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...of allowing the true story, the not-manmade story, but God's story with man to get its proper shape. There is no arbitrariness. No myth. There are no seven generations. And there are no 12 months of the year. And there are no 1460 years for the Great Year. And there are no millions of years. That's all calculation of men. But the Jews insist that God sends His spirit when He sends it. The -- spirit blows -- as it listeth. And He -- they have taken this seriously, gentlemen. You quote all these biblical words. But to live by them is very difficult, you see. You all are in the hands of predictors, and calculators, and computers. The Jews are not. They have no magic and no sorcery. A magician and a sorcerer, the Old Testament says, shall be killed, because he murders the soul of Israel. And so it is. And you are all in the hands of these people today. We have -- are today -- that goes together with the hatred of the Jews, of course, gentlemen. Hitler is in all of you. And -- witchcraft, and sorcery, and magic, and prediction always returns as soon as the role of Israel, the prophetic role of Israel--that God is free--is forgotten, you see. Everybody tries to -- bewitch the divine powers into some magic square which can be computed. All of you think that nature can be -- is computable, and predictable. Including yourself, gentlemen. But as far as the Sabbath -- the people who celebrate a Sabbath with God, go, it means that man is free, because his maker is free. If he joins God's will, we can get out of our certainly very animal and very low nature and become free.

So gentlemen, the quality of Israel is acquired freedom, as an acquired faculty, which has to be reacquired in every generation. You are not free, gentlemen, because you are the descendants of the Puritans. You have lost your freedom. You are now the products of your environment, and you are told that you should be very proud of this. All psychologists tell you that you are just the products of a -- your environment, that you react according to certain tests. All this testing and statistics-measure, gentlemen, abolishes your freedom. That's why freedom do- -- doesn't find any appeal in your heart, you see. No- -- nothing. The greatest injustices can be done in this country. No -- students in colleges don't do anything about it. It's not your business. You have given up your freedom, gentlemen. For the last 10 years, it has reached astounding proportions. You are not free, because you don't care for freedom. You don't reacquire it. You don't know that freedom -- I mean, what did Patrick Henry say? Wie?

("Give me liberty or give me death.")

Yes, because it costs something, gentlemen. It's a dangerous proposition. He didn't join the two words for nothing. Eternal vigilance, gentlemen.

So it is very -- you cannot quote your ancestors at this moment. America lives in an absolutely new era of Egyptian darkness, because it's all organized. It's a corporate state. And in the corporate state, nobody is responsible for anything but for the piece of work for which he's fed.

I have reported in my book, The Christian Future, this tremendous conversation which took place here on this campus in 1939, and there were educational advisers, so called--"educational advisers," mark you well--and of course I always think education has something to do with freedom. Sixty-six educational advisers for the then-unemployed, the so-called Civilian Conservation Corps. And a man was called up to give a definition of a citizen. And he said that a citizen was "a man profitably employed." There you have the corporate state. That's Egypt. A man profitably employed is a citizen.

So we argued the point. And I gave him my definition of a citizen, that a citizen is a man who, when the city is destroyed, can refound the city. That's the only valuable definition of a citizen you can give. If he hasn't this -- the guts to refound the city, he's not a citizen in the full sense. He's not potent. He's impotent. And the man who is profitably employed is totally impotent. He's a cog on the wheel. But why he should be called a citizen, I do not see. And you all think that the definition of this educational, cantankerous cuss is true. That a man is a citizen, because he's profitably employed, which of course throws out all the unemployed. Mr. Hoover's idea that an unemployed is not a citizen, Herbert Hoover, in 1929. I told you.

That's a strange world in which you live, gentlemen. It certainly has nothing to do with all the documents on which you pride yourself, of the 18th century. It's a total change, a complete break in continuity. You live in an absolutely different era. And you don't have to, but you have brought it on yourself, because you prefer this corporate state to anything else, and you think it can't be -- helped, it is -- has to be this way.

The avenue into the future, gentlemen, which the Bible keeps open, is the avenue of freedom. And it may come to you as a shock, gentlemen, but freedom is an -- acquired faculty. It is not your birthright, as you think. It is not a natural right; but it is an acquired right, an historical right. People have died for it. That's why it exists. So it is not -- comes not to you from birth -- your own birth, gentlemen, but it comes to you through the death of other people who have sacrificed their life so that you may have freedom. That's a very different situation. You owe your freedom to somebody else. No child that is born o- -- has freedom, obviously, except under the patronage of a law that has been acquired one day, you see. So in -- of course, all the Israelitic laws, for example, that the son of Abraham can't be sacrificed, is now incorporated into our law. We have abol-

ished the tribal -- rite of a -- of a -- of a despot, of a father of a -- household to -- to kill his children, have we not? You take this for granted, gentlemen. Is this your right? No. It's an acquired right. And the -- was acquired by people who, in advance, postulated something. You have to reacquire it.

As you know, it's very threatened, today. The -- the doctors in -- Hitler Germany abolished it. The concentration camps in Russia -- the work camps abolish it. Our eugenists and euthanasians will abolish it. It is very cheap today, the right to live.

Now the Greeks. Gentlemen, compared to the tremendous achievement of a totem pole, and of a temple, and of the Bible, it is very funny that you should go to a liberal arts college to get your education. Because that's a Greek institution. And obviously, when you think of the Greeks, the eternal Greece -- the eternal value of Greece, then we mean something that has to do with education. It has an "educational value," as we say. There are the idealists. Of the Greeks, there is beauty, there is -- are the classics, too.

So it is very important that you see very clearly the paradox. First, the Greeks are not half as real in our existence. There are no -- the Greeks among us in the old sense of the classics, as the Jews. They still live here, with us, you see. And there are no temples of Greece. We go to a Christian temple. We have varied the temple. There are temples, but they have been -- have nothing to do with Greece. We wouldn't think of a temple in first term today of Greece. When you go to a Christian Church, or to -- synagogue.

And the third thing is: our family relations certainly can only exist if the Greeks have nothing to do with this, because they are homosexuals. And it would be the ruin of any family life if homosexuality would be admitted. Then they have no rights for women. This would be quite impossible in America. They stood for slavery. They stood for -- so the Civil War couldn't have taken place under Greek influence. And if the Greeks, in their reality of antiquity still had something to say, we would have no United Nations, because the Greeks believed that every city would have to go -- go to war forever. There could be no disarmament. Plato's State is perfectly hopeless in this respect. His i- -- allegedly ideal state, gentlemen, if you read it, by Plato: eternal war, eternal slavery, eternal subjugation of women, and eternal lusting of male for male. These are just four features which show you that we have really very little to do with the o- -- ancient Greeks. You wouldn't like to live there. You couldn't.

And the fifth thing is that Socrates, when he was put to trial, had the impertinence to say that he had never done anything wrong in his life, and never any- -- thought anything stupid. Now you must admit that a -- modern

man who says such nonsense would be laughed out of court. I mean, the beginning of wisdom for us to s- -- be humble and to say that we have done many stupid things in our life and have thought many wrong thoughts. Wouldn't you agree?

So gentlemen, don't believe that you have anything to do with the Greeks. That's the first axiom which we will -- wish to put down. Compared to your family traditions and your country traditions, and your freedom, the Greeks have nothing to offer. And yet, everyone here in -- Dartmouth has to pay lip service to the classics, and everybody has to fall in a trance when Mr. {Rattray} reads Greek lyrics to us.

And Mr. {Rattray}, you know -- is right. The funny thing is, gentlemen, that the Greeks have a -- very special role. And I think, just as the Jews are everlasting, and as the family is everlasting, in the -- on -- as -- as civilization, the division of labor is everlasting, the Greeks have something. And the great question is what it is.

So if we write the four chapters of antiquity, and have -- I hope -- I hope I have convinced you, that there is something to the fact that there are tribes, and temples, and Israel, it is impossible to write the Chapter 4 as though it was just the conti- -- a next step, Greece. This would be wrong. And so please correct it.

The Greeks do something else. They step outside history. They step outside history. They are the boon-companion of our leisure. They are the lubrication when history is too hard on us; and when you are mobilized into the army, and sent to Saipan or to the teahouse under the august moon, then you can take with you a volume of poems by Walt Whitman, or by Homer, or a Greek lyric, or Shakespeare. And when you do this, you use the Greek element of life to relieve pain, and to lubricate human relations. Greeks -- the Greeks have created what is called "humanism"--humanism, gentlemen--and they have created the notion of humanity.

Now my task today and Thursday is to make you understand that humanity is second-rate, and that it is indispensable. Both -- is very difficult for you to believe. The highest for you is humanity. You are all humanitarians in your mind. Gentlemen, I prefer still the United States to the United Nations. That's the difference between humanity, gentlemen, and reality. The United Nations are humanity, but they are not the humankind. I make a straight -- strict decisi- -- distinction, gentlemen, between these three things which I will call the "humankind." The real people, as they are--in the past, in the present, and in the future--and humanity -- that's an abstraction; that's what I think would be nice. You can also say, gentlemen, the humankind is the human race from the first day

of -- of creation to the last. And humanity is the cross-section of hu- -- of human beings as of today, without past, without present, and without future. Just in the telephone book, on 1st Avenue, New York City. Something at this moment -- as of this moment.

This is -- the two words are very useful to compare, gentlemen. The humankind, that is the terrible austerity and severity with which people are born, and die, and are regenerated. And humanity is the -- is the parlor existence. You know, it -- there are parlor socialists and there are real Socialists. And there are parlor communists, and there are real Communists. And there are parlor patriots and there are real patriots. And humanity is everything that you meet in a parlor, or on this campus, which is just an open-space parlor. Because, gentlemen, what you think and say on this campus is not held against you. Humanity is irresponsible. It is what I like, or what I dislike. But it's just depending on your subjective judgment, on your opinions. Humanity is the collection of all the individuals' subjective opinions. And one opinion is as unimportant as another opinion, gentlemen.

When do -- does my opinion become important? Here, I give you my opinions, gentlemen. When it is saturated with what has been believed before, what has been done before, and what you believe me. If I cannot teach, what I think is utterly unimportant. It's just a nightmare; it's just a dream, is it not? It takes shape because I transfer, you see. At that very moment, something very dangerous happens, something very important, you see, because I introduce you into the time avenue of a doctrine, of a teaching.

That's why in this country of modern -- complete profligacy, and complete breaking down of all time connections, you mustn't indoctrinate a man. Gentlemen, if I cannot indoctrinate you, I cannot teach. And that's what happens today in America; there is no teaching, because it's called--with a curse--indoctrination. Of course, I wish to indoctrinate you. Do you think that the huma- -- human race could have existed through the last 5,000 years without the heaviest indoctrination? Why don't you wish to be indoctrinated? I never understand this. I, as a young man, wanted to be indoctrinated. What is the -- what is your idea that you shouldn't be indoctrinated, gentlemen? How can you learn? Learning -- means to be indoctrinated, because I know certain things which you have no idea of. But you insist, that with your -- with your wonderful brain, this empty vessel of superstitions, that you will judge what I'm telling you. And that you call te- -- that you call "learning"? Nobody can learn, gentlemen, if he doesn't surrender. But they tell you that's a scandal. It's all fictitious in this country, that there are people who stand behind you and make you do certain things, and then they call this progressive education and say, "The child did it all." Well, I haven't seen that the child is surrounded with the real world in his progressive studies, but with

the great -- very clever selection of the things the teacher wants him to know. So it's just a cheating, psychology: the child must not know that it is indoctrinated. That's called "progressive education" in this country.

All the important facts are omitted in Teachers College, Columbia. They give you in your high schools the unimportant fact, because that's still -- not a -- no religion, no politics, nothing serious, no languages. And then they say, "You -- read this -- learn this all by yourself," because they have made it impossible for you to learn anything important.

Wake up, gentlemen, to this cheating! I told you that life is the -- truth has to do with unpleasantness. And as long as people can convince you that because indoctrination is unpleasant--you mustn't be indoctrinated--you cannot learn. It's impossible. Now I have never found, by the way, that indoctrination is unpleasant. I mean, I think -- at least a normal human being at 10 wants to learn everything there is to -- learn. You have only probably ceased to be in this state of youth. I mean, you are much older than I. I still want to learn something. And I go to the source where somebody knows something. And I want to know what he has to say. And then I learn it. And I -- I -- at first I don't quibble. It's much later that, when I am as much an expert as he is, that I begin and try to outrun him and to outwit him by doing one better. But the condition is, gentlemen: you can mutiny against indoctrination if you know all that which the indoctrinator has given you. Before, you cannot criticize him. But you all try to first criticize before you even know what he has to say.

Like this young man here in this hall--I have forgotten his beautiful name--who came to me after the first lecture and said why didn't I tell him in five minutes how to improve humanity.

I said, "I'm sorry. It takes me three months."

Gentlemen, the Greeks are the group that keeps the secret of education fresh. Poetry and science, philosophy, as you know, change in every generation. Where you have one book, the Bible, over all generations in the Hebrew tradition, and where you have the temple forever, the Greeks produce in every generation sensational literature, sensational art. New plays, new music, new ideas. The change of scene, that's Greece.

The change of scene, gentlemen, is not necessary for your -- our body. We can live in the same house for 50 years, for a hundred years. For 200 years. So our body can -- use the same temple building, the same shelter, or the same Egyptian home. The human soul can look up and praise his maker day and night. The -- with 150 Psalms, you can live on a desert island and get through very well. But

who has to be fed daily a new food, gentlemen? That's our mind. The mind is fickle. And our mind has to get the truth in a new form every day. You go to a movie three times a week; it's always the same stuff. But you don't realize it, quite. So you go obediently and pay three times for some variation, what you could really get by -- not going there and say, "I know all these tricks."

In high art, it's the same. Art is original, gentlemen. The Greeks are the geniuses of originality. That is, it makes you appear as though somebody wrote a love poem for the first time, when you read a -- Greek lyrics, as Mr. {Rattray} produced them. The greatness of art, gentlemen, is that it strikes you as utterly new, as unheard-of.

Now all the other three time avenues: the tribe, and the temple, and Israel are very, very, long-winded, patient, and boring. There is absolutely no relief. And you are a monk, and you join Mr. Thomas Merton and you go into the Seven Storey Mountain, then you have to pray in one week all the 150 Psalms; and in the next week, again; and in the next week, again. And you have to -- this to do for 52 years -- 52 weeks--and perhaps through 52 years--52 times 52, that's quite a considerable sum. I don't know if Mr. Merton is not more of a Greek than he admits, because instead of praying the 150 Psalms every week, he writes books about it. That's Greek. That's not a monk's business, to write books about being a monk, you see. That's a break of his vow. A breach of his vow. Obviously his superiors prefer that he makes money for the monastery. But certainly he has ceased to be a monk, because he writes books about being a monk. That's Greek.

The Greek contemplate, gentlemen, the Greek obs- -- Greeks observe, and the Greeks get this terrible kick by observing daily new facts. The facts are all there. The earth has been created all the time. But the Greeks find a way of putting before you the same old story in a new garb. And we couldn't live without this relief, gentlemen.

Any child has to be introduced into the old world of its ancestors by this stimulation--as you call it--by stimulation, by making it feel that it can discover this world for the first time, that it isn't just going to act as his grandfather, but that really there is something added by which you can say, "Never was it so beautiful." "Never was anything like it." The Greeks say to you, "I have a way of giving you reality--the relation to past, present, and future--so that you can say it has never been done in the same manner." And this, your -- our human mind is restless if we cannot get this satisfaction, gentlemen. The satisfaction of what you call sometimes your intellectual curiosity, or what you have called the piquing of your senses, a new perfume, a new trick.

And this has all been summed up once, in a very wonderful Greek saying.

When Victor Hugo, the great French poet--who was a -- a Greek in the sense of the arts--when he welcomed Baudelaire, the French, bad -- naughty poet, with his Fleurs du Mal, in which he really sings -- sings beautifully of things that are wicked, and bad, and destructive, he says, "We thank you, MaŒtre Baudelaire. You have given us un frisson nouveau." You have heard this word? "Frisson" means to shiver. A "frisson nouveau."

Now for all you, who are hard-boiled, you see, and completely already experienced in life, it is very important that you get a frisson nouveau, that something still makes you quiver. And this something is Gre- -- the Greek ingredient of life.

The Greeks add novelty. Now novelty has something to do with time, gentlemen, and yet it is not time itself. The Greeks give you the sensation of novelty. And in this the -- the mere discipline in which our life really goes from the cradle to the grave with this fact that we all have to love, to work, and to die. These are the three tenets after all of our life, gentlemen. It would -- it is -- a veil, it is a curtain, it is an act of leniency that our mind may withdraw from having his attention on this sad fact that we'll all be dead 40 years from now, you see. Perhaps with you, 60 years from now.

So instead of thinking of these great facts of life, everything we call "Greek" is taking off the pressure. Relax. The Greeks have created re-creation. All recreation centers have this brazenness of, you see, "Fill your leisure time." The more leisure you have, the more the Greek element will get between you and reality, and you will hang your -- the walls of your room with beautiful pictures, and with -- the shelves of good classical books, and with rec- -- record albums of all the clas- -- music--modern and otherwise. Gentlemen, the Greeks live by the grace of the Nine Muses. The Greek life is the -- the -- life, you might say, the musical life, if you allow me to bring back this word "musical" to its proper meaning. You think Muses and music to be just music in sound. But of course, the Nine Muses, the daughters of Zeus, of Olympus, they are something quite different. They are history, and literature, and geography, and astronomy; they are all knowledge, and all poetry. They are the arts and the sciences, you see. So the Greeks stand for the arts and the sciences, gentlemen.

The Nine Muses embo- -- are the first form of expressing the inspiration that comes to people who read good books, and see good -- hear good music, and go dancing, and enjoy life as the younger generation, which can live by the arts and sciences, gentlemen. If you distribute the powers of life, gen- -- you will find that the state is man's business, or should be; the Church should be women's business; the arts should be the girls' -- the daughters' businesses--they should dress beautifully, and should -- themselves be like the nymphs, or the graces, and

for them, all art exists; and for the men, for you people is the knowledge, are the sciences and philosophy. So that if you distribute in the family the four great powers of antiquity, you would find that the fathers represent the tribal order; and the mothers represent the Egyptian reverence for tradition, the temple's order and its ritual; the daughters would represent the arts; and the Greeks would represent the sciences -- the -- the -- the young man.

The word humanity -- "humanism," I should say, not "humanity"--humanism presents this pre- -- prevailing interest in the artistic and the scientific approach to life. You are humanists if you like to read a good book. You are a humanist if you talk seriously about ideas with somebody else. You are a humanist if you say, "People who have the -- a mind are my brothers." In a tribe, you say, "The people who worship the same spirit are my brothers." In Israel, you say that the people who expect the judg- -- coming of the Lord are my bro- -- are brothers, you see. Stupid or intelligent. In humanism, you look for the IQ. And you prefer a man who is intelligent, because he can enjoy the arts and the sciences with you. You wouldn't go and -- as a Greek and call an idiot your brother. That's Christianity, gentlemen. That's more difficult. The Greeks did not call the idiots their brothers. They threw them into the abyss, into the cli- -- on the cliffs.

And I can tell you an interesting story with regard to the Greeks and this fact of throwing away the feeble, and the sick. You are at the crossroads, gentlemen. The Greek element at this moment is corroding your Christian tradition in this country. But I still think that most doctors and most laymen would agree that a poor child should not be killed, because it has a little life in it. Wouldn't you agree? Would you? Or are you doubtful about it, that a feeble person should be done away with?

Gentlemen, when Hitler ransacked all the hospitals and all the insane asylums in Germany to get rid of the worthless lives--and he did this by the thousands and by the ten-thousands--and all the parents of these children trembled, and the doctors, and the nurses, and these char- -- organizations of charity, he had of course in back of him all the naturalistic trend of the age, of modern, natural scientists -- say, "Why not? Selection of valuable life. We do the selecting, and of course we are valuable." The first people who should be killed are all these natural selectors, of course. Yes. Then they wouldn't -- they would learn, that once you begin to make a selection, it's perfectly arbitrary whom you select.

Now this happened. There is a famous institution in Germany called Bethel. Just like Bethel here in Vermont, the house of the Lord. And it is a -- very famous for its charities. The idiots, the feeble-minded, the epileptics, the old people, everybody sick is cared there for. It's a kind of city of charity of some

30,000 inhabitants. And it is famous for the joy that it gives -- to the sick people. They are not there in any way treated as sad cases, but there's great jubilation in this place. And I have special -- very special ties to this place. And I went there last summer. And they gave me a torchlight parade, of which I was very -- still very proud. It's probably the only torchlight parade I'll ever get in my life.

Well, that's beside the point, because the important thing that you must know in -- in re- -- connection with the Greeks, is the story that the head of this institution told me.

When Hitler sent his murderers in trucks to collect these sick -- the sick there, the -- the worst cases, they came -- drove in, and rumor had it--you know, the sick people and the insane, they know very well what's going on--there was a great wail going up. The trucks came into the courtyard, and what would Mr. von Bodelschwingh, the head of the institution, do? He's a very famous man. How famous the Bodelschwinghs are in Germany you may perhaps fathom from the famous sentence, when he founded this: "Bethel has to be founded -- grounded more firmly than the state of Prussia," which at that time was a big order. It seemed the most solid thing in the world, Prussia. That's, you see, like a rock.

And he said, "We, without Christian charities have to be stronger and more firmly established," which is true. There is no Prussia today, and Bethel is flourishing. But he said this is the midst of the great legend of Prussia.

So what happened when the -- these murderers came? He went to the telephone, Bodelschwingh, and rang up the personal physician of Hitler and said, "You have been once in this -- here in these hospitals yourself, as a young doctor. You have -- can't let me down; you have to come immediately."

Well, he came. And so long he could postpone the decisions of these murderers. He said, "There is -- will be some intervention from higher quarters."

So these men murmuringly adjourned. And he began to talk to this man. And what could he say? He pulled out a volume on ancient history by the famous Jak- -- Jakob Burckhardt, a Swiss. Burckhardt has written famous -- two famous works: The History of Greek Civilization, and History of the Italian Renaissance. He is famous for both. And Burckhardt seems -- I have not looked up the place, seems to say in one place that the Greeks perished because of their lack of charity and real humanity, and -- because the Spartans -- the Spartans killed the children which they disliked, which they thought were misfits.

And for two hours, this was the argument, the only he had; this was a

pagan. He couldn't use any Christian argument. But he said, "History has shown that these Greeks were doomed, because without mercy and justice, there is no kingdom, there is no realm, there is no order." And the Greeks, in their -- in their craving for power, beauty, sensation, intellectual satisfaction, you see, would stop at nothing.

Well, lo and behold, the doctor has given in. And he ordered these body- -- bodyguards of Hitler to withdraw. And not one child in Bethel has been wronged. This is the only place in Germany where the people, these 30,000 sick people, have not been injured, or killed, or executed.

The interesting thing to me is that this highly personal Christian -- who -- we would call him, well, in our terms, here in this country "evangelist," evangelical Christianity -- pietistic Christianity--like the Moravian Brethren, you may compare him to, or something like that--this very -- that he used the Greek argument against the Greeks, that he did not try to -- the Bible on this man, you see. But he said, "Your way of thinking destroys itself."

And you see, again it's an unpleasant truth, that I want you to understand the price of Greece. The price of Greece is their own political and religious destruction. They have left us arts and sciences, but as an -- as an order of the world, they have vanished. First under the -- Alexander, and then under the Romans, and finally under the Turks. But Greece is a -- has been re-created, as you know, in the last hundred years by a fictitious schoolmaster's dream in Paris, and Berlin, and London, I mean. It's a revival, is Greece. There is not one Greek man in -- living in Greece. They are all Slavs. The -- the -- that's an artificial nation. What lives in the -- Greece, so-called, geographically, has absolutely nothing to do with ancient Greece, of course, you see. Absolutely nothing, less than nothing.

So the Greeks stand for education, gentlemen. They stand for leisure. They stand for entertainment. They stand for mental interest, what you call "ideas." That's why anybody, gentlemen, who looks -- has looked into reality cannot be an idealist, because then he would be a Greek. He would prefer ideas to the order of life. And to its prices, and its sacrifices. I hope you will not either be an idealist, or say, "I'm not an idealist." It's both wrong. You must not be touched by this. The Greek way is the way while we are not on duty. It is always everything that fills the mind when we are off duty. It is all right to go the opera. It is all right to read a poem. I do it all the time, far too much. I'm very Greek. But I must not forget to wash the dishes. That's not Greek. That's done by slaves in Greece. But the price of life is not asked in Greece, the -- the price of the sensation.

The -- the outstanding example, gentlemen, of -- of the perversion of -- of the Greek influence in this country came to me when I rescued a young lady from committing suicide. She was 17. It was -- really been a pity. By the -- by this time, she is married and perfectly normal. And so we had an intimate conversation, and in the course of this -- the following conversations in which I tried to restore her equilibrium, this very pretty young woman--and very -- from a good family, relatively speaking--she -- she said that she wanted to be a poet. Then she would have no qualms of conscience.

I said, "What do you mean? Why shouldn't you have a qualm of conscience if -- because you are a poet?"

"Well," she said, "my great example is Verlaine." That's a French -- Belgian poet. "He murdered his father-in-law, but since he wrote a wonderful poem about it, he was all right."

The price of poetry, gentlemen--take the opium eater, or take Mr. Byron's deviltry--if you can then write -- produce a great poem or a great piece of art, you see, everything is forgiven.

So gentlemen, in the Greek situation, everything is topsy-turvy. Since genius is law, the price of genius has to be paid. If Mr. Verlaine wouldn't have written a good poem without having the satisfaction of first murdering his father-in-law--can't be helped, the poem has to be produced--it's more important -- than the father-in-law. Now I hope you will see the absurdity of this young lady's reckoning.

But I read another -- the other day, I read the following conclusion, gentlemen: "Women are not only there to be loved, they are even the highest stimulation for the artist's inspiration." Now again, you see, total -- to- -- everything topsy-turvy. Obviously the artist -- is a help so that we are well-loved, and are able to love. I mean, he helps me to be a -- well-married. And poetry is serviceable to such great purposes. Oh no, but in this statement of this very superior mind, it was the other way around: that ladies can stimulate a poet so that he produces great art.

If you enhance the paperwork of a -- verse over real life, gentlemen, you are lost. That's why, as you know, Christianity came into the world to say that even the greatest temples are of no avail, compared to the life of one little baby. That it was more important, this worthless baby, you see, which has made -- which has no use -- which -- is of no use at this moment, whatsoever, compared to The Iliad. If you have a baby in the room, gentlemen, and the only edition of The Iliad, and there is a fire, whom do you have to save? Whom do you have to

save, The Iliad, or the baby?

(The baby.)

Of course you have to save the baby. There's absolutely no doubt.

And once you have made this clear to you, gentlemen, you are safe. You have ceased then to rank Greece with the three great powers of life: past, present, and future. Because Greece is timelessness. Greece is timelessness. Iliad is timelessly beautiful. It's a wonderful book. And yet, har- -- horrid as it sounds, if you have a living baby, gentlemen, and the most precious manuscript in the world, the manuscript has to be sacrificed to the baby. If you make the opposite decision, gentlemen, you live in another world. You live in the Greek world. Even a director of a museum cannot knowingly sacrifice the life of a -- of a -- of a helper, of a servant to the saving of a Madonna. If the man volunteers, which has happened in such a case as an heroic act, that's possible. But you cannot send this man to his doom, because you say the Madonna has to be saved, and the man must die. You understand this? It is very hard for you to understand, because most of you evade the issue.

The -- the -- you live in a dream state with regard to the Greek values, gentlemen. You -- never want to see that there has to be made a decision in your heart of heart. That you have to know for sure, that although it's very sad if one of these masterpieces of art should be destroyed, it -- it is -- ranks in a timeless world and has nothing to do with the necessary life of mankind. It's a luxury. It's a wonderful luxury, you see. And it's healing and everything. But the Ninth Symphony compared to a baby is still only the Ninth Symphony.

I'm very sorry. I condemn my own books. They're wonderful, you know. But they aren't quite enough.

And of course, in this environment, gentlemen--with Baker, and all the offerings we make you for wonderful art and science--it is very -- dangerous. The Greek situation always tries to make you shift your -- your--how do you say?--scale of values. The temptation in the 19th century until the world wars has been--perhaps it has less for you--to say that the Greek values were even greater than the values of family, country, and -- and Church, or religion. Wouldn't you agree? You must still see this, the -- the --.

I think that we are breaking up -- the content of the Russian Revolution is just the writing of this false sense of values. The Russians say, "That's all nonsense." They go too far, I think. But they still, of course, have their idea of science. But they command the arts, as you know. And there is absolutely -- the arts are

in servitude in Russia.

In this country, we have no arts, so the danger is not so great with the arts. But the danger is with the scientists, you see. That really for the peru- -- scientific perusal, anything goes. That if you say, "It's scientific," then it's justified. Gentlemen, nothing is justified because it is scientific. Nothing is justified because it is -- artistic. There is no justification in the last analysis. Ask what it has cost. If it has cost human lives, it has to be rejected. And the atomic bomb is scientifically wonderful, gentlemen. Is that a justification for the -- throw the bomb? Not at all. Not the slightest. Ja? Thank you.

So leisure, the Greek element.

[tape interruption]

...the whole problem of the Greeks then is, if you make the Greeks sovereign, the people perish. If you try to live without the Greek mentality, you will break down under the burden of the severity of life. The whole problem of the Greeks is: which place is for this Greek switchboard? The Greeks allow us to forget, to be stimulated, to have sensations, and to live moment by moment with a wonderful picture, or wonderful sensation all the time ringing in our ears, or before our eyes. Music does this. Theater does this.

Gentlemen, the -- what is the word "theater"? It's a Greek word. It is the place to look at, instead of reality. That's the theater. So "theater" means the place where you look. But you very well know in the the- -- on the stage that you do not look at reality, but you look at a substitute of reality, don't you? Yet it is the place for looking, the view. Television--I mean, movies, everything--is an attempt to put in the place of your own life, which you should face, and with which you are confronted, you see, another vision.

Now our problem now -- at this moment is to find the useful place for the Greeks, where it enhances life, and where it adds to the discipline of the march through time. That's our proposition, after all, here, to find the ingredients under which man can become one through all ages, and in all climates. And the element, gentlemen, in which this is needed is the pedagogical element. The word for "the child" in Greece is "pais" -- p-a-i-s. And derived from it is -- you know the word "pedagogics" and "pediatry" -- pediatrician is the man who takes care of the children's diseases. So -- Mr. Werner Jaeger, the great expert on the Greeks in Harvard, has written a famous book which he has called Paideia, P-a-i-d-e-i-a. It has gone through many editions and is used there as a standard book. Has anybody seen the book? Why does he call it this? Because he has recognized that the function, eternal function of the Greeks is to imbue the growing child with

the pictures, the vision of other worlds, other orders, you see, and by this encyclopedic knowledge, by this -- prepare the child with the necessary ferments, the necessary fermentation of his mind so that he tackles his own life afresh.

The Greeks are the great refresher course, gentlemen, of the human race. Think of the boredom in a midwestern town. Main Street. I mean, it is just hard to live there. You know everybody. And everybody has just moved in, or -- is going to leave. And every Main Street in the United States looks exactly alike. And you ask yourself, why is this Main Street there? After 10 minutes, you know everybody in town as well as you will ever know him. And without the movie, and the newspaper, and all the Greek elements of life, it would be perfectly unbearable--and the public library. And therefore, gentlemen, the Greek element is a very -- stra- -- severe need in an order which is only understandable in longrange perspective. You can well -- very -- like the order of a small midwestern town, if you think in terms of 30 years, that these good people work there, and are honest, and build houses, and beget children, send them to school. But as to day-by-day living, you see, you will feel tempted to get drunk, to go off on a spree, because you just don't know what to do with yourself on a Sunday afternoon.

This then is the Greek relief, to fill the empty time holes, so to speak. And the -- the mo- -- the growing person needs this more than anything else, so that he may be patient, gentlemen. The -- misfortune of any human being is to become a child prodigy, and to race, and to speed. And the Greeks are a way of--you may say, idling away the time, or filling the time, or useful -- preparing yourself for life. However you call it--to prepare, to idle away time, to have leisure--it is always the same problem, to bring this weak bastard of man, you and me, in line with the tremendous task of our maker, that we should serve as links of eternity. There is such a malproportion, such a disproportion between our task to link generations, and all our appetites as for the moment, that you would rape 50 girls instead of marrying one. And where would be the human race? And where would be the peace of mankind? And therefore, gentlemen, if you -- we can persuade yoursel- -- you to write 50 love poems to one sweetheart, the Greeks have done their task.

You must un- -- understand, gentlemen, that to write love poetry is an invention of the Greeks. There was no love poetry there. I mean the articulatedness of personal relations just didn't exist. If you can ennoble man's passions with something that takes time, and is -- can be elaborated, you cure the misproportion between your mental relation to the world and your real relation to the world. Our -- I grow to 70 years -- or I don't grow, I mean; but here I am for 70 years, you see. But my mind is, of course, infinitely faster. And if I concentrate my mind on my own self-interest, I will, as I said, do 365 follies a year. I'll go out

each day and get drunk, or spend my money in -- on worthless things, or on worthless people, because I just can't stand it to be alone. All of you are tempted by this, gentlemen.

That's why I think it is horrid that Saturday afternoon the library in Dartmouth is closed. I think you should petition and -- say that so many crimes are committed because the library is closed. Because what do you do after 5 o'clock on Saturday? Well, most of you are at Smith, I know. But those who aren't, you have to do something stupid, because in the last analysis, it depends on very many accidents when we are good and when we are not good.

I mean, at your age, I have to confess that just the situation creates all kind of follies, doesn't it? If you are in an environment that is just not inducive, you will do things that you otherwise would not do. And if you are stopped on the street and asked for tea, it saves a lot of trouble to which you otherwise might be -- might come. Isn't that true?

So I feel that's very inhospitable of this college. You should really not allow it. It is done in the interest of the staff. I know that Mr. {Moran} has very deep financial problems, and -- but it is not right. If among those 3,000 comrades of yours, gentlemen, there are only 10 who go gambling, or drinking, or carousing because the library is closed, it is worth op- -- keeping it open, wouldn't you -- admit?

And -- so gentlemen, the Greeks lead us to a very strange historical statement. Man has been created incongruous to his task. It's another way of looking at our frailty by saying, "We are over-asked." It's too hard for us to live 70 years and concentrate only on the essential issues. There are so many mo- -- moments where we say, "What's all this about?" you see, "What's" -- and you are bored, and you are nettled, and you are jealous, and you are afraid. And to find at that moment the real Greek ferment, you see, the Greek -- lubrication, you see, is a tremendous relief.

So the Muses -- don't despise them, gentlemen. You of course have the athletics at your age. But put something in for a rainy day. Cultivate your relations to books, or to poetry, or to the scene, or to something. I assure you that it is the most human way of filling your leisure, because it is not unrelated to your real life. The Greeks solved this great problem, gentlemen, that we had too much leisure, but that it can be filled by noble things which lead back into life. Would you take this formula, gentlemen: that the Greeks have found the way of leading back into life those empty spaces of time. You see, if you don't do this, you -- go to Tibet, which is a wonderful country, obviously, but where the people will have a prayer mill which prays the 100 and -- thousand times the same prayer.

There's nothing Greek. In a Greek -- the Greek-instilled civilization, they would not have to go through this terrible boredom, you see, of have -- repeating the same prayer 100,000 times, which I think it's something depraved, you see, because they would have 100,000 different notions, 100,000 different ideas, 100,000 different sensations.

I must put it in this flatness before you, because there is such an incredible ignorancy over the relation of the Greek mind to the divine spirit. Gentlemen, the mind is not God. Your intelligence is nothing divine. It's very inventive; it's very -- it's a very good organ. I have plenty of it myself. I am inventive, I am intelligent, gentlemen. But it has to serve. If you don't make the intelligence serviceable, and you think in -- reason can lead, you get into trouble. Because reason can prove anything. It can prove slavery, it can prove intoxication, it can prove lust, it can prove anything. It can certainly prove -- imperialism, power politics, anything.

Reason is a harlot. It will serve any -- any lust of your body or of your soul, if you let it do not know that it has to be put in its place, and to give it the right title. Gentlemen, the Greek spirit accompanies the other spirits. It is our companion. It is our duenna, as in the plays, our -- our -- how do you call the lady who is always with the heroine? You see, in a -- a British play of the 18th or 17th century, we'll always find that--or in an opera--that there is always the socalled duenna -- lady-in-waiting, so to speak, you see, who is the bystander, and to whom you -- in whom you can confide, and to whom you can utter all your grievances, you see. And she's always mysteriously of help.

Leisure rightly employed regenerates serious life. -- Leisure rightly employed regenerates serious life. Therefore the Greeks are not only the lubricating oil. They are not just the filler -- stop-gaps and fillers. But something in this leisure returns into real life, because -- why? Because the man who spends his leisure well, gentlemen, comes back into life with enhanced energy and perspicacity. His eyes are opened. His senses are awakened, you see, and he plunges into his real business with twice as much zest. It isn't -- if you want to know where the Greeks come in, allow me this metaphor which I always use, and I have found no better. It's like a -- the head start in a diving board. The Greeks seemingly lead away from real life, but they enhance the energy with which you take the jump.

And there is a famous sentence by a great scientist, gentlemen: never does science come nearer to changing real life than when it seems to be -- to have removed it, farrest from it. It's a very strange paradox. But I think the -- the meta- -- the simile of the dive board may help you. If you take a leap -- a jump, not -- only on the dive board, but just a broad jump, how do you call this going back,

this movement away from the jump before you start? You call it head start? Is that the right word?

({ }.)

Ja, the -- but the running start is simply three steps forward and jump. But what I mean is, here you stand, take the measure of the distance, and now you step back. For this there is no English word, as far as I can think of. And yet it is the most important movement. I'll tell you what it is; it's the most human movement, you see. Everything in nature is pressure, reaction. If you take, however, these three steps back, you act as a free man. That's why the Greeks also are liberal, and why this is a liberal arts college. It is an action which is not a mere reaction. Don't you see that when I go, take the measure of the jump, and say, "I have to take more -- you see, get more room," then this -- I act as -- not under pressure, but as a free agent.

So the Greek meaning of "freedom," gentlemen, is not the same meaning as the Israelitic meaning of "freedom," I'm afraid to say. There are two meanings of "freedom." The Greeks create a -- a tension, or a relaxation, you also may say, so that you do not act immediately, but you create better conditions for the action. This creating of better conditions for your necessary act is the Greek contribution to life. It's immense, but you have to know it's a detour. What you -- is there no word for this going backward in order to go --.

(Balk. They use it -- it's called "wind-up" in baseball. Balk. Balk.)

How do you spell it?

(B-a-l-k.)

({ }.)

Wind-up. Wind-up, yes, yes. Wind-up, ja, ja.

({ }.)

Well, you would -- it's --.

(There's a term in horseback riding, so that I -- it's a motion where you start the horse backwards three steps, it's called a "Vienna gallop." You start it backward, take three steps backwards, it { }.)

All right, call -- let's call it the -- from now on the "Vienna gallop." I'm

delighted to have any expression. And nobody can mistake it. "Vienna gallop" nobody can understand, so they all have to ask, "What does it mean?" Wonderful. You are absolutely right, you see. We are all settled. Vienna gallop. Because we are -- as soon as a man takes the time to -- ask what it means, we can make him understand.

You may have noticed that in this Greek case, because you are deeply involved in it, I started with the function of the Greeks. I now have to -- to say -- tell you how it was done. The function of the Greeks is the enhancement of the real life. But only the enhancement. It is this wind-up, or this Vienna gallop. All right.

Why are the Greeks un- -- imperishable? After all--I told you--as a nation, they have long ceased to exist. And -- as a political entity, they have ceased to exist. Their superstitions of their many gods, and all their perversions, people had to get rid of. And you may be interested to hear that the greatest Greek speaker of antiquity, John Chrysostomos, whose name means the "man with the golden mouth." He was patriarch of Constantinople in the 4th century, that this man with the golden mouth, Johann -- {Johannis} Chrysostomos. Perhaps it is worth giving this man's name. John -- when you read the -- these modern bestsellers on Greece, The Glory that Was Greece, they never tell the disastrous ending of Greece. But John Chrysostomos was a Greek, and he -- had inherited from Aeschylus, and Homer, and Plato, and Demosthenes all the eloquence there was in Greece. And he writes a wonderful Greek. And he calls it the Greek Odyssey, the life of the Greek mind, because he says this Greek mind--"{plane}," he calls it, the planets, you know, are the stars that have an irregular -- irregular course, and got their name because they are not fixed stars, but they err -- e-r-r, they wander around the -- the heavens. He said the Greeks had to produce every year a new sensation, had to write a new book, have a new idea. And that leads them of course into an odyssey in the sense that you go just from island to island of the mind, and you have to be sensational. You can never, you see, repeat any course. The book has always to be new.

You know how in Broadway -- on Broadway and on Fifth Avenue the people are plagued by inventing new book titles, and new -- new topics, and new themes all the time. They always sell the same soap, but it has to be -- have a different name every year. And the -- all the goods that we eat are essentially the same. But imagine what you can vary, the -- corn flakes and all these -- stuffs, you see, just by Greek, new sensational titles. And I always feel the Saturday Evening Post has not changed since 1800, but they feign that they do. Every number they say, contains something different. I haven't found it, yet. It's always the same. Essentially the same. They have four forms for short stories, which are -- or 16--I don't know; they have a certain, as you know, routine--a catalog of

forms which you have to fill, they say. And it's just a little -- it's -- it's like any cooking, I mean. You -- you can have scrambled eggs, and -- and other eggs I mean, so often in the week, and then it comes back. And I think that's the same amount of variation our magazines offer, I mean. A little obscenity, and a little politics, and a little statistics, and a little joke. And it's always the same. It's always the same.

So I hope by -- in two years from now you will have given up reading any American magazine. It isn't worth it. It's -- the combination is exhausted. By which I mean to say, John Chrysostomos called this he -- the {plane.}

So the Greeks ended in disaster, gentlemen. The record of Greece is negative. We have to save in the Renaissance the Greek element by -- founding liberal arts colleges. In us, gentlemen, the Greeks are innocuous, because they are not sovereign. They are not a state; they are not a religion. They are just arts and sciences. So the Greeks have entered our own life, gentlemen, in an innocuous form. But in order to produce the "Glory that was Greece," this mental odyssey, they had to base themselves on their situation between the tribes, the Jews, and the empires. The Greeks are the first internationalists, not because they were internationally minded, but because they were internationally placed. They lived between the existing orders of society.

Where the Jews challenged the tribes and the empires, the Greeks compromised. The Greeks compromised. There were, by and large, 250 to 300 independent Greek societies, Greek city-states. All -- and every one of them mixed the elements of a tribe, of -- and of an empire. What we call a Greek polis is an empire of the size of a tribe, and is a tribe that has settled. That's exactly what a polis is, a settled tribe. That is, any Greek polis has a temple, and is oriented between Heaven and earth; Zeus in Heaven, and Hera -- or Diana, or who it -- -ever it is who is Hera, downstairs, down below. The tribal element comes in with Heracles. He is the great representative for the whole history of Greece of the heroic element, of the tribal ancestors. He is a human being, he's not a god. And he has his name, gentlemen, because he founds the city. He prepares the ground. He -- cuts down the bush. He slays the dragon. Siegfried in German is the same story, you see. Everywhere where you get such a hero, who kills the wild animals and tames the bull, you have the story that the tribal relation to life, through a chieftain, is compromised, is mixed with the settlement problem, that finally we -- people stay put in one place.

Heracles is a very important -- the creation of the Greek mind. Do you know what it means? Does anybody know what the name "Heracles" means? It's a very great story, gentlemen. The Greeks, as I said, compromise tribe and empire. Now let's go back and say, "The tribes have ancestors." The Greek name for

ancestors is "heros," and "heros" is an ancestor. The heroic age is the -- are the age of the founders of the tribe. And -- as we say, the founders -- the fa- -- founding fathers of this country. You would also admit that this was the heroic age of the United States, wouldn't you? Nothing very --. I want you to understand that the word "hero" is in Greece something common, something necessary, like "founder," and not something where you can say, "There are no heroes." I mean, this debunking today has led you to believe that the word "hero" is a gross exaggeration and that there -- are just no heroes. "Hero" is a necessary concept in any tribe, because it means the people in authority. Can you understand? The heroes are the predecessors, the ancestors to whom we look up. Without the understanding of this word "hero" I cannot explain to you the word "Heracles."

So the first thing for your understanding of this great hero of Greece, or this great name of Greece, Heracles, you have to know that when the tribes of the Greeks entered the Balkan peninsula and came into this -- strangely scattered island ocean, of the Aegeas, with all -- the peninsula on the mainland, and all the innumerable islands -- between Asia Minor and Greece, that they brought with them the idea that they were under the authority of a hero. Every group, they had to look up to somebody who reminded them of discipline, and what was what. But when they came into this Mediterranean, they found everywhere the vestiges of Babylonian and Egyptian civilization; that is, of a regular calendar of work, with the seasons, predictable and repeated, and temples built, and these temples oriented from east, and north, and south, and west. And of course, with a divine priest -- a staff of priests observing the stars and telling the people when to act.

Now the Greeks have never been under the domination of a priestly caste. The stargazers of Egypt had nothing to say in Greece. It is one of their tremendous advantages that they took the best from Egypt, as they took the heroes from -- from the tribe, but rejected the authority of these -- this magic square in the heavens over their life. The reason for this is very simple, gentlemen. There was no Nile. The first Greeks that came into Greece, the first tribesmen, called their little fountains and rivers "Nile." We have still vestiges of this naive idea that if you wanted to have a city, you had to have a Nile. So because there was a Nile in Egypt, anybody who wanted to settle definitely called the water which would irrigate his field, "Nile."

It didn't work, because in Greece, as you know, there is rainfall, very -- and the -- the country lives by rain. So the rain-god -- god couldn't be Horus -- the water-god couldn't be Osiris, or Horus, or the Nile. It had to be the sky-god, the man of the irregular water supply, Mr. Zeus. And instead of saying that the Heaven was made pregnant by the rising water of the Nile--I told you, that's the Osiris legend--that the thing had to be reversed. Zeus was up, and he, as a -- the

very drastic expression in Greek was, all time, he had his coitus -- he had his inter- -- sexual intercourse with the earth; and the earth is Hera.

So the Greeks abdicated their worship of the hero in favor of the goddess of the earth, of Demeter, of {Gai}, of Hera. Hera was the settled order, and therefore in this transition from "heros" to "Hera," you see what happened to the migrating tribes of the Indo-European stock, who entered Greece. They saw that they had to compromise. They couldn't forget their "heros." And so they said that -- that leader of our group who did this is Heracles. And everywhere you find Heracles, and what does the man mean -- name mean? It means "he who makes Hera glorious, he who makes her, the goddess, glorious." That's a very wonderful compromise in the Greek tradition, you see. They inherit the earth from the prepared, great empires in the East. And they bring with them their warrior qualities, their chieftaincy, their migratory qualities. They compromise and give to the earth the honor of being the goddess of life, and of agriculture, and made pregnant and fertile by rain, by Zeus. But they say, "We, the human beings, our ancestor Heracles, are the founder of the dynasty of the Spartan kings, for example -- he is he who makes Hera glorious." That's the literal translation of "Heracles." "Cles" means glory, and "Hera," means of course the goddess of -- who has taken the place of the -- of the hero. She is the founding substance, so to speak, of the Greek city.

I think it's is a tremendous story, because you may study in the name of the word -- in the name "Heracles" the exact amount of admixture of tribal elements, and of imperial elements in the Greek situation. Heracles is the hero, the founding ancestor who makes Hera famous.

And so the Greeks are based on the very first -- at the very first moment on the compromise that their polis is as -- not larger than a tribe. It is not larger than a tribe. And that their temples are repeated over Greece a hundred times -- 200 -- 300 times. When Aristotle wrote up the constitutions of the various {polis} of { }, he found 300 cities whom he might have described. He only finished 158. But you see that Greece is plurality. And what is plurality, gentlemen, but the necessity for comparison? The Greeks got their Greek element of reason, of poetry, of science, of sensation, of Muse, by comparison. What is a Greek tragedy, gentlemen? A Greek tragedy is a play acted in Athens about all the heroes of the various cities of In- -- or who- -- whom they had founded. That is, you could play Oedipus, as you know, or Agamemnon in Athens, although the hero had lived in Sparta, or in Argos, or in Thebes.

So Greek art, gentlemen, is -- differs from a tribal art -- a play, because it is -- compares innumerable cities, innumerable myths, innumerable gods. And the Greeks are only superior to the tribes and the empires, because of this material

for comparison. They have no standard to go by to judge this myth, but they collect them. They are encyclopedic.

And so the -- the innermost feature of Greeks -- the Greek mind is comparison, gentlemen. "Give me three men, I'll tell you what a man is." Is that true, by the way? I give you here this whole class. Can you deduce from these 75 people the qualities of humanity? No, that's a logical error. The Greeks commit it all the time. The whole problem of Greek philosophy is their attempt to deduce from the many, the one. Or to prove that it cannot be done. The whole discussion of the Greek mind is, if I have 158 cities, do I know what the best city is, you see? Do I? Do I not? You don't. They can all be corrupt. No criterion.

(Is that what the curve system is based on?)

What?

(It's what the curve system is based on. Can testify in college, here. If you have three people, you can -- they are valuable only that you can -- with three other people, you can draw a curve.)

Yes, insanity. Total insanity. That's why I feel -- I live in an insane environment, because you -- this -- this Greek mind believes in its own nonsense. Give me 50 people. They are all idiots, and I say, "Man is an idiot." The logic -- that's the Greek logic.

Of course, they were saved, because not all their environment was Greek. There was Egypt, and there were the -- were the Gothic -- the tribes. They were all -- of all descriptions. If you read the -- who has written -- read Plato? The Laws or The Republic? Well, it's -- it's filled with this comparison between the -- the primitive people, and the Egyptians, and the -- and the Greeks, you see. But the essence is, gentlemen, that the -- what you call "reason" -- don't be betrayed. You have to get behind the secret of your own mind. The mind is that instrument for comparison. Give me two things, and I can say one is larger, and the other is smaller. But what it should be, you don't know from this. The reason never knows what should be, gentlemen. Never. But it can compare any number of things and can bring them into a -- into a scale, into an order. You can arrange them by series.

Comparison, gentlemen, is no good without genius. Take -- take {deBohr's} structure of the atom. No comparison between all these 76 different elements could ever have proved that the atoms -- you see, consisted of a planetary system. That is a stroke of genius of Mr. {deBohr}. It has nothing to do with comparison whatsoever. You see, it's a novelty, it's an innovation, where some-

thing breaks into man's imagination, which cannot be logically deduced. No invention, gentlemen, is -- has ever been based on logic. And yet you believe it can be forced. I don't -- never has anything been invented. The Benzol ring, you know what that is? HO -- you know, H6O6, or O6H -- or how do { }? Wie? It was just an inspiration of a man who suddenly saw flapping doors, because he had studied architecture.

And -- so the Greeks, gentlemen, base their international lo- -- situation or draw from their international place -- placement, the power of comparison, of infinite comparison. What you call the "Greek theater," gentlemen, is the power to locate in Athens, comparatively speaking--literally, comparatively speaking--the myth and the religions of all other peoples. If you hear- -- have heard of Greek tragedy, gentlemen, the -- the difference between a cult of Agamemnon in Argos is only that Agamemnon is one king of Argos, and he has a cult in his memory. Then you get the Greek poet who goes to Athens, and he writes of this cult in Agamemnon's city, you see, and transfers it to Athens; and next year, another king from another city is memorized. And that's poetry, gentlemen: comparative religion.

Thank you.