Transcript
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Ladies and gentlemen, when I was your age, I published an ancient text of the Middle Ages, of the period of Magna Carta, around 1215. On German soil it had -- been originated. And it said, among other things, which I had to publish, that we lived with uncertainty in the 6th millennium. And the figure, the number of the years left to our existence on this earth was unknown. "Wir leben auf diese Erde mit unsicher Zahl." With uncertain number. I liked this sentence. It made absolutely no sense in the days in which I lived. In the days in which I lived--this was before the First World War then--nobody had such funny ideas as though the world could come to an end. It is not quite so unheard today. I certainly am convinced that the length of time given man on this earth is very limited. I would say 5-, 600 years. And it is already a miracle if we can achieve that much.
You live outside time. That is, you have no feeling about wh- -- how much time is left. You are not connected with the time stream. Modern technical man has no such feelings. He just doesn't know. And -- so he writes fat books on past history. But they have no yardstick, because obviously it should make a difference if there are still 10,000 years to come, or 500, or none. If all goes down with a whimper, in an explosion tomorrow, it isn't worthwhile digging very deeply into -- every year of the past, and having institutes of archaeology in Athens and in Rome. But we don't care.
The connection of, I feel -- of the various parts of our existence with regard to time is interrupted. The connection -- it doesn't flow, the rhythm, as -- with regard to what is to come and what has been, doesn't function. But one of the means by which we still try to grasp this is, I suppose, historical reviewing. Because if I can see that there have been five or six millenniums of different character before, it imparts to my own existence a certain length, a certain rhythm. And rhythm and length together are the essential feeling of time.
Time today has become such a secret--what it is, and how it is lived--that I think I cannot do any better than to draw your attention in the -- our last meeting to this fact that if you -- we talk universal history, the meaning of this undertaking is obviously not to teach you all the facts. That's impossible. What you call "facts" are so numberless that they cannot be taught. But there are a certain relation between the facts, a certain rhythm, a certain impatience or patience, a certain expectation, or a certain indifference to our world of events, of news, of dispatches, of issues of Time and Fortune.
Most of you, I think, have -- are satisfied to have a 24-hour history, and a
24-hour memory, which amounts to the abolition of memory. Others, however, I think, are quite capable of building, next door to each other, some inkling of 6,000 years of the pharaonic history, and the next 24 hours, so that they all overlap. What is really decisive in your own heart, I cannot tell. Probably all men have a different -- ja, admixture, a different gravy, a different combination of the ingredients of curiosity, impatience, indifference, detachment, im- -- effervescence, glow even, feverish, urgency. If you watch yourself, I don't know when you are hectic. Some may be over the news of the stock exchange. And some may be over the vote in -- in China which is not taken.
That is, man today is dismissed into his own private heartbeat and rhythm in the -- such an -- to such an extent that I am very doubtful that mankind will ever have a common history, really. Still I have been foolish enough to attempt to give you a common -- some basis for a common rhythm. A universal history, when it is taught, can have only this one purpose, to implant in you the power to overcome your private times, your private rhythms, and to share that rhythm which makes you brothers with the people 7,000 years back. History should make you indifferent to your contemporaries, and should make you very intimate with the people of all other times. If it doesn't do this, history hasn't done its purpose. The brotherhood of man through time is equally important as the brotherhood of the ladies and men today in the barbershop, or on the street. But what you call the -- "fellowship of man" or the "brotherhood of man" is usually that of the -- today's moment, 1967. And that's why we are in a very bad way.
If -- if the contemporaries are the only people with whom you have a common history, you have no common history. You are on a Niagara downwards -- the river down, the water flood. And you will be swallowed up by pure accident. But that's sold today in schoolbooks, textbooks, in -- in investigations, and of course in magazines, as the only history. A history which you have in common with the -- people here in your next seat. Now that isn't important. But if you could have a common history with Plato and a common history with Homer, that would perhaps be of some value, because it would make his and your life fruitful, because it would exploit the gap in time by unifying the effort.
This is what I have tried to -- to do. I don't know if I have succeeded and you will not know if I have succeeded before 10 or 20 years are -- have gone by. However, I do feel that you should know that we need today some such pity on our own nerves, on our own frazzled nerves -- and our own frazzled consciousness, that the people of all time are our contemporaries. Real time is only a time which is able to surround, to embrace, to contain, to condense all the times. If you have not a brother in the year 800 and the year 1200, you are benighted. And every one of you has to find at least one such hero--be it a poet. You may read Wordsworth, or you may read Shakespeare. But do you think you can see a
Shakespeare play without becoming his contemporary? Impossible.
And fortunately, you still go to Shakespeare. And that's all right. Then you all of a sudden have a time that is 500 years, 300 years, 400 years long, and wide, and broad. And then you live in real time. What you do today, coming to this one lecture, is only attempt to lead you out of this moment into these wide pastures. And they are green pastures.
And therefore the old -- the old spiritual, "Green Pastures"--who has seen this? is it still known? "Green Pastures"; who? thank you -- well, it's still known. This is therefore so important--that's the contribution of the Negroes in a pagan universe today--that by their belief in Green Pastures they have still this feeling of one time for all men of good will.
The same attempt is in this course. And -- the response to such an approach is in- -- have -- to have infinite time. Once you understand that to look into a thousand years is worth your while, you become very rich. You have infinite time. And the choice of your own moment in -- inside this time becomes then a -- a very worthwhile thing. You can even become a missionary to China. Even old-fashioned and obsolete Christianity can become a very futuristic and -- unheard-of job. What you are endangered with, and what has eaten out the marrow of your viscera is that you say you have seen all the pictures. "That's all obsolete. Christianity, yes. Five hundred years ago, they went out to the Philippines and made these people into Christians. Too bad that they did. Now they are full of superstitions."
It is very risky to be a missionary. You will find, if you will become one, that your pupils always go superstitious. It's the essence of conversion that the convert is superstitious. It is impossible to convey to a convert the pure faith. He first brings with him his own prejudices, and misunderstands what he is told. So the first Christians were not the best Christians, and never are. You pooh-pooh this and say, "Oh, missions? Obsolete. Doesn't work."
Your task, my tasks, our books, and our teachings, and our actions are a little more complicated. That is, at the same time, the same act can be absolutely truthful, orthodox, correct, and spread superstitions, and inhibitions, and stupidity, and spread the night. None of our acts is clear. None of our acts is unambiguous. None of your acts--when you get married--is either a blessing or a curse. It is always both.
And when you say it is a curse, then it may become -- just begin to be a blessing.
So you- -- through history--I hope I have made this clear by my examples, a little bit--through history, we live in a much richer universe than is customary. It is not a universe of good and bad, of evil and virtuous. It is a ques- -- a situation where a whole wealth of creation is impinging upon us. Everything is possible, thanks to history, at every one moment. The sa- -- next saint can come from the Philippines or from Zambia. Probably he will not come from California. It's hi- -- at least highly improbable. It's more difficult to be a saint in California today than in Zambia. That's unexpected, because you say, "Af- -- these benighted Africans." Who is benighted? We will find out at the end of the story.
Now to be more concrete and more exact. I told you that in the year of the Lord 1889, the world entered a third millennium. And my manuscript of Magna Carta, days of the Sachsenspiegel, of the Speculum of the Saxons, which said, "We don't know at what end of the millennium we are living. And we don't know how long the time will carry us along."
That is, of course, a little different today, because we can say the millennium in which this man in 1215 wrote is over with. Well, the days of All Souls are no longer the dominating days. The days of All Bodies today are the ones that move visibly, the outer world. Because, I told you, or began to tell you, in 1889, the American Federation of Labor, under the leadership of Samuel Gompers, sent a delegation to Paris, and said, "We need an international, worldwide day of labor. This day of work shall be the 1st of May, and it must overlook all nationalistic holidays. Not the day of the Bastille, July 14th in Paris; not the day of -- 5th of November, Parliament, Gunpowder Plot in England; no national holiday, not even Lincoln's Birthday or Washington's Birthday, must interfere with the union of all hands on this globe under the auspices of a day in honor of the sweat of labor, the sweat of our brow."
The funny thing is that if you have a good idea a little too early, it is practically--usually impossible to put through. The fate of this resolution of a labor union in Paris in 1889 was -- what you must learn is -- will be your fate as a reformer also. The -- Americans could not push it through, went home dissatisfied, and disappointed and said, "These Europeans are not good for anything any longer," and recogn- -- reconciled themselves to the capitalistic world in America. And 10 years later, Labor Day was installed by the legislation in Washington. And since then, we have Labor Day. But it was a defection. The labor in -- of America went over to the entrepreneurs -- entrepreneurs, to the bankers of America. And Labor Day today is a good, bourgeois holiday, as you well know, because you had to go to -- to school after Labor Day. It is a perfectly harmless, un- -- non-combative day today in this country. It has no longer to do with the transition from a national life to an international or worldwide life, a cosmic life.
I think it's a pity. Today, the May 1st, as you know, is a demonstrative, political holiday of the Russians. And anybody in the world who is pro-Communist celebrates May 1st. And anybo- -- -body who loves Mr. Rusk celebrates May 1st. I love neither, so I don't celebrate either. -- Celebrates Labor Day, I -- beg your pardon.
So the -- we have botched it. There is no international holiday for the third millennium. Beginning the third millennium as the wor- -- the work of our brow, administered by anybody regardless of faith, language, and creed. This is how the sentence should run. How do you say? "Regardless of -- color" -- what is it? Wie?
(Race, color, or creed?)
Ja. It's wrong, you see. The important thing is "regardless of speech" -- "of language." That's not in the formula. It should be. That's the important thing. That it is not an American or a French day, you see. And that -- this is not baptized by French, or by Russia, or by America.
However, although this is mutilated, as so many things of the outgoing 19th century were already on some new track of international affairs, but were unable to pull it off, like the League of Nations itself. That's also botched. That's just rudimentary; that's mutilated; it's a stump, a rump. You m- -- ca- -- may say a rump government.
We live in the twi- -- twilight of attempts to the third millennium, but none of these steps has really carried us into the third thousand years. And it's no accident it's only 1967. There are 33 years left. After 2000, I think, people will get nervous and will say, "Let's now get going."
Well, however this may be, we cannot predict. You must take with you for your grandchildren this fact that Labor Day is the first attempt to overcome all ideological divisions. All divisions in language, all divisions in religion, all divisions in ideology, and that's quite a big order. The physical man, regardless of speech, is caught, or is chased, or is organized in Labor Day. He is asked to do something on a certain day in the year, simply because of the sweat of his brow, and not of anyth- -- because of anything that is living behind his brow.
And from the papers I have received from you, I gather that this ha- -- holds a strong -- a strong temptation; a strong, seductive element for you. It would be wonderful if people could agree, regardless of their speech. Today's issue for this last meeting should be then to tell you how far this is an illusion, how far it is not desirable that people could agree without language. If I read
your papers, one-half of you is, so to speak, attrist‚, is saddened by the fact that words divide us, that partisans- -- -ship is inevitable, once you say -- why you are a Christian or a Buddhist. And so the -- simply by the fact that you use these two names--Buddhist and Christian--you are dissolving the pattern, the tapestry of life already. And so, fed up as you are with religious squabbles -- squabbles and denominational discussions, you say, "Let's do away with all this. Let's not mention the gods."
This third millennium, in the Apocalypse, in Revelation, in the last book of the New Testament, is expecting the anti-Christ. The anti-Christ is the power in you and me to say, "It doesn't matter." And in this sense, I think we already live in the millennium of the anti-Christ. Nothing matters. It doesn't matter. You're { }, I'm { }, too. Everybody is. Pleased, at your pleasure. Take -- take your liberty. We don't mind. You say you are the best. He says he's the best. She, of course, says she's the best. So everybody is the best. Isn't that wonderful? Nobody can say anything about anybody else as being better or holier than holy. This is the general attitude today, at least in the newspapers. Everybody is right.
It's a great temptation. you see. You sa- -- save a lot of trouble if you don't have to decide that anybody is right. Because if it -- this is true what -- what these people propose, then of course "Nobody is right" and "Everybody is right" is identical. And I would say this is the anti-Christ. And the anti-Christ is pron- -- proclaimed as the content of the third millennium, as the end of the world. And it is already. If you read the Sentinel, and you read the San -- what is it? the San Jose Mercury, they are both right. Everybody is right. There can be nobody who is right. There are too many.
So -- I once went to a meeting on educational {principles}, for labor education, by the way. And I had to stick my neck out, because I was the head of a new institution which was very much under fire, you see. And I said--as you know it here in Cowell, too--that an intensive education meant taking sides, and making -- being partisan, that you could not educate people without having definite ideas and convictions, and that it was not possible to say, "Everybody is right." Whereupon the people from the same city who also were present of course got very nervous, as they would here today, and say, "But how can this man say that he knows what has to be done? Nobody knows this. E- -- nobody is right. So we must allow everybody to do something."
And the man in the chair was an old man. I'm afraid he was the -- at that time -- as old as I am now. And he coughed and he sneezed. And we depended on his final say at the end of all this discussion. And he says -- said finally, "I thank the people of the either-or, as much as the people of the one-and-theother." And that's modern man. You see, he thanked the -- the people who stood
on the decisive element of either-or as the people who -- recommended the -- what's this in -- in -- in English, the "sowohl als auch"? the -- wie?
({ }.)
Ja, ja, ja. Quite. I think that is modern man quite well photographed, I mean. The chairman knew that peop- -- some people were for the either-or, and some were for the both. And so you -- he was for both-both.
That's by and large what every Christian minister today is expected to say. It's of course utter nonsense. And he certainly cannot help his people to go to Heaven, this manner. But what does it matter? You either go to Heaven, or you don't go to Heaven, and both is right. Both, always both.
These thousand years in -- ahead of us, will have to be lived by most people in great lonelin- -- loneliness. There will be nobody in -- in certain authority. Even the pope now has committees -- which he has to ask. And they don't ans- -- answer him. And he then doesn't know the answer. Poor man. He shouldn't rely on committees. You know, in his own heart, he has much better stars than with all these experts.
A kind of insanity has befallen the world, with this committee business, you see. You will get a committee which tells you whether you should get- -- marry this girl or not. No committee can solve your problem. This thinking in committees is the insanity of the anti-Christian millennium which lies -- ahead of us. I warn you against it; use it as little as possible. Postpone it. It is impossible to live happily in -- in a millennium of committees. In your own heart is the committee, of course, this plurifariousness.
Most people today are pluralistic. They are split. They contain all the refractory and contradictory elements that can be found on every principle of ex- -- your existence. Should you save? Should you waste? Should you spend? Should you love? Should you fear? All this has to be decided. But you have a committee that says, "Twenty percent are in favor of this and 10 percent are in favor of this," and so on, and so on. And you never know what the outcome is of these percentages.
So this is -- the future man is a percentage man. And that is to say he is not a man. The abolition of mankind is -- is in great practice at this moment. A man who cannot decide is -- has ceased to be a man. And I'm afraid the women of today try to corrupt us all into this state of affairs. Because it makes you feel superior. You look upon a man who is -- he's at the same time the opposites -- make him look -- as though he was -- superior. Superior with what? That would
be the question.
There is one hitch, which may show you where the error in this transition from the second millennium to the third occurs. In the fir- -- second millennium, if you were a good Frenchman, you did your duty in Paris. And if you were a good American, it wasn't just in New York, but in other cities, too--even Kansas City--you could be a very good American. Today, you have -- at the same time to be a good American, a good -- good cosmopolitan, et cetera, and a good professional, and therefore you are -- we are all over-asked. That many virtues you cannot have at the same time. They cancel each other out.
Now you would say, "Why not? As long as this carries along, as there is not war, no explosion, let nobody make decisions of this moralistic, relig- -- religious character." People don't have to decide whether they want to be Roman Catholic, or Presbyterian. They are both. Isn't that wonderful? They meet in a summer school, you see. And say, "Here are 50 Presbyterians, and here are 50 Roman- -- Romanists, and we get along beautifully," you see. That's called "discussion" or "debate." And now they have a word: "dialogism." And you see, "It's wonderful. We are all dialogists."
There's one hitch. And this I must bring to your attention, because it is mostly forgotten today. In the papers which you have written me, this mistake, or this gap is very saillant, very, very strong. You speak in these papers--partly, at least--of God, and dispose of Him in one way or the other as to your mercy. He must be this way or the other. There is one hitch in this discussion, that God is the same for every one of us. There is only one God. And funny enough, in most of your papers, that's never mentioned. You try to define the divinity on your own -- at your own risk. That's perfectly valueless. The thing -- only becomes interesting if everybody else and you adore the same creator. And that is a big -- big order. You see, there are several billion people on earth. And as long as not all people worship God, you don't know who God is. It is the God who blinds you and opens the eyes of others. And that's why you have to listen to others for -- example, too, because you may be deaf, and blind, and dumb.
It's very strange. Not one person in the papers I have read sees that the crisis of religion, of which the people speak so much, does not consist in your inability or ineptitude of defining God Almighty. We can't do this, either -- neither, {Kendall}. But in the great riddle, that you and I have to worship the same creator, then the thing become- -- gets very exciting. Because there are, as I said, 4 billion people on this globe -- or more--I don't know at this moment the -- the official figure. And they all claim that all people of all times have had to worship, and will have to worship one power that governs your and my steps.
Now that's interesting, and that's dangerous, and that seems to be nearly incompatible with the weakness of your and my IQ. How can people who have an IQ which is -- seems -- it's always very moderate--whether it's 158 or 159, that doesn't help--compared to the task that we should know who God is? Seems in- -- unavailable.
So -- may I say this in general about your papers. In as far as this problem comes in, the greatest obstacle of modern -- of any man at any time on this earth isn't even mentioned. That when you try to define the -- religion as perfectly un- -- uninteresting, it would only become interesting if you felt that every reader of your paper would have to agree that he worships the same God as you, otherwise these are little -- china dollies, I mean. They -- they may be very pretty, but they are brittle, frail, and mean absolutely nothing. And I have to say, gentlemen and ladies, most of your gods do not avail to anything. They don't cut any ice. Nobody has a private God. The whole question of humanity is -- do we -- can we worship one God? This is your problem, Mr. {Dickerson}.
However, I don't think the thing is so -- so impossible as on the surface of things it would look. If you compare the people who write articles, the people who make speeches, the people who write letters to their sweetheart about their idea of the divine, and the vast universe that has to be -- is governed by one and the same power, and makes -- that makes demands on every one of us, probably every one a different demand -- that is not so hopeless as it might look. When you first see these papers written by youngsters who proclaim that they think God should be: He and He, and don't see how ridiculous this is.
The real situation after 1889 seems to be that the private person in every one of us is much more inv- -- invisible, much more in -- how do you -- would you say? -- in the foreground than the real acting man. The man who in his profession or so carries about in his real sense--by building a house, or by being -- construing a machine, you have of course a theology: you do something with your time, with your energy, and you do it seriously, because a machine can carry -- go wrong, and it can explode, and it can kill somebody. Then you are brought to trial; then you have to say, "But I had to construe a machine. You -- you must understand this; it is risky. You can't send me to the -- to the guillotine, just because the machine exploded."
And so you let him off, and say this was just -- he was not very careful, but he didn't -- he mean -- meant well. We have, for every serious failing for you and me, we have today very grand excuses. And really a man is rarely executed for having just led to the death of other people. By accident. You just think of the highway accidents, you see. When you run over somebody, we are not executed for this. We have an insurance; and we go home and forget about it.
In other words, the modern world tries to live 90 percent of your day as playboys, as children, innocent children who -- who are covered for the accidents on the highway which they produce, for the damage they do in one way or the other, by going into museum and scratching there the pictures or something. Everybody is insured. The insurance is one wonderful way, of the third millennium, of blinding us to our real responsibilities. We do much more harm than we know we do, because we are insured against the consequences. So the harm is not done by us, you see, knowing what hap- -- what follows.
So I would suggest that the third millennium should deserve the title--and that is probably why it has been called the millennium of the anti-Christ in Revelation--before your and my own eyes, the day, the 24 hours which you have to live today or tomorrow is -- at 90 percent filled with arranged things, play things, unreal things, semi-real things. Man's life is divided into play and seriousness.
Now there is nothing in this world of today that cannot be made into play. The begetting of children can be made into an amusement, you see. This has been said cynically: if the consequences were not there, it would be a good social game. This is the desire of modern man, the third millennium man -- everywhere. And that's in Zambia, or in Senegal, or in -- where is Mr. Nkrumah? Where was he, the bloody tyrant? Nkrumah?
(Ghana?)
Ghana. Ja. That's -- was the Eldorado of the third millennium existence, you see, with the golden shirt for the lady. Imagine! A golden shirt! Terrible idea, but a good plaything. Why shouldn't she wear a golden shirt? She couldn't sleep in it. You can't sleep in a golden shirt, you know. It's a wonderful idea. It costs terribly -- money; the country went bankrupt, but Ghana -- and something fabulous was done. She had a golden shirt, this girl. And this is modern man.
I think the golden shirt of Madame Nkrumah is by and large a very good example of our way of swindling ourselves through life. The consequences of our actions are eliminated, whether we have abortion, or whether we have condoms, or what- -- whatever we have, there is a way of getting around the consequences. Wherever you can eliminate the consequences of any action, there is no action. And we don't -- haven't even a very good word for this playboy existence, but it is the most -- the most -- the best expression, I think. Why it is so difficult to today know, to say anything, to teach, is that nine-tenths of our endeavors--and you are all included and I'm included, too--is an attempt to make use of our fabulous technical facilities to abolish consequences. Therefore we can do innumerable more things than we could do before, and without -- without a
vengeance, without consequence. And wherever man lives this world -- in this world without consequences, you see, no discussion about history, no discussion about the future, not even about the past, is of any importance. It's not worth your mind; it's not worth your tongue. Language dies.
This -- Mr. -- this Mr. -- who -- who's this mes- -- man from Toronto? Mr. {Laclumen} says rightly, we re-enter a re-tribalization process. He's right. At this moment, at this turning point of the times, the serious character of life is pushed aside. Re-tribalization means it is not necessary that one puts one's own name behind or under one's action. As a group, all the dentists --.
I once had to lecture -- or three times I had to lecture to the dentists' convention. They wanted to know about their character as dentists. Very interesting. But once you plunge into this attempt to characterize dentists, you see, it's something inhuman about it. As with all professional talks. If you talk to the grammar school teachers, I think the person of the teacher is already on the way out, is already wrong. All our classifications today--what's called "sociology," and "economy," and "statistics," and "psychology"--is an attempt to cheapen the responsibility of the doer, to say it's not quite you. "It's just a class; it's just a profession. All teachers do this, all ministers do this. All politicians do this." Which is of course nonsense. And it's the cheapest way out today, and -- by which people comfort themselves, but the -- it's a -- way of going to Hell.
Hell consists of generalities. And Hell is unable to say, "It's you, Sir. You only live once," you see. All minor, unimportant classifications tell you, "Oh no, it's not you, you do it. But as a doctor, you must do this." And "As a teacher, you must do this." And "As, as, as, as, as." So it ends I think with a-s-s.
This is rampant. Everyone is brought up, everybody will tempt you in the same manner. As soon as you pass an examination, some secretary comes and "Won't you join our alumni association?" Now what is an alumni association? An attempt to hide behind the bush. Then you are alumnus, and not yourself. That's of course one of the center positions today of the anti-Christ. Because it is wonderful to hide, to hide behind some generalization.
Now "alumnus" is such a generalization, It doesn't exist, because it's just in numbers. Of course, 500 students of the same school of the same year have nothing in common after 10 years, you see. Their -- their women can't stand each other, and where that is, they have nothing to do with each other. Why should they form an alumnae association? But they do. And they even meet, and they sing, and they have caps!
That's degrading. Humiliating. It's getting more difficult all the time to
become a person. That is, to identify the carrier of these two legs, and two arms, and a heart, and a stomach, and lungs as the man who has really said this and done this. Very few people who even struggle for this. Most people try to hide behind some label which takes away their -- their personal action.
If this goes on, the third millennium will have the character of non-existence. And it isn't -- we aren't sure what is going to happen. As I said, the -- the New Testament felt that the anti-Christ was inevitable, that he would -- have such -- he would hold out such a temptation to the ordinary believer.
When I was young, people of course -- all my -- the educated people around me--all the professors and all the doctors, and my parents, and my -- we ourselves, of course, we children--we said, "These were benighted people who believed in the coming of the anti-Christ. That was all over. couldn't happen," you see. That was before the Enlightenment had cleared the way for Benjamin Franklin.
I'm afraid it is a little different after these two world wars. It seems that this way out is the great desire of the masses of man. They all -- all look for ways in which the time of today is not a sequence of the times that have -- preceded it. The great dream of the anti-Christ--and I use this old-fashioned term on purpose, so that at least once in your life you may hear that one can take this very seriously. It isn't fashionable, but it is an absolutely indispensable expression; it's not a joke. The anti-Christ says, "We don't need all the expensive Christianity, we don't need pilgrimage, we don't need -- chastisement, we don't need penance. We, as the anti-Christ, can do this as in play. In five minutes, we are on top of the world." That's the anti-Christ; it's cheap.
And you just -- we have to read the papers. They all promise you a shortcut. And where there is a shortcut, there is the anti-Christ. Because of course, the -- what is Christianity? What -- are these 2,000 years? What is All Souls and All Saints? And what is Labor Day? The recognition that there is an equation between effort and result. That if you don't give your life, you can't earn your life. That if you don't die, you can't rise from the dead. That everything is in- -- unalterable, opposed to any shortcut. That where you take a shortcut, you are leaving life. And most of you try, therefore, not to live. Because who wants to pay the full -- price?
Well, Jesus, as you know, He didn't have to die; He didn't have to go to the Cross; He didn't have to pay the penalty of His existence. Nobody asked Him. But He knew that if He didn't pay the full price, it would have not -- no consequences for the rest of mankind, for the whole future of the human race. Any act which is worth doing demands infinite devotion. And any act you are
recommended today, is recommended to you with the implication that it only demands a very little effort. Don't fall for these small efforts. They aren't worth doing. They are all cheating God. And yourself.
This is why I concentrate at this moment as the issue. The third millennium will be divided between the very few faithful who know that life is exact, like arithmetic, like geometry. And that the investment and the outcome of the investment must correspond. You can't become a millionaire at the stock exchange. Don't believe it for a minute, in real life. Money? That's dirt, anyway. And you can speculate on the stock exchange, and be loc- -- lucky, and get away with murder, that -- that is not your own life. Your own life ma- -- demands that the -- your devotion is genuine, that you don't ask something for nothing. And you don't -- and you know very well that the -- the cheaters, the murderers, the thieves, the liars, the -- the slanderers can only be beaten if somebody does more than is necessary, if you and I are somewhere willing to suffer without -- without reason, so to speak, innocently.
This is not fashionable today, but gentlemen, the -- the story of mankind is very severe. The -- that victims of the sacrificers in the tribe, they were human beings who were innocent, as Iphigenia in Aulis. Or anybody else slaughtered, like Isaac, whom his father was willing to slaughter. What had Isaac done to be slaughtered? But without his being slaughtered, the father believed that the tribe of his family could not prosper. And certainly this was more reasonable to believe than that he could prosper by speculating at the stock exchange. It was an attempt to get something for nothing, which is utterly ridiculous, which is never true. And don't believe that when somebody makes such a gain at the stock exchange, not -- nobody loses. That's in- -- untrue, too. It's very funny that the story of all these riches in the -- at the -- in Wall Street has never been written from the other side, of the victims, who have not -- who have lost their money. Or the Czech miners who have lost their health in Pennsylvania, in the same mines in which Mr. Rockefeller made his millions.
You live in a -- in a -- in an -- a fairy tale, I can only say. When I read the American history books, not one word of truth is in them. The sufferings are not there. The devotion, the willingness of mothers and housewives to suffer with injustice. But that is the essence of humanity. Not one of us can claim that he can limit his existence on this earth without benefiting from somebody's good will, somebody's patience, somebody's willingness, you see, to bear the brunt of a situation, which you have -- on -- in which you are benefiting.
And therefore, it is worth our while to think that the third millennium will, despite all these wonderful playboys and playgirls, will ha- -- have to go on. There is no real distinction. The future will probably be not very denominational.
It will not have many official saints declorar- -- declared, as they could in the -- in the first thousand years. The third millennium will be an attempt to -- not to drown in play. If this can be done, if the -- a majority of people can be persuaded to suffer willingly, then we can go on. If most people, however, will go to the movies every evening, the world cannot go on.
This is the issue. And all the western world, gentlemen, at this moment--ladies, I should include, I know--the -- all the western world has not yet found the certainty, whether it can persuade the colored people to share a life of suffering. They -- we persuade now the people in Brasilia that they will share our movie service. They -- we may. But that isn't important. We should not transfer our movies to Brazil, I think, because the consequences might be that the Brazilians never, never, never become our brothers. Because people at play are not brotherly or sisterly. It is not enough to play together to be really common. That -- it is one of the ideologies in this country, that if the people play together, they love each other. It is a little more complicated.
It is -- what -- and that's why I have tried to pick this last me- -- the last -- your reunion as to the future. The riddle of history, of course, must be time. The riddle of history is our relation to the timing of events, to our -- the timing of our own lives. It makes a difference whether you marry at 14, or at 24, or at 34, or at 44. And the -- the ages of man can be divided by the ages of marriage. It's a different country in which a person is 30 when he marries, and 18 when he marries, you see. If he marries at 18, he is divorced at 22. And he is. And the poor woman then has to -- has to see how he goes after a young woman after he -- she has nourished him for the first four years of this first -- his first married life. That's today the American situation.
Because time is your and my greatest mystery. The timing of our lives can only be done once. Once it is spoiled, it is spoiled. The sacrament of -- man is in his timing. We only all can pray that we are treated mercifully, because we -- since we have to choose the times of our acts in life, alone, single-handed, it is unavoidable that there are terrible mistakes. At this moment, since the end of the 19th century, the freedom of man to act when he pleases is the utterly new millennium, which has never existed before. And which has terrible consequences. And we have to face them, not only, but we have to make the best of it.
Now the mystery of the Christian era is that there is no mistake, no sin, no failure that cannot be amended. There is -- strangely enough in the book of fate, for every precautious, premature, or too-late action, some remedy. And the tapestry of biography, the tapestry of human lives--you just look around and see it in your own family--is -- has today become endless. The combinations between people who get married, or don't get married, or have been married is today a --
a kaleidoscope. And if you look into the better lives of better people, you find great miracles, great mysteries. And I think the cultivation of these mysteries is the future of our race. There will be no future unless you people, as any older person can tell you, respect the moment of your acts so much that you know the timing is of the essence. It doesn't matter that you marry; it matters very much when you marry. The same with your studies, the same with your vocation. The when is the great mystery today.
There's a very simple reason for this. People now tend to become 150 years of age. And if this horrible dream ever should come true, obviously on the one side, you have a telephone in which you can -- on -- by which you can be connected in two minutes to the antipodes, and in two minutes can bridge the universe; and on the other hand, you try to live 150 years, whereas normally before, you lived 70. It means that you can pack in 150 years innumerable more decisions than you -- we had to do before. How this can be done, nobody knows. I shudder by -- with the idea that we should all be asked to live beyond our time. We will be absolutely monsters if this is demanded from us. You and I can't do this. This is not a hope. It is a fear that this old age could -- should spread. We are not meant to live -- pack 15- -- in 150 years meaningless bets, and meaningless airplane rides, and meaningless motels -- stays, and what have you. And even -- meaningless friendships, because you can have too much of every good thing. And how you people here, as you sit here, shall be able to live another 90 years, I do not know. God bless you, God save you, and God protect you; and may He not demand from you this impossible task. You are not equipped for this.
The limitations of life today are the task of wisdom, and not the extension. It is terrifying to think that every one of us, every year still has to find some -- some new card game which he has to learn. Boredom itself -- personified, with amusement, coupled with amusement, or on the basis of -- of total amusement and total boredom. And these empty hearts, which I see today in so many people are really very frightful. This -- this world must devour itself.
The third millennium has -- is faced not with war, not with starvation, not with emptiness, not with isolation, not with ignorance. It is threatened by everything. This term, that we can do anything and everything, is enough to kill man, to make it -- his life worthless, absolutely worthless. You and I can only live under necessity. The blessing, to be allowed to do that which is necessary, to recognize it, to carry it out against all odds, that is the beatitude; that is the saintliness; that is the soul- -- ensoulment of life. Anything that is just possible, that is just permissible is a curse, a real curse. That you can do these things--gentlemen, do you think --? For children, that's very nice. But anybody over 20 should be totally indifferent to something that he can do. The whole question for a human being is: Must it be done? Is it necessary?
You had a president who never said a word if he could help it. His name was Calvin Coolidge. And he was a farmer's son. And he's quite know- -- wellknown for his -- for his brevity, and succinctness, and conciseness of expression. So when a law was sent up to the White House, and Mr. Coolidge was expected to sign it, he had only one question: "Is it necessary?" And if it wasn't necessary, he would veto it. In great wisdom, he knew that the curse of legislation, the curse of modern politics--be it in -- in Sacramento or in Washington--is superfluous legislation. That's forbidden. It destroys the respect for the law. It destroys the meaning of legislation. It destroys the whole machinery. We have all -- every one here knows that we have too many laws. We have a total indifference to legislation. A law -- one law a year: that's a good legislation. A thousand laws a year: that's a curse.
Now this "too much" is -- only shows you that we have -- are on the way of fabricating a playlike existence. If a thousand la- -- bills can be passed in Washington, no law can be passed. Because how can thousand laws demand your and my allegiance? We don't even know that they have been passed. And in this plethora -- under this rainstorm, we live day by day. And therefore, the respect for the law is on the way out. What's the law? It's one of these many items, you see, 50 to the second, in the Congress. That's very serious.
I'm a lawyer by profession, from house. And I know that one of the rarest things in the law is the respect for the law by the lawyers. And the only way in which you can coerce the lawyers, the politicians, the senators, the law- -- the -- the attorney generals, and the attorn- -- district attorneys is by making it very difficult for them to act, by creating a bottleneck, by saying it is very difficult to get this law passed. Then they will think twice before they pass the law. And they will respect it, because it has taken blood, sweat, and tears.
Now we are back to this playboy existence. Since 1889, the world lives in a millennium of play, of cheapness, of "Anything -- goes." The man Nietzsche, Friedrich Nietzsche deserves your sympathy because he tried to revive religion by proclaiming, "God is dead." Exactly like the "death of" -- "God of" -- what is it now? "death of God," the theologians today, who have heard of Nietzsche a hundred years later.
This man was serious. He was a minister's son. He was a poetical soul. He was a great musician. and he saw that the professors had undermined all the respect for divinity. And he hoped that by challenging them, they might come to their senses. And -- it is one of the great lessons, I think, which you have to learn in this country, that he who says, "God is dead" may be the great lover of God. And he who says every Sunday, "O Lord, O Lord," may be one of His killers. Because it is too cheap. If you say it too often, "O God," nobody will believe that
you mean it.
The blasphemy today is in the cheapness. God today is an everyday affair. Well, He is however a holiday affair. And a nation that has no holidays cannot recuperate. Heaven knows, it's -- it's worth your -- your perspiration to find how sanctity can be reproduced.
May I put on these dates? From Easter to No- -- to All Saints, a thousand years were spent with inculcating into the tribes, the empires, the cities of the Greeks, and the Jewish priesthood the verity that the same man had to be a prophet, and an ancestor, and a poet, and a priest. And that these four great creations of antiquity could not lie separate, that it wasn't enough to be in Egypt, and a priest. But you had to be in -- in -- in Egypt also a Jewish pri- -- monk, as Athanasius proved, and A- -- St. Anthony.
I have tried to show you that this interpenetration of the inter- -- independent creatures of antiquity has been achieved in the last 2,000 years; that you and I, we are--whether you like it or not--participating in All Saints through some models, in your vocation or in your upbringing, or in the choice of your prototype as women or as male -- men. He -- you -- he- -- everybody has his hero, even if he doesn't know who that is. You are all conforming to certain human beings who are not members of antiquity, but who belong to the Christian era. You cannot be an Achilles. That's very strange, but it is a fact. That is, your pagan models have vanished.
All the attempts--this has been tried, if you think of Swinburne, and such English crackpots--they -- it is impossible to imitate antiq- -- ancient men. You go sick. You fall -- go mad. You go insane. But you can follow the example of these men who, in the last 2,000 years, have solved this riddle of imparting the whole of life to their own ex- -- biography, to their own existence. Obviously, today, after the two World Wars, and after Nietzsche's cry, "God is dead," there is some--and after the institution of Labor Day, this going-back to the body, his physique of man, instead of his soul, or his -- his religious genius as a saint--we have to ask ourselves: how you and I get orientation.
And the last word I can only try to say to you is --. Let me see: if you look at these three dates, I would say they delineate your and my existence in the Spirit to this day. And they will from now on, forever. There will be no new. And what do they say? The physical man comes forward in spring, as it is nature, when it begins to grow; the ice is dissolving, the snow is melting. That's Labor Day; that's the pure, physical aspect; that's the aspect of the world. The November 2nd, All Souls, that's the day of the community, of the nations. I said to you, on All Souls, all the nations take their birthday, take their beginning. Bastille Day
in Paris is an offspring of All Souls. The individual on -- All Souls Day is not in demand, but his cooperative effort, his coexistence, his similarity with his comrades in life, in history, in coming forward as a Frenchman, as a brother in the same village, or whatever it is. And before, we had All Saints. These are the great giants who in their individual person, have stood in the limelight and allowed you and me to say, "I will be like St. Benedict," or "I will be like St. Augustine," and have set the example of an individual, sole, lonely existence, which isn't for everybody.
You can study this row and find something quite interesting in this. May 1st and November 1st are separated by six months. Now the ancient, tribal calendar all over the globe had exactly this same rhythm. It -- only lasted six months. The Pleiades, the -- the stars--or how do you pronounce these stars?--they are in a -- significant constellation at the end of April and at the end of October. And wherever you -- look in the old traditions of the folklore, the Pleiades are the calendar constellations which were used by primitive man to or- -- get orientation. It is, I think, quite mysterious that these two dates, November 1st and May 1st, now at the end of history, again play this role between Church and state for our orientation. November 1st is the recognized date for the various denominations. The people go to their graves. The churchyards are visited on November 1st, on All Souls, are they not? And -- on All Saints. And May -- is the day of -- for the unions, or for labor, for the May f- -- celebrations.
It is -- rather mysterious that over 7,000 years, the most significant data of the beginning are again significant today. The patience with us impatient people, who are all for innovations and changes constantly, impresses me. We are very conservative. We haven't made any dif- -- any real, ra- -- you see, radical change. Our incisive moments of meditation, or contemplation, or celebration are exactly the same as they have been in the beginning. Which is a kind of -- I think a reassuring item about our i- -- own identity. We are really identifiable, historically, through 7,000 years. So there must be something to it. Summer and winter of course is a very simple division. And in this sense, May 1st and in- -- November 1st make sense. Perhaps not in California, but in all normal places.
The second interesting item is that the Church, the official promoter of a unity of the human race, the first power that has declared that the earth was the Lord's, and everything that is in it...
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