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...a break off, and then without further ado, just stop after the time that I think is my limit today.

Our topic has been an attempt to define the Christian era, not in -- by words, but by certain facts so that even you, although you are totally spoiled by the academic system, can understand that the era of -- before Christ, and the era of our own time reckoning, differ. Today, the great fashion is to say there is no such thing as the Christian era. Nothing has changed. And if you read the papers, it is highly improbable that we should live in a Christian era.

And therefore, I have made an attempt to bring you to the -- to your attention a number of colossal conquests, or facts, or acts by which we daily renew our faith that we live in an era that has shifted away from those four ancient antiquities: the tribe with its human sacrifices; the temples with their cosmic worship of astrology, and constellations, and the seasons; the worship of genius, of poetry, and literature, and philosophy, as the Greeks did with their homosexuality, and their slavery, and their eternal warfare; and that we have also -- no longer limit ourselves to this strange selected group of prophetic people, the Jews.

How this has been brought on is the content of these last four lectures. I intend to meet you twice this week--today and tomorrow, same time--and on the regular hours on -- next Tuesday and next Thursday. I've been told that I must make this known, because not everybody is lecturing next week. Is that right?

So we need, I think, these four meetings. And if I achieve my purpose, then I will -- you would have to say that you now know why it is said that we live in an era which differs totally from anything that has been in -- in -- in life, or in completion, or in production before Christ. Nothing is more needed. I -- talk to many theologians who can't tell me what -- what has changed, let alone the philosophers who have abolished Christianity long ago. And of course in the natural sciences, they don't even know that time has a chronology and an era. In natural science, there are no eras. You just count, blindly. Beginning or end: makes no difference.

So we are today in a real confusion. A hundred fifty years ago in this country, the leader of the Indian chiefs in Montana said, "I have to christen my people, get them to ta- -- accept Christianity." He was a leader of the Stockbridge Indians, and they had emigrated to Montana. He said, "My people move in circles." And he felt that the essence of paganism was this moving in circles. I would

say that today the San Francisco Chronicle moves in circles.

That is, Chris- -- the Christian era can be lost. Obviously, it is not totally sure to say that you live in the Christian era. I would have to see really what you do before I'm quite sure. But the majority of people pretends, at least, to be -- live in an era which has definitely changed 1967 years ago. As far as I can see in my own life, the pretense has become more shallow and more incredible since I grew -- woke up. In my days, nobody doubted, before the First World War, that we lived in the Christian era. There were bad, wicked people like a certain Nietzsche, who wrote The Antichrist, and there was Karl Marx who was a Communist--imagine! And now since everybody now is a Communist, including the president of the United States, it makes no -- you -- you can no longer distinguish the times. This is the only Communist country in there world, here, this. But nobody knows it. You guarantee every -- every genius his livelihood. That's Communism. You can't ask for more.

But this cannot be recognized. All the words fall between your -- around your ears today as empty straw, because there is not even a minimum of recognition in what the Christian era would then consist.

So I made an attempt last time, to be -- or I began to show you in one man an attempt to do away once for all with the darkness of Egypt, and the worship of astrology. The Christian father, Tertullian, in 200, wrote that down to Christ, astrology was indispensable and inevitable for the rulers of the world. You had to go by certain knowledge of the constellations in the heavens. Since Christ came, this was no longer necessary. So this man tied up astrology and our deliverance from this with the -- with Christianity. And I gave you, as a first example of this new understanding, the life of Anthony, the father of the monks in the Egyptian desert.

You -- we all -- I just came -- come back from the hospital where I owe my -- my nursing of course to some good nurses from the monastic order of St. Dominicus. And we -- you all owe nursing, of course, to the monastic orders. And they come right back from the Egyptian darkness in Egypt, where the -- Anthony, as I have told you, went into the desert, regardless of the fact that one monk would spend day and night in just bringing the water to a place in which there was no water, in which the Nile water was not to be had without a true, superhuman effort. Because he -- had to prove that the earth was the Lord's, and not of the star-lore, and not of Horus or Osiris, or any of these lucubrations of the Egyptian priesthood.

The freedom of man from circumstance, from so-called "conditions," which always in sociology again, tries to overwhelm people--you see, natural

conditions, physical conditions, economic conditions--has been fought off by Anthony and his monks. Wherever you find a true monastic vocation, you find there total indifference to natural conditions. Natural conditions--I hope you will laugh when somebody comes -- you -- with "natural conditions." That is never a good reason for anything in life. Natural conditions? They are just there to be ignored, or to be overcome, or to be challenged. Certainly not to be given into it. The line of least resistance, gentlemen, is not the line of history.

A great musician, a piano player, Arthur Schnabel--some of you may have heard his name--wrote a book 20 years ago, The Line of Most Resistance, colon: Music. Now that is your life, too. Anybody's human life consists in fighting -- taking the line of the hardest resistance. All progress--what we call progress, gentlemen, in humanity has only been reached by people who have taken the line of hardest resistance.

I've -- in 1926, I published a book in which the first chapter was entitled, "{Ama qui arduissimum est}," Love that which is the hardest to love.

All history in the Christian era goes the wei- -- goes the line of most resistance. Whenever it takes the line of least resistance, as in politics, it is pagan. I mean, we have a pagan government at this moment. Because it takes quite naively and openly the line of lea- -- most resistance -- of least resistance, pardon me.

When I published my article, the people also thought in Germany--it was just before Hitler--that I was mad. You live so by fashion, and accident, and -- the Gallup Poll. Recently I haven't heard of the Gallup Poll; has it disappeared? Ja. Well, it's the most wicked thing there is.

Because for -- any human being, gentlemen, the line of most resistance is the only criterion for the correct choice. Whenever you want to pick your vocation, your wife, your predilection, your party from the line of least resistance, you have ceased to be a human being. You are just nothing but a swine. And most people even boast of this, and they become insurance agents. And tell you so, that you take the line of least resistance. Don't take it.

All what we call "humanity," all what we call "progress," all what we call "superb," rests on the human choice of the hardest resistance. And that's why Anthony, the father of the monks in the Egyptian desert ranks first in this choice of the hardest place to go to. The most improbable place. Only this, what is solved in our human problems, in the line of most resistance, of hardest resistance, of most incredible success, only this is worth doing. The other things, well -- any snail can do it, too. For this, you don't -- wouldn't have to be a human being. You can be a donkey, and you can be a snail, you can be a lion. All these

animals follow their instinct. Man is the only being that does not follow his instinct, or he is not a human being.

This is very serious, because you all are sent to psychiatrists, and to naturalists, and to biologists, and to pacifists, to economists -- that is, all people who preach the line of least resistance. And that's why this mighty nation very well may perish. It isn't safe yet, where we are. Because it can be openly preached in schools and churches, that we should follow the line of least resistance, which means that we shall transform the world into this same heap of mass, and instinct, and -- and urges, which has led man to all the disasters we know of.

The second man who was chosen to prove this point is Athanasius. Athanasius is the author of the Trinity which Bishop Pike so disparages, because he doesn't understand it. Mr. Bishop Pike, I'm afraid to say, didn't go to a good school. This is very serious. A bishop can afford to become a bishop in this country and not know what he's talking about. He's just ignorant. Totally ignorant.

Now Athanasius spent a life of 76 years in exile, and in persecution for this one word, that the Trinity was divine. And -- any life that has been paid for in cash, as the Athanasian life, should at least make man pause. It isn't for nothing that this man was in exile in Germany, in France, in Syria, in Jerusalem. He was the first cleric of the diocese of Alexandria to which St. Mark, the -- the pupil of -- of St. Peter had gone. And so it was in direct line with the prince of the Apostles that Athanasius was -- came to be the representative of this doctrine that God was in three generations to be worshiped: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

I have tried to prepare you for this by telling you at the beginning that history can only be known by people who live in three generations. If you cannot recognize your grandparents, or hope that your grandchildren will recognize your actions, then you do not know what history is all about. Then you can be a physicist, an economist, whatever you be; but you are not in history. Because history begins there where a grandfather, and a father, and a son recognize that they must act differently, yet all under the divine guidance. God is at this very moment Trinitarian. Because it's the same divinity that speaks in three different languages to these three generations.

And I told you that the Spartans knew this, and that in the Spartan poetry, three generations would enter the belligerent chorus. And {Tertaius}, the great poet, sang for the young, for the citizens -- the soldier-citizens, and for the old. And they all understood, and he all sang for them a different text. But it was one song.

We -- our language is just too linear, too mon- -- monolithic, too primitive to cover the wisdom of our maker. Before you understand anything, you must know how your mother, and how your grand- -- granddaughter will react to what you are doing, and saying, and preaching today. Before, it's utterly uninteresting what you think. And that's why modern American politics are so uninteresting. They are not interesting because nobody speaks something that is to last, and to be recognized as all the speeches of the men in the -- in the First Congress. The -- faster you forget what was said yesterday, the better off you are today, you see. Because they hope that nobody will remind anybody of the asinine sentences they said yesterday. They don't wish to be quoted. They are afraid of this, because that would show up that they love -- live by the moment.

Gentlemen, our spirit hasn't been given us for the moment. It has to be given us to bridge the abrupt changes of climate, changes of situation, and make us see the unity between the various phases, and eras, and -- tragedies of mankind.

Now this is what Athanasius then stood for. The practical issue you also can understand. I think even Bishop Pike could understand it. The practical issue was: was the emperor of the Roman Empire more divine than Jesus Christ of Nazareth? Therefore, if you said that there was not a Trinitarian divinity in the worship of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, then it was impossible to do away with the divinity of the earthly rulers. An earthly ruler in 325, when the Council of Nicaea was convened, was supposed to be a god. All the city-gods -- Alexander had been declared to be a god, the pharaohs were god, the Hindu rajahs are god -- to this -- down to 1860; as long as they have their -- their ridiculous pearls, they think they are divine, the maharajas. All this divinity swindle, my dear people -- that's still among us. Hitler declared himself to be God. And the people kneeled before him and believed it. And they murdered millions of people only because he said so. Because the god couldn't go wrong. This is very practical.

So divinity of a ruler is a very dangerous thing. And I always am surprised when I see that the Jews do not understand this, that the back -- relapse into paganism is the immediate consequence of the giving-up of the Trinity. Because if -- unless one mortal man had reached more divinity, more absolute humanity, or divinity than the earthly ruler, he would have no way of pointing out to the existing powers in any city or in any state that they may perhaps ver- -- be very mortal, and very passing, you see.

The criticism of any human ruler in any given era, at any given moment, is based on the clear statement that there was one man who deserved the title "divinity," and Caesar -- Julius Caesar did not deserve it. If you do not say "no" to

a divinity of a pagan ruler, and you can only say this by saying "yes" to the divinity of a non-earthly ruler, then we are back to pre-Christian normalcy. And it seems to be most people today -- quite normal, if I see how the -- Hitlerism is -- is -- is now aggressing, invading the United States with all your--I won't give any names--political idiocies. The -- the divinity of the -- present-day government is just what is -- they are aiming at. No resistance possible. No contradiction. They are right.

So Athanasius, the bishop of Alexandria, who died in 2- -- 376, was 45 years in exile, because he wouldn't give in, in the matter of this doctrine. And he knew that only in this dec- -- doctrine, could he Christianize Egypt and the Roman Empire. As long as an emperor could say, "In my emperor -- empire, there is no man who is divine," it was perfectly safe for him to assume that then he was divine, because he had the hangman, he had the lictores, he had the soldiers at his -- at his disposal. He could murder, and captivate, and enjail, and deprive. So who could say he was not divine?

Power is wonderful thing to blind oneself and others. And if you only saw the professors and the theologians in Germany, how they rushed to -- into servility, so pleased to be able to say that something was -- -body else was responsible, and they were not, if you have seen this servitude of people with regard to a man who just had the power to punish them, then you will think twice before you belittle the Trinity. The Trinity is the only form in which human freedom has been stabilized on earth. Because it says, "My dear ruler, my dear Reagan, my dear Johnson, my dear Bomson, you are an earthly ruler. But we know of a ruler who is not earthly, and who is infallible. And who can resist your demands very well, even to the -- to the edge of death."

This is nothing to laugh off, and the way it has been treated in this country, this whole issue, is scandalous. I'm ashamed of you, that on this -- on this campus, this man who denies the Trinity could be applauded. I don't understand you. You don't know how important this is. All freedom, all humanity is at stake if you let this pass! "Oh, it's so long ago. Why should we get excited what Athanasius thought in 370?"

Well, perhaps 50 years of exile is perhaps enough to impress you a little bit. But all the dead people -- all my friends who have died in Germany; what shall I think of them? They only died for the Trinity; that is, for the right to say that somebody was more divine than this scoundrel Hitler. For this simple thing, the Trinity has to be stated. Because any man in power says, "But look at me. I'm successful. The world -- I have the biggest bank account in the world." And you laugh off this. I don't understand you. You will weep one day. This country is very near the abyss, because there are no powers that resist it. This can be done

here with impunity. Shamelessness rules.

When Athanasius--only to show you the connection between Anthony and -- Athanasius. When Athanasius had resisted all the exiles, and all the chasing by the emperor who would not accept the Trinity formula of the Nicaean Council, he would not admit that Jesus was divine and the emperor was not divine, because that is the corollary --.

The -- Athanasius fled--at one time when he was already nearly 80--into the Egyptian desert. And after five years, he was told that the emperor had died, this last emperor, who resisted the Homoousius, the formula of the Nicaean Creed, and that therefore--pardon me, I have--he felt that he could return to his seat as an archbishop, and he should, and reside in Alexandria, to be in residence there.

Then the monks from the desert came and implored him not to forget him -- them, to think of them -- because they had given him shelter, after all, he was -- as a refugee he was in this desert. And then he said the great word which makes you understand perhaps the unity of the Christian era, and among Christian brothers. These monks had not bothered about the Trinity; they didn't live by theological debate. They lived by this daily service in the desert, by going there 24 hours to get the water, and to prove that this land was not cursed, and was not under a consel- -- constellation, as the astrologers had said of -- of the desert, that it couldn't be lived in, it shouldn't be lived in, because the Nile water didn't get there.

So he said, with a quotation from the last Psalm, "If I forgot you, Jerusalem, then my hand should wither." So he promised them that he would be inscribed -- they would be inscribed in his heart as the chosen people. And here you can see the marriage of antiquity and the new order. The New Israel, these are the monks in the desert. And Athanasius said that much. Three hundred years after the destruction of Jerusalem, it was quite vivid in him that unless the role of the Jews was now filled by the -- by the monks, and the ascetes, and the hermit -- hermits, then some great tradition of antiquity would be lost -- a transformation of antiquity of the Jewish people into the pilgrim fathers, the desert fathers.

If you want to understand where you find Israel in the Church, you must look at the monks. The nuns and the monks, they are continuing the role of Is- -- Old Israel. They are the New Israel, as they call themselves with great pride. And it is true that they are as unnatural as the Jewish people to this day. A monk and a nun certainly cannot be quoted as being normal, or as being -- following the line of least resistance. Any monk has to follow the line of hardest resistance, just

as the Jews. It was highly improbable that God shall have taken any interest in this small people under the Sinai, but obviously he did. The minority is never provable. You can never demonstrate that any -- minority is worth to exist. And you must learn this in America. Only minorities deserve to exist. The -- democracy in America only exists for the protection of minorities. If you forget this, it will be mob rule.

It is terrible today; you can grow up in a public school and never heard -- hear that all the schools in this country were of course minority schools, sectarian schools, nonconformist schools. And that's why they prospered. For this simple reason, that whether you had a German, or a Presbyterian, or Irish Catholic minority, it was a minority that could be protected under the laws of the United States. And it was not protected because it was the majority. But all this is lost on you. You go to public schools, and they -- all that is left is the school luncheon. Because you do not know this great order: love that which is hardest to love. Do this which is most improbable to -- to be successful. Nothing else is worth doing. Do you think you can reach the North -- northern Pole, because it is the most convenient place to go to?

The third man who installed Christianity in our -- on our shores and in our countries is St. Augustine. And the fourth man is Jerome. You have heard these two names, I suppose. St. Augustine was, once more, a splendid Ger- -- American lawyer. He could have been in the monkey trials in -- who was the lawyer in Tennessee? Do you remember?

(Darrow.)

Wie?

(Page Smith: Clarence Darrow. Clarence Darrow.)

Ja, ja. Darrow, you mean. Well, St. Augustine was the great speaker, very eloquent, and took all the liberties which a man in such position takes. He had plenty of money, plenty of women, and an illegitimate son, which was not so simple. But he took it in -- in his -- in his -- well, how do you say? -- in his -- speed. And came to the end of his rope. His mother, as you know -- is the famous story of his mother Monica, that she shed so many tears that one day he saw the end of his pagan career dawning on him, and he went to -- say to her that he now knew that there was some redeeming power greater than his passions, and greater than his talents. Talents -- to despise talents, to despise passions is the great doctrine of St. Augustine. That neither to be passionate as Mr. Ginsburg, nor to be talented as -- I don't know, Mr. Hemingway -- is a way to Heaven.

When I was young, fortunately I had an older friend who said to me -- quoted to me a verse by Goethe, you see: "Talents? Who has not talents? Gifts"--what's Spielzeuge? Wie? "Toys -- toys for children, you see. Only seriousness makes a man, and only conse- -- consequence makes genius."

I warn you: don't worship genius, and don't worship talent. That's very cheap. Throw it away. It is in itself worth nothing. Usually it's a way to certain -- secure ruin. Nobody tells you this. You are measured today to talents, and to gifts, and to endowments. I don't know. Colleges may be endowed. And then they die -- wither on the stem immediately when they are endowed. Again, give me no money, and I'll see if the school is worth something. With money, you can't prove it, what it is worth. You know this here, too. It isn't because it is endowed that Cowell College will be a good college. Only if it is -- can only be a good college despite all the money that is poured on you. Then it may become a good college. But not for the money that's spent here. Money cannot spend anything to improve education. It's ridiculous that you shouldn't know this. You know it, of course, because you know that a poor family can give a child a much better education than a rich family where there are four divorces and five women. This is ridiculous to belie- -- .

But you live in two worlds. At the one side, you know all these great old, homely truths of America's background, that poverty is the mother of virtue, and earnestness is it. And on the other side, you are so tempted by opportunity, statistics, and such that you really believe that wealth makes a man happy. Well, it lands him in Hell. Do you really think that I should become a worshiper of -- of wealth because we are here in a wealthy country? The only service I can render to this country is to warn them against the curse of wealth. It's not a blessing. It's nothing to be said against it, if you are immune against its consequences. But you certainly have to be aware that as soon as you do something because rich people do this, you are already on the way up -- out.

Now St. Augustine was exactly this prince of lawyers. He had the greatest income you could have, by a splendid law practice. And he threw it all away. And he tried to educate his illegitimate son. Four- -- 15 years of age, he had called him "god-given," from an illegitimate mistress, and found out how difficult this was to make clear to his son why he had produced an illegitimate son. And why he, St. Augustine, still had a right to claim that he was this son's father.

The first thing of course the son said to him is, "How come? Why am I not your son?" Very difficult to answer.

And he wrote a wonderful paper on which I have -- you may say wasted much time of my own life, editing it, commenting on it, printing it, reprinting it,

talking about it. And it is called "De Magistro," "On the Teacher." And this little dialogue of St. Augustine of course has been left alone by all the great theologians. They don't touch this, because the son died as -- when he was 17, and he didn't become a pope, and he didn't even become a cardinal. And he was just a poor boy who suffered from the fact that his father had not married his mother.

And the dialogue on the De Magistro is written by St. Augustine in a great anguish of heart to explain to himself "How come? How do I explain to my son what has happened? And how can I claim that my son should listen to me, just the same? Have I not forfeited all my authority? Must I not go away silently and hang my -- head in shame?"

A question you all will be tantalized by. It -- there will always be people where you have the feeling: you have no right to discipline them, you have no right to blame them, because you are just in their -- in the predicament, which you reproach you with -- which they reproach you with.

Now in this dialogue, the solution is a Christian solution, of course, that there is no guilt so scarlet red, and there is no shame so dark that it cannot be healed, and cured, and overcome by genuine repentance. The father cannot pose as the great aristocrat, the lawyer, you see, first class, Mr. Darrow. But he can pose very humbly as one of the innumerable people who have gone astray, and who now must try to minimize the terrible consequences of their estrangement of the divine law. This is what -- why the dialogue is written.

And this is why St. Augustine has opened a whole era of new thinking. He's famous today for his book, The City of God. Now The City of God is a great book in 20 volumes. And this little dialogue of mine on the teacher, "De Magistro," is very short. And you don't find it in the learned books on St. Augustine even mentioned. But to me, one and the -- the other are the same thing, because it is the power to change the times. For St. Augustine, the whole ancient world in which he was a successful lawyer has disappeared, has vanished. When he wrote the "De Magistro," his son and he lived in a little village in Southern Italy in the face of God. And that there was a Roman Empire, and that there was still a Roman emperor didn't interest him in the least. He has written The City of God for the purpose to show that God's purpose has very little to do with the earthly rulers. And that the fact that there was a kind -- a Mr. Alaric storming Rome and conquering it in 410 was of no importance; that the Vandals had just laid -- set sail to conquer Africa was of no importance; that there opened up a Christian era for hundreds of years to come for all the nations, the Vandals as much as the Burgundians, the Burgundians as much as the Franks, the Romans as much as the Greeks, and the Moslem -- who were just at that time feeling their oat for the first time; St. Augustine has taken Christianity out of the Roman Em-

pire. And that's why -- what has made him immortal.

You and I know still the name of the bishop of Hippo, because it didn't matter that he wrote in Latin. He made Latin a language for the future, and not the language for the Roman Empire. And that has transformed the world, as you know. All the medieval and all new-time literature is written in Latin. Locke and Hume, the two Englishmen, still wrote in Latin. And through this, the world bec- -- got -- became one, of one mind. Because it wasn't the Roman Empire, but it was only the sheath, the sword of the Latin language which was to move future generations, and not the emperor of Rome, or his ministers.

So St. Augustine has generalized, vulgarized, expropriated--however you call it--the -- Latin as a political means of power for the Roman Empire, and has made it accessible for all the greater thoughts of you and mine. Whenever you think something about the City of God, or the future of mankind, anything, it is St. -- is Augustinian. All the great thoughts of the last 1500 years you find for the first time worded and formulated in the Latin of St. Augustine. Because he was very anxious to say these things in a language that even his son, Adeodatus, his illegitimate son, would have to admit that the father didn't say this because he was a minister of his excellency the emperor of Rome or his majesty, but because he was a poor sinner as he himself: a weak, trembling soul.

And to -- to create a language for weak, trembling souls, gentlemen, is very difficult. Most of you write very proud letters in which all the formulas of your eloquence are well wrapped, so then nobody can hurt you. If you read all the letters which you write to thank -- thank -- thank-you letters, and bread-andbutter letters, and what-not, and especially letters by which you wish to be introduced to be accepted by a college -- I mean, you know what lying goes on there.

I had a friend who was a very great jurist. And he said he could understand that -- examination papers might have to be written, but he couldn't understand why they had to be read.

Which means that this human mortality of ours, this dross of our nature is everywhere with us. And it has always to be overcome by the most improbable--as in the case of -- of St. Augustine, who wrote for his illegitimate son and had to overcome the barrier that this son rightly could point out to the father that he certainly was a poor teacher, the least man to be -- be an authority. And St. Augustine said that much.

The dialogue ends, of course, on the term that only Christ can be the real teacher; and he, St. Augustine, could not claim to be a teacher. Any good teacher

will tell you--if he is a good teacher, I think--that he cannot teach and the student cannot learn. The affinity, the harmony between a teacher and a student is always in a third soul. Any good teacher has to abdicate first his own systematic teaching.

I was asked to give a lecture in -- here in the neighborhood in a -- four weeks. And I said, "I -- let me -- let us call it 'The Teacher as the Enemy of Education.'"

This is what I tried to say, gentlemen. Any teacher who is cocksure that he has a system of education which he can pour into the poor soul and ear of a te- -- student is no teacher. There is no system of education. Don't believe it, even if they say so. There is only this readiness to admit that the teacher has to go against any -- system, as it -- a student has to go, too. He cannot know what's going to happen. He cannot know how to teach anybody anything. Just as little as -- St. Augustine.

So if you do me a favor: make a question mark whenever you see the word "education." If you could get rid of it in America, it would be wonderful. It is an unnecessary word, because it denies the fellowship of man, the brotherhood of man. Whether you are 70, and you are -- the other is 10, does this make a difference in your brotherhood? Is there a system by which an older man has a right to teach a younger man? Then there would also -- to have the system by which a younger man has the right to teach the older man. There isn't. It is always a privilege if an old man and a young man can unite. And it is always a miracle. And it will always have to be found anew, and anew. And there is no recipe. And I can assure you--after all, I am -- I don't wish to boast with my age; it is nothing to boast about--but I have never given two lectures identical in my whole life. And I wouldn't know how to do it. And that would be systematic education, if you would go to a class and say, "Today is that paper in which I used to -- usually say this nonsense; and tomorrow is that paper in which I say this nonsense."

I don't know how you do it. But I can't. I can assure you, I have never repeated any one lecture in my life. And after 60 years of teaching, that's quite a good record.

And this is the illness today, again, with your democracy, that you believe that teaching is a profession. It isn't. It is a free activity, and free act of love. It can be spoiled; it can be bribed; it can be ruined; it can be corrupted. Everything, of course. But whenever it rains, it is a surprise, or it isn't teaching. Anybody who goes into a classroom and knows exactly what he has to say in the following 60 minutes should immediately resign.

And any good teacher knows this, of course, but he won't tell you. Because he thinks he get -- gets a better salary if he pretends that he has a system.

This is one of the greatest fallacies of our public life today, this idea that there are systems, you see. "Our little systems have their day." Do you know who said this? Quotation. Please. "Our little system has their day." It's one of -- the only good poem ever written by {Arthur} Tennyson. "Our little system have their day." That's a remarkable sentence. And the English have saved the world, because to the end, they have believed this. If you look at Winston Churchill, or -- or Tennyson ...

[tape interruption] That's only for professors of philosophy, and that's dying out now. There is no philosophy, gentlemen. This -- this is a great secret, which I have tried to proclaim for the last 50 years. Now it is getting around. Even theologians have heard of it. There is no system. That doesn't exist. The human mind, you and I, when you are alive and the blood is circulating through your heart, how can there be a system? You look at a flower, and all you have -- a new idea. Why isn't this new idea just as true -- as truthful as was the old idea? However you express your insights, that may change. Of course that can be transient. But it will go on changing. That's so nice about life, you see. You can make -- have a new friend every day.

Now the first man of whom I have to speak, because he saddled -- St. Augustine saddled the world with a new way of speaking, with a new way of seeing the unsystematic truth of the world, of saying, "Look into the world as it really is. It is a -- quite different from what you were told in your youth. It's worth looking -- the world differs every minute, because there is a human soul looking at it, too. And with the eyes of a living being, the world is re-created." It isn't true that God created the world in the first six days. Didn't I tell you that Christianity bel- -- is based on the assumption, on the faith that the beginning contains the end, and the end contains the beginning? And that is the difference between a physicist and between a historian. A historian knows that the beginning, as the Sabbath, as the first day of creation, already leads on to the Great Sabbath of the world. And in the same sense, St. Augustine knew that there had to be this City of God in in- -- unintermittent renovation, unintermittent rebuilding, unintermittent rediscovery.

In order to encourage the thousand nations, the pagans, the Gentiles of the world to live this way, to fill themselves with this glory of God's creation, Jerome came along and introduced the principle of translation. He has translated the whole Bible into the Greek, and into the Latin. The Vulgate, you see, which you buy in your Catholic hotels now--or don't buy; they give it you for

nothing--the so-called Vulgate, is Jerome's translation. His name is Hieronymous. A very wonderful name for a translator of the Bible, because it -- means the man with a sacred name.

Pardon me, I have -- I have written down his dates, so I'd better play safe: 340 to 420. These giants--you see, here is St. Augustine: St. Augustine is 354 to 430; Anthony: 251 to 356; Athanasius: 296 to 373. The dogma of the Trinity was proclaimed in 4- -- in 325, in Nicaea. And at that time, Athanasius was a young deacon. He was not even bishop. He went with his bishop from Alexandria to Nicaea. And Nicaea is a place in the -- front line of Byzantium, of Constantinople. It's a little place on the other side of the bay, of Stambul.

The interesting thing about this coun- -- council is that it was so unheardof, that there was any communication, the -- unheard-of that the world had become one by the coming of Christ, that you can hardly understand the novelty of this beginning, to have a universal council. I think it may help you to understand that really the desert fathers have created the unity of the globe, that this is not an empty word of mine. You wouldn't believe it, now with your airlines, and Uni- -- Trans- -- United, and TransWorld, et cetera. You think it's natural that all men know of each other, and want to come together. I can only assure you that this was the other big lie of your student -- of your teachers. It is not true that man wants to see the other fellow. Just ask the people in South Carolina how they feel about it. They don't want to see the black man. They would be very happy if he had -- could be removed. This love of -- affection for all mankind is just one big lie.

But there has been an -- amount of fraternity, an amount of mutual neighborly love. And that has been only -- been brought about, as I told you, by the Church. Before, the people had boundaries. The state of Vermont was one big forent -- forest, and no Indian ever crossed the land from Canada into New England before 1763. Vermont is very small, you know. But it was enough of a frontier to make the thing absolutely without -- out of reach. Nobody wanted to cross frontiers in pre-Christian times. And that is the original state of man. He does not want to cross frontiers. It's not true. All these papers lie, because they do not know that the condition is the brotherhood of man. You can only let go the frontiers if you really are resolved to treat the man on the other side as your brother.

Now I have here an article in the papers, which may warn you that this -- nobody believes this today. Here is a marine, {Chetkowski}, 18 years of age from Trenton, New Jersey, who was attempt- -- convicted of attempted murder in Vietnam, because he mutilated a body of a man he had slain, by cutting off the left ear. And he was asked how could he do it?

And he said, "I thought actually that was a common thing to do after a kill."

Here you have naked paganism in America. It is pagan to mutilate a man you have killed in battle. And that goes here on -- in this -- in this country, this allegedly civilized country -- some say -- even say "Christianized" country. You remember the man from Cupertino, Jack {Slade}, with his immortal Egyptian saying that 150 men killed weekly was a small expense for this boom. That's the same thing for Egypt, you see. The man who here -- cuts off the ears is a man, the sacrificer who kills his victim in the old tribe. In Egypt, you give everything for the prosperity, for the great harvest of the Nile flood. So you say, "Hundred fifty dead, that's a cheap price for the greatest boom we ever had."

The Christian era is easily abandoned. More and more people today seem to recede from it. And we are -- I'm not on safe ground if I say that we are living in the Christian era. Because this man, you see, 50 years ago, would not have been able to formulate this sentence: "I thought that it was -- that one did this." I assure you that 50 years it was impossible to think this sentence. Now, you don't mind. You read it every day. In 50 years, this has come about. So we will have breakfast, you see, from Vietnamese prisoners very soon.

It's inevitable. You have no weapons against it. You have -- since you have abolished the divinity of Christ, you have abolished the divinity of the victim. Now if the victim is not as divine as the ruler, as the God Caesar, then you have no basis to treat man. The whole problem of Christianity is that St. -- Athanasius insisted that the man on the Cross, the common criminal hanged in the most shameful manner, was div- -- more divine than the emperor. Therefore, you cannot mutilate the corpse. It's natural. Anybody who has ever realized the meaning of the Crucifixion is immune against becoming a cannibal. If he isn't, then -- well, then the era hasn't done its work. The same is true, of course, of the -- three other things. If the pil- -- the -- the hermit fathers, the desert fathers have not made an indelible impression on the mighty archbishop of Alexandria and he says, "Despite their lice, and despite their famishment, and despite their incouth -- uncouth soutane, they are my brothers," you have preached in vain. Then the Archbishop Athan- -- Athanasius is just a glorified, pagan, archpriest, pontifex of the old Roman pagan institutions. And on it goes.

All these four offices by which we have risen above the anc- -- antiquity, the four of the tribe; of the country, the cosmic order; of the city of genius, the Greeks, and of -- the writers of poetry and books; and of the Jewish, chosen people--all these four had to be translated into something that made it -- them a part of the universal church. And I said to you, the desert fathers, for example, are the form in which the Jewish people have entered the church: despised, poor,

downtrodden, yet immortal. Equal. Saintly. The chosen people.

This was very obvious to the people in the first thousand years of our era. The first thousand years of our era have translated the sacrificer and his victim into one language. The sacrificer is the ancestor. And his medicine man who has the right to slay the young prisoner of war, for example, or his child. The sacrifice of I- -- Isaac, you have known in the Bible--that's why it had to be written into the Old Testament--that Abraham kam from a -- came from a background in which you had to slaughter your oldest son for the good spirits of the ancestors. And the abolition is therefore rightly incorporated into the story of the Bible. Otherwise it would not be a real story of humanity. Because the first phase obviously has been the pride of the ancestors that they could murder, kill, slaughter, execute, to the spirit of the tribe, to the -- by an act of sacrifice some innocent victim, and thereby buy prosperity, buy the gra- -- good grace of the gods.

I don't know why this is not preached today. I never hear this made clear to you, even if you should go to church, which I do not presume, that the -- sacrifice is an eternal temptation of man. We all want to be bought off by sacrifices of other people. We all like this idea very much. It's so simple. If Isaac is slain, then Abraham can be the patriarch. If he is not slain, then where have you any guarantee that God looks with favor at me? I haven't done anything for it.

The -- the king of Sweden in 1070 of our era was still a pagan. And every 10 years he slaughtered one of his son -- sons to -- for prosperity, so that the kingdom of Sweden might have eternal night. When the seventh son came again before the priesthood, the people rose. They loved the son, and they hated the father by then. And all became Christians. So that the step to baptism in Sweden in the year 1070 of our era was simply nothing else but the giving-up of the bloody, human sacrifice. It consisted in this very fact that now the sacrificer knew that the sacrifice was his own brother, and that there was no cause for him sacrificing the other for a longer life of prosperity for his own rule. It is so simple that you never think of it. You never know that no order exists without sacrifice. It doesn't. You only have to know who sacrifices. If the sacrificer sacrifices himself, as in Christianity, then the victim is the sacrificer. And that is the content of the Christian story, that the sacrificer and the victim become undistinguishably one.

The same is of course true of the three other forms of antiquity. The astrologer, you see, becomes a {cosmos}. I told you that Tertullian in 200 said, "We no longer need astrology, because Christ has come, and breaks these superstitions of the constellations of the sun. He is Himself the greatest constellation: that human freedom which does not fear death." And anybody--you, too, gen-

tlemen, and the ladies even more so--any person who is not afraid of death for a good cause is divine. That is our divinity. And you can change the world by that. That's the little conditional touch. As soon as you fear the police, or the examination papers, or some such silly thing, you are weak. You cannot change the world. But there is nobody who cannot transform the world if he doesn't care for these wonderful implements and temptations.

Fearlessness in the favor of great odds and dangers is the condition for our life on this earth.

Let me follow this up. This -- Gospel of St. John begins with the sentence, "In the beginning was the Word," by which he wanted to say--St. John--that po- -- the poem is older and more important than the poet. Because the word "logos" means exactly this. And -- so of course, Jesus is much more poetical than any poems ever written. There is no -- any even faintly parallel poetical life or drama than the life of Christ. And therefore, it became, in the Middle Ages, the great passion play, the beginning of the modern stage. Shakespeare is unthinkable without the passion plays. That is his transformation. If you take the -- the -- the drama of Shakespeare, you see, it is purified, transformed, because between the Greek tragedy and Shakespeare, there have been a thousand years of the divine message of the we- -- daily Mass, the daily tragedy--which is not a tragedy, because it's lifted up to the greatest song of mankind. It's the poem of mankind.

But as long as our Bible translators are so blind, deaf, and lazy that they -- translate the first sentence in St. John with "the Word," I can't help them. They just lead you astray. Jesus of course--this is hard -- hard to overlook--is the prophesied one. That's why John the Baptist has to precede him. John the Baptist is the last prophet. And in -- he -- Christ couldn't have been the prophesied one if there hadn't been the Baptist pointing to Him and say, "Look here, that is the lamb of God." The connection between the Baptist and Christ today is totally overlooked by liberal theology. There would be no prophesied one if there hadn't been a prophet. And that's why I have asked you to write the paper on -- on -- yes, Sir. I've asked you to write which paper? The Isaiah II, because there is the story, the prophecy of the servant, you see, who is executed. And without the prophecy, he couldn't have come -- to be the prophesied.

So there is an intimate connection, an intimate necessity between the man who foresaw that somebody had to -- suffer for the people--Isaiah 53--and the man who then said, "I'll do it; I'll be that lamb, who takes the sins of the world upon myself."

Perhaps it is worth your while to take down these four remar- -- four equations. The sacrificer and the victim, the astrologer and the cosmos, the poet

and his poem, the prophet and the prophesied. They end -- at the threshold of mod- -- our own time. These four equations are -- if you -- I may say so, dissolved or are formulated. If Abraham and Isaac do not become sisters and brothers--I mean -- I should say--in the spirit, then there is no reconciliation. Then there is eternal bloody sacrifice. But Isaac is the brother of the Lord, and that's why he called himself the son of God. He was not -- Abraham was a friend of God. As you know in the Bible, it is said that he was God's friend. Very profound. But still more profound of Jesus to say that He was the Son of God, because the fa- -- the father, having been the friend of God, He couldn't be less.

The astrologer and the cosmos. If you could only see that this is literally true. I'm not talking to you about superstitions, about --. I'm -- talking about something you can test every minute of your own existence. That without these four orders, we have no orientation. You all live in a natural, geographical, economic cosmos of -- from certain geographical, physical, chemical, biological laws. Well, these laws are of course that which this creation story has tried to propagate. That man has a strange place in this creation. He is a part of it; he is a creature. And yet he is also a re-creator, because he knows of his creation, as no animal does. And he can shift the emphasis. And he is at all times on both sides of the creator and the creature.

I don't know -- what I do not understand is only the illi- -- illiteracy of the biologists, that they don't see this, that they are both: creator and creature.

And the poet and his poem, that's today in our Greek world unknown, too. That's why you forgive all the immensities, the fraud of the modern writers, their whoredom, and their harloting, and their corruption. If you knew that the condition of the poet -- poem -- poet is that the poem is exalted by him above himself, you wouldn't feel that way. You would know that he enters ho- -- a holy land when he's writing, and that he has to become worthy of his poem. And it's no excuse that he has to take so many drugs before -- before he can write a verse. That's no excuse. His perversions aren't -- { } to us, because then his poetry improves. Does it improve? Don't believe it. It does not improve. It's nonsense, utter nonsense. It's infamous, too.

But I understand that you are just on the verge of producing such an infamy in this college. I hope it will not happen. What I have heard of it makes me feel that I must take a ticket and leave immediately. You should prevent it. You know what I'm talking about. It's a scandal. I see absolutely no excuse. And I certainly am not going to teach here if this play goes over the stage here in this -- in this Cowell College. Or is it Stevenson? It wouldn't make any difference. You know what I'm talking about. Sir.

The -- our era, my dear friends, has settled a number of questions once forever. There is no homosexuality, there is no perversion, there is no slavery, there is no golden calf, there is no astrology, there is no cruelty against prisoners of war. All this is out, once forever. If you give this up, you slide into the abyss of nothingness. And the danger is that people are so salty today, and so refined, and so putrid that they think it's wonderful that you can ...

[tape interruption]

Believe me. The world is very old. But it has written of certain accounts and closed them once forever. And the account of the victim that is slaughtered by the sacrificers; the account of the poet -- poem that can be mistreated for any stimulus of the writer, in any form of -- of stimuli; the astrologer, the predictor who think- -- thinks that he can predict the stock exchange, let him go bankrupt--I hope he will; and the prophet who is above the prophesied and says, "I can point out what the future will look, how all these people are -- look. The -- the future has already started," this Mr. Jung, who is so old, you see. You live today in -- a necromancy. You live today in an order that is absolutely cursed, because it was closed in 325 A.D., with the introduction of the Trinity.

Thank you.