Transcript

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

We are at this moment trying to find the translation into a political realm of the remaining religious terms of the previous American story of ecclesiastical liberty and independence. The sovereignty of the churches in this country, we said, is earlier than the sovereignty of the nation. And you cannot understand America if you do not know of its unique position in the history of mankind, that here the Church is older than the state. The people here had the power to run their churches before they had the power to run their government. And that's unheard-of. And this has left its indelible mark to this day on the American mores and Constitution.

And you will never understand your own country, and you don't understand your own country--you can be sure of this--because you do not know that behind every political term in this country, there lurks a religious term which has been translated. And that nothing, for example, of French philosophy or Amer- -- English political thought, or German theorizing or poetry can be translated without it do -- into this country's vocabulary and language, just -- it is however done all the s- -- time. And through you, this constant pollution of the river of American tradition goes on, because you take it for granted that "philosophy" in this country is "philosophy" in France, that "state" in this country is "state" in England, and on it goes, all these confusions. But those words over there have never been translated from the Christian language into a secular language as it has happened here.

Now we were pause- -- at this moment, we had stopped at the term "friend." And you have only to think of the Society of Friends to know that this is a religious term, that it is used in opposition to "kinsman." When you today say, "friend," you do no longer mean your family, although etymologically, the word to this day just means nothing but "kinsman." The word "friend" means somebody akin. But it has lost this meaning. It has a religious meaning. And the Friends have supplemented the -- in the -- separation of Church and state, they have substituted for the prohibition laid on the government to acknowledge the existence of religion or churches in its dealings. As you know, there cannot be any religious books bought by the University of California. No religious denomination can give instruction in the schools. The school bus cannot carry Catholic or Protestant Chur- -- children to denominational schools. You have these problems which say, "The government doesn't know of the existence of religious bodies."

However, in 1870, President Grant asked the Society of Friends to take care of the Indian problem and to take a hand in the Freed Man's Bureau. This

was not figuring as a religious group, you see. And ever since, the Friends have, with their social service committee, imposed on the American scene this great halfway house of a religious body that is recognized as a body with whom you can deal without breaking the peace, so to speak, between Church and state. And I think this date of 19- -- 1870, as a step taken by the president of the United States towards the Society of Friends is a very remarkable one, because there are times where the state just either has to become the Church itself, or has to deal with churches. I mean, with -- President Eisenhower has chosen the way of acting as a church leader himself when he introduced prayer into Cabinet meetings and at this visit in Paris. But that's a very risky step. Eleanor Roosevelt, in a similar way, was so to speak the Church within the state, at a moment when the churches were at an all-time moral low because of the social gospel of their secularism.

There has always -- the function of the Church has always been to {supply} in this country, but they change appearances. Never be -- think that because something is called "church" it functions as church, and never think because something is called "government" it must function as government. The one thing the devil always do -- do -- does, you see, that he always leaves the labels on the bottles, but always changes the content.

And if you once know this, you understand history as a constant striving of val- -- invalidating of -- or on the other hand -- verifying the labels. The functions expressed by these labels are indispensable. It is one of the joyful jokes of your youth, that you think that you can abolish the function of the Church, or the function of the state, you see. You can have a new system of life, so to speak, a new way of life. Don't believe this. The functions of a father have to be supplied in a family. If the father doesn't do it, then the mother will do it, you see, because fatherhood is eternal. So -- the same is with daughterhood. Since the daughters today behave like boys, or worse than that, so daughterhood is -- is lacking in this country. It's a great quality to be the daughter of a -- of a spirited man, the heiress of his spirit. These daughters of today just go to colleges and have no spirit of their father at all.

So daughterhood is such a function you -- that goes today begging. It is represented by some good, fine boys who simply act as -- well, don't laugh. This is very serious, and you don't know if this is not the spiritual {Juliet}. All these great functions, you see, of the daughter, the father, the mother, the son; the government, the church, the arts, the education and so, have to be represented. And if they are destroyed by wrong functioning, the same function has to be taken over by somebody who doesn't -- has a -- official badge for this, you see, but he steps into the breach and has to do it.

Now in this same sense in 1870, the Society of Friends was available at a time when a denomination could not be entrusted with the charge. The whole problem of history writing and history reading, and your understanding of your own history in this country is not to look for novelty. But look for this hopping around between dead, shopworn labels, and the real function. A family is a family since Adam and Eve had Abel and Cain. But the function, you see, as I said, of a daughter and a son, and a father and a mother, today are very often not at all dealt with in a family. These are four disconnected people who call themselves a family. So the -- the community church, or the club or somebody else may have to function in this quality of father or mother to these orphans. And of course, since the parents have no children but only people who go to schools, and nursery schools, and so on, who -- for whom they are -- they are just providers, then the same occurs, of course, such a poor man when he grows up to -- 50, he has no daughter. Now how can you live without a daughter? You have to have a daughter, that is, the spirit of a daughter, if you want to be happy. No man can live without a daughter. That isn't done by adoption, either, I mean, by adoption of a physical specimen, called then her dau- -- your daughter, legally. But you must have relation -- a relation to the next generation through the -- in the feminine line, if you want really to feel that you are rooted, and embedded in the future of the human race.

And you see this very clearly. How do we in America -- have coped with this breakup of the daughter Zion? Because in the Bible, the bride -- the Zi- -- the daughter is -- is the Church. She is called the bride, is she not, and she is -- called the daughter of Zion. Well, there's a very simple secret today, that has to do with friendship. People of this country, fathers who get rich, immigrants who make good, people of the first generation, what do they do, in order to have spiritual daughters? They endow.

Now the word "dowry" is a daugh- -- a relation that expresses the relation between father and daughter. And it is the most sacred relation, much more sacred, and much more spirited than the relation between son and mother. But this is -- has been overtalked in this country, the daugh- -- daughter -- I -- I -- I simply vomit when I hear this mother talk in this country, because it is just sentimentality. Any -- you have to cut the umbilical cord and most sons never do. And so their matrimony -- marriage suffers, and they have a mistress and a mother all the time. But a man must cleave to the wife of his choosing, and he must leave father and mother. This seems never to be preached in this country. The -- the girls, they run away, yes. But not the men.

And this is very remarkable that the Bible should men- -- mention the man as having to give up his mother, not the daughter. In our country, now your civilization to -- according to your mentality, the -- seem to be -- stresses that the

daughter has to, you see, give up the father and mother and cleave to the husband of her choosing, of course, her choosing. But -- but the truth of the matter is much more complicated in the Bible, that the son must, you see, leave father and mother and cleave to the wife of his choosing. That's a very serious business. And it isn't done naturally. It is only done by -- if his -- if his -- he doesn't marry for sex. The -- otherwise he can't do it.

Now endowment is the form in which we have a similar transformation as we have with the term "friendship." The Friends are related to each other by a common spirit that is stronger than brotherly love, as I told you from the Proverbs in the Old Testament. And the same is true, the relation of an American, I think, in a natural way is with his country as his daughter. America has no patriots. America has no -- is not a fatherland, as the Germans call it. It is not "la patrie," as the French call it. But since the -- country is always considered younger than the men who endows it and does for -- something for it, you see, so he endows it, as you endow your daughter.

And so "dowry" -- is a word that has lost its meaning in private circumstances, but I think only because all our educational institutions, all our museums, all our foundations are daughters of men. And if you would take this seriously, you would suddenly see that the Americans are a new race, because they date their spiritual relations not from the past, but from the future. If your country is not your fatherland, but your daughterland--your daughter country--in this very moment obviously, you are dictated to by the future, and you are not ordered by the past. And it is very strange that these relations are not mentioned to you today. And the reason of cour- -- is that we live in the era of simplifications. People really think that the idea of the "public" solves all riddles. If you think of "the public and its government," the people who always consist of parents, and children, of father, mother, daughter, and son, disappear as unnecessary. You really think that if you bring the television set into every family, you can govern the people. You can -- make them -- intoxicate them, of course. You can make them into a public.

Now I mention this, gentlemen, because we have now to turn to the lack of friendship in the United States. People today in our colleges don't make friends. They only are chummy, and they have roommates, and they have pals.

I had lunch with a student the other day, and we talked very frankly. And he said to me, "How wonderful that in these four years in college, I have one opportunity to speak my mind," because he adjusts all the time, and conforms all the time, you see, so the mendacity, and the hypocrisy is contemptible on our campuses. It may be worse in the East than it is here. I don't know this. But it is horrifying. My son went to college. He has a beautiful, I think, amiable character,

but no friend made in the college. All his friends come from -- his school -- high school days. But not in college. That's not the place to make real friends.

Everybody here is everybody's friend, so nobody has a friend, because friendship is something spiritual, and if you have the lowest common denominator, you have only Jim and Joe. That's not friendship. Everybody tells me in his -- this country that this is -- Such-and-Such is his friend, and I find out that they have met once. That's very easy then to have a friend, you see. It costs nothing. The word "friend" at this moment is of -- in -- is in -- practically not an institution on the American scene. But it was in 1800. And, the -- as I told you at the end of the last meeting, the government of the United States, this fiction of complete democracy, has only been possible because presidents of the United States have friends, that is, people who for better or worse would stick to them, and on whom they could call without party lines, and without much ado. Franklin D. Roosevelt's presidency was only made possible because he had a large number of friends whom he could ring up and say, "Now you come and do this." Mr. Eisenhower has no friends, so it's all big business. And every two years, they leave him, as you see know with Mr. {McElroy}. That's the opposite from a friend. That's just a businessman.

Now this big country cannot be run without such an inner group. It has been called here with a -- a derisive term, "the Kitchen Cabinet." But that only means, gentlemen, that if you think of the kitchen as a part of the house, and you think of the cabinet as a part of the house, and you think of the chamber as a part of the house, and you think of the court as a part of the house, you can see that what we call "government" has first been established--in Rome, it's the curia, as you know the Roman curia; and it's the biggest--court, chamber, cabinet, kitchen cabinet. That is, different from what your theory in political science always tries to tell you, about the forms of government, parliamentary system: that's all abstraction from Greek philosophy, gentlemen. In reality, look around you, how we go- -- govern, with a group of people on whom we can rely. Who are our limbs, and our -- our legs, and our arms. Because nobody can -- wake 24 hours. Somebody has to take the telephone. In your case, of course, your husband.

But otherwise, you see, the whole fiction that you have of government through voting, then no work could be done. And you can't -- govern by bureaucracy, because they go home after their work is done after the 8-hour day. What you call a bureaucrat is a man who is not, you see, forced by -- by friendship and conviction to stay till 4 o'clock in the morning. And -- Mr. Hoover, Jr., was a case in point, you see, who whined, and broke down, had a nervous -- nervous jitters when he suddenly had to act not as a bureaucrat, but as a man. You may -- you remember? Well, { }. I mean, this country was not governed for -- for a moment, because Mr. Herbert -- Herbert Hoover, Jr., was just an offi-

cial; and he was not identified with the fate of this country.

This can happen any minute, at this moment. You have to have identification of the governing group, and the -- the Ro- -- Roman pope { } because the cardinals form the curia of Rome, you see. The--how do you spell--pronounce it in English? I don't know. KYUR-ee-ah? Wie?

(KYUR-ee-ah.)

Curia, yes. The -- the -- the princes -- the king of England, you see, does it with his court, has a chamberlain, and a marshall, you see, and so the prince and princess -- emperor of Chi- -- Japan to this day, can just tell to -- say a prince, "You govern -- travel now to Russia and bring a message to Mr. Khrushchev," you see. So the prince has to go. And Princess Margaret cannot marry whom they wants to { }. It has to be at the disposal of the -- of the court, I mean, in -- in England. This is -- the meaning of a -- of a monarchy. You have wrong notions about monarchy. The notion of a monarchy is simply that there is a family whose interests are identified. And if you look at the Roosevelt families, you know that these boys never identified their purposes with their father's interests. So that's a republi- -- republic; and the sons of Mr. Roosevelt didn't do him any honor.

So a family is in charge, and therefore we have the same situation when Mr. Wilson had his stroke. As you know, Mrs. Wilson did govern practically this country, and no questions asked. Heaven knows what she decided. He did- -- obviously didn't understand a thing, but she didn't allow anybody to approach his bed. She didn't allow a, as you know, a vicar -- I mean, the vice-president was not allowed to do it; but Mrs. Wilson did it. There's an interesting fact which brings out to you the -- the simplicity of human life always, when it comes down to brass tacks, you can write anything into the Constitution. The normal -- natural situation recurs, I mean. Monarchy is not invention of the devil. But is making use of the family unit for running affairs. Now in a country like this, you cannot do this, of course, because here the ladies don't even change their name if they don't like it when they marry. So, I mean, how can you then trust the woman?

Then you get a chambers in the democracy -- in France, you get the parliament, the chamber of deputies is -- was, until Mr. {Gold} came, the sovereign of France, you see. And this was taken very seriously. It was really the chamber in which people met. Then you get the cabinet government -- but in this country, as you know, when the cabinet was introduced, it became the seed of dissent. I mean, the -- all the members of Mr. Lincoln cabine- -- Lincoln's cabinet in the Civil War wanted to become president themselves, as you know. So how can you govern with such -- such scoundrels? And -- Mr. Wilson had a cabinet, and he would take the vote, and then he would said -- say at the end, everybody, you

see, saying "yes" or "no," and then he would say, "Carried, with all -- with one vote against all." You see. This is not a cabinet again, you see, because these members were appointed for political reasons, to give representation to regional interests or what-not, and if you have such a cabinet you can have it in the ins- -- Constitution 10 times that Mr. Mitchell is an important member in the cabinet. He just isn't. He's a -- you see, the one worker among 10 millionaires. And so the cabinet doesn't function in this country.

So it has always been this way, with Alex- -- since Alexander Hamilton, that Washington had to have a friend, his alter ego. That was Alexander Hamilton. And then he had in his cabinet a noisy -- noisemaker, that was Jefferson, you see. And he could not rely on Jefferson, because Jefferson hated every bit of the {president's} --. And {prustrated}. But you can't be frustrated, if you have to go to sleep. And a president must sleep well; a general must sleep well. You have to have members of the -- your family. Now that's a spiritual notion, family.

Just as I tell -- told you about endowment, where the -- the college which you endow, or the museum which you endow, or the foundation which you endow, the hospital which you endow is representative of your spiritual future, so in the same sense, the cabinet in this country is not enough to intimate to the president that he can go to sleep and things will be taken care of. So you get all kinds of things, and usually get friends. Mr. Ro- -- F.D.R. is -- has been such a genius in politics, because he had devoted friends. They weren't even a kitchen cabinet; it wasn't necessary, but he had friends. Harry Hopkins is a case in point. And this president has no friends, because he came from West Point and there -- you only have chums and pals. You don't make friends in the Army. And -- you make -- and in -- during the war, you would make friends, but he couldn't, being, you see, just the meeting point of all kind of intrigues between all the other generals. And so the poor man has no friends, so he gets Sherman Adams. Well, it -- that was -- there was -- had to be created a special office, assistant to the president, you see, that never had existed before, as far as I know. Isn't that right? Gentlemen, you should know. And that's very interesting. This was a substitute for the friend. And he failed him. But naturally, because he didn't select him, he --.

What now, we ask ourselves quite seriously, that's why I feel that -- that a military dictatorship is bound to come over this country, because the line of friendship that came down from the 18th century has been exhausted; and with mere pals, and mere club women and club men, you cannot run a country. You cannot go to sleep, because you have to mistrust everybody else that he might become -- want to become president, too.

This is very serious, and it shows you what I -- that's what I was driving

at, that from the 18th century, we still have carried over two important notions: people, and that means two sexes and three ages represented at every one moment -- at least three ages and at least two sexes represented. With public, that isn't necessary. Now a public is ungov- -- governable. And a member of the public cannot govern, because he has no identity with anybody else.

These two expressions, gentlemen--I'm -- will you please to re- -- never to forget this--these are two biblical expressions: since David became the friend of Jonathan, although Jonathan was the son of his enemy, and since the chosen people consisted not of a mob, as in an Indian tribe, but of each of -- of free-holders, of fathers of a household, and wives, and ch- -- sons, and daughters, all to be free men in their own right, ever since have these two expressions to be carried over into the future in some form. You cannot dodge these -- these functions. Now we have to define, however, who is a friend. And in the process, you will see the difference from a public in which everybody behaves nicely to his man -- left and right in the -- in the -- in the -- when you see a picture, obviously, you are polite to your neighbor. And you may call this very friendly gesture. And people are very friendly on the highway, and people are very friendly in the stores. And the customer is always right, and that you may -- you make -- may make you think that the -- the owner of the store is your friend. Of course he isn't, he's out to make -- get your money, and that's all. But you are delighted, because he's so friendly. But that's lipstick.

I suggest that a friend can be only recognized if he survives for better, for worse; that he in this sense is similar to a wife. Now -- as long -- I know nowadays the -- they don't last for better for worse. I've seen cases where the only reasoning was because times hadn't gotten worse, of course, now we have to get a divorce. But they never were married, these people. And the test of a marriage is that you stick through night and day. That is, through two opposite situations. And you have no friend if he doesn't stay with you through two op- -- opps- -- opposite situations: once when you are rich, and once when you are poor. If he stays through the two emergencies, you have a friend, obviously. Before, you haven't. That's why rich people are -- don't know if they have friends, you see, because as long as they are rich, that's never tested. Everybody wants to be a rich man's friend, but that's not friendship.

In -- in -- in -- in economic theory, we call this satellites. I mean, you just have to read Timon of Athens, by Shakespeare, you see, to know what that is. And -- by the way, who has read Timon of Athens? Who has read Timon? See, this sunny California, you see; such a terrible play doesn't have to be read. Gentlemen, if you want to know what America is all about at this moment, read Timon of Athens. America has no friends, because all the people only like her as long as she is rich. What does this help you? What does it help a country that the

o- -- other nations behave because America is rich? Do you think that's a basis for survival? Read Timon of Athens. And then read what he says about greatness -- once the -- first senator has the greatest sentence in all of Shakespeare, find it -- is found in this play, when the one senator says to the other what it means to be great. And then you can thereby I think learn something about friendship.

So a friend is -- sticks closer than a brother, but you only know that he sticks closer than a brother if he survives your miserable state, if he goes with you on the scaffo- -- to the scaffold, and doesn't run away when you are suddenly in an emergency. I am of German descent, as you by -- know by my accent. And I came to this country 25 years ago. And when the Pearl Harbor accident happened, Mis- -- my minister--my minister, mind you--the minister of the church to which I belong to this day, he has left; I'm there--sent word to me that since I was of German descent, I would understand that during the war, he wouldn't speak to me. Ja. Yes. Oh yes, that's called a church today.

I mean, you see, whether it's church, or friends -- or friends or whatever you have today, the words mean nothing. This man was just a scoundrel like anybody else. Or worse. A pagan wouldn't have said this, because --. This man thought the immunity, you see, of being a minister, even under such conditions would protect him from his own contempt. Of course, how can such a man look in the -- shave and a look into the mirror? He couldn't.

So now I -- we spoke about this special American im- -- power to improvise, and that if you call people by their first name, you brush aside all the insidious memories of less agreeable past situations, you suddenly need then, you forget that yesterday you were fighting this man. And I said to you that I haven't found any--and I don't know of any--country in which so much has been achieved by this power of improvisation, that a new group can meet on the spur of the moment and handle things very effectively for a short while. But that's an impediment to friendship, because the real friend of course must see you when you are out of honor, you see, and out of -- of promise, when people don't talk to you.

My friends were two neighbors in the year 1942, who when this minister had said this, published an article about me in the local paper, you see, to defend me against the insinuations of the mob on -- on Main Street. And I suddenly knew these people with whom I had -- not -- very small dealings before, next to none. They were my friends, because they came out, you see, in a -- generous manner, just writing up my life story, and so rescuing me from -- from this awkward situation. When you live in a town of a thousand people, there's nothing much otherwise around, and you have to live four years in such -- during such a war, you see, it's very important that somebody should come to

your -- to your rescue.

So I mean to say, these people recognized me in an hour when it wasn't agreeable to recognize me for them, and they stick -- stuck their neck out. And this is friendship.

And otherwise there is no friendship, and you never know who is your friend before the night is very dark, or vor you're sick, or vor you lose some point in the public esteem. And without defeat, you don't know, I mean, we -- that John, you see -- why is John found under the Cross together with the women? Because he was the natural friend of -- of Jesus. The others were called. They had an office, the 12 -- the 11 others. But the -- the Bible is very explicit in saying they were friends. And this -- therefore he is found under the Cross, and he was -- didn't have to become a martyr because he, so to speak, understood and lived by the nature, and not by a special appointment. That's -- that's why most people do not understand the Gospel of St. John. But the Gospel of St. John is so remarkable, because here is the personal friend, the natural friend who ends, just w- -- on a no- -- this note of friendship, that all the books that could be written about his friend, who wouldn't -- wouldn't suffi- -- would fill the whole globe, so to speak, the earth wouldn't be big enough to contain them. So he just speaks, and he runs, you see, as you know, in competition with Peter to find the grave; and he just behaves like a friend does behave in a natural way. But it's very rare that a friend sees in his friend his greatness. And so the Gospel of J- -- St. John is so remarkable, because it begins with the most remote notion of the friend and then comes down to earth, and leaves us with the under- -- feeling that they really were very close friends.

So friendship, as many other religious features of the 18th century at this moment, gentlemen, will have to be re-created. It has specially by our educational processes been reduced to mere chumminess. And to have a pal, and to have a roommate is not the same thing as to have a friend. It's something quite different. To a friend, you do not adjust; but into friendship you grow and become yourself. Through friendship we become ourselves. And the other -- all the other things are -- what the psychologists call "adjustment." It is very des- -- despicable and quite superfluous. It just does harm; if you -- if you adjust too long, and -- and smile -- keep smiling all the time, you finally have to go to a lunatic asylum where you are allowed to weep. I mean, this country is sick with tears that are not -- that are not wept, you see. If you -- if you don't have a -- strike a balance between tears and laughter, you fall sick. And in this country--in Southern California it seems especially--you have only sunshine. And that's not good for the human soul. They -- I'm told -- they have to smile when they go to Forest Lawn Cemetery.

So friends weep with you. If David hadn't wept for Jonathan, he wouldn't have been his friend. But nobody is allowed to weep today for anybody, not even for himself; so man isn't his own friend today. How could he be anybody else's friend? You never de- -- weep about your own decay and degeneration, so probably you -- you won't have a friend either in the outer world. Everybody is nice. To be nice and to be polite is the opposite from friendship. The one thing a friend has the duty to do is to be {gruff}, and to be outspoken, and to be critical. This you cannot afford in this modern society. The reason is the multiplication of acquaintances. We call every acquaintance a friend, because we have, compared to former days--because of these millions milling around in our streets, on the highway--we have 10,000 acquaintances, you see, compared to five friends. Now we don't want to have anyone of these 10,000 acquaintances, so we call them all friends; the terrible result only being that we haven't yet found a -- a clear statement: who then are the five, you see, who are our friends? They also run under this general title of -- of "friendship," and they { }.

This is a serious thing for your children. It isn't -- doesn't -- isn't enough to send children to kindergarten and to send children to school, because friendship is a battle royal. -- Friends are { }, and friends are lost. And it breaks your heart. And -- and it is as important to have friends as it is to have a mistress, or a sweetheart, or fall in love. It is -- it's parallel. And man is only complete if he has these two axises.

And since we now live in the century of womanhood, I can assure you that the problem of friendship between women is perhaps the greatest problem of the next hundred years. Can women--instead of being jealous, and instead being indifferent, or instead of being nasty to each other--can they be in the deeper sense friends? This has been, of course, such friendship has existed. But it isn't yet transfigured in literature. And there are no great plays on woman friends as there are on -- on -- on male friendship, you see. And obviously there is still a great need of the transfiguration of friendship that it could only be on the basis of victory over jealousy. And that's unheard-of. The -- nine-tenths of the American ladies whom I have the privilege to know take it for granted that they have the right to be jealous. That's called a virtue in this country. And they have spiritual jealousy; they are spirit- -- jealous against the -- the influences on their husbands, the spiritual influences. Religion and art are the business of the women in the house. So if the man has religious or literary affiliations, in nine -- cases out of 10, I have seen that the husband has lost his -- had to give up his friends, and these affiliations, because of the power of a -- his wife.

And I can -- I can assure you that is the observation over the last 25 years of the -- this bereavement of the man in this country by the jealousy of his wife that is incredible. The -- this deprivation. There are exceptions. Very rare. And

the people who have been left isolated under the thumb of their woman, not because they were in love with another woman, but because they had spiritual interests to which the wife didn't feel up, so to speak, where she was jealous, because she felt she couldn't keep up with -- with this -- with this level are much more numerous. I had perhaps 5,000 students in this country so far, and I would think that 4,000 of them have been deprived of their normal growth through the jealousy of their wives, the spiritual jealousy of their wives. That's a serious business.

So the word "friend" is at this moment unredeemed, and it is not taken seriously. And I assure you in all the educational process -- it is even destroyed, because everybody -- everything is done to neutralize it. If you have school luncheon with 150 people, that's not inducive to friendship. These school luncheons are the death of all people in this country. They make them -- even the children into a public. And I -- I -- I think it's heartbreaking that from California, from this state, this -- this trend was started -- 12 years ago that all the children from all the small district schools had to be centralized and sit down by the hundred. That's just the worst militarism I know, this American school luncheon. That's militarism, because you're put in a uniform of behavior; and uniform is military.

People are multi- -- multiform. And they are colorful. And children have to sit down at the school luncheon and -- and drink this pasteurized milk, and eat Kraft cheese. Well, they are pasteurized. Sterilized. You eat sterilized food. We have sterilized friendships. Everything is pasteurized in this country, so nothing can grow. And your children are -- this is -- they are the most wonderful people in the world, but they have ceased to be people. By the ripe age of 12, they are public.

Can you now understand why I feel that the change from the religious to the secular has been bought at a price? Because very few people at this moment will admit that "public" and "people" is something quite different. What we call "secular" treats a man regardless of his religious affiliations. The public consists of thousand people, as we said, who buy a ticket. And by buying a ticket, they renounce all relationship to their -- the 999 other people in this room. They just go there because their relationship is the three dollars they pay, you see. And everybody else pays three dollars, and so the relationship is in this manner: here is the stage; and here is the public, just individuals. And so you come to this strange idea that the world is populated by individuals.

The word "individual" as you know is still bandied around, and it means a man who is not conditioned as a member of a people, and he's not conditioned by friendship. That is, he is neither conditioned on a spiritual nor on a biological

basis, you see, as a member. A friend is a member of a group. And a -- a son is a member of a family, you see, but an individual is -- is {an atom}. -- We have of course -- you have to have a pri- -- pay a price.

Down to 1850, which is the great dividing line in America from secular history of the state and of our government, from 1776, these two things--people and friends--practically still stood unshaken. The book by Mr. Frankfurter, which I mentioned to you, The Public and Its Government, couldn't have been written in -- in 1850, you see. It would have had to be entitled, The Pub- -- People, you see, and Its -- Their Government, and Their Government. Very personal. And -- but today, as I said, you have instead of friends, the individuals, the number racket.

I think the expressive game of -- on this for -- is Bingo. Have you ever seen a socie- -- party of Bingo -- people playing Bingo? I once was condemned to attend such a thing in a military establishment on -- on an airfield. I've never seen such a sad group. All numbers, everything is a number. And there were the colon- -- was the colonel, his wife, and the three children. They were so bored, and they had to be so interested. Artificially. A family is interesting as long as these people are not just, you see, people cramping each other's style, but going in opposite directions. As soon as you want to equalize them, and they all become individuals, you see, and --.

I once had a man from Madison Avenue visiting me, and it may be worth telling the story that we just -- he inquired what we were doing, and how we were living. And all the answers were unsatisfactory from the standpoint of Madison Avenue, where the big advertising -- firms, as you know, sit. And he finally said, "For heaven's sake, you are statistically unimportant."

I took this as a great compliment, you see. Look to form a group that is statistically unimportant. And you can only do it with a group that lives together for better, for worse. As soon as you want to adjust to -- to society and so, you become statistically important, and you are a great bore, to yourself and to others. Figures are just always boring. Numerals, numbers.

Now, I have to say one thing now. How could a -- a country go in this direction since 1850 of becoming more and more a public, so that today even the family consists of individuals? Everyone goes to work or to school. I know a family, very nice people, three people, three cars; they occasionally meet. And they still have the same bungalow to live in. And that's called a family. A son, and the mother, and the father. But they -- it's purely accidental.

And -- well, we are bossed. The boss in American politics since 1850 has

become the secret figure without which the public cannot be ruled and entertained. Of course, the famous boss of McKinley was Marc- -- Hanna. And -- but { }. Everybody in this country is quite well acquainted with the fact that there is always a secret that is not shown to the public: how affairs are run, I mean. Whether you have the Kennedy trust fund that now is grooming Mr. Kennedy for president, or whether you have the -- the -- the caucus, the group that prepares, you see, the candi- -- the procedures for an election. The fiction that a country could -- consist of individuals, has to be balanced by secret.

And we said last time already that the secret of the Free Masonry was attacked by the Anti-Masonic Party. But I want to come back to the fact that secrecy at -- in the first half of the 19th century lodged in the Free Masonry, and in the {sense avowedly}, in this one group, has now of course spread to all the big corporations, to all the parties. We -- take it for granted that everywhere there is a -- a boss, or a group, or a -- something that runs the show. And we only see the appearances of this side of the stage. But what goes on backstage is of course the decisive element. { }.