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

As to the technical rules of this game, I think I must go on for the next two lectures, Tuesday and -- and Thursday. I hope this is no co- -- no inconvenience. But I think I should finish this lecture course. It was planned from the beginning for these two more lectures. And since it is called Universal History, I think I would go wrong if I gave up --. So if anybody is prevented from coming, I -- very well will understand this. But since I give no exam, I think it isn't unfair for you to come and listen on Tuesday and Thursday. But I don't see there's any reason that we should have it in the -- in the afternoon. Can we go back to our normal time of 10- -- of -- what is it, 11? Any objections? What do you say? Louder. Wie?

(I have a final { }.)

In the morning. Well, would it be helpful if I came in the afternoon? Everybody agreed on this? Makes no difference to me. So if you prefer the afternoon, I'll do it, and stay on this hour as of now, 3:30. So, I'll have to inscribe it in my memory. Tuesday and Thursday at 10:30.

(3:30.)

What did I say?

(10:30.)

Wie?

(10:30.)

Well, I'm sound asleep.

When did Columbus discover America?

(1492.)

Well, I'm very proud of you. I thought most of you would not know it. Because at this moment, we live in a moment of pretty great darkness. And the most ordinary data are forgotten. And I'm going to take -- to talk -- today on this very question which you not even -- learn to deal with, on the Christian era, and on our idea of counting the years, which is a very strange idea, and which it took exactly 430 years before they were achieved. And this may remind you of your topic for the paper, the Second Isaiah.

When you had to write on the Second Isaiah, I hope you noticed that the man wrote obviously around 540 B.C., which means 540 years before the man was born whom he prophesied. That's quite an achievement. We have nothing today that comes near this feeling for long periods of time. I think if you would be told that what you are doing today will take effect in 450 years, you would be prob- -- pretty dismayed. Anybody who does right would be pretty grateful that anything that he does has such a long-reaching effect. Since you only have effects till the next divorce, it is not very much worth living. I mean, anybody who has to count on four divorces during his marriage better not start.

This is not a joke. But it is the problem, the question whether America has any future.

When my friend Chesterton, whom I admired greatly and whom I happened to know personally, the great Englishman, when he came to Amer- -- New York, he was shown around. And he stood on the balcony of Fifth Avenue. And he said to the head waiter who showed him in this hotel, "It's very nice, but will it be here tomorrow?"

That's the impression American makes on anybody who comes to see it, first. Will it be here tomorrow? And it isn't yet found out whether we -- you will be found tomorrow. And as -- the people behave here as though they would not be seen tomorrow.

I got a letter on Long -- from Long Beach. And he said, "My" -- these are -- he's an Englishman and his American wife, "Our friends in Long Beach seemed to see war or complete isolationism as the only solution to the imminent -- danger of China."

I had -- an encounter with an -- couple here at the -- Stanford University. He's a friend of per- -- of President Eisenhower, who said that of course, we had to throw the bomb so radically on China right away that all 700 million Chinese were destroyed.

Now these two stories of Long Beach and of Stanford show that America has no future. If such apes dare to call themselves "human beings," they have to be destroyed. And any means is correct if these two -- group of Americans are destroyed. They have no right to exist. They are animals. If they speak of other people in this -- in these terms, out they go. And you can be sure they will go out. God is without any such mercy, because identity of purpose is -- the fir- -- prob- -- of -- all problem of any human history. If you say of an whole -- another group, "They have to go," then you -- then they'll -- either end in Auschwitz, or in a bomb catastrophe. But the people who in -- in the end will be destroyed are

neither the Jews nor the -- nor the Chinese. Somebody quite different.

This is very serious. And -- you can talk here to educated, rich people. And they say this without batting an -- an eye. This I think so -- is so very remarkable. They haven't been challenged. They haven't been provoked -- provoked. The poor Chinese try to find their way in a revolution in which we, the western people, have brought upon them. We have introduced the airplanes; we have introduced chemistry; we have introduced the technicalities. They must now drive automobiles without knowing it. Who has imported this? The Chi- -- the Americans. They published in 1923 a book, 400 Million Customers about China. That was the idea they had of the civilization they had to import into China. Four hundred million customers. Make money. Get rich. And then they say they have to destroy them. Because they -- after having bought all this nonsense--the cigarettes, and the alcohol, et cetera--these Chinese felt perhaps they had a voice in the matter, too.

And you -- I don't hear any paper protesting this. All the good people say this in this -- in this -- the state of California, that China has to be destroyed. And there is no official protest either in church, or in state, or in school against this. Nobody says, "That's blasphemy."

And I can assure you that in the moment where blasphemy is unknown, God disappears. God ex- -- is only worshiped as long as you know that you can commit blasphemy. And you don't even know what blasphemy is. It's not easy to know. What is blasphemy? Blasphemy is -- obviously a misjudgment about our relation to our creator. Under certain conditions, we are participating in His creative process. And as long as we are willing to co-create, we cannot commit blasphemy, because we assume that God is our Father, and our Brother, and our Son. This is the whole story.

These people whom I have the -- the doubtful pleasure of meeting in California assume that they can destroy one-half of mankind for their own benefit. That's blasphemy. And there is no hope for such a nation. I can assure you. There is absolutely ho- --. Nobody who does not repentance for such a cynical utterance as, "They have to -- all to be bombed out of existence, they have all to disappear," nobody will be spared. That's Sodom and Gomorrah all over. And you tremble, because you don't know what you say to these people. They run around. They have all too much money, and they are all drun- -- drunk, most of the time, with the help of their cocktails.

I will therefore speak today, and I had this planned before--without even this terrible utterance from Long Beach and from Stanford--on the idea of progress. You must know this. Nobody knows today that progress has two stories to

tell. There is a progress in the 19th century. We are a progressive era, we think. There are more airplanes today, and more telegraphs, and more cottages, and more, more, more of everything: more vitamins, and more bitamins, and more knitamins. But the important thing is obviously to know when we do progress and when we regress. I think that this gentleman from Stanford University and his wife are not progressing when they say that we have to throw the bomb on China right away. But how do I prove it to him, and how does he prove it to me, what progress is? This is not so simple.

As a matter of fact, if you read any ancient, or any nonChristian writer, you will find not a word on progress. Plato knows -- knew nothing of progress. He did not believe that the world was progressing. Plato is, by and large in my eyes, a great harm today to modern thinking. Nobody is improved by reading Plato. But I'm -- you see, vindictive, because my nickname as a boy was Plato. So I can't get over that. So I -- I can't prove the case -- my case very well.

But the idea of progress is lodged in the 14th chapter of the Gospel of St. John, where Jesus explicitly says that His disciples will do greater things than He Himself. That's qui- -- rather surprising. Most geniuses promise that they are the geniuses. He said, "I produce geniuses. I produce people who will do greater things than I myself." And that's of course the proof of His genuine character.

It took 450 years before people felt that they could count on this. Now I mean this quite literally. Count on this, by counting the Christian era. In 4- -- in 530, prob- -- exactly speak- -- exactly in 534, a monk in Italy invented the Christian era and said, "From now on, it will be better to omit the consuls of Rome year after year, for their consulate, or the emperors for that matter. We will count the years now from the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem."

So I told you that our era is exactly 534 years old, which I think in itself is a remarkable fact, worth your know- -- knowledge. Before, people had to count very clumsily, either after the reign of -- of the Syrian Antiochus, in 330, after the death of Alexander the Great. That was the first time that more than one country had to count the same government, because after Alexander, you see, the -- the old realm dissolved and collapsed, and there were three or four realms who wanted to have the same chronology.

You can take this down: the chronology which we have today comes from the fact that originally every city and every kingdom had its own chronology. And therefore the Greeks had O- -- the Olympiads, for example, since 1776 B.C. Rome counted, as you know already, from 753 B.C. The Egyptian counted from--you know this; I have told you this several times, because I think it is very

important--from 2776 B.C. But the constellation from which all this was dated returned only in this part of the world. There could not be a universal chronology, because the stars and the sun do not show up on the same day, in the same season, at the sa- -- in the same time.

Therefore, to invent a chronology which would be valid for the whole globe is a very ingenious thing. And there are only three such chronologies today. One is the Christian, one is the Jewish, and one is the Mohammedan. They are all dating from the same century. The Jewish calendar was invented 580, 50 years after the Christian, in competition with the Christian, and -- from anger. Because they said, of course, "We don't want to be reminded of the man who left Judaism behind. Therefore we want to count from the creation of the world."

The Jews had avoided all astrology, and had avoided all superstitions, and all ancestry. So when they began to count in 580, they acquiesced only under the pressure of the Christian era. They said, "We can't count the years from the birth of Christ. Therefore let us count from the creation of the world," which was a rather abstract guess, because we aren't quite sure about the creation of the world. Not even the natural scientists. And so the 500 -- 5,000 years today, you know what the Jewish year is this year? You should, it's quite interesting. It's worth knowing, you see. It's an attempt to go so far back, there's -- no astrology is involved. They wanted to beat down the -- the astrological, you see, mysteries of Babylon and Egypt. And therefore, since the Egyptian year began in 2976 B.C., it is obvious that they had -- the Jews had to go behind this, you see, before there was ever a pharaoh. But on the other hand, you will admit, the year is not a reality. It's a pipe dream. It's an abstraction.

You cannot say this of the Christian -- chronology. With the Christian -- with the Jewish era, the Jews have forfeited their privilege of being utterly based on experience. The chronology of the Jewish year is not based on experience, son- -- it's based on a protest. It's a protest against the Christian era. Understandably so, but you must know that it -- that forgoes really the claims laid down in the Sabbath week. The week is observable. That's a fact. And you can celebrate each Sabbath, and not -- do no work, and emigrate from nature, from creation, from movement, by sitting still.

But the creation of the year -- of the -- the year of the creation of the earth I'm afraid is pure protest, pure fantasy. They said, "Anything is better than a -- the Christian era."

Now there's a third era with us. And if you go by numbers, it is very numerous. And I think it can compete with the Catholic Church; that's the Islam.

The Mohammedan count from the year of the flight of Mohammed, from Mecca to Medina. In 2- -- 622 of our era, this was done. And the -- Islam has a moon year, 354 days. And therefore the -- the calendar, the -- the -- of the Hegira--that's -- is the word used for the flight from -- Mohammed from Mecca to Medina--this Hegira is of course not -- jibes not with our chronology at all. The moon year is 354 days; you can figure out how long it takes before the -- the -- they -- they cla- -- they cleave apart, the years.

You learn something about comparative religion, I think, in a very simple manner by paying some attention to these three eras. The whole story of mankind is in a way contained in the Christian era, the Jewish era, and the Islam era. And perhaps it is -- deserves a few words of explanation to make you feel that you are in front of the center of human history. The fact that in one century, between 530 and 622, these three data were introduced, and acknowledged, and respected deserves your attention, ladies and gentlemen.

And I'm very -- it is -- doesn't speak for us that you can grow up today in this world of ours, of a high school, and never learn these facts. At least, I have met with children who had never heard of -- either one or the other as a problem, as a riddle, or as a mystery. It is very mysterious that in one century, the religious cleavage, the split of mankind led to the adoption of three competitive eras, all defying one each other -- denying each other, proclaiming that one wasn't worth to be mentioned.

The Islam, as you know, is a -- a man's religion. Mohammed covers the problem of all primitive man. He is the only one who receives a revelation, and the others follow suit. He dictated the Koran. Jesus didn't write down one line, and that's His act of faith. The four Gospels were written when Jesus had long disappeared, of this earthly life. Not so, Mohammed. He dictated it carefully himself. No mistakes. And therefore nothing important. Anybody who im- -- im- -- dictates his own religion cannot say anything important, because this is -- goes beyond human consciousness, his own saintliness, or his own vocation, or his own apostolicity, or whatever have you. So the very -- naivet‚ of the Islam is in this fact that Is- -- Mohammed spent his day in writing down his -- his 42 suras, these most boring chapters ever written in religion.

I have no respect for -- for the man. And I don't see why I should pretend to have, because that's against all spiritual experience, that a man writes down his own greatness. And it is high time that you part with this ridiculous toleration: because this is called a world religion, so you have to bow and say it's just as good as any other -- world religion. This is nonsense. It's a heresy. And it's an aberration. It's a profound mental illness. And I'm perfectly willing to stand up for this. And to prove it. And we -- you go wrong, you see, from all your toler-

ance by not daring to say that you are not a Buddhist, and you are not a Laotsist, and you are not a Chinese, and what-not. You know nothing anymore what's any good, and anything valuable. You have abdicated your deepest fe- -- reason, and your deepest wisdom. Don't do that. It's no good reason to do this. This is cheap, cowardly, and disastrous. You can't educate children. You have forfeited your own right to bring up your children. And you give them to these schoolteachers. And what do they know?

So today, we have all these parents in California who send their children to progressive schools or to Cowell College. Does this help? If the parents do not know what is good, they can't send their children to any college that's better. Because you have to know what is better before you can send the children there. There is -- a complete madness has bro- -- broken out today. That you assume that when parents know nothing, they go to some expert, you see, and say, "This is -- you -- you educate my children." On anything important, how can the par- -- teachers educate the children? They can't. It's unimportant what they can do -- besides being parents. Nobody is so wise than a good parent. He may be very stupid otherwise. But with -- with regard to the love of his child, any father can know much more than any teacher.

Very strange how this has happened. This country is today in an absolute, dark fog. You have the bomb, and you have the chambers of commerce, and you have -- I don't know. And you have Mr. Reagan. That is, you have mass production without any standards of anything. Does anybody know whether we should have more students in -- in colleges, or fewer? That's the issue, after all, for the governor at this moment. But can you advise him on this? Is it wise that people drive cars, or that people learn Greek? We have no standards for anything. I wouldn't dare to tell anybody, because in California certainly nobody would believe me.

This is all mass production. It is fashion. Now it is the fashion to learn Greek. The other -- year -- next year it's sociology, the next year is psychology, the next year is neurotics. Something is --.

But what is the standard? Well, I tell you what the standard is: the Christian era. And if you recede from the Christian era, you have no standards. You will introduce slavery. You will intro- -- of course, introduce marijuana. You must introduce drugs. You must have narcotics. You must have slavery -- you must have white slavery -- I mean, how do you call it? white sl- -- yes, white slavery. You must have brothels, and professional harlots--male or female for that matter--and you have it. They are all there, right around the corner.

Because the Christian era is the only era that contains in itself--and that's

why it is counted--a change for the better. In 440- -- -34, for the first time, a Christian writer, a pupil of St. Augustine on whom I have talked yesterday, wrote a book, {Commonitorium}. A mi- -- you can call it a -- a summons, a reminder -- that's perhaps the best translation of the word "{commonitorium}." And he wrote in this, "Can there be progress? Is it possible that any generation goes forward? After all, we are the same, dark sinners all the time. We are absolutely unproven and untested; so don't we move in a circle?"

And by itself, if you look at California today, which treats itself as an independent state, it moves in some blind circles. There is no progress in -- California. It's impossible. Nobody can move progressively who forgets where he comes from, and he -- where he doesn't know where he means to go to. It's just every year different, every election different. Every increase in people from Iowa different. They don't seem to be the worst. But still, the -- your -- the -- the immigration in this country--of course, as any immigration in any country--shakes tradition, shakes the certainty of what to do. You can, of course, if you have 500,000 new people coming to a state every year, as this has happened for the last 25 years in this state, you cannot expect any continuity. The best things are forgotten. And the forgetfulness of this is -- is terrifying.

If you think how many good things from schools, to orphan asylums, to kindergarten, to roads, to -- have existed, have been created here, and how much of this is buried today, in -- under complete oblivion, you would be surprised. It's a little, little, little percentage that reaches you today, of the things created here with toil, sweat, and tears, and great devotion. And your assumption that this will be preserved is very naive. It cannot. It's all forgotten.

Never has the world been so forgetful than the world at this moment, you see. For the -- memories, as you know, we have the beloved ones. We have the -- these usurers who take your money for the funeral. They have to remember. They put then on the grave, you see, when he died, and that he died, you see, and said he's immortal. But he isn't immortal because somebody makes money of his immortality.

To be immortal is a very serious thing. Now the Christian era, you see, distinguishes between death and lastingness, lasting life, "life everlasting," as they call it. Because of course Jesus was the first man who said, "I must die in order to be immortal."

All the immortal stories otherwise, outside Christianity, pretend that you can have deathlessness without dying. This is ridiculous. Jesus said, "Of course I have to die, but that will create my eternity, my eternal life." And there are people to this day, and never have missed in any generation, who have not died

for Christ's sake, and have thereby saved human freedom and human dignity. And you rely on this. And you would be surprised how much you rely on this. To a portion, every one of us is expected to die proportionately in some danger, in some disagreeable thing for others. You take it for granted that a man doesn't run away from danger, or from an operation because he -- this will save another person's life. But it goes much further, because people die for the future of the human race. And these people who die are the only people who are sane, people with sanity. And these people fill the Christian era.

The Christian era then consists of those people who have put the life eternal over their physical existence. And that's why the first part of the calendar of the Christian era consists of so-called saints. A saint is a man who, when the choice has to be made between his physical life and his eternal existence, chooses eternity, and therefore is remembered forever.

And therefore the first thousand years of our era, from 434 to 9- -- 854--perhaps it's worth your while taking down this date--consisted of the formation of the so-called church calendar. And the church calendar consists of the people who have died for Chris- -- Christ's sake, who are figured -- are reckoned with the saints.

The day, All Saints, was introduced in 854 of our era. Ever since, the Church has said, "Fortunately now there are so many saints, that we need one day in which all the saints shall be remembered by -- in our services, and nobody must be forgotten of this -- these pure-hearted people." And so the pope in 1854 defined this day as the day of All Souls -- of All Saints, of --. And the day is on the 1st of November, Halloween. And you know it. It's a very profound day. It's the only day in which you can still study the unbroken tradition of Christianity. There are no sects about this. The first 900 years of the Church have lived by the witness, and the testimonial, and the sufferings, and the martyrdom of the saints. Otherwise, there would be no Christianity and you would have no reason to remember it. And this 1st of November is of course nothing but an attempt to do justice to all, even the unknown, who died in prison, who died in slavery, who were carried away and martyred, and never gave up the faith.

All Saints Day fills the -- is therefore the complete summary of the first thousand years of Church history. And when I -- what I had to do today is to bring you close to the understanding that the Church actually had nothing better to do the first 900 years of her e- -- their ex- -- her existence than to eternalize the memory of the saints. To you that's of course cheap. You want to see cathedrals. You want to see Crusades. You want to have saints that can be -- that can be worshiped. That's not the calendar of the saints. The martyr- -- martyrology of the saintly -- saints' calendar consists in the patient, 900 years' sludging and

slaving for people who in any one given moment would otherwise have denied the Lord.

Today you -- deny the Lord, and you are quite sure that that would not interfere with Christianity, because you have the saints for this, 900 years back. Why should you do anything about it? Most people I know are absolute pagans. They had denied the saints. They don't say that these are their precursors and predecessors. They say, "They are funny; they are strange people." Don't believe it for a minute, when you -- your own emergency comes, you will take it for granted that somebody sacrifices his life for you. You all expect this, naively. It's very strange. But you are a great lover of people in these -- retro- -- retroactive sense. Not you love the people, but you assume that the people love you. The doctors, the nurse -- who else it is, you all expect that somebody will save you. And that's very touching, because you -- you don't love the people. But modern man loves all the people who are meant to save him.

When this year, 1854 -- came, of all the Christian antiquity, of all the times of the pharaohs--of the emperors of Rome, of the Greek tragedies, and -- and games, and competitions, the Olympiads--nothing was left. Half of the world had been overrun by Islam, the whole eastern half of the Mediterranean basin. And in the West, there were the Germanic tribes who knew nothing of Pharaoh, and who knew nothing of Isaac and Jacob, and knew nothing of Jerusalem, and they were all completely estranged, the only thing these barbarians kept--even Islam to a certain extent--were the saints. There was a moment then--and that's why I -- you must know this--there was a moment in the history of -- of our world in which, except for the dying days, the birthday for Heaven for the saints--there was nothing remembered, nothing known. Everything had departed. Everything was buried in a -- in a tremendous ruin.

Chesterton expressed it in this wonderful verse: "And the end of the world was long ago." That is, the Roman Empire, the Egyptian, the Persian, all these empires were gone. There were tribes: the Franks, and the Goths, and the Swedes in Sweden --. In the -- down to the year 1000, every ten years, the king of Sweden--I think I mentioned it last -- time to you--slaughtered his -- one of his sons for bloody sacrifice, so deep was -- was paganism -- had paganism returned. The only witness to the fact that God knew better and demanded more from us were the saint days and are the saint days. And anybody who is converted to Christianity, better make a beginning with understanding, celebrating, repeating the services on the saint days. They are the purest expression of our worship. There is nothing purer, nothing more persuasive, nothing more convincing. Don't go to big cathedrals. But read the service of a saint day every day, and you cannot help being -- becoming a better man, know more about your own life.

It's one of the terrors of this country that although they all speak big of religion, this very simple service, this service of the saints, is -- is not -- doesn't play a great role in this. That's a very refreshing -- thing. You can do it all by yourself. You don't have to encumber anybody else. You just buy yourself a -- a Mass book, and read the service of every day. Do -- you will sur- -- be surprised how varied it is, how rich it is. There are the martyrs, like St. Stephen, the -- the protomartyr, the first martyr of the Christian Church. And -- every saint is a surprise. Nobody had thought -- not one of the 12 Apostles had thought that anybody but one of the Apostles would be the first martyr. Lo and behold! The proto-martyr, the first martyr, was Stephen, a man who had nothing to do with the 12, you see. But as the first martyr, of course, he plays an exceedingly important role in the tradition of Christianity, because here was one provoked, and challenged, you see, all surprisingly, not by a Gospel writer, not by one of the leading Apostles, not meant to play the role like Peter or Paul. Not at all. Just Stephen.

He -- even spoke, obviously, as his ow- -- native language, he spoke Greek. Because "stephanos" means crown. So he was probably from Crown College.

Well, it is so primitive--and pardon me for using these -- these simplic- -- -ple translations--because it is very hard for you to understand that -- that our era lives by common people who do extraordinary things. The essence of Chris- -- the Christian story is that ordinary, vulgar, common people have done the most surprising and extraordinary things. And that's why they are called saints. And for no other reason. They are neither geniuses, nor are they talented, nor are they noble, nor are they rich, nor do they get the Nobel Prize. That's all nonsense for real people. Just nonsense.

Because any real marriage is -- to a nine-third -- incognito. It is a miracle when somebody goes and den- -- announces the good news that there was a saint. The saint has to be discovered. He is not -- when he dies, he is not famous. He's quite unknown.

But you have such wonderful, you see, ideas of -- of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, that you think all famous people -- are first in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and later they are forgotten. But the real saints, you see, they are never in the -- Encyclopaedia Britannica, and they are never forgotten. And these two, if you can fil- -- fulfill these two characters, you will go to Heaven. And otherwise, you will not.

Now we -- are here in the 9th century, 854. And I said it was the end of the ancient world. There was no Carol- -- there was an emperor, yes, but he was a

Carolingian emperor, but he could hardly read and write. That was -- Charlemagne. And Charlemagne was a very good Christian. and he said, "I cannot afford to renew the empire. But I'll do my best to correct it."

And so we have, for the -- in the first thousand years, never the word "renaissance," as you bandy this around; everybody speaks of renaissance; I don't know it -- what you know what you are talking about. But Charlemagne had no idea that he could re- -- give -- rebirth to Christianity. But he said he wanted to correct all the mistakes that had come from impoverishment, and fear, and great losses in war and peace. And so it is very beautiful, I think. The modesty of the greatest emperor of the first thousand years, Charlemagne, that he called his political measures a "correction," a little correction. And I think it's necessary -- a friend of mine has discovered this, recently, that this was the technical expression. You don't find it in your textbooks. But I think it is a likable term.

A correction of the government of the Roman Empire, he said, had to be introduced. And he did. And so, { }, his successor introduced the day of All Souls -- of all Saints. This is the ninth century, the end of any direct tradition of the Roman Empire, any tra- -- direct tradition of the -- ancients, in a state of affairs in which the power of these pagan forms already had vanished. The Roman emperor was no longer the son of God, you see. And the -- the pharaoh had vanished. Egypt was no longer the mighty civilization of star lore. The tribes were conquered. Islam had wiped out all the wild tribes and -- in the East. And in the West, Charlemagne had done this. He conquered the Saxons. The -- Hengist and Horsa had been converted to Christianity; King Alfred was a good Christian. And therefore, nothing of the pre-Christian era, or times--"eras," I should call it, plural--any longer claimed inviolate existence.

It took then 900 years of the Christian era that the pre-Christian vestiges, or principalities, or empires had vanished. I think a very short time. And perhaps you learn how short history really is. Because you live in such a haste that you have no longer any un- -- any power inside your own bones and nerves, to know what time it takes to do something important. Four hundred years, I would say, is the shortest time. You can see this very simply. The Reformation happened in 1517. Now we have 1967. It has taken 400 years before the error of the Reformation has been expiated, you see. The -- Luther thought that every pri- -- every layman could be a priest. And that's the doctrine of the universal priesthood of all the faithful. As you know, the ministers of Protestantism haven't done that well. They have introduced that everybody must be a theologian. The last of them being Harvey Cox. And -- that's not the same to be a priest, or a -- theologian. That's something quite different. To be a theologian means to be a Greek philosopher, and to be a priest means to lit- -- be a liturgical saint, you -- a liturgi-

cal wis- -- wise -- wise man.

Now I think today, the day is coming where every father of a family will have to be a priest. And you, too, here. You will have to in- -- enact the liturgy. That is, Luther is triumphant today. Today people understand that he had to teach, and had to demand from you that you also are a priest of God Almighty. But for 400 years, they have found this subterfuge that if you only have pastors and theologians who have learned Greek and Latin, then that's enough. And you can go to Church, and go to sleep there every morning, every Sunday.

So the -- the laity in Protestantism has not become priests. But they have become theologians. In most cases. The sects have done differently. There are very fine Christian sects in which the laity, the -- the layman knows that he is a priest. But in the ordinary Lutheran Church, that just isn't the case. He -- he has a studied man who learns for him Greek, and Hebrew, and Latin, and delivers the sermon every Sunday from 11:00 to 12:00.

So -- what I have to say is: Luther appeared on the surface of -- of life in 1517. We now have 1967, and Mr. Cox can come of the -- and talk about the death of God, because he -- he is so afraid of the death of the the- -- theologians. And -- this has took -- has taken him 430 years. And -- is it true? Or 440 years. And so that seems to be an ordinary period for a great development in human faith and human behavior. Four hundred years is not too long a time for introducing a real change. If it isn't that long, you see, it cannot be a thorough change. I think the change is very thorough today. You can no longer go back before Luther and say that it was enough to have professional priests. No. You and I, we have to be priests, or the whole priesthood is gone. It's a laughingstock, otherwise.

So and -- whether you take the pope in Rome, or whether you take a Protestant, or whether you take a Presbyterian even--where it is very hard--whether you take a -- a Mormon in -- in Utah, the problem is all over the world, that liturgy, and service, and priesthood, and saintliness can no longer be separated. There are no laity -- is no laity. It's impossible. You are just as little laity as your minister. And he is just as little a priest as -- as -- as you are.

This is a very obscure moment in the history. It has just taken 450 years before this nice, naive conflict between priest and laity is disappearing today. You cannot. Nobody can reason it out, how it ever could have existed. And that even includes the women; that makes it so very nerve-wracking.

In the year -- 854, the Christian era, we can say, got to its first visible conclusion. For every day in the year, there was a saint day proving that people had listened to the voice from Heaven, and had acted as the younger brothers

and sisters of the Lord. They had joined the Christian family. What happens ever since? We have two more eras to distinguish. And I shall devote the time next time, and the rest of the -- Thursday, to explaining to you these two following thousand years. You may of course say, "Well, there are no 2,000 years." That's perfectly true. But one of these thousand years does indeed -- did indeed begin around the year 900, or the year 854 after the institution of All Saints Day. There began a -- quite a different era, we -- which we today usually call "world history," and which lasts from the day of 854 to the year of the Lord 8- -- 1889, as we shall see. And which is very outspoken again. And it is not the era of saint days, but it is the era of All Souls, of all human beings, regardless of their saintliness or their unsaintliness. The -- mankind, the brotherhood of man, the saintliness of man, the celebration of All Saints has led to a tremendous consequence that if men can gain Heaven for their brothers and sisters by their suffering, and by their faith, then all mankind can be redeemed. And -- so the next thousand years have been filled with the triumphant shout, so to speak, that the whole world can be revolutionized. That it's perfectly possible to redeem the unsaint, those who are not saints. with the help of the saints to a better, and more human, and more perfect life.

So the content of the next two meetings -- of the next meeting will be the era of All Souls. And this era, in order to put you at rest, that I'm not just writing poetry, is: 854 is the last day in which Christ summoned one of His saints to a special service and gave him the title "saint." From 854 to 1889--and I'll tell you why I have a special reason for this strange date, 1889--mankind has believed that there could be a day for All Souls. Now a soul is not a saint. Some people think that even they themselves have souls. It is sometimes doubtful to me. But most of us pretend this, that they -- we have -- you --. It is very strange. For yourself, everybody says he has a soul. But if it comes to public talk, they all pooh-pooh this and say, "Soul? Never heard of it in psychology." Today the great enmity of the soul is the psychologist, who says, "There are no souls." William James has formally and solemnly abolished the term "soul." And he says, "Souls do not exist." And he was the greatest psychologist of the 19th century.

So it is quite an important question. Perhaps we come to the result in the next week that the psychologists really have no soul. And that it is wise to figure on a part of humanity which abolishes souls, which is soulless. And you have to think about the consequences. Sometimes, as I think -- if I hear these people in Long Beach and in Stanford speak about destroying the Chinese, I would say they have abdicated their souls. They are pure psychologists.

And so this is a serious question, because you can see why, since 1889, the prognostication for mankind has been very pessimistic, that people have said that the third millennium, the last era of our Christian -- figuring, our Christian

computation, will end in the anti-Christ, will end in a terrible disaster, will end in a hodgepodge, where everybody does as he pleases, in a total, lawless universe. We are moving in this direction. And it's very doubtful whether you and I can prevent it. Some of you don't look to me as though they had any intention to preventing it. They enjoy it greatly, you see. And I mean, this who- -- your whole generation is very tempted by the effect, "I can do as I please." And no revenge, no vindication, no -- always impunity. You really think you can take marijuana with impunity? I don't think so. I'm very stupid, and very old-fashioned, I know. But I must tell you that there are people who think that you are destroying the future of the human race. And why? I will also glad -- be glad to render accounts for.

With every drug -- drug you take, you enable the scoundrels to wage war against China, because you prevent them from doing -- don't prevent them from doing this. You have no authority. You have no right to stand up and say anything is wrong that these beasts do, because you are beasts yourself. And who -- everybody pardons today everything to everybody else. And where there is this general -- condoning process, you see, we'd better keep silent about history. There is no history, you see. There's just a hodge-podge of confusion.

So the thing is very confusing indeed. And if you read the Apocalypse, the last book of the New Testament, it is full of these forebodings, that in the -- final times, when the -- we can fly, and we can telegraph, and we can know everything, and we com- -- can compute everything, and Xerox everything, that at that moment, mankind no longer knows direction -- the direction, you see. It has just gone out of -- out of his appointed group. And this is what you enjoy greatly. You think it is wonderful that you are not asked for any certain performances. The performance is -- is so boring, life is so boring that you must have to think up something which hasn't been done before, which ma- -- makes it in my mi- -- estimation even more boring. Because I assure you, the things that haven't been done before are not worth doing.

The human heart is so great and so full of imagination that anything that a genius or a great heart has done has already been done. It is worth doing -- being done again. And anything you can think up for having never been done before, like quartering a baby and eating it, is not very interesting. I mean, the gru- -- atrocities -- done today are of course unheard-of. They have never been done before. But that's all. They can only be done for having never been done before, because they are atrocities. And people were much more decent than you are.

We have now a dated scale--and that's all I can do today with -- between us. Eight hundred fifty-four is a break in continuity, as we shall see, because it

was the day on which All Souls was introduced, as the day summing up the achievements of the first 900 years of the Christian era. And with this summary, of course there comes a kind of relaxation, a kind of battle fatigue, and also a kind of good feeling. We have done our utmost. We have understood what we were meant to do. We have in- -- how would you say? we have canonized--that is perhaps the best word--we have canonized all the irregularities of 900 years, you see, and have seen the glory of their services of these good servants of the Lord. And therefore, we now have it. We can rely on it. And it is this kind of sigh of redeeming certainty, which you must ascribe to this dark age, of which you otherwise know nothing, the Carolingian age. The Carolingian age was not dark at all. It had no electric light, so it seemed to you very dark. But it wasn't dark, because it has this great feeling that it had kept against Islam, against Turks, against all kind of Saxons, Swedes, what-not, all barbarians the faith that there was progress.

And let me now use the next -- last five minutes today for en- -- enlarging a little bit on this idea of progress, because it has been so totally forgotten today. You think progress is natural, or it is nothing special, or it is nothing common. It's the most uncommon idea in the world. Why you should be better than your parents is very hard to understand, why you should be able to progress over your parents. If you know your parents well, you will cross yourself, and say, "God forbid that I pretend that I'm better than my mother." If you say so, you'd better recover, re- -- think twice. Anybody who loves any person begins his love with the remark that she is just -- has not -- her equal. She hasn't. And that's why she is a human being. Because the wonderful thing about humanity is that we have -- none of us has, as far as we are real human beings, we cannot be imitated. And we cannot be superseded. We are utterly, utterly different from anybody who has ever lived. And the All Saints calendar is so interesting, because it is not a number -- calendars of numbers. There are not counted 365 saints. That wouldn't be interesting at all. But there are 365 people of whom none is equal to the other. They are all totally different. Different characters, different gifts, different i- -- ideas, different tasks, different faiths, everything. Because you are such bigots that you think that religion consists in everybody believing the -- and knowing the same thing, and being equally stupid. Or sleepy. That has nothing to do with -- with the real faith of people. All saints were all wild, great people, heretics, you see--in great danger all their lives for being excommunicated. And that's a saint, who to the last minute doesn't know if he can make it or not.

This damned piety today spoils everything. A saint is a man -- a redblooded man with great dangers. And everybody runs away from him because he's so disagreeable. Saints are neither agreeable, nor are they tame, nor are they nice. Jerome, of whom I told you yesterday, you see, was o- -- a most awful man ever ha- -- ever lived. The man who translated the Bible, and taught us that there

war -- were no sacred cows in Israel, in the Bible, you see. That any language was saint enough, instead of Hebrew, to contain the sacred texts. That's a great achievement. But he paid, of course, with all kind of bad moods for this tremendous effort to find the right word for every of the Hebrew words which had never before translated into a pagan faith. I mean, the Romans--for whom did they believe? These ridiculous gods--Zeus, and Poseidon, and these nonsense -- nonsensical entities-of-nature gods. You wouldn't -- buy them for one minute today. But you are so hardened, you see, in your tradition that you think Zeus is a luxury which we can afford on the side. Since you know who the true God is, you see, the son of Jesus, you take Zeus in your stride, and you say, "How wonderful they had this mythology, and they had this wonderful poetry."

Gentlemen, I -- you may be very grateful that you don't have to pray to God--called Zeus, or to Poseidon, or to Hera, and the -- all these damned whores. There is nothing beautiful about these old, ancient gods. Helpless. Totally helpless they were. They didn't know better. But that's not -- not to go back to them. Then -- is not an act of freedom. And to become a saint to super- -- to overcome the temptations of these spirits, ghosts, fairies, however you call them--first was a big thing. Now you read fairy tales. They cost you nothing, because you don't believe in the fairies, you see. You know very well that your ancestors, the saints, have driven them out of your heart and of your soul, so you can entertain yourself with this. And then you think you are tolerant, and you -- you have all these Greek gods, too, in your mind. You have not. And as soon as you grow up again to wildflowers in your -- in your fantasy, these -- these gods, you will end like Plato with homosexuality, as you do already; and with slavery, as you do already; and with -- the violation of all innocence, and virginity of women; and with eternal war, and with the enslavement of the ne- -- next neighbor. Everything you see now in Stanford happening.

This is -- we are back to paganism to a great extent at this moment, you see. Because if you say, "I go to war against the Chinese," nobody slaps you in the face and says, "You are swine." Which you are, when you say this.

It's very strange. You live today in a -- such a twilight, that I really think half of this country will have to perish with terrible punishments. God doesn't allow Himself to -- to go backward on what He has taught us for 2,000 years. You mustn't believe this. That's not forgotten. With all the Mercedes Benz cars in the world, it isn't forgotten.

What is, however, our task, and our very -- I think very gay task is that there are still homeless thoughts of antiquity, which we can make at home among us. If you take a -- a family of Australians, if you take our friend from the Solomon Islands, here, who lives here with us--who knows him?--you know that

he is a very wonderful man, and that he has -- certain qualities by the simplicity of his background which we don't have. And obviously, there is very much to be saved from his family traditions. That is, in other words, before -- instead of going now back to the Roman emperor in 854 B.C., or to the Egyptian pharaoh, we may have to go back today to the Solomon Islands. And we probably will. And we are all already on the ro- -- on the way to this. And what we call "anthropology" is of course an attempt to replace humanism by anthropology.

And this is the last thing I would like to say to you today, because we -- I have introduced you today to four orders: the tribes; the Egyptian pharaohs, the empires, with their classes and their industries, and their trades; Greece, with its science and art, and Rome; and Judaism, of course, with its priesthood. And then we have in a kind of sweeping, and perhaps too-simple way, I have said to you that Christianity had to inherit these four orders. And -- all we have said today is how this was done, how this calendar of the Christian Church penetrated every -- niche, and every -- day, and every writing, and every tradition of these four orders, so that in 854, Charlemagne could believe that he was a Christian emperor, and he was not a Solomonian Islander, and he was not a Roman, and he was not a Greek, and he was not a Hebrew, and he was not a tribesman. And he had the great feeling that he was Charlemagne, the emperor of a Christian Rome. And that was unheard-of before.

Today the program sounds very different. The word with which the humanity of the Greeks, of the Homer, of the Egyptians and so, was proclaimed, is -- has been the word "humanism." It's a Latin word. It comes from "homo," the man. And you think that "humanism" is a blameless word, I would think -- imagine. And if you hear Mr. Khrushchev, or his successor, Kosygin, who has a hard time to -- pronouncing this wor- -- foreign word. Khrushchev ha- -- had it very often in his mouth--it's the word "humanism" which he always uses to explain if he doesn't hang somebody. "Humanism" is the fashionable word for the Russian Revolution. That's why it is also important for you and me. And "humanism" has been a fashionable word in the 19th century in this country. People didn't like to say they were Christians. And they didn't like to say that they were Jews. But they think that they were human. "Human" was an abstraction which omitted any direct commitment to any positive pronunciation.

I feel that the day has come, ever since 1889, since Karl Marx, since the -- Communist revolution, in which the word "humanism" is too much a partisan word of the bourgeoisie, of the artist, of the writer, of the philosopher. And they say that they are humanists.

If I think of my friend in the Solomon Islands, then I know that he can only side with the modern anthropologists. The word "anthropologist" is of

course nothing very different from "humanist." "Anthropologist" means a man who deals with human beings. A humanist is a man who deals with human ideals. It is not quite the same. It is a very refined dis- -- distinction. And you will find that you are lucky if you side with the anthropologists. And you are very unlucky if you try to side with the humanists. The reason is that "humanism" has been terribly abused, and is trite today. And if you call this your own ideal, it may be all right from your own private point of view. Humanistic, you are misunderstood. You must be misunderstood, because for the last 200 years, the schoolteachers, the artists, the writers, everybody has posed as a humanist. Especially of course, the French writers. The English always thought they were British, and that was a little better than to be human.

But the French have very much perorated on humanism. And it's quite strange. In this country, I think humanism is still very popular. But I am afraid it is unlimited. It does not make clear whether we live in the second thousand years of our era, which led from All Souls -- from All Saints to All Souls, or whether we live in the social revolution, which began with May Day, May 1st, of which we will have to speak next time.

So I -- I only want to tell you that you already know by experience, by meeting people from primitive regions, islands, with whom you have to put up, and with -- whom you have to befriend, that strangely enough, our faith has already three utterances. You can meet a saint, you can meet a soul, and you can be an anthropologist. And it is very different, in each case. An anthropologist has no right to ask for any model, for any -- for any statement, so to speak, of principle, of ideal. An anthropologist finds man as he finds him. There he is. That's an an- -- you see. An anthropologist is not surprised.

A humanist takes it for granted that we are all human. Then to his great surprise, he discovers that he would like to eat human meat. That is, the humanists whom I happen to know, are all people who don't know -- don't know their own cruelty and atrocity. And don't care to know. They have sealed this off. And you don't know your own wickedness when you call yourself a humanist. And Mr. Khrushchev doesn't. And that is the hindrance for this term, and I decline to use it. I say that's obsolete. That was -- in 1800 perhaps was it possible to be betrayed, you see, to believe that you were human under all conditions. You can't believe this anymore. To be a human is a self-praise. That's too cheap. But an anthropologist, it means a man who is afraid that anything can happen. Obviously an anthropologist must be aware that sometimes people have eaten their fellow man on board ship, when they had nothing else to eat, or the Donner Party in -- in the -- Death Valley.

That's very serious. Don't confuse humanists and anthropologists, be-

cause they side with you for the real understanding of the three Christian eras through which we have passed. The first, the thousand years of the saints, eating up, devouring, digesting, abolishing all pre-Christian orders and introducing progress. And saying, "We know what progress is. Nothing can return that went on before us." The second thousand years makes everybody part- -- participate in this humanity and All Souls Day. I don't wish to say too much today for this. And the third is, of course, still before us. It's just beginning, with the fact that in California, you have kindly enough some people who call themselves anthropologists, and who decline therefore to judge their brother man and say, "That's good for anthropologists, you see, and not good for me."

So, with these three steps, I think we can't go wrong. I hope you will keep this orientation. It's the best I can offer you, and it's the only orientation that exists. And it's the only orientation that the academic guild today de- -- declines to give you. There is today such a total confusion in order, that nobody dares to say that there are 3,000 years of the Christian era, and they are all totally different. But they are. And you are very unhappy if you don't know this, and if you don't make the best use of it. You live the first thousand years, and the second thousand years, and the third thousand years in a totally different era.

Thank you.