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

(This is the second side.)

[tape interruption]

...respect, or reverence for the great power that is in numbers. They -- they are brazen enough to say, "If I can number a thing, I -- so what?" Anybody who deals with the Pythagorean paper should think twice before he delivers it to me, because I will not accept any impertinence, or brazenness, or insolence. It's a very solemn thing to hear the harmony of the spheres. And those -- who deals with Pythagoras? There's only one? Well, he -- ja. You do well to read in -- in a translation, of course--this is a very brief thing--at least the Timaeus by Plato, once through. It's a short thing to read, but there you find the response to Pythagoreanism in -- by a mind like Plato. He wasn't a Pythagorean, but in his old age, he -- he heard also the harmony of the spheres. And as a matter of fact, the greatest expression of the Pythagorean secret is today for us in the Timaeus, a -- a dialogue of the latest years of Plato.

With regard to Aristotle, the opposite is true. There is so much we have about -- from Aristotle's pen, that I have never thought that you sh- -- could read everything -- that would be even useful to recommend an extended reading. I would suggest that you take up two books in full. Either Politics and Poetics, or the Constitution of Athens and the Nichomachean Ethics, or the pol- -- book on politics. But there have to be at least two full-fledged books which you analyze in your paper to get to the method. You can also get his books on animals and plants, because he created, as the first man in history, the power to describe something objectively.

And so it's a question of your own selection. And I don't want to make any -- pre- -- prescribe anything, I -- because Aristotle is really of an amazing universality. And if I would cut out a -- a certain book, I would prejudice your own taste. Anybody who is interested in the natural sciences will go to his natural sc- -- scientific writings. They are, as -- with regard to style and representation I think, just as exciting as the political writings or the literary writings. I don't think there is -- in my mind, any one writing by Aristotle in which his greatness is greater, so to speak, than in the others. If you always keep in mind that in -- with Aristotle we reach this moment of quiet contemplation of the width of the universe, of the famous Greek "pan," including man, including the variety of states.

Also if one of you writes a pa- -- who is a -- dealing with Aristotle? What I

-- all of you want to do is to meditate on this tremendous undertaking of his that he had 158 constitutions of different states worked over, and represented objectively, not swallowing them all up in a ni- -- neat system of politics, as we write our textbooks on government today, but expounding carefully the workings of 158 different systems, so that every one would -- could be done justice, and could stand out in its own light, so to speak, and on its own merits. We have only one of these books today. But the principle of his -- of his assortment, of his selection, of his undertaking deserves your -- a clear statement in your paper, because in addition to the -- to the -- you may say, notes his students got from his lectures, which we now today call his books, these -- many s- -- of his real writings, which he wrote himself, dialogues and others, are lost. And it's very unfair today to compare Aristotle -- the Aristotelian bulk of literature with the Platonic, because the proper doctrine of Plato was never written. And his dialogues are sideline books. And he says so himself in his Seventh Letter. Who is dealing with Plato?

So first, to finish my word -- words on Aristotle. So be careful not to -- not to be dismayed, so to speak, by the lack of beauty in Aristotle's books. Most of it has been preserved by notes, you see, taken down by his students. What is it?

(How should we { } with Aristotle?)

Well, as much as you can. He is the real -- the real son of Aristotle. And by -- you see, he adds to Aristotle the -- the dealing with characters, with human types, you see. So he tries to go on from the animals and plants and even follow this into human nature. And his characters to this day are outstanding descriptions of temperament, you see.

I think there is -- I must leave this to you, just as I leave the selection of the writings of Aristotle to you. I think in Theophrastus, it becomes clear where the -- what the ultimate, so to speak, is. The highest. Most -- gentlemen, most great men reach their achievement in their best students, in their best pupil, you see. You cannot understand Christ without Paul. It's the -- has been the fashion of the last hundred years to say that Paul spoiled Christianity. But he didn't. He made it understandable, and he has saved it. And nobody understands Christ who doesn't understand Paul. And this habit of killing Paul in order allegedly to love Christ is a very bad habit. And I think it's waning -- wearing off today. It has been done with a great ruthlessness, and -- and great lack of taste. So with Theophrastus and Aristotle, it's -- similar, you see. He's his best stu- -- pupil. And the real man, you s- -- the man who got it all from Aristotle, you see, and where it stands out very clearly.

With regard to Plato. Every one of you has to deal with the Seventh

Letter. The Seventh Letter is his own statement about the relation of his writings to his teachings. If you don't read the Seventh Letter, then you do not understand the place which he gives himself to his literature. And you are all so paper-minded, and paperbound- minded, that you think when a man writes a book, that's the man. Far from it, gentlemen, you see. You don't know Plato if you -- don't see his life. His achievement is the -- the great 80 years, which he lived from 4- -- what are his dates? Who knows the life dates of Plato? Well, then I have to assume that you haven't even started on your paper on Plato. That's the first thing, after all. When a man writes about another man, the -- he goes and looks up his dates and learns them by heart. Otherwise you can't know anything about the man. Funny idea. Do you know when you have been born? Well, without it, you are lost. If you don't know whether you are 15 or 28, you don't know how to behave.

You -- this is not -- not ridiculous, gentlemen. I assure you that as long as you haven't put down the li- -- dates of -- of Ari- -- of Plato and made clear that he was 28 years old when Socrates died, in his absence, to his great dismay--and that is the real tragedy of Plato's life, as I told you--then you don't understand Plato, how he spent the rest of -- 42 more years of immortalizing Socrates. That's a very strange relation. Twenty-eight is 4 times 7. These are four phases of growth. And there were left to him how many more years?--42 years, is that right?--and that's 6 times 7. And you can see that his life consists of at least six stations after the death of Socrates. And these stations are very important, because he changes constantly and finds new ways of doing what he -- the death of Socrates obliges him to do. He's under the spell of this event for the rest of his life.

So the dates 428 to 348 are of utmost importance. They are also of such importance because you must take down the date when Aristotle was born. When was he born? Does nobody know that? Wie?

(427.)

That's Plato. And Aristotle?

(385.)

What?

(385.)

Are you sure?

(385 or 384.)

Ja, I think it's 3-8-4. Well, that's very important, because the -- the Academy is founded in 3-8-7. So you must think that Aristotle is born into a going concern. And that he is such a classic is that he hadn't to pay the penalty, the -- hadn't given his blood for the blood bank of founding the Academy. That's a great difference, gentlemen. If you are a founder, you have to waste your time to make people see what should be done. If you are born into something, you see, you can proceed to do it. You see the difference?

And there- -- that's the real break between Plato and Aristotle, gentlemen, that Plato's whole life is consumed in making to the Greeks this point clear that there should be a center of free studies not subservient to any one city. That's the Academy. And we have led up to this. All the time, I've tried to explain to you that although Plato is an Athenian, and although he is founding a school in Athens, the school is not of Athens, but is the heiress, the inheri- -- the heritage of the achievement of all of Greece, like the Trojan War. Just as all Greeks waged the war and came to common consciousness in Homer, you see, so a second time the Academy brings together all the achievements from all the cities of Greece, including the colonies in the Far East, in Afri- -- and in the Far West, in Africa, and Cyrene, in Italy, in Sicily, you see. And it's a homecoming of all these, you see, stormy petrels. And that's a great scenery, isn't that? It's a -- much different from what you learn. Plato founded the Academy in Athens. If I had let you believe this, you see, you wouldn't understand what's importance. Any Podunk in America today can found an academy. And if you just take the words "academy" and "city," you haven't -- you have no idea what Greek philosophy is about.

Now with Aristotle then, the dates are again terribly important. And when he dies, the whole western Mediterranean, gentlemen, is no longer governed in cities, but in -- by kings, in big states. Alexander has come, has smashed up all these hundreds of cities. And he has been the new Achilles. And whereas in the Trojan War, Achilles dies and the Greeks return home, you can say that in the Alexandrinian empire, the cities, with all their named heroes, you see, die, lose their independence. And what is remaining is the Hellenistic, one world of the Mediterranean inher- -- to be inherited later by the Romans, as you know it. What you call "classical civilization" is the gift of Alexander and the Romans to us.

So, gentlemen, perhaps you see now the tremendous way in all your papers, you will have to be aware that -- who is dealing with the Stoics? You see, the Stoics only come into their own after that--Epicurus, too--when the world has already become one, you see. When nobody can hope to live in one city,

because you already live in tremendous territories. Alexander has come and -- and learned too well from Aristotle, you see, what to do. Alexander is, you know, the -- the pupil of Aristotle, and -- you cannot say the "student," because he certainly did not carry out Aristotle's dreams or visions. It's a -- he is a dis- -- he is not a disciple of Aristotle. He's not an Aristotelian. He's a young god who -- who sows the relativity of this academic and peripatetic knowledge by doing the very opposite.

So the -- the -- the greatness of this century, of -- of the 4th century, gentlemen, is then in these very dates. Socrates is born when?

(169.)

Is it -- 340? I thought he died in 348. Isn't that right?

(347.)

And Aristotle dies when?

(342.)

Now, here is the real- -- reign of Alexander. Here is the famous Peloponnesian War. Here, before, goes -- go the -- the tremendous battles of liberation of the Greeks of -- for freedom against the Persians. Which are the two great battles?

(Marathon and Thermopylae.)

Quite. So from the outside, Greece is saved for another 150 years. But then, from the north -- from their own Prussian North, from Macedonia, which is very much like the Prussians in Germany, comes the unifying force, Alexander overrides all these hundreds of cities, unifies them, and pays -- the payoff is that he makes all the other realms around the Mediterranean Greek. After -- this is the battle again- -- against the older civilizations, here. Persians--and of course that includes Babylon and Egypt--all the pre-Greek empires, you see, are smashed, or are stopped here. Then Alexander comes -- as you know, marches into Persia, defeats the great king of Persia, and what remains after 323 in the Mediterranean world, down to Babylon and down to Assyr, is Greek. So he replaces the pre-Greek empires with a Greek empire -- Greek-speaking empires. They are kingsh- -- kingdoms subdivided under, but they all speak Greek. When the Romans come, it's like a natural rehabilitation of the Alexandrinian dream.

Alexander the Great carries, as the pupil of Aristotle, the Greek thought

of the Academy, of the Stoics, of the Epicureans, of all the schools of Greek thought -- also into non-Greek, you see, the non-Greek world. And we have it for this reason today. You may say that as a -- as a Saks- -- vaccine has to be vaccinated first on a little culture--and then it can be sent to all the schoolchildren, you see, in America--in the same way, gentlemen, in antiquity, Greek thought was vaccinated in a test case on the whole Mediterranean, and today if you tol- -- go to the United Nations, that's very Greek indeed. And our Olympic Games in Melbourne, and our United Nations in New York are the Greek aspect of the world--isn't the whole aspect of the world. You can't live the United Nations alone. And you can't live by the Olympic Games alone. But it's an essential part of our existence. And it has all been exercised or trained into us for the first time 2,000 years ago. And that's why the games in Melbourne are called the Olympic Games, you see. And that's why the -- the term which is used in the United Nations incessantly is "politics," that's the Greek word "polis." We have not taken over the word "em-" -- "empire." We have not taken over the word "theocracy" from the Egyptians or the Babylonians, you see. We speak of "politics." That's Greek.

And if you could see this -- these dates, gentlemen, in their true light, you should learn them, gentlemen--well, as you learn skiing, or as you learn any practical thing. These figures are full of significance, because it shows you how much it -- long it takes, to develop a new serum, a new vaccine to immunize any one city of man, you see, against seclusion. To open it up, and to make it -- put it into connection, you see, with a mental process, you see, that is bigger than McCarthy in Wisconsin.

Socrates dies from the hand of Mr. McCarthy in 399. The accusation is that the gods of Athens do not suffice for him. And I think the accusation was true. And I think under the laws of Athens, he was justifiably -- you see, condemned. And this is for you a hard lesson, gentlemen. But the story of Greek philosophy is that the intrusion of a new dimension of thinking, this universal dimension, that you think for the whole world, has to be bought at a price. What you don't -- not understand, gentlemen, is that in a tragedy, both sides can be right. And in the death of Socrates, to which I now -- wish to turn today, especially, the main problem is and -- is acknowledged by -- by Socrates in his Criton, and we spoke about this before, you see, is that -- progress in humanity does not come about in the simple and silly way that one man is wrong -- your parents are wrong, and you are right; or you are wrong and your parents are right, gentlemen. But your parents are right, and you are right. And then life becomes interesting. They defend something important, and you defend something important, you see. And at one moment, it isn't yet decided how the two can live together. And therefore, both sides are right. And both sides, you see, are too narrow. They haven't yet found a way in giving room for this other life.

So the Athenians, from their point of view, I think, can be called blind men--just as the Jews, when they crucified the Lord--narrow men, deaf men, but they were not in the sense unjust, according to their own law. The law has to be fulfilled, even if it hasn't yet been abolished. You can only conclude from 399 that the Athenians now had to open up a place in their suburb, called later the Academy, in which a Socrates, you see, could exist without being accused by the citizens of Athens of heresy, and of defying the Athenian gods, because he was trying to make the Athenian gods rhyme and square with God in the universe.

So the main point I wish to make about Socrates is, gentlemen, today that he was the tragic figure in which the new element of universal thought, of a thought of second impressions, of critical thought, came to blows with the world of first impressions. To you, who live in such a loose world of only second impressions, you live by abstraction, your head is full of abstractions like philosophy and politics. And that's all abstract, gentlemen. And your -- you are full of theology. If you analyze the vocabulary of an American senior in -- in college, out of nine words which you use, eight are abstracts, and one is concrete. And you don't even know what an abstract is. You -- most of you think that the abstract is concrete and the concrete is abstract. You know what con- -- how to define concrete? What's the difference between abstract and concrete? Pardon me?

({ } the other is more his ideological idea { }.)

Well, I would go so far to say that a full concrete, see -- you are not a concept. You are concrete, you see. So the -- the complete concrete, you see, cannot be covered or explained by a -- a concept, you see. A concept always takes some generalization, you see. You can only conceive of something if you abstract from its specific, you see, thing, and put it into some class. You have to classify it. And already -- when I begin to classify you, I do you wrong. You see. You are quite unique, Sir. You are a human being, but I haven't said very much if I say you are a human being, you see. And your wife can't do anything with a human being. She -- can only do something with you. I mean. We marry one, you see, person.

So a person is concrete, you see, and is not abstract. And persons, of course, are the most -- the holy resisters against abstractions, and I tried to show you that in Greek philosophy, the saving grace has always been the philosopher. He is the one concrete miracle, you see, which remains undissolved. The -- Pythagoras himself, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, you see. Unshaken, he is a person. And you remember that I tried to show you that there are three miracles, and not one. Instead of what you think, yes. I wish to -- can be -- have intellectual curiosity. I may be surprised why the earth tor- -- turns around the sun. That's

only the objective miracle. That's a fact, you see. But the first who can discover this, that this is a miracle, is mirac- -- more miraculous. The big brain of Mr. Einstein is miraculous, much more miraculous than all the laws of relativity.

I had to deal in a -- in my Sociology which just appeared with the problem of -- of the Freudians, for example. And I say that there should be in every generation a man like Sigmund Freud, or like Karl Marx, or like Plato -- is much more important than the doctrine of Freudianism, because it is more important that in every generation, a new doctrine can be proclaimed. You must see this. If -- if you say, "Psychoanalysis is everything," the result might be that there might be no heroic men, because we think of every great man later than just as a lunatic who has an Oedipus Complex, you see. And if you declare every great man in the future as a man who -- deal -- who comes, you see, out of inhibition, repression, Oedipus Complex, inferiority complex, superiority complex, you see, et cetera, then out goes greatness. Out goes innovation, because you -- you have then anal- -- analysts who put these people in their strait-jackets. That's all that happens to the great man then.

So the person of Freud is much more important, from my point of view of life, in the community, and the future of this country, that there should be in the next generation freedom again for a man to teach -- I don't know what. I don't know it, but I must make room for his -- appearance. Can you see this? Same with Marx. You see it now with the trouble they have in Russia, you see. By having deified one doctrine, you see, they can't go on. You see, they are absolutely hamstrung at this moment, a dead-end street, because they have declared that a doctrine developed in 1847 is the ultimate doctrine, which is utter nonsense, obviously, you see. And that's the nonsense about Bolshevism. Not what they -- what they teach, but that they teach that this is ultimate doctrine.

So gentlemen, you can only cure yourself from this, if you see that the Greeks in Socrates, in Plato, in Aristotle, in Pythagoras, in Thales, in all these sages have names to conjure with, to save themselves from the mere admiration of the objective statements of these men. Can you see this? So to admire the philosopher, gentlemen, is the corollary to admiring the philosophy. If you do not admire the philosopher, the creative spirit who has brought up the philosophy, you will admire a makeshift, a manmade mannequin, a -- philosophy. Whereas you have to admire the tremendous brain that is able to develop such a philosophy, you see. And these we need at all times. This is the real problem of freedom.

Gentlemen, we owe our freedom as -- as general citizens of the world, as -- as millions only to the deep conviction of any im- -- civilized group, that they have to make room for genius. You see. It's genius that saves you and me from

being herded to the polls in a one-party system, because in democracy we say we don't know the next leader, you see. We give -- must give the minority a chance to become the majority. Now that's exactly the same story as Mis- -- Mr. Freud's life story, who was for 30 years rejected by everybody, you see. And now in this country, you run amok with him. But that will wear off, of course, and there must be room for somebody else who contradicts Mr. Freud or has something else important to say. I don't know what.

So the -- third miracle, gentlemen, then is: the currency which greatness and genius is given in a community that hates it at first, that the ethics of the pro- -- process of teaching of knowledge, of education, you see, that we have to learn that Socrates executed for high treason and blasphemy in 399, in 387 can become the god of the Academy -- or the good spirit of the Academy in the suburbs of Athens. And that people, although they have strangled his physical existence, bow to the evidence, are overcome, you see, by a new ethics, and therefore, the logos of Socrates becomes the ethics of the Greeks, you see, on the physics of the universe. You remember my constant repetition of these three items?

And therefore there are three miracles in the world, gentlemen. The logical miracle, they are great minds, in seeming contradiction in every generation renewing the life of our race. The -- ethical miracle, that although at first they are -- sound impossible and madmen, we finally bow and make room for the current which they create, for the stream of life which they impart. And third, that the universe looks different when we bow ethically to the logical power of these spirits.

You will find it again and again that without this careful division of the logical, and the ethical, and the physical, you have no philosophy. Today man in modern society has no philosophy, because he treats genius also as physical, and God also as a fact. God is not a fact, gentlemen. It's a power that makes you say something new. That's something quite different. That's the best I can tell you about what we know of God. The first thing we -- we know is that you can make a declaration of love today where you haven't made one yesterday. That's such a tremendous fact in your life that you know that God is the power who allows you this freedom. Yesterday, you said, "I'll never marry a girl from Cleveland. It's a terrible city." Tomorrow you go and propose to her. You are overcome by a new power, a new affection. I mean, that's a joke, you understand. But you might have said that you will never marry a Jewess, or you will marry -- never marry a Muslim girl, or a Negro girl, you see. And tomorrow, you'll go and you are overcome, you see, by the new truth that you have to do just the very thing you have defied before, you see, you'd never do.

This is the -- the new logos. This is the logos in action. That's not what you call "logic," of course. And I warn you, what Americans call philosophy, and ethics, and logic, has nothing to do with Greek philosophy. What you call "ethical" is what your Aunt Elizabeth thinks is ethical. That's not ethics. And what you call is -- "logical" is what an -- a man -- an accountant can -- can do in arithmetic. Of course, arithmetic is very good, but has nothing to do with philosophy, gentlemen. Philosophy is the discovery that in every one moment, new truth is breaking in, and that you may be the vessel of this new truth. God speaks through you, every minute, unexpectedly, against our will.

Most people, gentlemen, who have proclaimed the new truth, have been very reluctant to do it. The people who are very eager to -- to proclaim something usually don't proclaim truth. Walter Winchell doesn't proclaim truth. He's very eager to proclaim something every day over the radio, you see. But just isn't truth. Don't tell him, because otherwise he'll attack me, too.

Well, such a scoundrel -- what have you, I mean? There is no truth in this. There is no logos. That's sadism. That's black joy, the misfortunes of other people.

So this is and remains then the -- the -- the key to our -- your treatment also of your term papers, gentlemen. You must always see that the coming in of this philosophy at a certain time, as a power, integrated into the life stream of all our thought ever since, is the problem to be respected. It isn't -- can't be brushed aside as, "Oh, he just says this. So what?" You have to say, "Imagine! One day a man discovered the sanctity of numbers -- the quality of numbers." And with -- at this point, I'm now back to Pythagoras.

I -- we ended the last time, as you remember, with the tetractys. And what is remaining in Plato in the Timaeus and in Aristotle, out of the Pythagorean thought is something that we have to re- -- reconquer today, the quality of numbers. The quality of numbers. You only know that numbers have -- are quantities. You think that 4 -- you remember, we talked about this before -- are only 1, 2, 3, 4 and then you go on, 5, 6, 7. But gentlemen, a century even has a quality of its own. A century is not a hundred years, or 3,600 -- -524 days, according the astronomical calendar. But you and I are members of a century that overpowers you and me. Because we belong to a certain century, you see, we can't think -- differently. When this century ends, it will dismiss our posterity from this same hypnosis. But we poor people are in the 20th century. So we, obviously, if we don't discover the -- the power of the quality which a century has over us, you see, by some truer worship of truer gods than the g- -- spirit of the times, we are just contemporaries.

Most of you, as you know, at this moment deny that numbers have any spell or -- yet you all boast that you are Class of '57, or Class of '56, or Class of '58, Class of '59. And the greatest example of this was given in 1940 in this college. A friend of -- here, a colleague of mine, Professor Bartlett, gave a paper to write on St. Augustine to a student. And he got the amazing reply, "Here I am, a senior in Dartmouth College in the year of the Lord 1940. I think that my predecessors in this college who went to war in 1917, were pretty stupid. They were taken in by warmongers. And I feel very superior to these people who went before me by 23 years. How can I be asked now to write on a man who died in 430 A.D.?" That was his logic. That's a typical, you see, contemporary, boasting, you see, of the spirit of his own day, and not seeing the quality, the limitation of only being a spirit of his own day, and being unable to understand the importance of a man who -- who wrote -- who lived 5- -- 1500 years before him. The total impotency.

And I think it has hit most people today, they are impotent to listen to any truth that has nothing to do with the spirit of the times. You are quite sure that you know everything you have to know from reading the newspapers. But they stifle your sensibilities, gentlemen. They make you deaf. They do exactly what the Bible says, "They have ears and they don't hear. And they have eyes, and they don't see." That's the business of the newspapers. They make such a noise, you see. And they have so many pictures that you cannot see a little more on the long wavelength, you see, of the -- all the times.

Therefore, I go back to something simpler, gentlemen. I tried to tell you that the so-called tetractys of the Pythagoreans meant that in -- when you deal with anything in the world, you must never be satisfied by reducing it to two or three. Like capital and labor. I have written a whole book, The Multiformity of Man, to say that if you do not take in the man- -- the salesmen, and the engineers, the inventor in the business of industry, you'll never understand industry. Industry is not management and labor, you see. It's sales, as well as inventions, innovations, technological change, you see, which is neither labor nor management, obviously, but grows in another potato field. And there again I have made the -- who knows The Multiformity? Some of you must have read it. Well, it's just another attempt to be a Pythagorean. That is, not to deal with anything worldly, with -- fewer instances than at least four. Only -- when I take four different points am I sure that I am not forcing the issue by my little logic here, up here, you see, by my -- the play of my mind. The outer world, gentlemen, is not logical, but has to be experienced in its vastness and four is the protection.

Now in -- in Greek philosophy, this played a tremendous part practically then, with Plato, with Aristotle, because of the four cardinal virtues. Already in

the 5th century, before Plato, and before Socrates, it was recognized that you cannot describe a man's virtues by saying "He's virtuous." That would be empty, you see, or "He's good." As soon, however, as you try to -- to analyze, you found at least four qualities, which may not be sufficient, but at least four. And you know which they were. Everybody knows the four cardinal virtues, don't you, of -- of the Greek. Please.

(Temperance, justice, courage, and -- { } word.)

Prudence. Let's put them here. They can of course be expressed in different terms. Courage and--what's the { }--justice. Now you can say justice is the distribution of prudence, temperance, and courage. That is, you can pru- -- put prudence -- justice, if you like to, in the center, and have the three, you see, go out like rays. Or you could put them in a square. The important thing is, don't try to reduce one to the other. You see. Don't try to say that you can say courage is temperance, and prudence is justice, you see. As soon as you do, resist this temptation of all the little logicians. To have lesser, and fewer, and fewer things, and reduce everything to this big monism--number 1, everything is water; everything is this--then you are a Pythagorean, because you have given the number 4 this quality to deal with reality.

Will you take this down, gentlemen? The number 4 has this great merit that it forces you to stay within ex- -- empirical experience, and never get out it -- out of it with neat, logical tricks. You can, of course, argue, argue -- by argument everything has been proved, you see. You -- I can prove that you don't exist. And you can prove that I don't exist, gentlemen. But then I slap you in the face and you suddenly, empirically realize that I do exist. The whole argument hasn't proven anything.

And it -- therefore, gentlemen, don't take this lightly. Through the whole of Greek philosophy, we have inherited to this day this assumption that there are three virtues: prudence, temperance -- four virtues: prudence, temperance, courage, and justice. The argument has only been what they are, how they relate to each other, how you should deal with them, you see, when you should be courageous, when you should be prudent, how you can combine them, et cetera. The -- the great achievement of the Greek mind has been to let them stand. And if you think back to Thales, whose first -- power was to reduce, to unify, to generalize, to say, "There is a common denominator, water" in 582, you see suddenly that the answer now is: Don't reduce too much. There are certain source qualities, genuine, primary elements which must never be reduced.

And therefore, if you read now up on Pythagoras and on the number -- the theory of numbers, you must understand that there is something that has

nothing to do with mathematics, but with your best logic. I warn you to try to develop a system in which the -- the flourishing, luscious universe is ever brought under too few articles of faith.

As you know, there are, on the other hand, in dealing with the gods, the three supernatural virtues. There is hope, and faith, and love. And there is a deep reason why God can be explained by three terms. All wor- -- what we call the world, gentlemen, contains death, contains corruption. And the world therefore has always the elements of four. What you call -- when we are forced to speak of forces that rule this world, create this world, restore this world, regenerate this world, judge this world, three is enough, because death is not contained in our description of the Trinity.

So I want -- have promised you last time to show you that the numbers 4, and 3, and 7 are not arbitrary at all. They are not to be gotten by your little brain by numbering 1, 2, 3, then 4, 5, 6, 7, you see. They are only gotten by coming down from the infinite, to -- infinite of your own spirit, of your wonder -- sense of wonder, and trying to peg numbers on your experiences. And the minimum peg you have to hang onto the word outside of your senses, you see, is 4. If you don't, you go and go -- become a lunatic in a lunatic asylum. Most lunatics with megalomaniac ideas, you see, have systems of thoughts that have given up this important respect for reality and talk just of one or two principles.

In the whole 19th century, you had this bias of the so-called {monists}. {They said} God is -- just {an excrescence} of your brain, everything is just soap bubble, and everything is {energy}, or everything is atom, or everything is wave, or everything is electricity, you see. These are very stupid people, but they had a tremendous following in the 19th century, because people had given up this spirit of observing their own existence. In as far as you can say something that is true, gentlemen, in hope, and in fa- -- out of faith, and in love to your -- to the person you want to convince, to save by your {saving} word, three is enough. The divine--that doesn't take up space, that doesn't corrupt like the living word--can be -- enter the -- the -- your experience in this form of three.

I can't go into the whole theology of the -- this, but I only warn you: don't poke fun at the Pythagoreans, and don't poke fun at the Trinity. As long as you poke fun at it, you don't know -- know even the problem that has given rise to these -- both statements. These both statements come from a real experience. And your statements comes from a silly reflec- -- reaction of a schoolboy who learns figures in a -- in arithmetic. That's not { }. That's not experience, what you learn in school, that you can count up to a hundred. You see, that's repetition. That's an echo of other people's numbers, isn't it? You have learned after all just empty words. And you think -- as long as you think that numbers are quantities,

you have not entered the problem: what's the relation of numbers to thinking? The relation of thun- -- of numbers to thinking is that 1, 2, 3, 4, 7 are qualities of empirical, you see, living.

I can't say more at this moment. I know that you will not agree with me at this moment. It is beyond your own experience, probably. But all I can do is to put this up as a warning. Despise the people, the grownups who poke fun at these mysteries. They say there are no mysteries. What they only say that they are shameless and that they have lost their sense of wonder.

The very fact, gentlemen, that Socrates, and Plato, and Aristotle were needed to fill the Greek wor- -- the world with Greek thought is miraculous. And you can't get out of this fact that one man couldn't do it, that you had to have three generations. And for example, the three-generation principle of the life of the logos, you see, is a tremendous principle. You have it in Christianity. You have John the Baptist, we have the Lord, and the Apostles. Without this, there is no revelation possible. You -- Jesus alone can't do it. He has to have somebody who announces Him, so that people can wait for Him, and promi- -- be promised. And He has to have somebody who takes Him up on this. And without the apostolic church and the prophesied church, there is absolutely nothing to Jesus. He is just then out of place, and out of time.

So believe me, the -- the -- the deeper you study the history of Greek philosophy, the more you must look at the march of these great spirits through time, and you must understand. So far, we have giv- -- I have given you this abstract list of 70 or 90 philosophers here. At this moment, however, we are turning towards the centerpiece of Greek -- the history of Greek philosophy, from Socrates to Aristotle. And the first thing then I want to say is, there had to be three. There had to be three. You couldn't have it cheaper, you see. You couldn't have it in one -- in one man. If you understand it, you will understand that there is an element of admiration, of miraculous ethics in the relation of Socrates to Plato, of Plato to Socrates, of Plato to Aristotle, of Aristotle to Socrates, and of Aristotle to Plato.

So -- when you have three, you have already a very complex relationship, you see, of minds and spirits. And it has -- still debated. But the people who debate the relations of Aristotle, and Plato, and Socrates, always only figure out: what did one say? I'm overcome by the miracle of their collaboration, of their mutual influence, you see, that the -- the spirit did flow, that what one man did, the other didn't have to repeat. He could do something else.

So Socrates, gentlemen, and Plato, and Aristotle represent the first, and you may say also the last, success in Greek philosophy for a division of labor. In

the -- in -- in these classi- -- famous century from 399 to 322, you may say, Greek philosophy -- for once had this great, miraculous experience, that three independent spirits acted differently and thereby created a unity, something that after this is always exemplified by these three names. If you speak of Greek philosophy today, you cannot o- -- simply say Aristotle; you cannot simply say Socrates; you cannot simply say Plato. Isn't that very strange?

I hope that what I have -- what I am trying to do is, gentlemen, I have invited you from the beginning to admire these great geniuses. Today, I'm admir- -- asking you to admire something that brought three of these geniuses into focus, into mutual dependency, you see, into something that is more than just sequence in time, you see. It's a dis- -- division of labor. And that is very miraculous. And I -- it remains miraculous. And you can ponder for a whole life, whenever you read any of these writings of these three men, you can never forget that the two others faceted, and varied, and made more meaningful one of these three men's sayings. They belong to each other. One begets the other, you see. But it is in a way, it's so -- as though Aristotle and Plato were already contained in Socrates, and as Socrates had to linger on in -- in Plato and Aristotle, you see. And as soon as the Socratic quest died in these Aristotelians of later time, and -- Platonists of later time, and they just repeated their being Platonists alone, { }, they remain sterile.

You have to contain today an element of Socrates, an element of Plato and Aristotle in your -- -side yourself if you want to philosophize. Nobody today can say he's "an Aristotelian." Nobody can say he's "a Platonist," and nobody can say he's "a Socratic," gentlemen. This is utterly stupid. An element of all three, you see, is necessary to get yourself moving, to get yourself into -- into real life. Let's have a break.

[tape interruption.]

The greatest miracle in these philosophers is beyond your reach. The -- the form of their lives -- I tried to tell you that the -- Plato's biography certainly is a very miraculous display of a spectrum of colors out of one light. I mean, the consequence of -- of his life, the -- the logic of his life, of his biography is very great. And yet it is constant transformation. He is every 10 years a new man in order to be the same. The motto on my own books -- in my -- my own book sign reads, "Mutabor {tamen manebo}." That means "I shall be changed, and for this very reason, I shall remain the same."

Now I think any living person, gentlemen, has this problem. In order to be the same, you have to be different in every age of your life. That's very strange, but that's how it is, you see. In order to be the same, because an element

of your sameness is that you are, for example, vital. Now you can't be vital if only do for 20 years long the same thing. So in order to remain vital you have to do after 20 years something different, you see, so that you are still the same man of whom people said, "He still had some vitality left." Isn't that true?

Now most people don't understand this, that in order to remain the same, we have to change. That is, of course, the greatness of a man like Aristotle, or Plato, and of Socrates. And I can't ask you to do this. It's beyond, I think, your -- your art, and your skill, and -- you have perhaps to have a dim impression that the greatness of this man is in his fulfillment of this tremendous task, to do as much changing as is necessary to save his aliveness, his vitality. For this, you have to change.

And in Plato's life, it isn't very -- as difficult to grasp, as with Aristotle, because we know Aristotle also had a highly dramatic life. To be the teacher of Alexander the Great is not a minor matter. And to go to a foreign court, and to go to Asia Minor and then return to Athens, and so on and so forth. So you can also dramatize the life of Aristotle. But to see it in connection with his problem of saving the heritage of all the previous thinking from Homer to Socrates, that in a -- that I think is beyond your ken. And therefore, I'm perfectly satisfied if you -- I've given you the task, just to describe for what Plato stands as the founder of the Academy, and not in what phases of life he produced these results.

The second thing, this -- this biographical miracle, I think you should keep in mind that we worship these people as mir- -- miraculous revelations of human power -- of human -- the human art of living, but I think that has to wait. And I hope you will not give up the Greek philosophy, because you have unfortunately taken a course, and written a -- finals in it. That's always the end with you, with any subject matter that you think, "Never again." Greek philosophy is something to be -- to be -- to accompany you. You can take any of these dialogues of Plato and read them with the greatest amazement for the 15th time. It's just like Homer. I read Homer every year, and I read a Platonic dialogue every year, and I've always totally forgotten that I ever read them before. And that does not mean that I haven't read them very attentively and very fruitfully, but there is some -- so -- they have this freshness as a Shakespeare play, or the Bible. You can read this sto- -- first chapter in the Bible as though you have never read it before.

And that's the problem of living, you see. You must meet your wife after -- the silver wedding as though had never seen her before. If you can do this, you can say that you really have loved your life -- wife. If you say after 25 years, "I know her by heart," you'd better get a divorce.

So there is always still something ahead of you. If you describe Plato's philosophy as expressed, for example, in The Republic, I shall be very satisfied indeed, if you can do it. This is obviously, gentlemen, on your part only a first attempt. And you treat it as a first attempt. And I hope the -- you don't have to write a second term paper on the same man, but you should know that it is just an attempt to come near these men. And you are not through with them after you have written the paper, obviously. Therefore, it's so hard for me to say -- from what point you shall approach it. I have given you great leeway. You can pick out two or three symptomatic and outstanding contributions of these men, and you can't misread them totally, and something will stand out.

To this I must now turn. I'm -- turn back to Socrates and then we shall -- we shall not devote too much time to Socrates himself, anymore, and then after the vacation next Tuesday, we will settle on reading the fourth book of The Republic here together. Not that this is all you have to -- you have to do. I hope you will read the -- the rest of this -- the three books preceding it, yourself, in the process. But we -- I want to give so much time so that the strange text is -- comes up word by word here in class. So next Tuesday, please bring the Platonic dialogue.

Today I -- have to repeat and to brush up on the problem of Socrates. Socrates is a legend. He was a legend in Greece, and he's a legend today. That is, there is more talk about Socrates than we possibly can know. That's a legend. We know very little about Socrates. Or you can say we know so much that we haven't the faintest idea what is really fact, you see, and what is imagination.

The cue to Socrates which you must never forget, and which is very hard for your to understand, but which -- on which you must build your thought, in -- in future years, and I -- I take it there will be in future years on your part the desire perhaps to understand what it is all about, this -- this getting out beyond the commonplace -- is that he asks the questioner. I told you that the problem of Socrates was to turn the process of questioning, you see, so far that he questioned -- would question those who questioned.

If you do not see this second power, this asking to the square, you will always mistake the il- -- the curious question of a child, "Mother? How are the children born?" Or "Is there a God?" Or "Has God a white beard?" for a Socratic question. That's not a Socratic question, gentlemen. That's just a stupid question. In this country, every question is admitted. As long as you cannot cut out and excise stupid questions, gentlemen, there can be no progress, there can be no education, there can be nothing. The -- the best answer to a stupid question remains to this day not to answer it. Nobody seems to have the courage in this country to say, "That's such a stupid question that I won't answer it." You

answer every question, and thereby you always get into deep water. That is all you expect. If you ask a stupid question, that somebody is stupid enough to answer it. Never forget that one fool can ask more questions than hundred wise men can answer. That's the first rule of all thinking processes, gentlemen. Why? I remind you. I told you: questioning means the desire for participation of the ignoramus in a going concern. You ask for the road in a foreign country. You ask for the -- for the cost of a ticket at the -- at the booth, you see. He knows, you don't know. All questions presuppose an {expert}. You can only ask as long as you think there is somebody who knows.

If you -- if you drop this -- this qualification of questioning, you see, that it is an attempt of the outsider to get inside society, you cannot understand the limitations of all asking. -- A question only makes sense if there is a preestablished answer, which this man doesn't know, but which all the others know. That's how we all move in a foreign country. That's how you move in a foreign -- world of grownups. When you enter a new {thing}, you have to ask. And people are ni- -- kind enough to show you around, as we say.

And as long as this is the relation of question and answer, everything is safe and so -- sane and so. But of course, a child, for example, asks many -- too -- questions, because it just doesn't know where it wants get into. It is so far away from the way of the grownups, you see, that it asks anything. So the one condition for the question, and for the questioner is that he is seriously loving the group which can answer the question. If you are not -- haven't the real desire to ask for the road to the harbor, because you want to go on this road to the harbor, you don't deserve an answer. Can't you see this?

The child that asks, you see, about the white beard of God doesn't deserve an answer, because he -- doesn't intend to pray to God. It shouldn't be -- it's blasphemy. Don't answer it. It's a stupid question. The -- the condition of a question is that the questioner wants to join the community. That's a very simple rule, gentlemen, and explains the whole Platonic, Socratic, and Aristotel- -- -ic obsession with the city of man. All questions must remain related to the city of man. Otherwise they do not deserve an answer.

Therefore, Socrates comes in and asks, and tries to prove that the questioner has to be asked if he is really serious. Does he really mean business? Does he want to be good, courageous, prudent? A good citizen, you see? Or does he just ask to show off as a sophist, just to show that he can prove anything, you see, for the sake of argument? The whole of Parmenides is written about this topic, for example. Or the Gorgias, you see, or the Protagoras, the -- the Ion, you see. For the sake of argument, you can argue anything. But you must remain related, as Plato then formulates it in his dialogues, to the good. The good is the

sum, so to speak, of serious participation.

If you do not remain seriously ins- -- have not the desire to get inside, or to stay inside, whatever the situation is, you see, your question is not a good question. We are full of this nonsense today, gentlemen. This is the era of the sophists. And -- never have the sophists ruled this country. They call themselves, I don't know what they call themselves -- broadcasters, or intellectuals, or -- or quiz kids, or what-not; $64,000 question. The only good thing about the $64,000 question obviously are the $64,000, but not the question.

The question is a nonsense question. They are all nonsensical that questions they ask on this idiot quiz game { }. { } entertainment, so I -- I -- you can't get excited over this, you see. But obviously you are much better off if you don't know the answer. It's -- like this yes-and-no examinations, gentlemen. I mean, it's not important to know these "yes" and "no." Any term paper on -- written on the Stoics, it can't be -- just that bad as these papers that you have -- where you have to guess 50 percent of -- of right, you see, with "yes" and "no." That's not worth answering, because it isn't -- you are not serious. You don't want to know the good. You won't -- the help of the -- answering this question join the community and contribute something to the communal life. You don't find -- want to find a road into the good life.

Now, it's very important, gentlemen, because you open a book by S- -- by Plato, or Xenophon on Socrates, or -- all the traditions on Socrates. He is parroting { } questions as a -- like a stupid child at first sight. So don't get annoyed. Make this distinction clear to you, gentlemen, that Socrates -- the Socratic method sifts the questions. You are absolutely lost if you mistake the form of question as being the same between Socrates and a child. But this is today the average error, because everybody in this country thinks that he is a philosopher, and that everybody is as stupid -- every philosopher is rated as -- to be as stupid as the man who reads up on philosophy. But philosophy is a vocation, gentlemen, a very disagreeable vocation. And in the case of Socrates, it ended with death. In the case of others, it ended with exile. In the case of others, it ended with madness. In the case of others, it ended with persecution, or with poverty, or illness. Because it is the attempt to throw down the usurped questioners, the intellectuals in a community, the sophists, who at that moment, you see, will not -- will not, if they are aesthetes, and celebrate poetry for poetry's sake, or art for art's sake, or politicians for politics' sake. They will not give answer to the question: "What's the good of your question? Why do you ask this question?" You see. And the Socratic answer is that you must thereby be led to lead a better life, otherwise the question cannot be answered, because you have no st- -- yardstick. Mere -- the mere jumbling, juggling -- of tossing-up and tossing down of words makes any answer possible, gentlemen. The difference between

the sophists and Socrates then is that Socrates -- wants to be a sophist who tries the sophists.

And I think it isn't -- only natural that therefore he should have been crucified. It's a very disagreeable -- a very unpleasant task, and nobody is liked, you see. Mist- -- my friend, Mr. Samuel Eliot Morison now made a -- some -- gave some lectures on the trash, and on the hypocrisy, and on the insincerity of American education. And he had to go to Canada to deliver these lectures, because in America nobody would have listened to his provocation.

The sophists are always in command, if not somebody sticks his neck out and risks to tell them -- to ask them, "What are you doing with the mind, with the brain, with your logic, with your quizzes?" You see. Who is stopping Walter Winchell? That's the question. And it's a very serious question. Who is stopping these obscenities? Who is stopping the comic strips? Who is stopping the nonsense that's going on in television, and what-not? Who is? The philosopher. If he doesn't exist, if such a -- such a healthy force doesn't develop, you see, the country must go out of hand, obviously. And you have then some mental, moral, or financial crisis. In -- you just have to read the behavior of the people in the '20s, when they said that all the laws of the universe were successfully abolished. Saving was ridiculous, you see. Death had -- would yield. People would go -- become 150 years old, you see. And you had to live on the installment plan. Well, the doctrines are nearly -- as equally mad at this moment. But not quite. In the gay '20- -- -8, you had -- you prepared the crash, because there was nobody who was listened to.

Sinclair Lewis came home from Europe in '28. He went on Fifth Avenue to the -- his publisher's office. He looked down on the street, and the publisher said to -- "You -- how do you like it?"

And he said, "I think the world here is insane. Absolutely insane."

And Sinclair Lewis, after all, a man of quite superior intelligence. You may have heard of his name. And -- and the publisher, of course, thought that Sinclair Lewis was mad. And he thought that the world -- Sinclair Lewis thought that the publisher was insane. Well, a year later, the issue was settled.

But a man like Sinclair Lewis was the Socratic element in America. There's no doubt about it. From Babbitt on, you see, he has acted as a Socratic element questioning the people, you see, with -- who -- who put all the silly questions into people's mind. So to speak, the daily philosophers of the moment. Because it was a philosophy in '28, you see, that saving was ridiculous, that tomorrow would be better than yesterday, et cetera, you see, that death was

abolished, sickness was abolished, you see. Children didn't have to behave -- their parents, you see -- everybody had to sleep with everybody else, constantly.

A friend of mine in '28 -- was in New York when a man in a cocktail party went to him, "Oh, you know, I have a funny feeling my wife's just sleeping with a Negro."

He said, "What do you say?"

"Well, you see, we -- after all, we are civilized men. I couldn't forbid it. She wanted to have the experience."

Well, she had the experience. That's by and large the -- life of -- the age of the sophist. You always get this, gentlemen. You always get this tremendous temptation by argument from the outside -- outside the polis. If you have this, you see, this abstract thinking, you can prove everything to anybody, if you for- -- forget the good life, that the generalization, gentlemen, the general thought must create a better city.

So now you see perhaps that the Socratic element tries to bind together second impressions, second thoughts, critical thoughts, you see, with the force and authority of primary ethics, of primary truth, of the cult of the city, of the div- -- worship of the true gods, you see. And make sure that what's going on in this more general room of schools, and thinking, you see, of the Eleatics, or of the -- Miletus, you see, always remains within the fruitful process, so to speak, you see, of landing as a { } into something concrete and real. Can you see this? This is the -- the service rendered by Socrates.

And since the city of Athens, of course, hated the sophists, his being the super-sophist, Athens -- the sophists, too, around their suspicions. They couldn't understand what he was doing, because he did it for the first time. On the other hand, gentlemen, Socrates seems to have fully understood -- I say this tentatively, because everything we say about Socrates is tentative -- he seems to have fully understood that you could not turn the clock back, that Athens, as the capital of the Greek -- the whole Greek world, had to digest these sophists, as they came from Sicily, from Italy, from Asia Minor, you see -- and so that he had a certain amount of tolerance.

It's a combination -- then of criticism of the -- these critics, you see, and of tolerance which seems to have impressed all contemporaries. As -- the great thing about Socrates is: he never wrote a line. He never wrote a line. And therefore, we have no authentic utterance of his -- of his own thought. We -- we only have him in the descriptions of others who had their own philosophy, who built

on his questions already answers. And therefore, we do not know how much in Plato's dialogue is Socrate- -- Socratic, and how much is Platonic, you see. Because Pla- -- af- -- So- -- Socrates had given the -- the an- -- the question, you see, then Plato then gives the final, composite answer, you see. And -- what I call the division of labor is -- put into a high degree in Platonic dialogue developed there to -- with great skill, that the desire, the zest for questioning, all these critical positions of the Eleatic School, of the Io- -- of the Pythagorean School and so -- is then driving Socrates onto a positive solution which he obviously has never given in his lifetime, but wh- -- which is the Platonic solution, you see.

And I have to -- perhaps to put one word here at the end, before you -- I dismiss class, in: the Platonic obligation to clear up any misunderstanding about Socrates' intent forces Plato to go one step further, to go beyond the question of the questioner, you see, and to create a utopia. It is very hard for me today -- you may be different -- but for me to be patient with Plato's utopia. I think he -- his utopia, his polity, and so are terrible. I want to tell you frankly that I couldn't live one day in the Platonic universe, and it's a terrible utopia. But I can do justice to his necessity of saying that he meant business, that he wanted not to be -- remain a critic. Therefore, he said, "I wish to prove that there is a best city, you see, a better city." And the word "utopia" is needed for us. "Utopia" means nowhere. It is not a Greek word, gentlemen. It was invented in the year 1560 by the great British Chancellor Thomas Morus. And it means nowhere. No-where. "Topos" is the place. In no place.

Now today, everybody speaks of Plato's state as a utopia. It is not the word of Plato. His word is the "best state," which is quite different, you see. You see, you have Athens. You have the better states of all these critics, of the critics who questioned the -- the individual states. And you have then Socrates proving that none of these critics really had a complete picture of the city. Socrates proves -- will you take this down -- Socrates proves the incompleteness of the responsibility in the critic. He argues some point, you see. We shouldn't have election every four years. We should have only -- only have them every eight years you see. But the whole of democracy is not in their minds. They don't care for the existence of the city for their survival. They only care for their immediate criticism, you see, for their {witticism}. You can criticize any little particle of a system, you see, of a whole order. I can criticize that I call my parents "parents," if I do not understand what the whole family is all about. And people have done this in the last years, as you know. They say, why call father "Father"? You see. Call him "Charlie." And they have done it, because they didn't know what the family was there for. That the family was a representative -- created in the image of God. Well, you can't call God "Charlie," therefore, you can't call your father "Charlie." That's a real answer, gentlemen. I mean this. It's not a joke.

If you don't understand, however, that the family is created in the image of God, then you cannot understand why your father cannot be called by his nickname, you see. "Chinaman" or what-not.

And they have driven this in this country, the sophists, so far, that the families have been destroyed by this. Therefore, Socrates said, "The critics don't have this city of man at heart. They don't want to return into the community." And Plato says, "Therefore I have to give them the best state." And that's his obsession.

Now, there is a relation between the good state, the better state, the better individual items -- I shouldn't say "state" here. That's not right. The better -- better measures, "better laws" perhaps is better, or better customs, and the best state. Plato is the first Greek philosopher who feels obliged, you see, in order to dam up these wanton criticism of -- of single teachers, to give out of the mind a full-fledged picture, you see, of our destiny. That had never been done before: an unreal city, you see, to be developed out of -- of philosophy, so that all the witticism and criticism could fall into -- into a special pattern, you see, and not be any one exaggerated.

And so Plato was the first utopian. It's a great topic now in Europe to write on utopias. I have several friends who at this time are concerned with producing books of 600 and 700 pages on utopia. And of course the Bolsheviks have a utopia: the classless society. That's a utopia, you see, a nowhere, a best state. But you must understand the Socratic problem is bound up with the final solution of Plato. If Pla- -- Socrates says, "All these people who know better, you see, know nothing, because they don't know the good."

So Plato comes in, "Then we must know the best."

Will you kindly try to -- to put down this strange climax: the good, the better, and the best, you see? It is -- I must invite you -- otherwise you will never understand the relation of Platonism, you see, to the good and to the sophists. And never -- you will always remain Greenwich Village intellectuals otherwise.