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[Unidentified speaker]: (Good evening, and welcome to the second evening session of the Tippett Lecture Series. We're glad that you're here. We're happy this evening to have the president of the University of the Pacific, Dr. Robert {Burns}, to say a few words. Dr. {Burns}?)

[Robert {Burns}]: (Last evening, after the lecture, I called Bishop Tippett long distance, and found that he had just been elected the president of the Council of Bishops for the Methodist Church. He is in an eastern clime, but quite elated--and I'm sure we are, too--that the man after whom these lectures are named is now at this exalted position. And he expects to be here tomorrow noon, so that I'm sure he's going to be very pleased to know not only the choice of the speaker that we had this year, but also the great response that we have had. I'm greatly pleased to see the turnout last night, and also the turnout -- turnout this evening.

(One of the great stimulating things about what happens on this campus is the fact that we can have people of the stature that we have here in these lectures. And I'm sure that students are beginning to appreciate this. But don't just leave it entirely to the students, because the faculty appreciate this, for it gets the cobwebs off the sky. And we pick up by accretion a great many things which we normally wouldn't get.

(So I think, speaking on behalf of the university, we are extremely pleased that we can have a man of the stature of our lecturer tonight here. And I'm representing Bishop Tippett in saying that he couldn't be here these two nights, but he will be here tomorrow night.

(Thank you very much.)

[First unidentified speaker]: (I'd like to call to your attention that at the exit here, and the exit behind me, you'll find copies of Dr. Rosenstock-Huessy's book, The Christian Future, and you will find mimeographed introductions to his forthcoming book, Judaism in spite of Christianity. And I hope that you will avail yourself of the opportunity to pick up these two items. The book sells for $2.35.

(I call to your attention that tomorrow, Dr. Rosenstock-Huessy will be speaking at 11 o'clock a.m. in the chapel, on the topic, "Faith, Love, and Hope, as Three Generations." And tomorrow evening, in the final lecture of the series, in the Great Hall at Raymond College, his topic is, "From Halloween to Labor Day."

(Last night, after a very stimulating encounter with Dr. RosenstockHuessy, several of us--and I trust that many of your were included--went home, and with The Christian Future and other material that was available to us, tried to enrich our understanding of the kinds of things that he was introducing us to last night. We are happy that you are back here this evening. As Prof. Rosenstock-Huessy, after having spent a day engaging students in conversation and stimulating a classroom on the campus, is here with the second in a series of his major lectures entitled, "The Creation of Progress." And I know you join me in giving a warm welcome once again to Prof. Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy.)

* * *

Ladies and gentlemen, "The Creation of Progress" sounds to myself a little dry. Creation is something rather vital, and rheumy, and sappy; but progress today is -- rather has something to do with bigger and better automobiles, greater highways, and -- more taxes, probably. So the word "progress" has declined.

When I wrote the book 25 years ago, The Christian Future, and had a chapter on progress, it had not reached this all-time low it has today. I don't think that people at this moment can realize the religious awe that this term "progress" once carried for our ancestors. In the middle of the 19th century, the word was used to translate the greatest desires of the Christian community into secular problems and ways. And the great progressive -- man in progressive education, John Dewey, made it very popular and said, "We progress in spirals."

Those of you who were present last time know that I reject this whole notion of spiral as an intriguing hypocrisy. The spiral doesn't offer anything visible or tenable in form of movement. It goes up and down, no direction given, no aim, no goal; it is one of these cure-all words which promise you immortality, and next day you are dead. "Spiral" is one of the obsessions of the last 50 years, I warn you against the word. You can analyze this as you like; it has no meaning. Absolutely no meaning. But the leading spirits of the last century took flight into the spiral, and I think I have found out why.

You see, for the last 200 years since Benjamin Franklin and the French Revolution, the "fall of man" and the Crucifixion ceased to be mentioned in good society. You -- dealt with human problems outside any religious context. And so the fact that men fell or had fallen, that was very energetically sup- -- repressed, and many other Christian notions or bub- -- biblical notions. Instead, the word "spiral" had this wonderful notion that the part of the Christian message seemed to be retained. Yes, men move upward, but in the next moment, he fell downward. And so it's a wonderful merry-go-round, like an American -- like the merry-go-rounds, up and down, and up and down, meistens -- mostly down.

It is quite serious, this lo- -- loss in our vocabulary, of a decent term to explain man's handicap in history. The Bible said -- called it the "fall of man" and said that something had happened which cured this fall and had re-established our proper level of behavior. And my task tonight is at first to state that if you talk of the fa- -- of the spiral as the wonderful way in which we circumvent the tragedy of humanity--as in two world wars, or as at this moment in Vietnam, or as anywhere where you look, in Ma- -- in Mao's China--if you want to circumvent or to lie--which is the -- the proper term--about reality, this word "spiral" is a wonderful, mechanical translation of the serpent in the Old Testament. Look at the spiral. It nearly is -- looks like a taxidermic snake. And the serpent of the Jews in the Bi- -- Old Testament served exactly the same goal to express what ordinary men thought about their earthly state. The serpent recoiling, recoiling, got them down. The fall of man is not so far away as you think, I think you know very well that "fall" and "man" is at this moment with us; otherwise we wouldn't be in Vietnam, and several other things wouldn't go on at this moment.

So, I feel that the word "spiral" can draw attention to the fact that your vocabulary and my way of speaking has been emaciated into a mechanical way of speaking from the organic way of speaking, of the Old Testament. We speak of spirals; the ancients spoke of the snake, of the serpent. That's long forgotten. Who reads the first chapters of Genesis? I mean, that's -- for the museum. Unfortunately, the spiral is not for the museum, but for the so-called philosophers of today. The greatest man of -- of a -- in regard to the -- to the spiral in this country was John Dewey, born in 1859, the great hero of progressive education. And since he wanted to rescue education from any suspicion that it could go backward, or fall down on the job, he said that the movement of education is the spiral. That guaranteed, you see, all the downfalls and all the progresses.

Now I'm quite serious. Modern man, in the last 200 years, in this period called the Enlightenment, has replaced the organic terms of the Old Testament, like "serpent," by mechanical terms, like "spiral." If you want to understand what has happened to your own vocabulary about reality, just look into this term "spiral" as a replacer, as a substitute for "serpent," and you find -- will find many others, you see. We say "trends" when we ma- -- mean "wicked angels." And so we have wonderful vocabulary everywhere replacing the old terms by mechanical terms. The old were organic, they were taken from the bot- -- botany and zoology, from living beings. But we have, of course, by our mastery of mechan- -- mechanisms and machinery, much easier access to mechanical terms. If you look at -- carefully at the word "spiral," it corresponds in its use, in its adaptability, in its practicality, exactly to the word "serpent" in the first chapters of Genesis.

And I would say, "Beware of the serpent." That is, there is something very cheap about com- -- taking comfort in the fact that yes, man is constantly led

astray by the serpent, or by the spiral -- no difference.

The Christians, of course, have never fallen for -- for spirals because they rose above the fall of man. And that is the content of the religious message of Christianity: that there are ways in which man is not required, so to speak, to fall. Our psychologists say we are required to fall; our Freudians say we are all analytically involved, you see; the death of God has occurred, exactly what the serpent said to Eve; and so we live today very happily in the first chapters of Genesis without the Redemption, without any power to escape from it. Especially the -- the progressive educators, you see, have tried to tell us that children are never wicked, never naughty, never lazy, never lie. I have found that they lie all the time.

The innocence of man is a great dream of mankind, the "golden age." And if you construe the serpent as a spiral, you can get away from original sin. You can get away from the fact that we are very weak and every day we are -- something is missing to our completion. We can't do all the things we would have to do to live in a decent world. Every one of us neglects a li- -- tiny little bit. And if you take the sum of it all, it's quite considerable and you have to establish a police department. And a police department certainly is the simplest expression not of the spiral, but of original sin.

But it is very remarkable that this country especially has escaped any quotation from the Old Testament, with the help of these mechanical terms. I think the word "spiral" is highly instructive for the way in which the devil cheats us. If you speak of the spiral, you cannot recognize that this is a nonsensical notion. If you look at it carefully, you say, "What's this?" "Where do I go?" Nobody knows. Spiral leads nowhere. But it's a wonderful consolation. John Dewey has literally printed that progress has the form of a spiral. Now, I invite everybody for a prize of $100 to tell me what this means. It doesn't mean anything. And that's so wonderful, if you look educational books -- read educational books, as I have to do sometimes, you find out that they mean absolutely nothing. Good educators don't read books on education. They may write them; that's something different.

But it is a serious situation, because the very word "progress" at this moment has lost its momentum. You think, and most people do think, that progress is secured. And the funny thing is that it has been made secure by a second trip -- trick, similar to the snake which has been replaced by the mechanical spiral, the dead, the organic, by the mechanic. In a similar man- -- manner, a second theft has been performed on our vocabulary. The word "progress" today is understood about progress in the building of automobiles, in the building of aircraft, in the building of auditoriums like this one; they are very progressive.

You can't find a better place to speak in, as this one here. It's the newest architecture. So you say, "Aren't we progressive?" Unfortunately these individual progresses would have never led to the invention or the coining of the phrase "progress." That's an error. The word "progress" in this sense of progress in chemistry, progress in physics, progress in mechanics, you see, progress in special fields, is all derivative and second-rate compared to the great idea that mankind progresses, that mankind can get out of its hole, out of its fall, by progress.

And I want to devote tonight my time to this--after all, rather important--story, that man has conceived of his own march through time as a progress. The word "progress" is a contradiction, which you will not -- expect, to "regress." All the ancient peoples, outside the Revelation of the Bible, believed in circular movements and therefore they believed in the regressus, in the regress of the Great Year on -- in the sky. That one day every 1460 years, the same constellation would occur -- that's what Phar- -- Pharaoh and the Assyrian kings believed they knew. The Jews came and laughed at this, and said, "We are satisfied with a year of 365 days' duration, and all this Big Year business is superstition." That's -- and the progress of the Jews was the abolition of all the big mechanisms, of all the big calculations, and computations, and -- and calendar lore.

So progress was opposed to the regressus, in- -- ad infinitum, in which only now our bankers and our analysts believe, you see; I mean the -- financial wizards, the financial -- they analyze cycles all the time, you see. They are never right, but they sell their ware very successfully. Regress is forbidden among Christians: the belief in cycles. We are not on this earth to move in cycles. That's quite serious and I -- I can't mince words. And I tried to -- tell you last time that Mr. Spengler, the -- greatest atheist I have ever met, proclaimed the cycles in history in order to abolish Christianity. This book, The Decline of the West, is so interesting; and that's why I visited the author af- -- just after it was written, because he had managed to omit Christianity from his world history. It didn't exist. In a history of cycles, the Christian Church doesn't occur, you see. He had an Arabian millennium, that was from 0 to 1000, and then he had a Faustian millennium, that included even California. And there was no bridge. And the 2- -- last 2,000 years were not held together by the Christian faith, you see. He ignored it. He said, "That doesn't exist, had no influence, you see. We shouldn't count the years in this manner" of our Christian era, you see. "We should count from 0 to 1000 and from 1001 to 2000." All our other historians, like Mr. Arnold Toynbee, do exactly the same.

In this moment, then, the use of--the "avoidance" perhaps is better--of the word "progress" -- in the singular, is a mark of a decent atheist. Anybody who wants to deny God says that the Christian era doesn't exist, that it makes no

sense to count through -- that in the year 1000 everything changed so totally that it makes no sense to connect the era. And your children will have to read textbooks in school in which the Christian era is denied and omitted. It's all brewing; it's all coming. And it's very hard to fight. They have of course "the facts" on their side. Anybody has the facts on his side, you know. That's called the legal profession.

The progress of Mr. John Dewey, the -- this educational wizard--founder of the University of Chicago in 1895, and the most influential man in education in all of America, of -- of anybody I know--this man is alive in innumerable teachers' colleges, in innumerable superintendent of schools. And he has managed to implant in you the idea that the little fields, like football, can make progress. The general question of a foot- -- or a progress of mankind doesn't touch him; he doesn't know anything about it, and he doesn't pretend to know anything about it. But you can make innumerable progresses, you see: bigger -- bigger and better elephants, bigger and better bridge players, bigger and better cars, and everything bigger and better. "Improvement," you should call these things. They can, of course, be partial. But "progress," I'm afraid, is a sacred word. Because it came when our Lord entered the world to heal fallen man from his constant regressus, from his constant cycles, from his constant superstitions that something had to be done tomorrow, because it was yesterday; that the South -- the South cannot give up segregation, because it was the remnant of their defeat in the Civil War in 1865 and they do not want to be reminded of their defeat in -- 1865. So for more than a hundred years, the South has carried in front of -- themselves segregation as a token that they were not defeated. That's why it is so important for them; it's a victory -- emblem, you see, against all visible signs. They say, "We -- we never lost the Civil War." That's why it cannot be fought in the ordinary way by -- legislation. It's a profound, religious and -- issue that the conquered South to this day holds up this as a shibboleth, you see, as this talisman, by their right of -- the right of Mr. Maddox not to serve the Negro in his -- in his -- in his restaurant, he becomes governor of Georgia. That's the only reason why he is governor, because he has hoisted the flag of victory, which otherwise was denied the South.

People in--I don't understand it--in this country, people ask -- argue morally about the South -- Southern question, the Negro question. They love the Negro and --. This is not the issue. The issue is: how do you cure a whole conquered nation from its talisman, from this one token by which it denies that it has been defeated?

You could go to the South five years ago and hear the people say, "After all, we have not lost the Civil War."

Now come back to my world of progress. The emancipation of the black people in this country is not considered then a token of progress. Well, what is

progress? I think it's a very legitimate question. It cannot be that a car of hundred horsepowers is progressive, compared to a car of 10. The miracle of a 10horsepower car is in a way greater than the big car, you see. It's not only more economical, but it's more desirable that everybody can have a small car and -- and not only the big shots have the big car. I don't know how you would decide, but the biggest cars are not the most progressive cars. The same with other things. The most numerous school probably is not the best school, the most progressive school.

Well, what is then the Christian notion of progress? For this I would have to tell you first that the word "progress" occurs first in the year of the Lord 434 of our era. It was spoken by a monk in the south of France, Vincenz of Lerinum, who was a pupil of St. Augustine's, the bishop of Hippo, who had died two years earlier. And it was in the downfall of the Roman Empire a tremendously courageous act to speak of the progress of man in the face of the destruction of all power and all order around the Mediterranean Sea. Progress can be, among defeated nations, inside defeat. That's why it is such an important notion. It has nothing to do with success; it has nothing to do with the bank account; it has not even to do with a good wife. You can be unhappily married, and yet speak of your spiritual progress. Probably Socres- -- Socrates made all his progress, thanks to Xanthippe.

It's a very strange notion. Is this -- is this a dream? Is there such progress? If you compare the word "progress" with the word of "the fall of man" in the Old Testament, which today is pooh-poohed: "Who speaks of the fall of man? That has never happened; and that's an illusion, you see. I go to a psychoanalyst, he asks $10,000 and so no fall." It isn't that simple. We all know that what is demanded from us we can't do completely. There is always something lacking. And the fall of man is an expression used by Vincenz of Lerinum and his followers, this -- this abbot in -- near Marseilles on the Mediterranean, to say that man in the Christian era, following his master's example, and fortified by His example, is able to fall less profoundly, less deep as -- than before. What we call "progress" is the bold belief that there is a God in Heaven who holds His arms open and is willing to help us when we fall less profoundly into the -- into the -- dirt, and the quagmire of our despair, of our cowardice, of our weakness. "To fall less" is the correct translation of the word "progress." Never have the Christians pretended that progress means that you can fly to the moon. Such strange ideas were quite foreign from them. And they did, however, want to remain in the arms of their Father a little closer, a little better than they had before.

And so "progress" means that the fall of man can be mitigated, can be even avoided. The perfect man remains in the order to which we are created. The fallen man knows that he has, in one way or the other, stepped outside the

bounds of the divine law. It is very difficult to find any book today, especially these so-called theological books, Sir, the -- who have any idea that progress has to do with the fall of man, and is nothing but a -- the -- the enthusiasm, spread by the coming of Jesus into the world, that man, by taking upon him the gallow beams of the Cross, can thereby avoid his fall. Jesus stumbled when He had to carry the Cross, as you know. He was too weak to carry it in the -- in wood, in nature, in -- physically. He was not too weak to carry His Cross which led Him -- which were the gallows of His undoing.

Ever since man fell, in the garden of Eden, the -- his problem was to hide this fall; to say, "I'm perfect." So they all -- we all geh- -- go in very elegant dress on the Sunday parade and there we seem to be perfect. And all our deficiencies are hidden on weekdays. The church parade is a very dangerous appearance, because you put on an appearance. Jesus didn't. He didn't go to the temple, but He carried His gallow beams visibly. And everybody said, "Look at this sinner. Look at this criminal. Look at this adjudicated {stellerate}. And for this reason, we call Him our Savior. For this only reason, because He fell deliberately where He didn't have to. He fell for us.

The fall of man and the progress of Christ are one and the same thing from two different sides. -- You know, probably--many of you--the books by Dr. {Dodd}, the biblical critic. He said we should not call the Cross "the Cross." We should call it the "gallow beams." The reason perhaps is now obvious. By calling the Cross the "gallow beams," man says, "I can only be understand with that part of mine by which I am obligated and rooted in the awful errors of my existence, of our society. The -- if I do not carry this -- these gellow -- gallow beams visibly with me, I pretend to be virtuous."

The Cross of Jesus is very much used in songs, but I doubt that it is understood in most cases. People do not understand that what they try to say in these -- in this old verse is that you are never alone; you are never a single person. You are always a part of the whole of humanity, since the days of Adam and Eve. And that this inheritance maroons you, confines you to a very imperfect appearance of your real -- of the -- in real life. Man plus the gallow beams, that's real man.

Now Vin- -- when Vincent of Lerinum, when this dawned on him, and he wrote on progress, he was quite sure that the progress could only have to do with our relation to the divinity. Before, man had regress to cycles. He knew that the sun would rise next morning, and he felt very elated that he could know this. He knew something about the secrets of the universe. And when the moon came, he could predict that in four weeks there would be a new moon, you see. So all the satisfaction of man at first came from his knowledge the ex- -- of the external

universe. The great step into a different kind of knowledge, into a kind of knowledge of our own life story came when Jesus said, "If we all knew that we are carrying the gallow beams of our collective guilt in every step, in every word, in every appearance which we put into this world, then men would recognize each other as brothers, and then they would be able gradually to diminish this load."

Looking at the gallow beams in somebody else, you know, is much easier than -- look at the gallow beams on your own back. You can't see it. It's like the princess in the fairy tale, you see, who tried to -- to see the prince who was nestling in her own hair.

It is that simple, with the idea of progress. Progress has been created down to the French Revolution as a constant effort to show the gallow beams in back of the real man and woman. That is, to show that he was indebted to the law that prescribed to him certain things that he couldn't alter--like going to war, or like acting as a juror, or like doing any -- any other duty in the -- in our society, which is not angelic, which is very earthly. We all are participating in a common order, and that is -- are our gallow beams. We all carry this cross. And this cross is not tooth-aches, and not being heroic about going to the doctor, as many people today abuse the word "cross." It is their wrong appearance, that we are -- appear as powerful, as wise, as superior, as good, when we are very wicked indeed. The appearance of goodness is the real -- are the real gallow beams of the Christian in any era. We all want to appear a little better. And I can't -- can't blame us, I mean. It is intolerable to appear as who we are.

There is a church in Philadelphia where the people were -- a year ago were hit quite hard by the fact that they were not perfect. So they asked from their minister to throw himself at every service straight -- prostrate to the floor. They remained seated, and they thought that was the cross-beam, you see, the gallow beams that would cure their ills. A funny idea of a congregation to say that the minister could expiate for them, you see, by falling prostrate. But I know many con- -- congregations which really believe this, you see. The funny thing is -- and the minister himself seems to believe it, too. His wife wouldn't.

This is quite serious, because the word "cross," the word "gallow beams," which I use from -- from Dr. {Dodd's} example--which I think is a good one--is today by the overdose of progresses made in all fields, you see, really useless, nearly useless. I have to -- try to explain it to you again from -- from scratch, as something in- -- unavoidable, something that we cannot skip. People -- look at all these people who teach you who you are, you see. They teach you involvement, devolvement, revolvement. I think it's pretty funny, these -- these specialists in involvement, or these specialists in existentialism, and so on. We know all this

long ago, only we don't make use of what we know, that's all. You all know that man falls and that certain people fall less profoundly than others. Everybody does this, knows it, lives it, and the example is there that he who took the gallow beams and carried them in front of mankind and said, "That's me!" is the greatest of us all, because He volunteered to accept the Cross as His definition. And we don't like this at all. And we don't want to be defined by our gallow beams at all. We want to have a title; and we want to have a salary; and we hand to -- want to have security. Progress means to forego these securities, to fall less deeply into the morass of all these nice, worldly securities, including the financial securities on the stock exchange.

When I look back at the 19th century and the 20th as far as I have lived it, it seems a pipe dream to hope that the full meaning of the word "fall of man" and "progress" can be restored among people who have now learned to see progress in every little invention of a new match. That they call "progress." We may -- will have to do it. It may not be the word "progress" which will cure us. But the thing is the same. The greatness of the Revelation of the last 2,000 years cannot be altered. The fact is that man is not lifting himself up on his own -- at his own bootstraps. That fact is that we don't move in circles; at least we don't have to move in circles. The great fact is that we have to fall less out of the hands of our maker than we think we must.

This discovery, that we are closer to our Father in Heaven than we assume we can be, that is the strange message which seems to be forgotten in every generation. And when I listen to the Christian gospel as it is preached today, I always admi- -- admire the ministers that they omit this. They have a very special technique of omitting this very fact of redemption: that to be redeemed means to fall less out of the Father's hands. After all, He created us. Adam first was with God; Jesus was with God; you were with God, before you entered this valley of tears. So how can otherwise it be that we exist if we weren't perfect first, and then imperfect later? This is the meaning of progress in the Christian era, the meaning that progress is the reconstitution of our original, virginal state.

[applause]

We can stay here.

[Unidentified speaker]: (Prof. Rosenstock-Huessy would entertain a few questions if you have them at this point.)

(Over here.)

(Would you trace the beginning use of the word to a -- contemporary or a

student of St. Augustine. {Furey}, in his history of the idea of progress, finds quite different roots for it. Almost a progressive development, running through {Beaudin}, and Condorcet, and Bacon, and many others. I wondered why we must of necessity take this initial use of the term as the -- the meaning that has had most significance for western civilization?

Well, I am delighted that you bring this up. You see, if one speaks without a manuscript, one is apt to forget one's best points. The -- the word "progress" in a singular has dominated western thought, and that means the thought really of all energetic thinkers in 1500 years, from 400 to 1792. It is true that in 1792, Monsieur Condorcet, as a good Frenchman and a good member of the Revolutionary Party in France, wrote a book, Les Progress -- ProgrŠs de l'Humanit‚. And thereby shifted the truth of the matter from the singular of "progress" of man to "progresses" in civilization, as you also would do. So after this it -- came the progress in -- in automation, and the progress in dautomation, and cautomation, and mautomation. And we are full of progresses, you see. And that is just the calamity.

So the great in- -- catastrophe of the human mind occurred by this translating a singular, The -- Le ProgrŠs de l'Esprit Humaine, you see, with the belief in the Holy Spirit, in one power permeating all mankind into this book of Condorcet, which I own, my dear--I'm sorry I do, but I did pay for it when I was a student--and I learned the idiocy of people who wanted to replace the Holy Spirit by the arts and sciences, and by technology. And that's what Condorcet does in this book. He says there are innumerable progresses -- possible, you see. Here and there a new button, and a new pattern for -- for solving all ills of a woman's dress, et cetera. That's all for progress. But it is not a very exalted progress. It is the application of the term "progress" to a multifarious civilization, you see. That's why I feel -- you see, that's why it happened to me, that I didn't mention it. But if you read my book, The Christian Future, Monsieur Condorcet is -- is well taken care of.

(Um, Dr. Rosenstock-Huessy, you said -- you were talking earlier today about -- you said that mankind knows what -- that incest is self-destruction. But you said there was a growing obsession of the present society with incest. Would you think that is a death-wish for our society?)

Now it's hard on these people who were not present this morning, that I should answer a question which makes no sense to them at all. You think I should answer it, just the same? Wie? Well, I think it's very impolite to the other people.

The question that -- our friend here brings up was asked in some other

context. I said, strangely enough, from the abyss of fallen man, from the abyss of prehistory, rises today a phenomenon which people in my youth had thought would never even be mentioned. That's incest, the love between brother and sister. There are many novels which treat this, and plays. And people today, since they want to understand everything, they even want to understand this phenomenon. Now I have never felt that it is a serious phenomenon, but I -- beca- -- for the simple reason that mankind in two generations would destroy itself by incest. The result of incest is such a dwarfed race that it wouldn't survive. It would just go out of business -- physically. If brother and sister mate, the result is that they -- they are 30 inches shorter, the children, you see. And in the -- in the -- fight for survival, mankind has of course understood this. You go to the Eskimos, or you go to the islands in the Pacific and you find that the incest rules are strictly observed, because they are the salvation of the group. Without the incest, you see, taboos, the group would just be wiped out. So we don't have to moralize, you see, because we just -- the facts of life forbid it.

On the other hand, of course, you may use this example of why incest is out, and cannot return, despite Mr. Proust, and despite Mr. Mann, and despite all these gentlemen, who are no gentlemen.

In a positive sense, of course, the taboo of incest teaches us what marriage is, that mankind was created as one man, and that marriage has to restore this unity of the human race, in the most practical way by forbidding the old -- these simple strands to stay put, to stay separate. And the next thousand years will of course see this problem in aggrandized million- -- -wise, because all these groups on the univer- -- on the globe will demand some way of coping with intermarriage. And obviously the solution is not that everybody intermarries everybody else, but that intermarriage is left open, and that in any decisive moment, the -- Queen of {Saba} who was a Negress, can marry Queen Solo- -- King Solomon. In the Old Testament, this example is very eloquent.

I have a friend. His father is a senator of the United States Senate. And he married -- he's a doctor and he married a Negro nurse. And for a senator of the United States, that's -- was quite an imposition. It went very well. The parents are fine people, and the couple are vell -- well-matched. But it is something still extraordinary. And it has to be extraordinary. Nobody -- can say that it is something simple, and -- without any -- any discussion, or without any difficulty. It has difficulty. And so it is with all intermarriages.

I hope you all have experiences -- in this matter, because the only way in which man can remain -- an understander of politics is through his marriage and engagement experiences. This is never mentioned. When I read these American textbooks on politi- -- on political science, I yawn, and I throw them into the

wastepaper basket, because they never, never know that the -- greatest politics that has to be learned is marriage. How to cope with your in-laws -- heavens! When -- if this isn't politics, what's politics? And why don't people -- include this in their doctrine, in their indoctrination? But it is -- a man becomes a man -- if he learns to cope with the relatives of his wife. And a woman even more so, you see. Her husband's mother -- that's some obstacle for bliss.

This is serious. Why -- it is nothing to laugh. Our situation in this lit- -- puny world -- world of three, four, five, six people is just as complicated as our relations to Vietnam, and Mr. Mao, and China. I feel they are more complicated, because I have to cope with this problem daily. And with Mao, I only wait till my -- the ambassador from America sends a new dispatch. So there is always a little rest, you see, for a week or so.

We have no sense for the important. The importance of mating is greater than all frontiers of countries and territories, and all export licenses and all import licenses, taken together.

(I'll accept one more, and then Prof. Rosenstock-Huessy has had a long day, { }.)

(I wondered: if progress is really a small departure from our creator, and the lack of progress is a great departure, is it logical, or is it necessary that a longer life is more likely to be destructive to our future, because we've got more time to get further away from our creator? In other words, what I'm asking, really, is the old story about whether or not the infants who die very, very young might be the most blessed?)

Fortunately, you can answer this question yourself much better than I. I won't.

(I have an answer. I didn't know how you --.)

Exactly. Well, you have. So I'm quite sure you have. Everybody knows these things, you see. Not to speak of, but the people who are silent know much more about it, because they probably had to suffer. And suffer -- suffering is the only source of wisdom, and not my brain here. So if I would answer this on the spur of the moment, it would be an intellectual answer. It would be worth nothing, you see. But if I had a child in this category, you see, I would probably know something, of some wisdom. So forgive me for not answering. It is a serious question, and I will not answer it on the spur of the moment, just from here. I don't believe that is the source of insight, the so- -- brain, you see. It's nothing but a -- an attic, where the old luggage is put. That's what the brain is.

(Thank you very much, Prof. Rosenstock-Huessy. Let me remind you of the two sessions tomorrow, and we're adjourned this evening.)