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

So may I have this text { } {report}? Just leave it -- leave it there { }. I just wanted { }.

[tape interruption]

Well, wha- -- what would you say if we compare this harmless {place} in the Bible, where Ichabod is -- is named with this whole poem? What is the tremendous difference? Or what is -- may explain to you the importance the Bible has had -- through the ages? To compare the -- the text of "Ichabod," the poem, with the one sentence, where the mother of Ich- -- of Ichabod is provoked to call {him with} this name? I mean, what's the tiny, and yet very important, difference? What do we hear in the Bible about Ichabod?

(Um, well, that the glory of God has departed, and I think this -- I think represents the reality in all of history of the need for the great -- or the -- the favor of some greater power than our own selves. And that the recurrence of this, rein- -- every individual is always going to continue whether it be --.)

But what is the difference in the poem? I understand what you say, very eloquently, about the Bible -- the place in the Bible. But that a man should then write a poem on Da- -- Daniel Webster, calling him "Ichabod," with all this content -- don't you see that this is quite incongruous?

({ } the Old Testament --.)

What is the incongruity? Let's first state the incongruity between the -- look at the text, please. I -- what's the -- look at this one verse in the Bible. You cannot understand the history of the human race for the last 2,000 years, if you aren't very clear on this point. Because the whole human race, in the last 2,000 years has done nothing but write a poem on -- like "Ichabod." That's the whole content of your history, whether you read the Declaration of Independence, or whether you read the Bill of Rights, or whether you read -- the great proclamations of the popes in the 13th century, and the 12th century, and the 11th century. And since you are Americans, you decline to see any continuity. You are sick with this -- with this island-hopping of your mind. You think everything is just a fact here, and there is a fact. And if you read Nehru's history of the world, which is -- I recommend highly, you have the whole American mentality. Nehru is -- could be an American, you see. No sense, no continuity. No- -- everywhere is spotty, I mean. Here is a fact; there is a fact; and there is a fact; and there is a fact.

Now it isn't that simple. Thanks to the Bible, you see, every chapter in human history has been spiced, and braced, and staved together with the help of "Ichabod" poems. That is, for every event, there has been an illumination -- somewhere in the Old Testament. And has gotten the title page, you see. {Cromwell}, I mean, that's the fifth monarchy, that's from Daniel -- { } of Daniel, for example. Anything you ca- -- anything you care for in the history of the human race so far -- I mean, Karl Marx is an old, ancient prophet of the Old Testament. It's very simple. Justice must be done, you see. Justice is more important than mercy. You see, that's -- goes against the charity ladies of this country. You cannot understand the pathos of Bolshevism, if you do not understand the fight of the Old Testament for justice is first, and mercy comes later, and you cannot run the -- the world -- on -- you see, without the 10 Commandments. But all Americans try very hard to say that the New Testament is enough, and the Old Testament isn't needed. In comes Marx, and reminds you of the completeness of the old st- -- the whole story that without justice to the worker, charity balls and charity performances are just horrid, as they are at this moment in this country.

So "Ichabod," after all -- how many stanzas? Will you tell me, how many stanzas?

(Nine. Nine.)

You see. Now I want to draw your attention to the fact that we learn from the story of the Bible with us what development really is. It's just one little crystal in this text, "Ichabod." "The spirit has departed from -- from Israel," you see. And nothing about the pre-history of this man. But here is a great man, Daniel Webster, you see. He has a wonderful story of genius, and -- and charity, by the way, and great tenderness, and great firmness, and has upheld the Union for 20 years, from 1830 from his great speech against nullification, you see, "Union and liberty forever," and now he's -- he's fallen. And the spirit has departed from Israel.

Now what has happened, gentlemen ? The whole story of the spirit is first in him and now it departs. So "Ichabod," in the case of the poem, you see, compared to the Bible, covers a generation -- two generations of life, you see. The -- the -- the final moment is only so terrible, because what was in the -- Eli, the father of Ichabod, was in this man Webster, you see, so that he comprises more than one generation. You may call this a trick, but it is much profounder. You and I, my dear people, we represent the whole human race in many generations. You all can live the nine lives of a cat not only, but your mother's and your father's life, and your grandparents' life, and your own life, and your children's life, if you're led to.

And this is the incredible story of this poem "Ichabod": that practically, first the grace is shown you -- how { }, you see, and then the departure. He couldn't show it, of course, otherwise. But in the Bible story, obviously, first Eli is the anointed of the -- of the God, you see. He is a prophet. He -- had sanctuary functions. It's only the -- Ichabod, the -- where the mother says, "Now it's all over." But with Webster, it's one and the same man. That's incredible. Ichabod never had the grace of God, had he?

It is, of course, too simple a matter for you to consider. You are all so in travel, and dealing only with mileage, so to speak, and quantity, that such a small consideration that anything is here can topsy-turvy in this poem, the quotation. That doesn't even occur to you as important. It's too small a matter. You owe -- you -- you -- you cannot think. You cannot read a text. You have been absolutely ruined of -- by a course of your probl- -- idea of animal evolution.

You see, in history, man himself--Mr. Webster--goes through all the stages of the Old Testament story. One and the same man is the evolution story. In -- as the animal kingdom, one is an ape, and the other is a gorilla, and the third is man, and the first is a -- is a reptile, and so on, you see. And it's all separate. And still in the Old Testament, a whole man has to curse -- wear the curse of Ichabod. This whole, poor -- boy, after all, he's innocent, isn't he? He's just born to Eli, and he calls -- the spirit has departed. And the whole man's life is signified.

And the whole Old Testament, you see, is--compared to our era--still in this sense pre-human, or Old Testament -- "antiquity" as we call it, you see, the ancient world, before the revelation, before redemption, because every man is only one type, one thing. He's pharaoh, you see. Or he's Moses, you see. But already in Moses, by the way, I mean, the Jews always had this inkling that redeemed man lived through many phases and chapters, and that he is humanity, you see, that the man is not an atom, as you think of man. But that evolution passes through your own life. And here it is shown how the whole story of the Jewish sanctuary at Shiloh is -- has lived -- been lived through -- through Webster, and now has come to an ignominious end. It has -- a negative outcome, so to speak.

But this is -- has always struck me, the incredible -- Whittier, of course being a Quaker and being a poet, he lived through this whole Old Testament incessantly, you see. And the less he could use it in the liturgy--the Quakers, after all, have no readings, they have no texts, they have no sermonizing, you see--the -- the more it entered his spirit.

Now this is what we call really "evolution," gentlemen, in a -- in a -- in a s- -- in the true sense of human experience. In our era, man evolves through these

stages first of the Old and then of the New Testament. He's either condemned -- we call this the Judg- -- "Last Judgment," we call this the -- "hell" and "devil." You laugh at all these things, you think we are through with them. It isn't true. Before a man comes to an end, he is judged. He stands judged.

A very wise minister, Mr. Frederick Robertson, a very great Englishman who died in 1851--if you ever come to his biography, I recommend you this book very great- -- very much--Robert- -- Frederick Robertson was a leading minister in England. It was said of him that he was a prophet, a poet, a -- a king, and a -- a saint. And that's all we can hope for, I mean, that he was a complete man, so to speak. And he died very young, I think at 38 -- 38 or 40. Forgotten what. And -- he said at a -- in a funeral oration once that, after all, if we were so lucky in our era that if we had loved each other and lived in an affectionate community, the judgment over a man at -- on his -- at his death and funeral were -- usually the right one, that people had come to understand each other in our common life to such extent that what was said, you see, honestly, at the moment of a man dying, was usually -- quite a right assessment. The good, and the evil, and the significance of the community, that we could hope for, so to peak, that sins were not buried, that they were not -- man wasn't forgotten, and wasn't misinterpreted. But if a man had -- at least in normal times, the -- finally it was all said -- all revealed. After all the revilement, and all the defiance, and all the battles, you see, people would come to peace- -- peaceful terms with each other. And the eulogy, or the feeling of the community--more than this formal eulogy at the grave, of course--was in fact able to cope with a man's role.

Now that isn't true in days of outlaws, and in days of -- of -- you see, constant enmity. It's not -- true of the Old Testament story at all. I mean, men are -- you see, enemies to each other to the bitter end. And you just have to think of vendetta and vengeance -- everywhere, and these people never forgive each other and see each other in the true light.

So to evolve seems to me -- evolution is the -- the story of "Ichabod" in the historical sense.

And what I can do in this seminar with you poor -- poor, demented people is only to wake you up to the fact that the scientific era is over. That is, an attempt to treat man as a piece of nature. That if you do this, you destroy a piece of your community. You are not parts of nature, because we are able to tie together ends and beginnings. And we can survive death. No animal can do this. We are regenerated. And Webster gets this poem in the hope that he too, even, this is -- his poem may still repent, you see, and be regenerated. Even beyond "Ichabod" there is still hope for Daniel Webster. You must understand that otherwise the writing of the poem made no sense. And that's a great story.

Ichabod is one, just this type, you see. And Eli is another. But the poem is written because of Webster being Eli at once, you see, and Ichabod now, and -- let's hope that God will forgive him. That's mean- -- the meaning of God's forgiveness, you see, which is unheard-of in antiquity, you see. That a man can be restored to his former honor, and -- and -- you see, just because he acknowledges that one phase of his life is without the divine grace. Can you see this? The -- the continuity of history is here carried into the individual life, and to -- I think most people in this country do live the li- -- nine lives of a cat. But they don't -- they only live it as a cat. You should live the nine lives of a human soul. That is, knowing these phases of each other, facing, you see, these phases, these chapters.

The whole problem of yours today in Los Angeles is: everybody here has nine lives. They came to this country, I mean, to Los Angeles once, either your parents or you yourself, you see. And you will not stay here for -- all life. We all lead today many existences. The real problem today is the -- despite this, which is now already the conquest of the Christian era--that we are allowed to live more than one life, you see, that we aren't stamped out a slave forever, a black man forever, a white man forever, a nobleman forever, you see, a peasant forever -- you understand--that we all evolve through these various stages. Your problem and mine is to live these lives as a human being facing these various phases. Having no alibi, and no aliases just, and not running away from our past, and not running away from our future.

And so you must see if we read this poe- -- have this great poem "Ichabod," you enter history only if you keep the Old and the New Testament. Ichabod -- the -- the model case, one wo- -- man has to carry -- has to be the scapegoat, so to speak, you see. "He" -- "The light has departed from Israel." That's a whole generation. But -- to -- as our sins are forgiven, don't think this is a metaphor. Or don't think that's something for the Sunday church. The ministers don't understand this for a long time already. They have -- they have all apostasized. Rabbis and -- and ministers do not know anything, but the poets still know it. And you -- still can know it. If you read this poem "Ichabod," you are in the New Testament, because it's the application of this Old Testament in which still every man was just one -- one -- one item, or one definition, or one -- had one meaning, so to speak, you see.

Not one of us has only one meaning. You all can hope for that you go on from one station to the other. From one light to the next, from one rebirth to the next. And you all take it for granted, gentlemen. Only I have to -- wake you up to the fact that in Los Angeles, which is perhaps the summary of all western civilization, you see, the -- the -- in a strange manner, this -- this Southern California is the extreme of everything the human race has -- has dreamt of for thousand

years. You are in great danger to take this splitting up in evolutionary phases in your life so much for granted that you break up, that we -- we -- you s- -- you are like a -- the fission of the atom. That is, you live so many lives, that they lose unity, they lose continuity. You see, you just -- it is so easy for you to -- to start all over again.

I had this story, who -- we dismissed a man, a tutor in -- in our college, because he was a homosexual, and he threatened the boys. And so he went to another university, and they didn't know anything of his background. Of course, we shielded him, and tried to give him a new start. And what happened? He was made the -- the -- s- -- patron of one of the dormitories.

Now, you see -- in -- now, in antiquity, or in any -- in any Old Testament vengeance situation, absolute situation, or, you see, pre-Christian, this man would have been cast, you see, in -- in iron chains and either would have been burned at stake, as you know--perverts were not dealt very graciously with, you see. We do the {other} with the, you see. We make him the gardener, you see, the goat into the gardener, which is not a good idea, either. Because we -- we give him a chance to start all over again, you see. And everything is, so to speak, has never happened. And that's the exactly opposite exaggeration. So we are over-Christian today. Let me tell you this.

We have lost the power of the antithesis between the Old Testament and the New Testament. And so you all pride yourself -- you -- that's why you are, for example, all pacifists, you see. And all -- you allow any number of divorces, as in this {Duncan} case. That's the end of civilization -- you see. She is a prostitute who uses marriage as a -- as a shield for her prostitution. That's very serious. You see, if you -- if marriage can be abused by even by one -- you see, for such purposes, something is very wrong with the way we enter upon marriage, you see. Because it -- shows that it is entered upon absolutely without any consideration of any -- any consequence. So I think -- that's -- the son can be with a lawyer, and that this law school student whom she married, you see, can be a lawyer, that's just all incredible. I mean, it's the end of the world, gentlemen. You can be sure that such a world cannot survive. It's -- has no longer persons who live -- but just little fragments of people.

So the old world of antiquity, gentlemen, has made everyone serve one -- in one capacity, and therefore has denied man's right to be reborn. There is no -- no ad- -- remission of sins in antiquity. Be- -- what we call "revelation" is the drawing away of the veil so that man can survive his own previous form. Because any form -- you see, any state of will and mind, if you have any mentality -- in antiquity is final. And so man is under a veil, because that's -- what we call "the mind," you see, "My own mind."

You remember in class, I tried to tell you that mentality was fickle and that we had as many minds as we had chapters in our lives, I mean. I'm of a different mind, you see, very often. My mind changes, and it's given me for change. The mind is not -- the root of my -- of my ex- -- soul, and my existence, and my identity. You cannot identify yourself with your mind, because you have a childish mind, you have an adolescent mind, and you have a mature mind, you see. And therefore, the mind is not the point of identification.

So this poem, "Ichabod," you see, is suddenly posing the question, "Is not every one of you the whole story?"

And this has to do with the -- with the -- well, I give you a simile. The -- in the -- in the medieval churches, which tried to rec- -- recapitulate the anc- -- Old Testament, of course, you have the architecture laid out in such a way that it begins with the precinct leading up to the portals of the cathedral, and it's called the paradise. And then you enter the door, then that's the time of Noah, the c- -- covenant with God. And then you go forward, and comes the Old Testament and the Jews; and then comes the -- all the stages, you see: kings and prophets, the six eras of the world are laid out; till the apses, you have the Last Judgment.

So in a -- the people in the Middle -- Ages were quite aware that what they should inculcate in a man was the road from Paradise to Last Judgment. That's why at the so-called -- there is a portal in every cathedral called the port -- the gates of Adam and Eve. Because after Paradise, you see, fallen man enters here the Church and therefore needs the Church. In Paradise -- the animal kingdom, he doesn't need any revelation or any speech, you see, or any word. Animals live unconsciously and unhistorically.

So the -- the -- the -- I only wanted to show you this problem of evolution has harassed the mind of people for the last thousand -- 2,000 years. And therefore, the Gothic cathedrals were built to represent our march through the six ages of the whole world's history, you see: three ages pre-Christian, and three ages post-Christian, to the Judgment Day.

This all strikes you to- -- today just as symbolism, as you dare to call it. Wherever you read the word "symbolism," kill the author, because it de- -- deprives you of the seriousness of the business, you see. This is not symbolism. This is impregnation with the -- with the power to live through ma- -- many ages. That's -- I -- I think the word "symbolism" is one of the most obnoxious terms at this moment, because the literati in the English department speak about it, and devaluate it thereby.

This is not symbolism. That's experience. That's empirical.

Now today, it's the individual. Mr. Webster--and you, too--you live through all these stages to -- which man has lived. And we recapitulate in our own life these various stages, especially the fall of man. And -- and obviously today, you see, the whole struggle between the -- the organized churches and the academic campus is that on campus everybody pretends in his lectures and in your examinations that you are -- God doesn't exist, that you can deal without him. He is never mentioned--it's just bad taste to mention Him in college. And it's very -- would be very bad taste not to mention God in Church, you will admit, you see. There you have to over-mention Him; and here you have to under-mention Him. There you have again this breakup of the various stages of your mind into absolute, separated entities. You see, on Sunday, God is -- praised from 10 -- 11 to 12, 10,000 times, and in the college, He isn't mentioned once. At least not in a way that you believe in Him; only in the way that other poor, benighted souls have believed in Him. I mean, historically, God may be mentioned. But that He's present in this room, gentlemen -- and ladies, you know it very well, but it mustn't be mentioned. But He's here, I assure you. And the devil is here, too, waiting for his opportunity.

As -- as long as you break yourself into these animal creatures, who are, from 10 to 11 philosophers, and from 11 to 12 theologians, you see, and from -- and from 2 to 3 at night, animals, and so on, you are the unhappiest of creatures. You are not in history, but you are broken into fragments of a zoological garden. And that's how I see most people try to live. They -- they try to live in these -- in these absolute water-tight compartments without awareness that these phases are one wonderful life, the whole of creation.

So you -- you -- the only way in which you can teach children history is by pointing out such poems, you see, of "Ichabod," who have this double punctuation of -- the -- the -- the name is still taken from the great single case in the Old Testament, but it's already reconciled with the whole of life, you see, with a longer, continuous existence, you see. But since {I admit it,} Mr. Webster is a reborn soul, and he can be forgiven, you see. And Webster -- Whittier said on his deathbed, by the way--he was of course {wrung} by Webster's friends very often about this poem--that -- at the end, he -- he admitted that much, that perhaps Mr. Webster had lived down this poem, you see, that perhaps God in His mercy would not consider the poem as the last word about Mr. Daniel Webster.

Now this may not even strike you as -- as something unnatural, because you take if for granted that we go on from mood to mood. This isn't quite true, gentlemen. Remember, if a man dies unrepenting, like Mrs. {Duncan} probably will, she just goes to hell. You only must think that hell is a state not at -- somewhere -- else outside this world, but in -- in this community. She will be a blot on this community for a hundred years to come. And that's -- we call "hell."

And you cannot redeem her. She is just there. And she's on you, this -- this -- city, this civilization, this age is identified with her. You haven't shaken her, you see. Of course, we have to do the minimum in showing our abhorrence, and our -- extinguish her. But since he doesn't repent and since she doesn't admit it -- the only contribution such a criminal can make is admission, you see, and saying, "Yes, I have sinned." Then it's all over, I mean. Then you can -- you can go on.

Now the second story is of course, "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," and you have a similar problem, you see. Is history just -- has a -- has Jesus just died in Nazareth in -- in 33, you see, of our era? Has He? That wouldn't be very interesting. So in peacetime, people believe this, however. They write biblical criticism; they write novels about Paul or about Jesus, what a nice boy He was, and how obedient to His parents, and nobody understands how such an obedient boy could ever become a rebel, and could ever protest, and so on. But He did. Well, people who write these -- these -- these sugar-coated articles for Easter in the paper, which I now have to read in these horrid Los Angeles papers--the -- they don't care.

The only way in which you can express your belief in this new era, where man passes through all the stages from -- from Paradise, over fall, to redemption, to rebirth, and to the Last Judgment, is of course when you still expect yourself judgment. And this is "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" written about, you see: "I have seen" -- "I have seen the coming of the Lord." That is, when you suddenly see that history is half the future and half the past, that you are in the middle of future -- exactly in the middle between the future and the past, you see. That what we -- call the present exists only--now may I put down this law, which I haven't formulated, but Goethe has formulated--man has exactly as much past as he has future, and he has exactly as much future as he has past. Modern man has no future, because he -- is impertinent enough to try to have a past of 700 million years. That's not given to the human race. You see, all this talk about geological man frustrates you, because there has to be equilibrium. Man has only that much past he has future, and he has only that much future as he has past, if he is a living creature.

And today, modern man has no future. I can assure you that. It ends just here at the beach. And you are already -- that's why you have the Ortal- -- Oriental Exclusion Act, because you are so afraid of anything that looms from the other side of the water. Here is -- Manifest Destiny has come to an end at the Pacific Ocean. American history as American history ends. That's all over. You have no future.

And that's why Adlai Stevenson came out and said, "We are just fearful people. We haven't -- we are timid. We -- we don't think that the future is with

us anymore. It is with somebody else. It has left us." Well, gentlemen, all the modern science is -- is trying to make you -- throw you -- off balance by telling you that -- that 700 million years -- light years, you see, are what matters. Well, then you don't matter. But if you have just a past of 6,000 years, then it doesn't matter very much if you would kindly help to add another thousand years to the story. Then you -- that's still worth a real effort. And what you -- we -- what this history seminar or any history teaching at this moment must try to do is to encourage you to give the next thousand years a chance, and not just your -- you see, your own pleasure, and your own retirement age, and -- and your own ins- -- old insurance. And you cannot even insure your old pension, you see, if we have inflation. And inflation means "no belief in the future." That's all what inflation means. Inflation means, "After us, the deluge." That's what the French nobility said in the French Revolution, you see -- before the French Revolution. "Oh, aprŠs nous, le d‚luge." Yes, you know. After us, the deluge. And that's what every American today says. And that's why the country can have no future.

They say, "Oh, if I only make money today at the stock exchange, let's have inflation." All the manufacturers think that way; all the workers think that way; Mr. Reu- -- Reuther and how all these lobbyists are -- are -- call themselves. Because people are not afraid of the Last Judgment anymore. They don't think there is a Judgment Day. They don't think that their sins have to be admitted. They never consider { } -- possibly Ichabod, "The spirit has departed from Israel," my dear, you see. All these politicians, if you call for -- tell them that Mr. Webster winced under the poem, they just laugh. If you wrote today a poem, "Ichabod," would they -- would they take it seriously? Would they apply it to themselves?

This is the dis- -- the distance we have traveled from 1850 to today -- to today. You cannot reach any of these men today in their conscience. What is conscience, gentlemen? The violence between future and past. It's nothing moral. Conscience means to be conscious of where we stand. And we stand always between the heir -- being heirs and being founders. Every human being has as much future as he -- thinks himself a founder; and every man has as much past if he thinks himself being an heir.

Now you don't think yourselves founders. You marry because your sex urge demands it. Not because you want to have children, or found a new republic, or -- settle a new island. So you are not founders. You are just heirs. And of course, you know it very well, I mean. A mere heir is a degenerate, a rich heiress. The most -- worst is Barbara Hutton, or who -- Gloria Vanderbilt, or so. Poor people, I mean, just heiresses. They get bandied around, because they have a fortune and they have a name, and they can never make a real life, because they -- the future and the past are not in balance.

And this is the Old Testament, and that's the New Testament in all of us. And the condition of a new phase in your life is that you acknowledge your inheritance, your heritage, you see. This is the strange balance. That's why every new phase has to be entered upon deliberately, so to speak, gratefully, ruefully, tremblingly--under this "fear and trembling," as Kierkegaard has said, you see--because you always know that you are losing something, that you're shutting one door { }, and it can only be done in the -- under the dire need of necessity, that we live on.

Old Calvin Coolidge, you see, a Vermonter, used to say when he -- asked if he should veto a bill, he only asked one question: "Is it necessary?" And any superfluous bill was vetoed. And that I recommend to you in your own life, you see. Ask yourself about the serious decisions in life: "Is it necessary?" It's the only guide you have. Not "Is it right?" or "Is it good?" Just "Is it necessary?" Because sometimes it is necessary to break the law, obviously. And sometimes it's necessary to -- to -- observe the law. This is our -- your incredible freedom. If you found a new society, you will always have to break the laws of the old society. But if you don't found anything, and just have -- are pleasure-seeking, you fall under the law, and there's no excuse.

So the same act can be -- can be your freedom, and the same act can be your curse. Not two cases of eloping, or marrying, or en- -- getting engaged, or {choosing} { } are of the same character. It is just two spirits can, you see -- can -- the meaning can be absolutely different. One can be Ichabod, you see, and one can be the coming of the Lord.

Now without the reading of the text of the Old and the New Testament, I do therefore think that people are completely given over to their blind passions--in every generation, to the fashion. And so you get, since 1850, a rage of the spirit of the times. That is, we think that the times themselves contain men.

And I've been to the library this morning to read up on -- on some American writers. And there is a -- a magazine called the American Literature. And the whole attempt -- you know this, probably, American Literature, you know? It's a very good magazine, it is, in its own ri- -- way. You know it? Who knows American Literature? Whew! How can you escape? All -- all these textbooks condemn you to eternal death. Ja. You've never seen it? { }.

That's where your professors -- your professors get all their knowledge. Yes. Look at it. You will always get an A in their English courses if you read this magazine.

Well, we have here -- I'll -- just to give you an example what happens if

you are not -- if you are not addressed as "Ichabod" or as "The Battle Hymn" -- with "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," I mean, of the battlefield of life, that there is a great moment at this moment -- either from the future or from the spirit that is departed. I mean, the two poems are so great, because one is on death, and end, you see, and the other is on the beginning, on a -- on a new foundation. I think that's so -- it so happens that these -- we came upon these two, but I think they are extremely opposite, and extremely -- significant, because "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" and the -- "Ichabod" tell -- tell you that every human being -- when I open my mouth or you open your mouth to a serious statement, we call into life, and we condemn to death.

You see, any gossiping monster, or any judge, or any student--you don't know this--that we -- that life and death are on the human tongue. That's why the Gospel of St. John begins: "In the beginning was the Word," you see. You -- we cannot speak without saying of a part of life that it has died and departed, and of other elements that we still { } the future, because we must speak in tenses. We cannot speak as "I was," "I am," "I shall be."

So if you say, "Germany was a great country," and you say it has died, you see. If you say "Germany is a great -- country," you give it a lease on life. You say, "Europe was a great civilization," then it's all over. If you say, "Germany -- Europe has still a future," then you give it a lease of life, and you invite everybody who subscribes to this sentence to do something about it. Most people have no idea that by speaking, we commit constantly either childbirth, you see, or murder. And -- or execution. Some things deserve to be executed. We bury them.

But -- men- -- mark this well: to speak means to call into life, as the wonderful saying is: we call into life, you see; that's done by speech. And the word "to call into life," just -- it should bring it to your attention that we speak us into being, or we bespeak us out of being. If you say, "This man," you see, "is a down-and-out," or "He's done in," you see, as you treat all the old people today after 65 -- "Oh, put him into a convalescent home; put him in an old-age pension, you see, and so on, it's over with," you no longer expect anything from them.

To speak means to decide over life and death. And if you only knew this, you would know that the way you speak is -- is powerless, because you don't know that you are involved in the creative process of mankind by which we constantly re-arrange those things that have a future, those parts of life, you see, which we want you to carry into the future, and those parts which we put on the cemetery. To speak means to decide over life and death.

Now you no longer can understand the architecture of a cathedral as really meaningful. You no longer believe that man goes from Paradise to the Last

Judgment. These forms in which the -- it is -- was expressed in -- in the Middle Ages is probably gone for you. I -- at least -- not for me, I mean. But I see you, and I think -- you will look at these buildings and say, "That's just" -- "That's just pictures." And you will not enter the cathedral with the feeling that you march through time. I -- at least I haven't found any American who is capable of this experience. All right. We have to drop it. But it's obvious that you and I must make an effort to give ourselves and future generations some corresponding evolutionary experience, you see, that vitalizes you, not in the form of the whole history of the human race, but your own march perhaps through your own ages of life.

And therefore, gentlemen, the curse you have to fight is that you are immersed into any one age, any one generation, any one spirit of your time, which is the great devil that today goes around and tries to devour you. You are told that you are the angry generation, or you are the postwar generation. Don't believe it for a minute. It's all nonsense. Your whole problem is to live through a number of generations, and to do your part to reconnect all generations in your own life, and in the life of the country, and in the life of the human race.

And here -- I give you an example what -- . Here, we have a great man in this country Mr. Lee Masters. You know probably who he is, the man who published the Spoon River Anthology. Have you ever read him?

(Yes, I have.)

Well, I think he's a very great man, and an important man, because he signifies a -- a note in American literature without which we wouldn't -- so to speak, this would not be any longer a part of the human race. It would just be America. I mean, Mas- -- Lee Masters in his pessimism represents the connecting link with the rest of the human race, because he's critical of -- of the -- American situation -- as of this moment. He's a wise guy, and as you know, he was completely destitute 10 years ago; he lived in a poor house and -- when he -- then people came to his rescue, and -- but he lived actually in the poor house. And that's how you treat your geniuses in this country. But you have always done this, I mean. Nothing has changed.

But -- if you do not speak of "Ichabod," and if you do not speak -- in terms of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," this is what happens. That's why it seems to me so very important. I hope I can -- it is in this volume.

Ah yes, I know where it is. Now listen. Would you -- it probably wouldn't occur to you that it is a -- the fall of man here, of modern man in this article. A -- quite -- intelligent man who has written the article. I -- let me read it to you.

So -- Masters has, you see -- is simply a part of America. Have read Spoon River Anthology? Have you heard of it? It's a very good book. It's very important. Have you read it? Well, yes. He's a forgotten man. You do not expect -- poetry is eternal. If poetry -- Shakespeare has no meaning, if you don't -- isn't -- if he isn't even played at all, today. What is Shakespeare's meaning if he was -- just was acted under Ja- -- James I? And you accept it. In this one case of Shakespeare, you do not wonder how it is possible, you see, to -- to acknowledge him. I hope in the field of Donne, you are of the same opinion. He speaks to you, doesn't he?

Now how- -- Mr. Masters, however--although I think he deserves the same immor- -- kind of -- of timelessness--any great poetry is in this sense penetrating into any spirit of the time as a warning that there is more to life than this spirit of this one time. That's what Shakespeare means, isn't it? This -- the idea of poetry, that it reaches a -- a -- a penetration, you see, which goes under the skin of the uniform which you wear in 1959. Could you -- possibly think of time in terms of earth, in times of space -- terms of space, and say that man root -- is rooted in time? And that, just as a tree has to outgrow, by his putting down deeper roots--the surface of his soil, and go beneath it, and above it--in the same sense, any man is born in -- in the -- on the topsoil of his own time. But he has put to -- down his roots underneath this, and grow beyond it. Man is a creature in time. We have our roots, you see, in Heaven. These are our roots. The brain is our roots, not our crown, you see. It's our darkest part. It's our part which has inherited all the categories of the past. Here, in your mind, that's the most conservative part of your being. Your heart is much more exposed to novelty, and your touch, and your senses. The -- the mind is a conservative man.

As you know, the cells of the brain are the only part of man -- man's body that are not renewed. They are ir- -- unregenerators, you see. That's why without repentance, the human mind can never have a new idea, because the heart has to throw up such a violent denial of your prejudices, you see, that the -- a new chapter in your brain is opened, you see. You can only eliminate false ideas in your brain by closing the book, by moving into another part of your brain, because you cannot renew any memory in your mind. That's phy- -- I mean, that's -- the physiologists can tell you this, that the brain cells are that part of the human body that are not regenerated every seven years. Every seven years, you have a new body, you see, except for your mind, except for the brain. That's continuous. And that's why the renewal of the brain is something that cannot be brought about by the brain itself. It can only be brought about by great, strong passions of faith, and fear, and love, and affection -- that is, when the whole world -- body is worked up, when you are beside yourselves, then you can throw up blood into this brain and eliminate whole chapters of your mental life, you see, by saying, "That's Old Testament; that's bygone," you see.

This is how we renew ourselves. That's why rebirth is a physiological process. It is the victory of the rest of your body over the mind.

Here, now listen to this. I think it's -- I have never seen anything so cruel:

"It was somewhat of a shock to this reviewer to realize that Mr. Masters, who has written his autobiography, is now 67 years of age, that he's contemporary with William Vaughn Moody, Clyde Fitch, and Booth Tarkington, and that 22 years ago have passed since the sensational Spoon River Anthology in 1915. The appearance of that book so definitely marked the success of the prewar modernists"--poor poet, "the success of the prewar modernists"; that's not a place for Shakespeare -- the -- the victory of Sidney and -- and -- and Marlowe, you condemn him to death--"the appearance of the book so definitely marked the success of the prewar modernists that it is still hard to think of its author as anything but a young radical.

"Yet even at that time, Mr. Masters was not young. Soon Riv- -- Spoon River was the culmination of many years of struggle to find expression for a thwarted and stumbling experience. And its attainment was never repeated. An era of literary history brought to a close by the Life Records in a Storyteller's Story, A Book about Myself, and Across Spoon River," all books by Mr. Masters. "Even though there may be still further to go in Following down Time and The River, the special kind of frustration of the generation which reached its maturity before the '20s and which reveals the sources of Mark Twain's dismay in The Mysterious Stranger has found its voices, we can never return to the faith of Emerson in nature identified with an all-good, because science has its clutches on the psyche, both social and individual.

"But the work of Masters, however vital, was destructive if utilitarian. It marks the recognition of the challenge of science, not the solution of the problems presented.

"The naturalism of Master i- -- Masters is not the naturalism of younger writers. This much we can tell, even though the scene is too close for us to have much perspective or judgment on the issues inse- -- itself. { }."

Now here is a man buried alive, because there is no -- nothing beyond the spirit of his own days. He is just catalogued. All this literary criticism in America is an infamous zoological garden, an attempt to bury people alive. You have to turn against this, gentlemen. Is your soul immersed in the year 1959? Are you obsolete because your first utterance took place in 1954, and now it's all over with? Has a man who wrote in 1954 -- need not the right to be as fresh as the morning dew in 1974? What's all this talk about belonging to a certain generation? You should despise this. That's how we begin. That's our prehistoric existence, you see. You all are born in a certain moment. And it's your damned duty

to put down your roots so far that you cover the thousands of years since Adam. And Jesus is the first -- the second Adam, because He did just this. He was David's son. He was a prophet. He was a teacher. He was a Jew. He was a human being. And He -- He -- was just as much a Gentile as He was a Jew, of course, and therefore He can -- speak of Himself as a second Adam. Because 6,000 years of history, or 5,000 years are all comprised in Him. That's your duty, too. You are the man of all ages. You are not the man of your own age.

And this is putting down roots. In -- the future, you are the beginners of an endless future of future generations, or you are a harlot, or you are a murderer, or you are somebody who obstaculates the -- the road -- to progress.

It is -- we begin, as I say, once more, you see, in time, as a plant -- begins in space. But that's not the story of the plant, and that's not my and your story. But if we have a seminar in history, and a history department in this beautiful university, gentlemen, then you are in this history department to learn how people put down roots; that is, how we absorb other chapters of history. And we cannot read a his- -- anything on history without posing the -- yourself the question: how much future, how much past, balanced between the two. How much do I get deeper into the various spirits of the time so that I can pierce the crust, the hard crust of my own time and cease to -- to belong of my time, and -- I wish everybody of you goes to Heaven as -- as Lincoln went when Mr. Edward Stanton, his secretary of war, said -- what did he say?

("Now he belongs to the ages.")

Ja. That's the meaning of it. Very simple.

Who cares when Lincoln lived? And you see, what we call "legend" is only the -- when a man has become so powerful that it doesn't matter anymore that he would die in 1865. Everybody of -- every one of you -- has to become legendary. To -- to become a legend means to rise finally above the encrustation by your own time. And that's what everybody has to hope for. Formerly call -- people called this, "He goes to Heaven." Gentlemen and ladies, you will have to find a -- a parallel expression, because whatever you -- wherever you turn to, you cannot be blessed if you are only a product of your own time, because you haven't then -- not -- spoken. And to speak means to make room for the past and the future, and to decide what -- what shall belong to the past and what shall go into the future.

And you cannot help -- whether you -- you open your mouth and you make this decision. If you say, "It is," and if you say, "It was," and if you say, "It will be," you create the universe. That's why we know that God created the

world, because we are part of it. We -- we create it, so what's -- wondrous about it that He created it? And still creating it, through us. It is so absolu- -- everybody knows it -- because everybody speaks. But when they sit down in these classrooms, and examine you, they turn against everything they do themselves.

So -- pardon me. This is the story of Ichabod" and "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." And you can see that our history at this moment is in terrible danger, because it has no power to invoke against the -- these acts, these superstitions of the moment that man is a part of his own time. What is his own time? Of this fleeting moment, you see, like this poor Master, who stands condemned in the terms of Mr. {Muir}, you see, that he's 67 years old, and has to belong to a certain generation. Then he says, "{But I} -- in 1915, he was already"--this was written -- '37--40, so my -- it doesn't hold water at all, because my generation were then -- in 1915 used to be 25. And now here he was 40 when he came out with his Spoon River Anthology, you see. Now he's 67. Procrustean bed. { } generation, just the same.

And take, you see -- the infamous tone is, you see: "The work of Masters was" -- I tell you, that's condemning the man, you see, to death. "It was." If Shakespeare was -- St. Augustine and Shakespeare have a much brighter future than you and I. I can assure you that. They are still coming. I still see in -- the coming of the Lord in their works, but not in yours, and not in mine. We're just hang -- hangers-on, and dragged along with their genius.

Every -- what -- whom do we mention in history? Those who still have a future. Not -- nobody else has to be mentioned. But we have to sift this wheat from the chaff all the time to save all these people who have a future, more than you and I.

So I think this -- this whole -- this review is a -- is a very good ex- -- let me read it to you once more:

"It was somewhat of a shock to this reviewer"--then he shouldn't write a review of -- if he has no relation to Mr. Masters, you see, as a -- except as a museum -- curator of a museum of -- of -- of -- of fossils. "It was somewhat of a shock to this reviewer to realize that Mr. Masters is now 67 years of age." I'm -- that's -- that's the fashion today. I mean, I take this just as a typical review--"As I -- he was a contemporary with William Vaughan Moody, Clyde Fitch, Booth Tarkington, and that 22 years ago have passed since the sensational Spoon River Anthology in 1915. The periods of the book who -- so definitely marked the success of the prewar modernists"--you have even difficulty of getting oriented, you see--"it marked so definitely the success of the prewar modernists, that it is still hard to think of its author as anything but a young radical."

Do you understand? You see, he -- he tries immediately to draw your attention just to -- here.

"That even at that time Mr. Masters was not young."

What of it?

"Spoon River was a culmination of many years of struggle to find expression. And its attainment was never repeated."

That's why it was a great book. Even in the dirty soil of this moment, 1959, you can { } can you not? And that -- then you can decry the -- the handicap of being born in a -- in a barren time, you see. That's -- would be your spec- -- spec- -- special greatness, you see.

"An era of literary history is brought to a close by the life record."

And that's all just for the museum. "An era of literary history." Is Shakespeare brought to a close, because Ben Jonson lived -- longer than Shakespeare by an accident? As a matter of fact, Ben Jonson survived him by 25 years. But who mentions Ben Jonson?

But according to this, Ben Jonson, since he comes later, obviously he must be closer to us. And you live all under this -- under this -- the auspices of this superstition, you see.

Put it down that man is a creature of time, and you begin to be shaken up by the truth, that the -- the moment is the smallest item, just as you put a seed in -- in -- as a matter of fact, you see, on top, only half-an-inch deep in your garden soil. But you expect this soil to put down roots. And you see, what is the consequence of your -- of this today? That most of you are at best grass, and not one of you is -- becomes the tree. That oak and linden should simply -- signify first men like {Philemon}, and {Bacchus} in the old mythology, that's un-understandable today. You are all too pleased if you are of one year, "Class of '58" or "Class of '62" you call it. And so you are reduced to a -- to a -- annual. But man is perennial. And the decision has to be made by you: are you perennials, or are you annuals? But you try to be 70 times annuals, that if you live every year -- a separate life, and it doesn't dawn on you that to live means to penetrate this crust of one year, and become perennial. And these similes are not similes. We are organic substance.

And -- in a machine age, you see, of steel and iron, all you and I can do is to reconsider our own existence as the remnant of the organic world, you see.

We are -- have to represent the topsoil when the machinery keeps drilling 2,000 feet deep into the su- -- subsoil. And this is your and my honor that we live organicity, that we live in the way in which organic life lives, you see, through many passages, and many forms of existence without ever losing our -- losing our identity. This you can only do -- you can only live the nine lives of a cat if you have access to the nine ages of human history.

And that's why I thought that--uncommon as it is--that even you people grat- -- graduating in American history or majoring therein, should know something of antiquity. That's not wanton, because it is the -- antiquity is the mosaic, you see, out of which every one of us has to compose the phases of his life. We are cursed and blessed in alternation. At once we are Ruth, and at the other moment we are Hannah, and once we are Alexander the Great, and the next moment we are Jeremiah. And we have access to all these types, you see, of kings, and prophets, and -- and martyrs of antiquity in alternation. And we read it like an open book. And that's the whole meaning of the Bible.

Now where you -- what did I say -- what -- what Thucydides { }. Now here we come to a Greek who has gotten the Gentile mind out of mythology, just as the Jews. And he has created another aspect of history.

All people, you and I -- if we -- if you have to tell the story of this seminar, here, you see--that's why I wanted you to write a report--to make you aware how all history at first is mythical. A myth begins with the end of the story, and then goes backward, you see. And what you saw in Samuel was the achievement that the story began at the beginning without anybody knowing anything more than he knew at that time, you see. And that's the Book of Samuel. Can you remember? The modesty that it is -- that not one of the participants of the game is -- more, you see, has power over the future. He lives in -- on faith. We know already, you see, but the people there don't.

Now myth makes the people know ahead of time. And that's, therefore, because I know, so probably there you, too. Whenever you get a mythical story about railroad kings, or vested interests, you make them always all-wise. Most myth about American history is written about Mr. Rockefeller or Mr. Pierpont Morgan knowing what he was doing. I assure you, neither Lincoln nor Pierpont Morgan knew what they were doing. They just do it. I mean, that is, the myth, however, puts tremendous, you see, plans and cunning octopus, spider into the minds of people. They aren't that clever.

You see, we -- but myth always begins backward. That is the normal behavior of boys, and cheap students, and classroom performance. Anything that is learned -- all your colleges are mythical institutions, because they know al-

ready the outcome, and think everybody did. And so they look at the other people as though they have performed on purpose. And the modern philosophy of, for example, utilitarianism is a typical academic idea, you see, that people all are purposive, and -- and get what they want, and do what they please, and -- and plan, you see, and all our wicked -- and there is always a nigger in the wood pile. And there's a boss who -- see -- he bosses everybody. And that's the intellectual attitude.

When Mr. Lindbergh's baby was kidnapped, you know, that's 30 years ago, the French had the same attitude, the intellectuals in Paris. A friend of mine went to Paris, and he was immediately interviewed about the Lindbergh case, and they of course in Paris knew all -- much better than the people in New York. And "Oh," they said, "He wasn't kidnapped. The boy wasn't kidnapped."

"But he was. There was Bruno Hauptmann. He was really kidnapped. { }."

"Oh, no. No."

"Now what's the story?" my friend said, who was a -- is a professor at Harvard.

And he -- they said, "Oh, we know. There was a -- a will of an uncle of Mrs. Mo- -- Lindbergh -- Morrow Lindbergh, very rich man and," they said -- he said -- "the will said, that they -- she could only inherit money if there was a child." There -- for a childless marriage he didn't provide. "So they had to have a child, but they had no child. So they adopted this child, which was --. And when then, that -- she was pregnant, and had a child of her own, she -- they wanted to get rid of the first-born child. And that, instead of kidnapping -- poor Hauptmann was -- was paid for eliminating the adopted child, which they had only adopted in order to get the money."

Now my friend was so upset. He wrote home and -- to California where they had lived. There never was an uncle, there never was a will, you see. The whole story was a hoax. And he told them so. He couldn't convince them { }. They said, "Well, if there was no will, if there was no money, the first child wasn't { }."

They know in Paris. This is the myth of the intellectuals, because then everything was planned, you see; it's a purposive scheme of things, you see. Everything is -- falls into the pattern of being known from the beginning. You will know -- see that all pseudo-history comes from imputing to the people that they didn't stumble on gold, but that they planned to find the gold in Klondike

in the first place, for example. Everything is planned.

You -- it has been said of the British empire that it came -- got together in their sleep. And that's a much truer story. The English are a great people, because they have never believed in purposive schemes. And they don't. They -- that's why they got this big empire in -- in {sleep}. I think Manifest Destiny has played a role in this way here. People -- this wasn't planned. -- It just came by -- by -- by circumstance.

So myth is always -- will you kindly take down this rule of -- of knowledge? At the end, we are -- we know the results, and we are apt to know everything in reverse order. Therefore, we clothe the beginnings already with the results of the end. We dress up the -- the -- the mind of the beginning as though we knew the results. And it is very hard for us to understand that by faith and perseverance, results are brought about which have absolutely nothing to do with the will of the -- and of the -- in the beginning {phase} or the plan, or the purpose.

And so the people reduce, as Charles Beard does with his declaration of independence, they reduce the Declaration of Independence to purpose, that these people had to protect their property. It's childish, because people act -- do many things without purpose, but under necessity. You don't breathe for any purpose, but you have to breathe. And you sit here, I hope, without any purpose, because otherwise I couldn't teach you. You are unable to learn if you have a purpose. The more purpose you have in getting an A in an examination, the worse as a student you are. You have to surrender your purpose in order to learn.

And that's about any -- phase of life, I mean. If you cannot act spontaneously -- so that's why the Bible says, you see, that you shouldn't prepare speeches { }, you see, as the Quakers do { }. Because if you will stand before magistrates and authorities, God will tell you what to say at this moment. And the -- the more you plan it, the worse the speech will be.

Purpose is the curse of the student in looking into -- into history, that he carries the knowledge of the end into the beginning.

Now Thucydides is, like the Bible, an attempt to cure the -- the curious mind of later generations, the -- only curious mind from this superstition. What we call today "history," since the Bible and Thucydides, is an attempt to do justice to the contemporaries of an event by not putting into their mind anything that they couldn't know at the time. It's the innocence of happening which had to be restored.

You see, all the forecasts are mythical, which we find in ancient history, you see, that people were told beforehand the outcome of the Trojan War, and so on, you see. That's why it is not history. But in -- in the case of Thucydides -- we will see in which way he works. But the problem of -- this is the problem of the classroom. And -- here again, I want you to reconsider your statement. Today it's a great fashion to speak not only of symbols but of myth. Every second -- schoolchild has now to write papers on myth. But the myth of the school is the first you have to look through before you understand -- that myth is eternal, that -- everybody today is superior to myth. Don't believe it for a minute. We all live by myth. And it is --- only with an effort that we wake up from -- from our myth. We all impute to other people that are purposive, and shrewd, or clever, and intelligent. And they aren't; and we aren't. And one thing, you see, is -- is always mythical. The myth is empowering the participants in the struggle of having a -- a hold over the event, or should have a hold, you see. Don't be miscarriaged. Whereas in real life, there are always influences that are bigger than the event. Myth is also isolated.

Every myth is by itself. It cuts out. A friend of mind, a -- a great thinker in -- in Europe, Hans Ehrenberg, once said -- has said that all myth confines the powers at work in history, you see, to a specific place and a specific time. So the whole -- reviewer of -- of Mr. Lee Master is mythical, by putting Mr. Master in this box. You see, that's a myth.

The most outstanding example at this moment of the mythical treatment of history is -- is a book by Perry Miller on Herman Melville. Has anybody seen it? Perry Miller is a very good man. That's why I mention it, because it's so tragic. And he puts Herman Melville, the greatest American spirit we have--the representative of 300 years of American history--he puts him not only into the year 1850, but he makes him a part of the New York coterie, who tried to save American literature from -- from New York. And he says, "He was only there very minor star in the galaxy of New Yorkers. And I only treat him here as an appendix to -- Washington Irving and -- and all the greater lights." So poor Melville, not only, you see, is not expanded into the reality of his existence, but he is even lowered. He is no longer Herman Melville, but just, you see, Arcturus Beta in a constellation of -- of minor lights in -- on Broadway.

(This is the Perry Miller who wrote the biography { } of -- of Jonathan Edwards?)

Yes, yes. There he has fallen from -- that's "Ichabod." You could write a poem on Perry Miller entitled "Ichabod," you see. The greatness departed from Israel. It's horrid. And -- I'm, you see -- I'm dealing with Melville this week. It's probably -- right after Easter. And I -- I'm just horrified, I mean, that I have to

come as a non-American to rescue Melville from the clutches of this. Bury him not only in space but in -- in time, but in space, too. Just making him an appendix of a little group in New York, of all -- what has this man who went to the South Sea to do with New York? He -- after all, he had to live somewhere. But -- is this -- reason enough to bury him in -- under the -- under the rubbish of -- heap of New York?

But myth is--that's all that myth is--an attempt to make one section of time, and one section, you see, of space single, universal, omnipotent. You will see, I mean -- I have tested it. It is of course -- perhaps to you a very strange definition. It -- it's -- it's capable of -- of real -- of universal application. And since the word "myth" today is so popular, you'd better make something out of it. Revelation is the courage to write the 10th chapter of Genesis. And to say the Hebrews -- my dear, that's not very much. They are just the sons -- the sons, the grandsons of -- of -- { } of Sem, and therefore Sem is -- {being} -- one brother only of Noah. That's a very small story, you see. That's anti-mythical. And the Bible and Thucydides are anti-mythical books.

Because they are quite aware that history begins anywhere without a purpose, that it has ramifications far before the time crust of the moment, of the individual, you see, and far beyond. And that the implications are more important than what this little man marks off as a field of action in his own right, and his own mind, and also what the onlooker, who looks back, you see, tries to impute, who begins arbitrarily somewhere, you see, and that this man's wicked plan, you see. Here, the father of the Constitution, planned the defection from England, you see. Or like Mr. -- Mrs. Lindbergh, you see, she wanted to get the money. You see, it's all planned. Whereas kidnapping is the disease of the American body politic, you see, that has been brought about probably from the Indians, you see, red Indians, in a slow process of centuries. And it comes to a climax in the Lindbergh case.

So myth is an attempt to impute the knowledge of the end to the past, and puts time and space into separate boxes, so to speak. In this you can connect, you see, first cause and effect in such a way.

I think we have to make a break here.

[tape interruption]

Well, what I would like to do -- I have no finals for this seminar. So I have to put you to work during the -- of course during the term. And I would like you to write a biography -- or the life of--a "biography" is too proud a word; I don't mean this, but it's--the life of Thucydides and of Caesar. I think that's -- and with

the life of Thucydides, I mean what we -- we only know of Thucydides through his book. All that is known of Thucydides comes from his own text, mostly. Nearly all. And supposedly the later life of Thucydides was written off -- up late in antiquity, simply composed, so to speak, of the facts mentioned in his own history about himself.

Now that's a very strange situation, of course, and it's very interesting. You will have to go to the library and find older and better translations with indices about Thucydides. I see that this edition has no index, so you cannot be sure that all the places where Thucydides is mentioned are found in your text. So you have to go to the library and work a little bit more carefully about what he says of himself, and what we therefore have to conclude. Is it as much as in the case of Thucydides as in the case of Caesar. Very much light is thrown upon the book, if you understand who the man was and his position, I mean. In -- they are not learned men in the sense in which today a man becomes a professor of history.

And I think one thing that you should carry away from this -- our meeting { } -- to be a historian is not to be a professor of history. And to be a professor of history is not to be an historian. And to be a professor of philosophy doesn't make you into a philosopher. To be a philosopher is some -- one thing and to be a professor of philosophy who can teach other people's philosophies, you see, and systematize them; that's -- a different story. We are today in this handicap that the academic professions have swallowed up, so to speak, the original faculties of the human race, which are prophecy, and history writing, and poetry, and so. And more and more poets are made now -- college professors, as you know, just to have a -- a roof over their heads for { }. And so it is possible that in 50 years, the American school children -- students will believe that the arts and sciences are really taken care of under -- in the shelter -- under the sheltered roofs of institutions. You see, that's the -- all the poets have become institutionalized; in other words, have gone insane. And this is a very great danger. Here -- to be an historian is an original capacity of man. Any grandmother has it who tells tales, you see. That's an historian already, the beginning at least of one. But to be a professor of history, and to be examined in history, and be a senior in -- that's something derivative, don't you see? That's second-rate. I won't -- I don't want to be -- be { }. I myself am in this position. But we have to be very humble and say that we take the existence of historians for granted, you see, and now build on them.

Now -- Thucydides is not of this type, and of course the Book of Samuel is not of this type, and Caesar is not of this type. And one of the {fatal} -- worst situations in this country is that there is a {defiance} that these are original faculties of the human -- human genius, you see -- to become a historian. And it has

absolutely nothing to do with any status in the community. The same with poetry, I mean. It is -- it is hopeless to -- to demand and -- and, you see -- a literary recognition of a writer. This is still known, and --. But it's the same, of course: Benjamin Franklin was a physicist, but he was not a professor of physics, as you all know, you see. His was a direct relation to the lightning rod, and not a relation derived of -- from an appointment of -- by other people.

I -- I tell you why this is very important at this moment. Because as you know, we now have foundations who support now the arts and the sciences. And so it seems that they are all taken care of. They have the Guggenheim for creative effort, and so on. And we have the Rockefeller Foundation, and whatnot. Eight thousand foundations. Well, will you kindly consider that to have to go before a foundation is already proof that you think that you can make yourself understood before you have achieved what you do. Now any real achievement is something that hasn't been done, yet. And therefore it can never be approved beforehand by a president of a responsible foundation. He has to disapprove it, because it's uncertain. It's not safe.

Now all these people have to play it safe in these foundations. And the bigger they are, the more. The Ford Foundation has to give $400 million away to all the schools, because that is safe. It's useless. Perfectly useless. Nothing has happened to this distribution of $400 million. But if you would give $5,000 to an unknown genius, you would be able to make yourself ridiculous. And probably would. And people have told me that these foundations that they prefer to give away $5 million than to -- to support a real genius for -- $4,000, you see, because with $5 million, they -- they support a growing enterprise, something that everybody already knows about and approves of. But $4,000, that may be thrown away. Of course it may be thrown away. But perhaps what you do with it is much -- much further than if you, you see -- if you save Herman Melville for having to become a customs inspector in New York, that would be a -- certainly a greater deed than to support obsolete cancer research, as you do in this country now with hundreds of millions of dollars, just because Mr. Pasteur lived -- lived in 1879. Cancer research in this country is a great example of a complete waste. Just because the presidents of these foundations are obsolete. I mean, anybody who is not doing a thing himself is less knowledge- -- knowing, you see, what can be done than the man in the front line obviously. You can understand this.

So we are very much handicapped at this moment, because these peo- -- these foundations publish even their philosophies. The Rockefeller Foundation has the effrontery to publish the philosophy of the Rockefeller Foundation. Money has no philosophy. And -- how can they know wha- -- how to -- how to handle a growing universe and a growing spirit? Philosophy of the Rockefeller. I mean, nobody laughs. It's the most laughable thing I've ever heard in my life.

Philosophy of the Rockefeller Foundation. That is really, I mean, the -- the -- the arrogance of money carried a little too far. Money has no philosophy. It's a means. Means have no philosophy. And -- but this means that this man -- these men in the Rockefeller Foundation, they have supported astrologers and the most subversive mentalities, so to peak, I mean, sectarians. Because that's -- they -- but nothing original. Nothing creative. Nothing that hasn't happened before that they couldn't catalog.

Geniuses are now only to be found in this country in lunatic asylums. Because there is an absolute abhorrence, except for jokers -- I mean. The only originality you have is Bob Hope, and such people, and -- and Will Rodgers, and so on. But they're -- clowns can be original; the Marx Brothers can be.

Now -- so we have this, you see, the -- the story of -- you have the folklore. And then you have the historian. And then you have professors of history. And finally, you have organized science, or organized historiography, as we have it today with these foundations, and these magazines, and the American Historical Association: organized association. And there is -- everything serves a -- quite a different purpose. This is prehistorical, you see, folklore. The historian is creating history. They are reporting on the creation of history. And these people unfortunately think that the reporting on historians is more important than becom- -- being an historian. And so the -- the diffi- -- difficulty -- the difficult situation in which we are in every field of human endeavor at this moment, you see, that the organizations of history, of painting, of architecture--whatever you take--are in their selection of what you should support, always inclined to support the second-rate man as against the first-rate man. Because the first-rate man is an unfinished, a raw product, you see; and the other has already has the cellophane, and is salable, and -- and five -- six recommendations and everybody says, "Oh, that's Course 180, or 198," I mean. That's already, you see, catalog- -- in the catalog.

You cannot organize creative effort. You can organ- -- only organize derivative effort. This is important for you to know in your own life. Now that's not true of the historian only. It's true of any other field, I mean. It's even trau -- true, I assure you--which will startle you--of medicine. But I have seen original doctors, so to speak, by birth. We talked about this here, didn't we? And I have seen, I mean, people who have a doctor's degree -- just perfectly indifferent. You can be an M.D., but that doesn't make you into a physician, in the sense of Hippocrates. The -- many doctors, the oath of Hippocrates is the only moment in which they are face-to-face with original medicine, you see. The rest is textbook.

Anybody who goes home after an eight-hour day, you see, and says he has done his duty is second-rate. Take a nurse. They have now the eight-hour

day. Now -- that's second-rate.

In our garden, we have a gardener. He is hired by the owner of the house. We have nothing to do with it. Now a friend of ours who's lame, limping, had carried their garden chair downstairs in the garden -- somewhere down below, and wanted to get it up when it began to rain. And she was afraid that it might get wet. And so she asked him, this gardener from San Pedro who was working there and his wife, both -- would they help her--she was limping, she's lame, had an operation on her--would she kindly help her to carry this -- the chair up?

They said, "No," because they weren't hired for that. They were gardeners.

Now the danger of -- you see, of any such professor of history, too--or any professional man--is that it isn't within his -- you see, within his tariff, within his contract, so he hasn't to do it.

So, as you know, many people in the hospital there destroyed their family relations, because for -- 50 years ago, there was no social service for the relations of the man who went to the hospital. My friend Richard Cabot started in Massachusetts for the first time a service for the family of a man who had to go to the hospital--or the mother, especially, you see, for the children. That's now understood that there is some such interest on the sidelines of a treatment. That's the usual -- surgeon, you see, in a hospital setting th- -- thought it wasn't -- that wasn't his consideration, what happened to the family. Of course in many cases, the patient couldn't even get well, because she was -- the mother was so much worrying in her bed in the hospital over the children so that even the medical effort was frustrated, you see, because the children were not cared for.

This is now -- a case in point where the average professional man, you see, was not a -- you see, taking the situation in, but acted within the limits, you see, of a profession. Now you cannot become an historian if you act within the limits of what is expected to be a textbook in your profession for an examination. You see, that's a different story. That's derivative. Textbooks are one thing, you see. And original history is something else. Can you understand this?

In -- for the historian, the boundaries of his task are to be discovered as he goes along. And for the professor of history, the boun- -- of a textbook, the boundaries of his task are all pre-established. That's why you are on safe ground in a textbook. Nothing ever happens, I mean. It's all delimited, you see. The limitations to the next department, and what doesn't go in, and what does go in, it's all predisposed. Can you see this. Really?

(I don't like textbooks.)

What?

(I don't like textbooks.)

You don't --?

(I don't like textbooks.)

Well. Good for you.

({ } course { }.)

So Thucydides and Caesar are the stars of the historians. I don't say that you are -- I would have to write history as they did. But you understand. The principles of our own history could be different. But the originality, that we did something for the first time, is important, I think. Just as the Book of Samuel is. Something was done, you see, in the discovery of the task.

And may I make this remark, that is against all -- all your evolutionary schemes? The first is always the best. Jesus is the best Christian. This can -- nobody can deny. You see, Moses is the best Jew. Abraham is. The first is the best. That's geht -- against all your grain. Any pluralization, the multiplication of a great model will always lead to a watering down, to a dilution of {type}. The first must be the best. Otherwise he couldn't be creative.

This is against everything you have imbibed. And therefore I have to struggle. Thucydides and Caesar are -- and the Bible are the best. Homer is the greatest poem of all time -- poet of all times, you see. {Very strange}. Hard to understand, but he is, to this day. There's no greater poet. I mean, I have learned this, I mean, by bitter experience. I grew up, of course, as you did grow up, with the -- all these superstitions, that later is better.

[tape interruption]

So in this sense, I think your going to the -- to the ancients for the -- for seeing what it means to create out of -- you see, of nothingness a picture is important.

Now would you kindly begin to read this text? And { } see -- in -- in what this originality consists, how it is, so to speak, on what it is based, or what makes Thucydides a -- a beginner of a -- completely new task.

(Read the introduction? Or --)

No, his own text. Not -- no introduction.

("I began like this {since} the very outbreak of the war, in the belief that it was going to be a great war, and more worth writing about than any of those that had taken place in the past. My belief was based on the fact that two sides were at the great heights of their powers and preparedness, and I saw too that the rest of the Hellenic world committed to one side or the other. Even those who were not immediately engaged were delibera- -- deliberating on the courses which they would -- take later. This was the greatest disturbance in the history of the Hellenes.")

Now will you take down this sentence? This one sentence. You have no text? You write it down, this sentence this {weekend}. Will you kindly take -- say it once more? "This was the --"

("This was the greatest disturbance in the history of the Hellenes" -- how do you pronounce that? Hellenes?)

Well, you see, it's arbitrary how this man tries to do. We used to say "HELL ens" in English. Now people are more -- sensitive to the original Greek poem, so they introduce "HELL een ess." But how to pronounce it, the Greeks would say "HELL ay NEHS," as we -- in the -- that's the European pronunciation. In America, I think we -- we use what is called {iotacize}. That is, you prefer for the -- for the eta, the -- the sound "I." HELL en EE nes. Perfectly arbitrary, you see. You see? I can't tell you. It's a new invention that 50 years ago, that he would have spelled it -- the translator would have spelled it H-e-l-l-e-e-n-s. And, for example, Greece is officially not "Greece," but -- the "Kingdom of the Hellenes," at this moment, I mean, in -- in Hellas, I mean, the -- the newer kingdom of Greece, you see.

So I think the interna- -- would be -- somebody be good enough to -- to look this up in the postal directory of -- and go to a Post Office -- regular Post Office and ask them to give -- show you the international -- ja? -- list. And -- just as it is with the Netherlands, you see. It's called the "Kingdom of the Netherlands," and not "Holland." Or not "Dutch." So it is with -- I think that they call -- official title is the "King of the Hellenes," the king of Greece. It's not "King of Greece." Wie?

({ }.)

Ja. So obviously it should then be "Hellens" today, you see. But he said "Hellenes," and I don't blame him, because so many beautiful Greek forms have

been transmitted to us through the Latin and then have been shortened, you see.

(I've heard one pronunciation with that spelling, of "HELL een.")

Of?

("HELL een." With the H-e-l-l-e-n-e-s. "HELL eens.")

No, well. It's Hellene -- but the Greek -- it's the full Greek form without any transformation, whereas before, you see, down to 1900, we quoted the Greek names--that's perhaps useful for you, you have heard of this--Greek forms in their Latin transformation. And as we said not Zeus, but Jupiter very often, you see, so -- you could find in -- in Swinburne, you can find still "Ulixes," instead of "Odysseus" even, and well, give me another -- "Hercules" instead of "Heracles," you see. It's -- Greek, it's "Heracles." "Hercules" is the -- is the Latin transformation. Well, I think that "Hercules" is only in Shakespeare. It's all "Hercules," and never "Heracles." And now everybody -- poet would write "Heracles," and it has disappeared, the Latin intervening form. I'm just looking for other such names that would have undergone the same -- the same -- wie?

({ }.)

You see, "Alexandros" we say today very often. But the Romans see -- say "Alexander." So you say still, "Alexander the Great," don't you? That's the Latin form. The Greeks never said "Alexander"; they said "Alexandros." That's just a -- one -- one more. Well, Agamemnon { } same. Yet you say Achilles, don't you? But in Greek of course it's {Achillois}. {Achillus}, you see, this is like Odysseus. And so it would be -- but the Romans said "Achilles," so we say "Achilles." And probably 10 years from now, we will all say "{Achillois}."

And -- and so any -- any Greek word has in the humanistic period of the Renaissance been adopted first in the Lat- -- in its Latin form, not in its Greek form. And it's only now that we recover, so to speak, our sense of pro- -- propriety and historicity, and give -- give the names back their -- their old splendor.

"Aristotle" is of course the Latin form, you see, instead of "{Aristotles}." People will, I think -- well I don't know in this country, it's too popular, I think. The popular -- more popular a name, of course, the less you can change it, you see. We in Germany already say "Aristotles," which is nearer to the Greek, you see, than "Aristotle." Because the -- Luther threw out Aristotle for good from the schools. {We} had persecuted Aristotle, so now he has been purged and can -- can come back in his pure Greek form. But you are still all Aristotelians; it's very benighted. This, you see, America is the only country in which scholasticism still

holds sway over your minds, I mean. You still believe in the Aristotelian logic, and all the -- that was the great bible of the school-men of the 14th century. You have still colleges, you see, all the forms of the medieval university. On the continent of Europe, that all has been abolished. The Reformation destroyed all the remnants of scholastic forms of scholarship. You still have a master of arts. There is no master of arts in Germany, you see, there. You have a bachelor of arts. That's all medieval terms, you see. We have no bachelor of arts, you see. So Luther, and Melanchthon, and all the reformers in Germany turned against the school-men, against Thomas Aquinas, and against Bonaventura, and against Ab‚lard, you see, and said, "That's all superstition." And Aristotle, being the patron of the medieval university, was destroyed on the continent. And you here, and wanting to have, of course, all the good traditions of -- everything that {-- as found} in Europe, were -- have been very shy. You have the common law of England, and you have the -- the universities, you see, of the Middle Ages in this -- in your set-up here. It's very interesting. The is the old -- the -- the type of university life on this campus is much more akin to the medieval university than the life in Paris or in Heidelberg. That's much more radically changed.

So the more you come to a frontier, the more conservative features you get. The oldest English is speaking in Ameri- -- spoken in America. In America, it's "Berkeley." How is it in London?

(BARK ley.)

That's new, you see. "BER kley" is old. My town is called -- in here, in my own town, we call it "NOR witch." But in England, the town of Norwich of course is called "NOR itch." You see. The "w" is not pronounced. So we have kept the older pronunciation. And the Pennsylvania Dutch still speak 17th-century German, you see. The Germans speak 20th-century German. So the frontier is always conservative.

And the Moslem in Bosnia in -- in -- in Yugoslavia still have the fez, you see, the -- the -- turbans, you see, the -- whereas the Turks in -- in {Kemal's Atta- -- Turkey} don't have it. And they still have the harem for the women, you see, in these Mos- -- in these Moslem provinces of Yugoslavia. Because the more you come to the frontier, the more unable is the -- is any -- the region to change on its own, the more anxious it is to -- to show that it has still, you see, the old tradition.

Since this -- again, this is unknown. You think the frontier is -- is modern. Fortunately it isn't, because that's the only way in which old things are -- can be retrieved, from the frontiers. There they are preserved. Cockney English is three centuries more recent than the -- the English po- -- spoken in Pennsylvania or in -- or in Vermont.

Now what have I -- did I tell you this? Because I wanted to tell you that the historian here makes a tremendous statement. "It's the greatest occurrence in the history of the {warfare} -- of -- of Greece." This is the sentence you should single out, because it -- points out to -- the fact that history originated with the feeling of elation, that something tremendous has happened. The biggest is just good enough for history. Again, this is today, as you know, objected to.

And it's a { }, I mean, he doesn't even argue the point. Will you go on?

(Do you want me to read that sentence over again?)

This one sentence. Has everybody taken it down? I think -- it's unique. I know of no other historian who -- who only states, "That's the biggest event," you see. And it's the opposite from Samuel, of course, you see. It's bigness, the greatness, the exultation, you see. Standing out, show. Here, I mean, that's -- it's -- essence of secular history, that it is not moved by the little emotions, the small, still voice of the heart. But it is -- moved, you see, because mountains have been -- have been displaced, have been moved.

The Greeks had a special word for this, { }, it's the {showy fest}, you see, as they called it. It was something to be shown at the festivals of -- of the land. I mean, like on the Fourth of July, that's the Declaration of Independence. That the { } in all history, gentlemen. But it's very American to say this of -- about any event then: "It is the greatest." And this is a good reason to write history. Ja. Go on, here.

("This was a great- --)

{Limelight}.

(Oh.)

("This was the greatest disturbance in the history of the Hellenes, affecting also a large part of the non-Hellenic world, and indeed -- I might also say the whole of mankind.")

Now there { }. The greatest {under} all aspects. And he makes three distinctions: the Athenians have a history, the Hellenes have a history, mankind has a history. So again you get -- but in -- in the opposite sequence as in the Bible, you get the inner ring, the wider circle, and the extreme circle. It's all in space, you see. We { } here, in the middle, Athenian history; Greek history; human history. That's I think your vision of universal history. In -- in -- in cir- -- in concentric circles.

Ja?

("Although I have found it impossible, because of its remoteness in time to acquire a really precise knowledge of the distant past, or even of a history preceding our own period, yet after looking back into it as far as I can, all the evidence leads me to conclude that these periods were not great periods, either in warfare or in anything else. It appears, for example, that the country now called Hellas had no settled population in ancient times. Instead there was a series of migrations, as the various tribes came under the constant pressure of invaders, who were stronger than they were, were always prepared to abandon their own country. There was no commerce and no fishing, and ...")

Will you now kindly understand that what he's now doing is to reason why this is the greatest event. And he will now give you a glance into the -- all history that leads up to it, always with -- under the aspect: why is my event the greatest? You see. This is not very clear to most readers, that he's now building up his case to prove that this is the greatest case in history.

Ja, go on.

({ }. Oh, yes.)

("There was no communication and -- there was no commerce and no safe communication either by land or at sea. The use they made of their land was limited to production of necessities. They had no surplus left over for capital, and already the...")

Well, this is -- "capital" is just infamous. That's not a Greek term. And that's just an invention of this New School of Economics, I mean. He knows nothing of this. Go on.

Capital is -- these translations are so impertinent, so impudent, because they carry back into the old history these -- the categories of these modern men. It's not right.

Ja?

("...since they looked" or -- "since they lacked production of fortifications, and at any moment an invader might appear and take their land away from them. Thus in the belief that the day-today necessities of life would be secured just as well in one place as in another, they showed no reluctance in moving from their homes, and therefore built no cities of any size or strength, nor acquired any important resources. Where the soil was most fertile,

there were the most frequently changes of population. As in -- as in what is now called Thessaly in Boeotia" -- is that how you pronounce that?)

Yes.

(-- "Boeotia and most of the Peloponnese, except for Arcadia and in the others of the rich parts of Hellas.

("For in these fertile districts, it was easier for individuals to secure greater powers than their neighbors. This led to disunity and often caused the collapse of the estates, which in any case were more likely than others to attract the attention of foreign invaders and { } the most interesting to occur in Attica; { } that Attica, because of the poverty of her soil, was remarkably free from any -- from political disunity.")

Now that's completely arbitrary. This is not a footnote; that's in the text. But in your edition there, it has been put in a footnote.

(Well, { } he made a statement in his introduction, I believe, that he felt that had Thucydides been writing this book in -- in the present time, he would have placed certain passages in footnotes. Therefore he has taken the liberty himself.)

I know. But what do you say to that? Wie?

({ }. It would { } be included in -- into the text, rather than putting it in a footnote.)

No. And if -- if so, has he a right for this reason, because he invented footnotes, to change the text of { } and -- and do better? { } incredible. The -- the -- the arrogance of these people is just -- I can't understand it.

I mean, you -- because you -- you would not write the -- the Psalms today in this responsory mood, in one-half verse, you see, and one-half verse, as we do in our responsive reading. And so you'd better treat the Psalms then without the repetition. {Very} { }. That would be the consequence.

(I curious to know, how much did they use footnotes at all in the -- in -- in antiquity { }?)

No, no footnotes. But they would say, "Let me here digress." And then they would return. They would call it a digression.

(Couldn't we say that he's here just trying to make Thucydides into --

fashionable, so to speak?)

I'm afraid he's just trying to make him into a textbook. Not fashionable, a textbook. It's a lowering of the rank, you see. Fashionable, I mean, it -- it would be still excused. Ja? Footnotes are not fashionable.

Ja? Any question? Ja?

Now comes -- this footnote, of course, put it up in the text. "Certainly Attica" -- let me read it to you to see here how the famous Jowett translates it. He was the greatest translator of Greek texts in -- he was the master of Baliol in -- in Oxford. And it's a little boring now, because it's Victorian style. But I -- I still think that he was much more careful. He would never speak of "capital," you see, because capital is something quite different from the amassment of wealth. As you know, in Mycenae, we find these treasures, you see, so that the king could be liberal, and generous, I mean, in -- in giving premiums to heroes with the golden spear, or golden helmet, or what-not. But that's not capital. You see, that's a treasure, and -- or {work}, or whatever he calls it. And that's what Thucydides is speaking of. He's not speaking of capital. He does not speak of new investments, I mean. And so -- here:

"Certainly Attica, of which the soil was poor {and they} enjoyed long freedom from civil strife, and therefore retained its original inhabitants. And { } confirmation of my argument {supported} by the fact that Attica, through immigration, increased in population more than any other region. For the leading men of Hellas, when driven out of their own country, by war or revolution, sought as -- asylum as -- Athens, and from the very earliest times, being admitted to rights of citizenship, so greatly increased the number of inhabitants, that Attica became incapable of containing them, and was at last obliged to send out colonies to Ionia."

Now, go on, please. Who has the text? You have, do you?

("Another point which seems to me good evidence { }...")

What? Please, I -- couldn't follow, just acoustically. Please.

("Another -- another point which seems to me good evidence for the weakness of the early inhabitants of the country is this. We have no record of any action taken by Hellas as a whole before the Trojan War. Indeed, my view is that, at this time, the whole country was not even called Hellas. Before the time of Hellen, the son of Deucalion?")

Deucalion. Deucalion is supposed to be the first man who created offspring by throwing steins after the Great Flood, in back of him, and then men would {arise}. So he is an important person, I mean. Deucalion is the -- is the Noah of the Greeks. And may I say this in passing? That the Greek mythology and the Old Testament had very many of these traditions in common. The -- the pounding of the gi- -- titans against the -- Olympus, toppling the mountains of Ossa and Pelion, one -- on top of all the other in order to storm Olympus, obviously is related to the Babyl- -- the story of Babylon, you see, building a tower that reaches into the sky. And we have every reason to believe that the Greek traditions, which were founded in -- between 1500 and 1000 B.C., and formulated -- must have been at that time, and the Jewish tradition, probably connected through the Phoenicians, went back to a common attempt to cope with the antecedents of the human race.

I mean, this is not limited to the Jews and to the Greeks. Of course, they all -- everybody--you, too, I mean--you have some way, even dimly, to look at our antecedents. And the Bible is not understood if you do not see that the Jews undertook to stabilize the minimum of common tradition in the first books, you see, in the pre-Jewish story, that everybody would -- had -- would, so to speak, admit -- would have to admit that. And so they, of course, being surrounded by people who had gone through similar experience of migration and settlement, the -- the first book of Moses is to be taken as the -- the summary of the common experiences of the human race, only in -- in such a way that the Jewish writer keeps it clean from superstition.

That's the whole story of the founding of Egypt, and the founding of -- Sumer and -- and Assyr, and Sumeria, and -- and Nineveh -- Babylon in -- in the story of Noah. Noah is the purified founder of -- of a country, you see, with wine, and -- after the flood, then.

Well, I could go on. It's a long story. But I only wanted to tell you that the tradition here of Deucalion is not a purely Greek tradition. Just as we have traced the origin of the Jewish tradition in the Old Testament to a wider, you see, connection with Babylonian myth; you -- you must do the same about of course Greek mythology. That's not simply Greek, but it's an attempt in -- in -- in Greek terms to justify what was known of the power of people to -- to deal with flooded land, to -- irrigation, with -- with turning the desert into fruitland.

Yes, go on. Deucalion.

("Deucalion. The name did not exist at all. The biggest parts were known by the names of different tribes. But the name of -- Pelasgian...")

Yes, Pelasgian.

("...predominated.)

Now the word "Pelasgian" -- there was a Pelasgian ritual you find still in the days of Caesar and Augustine in Greece. And it's a -- pre-Greek. And the significance, as -- as far as I can make out, is that it has to do with the { } -- tradition of using irrigation. "{Pelasgos}" means the sea. And as Poseidon was at that time the god of the pre-Greek population -- after all, the god of water. So it was -- it seems that the -- the -- how do you call the people who go down in the swamps, the -- the -- {stable building}, the --?

(Lake-dwellers?)

Lake-dwellers, you see. That "Pelasgian" is a term like "lake-dwellers," the people who -- knew how to cope, and how to put use -- to use water, and flood, and inundation. And that they were called "Pelasgians" from their art of dealing with the pelagos, with the -- with the water. This is -- cannot be proven. But I think the word "pelas" { } "pelagos" also means stork. Now the stork is famous for his long legs, that he can, you see, stand in any flooded area and still reach the ground.

And so we have reason to believe that the Greeks gave to these original inhabitants when they came there, a name from what they were doing. And what the Greeks were not able -- the Greeks came as belligerent, as warriors, over the mountains of the Balkans, invading this territory. They found a civilized, you see, countryside, with -- with fruit trees, and -- we know, and fields, we can -- and cattle-grazing, and -- and plowing, and harrowing, and harvesting. And it seems that they gave, in their astonishment, the name to these people as the people who knew how to fertilize land in regular, you see, circulation with water. I mean, it would be the same here, when you come to such a region, what strikes you in Los Angeles is the miracles water can -- can do, you see. So everybody has to have a swimming pool to waste a little more water than is necessary. That's -- we are all Pelasgians here, you see.

Ja? Read it.

("After Hellen and his son had grown power- -- powerful in Phthiotis, and had been invited as allies into other states, these stayed {separate} -- {and} because of their connection with the family of Hellen, began to be called Hellenic. But it took a long time for the name { }. The best evidence of this can be found in Homer who, though he was born much later than the time of the Trojan War, nowhere uses the name Hellenic for the {whole force}. Instead he keeps this name for the followers of Achilles,

who came from --.")

Yes, go on.

(-- pronounce it.)

("--Phthiotis, and who were in fact the original Hellenes. For the rest in his poem, he uses the ward -- the words Danaan, Argives, and Achaeans. He does not even use the term "foreigners," and since in my opinion, it's because at this time, the Hellenes were not yet known by one name, and so marked off at something separate from the outside world. In any case, the various Hellenic states, { }. By Hellenic, I mean both -- {they were} both those who took on the names city by city, as a result of the common language and those who were -- who later were called -- and those who later were all called by the common name weakened themselves in my opinion { } with one another {in} those kinds of collective actions {brought about} the Trojan War. And they did not {cast any eye}, even for the Troj- -- Trojan expedition unless they had previously acquired great knowledge of { }.")

Now, look -- I can't -- draw really, but in order to draw your attention to the fact of the migration of the name "Greek." And that's quite important, because Thucydides' life in Athens -- Thucydides had his wealth up here. He had -- he is a mine owner, at the coast. And here is his favorite Chalkidiki, where the monks of Athos sit. And here it would be Saloniki -- Thessaloniki, I mean. You have heard of the city of Thessaloni -- Paul writes a letter to the Thessalonians. And -- and even up there and this would be the Balkans and Macedonia. And here is Thrace -- Thrac- -- Thracia. Here is Troy. Here is the entrance to the -- to the {Marnae}, and here is Byzantium, Constantinople. And it will be no -- you don't have to go into this.

And Homer is written in a dialect which was obviously spoken here, in Lesbos, and here at the shore -- south of Troy, of Asia Minor--here, I have put Miletus here, the island of Chios from which probably Homer sprang, the oldest man from whom we know anything about Greek, and whom Thucydides here is quoting, you see, as a proof.

Now the -- the motherland of Greece is Thessaly. Here is the home of Achilles. And Achilles is the hero of the center landsca- -- region of Thessaly, which is called {Phthia}. Phthiotis you have read in the text just a moment. And so { } here { } -- I have climbed it two years ago. It's very wonderful to behold the -- the way, and when you stand there, where the Achilles' home is supposed to be, you see the Ossa and the Pelion, and you see how people could think that if you could only put one on top of the other, you could climb Olympus, because in front of you, you see Olympus in the north, and on your right,

you see Ossa and Olympu- -- and Pelion; and Ossa is triangular and Pelion is square. And so you are very tempted to put the triangle, you see, on top of the square and -- and reach up to Olympus.

And if you once have seen this, you understand that everything in -- ritual -- method and -- and mythology, methodology centers has been born, so to speak, in this Hellenic region, of {Phthia}, where Achilles' home is. And you have lost this connotation. You hear of Athens and of Sparta, and you never think that when the Greeks came across the Balkans in -- on these two pathways to the Valley of { } here, which is very narrow indeed -- here, at the co- -- here and -- I should put it -- up to { } and then they came down this valley here, they found the first agriculture, the first { }, and cultivated land in Thessaly. Today this is still { } -- big -- big agriculture. Thousands and thousands of acres are cultivated with American machinery. The Americans have -- agricultural implements are everywhere over the place, and in -- only in Thessaly, because only there you have these large fields in Greece. Everywhere down south is much smaller, you see, it's much more high. It's -- it's more mountainous, and there is no -- aren't even { }, so you can't combine the effort and -- and {really} combine.

Now what I mean to say, let us consider then, that at the time that -- that Thucydides writes, he is still fully aware of the full picture of Greece, because he is here, far away, as an Athenian citizen, however. But he is here -- has mining interests. So he is quite aware of the in-between, or the --. But the -- most people who live in Greece, and in -- live on these islands here, they are colonial, or they live in Sicily. The -- the -- one city of Miletus had 100 colonies in the days of Thucydides. One hundred other cities all having sprung, so to speak, the New England, you see, of England, Miletus. But just as the Anglo-Saxons came from the continent of Europe once to England, so the Greeks--you see, the great colonizers--had come from this bad- -- backwoods of Saxony called Thessaly.

And had long -- you do not think that these people -- of Anglo-Saxons as continental people. You think they are island people, you see. In the same sense, I would suggest to you that you have to think of the Greeks in their majority consider themselves as British--that is, living on islands or on peninsulas. But they had also come from the mainland, not only { } of Europe in general, I mean -- beyond the Alps, and then to Thessaly, and their superiority has been the horse. They had conquered Greece because they were -- had horses. And the original settlers in the valleys of the Greek -- of the Mediterranean, all around the Mediterranean, were all bull people, you see. That's why you still have in Spain the bullfight to this day. That's pre-Greek, pre-Indo-European.

The Indo-Europeans make -- conquer these countries by their superior

cavalry, by their chariots. The Armenians, the Hindus, the -- the Persians, the Hittites, the Greeks, the Romans, the Celts, the Germans--they are, as you know, those groups who overrun all the old settlements of the world only because they had the superior armament of horses. That's all they did. Otherwise -- if you go to India today, the -- they -- they boast, these Brahmins that they are all from the -- from the -- white's -- man's stock. But they aren't, of course. They are all very colorful indeed. But they -- the conquest of India, you see, came from the horsemen who -- who passed the -- the mou- -- high mountains in the north -- northwest. And Mr. Nehru or Mr. Gandhi pretend that they all come from their stock. It was a handful of people. And I don't think there's anybody in India who has anything, except some maharaja, may have still some blood from these old conquerors, because this was a minute group of people. But they have imposed their literature, their poetry, their religion on these conquered people, you see.

Now it's very similar with the Greeks. I -- I think nine-tenths of the people living in Greece in the days of Thucydides had not one pint of blood of IndoEuropean descent. They all were conquered by these horsemen, by these charioteers. That's why { } have become very proud of being like the -- like the Picts and the Scots in Scotland, who are not Indo-Europeans, of course. They are all pre-Indo-Europeans, you see, but they -- they are very proud that they are Anglo-Saxons.

And I think therefore the story of the -- the spread of the word "Hellen" is a very good story, because there is this little island of the Hellenes, and we find it still here in -- in Dodona, in Epirus. The priests there were called "{vellens}," that's the same name, we --. And they were still pre-nomadic people. They were not allowed to build temples { }. The priests of Dodona are quite important for us, because they still represent the state of affairs in which the Indo-Europeans were nomads and therefore never built temples, you see. They prayed to their gods in -- in -- in the grove, in the -- in the forest.

[tape interruption]

So today we are very much aware of the intrusive character of the Greeks and the Romans into Mediterranean culture in which settlement, irrigation, astronomy, and temple-building was already, you see, prevalent. And for these medieval people--you find them in Sardinia today--they are quite fashionable. The Etruscans belong to this group, and are all over the Mediterranean, everything you travel in Europe -- in -- in Italy, in -- in the Mediterranean today is very much en vogue, when it can be pointed out that it's pre- -- pre-Roman, preGreek, I mean. Think of Crete, I mean, and Mycenae.

Now well, the difference is always that pre-Greek is without the horse,

and without any reminiscence of the old warrior and tribal order. That had been uprooted already in the Mediterranean. It's a purely -- era of settlement, and of Isis and Osiris, and of -- sky-worship, you see. Flood -- the flood at the harvest time, you -- you { } you have to deal with the sky. The Greeks come in, and try to keep as much as possible their--because they are the victors--they have preMediterranean mores and convictions, and call these people who are just given to the -- to the water problem or the irrigation problem the Pelasgians. And I think that makes sense to you. Perhaps you can learn to distinguish then three layers -- the Greeks are a special people, because they are nomads who enter a settlement and try to save from their nomadic features as much as possible by building it into the settlement civilization which in itself is later.

So the Greeks, you see, are modernizing the settlement civilization of the big empires by trying to rescue a part of the pre-settlement mores of the wild -- of the wild tribes.

To give you a very -- a stunning example. The -- the Phaecians -- you know who they are--the Phaecians in -- in Homer. Who are they?

(They have a little island on which the { }.)

And what do they do to Odysseus?

(They treat him as a guest; they are very gracious.)

And -- so it's the ideal country, don't you see? The best island in the Mediterranean, which is ruled by { }. And -- and in this shipwreck, Odysseus learns without great astonishment that the 25 sons of the King { } are married to the 25 sisters of him. They -- they had 25 sisters. That is, incest is a rule in Egypt. And it is a rule in all agricultural countries, because you don't want to split the property.

And that's a second, a later stage, you see. In any nomadic civilization that's strictly forbidden. People are put to death if they mix with their sister. So the -- this is a very clear case, where the Greeks supersede a later civil- -- which you would call a later civilization by abhorring themselves these modernized, matriarchical -- as you may call them, or better--I call them better "sorority"--marriage, and get accepted as a higher civilization, because while -- the Phaecians are shown as the more advanced people, the more cultural people. And they have the elegancy, you see, and the -- all the advantages of civilization. And what we find the -- as -- Greek culture, just as much as the Jewish, you see, Judaism and Greeks both appear after the earth is settled in the river valleys where there is irrigation, and after the nomads have spilled all over the whole

earth.

So Jews and Greeks are third attempts. They come very late indeed. And you cannot understand Thucydides or Plato, for that matter--if you ever read Plato--without understanding that Plato, as well as Thucydides, and the writers of the Bible took it for granted that there were Egyptians and Scythians, that there were migratory tribes and settled cities.

These two layers, you see, were accepted. And the Jews and the Greeks both protest against these forms as in themselves impossible. And the difference between the Jews and the Greeks is the following: the Greeks prophesy a time when there will be neither incest-marriage and the deification of kings, nor migration -- mere migration and more constant warfare; but the Greeks try to mix the two. So if you have two states of life, you can say, "I compromise." That the Greeks did. Or I -- you -- "I will rise above them." That's Israel. But both have in front of them the same world of mi- -- migratory tribes, and in the -- in the river valleys, definite settlement, you see. As in Thessaly -- also final settlement, where people say, "We won't move."

To this day, the Egyptians don't migrate. Syrians migrate, Arabs migrate, Turks migrate. The Egyptians don't. You have no Egyptians -- Egyptians in the -- in the city of Los Angeles. You have everybody here, but the Egyptians still drink Nile water, because Nile water is sacred. And when the Americans brought in Lux- -- into Luxor a -- a water supply, you see, with artesian wells, the Egyptians to this day wouldn't touch -- won't touch it, because it's not Nile water. They prefer the -- you see, the -- the old river civilization to this day.

Now this is what -- what -- the name "Hellen" stands for. Helle- -- the word "Hellen" became so important, I'm sure, in Greek history, because it reminded the people of their pre-Mediterranean relations and rules, you see. If you said "Hellen," you meant a man, an invading horseman, you see, as if you say, "Anglo-Saxon" today, you see, in -- in this country. It's a similar ach- -- connotation of -- of -- of antiquity. That's why it has beco- -- a Hellen is a man who has not succumbed to the lures of the Orient, so to speak, to the soft-boiled ritual of the harem, and the pharaoh, and Osiris {ritual}, you see, and the cult of palace, and all the fertility rites of the Mediterranean. Who is still -- although he uses these means of existence, he is still superior to them with his free spirit as a -- as a warrior.

(The last passage in -- in the very last passage in Herodotus speaks of it, where Cyrus, after the -- the -- after the -- they had conquered the Medes, and made themselves lords of Asia, the -- various tribal chieftains came and said, "Let's--now that we can do it--let's go down and -- into the civilized Fertile

Crescent and make ourselves lords of that country." And then he -- "No let's stay here; otherwise we'll become soft, because soft countries breed soft people.")

Ja. Well, if you -- can anybody have a -- did anybody have to read Plato? Or did anybody voluntarily read Plato? Wie? Did you? Hallo. did you?

(No.)

Nobody has read The State by Plato?

(The Republic.)

The Republic. Well, in The Republic, Plato makes this distinction between the three -- three political orders--don't you remember?--of the tribes, and of the country. Only he gives them different names. But you have to just use our modern names to understand what he's trying to tell, that the Greeks are in a special case, you see. The Egyptians are the ones of the belly, you see; the warriors, the nomadic tribes are of the chest, of the heart, you see; and the Greeks must be of the mind, you see, of the -- here, of the front. You remember?

This tripartition is the -- is the way in which Plato recognizes that the Greeks are neither nomadic warriors, nor citizens, you see. City-dwellers. This is the stage -- way in which he puts it. But this is -- Thucydides' attempt here to -- to -- to say what is Hellenic. Hellenic is neither Persian, or -- or Assyrian, or Egyptian. Well, I could -- try eloquently. But you do not understand Greek -- the Greeks and the Jews, and why the New Testament speaks of having broken down the wall between Greeks and Jews, if you do not understand that in antiquity the Greeks and Jews both were beyond the experience of the majority of the people, you see, in the sense that they came from one order--the nomadic order--appropriated the benefits, the ad- -- advantages of the settlement order, and tried to -- to compro- --how would you say?--to syntheticize -- to synthesize, you see, the best of both.

This is not known to you. You take today the Greeks and the Jews, as they were just tribes or -- or on the other hand, countries. That's not true. Both were perfectly aware that they had to digest older forms of life and transcend them. That's the whole content of the Bible as you -- as you may now recall, that you must live in Canaan, but you must not stoop down to their -- to their native gods, to their idiosyncrasies, you see. And the Greeks were perfectly aware of this, too. That's why they were so proud of being Greeks, and not barbarians. The barbarians are sunk in one form of government. The Greeks are combiners.

So the Greeks are proud of mixture of forms. And the Jews are proud of

not being taken in by any one existing form. One is negative, so to speak. The other is synthetic. The Greeks could never, therefore, outgrow these two older forms. They could only have various states of mixture. But they kept them before us.

And this is not mentioned in your textbooks. But I don't know why, because the -- our whole tradition is aware of the fact: the Greeks are the summary of the previous historical life on earth, you see. And the Jews are the token, that this isn't good enough, that it is still broken up into frag- -- too fragmentary, you see. It's very -- it's not union enough. And so, whenever you open the New Testament, you will find in the letters, you see, that there is no longer Jews and Greeks, you see. The whole problem of the -- as you know, of the conversion of the Gentiles--why Paul had to go to the Gentiles--is that the unity promised to the Jews can only ab- -- come about after all the Gentiles, you see, have been fermented by the Gospel. And then the Jews can become Christians, too.

Paul only goes to the Gentiles for the sake of the Jews, to prove to the Jews that they may now come to rest, because the Gentiles are no longer, you see, just sticking to their guns, but are willing to give -- to come to the -- the third order, so to speak, which the Jews had -- had prophesied.

The -- the Christian mission is -- is meaning- -- did not come about for the sake of the Gentiles--you mustn't think this--but to prove the Jews right. Paul -- that's what Paul says in the Letter to the Romans, that the -- the Jews were right, so far, you see, as long as the Gentiles were obstinate. But if the Gentiles should soften, then the special role of the Jews could of course, be given up. And that's the meaning of the creation of Is- -- the state of Israel at this moment, that after 1950 years, the -- the thing has come full cycle. Now the Jews may become normal nations, because the nations have been -- have ceased to be prehistorical, to be pre-Greek, and pre-Jewish. In as far as they have, this is -- this story is at an end.

So will you kindly read the -- the whole first book of Thucydides? It will also serve you for your paper. And I want to get this biography of Caesar and Thucydides in -- within a fortnight, because otherwise I can't -- or with -- a little longer. But let me have it on -- on April 15th. What? What are you laughing at?

(That's the same day as the other paper in { } is due.)

Yes, yes -- to burn them all together. Make a bonfire.