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

[Opening remarks missing]

... religions, gentlemen, are partially true. And we found that they were only incomplete. There is no wrong or right in religion, gentlemen, but every man who lives, of course, since he has to have religion in order to live, since this is a power that sustains them, you can't say there is no religion in any one person, as little as you can say there's no electricity in the universe. Or there is no rotation in the celestial bodies. So the progress I think we should have made by now in your insight into religion is that there are no independent religions which you can compare as separate. But there are incomplete religions all opening up to the desire of hitting it off right, of being the complete power which sustains men. We had -- lined up certain elements of the animation, which is worshiped -- the organic life, which is worshiped in the -- with the first man. We found there was first of all the respect for life, and the gradation of life, the offertory for life taken and the gratitude for life received. And I mentioned already to you the problem of the meal, of the Communion supper. And it's perhaps just as well if we think of the next lectures as trying to build up from these various religions, as we find them -- here, especially, well everywhere in the world. Animism, and later on the great nature religions. When we list -- if we list these -- these items, Christianity and any religion to -- our religion has simply to preserve, and to interpret, and to enlarge upon.

The first, I wish to state today once more is the meal. The second, we already stated, was the succession. Now in our religion, and to tell you the truth, only children of America can think that there is any other religion but Christianity; it is the religion, and that's not a superstition, gentlemen. You will see, just ask Mr. Nehru or Mr. Gandhi what they think. They know it very well. But in this country, of course, the education is -- looks down on Christianity as something above which psychology has long arisen. Well, you will perhaps understand now why this is very childish, gentlemen, because Christianity has from the very first admitted this problem of succession. In the Christian Church, you find it under the term of apostolic succession. It is, however, nothing but the recognition that posterity is the criterion of your own action. If that which you do today, gentlemen, is not successful, it is not the religious act that is the act done in full power, in full meaning, as you could do it. You haven't gained full access to your own existence on this earth. It hasn't been vital. Now, of course, the word "successful," as all American expressions, has been degraded to mean that you have success. But "successful" means only to have -- bear fruit, to have -- to succeed. And throw out the word "successful" and say "successive." You have the religious term. It's the same as with "happiness," in the American Constitution, which was put in, in

order to avoid the denominational apple of discord, "salvation." But the pursuit of happiness in your constitution, gentlemen, that means "salvation" and doesn't mean happiness. We have talked about this before, haven't we? So, the same is with "successful." Nothing succeeds as success, is a famous saying, which is very true, gentlemen. Well, Christianity is now so old, it's very easy to speak of Christianity. In the first -- first generation, it hadn't succeeded yet; it hadn't been succeeded into. So the people denied of course in Rome that it existed.

If you had asked Seneca or the Emperor Nero, or Pontius Pilate -- you know the famous novel of Pontius Pilate, on Pontius Pilate by -- by a Frenchman, Anatole France, who described Pontius Pilate as a retired commissioner of the Philippines in -- living in Nice at the Riviera. And a man from the Orient comes and visits him and said, "Your Excellency, don't you remember this funny event there when you had to execute this Galilean?"

And he says, "Jesus de Nazareth, tu sais? Je ne m'en souviens pas."

That is unsucceeded religion. "Jesus of Nazareth? I don't remember." I don't remember, you see.

Now you are all more or less Pontius Pilates, of course. And therefore, gentlemen, religion is judged by succession. The weakest -- at the moment no religious act, gentlemen, is {ever} visible. When the widow brings her little penny into the -- her little mite into the church for the collection, that's not recognized. Any Christian act is incognito, gentlemen, or any religious act -- and that's what the -- most primitive men already knew. Incognito, gentlemen, in the first moment. And by their fruits they shall be known. The Christianity, gentlemen, said apostolic succession; the primitive man says carnal succession. But succession it had to be, for his act. That is, all animistic religion is institutionalized, wants to be repeated, formed now on forever. The name-giving hero of the tribe, or any ceremony, any ritual in a tribe must be succeeded in by any man who wants to belong to the group, forever and forever. And you can even say that this necessity of succession is the lameness of all primitive religion, because they can't get rid of any such ritual. Once some act has been instituted, it has to go on forever. And the first act that is instituted is the meal. We said this is the same as Communion. Now in Communion, the body of God is put between our teeth and His blood is drunken down our neck -- our throat, and for such refined gentlemen as the Dartmouth football team, that's of course very superstitious. But God created us in the flesh and bone, and in -- with a stomach. And for the refined gentlemen of the academic clan, who only have brains and no body left, they do not understand that the body has to be sanctified. The creed, gentlemen, of Christianity and of the animistic tribe is that sensation has to be sanctified. That the senses have to sanctified. That your body is the creation of God, and not

your little brain. Your brain is the product of your wrong teachers. So it is essentially wrong.

Any -- if I would judge, gentlemen, the 3,000 students of Dartmouth, with regard to their divinity, I would say they are divine, except for their brains. But you think the brain is divine, and your body is ugly. That's the other way around. God created the body, but you have corrupted your mind. So the poor -- He has been excluded from your consciousness. There He isn't. But He is in every limp of yours.

Now, gentlemen, what is a meal? On this I have to say one more, then we can leave the animistic element in our -- in everyday, in eternal religion and can go to -- onto something else. In the meal, two elements -- would you kindly retain and become -- they must become clear to you. A meal is so wonderful, because not one man, but many men participate. A meal is a common process of a group. To -- show you the importance of the animistic problem of the meal, it is that in the meal, the taking of lower life is sanctified, because the group represents the higher life, compared to the camel, or the wapiti or whatever you eat, or the moose, or the bull. That is, gentlemen, in the tribes, it is not a question of vegetarianism versus carnalism, not a question of whether to eat potatoes or to eat steak. But it is a question when to eat steak, and when to eat potatoes. The individual in the tribe is only allowed to eat berries, and potatoes, and vegetables. And the group is allowed to eat meat. This cuts right across your prejudices, gentlemen. You believe in objectivity and you believe that meat is meat, steak is steak, and vegetable is vegetable, at all occasions, because you live in a library, in a laboratory. In real life, that doesn't exist, gentlemen. What is a vice at one moment is a virtue at another moment. That's the first rule of religion. And therefore what is meat at one time, you see, is forbidden the other time. And -- a meal of the whole group, you are allowed to eat meat. And it is right to eat meat. And for yourself alone, it is not right. It is right, for example, to drink wine in a group. It is wrong for you to gulp down a glass of whiskey in despair for yourself, which all Americans think. And if three people in this country drink, there are only three lonely individuals, everyone drinking for himself. That's why they still try as a last remnant to pay for the others at the bar, to the bartender, because there is still a last religious remnant that spirits are only healthy and admissible in a friendly group, exalting the spirit of the group. The vice in Sweden, Norway, and America for -- in drinking is that the despondent man is shown to drink, even in the movie. You can see the hero gulp down a glass of whiskey. That's criminal. That's as bad as a prostitute. It's an abuse of the inspiration, gentlemen. You can't see this. For you, it's either -- you're a prohibitionist and don't drink, or you drink. Nonsense. When to drink. Everything is allowed a man in the right situation. And nothing is allowed a man in the wrong situation. Just as it is right to go to bed with your beloved, whether you are married or not. If you really love her,

nothing wrong. And it is wrong to go to bed with a woman whom you don't love. So it is right, if you are inspired by friendship, to celebrate this by spirits. And it is wrong when you have no group and no friends, to be lacrimose and to weep over your own shoulder, so to speak, by feeding yourself liquor. And this is unknown in -- in this modern day. Isn't that very interesting? And yet that's the secret, gentlemen, of the tribal religion. And that's why we have to study it, because it's something eternal. The meal of meat -- to this day with the Arabs this is so, and it was exactly the same here with the primitive Indians -- when a whole group hunts, they together are allowed to eat the meat of the deer.

By the way, there is a large remnant of this, although it's purely technical now. As you know, the deer which is hunted in November in New Hampshire and Vermont must not be sold on the market. It can only be given as a gift. Although it has other reasons, I very well know why they have made this law. It still reminds you of the fact that meat is something given away in a community, in a friendly spirit, you see. It's hunted down together. And it cannot be -- why is that so, gentlemen? Animal life stands very close to us. You alone are not higher than a gorilla or a lion. But in the group, of the family, and of the speaking tribe, you have reached the stature of men. And when the whole group acts, it is entitled to pass judgment that the bear is lower life, and that it can be taken. And therefore you see that all religion forms decisions. What's right in some position, gentlemen, is not right in another position, because religion places you. I told you that any prayer gives orientation. Now, you may draw the conclusion, gentlemen, in the meal situation, the people pray together and invoke the spirit together. That's not a private prayer. And that's why they are allowed, because by their common prayer, they reach a higher level of peace and behavior to take lower life, because that's the law of life, gentlemen. As a soldier must give his life for the law of his country, because the law of his country stands higher than his own private existence. In the same sense, the tribe can take the life of the animal, and you as individuals cannot. And you -- I would say, gentlemen, that every American in the 19th century till now who eats steak has taken upon himself to be a whole tribe in his own right. What we call a person today enjoys all the privilege of the one man who was a person in the old tribes, the medicine men. Because persona means the man who wears a mask, as you may know. And therefore you all claim to have the stature of a chieftain. Everybody a chieftain in this country. As we say, every man a king. You have heard this. But gentlemen, that means that -- that if every man is a king, that he reaches a stature which gives him quite different duties and obligations and rights as the individual. Religion deposes, gentlemen, and exalts. It cannot help doing this. And you have no doubt that you are allowed to eat steak. How long, I do not know. I think in 50 years, that people will go begging -- down on their knees if they just have bread in this country. This will be a very hungry country. The waste will not last, gentlemen. Can be sure of that. Your grandchildren will not have the same, easy

life that you have. You do everything that they will have nothing left.

Because you have just no relation to what is given you every day. You don't know what it means to pray, "our daily bread give us today," because you think it's steak. You don't know that it's bread. Your bread you don't eat. You just throw it away. And this has nothing in it.

For all these reasons, gentlemen, I warn you. The religion of these first men has to become our -- your -- our religion again, or we are lost. The line cannot be drawn in this childish way between vegetarians and prohibitionists and all these sects. But you have to know again that it takes the peace of a group before you can, and must celebrate it by wine or by soma, as the Hindus do. Or by the beer, or by whiskey. Whatever any group has as its liquor. If you look into the history of the intoxicating drinks, you will find that nearly any political group has its own intoxicating brewery. And that has very deep reasons. Because it is -- goes with the certainty of this group that it is a group. The alcohol, gentlemen, the spirits simply affirm this -- or are the seal under the fact that here is an inspired group, who know where they are going, who have orientation, who don't move in circles. The first thing, if you have a friend who is a drunkard, is to teach him that he must drink in company. Then you can cure him. It's all right to drink in company, and he must become contemptuous of his drinking alone, otherwise you will never cure him really, because that's his problem: that he doesn't drink alone, you see. And when a man -- when people drink together, they don't get drunk. That's so funny. That's why other countries, Germany, Southern Germany, Italy, Switzerland, France, Spain have not the same situation as we have here, you see. Here it is a sin to drink, for everybody. Everybody has a bad conscience. Everybody boasts of it. All the -- your fraternities are just rotten to the core, because of your drinking mores. And you have the effrontery to invite me to cocktail parties. I won't go. Cocktail parties are just nothing. They're nonsense. And I think the fraternities should give up this bad habit to invite professors to cocktail parties. I got an invitation today, again. It's very -- seems to be very nice. I think it's an insult.

You have no right, if you invite me to -- to intend to make me drunk in 20 minutes, gulping down three martinis. That's not drinking. There must be an occasion to drink, gentlemen. The occasion must be celebrating -- celebration. But here we drink in order to get going, to have anything to say to each other. And put down the barriers between people. That's the opposite, gentlemen. In a wedding, we drink, because we are all rejoicing. So there is first the feeling, first the concordance, first the unity, and then comes in the drink as its expression, as its ritual. I mean, first you have a bride and then you put on the wreath, don't you? You can't first have a wreath and then put a -- have the -- take an old hag and say, "She's the bride." Well, they do it in this country. Old ladies marry

young men.

Gentlemen, there are then two things in the meal. Exaltation or an exultation, and exuberance, and community. The great fact of the meal is that not one person eats. Therefore, gentlemen, all human processes of digestion, of eating, have a different vocabulary from the eating of animals. The word "meal," gentlemen, is a social and religious term. All meals are first religious ceremonies. There is no separation. When you sit down to a meal, you have already the spirit that moves you together. Whereas, gentlemen, animals devour. They are voracious. A human being cannot be voracious at a meal, or it isn't yet a human being. It's a little brat, or so, you see. We eat. The word "eat" originally was not used from -- of animals. In German, that is to this day true, that you cannot say "eat" for the animals. The animal frisst. I have no English equivalent for the -- this differentiation. But it's in every language. As you know, the English language has this division between the words used in the kitchen, meat and flesh on the animal in -- out in the world. It comes all from the courts-language of the King of England, who was a Norman, and who -- whose food was thereby sanctified through the ceremonial of this anointed of the lord, who invited his knights, and his bishops to sit down with him in -- you see, for the meal. And so all the English terms, as you know, for food are exalted. And what I told you about liquor, that is true about every ceremony in the British kitchen. Because you say not "flesh," but you say "meat." Give me other examples. You don't say "calf," you say "veal," you see. You don't say, "sheep," you say "mutton." And on it goes, you see. So that every word is transformed through its belonging to -- being incorporated into the life of the community. And I tried to show you that this word "incorporation" is so essential for showing you that we can't avoid it. A religion is something that means just "How do I incorporate?" "What do I incorporate?" "What can I not incorporate?" The -- most of the meal, you see, are inexorably there. Because you either -- that is your religion. If you make no distinction between a meal and the buying of food, as you call it, in the drugstore, which is really the greatest degradation of humanity, that you buy your meal. You cannot say this. Better to say "buy food" than you are down to the dogs.

A meal is a meal. We introduce this, gentlemen. Don't allow when you go out into the restaurant, everybody to order his own meal. If you have a celebration, order the meal for all. One orders. That's human. And it's quite inhuman what you do. Everybody has his menu, the whole time is spent on everybody making a different choice, according to his calories and vitamins and this -- his --. That's not hospitality. That's not a meal. Think of a family in which you are invited for the turkey dinner and then say you want to have duck or chicken. There's no hospitality in this country, gentlemen, in the restaurants, because people do not invite the people to the common meal. Everybody orders for himself, you see. And there is no spirit. And that's why especially the drinking habits are so disas-

trous here. And people suffer so much. This whole business of Alcoholic Anonymous is just one -- little symptom of the helplessness. As soon as you think that you as individuals you can decide on your food and your drink, you have gone wrong. That's just what you cannot do. Any -- all the people get ulcers who think too much of their digestion. And they all have obstipation. You just begin to think of your bowel movement, and it's gone. You must know these people who are so hypochondriac because all the time they ask, "Shall I have digestion?" Of course, they don't.

And you forget it, because you care for the other fellow's best piece, you see. The greatness of the meal is the discovery that if you wish that the other takes the greater piece of the cake, you see, you suddenly are lifted up and you are inspired because, what's spirit, gentlemen? To be identified with more than yourself. That's spirit. Isn't that true? That's all. It is very much, because more you cannot hope for. Whether you are -- whether a wife cares for her husband's health, gentlemen, or whether the children wish to give their father an overcoat for Christmas, because he himself will never come around to buy it, spends everything on his children, it's always the same, gentlemen. This group is inspired. Spirit means to be able to identify yourself with more than yourself. And the word "spirits," I assure you, for the liquor, is not simply accidentally identical with spirit. It is the na‹ve carnal underpinning, and underlining of this inspiration. When people are together in great -- high spirits, they want to have spirits. So you must understand that liquor, gentlemen, is the ritual of inspiration. It's perfectly normal to get drunk when you are very happy. But what destroys the drunkard is when he tries to be happy without being happy, only by the spirit. But people, you see, in this country look down on the people who worship a stone, or a branch of a tree, or something and say, "That's superstition of primitive men." Gentlemen, the people who get drunk are superstitious, because they worship the idol, the fetish of the bottle. The bottle is symbolically -- perfectly correct, the expression of my inspiration. If you, however, take to the bottle, you just take to the garment, without the contents, don't you? Can -- can't you see this? The bottle is the implementation of my inspiration. Or our inspiration. And therefore modern man's superstition, his idolatry, his fetishes, it's his bottle. It's his -- the same, I mean, with of course in sex relations. You want to love and you take the lipstick lady from Hollywood, your pinup girl, to be the substitute. Down with the pinup girl. That's idolatry.

(Sir, I'm -- I don't quite understand why, when you're unhappy, when you're -- why should you drink then? I mean, it -- )

Because all physical means implement, or underpin, or support my higher life. I build a temple to worship the Lord so that I -- he may -- I may express my gratitude, and my great feelings about it. I can of course pray in this -- my -- at home,

you see. But still there is a great righteousness in building a wonderful cupola to worship God. So the cupola, of course, is perfectly empty without my praying in it. So therefore if I have only the cupola, I'm an idolater of stones. If anybody thinks he has to go to that cupola before he can be pious, you see, he's childish. But there's nothing wrong about building a nice basilisk-a -- you see, basilica, or church. But it has to be supported by the strength of the spirit.

(Oh yeah, I see.)

Can't you?

(Yeah, I see.)

Now the bottle is exactly like the beautiful church.

(Does the same thing hold with our habits of eating, in which wouldn't it be equally bad if you give somebody else the biggest piece of cake, just because it's the thing to do, a routine, rather than because you have the feeling of communion?)

Well, you are -- any -- better follow the routine than have -- do nothing. I mean, there are three degrees, you see. You can be rude and take the biggest piece yourself. You can give it to the other man, just because you are educated that way, you see. And you can do it, because you feel that even the greatest villain, because when he's your guest, has to be honored. In German, we have a proverb which says, "Even the meanest guest has to be treated honorably," you see. Now, beware, you see, of { }. The routine is still always better than the nakedness. Don't you agree? I mean, just the -- doing nothing, I mean, will -- you really wish to sit down with somebody else and grab before his eyes the best piece, just because you hate him. Well then, better not to sit down with him.

I'll give you a story, gentlemen. At the Civilian Conservation Corps, which was the unemployment agency in the '30s ...

[laughter]

Why do you laugh?

(You make it sound like an unemployment --)

It was.

(-- agency. But they didn't pay to be unemployed; they paid you to work.

{ })

Not to put it in -- I wasn't { }.

[lots of laughter]

{ } years which I have devoted to the voluntary service which you will -- you and your children one day too, gentlemen, will need it in -- an industrialized society, that the work service is a political thing. How could it be political? It's { }? Everything { } a person in America doesn't understand { }, he calls political. { } These were your brothers, my dear man. They were { }.

(I didn't mean it that way.)

Well, how did you mean it?

(I said I thought you were making a political joke out of it, by calling it an unemployment agency, same as { })

No, I still think it's not a wrong expression to say this was the agency which took care of unemployment. What's wrong with that? But I don't -- I mean, it's not a perfect expression. I don't -- it's not an official expression. It hasn't been sanctified by law, but what's wrong about the expression? I -- would you have { }.

(Like unemployment agencies now, that is, like pay you to be unemployed. But the CCC took the unemployed and put them to work. So I thought that you were comparing it to an unemployment agency nowadays, that you were speaking sarcastically of the CCC.)

I was just beginning to say something. I haven't anything { }.

[much laughter]

So the unemployment agency of the Civilian Conservation Corps and -- had camps nearby, by the way, here, across the river, there was one. I went there, quite often. I reformed it. And I was then called to Washington and had to reform the whole CCC. And my complaint was that the morale in these camps was so poor that these boys grabbed the food -- snatched it away from each other at meals. Any man who has commanded a platoon or a unit knows that this is the lowest degree of morale when this happens. And there you can -- just have to close that -- that institution down. You have to begin from scratch. That's corrupt. In any army, where the food is only grabbed, snatched away from each

other, there is no longer the basic minimum of comradeship. Very important, gentlemen. You must have one man in the platoon who is as much near to your heart for getting his food as you do. Then you will survive in an army. Because then you have your -- a chummie, you see, your -- buddy. And that's the whole essence of the buddy, that you completely are allowed -- because you have one buddy at least -- not to care for yourself, but for the interests of this buddy just as much as for you. Who has had -- been in the army? Not one of you. But you can -- may rest assured that's the whole problem of the buddy. You may not like your buddy otherwise, but you see this is the one thing which he gives you, this allowance to be larger than yourself.

So here's my problem, you see. There's -- the morale in these camps was so low, there were two things which are worth remembering: one was the meal, that everybody only fought for his own food; and the second was that when the educational officer in this camps in -- on weekends had to entertain these boys, they said they wouldn't play unless he gave him some money awards. They only wanted to play when they -- if they were paid for it. Well, that's the ultimate degradation of the human soul, you can see. If you are paid for the privilege of playing games. And we have gone pretty far in the decadence, gentlemen, and the degeneration of humanity in this country. These are two great items, gentlemen: the idea that everybody orders his own food -- that there are no meals, practically, that you buy food -- of which you can follow the consequences up right through. The loneliness of the human soul in this country is so terrifying as it is nowhere else, because at meals, the unity of humanity begins to sprout. That's long before you mate, and long before you make sentimental friends, and write { } for each other and exchange letters, that in the common meal we make friends, we befriend each other. And -- but the expression of this is this mutual interest what the other person eats. Now that's forbidden here in this country, by establishment. You must look away when you sit at this counter there. You only eat your sandwich, and the other person eats his sandwich. That's not friendship. That's competition in salesmanship, or in buying. Terrible.

This goes very deep, gentlemen. That's why the American is the most isolated person in the universe, and why very superficial goings-on are already called friendship in this country, because you are so grateful for a little bit of sunlight.

The second is this "I don't care" attitude, this indifference this -- you cannot reach a person who is not excited when he's offered ice cream. I had a Swedish friend, a very famous person. She's on the German stamps now as a great philanthropist, Elsa Brandstr”m, who had to live in this country the last 20 years in her life. She died miserably from cancer, in despair, because she couldn't find her way in this country. She had been to Siberia. She was the angel of the prisoners of war, and she had lived in Russia, and she had lived in Germany. But when she

came to America, it broke her heart, because she gave a party for her little daughter's friends. And whenever this party happened, these little brats would say, when she offered them ice cream a second time, "Oh, I don't care." And then she always said in despair and with tears in her eye, "But you have to care." You have to care. Play. Food. Whipped cream. They make no sense if people have still the desire for them. But in this country, you see, here I offer you this course and you aren't desirous, so what's the result? You remain blas‚. And so it goes with all the good things. Everything in this country, { } the highest standard of living, is offered the children far too early, before they have any desire to have it. So they say, "I don't care." And that's degeneracy, gentlemen. And you cannot study the forms of human life, unless it is scarce, unless it is difficult to have. And where there is ample supply of everything, you can never study the foundations of humanity. The foundations of humanity only can come out, and become clear where there is necessity. But you never reach this bottom, you see, of dire necessity, because you have always too much.

We have burned the grain, as you know, and we have staples of butter and -- stores of butter, and other people go hungry, and we don't know what to do. And the coffee has been burned in Brazil. And all these things. Do you think that is -- will end -- must not end in complete disaster of the human soul? All shoveled up? All -- because they're all indifferent. Hah! Nothing can happen. We always have enough. If everybody thinks he has enough, gentlemen, he's frozen. He's just dead.

So these two things keep in mind, gentlemen. Any meal is a challenge as to comrade- -- fellowship, gentlemen, and as to what to use there, and as to the excitement of being blessed by having it. The meal should reveal to everybody the catastrophe that looms -- if there is not this common meal. It must be common, gentlemen, and it must be there. It must be available, its content. And otherwise you cannot understand the ritual of the whole Christian world, as to Communion. Even the Baptists have not abolished the Communion supper. It hangs there on a very thin thread. But the sacrament of the Communion, gentlemen, makes Christianity into more than an accidental club. The Communion connects Christianity with the beginning of the race. And the -- otherwise it wouldn't be a religion, because the true religion must be the same religion for the first man as much as for the last. There is no progress in religion. There is only more completeness. That is, if you want to progress in religion and give up the beginnings, you haven't progressed.

Gentlemen, perhaps you take this down. In religion you can study the real meaning of progress. Progress is only there where everything we have is kept and more is added. But you think progress is to forget everything that has gone on before and to run to the next. That's not progress. That's moving in vicious

circles. This whole country, gentlemen, is moving in vicious circles, because it calls progress the next sensation. That's not progress. Progress is to keep what one has, and to be able to stock upon it more. Isn't that obvious? Otherwise, if you lose as much as you gain, there's no progress. That's the whole problem today in America. I mean, the conservative wing feels that there has never been a conservative party this country allowed to prosper who says, "Now let's first of all keep what we have. Let's not despise the Pilgrim fathers and the Puritans. Let's not laugh of Mr. Wigglesworth and Jonathan Edwards. But let's first keep what they had: discipline and faith. And then we may add a little technology, too." But in this country today, the people are laughed at who say, "But for heaven's sake, we cannot give up what we have, just because -- in order to make the next invention." But that's what you all believe. Shouldn't the next invention first be investigated whether it will not destroy everything we have? Nobody investigates any invention in this country. You just say they are progressive. I don't -- cannot understand that, why television is progressive. I don't see it. You -- you believe it.

(I'd agree with you ...)

Wie?

(I agree with you.)

Ja. Well, the children even seem to find out about it. And to my great enthusiasm, I know of several families where the children have forbidden the parents to turn on television.

Now, gentlemen. We turn to the next. So with these two -- with these two great things, the meal and all the ramification -- implications and problem of succession, gentlemen, we are related to the first layer of humanity forever. Because these great -- two great discoveries made them into men, when every creative act of humanity must be succeeded into. Otherwise it hasn't its full stature. So what the father said to the son had to be -- go down from generation to generation. I told you that all the names in son -- in s-e-n and s-o-n -- bear witness to the fact that to this day people feel that a father must not have spoken in vain, that his name must be still contained in his son's name.

There is a third question of the -- in tribalism, with which I deal at great length in 58. I feel therefore this reason, really for the purely technical reason, that's the relation of man to his ancestors, to the dead. I could make the same point as with regard to meal, and with regard to succession, with regard to the revelation to the dead, and I would then be able to prove to you, gentlemen, that this is third point: why at this moment we must go back to the primitive tribes to renew your

and my faith in reality. We owe them a clarification about men's relation to the past, as much as to the future. An act that is well done, with religious power, deserves to be carried on forever, we said. That's -- so I look forward to posterity. But you can also look backward, of course, from posterity, and say, "For this reason, any man who has done something before me, must be remembered by me." So the relation to the dead is another religious problem. But since it has been overdone, in a sentimental way and again in a superstitious way, I think at -- that at this moment, at least, I'm not going to cope with it. Because I wanted to put your eyes in a direction in which the textbooks on prehistory, on anthropology, on religion never mention your and my relation. They never mention that succession is still, for you and me, a great problem, you see. And they never mention the meal. And so I thought this is more fruitful, because there you can do something.

The most urgent thing with regard to succession in this country at this moment is apprenticeship. As you know, nobody can learn -- even become a merchant, except by going to Tuck School. Now do you think you can become a merchant by going to Tuck School and passing examinations? You have to be an apprentice of a man who does it. In this country, you know why -- which country is the best with regard to apprenticeship? The law, because the great judges in this country still have young boys working for them as secretaries for one year, you see. And there they get the spirit. They see how a great man works.

Yesterday, I just happened to read a biography of Jonathan Swift. Certainly was not a very agreeable character. But everything he was, he became by being the apprentice and the secretary of Sir William Temple, very great man in his time, and living four years in his household, and being his political amanuensis, and finally the editor of his papers. And that made Jonathan Swift into anything of importance. And without this apprenticeship, you see, he wouldn't have. And he had been to Oxford. And he had been to Dublin -- Trinity College. And so, gentlemen, if you can serve one other man of the older generation faithfully, and you will gain his stature. And you can't get this by examinations, as you think you can.

When I was 30, I came out of the war. And everybody was an anarchist -- in a state of anarchy in Europe. And everybody thought that now the day of so-called democracy had come, everybody as he pleases. And the four-and-a-half years of restraint, and scarcity, and famine were over, so there was of course a wild, throbbing life, as we had, by the way, after the war. Fantastic pleasure-making in 1819 {1918} in New York, I'm told. And I felt I should react against this. I was a freelance. I was a professor. I had my own position. I was quite independent. And I said, "I must serve."

And people said, "You are mad. You have served six years in the army. Isn't that enough?"

"No," I said. "At the moment, when nobody serves, I must implement my firm conviction that society consists of these dovetailings of people into each other."

So I went to a manufacturer -- and whose men were on strike, was a factory of 18,000 men -- who was in great embarrassment what to do -- and said I would serve under him for the next three years as his private secretary, which I proceeded to do. To his own great -- astonishment, he couldn't understand how an intelligent human being wanted to serve. And it has made me. I ceased to be just an academic person. And I came back to reality. And I had been an officer, and had 1800 men under my command. And the next day I had to take the dog of the lady of my boss out into the street. It was very good for my soul.

So succession, gentlemen, and apprenticeship are things that have nearly disappeared in this country. I'm therefore also, I mean, terrified by our tax system. I believe in inheritance, even materially speaking. And today, as you know, no great fortune can be inherited in this country, and I think that's very wrong. I think that's a greater crime than the capital excess tax, this inheritance tax which we have. Because if the -- if we still believe in any independence from government, we need fortunes, which secure men -- some power not to enter the state department, not to become just an official, or a bureaucrat, and draw a salary for -- as an employee from somebody else. Isn't that the only -- background we have of freedom in this country at this moment? The little farmers disappear. Ten years from now, there will be no farmer left who has just 150 acres in this country. It is a great tragedy, gentlemen. The foundations of our country go. And then we tax away all property which is the last bulwark of independence. Because if the state department doesn't like my nose or my papers and then says "Goodbye," then I can't find a job. But if I have still the means of supporting myself in some form, coming to me from a nice little great aunt, who leaves me a legacy, I can defy the state department. And I'm -- there must be people who can defy the government, gentlemen. Or all that it is, is just slavery. But all these modern, young gentlemen, as you are, are so enlightened that they never -- the inheritance tax isn't even mentioned in the public debate. Just as little as the Puerto Ricans. I have found now, for the last 20 years in this country, gentlemen, that no important issue is ever discussed, out -- except when it is too late. And everything that is discussed is utterly unimportant. McCarthy. What's the importance of McCarthy? But the importance of the Puerto Ricans, that's of great importance. The importance of no farms, that's of very great importance. The -- these aren't discussed -- they speak of subsidizing the big farms in the Middle West. That's not the question of the small farmer today. Small farmers have disappeared for quite different reasons, for machinery. And nothing is discussed

what's serious in this country. You always have some light issues, which are colorful. One million Puerto Ricans in 1960 in New York. Not -- it isn't discussed; it's just happening all the time. I mean, it is not discussed of the high- -- it's -- on the highest -- in the highest echelons, where it should be.

But the -- well, I only meant to say the property is a very serious question with regard to succession, because inheritance is a form of succession, of succeeding into the ranks of your parents, or whoever is you inheritor. That isn't to be despised, gentlemen. It has been gone -- thrown overboard in this country with a light heartedness. Nobody even discusses the fact that the owner of The New York Times cannot leave his paper to his son. When The New York Times inhabitor, Mr. Sulzberger, died, it has to be put up for auction, because he can't pay the inheritance tax. And the same with the great publishers. With -- all the great firms that still need a certain brain and a certain go, they are all doomed, every one of them. Well, of General Motors, it is already true for a long time, and so on. It's very serious, because that has all to do with what William James has said. At the end of our civilization he has said, "In no period of history of the human race has the future so totally abandoned in favor of the present, as in this country at this moment," gentlemen, for the last 50 years, 70 years. In no past -- the time of history has the future so totally be abandoned in favor of the present. He even says -- has so -- been so totally sacrificed in favor of the present. This means no succession. The word "succession" just means to do more for succession than for ourselves. That is, if you have a buddy, you let him have the best piece. And if you have a son, you let him have the best piece. Can you see this? That's exactly the same problem, only with regard to the future.

And there is no identity. I haven't still to find one American, gentlemen -- I'm now quite serious, because I have tried really for the last 20 years to break into this terrible impasse and dead alley here, I have not succeeded -- I have not still to find one man who is sleepless about what America is like in 2000. Everybody is sleepless about the next election, for which he hasn't to be sleepless. That's taken care of. But there is nobody who is sleepless. If you have now a Congress -- who has -- begin sacrifice the conservation of the West to the interest of the cattle grazers. This could happen 50 years after Theodore Roosevelt. How is this possible? Only because you are absolutely uninterested in the future. And you always say you are only interested in the future. This is such a contradiction. Every American says, "What is the past to me? Nothing. I'm looking into the future. Better world to come. Help to build -- bring about a better ..." I never see you do that. Because the first question, if a man really wants to bring about a better world, is obviously to think, "What must I do to be efficient with regard to the year 2050?" And then all your momentary interests go, and you will not try to bring about the tomorrow out of the today, gentlemen. This is impossible. By having a new edition of The Valley News every day, you do not change the

times at all. But by hanging before you what has to be achieved in 2050, you may plant a seed, which is quite inconspicuous at this moment, and may nourish it and protect it against inroads, so that it can be a tree 100 years from now. That's how a tree is planted. Tree is not planted by adding, adding, adding something that exists already today, but by putting down a seed in the ground, which is incognito, in- -- unknown to everybody who lives today. I would like to see any one of you do something that's incognito today, that will bear fruit the day after tomorrow. All -- everything of -- which do -- is advertised, yes, world union, or federates, or so. This is the opposite from sowing. That's all harvesting. Because it is conspic- -- you want to make it conspicuous now. The big thing, gentlemen, is not to be conspicuous now, but to become conspicuous by the novelty of your undertaking, gradually, and very slowly.

Well, let's go over to the next point, gentlemen. When meals, apprenticeship, prayers to the spirits, when all these identities have been established with the future, with posterity, with your comrades, with the group around you, life had been exalted. Organic life was led, so to speak, by passionate, by loving, by the loving group. And you have therefore an intimate relation between group, here the second and the fourth ring. We get now a second cycle. When the earth was inhabited by the migrating tribes, who all are animists, and who carried this faith all over this continent, you see. As you know, you'll find in Mexico, and Yucatan, and Maya culture, and the -- in Peru, the Aztecs, and they are very much all confused today. They are also called Indians. I want to stress that the Aztec and the Inca civilizations are totally different from animism. It's the opposite. It's an attempt to break out of our own life cycle, of organic, and willful and passionate life, and to face the world outside, to reach therefore into this, what we today would call the world of physics, of dead matter. Gentlemen, the animist may speak of sun and moon as persons, but just as he speaks of the animals as persons. But the animistic religion has absolutely no interest in the stars, or in the -- astrology. It is a lie which still is t- -- found in many books. But it is simply not so. The migratory tribes have no interest in astronomy. Absolutely no relation, and they have no sun-worship. And to finish it all, the sun has never been worshiped. Nowhere. You can't worship the sun. So stupid, people have never been -- except in modern times, where everything is possible today, because it's all arbitrary, invention.

What the people did when they tried to march out the bush, and out the streams of the water, and to be aware of influences of this dead -- majestic universe was to find regular movements, cycles. The study of the dead matter was not a study of what we would call dead matter, but was an attempt to find cyclical life outside the organic life. It was so frightful, because animals and people die, and they die very irregularly. And they die at the most undesirable and unexpected moment. And the sun and the moon and the stars, they return. They

recur. The first experience of resurrection, gentlemen, of resurgence, of recurrence, of permanency, of perpetuity is in this outer world. So this outer world, gentlemen, is dead, but recurrent. Whereas the animistic substance, inside which man tried to find his home, at first is alive, but vanishing, transient. Not sure, you see. The reproduction of life is much unsafer than the reproduction of the sunlight in summer. The -- again in 58 I deal with the history of Egypt, where this was first realized. But if you come to the -- Mexico and study the religion of the Mexicans, you find the pyramids and you find the first great -- the great attempt of worshiping time cycles. Every community, for example in Yucatan, had to establish every five years a little pillar, and every 20 years a larger pillar, just to celebrate the victory of returning time. The greatest expression is in -- of this realization, gentlemen, that the created universe has a calendar -- is in this great hymn of the Catholic liturgy, of -- where the creator is invoked with the sentence, which really cannot be translated very well in any living language. In Latin it runs, "Qui temporum {dais} tempora." God is recognized in the outer world, of dead things, as He who gives the times of the times. In the -- in the New -- in the service, this is now the "eons of the eons," also. The times of the times. The tides, you can say, of the times. The incisive moment, that there is ebb and tide, day and night. What is in the Old Testament, you see, invoked or summarized in the blessing given to Noah after the great flood, that there shall not cease winter and summer, you see, day and night, what else? What is a great blessing given to the -- Noah and his Japheth, Ham and Shem? Wie? Japheth, Shem and Ham. Wie?

(The continuation of the race, that God would destroy {man}.)

No, no. "There shall not cease to be summer and winter, cold and heat, and night and day." It is this calendar. When -- do you see that Noah is the -- so to speak, the redemption of the great empires of antiquity. In the figure of Noah, the biblical narrator has tried to keep, as I do in my attempt here, to keep the just and religiously correct contribution of those empires, and to excise their idolatry. You see, it's -- so to speak -- pharaoh of Egypt, without the pharaonic, you see, enslavement of mankind. It's the -- it's exactly what I told you. The Bible tries to show you the steps of the full religion which we must keep as compared to the idolatries and the excessive abuses of animism getting stuck in superstition and, for example, human sacrifice, you see. Well -- I need not bother you. Well, I can't go into this at this point.

But the cycles of the stars are the astonishing event with which man puts his foot outside his family life, his tribal life, his bush and jungle life, in which he was only interested in living things, and tried to look away from dead things. The animistic religion says, "I can only cope with life." The calendar religion says, "I have a key into the universe far away." Therefore, gentlemen, the first word of

the new religion is eternity. And -- an idea which is quite foreign to any animistic or primitive man.

[tape interruption]

About 2,800 before Christ and -- Christ, and the Aztecs count their years 2,400 before Christ, at a moment when the Great Pyramid was built in Egypt. However, these -- as you know, these connections are very much under dispute today, and we haven't to go into this. The main point is that for the Mexicans, man's victory is expressed, not in the common meal, and not in the apostolic succession, and not in the sacrifice for the animals taken in a hunt. But it is expressed in the evidence of the recurrence of the astronomical phenomena. Man is master -- is made master of the dead universe after he has been made master of the living universe. He steps outside that which is really your and my competency, life, when he deals with the stars. That's forgotten today, gentlemen. Astronomy and physics are after all the knowledge of the dead, of that which is not like we, which is very disastrous to us. And certainly just as { } helpful because you can't live among stones. I once had to spend a night in the famous -- among the famous Craters of the Moon in Idaho. I don't recommend it. It was just terrible. I mean, just volcanic ashes. And we had to camp there overnight, and not a helm of grass growing there. It was really the -- as bad as the moon itself probably is.

So we have poeticized this astronomical world, gentlemen. But this astronomical world at first sight is only ominous, sinister. And that's what these people felt. When an eclipse of the sun happened, they thought the world would come to an end, didn't they? And this is more normal than for us, who feel so secure and just are curious about these foreign bodies, and these eclipses, and these meteors, and don't think that they can hit us on the head. Heaven, gentlemen, is sinister as much as it is helpful. It brings the night, and with the night all the dangers for humanity. And therefore, you see the ambivalence of the new calendar-religion. It isn't a glorification of the sun in all her -- his beauty and all his glory. It is also the sun in all its deathening -- deadening heat. And sunstrokes are just as frequent, you see, in a tropical -- in Mexico, for example, or in Peru -- as the blessing of the sun. If the sun shines and you have no water, nothing grows. Everything's parched. That's the desert. So that should warn you already against the idea that the sun has its- -- himself would ever strike people as divine. What did strike the people as divine, gentlemen, was the eternal recurrence of a constellation. The real word of the first -- these religions was the idea of constellation. The word "constellation" means that various elements cooperate and con- -- create a configuration through which the appearance of the sun is made into a blessing. So the sun has never been taken in these astronomical or astrological traditions, which you still find in the astrological columns of our papers for the curiosity of the reader, you see. That's the last remnant of the whole layer of

religion. You'll find that -- never that the individual star is the important thing. But for example in astrology the zodiac, in which constellations the sun does appear when you are born. That is important, you see. The constellation. The zodiac is only a very late, by the way -- a very late discovery, that the sun in moving over the horizon, you see, not going -- rising every time of the year the same place, passes through a number of constellations. Because the whole firmament is revolving, as you know, and therefore, this relation of the sunrise to the constellation gives you today the possibility of saying that you are born in the sign of the lion, or born in the sign of the cancer, and therefore you have certain special qualities, allegedly, because in July this constellation prevails, and in August, another. You have seen these superstitions.

Gentlemen, the origin of these superstitions is very sublime, because it was the discovery of the whole year. The animistic religion has only half-year calendars. The animistic religion has as its celebration days the first of May and the first of November. And the days were between life inside the house and life outside the house. In winter, you had to retire, because too cold outside, you see. You had to use for shelter. That was one life. And the second half of life -- of the year, you went out. But the -- both halves of the year had not -- didn't form a unity. People at that time, these nomadic tribes of course had no real agriculture. They took what they got, hunting especially, or berries, or little fruits growing up. They didn't wait year after year for the same results. All calendar religion, gentlemen, allow man to vanquish his fear of one specific, and peculiar, and lasting domicile or residence. The new religion of the calendar, because it looks up to Heaven for -- ruling our movements on earth, has allowed men to settle. And for you it is very hard to understand why this was such a great step. The gypsies to this day cannot settle. They would feel irreligious. They would be panicky if they settled. And no free man can be told that he must settle forever in any one place. Even an American may find it necessary to travel, and to roam the earth. And all the people have come to this country felt that this was a divine birthright, that people could come to America. Can you see this? That the opposite is very unnatural. And yet, gentlemen, you find in antiquity nations who gave up migrating.

So the first religion of the stars was the most outspoken and the most farreaching. The first principle of the new calendar-religion, of the Mexicans and Peruvians was, "Once a city, always a city." A city in antiquity was a place that had reflected the will of the stars on earth in such a way that it could never be deserted. It's -- the eternal recurrence leads to the eternal settlement. This is completely lost on you. We have ghost-towns and boomtowns. This country is still nomadic. This country is a roaming, rolling, you see, caravan, compared to what the people meant by settlement, originally, in the antiquity, and which you still find in Egypt. Nobody leaves Egypt to this day, except with this Mendez-

France, who isn't Egyptian, but is now prime minister of France. But { } {at least the wife of him}. But otherwise, as you know, it's very -- if you read statistics, the country that has the last number of emigrants, people leaving the country, settle elsewhere, are the Egyptians. The Syrians move. The -- all the other Arab countries have more -- lose more. Because in Egypt, the idea of settlement probably was invented.

But it's very similar with the Peruvians, and it's very similar with the Aztecs, gentlemen. The great idea of Peruvian -- the Incas is settlement. And this has been completely overlooked. You can't find any textbook which has a chapter on the difference between migrating people and settlement people. It takes a different religion, gentlemen. Because what does it take? A self-denying ordinance, because it means that the gods will bring to your place, when you are in Quito or Lima, all you need. That you will not have to go hunting, that you will not be restlessly, you see, shifting. Now if you think that in America every one tribe comes from a warrior, or from Southern {Indian,} practically, you can see that in the bones of the constitutional human being originally, there is a tremendous uncertainty as to the place where we should speak. He's constantly on the move. He's constantly willing to try another place. And to you that's quite normal. But cities cannot be built by such people. Cities can only have -- only -- and great empires and nations. You haven't only the Washington -- the city of Washington now after 150 years going. Now it's a beautiful city. If you look at the map in 1800, it was just horrid. It was just swamps, and real estate speculators. And Washington obviously only makes sense after 150 years. In 1800, { } sold it eagerly, you see, for nothing. It wasn't worth anything, yet. And even in 1865, it was a very poor, poor sight. And in 1812, it was totally destroyed, burned, you see, the capital. And yet now it is there. So that -- how many generations is this? If you -- from -- express it in generations? Wie? Six, correct.

Well, you may say seven. Six and-a-half, ja. Which for a tribal memory, is all there is to it. The tribal memory is, by and large, six generations, you see. But obviously Rome lasted now -- the memory of Rome is now 2,500 years old. The Mexican calendar is 3,000 -- was 3,900 years. And this country I think is prepared at least to give Washington another chance for another 20 years.

What I'm driving at, gentlemen, and what I -- you -- I like you to take with you into the vacations is that the -- it takes a new relation to the powers that make us, before a man can say, "This is it. Here I stay. This is the land which God has given me and my heirs." The whole story of the Bible, which speaks of the promised land, is very difficult for you to understand. But you have seen the Zionists go back after 2,000 -- 3,000 years -- to the Holy Land. What is this? It is hard to understand for any nomadic spirit. What's there about one land, and as you know, it's the most desert land, and the cursed land, this Palestine to which

the Zionists have gone. And it is probably because it is such a cursed, and infertile -- I mean, sterile land -- that they want to try it. But it isn't natural, to say "This is now the land." Absolutely against reason. Absolutely unreasonable. So, if you would only take with you into the Christmas vacation this great question mark: the calendar religion is unnatural, because it gives every group its own land, and that deprives this -- these people of their glorious birthright to say that they are of all the -- earth, they are just roaming the earth. This great -- selfdenying ordinance, gentlemen, comes from a deep faith into man's power to lead the necessary elements of the outer world upon this -- upon this field. And of course, as you know, the great energy of settlement meant that earth, fire, air, and water -- the great four elements of the ancients, which have this great value, you see, of a -- to enable man to become a settler -- that they can be united in one place to give him the whole universe in microscopical form. Any country therefore, gentlemen, must be the universe itself, otherwise you couldn't settle. So gentlemen, all calendar-religions promise and fulfill -- I think they have delivered the goods -- fulfill this first condition which must be fulfilled before you and I can say, "I -- we live in America." That America represents the whole universe, totally, that all eternity can be lived within your own life, and that the whole globe can come and meet, so to speak, and shake hands with you in your own place. And the great point of union, in which eternity and globe are met in one spot of the earth, is the temple. Therefore, all calendar-religions, gentlemen, deliver their goods by allowing men to worship eternity and universe, space and time, at one point. And all the superstitions and all the great creeds of the -- of our -- of the past, gentlemen, have had to bring in this promise: that the dead universe, the whole world, could be encountered in one specific place. And that the whole of eternity all the times, in eternal recurrence, could be joined in, could be hit off right, could be entered upon, if you entered the service of the divine in the right moment in this temple, at the right day. So there are two great things, gentlemen. Calendar and temple, which we'll have to study next time.