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(Please, professor. Before you go any further, may I say something to the class? My name is Philip Chamberlin, and I'm a graduate student in the school of education here. But the important matter of identity is not myself, but the one that is underscored by the question that so many of you have been asking. And that is, "Who is our professor?" The question has shocked me into realizing that as yet no one has introduced him, although to be sure, Dr. {Meyer}, Dr. Smith, and Dr. {Winter} have spoken about him at length in their own classes. With your permission, I should like to attempt to correct this omission by saying something about his life, a life of combined action and scholarship which, it seems to me at the very least, is remarkable.

(Our professor was born Eugen Rosenstock in Germany in 1888. And he changed his name to Rosenstock-Huessy when he married the very charming Margrit Huessy--after the Swiss custom, I believe it is. In 1914, he entered the service of his country, eventually commanded the supply lines opposite Verdun at the front. After World War I, he went into industry, edited a factory newspaper, assisted in the founding the Academy of Labor at Frankfurt am Main, and acted as its first director.

(From 1923 until 1933, he was professor of civil, German, commercial, and industrial law, and sociology at the University of Breslau, Germany. At the same -- during the same period, he founded the German labor camp movement, was vice chairman of the World Association of Adult Education in London, and lectured at Oxford University. In 1933, he emigrated to the United States and went to Harvard University, where he was found competent to teach before graduate students in six different departments. In 1935, he was further honored by being asked to deliver the famous Lowell Lectures, of which I'm sure you're familiar, at the Lowell Institute in Boston. And the substance of these lectures forms the basis of one of his books, The Multiformity of Man. I have it here with me. Incidentally, his bibliography covers some 250 items. Unfortunately for us, most of them are in German, but many of them are in English. We have some in the library here. But these two are not in the library as yet, and I should like to make my own copies available to the class. They're The Multiformity of Man and a book on history, Out of Revolution, subtitled, The Autobiography of Western Man.

(In 1935 also, Dr. Rosenstock-Huessy accepted a chair of social philosophy at Dartmouth College, and he is now professor emeritus of that institution. In 1940, President Roosevelt called upon him to train leaders for the Civilian Conservation Corps, and he founded Camp William James in Vermont for that

purpose.

(In recent years, he's been in increasing demand on the continent and has spent sabbaticals and summer leaves there, particularly in Germany and in Switzerland. And I understand only two years ago he returned to Germany to advise the government on educational reform.

(It was just 12 years ago that I first walked into his class at Dartmouth College on Plato, quite unsuspectingly, I imagine as many of you have come to his class here. Since that time, I have always regarded him as my teacher, I'm very proud to say--not because he gave me a neat system of thought for dealing with the world. That would be rather impossible and -- although fashionable, but because he forced me, rather painfully at times, to learn from my own experience of life.

(So I think now perhaps you understand why it is that for me this course is a special occasion and why I take particular pleasure in introducing to you Dr. Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, a visiting professor at the University of California at Los Angeles for the spring term, 1959.)

However a man blushes, he must never speak of the man who introduced him. That's one of the ritual, I think -- rituals that has to be kept.

We are entering today the historical march through time after we have made sure that we know a little bit about the future. We know that the future must allow us still to change direction. Anything that is some -- would work some magic, some complete system, like Bellamy's Looking Backward, or like Communism, antagonizes the freedom of our decision. They cannot remain goals of the future. If they try to, they must be destroyed. The future is not unknown. The destiny of man is not unknown. The destiny of man is to keep alive under the conditions which his ancestors have handed down to him, which is to keep what we have, and to be able to add. And the things we have received, the most precious gift, is this power to change in peace, or to change with honor, as I like to call it. It's neither escapism, by running, running, running; nor is it stationary by staying, staying, staying. But it's the march through time by which our one leg points backward and the other leg forward. And the same freedom is given to our eyes.

The last thing I tried to tell you last -- in our last meeting was that all history of the Christian era is the rebirth of times forgotten; the immersion of the newborn, the initiation of the newborn in the times that is still alive in the hearts of the older; and at the same time, setting our foot -- feet forward in the march to greater solidarity and greater freedom. It is this, which is usually forgotten in our

history books, that a rebirth in every generation has to take place and that it -- falls into two departments, or two chapters always: the initiation of the natural brat, the baby, which is outside of history as -- long as his elders do not receive it and initiate it. The heresy of the last century, with which you people had to pay with two world wars--at least your -- the generation between you and me, and of -- whose consequences you suffer at this moment by your utter confusion, and your utter atomization--is this incredible lie that human beings become historical beings by themselves, just by being born. Man may be born free and equal, but he's not born into history. You have to add to the famous claims of the -- of the Declaration of Independence, that only the love of others makes us into human beings. We have to learn to speak, and if no mother or father teaches us this, we are lost. We have to learn not only to speak, but we have to -- learn to speak with power, with conviction so that we can be quoted, that is, with that courage which says, "Since I said it, I'll make good."

Any word spoken is not a word about objects, what you call "objectivity." I despise objectivity. What is expected of young people is that what they say can be trusted. That is, if you say today something that you will make it good tomorrow, that's the interesting thing about human speech. Speech is not description of things past or things you look at. Who cares for labels? But it is very important that if you tell a girl that you are going to marry her, that you do that. She would resent it otherwise. And before a human being can say such a thing with conviction, he must have ceased to be a playboy, or a playgirl, or a showgirl. That is, it takes 20 years before you can speak with that power which deserves to be trusted. Everything before that time is nonsense. That is, doesn't count. You can take it back. Nobody can, you see -- has to be taken seriously before he is 20. I think even before he is 30.

I had a Catholic friend who -- a priest, a famous man in the ranks of the Church, who always said to me, "Nobody has to be believed before he's 30. He can always go back on his word, and you can't resent it. He's young, and you mustn't believe what he says. He's just playing with his ideas. He's trying one thing and the other, and he's experimenting; that's therefore -- don't take him too seriously. But after 30, I think a man can demand, and we can demand from a man, that he means what he says, and says what he means." And these are the two things nobody seems to like today. The people don't say what they mean, and they don't mean what they say. And so in order to secure this strange hideout, they usually say to each other, "You know what -- if you know what I mean." And nobody ever knows what the other means. This is the curse of the age, this phrase, "If you know what I mean." It's despicable.

And that's why today history is in a bad way, because you have been told that man grows into history by himself, just by nature. He doesn't. He has to

learn very painfully to distinguish between what it means to play marriage, or to play engagement, or to play with toys, or to play a soldier, and then to know what it is to be a soldier and to be a lover. To play with love, that's what you can do at this moment. But can you love? I doubt it. No man can love before he's 20 -- 22. He cannot love at 19. He can have sex relations; that's not love. You -- complete confusion today about this. Anything that is physical, demonstrable, like sex urge, is mistaken to be -- make a man marriageable and lovable. Not at all. These are quite different stages in human life, because they are connected with speech. When a man says that he's able to support a family, and willing to stave off temptation in the outside world, and that he can earn -- make a living and protect his wife, and invite a guest to his house, and when he can make such great decisions, then he has grown up and has the right to marry. Marriage has nothing to do with sex; it has nothing to do with love. I have to say it so brutally.

It is very necessary to distinguish, because marriage is an historical event in the life of the human race. Sex is a private affair of your senses. Animals have this, too. Only if you go out before the community and say, "I demand that you call this wife my wife," do you put down your foot and say something of importance, of abiding importance. And you know how bad -- and what -- bad way we are now. We have now--in -- in other countries even more than here--we have now people who get just paid because they have children and women -- instead the other way around, that they have women and children, because they have pay. As soon as you have family wages, for example, your own status as a man who can say something to his wife, as well as to his employer, you see, is destroyed, obviously, you see. Because his children get him the payment now, you see, instead -- his -- he go- -- getting the payment for his children.

In France, you know, if -- if you have six children, you have no longer to work. That's the way they settled the social revolution in France. That's very strange. That was -- been their way out. They pay such immense additional sums to anybody who has the pleasure of begetting children that -- of course, this pleasure today is the -- the center of attention, but what has come out of France the last 20 years? Not one fruitful thought. Just destruction.

So -- this I had to tell you -- so that you understand that the fact that this mighty republic is involved, engaged in two re- -- rebirths, tasks, all the time: bring the children who are newly born into line with the still-living tradition of their parents, as far they have one; and enlarging the living tradition of the adults, by digging up forgotten forms of life, which now are specially needed, like--as I told you last time--initiation or 150 years ago, the pillars of Monticello.

What's Monticello, I mean? Well, you know this is Jefferson's home, and if you look at the University of Virginia, or at the building in Monticello, you know

that the renaissance, the finest forms of the Greek and Roman buildings, you see, architecture, were renewed at that time with great -- at great cost, and with great glee, and with enthusiasm. And this -- these shores of these United States, therefore, looked a little like the sh- -- the shores of Europe. And so this country could hold up his head and say that it was the equal in the reconquest of Rome and Greece to the -- its, you see, predecessors on European soil.

And I think the -- the renaissance in America is a very important portion of the way to equality with the European powers, in the heart of the American people. We have an institute in Athens. We have an academy in Rome. That's nothing negligible, because it mean -- meant that the past was common to the Americans, as well as to the Europeans. When we come later to consider the Mormons, you will see the very opposite trend, an attempt to break away from Euro- -- the European past, you see, and you have it all on this soil only. And you can't get a more -- sharper focus of the initial situation of this country in 1800 than if you go to Monticello on pilgrimage and see how Jefferson built his -- the University of Virginia.

This is this renaissance in the second degree -- this rebirth in the second degree, which has occupied the last 150 years, and which I think at this moment is drawing to a close. You look at the architecture of Mr. Neutra, he doesn't build Greek pillars in Los Angeles, you see. Although you could say that the blue sky and the sunlight is very alluring in this respect, you see. You could have these Greek forms here without much reproach. But it isn't done. We have dis- -- we are discovering now that in architecture, the ancients are not our models. There are other renaissances. And I told you already that I think by 1960--and more and more to come--the forms of tribal initiation, tribal dances will be in the forefront of our thoughts. I think that our -- otherwise our young people shall -- simply cannot be introduced into history, into the historical position of responsibility. You have your slang. Your "You know what I mean" attitude has murdered your power to speak with commitment. You cannot write poetry for this reason. Your short stories are a mumble; and you are muttering, but you are not speaking.

And in order to recover speech, I think the last 500 years on this earth will be -- have a very hard time. We'll dig out all those forces of re-creating powerful and -- speak -- speech, in order to let you not wither on the stem. Because at this moment, gentlemen, according to the standards of our society, you have finished products at 20. You will only, so to speak, repeat what you have { }. Sports, reading books, going to the movies, lying in bed with a girl, traveling to Europe or to other equally uninteresting countries, and -- and being suckers far -- for the television people, and so on and so forth. There is nothing in your life, if you analyze it, which will still come as a tremendous surprise to you. You are all blas‚. You can repeat the performance 50 times; but at 50, you will say, "I have

seen all the pictures," and shoot yourself, or go crazy.

And I can only recommend this for a person who at 20 already thinks that he has discovered all the quality of a human being. The quality of a man and of a father is something quite different than -- than that of an adolescent. But you don't expect it. You s- -- you want to have it all at once. And therefore, as -- as I said, the -- the race in this -- is at this moment in the Western world -- has a very poor prognostication. You live forever physically, and you have ceased living spiritually at the ripe age of an undergraduate.

Because the one thing you don't want is to get excited. You {sell} to each other, "Don't get excited." Now gentlemen, I still get excited. And that's has -- what's has keep -- kept me alive. And the only rule for life is "Stay excited. Remain excitable, inflammable." If you can't, shoot yourself.

The man in front of a mirror is highly objective. And that -- he is the man who uses a mirror to shoot himself so that he can direct his revolver at his -- face. Try it. That's objectivity. I'm too busy to be objective. I have to try to join the -- the -- the -- the march of history. And I have to try to get you into this swim -- stream.

In order to delineate the period as a whole, I promised you that our first chapter should be Free Masonry. But before you fully understand the impact of Free Masonry, let me give you two little anecdotes which may show you from the beginning that anything that has come to the United States--whether Monticello, or Free Masonry, or Presbyterianism, or Episcopalianism--immediately changes its form in a strange manner when it reaches these shores. Pardon me, I tried to bring a special -- ja, here it is.

Everything that -- is covered by the same name, like history itself, philosophy, ren- -- Renaissance, is different when it is mentioned by an American from what it is when it is mentioned by an Englishman. And since my native American friends do not think it necessary to express this distinction, I, as a not-native immigrant, think that I -- it helps you if I take the American point of view and defend it against the European. The first -- the one example I only can give you today about this difference of American society, and European society--and after all we are dealing with society here--is the story of the governor of Massachusetts, Win- -- Winthrop, of the 17th century, who wrote down, among other remarks, that the toasting that was going on in England--and of course in -- New England, too, toasting each other--"was in vain, for it holds forth love and wishes of health--which are serious things--by drinking, which neither in the nature nor use it is able to effect." So here is a governor of Massachusetts who still is under English -- English crown, and who probably was a perfect gentleman in his

behavior as best he could, and who says in this truly American analysis, "toasting was vain, for it holds forth love and wishes of health--which are serious things, by drinking--which neither in the nature or use is it able to effect."

I take you now to England, with the same problem of toasts. There was a young American, Lloyd Griscom, the son of the president of the Red Star Line, who had the good fortune at your age, at the ripe age of 20, to be -- be made private secretary to the first American ambassador to the Court of St. James. So he was exactly your contemporary. And his father had promised him a thousand dollars if he wouldn't touch alcohol before he -- before his 21st birthday.

Now he made friends among the officers of the guard in London, as he would at 20. And one of them, one of the famous regiment of the Cold Streams Guards, invited him to the daily dinner, which was furnished to these officers on guard by the queen. It was a very elaborate pa- -- repast. At the end -- or he went, very pleased, of course. At 20 you can imagine how he felt. And at the end of the dinner, which was prepared by one of the foremost chefs of England, the presiding major--and the company rose with him, the major lifted his glass, "Her majesty, the queen," he pronounced solemnly.

"All around me," says Griscom -- I'm afraid I -- "All around the table, champagne goblets were extended. Mine alone was empty," says Griscom, you see, being under orders from his father. It was worth a thousand dollars, you must think.

"I was wondering why the major did not give the signal to drink, when I noticed his eye was on me. And out of the silence, he thundered, `Young man! Her majesty's health must be drunk in champagne.' Everybody remained standing at attention, while a soldier hurriedly filled my glass. I drained it with the rest. I apologized later to the major and tried to explain my arrangement with Father. But he reiterated that under no circumstances would anybody be excused from drinking the queen's health. Luckily, Father agreed with him."

That is to say, he did get his thousand dollars after one more year, you see, despite this breach of his vow, or of his promise.

So here you see the opposition between the breach of etiquette and the breach of a promise, of an individual conviction. And I think that goes right a red thread through all American history, that the forms of Europe--whether it's prayer, or whether it's a toast, or whether it's any other custom--comes under the scrutiny of the individual, and is dismissed as unnecessary, if it so pleases.

If you look at the story of drinking, you know the tragedy of the drinking

mores in this country, that no people -- person knows how to drink. They gulp. You gulp down your whisky or -- . But wine drinking, beer drinking, is of course not given to the individual, gentlemen. All the fermented liquors, all the power which we have attained, to give beyond the ripe growth of grain on this soil--or any other plant, fruit--a higher potency to the fruit by fermenting it, you see, and allowing it to reach a passionate stage, have always been felt through hu- -- humanity to allow man to rise to his real potency, to his real, passionate, and higher state of creativity, of poetry, of friendship, of love, of affection, of union, and of changing the world. The purposive man, the active man, the willful man will not drink. He's sober, he's wakeful, he's industrious, sits at his desk, he files cards, he telephones, he receives visitors, he writes bills--sometimes he pays them. But he is in a state of aggregate which I would compare to water, perhaps to milk--but sterilized milk, pasteurized milk.

But the man who drinks wine with his friends is no longer alone. The idea of the toast--you -- of -- to the queen, you may not know--means that all the ancestors of the royalty are present. The toast is originally -- had originally been devised to bring home to those present that they live under the auspices of some good spirits. The toast is the invocation of the dead. It's a libation. And it's very serious thing, because nobody is in history who doesn't acknowledge his debt to his predecessors. You cannot live on this globe, 2 billion people today, in unity and peace, unless you select the people as your patron saints who have bestowed on us this power to live, 2 billion people, in constant communication with each other without going to war, too. Indian tribes couldn't do this without extirpating one the other.

So it is an immense achievement at this moment that we, in the Christian era, in -- under the invocation of some good spirits, the founding fathers, Christ Himself, St. Francis, and some others, are able to make peace, and hold the peace between each other. That's the toast.

Now Mr. Winthrop considered himself a good, godly man, a good member of the Christian Church, and yet he could not understand that Ho- -- Holy Communion in church was quite an impossibility and meaningless if you abolished the toast at home. Because the toast at home is the small edition of the Communion supper. And lo and behold, the result has been that in this country people have to be -- have to lie to each other that our Lord didn't drink wine, and so they drink cranberry sauce, which is really very scandalous and just shows you that the American way has been to be des- -- dissect, to saw to pieces the group traditions of Europe, from the very beginning.

And Winthrop said, you see, he didn't see how the toast could be serious--because health was serious, and the toast was not--he did not see one

thing which -- on which all customs, all folklore is based, and which is of course utterly in neglect in this country, that -- man is only man inside the traditions of his ancestors and his progeny, that we are only fully human when we are inside ourselves son as well as fathers, daughters as well as mothers. As long as you haven't developed inside yourself this valve, so that you alternatingly can be mother and daughter, or daughter and mother, and--this power is called the power of the bride--and as long as you haven't discovered in -- in the male this power of being alternatingly son and father, you certainly have no access to Christianity, because the -- Christianity believes for this reason that God comes to us in two forms, Father and Son. And a man doesn't know of himself as long as he treats himself or herself as a -- being an animal of one generation. All of you contain within you at least the seeds of two generations. You cover more ground than your consciousness does, because your consciousness as a young man is the opposite from that of an old man. But your character is not. You must play with your consciousness as a young man and with your consciousness as an old man. If you cannot understand me now because I am old, you aren't yet human. If I cannot understand you, or -- because you are young, you see, I'm not -- have lost my humanity.

We all can only live with each other because man can understand the -- the opposite in time, and only thereby becomes fully human. Only a mother who understands her daughter, a daughter who understands her mother--or her father for that matter, and vice versa--is a full- -- fully intelligent person. Before, he's just crazy, mad -- I mean, a schizophrenic, or whatever you call it. Wh- -- what they call "schizophrenic" is just this evasion of this valve situation. We -- a schizophrenic cannot throw the switch, you see, to pass from one of these states into the other. They remain separate inside of him. And -- because all the traditions of this country, since John Winthrop, have been that we are the judges of the forms of life that surround us, of the environment.

Now don't believe that the English at a witty moment cannot be critical of the toast to the queen or to the king. But it doesn't interfere with their action. It comes too late in life, this critical attitude. A man at 30, at 40 may say, "Shucks," you see, "It's all nonsense." But he grows up first inside this apparatus. Now in America I think it's the strange, opposite situation, right through. Older people have learned the values of forms. But younger people are denied this na‹ve faith in forms. They begin with the criticism. You begin with the criticism and end up as a -- as a Rotarian. And -- and that makes life so exceedingly funny in this country, because forms here are at the end of life, when man can only chuckle and treat them with a sense of humor. And at the beginning, there is the individual attitude of "not for me." In Am- -- in Europe, it's all the reverse order.

I always tell the story, which opened my eyes to this, when the president

of my college in the East resigned his office to his successor. He began with a funny story, he himself. He was nearly in tears that day. It was, after all, his life's end. He had been president of this college for 26 years. And yet he thought it was his duty to deliver himself of a joke. And so he told the story, that the emperor of Japan had said to the American -- to the interpreter, who had to interpret his speech to an American envoy, to his majesty, just two words. And then the interpreter gave a long talk to the ambassador. And the ambassador rather impatiently afterwards asked the interpreter, "What did his majesty really say? It after all was very brief."

"Oh," he said, "ceremonious hokum." Ceremonious hokum. Give him what he -- his due, you see, as an ambassador.

And I think that's -- this, my president Hopkins, told us, ceremonious hokum. So everybody laughed. We -- although we all were very lacrimose. And then the degree of doctor of law was bestowed on him by the new president, who took his office in this way under his wing; and third, then the chaplain said a prayer. Now in Europe, the chaplain would have said the prayer, the president would have received his doctor's degree, and then somebody would have cracked a joke. And I assure you that you go very far if you understand that everything is alike in Europe and America, only in the opposite order. It helps, because nobody tells you this. It's in no book.

And this is like John Winthrop, you see, who in his young days, comes {through} -- as an emigrant, of course, you are sharp, you see. You argue the point. He says, "No truth for me. It's all nonsense." But I'm sure that when he was governor of Massachusetts, he fulfills the rites, you see, and said, "He -- his majesty, the king," as a royal governor of Massachusetts. How could he help it?

And that's a very strange situation, gentlemen. You all begin as analysts. And therefore, the firm forms of group life, of society, of integrated families to you seem to be synthetic, syntheticized. That is, artificially put together by will at your old age. And you always feel degraded. If you look at my colleagues who go to commencement, they put on these funny huts, these inventions of the '70s of the last century in this country, and -- these doctor huts, you know, and they are all embarrassed. And as soon as possible, they drop them somewhere in the gutter. And they -- and they are funny, these -- these -- these mortars. And if you look -- go to an English or German procession of the same type of man, these people can't wear their gowns long enough, so to speak. There's no end to it. They come -- no, they don't drop them, you see, and aren't ashamed of them, because these gowns are more natural to them than the analytical criticism that perhaps the gowns aren't worth much, you see, but moth-eaten. But in -- in Europe, the gown is first and the moth comes later. And in America, the moth is

first and the gown comes later.

This is important. And I have to send it -- say it before, because there is no institution in this country that is not definitely and distinctively another social institution for this very reason: that it is -- seems to be the same, but in the hearts of the people who support it, it isn't. It comes in the opposite series of -- experiences of your own life. And that's why it is very hard for you to cope with all the institutions that have come this country -- including the universities. That's one big inderstan- -- misunderstanding of European feelings. The whole academic population in this country loves -- lives under assumptions the Europeans just don't make when they go to a school of higher education. That's at this moment not yet ripe to be explained in detail. I don't know if we have time to go into this.

But I thought I owe it to you, by this example of Mr. Lloyd Griscom. And I think his name deserves to be remembered. And in oppo- -- and John Winthrop, that even the story of toasting looks very different from the -- that side of the ocean where people knew that young people had to be introduced into an existing, firm order of society, compared to this country, where grownup people try to give the minimum of form to shape the life of the young after they themselves have lan- -- having landed here, had to drop their old way forms anyway.

So in this country, the old stand naked, so to speak, at the shore, and found this country for the next generation. But in Europe, the younger generation receives, or is introduced, is initiated into existing forms, and then is allowed to shift for itself with personal criticism. But not allowed to alter their ways of life just from this witty analysis.

In any seminar here, in every -- in any discussion, I am always hard-put to sympathize with the -- your criticisms of the most venerable institutions, that you really believe that at the ripe age of 18, you are able to judge love, patriotism, passion, greed, ambition. Especially I get nervous when I hear you speak about selfishness and unselfishness, you see. And -- this is not a question for mature minds. No man at 60 asks these questions, whether this is a selfish act and an unselfish act. That's left to God's judgment, alone. You'll never know whether any act of yours is selfish or unselfish. As long as you dabble with this kind of ethical -- ethical idiotism, you will be the most miserable of creatures. That's not given to men to know whether we -- act out of selfishness or unselfishness or in what proportion. We have to love each other as we love ourselves, so that's undistinguishable. Love is a common quality whether you love yourself or whether you love others.

Don't plague yourself with this. But it's the beginning of all American -- purely American theories on government, on society, that the question is always

asked, "Is it altruistic, or is it egotistic?" Well, it is one of these wonderful, insoluble problems, with which you could play for the rest of your life, and which comes to a man if he tries to think out the universe before he has experienced it. And this is your fate. I mean, you think that at 15, you have to think out the universe, whereas this British officer of the Cold Streams just drank his champagne. That's much simpler, and much healthier.

That doesn't mean that perhaps 20 years later, he didn't bring the Stuart king to the scaffold. But he leaves it to the -- to his more mature experience. I've -- yes?

({ } no American struggle { }.)

Struggle, yes, but I don't call this a struggle, if you have a theory on altruism, you see. That's not a struggle. That's just a theory. That's something very different. In any individual case, obviously -- if you have to help somebody, or not to help somebody, that's a struggle. Don't misunderstand me. But the -- Mr. John Winthrop put down the theory that a toast was no good. Now, I assure you, a toast is a lot of good if you ever had -- did you go to the silver wedding of your parents? No? Hasn't happened yet? Why not toast? It's very important. It's the high point of the festival. If you don't drink wine at that festival, I'm sorry.

It's -- you see, the -- the main point I have tried to make is that life here really is lived in another series of events than it is in Europe. It is all predicated on the experience of a man who's landing here without much equipment, and then tries to establish the good life for his children. And in -- in Europe, of course, that's the other way around. This is here -- you have -- it has been said by Maxim Gorky, the great Russian Communist poet, that this country is still a society of immigrants, and not a nation, and that it doesn't even know what a nation is. Yes?

(By your very words, you enforce a change. If tradition precludes change, simply by the virtue of being tradition, simply by drinking a toast, where --)

But I'm describing a state of affairs, Sir. You misunderstand me. I'm not critical of the two. I think that I, too, in landing in this country, I'm just thrown in exactly the same position as any American. You do not see that I'm dealing with some existing conditions, and I'm not critical. Any American, and any Englishman, any German at one time in life has to be critical. But in this country, the weight of criticism is thrown on shoulders that are very young, let me say, or inexperienced. And the weight of criticism in the countries of Europe is thrown on weightier shoulders, who in this country, by that time have made their peace with society, run for Senator, promised everything to everybody, joined every

idiotic order, toast everybody who wants to kiss Negro babies, and what-not. Don't you see I'm only trying to show that at the age in which a European is most critical and retiring, and hates all this unnecessary folklore, you see, here in this country, the man in politics is just forced to cope with all these rituals, you see, and take them seriously. Whereas, as a young man, he's just like you, saying, "It's nonsense." I'm just describing yourself, Sir, nothing else.

(I'm trying to find my responsibility, ideally.)

Oh, don't use the word "responsibility." You have no -- "response" is the term for a young man, not "responsibility." When I hear the word "responsibility," I go to sleep; "-bilities," drop it. Isn't that response enough? I don't believe in responsibilities. They always -- if I hear a politician speak of responsibilities, he's going to cheat me. I mean it, Sir. I think I'm quite a responsible citizen. But to speak of my responsibilities when I have to declare why I like something, or why I hate something, that's an easy -- too-easy play.

Because the whole problem in politics is the sharing of a response, not that it is your responsibility, or my responsibility. I listen to you if you say, "Ow!" Because that is a creative act in politics which -- of which I am trying to convince you at this moment. I'm giving you a social history of the United States and I say that Mr. John Winthrop destroyed the social fabric from which he came, by saying that a toast had no meaning, that it wasn't the expression of a good company. And as long as you do not even listen to my description, you cannot understand what I'm driving at, that you -- we are born into society, and if we are not enlarged and enhanced by those forms which induce everybody to share the higher spirit of the community, you see, we remain sad critics, bystanders, onlookers, reflective individuals, the whole -- Greenwich Village. Ja?

(One more { }.)

Try hard.

(If I maintain -- if I maintain my silence until the age of -ibility -- responsibility, until I'm 30 or 35, by this time, I will have precluded all my possibilities for original change. Mr. Winthrop seems to me such a perfect example of exactly a man who has changed -- changed from a tradition that although to the individual may be important, yet to another individual, it --)

Well, it is your privilege to choose him and -- as your -- as your model. I just say that all Americans do exactly what you do. That's what I tried to say. You see, you recognize in Winthrop your brother, friend, and -- and forefather. That's your privilege. But I would -- wanted to warn you that since Winthrop and you

deal with toasts as your theme, so to speak, or with other social forms, you must not be surprised that if you have people giving parties in this country, and giving parties in Europe, they do not -- they don't do the same thing. It isn't done in the same, you see, group. That's all I tried to say. It is {perfectly yours}. I don't want to change you at this moment. Perhaps later on.

Thank you.