't come by itself. Any honorable man can lose his honor by doing one dishonorable thing the next day. So he shouldn't say "It is natural," you see -- or he -- he can say it, but I mean he shouldn't think it is very natural. And {weakness}. Never think, gentlemen -- when you read in the newspapers the expressions "of course," and "natural," you are always confronted with an historical mystery; you are always confronted with a quality of the human being, which has come down through the ages as such a sacred possession that nobody has dared to destroy it. And then you have to ask yourself what has to be done so that it may be -- last; but it can always be destroyed.

If you are a good Christian, you may know that any Christian can deny Christianity and destroy the Church. Every one of us can. You can make such monstrosities in the name of Christ that everybody else says, "I will not be a Christian, because this monster was a member of the Christian Church," you see. "How -- what good can a religion be that contains such a monstrosity?" Can't you -- don't you see that every one of you can destroy the Church? Bec- -- and there- -- it is not natural that the -- we all are Christians, gentlemen. The last thing it is. You see, it is most unnatural. And the Church would be bet- -- much -- much better off if all these na- -- nature-Christians, these Christian shirts, and all these people who call Christianity their anti-Semitism, or their anti-Negroism, if these -- these Christian gentlemen in the South would have no right to call themselves Christians. They aren't Christians. But they think they are made Christians by nature. In this very moment, the historical tradition is destroyed.

And that's perhaps the -- the practical, gentlemen, the practical use for this course, with you. My interest is perhaps more involved. But for you, it's very practical, I think, to become aware of the fact that without your regaining this respect for the difficulties of tradition, there can be no tradition. Anything which you call in this country, "100 percent American," or "red-blooded Americanism," and "Christianity," or "civilization," or "progress," gentlemen, is in greatest danger, because you take it for granted. If you take it for granted, it's already finished. Every scoundrel, every criminal, every neurotic, you see, can then claim that by the nature of things, he is an American, you see. And nothing can happen to him, so to speak, anymore. He is then your pal, and you have to accept him, although he is -- lousy.

In history, gentlemen, the reaching the next generation is always extraordinary. It is always extraordinary, never ordinary, that anything exists more than the lifetime of the person who does it first. The transmission of acquired qualities, gentlemen, poses this question: what is by its nature single-aged, and what

is by its super-nature, by its more-than-nature, able to be pluri-aged, to reach the other generation? When Lincoln was said to belong to the ages, it was said that he had ceased to be a merely natural being, who -- which is confined between birth and death, and after his death, you see, he is forgotten. Obviously the only quality Stanton meant to mention was that he had a certain quality which was not natural. You may not like the idea that anything in your existence should be not natural, but unfortunately that is so. What is non-natural, gentlemen, is -- are all the things that had to be started once, for the first time. Because nature cannot have any quality which it hasn't always. Man can. You and I have now a number of qualities which we hadn't before.

I mention a second quality, gentlemen; that's writing. Obviously there have large -- been large civilizations in which people did not write -- books, you see, or letters. They couldn't write. And you would admit that to you it is quite natural for you to take a postal card and write your daddy, "Send me the paycheck. I'm broke." You can write, and you take it for granted that it's only natural then, you say, that you can write. Obviously writing has had -- has eventuated much later than speech. People for thousands of years could speak and did not have any intention to write. They -- it would have made no sense, because the group in which they spoke was so small, and so much -- as of here, you see, that already around the corner, the people spoke a different language. So there was no reason to write a letter, you see, to somebody who spoke differently.

We'll see that this miracle of the invention of writing is the second chapter in our course, and I may then tell you that the first two chapters of this -- of this course will be the creation of language, or speech; and the second, the creation of writing.

You see that this involves many other things just as well. But for the time being, I -- this may suffice, to show you what I mean by a quality that has not existed at one time, and now enters the scene. We call this an historical event, gentlemen, or historical quality something that at one time did not exist; and at another time begins to exist; and at a third time, still has to exist. There are three qualities of such a thing. Writing is not a natural thing, because at -- long period of history, it didn't exist; at a certain period it suddenly begins, you see, to enter the scene; and to this day, it still exists. And people in the grade school have to learn to write.

Again, you say, "Of course." I warn you, gentlemen. I warn you. It isn't an "of course." There are many handicaps today, as to speech. So too, writing today in this country, which make it -- may obfuscate it, and to make it into a very perishable material. I think more people at this moment are officially engaged in writing things that should not be written than in things that should be written.

I -- yesterday met a boy -- Dartmouth boy on the plane. He is an ex- -- graduate. He went back to his pulp magazine in New York, and he -- I asked him, "What are you doing?"

And he said, "Well, I'm in this pulp magazine." I know -- I don't -- I think it's called Deep Secret or something like that. And -- I've forgotten the title.

Well, he was quite ashamed, and he -- when he was already up the -- the flight of stairs into the plane, he called back and said, "Really, professor. I have nothing to do with the writing. I am only for the mathematical computation of the distribution."

He was -- he felt ashamed that he should be engaged in an enterprise. He should be ashamed. I don't think that Deep Secret is a necessity, and it certainly does something to detract from the value of writing. And you would agree if you -- if all the textbooks in America were destroyed, no great harm done. And they form in this unique country, nine-tenths of the literary production of every year. This is unique. No other country has such a lopside production of books. In all other countries, you see, schoolboo- -- textbooks and schoolbooks are only onehalf of the production. But in America, where nobody reads anything, the only time when you can be forced to read something is at school, you see. And so among the books that are published every year in the United States, they are 90 percent textbooks; and they are worthless, because they only repeat. And obviously a book should be something in which something is said for the first time, don't you think? A good book. That's genuine writing, you see. Writing was invented to perpetuate things, you see, of one age, so that they could reach posterity. Think of Shakespeare, or think of Homer, you see. These are all things said once, you see, forever. The textbooks are not this type. They are only forever, but never once, I mean. The man hasn't thought this up for the first time. You see, he's only one-half of the story. Can you see the difference?

You have things that can be repeated, plagiarized, in a -- in a -- like a prayer mill in Tibet, you see. You say it again and again.

The other day, a friend of mine went with a Catholic lady, who is a stout Catholic, to church. And the lady is 30 years of age, and -- and goes every Sunday. And my friend asked her if she understood what the priest said when he said the Domine vobiscum, which means "O Lord, be -- be with you -- the Lord be with you."

And he -- she had no idea. "Domine vobiscum" was just textbook repetition, you see. She didn't know what it meant. And she thought he was -- she was going to church. She certainly wasn't. She had just an idea that this was how to

go to church. She had never learned how to go to church.

This -- I mean, gentlemen, this transmission of acquired faculties cannot happen as in the case of this lady, or in the case of the pulp magazine. Anybody who writes the pulp magazine does not write. He imitates writing. He plays on your curiosity to read something written, you see. And sends -- sells you something cheaper than you should buy. If you buy Homer, or Shakespeare, or the Bible, you get something that is said once, you see, perhaps orally to living -- among living people, and is so alive, that it deserves to go down through the ages. If you buy a pulp magazine, it is the opposite. It is so cut and dry, and so routine, you see. These men can go to sleep, I'm sure, and write while they are asleep, these pulp magazine stories. They are inferior. And they are inferior because they don't want to stand up and be counted, as having said something for the first time in a creative manner. But they want to reach a sale of 100,000 copies. That's all they care for.

Now a real poet, as you know, a real man who says something, like Lincoln of -- in the Gettysburg Address, does not care at this moment of age to whom he's -- to how many he speaks. He has to say it. As you know, the Lincoln -- the Gettysburg Address was thrown in the wastepaper basket by Lincoln himself, because he thought nobody had listened to it, and the main orator spoke three hours. And so he thought the main speech was not his, you see. So he threw the manuscript -- of the address into the wastepaper basket, and it was fished up there, and saved.

A pluri-aged event, gentlemen, is only a -- an event that in its own age was absolutely na‹ve, that was -- belonged wholly to its own age first, and that reached the next ages not by the vanity or the construction, or the gadgets of the man who -- or the people who did it, but be- -- by its own seed, by its own value. It's -- the survival value, gentlemen, that's something which you never consider, that the things we -- we do today -- we do, not because somebody before wanted us to do this, but because they are so good, that we can't think of being without them. Speaking and writing we do not do, because the first man who spoke, you see, thought of you and me. You can see this. I mean, how could he? But it has reached us--and the same is true of Lincoln: while he lived, he didn't think of his immortality, or he would have been a vain ass, would he not? You will -- must not think of your own monument, but you become a monument, without knowing it.

So the pluri-aged event, as I'm going to talk about, gentlemen, is not an event like the pyramids, that simply is there forever, because it w- -- nobody can destroy it, because it would cost too much, you see. And -- look -- go to -- go to our car cemetery, here -- over in Norwich, or wherever you see one, you see.

These cars, they may last a long time, many ages, you see, before they are rusted. But you will admit that they are not pluri-aged, you see. They are just there, and -- and they -- they do not go -- in time. Everybody would be delighted if they would dissolve after a while. They just don't.

"Pluri-aged" means, gentlemen, the innocence of the first generation, in the sense that he who acts, or he who creates, or he who does, does not act because somebody -- some life insurance has promised him that 200 years from now, you see, it will pay interest. That's an investment. That's something very different.

Let's have a break here. Five minutes.

[tape interruption]

Gentlemen, I have been told that there was a grave misunderstanding.

[tape interruption]

...of such a permanency. Obviously it -- it is quite useful, gentlemen, to make -- pause for a moment and to see the difference of the memory of Lincoln and the car cemetery. The car cemetery, where the old automobiles are rotting, is there all the time until the appointed date where snow, and mud, and what-not covers it up. Now you take a baby that passes on its -- a walk there, that sees this car cemetery always just as you see it. You were already 20 when it started. This child is born tomorrow, and it will see it, and perhaps even -- may -- its own -- this child's child may see it. And that I would call a mechanical pluri-aged character, because this thing doesn't move. It's just there, you see. And it is there less and less, but it is there as a constant.

Now you take the memory of Lincoln. A new child is born. The contemporaries of Lincoln have all died. This child for a long time doesn't know anything of Lincoln. It has to recapture the spirit in its own age. And therefore -- every one age has to make a special effort. There is nothing mechanical, as with the dead car lying there in the cemetery. But with the -- Lincoln, he has to wake up one moment in his life, again in an historical event, and be confronted with the fact: Lincoln. And he has to ask himself, "Does it mean anything in my life?" "Is it going to mean anything in my life?" And as you know, if he is a southerner, he may say, "Never." You see, "This northern brute just isn't for me." He may not accept it.

And therefore, gentlemen, a pluri-aged event--and I'm very grateful that I could clear this up, perhaps--is an event whose quality has to be reconquered in

every generation, in every age, afresh. And of course there is -- there you see how very few events of this character can exist in human history. How can you be asked to acquire an inherited quality while you are alive? About language, we make no fuss. We expect you to go on learning English all your life, as a matter of fact, you see. And the same is true of writing. And you improve -- we -- we get typewriters, and telewriters, et cetera, because we want to improve these qualities all the time.

And so it is not a minor, secondary -- second-rate thing, which can be called -- or constituting the eternal horizons of our race. The human family, gentlemen, however, is still bound to demand from you that at one time, you must acquire the faculty of becoming a father. You don't -- have acquired this faculty by a long shot. Yet if a man does not at one time develop--that's a third quality--a paternal faculty, the faculty of knowing what the father is, he will undermine all religion. Because God is our Father, and you are in His image. And you can only acquire any -- any supporting value for the religion that unites all men since time immemorial, if you at one time acquire the faculty of a father. Most in this country never acquire it. They remain daddies. And therefore, there is no religion in this country, gentlemen.

When the Puritans came, they were fathers. They { } fathers. They knew exactly in whose image they exercised their paternal control. You don't. You don't want any control. You want to talk with your -- with your own son, and he shall -- demand { } -- call you by his first name -- by your first name. And such nonsense. That goes on all among you, gentlemen. And you have abdicated this acquisition of the transmission of this acquired faculty that men can be fathers.

Now you know very well, that in the animal kingdom, that doesn't exist. The -- there is no fatherhood in the animal kingdom, because there is no memory. How can any animal know who the father is? Just isn't. Once an animal is off -- is -- is -- leaves the mother, this -- fatherhood ceases. The old man is killed by the pack. You just have to read The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling. Who has read it? Gentlemen, you are all minority readers already. Very strange. But Deep Secret everybody reads. Again, The Jungle Book is something I think that is a -- should be transmitted from generation to generation. I cannot understand how such a great book can be -- can -- can, so to speak, be omitted from the upbringing of an American college boy. I cannot see it. I assure you that on the continent of Europe, everybody still reads Kipling. And he was an Englishman, and he was a violent anti-continental, but that hasn't hindered the Germans or the Italians to read him. Men -- I -- I don't see how you can become human beings without reading The Jungle Book, because he has prophesied this new tribal urge of the human being, which is so strong in this country. You need it more, The Jungle

Book, than anybody else. It interprets your own -- your own strange situation at this moment.

Well, I didn't mean to say this, but I meant to say that fatherhood is an acquired faculty. And it is therefore never mentioned in this country. Very strange. All -- everybody speaks of Mo- -- Mommy, and Mummies, and moth- -- mothers, and everybody melts in tears. And the -- all the nonsense that is done here in the name of the mothers of America is just heart-rending. We have lost two wars because of the mothers who had to bring their boys home. Ja. That's motherhood, you see. That's always invoked, because it's an animal thing. Mothers are just there by their animal natures. The mother of God became only the mother of God, because she lost her son. Under the Cross, she became His mother, you see.

But this moth- -- { } shows you, gentlemen, that you live in an animal kingdom in which there is no history, and no transmission of acquired faculties, and no eternal horizons of mankind, to be sure. Only eternal -- eternal horizons of zoology. Fatherhood is a purely historical thing. And what a father is, and that God is Our Father, we only know from the Israelites.

Now there are three chapters which we have then to deal with in this course already laid out very clearly: the chapter of speech, the chapter of writing, and the chapter of fatherhood. And these are three different, great layers of our -- your and my qualifications for humanity, for being human beings. There is today no human being who is not able to speak, who is not able to write, and who is not able to understand why God is called "Our Father." Now I assure you, you cannot understand why God is your father; it's because you have not in yourself -- in your system the power to { }. Before, you are not a father potentially, yourself. All this talk of "Our Father in Heaven" makes no sense to me. Just superstition. And it is: you have to be the father inside yourself, before you understand God. It is not enough that somebody legally calls himself "father." How do I know that you have a real father? He may be just the wrong father. I don't know everyone fa- -- -one's father in this room. It's just said without disregard to his personal qualities, gentlemen; but to have a father, that doesn't prove to me that you do not abuse your relation to your father, and that you understand who he is, Sir. He is -- you see, would be qualified for fatherhood, you see, but not you. You will only prove it when you are a father, or a grandfather, or an ancestor in your own right. And since everybody boasts in this country that he must only never grow older than 12 years, I doubt that there is any tradition of fatherhood at this moment in this country. And that's why we instead have the Oedipus complexes, and psychoanalysts, and -- and mothers, and -- and all this fake stuff. Because nobody in this country wants to stand up and say, "I am a father. I have the qualities which the creator of this universe also gave anybody

who is created in His image." That's a quality, gentlemen, which has to be acquired, and you don't want to acquire it.

And therefore, gentlemen, half of history makes no sense to you, because half of history is bound up with this great problem: how do sons become fathers? It is not easy.

I got a letter -- gentlemen, I'm ashamed to tell you, the le- -- the man graduated in 1948 of this -- from this college. He never {sent} word. I didn't know -- anything about him. For Christmas, I got a tremendous ovation by him -- a Christmas card. So I wrote, and I thanked him, and said him what was -- he was doing.

So I get back a long letter in which the most terrible sentence was: he said, "I am a son, I am a husband, I am a father -- but I am not yet a man."

Obviously that was true, because a decent fellow just doesn't write somebody after eight years and { } first confession. There were other -- stim- -- similar remarks on sex, et cetera, which showed that he was off-balance. But to be able to say, "I am a father" by the accident of -- of proc- -- procreation in a physical sense, obviously--his poor wife!--and say, "I am not a man, yet," obviously fatherhood implies that you are a man, besides. Isn't that right? You cannot rise to fatherhood before you have become a man. But he doesn't know this. So he thinks the technical fact that the laws admit that he had something to do with this -- physical birth of his child, and calls this, you see, "I am a father." Of course he isn't. Not by a long shot. And nothing can help him, I mean. He hasn't found himself. My letter certainly cannot put right such a man who abuses all human language by saying, "I'm a" -- "I'm a husband, and I'm a father, but I'm not yet a man." I don't know what to say to such a man. Can you understand my despair?

But you all try to do that, gentlemen. You think that when, at 21 -- quadruplets are born to you, that you are a father. You are just pushing a perambulator. That's all. That is, you are a vice-mother. That's all you are. You are helping your wife to bring up these brats. But fatherhood is something quite different. That begins only when the children are 12.

There must be something for which they can be proud when they mention your name, and look up to, and know what is right and wrong, from their father. Fatherhood is legislation, gentlemen. A lawgiver is a father, you see. Nothing less than the law makes a father. If you can tell your son, "This is not done," then you are his father.

We have three chapters, gentlemen. There is one fourth chapter. Since the

great things, like speech, and writing, and fatherhood--these powers which make a man more than an animal, since they are endangered in every generation, because every human being can miss the boat, and can relapse into prehistorical attitudes -- since -- I told you that transmission of acquired faculties has this risk--that at one time, it did not exist, this quality--therefore it can be lost again, because it has -- is not natural. Since we are always unsafe, there is a tremendous necessity, gentlemen, of schooling, of training, of finding ways of reviving the beginnings of the first word spoken. Who does this, gentlemen? Who makes us feel at this moment, in 1957, that there is speech still coming to us that has never been spoken? Although it is there, there is the -- the Webster, and there is the Oxford Dictionary; and yet, gentlemen, there is an instrumentality in the midst of us, on this campus even, by the help of which we are allowed to feel that speech is novel, hasn't yet all been told. Well, it's poetry. That's just the arts. The arts are the bringing-back of the first moment of writing, of speaking, of fatherhood. Take drama. Take Hamlet, you see.

Fell down.

The -- poetry is such a revitalizing agent, gentlemen. Schooling -- you go to school here, you take courses with me and others, is another such way. And there is a whole group in the history of the human race, gentlemen, that has devoted all their energy to revitalizing these three great qualities of speech, of writing, and of family, leg- -- of legislation. And they are the Greeks. Therefore, we shall have -- devote a certain -- a full chapter to the specialization of the Greek mind for keeping the acquired faculties of the race flamboyant, buoyant. Revitalizing them. After all, a college, here -- this liberal arts college is a Greek institution at this moment, you see, trying to make you think that English is a non-natural thing. We -- if we can't achieve this by Mr. {Eberhart}, or by Ha- -- Shakespeare, or by a course in creative writing, you see, or by listening to a man who really means to speak, to say something of -- of -- dangerous for the first time, then you will mistreat speech as a routine. And it will fall down, as it does in this -- country.

I think this English gentlemen who came and gave us hell -- has a -- has -- has a -- has a great point. In the last 20 years, English has been killed in this country by the rate of billions of light years. You see, and it is dying, America. It is absolutely dying. You read the New York -- the literary supplement of the New York Times, they still have a language. And you read the literary supplement of the New York Times, they have no language, but just advertising. It's not written in English anymore, the book reviews of the lit- -- of the New York Times.

Has anybody read the London Literary -- literary supplement of the

London Times? Who has? Well gentlemen, that's music. That's language. But the New York Times, and that's the best paper in America, compared to the HeraldTribune, or {Bill Cunningham}. Well, that's Murder in the Cathedral. I have never -- it is. It is vulgarity impersonated. I am always afrai- -- I mean, I always know what's right when I read {Bill Cunningham}. I just say the opposite.

But the treatment of the English language, that's what I have in mind at this moment, gentlemen. That's really in great danger. You don't know this, gentlemen. But I assure you, it is. You can't write letters anymore if you go on like that. And then you can't woo your -- your gir- -- your wife, and you can't educate your children. Language is nothing -- not a luxury. It's nothing -- nothing nice. It's important. -- It is -- it is the center of -- of our existence. If you let this go, gentlemen, from your own being, you will end up in -- a schizophrenic. A schizophrenic is a man who has lost this power, you see, to poise his words in the center of his being, and to say exactly what he stands for. Like the -- we come back to this terrible letter. This of course -- this man is a schizophrenic who writes, you see, "I am a husband, and I am a father, and I'm -- but I am not yet a man."

I showed it to a psychiatrist, and he said, "Typical -- typical of a schizophrenic," you see. You -- I think you get somewhere, and in the middle, the main thing is lacking. He doesn't say who -- he doesn't stand by what he says. He -- he is not there.

Well, we have now the first part of our course, gentlemen. That's enough for today. I wanted to tell you then that we -- they will have the four headlines, the four chapter headings: the creation of speech, the creation of writing, the creation of fatherhood, and the creation of the arts and sciences.

Now I say, however--and this has to be added--I call then "creation," gentlemen, something that enters the scene for the first time in one age, and then is strong enough to force all other ages to join this first age in accepting this step. You see, that's very complicated. Creation, gentlemen, is not what you call "creation" today. It's -- has been talked down. Creation is a -- in a -- a new hat, can be called a "cr‚ation nouvelle" in Paris. But it isn't. It is not a creation. And of course it's very hard for you and me to find the right word which will express the -- still in terms of the Bible what a creature is, as compared to nature. Gentlemen, nature is that which has been there before history. But a creature is somebody who has to be created till the last day. When I say, "Tigers must be," I admit that there is a plan according to which tigers should not be extirpated, you see. If I say, "By the nature of things, all people are greedy," or "are timid," or "are hungry," I say something, you see, of the past. I don't say anything -- I do not even say if it isn't perhaps good to eradicate timidity, make everybody courageous,

you see. Then this nature would be changed. It would be. That's a good idea. We -- since we are all timid by nature, we can all become heroes. That's what a religion tries to do. It tries to abolish timidity; because timidity is natural, and if you can abolish timidity, you -- we become supernatural. Or we at least become something new. We become a new creature. As you know, that's a biblical text which I'm quoting, that when a man is reborn, he is like a new creature.

Now gentlemen, then, the word "creation" has this ring. If you get the end of time, the last day of history--let's say, 3,000 years from today, if you cannot think -- you have given up all belief in the future. This country is without any faith in the future at this moment. You are just lucky if you can get by the Third World War. That's the whole perspective which I find in this country at this moment. 1984, or the satellite, or the Third World War, or the hydrogen bomb; gentlemen, that's no future, you will admit, for the creation. That's just the end of the world, you see. But it's not the beginning of creation.

Now creation is a permanent beginning. Would you perhaps take down this definition? Nature is a constant ending. Creation is a perpetual beginning. That is, when we speak of speech as a creation, gentlemen, we mean to say that when man created speech, he began his final future, his definite future. He began his des- -- to fulfill his destiny. Therefore, gentlemen, a create -- a chapter which is called "the creation of speech" is not interested in dating this backward, in saying, "It happened 6,000 years before Christ." I'm not interested in this--although I know when it happened, but that's a minor consideration. But the main point is that I say, "You and I began to be created as the beings in which we will have to be until the end of time at that moment when speech enters the sequence." You and I must speak, isn't that true? You see. And as long as there is -- you want to have children, they must speak. And in all the foreseeable future, you must make sacrifices for this power to speak. You must teach the people to come, to speak. You are cursed, you forfeit your membership in the United Nations and the united humanity if you don't do the -- something for speech.

This is meant by the great word "creation," gentlemen. I don't know if I can rekindle in you the flame of this word. When the Bible says, "In the beginning, God created Heaven and earth," He -- the Bible means to say, "Your and my future began then." You see, you read it as a history book. You read it as though -- as though -- nature came to pass at that time. That's not the idea. The idea is that what you and I are now doing are steps in the great enterprise which started then, and in which we are now engaged, you see, for its continuation.

So the word "creation" -- where would -- where am I with my scheme? Where did I put it? Here. If this is the whole length of time, gentlemen, which man covers in -- on this earth, then creation means that anytime a further step to

the final creation has been undertaken, and we classify all events of the past as first steps into the future. I'm interested in speech not because I'm a linguist, or I care for the Oxford Dictionary, you see. But I'm interested in the future of the human race, of which language has to be a permanent chapter. You can quarrel. You can say you want to have a man who doesn't speak. Then we have an issue, you see. And we go to war. That's -- the real wars, you see, are fought over these religious destinies of the human race. What is a part of the future, you see? We say "property"; the Russians say, "No property"; so there is -- will be a war -- must be a war, if we cannot settle this otherwise. So we have taxation, and so there's no property here, and so -- no difference very soon between Russia and the United States.

Well, nature, gentlemen, looks backward. What has been. Creation looks forward, "creature." The word "creature" in the -- who is a Catholic? Who knows the Creed in Latin? Would somebody help me? Well, as you know, the -- the word "natura" and the word "creatura" are both Latin forms. And they both mean what's -- has come, what is going to pass. Nature means what's going to pass by -- by physical reasons, by birth. Creation is that which has to be created by human sacrifice. "Creatura" means that which is to come. But exceptionally, because it didn't exist in the beginning. It is not born into us. Speech is not born into you and me.

Anybody who knows the ritual of christening? What the priest says when -- when the child is christened? Who is an Anglican -- Episcopalian? Ah, we have not a first-rate social class.

Well, gentlemen, there is a very strange sentence. The priest says, when it gives -- he gives a name to the child, calls him a Christian, he says, "I give you what nature cannot give." Perhaps you take this down, gentlemen. The topic of my course is: "What Nature Cannot Give." What nature cannot give. Speech can -- nature cannot give speech. What nature cannot give. It's a very great sentence. Very simple. It's monosyllabic: what nature cannot give.

That's all what christening does, gives you a name in the human family. And you have suddenly, you see, you can be spoken of, all of a sudden. Before, you couldn't. You were just a brat. "What Nature Cannot Give" is also the topic of this whole course, gentlemen. Because what nature cannot give has to be treated if it -- is meant to have any value, as something by which our future began. Our -- your and my future. You cannot act tomorrow unless you carry with you those things which you continue, which you perpetuate, so to speak, on the basis of which your action makes sense. Can you see this? You can destroy without regard to the past, you see, but you cannot create unless you take into account that which is already part of this same creation. To create, gentle-

men, means to enter upon the stream of history as it already began, with a view of the future long ago.

Ma- -- the funny thing is, gentlemen, that you all, in your wonderful pride of being born -- living in 1957, look down on your ancestors, and think that they never considered the future. But gentlemen, I assure you, the older -- longer back you go in history, the more these people were only interested in the future. And the further down one comes to you, the less anybody is interested in the future beyond his own life. You are not interested in the future, and that's my complaint against you. I want to interest you in the future; that comes after your death. I'm not interested in you, but I'm interested in you as mainstays for the future. That's my only intere- --. Any educator -- I cannot help you in your private needs, immediate needs, but I can make you understand that you are needed, gentlemen, so that we may reach the future, beyond you. -- My interest in you begins in the power by which you belong to the ages. That's called "education," you see. The rest is called "breeding." And that's for the animal kingdom.

But I want to convince you that your actions must -- be in line with the definite destiny of the human race, with the future. What do I care for what you -- whether you play baseball or basketball? That's an avocation. I mean, do as you please, you see. That's not a question of education. You admit this. It's arbitrary. Now -- but through you, and despite of you, we may reach the future: that's not arbitrary, gentlemen. That's necessary. And therefore, this course tries to e- -- evoke in you the feeling what is arbitrary, and what is necessary. Many things you can do in your lifetime, they are perfectly arbitrary. You can -- I eat coffee ice cream, strawberry ice cream, raspberry ice cream. You can even eat cranberry ice cream, although I have never found it. But it is arbitrary, perfectly arbitrary. Can you see this? It's arbitrary, because it's mono-aged, it's singleaged, you see. It goes and comes, and has no -- no claim to our attention -- or -- our memory. It is not monumental, it's not a monument { }.

Gentlemen, other things are necessary. For example, that the United States exist, it's still more necessary than you exist. So when a war breaks out, we demand from you that you are killed on the battlefield in honor of the United States' survival, you see. It's very hard for you to understand. Why should we? But it is necessary. I assure you, it is necessary. You are arbitrary. And the survival of the United States--compared to your existence--is necessary, whether you believe it or not. If you don't believe it, you are shot dead for desertion. And rightly so, from my point of view. You may -- you may think it -- we -- are very sorry, and we try to get away with it. But gentlemen, fortunately, there is still a law against desertion, because the desertion says that the man did not do the necessary thing. And I assure you, gentlemen, all necessary things belong to the

ages. The arbitrary things belong to one age.

And so I come back. Gentlemen, I have tried to explain to you why I said "the creation of speech." The creation of speech entails that speech is necessary for you and me to reach the future. That's the meaning of "creation." Don't use the word "creation" for any smaller thing. Don't use it for creative writing, for selling short stories to the Saturday Evening Post. That's utterly unnecessary. The -- Saturday Evening Post I don't think is a necessary institution. It's a moneymaking institution. They say so, at least. I mean, they don't claim anything, except that they are a business, a profit-making institution. As soon as they say to me that they are {losing}, I will -- shall become interested in them. And then they may be a real sacrificial institution, gentlemen, for the future. That would be interesting.

All things, gentlemen, for the future don't pay. It doesn't pay you to educate your children. And let me end this with a terrible example of the total misunderstanding of this course and of the thought of creation by modern men.

There is a very rich man in New York, and he was visited by a friend of mine. And there was this man, with all his millions of dollars, on Park Avenue. And there was his wife. And they were both, in the presence of the guests, mistreated by their brats.

And the telephone rang, and the child would say, "Papa, go to the telephone. That's for me. Get the message."

And so -- well, at one time, the boy was good enough to go to the telephone himself, because he -- the other side -- partner wanted to talk to him. It was a girl. And so he disappeared.

And the husband and wife turned to my friend and said, "You are a European. You are perhaps dumbfounded, because we are -- we allow our children to mistreat us in this way. But you see, we just don't know what else we could do. After all, if we now give in so much, perhaps they will be nice to us in our old age."

That's the end of the world. You see, they did not the necessary thing--educating their children, you see--they wanted to buy the future. Can you see this? That's the opposite. As soon as a man tries to buy his future, you see, creation stops. It's all returned to a state of nature. They are animals, wild animals. And you -- it can't work, gentlemen. And -- that a man on Park Avenue can even have such a thought enter his head--let alone say such a thing, you see--shows you that there is, at every moment, possible a total collapse of civiliza-

tion. This man destroys the order in which he lives. He destroys it. No -- period, I mean. There is absolutely no extenuating circumstance for such an animal. He is a wolf. He deserves to be killed, to be executed. He destroys not only himself, but he destroys his children. He's a misfit for -- he has no right to bring up children, because he wants to buy the favor of his child. That's the opposite from the reason why we entrust parents with children. You can see that fatherhood really is abolished in this man. Can you see this?

So I have not exaggerated, gentlemen. In this moment, there are many socalled daddies who are not -- fit to be fathers. They aren't. They buy from their children security. And they don't do the necessary thing for the future, and they do not believe that the future has already started in their -- through their relation to their child. That they already know what they must give, you see, donate their child -- to their for reaching the future.

Well, at this moment, I will stop. So we meet next time kindly to- -- tomorrow, Tuesday, in 103 Carpenter.