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

(Philosophy 53, October 8, 1953. Testing one, two, three. One, two, three.)

... solution, so that we feel that we have some firm ground under our feet and are not just drifting. This has a special reason, gentlemen. It is my experience that most courses introducing you to civilization or history, you see, wrongly begin somewhere in the past and then lead nowhere. So from somewhere to nowhere, I don't wish to lead you. I wish to begin with a goal, and then show the way towards it, and the reasons why this goal is really the goal, because there is no other way out.

You -- this method of the course has something to do, gentlemen, with the good life. The good life is not a life that doesn't know its direction. It is groping for the means, but it is quite sure of its destiny, of its end. You live -- try to live a life that's just the other way around. You begin somewhere, and don't want to know where it should lead you to. If you lea- -- read any literary critic in this country on great art, you will find that most people today are under the con- -- impression that art must always hold a surprise, that the happy ending, you see, must come in the last minute and send you home with the feeling as a detective story: why didn't we know this all the time, that this would be the solution? That is, gentlemen, the secular mind, the ordinary mind of yours, the animal mind goes along and is finally surprised by the solution. Any such literary production that -- like a detective story -- cannot be read twice, because you know the solution, and the secret is out; and therefore the reviewers of -- you know, of detective stories have agreed that they must not give the secret, because otherwise the poor publisher wouldn't sell one copy, because even if the review only would divulge the solution of the mystery story, it would no longer sell.

That is, the good fortune of the book depends on your not knowing the end. This is an imitation of the animal life in your own life, that you do not know the end of your own life, and you -- try to keep it hidden. Perhaps you may not have to die. Although Johnny and -- and -- and Billy have died, perhaps you can escape it. That's, so to speak, the fervent hope of the animal in us. We don't want to know. We don't want to know. You take the hero -- you take Christ's life -- who knew not only that He had to die one day, but He even was -- had resolved that He should invest His death as a capital of mankind in a new bank for the unity of the human race. Here is a man who faces the future, who knows perfectly well that we all have to die. And his question is only: how to invest His living powers best. But the direction, the consumption, their death -- His death is always with Him, all the time. You try to forget it.

Now the animal in us, gentlemen, is therefore always reflected in the socalled fiction. You call literature "fiction." And it is fiction. And the early Christians have taught me a lesson. I come more and more, the older I grow, to a -- have a direct disgust with fiction. I do not see why I should waste my time with books. There's a new novel written now by a 23-year-old Harvard man, classmate of this gentlemen here. Well, I'm not going to read such a book. All the reviews tell me that it's just fabricated. I don't care. Why should I listen to the fabrications of a 23-year-old guy? I'm -- I'm not interested. I don't want to have fiction. I want to have truth.

Now gentlemen, all great art gives you to know the end of the story before you start. Homer -- you open The Iliad, and you know it all in the first verses. You read The Odyssey, you know it all when you open the book. There's no plot to take you by surprise. What you read is the "how," not the "that." What you read is how it comes about, because that's where we are distinguishable. How we live. We all have to die. And a great poet takes this for granted.

The small -- the -- the fictionist, the imitator of literature, what you call the "American literature" is just all -- salesworthy, you see. It's commercialized. They want to keep your attention by the plot, by the surprise, by the detective {thing}. You don't know what's ahead of you. But take Wolfe. There's no -- nothing to surprise you about the end. He's a real { }. Or you take Melville. There's nothing in the story that is really at the end different from --the beginning. First page and the last page, you are exactly in the same climate. Any great -- or the same with Hawthorne, even, although he is certainly not a -- an overpow- -- overpowering poet, you see.

But a genuine poet, gentlemen, doesn't have his contact with you through his keeping you just in suspense, but making you feel that you are living in one climate all the time, and -- he can very well give away his secret, his so-called secret, I mean, the solution beforehand, because he keeps you in suspense by retardation, by showing how difficult it was to bring it about. As Virgil said, "So much work it was to found the Roman race." But he begins immediately, "{Siden}," you see, "Arma virumque cano." Of arms and man I sing -- of -- of Aeneas and Anchises, how they found Rome finally, you see. But then there is this great sentence, you see, {tanta} moles erat Romanam condore gentem. Such a trouble it was to come down to brass tacks and found the city of Rome. The moles, the -- the difficulty, the same is true of Tolstoy, War and Peace, one of the greatest books ever written, you see. There's no surprise in this story, but there is a melody, and just as much as any -- great musician gives you the theme in the first beats, and then enlarges on it, and doesn't hide it, you see, under the bushel, but once you take the Fifth Symphony, you see --

[opening notes of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, then a shift to another theme]

Well, it will never be better, that's all -- all there is to it. These two themes, these two -- have you heard it? Well, that's the story. And that's great music. No surprise. No detective story. But you are so mistaught that you always think that is not -- that the -- the whole gist is as in a short story, you see. When does -- the moment come when she proposes to her man, you see. You know the degradation of American literature now goes so far that they even have -- make always the girl propose to the man. And the trick is only, you see, to do it in some way you have never read before. This is -- has nothing to do with literature. Just -- it's is saleable.

I had once a jung -- young friend. I saved her from committing suicide, so she was always very grateful to me. She went to Radcliffe -- alias Harvard, and she wrote her autobiography. And of course, since she had an exciting past, as I -- you can understand from the -- this experience with I -- which I had with her, that she had something to write about. So she got back this paper, with the -- with the remark by her English professor, "Saleable."

Not an "A," you see, not "Excellent," but "Saleable." That's the ultimate degradation, you see, of the human pen. That was the criterion this -- this asinine man had, you see, by which he -- that's then called "education." In Radcliffe. It was not Tuck School. It was not a commercial school. It was not a school -- and then -- and I mean -- I just felt that -- well, the -- the bottom fell out of -- so to speak, on -- from my faith in -- in education in this country, if an English teacher can tell a student who gives away her most personal life experience, you see, in an eloquent manner, "Saleable." Is this the goal?

If this is the goal, then you understand why it's -- has to be tricks. If it is saleable, you see, it is just imitation of other literature. Anything which you write for sale already has a standard set by others, because you want to judge -- if people will sell it, you can only judge it by other books. Any great book is not for sale, because it creates a new market. It -- is a new product, if it is an original writing. You don't know if there's anything { } so to speak. You will know that even the -- all the American publishers in New York -- as they are concentrated there and going bankrupt every day -- they never know of a success ahead of time, you see. They are always surprised. When Mrs. -- one of the great successes was The Good Earth. Well, the publisher had no idea that it would be a great success, you see. You remember The Good Earth by -- by Pearl Buck.

Well, that's -- that comes to mind. It's an old story, an old experience, that a real bestseller cannot be known beforehand by the publisher. He has no idea.

They always try -- I mean, they have a kind of -- of -- of course, the sorcerers of Egyp- -- pharaoh-of-Egypt service. I mean, they have prognostications, and astrologers, and just as the people at the stock exchange. They always want to know ahead of time when they are going to lose their money. But they always lose it and they don't know ahead of time.

But you are the -- living in a -- in a -- absolutely debased and falsified climate. And so I have to cry you awake, gentlemen. Homer is not a great poem because you are kept waiting for the outcome. It is a great poem because although you know the outcome from the very beginning, you cannot help reading it. Just think of the Bible. The whole outcome of the Bible is known, you see, that Christianity would be a complete failure. And you read it just the same, if you -- if you have at all the -- the nerve. It's not saleable. The Bible is -- I mean, no publisher in New York would take a book of the contents of the Bible today and publish it. It is -- can be no success. The whole story is known beforehand. The fall of man in the first chapter. It's all there. Man is just so depraved as he is today. And he is so this way from the beginning.

So you -- you have, you see, lost even the organs of this dis- -- decrimination. And therefore, gentlemen, I have to try to -- to impose on you the method by which I say the American story is vital to you, because the outcome can already be known, and not although the outcome can already be known. Do -- can you see the difference? And all the people try to -- to lull you into this insecurity as though the outcome couldn't be known. It is very well known today what could be the contribution of America to -- to the world at large, and what cannot be. We can already say that the denominational tradition of the churches in Europe cannot be the American contribution, because we have 287 denominations, you see. So that's out, you see. But we can also say, gentlemen, that the independence of America from the rest of the world cannot be America's contribution to the world, because the world is sick with independent parts, you see, and must have a planetary organ- -- order. Therefore we already know that's out, you see. The question is, then, what is not out? And I do think that the James family stands out there as something to be considered very seriously. But it ha- -- they have already lived.

I come back to my first statement in the first meeting, that your problem is to understand that something can have existed in the flesh and yet not reached you in its spirit. If you do not believe this, you cannot believe that Buddha, or Lao-Tse, or Christ, or the Bible have anything to tell you, because that's long ago.

I never understand these people in this country who on the the one-hand side pay lip service to the Church, or to religion, or go even with their family to a service and on the other hand say that history is bunk. Well but -- I told -- we

talked about it, you see. Jesus, after all, died 1900 years ago. So in between there has alwa- -- only been bunk? I don't believe that He can claim for Himself that He has more historical rights to talk to us than any -- all the things that have gone on -- in between. This is to me too artificial. If there hasn't been -- a stream of spiritual life reaching out from Him to us, to this day, then I shall not have the power to say why American denominationalism is -- is not the blessing we have to impart to the world, and why American nationalism, or independence, or isolationism cannot be the gift we have to impart to Iraq, and Iran, and Germany, and Poland, and Norway at this moment. But you know this, as well as I. We only have -- I have to cry you awake to the fact that you know much more about America's contribution to the future of humanity than at this time you have the -- the likelihood to -- to admit.

What have the James family done? Well, gentlemen, Mr. Henry James, Sr., was a heretic. That is, he did not believe in organized Christianity. His church was his family conversation. That is, he had tenets that coincided I think with orthodox Christianity, and he found it sufficient all through his life, to his death in 1882, to expound this vigorously within a tremendous conversation in his family. And his eloquence resounds in the diary of his daughter Alice, in the novels of his son Henry, in the heroism of his son Robertson, and in the philosophy of William James.

That is, he found a tremendously rich, colorful, and you may say "prismatic" response on echo in what his children did with the words they had heard from his mouth. He expounded the Gospel at his family table as a father. And back comes to him one tongue, philosophy; one tongue, that's Alice's, the invalid, most eloquent woman that ever lived in this country dia- -- in her diaries, they were -- have been privately printed by the family, but you can -- I think we have it here -- anybody interested? Then the epistolary of the -- of William James as published by Ralph Barton Perry, and the novels of his -- Henry.

Now, spiritually and -- so to speak, as a problem of the mind, we -- you see then that here is a strange situation. A man who day and night only preaches the law of the Lord, as in the first Psalm says, he is like a tree planted at the rivers of water who bears his fruit day and night by speaking of the law of the Lord, you see, day and night, and his -- the answer is in various -- idioms and dialects from his children, and they are -- these idioms are secular.

So gentlemen, you may say one equals infinity in the religious tongue; there is only one way of speech; that in the secular, you can respond from the periphery in many tongues. So if you -- think this man stands in the middle, you can also say this is the center, and this is the periphery, and gentlemen, the echo of a good teacher, or of a poet, in the hearts of his audience, or of his spectators is

many-fold, and can never be in the same idiom. Not the man who repeats the words of the master is his disciple, you see. But St. Paul is the master, the best disciple, and you know that St. Paul never quotes the Lord. He always speaks in the {live} moment, as Mr. Richards, I'm told, has asked you to speak. Did you go to his lecture? Who did? Well, you see.

The -- the Paul, the Apostle, never quotes Jesus. If you read his letters, it's all fresh. It's all expressed, you see, without any quotation from the Gospels. No Sermon on the Mount quoted, as the pious people do today. If you want to be -- lead a good life, gentlemen, don't quote the Sermon of the Mount, because Christianity has nothing to do with quotations. The apostolic life is to speak with the same power, and without glibness, and not saying, "so on and so forth," or "at some way," or "anyway," or "I think you understand," and "if you know what I mean," you see, and all these terrible words. They are all agnostic words. If a man says to me, "You know what I mean?" I can only always answer, "No, I don't know what you mean. Please tell me."

Well, gentlemen, we are in the midst of a tremendous problem and you don't see it, and that's why I -- invite you to wake up to the fact that the relation of such an eloquent father who, outside the Church -- without a pulpit, without being a bishop, without being a saint, without being an apostle -- is able to -- to fertilize, to incite in four members of his family such a tremendous intellectual life, you see, is a very serious power behind the throne, so to speak. And we have to look into this very definitely. You -- we may say, gentlemen, that in America, the Gospel has been unchurched in the person of Henry James. It has become unchurched.

You still find the Mormons having to write a second book, a second gospel, The Book of the Mormons, you see. They -- that's in the middle of the -- you see, Young and Brigham, you see, in the -- in the middle of the 19th century. Here however is a man who definitely forgoes all reliance on either scripture, sacred text, or -- or church, but who feels in his family still provoked, challenged, {and} compelled to speak day and night of the Gospel, and to translate it in such a way that these children suddenly feel a Niagara of eloquence avail -- awakening them. And any one of -- I told you the story of Bernard Shaw and the two sons, when they said, "Of course, our father was {a genius}. We agree, you don't -- can't tease with saying that we who have the literary fame in the world are bigger men than he."

Now you have this strange situation, gentlemen, that Henry James draws the sum of the religious past of American history in a strange manner, you see. It is through him the religion still reaches this secular generation, you see, of scientific and literary attitudes, beginning perhaps in 1870 or after the Civil -- 1865,

you see.

So you have him as the last religious generation in this country, and that's why I made the break in 1865, you remember what we did. And you have the purely secular in these people -- people. Philosophy, diary, novels -- I should have perhaps said "the epistolary," is something specific. This -- these three forms you know, but we'll have to build on this as something not yet fully evaluated and treasured.

Now Mr. William James, to oppose him right away to his father, tried to be a scientist. He went to Brazil with an expedition in geology and in zoology. And the special sciences, however, were too much for him. That is, his attempt to forget his father's imposition of unity and comprehensiveness, which always -- gives, you see, in religion unity, universality -- one god means "unity of all -- for all," you see. If you take this point of the thought of his father at the breakfast table, God, and you take the sciences -- zoology, medicine -- this was the great temptation of William James, to be sure, for a while in the '60s. And he tried very hard to forget that he had any relation to his father. And he tried to build up his own personality under the -- in the studying at Harvard, and then going, as I said -- told you, on expeditions. And it didn't work. He fell sick. He had a melancholia, and he could not stay in this so-called -- well, how should we call them? -- in this plura- -- pluralism, in this plural. Here we have oneness in the father, but heresy with regard to the Church. Oneness with regard to faith, heresy with regard to Church.

Now here you have an attempt of plura- -- pluralism in the very beginning. Oh, I study zoology. I study anatomy. I study {this}. I study psychology. I study this and that. This -- this -- this- or that-ness, which you all suffer from. Many things. The "many-ness" is perhaps better than "pluralism." How would we call this in -- in Latin?

Well, we should have a word instead of "hoi-polloi." Not "hoi-polloi." That's a mass, you see. But we should have {ta pola}, the many things, you see, the many-fold, the Encyclopaedia Britannica facts, so to speak. I don't know what -- how to call this many-ness. How would -- you have any word for this? The multitude. We always think of people when we speak of multitude. But of -- what I want to insinuate is, you see, the multitude, the ocean of -- of knowledgeable fields of -- you see, of scientific endeavor. How would you call such a manyness?

(Multiplicity?)

Ja. I think that's -- that's not perfect, but I think it's quite good.

Now, gentlemen, will you take this down -- on faith for the time being? All secular things are multiple. People today even believe in multiple inspiration. You go to Hollywood, and you have five people sitting in -- in adjacent studios and they have common inspiration. They call it -- I mean it's multiple inspiration. The -- they -- the most incredible story, you see, because unfortunately God created men and -- and fe- -- fe- -- male and female, but He didn't create multiple inspiration. But in Hollywood, they believe it. These glued and -- and -- and -- and tailored and -- and pasted comedies, you see. One writes the beginning, the other writes the end, and the third writes the middle. And that they call then "art." And you believe them, too. I mean, you can sell in this country anything, because you believe that art has something to do with selling. As long as you believe this, you must believe in multiplicity.

Now, the important thing is that in 1865, gentlemen, William James and Henry James are farrest apart. If you look at your own life, I think that's true about you, too, that at this moment you are farrest away from your father. At least you must be. You should be. At this moment, you must let as many elements that are foreign to your father's tradition and life enter your own bloodstream, in order to become somebody in your own right. You must try out how far you can go away from him. That is your duty at this moment. The interesting thing is, gentlemen, that in -- at a certain moment in life, you are farrest away from your father, and that is also from the spirit of your father's tradition, and his -- his -- his position in life. And that, believe it or not, as time goes on, you can then build bridges between that which has entered your life as novelty and a new thought, you see, and his position. And I think that at 60, normally any man can have -- can affirm both positions -- his father's and his own, you see, without much trouble. But now you have all the trouble in the world, I suppose -- or I hope -- to asser- -- -firm your -- assert your position first, because it isn't yet in existence. Can you understand my point?

So gentlemen, in William James, you can study the fact that in 1865, he is more distanced from his father than ever after. Now I think that's -- already is miraculous, because it -- also shows you that time is not what you think it is -- going this way, from A to B, gentlemen, because we learn here, here is the life of the father lived. And the life of William James begins at the farrest point and then returns. In order to find its relation to this previous life, it has to come near enough so that you can build an ellipse, with two foci, so that there is some electric spark going over, you see. Now, you have an elec- -- a machine for electricity, you know if you remove them -- the two poles too far apart, no spark, you see. If you bring them together completely, no current, either, you see. But you have to find the polarity under which there will be light, there will be electricity.

Now, I propose to you to look at this James family problem as a discovery

in -- in your own historical situation, because your idea is that in 18- -- 1980, you will be more away from your father, or your father's generation -- that is, me, you see, and what I stand for -- than you will today. I assure you, this is not true. The -- the main point is that a man of 45 at this moment -- I'm already older. I'm already -- so to speak, could be your grandfather. But a man of 45 and a boy of 20 are more antagonistic, you see, than these same people are at the age when one is 80 and the other is 50 or 55. And that's very interesting, and I think quite exciting. But you have to apply to the universal history of the human race. History does not go in a marching procession, as all the scientific analogies or diagrams try to show you. History is not going from A to B. Christ is farrer away from the Old Testament church of course, than the people in 300, when they already prayed the Psalms again in the Church. Jesus had first to tell people that they could worship God without the Psalms, too. But there was no harm done in 300 to bringing in the -- Psalms again, and have the whole liturgy, you see, and the whole caboodle {prayed again}, as they do today, you see, where -- where you have all the hundred-fifty Psalms preached in every Protestant and every Catholic church every Sunday. But if the Apostles and the -- Jesus had only done this, there would have been no Christianity. Can you see this?

So gentlemen, history is a mysterious process of bringing up B anoth- -- a new position, and then relating B to A. That is the real process of life between people who know of each other and are not in nature, but in history. People who love each other, gentlemen, cannot spare each other suffering, because B has to come into being. A mother must give life to her child under great pain and suffering, under travail. If she doesn't separate the body of this child into an independent entity, both die, you see. The child has to get away from the mother, but it has to come back, to her -- by her smile, and her tenderness, and her -- you see, her nursing, and so on. But first it has to go out.

Now gentlemen, between father and son, this is true in the spirit. What is true about the body of a mother and her baby is true, and you can study it fortunately on -- in a story lived in this country better than in any European country, any Roman, or Greek, or Palestine country. The great story about William James and Henry James is that here birth was given to a new type of man, the secular American, the scientific American, the American who wouldn't take anything for granted, the man who said, "I don't know what the soul is, and I don't know what God is. I live without them for the time being," you see. And it was given birth by a churched -- unchurched Christian who was so full of the Gospel that although the son evaded all denominational, all church affiliations, you see, did not forget the sound of these words in his ears. And although he struggled hard to get out of it, and ran to ends of the earth, to Brazil, for -- on his zoological expedition, is still under the spell or -- and has to echo it, and has to re-translate it into, gentlemen, what? A secular unity. A secular unity. A secular comprehen-

siveness, which doesn't remain mere multiplicity.

What time is it? Oh, dear. Let's have a break.

[tape interruption]

...me retard my statement by telling you my own experience. The problem of single-aged and multi-aged, or pluri-aged thinking in politics has moved me all my life. And if you think of the idea of a renaissance, a coming-back of classic civilization -- as they believed in the 16th century, or in the 18th century, the restoration of anything that has gone by us -- the English people believed in the restoration of the old freedoms -- you have always the same problem that the fullness of life can only be experienced if more than one generation is after it and endeavors to fulfill it, because all these restorations try to do better, to do the same thing, but now -- an a -- on a higher level so that it would be more tenable than before. If you restore Athen- -- Athenian painting in Raphael and Michelangelo, you feel that you are doing more than just having the Athenian arts, you see. You are now fulfilling the real destiny of man to repeat, to reproduce its highest forms, in a conscious effort. And therefore you already have the problem of bringing more than one generation to a common fruition, to a common exploit. Long ago, somebody does something -- Plato, or Aristotle, or Jesus -- and we today try to do it consciously and therefore connect ourselves with such a bygone generation.

The renaissance topic therefore, for example, already in -- suggested to me -- it is my oldest topic in my own thinking -- the problem of: what have generations to do with each other? If you found 48 states in this country, then of course, the 48th still has to bear some semblance to the -- Massachusetts, or to Virginia, or to Vermont. And therefore, you still carry within yourself, you see, the loyalty to the people in the other states, although you are out in Arizona, and get statehood in 1908. And that is a renaissance problem. And it means that although you seem to be acting independently, your independence is really limited by your affection, and reverence, and interest in another generation's doings. And what is this? How are you free and dependent at the same time? The relationship of this, you see, has intrigued me.

But I want to be more down to earth by telling you that in 1900 -- in the '20s of the 19th -- 20th century, there was in Europe, as you may know, a pronounced youth movement, a rebellion of the younger in the machine age against the drabness and the -- the philistines among their parents. And there was a kind of strike of the young, out of which finally then the Hitler movement -- was {formed} by a multiplicity really of elements. But in the -- since 1905, in Europe there has been this so-called youth movement, a radical re-interpretation of the

life of parents and children. Very much like progressive education. The child owes nothing to the parents; the teachers are facilities; it is the child that must decide for himself what to choose -- the elective system in every way of human endeavor. And if you can get the nursery school child already to make decisions on its food, all the better. Concentrate, condense all decisions of life into the individual's lifespan; then you have emancipated this child.

Well, the youth movement is the German aspect of this complete severance of relations between parents and children as a spiritual problem, as a problem of common understanding, and you may say that it is the -- the radical outcome of the liberal century. Liberalism meant that the parents were demanded to make every sacrifice for the education of their children, but they had to make no -- make no demands on the work -- the labor of their children -- think of child labor, which has been abolished at the end of this period, and no demands on their creed, their faith, their loyalty, or what-not. It's a very strange paradox, that liberalism at the one-hand side demanded the utmost in sacrifice on the part of the parents, and on the other hand, demanded no sacrifice on the part of the children.

And you can even say, the more sacrifices the parents make to send their boys to college, the less the children are demanded to make any sacrifices for their parents. That is the ak- -- awkward situation, so to speak, down to the two world wars, that the word "sacrifice" is ridiculed just as much "adolescent" is ridiculed, or "virgin." There are no virgins in this country. There are no adolescents in this country. And you must never mention the word "sacrifice."

I once tried to publish an article on this -- a series of articles on this on campus here, in The Dartmouth in 1940, and -- as a vocabulary of education. And I finally got it in and I had to say, "I know that the word will not go over, but the thing remains, there is no historical life possible without sacrifice. And you won't hear it, and therefore there will become -- come a terrible catastrophe" -- it was just before we entered the war -- "because when you don't believe in sacrifice, then you will be demanded to make it by violence, by force," which has always happened. I mean, that's the way in which God corrects man's ways, when you don't believe a part of the truth, the truth comes upon you, from your back. It just says universal military service.

Which is sacrifice. But you don't want to know it in front of you, in your own philosophy. So it comes through the back door. And that's why still we have this trouble of having just universal military training established, you see. You want to do it half-heartedly, and so you get all the injustices that boys are sent to Korea, after they have participated Second World War, just because you are -- cannot be made to understand that you have to sacrifice.

Well, this unpopular word "sacrifice," as I said, has been written large into the hearts of all the parents of the 19th century. If you think of Dartmouth College, what the alumni do for you, it's just unbelievable. Why they do it, nobody knows, you see. God only knows how long they are going to do it for us, you see, but they do it. But you, I mean, you may have to fight your own way through college by serving at tables, and so, but that's still enlightened self-interest, I mean. That's within your own, you see, within your own sphere.

And -- so gentlemen, liberalism consists of stressing the sacrifices of the parents, and of stressing the non-sacrificial situation of the young. You may say that down to 1800 the reverse was true. We stressed the sacrifices by piety and loyalty to be made by the children, you see, and the authority of the parents was stressed more than their sacrifices. But today the child is the authority, and that's youth movement.

So these youth groups in Germany were led by very energetic, so-called leaders. The whole leader principle originated, gentlemen, in these cells, in these youth groups, where 15, 20, or 10 or 8 even would cluster around a leader and go out into the woods, or go out into Italy, or Yugoslavia, or some other part of Europe, just with tents and hiking, and -- on very little means, and -- and quite daring, and would follow the -- the leader. And I was thrown into very serious contact with these people. I tried to persuade the youth groups after the -- between the wars to serve and to go to the workers and farmers, and run what is now known as work camps, and -- a thing which we invented in the '20s for the first time. And I have succeeded in part to make these youth groups, which consisted of young, middle-class boys, I mean, students, and high school boys, and scout -- what we would find in the scout movement, you see -- with people who -- were young Communists or young Marxians, and people who were young -- well, how would you call it? -- young Texans, I mean, rodeo people, and such -- I mean, people who had no time for scouts, because they were out in the wilds, anyway. And -- farmers' sons.

And so we wanted to bring together three quite different ways of life: the old countryside way of life, with its old customs and folklore; the Marxian way of life of the citified workman, enlightened and individualistic in one way, and politically mad in the other, and -- mass man, you may say; and the student, as a -- individualistic type, with his own self-determination very much stressed. In this battle, this wasn't easy to gain access to these youth groups. They were very suspicious. And they said the leader has the say. And the -- the allegiance was between the -- such a boy of 20 or 21, and his 14-, 15-, 16-, 17-, 18-year-old gang, or however you may call it, I mean. Soldiers, privates. And so I was faced with this very problem in a -- in a -- experimental way of the place for a man who thinks in terms of more than one generation, facing a group that is loyal, and is

alive, and is very powerful, and very vigorous, because of its immense loyalty to the guiding spirit, to the leader. And I had a public discussion of -- with some of the more dogmatic leaders who didn't want me to intrude into their work, and didn't want -- open their youth movement to these mixed camps, in which of course, farmers and workers having no such ideas of group allegiance to leaders, you see, would have fallen in such different germs of disintegration, perhaps.

This public discussion already was go- -- going on at a time when I knew very little about the James family, certainly. I knew a little bit of William James. I knew nothing of his father. I lived in Germany, and yet I wrote an article which is called -- which I found the other day, "The Polychronic -- Polychrony of a Nation," of a people. "Polychrony" means many times, you see, the -- the plurality of times, of ages to -- repre- -- present all the time in a people. And I said, all real problems of history are polychronic. There is -- or pleiochronic, you see. They're pleiochron- -- there is more than one time. Pleio means "more than one," you see. You have heard of Pleistocene, perhaps in -- in geology, you see, which also means when there was the most of it, the most of -- of -- of -- of something.

Well, whether you call it "polychronic" or "pleiochronic," it is the same problem of the pluri-aged, which has faced this country, as I told you, since 1685, and I think it is -- gives me a kind of -- of clear title to my special interest. I haven't learned this when I came to America, but I have learned it only here in a specific American application. It is the universal problem of mankind, and it is the specific problem of our own time, gentlemen. Everything in our own time appears to be of this time itself, only. The only group of people that has to take a beating in this country, by poor treatment, by terrible salaries, are the teachers. The teachers are clearly located between the generations, because they have to hand over to one generation what the other generations have achieved. And they have to enable them to get into their own -- into their own shape, with the help of the achievements of others. That is, of course, belittled here, because Mr. Dewey has tried to tell you, and all his teachers' colleges in the country that the chi- -- it is the child who makes himself, and the teachers are just standing by and -- and taking out the handkerchief and dry-cleaning your noses, blowing your noses.

But idea of a female schoolteacher I think doesn't hold water here in -- in any college situation. You will admit that what I tell you is not of your own doing. It just comes to you. You may reject it. You may not listen to it, you may laugh at it. But it comes to you from another age, you see. And its there-ness can only serve you if you admit that there is something outside your own age which is necessary to your own existence. Otherwise my whole offering here makes no sense, because I cannot share the experiences of your own generation. And you cannot share directly the experience of my generation, you see. But we have to

agree on something, you see, that goes on through the generations. I have to divest myself of the two special types of my time, you see, but you will have to do the same about your own specialty, or we can't get together.

And I mention these articles. They appeared in a -- in a magazine of which I am still very proud. I wasn't the founder of it, but I was one of the -- the machinists, so to speak. I brought the people together who did edit it. It was edited by one Roman Catholic, by one Protestant, and by one Jew. And the three together called the magazine, "The Creature," Kreatur, creatura. And they said that the creature of man was that he was a temporal being. And so my article, you see, was one of the programmatic articles, because I said man only begins to be man if he is aware of his -- you see, his problem that the temporalities of your and my must -- must be dovetailed in some form. How, that -- we may look into this. That may be open to question. But man begins only if he is not only of his own age, because he has to be spoken to, and he has to be spoken into a life, you see, of the race.

And therefore, life begins not at 40, gentlemen, but life begins when you meet your grandchildren and your grandparents, spiritually. And never -- it doesn't believe -- before. Life doesn't belie- -- begin at 40. It doesn't begin at 18. It doesn't begin at your birth. You're quite mistaken. That what we call human life, and not animal life, begins when one tone -- your name, "John," "Bill" -- enters you as coming from far away, and when you begin to believe and hope that there will be somebody who listens to you, and your grievances and your complaints to carry them on and to redeem you in the future, whatever you have to complain of.

Once you enter, you see, this relation between the ages that have gone before, and begin after -- with you, you see, then you be -- come to life, to what is deserved to be called life. Everything else before is just existence, vegetation, animal nature. It is certainly subconscious, unconscious. It is this side of good and evil. It isn't life. It is just the lower life.

So my suggestion is, gentlemen, that in the James family, already in 1865, that which is facing every family today in the whole Western world has been lived out with great clearness and precision, as a problem of the age: how does a child spiritually come into its independing existence, and yet not sacrifice, or lose, you see, or gainsay that which his fathers have spiritually, you see, created. That is a paradox, and you can't get out of it, by forgetting it. And it is before us at this moment. And that's the whole crisis in America. That's Mr. McCarthy. That's everything we are talking about today, you see. What is the relation of your freedom, you see, and of tradition? But as you -- say "freedom and tradition," it's a very murky -- I mean, a moldy thing. I'm not -- the words have

been talked -- overtalked too much. But if you understand that it is the question of how one age is embedded between the other ages which we have to affirm as being ages, too, in their own right and with full glory, you see, then you see that it is not a question of some abstract noun, "freedom and tradition," for which I cannot wax warm, you see. But it is the question of the full stature of man in his own generation as soon as he accepts "generation" by definition as something that has to be followed by generations to come, and that has been preceded by generations that have gone on before, so that generation is always only inside a sequence.

Now I think we have already for today made one big, successful assumption that in any generation, the experience of other-ness, of particularity, of being specific, of differing from the past comes first. Every one generation should wake up with the feeling: we are different. And it's the second discovery that they discover that in the very feeling that we are different, we are identical with all other generations, because all generations recognize themselves only by this feeling of distinction. And that isn't the whole problem. The problem is: how this distinction, you see, can be reconciled to our identity. But we have already reversed, gentlemen, the naturalistic, evolutionistic conception of a straight line in history. History is not a straight line. It is a jump, and then a bridge -- bridging-back of the gulf.

I always compare it to this, because you see, if a man goes into the mountains, for example, and is confronted with a torrent -- I had to solve this problem once -- how does he build a bridge? Not by standing this side of the torrent and then beginning to build the bridge. One man has to get to the other side, and then you can begin to build the bridge, you see, by ropes, and by beams that you throw over. You cannot build a bridge from one side, only. You have to get across by a jump, or by fording, or by -- on horse- -- or horse swimming through. What -- however you do it, or you have to go upstream where it is more lenient, you see, and not so wild, and then come back down again to the point where you feel the bridgehead should be made. But whatever it is, a bridge has to be built from both sides, or you can't build it.

So the idea of ours has been so mechanical that you think time is just a patching-on one year after another. This is not the case, because years are abstractions. They are mechanical. They are a clockwork. Life never is -- happens in this way. There must be a new entity that lives a little bit longer than the father and the grandfather. This entity has to be first assured of its independence, of its own character, of its quality of belonging to its own age, and then after it has received the security and reassurance that it is somebody in his -- its own right, you see, then it will also harken to the burden that it has to carry on, the sound that had to be -- has to be spoken through the ages.

I think that this is such an important discovery that I should stress this; although on the other hand, if you really look on it, is very trivial, because you know this from your own family experience. But unfortunately, gentlemen, science has made such inroad on the soundness on your brain, that you don't know it, that you really believe in the mechanism of time and mechanical time that A and B are connected automatically. They are not. You, as a brute animal, would kill your father. You would forget him after a year, as all -- animals do. If you go to ani- -- into the animal world, the son does mate with his mother, because after a year, the -- the filly or the -- the calf has forgotten who the mother was, although the mother nurses them, you see. No memory. There is therefore, gentlemen -- old age is only horror to the young in the animal world. It holds no promise.

And this is a summary of this, gentlemen, for today: the fact that we remember the past means that memory is a promise for our own future. There comes in again this regeneration term, this renaissance term. You see, we kept only an interest in remembering the past, because it must still mean something in our own future. As mere memory, we should forget our parents, or grandparents. There's no reason why you should remember sentimentally something that is just bygone, you see. Let the dead bury the dead, the New Testament says. The only question is, "What is dead?" you see. But the dead must bury the dead, and you go on to new things. But are your parents dead? Well, physically, they may -- have to die before you, you see. But spiritually, that's the question, you see. What is dead?

This we have to decide in every generation, by a decision, and not by an autom- -- automatic evolution. Evolution is utter nonsense for human beings. It is perfectly useless, because either it's too much to carry if it is just going on, you see, or there's nothing to carry. The whole question is: how much of tradition do we have to carry, and how much do we have to reject? The amount of freedom, gentlemen, and the amount of tradition, the amount of sonhood, and the amount of independence have to be re-determined. And you can only do it by saying independence is first, and interdependence is second.

And as you know, that's the great lesson now preached to the Americans in general in history, you see. Independence in 1776 and interdependence by the famous law, Number 1776. You know which law this was, which bill in Congress, which had the number, the fateful number 1776? And I think you should remember it. It is -- I'm sorry it is forgotten now. That was the famous lend-lease proposition by which we entered the war on the side of the Allies, that had the number 1776. And it meant that in 1941, when this bill was passed, it was -- I never forget it -- it was March -- it was very fateful in my own life, this date -- I was in Washington at that day and something was decided in my own life, too --

that was the -- when this -- the -- this bill was passed in Congress. It meant that we have gone back on our Declaration of Interde- -- Independence, you see, and had entered a period of interdependence. America had come of age. The young American had to assert, you see, their being an age by themselves. And since 1940 it is, so to speak, common knowledge, that this isn't the whole story. Can you see this?

So let's stop here.