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

...expressing the fact that the Church had done its work, at least in part of the world, and that the people Christianized, baptized, educated, retrained, re- -- converted by the Church could now move into a new direction. So we have to devote our attention today to the way by which it became possible that the Church was followed by a period marked by the history of Christianity. Today all this is mumbo-jumbo in your minds, and you think "Christianity" is a word that must be as old as the Church. It isn't.

I -- may I bring back then to your attention what has been said last time, to bring you into the mood of admitting--which is very hard for a Roman Catholic, who lives by the faith that nothing ever has changed since Christ came into the world, which would mean that He came in vain--you remember that I insisted that there has been a change in the meaning of the word "sacraments." And -- as there has been a change in the meaning of the word "Christianity," or at -- even a new birth of this term "Christianity" compared to "Church."

I ran in -- in a bookstore in Boston, I ran into a book on the seven sacraments, by a Rev. Francis J. {Connell}. I'm sure he's of one of the southern counties of Ireland, originally, and so he should be a good Catholic. And he's a priest of the Roman Church. And the book is written on the seven sacraments. It's quite authorized, as you can see. And he says: before the 12th century, the word "sacrament" was used in the sense in which I have explained it to you--that the largest sacrament was the Crucifixion--but after the -- 12th century, the word began to be used in a more restricted sense, for the seven sacraments as external tokens of the faith. "In this sense," he then goes on, "I shall use this term in this book." That's the way you have been brought up, too. But that doesn't alter the fact that the word "sacrament" in the old -- life of the Church meant the way in which new ways of life were discovered by the saints. As the Crucifixion was the first great sacrament of this new church, so every saint's life was a sacrament. And the immediate action, gentlemen, done on faith and not under the authority of some superior, was the sacrament by which the -- life was consecrated.

And if -- today the Church is very anxious to insist that its children should only know the ins- -- institutionalized sacraments, it is obvious that it is taken away from your adulthood, from your maturity. The old saints, gentlemen, which have founded the Church were different people. They were people like -- today perhaps, a man like Einstein or Fridtjof Nansen, or--what can we say today?--of people of the same caliber and size. And they were not small and sweet little children. They were very austere, and very uncomfortable and surprising characters. Nothing known beforehand. And they didn't bear the stamp

of some edition in gold lining, and leather binding, and predicted goodness and sweetness of character. Mr. -- St. Jerome, and St. Augustine, and St. Ambrose, and all the great saints of the -- first thousand years, gentlemen, were people most unpleasant to be with, most austere, and certainly people who did not at all conform to anything in their own time. And it is this ominous, austere, challenging, and severe confrontation of the ancient world with such new characters, whom nobody had seen before--giants, titans--every one of them able to found a tribe of his own, but disciplined enough to stay within the company of saints under the guidance of Christ, that has made the Church such an incredible venture.

And the greatness of the -- ancient Church is such, gentlemen, that the descendants of this Church look like dwarves compared to those giants. And it is simply the duty of the historian to draw attention to this loss of size. As the word "sacrament" has lost its size, so have you lost size and scope. Because to be a saint means to -- discover a new way of life--that's the definition of a saint--and not to discover it on- -- one's own wantonness, because it is necessary, because the times can only be saved by people who bring a new element of sanity into the -- an insane world. You think that you know you can -- recognize a saint if you meet him. Gentlemen, a saint is always a person who is in danger of being put into an insane asylum, because the world is insane.

A saint who can be recognized in his own lifetime is not a saint. That's a -- the definition of a saint. A saint of whom you can say while he is alive that he is a saint, you can be sure is not a saint, because he does not add a new dimension to the ways of life. And how can you be known as a saint if you depend on the judgment of others who are not saints? It's impossible. Can you see this? If I make a new invention of a -- in the dimensions of humanity, all the people who live in the old dimensions will say he cannot exist. It's impossible that such a man lives. They won't see him. They can see him only after he has died and the fruits of his life become known.

Beware, gentlemen, of living saints. They are imitations. An original saint is a contradiction in terms, gentlemen, because a saint is an original character. That's a saint. There are no other saints. If it is a -- an imi- -- there are many imitators of saints, gentlemen. But I -- I would insist that an imitat- -- -ation of a saint is not a saint, you see. You can imitate saintliness, and is imitated today by -- by the score, of course, by the thousands. But these are not saints, you see. They are just pseudo-saints.

Now in order to round out the picture of the first thousand years of the Church--in which it is really original and new, and surprising, and showing for the first time how different man can be from anything that had gone on

before--I'd like to finish the -- the dates -- the data which I have listed last time. You remember the Church had to outgrow Jerusalem. After the Crucifixion, I told you, the 12 Apostles lasted in -- in Jerusalem against all odds, so to speak, under the leadership of the Apostle James, of the brother of John, and the Acts -- the Book of Acts says in the 8th chapter, in the first verse, that while the whole rest of the Church went into hiding, the 12 Apostles held out against -- in Jerusalem. And I told you that at that time, all the mysteries of our faith have been settled, have been discussed, and have been written, and that the Gospel of St. Matthew is the first wording of the new recognition of a step forward in the history of revelation. The liturgy, Mass, Eucharist--all these forms of worship must have been instituted in those 12 days -- 12 years.

In 42, the Council of the Apostle met and said James had been -- had been executed, so we have to leave and out goes the Church from the Jewish country and prepares the world, while some faithful, James the Less, the Apostle -- the -- the Less, you see, the cousin or the brother of the Lord, stay in Jerusalem to {settle it}.

So we get the real story of the Church that -- you may put it in -- always in this crucial way. At any time, gentlemen, something lasts and something starts in Christianity. Everything done in Christianity must go on. There is still a Christian Church in Jerusalem. As you know, the -- you can go there and -- to see the sights of the life of Jesus, held in great respect and revered. But that is a museum, that's a memory of these first 12 years, and the first 40 years. The -- the real story then goes on with Peter and Paul leaving, and going forward into the -- Greece and Rome -- with the Roman empire. And I -- it is terribly important for you to understand that the history of the Church always consists of a movement to retain what has been done before--and the opposite movement, to discover what still has to be done in a new and original way.

You can never sh- -- give the history of the Church, as unfortunately most books are written in such an evolutionary line, and say that this is 1, and this is 70, and this is 325, and this is 800. Any book on the history of the Church written in this manner is absolutely misleading. That's why at this moment, no readable history of the Church exists. They are all wrong, because every one--Roman Catholic, and Protestant, exactly likewise, and agnostic, too--are sold to this evolutionary scheme that something that happens later is later. But obviously, gentlemen, the Church in Jerusalem is the same since 42, so to speak, you see. And it is wrong to say that in -- a bishop of Jerusalem existed in 700 A.D. as a new event, so to speak, in the history of the Church, you see, when that what was new in 700, it happens elsewhere; and in 700, the Church in Jerusalem is simply continuing to hold onto that which was done in 42, which is all right in my eyes, you see. But you have to have always these two ways of continuation

and of origination.

Somewhere, something new must burst forth, like the Apostle Paul, who comes forward, you see, unexpectedly, without any continuity, you see, shaking up the old guard of the Apostles, you see, and making them feel very -- very poorly indeed. There is an upstart here, suddenly, you see. He has no credentials, you see. He has never seen the Lord, probably -- we can assume. And he has persecuted the Christians, you see. And he becomes the bearer of the torch to -- to -- to the Greeks. That's the real story of the Church. That's why it's so exciting. And that's why it should be rewritten, gentlemen.

I think most textbooks of Church history today are absolutely boring, and absolutely treating the Church as something natural. If the Church is natural, gentlemen, then there is no Church. And -- how can a thing be called "supernatural" if it isn't constantly surprising us? The history of the Church, gentlemen, is the most surprising story, and it always happens in the most unexpected way. The -- turning point is always something you can never predict, you can never deduce from the past. If you could, it would be evolution, gentlemen. And then it would be an animal history. It would be a natural history.

At this moment again, gentlemen, don't look into the official channels if you want to know where Christianity goes. Nonsense. You will only know if you do it yourself. And you will have to do it, gentlemen, against the authorities, obviously, because they think everything is fine. They are cons- -- they are continuing, and they should. But you shouldn't continue.

So this is not the history of the Church, gentlemen, looking in this straight manner. But I have -- it's very difficult to schematize this on a blackboard. But I have to try. If we get these years, the birth of Christ -- Christmas, it is continued by the bishops' -- writ of James the Less, who was simply a member of the family of Jesus, und who takes it upon himself in flesh and blood to last out, as long as there is a Jewish community in Jerusalem, to remind people that his great cousin, or his great brother, Jesus, has gone to the Cross. And who becomes, from 42 to -- I think to 63 or 61, the bishop of this -- of this remnant of faithful Jews. On goes the real story--as I tried to tell you--and out go the Apostles into the world.

Now we have seen that in the twel- -- second century--and here is the -- then the destruction of Jerusalem--and that would finish the -- the pure family history of the family of Joseph, and Mary, and Jesus, and -- and -- and James, as -- as the man who was chosen, because he -- could -- could say that he belongs.

In 42, I need not tell you that the community in -- in Jerusalem was wiped out. It took a long time before it was re-established. In the second century, I lifted

up one incident, the fact that people tried to be -- Greek Christians now, and empire Christians, without the Old Testament. The so-called greatest heresy, of all the heresies of the Church, has been the heres- -- Marcionite heresy. But it is good -- just as good to introduce one heresy so that you know what a heresy is. A heresy is something that makes Christianity smaller than it is. Christianity must inherit the whole of antiquity. That's its catholic character. It must inherit the final man's completeness. You can see this. Otherwise it wouldn't be the Church. Otherwise it would be just some imper- -- some empirical's partial, mythical enterprise of mere Greek improvement, you see, or mere Jewish improvement, or mere progress within the empire-building, or mere improvement of priesthood. And that cannot be Christianity which comes at the end of all these times.

The Marcionite heresy was an attempt to say to the Christians, "Don't give any support to the Old Testament. The Old Testament is abolished. The God of the Jews is not the God of Christ. The God of Christ is the inspiring Christ of genius," so to speak. And the Marcionite heresy said the only books of the Bible that should be used in their heretical congregations should be the works of the Apostle St. Paul. And he even gave up the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Mark as not sufficiently un-Jewed -- de-Judah-ized. So Mr. Marcion, of course, was revived in the days of Hitler by a tremend- -- stupendous monograph, and served very handily to the Hitler heresy. In the Hitler heresy, you may say.

It happens in all times, gentlemen, that there will be attempts to limit, to restrict the Gospel to one of the -- its four approaches, or even less. And I think we gain a new insight then in the importance of the notion of a heresy. A heresy means literally to pick and choose. "Heretic" is to be choosy. And Christ makes sense only if you cannot pick and choose. If it is necessary to embrace, and to comprehend the whole story, because otherwise the whole history of mankind has been lived in vain. It is the vanity of the heresy, gentlemen, the cancellation of already-acquired completeness and catholicity, which was -- came to the fore in the second century for the first time. I have put the year 160 before you last time, and I mean to tell you that in 160, the Church of Rome--the great Church, the lasting Church--found it necessary to define the canon of the New Testament, and to say that at least those four Gospels, whom -- which we have now in our -- in our Bibles, were indispensable. You can see why. Since Marcion said, "Luke is enough," the Church had to say, "It is not enough." You have to have this appeal to the Jews, and to the Israelites, and to the Romans, and not just the appeal to the Greeks.

By the way, he was mistaken in the sense that I think the -- the -- John is much more instrumental to the conversion of genius than Luke. But that's -- would go into the errors of Marcion -- Marcion. Marcion is very much like a modern Free Mason, or --. That's the same brand of mentality. It's your own

mentality, gentlemen. Most of you have the Marcionite mentality. Liberal, worldly, secular, rational, and thinking that you can -- can think it all out by -- by a system of re- -- rational -- you know what's good, and you know what's evil, of course--that you know even better--and -- and on the basis of these naive, selfconcocted, systematic thoughts, you decide what you -- what you want to accept from the traditions of your forefathers, and what you have the right to let go. Of course, the story of the Church is one of great respect, for thousands of years, and implies that you are nincompoops, and you have no idea what { } is, yourself, because you don't even know what's there. So how can you know that you don't know even nine-tenths of the truth if you decide -- sit in judgment what you are kind enough to admit as perhaps being true at the age of 20? You have no room then in your own mind to making discoveries about the truth already discovered and just forgotten by your -- probably by your teachers and parents, you see. Most -- of the greatest truths haven't even reached you to this day. And you already say that these people are obsolete. Wonderful.

But that is this overrating of the mind which -- over which Marcion stands, and that's why he deserves to be mentioned. And deserves for -- also to be mentioned--and it is unfortunate that the -- the real, religious people have not seen the importance of this admission--that there was no reason to fix the canon of the New Testament before 160 A.D. If you debate today with churchmen and theologians this question, the so-called enlightened or secular minds will say the canon is very late. And the orthodox people, the fundamentalists, or the -- integralists, or the fanatacists will say, "Oh no, it was all finished in 40, or 50, or 60." I think that a really believing Christian should be very pleased to find that the canon was fixed very late. Because it was only bec- -- when Marcion tried to whittle down the existing inspirational writing, you see, that it became necessary self-defense for the catholic church to lay down a law. It wasn't necessary before to limit the writings that existed. But then they had to have a minimum, fixed.

So I would reverse the whole canon of selection and criticism today. And as a believer, I would say that the spirit moved freely in the Christian Church up to 160. And only then was it inevitable because there was so much heresy, and so much -- choosing that the authority of the Church had to be belabored -- had to belabor the point that all the four Gospels at least should be kept.

At that time, there were many more Gospels in circulation. There was the Gospel of St. Peter, and so on. And the Church said, "This -- these are the four which we need indispensably," and you can understand why, now, because they do keep open the tract and the ducts into the -- areas, you see, of such separate shape as the tribes, and the empires, and the Greek schools, and the -- and the -- temple tradition of Israel itself, the prophetic tradition.

My whole approach here, you may care to know, is reversing the attitude of the unbelievers and the believers of the last 150 years. I think that a really believing man who believes that the Church came when the times were fulfilled will have absolutely no reason to concentrate all his attention to defending any verbiage on the life and death of Jesus, because I can see that He comes after 5-, 6-, 10,000 years of humanity as its -- their fulfillment. So what do I care for any momentary slip of the pen or expression? I'm not concentrating on the life of Jesus in His own day. I've tried to show you that His meaning is only developed in -- outside His own lifetime. Therefore I don't have the qualms, you see, of a man who tries to defend his -- his dignity or his importance as of that moment. I can only understand Him at all if He is not a man of His own time.

By the way, I found in Samuel Johnson, the critic of England, a remark -- a sentence which sums -- sums up my method quite well. He says, "Anything that relates man to the past, or to the faraway world, or to the future, makes him a bigger man compared to the man who lives in his own time and locality only." That's still a heri -- heritage, you see, an inheritance from Christianity in Samuel Johnson. You may run into this quotation. I thought I should show you in how many ways the Christian truth has survived. That's a purely secular form of his -- of Samuel Johnson, you see, said to -- to Boswell in one of his famous conversations.

In the -- the sec- -- third century, I said to you, Judaism has to be reappropriated in the form of the desert monks. The Exodus from Egypt has to be lived now by the Church herself. And the first fathers of the monks go into the Egyptian desert away from the humanized and settled cities, and urban centers of agricultural life and planned economy.

And therefore in the third century, we suddenly see that the Israelitic tradition cannot be abandoned, but has to be used again in its extreme form even of -- part of the Church not belonging to the world at all. This may explain to you what any Catholic knows, that there is today a distinction between the world -- the worldly clergy and the monastic orders. It is very hard for you to understand how the clergy -- bishops, and patriarchs, and cardinals can be called "world clergy," you see. It seems to be a contradiction in terms. But it is this fact that three-quarters of the Church are nestling and residing within the worldly orders of empires, and nations, and schools. And one-third must protest this membership of the world, you see, by going again and again into the desert. In the first thousand years, gentlemen, the monks could only found a monastery if in their charter it read that a desert had been given to them.

Now for example, when the great monasteries in Europe were founded, you -- we still have sometimes the -- the documents, the king of the Franks, or the

king of -- of Ang- -- England would grant a charter saying that such-and-such a desert was a sign to this new monastery--of Saint Gall, or Saint- -- Michel, or whatever it was. And that was, of course, a figure -- figure of speech. It was not a desert, you see. But it had to be called a desert because it meant, you see, that this part of the globe was cut out and to be treated as a desert not belonging to the ordinary administration of the planned economy of the settlements, you see.

And I think it's an interesting fact that this wording was chosen as late as 1200 and 1300, before the Franciscans came. Any monk, a Cistercian or a Benedictine, had to live in a place which was declared to belong to the non-settled, noncivilized part of the world, to the desert.

So from 280, you may say, down to 1200, the monasteries could even officially, legally be founded in a place set aside and recognized as not forming a part of the ordinary counties, and districts, you see, and provinces of the empires of this earth. The tenacity with which this formula was upheld may -- may prove to you how serious people felt that a Church, gentlemen, can only exist if onequarter of it--that's what we may call the monks; it doesn't, of course, it's -- that one foot of its building, one wing of its building--was outside the world.

It is today, I'm sorry to say, not -- no longer true that the monasteries are outside the world. They try very hard, but if you look at the story of Thomas Merton, and his monastery, and it's a very tragic story. It is impossible, obviously today, for a modern monk not to become even more worldly and be a bestseller. And a bestseller is not a monk. He cannot be. It's nonsense. He is of the world. And -- modern monks, gentlemen, are not to be found in monasteries. That's very -- important to know. The reason is not in the good will of the monasteries, but they have been discovered, so to speak, by the world-men. And the worldmen cling to them; they -- run to them, and write them up. Now a monastery that's written up in the papers has ceased to be a monastery. They have to be in hiding. You must be -- remain undiscovered.

That has been dis- -- discovered, this great truth, gentlemen, by Kierkegaard, who speaks of the incognito. If you look at the life of Jesus, one-half of His problem was to remain undiscovered unto the Crucifixion, unknown for what He really was, you see, misunderstood. It's part of His fruitfulness that there was a secret about Him. And the monks have been, for the first 1300 years of the life of the Church, the mysterious, the desert part, the not-yet-explored part of the Church, the -- the reserve. Just as we have a re- -- in the Reserve Bank system of the federal government, real reserves, you see, not -- untapped reserves.

So the monks are the untapped reserves of the Church, representing this same character the Israelites had in the ancient world, that they were totally

undiscovered. No, Plato didn't know anything of Moses, you see. But there they were, already, for 900 years, waiting. And they had an effect, but an effect unknown to the powers of the day. As soon as the Jews were written up by the journal- -- newspapermen of Athens, it was all over.

This is very hard for you to understand. I think I have told you the story that Life wanted me to write up the future of our history, and I had to decline. They wanted to photograph it -- in advance, you see. That's impossible, gentlemen. All future life is inconspicuous. And perhaps you will understand therefore the rule to be laid down. The Church has ceased to have a future as soon as it -- as she has become conspicuous. If she has an element in which she's unconspicuous, she cannot have a future. The future is inconspicuous -- as inconspicuous as a newborn baby. A newborn baby is inconspicuous. That's why it has a future.

It is this -- the deepest problem of our faith, gentlemen. In -- you are alive, and you have a future in as far as you agree and consent to remain inconspicuous, because as soon as the klieg lights are on you, you can't grow.

Tell you a secret, gentlemen. All growth takes place at night. In daytime, we don't grow. As soon as you want to have enlightenment, and everything clarified, and everything known, you can, under one condition: that nothing grows anymore. The sun may be very nice, but it doesn't make anything grow. And you grow at night, in the humility and in the dark. Warm nights are needed. Nothing grows -- here, you look around, in all these sunny days, because the nights are still cold. That's decisive.

The Church is just as -- in -- as much a cos- -- of the cosmic order as you and I are, as individuals, gentlemen. And it is at this moment, with all the publicity given to li- -- every harm of -- helm of grass, to every little leaflet, it's more imp- -- difficult to grow, you see, for anything fertile, than ever before. The real problem today is -- is fruitfulness, growth, and -- under modern conditions, it -- it just won't happen.

Twenty years ago -- no, 30 years ago, a delegation of American educators came to see me in Eur- -- Germany, and said that they wanted to spend some -- several million dollars on protecting genius. There was no genius in America; they didn't know quite why, but it wasn't. And they were -- had been told that there might be to -- found still some geniuses in Germany. And this was so important--the human race would be extinguished without geniuses--so what could they do to protect German genius? -- or geniuses, in the plural. And they were perfectly willing to do anything we would advise them to do.

So I said, "Depart as fast as possible."

They did. But probably that's the reason why you have no genius in America.

It's a very serious thing, gentlemen, because you can see that for the last 200 years you have been preached only enlightenment. Now light without night is nothing -- is worth nothing. Light is -- we have too much light today. Too many things are known, and therefore they are all dead. And too many people are known. Known people are boring.

They -- know -- you even know yourself. It must be terrible for you to live with you -- -self since you are so well known, gentlemen. I'm totally unknown to yourself. Don't try to know yourself, gentlemen. It's a bad idea. It's a Greek idea. It's always the end of life.

The people whom you love may open your eyes to what man is. You must know your girl. You must know your parents. You must know your brothers, and your sisters, and your friends. But try not to know yourself. You will be much nicer men. But you do all the -- the opposite. You think you are interesting. Gentlemen, you are the most uninteresting people as soon as you begin to think of -- too much about yourself. Why is an Englishman an interesting creature? Because for centuries he shrinks from self- -- from introspection. So he's terribly {interesting}. He's a mystery to himself. And when you try to express yourself, the result is monstrous, absolutely monstrous.

Now that's mon- -- the monasticism, gentlemen. And I think I should waste -- I have spent perhaps too much time in proportion on insisting that it is an integral part of the Church when it discovered that this hiding in the desert of Jesus, where He underwent the -- the three temptations of the devil, that this is the great and an integral part of any moment in the history of the Ch- -- of that power in us which can change the trend, which can reverse the trend. Without the power to be incognito, gentlemen, nothing can be achieved. Any man who sits down to write a book has to have the guts to remain unknown until the book is -- is there and has been a hit. All these years, he is to his neighbors somebody who has not yet written the book. To himself, he already is the man who is going to write the book.

Now that's the cleavage, you see. You cannot be on all fours with your environment if you have to do something real in the world, because while you are doing it, nobody, you see, will believe that you can do it. Don't you see that in any creative life, there is this lag between your environment and yourself?

James Joyce always was thought by his wife to be an absolute madman--which he probably was, by the way--because she didn't believe that he would be the author of all these books which have made him famous. She hadn't -- married him before he wrote these books, and she didn't expect him to write these books, and she was very sorry that he did. And of course, finally, they -- she didn't even follow him in the last stages of his life. She was very unhappy, and -- perhaps that couldn't be helped. But you -- this is a tragedy, gentlemen, which you don't have to undergo with your own wife, whom you may have convinced, you -- may have faith in you--that's called "faith," you see. But your outer environment -- your parents must never believe that you are a genius, because if they believe it too early, they'll pamper you, and they'll spoil you. I mean, there are many parents who believe that a child is a genius, and he isn't. That's the opposite wrongdoing. It is much better that the parents say, "He's just a normal boy, and he shouldn't do these extravagant things," and then he does them, just the same.

But this is necessary. Can't you see that nobody who does anything for the first time has any right to expect that other people expect him to do something for the first time, because it hasn't been done before? Isn't that logical? Now this lag, this discrepancy is the real problem of any growth.

And that didn't exist in the old civilizations of antiquity, so to speak. That didn't exist, this necessity of admitting that every human being next to you is a secret which will reveal itself only in due time. You cannot know ahead of time what neighbors -- John is going to be. That what we mean really by "freedom," gentlemen. Your -- your pagan explanation of why we have civil rights and civil liberties is certainly un-Christian. The Christian only says, "I can't know what's going to happen, what is embodied, what is secreted into this next neighbor of mine. And I must give him the chance to outgrow my prejudices."

You say you shouldn't have prejudices. Gentlemen, that's impossible. We all have prejudices. Parents must have prejudices about their children; children have prejudices about their parents. We only must remain willing to have our prejudices disproved. That's all we can ask. You cannot be -- live without prejudices, because prejudice is just your view of the world, after all. You see something and you base your expectations on what you see. That's not a prejudice, gentlemen. That's a preliminary judgment. You can't live without them.

I -- always just -- hate people who say they have no prejudices. They're terrible. They think everybody else has prejudice, only they haven't. I have prejudices, you have prejudices. Millions of prejudices. The whole discipline a man must apply, if he wants to belie- -- -long to the Christian era is that he's willing to say that there is a dark ground, a nightly growth around us, and that

can take us by surprise. And we have to remain willing to be re- -- repudiated, to re- -- be refuted by something we have not seen before, and have not heard of before, in people. But the tension of a Christian in the Christian era, gentlemen, is not between being a semantic blank and having no judgment. That would be perfectly worthless, because then he would also be not allowed to form then a judgment about the new experience, when such a saint expears -- appears and he would again say, "I must have no judgment in the matter; it would be a prejudice." To have no prejudice means to have no judgment.

The tragedy of life is really much more serious, gentlemen, that we go from a partial recognition of the truth, to a fuller recognition of the truth. Never to the fullest, probably. But if you -- won't have , gentlemen, you just are worth nothing. You are -- you have not the eagerness of -- of judging, of -- of forming an opinion. But it is all today mixed up, as you know, with -- with the idea, "Here I stand; I don't have enough of the facts. I gather more, then I form my judgments so I have no prejudice before."

Gentlemen, this isn't the problem. Here I stand, and you bring me some newcomer, and I look at him. I think he's a wonderful guy. And I don't know his record, and I have to send to the registrar and find out that he has Es and Ds all the time.

This is what you think to be without prejudice, and to get information, and face the facts, and make an analysis. Gentlemen, that's all without the real problem of life. Because I can do this in half an hour; I can write letters of information; in two days, I can have an answer. There is no time span involved, you see. The tragedy of -- which Chris- -- Christ came to solve was over many years, over centuries, to give a nation a chance to grow, as the American nation got -- by the Amer- -- English navy to 1776 -- 1783 to 1914. That's faith, to prove oneself, you see, af- -- over a hundred years.

That cannot be done by information. Because the individual which is under scrutiny must first become who he can be. He isn't, yet. In 1800, nobody could have predicted -- in any way that the Americans would settle the West in the second half of the 19th century, you see, successfully, with 40 more states.

So it had to be done, and you have -- this is the problem then of real life, gentlemen, that the growth must be allowed to take care, without our knowing it, in- -- incognito, unseeming, inconspicuously. That's something quite different from the judgments of the Greek mind, based on more information, you see. That's important for these poor physicists and plumbers. But not for real people, gentlemen, who have to do with living -- with living beings, and with living entities like nations, and religions, and -- and convictions, and persons. You

always mistake this -- the problem of science, to find out about something with certainty or probability, you see, for the real problem of judging. "Judge not, lest ye be judged," in the Gospel. If I come to know you, gentlemen, you have 50 years to live. No inquiry at this moment will ever teach me. No test -- no Rorschach test will ever prove to me that you are insane. You probably are insane. But I have to give you a choice. It may take 50 years, and I will be dead by that time, that you have outgrown all the prejudices of your environment and have come out with flying colors. And one of the powers that will have allowed you to come out with flying colors is the suspicion of people like myself that you may not grow, because that will, you see, make you work so much harder. And the feeling that you are not recognized will push you, obviously, you see. It will be a great help in your struggle forward. Whereas if I now said, "He's the most wonderful guy in the world," you will sit back and do nothing. And at 70, you will be just as stupid as you are now.

So the -- gentlemen, the -- the secret, that I cannot possibly recognize the miracle that is contained within you, is part of your power to grow. The potency which a man has inside is dependent on my not knowing it.

It is this constant clash, gentlemen, of your Greek mind with the Christian doctrine which I have to attack here. You think that to be without prejudice means to sit back and to send out analysts and statisticians, and to inquire, and then to know what it's all about, because you think that the thing -- itself can be known already. But the real problem of life is that the most important things cannot be known beforehand. They must come to pass. Can you see the difference? Is it perfectly clear?

And so perhaps you retain from this discussion the maxim, gentlemen--it's a very important one--that all the questions asked in science about truth have nothing to do with the question asked in -- in the community about people. In science, all the facts can -- could be known already. You can -- you can weigh the shell and you can analyze it, and by the spectrum -- as a spectroanalysis, and you just haven't done it, yet, so they -- the physicist tells you: don't have any prejudices, and look first; and weigh it and measure it, and then you know. But the problem is always that the facts are all already in some way available, isn't that true? But where there is new life, gentlemen, nothing is available. The idea that you can know whether a 15-year-old boy one day will -- be president of the United States is idiocy. We have all these tests today, and we have these people, these predictors. And that's why the Jews have prophets who say, "This kind of prediction of life is criminal. These people have to be killed. They have to be executed. They deserve not to live." People who dare to say that the United States will be a nation of old people in 1954. And it was printed in 1935. You have this black magic here in this country, where people tell you that they can predict

your own responses 10 years from now.

You -- gentlemen, there is pre-Christianity in this country to a large extent, because people say, "How terrible, certain things are unknown."

Now I say, "For Heaven's sake, only those parts of the American scene which are at this moment are unknown -- leave me any hope for the future," because everything that is known is hopeless. But that isn't the whole truth about America. I'm sure that I don't see many processes that's going on in American homes which are absolutely wonderful. But I just -- they can't be seen. They are inconspicuous. And there is the hope. Do you really think the hope is in -- in more consumers' goods? That can be seen. But the real hope is of course in those slow processes by which the pub- -- public will cease to be just a public or a consumer, and will become people again. And while -- it is perfectly possible to become a real people again on 72nd Street -- perhaps not on the East side, but the West side, perhaps.

That is, people are--compared to public, you see--something that cannot be seen, because it's living on -- not on the cross-section of life as of this moment, but in the long-range situation, you see, of this channel, or river, which is flowing on, and whose bank will only become visible, and marked out, you see, after the water has -- has -- has -- dug it out.

Of course, { }. Well, I {mean what} I meant to do.