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...time I spoke of a man who, under great privations and hardships, kept investigating the fate of the Western -- of the Eastern Mediterranean, the region of Greece and Jerusalem. And I think honorably he deserves to be mentioned by name. I put his name here: Michael C. Astour. And the book is -- is pretty unknown, and deserves to be read. It's called {Helleno Semitica}. In a strange way, he has tried to express in his title his endeavor to show that although onehalf of the inhabitants of the Western -- of this world, of the Eastern Mediterranean, spoke Greek and the other -- spoke Phoenician and Hebrew, it is really one world.

And this is the topic of today's lecture again. And so I recommend to you Michael C. Astour -- A-s-t-o-u-r. (Helleno Semitica}. Leiden -- 1965, Leiden, in Holland. L-e-i-d-e-n.

We come from an era in which this -- people were blinded, because they were naturalists; they believed in science. And when you believe in science, you cannot look behind yourself. You can only look at blackboards, and there is nothing behind the blackboards. But there is very much behind you, and your interest in -- in not knowing the facts. People don't want to know the truth. The great fiction of our era is that people say they are all scientifically minded, so that they can obliterate the truth. Because you are interested, very interested in your future. And your -- you are -- you are full of self-interest. You want to make a career. You want even to write a book to get a Ph.D. And you should be disinterested? This is laughable. But you live in this atmosphere of a big lie.

And the unity of so different nations as Israel and Greece is a way of discovering the self-interest of even the greatest geniuses of history. They fought for their own existence. They fought for their survival. And we owe them a load of gratitude, because they suffered for this.

You dream of a world in which there is no suffering, in which there are books written galore, and in which everybody is made a professor. Yes, at a constantly increasing salary. This is not inducive to truth; this is not intrusive -- to -- to politics; this is not inducive to knowing anything about your life. The -- the big lie today is that you can know all these things per se, without participation. You can know all about Homer, and you can know all about Praxiteles or Olympia, and it makes not the slightest difference in your own life.

Now I assure you; this is not true. You cannot know anything about art; you can know anything about politics; you can -- can't know anything about

prayer; you can't know anything about the prophets of Israel unless you are still a sounding board, and -- are yourself echoing the hymns and Psalms, and the beauty, and the sciences, the knowledge of old. Just by staring at this; just by learning to read a little faster--which is the newest dope which they give you.

Nobody has protested in this country to this crime that it is recommended to read faster. The only -- recommendation I can make is: read more slowly. Then perhaps it can penetrate. We are in a pigsty. And that's called "culture." It's even called "culture break."

So -- I have tried, although I am -- very great adherent of -- to the Christian era and think that something new came into the world when we began to count the years from 0, I still have to ask you to put the break -- the culture break elsewhere. And I've tried to show you that in a universal history of mankind, there is a definite break between the tribes of old, who created parents--and the priests of later who created the great empires--and now we are in a new era, which is defined before Christ, but after Egypt and after Babylon, and is occupied by the Greeks and the Jews. There are two groups that contend, so to speak, for our attention in this time. There is a universe created after the first cycle of the Egyptian pyramids was closed in 1318, and that ends with Constantine or the coming of Christ into the an- -- ancient world. It is difficult for me and it's difficult for you to free yourself from the simple counting of A.D., B.C. A.D. begins our own era. And B.C., that's before Christ, and there is great darkness.

I am trying to do today, and the last meetings already, to interest you in an -- chronology which would lift up a peak before Christ, in order to understand Christ a little better: the Church and the modern world. We all count simply 1967, but no thought is given to it. And I have watched in my own lifetime with great amazement the total indifference in which the people overlook the break at 0. If you read -- take the ordinary book now, which -- as it is sold to you for $1.35, it makes no difference when the thing is enacted. The people think you can talk -- tell the whole history, 15,000 years back, and 500 million -- years back--as the geologists do with great fervor; they know nothing about it, but they tell you just the same what has happened. And these ridiculous configurations and enumerations -- have erased the Christian era. I try to put it into its proper perspective as important by showing you a peak that precedes it. So that you see that era, chronology, is nothing wanton, is nothing indifferent, is our own creed. Anybody who counts the years after Christ thereby confesses something and attains something, a certain certainty, or it makes no sense.

Now to simplify matters: the Christian era is at this moment on the way out. Most of our professors are such pagans that they do not see any difference between 700 A.D. or 700 B.C. I can't follow them. And in order not to follow

them, I cannot cry yourself awake and say, "But there is a difference. You cannot confuse the years after Christ with the years before Christ." By just saying so, I wouldn't convince you.

What I try to do therefore is to have a preliminary break, by making the year 1320 important--or 1318, as is -- would be precise, the first Great Year in human history, the first astrological universe of the Egyptians came to an end at that time. This made a difference. And the Greeks and the Hebrews came into existence after this break. So that's the time from 1318 to Constantine, or to Antoninus Pius, or to St. -- the Apostle Paul, and the destruction of Jerusalem in 70, that this forms a unity, which is very well and clearly set off against later times. And it is very much set off against previous times. This I think is a remedy, a rather homeopathic remedy against the modern indifferentism, in which all cats are gray, and the -- the day has been abolished, and there is no era anymore.

We need an era. But as I say, I want to show you that the first universe, the tribes, came at an end when the pharaoh of Egypt built his great house, and when on the -- in the place of parents, priests were created every day. And temples were built.

This era came to an end when, between the empires and the tribes, new units appeared which were neither empires nor tribes. And this -- were the Greeks and the Jews. And for this reason, I'm -- have to devote some time today again, once more, to the Greek achievement, which begins with the Trojan War. It is usually given to the year 1187 B.C., and which ends with Alexander the Great and the transmission of the Greek spirit to the city of Alexandria, where appropriately so, Alexandria is in Egypt; the E- -- the E- -- Hellenic-Judeo era, this -- this one millennium begins in 1318 B.C., and it ends when the Greek literature is -- treasure is brought to Alexandria, and is there made accessible to the rest of the world; it be- -- it comes home to roost. Alexandria being in Egypt, being a part of the old pharaonic empire, is just fitting that this venture, this excursion into the Mediterranean Sea, done by the Greeks and the Jews, ends in Alexandria. It is very fitting that the books of Aristotle were salvaged in Alexandria, that Greek grammar was invented and written unfortunately for your own -- for yourself, written and studied in Alexandria. All the grammar you learn is Alexandrinian -- of Alexandrinian origin. That the Jews had their Bible translated into Greek in Alexandria, the Septuagint.

So that there is one big cycle, filled with the adventures of Greeks and Jews. Post-Egyptian, post-tribal. There are poets, and there are prophets who together have ventured, have dared, have managed to survive the bigness of the empires, and the fluidity and the migration of the nomadic tribes. They are not like the Boreros -- Bororos in Brazil, who came from the Bering Strait. These

Greeks are there. They are there for good. There are still today some Illyrians and some Albanese who claim to be Greeks, in the kingdom of Greece. By and large, it has been figured out that there are two villages in Greece that are still Greek. The others are not. The continuity, you see, is really gone. But don't tell this to the -- king of Greece. Then he has -- has to execute you.

But Greece came to an end. I told you that the great father of the Church, Chrysostomos, that he called this the -- the Greek planetary errancy, the great migration, this road from the Trojan War to Christianity, for the Greeks. And you may say the same of the Jews. Both their errancy ends when they disgorge into world history. And that comes with the Christian era.

So you understand that knowledge of the thousand years B.C., before Christ, is an important way of understanding our own era. There is a universe, an inter- -- intermediary--how do you say? intermediary? ja--universe, a universal chapter of history -- or a univer- -- a chapter of universal history between the Trojan War, and between the death of Ekhnaton in El-Amarna, and the coming of Christ into the whole world, into -- a new universe, which does not know Jew or Greek anymore.

For this reason, then, as an antechamber, as a first chapter to our own era, I would like to say something more about the Greeks and the Hebrew spirit.

The difference between them and us rests in a simple secret, unknown to you. The secret is that a man of that time, until the days of St. Augustine, would read out loud. That is, the way you read and I read, quietly, without articulation, and without making sounds, was un- -- unknown, down to the days of Christianity, down to the days of 300 or 400. We know that St. Augustine was frightened himself, because he spoke up. He -- he caught himself, that he didn't have to. He learned to speak -- to read without articulation. You'll say, "What's the difference?" You read slowly, you read -- quietly. These older people spoke. Or a slave would read to them out loud. That was the -- for the rich man in Athens. Plato, for example, had the manuscript read to him by a slave. What's the difference?

As long as we speak--and all reading is subject to speaking, to articulating, you see--these waves of sound keep us in the same medium in which Jesus moved when He was called the Fish, in the waters of life. That's the oldest symbol of Christianity, in the very moment when speech was on the way out. As you know, St. John wrote, "In the beginning was the Word." And Jesus Himself was then called and painted in the catacombs as the Fish, because He never was without the sounds of real speech, hearing, or answering. What you call "thinking," this vice, this medium of cheating other people, didn't exist.

This is more important than you think, because it is a total break in the tradition of mankind. -- One of you came to me the other day and tried to find herself in this conversation. And she was quite surprised that I said to her -- that she wasn't alone. That in any moment the whole language which filled her memories, and her hopes, and her wishes, was alive, was like the flow of the ocean waves, permeating her. But it wasn't true -- it is not true; it shouldn't be true that your dress is the limit of your existence as of this moment. You listen to me. Something goes on through me. It's a complicated electric system. By electricity we have artificially now replaced this naive knowledge of all people down to the Christian era, that we were bas- -- basking in the sunlight of speech.

In hearing, in listening, in expecting, in encouraging, in applauding, in vituperating, what have you -- you are never alone. There is something -- a wavelength that pen- -- permeates you. But you neglect this. You judge yourself now by -- what you -- how you call "psychoanalysis." This dirty trick. It's a dirty trick, because it omits the normal, the healthy situation of a man that he is listening and speaking. And what they say in psychoanalysis is all unspeakable for this very reason. It's naive. This man Freud came at the end of an era. He came at the end of the first Christian two millennia, certainly; in 1889, Austria was on the way to -- of perishing, so they invented something that describes this state of affairs. But there's not more to it. It's death; it's putrefaction. Do you really think you could live one moment without the harmonies of the universe going through you at this moment? How can I -- could I speak to you? I'm playing with my loud voice and my shouting on all the small voices that are already alive in you, to which I try to bring some assonances, so that you can recognize what I say, by -- because it is consonant, as the language says so very beautifully--it is consonant with -- you already know. I couldn't speak if you didn't know English. You do. And you know very much English. You even have heard Twelfth Night the other day, so you are full of poetry. And that's why you can understand what I say. Otherwise you couldn't. As naked people weighing 140 pounds, you couldn't understand anything.

I mean, the shame of our time is in this abstraction from speech, as -- though this was not the -- the medium inside which we are swimming, we are basking. And we are restored to life only when we surrender to this harmonious stream, to these cataracts of enthusiasm.

You really think that when you yawn you are the most vivid and vital person. I assure you, you are not. But that's the -- modern theory. The modern theory has abolished man as re- -- real. It's a pure abstraction which you learn in anatomy. It's a dead man. And there- -- therefore, my -- Mr. Vesalius in 1529 invented anatomy as the beginning of -- for the study of medicine. So all our doctors go wrong; the first term, they have to study the corpse. This has to go.

I'm sure that 20 years from now, or 30 years from now no medical school will allow this to happen any longer. They mustn't be misled. That was an interval of the so-called Renaissance, of this big misunderstanding of the 16th century, where man wanted to see his brother man, instead of loving him.

So you see, this fact, that all the Greeks and the Jew -- all the Jews--and the Philistines, too--spoke, and did not read out, when they read a book -- and did not -- be silent when they read a book, makes a great difference. You cannot understand these people if you do not take this into account that of course Plato spoke. He didn't philosophize, as modern philosophers, who -- who can't say what they think, because they are so learned, that they have to swallow it.

Modern thinking is -- I got a letter from a -- from a man who had been here last year, and who is now in Santa Barbara--I'm sorry, I'm -- I forgot to bring the bo- -- the letter; two pages--it's utterly un-understandable. It's strict philosophical -- strictly philosophical, you see. He cannot speak anymore, the poor man. At -- at the ripe age of 25, he has lost his speech, but replaced it by Greek terminology, which he doesn't understand himself. And that's -- most of you do when they begin to philosophize. Nobody can understand what you say. And you yourself can't. And that's why it sounds to you terribly learned. And -- and --.

Now don't say that this isn't important. It's a central fact of our civilization today that we have no access to Homer; no access to Plato; no access to the Bibel -- Bible, to the prophets. Because you are accustomed to sit here and to let these words dance before your eyes as a fast reader. And you don't allow even that they -- might come to life in you, by being pronounced, by being echoing. It's recommended in every newspaper I open: fast reading, quick reading. Nobody burns these people at stake. The next -- probably the next president of the university will be a fast reader.

Only to show you that we are on the way out. If this continues, you can be sure that no real life on this earth can be continued, because we live by speech. Speech is life-giving, and there is no other life. Money doesn't -- can't do it; beauty can't do it; and harlots can't do it; and alcohol can't do it; and L- -- what's this? LSD can't do it. Nothing can do it, except speech. And speech is conversation. And speech therefore abolishes the advantage of the man who listens, compared to the man who has to speak up. And this division of one speaker here, saying -- speaking all the time, and you sitting silent and not understanding one word: that has to go.

The world is really -- you don't know this, but we are on the way out. This has not happened to any other civilization, this impertinence of saying that I

don't have to speak; I read. The modesty -- that comes from speaking, you see, and the know- -- knowledge that you may be heard, and overheard, and criticized is abolished, if you think that you can just think, and make your -- your violent criticism unheard of any- -- to anybody else.

Now Alexandria, being the end of this era, has in its name also the content of -- of these 1400 years of one Great Year, as I counted. It's of course a little arbitrary. I can begin with the Trojan War, 1187; or with the death of Ekhnaton, and the founding of his -- of his deathless residence in the midst of -- of Egypt. El-Amarna, in 1318. Or you can begin with the em- -- emigration of the Jews of Moses from Egypt, around 1250, as far -- best as we can think.

These two configurations cannot be understood in separation. It's no good studying the Greeks by themselves, or studying the Jews by themselves, I think. If you want to understand what happened in -- after the empires had made their great establishment, and -- established the temple in Babylon, and the temple in -- pyramids in Gizeh, is that they -- the in-betweens represented by the Greeks in their 250 cities, and the Jews in their temple in Jerusalem, that these two extremes encompassed any middle forms in between. They were neither tribes nor empires, the Greeks and the Jews were not. And this is a form of existence, which to this day, the ki- -- emperor of Siam tries to continue. I mean, you find to this day any number of middle forms, trying to exist between the two extremes of the migratory Bedouin tribe, and of the entrenched empire, Mao style.

Since they are extreme, they contain, they encompass the other forms. Why did the Greeks and the Jews succeed in this model type, and -- ? Well, they -- only succeed as long as we keep both, and we are conscious of this contrast. By themselves, all taken alone, neither the Greeks nor the Jews make sense. This is the most difficult thing for you, and for anybody today to understand; because all your investigations into the natural sciences try to isolate a phenomenon, and to explain it, and then go one to the next element. You even speak of "elements."

Now in human history, I'm afraid it isn't that easy. You cannot isolate the Greeks and understand them; and isolate the Jews and understand them, if you do not understand that they are torn, or moved, or co- -- propelled in these two opposite possibilities, in order to maintain their existence in a world of tribes and empires.

I have not brought you a map of the -- of the Eastern Mediterranean, and I have not thought that this would help. I think it helps just as much if I put down here the figure 258, and ask you to look at this as the -- as the Aegean Sea, including here, Delos; and here, Delphi; and here, Athens; and on the other hand, ask

you to look at this little rock in the midst of nowhere, in Israel, in Palestine, called Jerusalem, being blocked up -- off from the seashore, from the Mediterranean, by the Philistines, by an Indo-European people who, as you know, from -- the story of David and Goliath, made life very difficult for the Jews for quite a while.

The Jews in a corner, and the Greeks everywhere on sea, represent two extremes of human existence. An attempt to be Greek, to be themselves, although really being nowhere, being dis- -- being, in Marsei- -- Marseilles on one-hand side, and in Cornwall, and on the other hand, being on the Tigris and the Euphrates, perhaps. Or under Alexander the Great, as you know, they entered -- they entered India.

But the Greek language prepared -- prevailed, and the Greeks have defended their integrity by this one, strange word which they -- by which they opposed the rest of the world. And this word was "barbarians." A Greek called anybody who didn't write or speak Greek a barbarian. And what is a {Barbaross}, a barbarian? A man who speaks a language I cannot understand. You see, the word "barbarian" has no meaning except: bar-rar-rar-rar-ra, I can't understand. And that's what it means.

And so the Greeks insisted that if you want to be a human being, you had to learn Greek. And what you call 'humanism" is always connected with the effort of the humanistic, Greek spirit to prevail. There are some more features of this Greek situation, which I would like to en- -- enlarge on, before going over to Jerusalem, and to the Jewish situation.

They could be heard. I said to you, the Greeks knew that if something was written in Greek, it would be recited. Therefore, it was a living universe of Greek language, of Greek speech, of eloquence, which you can hardly today fathom. What we call "rhetorics" today was for the Greeks music. That is, a speaker like Demosthenes was as much the Richard Wagner of his time as -- just a writer. A speechmaker was not a man who just spoke, but a man who aroused you by the vocality, by the beauty of his speech.

I had a -- fortunately a teacher who was a specialist on Demosthenes. And he would never fail to come to class and have dug up other assonance in one of the speeches of -- of Demosthenes to show us how he played on the ears of his listeners, how important that was, you see. Just as you have the Leitmotif in Richard Wagner, so he had these Leitmotifs. I -- had one rememb- -- I still -- one -- remember one: he attacks -- Demosthenes attacks the populace in Athens. He -- he says, "You -- you miss out on the important issues, and -- and all you hear { }," and my teacher always was in a grand frenzy of enthusiasm about this. I couldn't see the point at all. I'll try to see it now. It means "scurrilities and water

supply." The -- that is, they spoke of the very necessary way of having plumbing. And he said, "This is -- for the Greek, for the -- you listeners, it is in -- you remain indifferent. It's very exciting, the plumbing problem." Think of any school board here. "But you think this is just scurrility. This is just {lerus}. {"Lerus"} means -- means playthings, and "{pegas}" means -- means water supply. {Pegae} is the source, the spring.

Now this is of course an arbitrary example, but it has stuck in my mind, because at least my dear old teacher, you see, who always coughed--and interrupted all the eloquence of his mouth, you see, by this coughing constantly--still paid homage to the Greek eloquence, and tried to make us feel that Demosthenes was a singer, was a composer, was a musician. And only if you allow me to say that the Greeks were musicians, have you any idea of understanding the magic of the Greek tradition. They were musicians. And they never thought of anything else. Rhetorics meant to make sound. And what you call "rhetorics," it's nothing. Because that's just tricks for the style, I mean, how to compose. But you cannot hear rhetorics today. But you could in Greece. And you had to. And that -- on that depended of course your -- your career and your success.

So this word "humanity" in Greece was this kind of self-assurance for the Greek mind that they would always be at home in the Greek language. The home of this humanism is Greek. You still -- call it philosophy; you still call -- all the words for your mental -- equipment are of Greek origin, from grammar to history. Every word is Greek which you use, to be understood in the academic realm. Of course, the word "academic" is Greek, too.

There was a -- does anybody know why it was c- -- we speak of academics, why allegedly you are academicians? Why? You know it? But you sh- -- wie?

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And what is an academy?

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But why dis- -- was it called "academy"?

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Huh? It's very simple. Acacias were standing in the garden in which Plato taught.

Ac- -- the academy was a real place where real people spoke. But that of

course has long ceased to be.

If you wish to understand the Greek spirit, and the Greek eloquence, and the Greek articulation, and why you have to speak of philosophy, and grammar, and psychoanalysis, et cetera, you must remember that the mind of any Greek citizen was always encompassing a wider area than the political boundaries inside which he was a citizen.

The transcendence, you may call it--it's a dangerous word, because most people go to sleep when I say "transcendence"--but the encompassing power of the Greek mind was always larger than the physical boundaries of his political activity. And that is what the Greeks have called "physis." The word "physis" in Greece is an important word, and we use it quite differently today. It means: that beyond the walls of the town -- and the city, which I still can see, and with which I still have to reckon. The sea in the -- Pireaeus, perhaps, you see, in the harbor; or the flowers on the mountaintop. Anything that is beyond the political realm is physis.

So the Greek grows up as a -- as a citizen first, as an Athenian. And he adds to this, physis. Now you have trans- -- completely--how do you say?--confused this. For the modern man, nature is first, and politics is second. That's un-understandable for a Greek, and that's why you don't understand the Greeks. For the Greeks, his polis, his city is his own divinity. He is a man because Zeus, and Athene, and Hera, and Poseidon protect his city. And in the midst of these deities, he is allowed to speak as a citizen. And then he looks out to the lake, the sea, the mountain-top, and there is more. And now he has to figure out: what is more there? Well, it's the -- more is: it's a lawless region. You may conquer it from an enemy; you may treat it as spoils, you may divide it. You may dig the silver, in -- in Laurium, in -- at the end of Attica, where the silver mines were. That is, physis is second to polis.

All our books on Gre- -- the Greek philosophy and Greek tradition I think are misleading and are written wrong, because all these gentlemen who teach philosophy here in this country say that nature is first, and politics is second. No Greek ever had -- had such a -- such a frivolous, and {celerate} idea. He was first a part and parcel of the body politic. He was incorporated. Can you cut off my hand? Can you cut off my head? Can you take out my heart and say, "I am -- this is America," without my heart, without my participation? Impossible. The Greek was first an Athenian, and then he was a Spartan, and then he was an {Aegeanete}. And this he was first. And then he went to the beach, and he saw the waves of the sea, and then he saw the -- Delphi and the -- he saw {even a hay}, and then he said, "This is nature; this is outside the political order; this is disorganized; this is chaotic. You see, anything can happen here."

It is very strange that now for 400 years, our so- -- philosophers, so-called, have neglected this fact that they have put all Greek thinking topsy-turvy. For the Greeks, the political order is native, is in-born. Dyed-in-the-wool, you are an Athenian. And then you go out. And of course, if you go out and visit the island of Samos, and visit this gentleman Polycrates and -- make wise speeches to him as Solon did, they can speak of nature.

You are in the other way. You think you are -- here, you are most unnatural, I assure you. But you think you can cope with nature before you are a citizen of the United States. You cannot. I mean, the Greeks are right, and you are wrong. But all this idolatry of your own thought, and your own thinking is in your mind, and therefore makes any understanding impossible. I cannot talk to people really and seriously who do not know where their full allegiances and their dependencies are; you think they are in yourself. If I look -- into this self, it only stinks. There is nothing in self. I have never seen anybo- -- inside instead of blood, and flesh, and cells, and tissues. And that you call the "inner sanctum." The inner sanctum is the community which has given you life, which has sent you here, inside which I and you are talking to each other. This is the life which has been granted to us. And we have it only together. And you have no life by yourself. If you have life yourself, then it ends, as with Vesalius, in anatomy, as a corpse. You are your self.

So you see, it has tremendous effects, a full understanding of what the Greeks really did, in those -- in this solar constellation from the fall of Troy to the coming of the Nicaean Council. This is a universe which was there created, because the Greeks had the courage to say, "We must, in addition to our political existence, which is too small compared to the pharaonic Egypt or the Persian empire, we have to look outside and give life, and context, and meaning to the environment around the city. And then polis and physis together, they will teach us how to live."

You will admit that this is of great significance today as it was then. I'm -- this would be the word "city," and -- out of which you have made the word "civilization"; and this would be the word "nature." That's the Latin translation of these two important words. And when St. Augustine wrote The City of God in 415 of our era, he brought this millennium, or this Great Year to appropriate close, because he said, "We are not in a city of man's making," you see. "God created this whole civitas, this whole city. The City of God reconciles nature and the city of man."

There is no better answer, to this day. But what you have done is to cut out the city of man as your cradle, as your birthplace, as what -- that what allows you to speak about nature. You first think of nature, and then you try to explain

what you should do in the city, in your state, in the United States, or in California. That's just fantastic. And that's why you are so very lonely.

Any student who follows this Greek abstraction, that nature is first and city is second, you see, ends of course up as a -- as a candidate for suicide. Because he's utterly alone. Fortunately that isn't so. I mean, when I see you, you are quite eloquent. You don't know how -- how eloquent you are made, simply by the fact that you have friends. You speak to each other, and that keeps you going. But it's the speech that keeps you going, and you don't keep the speech going.

Now on the Jewish side, you can see that the whole situation is the opposite. There was no nature to be seen outside the many cities on which then the various philosophical schools from the various cities, from southern Italy to Asia Minor, could agree. There was this -- not this exchange between 258 cities of man and the one nature of the gods. The Hebrews are an un-understandable contradiction, because they were always in the minority. They had no way of ever being in the majority.

You see this -- there has been -- is a great debate at this -- for the last 20 years, as a matter of fact, or 30 years, going on, trying to decide how much of the Moses story in Egypt is a true story, and how much it is legend. Very exciting question, by the way. And I'm inclined to think that it is all literally true, but I'm very conservative. And I don't ask you to believe this, without more ado. What I can say is that this, the underdog situation is the Jewish situation even in Palestine, because we know from the documents and from the texts in the Bible itself that the mighty, seafaring Philistines were occupying the important harbors: Tel Aviv, Tyrus, and Sidon, and Gaza. And that Saul was murdered by them. And his -- first -- the first Jewish kingdom was completely destroyed by them.

It's a terrible story to read in -- in the Bible, in the book -- first Book of Samuel, how he and his three chil- -- sons were murdered and executed. And then the man who saved Israel is a vassal of the Philistines, a man who had betrayed Saul--King David--and had -- allied himself with the Philistines, and owed his very existence to the Philistine mercy. Not a very nice character, but a great man.

And King David therefore, by the grace of God and the Philistines, was able to establish the Jews in the teeth, so to speak, of this great seafaring power, in -- landlocked, you see, without any harbor, without any navy, with- -- that is, without all the things you need to have to be a great power. Air Force Number 234. They had no air force, but they survived. And you read the Bible, but you don't read the Philistinian records. This is very strange. Why should we?

Now the Greeks conquered by poetry and philosophy. And the Jews conquer by prophecy. The prophets of Israel have managed the impossible. In this landlocked lake of Israel, they endured, endured until the whole world kneeled -- knelt at the manger in Bethlehem. That's quite an achievement.

If you want to understand this, you must look back to the fact that from the first day of our human record, there are victims, and they are unsparable. They are -- are -- in- -- un- -- how do you say? they are necessary. Human victims, slaughtered as spoils in -- in -- in war, prisoners of war, being executed like Iphigenia in Aulis, in order to get better wind -- favorable wind for the fleet. They are as real in the realm of living as all the other processes of life: peace, and lawgiving, and peacemaking. Only mankind of course has made an attempt to look away from the victim. If somebody is slaughtered, somebody is killed, "That's too bad," we say. But he -- is not on record. He is forgotten. Think of all the people killed in war. The side that is victorious has no -- makes no effort to prolong their life. The vic- -- the vanquished do, and remember the -- the dead. But that's a very difficult thing to do. And the Jews are the vanquished. You only have to think of Hitler and the 6 million Jews executed by him. They are the vic- -- vanquished again.

Now to understand that in the process of creation, the victims are just as needed and required as the victors, that's a very late lesson to be learned. Nobody likes even to mention it. But it is the truth. It is a very strange truth, that the Jews are the first who tried to give speech to the victims.

I'll not go into this today. It's too -- it would have to be too long. So I will postpone this for our next meeting. What I have to do today is to characterize, perhaps, the group, with the help of which the Jews were able to eternalize the memory of the victims, and to laugh at the victors. That's what they have done always, and that's why they are so much hated. The smallest Jew, if he sees a dictator, cannot help laughing. This is ridiculous." The -- Mr. Franco would be ridiculous in Spain; Mr. Hitler would be ridiculous in Germany to a decent Jew. Dictators don't impress them. Because they are -- they think that life can be had above the -- ordinary, above the format of man. And for this no Jew has any organ.

I had a -- I -- when I was in this country, the first two years, I had a visitor from Germany. He was the bridegroom, the fianc‚ of a young Jewish doctor. And he told me that he went out with her in Germany, where everywhere there were pictures of Hitler. And he got in -- in great trouble, because he sim- -- she simply said when they entered such a -- such a den of injus- -- of injustice again with such a picture, he -- he said -- he only said, "He looks so important." And everybody laughed who heard this, you see, and the whole nimbus was gone.

"He looks so important," I mean. You had to laugh if you saw this cripple of a man. You see, he was not a -- not even a man. He couldn't sleep with a woman. This man was the Adonis of -- of Germany for 12 years. So she just brushed this aside: "He looks so important." And this over-importance is inaccessible to a reasonable worshiper of Yahweh. God is alone important, and the man just isn't.

The prophets are the creation of Israel. And a prophet is representing of something that you all have inside of you. The greatest German poetess, Ricarda Huch, H-u-c-h, who died in 1947, I think, after she had to live through all the agony of Germany's defeat, she wrote at that time: "Deep down, every human being is prophetic."

This is important, because in the last moment, so to speak, of the agony of Europe, this woman re-established the unity of the human soul. If you were not by nature prophetic, the prophets of Israel would have nothing to do with you. We are not for exceptions. And if the prophets were something that can on- -- not be understood by you and me, then we won't read the Bible. The Bible is -- nothing unnatural. It's something very simple. It is only the cultivation of something -- repressed, subjugated in the stress of vanity of everyday living, of poetry and theaters. The Greeks have founded the theaters. The Jews have rescued the faculty that you all have.

My dear people, I could -- will not boast. I am far from it. But I have been able to prophesy 1919, very -- to the -- literally. Hitler, the persecution of the Jews. All this I have printed at that time, and have acted upon it. And to -- to prophesy is only to be open to the future, as you are open to the outer world. You will not deny that you can smell the wind and say what the -- "It's going to rain." You can. Your body just tells you this. And you think I cannot prophesy, and you cannot prophesy? If you really love mankind, and are an American, or are rooted in the community, you shouldn't be able to know what's going to happen? Just as any body knows the sickness that's -- is going to befall it, the putridity, the senility?

It's very strange that modern man thinks prophets are exhibitionists, or they are rarities, or they are unnatural. This is incredible. This is the most normal thing in the world, to prophesy. Only most people are such cowards, and they are so busy, and they have to have such other standards of life that they -- they do not use this faculty; they do not believe in it; they neglect it. You all are cripples, more or less. Otherwise you would write poetry, you would compose music. You would do all the things which we are meant to do. And one of them is to have a clear feeling for what's coming.

And if you see what is happening in -- in California, you would -- must be

very, very, very stultified indeed, and very obtuse. If you -- have no ideas about what's going to happen to this state. Just cultivate your prophetical faculty. The prophetical faculty is nothing but the -- that's what the meaning of the word is: to speak what God has ordained, what is coming, to articulate what is already in process of coming true. Prophecy has -- does not mean to -- to speak, to predict. That's good for -- for the stock exchange and the brokers. In this country -- "prediction" and "prophecy" are confused. Don't do this. The predictors who tell you what shares to sell and what shares to buy, they are in the material world, this side of speech, this side of understanding, this side of history. But somebody who says that the House cannot stand half-divid- -- half-free and half-slave--like Lincoln, you see--he is a prophet. And he is a prophet in the year of the Lord 1967, because the house is still half-div- -- is still divided: half-slave and half-free, as you well know. And the longer you wait to lift this up, the longer will this prophecy stand in the sky waiting for fulfillment.

And it's very important that it should have been said by Abraham Lincoln a hundred years ago. Without this word, you would have the -- the weakness of your prophetic faculties would even increase. You would know less of the future. This one word, and from this, you can see that a word of prophecy, spoken a year -- hundred years ahead of time, is effective. And nothing you need more, my dear friends--if this stay in -- in this beautiful place, Cowell College, or Stev- -- Stevenson College, or Crown College is to have any meaning, you must learn to appreciate things that are valid for the next hundred years. It is not important what you have to know for the next examination. Forget it. It is not important what you know two years from now. But it's terribly important that if you are -- when you are old, you can remember that you have been told ahead of time what's going to happen in your life, and -- where you should concentrate your powers for.

Nobody can live without prophecy. We all live by this. Either for the country, or for your city, or for your family, or for your vocation. I mean, anybody who studies medicine today has to have a prophecy: what is medicine coming to and going for?

And this is even valid for historians. We need today a prophetic sermon for historians. Or -- the paperwork, you see, the production of paper dissertations will so increase that nobody can read anything anymore.

So please allow me to state as today--at this I will let it go -- today--that prophecy is a natural element of social existence, that no society can live without the force of prophecy. The proof of this is that the most anti-prophetic nation, the Greeks, had Delphi. They sent people -- listen to the oracle. And this was always a very ambiguous oracle, and not very amiable. They -- they led people astray.

Obviously this lady in Delphi had not gone to -- to my classes.

The -- Delphan oracle seems to have been--a -- well, what would you say, "bekmmert"? what is it? what's the word there?--dwarfed, dwarfed in its functioning. The Greeks neglected the oracles, but couldn't do without them. So the Romans still sent to -- to Delphi, and the Sicilians sent to Delphi. I mean, the oracle of Delphi was all over the world most renowned. But it was isolated. And my impression is that the -- that the oracles of the Delphian oracle did not have the educational character that the -- Jeremiah, or Isaiah, or the prophets in Israel had.

But you must bring them together. Just as the books of history exist in the Old Testament, so the prophecies of the Delphian oracle exist in Greece. They are not excluding each other, Greeks and Jews; they are only stressing another side of existence. The Greeks: the plurality of man in many, many city-states; and the Jews, the minority rule that the stronger power is outside; they can know of the stronger power but they cannot capitulate to it. They will not surrender. And there is prophecy that comforts them by saying what the meaning of their minority existence is.

You just have to look around in this country as -- if you would de- -- rob our minorities here of their fervent faith in the meaningful existence of themselves, you would break the spine of this country. This country has always been saved by mi- -- the minorities of yesterday who managed to be so good that Jack Kennedy, as from -- an Irishman, could become president of the United States. And yet when his father came to the United States, it was a hopeless minority, and was impossible to think that the son could become president of the United States. That's prophecy, and that's minority rule.

And as long as you keep this avenue open, you see, this country will flourish. As soon as you close it, it will break up.

I guess I have to stop here.