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

Old friends and newcomers, when I was here last, I was not alone. My wife was here with me. I have been made a widower and I'm --have to speak for myself, which is more difficult. Two people who are married together convince more than one. But there's a secret in this. When I was asked by Page to come here, I said to myself that I would have to offer the very best, in order to -- represent us two. One speaks better and more convincingly when one represents somebody else. In fact, all speaking is, I think, representative. Even if you speak for yourself, he who speaks is not the self, but the speaker; and the speaker claims to be in the truth and in the know -- and therefore, to represent an office in the universe.

So obviously, I will try to sum up here what in 50 years my married life has taught me. It has always been in back of our minds the presence of somebody else when we spoke to each other. The secret of speech is handled today by many groups of people -- by analysts, by poets, by critics -- there are more critics in the world certainly than there are poems written today, the poor poets are crowded out by the critics as you know -- and I will not add to their number. They seem to be -- the supply is really bigger, I think, than the demand. So I have asked myself, "Is it necessary that I should speak here?"

Of the handwriting of my wife, it has been said that she never did anything superfluous. And so when I tried to find something to talk to you about, I felt I had to justify to myself, "Is it necessary?" I come from the state of Calvin Coolidge, whose only blessing and whose only claim to glory is that he always asked, when the law had to be vetoed, or not vetoed, or signed, "Is it necessary?" Three words, you see, was already more than usually this man would speak. But he asked, "Is it necessary?"

Is this necessary? If I can prove to you that it is necessary, my main task will be done. We are in great danger today that speech will disappear from this world. Genuine speech. It has fallen into the hands of the children, the babes and sucklings. But unfortunately when speech falls in the hands of the sucklings, it doesn't mean that they tell the truth. They tell only funnies. The degradation of speech, of language, of anything written, printed, or said, is enormous. Play and serious speech are no longer distinguishable in most cases. You never know whether the man means it or not. And we heard yesterday that there are firms in this country who even train their people never to say anything where you know where they stand. It's "Yes" and "No" at the same time. It's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

Now Rosenstock-Huessy is not that way. I'm pledged that I shall say "Yes" or "No." Either or. It isn't -- there should be no double talk. But how do we find out what double talk is? This is really the question of our -- of today. When is the word true? Well, this -- you know that science today is God, and the scientists tell you it is true. It is true that the bomb will explode. But the bomb knows nothing of this, and so I thought my first approach to the whole question of living speech would be to distinguish the things that speak for themselves and the speak -- things we speak about. So I called this lecture, the first lecture, "Numbers, Words and Names."

It is at first quite difficult today to state the distinction. And before I go into this question, let me show you how important it might be today to discover the place of serious speech -- to be taken seriously at the danger of life. Like an oath, where you can perjure yourself.

The leading biologist of our days is Mr. Adolf Portmann in Basel, Switzerland. He has written a book, Fragments on the Biography of Man, in which he states his case very surprisingly this way: that man is distinguished from the animals by one feature -- he's born before time, before his day is really up. If he was an animal, he should be carried in his mother's womb for 22 months. But he isn't. He leaves his mother's womb after nine months and then for 13 more months, all his faculties of speech and hearing are developed -- even physically: the muscles and nerves for this, for speech, because he receives the living language of his people as the -- changes. He is the only animal, the only living being, we are, who are born into an historically changing environment and bear the imprint of the changes. All the animals remain what they have been once the species is created. Elephant and reptile and bird -- the same all the time. We are not. When a child grows up, it has learned American slang, unfortunately, instead of Oxford English. But it means that it lives in America, and it lives in 1962, and not in Elizabethan England. This is the whole distinction, but it's -- enough of a distinction. Man takes part in the further creation of the world, as it goes on year by year and century after century. And in this participation in the creative process of our maker, we are allowed to be remade and that's why a baby is 13 months already in this mother-womb of language, of his mother tongue. That's perhaps the simplest explanation of the expression, "mother tongue."

The mother's womb is then twofold for you and me. It -- one is physical, the living mother, and the other is the godmother of the spirit. That's probably also why we have godparents. We have to have second parents, and if -- whether the parents know it themselves or not -- father and mother become real parents only if this child is taught the living language by them and learns to distinguish "Yes" and "No," for example, and "Thank you," and "Please," and -- and "Yesterday," and "Tomorrow." All this is -- has nothing to do with the animal in us. It's a con-

tribution to this historical stream of creation. Man is the co-creator of his own life. And he's made into this in these strange 13 months outside the nest, or -- outside the womb, but in a nest made by history.

This is so simple that it is astonishing that a man had to come in the year 1944 to write this up, because we all know it. Or we all could have known it before, you see. But as a matter of fact, as -- it is only that the biologist, Mr. Portmann, discovered it. I think all other people knew it. It is the sermon of the Church. But of course, it has now to be translated into the language, or the lingo of biology, which I have tried to do at this moment, and given you an example of the constant process of change which is inherent in speech.

And at this point, I think I can make it clear to you what is lacking and what my words here will try to supply. Mr. Portmann knows that this womb of time, these 13 months for the baby are different in 1960 from 1940 and from 1850 et cetera. And they must be different in 2000. Yet, at this very moment, there is in the parliament of South Africa, a motion under consideration by the government, Mr. VerWoort, faithful Nazi adherent, saying that anybody who invokes or -- fosters change in his state, the South African Republic, you see, can be condemned to death. Anybody invoke -- invoking economic or political change in South Africa by this new law is threatened with death. Now this man, you see, transgresses the order of humanity. Violence must be the result. It would be the same result if the Welchers and the Birch Society would conquer in this conquer -- country. But by and large, they say the same as the law of Mr. VerWoort.

The older man -- the same baby that receives a changing form of equipment in his ideas, his customs, his mores, his dress, you see, when it is born into this world -- obviously has to produce newness and change when he is grown up. Because otherwise there would be nothing to -- to -- to be received by the newborn baby tomorrow. So we discover that this biological sketch of Mr. Portmann, convincing as it is as -- for the part of the baby, is quite unconvincing, because Mr. Portmann only says negatively he doesn't know why people grow so old, over 50, because physically, they {involve, then} you, see, they go backward. And they -- as you know, they are -- we are pensioned off at 65, because we are then seemingly unimportant.

Now, from my point of view, of course, the baby, you see, is counteracted, or is balanced, by the hoary head for the simple reason that this baby has to receive a new equipment. And one that is not of the day in which the 50-year-old lives, but will be still modern and fashionable when this baby born today, you see, will be 100 himself.

I once announced a course of lectures, "Spiritual History of the Western World

from 1100 to 2000." And when I arrived and saw the syllabus, and asked the students what they expected, "Oh," they said, "Oh, the catalogue said, `Spiritual History of the Western World from 1100 to 1200.'" So I went to the printer and to the -- to the office there -- printing press -- and said, "What have you done?"

"Well," they said, "That's the only possible interpretation. You can't say anything about 2000."

So I went before my class and said, "Pardon me, but I meant 2000, because you will be fathers and grandfathers in 2000. And if I do not teach you something that is worthwhile teaching in 2000, you certainly shouldn't sit here."

It's as simple as that. Still, if you mention the year 2000 in this University of Southern California, and it would be the same in Northern California, and -- you are called a stargazer, or an astrologer, you see, or some superstitious man because you talk about the year 2000. Yet, in fact, my dear friends, you must know it yourself -- everything you say today takes effect only in 2000. The -- the -- the -- that's the reason why the 10 Commandments say very simply that the -- the sins of our -- of their fathers are visited on their children, you see, in the third and fourth generation, because the stupidities and follies printed today in the American, or -- or here in the Los Angeles Times -- bear fruit, of course, only earliest in 40 years. They do not make -- immediately lead to action today, but they will lead to action, of course, in 19- -- in 2000. That's why I look forward to -- to terrible and -- cruelties in 2000, because "Spartacus" is played today. That must take effect in the souls of men in 40 years and you will see that man will be urged on to -- to fight each other, you see, for the curiosity and the sensation, as they already do in boxing. But it will be much worse. They will have lions again, and tigers just as in the days of the old Christianity. We do it. We bring it on today. It will take effect in 40 years. "Spartacus" is an example. I -- probably Mrs. Taylor is another example. I haven't seen "Cleopatra," and perhaps I shall not. But the fruits of our words obviously mature 40 years later.

And therefore, may I say, that the baby has to be balanced in our consideration to understand man by the founding fathers, as we call those people, you see, who didn't see the fruits of their labors themselves, but without whom there would be no republic of the United States of America. The very word "founding" means that you do not see the fruits of your labors yourself. Others must harvest what you have sown.

If you see this in large proportions now for a moment, and see the baby here and the -- the old man on the other side, man is not an animal for these two reasons: that his babies are born into a new and changed environment, compared to himself and compared to the previous generation, and that he himself is

obliged to give these -- his children, a transformed environment in order to fulfill this special place of humanity among the living beings on this globe. The equipment of this power to select those things that the children must inherit from thousand years back, and the additions which -- for which he is responsible and his generation, the selection is obviously the mystery of our existence. You cannot be a liberal in a religious sense, or a conservative only. Everybody has to be a liberal and a conservative because for certain things, he has to make room. That's his liberalism. For certain things, he must stand firm. That's his conservatism. In religious circles, or in any religious group, or any group that knows how in dan- -- in great danger the human race is today, the terms -- "liberal" and "conservative" belong to the 19th century. They are absolutely obsolete. You cannot elicit any response. They are unclear. I mean, most people who say today they are conservative, they are the liberals of 1860. Then it was called "liberal." But they call what they are now conservative.

Don't use these weasel words alone. Be clear to yourself that you wish your children are half-conservative and half-liberal, or half-free and half- -- -conserving and half-creating. Without this combination, man doesn't exist. Mr. VerWoort in South Africa digs the grave of his state and government, because he passes a law in which one-half of reality is negated. And the terrible thing is that when such a word is said, as Mr. VerWoort is speaking it, it's an {exciting} situation. Violence, the breakup of this order, is inevitable.

I never knew -- I had friends in South -- living in South Africa. Two sisters of mine are living there. I'm very interested in its fate and I have many reports. It's very complicated, and I'm -- cannot go into this, but I know that this law ends the history of South Africa. Whenever man thinks he can say this, you see, he has not received his own gospel, his own message, his own experience, because Mr. VerWoort, you know, speaks Afrikaans. And Afrikaans is a special branch of Dutch. A hundred years ago, Afrikaans didn't exist, because the Afrikaaners were just Dutchmen. And they spoke Dutch. But today, when you come in Holl- -- to Holland -- I lived last year three months in Holland -- everybody, you see, distinguishes two languages, because at -- in Capetown, the language has changed. It's called Afrikaans because it is no longer Dutch. And Mr. VerWoort defies this.

The famous first chieftain or head of the South African colony at the Cape of the -- Good Hope is Mr. {Stellen}, was Mr. {Stellen}, the town Stellenbosch still bears witness to it. Well, he was -- he was a mixed, a colored man -- you see, half-white, half-colored. Now that's the ancestor of the order of things in South Africa, yet as you know, the colored are excluded from any political rights in South Africa. So the breakdown of this order is predicated. It's inevitable.

I don't have to repeat to you the word of Mr. Lincoln in 1858 in the Douglas debates: that the House cannot stand half-free and half-slave. But in our case here, I wish to advocate that the secret of our existence is in this fact that we have a means of surviving our former self. This is the biological situation and I know -- I know Mr. Portmann personally, that he doesn't object to my claiming that I am adding here the second half of his own doctrine, you see, to the picture of the living animal, man. However, if you look around, this faculty by which he keeps, maintains, and rejects -- by which he adds, and by which he preserves -- is not claimed to be a revolutionary power which makes man man. But you read that man is somebody who says what he thinks, or who uses language as a means of communication, or -- as a psychological something -- as an instrument, as a tool. Now, how can the power by which I am allowed to decide how much I am of my father and how much I am of my daughter, by which I stand between two generations -- how can this be called an instrument? It's my making. The word that I speak, you see, I can be taken up on. The first character of -- of human -- the human being is that you can -- call me a liar. That is, you can distinguish between my truth -- do I mean what I say? And have I lied? I have to behave in such a way that what I have said can be seen written into me, executed by me. Of course, there have been in this strange century of ours, where a man was alone by himself and had no ancestors and no offspring, as far as his intellect was concerned, you can find that in St. Andrews, Edin- -- Scotland, where they have strange addresses usually made by famous men who come there to the foggy season and in order to breathe at all have to speak out loud -- that there -- a man gave a very -- a very distinguished man gave a lecture on speech. And he said the first speaker was a li- -- the liar. That's a paradox, indeed. And he made great fun, and it was a great speech. It's -- it's printed: by Bernard Shaw.

And it shows you the -- the conclusion to which modern man has come -- probably he saw too much of Madison Avenue -- and he saw that men fabricate today images, word pictures, and how these strange word-terms go. And so people are told today that words are within our power, that you and I manipulate people with words. That we are rhetorically taught how to make good speeches and how -- or how to treat Mr. Eisenhower after -- according to the father image. I don't know -- is -- what -- is Kennedy my brother-in-law image, or what is it?

Wherever you hear speech confused with images and pictures, you know that you have a pagan, a heathen before you. It is paganism to think that words spoken are coins which I throw out, you see, according to the images I have printed on them. Speech is something quite different. Speech is that transformer of myself. By speaking, we become different people. You know this very well, because one act of speaking is -- of course listening. Nobody speaks alone. I said to you that I have spoken in the name of more than me, but everybody does this.

And while I am here, I can only say something, and I am only interested in saying something because you kindly listen. We form a unity at this -- as of this moment, you see, short as it may be. But if you wouldn't listen, you see, it would make no sense that I spoke. And I do not speak here for myself. But I'm trying to hand over something that of course has been said by millions of people through the ages and has to be said to the end of time as long as men have to be born and die.

That is, we speak or we listen -- and I assure it is the same thing -- in order to distinguish yesterday and tomorrow. Now the greatest, funniest absurdity in which I run into today is that people think we invented -- man invented language already. This is such a stupid idea that I invented language. I was taught it, obviously, and I, you see, was very eager to learn it. People think that it was meant to signify chairs and things visible here in this room. If you think that man has to eliminate dead stuff, because his baby must not receive it, must not know of it, and if you think that he has to have the authority to eliminate this dead stuff so that it is thrown out and not remembered and burned, so to speak, and new things have to be put up and impose people -- impress people so much that they're eager to transmit them to future generations, then man of course needs a power that is bigger than he himself. And the first, the first way, of course, for any man who has recreated language is that he bows to its authority himself. No prophet and no poet is interesting, and no savior if he doesn't obey the word that he speaks in the first place himself. If he doesn't set the example that this word is binding on himself, you see, nobody will listen. And for this reason, it is impossible to call language an instrument, because if I have to bow to the authority of this word, you see, then this word is more powerful than I myself.

Now that's a hard doctrine and I don't expect you to believe me, at this moment. But I wanted to announce my protest against the pagans. Wherever -- and in this country, it's unfortunate, the religionists show movies of the Bible to wean people from any religion. And the secret of the living word is invisible and will remain invisible. When we come later to the -- this dissection of the various senses with which God has endowed us, I'll try to show you why vision, the eye sense, is the least perceptive of the mystery of speech, and why we are killing our -- our children's faith and our children's power of trust, confidence, and love by showing him every- -- everything ahead of time. You shouldn't do that. It's -- they'll never forgive you later. If they have been taken into this wrong confidence of -- of picture images of the secrets of life.

God is invisible; and let me break out of the usual style of speech by saying very simply: numbers, and words, and names, of which I have promised to speak here tonight, are very easily distinguishable. Numbers are valid for things that can neither listen nor speak themselves. You may say of 10 oxen that there are 10

oxen, but already of the people here, I could not say 25 -- that we are just 25 -- or 45 people. I must try to come to know you. I must be intro- -- be introduced to every one of you. Otherwise you could go home, rather offended, and said, "He has treated us very superciliously and very contemptuously." Now "contemptuously" is a very important word. You expect me to treat you as equals. And we have to exchange words. I cannot speak in numbers -- of you and to you, but I have to speak in a human language, and this is -- happens to be my poor edition of English.

[tape interruption]

That is, we speak in an -- in an idiomatic tongue to each other in order to feel that {we} respect each other. Respect, that -- is, that we take -- have regards for each other, and that we take -- speak together. Now the word "together" is of course today a rather platitudinous word, perhaps, but "together" means that everybody is with the speaker in the know. All listeners, all of you -- here in this corner, you too, Lady -- have -- must be taken into this speech. I must assume that you as well as the people right here in front are not falling asleep, that you are with me.

That is, everyone to whom I address human speech must feel that he is privileged to be taken out of dead nature, of the dead world, of the non-speaking universe, of the number universe, you see, that he's not treated as a number. And the more any eloquent speaker can convey this, you see, to his audience, the better he is. You know the story about Governor Curley, of Massachusetts. He was a very eloquent Irishman, but he did some crooked things. Among others, he -- among others, he did something very charming, he took the examination for somebody else -- the Civil Service examination. But unfortunately he was caught in the process and sent to prison. I think it was rather uncharitable of the judge. But he stayed in politics and became Governor of Massachusetts just the same, and was a headache for Franklin D. Roosevelt. And one day he went into a -- into a gathering of politic- -- a political gathering -- and made his speech. And a heckler threw in, "How was this, Mr. Curley, with this man for whom you took the exam?"

And Curley beamed and said, "Yes, and I would it do for you also." Now that's a real speaker, you see.

What's the difference between numbers and words? In this example, you have the whole case. Mr. Curley spoke of the future of the man who listened to him. He said that this man might come in a situ- -- get into a situation where he needed Mr. Curley's help. Any politician, you see, does this. No scientist does it. No scientist could have said this sentence, because he deals with past things, with things that can be numbered and measured. But a man who has a living

audience must consider their tomorrow, you see. And therefore, where you have words, you have the alphabet of tenses. You said the -- the number is timeless. Ten, ten, a million, they have no place in time. No even perhaps in space.

But I have the great honor that a man from Madison Avenue came to my house and said, after he had listened to me, "You are statistically unimportant." Now, that's a great honor. He had to speak to me, you see. He couldn't number me. A man who is statistically important is nothing else but a statistic.

Now, I'm quite serious. This is the -- very much -- the dividing line between numbers and words, that in order to be important in human speech, you have to be numberless. You have to be perfectly statis- -- unimportant in statistics, because otherwise it makes no se- -- it is not important that you should speak. Most people strike you as -- it is unimportant what they say.

So words are spoken to living beings who have to distinguish -- that's the deepest secret, I can tell you, as of this evening, at least, it seems the most important -- language was not created to tell you, "This is a chair." I could have always pointed with my finger to this chair. And mothers and children do not have -- babies have -- do not have to speak to each other in a formal language. It's perfectly unnecessary. You just show it to them. Let them -- let them gr- -- grab it and let them feel -- probably they try to eat it.

That is, there is a -- it is not true that the world of our five senses would ever have created speech. Speech is created for this great act of the Founding Fathers to distinguish past and future. Therefore, language is not the power to say, "This is the chair," or "This is the -- St. Augustine Church." But it is meant only for the power you have to say, "My father no longer is alive, but I -- a child has been born to me." We speak in order to distinguish past and future. Just as much as we -- speak in order to say, "Here, we speak English, and across the border we speak Mexican." You distinguish then inside and outside.

These are the two only reasons why we speak and that's why every word -- verb in -- even in English, half-dead as it is, can show tense. You can distinguish "I have said" and "I shall say." So, the root of language -- are not words, and are not numbers, but is this wonderful bridge across the times by which you stand in the middle of the -- on a raft, so to speak, in time, and say, "This is behind me. This has happened."

I always give this very crude example that you have the liberty at this moment to say, "Europe was a great civilization." Or to say, "Europe is a great civilization." Depending on your creed about the future of mankind, you will say these sentences with different, you see, intonation and with different vitality. If you say,

"Europe was a great civilization," then the two world wars have destroyed Europe. Perhaps they have. If you say, "Europe is still the white man's -- not only the cradle, but its," you see, "its mainstay" -- then you throw in your faith together with the Europeans and America can't go it alone.

This little word "is" or "was" is for you and me, for all important purposes, the mystery of language, because it means that this strange fact that within our own lifetime certain things have been condemned to death, certain mores, certain ways of life, and some new will have to come into being, is entrusted to your own decision. Every one of us is a remaker of the universe simply by his being allowed to change between "was" and "is." That's the reason why it is important that God is that -- called "He who has been," you see, "who is and shall be." He is not concerned with this change in us. He has planted it -- in us in order that we may participate in his further creation. This little word "is" and "was" then gives you the secret of what speech in words really is. It is our power to distinguish yesterday and tomorrow. Past and future. We look backward and forward, and if you would give up this ridiculous idea that we know anything from the past and present about the future, and would say -- see that we look backward and forward, you would be already be above naked heathenism, as it is rampant in all the social sciences today, who tell you that language is an instrument, a tool to persuade people to buy at Sears, Roebuck.

What is -- who is God? God are all the powers that make us speak. We have to define then the names as all those powers whom we must invoke in order to survive. The first names are the names of our gods, and pardon me for obliging you for a moment to speak of this in the plural, because the languages were created, of course, in the dark night of -- before the -- full revelation -- and you must not take it amiss that I mean really to say that people who do not know that Venus, and Apollo, and Zeus, and Hera can be gods will today miss the bus into revelation. It is because there were many gods -- and the Bible is full of the Elohim as you know -- Elohim means "gods" in the plural -- that Jahweh, the god of tomorrow, could be proclaimed. And with all our poetry and all our symbols in architecture and sculpture and painting about the gods of antiquity, I think it is high time that you convince yourself that you too, you see, either invoke Americanism and the American flag -- that's your god at that moment -- or you invoke socialism, or Communism -- as people reproach others -- or you invoke neutralism, or you invoke pacifism, or you invoke bellicism, or you invoke the Marines or whoever your god is as of this moment.

That is, all men have between the God who has created man as this changer of things and as His speaker of words, and the invoker of powers, and -- there are always between Him, the Almighty, and us powers -- the powers that be. And I like to call them "God" for good reason. Because all these powers make you cry

out, shout and speak, whether you dance around the flag or whether you spend -- your money collecting pictures, you see, of Picasso. And it is always the same. You have some authority which forces you to go around and speak of them, and name them, and invoke them. The names are not words of human -- between human beings. But they are invocations of powers that make you speak. I happened to run into this famous song by Shakespeare:

"Hark, hark the lark at Heaven's gate and Phoebus 'gins arise, His steeds to water at those springs On chalic'd flowers that lies; And winking Mary-buds begin To ope their golden eyes: With everything that pretty is, My lady sweet, arise. Arise! Arise!"

You know that love must speak. It must invoke. Here the whole universe must dance around the sweetheart. "With everything that pretty is, my lady sweet, arise." You will see that whenever we speak fully, we try to assemble the whole universe around the center of our thought. You bring not to your sweetheart everything you have. That's not accidental, because we always turn to the gods, to the powers that are much bigger than our little environment and try to enlarge it, to show that this power, this omnipresent power is really present here at -- this minute. And when it and if it is present, and if we can convince our sweetheart that it is present, she'll say, "Yes." She cannot -- she can resist me, as myself, but she cannot resist the divine power that blesses this moment and enters this room and says, "Phoebe, I have endowed this man now with the divine spirit. He brings you the -- the -- all the goods of creation.

If -- this sentence -- this little poem, strangely enough, has accompanied me for -- through life, since I was a boy. I always thought this was the -- the greatest poem, so to speak, the most essential. It contains this element, you see, of comprehensiveness, of taking with me the universe and bringing it to this one point of excitement at which it must serve now, you see, at -- so that I can focus on creation from this one viewpoint. You will ever -- always -- find that all eloquence consists in this power to unify the universe under the impact of this one thing that now has to be said, and this one person that now has to be convinced and won over. This is what we call eloquence: to speak out of the fullness of the whole, you see, into this one little point into which we concentrate all the power. And that's the secret of the divinity. That's why the child in the cradle represents God. It is the weakest moment in this hitherto creation into which the divine spirit can enter and co-create and go on with the next act of creation. God is only

powerful in the weak.

The gods, then -- let me repeat -- are the names that we invoke in order to be tolerated, in order to be -- and of course, the sweetheart itself is such -- should be such -- treated as such a person. There's always a greater power, I said to you, present when we speak. Here, I speak -- obviously in front of you, in this very affectionate group, because there has been something developed between you and me. You trust me, although you cannot label me at this moment as a -- I don't know what -- "logologist," or something like that. I'm not posing here as a scientist. And I certainly think these things are all true, and they -- yet they are not science. And what it is I'll leave to itself -- probably couldn't meet unless for three years there had been some basis for confidence and mutual trust, and that you were willing to know that I would invoke the power of truth and of necessity between you and me.

I feel very strongly that there will soon be -- as I said in the beginning -- no language unless we purify its purpose, and we bow to its importance, and we know that the names which we invoke are not of my own making. How can speech be instrument or tool? If I need the words, "Lincoln," or "America," or whatever I choose to -- to take; and our religion has taught us that the name, above all names, is the man who has taught us under what conditions change has to be completed, has to be undertaken. Our savior is the savior because He has distributed between the old and the new, between the law and grace, between free -- future and past, between the people's order and the innovation of the first founder, the light and the shadow in such a way that everybody in every situation can decide how much he is a baby who has received, and how much he is a founder who has to bequeath.

You all are torn by this decision, in every one moment -- whether you educate your child or whether you don't educate your child. If you don't educate it, you decide just as much, of course, about his future or her future. We are exposed in this frailty of ours to this violent battle between dead -- the dead things which we can number and count: all the television sets, what have you, all the dead things of which you can only speak in numbers, you see, and in prices and price tags, but which do not talk back. And you can then speak to people, and take them with you on your journey and try to find out how many will accompany you and how many you have to leave behind because they are hopeless. And then you have -- can only speak to these living group of people in the name of something -- you call it "the future" today, or you call it whatever, "America," or "peace." I don't care, these are minor gods. They are only parts of God because God is the power who makes us speak. Words are the ways of communication between people. And numbers are the means of mentioning things.

In a thing, the first quality is its number. In a human being, it's the last one. When you go to this -- to the Marines, you see, and they begin to count the members of the company, you feel pretty low, you see. You're dispossessed, because you are a man without a name. And that's a first impression you get when you are a recruit in uniform. And that's why the word "uniform" means that there men are -- we attempt to -- to use people as means to an end for the defense of the country. They have to obey orders and you cannot help treating them sometimes, you see, as tools, as means, as instruments. They are instruments to victory, you may say, but still, any general has to use his men, you see, in such a way. And when General Patton didn't, you see -- didn't do it, you remember what happened in Sicily. He had just bad luck.

That's all I wanted to say to- -- tonight. Perhaps you have followed so far that you begin to believe that numbers for things, and words between people, and names of the powers above us are real, and are really distinguishable, and that names are not playthings.

In this country, however, and now give me five minutes more, rather to oppose, people have desperately tried since they are enlightened, and liberals, and rationalists and have gone to high school -- they try to prove to themselves that the names of their children are { }. There was a governor of Texas -- of course, Texas -- Mr. Hogg, and he called his first daughter Ima Hogg and his second daughter You Are A Hogg. And so Ima Hogg and Ura Hogg have gone through life -- but they have become by the way very decent people. It is very difficult, with this name. Only because Hogg was written with two g's, it was still possible.

I have read in the paper, in the Minneapolis paper on April 2nd, that to a Mr. and Mrs. Albert First a child was born, and they called the child, because it was born on the first of April, April First. So, all through life, this poor creature will be called -- since the father was Albert First -- she will be called, or he will be called, I don't know -- April First. Now, who is April? I think it's a curse on this child, you see. For a joke, this child was sold down the river for the next 70 years. That is, you see, we have reached this point where instead of knowing that we speak in order to bury the faraway dead, from the beginning of creation, the cave man, and to invoke the future, the man of the future, the blessed grandson, you see, we sacrifice everything to the joke of the moment. This child, because it happens to be born on April 1st, is denied a Christian name, and it has to run around with this joke that it is April First.

I have a colleague. He is a -- teaches German literature and -- in Dartmouth College, and he is a young man. He has three children, from a Roman lady -- from Rome, Italy. And she really is a Roman, in every respect, a very wonderful

person. And we had dinner a few days ago together before I came here, and she explained to me that names were nothing. They were something traditional and, on the other hand, they were something aesthetic, according to sound.

And then I asked them, "How did you label -- name your children?"

And he listed three Italian names. So I knew, of course, who had the say-so in the family. If you call your children Civero, and Cavallo and, I have forgotten who the -- Nicolao, or something like that, I mean, the children are in -- in this country of America forever, you see, distinguishable as of Italian origin. And since he is a Mr. McCormick, and has no Italian origin whatsoever, he ceded simply his birthright to his wife, you see. The story of Eva and Jacob should be written anew, between husband and wife. For the soup of lentils, which she cooks, you see, he sold her his children's names.

This is quite serious. He did not think that he had done anything of importance and we had a long { } on this. She understood completely. He didn't. Now this man teaches a language. He is a philologist. He is a -- teaches German literature and yet he was inaccessible to his own action with regard to his three children. I think that's such a remarkable situation that I decided I wa- -- was going to talk to you about this. -- This is serious. That's why I feel it is very necessary that we should recover our senses. If namegiving, for a child who has to live with this name, not just in his own lifetime, but with his own grandchildren, too -- that it has to be remembered, you see, in the far-fetched future of 200 years from now, as Ura Hogg and Ima Hogg, then something has {gone} utterly wrong. For a joke, we are selling out our birthright. And our birthright is this very simple thing that we can decide what deserves to be remembered in the future and what does not deserve to be remembered.

When at the -- in the -- in the -- in the legion service on Mem- -- on Decoration Day, or in Arlington on the cemetery, it is said "Killed in Action" -- the name is called forth, the name on the roster. And that stays. Man has invented by namegiving those divine powers that survive the human body and the human flesh. And names, therefore, are always divine, because they always claim -- or diabolical -- to last longer and to last independently from my and your physical existence.

This may in some cases not be, so to speak, ostensible. And yet, you only have to read the -- any old history book. They lived through the names that are used. And we live through the names that are remembered. You have to know that Benedict Arnold was a traitor, because only by mentioning Benedict Arnold can you know how difficult it was to swear allegiance to the American flag. That was a new thing. It was very doubtful -- who were these Americans? Could you

betray them already, you see? He had to be -- a case had to be made of this case, you see. And he had to be -- in order to introduce the fact that you could commit high treason against the United States of America, at the moment of the -- of the trial of -- against Benedict Arnold, you see, his name was written into the history of this country, you see, in a negative manner. He had been sorted out and found wanting.

Names, then, are the positive and the negative vestiges of eternal life. We have no others. The name of Christ and Jesus is all that stands out; and yet, there is a tremendous power. There is a gathering, a collectifying power. We can gather under this name and wipe out, delete the distinctions of time, the abyss of time. Well, on this, I'll have to -- we'll have to talk the next meeting.

(You wanna --)

Well, perhaps you will allow me.

(Yes.)

It is common here to ask questions. And I -- ask you to ask these questions next time in the beginning. I have always felt, and I have dabbled in -- quite a bit in these matters, so believe me, it is not -- not laziness, and it is not lack of interest that at the end of a -- an address, the questions dissolve thought. If it is an important question, however, it should be asked. And so I seriously invite you to ask all your questions at the beginning of the next meeting. And it will be the best introduction to the -- to the sequence. If this is agreeable, I would like you to follow this in the -- with the last -- next five lectures, you see, that we should begin with a question period. So don't forget what you have now to ask, please. Write it down and ask it the next time.

(Uh, we have cof- --)