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

...I tried to concentrate not on the man -- Cooper or Franklin -- himself, but you remember the thing that is not done in historical monography -- or biography -- very much is to elucidate the premises on which the life-work of such a man is predicated: what he assumes to be established about which he doesn't have to talk, but which he presupposes. And I have, all in this course, tried to show you that historical thinking is not interested in Henry James, Sr., or in William James, Jr. That is a silly, or at least an unhistorical, an anecdotal, a newspaper, a journalistic approach. We are interested here, in this point, where we can see that the two are polarly related. Now I don't know I -- what I mean by pluri-aged, what is the whole problem of the head-on idea of American civilization, every generation just looking ahead of itself, in this very naive way, and therefore always being surprised, never being able to accomplish anything, because people who just keep running -- What Makes Sammy Run? you know, is this terrible book by Mr. -- what's -- Schulberg. They don't achieve anything in the world. They may make a pile of money and tomorrow it's all gone. They are the most uninteresting people. Yet to you, gentlemen, 158 million Americans are -- due to live this silly way, head-on, always forward, for -- onward Christian soldiers, down to Hell.

This is not Christ. Christ has never lived "Onward Christian Soldiers." To Him, the past and the future had equal rank, and He had to hear the voice in Heaven who told Him: what of the created world, and what of the not-yet created world had at every moment pre- -- the prerogative? There's no "onward" all the time. This whole rush -- rush -- rush is unhistorical. That's why America is unhistorical.

So if I have done anything to you, gentlemen, I've tried to open your eyes to the fact -- more I cannot do in such a -- half a year -- that there can be people who I think -- I flatter myself -- have this different point of view, or this different view of point. I have a different sight. They called it "second sight," in -- as a superstition, gentlemen, when a person could see that the future and the past were all together; and therefore that a child and his father must be viewed in unity. Well, it is obvious. You do this in evolution all the time. You do not treat an embryo before you haven't seen what becomes of the embryo. The -- the swan is a swan on- -- only after he has grown up among the geese, isn't he? Then you can suddenly see that the ugly duckling is -- is a -- a swan. So everybody knows that it takes some years before he can -- knows what it is all about, what the relation of this -- for example, this swan to his duckling family is. Now you have to wait, unfortunately, until Mr. William James, Filius, has grown up and become 70 and dies in 1910, before you can write the history of son -- of Henry -- Adams

-- Ja- -- Henry James, Sr. But people don't want to do this. They say, "Henry James dies at 1882. Therefore, the literal remains of Henry James, Sr., are there and that's a man. Dry bones." Do you think you can write the history of George Washington because he died in 1799? Or when did he die? When did he die? Well, you don't even know.

(George Washington?)

Wie?

(I think it was 1799.)

Obviously -- is it?

(Yeah.)

The -- we can only write the history of George Washington now, and the man who writes the history of George Washington 50 years from now, gentlemen, must write a different and a better story of George Washington, because he knows better. How do you think the story of Christ -- Jesus Christ would have run in -- in 100 A.D.? I can tell you how it would run, because we have found in the catacombs in Rome a picture of how people in those days, who wrote history, pictured the picture. There is a man, {Alexaminos}, standing before a cross. On the cross hangs a man with an asinine- -- head of an ass. And it reads, "{Alexaminos} worships his God." And so Jesus, as an ass. That is the historical picture of -- in 100 A.D. of Jesus Christ. And today we know better, gentlemen.

So history is growing on you and me, because the more limbs of this strange body of humanity are developing, the simpler it is to describe the tree. Obviously if you see a little seedling of a pine tree, you have a much harder time to -- in describing it than if you see the whole pine tree standing there, because you just have then to take, you see, a very far-fetched view, and you see the whole countenance, the profile. And you know, every -- every tree has a countenance very much of its leaf and vice versa. The leaf has the form of a tree. So the -- the -- this you have to see first. I give you one leaf alone and never -- you never saw a whole tree, you never know that every tree has the same form as the foliage. It takes both, the big one and the small thing, in history to know anything.

This you do not believe. You do not believe it. That's why all these histories that are written now about World War II, they are not histories. They are a kind of a -- attempt to organize material, but they all call themselves in a -- in a terrible, unfortunate expression, "historians." You know all these people who run around, don't shoot, but write histories? The non-combatants -- attached to all

the staffs of the United States Armed Forces, they call themselves "historians." It has nothing to do with history. It's "recorders," they should be called, as they were in -- in more modest times. They are not historians. They are recorders, which is good enough, to me. "Clerks," they were formerly called in the churches, you see, the clerk. It was very powerful man, the clerk of the board of trustees, powerful man, as here in Dartmouth, you know. The clerk is really the man who does it all, and who -- who holds the whip. But we are so arrogant, we call these people "historians." So you don't know anymore what history is, gentlemen.

History is not known unless you know it by its fruits. Therefore, that isn't history which you reduce to some origins, as everybody does in this country, to causes before. George Washington is not at all interested because he had no water closet in 1750. That didn't cause him to become president of the United States. He didn't say, "I have no wa- -- no W.C., no running water, no plumbing. We must have a country where plumbing is the best," and so we got the United States. That would be causation. That would be what you call "history." Obviously, you only understand what George Washington did, that he created a nation after there is an American nation. Otherwise you can never write anything important or pertinent into his biography. Why should you remember him? This you have to wait for.

Will you take this down, gentlemen? By their fruits, ye shall know them. That's a very complete reversal of everything you think is scientific. History is not known by its beginnings. It is only known by its end. In the beginning, Christianity could very well be mistaken for fiv- -- 50 other religions. There was Mithras, and there was Bacchus, and there was Isis, and there was Serapis, and there were any number of -- of -- of religions, and it looked just like one of them, but it wasn't, because it reduced all these -- religions to ashes, because the Christians do not believe in -- in -- in a -- in a -- such fancy gods, but they believe in the simple life of a child in the cradle. And that's all, which means that they believe that God created man, and -- there are no gods in between. But that had to be found out and understood. And took thousand years before this was beaten down, that there was no other god, but the father of -- of man -- the child in the cradle. It took -- a thousand years then before you get a history of the Church. It is impossible to write the history of the Church in 100.

Now the same is true of father, Henry James. Henry James is meaningless unless we understand that he forced -- you'll remember -- forced his son to write in 1910, 30 years after his father's death, the "Moral Equivalent of War," and that he forced him to write The Varieties of Religious Experience. And that all the time, here this father in the grave was waiting for this little boy -- very nervous Harvard professor -- to come around and to join up with his father's problem. And everything is done in this, you see -- all history today is in this country --

dried down to dry bones, because it just means just single biographies. Everybody writes {Simpson and Quick}, history of one man. Gentlemen, history begins only when one man's life leaves an imprint on another man's life. And so, gentlemen, the smallest -- the smallest unit for history are two generations. That's another law which is important. Because by their fruits you shall know them, the consequence is that history only begins when you deal with more than one generation. Biography is not history. It is today, unfortunately -- I love biographies, I have written myself biographies, gentlemen, but as it is done in this country today, it's a destruction of history. You cannot write the history of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, or Woodrow Wilson by themselves. You can write now, for the first time, the history of Woodrow Wilson, because Franklin D. Roosevelt and Truman have governed after him. Now it makes sense to say what he really did, that he prophesied the Second World War. But as long as the Second World War hasn't happened, and nobody has followed suit, what is the meaning of saying that he died a disappointed man in 1923? The main thing we still do not know: did it make sense that he died a disillusioned man, you see? Obviously, it made very much sense, because he was the only man who knew the truth when he died in 1923 -- Wilson predicting World War II. Now that's the only interesting thing about him today. Now you have to wait. Before, you cannot know. You have to wait until another generation is put under the judgment, you see, of his own light, and his own promise, and his own prediction, and his own -- his own insight.

Well, this is the minimum. But you see, you gain a tremendous perspective if you know this, gentlemen. History is the time-binding power of men. Will you take this down again, that's Number 3. History is the power to bind time -- times that, by their very nature, would fall apart. History is always, as Nietzsche has called it -- Friedrich Nietzsche, the German philosopher, has written a very wonderful inauguration speech for his chair of -- of -- of history where he said about the use and the abuse of history for human living -- and in this speech he says that history always must be an article of faith. History will always be an article of faith. And there is no way out, and you hate this, because you think if history isn't science, then it isn't anything. Gentlemen, there is a history of science which isn't science. If you write today the history of science from Newton to -- to Einstein, that isn't science. That's history. What's history -- what's scientific about the history of physics, of the great physicists, you see? It is your belief that this forms the unity. You cannot prove it. You can say Newton belongs to the Middle Ages, and Einstein doesn't. So you can begin the history of physics with Einstein. That's your pleasure. You have to prove it. Your faith is then a different way from the run-of-the-mill physicist. And again, I write a history from -- of physics from antiquity to today, and I have another religion again, compared to the people who think that modern physics begins with Newton, with the man who -- concluded that the apple couldn't fall without

good reason from his -- the apple tree.

Where you connect, gentlemen, your -- your faith, there is religion, your religion. Today you have this great problem in the United States with all the agnostics and the Jews counting one way -- and most of the humanists -- and not understanding that the coming of Christ makes any difference. I can -- out of hundred books written today on history, there are perhaps two that really believe that there is -- Christ's -- coming was the turning point in history. All the others try to obliterate it and say, "nothing has changed."

I got a paper today from a young lady in Harvard -- Radcliffe, who wrote on tragedy, and quite naively says that the Greek tragedy, and Hamlet and Faust -- that's all one story, all one -- the history of tragedy. So she writes a paper on the nature of tragedy.

So I wrote back, "I'm amazed, my young lady, that you are already so much through with the Christian era. I always thought that we had no gods, we had no cothurnus, we had no deus ex machina coming, and solving the Greek tragedy, and we had no hero who was worshiped in the Dionysians in Athens. We had Hamlet, which is something quite different. We have a Christian tragedy in the Christian era. And we have Greek tragedy, and they are as different as somebody and his mirror image."

That's exactly how they are, they confront. Renaissance physics -- Einstein and Newton -- are not the same as Greek physics. But they are Renaissance, and therefore quite different. But you see, you don't -- you look at me and say, "Quite a surprise." Why shouldn't you write on the nature of tragedy? Well, my answer is: for a thousand years, there was no tragedy, because the Greek -- the Eucharist, and the -- the Mass, spectacle of the Mass had replaced tragedy. And when Shakespeare was allowed to write tragedy again, it was within a world in which Hamlet was not a god and hadn't to be deified, but was just one mortal. So one function of tragedy has remained inside the divine service, in church, and the -- only the secular aspect of this old Greek tragedy has migrated on the stage, and on Broadway, which is very different, really. If you read Mourning Becomes Electra, from O'Neill, then you know that has nothing to do with a Greek tragedy. Not the slightest. It's the opposite.

But you see, you live in this college atmosphere and you are, therefore, I think, the gravediggers of Western civilization, because the common men still live in the Christian era. They are good people. But your brain is absolutely corrupt. And you actually believe that you live simply sometime, somewhere -- it makes no difference whether it's 500 B.C. or 1000 A.D. -- to you it makes absolutely no difference. Well, I'm in -- up in arms with this lady. I told her, if she -- if this

is true, if there is a nature of tragedy without any break in history, you see, changing all tragedy, totally and putting it in a light of -- of a universal faith and universal government of the world, then of course, concentration camps and gas chambers were the only result, because why shouldn't we then live as the people 500 B.C. did, or 900 B.C.? And since this lady is Jewish, she's very deeply interested in this problem.

The nature, gentlemen, of all these things which -- which -- of which you hear -- nature of drama, nature of lyrics, nature of music means that we have no history, that nothing has changed. And certainly not through the Christian era.

Therefore, I'm talking to you about Henry James, Sr., and William James, Jr., all this time, gentlemen. But I'm really talking about the -- the B.C. and A.D. I have tried to re-invoke in you the fact that Henry James, Sr., is the only man whose existence separates William James from antiquity, from paganism. And in the same sense, Jonathan Edwards and the Mather brothers are the only people who separate you as the heirs of Benjamin Franklin from the concentration camps of Nineveh and Assyr. From the fi- -- the famous struggle for survival of Mr. Darwin. You all know that we are not in a struggle for survival -- survival of the fittest. You very well know that the first gesture you make is generously to help the weak. Everybody does this, here in this country, yet we proclaim by -- because we go back into antiquity more {and more} that only Darwin is right. Well, you would be lost, gentlemen. A college boy is so much weaker than a 15year-old boy who doesn't go to a college, in all his nervous reaction, all his sensibilities, that if the educated classes in a country would be judged by Darwinian standards, they would all have to wiped out, because what does it mean to be educated? To be more sensitive. To be more weak. To more -- more impressionable. That means education. You -- we keep you artificially more plastic. That is, you are still a baby. Now a baby is more imperiled by its inherent softness than a man in -- in chain armor, obviously, or a tank.

So education means to deny somebody the right to be hard-boiled. That's what education is, to prevent you from being hard-boiled. Now hard-boiled is protection, and that is Darwinianism. So Darwin is a natural. Education is an artificial, historical. That's done on the faith of parents to their children -- into their children and on the basis of faith of the children in their parents. It is always based on this two-generation principle, that the next generation doesn't have to live in the same way as the previous generation. And that's what I have tried to show you in America, as a permanent question mark, you see. But the American people, as people, have always known this. There have always been good Christians -- sectarians, and Baptists, Southern Baptists, Southwestern Baptists, Southeastern Baptists, but some sect which kept the flame burning of a good relation between ch- -- par- -- parents and children whom they wanted to

grow, whom they wanted to be bigger than themselves. But you live in this -- in this incredible idolatry of your own mind, of your own brain, and I -- I -- I think therefore -- good reason the colleges are going downhill in this country. Who's going to -- to let everybody waste his life four years in a college, when the result is that you don't believe in the Christian era, even anymore? That you believe the nature of tragedy. Well, the nature of tragedy will come home and visit you. We will then find that -- tragedy is na- -- natural for you. Why shouldn't you then live a tragic life? It's natural. It's not redeemed. It's not -- there is no -- no ho- -- no change. Everything is Greek tragedy, with the curse of the parents on the children in the third and fourth generation.

This is the -- what you live in. This is the whole Big Issue course. There is no Christian era here, in this college. But there is in reality, gentlemen, and that's why there is a college. But the college just abuses its existence today, and it does it since William James. And that's why I have tried to tell you that this is all right as long as a college boy can learn by being exposed to this nonsense, which you learn here, and this -- this unhistorical situation, that you have to re-enter history, which you do by the draft, for example, and by Mr. McCarthy, and by many other such things, because humanity just doesn't -- cannot go with- -- on without you. It needs you in the next generation.

Please.

(Sir, you -- you talked -- in the general perspective of the course, now, you've been talking about an -- an era of Christianity and you -- you never talk about the era per se. You always talk about the secularism, which is opposed to the era of Christianity. At what time in history could you tell us were all these things essentially understood in the sense that you say you understand them now and we don't. At what time did everybody take these things...)

Down to 1865, to the Civil War, and everywhere in Europe, too. You see, in 1870, it was -- the famous sentence was said, "God is dead," which meant that the times of men had no -- had no connections. What does it it mean, "God is dead"? God creates and governs the universe. You say, "God is dead," He doesn't govern the universe. And He hasn't created it. Therefore, every dust -- grain of dust on this -- this -- every speck of a -- of a human being, of an animal of this country has only his own lifetime to fulfill. There is nothing over-reaching his beginning and { } -- he lives from birth to death. Now, Sir, my dear man. No, one moment. One moment. Let me finish my sentence. You see, the belief that God governs the world finds expression in this: here you are born. When were you born?

(1933.)

1936.

(3.)

Wie?

(3. 1933, Sir. That would make me 14.)

Now, here you live in the year 1953, don't you? And here, your son might be born in 1973. Now -- oh, wait a minute. I have to put { }. 1973, and he will be in college in 1993. Ooh. That's a long time. Now, the naturalist says that what is important in your existence is that you were born in 1933 and that you die in 19- -- I beg your pardon. Expectation is longer. That you die sometime in 1980. That's arbitrary, but make it X. You die sometime. So your life line goes from your birth here, born -- died, here. This is his- -- your -- the naturalistic view of your existence. I don't care when you were born, Sir. There have been thousands of years in which people never remembered a birthday of a person. That's -- in any tribe. The day in which you were born were your initiation. In 19- -- you came to college when?

(1951.)

That's the day of your birth, in history. And it is. So let us assume that this is the day on which you wake up. And it will be -- in 1963 that you will make a -- some decision. And then it would be that history would only be important as reaching to some time in 2003, when your son makes a corresponding decision and because you went to Dartmouth, says he goes to Amherst. That is, when he opposes, or fulfills, or completes, by his understanding of what his father's generation has done, the meaning of what you have done by limiting it, or by adding it -- by underlining it. Now there are two views of -- you see, of the world. One is the natural one which makes the events, which happen between people coincide with their physical existence. And the other, which means that the words spoken by them, and the decisions made by them are bridging the gap of the times, between the generations.

(Well, what I'm trying to say, Sir, is that -- that the era which you speak of, I don't think ever -- I don't know -- has it ever existed? You haven't -- you haven't talked about it positively enough so I can understand the Christian era as a -- as a reality. You say it's a time in history. For instance, wha- -- wha- -- what's -- )

That's what I'm leading up to, my dear man. You don't read the catalog, and you -- of course, you do as you please. But I do also as I please. I give a whole course, 58, on the basis of 57, in which I try to show you what the eras are all

about. So I can't do this today. And I can't do it tomorrow. But I am devoted to it from February to May.

It's really ridiculous. Don't you read the catalog? That's -- this all -- only the preamble for exactly your question? Certainly. But you don't read, you just take a number -- 57.

(Well, I should hope so. If you ever read it over again, recently, Sir, and -- matter of fact, don't read your own descriptions. Read some of the evidence in the { }. I can only go on the experience I've had. They've never yet coincided. I didn't expect it would { }.)

Well, gentlemen, since the leaf contains the tree, I have taken the liberty of trying to give you the problem of a history of the human spirit, as opposed to the history of the human body, or human bodies -- of the mortals in us, in the example first of the Jameses, and then of the second generation. You remember the Mathers and the second half-way covenant, the same problem. And we have seen it time and again, that in the relation of the religious and secular, there is this clash of a history without -- where it is just natural -- and real history, which is created by every generation which joins the march of time.

So to get into the hinge between two times, two generations, is the problem of the historian. That's the eye of a historian. That's why there is no historian in this country. And the best historian whom we have, Mr. Samuel Morison, I told you, now writes the history of the -- of the na- -- of the war in -- in the Pacific, for the navy. And that of course has nothing to do with our -- the real historic problem: how one generation, you see, adds or detracts meaning from the previous generation. You take a boom-bust region, you take prospecting out in Montana. Well, in the '90s, as you may know, railroads were built for this -- to the silver mines there. There was a tremendous ado and then the same country just fall -- fell flat. Nobody is there anymore. Now we only can know that this was a rush, because we see, you see, the bust in the -- here in '95, this was the future of America, you see. It would be, now. And -- but it isn't. We have to know this now, that the people there were deserted. That is, that no second generation followed them. Now there are the Texans. And so what's the future there? I mean, they bought Montana, you see. They have a second dustbowl.

And so each time you can condemn or naturalize a history when you do not follow it up. By your not going West, you say, "The frontier is finished." But it is -- some people just have not to go there anymore. Now all the people from California come in -- back to New Hampshire and Vermont. I don't know why, but it seems that they need a worse climate than they have in California.

I wished only -- the whole problem of this course, gentlemen, is not the content. You hear about these people sufficiently -- Franklin and { }. I'm not going to -- to hear any more obscenities about Benjamin Franklin's illegitimate children. That's not my business in this course. The interesting thing about Benjamin Franklin is that in him there comes to the fore your own mentality. And this whole mentality is stultifying fruitful living, because Benjamin Franklin does not say, "By their fruits, you shall know them," but "by their causes," and -- you see. And therefore it is all -- everybody only to himself, because the man who -- who -- who doesn't plant a tree for his grandchildren, you see, cannot be convinced that he should. You can never prove to a man that it's worth prov- -- planting a tree for your grandchildren.

There's a famous story of the general -- Marshall -- Marshall Lyautey. Did I tell you the story in class? Lyautey was the French marshall who subdued Maroc and was a very great man. You can see this from the sentence which he spoke when the war in -- First World War in Europe broke out. On August 1st, 1914, they told the marshall there was a war in Europe now. And he said very slowly, "A war between Europeans only can be a civil war." Now if they had heeded this word, you see, the Europeans, they wouldn't have been -- gone to a war. If -- only -- because they treated this war as a war outside their, you see, their own natural bounds could they afford this. Ever since -- Europe is just a den of lions and tigers. It never has become anything else after that, you see, no longer a family of nations. And therefore the sentence is -- sums it all up in one sentence: that's a civil war. And that's the most cruel of all wars, you see. And it takes the longest to reverse, as you know, from the South. That's why there is no peace {anymore} in Europe.

But the second thing -- I wanted to tell you -- that gives you also a -- a scope of the -- and some picture of the man's scope. He was a very old man, and he was living in southern France on a -- on a visit -- no, only visiting there. And he was taken to a wonderful garden. And there was a tree whom he -- which he liked very much and he s- -- had his gardener with him. And he said, "Gardener, I must have this tree."

"Well," he said, "Monsieur le marechal, that's -- all right, but the tree takes a hundred years before it really looks like something."

"{Qu'ont} la plante, aujourd'hui." Be it be planted today, he said of this tree. This man lived in history, you see. "It doesn't matter that I'm dying, that I'm an old man. But don't lose any moment," you see. If it takes a hundred years, it's great -- high time that we plant it."

You can't find an American who would skip -- would even understand --

you didn't even understand the elegancy of the phrase -- "{Qu'ont} la plante, aujourd'hui." That this be -- let this be planted today, because now I still can follow in the sequence of generations and do my share, you see. For a garden -- what -- what does it matter whether see this or not? What has this to do with history?

You must pray that President Eisenhower does nothing for his re-election, but does everything only so that hundred years from now there may a United States of America. Woe to you if he only does anything for his immediate aggrandizement, or for your vanity, or for public opinion, or for these radio commentators, and all these {jackals}, and jackasses, and wolves who try to turn you from the way of a decent policy, just because today they don't understand. You are surrounded by wild animals, who make it nearly impossible for anybody to govern in this country, because they cannot say "I'm doing this so that there are the United States in 2030." Here's -- do -- say that he does it so that there is prosperity today. How do you know that prosperity for today is a good thing for America? It's never debated. I think it's very doubtful that we can afford prosperity. Obviously, we have to lower our standard of living. That would secure the future of America. The only thing. But that mustn't be mentioned. Because you do not live in history, you live as -- so poorly as Heracles said of the man who only works, you see, the journeyman, day by day. Your whole perspective -- horizon is just today. Can I buy a television set on the installment plan? That's the only question an American family is allowed to ask today, in politics. Is that a question for a decent people? Is that of any interest, that they should sit at home and -- and labor -- belabor the question whether they can afford a television set? This is -- nobody's concern. Whether they buy it or not has nothing to do with history, politics, justice, law, anything. It's indifferent. It's of no importance. But it's -- built up today as being the important thing the president of the United States has to solve. If he doesn't solve it, he's not a good president. How can you have a good president? -- Ich meine -- a hole -- and that's what strikes at everybody outside the United States, that we are only saved by the grace of God, because sometimes Mr. Nehru, and sometimes Mr. Atlee, and sometimes Mr. Churchill, and sometimes Mr. Bidault makes a clever remark, or sometimes Mr. Adenauer, and we come to our senses again and we don't live in a world of fools. But at home it's all -- just foolishness. Everything.

I haven't seen -- you see, th- -- this McCarthy business. Twenty years ago, everybody was a Communist, and for 20 years you let the people run rampant and now the stable is empty. There are no Communists in the United States, so we have a tremendous legislation against Communism. Isn't that just funny? The horse is stolen, now we lock the barn door. You'll never have horses again. Be sure. There will be no political life in the United States, because we now lock the barn so carefully that there can be no political movement. We will sit on any

movement, you see, and say, "It's Communism."

This is all just funny. Can anybody take all -- any of these things seriously who has looked into the depths of God's creation, that God has created man so that he must die in his own generation and must -- his life must be continued by the second and third, and fourth, and fifth generation? And history only begins to be interesting if neither what you do nor what I do is important, but if we bear -- unless we bear fruit, you see, we are not important.

This I have tried to tell you in this -- in this class, gentlemen. And it is very difficult for me to tell you, because it's a question that is not raised, that this mystery of humanity, the mystery of sociology, the history -- mystery of history is never to be found by looking at the mass here -- a mob of 9,000 people and taking votes or questionnaires. The question is: what happens between two elections? I'm not interested in whether you elect Mr. Truman in one year and Mr. Eisenhower -- again. It has nothing to do with history. The problem is -- if you want to understand history, is why in one year the people elect Truman and in the other term, they elect Eisenhower, you see. It's in this span between the two elections that history begins to become interesting, that two different generations, although they do the opposite, still collaborate. Isn't that obvious? How can any one election be interesting? Not at all.

But succession, gentlemen, and succession. That's the mystery of history. In what are we succeeded? In what's -- does it matter now that Mr. Eisenhower a year ago said he was a crusader? Everybody's down on him for this, and rightly now, because two-thirds of his legislation's just the New Deal. Can a man who crusades in Europe then come home on -- the head of the victorious army to the people who have made him supreme commander and says he is going to crusade at home against them? It's scandalous, but he doesn't know English. I mean, you cannot crusade at home, when you have -- have deserved the -- the highest honors in your own country as -- as commander-in-chief. Do you think that the Democrat soldiers can tolerate a -- a general who is crusading against them? But all this can be -- you can get away here with anything, because that he -- that he -- when he spoke of a crusade a year ago, you see, people thought he had forgotten his own book title, Crusade in Europe. So he made it a civil war, the election. A war. Here you go out against the enemy of humanity, Mr. Hitler, then you come home and say, "Now, I'm going to do the same at home." This he literally said, but it doesn't matter in this country, because nothing is held against a man what he said yesterday. You only hear what he says today, so you never understand what he says, because gentlemen, what we say makes only sense within the context of what was said yesterday, what will be said tomorrow. This gives light -- sheds light on what we are saying today. Otherwise you wouldn't understand what it means. It is only in the light of that which has been said before and

that which will be said afterwards, that you even can understand what the phrase means.

You -- it is simply true, gentlemen, that as mere products of the football campus of America, you have no power to understand history. And that's why I've -- came -- have been driven year after year back to this problem that I have to gi- -- give you an introduction into where the historical eye is located. No individual, gentlemen, can look into history. I can only talk to you about history because I feel burned, or molded, or made into the carrier of this between-generation view, you see. This I have learned in a long life, to look between the generations.

To give you a very pertinent example, gentlemen, why these eyes today destroy you, you see: as soon as you look at the life of Jesus, and then look at Paul and Peter, you also destroy the history of Christianity into a natural history. Here is this one man, Mr. Jesus, and then there is Mr. Paul and Peter, and then you get for the last 150 years the famous story that Paul ruined Christianity. Now Jesus, however, and the Apostles form together the apostolic church, from the very day. All Christians agree on this, that what one generation of Christians -- Jesus taught the Apostles -- they applied. The greatness of Jesus was the He said, "Goodbye, you do it now in my place," when He was 33, and allowed the -- Apostles to live a second generation and to prove that they had inherited the Holy Spirit. He could have lived on for 30 more years. Do you think He had to go to the Cross? He didn't have to, at all. But He had to make way for the freedom of life on this earth. And this He did -- that's His real sacrifice. Everybody has to die. Don't make so much fuss about the crucifixion. Other people have been martyred. And why is it an extraordinary event? Because He could have done better, what He left the 12 Apostles to perform so that people might learn that everybody -- even the fisherman, even the most stolid man -- had the same powers of -- the lowest of the low had the same spirit as the genius, the Son of God. And this is the greatest sacrifice a man can make, when he can lower himself, you see, below parity, and say, "I'm not needed. If -- if you love me, you have the same powers."

So when -- the fact of Christianity is exactly the fact of Henry James and William James. It's exactly the same thing, you see. The problem, how a father -- an older generation, Jesus -- can force gradually Peter and Paul to -- the orthodox Jew, and the simple tribesman, the fisherman, you see -- to act as the greatest genius, in His place. You know that Peter in the last minute still wanted to leave Rome, and the Lord -- he -- on the way from Rome to Naples he -- he -- Peter, you see, runs into Him, and what does He say?

(Go back.)

Wie?

(Go back, I guess.)

No. He's much -- He never says such a stupid thing.

(No. Well.)

(Quo vadis?)

"Quo vadis?" Peter asks the Lord, "Quo vadis?" Where do you go -- he asks this, his master.

And Jesus says, "To be crucified a second time in Rome."

Whereupon Peter understands and goes -- rushes back to Rome and is crucified in Jesus' place. Head down, even with double -- twice as great a cruelty as his -- his master. That's the story of Quo -- have you never heard of Quo Vadis? But you never understood it. It's the story of the two generations, Sir, gentlemen.

What I have tried to tell you is simply the famous course given by Mr. Bartlett in this college. I have told you about it. On universal history. Haven't we talked about them? But in such terms that you can understand it as the problem between your father and yourself. It's the eternal problem of humanity. That is only what Christianity has done: put the clock so right that you can see that is always the -- the story. It is the eternal story. Christianity is only the first time that the story was consciously lived between two generations. That is Christianity. That is the beginning of our era, you see. It is the beginning of man getting hold of his proper situation. That's all what Christianity is. The Christian era is a very practical thing. From that time on, more and more people -- first only the Apostles, and then the congregations, and then the bishops, and then the monks, and then the saints, and then the popes, and then the cities, and then the princes, and then the Puritans, and then the -- you see, learned how to live in historical relation to each other. It had to be studied. And now it's -- it's getting worldwide.

Gentlemen, the whole problem between Russia and America is the problem of the accumulation of capital. The whole problem of the reproduction of capital is the problem of fathers and sons. Shall a father withhold his capital income, in a -- invest for his sons, in his big -- with his big factory system, or -- or shall he go and spend it? You know this is the problem of the capital excess tax.

The problem of the -- the Marxians call it the "reproduction" problem. That's exactly the problem of -- of history, of the apostolic church now carried into the production of goods. Shall one-half of what we do, you see, be reserved to make other people, you see, produce? That's reproduction of capital, you see. Or shall we simply produce what we need and -- and do -- and eat it?

It's the whole problem of the -- of the capitalistic problem. This is the Christian problem. Never has before economy been baptized. The idea of -- which the world faced in the economic crisis of 1929 and in the Russian revolution is the problem: can economics, even, be treated as Jesus treated the Apostles? You don't believe this, gentlemen. But that's not blasphemy. That's my firm conviction. And I've written a whole book, The Autobiography of Western Man, on this topic, that the Russian revolution and the world wars are the last step of brin- -- even bringing our relation to coal, and oil, and electricity, and atomic energy into this same relation of a -- inheritance which has to be increased, and cannot be simply eaten up, you see. The problem is investment, re-investment, reproduction of capital {goods} -- accumulation of capital goods -- whatever you call it, you see. And you know, that's the key of the great Five-Year Plan in Russia, this relation.

Again, Henry James and his sons, the same thing. How much must I -- freedom must I give my son in his own generation to discover the truth? How much must I impose on him, you see? You remember what I said about genius and authority? Now the whole problem of the Five-Year Plan is genius and authority. Again, the -- the genius today could produce enough to give all the Russians all the eggs and the butter they need. But then there would be nothing provided for the next generation. The next generation would not have, as William James said, this endowment of having its own capital goods. Ja?

(Sir, if the historical example of this relation between father and son, or generations, is found in Christ and His relation to the Apostles Peter and Paul -- you told us when we were studying the Jameses that the essential thing that has to be passed on is the genius of the father to the son, not so much the authority. Well, in this historical example of Christ and the Apostles, what happened to the authority -- was it passed on, or was it not?)

Paul never quotes Christ, as you know. He's {completely free}. No words {has he}. The spirit is in him. We have -- the Acts says, "We have given over our souls to His spirit." That is, He has nothing anymore. But Paul declares, explains, interprets, commands, organizes, in his own heart, in his own name...

(In the name -- in the name of --)

...in the name, ja. But never saying that Christ has said so, never. That's not what we call "authority."

(Well, I think we definitely {quote} authority { }. But it occurs to me that he is using His authority when he's speaking in His name. And only because Christ lived and has this authority.)

But in Him, sure.

(Yeah. And this --)

It speaks directly. That is, freshly, from {genius}. The new creation. It's not quotation. It's not law. To authority -- it's quite right. I have -- I mean, there's a third thing, law, you see, which is not the same as {giving} authority. I mean, as long as the Apostles fulfill the requirement of sacrificing their own will to this authority, they aren't -- they are allowed to speak in { }. You're quite right. There is more to -- than genius and authority in this earth, because the -- the application of these apostles is their -- their own good will, you see, is of course required, you see. Oh ja, oh yes.

What time, please? Would you be able { } to finish your paper?

(No, Sir.)

How long is it?

(23 pages.)

Who has to leave at 2:45? Well, then we can't { }. Also, you will be then the first, next time.

We come back now to Cooper. In his case, gentlemen, we can study an aspect of the James problem, which again is unknown here. He discovers aristocracy, or he still keeps aristocracy. And as you remember in this paper, it was said that he is an aristocrat. And he -- he revels in Paris in the salons with the duchesses, and the counts, and the nobility, and the aristocracy of the spirit -- mind, and here he -- he is all for the natural red Indian, you see. So he has this cleavage in his mind, is that he is semi-democrat and semi-{ }, but as most Americans are, I mean. The -- I have not yet to -- I have still to find a democratic American. There's nobody who is taken in by royalty and by title as much of this -- on this campus. If I tell you the stories of hoaxes which have worked -- been worked on the Dartmouth community over the last 15 years, you would laugh. One pseudoafter another pseudo-title has -- has imposed on people. We were, unfortunately

being a little bit sophisticated, able to look through these hoaxes, but they -- you have -- you remember one?

(Lady Montague.)

Yes. Lady Montague. Just happened a year ago. Well, she called herself "Lady Montague." She was a -- she was a domestic servant from St. Louis, somewhere. And she's -- finally she ended in jail. But before, everybody in this college obediently had invited her to their homes and feel greatly honored, because she called herself "Lady," which only goes to prove that it is -- it is still effective to call yourself "Lady Montague."

Well, well -- I can give you a number of other examples. But it doesn't matter. Only I haven't yet to find a democratic American. You all want to descend from some royalty in Europe, and some -- everybody, you know, can have a -- his pedigree fabricated here, in some nice manner. And there's always somebody who -- whom you will not admit to your fraternity, or to your club. And that makes you feel good. You need always somebody who cannot make -- make it, because otherwise it wouldn't be -- be no fun to make it.

And this is -- discrepancy is only normal. I have nothing against it. The only funny thing is that you decline to accept it, that you all say it isn't, and that you even sell democracy to -- to other peoples, when they come to see in this country that it doesn't exist. I mean, the Europeans, of course, laugh their heads off when Americans talk about democracy. I assure you, Europeans in many ways are much more democratic. I mean -- if I am a professor at -- at -- at Dartmouth, it is decided in -- here, in the ranks of the scholastic society that I can be no good, because here are no people of any -- who amount to anything in Dartmouth. They are only football players. If -- this isn't true in Europe. If you belong to any high school, the people would still admit that you can be good. Even if you belong to Dartmouth. But here, it's absolute -- the truth. A man at Harvard just doesn't talk to a man at Dartmouth. I mean, in the -- in the faculty. It's just -- no quality.

Only to show you that we all live by these discrepancies, and these discriminations, and no discrimination -- life begins by discrimination. That doesn't mean, gentlemen, that we shouldn't fight for the other, and only the thing -- how much more complicated. This much richer life is much richer than you want to know. The funny thing about man is that he has to have a -- several tenets, and to strive equally strong. For -- for example, we need a powerful central government, and we need decentralization. That's not a contradiction, you see. We need both. We need decentralization and centralization. People will say, "Well, you either have to be centralist or decentral." I don't see it at all. I'm a

conservative, and I'm progressive, but I cannot be all the time, in every point a progressive, and cannot be all the time a conservative, you see. But man begins obviously when he's both. A man who says, "I'm always progressive," tires me, and a man who says he's always a reactionary, is equally unimportant. I mean, the people who are interesting are the people who at times are one thing and at times are the other. It's contradictory, sure. But it's very contradictory to inhale and to exhale. And yet life begins by this very fact. You eat and you shit. Now, you cannot say, "I'll just go on eating." And you cannot say, "I'll just go on shitting." You have to alternate. What's wrong about this? You cannot have a -- I mean -- founded on -- any one of these principles.

But you don't want to hear this, because you don't want to be in history. I mean, Henry -- I have tried to show you that Henry James and William James are like inhaling and exhaling. You remember what we tried to say, that you cannot understand the one without the trust and the love of the other, that this father at his breakfast table pouring out his Christian truth, obviously, you see, wanted to bring down some seed into the ground, and had to leave it to the -- his faith, and to weather and wind, and to the years to come, what his son would make of it, you see. That wasn't his business. But his son, on the other hand, received from his father the old eloquence, the whole top- -- all the topics of conversation, although he was quite free to twist them around and to omit something. But here, the eloquence, we said, comes to the sons from the father. You remember?

So there is a tie-up. You cannot look the life of Henry James into Henry James. And you cannot look the principle of democracy into people who allegedly always live democratic. You find it just as much in people who try to live aristocratic.

Now, this he does. And that's where you have the -- the -- premise of -- of Cooper, that there -- I have a quarter of an hour. I want to give you a -- a really important -- { } --

[Tape interruption]

...from his parents, that when William James gives up Henry James' Christianity, and says, "I'm a scientist. I know nothing {but what} my senses tell me. I have not this historical view of one, big stream of a Holy Spirit -- {going}." {Well}, what William James' position is, and yours, the psychologist's position, you see, confining himself to looking at this man and what he -- goes on in his mind. That's psychologizing. That's psychology, you see. Psychology is the application of the principle of nature to man's spirit and soul. And so he says, "I see that this boy wetted his bed at two, therefore his soul is wet, all the rest of his life."

And that you call now today "psychoanalysis," which means that you look for the importance of the man's actions in that which is confined between his cradle and his death, you see. Whereas obviously the New Deal has absolutely nothing to do with Mr. Roosevelt's infantile paralysis, or his digestion, but it has to do with the development of industry in five generations. That he finally had to say that labor is not a commodity has nothing to do with psychoanalysis, that he was under the thumb of his mother. And any psychologizing about Mr. Roosevelt's New Deal is ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous. But that's what people tell -- tell you today, that you can find in his antecedents as a body, as a boy in the cradle, the explanation of his acts. {Perfectly} fantastic. Every word he says is outside his own body. It is a -- has a meaning in the history of thousands of years when a man says, "new" and he says "deal." He uses words that are 5,000 years old, and therefore it has abs- -- it doesn't come out of him. It goes through him. He's just the carrier. It is -- but this is what people tell you today. They say that the electric light is to be explained by the isolation around the cable between two masts. Is this is true, you see? The mast being everybody's physique, you see, and the electric light has a -- very little to do with the wood on -- of the poles. But that's what you are told all the time by psychologists, that the wood of the mast pole determines whether there shall be electricity in the -- in the c- -- cables or not.

What I do in the society, gentlemen, of men, for peace, or for war, or -- that has absolutely nothing to do with whether I am a cripple or whether I am six feet -- six f- -- six. But you don't believe it. That's all for -- that's -- you call this today the great secrets of the -- of psychology.

They didn't even touch religion. I mean, Mr. {Raveling} made a speech. Did you -- who listened to him? Did you go to his lecture? The -- the Symposion of the psychology department, you see. He didn't even -- didn't even see that this had nothing to do with each other, the -- the malformations of the psychologists and what -- in the history of mankind is considered a sin, you see. The idolatry of the golden calf, that's a sin. But has nothing to do with the malformation of the children -- individual children of Israel, you see. Not the slightest. They could have a good digestion, or poor digestion. They could be one-third left- -- or they could, you see, love their sister or -- it has absolutely nothing to do with worshiping the golden calf.

But this is what today people tell you, that your digestion, or your desire to have a -- to go to bed with somebody will then enact legislation. The Bible is very careful to warn you against it. As you know, in the pedigree of Jesus there are very questionable ladies, because the Bible wants to make sure that the great decisions of mankind have absolutely nothing to do with the morality of the people who do it. If you are -- whether -- if you are sen- -- sensitive to the current

of history -- of the electric current, you see -- you can be a cripple, and you can be a criminal, and you can be stupid, and you can be a genius -- if you have this senses -- this sixth sense of history, you are fit for the kingdom of Heaven. And if you don't have it, you can pass all the examinations with A, and you can absolutely stultify yourself to the decisions that have to be made. Hoover was certainly an A student, but he just couldn't stop the Depression. He had no p- -- sense -- no political sense. He's an engineer. Engineers just don't have that sense, I mean. I'm -- beware of the technician, gentlemen, in politics. He's the man who doesn't understand -- never, anything. President Conant is such a man. So they made him high commissioner in Germany. Doesn't understand a thing of politics. He's a chemist. And when he was made president, the old professor Whitehead, the great philosopher, the British -- heard this and said, "Why have -- it's impossible. You can't do this. You can't make -- a president of -- the greatest university can't be a chemist."

"Well," he said, "Why not? President Eliot of Harvard was a chemist, too."

"Oh," he said, "but that's very different. Eliot was a poor chemist. But Conant is a good chemist."

Only to show you that to conduct history, the affairs of men, is a thing by itself, which ha- -- cannot be reduced to any endowment, you see, with a good -- with a good physique, or a good brain, or any of such things, because it's a relation to the things before you and after you, and not to the things you can touch, and weigh, and see, and mix, and boil up in -- a chemical compound. What can these physicists do? Produce atom bombs. That's their contribution to history. That is, any natural scientist who enters history destroys. That's all he can do. The letter of Mr. Einstein to President Roosevelt that he should build the atom bomb, that will be the immortality in history of Mr. Einstein, and not -- that he had a good brain in mathematics and physics. It's very uninteresting. And that's his only contribution. But they all pose, these people, as -- as -- as peacetime -- peace- -- No- -- Nobel Prize winners. But the physicists' contribution to the world of our -- of man is destruction, power, mechanics. And it takes a long time of ministers, and teachers, and mothers, and monks, and nuns, and deacons, and -- and nurses to heal any one of the wounds that one of these big physicists can produce in the body of mankind. But -- in this country, all the values stand on their head. So Mr. Einstein is the great genius of peace. He -- he has a window in Riverside Church. Just brain power. It has nothing to do with what man is craving as a continuity of the human race on this earth.

Now, Cooper's -- and Henry -- William James, Jr., and any -- or Mr. Einstein, in developing any one in their own time, secular invention { }, always to a certain extent belong to the pre-Christian order. That is, gentlemen, if you for

one moment allow me to -- where is my -- here. Here.

You take Greek -- Greek science. You take the -- Christianity. That's the beginning of our era. Let's put this plus, minus, zero. And you get the year 1865, William James -- or Cooper, 1821. Mr. William James decides, "I'm a scientist." That is -- {he is} -- let us -- allow me to say this -- he goes Greek. He says this. He becomes an academic. "Academic" is just another expression for s- -- allowing a mind to concentrate on that what the Greeks did in pre-Christian days. The word "academic" is the word for the renaissance of the Greek mind. Now since the Greek mind is polytheistic, worships many things -- the arts, and the boys and the girls -- they love both as you know, and the -- the Muses, and the Graces, and Bacchus, and Venus, and everything -- they are polytheistic, and in this sense, any Greek departmentalization of the mind, the famous ivory tower, is always pre-Christian by establishment. A man who just goes zoologic -- in for zoology, as William James did in 1865 when he went to Brazil, says, "I'm not responsible at this moment for making peace between men of g- -- men of good will, but I am going out, because I'm interested in { }." Now that's all right. That is, in every one moment...

[End of tape]