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I would like to finish today what we have -- what we have to say on the membership of the Church in American society. The reason of course is simply that we are pressed for time. The economic problems of our era, from 1800 to 1950 have to be covered during the month of May. On the other hand, I cannot at this moment immediately leave you with the Church issue a little more -- clearer expressed. Because, as I said, if 60 percent of the people of the United States at this moment belong to official churches, we have to ask ourselves: what is the function that these churches pretend to fulfill, try to fulfill, or do fulfill? And the thing is all the more burning, because Mr. Eisenhower has declared a -- the May 1st to be Law Day. That is, he has created a -- a holiday. Now to create holidays is a religious pretense and a religious function. Holidays are--like festivals--are by their very nature an attempt to bind posterity to something. And -- the calendar of the Church, of course--Christmas, Easter, the Sundays which you still partly observe, and the Sabbath--are the highest organizations of society.

So while I talked last -- yester- -- on Wednesday about the change in content of the churches, and told you that since they were helpless in the face of death, instead of putting our mortality into the -- beginning, center, and end of their existence, and since they followed all the modern social patterns of splitting up mankind into age groups, while it was obviously their task to unite all ages and all centuries in one spirit, the -- their relation to the time sense to modern man is I think even more relevant to our question.

There are two things then, therefore, I wish to say at -- at -- at the beginning. And I must ask for some special attention today so that we can finish, so that I can speak more concentratedly. One is that the Church always, of course, ceases to be the Church when it -- she is not equally interested in small numbers than in big numbers. Since the Church -- goes through all the ages--from the first day of creation to the last, trying to inculcate us this sense of belonging, despite our death and our mortality--she can very well forgo at any present moment large numbers. When 1500 people go to a church, it is not any argument that this is more of a church than when two or three are meeting in His name. Numbers of any one time are an argument against -- the Church, because the Church must be able to convey to every living being his membership in -- through all times. We are members through the Church of all the generations of man. And if you prefer to this to belong to 60 million Protestants or 50 million Baptists, this is not the Church. That's a society. And that's something of the moment. And it has no proof in itself that you belong to any church.

So bigness for the Church is fatal. As soon as priests are asked to keep

statistics about the number of people who go to church, that may be of very great financial importance for their momentary material survival, but it has nothing to do with their function as a Church.

So big numbers and small numbers I think are -- today are very much in confusion, because many people go by statistics and, for example, prove that Christianity is in a hopeless position, because the majority of the people of this world are not Christians. Well, that has been always. And it makes absolutely no difference whether there are -- out of 3 billion inhabitants of this earth 50 million Christians at this moment, or 20 million, or three. If you really believe that the unity through time is the essential -- the tie that mustn't be broken, the Church can always recover its loss of quantity in space. It can never -- she can never recover, once she has broken loose from her moorings as the unity through ages. Then she has apostasized, as the Mormons said; you can never recover this unity through time. But you can always expand again in space.

And I think I have to tell you this, because of course people here are drunk with figures, and prove to their own satisfaction that at this moment the Muslim world, or the Chinese world, or the Communists, or somebody like that are progressing, and -- doesn't matter at all. The -- the representation, gentlemen, of continuity is always the business of a minority. When there are 12 children in a family, and one parent--the widow who brings up these children--she's perfectly sufficient to con- -- constitute the continuity, and the 12 children who all play on the streets -- with their neighbors, they represent the present-day space world. That's quite -- right; they're just youngsters. They can't do anything else. They live in space; they don't live yet in time. They are pre-historical.

So the pre-historical part of mankind is always more numerous than the historical. In you, too. Twenty-three hours of your life, you are pre-historical. One hour in your life, when you do your func- -- real functioning, casting a vote, electing somebody, making a decision. There you are only in history. The rest goes on as in a natural rhythm of repetition. So minority is the honor of any Christian faith, or any faith what -- for -- whatever, because to enter history is a task which very few people do fulfill in any age.

So I'm much more worried today to label institutions, churches, who do not make the attempt to reach out and to tell us that primeval man--"cave man" as you call him so indignantly--and you are in the same boat. The cave man, for all his alleged pre-historical primitivism, has reached you. You dig out in Altamira cave his paintings; he speaks to us. So he has left a trace over 8,000 years. He has done much more for his continuity than any one of us. Because they have buried their dead in such a way that we to this day still know what they were -- felt when they buried their dead. I don't think that with cremation going, as it

does today, any vestige of anything that happens in Los Angeles will be seen in a hundred years. We leave no trace. We will not be remembered. Why should we? We have despised death. We say we put it out of our life. -- You only want to be as old as you can. Now anybody who wants only to live as -- as he can, remains enclosed in his own life. Perhaps you can -- you will succeed in this. And you do definitely, you manage very well to be forgotten absolutely the next day after the funeral.

But that's not the problem of the Church, because direction of history, of mankind, can only be held by people who pay -- as much attention to this tremendous question: how to connect the ages? than to this very simple action of disconnecting the ages--by our own laziness, luxuriousness, forgetfulness, tribalism, clannishness, urges, sex, and -- whatever you -- intoxication. What we call a vice, after all, is only the preponderance of the individual over the kind, you see. Otherwise, I mean, why not sex? But it destroys the race. And why not drink? Well, it destroys your -- your sobriety with regard to law, and legislation, and order.

Why, the -- from a subjective and individual point of view, you can never justify -- you can justify easily every vice under the sun. Vices can never been refuted from a point of view of enlightened self-interest. Any self has every right to be vicious. And if the self is the last instance of appeal, the last court of appeal, it is just purely accidental whether you prefer to murder your mother or whether you don't. Purely accidental.

As a matter of fact, very tragic. I have a student of mine--a friend of mine even--just put himself out of the way himself. He was a homosexual, and he never could conquer his drive. And so for 20 years after he had left university, he tried to justify this urge by writing, writing, studying. So he wri- -- finally wrote his last book on the meaning of history, proving that there could not be morality, that it was absolutely senseless, and every -- of course the world was spoiled by this sense of mor- -- morals, because he, the poor man, had to justify his own existence. After he had written the book, he obviously felt that it didn't work, just the same, despite this wonderful, systematic approval of self by this, you see, book. Mobilizing all the forces of history, so to speak, for his justification. So he -- he killed himself; that's just a half a year ago.

And I've never seen such a -- such a respectable struggle between the -- the kind -- our human kind and the human individual as in his case, because really he tried very hard. But he succumbed. And he succumbed not at the moment when he took his life, but when he tried to write a book justifying this, when he mobilized, you see, all the spiritual powers of historical man, which are given us to connect with our parents, and forefathers, and our descendants.

That's why we have a mind. That's why we have a spirit. That's why we are allowed to speak and to think, so that you can call your father your father, and your son your son. That's the only reason why language has to re- -- taken the place of science, you see. Mother and child would have never created language, because they are physically together. But of your ancestor you could only speak, because the old man was dead.

So death is the cradle of speech. The dead had to speak to the living, and that's why we speak to this day. And therefore, the Church is still there where the dead speak to the living. But it is not there where the living only speak to the living. That has nothing to do with Church. Never. That's, as I said, society.

So this is today -- we are overlooked by the -- by the statistics. Do -- you think that a church of thousand is stronger than a church of five? That's an error. The second thing which I have to bring home to you is that the better and the more difficult a position, a function, an achievement is, the more terrible is its corruption. If you corrupt a -- a man, and he converts -- is converted and improves, the whole story is within limits. If you corrupt a woman, who is more delicate and more precious in creation, God help you. A corrupted woman is much worse than a corrupted man. Look at Elizabeth {Duncan}. She's really -- has brought to you the full knowledge of what a corrupt woman is like. I don't think you can find a man so corrupt as she. That -- that was expressed always in a Latin saying, which is pertinent to the Church: Corruptio optimi pessima. The corruption of the best is the worst.

So there is a gradation, you see. If you have a poor car, that -- she doesn't run, you see. All right. It's a corrupt car, you see, a ruined car, but what of it? You see, it's a mechanism. Therefore the corruption of a car is not a catastrophe for mankind. But if you come higher in the scale of organization, a corrupt government obviously is much worse than a corrupt car. Now a corrupt church is the worst, because it is the best. And the corruption of the best is always the worst. And I think you should perhaps take down this very beautiful sentence, "Corruptio optimi pessima." Even without knowing Latin, you can decipher this. It means that when the corruption goes by degrees, the higher up in the scale of values something is, the more important, decisive, and dangerous is its corruption. Can you understand?

Now, at this moment, we have made fest to death. And the president of the United States has thought it -- possible and right to declare this to be Law Day. And the Roman Catholic Church celebrates this day by a new ukase of the pope as Joseph the Worker's Day. Both are counter-revolutionary movements to attack the celebration of May 1st by the Communist world. Therefore, we have today in this very moment, a class war and a religious war going on under your

noses. And so we have to say a word about this corruption of the best, which is the worst.

The calendar of the Church has superseded all artificial holidays in nature and in philosophy, in abstractions. And every day in the Roman calendar has been hotly disputed with regard to its historical character. Christianity is an historical religion. You couldn't build a church in the first 900 years of Church history without having a -- somebody who had died in this place, or at least, his relics, because you could not buy -- build a church unless an historical event had sanctified this spot. That's why St. Peter in Rome stands on the spot where Peter was buried, you see.

So first an event must actually have taken place, and then the Church steps in and says, "Let us hold onto this event which God has sent, and which is not manmade." That is, in other words, the -- our church calendar--and the Jewish calendar, as well--stand on the assumption that the calendar is not manmade, that it is an historical calendar, as against the calendar of solstice and sunshine -- sunrise, and -- and what-not.

This has given the churches and -- the Jews the honor of being historical religions. That meant, with a term you can hardly understand today, that they would not bow their knees to Baal, to any manmade, makeshift of an idol, not to the god of sports, and not to the god of science, and not to the god of beauty, and neither to Apollo, nor to Venus, nor to Aphrodite, nor to the god of war. They would only bow to the acts of God--like the exodus from Egypt, or the Crucifixion--which had actually occurred on this earth. That is, the Church, which has founded this country is anti-mythical. Anti-mythical. And anti-mythical is anything that exists, that the event is dated, and limited to one ti- -- special time and one special place.

The Bible is written against mythology. If it isn't that, it has no meaning. Today, however, when you can create by arbitrary ukase Mother's Day and Father's Day by chambers of commerce interest, you are deeply steeped in myth. You see, the difference between your father and a Father's Day is very simple. Your father's day is his birthday. And if he is your father, you cannot celebrate his day as any other day but his, personally, because it's unique. It's -- he is your father and nobody else. If you are -- however are asked to celebrate Father's Day, you celebrate a class, a type. A pre-personal, you see, defined term. Nothing you have experienced, but then -- you have just thought of in a system of philosophy. We are {Baalists}.

Now much worse, of course, still is Mother's Day. That's an insult. But it's all celebrated in this country, because you are all going mythical. Since you hate "This

son's mother," you must always add when you speak of the mother of God. Then you understand that in the Church, the future is -- wins out over the past. And in your life -- in for -- in economic life, the past wins out over the future. Now when you get mythical holidays, it just means that we are steeped today in a causal world of yesterday. A holiday, you see, of Mother Day sanctifies, you see, a relation which is not reconquered by the ascent of the son to heights to which he has to carry his mother, too.

And therefore, the modern western world goes out of history. It goes out into a dream world. When I meet people in this country, it's very hard for me to believe that they -- that they are alive. The date on the newspaper is really the only thing that -- that proves that they have some connection with their own time. Otherwise, they live a mythical existence of -- of age groups, and classes, and standards of living, and suburbanized localities. And they belong to Beverly Hill, and they belong to Santa Monica; some belong to Venice, and that's where they belong. And they'll vanish with Venice, and they will vanish with Santa Monica. They must. They want it this way. And they justify any stupidity preached in this church, because -- the public wouldn't understand anything else. So there has -- the poor man will like to speak on life, and he -- more abundant life, instead on the more abundant death.

Now that's why -- why I think that May 1st at this moment is a problem of serious consideration before the -- United States and its -- this country. When Franklin D. Roosevelt ushered in his new era of mythical existence of the masses, and appealed to the mass instead of to the person, as you know, he tampered with Thanksgiving Day. And the people in my state then discriminated very much between the date set by him for Thanksgiving--close to Christmas shopping--and the day, as they call "God's Thanksgiving Day," which had been set by the Pilgrim fathers at the first Thanksgiving in this country. And there was quite a fight on, and people resented the idea that the president of the United States could move such a holiday just for the interests of the -- Chamber of Commerce. And at this moment, I think everything is quiet again, and we celebrate God's Thanksgiving. I don't know what the situation is. Isn't that right? So the president's Thanksgiving has been given up. But he has now been victorious with regard to the mythical holiday.

On the other hand, the United States--I think I have mentioned this to you--has not been able to inculcate a vivid historical celebration of two world wars into your memory. There has been a limping holiday called Armistice Day, after the First World War, which certainly was a sad performance because no peace followed. That was November 11th. And today we have transformed Ar- -- this Armistice Day into Veterans' Day, which again is like Mother Day, and Father Day, and Labor Day, you see, and Law Day: an abstraction. Veterans?

There are veterans of the Korean War; there are veterans anywhere, you see, where a riot has occurred. There are veterans of the Berlin Airlift. That's not World War II, and that's not World War I, { } one event. They can be veterans of the -- of the Fre- -- Spanish-American War. I'm sure there are increasing numbers of widows of the Spanish-American War who draw a pension on the United States treasury every year. You know that's a racket.

So the -- the abolition of the historical sense of Christianity is a very remarkable feature of our time. The dean of St. Paul in London, a very famous and very sarcastic clergy- -- clergyman, has formulated in -- in a very masterful way, he has said in -- "History proves that the very institutions established to fight a certain evil have become themselves the receptacles for this evil, as soon as they no longer know what they are expected to perform." That is, the transition into one's opposite meaning is the greatest danger of the highest institutions.

As I told you, the colleges today provide opportunities for you to come to know each other and to get married. They certainly do not provide any certain way of being educated. The president of my college sent word to me that education had nothing to do with influencing students; and he didn't want to see any professor influence his students. Now that would be, of course, a great pleasure for { } of St. Paul in London to hear, because he would say, "That is my law," you see. As soon as an educational institution says it would -- will not influence its students, you see, it becomes a racket. It becomes a -- something utterly else. It becomes the opposite from its very function.

That is, the higher up we come in the life of our race and in its -- our institutions, gentlemen, as soon as an institution doesn't fulfill its proper purpose, it will fulfill a lower purpose. It must still -- since it is still there, be -- remain active. But it will remain an -- unfulfilled, a detested purpose. A purpose against which, in most cases, as it allegedly came into the world.

You can prove this by the split in our religious life at this moment between those who care for the end of the world and those who care for the beginning. I try to tell you, that you -- with you is the responsibility for all the good people in the Pentecostal sects, beginning with the Mormons, and ending--I don't know where, but probably with the Jehovah's Witness. Because since you only care for getting a degree, or an education, all things of the past, pointing to the past, these people say, "We care for the future." And so -- the Church of -- in this country is today terribly split between those who care for the future and those who care for the past. Those who -- think that the liturgy, or the Mass, or the -- the paraments on -- on the priest's dress are the important thing, and those who care for the Last Judgment. As soon as you split the ages into past and

future, the Church is rent in between. There is no Church where there is no unit- -- -fied expectation from the beginning to the end, because that is essential what is -- what she is meant for.

To end up this, because I -- as I said, I would like to -- to get through with this, let me now turn to the outer form in which this rift makes itself visible. The rift that the churches do represent, every one of them, only one-half of their function, to connect all the ages from beginning to end. To arouse in you prophetic warnings and fears of the Last Judgment, great expectations, promises of the future, and at the same time loyalty and gratitude to the beginning. The same god who created Heaven and earth and who will li- -- leave this human race to its destiny can't be a different god. But in our churches, they have become two.

You remember that I quoted to you this great poem by Emerson, "Give All to Love," and said at that very moment, the emphasis shifted from the guardianship of the male over the female to the prerogative of the woman over the man. The balance in both cases seemed to be shattered. Emerson allowing the woman to run away with her next love. You wouldn't say "lover," because that wouldn't have sounded so good. And in the other case of polygamy and of the missionary, the women being sacrificed, you see, to the task of the men, of colonization and mission.

Now in this breaking -- in this breach -- into this breach of 1850, there have streamed all kind of woman -- women-led sects. The first, of course, was Eddy Bak- -- Mary Baker -- Eddy Mary Baker -- Mary Eddy Baker with her Christian Science. And I do think--I -- I have not gone into this, but I think after the -- the English lady who founded the Shakers in this country in 1780 -- also a woman religious, had -- Mary Eddy Baker can be claimed as the first American who tried a -- a -- comprehensive religious movement, so to speak, you see, as a woman leader. I -- I won't, by the way, pretend this is true. Nobody can be -- have in evidence all the facts of these religious sects. But take it as an example--this was in 1856--it is -- then possible that a woman declared that she was in -- empowered to lead a -- such a movement.

We have this of course here in Los Angeles--I don't have to call names -- quote names--and it is I think today, at least in the outer world, admitted that the women in this country dominate. They dominate financially, they dominate morally, they dominize -- dominate spiritually. You can't do anything in any field of human endeavor where you not have first won the favor of the women of this country. But it also shows its {scent}, of course, in the organized sects, where you have here, in this town certainly, the greatest mark left by a woman over the last 30 years.

Now that's very serious, because it means that without even being discussed, the balance has been -- has completely shifted. And in order to show you the seriousness of this abstraction today of women's rights and the suffragists' movement, which have all to do with this -- with this change of balance between men and women in our society, let me put before you a very simple scheme. After childhood, when the son -- the baby has become a child, and the child has become a boy and the bo- -- or a girl, and the boy has become adolescent, and the girl has become a virgin, there comes a state for which the thing is decided in society about the balance of power between the sexes, because there enters the scene the state of bride and bridegroom. And for historical purposes, you see, you should never speak really of women and men -- of children, because the historical transformer of the human race are you and I in our function as bride and bridegroom. Because as bride and bridegroom, we connect two generations. That's our function. We leave our parents and we cleave to the wife of our choosing. And in this moment, we break. On the other hand, we reconnect, you see, because we carry on our father's name, or -- and there are grandchildren and grandparents. But if you understand it right, parents can only save their future by giving up their children and reconquering their grandchildren. That is the, you see, the transmission of the spirit through the ages. You have to give up your children; then you can become grandparents. Not otherwise. And if you try to remain your pa- -- children's parents too long, you lose your grandchildren.

Case of our -- President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, as you know, is a case in point. His mother tried to keep him, retain him, and ruined their grandchildren. It's a very typical story.

Now if -- bride and bridegroom are the historical sig- -- historically significant configurations in any generation, because they must decide how much past and how much future can be combined by them. In the choice of your mate, you decide whether you are endogamic or exogamic; you decide whether you marry a Filipino girl or you marry a next-door neighbor; that is, you decide over the future of the human race. You decide what at this moment for you is the right choice.

And since endogamy and exogamy has always historical significance, you see, because it means either a spread of good will, you see, or a narrow--and both may be right in its own proper time; nobody can decide this for anybody else--we are all historical people, not as children, and not as business executives. And certainly not when we come under a statistic as a public, buying -- buying Hershey chocolate with lead and poison. But only when we marry. Then nobody can escape the -- the situation of being of the greatest historical importance. And the words which signify this are nearly obsolete in this moment in this country. Because all other phases of life take precedence over the state of a bridegroom.

Just a funny expression today. It's only used one day in church. And never before, and never after. He's -- she's { } fianc‚e or whatever you call it, you see, or "go steady," or what-not. But "bridegroom," oh no.

Now -- a country is very sick where bride and bridegroom are not the center of devotion, of beauty, of the arts, of poetry, of the dressmaker, and not what- -- why -- what-not, because then ob- -- obviously the everyday life takes precedence over the important life.

Second, now com- -- now comes my { }: out of the state of bride and bridegroom, you can only develop the understanding that men and women live in a different se- -- sequence, because a -- a bride, when she marries, she still keeps--and rightly so for quite a while--the word "bride" in this country. I think it's a very beautiful thing, that a young woman can still be called "bride" after she has been, you see, to the altar. But then what does she become? If everything goes right, she becomes then the mother of her children. But woe to her, if already in the first 10 years of her life we would call her a housewife. She is not. That comes much later, to her distress.

That is, the sequence of bride, mother, and wife is in this manner. It is the opposite to the bridegroom. The bridegroom first becomes a husband; that he is unfortunately right after wedding. But a father he only becomes when his children are 12 years old. He cannot before. Before, he is just a vice-mama -- mammy. I mean, he may push the perambulator, and he may of course wash the -- wash the diapers. But that doesn't make him a mother. She is the mother, and he is the vice-{mammy}. And he is a husband of his wife. But a father he can only do -- come into his own when he has to say something to his children, which is serious. And that's completely forgotten today.

And therefore, you have these wonderful abstractions all through the last 150 years in this country that there -- people -- live the same life whether they are male or female. And if you would study this, you would suddenly discover that the sequence 1, 2, 3, you see, and the sequence 1, 3, 2, demands from every male and from every female quite a different range and sequence of experiences. Not that they do not in the end, you see, both become grandparents and very old indeed, but they -- they achieve this in a different way. And woe to the woman who tries to forget that she first has to become a mother. We have 20 years of terrible -- depression as you know, behind us, and the material depressions are always only the expression of the mental aberration. And -- when I came to this country 30 years ago nearly, of course the people there were many married couples who had never a child, and -- because the bride wanted, you see, to be a bride and a wife, and not a mother. And on the other hand, the husband, of course, did never intend to be a father. "What have I to do -- my children?" How

can I -- you have heard perhaps not even today this terrible blasphemy that made the rounds at that time -- at least in the East of the United States: how can we place children in a world like this? How can we bear the responsibility, you see? We must not have children, because these children would hold it against us and would say, "Why did you bring us into this horrible world," you see, with unemployment, et cetera.

Well, all this nonsense has gone on for a long time, and I'm glad to say it doesn't seem to go any longer. We bring so many children into the world that you now begin ask the opposite question.

But I do think that the awakening, the moral awakening of this country had its only expression, not yet in literature, not yet in anything that is visible, in legislation, politics, or the churches, simply in the fact that people have children, and thereby express their demand of reaching the future. Not in their own generation, but beyond the grave. That's a tremendous act of faith. It isn't affection, it isn't love; it is no virtue. But it is faith in the sense that these people feel that with their six children, they can be identified. It's -- and that is the one white hope in France and America, these large families of your generation. But they aren't yet inspired. It's a purely physical fact so far, that these parents -- allow themselves again the act of faith of having more children than they can feed.

But that's how the world stays young. And the whole problem of fathers and sons of the 19th century, which started the Russian Revolution. When Turgenev wrote his famous book Fathers and Sons, the Russian Revolution in 1863 was decided upon, because they felt that the sons would have to rise and rebel against their fathers. Today it's the other way around, you see. Today the problem is how sons become fathers. You would write -- then have to write a novel, Sons and Fathers, not Fathers and Sons. Because after a literature … la Hemingway and Faulkner, and all these debauchees, who -- in which the people only think that they are the last of a -- of a -- of a tree, the last generation -- take all the French literature: Gide, Proust, Aragon, { }. Whomever you take. Everyone is, you see, emancipating himself from some prejudice of his fathers. He no longer goes to church. He no longer believes his philosophy. They no longer believe -- it's always a less, and less, and less. Obviously that's totally interesting to -- to -- for us today.

the action of the day, which the government and you must take, with regard to foreign aid or what-not, and since the papers still -- Mr. Eisenhower had a press conference two days ago. He already has been told that he shouldn't speak of foreign aid, but of mutual aid. The report on this press conference unanimously read again with the term of {Wilton} Lewis, Jr., "foreign aid." That is, the report, you see, itself, fought against that which -- it tried to recommend. Because as

long as you speak of foreign aid, you live in 1890, you see. You have not digested the two world wars. Not even the Spanish-American War, because there the Philippines and Guam already came under our responsibility.

Now we are -- you live completely mythical, of course. Los Angeles, of course, in all the cities of the United States is -- is ranking first in this respect, with all its oddities and religious barbarism. And -- the arbitrariness of all these sects. And {their candidates}, however, which are -- at this moment swallow our western industrial society everywhere, are invitations to the masses to forget where they are, and who they are in persons. And to -- to loo- -- follocat- -- to locate them in some group, mass feeling of -- a -- very indefined urges. Mother's Day, you see, is the opposite from the cult of Mary, for example, because Mary is this son's mother, the founder of Christianity's mother. And she is only ennobled, because she came around and recognized in her own son a new era. And that is her marriage. She is this son's mother. If you celebrate mothers in general, there's no marriage. Absolutely no marriage. But who knows the difference today? Whether I read -- listen to Catholics, or Protestants, pagans, Jews, Gentiles, they think, "Oh, it's so nice to speak of mothers well, in general." There are mothers who have ruined their children.

There is absolutely no reason to believe that mothers are exempt from original sin. Children are not exempt, certainly. There are children who ruin their parents, and there are parents who ruin their children. No reason to -- worship or to sanctify any of these -- these purely secular and passing processes of life.

My son has nine children. My -- their -- his whole problem is: how can I become -- after he has been my father's son -- a father of -- to nine, you see. What do I have to tell them? That's his problem. And that's with many more people the problem. The problem all in France -- in France they suddenly have these large families. So all -- you cannot imagine how all this trash which you read, as the latest French literature bores the young French. They don't read Fran‡oise Sagan. They don't read any Proust. They spit at that -- on that. They think that's despicable. It's the end of the world, corruption. The French -- the young French are far advanced from you. They don't believe in any of the books you read, as the latest French import. Because they have large families to bring up. And that's a very different proposition. It's not a material proposition. But it's the proposition of re-creating the office of father and mother in a family. And that's a very difficult thing in a mech- -- mechanized society. And that's the problem of the Church.

The Church today is either -- imposter and a mere sham and fiction, or it turns to this problem of how -- relating past and future in the hearts of a family

that is mixed in between -- mixed up in three generations and has therefore, you see, to balance loyalty to the past, and -- and a faith in the future in a very -- in an unheard-of way, in which it never has happened to this country, where everything went so fast that there was never time to live through -- in three generations really.

Now the second point in this connection is that since we have the mythical holidays, obviously the annual calendar cannot be the seat of reform. In a family, it is important to have 25 wedding anniversaries. In a family, it's important to save money for the college education of one's child. In a family, it is important to provide for the grandparents for a time of 15 years after they have retired from business. That is, the length of time which today has be -- to be religiously impressed on people, is always longer than one year. You will find no possibility of religious reform as long as people dabble only with Sundays and little days.

A -- gentleman, my friend {Donald Meyer}, who usually gives this course, has the very bright idea that workers should be given a whole year of absence, instead of having a 40-year week and wasting away their time and -- you see, in hobbies and on weekend parties. They should concentrate, they should work their normal amount, which a man needs as a worker; and then however, they should be given a paid absence of a year then be able to go to a college and concentrate for a whole year in a way which they never can during their silly existence in a factory. And in this direction, all your thinking should now begin to turn.

There will from now on be nothing important which you can cure with Labor Days, and -- and Law Days, and Mother's Days, and Father's Days. They are all for children. And for mythmakers, mythweavers, and masses for the mob. But the Church will meet the mass problem and then so we thereby prepare ourselves for the last four weeks with the development of the modern masses--when she's only studying forms of fellowship which transcend the year. The Mormons already do this. They already send their missionaries for one or two years, two and two, into the world. That's why they're spreading. That's why they're hitting it off right, because they think of people. And the people, gentlemen, do not live -- by the day. Mass man lives day by day. People live by decades and generations. Better say "generations" than "decades."

And so the test today: what -- who is the Church?--is always, "Who offers opportunities for changes of life after seven or 10 years?" Our foundations are today religious institutions, because most people who get in contact with them owe then a whole year of a stipend, or fellowship, you see. And that is a real, incisive experience in their lives. And whatever you may think of Guggenheim,

or Rockefeller, or Ford, that's their greatest contribution. Not -- of course, ninetenths of the money they spend is wasted. But this one-tenth which they give for such one- and two-year grants is the one contact, this modern machine cog has with his real periods of life. Nothing that is shorter than 12 months today carries any blessing with it. Don't take -- go to Europe to 17 countries for six weeks. Don't do this. Waste -- don't waste your money. It isn't only wasting your money, gentlemen. These tourism -- that you give into these dragons, you see, of the travel agency, means that you'll never go again in the right way. It wouldn't so -- be so bad to go in the wrong manner over the world, but since you think then you have been there, you can never do it again in the right manner.

So cor- -- it always is so terrible when the best opportunities, you see, are corrupted, because they cannot be recovered. Virginity cannot be recovered--perhaps it can. But certainly Europe cannot be recovered. Once you have followed this -- this -- this Leviathan of modern tourism, you will never discover what it means to stay six weeks in one little town and make friends, and be allowed in there for the rest of your life as somebody who belongs there. These yearly -- or two years of interruptions of your mechanized existence, gentlemen, of your willful existence only have meaning if you from then on remain rooted and related to the people, and to the actions, and to the places you have been in during that time. You will -- agree with me.

Now woe to your summer talks. They all are fictitious. Woe to your summer {classes}. They all aren't serious enough. It's all just play. You play with time because you think, "Well, it doesn't matter." If a junior goes, however, to Europe and leaves on June 6, after -- commencement right away, and stays then really till September, 14 months, that's the minimum of an experience in a foreign country. Nothing under this -- in this high-pressure life of yours has any meaning. I have to tell you this, because nobody else does. And so my voice will be too weak, anyway, against all the -- your temptations. But somebody has to wake you up. You will remain -- the cogs of other people's income, advertising, tem- -- seduction, and bribery. You will only belong to the hidden persuader, if you not openly say that you must find times which are longer than all these short-lived expressions, you see, usually make on you.

And is -- today is a battle on, a battle royal between the real faith of man which is for his whole lifetime, and the faith of man in the stimulation of the day. That's why I'm so angry when people say to me that I am stimulating. Obviously then I have gone quite wrong. I have to destimulate you. I have to -- try to show you that all these stimulations of the day sink you into nothingness, into complete unimportance, because nothing that is shorter than a year, you see, can make you active and efficient in the outer world. It is a strange law. I haven't stated it. The greatest German thinker, Goethe, has said, "Nothing is of perma-

nent value that doesn't outlast one year."

And so this is my comfort for you against the mythical holidays which really otherwise would proclaim the end of the world. The last families, you see, and the insight already of the wiser groups in the -- in our population that we -- they should strive for one- and two-year breaks in their existence--they point the way -- into the real problem of the Church to die and to connect the ages despite the intervening death.