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

(Now, if we're picking up, this little light ought to blink. And that's what went on the blink over in the other -- with the other machine.)

(Let me stand back here. Is there any -- does it still blink when I'm standing back here?)

(Yes, it still blinks.)

[tape interruption]

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm pestering you so long {about} the future, because I think that the usual mistake of people who dabble in history is that they think they can afford to understand the past without committing themselves to their own choice of their faith in the future. History is an article of faith, because you don't understand the past unless you know where you believe that you are going. And I said last time for this reason, in order to wake you up from your slumber, of treating history as a collection of facts in a museum or a zoo, that I was thinking that world government would be -- put an end to free man and to history, because one thing about the future that had been created in times past was our power to change direction. Yes?

(Well, I -- I wanted to understand one thing. You said that we are bound by the past, in your last lecture. And you said again that we must have liberty in order to -- lead meaningful lives. And I want to know then: is the manner in which we gain this liberty by an awareness of the past simultaneously -- simultaneously understanding its function in the present and the future? And if this is so, then history is --)

Would you speak a little louder, because it's an interesting question.

(Well, in your last lecture, you said --)

No, no. Not the whole thing. Everybody has been at this last lecture. So let's cut out. We are bound by the past, you asked, and we are free for the future.

(-- Are you saying that history has a paradoxical function, Number 1: it -- it binds us, and yet in the same way, if we have an awareness -- an awareness of this, we can be free? Are you saying this?)

I'm saying this. But cut out the word "paradox." In -- at this moment, I

think it would be misleading as I was imposing something on you you did not know in everyday living. And I think that what has happened to your brain is that the schools have completely killed it. Because, you see, looking at mathematics, and looking in everything outside which you are allowed to treat as dead--to eat, or to -- to mold, or to deal with as you deal with a car, which you can use, all the instruments of life, you see--are what you call "logic." See? If you drop a chisel, it falls. The law of gravity is not paradoxical. It's just one-way. All dead things go one way: down the sink.

Life from the very beginning is made up -- with this question, that you are born, young, and become old. You cannot resist becoming old, and you have to try to stay young, which is -- as you call, a paradox, but is the essence of life, you see, that the full -- more abundant life is not losing what we have, and gaining what we don't have. So it is always more than you had yesterday, you see, but it is not a forgetting of yesterday. And it is not a loss of yesterday. I think I am still younger than most of you with regard to history, because I have a future, and I think your picture of history is so very black, because it is composed only of the past, you see, without direction. This, you -- you may refute me, and say I'm senile, and, you see, an old dotard. But youth and old age, for example, are not paradoxical in any human being. Everyone who has lived one day--the baby, you see--already is old, compared to the moment of its birth, you see; and it's young.

Now life means that there are all open avenues. All life is -- has this, what you call paradox, you see, this vibrant faculty of freedom as compared --. We can escape death every day by breathing, you see. We don't allow our body to be poisoned. Every breath of life is a victory over death. That is, to live means to combat death. Now in battle, you see, we are not anything at th- -- as of this moment. We have to prove ourselves. At -- as of this moment, we have to survive. And this battle against death, if you call this "paradox," all right. But I hated to use a term which sounds Greek, you see, to most people, and superfluous. That's why I don't like to use the word "paradox," as long as I have to do with people who are completely corrupted by the use of their cars to think of all life as instr- -- consisting of tools, of instruments, of things, think of themselves as having a body.

My dear lady, you don't have a body, you see. You are a physical specimen, you see, of incarnating the spirit of our creator. And you -- don't have a body. And as long as you think that you have a body, you'd better go to a doctor for mental health. You are this human being, you see, half-formed, and half still not-yet molded. We all, you see, form. When we die, we have fulfilled our form. It's like running into a mold, you see. But as long as we live, you see, there is something unfinished in us, and something finished, as any cell has -- is half --

has half its nucleus, you see, and half its free plasma around it. And life of a cell ceases at this very moment where the whole thing, you see, is of one block and has reached its -- one mold, it has no fluid around it. Yes?

(Well, I disagree with you when you say that I'm dead, because -- only because you have had more experience, and -- and you have thought about these problems more than I have. And so I am trying to find answers to these problems, but I have --)

Did I say you were dead? I'll take it back. I take it all back.

(Thank you. I'm glad to know I exist.)

I am -- I have never been impolite towards a lady on purpose. And -- I have only said that your mind, perhaps, was a little deader. I do think that our schools kill the mind. I do think this, because they allow you to think of yourself as things, as bodies, as objects. You even try to be objective. This happened to me two days ago, here, that I just answered a -- a boy with deep feeling about my attitude towards the -- former generations to whom I owe my own existence, the soldiers who fell in battle. And one of you was very much -- taken aback that a man could be so little objective. I just responded with my whole heart, and you expected me -- expect -- to respond only with this -- upper, upper, upper part of the brain, you see, where you figure what 2 and 2 is 4. I cannot respond to this -- question like the World War or Civil War with my extreme, upper brain, you see, which looks at things at a distance. This isn't me, myself. And you -- all your ancestors, who came to this country, I mean, that's a decision of free men to change, for example, and to keep the open -- on the open road, you see, and not in a closed shop.

So what I was trying to say last time, and what I think we -- you will now understand is that we cannot give up the primary human quality which is given by the fact that we can speech -- speak to each other and thereby get under each other's skin. Anybody who speaks to anybody else opens up to him, and allows the other man to face him. We will come back to this, perhaps at some length at another time when we speak of the religious movements in this country. Religion is nothing but the attempt to keep man open to this creati- -- re-creation of his social relations, constantly.

If you get married, why do you ask for the sanction of the Church? Because it is a tremendous undertaking to give up your allegiance in your own family, and to join and -- found a new family, and to rebuild this old family into the new. Any -- one of you--especially, I think, you ladies--should re- -- may remember that the forces of history is nothing but the constant history of mar-

riages, because in any marriage, you have a Virginia Reel. You go forward, form this pair, and then you stand upright and let new people--your own children, for example--go forward again. You know this -- this -- the polonaise, the Virginia Reel.

That's the -- by and large, the truth about history, that any one of you comes in at one time in a position to take a step into the future; for example, founding a home, you see. But at this very moment, you get fixed, because you have made a decision, a real, serious decision. And when the person gets serious--what's going to be serious about something? That you allow other people to quote you on this. As soon as you get married, that is not secret love, that is not elopement, that is not free love, because you ask the community to know about it, and to treat you as having made this decision. You ask to be called "Mrs." And as soon as they do call you this way, they -- you allow them to treat you as married. And that has tremendous consequences. They transfix you, you see, they -- you stay put. And it takes a tremendous effort to convince them that you are still young, and still -- perhaps have other things coming to you. A woman who is married, so to speak, is now forming a pillar of society. And pillars don't walk. And to be a pillar is -- and to be moving, is -- that's our paradox, as you call it, you see. And the whole of life consists--in the animal kingdom, it's just the same--of taking shape, taking shape, and yet have still other shapes coming to you. This is the great problem, you see.

In this country, to go out of shape, to be formless, has been a -- a passion with many of the immigrants, to get lost in the crowd, to be somebody, you see, to be "just a human being," to be a lemon, to be a jellyfish, to say to everybody, "Don't quote me on anything," you see. "I'm just anonymous. I have an alias," you see. "I'm changing my name three times a day."

Well, you -- then in Europe, you see the opposite extreme. Once an earl, always an earl; once a king, you see, always a king. Poor Princess Margaret can't marry. But you look at her, you see, and it would be a pity if there were no English princesses to write about, you see. What would our press do without them?

So you have the two extremes. The English formalities, you see, kings -- Court of St. James introduction, you know, what a -- what a terror it was to -- people here in Boston couldn't be introduced anymore. You know, they have abolished this wonderful--how do you call it?--presentation at the king- -- at the queen's court in England. So what does an American millionaire do now with his daughter? He has no place to go to.

That's social history of America. That's--perhaps you make this point -- even in writing, and note it very well--that the fixed forms were offered in

Europe in many respects. You could go to the Louvre, you could go to Italy, you see, and see the pope -- "make the pope" as they say it. And at home, nothing of the kind, you see. Free movement. I know a very great Protestant Church leader here in this country who wouldn't -- here wouldn't under any circumstances visit Cardinal Spellman. But he had to make the pope when he took his European trip. And he had let me wait in Zermatt for three days because he had to make the pope.

So you have today a strange division--I think it's overcome now, more or less--between the -- the fixed forms of life over in Europe, you see, to be visited, so to speak, to be stared at; and you have here such an overdoing of privacy, and fluidity, you see, and human being-ty, that nobody wants to be quoted on anything you say. And he says, "I am a -- just free." But I think we -- I have to draw attention to the fact that those who are -- seem to boast of being free are wearing very often heavy chains. And I feel that most Americans are very unfree. They are conformists, you see, of the moment. They have to -- speak the slang of the year. They have to dress, and to -- to do everything on Labor Day. After Labor Day, you can't wear a straw hat in New York, you see, without being laughed at.

I once sat with a friend from New York in Paris at the place of -- Place de l'Op‚ra, in the caf‚. And we were a group of internation- -- an international committee, and enjoyed the sunlight in the afternoon. And he looked around and said, "Where am I?"

And we asked what had happened. And he said, "It occurred to me that if my boss in New York saw me sitting in a caf‚ on the street at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, he would fire me." He was such a conformist, you see, that he couldn't think as a free man of himself in the afternoon at 3 not being at his desk. That's slavery.

So this is the purpose of such a social history, to bring attention to the fact that although here in this country we might feel that shapelessness, privacy, incognito, anonymity, freedom to shift, and shiftlessness seems to be the -- our birthright. This country has always depended on many fixities over in Europe to look at. And that in fact it has of course erected any number of social brick walls and concrete walls behind which more and more of our people are disappearing, like the poor people in Little Rock. And whenever Americans wake up to this fact, they deny it and say, "It's just an exception. We just have to wait another hundred years, and then it will disappear." When you wake up after a hundred years, the wall has grown. Obviously, there was much less division of the white and the black man in 1750 than there was in 1850, and there is much more now than there was in 1870.

It is not true that this country, because it boasts of everybody's freedom, is free. And it isn't true that -- Europe, because it has these glamorous forms, doesn't need more -- one doesn't have to get more freedom. I give you an example of this, because I think it's -- has to do with your question of the, you see, eternal paradox, that man is in history only as long as he keeps the balance between the two. And that as soon as you get Europe fixed, then you get Franco in Spain, you see, where you have to be a Catholic, and where every Roman priest in this country condemned anybo- -- any Basque Catholic priest who dared to say that he was on the side of the revolution.

I have seen such a poor man, was a Basque priest from the north, from Bilbao, from the big mining district. He came to this country as a hounded dog. And the peo- -- the Irish Catholics in the -- Massachusetts, who just hounded him, too, because he confessed that he was a Catholic who is siding, of course, with the workers of his mining district, and not with the Castilians in Madrid. That was unheard-of. In this country, a Spaniard had to be a conservative and a Catholic, or he was an anarchist and a Communist. And so we stare at these Europeans and bring them to ruin.

I have another friend, a great, famous historian, Gaetano Salvemini. You know him --. Well, he was an utterly -- one of the greatest men in -- in the field I think we ever had. And I think in his honor I should give his name here. He has written a very charming book on historians, warning the Americans against their superstitions in history. Perhaps you -- I recommend this book very highly. It's a short book. But he wrang it really from the bottom of his heart in despair, because he's -- thought that the Americans were throwing away their birthright of having a real history, you see, which would lead into the future, and not just a collection of Mr. Ford's villages.

You mistake history for antiquity, for antiquarianism. But histor- -- history is nothing but the future recognized in the -- its beginnings of the past, and protected, so that it may grow on, you see, into the future.

And so my story of Salvemini runs like this: -- he was an Italian born in southern Italy, became a professor of history at the University of Florence, in very young years, at the age of 28. He was there a full professor at the university. And then Mussolini came, and crushed freedom in Italy. And Salvemini and his students, whom he had enthused, opposed him. And Salvemini had to leave the country. He went to England. And before he left, he bequeathed his library to his university, which he loved. And these scoundrels, these cowards--they could have been at the University of Texas--they -- they denounced him before he -- the letter was made public in which he donated the library, and had Mussolini confiscate the library instead. So they didn't owe Mr. Salvemini any thanks, you

see, but could profusely prostrate themselves before the dictator.

Then he came to this -- from England he came to this country and had a chair at Harvard. And -- in this lat- -- latest years, he -- was able to return to Italy, advising the young, and teaching perseverance there, and patience.

Now this man always said to me in despair--I was very proud when I came to this country first, he was my finest student. He honored me by taking my whole course. And he said to me, "What is it with the Americans? They drive me to despondency, because they insist that Italy is a Catholic country. It's as Catholic as California, or as America, and not more. We have a pope, certainly. But there are as many non-Catholics in our country, in their heart of hearts, as there are in any other country. You learn in your textbook that the pope is in the Vatican, and therefore the rest of Italy has to cow under this yoke. And so the American policy, beginning with Mrs. Clare Luce, and ending with Mr. Luce -- just simply fixes Italy in this very unhappy state of being a medieval country."

And he said, "That isn't right. In American nobody says that the -- America is a Catholic country." The Catholics have to stand up. They have to function. And if there are no Christians, then to hell with Catholicism. Even for a Catholic, the condition is that he's a Christian. It's very rare, but it happens. With all Christian denominations, I mean. Look at all these churches, how few people are real Christians. But the test of Christianity is not the Roman Church, but the test of the Roman Church is its Christianity.

And so he said, "Why does this not apply to us? What an injustice. Every political measure in America is considered under the aspect, this Italy is a Roman Catholic country."

Now you see what happens if you do not understand that every man who is a human being must allow every other person also to be a human being. That is, to be at any one moment undecided, you see, free, how much of this past, how much of this Roman Catholic past in Italy, you see, is valid, and how much has to be abandoned. In every one moment, in every country, this is the case. It is with -- in your own private life. Perhaps you have to get a divorce. Perhaps you -- you have -- decide not to marry. It is up to you. But this secret cannot be wrested from you without killing your soul. And so the future of Italy is a secret. And your future is a secret. And as long as history must contain free people, and is only the history of free people, I decline to accept, for example, the plan of world government. Because it would mean in the future the people wouldn't have the same freedom as we have ourselves, and our ancestors had, who made us human beings, because this freedom we have inherited. You and I try to forget it every day. Everybody today is running for cover. Everybody today is -- is for some

fashion, by which he wants to be saved, either by vitamins, or by fightamins, or by lightamins. That is, you have quacks, who doctor -- that you don't have to make this decision every day, but that by some saving grace, you can be saved forever if you subscribe to the Stars, and Eagles, and Stripes, and what-not. By some patent medicine, most souls want to be saved today. The real thing of a -- of a -- life is however this, partly decided and formed, partly free and not yet decided. That's very fatiguing, you see.

I have a very great friend, Martin Buber, the great Jewish teacher who says, "Christianity goes too far. It puts too much freedom on men's shoulders. They can't bear it. Human beings cannot be this way." Now all we have, however -- in the last 1900 years has been done in the name of exactly this freedom. It may be -- it seems very often true that my friend Buber is right, and that it -- most of you shun this amount of freedom. You don't wish it.

Want -- some of you said you want to stay eternally free and never take shape, as all those children I had in my seminar the other day, who -- who said that even if a great work of history was achieved, and did- -- they didn't care for it, they still would have their private opinion. That is, they would- -- didn't want to be shaped by genius and by authority, you see. They say, "No. We -- we reserve judgment to judge --." And of course, Judgment Day will come, and they will still be jellyfish in the beginning of creation, 6 million years back, unformed, unshaped, never created. And on the other hand, as I said, you fix -- transfix Europe with your stare as tourists, like the man who went to -- through 23 countries last summer and came back and they called -- he called us, his friend, who had gone with him on this great trip to Eur- -- great tour. And he said, "But we have been to Austria."

And the other man said, "I don't recall that we have."

And -- but he proved his point, because he said, "Don't you recall the porter with the green hat? The green hat? That was Austria."

So you condemn these poor people in Austria always to wear a green hat. Well, that's what you do with the -- with the -- the racists do this to each other, you see. They have to look always as you once learned in your picture book how they ought to look. So if you meet Negro royalty, and Negro barons, and Negro bank presidents, you don't recognize them, because the Southern will tell you that this is a mam -- you see, a mammy, and something like that, and other Negroes don't exist. They know all beforehand, how anybody should look, and should be.

And if the Amish men -- suddenly wo- -- wanted to wear buttons, every-

body else in Pennsylvania would forbid it to them, because Amish men in Pennsylvania don't bear buttons.

We transfix with our stare our fellow man. This is the great hindrance of history. That's why I told you that the second law of history is dependent on its -- the free future, that we have to move forward in solidarity. That is, you can't leave behind somebody, because you think you know already who he is, you see. Then he would never be able to join with you in this next task, would he, you see? You would always have some people left behind, saying, "They are hopeless. We know them too well," you see. Just as -- what Mr. Salvemini felt, when you said it has to be -- remain a Catholic country. It can't be a mixed country in which the faith is -- has to be rediscovered, and reappropriated by every free soul, you see, in every generation.

This is very serious. Because an old Italian -- and I want also to give you this name, because the Italians are really a great people, and much freer than you think they are. This -- his -- man -- name is { }. And he has an automobile factory in Torino, and you will admit that automobiles are still rather modern, I think. They aren't jets, but as -- still, they aren't older than 50 years. Perhaps you, even in this town and city of Los Angeles, will think that isn't totally obsolete. So as an Italian, he makes modern machinery. And he has written a very fine book in 1947 on the future of mankind, and he there s- -- goes -- very simply says that all the mistakes, and downfalls, and catastrophes of history seem to him to have come from the lack of solidarity. From the lack of solidarity.

Now this is rarely mentioned in our liberal tradition, you see, that solidarity of the people who have to move along in this tremendous column of humanity into the future, that this solidarity means, gentlemen, that in history--now I take a step into a third lecture, and into a third -- trend -- train of ideas, also, Number 3--this solidarity, and this free future, both, imply something which is strangely omitted from our doctrinal, ideological, philosophical teaching, but ha- -- which has been the -- at the heart of William James' great American philosophy, that you can only have a free humanity, and you can have only an undiscovered future under one condition: that there is a plurality of ideologies, that people at the same time must think differently, and it's not the ideal of mankind to reach agreement on every point at any one time, as in mathematics. The -- our political, our religious, our deepest convictions must be articulate in a variety of manners, and they can never be reduced to what the -- these logicals, positivists, and semanticists, and all these people who start from dead things, and instruments, and tools, try to tell you, that unanimity is the goal of life. Unanimity is the goal of death.

This goes far into politics. Mistrust any decision in any Congress or par-

liament which is reached unanimously. That's usually a mob vote. It has no value, and no consistency. Trust those votes that are taken with one vote -- voice of majority. The French constitution in 1875 was passed with one vote it -- in its favor more, you see. And it lasted, after all, 55 years. That's a long time for a European constitution. And we only, you see, can worship the paper of the Constitution, because it doesn't exist anymore. And Mr. Adenauer was balloted in as chancellor of Germany with his own vote deciding. And he's -- has been the most successful man in -- in government in Europe for the last eight years.

This is very important, because it shows you the value of a position, the value of pluralism. In history, everything is...

[tape interruption]

In science, everything is wrong that is not unanimous. That's the very opposite. Therefore history is -- is a living thing, and science is a dead thing, or dealing with dead things. Of course, if you count the corpuscles in the blood, they have to agree, the two counts of the two nurses, you see. And -- otherwise it's wrong, you see. You have to make a recount. Anything dead can be counted, like figures. But the words -- of the word "symphony," of opinions, and convictions, and faiths must be variegated. There has to be a plurality of ideologies. Otherwise future life is impossible. Please?

({There has to be} some direction, regardless whether it's progress or regress. Isn't it necessary, though, to have --?)

Now I give you a very stringent example. At this moment, this country is in great danger, because for the last 10 years, it has allowed itself to -- claim that it was a capitalistic country. It never was, and never will be. It has always been a pluralistic country, economically speaking. There have always been different orders of economic { }. There have been convents, and there have been -- endowed schools, and there have been, you see, all kinds of -- of orders that are not capitalistic in the least. It isn't capitalistic that a man who draws more than $10,000 from municipal bonds has not to pay income tax on it. That's not capitalistic. It's anti-capitalistic. And so on and so forth.

I mean to say, my -- I have written many books on this. Of course they are totally unknown in this country. And -- the pluralism of economy, you see, is the only answer to the Communist tyranny. Of course, as long as the Americans pretend that they have nothing but mon- -- a capitalistic system, the Russians are right to -- harping that there are other ways of doing business. And you will never settle this issue. You -- you will only settle the issue if your future is as free as a bird, and you say, "Any form of business which is effective, I shall use. I

don't know, yet." There are -- you can change this all the time. It's not interesting.

When this country, by the founding fathers, was never founded on capitalism--I have studied all the documents; Page, you will bear me out--that there has never been the word "capitalism" used. It was a curse word. It was used by the Marxian to denounce liberalism. But never has the founding fathers adopted capitalism. It would have been scandalous.

So you are in a trap at this moment, ladies and gentlemen. Because you have no future as long as you say that "the United States" and "capitalism" are identifiable. They have nothing to do with each other. We have tried every century a different form of -- of doing business, you see. And obviously, in the jet age and the stratospheric age, you have to do business differently. There have already, of course, been wise men who -- who left the common man in hi- -- in this -- nebulous idea that he had to -- to fall for capitalism. And they stood up and they founded the committee of -- on economic power in 1935 or '36--when was it? And they made a very simple survey, and said, "Which things have to be done by free enterprise, and which things have to be done by state, which have to be done by international cooperation?" Now you see from the bomb very simply that we have reached a state where certain things can only be done on a bloc level, you see. Russia and its satellites may have atomic bombs, and we may have on -- as one bloc. But if you give bombs to Egypt, we are lost, you see, and to Nicaragua, you see. Ja, think of the idea that Panama suddenly has atomic weapons, you see. Then you will have to have a -- a new revolution in Panama, and send another Theodore Roosevelt down there.

Well, I mean, this is very simple. Then { } electric power: Mississippi Authority, Tennessee Valley Authority, and ties, you see, Truman Ties, they must be done by fools, you see, then, because only fools wear them. And so on it goes, from ladies' dresses. That has to be done by individual, you see, taste. Elisabeth Arden, you see. Mrs. Eisenhower goes there. And from individual taste to these common goods, there are all kinds of doing business. There is the little in- -- entrepreneur, you see, who designs chairs and designs ties, and we must give him leeway, you see, for consumers' goods. And we can say the most individual enterprise--the most capitalistic, in a sense--is the consumers' goods industry, you see. Especially the artistic one. And then you come to food. And that's already different, you see. You have cooperatives. And you have on the producers' side, you see, this problem of the orange, the citrus -- the -- the Sunkist exchange of California, where there is an organization on the part of the producer. -- It isn't their competition, you see, which is allowed to stand in the way of providing the customers with this fruit. And on it goes. And you finally, as I said, come to these large powers that circle the earth, and immediately the cry goes up that

not even America and the -- Russia can even interfere with each other's satellites in the sky. And you see, we should have a unified schedule, you see, of { }.

Now as soon as you see this, you see, that the product and the powers that are needed to produce the product are deciding over the ways of doing business, you see, then you suddenly wake up to the fact that of course, according to the aim and the purpose of the product, you see, to be produced, you have to do business in a different manner. You just look into the coming-about of any -- of any of the -- our abilities here in this country.

I just read the story of a -- the young diplomat, {Griscomb}, American diplomat, he happened already to be a secretary of the legation in London at the ripe age of 20, so you all could have happened to be that, you see. He got bored with royalty at 22, and left London and went out to Arizona. And there he heard of a -- a spring with electric energy in it. And in -- with his friends -- four friends, he built a hotel. You see, then left it to his friends, and went back out West -- back East. And I only say it was a cooperative enterprise, you see, if ever there was one. And then he came to a place in New England. And they had to take down an old mansion. And it was too expensive to hire a contractor; instead of paying something for the old materials, this contractor wanted to be paid for destroying the building. So they had a wonderful party, his sister and he himself of 35 people who were allowed to destroy everything in the house, you see, enjoyed it so much, and asked for no pay. You see, and finally they burned what was left. And he said, "What a feeling to be able to take an axe and just split open a mirror."

Now I only mean to say in the same way, by common enterprise, their socalled individualistic English village has been built. I live in a village in which everyone of course built the roads, and helped each other's neighbor -- each -- one's neighbor, you see. They built the schoolhouse, the meetinghouse, the church all together. In our textbooks, you get the impression that this is certainly anti-capitalistic, you see. But there it was. That's the way this whole country has -- has been built, by cooperative enterprise and not by capitalism. And without this investment of free -- cooperative effort, not one of us could be at this moment in this country.

But it isn't now mentioned anymore. For the last 10 years, I have seen this with great dismay, the country is suddenly identified with capitalism. This wasn't so when I came to this country 26 years ago. Nobody thought that capitalism and the United States were absolutely the same thing. Why should it? One is an -ism, and the oth- -- other is alive. And -isms are just something, you see, for this upper, upper, upper, upper, dead part of the brain. Nobody has seen capitalism. It's a worm. A worm of the mind.

So see how dangerous -- we are in a terrible position. At this moment, the South is in a dead-end street. The bankers are in a dead-end street of this country. The history professors who insist that all American history is just American history are on a dead-end street. At this moment, where the whole world is trying to get one, you see -- every one of these groups holds out a -- an identification card with something that's only partial.

And so my third assertion, before I steep -- step back in -- to the past, is this: that at every moment, partial realizations, partial truths, partial ways of life, partial methods, partial thoughts, encroach on the whole group, and try to make -- veer from its proper march through time, from its complete freedom to create new forms as a whole. At every one moment, there are groups on -- you see, noisily voicing concern that their vested interest, or their way of life, or their way of looking at things is threatened. And this is therefore the exciting thing. History is not a straight line. And history is not progress. But history is a constant battle of the whole of the community for its free future against partial realizations, against a -- realizations that are partially true. Of course, partially this country is capitalistic. I wouldn't be -- the fool to deny it. But I deny that the future of the United States can be bound up with -- with capitalism. If we please, we leave it behind, like a shell. What's important about that? Capitalism is not more important than you and I. It's of -- very minor consideration. It's not important in the light of the historical march through time of a humanity that has gone in -- through -- in the last 700 years through at least seven economic systems. So that's not important. We had feudalism. We had mercantilism. We had colonialism. We had manorialism. So we also had capitalism. What do -- and we had socialism. I can only tell you I care for neither of them. They are all unpleasant, because they force me to make money, to work. And you go to a native in the South Sea islands, and he said -- you know the story when a man offered him -- asked him to carry his luggage from the seaport inland, and he said, "Thank you. I had my dinner already."

What system is this? Certainly a system, you see. A very good system.

So this is Point 3, that partial truth is constantly encroaching on the whole truth. And the word "truth" is not perhaps very -- very complete, but it isn't wrong. There is of course a certain truth in the unpleasantness for the white man in the South, that he may have no maidservants very soon. And so he sees his future and his wife's future very much threatened, because as long as the black man is in the condition he is in, there are always, you see, servants in the house. Well, for us, this means nothing. We have no servants. Therefore, we don't understand the concern of the white man in the South, which is behind all his talk, you see, that his illegitimate cousins, and the products of his father's wiles are not equal human beings as he himself.

Partial truth is not just here, the question of the South, gentlemen. It's with any group. It's also with psychologists. It is with businessmen. It is with workers. It's with the CIO. It is with any group at any one moment who is vocal, that such a partial group tries to make people forget the dangers of remaining free as a whole. You have only to think of the dangers of the closed shop to see this. That hasn't been solved by a long shot.

But it goes beyond this. The United States are at this moment obviously part and parcel of a much larger story. And if you only think of the fate of Europe at this moment, and you read how these -- the papers here prepare you for an ominous and cowardly defeat--in the last days, I have seen with great dismay--then it is very well to look into history and see what happens if this is done. The free republic of Krakow was founded in the -- after the Napoleonic wars, just as Berlin was founded in 1945, and was ignominiously destroyed in 1846, under the protest of England and France, by the common action of Russia and Austria. And such an abolition obviously is in the making at this moment. I don't know what Mr. Mansfield is working for, but that's what he says.

And this country will lose all its international reputation within the next six months, and you won't have to -- done anything one way or the other. But you will be settled with this heritage of ignominy for centuries to come. And it's -- you know -- and the papers are a wonderful means of drugging you in this, you see. First you begin with "Hooray! and "Tremendous bravery," and "Nobody will let anybody down," and quite slowly, you see, you explain, "The English won't do it," "The French won't do it," and so on, "It's just too bad." And "Now Mr. Dulles is sick," and -- what have you. And I'm very pessimistic about this country's ability to keep a partial truth of appeasement at this moment, and -- and getting troikas, or having this -- this partial truth not overrun, I think, the sound and deeper instincts of a -- of a great people.

Only to show you that at every one moment, for example, the partial interest of doing business with Russia can very well outshine, you see, the real truth that somewhere in the world, the beacon of liberty has to be shining. And it is impossible to keep this out of a historical classroom, because this is the essence of history.

So we have made this third point, that we have to wield the power to understand many voices, like socialism, and colonialism, and -- and Americanism, and so on, and know that they are all partial. This power to discerning -- to discern the spirits, or of discerning the spirits, which is invoked in the New Testament, is the power for any group, any people to remain human. It can be lost at any minute. For any one purpose, the devil is very clever. He always comes from a corner of which you haven't been thinking. That's the devil, you

see. The -- the wonderful thing about the trickster is, you see, that he has many forms. You beat down one devilish form of temptation, of shortcoming, and -- now you have the credit card of the express company. That's the latest devilish trick, you see.

I talked to an owner of a restaurant on this, you see. And he said, "What" -- I said, "I can't understand that you are for it."

He said, "All these people run up higher bills."

Well, I think that's the devil, because obviously these bills are higher than they would in their sound minds run up, you see. And so you behave like a millionaire till the day of reckoning. Who has a credit card in this hall? They aren't worth anything, not even a credit card. Yes, you have to -- of course to be something to be able to be attacked by the devil. But it is just as in Faust. If you know Goethe's Faust, he signs just on the dotted line. It's exactly the same thing. Then the rest of his life, you see, he isn't a -- I don't know where they put him. They couldn't put him in the poorhouse very well. What's the house where you go after you haven't paid your bills nowadays? White House?

Next time, I want to start then with telling a little of this incredible -- -ly tempting history, gentlemen. You give me just one minute to announce the order which I shall try to follow. If, considering this constant temptation of going a toonarrow, and too-one-sided street, and not taking in solidarity the whole bulk of the people with you on this road, I will deal first with the aspect of America and Europe, with the heritage--and I shall begin with the Free Masonry, as the one thing that linked Eur- -- Europe and America at the very dawn of its liberty, around 1800. And we'll have then to speak of -- other community forces by which American society was molded from Europe. And then we shall try to see the forces in America regionally; one region after another has imposed on the whole its specific problems, and tried to sell to the whole its own regional problems as comprising the whole future of the United States. You just have to think of the Oriental Exclusion Act, you see, to know what -- how much California impinged, you see, on the public spirit of this country to -- with of course -- with tremendous consequences. You can trace Pearl Harbor very well to the Oriental Exclusion Act.

So we have our program mapped out: the European influences, and then the regional influences, as all the times threatening the compact, and comprehensive, and universal history of these United States.