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

...sketch of a { } the second grade { } ancient historian wrote these -- one of his volumes -- there is Polybius. But before doing so, let us go back to Thucydides. I had asked you to find out, didn't I, what his personal circumstances were. We were just in the midst of it. Is that right?

(Yes.)

What have you written?

({ }. Well, it's just { }.)

Well, tell me.

(Tell you? Start from scratch, or do you just want the last phase of it?)

The last phase.

(The last phase, all right { }.)

("History contains those selected things which allow an event to occur at a certain time, which can never again occur." That's the last line.)

Well, pointing out the -- the uniqueness of the event, of course. Do you have it?

(Yes.)

Well, about this uniqueness in -- it may be well -- you will always run into this. There has been -- raging--in the 19th century, and at the beginning of the 20th--a philosophical discussion on the kind of the facts in history and the kind of facts in nature. And although I think at this moment this discussion is -- is rarely mentioned, I grew up under this cannonade, these big guns on both sides: the philosophers -- it had of course very much to do with Marxism, because if you have a revolutionary { } theory of Marxism, you are apt to -- to generalize, and the individual event is then just one phase in a -- in a process, you see, of which you have an abstract notion { }. And so people and places become mi- -- of minor importance -- always the same struggle. You can read the most fantastic things.

I mean, if you read -- I read a -- an American writer's--what's the name?

{Hacker}, I think--description of the -- of the Civil War, and -- in this country. It was written in 19- -- in the '30s, when here Marxism was the cheapest way out of all thinking, you see. So then, of course, the -- the South was -- slave- -- with the slave-owners and the North as the industrial had to be depicted as -- as making war on each other as two -- as two different class systems. It was very hard to think why a railroad man and a planter, you see, are really different classes. They just aren't. And then the third thing, he was still very despondent, this gentleman, because the workers of America just didn't follow his class patterns, but all supported the Northern course, you see, and couldn't be set up against the -- set up against the capitalists, the wicked capitalists. And he was quite despondent, because of course the pattern which he had in his head, from the -- from Marx's book on England -- English -- English {industry}, just nev- -- nowhere fitted the American {nature}. Which of course is the deepest reason why there is no Marxism at this moment in this country to speak of, you see. But it just doesn't -- it isn't true.

And the -- however, in -- this was as late as 1937 that this American gentleman wrote this desperate cry- -- outcry, so to speak; I don't -- so to speak, admitting that he didn't find in American history the simple pattern he was bound to -- or bent on discovering.

And so there was a school in -- the -- University of Heidelberg was at that time manned by two outstanding philosophers, Rickert and Windelband, and they were of the old Kantian tradition. And they said, in so many words, that all events in history were unique, and that made them into historical events. And as soon as they were not -- in as far as they were not unique, they were questions of natural science, and not questions of history. And so that's a very nice distinction for you, as a starting point.

Unique events are historical events, and with the sort of -- kind of -- kind of corollary, in as far as an event is not unique, it is not an historical event. That all people have to eat and to digest is not histor- -- historical. That's natural. So Charlemagne had to eat, and President Eisenhower has to eat; and that's not a part of history because it is something, you see, that befalls all mortals. But in as far as Mr. Eisenhower visits President -- Mr. Dulles in the hospital, you see, that's a unique event; and that's an historical event. Can you see this?

So then it helps you a lot at -- first of all to be shoved into the awareness that the people who will make history, live history, or read history obviously are involved in this double process of natural -- nature and of history. And in as far as the thing is repetitive, we call it nature; and as far as it -- not repetitive, we have to call it history.

History is the story of the events which at one time did not form a part of nature, but entered the process of existence. The first steam engine of Mr. Stephenson is an historical event. Now we are so hard-boiled that all the trains that run every day on schedule--or not on schedule, you see--do not -- do not hit us as historical. But in as far as they depend on the invention of an inventor, on the getting-together of shareholders, on the la- -- a new law that allowed such companies to perform, you see, on government grants, they are still historical events, because this original law still has to be protected by the courts, you see. And in as far, therefore, as the unique beginnings are now established in institutions, these insti-- -stitutions, you see, depend, of course, on the will of those people who have once made these laws. And once you abolish this, you see, the -- and you turn the -- the right of way of the railroads--as they are -- demand now in California, you see--into freeways for the cars, the whole phase, the whole chapter of historical railroad building is, you see, is passed over, is superseded by another chapter.

So I -- I think the first law is a useful law. Historical events are unique events. Natural processes are -- always there. They are not unique. They are -- can be generalized. And since in this country--Mr. Charles Beard is a -- case in point, this man {Hacker} is a case in point, who tried to -- to exemplify the Civil War as a -- just a -- one case of the -- eternal class war, you see--since you have this tendency in this country to find the common denominator for all and everything, you can see that history has a very difficult time in this country, because all the time the psychologists, sociologists try to pretend that all this follows a certain pattern. For example, whenever you hear a person in this country say, "It's just politics," he has abolished history. What -- people mean by "It's just politics," I have never quite understood. It seems always to me, you see, to dismiss the thing as no problem at all. "Just politics," you see. Because I think then it just becomes interesting, because -- how can you transform it into a political history? That's the whole problem of politics, isn't it? So "just politics," it's no answer of any- -- to anything. But you hear it, don't you, all the time? And then people stop thinking and say, "Well, that's just as it is. Can't do anything." But obviously the thing becomes then interesting only, because then you have some- -- to do something about it, you mean. You have to form a third party, or you have to expose a politician, or whatever you have to do. Isn't that true? Would you agree with me?

So this is one of your stock phrases by which you -- you try to -- to e- -- to de- -- dismiss history as a natural process, because as soon as you say, "It's just politics," even politics has simply become a digestive process of greed, you see, and eating, and cannibalism, and dog-eats-dog, and whatever have you. And you have dismissed it in -- made it into a natural, repetitive process, you see, of -- like breathing, and -- and -- and sleeping.

The -- the catch of this neat dualism between history and nature is however in a little closer inspection of what makes it unique.

And this the Kantians, my friends there in -- in Germany, did not discover, or did not discuss. The -- event is unique because it has an irreplaceable date. It is only the unity of the history through all times that gives to this hour, to this moment in which we mention an historical event, the -- the quality of belonging to this event. That Mr. Eisenhower, as I read in the paper this morning, yesterday visited Mr. Dulles is part of the event. You cannot abstract from the time moment in this case. It isn't the same, you see, to say that Mr. Eisenhower frequently visited Mr. Dulles, for example, you see, or regularly visits Mr. Dulles. The historic significance of his visit yesterday of course is that he still treats him as secretary of state. And as you know, the question of whether he should finally hand in his resignation or not is quite a tragic question. The man probably would collapse in the moment he is -- it is because that's his life. He hasn't {aimed at this}. And so Mr. Eisenhower very -- very -- tries to prolong his life by allowing him to have the name of secretary of state. Here, his own -- the -- the surviv- -- the life of Mr. Dulles is involved in his being -- still thinking of himself as secretary of state.

And so this is a very human gesture on the part of the president, that he says, "I do not wish to withdraw the drug that keeps this man going." You understand? The papers never mention this.

Yes?

(Why do they allow some state department officials and newspapers to get hold of some information, and report it over the radio and newspapers, so that Mr. Dulles will get that information, like they don't think that he'll return to his job?)

Because they want to get -- I mean, it's an in- -- untenable situation for people in the state department. Somebody must have the responsibility. And therefore, you -- I don't know this, but I -- that's politics again. These people feel that the regard for the private person of Mr. Dulles has gone too far, and that he must be forced out. That's a battle. You see?

(It's not very kind to him.)

No, but can you always be kind? War is not kind; politics is not kind. And you must never hold against a man that he is -- is -- stern. My dear man, you can go too far in kindness. Don't you understand? It doesn't help that you have an invalid, and want to be kind to an invalid. The country cannot be run by in-

valids. We have a dying president and a dying secretary of state. Well, it's very serious. It's terrible. Just look at the president, how he looks. So this -- people just say, "I don't care." It's more important, you see, for the summit conference. They must have a secretary of state who can resist the president. For example, I mean. Our president as well as the other. Imagine in -- in four weeks, this -- this meeting is going to start. What's going to -- is this really possible with Mr. Dulles?

So there you have a real, historical issue, you see. The -- both parties are right. And perhaps you take this down as a -- as a corollary in history. You can be sure that in -- in an historical issue, all parties are right. The question is always in history "when," and never "what." Because both sides always have a point. But there comes a time -- well, once in every -- to every man and nation comes the hour to decide.

Now it is very difficult for modern man to -- to see -- give time the quality, which it is. You have black hair, but you also have only one life to live. And the uniqueness of your life in its being placed between these times. And your own time is the highest quality. The awareness of your time is the time -- the -- state of human consciousness most readily lost. If you go drunk, or take narcotics, the first thing you lose is the awareness of the time. When you go in -- on a spree at 11 o'clock in the evening, and you have one cocktail too many, you don't know what time it is; I mean, you don't care. You still know where you are, but you don't know when you are. Time just loses its -- its importance.

So it is like the perfume. The -- our -- sense of smell is the most easily stalemated. That is, you cannot smell for more than a few minutes a perfume. Afterwards, you -- you cease noticing it. Seeing is the difference. Seeing is not mate- -- staled. It stays with us. But the fatigue of our most subtle sense of life, which is smell, is most easily corrupted and lost. The same with the time sense. It has probably very much to do with each other. I think the sense of timing is exactly in the historical sense for larger units the same as the sense of smell; the scent, the flair. That's why a politician, you see, can be corrupt and blind with his eyes. But he must have the flair of the events of the future. That makes a politician. And that's unknown to most people today. We live, as you know, in -- near Hollywood. And everybody is here put on a screen, and everybody is made visible. But life to come cannot be seen, but it can be scented. And the sense for -- historical future is flair. And it is completely destroyed in our civilization. And that's why you are out of history; that's why you live in a dream world, because you have no sense of the hour. It's just "plenty of time."

So -- the United States entered two wars too late on a battlefield which was strewn with destruction and corpses. And if in both cases, the United States had come in right away, the -- the loss would have been one-hundredth -- 1

percent of what it was, because you can't get the United States to get off from the sen- -- idiotic sentence, "Seeing is believing," which is one of the most stupid sentences I know, because seeing is not believing. Seeing is the opposite from believing. When you believe, you trust your scent, your flair. And if you -- if you want to see, you will marry a -- a -- a nice-looking whore, and you will be the most unhappy creature, because she looks nice, but she smells not well. And that has a spiritual meaning.

The -- the -- the good things that have a future may be -- tiny. A baby is very inconspicuous, but it has a future. And it smells much better than the grownups.

And -- so the sense of scent, I like to -- to introduce into your historical thinking, because all the people you deal with in history--take Lincoln--had flair. I have read in the last days a very saddening book, the most violent, anti-Lincoln book that has been written in this country. And it's quite useful because, when you study the most -- hostile writer, you see, you know then everything that can be said against your hero, and you can see, you see: is there anything the matter with him? Now he has -- he -- this man is -- is so full of venom, that there is nothing he -- he doesn't hold against Lincoln. And there is a nice story -- in 1956, Lincoln gave a so-called "lost speech." We have only the -- the notes taken by his friends, and we don't have a manuscript. It's called the "lost speech." And my author is this Edgar Lee Masters, rants about this, and says, "What a man! There, he goes to a meeting, and he has not one note put down. Obviously, he didn't know what would happen, and he didn't know if he should -- should speak, and he didn't know what he would have to say. And so here is this seclusive, and -- and very secretive man, you see, who doesn't want to -- make up his mind one minute too early." Now that makes a statesman.

It's the greatest compliment he could have paid to -- to -- Lincoln, because I -- you understand that to be in politics means never to say anything too early, you see, and never say anything too late. Because the whole problem of politics is timing. Nothing else. Everybody has ideas. There are the Abolitionists, who for 30 years shouted at America, "No slaves." But then comes Lincoln, and he waits until 1863 before he says the -- the word, you see. And this makes him the -- it's all the difference between a man like Garrison, the great Abolitionist, you see, or Lovejoy. And -- and these -- a president -- a president is not elected for ideas, but for the timing. And since nobody knows this in this country, our statesmen -- are ruined. They have to kiss babies, and they have to smile, and they have to look good, and they have to be shot when they go to church, and so on. And -- and this is nonsense, to -- to take away all their strength. Their strength is to retain the instinct for timing. The -- .

(Would you say that in the 1956 election, the issue of stopping hydrogen bombs, which was such a prominent feature of Stevenson's campaign, was too early? And poorly timed?)

I'm trying to get back to --. Well, I do think that presidents must never deal with means, but only with ends. And I still think the hydrogen bomb is a means. And therefore, you see, peace is an end. But hydrogen bombs are not on the highest level to be discussed. They are means. And all pacifists, you see, who are struck horrified by means, don't get the point. The passions which make war, after all, that's what statesmen are about, you see, to calm people down. But the throwing of the bomb is always instrumental.

Now of course, if you once suddenly feel that your arm is -- is tied back, and you cannot throw the bomb, because you destroy your own country, you see, that's -- be a phase that's reached. But I think the public discussion again of this will not do very good. I think Mr. Eisenhower, as well as Mr. Khrushchev, knows that there is no war, but can't sell it to their electorates. I mean, the people still would -- are running, and the departments are still running with the bomb. And they -- they -- {no one thought} that there will never be a war, as long as people are in their five senses.

(I was just trying to find...)

But it's hard to make it an issue in an election campaign. Marx had a -- one great wisdom. He said, "No parties will make revolution in the future. The -- the conditions of production will." So he, of course, Marx is the great deplorer of the Communist Party. I mean, if it goes on by Marx, you see, you can't have a Communist Party, because it's not a partisan issue. The condition -- and the same is with bombs. The conditions of production, you see, of the bomb are universal, are worldwide. And we shoot them into international space, and therefore practically wars are already on the way out, you see. { } for -- your need for war territor- -- for war in the old sense you need territories which you can define. There will be struggles from -- most violent struggles, I'm sure, you see. But they will not have the territorial problem of boundaries. Because you -- {take} Berlin. Berlin is the first interspace problem. And it is exactly what Mr. {Reeman} said in mathematics, that we have now a mathematics -- { } of interpenetrating bodies. And who -- who knows a little mathematics? Who has -- wie? Wie? You must know that this is a special branch of mathematics to deal with the problems of interpenetrating bodies, you see. Have you heard of it?

(No.)

Well, better do, because that's the latest fashion.

Well, as a matter of fact, it's older than the international {confirmation} -- was -- Mr.--I think in 1857--Mr. {Reemann} published his first paper on interpenetrating bodies. But science is always prophetic, you see, it's doing in the spine what's happening in the -- in the flesh.

Well, why do you -- make such a terrible face? You're such a pretty girl, why do you do it?

(Well, I was thinking. I have Dr. {Gough.} He's been complaining that we've known about these non-Euclidian geometries for so long. We know Euclid's wrong. But the teachers just refuse to teach any non-Euclidian geometry.)

Well, you go on your own. { }. Why do you wait for { }?

(I didn't know about this in geometry.)

Well, you bring us some information next time, please.

(What's the name of this book that you talked about, Edgar Lee Masters, on Lincoln?)

Well, I -- you know, I'm not a mathematician.

(No, Edgar Lee Masters.)

(On Lincoln. You say ...)

Oh, Lee -- Edgar Lee Masters. Edgar Lee Masters, Lincoln--the Man.

(Lincoln--the Man?)

Came out in 1931. It's a very useful book. For example, he -- the greatest -- the greatest speech I think Lincoln ha- -- Lincoln ever made is the Second Inaugural. And this poor man, this Master- -- who comes from Illinois--and it's vanity that makes him write the book, because he has some personal traditions in the family about Springfield and Lincoln, so he -- he feels provoked to write this book, because he has this in, you see. He knows something. He's in the know. That -- that has -- I think is one of the awkward features of the book, that there is vanity in -- in -- in the man in writing it, that he can boast of some special information. But he doesn't -- there's no special information { }.

And then he comes to the Second Inaugural; he prints it--in part, I mean, the most beautiful sentence--and says, "This is sheer madness." And that's all he

says. So the man is -- is so mutilated in his soul, that -- that the fact that Lincoln there says, "Both sides are wrong," is beyond him. You see, the poor guy is so violent, that one has to be right, you see. His hero is Douglas. He said if Douglas had been -- made president, then there wouldn't have been a Civil War. It's all so incredibly na‹ve. He has no idea that things got worse every year from -- beginning with 1845 in this country, you see. And since he doesn't know that history always operates in this strange law that things have to get worse before they get better, and has always this evolutionary streak, you see, if you just wait e- -- long enough, the thing will -- will adjust themselves -- see, always come out right, anyway. He of course has already this school, which is dominating in this country -- if you adjust, you conform, and never make a decision, and the decisions are then made by some -- nobody knows, you see. This -- not making decisions is, of course, the theory, you see. You don't make decisions. And you don't date. You don't say "Now." And you don't say, "Today."

But Masters -- he ended in the poor house, and I think he deserved it. He's a -- very terrible man. And he destroyed his marriage, and he destroyed all his love life. And a genius in -- in endowment. And it's a very tragic case. But if you want to study America's intellectual class, intelligentsia in its complete decline and -- and -- deserved contempt, I -- I think you- -- you'd better read Masters. He's the man of the Spoon River Anthology, and wrote a very beautiful book, Domesday Book. And he had all the gifts of genius, and destroyed himself by -- not -- by trying to sit outside history, and sit it out in -- by his intelligence, you see, and looking at things. So Lincoln--the Man is just to him a spectactor from the outside.

I thought this very wonderful, you see, printing the Second Inaugural, and saying this is madness. And then saying, he comes to this meeting of the "lost speech," you see, because he hasn't made up his mind whether he shall speak, what he shall say, you see, and when he shall speak. Now that makes the -- the real man, you see, who -- who allows himself only to be the man of the hour. The New Testament of course says the same: Don't prepare your speeches, you see. When -- in the moment in which you will be put on the spot, God will tell you what to say. The -- the Quakers, you see, were not allowed ever to make a prepared statement about their case for this reason. They always quoted the New Testament for this. And the New -- of course, the whole problem of the New Testament is to give the -- Israel, which had lost its -- its place in history, its sense of timing, back this flair for things to come. And when the Church loses this, you get latter-day saints, and you get Pentecostal sects, because the whole of Christianity is the sense of what is dead and what's alive, the sense of life, and the sense for the dead. And I told you this, I think, in this group already. We speak in order to define what is dead and what is alive. That's our -- why we speak. That's the only reason why we must speak. Everything else could be done

by sign language, you see.

But in order to say, "This has been," I need words, because corpses are not present. They are -- they are not visible, you see. So we all -- all the times secrete, or -- separate, or segregate not black and white, but past and future.

(I was wondering, you know so many theologians are always talking about transcending time...)

Ach, these idiots! They are just Kantians. You see, most theologians are poor philosophers. They borrow some frame of reference from philosophy, and then plunge into -- into their thinking. They never know that Paul -- the Apostle Paul and the New Testament have fought all the Greek notions of philosophy. Read the Letters of Paul. He's down on them. He says, "This abstraction of time and space," you see, "is -- is nonsense. Look here. Here we are in this hour." At this moment, we are now. We know that there is something that has gone on before and -- this. So we are rooted at this moment in this situation. And we look -- can look backward, and we can look forward, as students, at least. With regard to your home life, you have parents, and you can look backward to them as older, and you have expectations in your life, and you look forward to them, and they probably are not connected with your parents very much. So you have one past -- which is -- is filled with -- with your family background--as we rightly say; "background" is -- is an -- appeal to backward--and so the true exper- -- the experiences of man is that he's all the time alternating between looking forward--as we dutifully say in our letters of -- when we accept an invitation: "We are looking forward to seeing you tomorrow night"--and we are looking backward.

Now you, however, live in a physicists' universe--that's an abstract time--in which you say, "There was a -- a beginning somewhere, and we go forward to today, and we go forward." That is, the people in natural science try to persuade you that you are always living in this evolutionary way. Look, our conscience and our experience in time is quite different. Our experience of time is awakened whenever we can make this break between backward and forward looking. And when you think of your head and of your body. I'm able to -- turn this way and this way. To be in history means to have the freedom of alternating between backward and forward.

This is quite something different, because it -- places you -- roots you. Now the modern intellect is uprooted, completely extirpated from his fertile living ground. A child is rooted, because it looks up to the parents and say -- says to them, "When are you going to die?" A na‹ve child will ask such a question. "When are you" -- "Oh, you are very old," this child will say to his grandmother,

you see. "When are you going to die?"

And the child therefore can teach us what the -- Christianity and what Judaism tried to teach: how man actually lives in time. He lives in time by alternating this point of view of looking backward, and looking forward. -- When he looks forward, he's frightened with all the dead corpses and superstitions he's meant to carry forward to the future, so he elopes. He -- he leaves father and mother and clings to -- cleaves to the wife of his choosing, because forwardlooking, he's frightened by the past, you see. Then he's loyal again, and to the silver wedding of his parents, you see, he comes, because he has also an amount of tradition and loyalty in him, and he will not break away totally, but he has to balance the past and the future. Every one of us has to do this.

And therefore, the real experience of time, this -- this fine perfume of now, and what's tomorrow, you see, this feeling that a politician has -- smells. You see, "I smell a rat," you see, "fishy," they say. A very good word, you see, for the historical sense. "This is fishy. I won't touch it," you see. You {know where in the world} this is getting you. There is something rotten in the state of Dane.

This is the real experience of time which every child that is born of a mother re-experiences. The phil- -- big philosophers, however, and the Kantian philosophers, and the theological positivists -- I mean these victims by -- gangsters, they -- they tell you that they learn all about time from the laboratory, from physics. That is, they are far removed from the experimental, ex- -- empirical time, you see, of peoples, of nations, of judges, of families, of real people. And they go to the laboratory and they take out a stopwatch. And they say, "Abstract time is that we have -- call this now 9:30, and now I count up to 60," and within 60 this -- this -- this bomb orbits -- you see, circles the universe, or whatever it does, as this last shot there, the satellite. That is, this is dead -- the time of dead things to which we only add the time element. You can take one -- one definition. Dead things are those who have no time within themselves. You take this chair, you see; there is nothing of the time element in it. It has no time. It's out of time. Dead -- death means to leave the time process. That's what it means.

Now if -- a physicist deals with dead matter. That is, his cloc- -- stopwatch adds the time element artificially, abstractly to what this chair in itself doesn't do. I let this chair fall; and then you count, then that takes half a second, you see, for it to fall down. But whereas you and I have this time sense inside of us, when we live, you see, the chair hasn't. You have to add it from the outside, mechanically. You have made the -- the clock. And the chair doesn't know anything about it.

So in death, time and reality are separated. Or time and matter are separate. And in -- in -- in life, every element of the living process carries its own

rhythm, its own death warrant, so to speak. You and I have a sense of time. He -- who is -- who comes under the Beatitudes in the New -- who is blessed? The man whose sense of time coincides with his given time, with his -- don't, you see. You are a lucky man, if you have to live 80 years, if you have something to live for during 80 years. The devil is the man -- is the power in us who tries to sell out quickly. I mean, the devil is always short -- you see, selling you short. That is, devil and God are not separated in anything but the time sense. This -- the devil says you can have this pleasure now, where you can only have it after you have served well.

The only difference between the diabolical streak in every human being and the divine is only that in the -- the divine streak, you have -- for example, have perseverance, you see. Until you have earned the money, you will not spend it. The -- the devil tells you, you can forge a check. So you forge a check, and so then you think you have the money. It's a very short operation, and you don't have it. Who- -- whole nations have been -- have been selling short and buying short on the installment plan -- you see. That is, their sense of timing has not co- -- not identified itself with the given time, the creature in us and the creator in us must come to a harmony.

Everybody has a sense of his allotted time. And you find this with the con- -- consumptious people, you see, these -- the artist who knows that he has, like Keats, you see, or like -- like--who was the --? Chopin, you see, who had to go early; Schubert--I mean, such people know that they have just a very short time, and they spend it, you see, in a feverish activity in order to fulfill themselves. Other people live beyond time.

I have a friend -- oh, "friend," I -- saying too much. I mean, he was 40 years older than I. He -- I visited him every -- when he was over 90, every year, to his birthday, and to -- he had jubilees one after another, 50th jubilee of his doctorate, and 50th jubilee of this and that. And he always said to us--the whole faculty went to see him--he said, "Death has forgotten me." And it was his greatest punishment. He had -- his wife had -- had took- -- -en her life, she had thrown herself out of the window. And he was such a cold fish that when everybody went and tried to help and rescue her, he said, "Don't touch her. First, notify the police." And that was his reaction to the death of his wife, you know.

And so death had forgotten him. He had to live too long. And -- you must know one thing you can live too --. And that's a curse. It's just like a -- confinement in a prison. This man was in prison, and he felt it. And he told us so. He had no worries. I mean, not big -- but life had -- was not real. You see, so the man had to live to the -- his 97th day -- year.

And as soon as you -- begin to understand that life can be too long as well as too short, you will perhaps begin to understand perhaps: our problem is that God has given us as creatures a limited time, and that our will and our insight has to try to keep inside this allotted time, you see.

We have -- here, a gentleman who has written a wonderful play on -- on Newman, and another play on -- on Justice Holmes, about the no- -- nonagenarians, about two blissful people of 90. And they're two great plays. Miss -- by {Emmett Labery}. And I recommend them highly to you if you want to under- -- to come near to the historical problem. One is called Second Spring, and the other is called The Magnificent Yankee. I recommend it highly for your -- for your -- for all you do in your classes, eye-openers.

And now I found a story to triple it, so to speak. And I wrote it -- sent it to him yesterday. You may be interested. There is in -- in Hungary, a hundred years ago, the revolution of the Hungarians, the Magyars, against the Hapsburgs -- were already once crushed by the Russians, just as it has been now. And this is a great tragedy that it has happened twice. -- What the Russians did in 1954, it was, wasn't it? Or '56? When was the Hungarian --?

('56. October '56.)

'56, they -- the czar did in 19- -- in 1850, when the Hungarians had thrown off the domination of the Austrians, for two years successfully, and the czar suddenly marched in his troops into Hungary from the north and forced the -- Hungarian army to surrender.

Now the commander-in-chief of this victorious Hungarian army that finally did -- had to surrender to this new army, and much bigger army of the Russians was G”rgey -- G”rgei -- von G”rgei. This man had to live 98 years. He died in 1916. That is, from 1850, when he was pardoned and not court-martialed by the emperor of Austria, on the behest of the czar, the poor man had to live to 1916, hated by the Hungarians, because he was the only officer of the Hungarian army that was not shot. So they all said he was a traitor. And he couldn't disprove it, because of course, he said, "I have nothing to do with my -- with my being pardoned. The czar of Russia wrote a letter to the emperor and said this man who has surrendered to me deserves my treatment, you see. Don't shoot him. That's the { }. And I -- had nothing to do with my being pardoned." But he -- this man, imagine, to live 66 years, after you have been a leader of your country, in complete -- you see, ignored within Hungary. And he died in the Sec- -- First World War, which--I mean, was of course the opening wedge for the second surrender of Hungary to -- to Russia.

So this man G”rgei is to me a great figure , you see, of the tragedy of -- of time. He had to live after his highest moment in 1950, for 66 years. That's an unheard-of tragedy to me, you see. And it's a punishment. It's a harder punishment than if he had been executed in --in -- right away in 19- -- 1850. Then he would be a great name in history.

Now nobody -- I asked Hungarians, and they didn't know that the man had lived on, you see. Just a ghost -- no, a forgotten man.

Well, as soon as you approach history in thi- -- as this problem of being up to date in our own given time, that my time allotted to me, and my will to do, and to time, must be harmonized, history becomes a concrete task of a nation, or of a people. There is an allotted time spent, and in this time, you have to make the right decisions to fill this time spent fruitfully, or you are just, you see, put on the bier, and carried out without your having lived out your life.

(What would you say about -- Lincoln? Would you say he was rescued out of life by being assassinated?)

Well, certainly. I mean, the -- the tremendous thing of -- of -- of Lincoln is that. Well, that's a very strange thing. First of all, of course, the greatest miracle of the assassination is that he was assassinated after he had done his work. And it is absolutely un-understandable why he wasn't assassinated before. Because obviously, before, it was just as easy or even easier. He was -- I mean, un- -- unprotected all the time. And when he marched into Richmond, you see, he wasn't assassinated.

And again, by the way, Mr. Masters' attacking him for his going to Richmond and sitting down in the chair of the mighty, whereas to me, this is the most Franciscan act of the whole career of Lincoln, that he marched on foot into Richmond, you see. Mr. Masters, this devil, can even twist here the lion's tail and says that it was just terrible that he -- that did -- didn't do this, you see, and walked in -- unprotected into Richmond.

Your question is, I think, that this -- assassin was in -- some kind of coalition with God, obviously, because he helped a lot to establish Lincoln in the hearts of this country. And I think -- I put it this way. When Lincoln had to travel from Springfield to Washington, he suddenly saw that what he had wished to become president was not what he had wished to be. I mean, it was a wartime president, and in a torn country. And it was quite clear to him that it was tragedy all around, and he hadn't -- didn't have one cheerful moment after that, as you know, I mean. He -- he felt that the presidency was not a -- it was just a burden. And that dawns of course on -- any candidate very gradually that what he has

desired all his -- the -- his life, you see, suddenly tastes very sour. And I think they had to pay this terrible price, and he was spared then, so to speak, more. The burden had become unbearable.

(Well, I was comparing him with your Hungarian general, then, because Lincoln had trouble with his own party...)

Of course he had. They would all have --.

(...they would all have -- made mincemeat out of him.)

Of course they would. No, it was great -- very merciful.

(Did Thomas Jefferson omit his presidency on his epitaph, because he had to change his attitude during the time of office. That is, before office and after office, he was agrarian, democratic type of -- thinking -- thinker. And in office, he had a change in order -- for expediency.?)

Well, you say "for expediency." But don't you think the office makes a man? I mean, as a party man, you have the perfect right to put one foot down and say, "Emphasis is on agrarianism, on sectionalism, on what-not," you see. On -- on -- on small farmers and so on. Then you come into office and you see that the office is comprehensive. And so I have always felt that it is the honor of -- of Jefferson that he took Louisiana. If he hadn't, it would be -- you see, he would have been a small man. He would have stood in hi- -- his mind would have stood in the way of his mission. And so I have -- I -- I feel that only as president does he rise to the stature of which, as a party man or as a -- and -- or as a man just of a program. He { }. I think you have to change program. I -- I cannot feel that programs are good enough.

I think Marx's insight, for example, that parties cannot solve the struggle of the classes, but institutions, you see, and the way we produce will bring up -- out -- about the new society is a must deeper insight than anything they have done with his memory in the Communist Party, because that makes him a very small man who is tied down to certain, you see, rules of -- some of which he has laid down before he has lived, before the society has lived, before the indus- -- industry has developed.

And so I -- or, for example, I would say that Marx--opposite from Jefferson--tried to be president in his private thinking, you see, and was then a party politician in his activities on the basis of his insight. Jefferson was a party man in his insight, and in office, he was a not-party man. Do you understand? Marx and Jefferson are mentally at opposite poles, because Marx dug deep enough to free

himself from his own mentality, and to say, "These laws of history go beyond human mentalities. There are many mentalities involved, and used, you see, and function, because everybody thinks as he works." That's, after all, his great -- insight, you see. And so a philosopher at his desk has a certain -- has certain ideas. A worker at his loom has certain ideas, you see. A capitalist at his -- at his -- in his -- at his -- at his ledger has certain ideas. But they all have to, you see, collaborate. That's -- that's production, you see. That's society.

So I think, when later, the poor Marx in his miserable -- because he was very miserable in England, of course, and an exile, and no money. And his -- children died from consumption, you know. They died really, and his wife died, from hunger. And in such a tragic situation, you have to do something. So he founded this ridiculous International, you see. And -- and then he -- they have now parties all over the world. But that isn't {even} his idea. His idea was that the world wars were the big -- world revolution. And he would have only contempt for Mr. Stalin's or Mr. Khrushchev's claim that -- that the Russian Communist Party has anything to do with the -- with the world revolution. He would have laughed at them. Parties cannot make revolutions, he said. That's his dogma, his real dogma.

So it is quite funny. Here you have Jefferson, 1780--or 1775, if you want to--Declaration, you see, of Independence--that's his mind. And then he becomes president. In 1803, we get this big chunk of land, and he rises to the occasion and forgets that he has been the man of agrarianism, you see. And -- in Marx's case, in 1847, he is already the man of the Louisiana Purchase, because he dreamed of world revolution, all proletarians of all the world, solidarity, you see. Just as Louisiana Purchase means all of America, you see, the seashore, the Pacific Coast. And this -- so Marx, that is his anti-Hegelian, anti-rational, anti-Enlightenment revolt. This -- Marx said, "I must do opposite from Mr. Jefferson." You see, he's just as much anti-Jefferson, of course, as he is anti-Hegel, or anti-Kant, or anti-Voltaire. He said, "All these people reason out a good world. I'm not going to overestimate my own thoughts. I'm looking at the conditions under which people produce," you see. "And therefore I'm just one of the producers. I produce ideas. Other people produce wheat," you see. "Other people print money. Therefore, I'm only one of these -- the ideologists. And therefore I will not give a damn to my own theory." That's his greatness. You see, "My theory isn't good enough. I must imply the needs of the workers." And that's why he say, "Proletarians of all countries, unite." That's like his Louisiana Purchase.

And--if you can stand this comparison for a moment--and then in 1865, he publishes his Kapital, and in 1867, you get the First International, and these are makeshifts of expediency to deal with the problem on hand, and to -- to -- to find a place for yourself in this soc- -- in the future society, which of course every man

has a right to struggle for. And so, Marx is -- is really dialectically--as we said, you see--abolishing the rank of philosophy in Jefferson's mind. Jefferson had to learn by politics. And Marx, quite vice versa, you see, had to learn that there was still room for a little bit of will and philosophy inside the non-will, you see, historical process of economic dialec- -- materialism. Can you see my point?

And I think it may help you. Both are -- you have to live this out today. You have to distrust your philosophies, gentlemen. But you have not ceased to philosophize. I hope I have done this myself in my life, you see. I always said to myself, "That isn't -- that isn't my whole life." I have to -- been a soldier. I've been a worker. I've been many things. I've been unemployed. And life is more comprehensive than what my mind contributes to this. But it isn't worthless what my mind contributes. So the book of Marx, the Kapital or the International, are not worthless, but they are minor compared to his deepest insight that man has to root himself in time.

And I would say that, gentlemen, that Marx has rep- -- rescued from the biblical tradition the fact that man first is rooted in a unique time situation. Jefferson said that at all times all men are created equal, you see. All enlightenment is timeless, natural law. And all Marx is historical. And what I have told you today is simply in this sense, I mean, every human being has to be a Marxian, because Marx comes from the Old Testament. And this -- in this sense, the Bible is simply true, that we are rooted in time. And these great phases of class war are nothing but the translation of your time and space inside your family into the life of the peoples of this earth in -- you see, written in -- large. That's the human family. This is exactly the situation you meet yourself in your own upbringing and in your own growth.

And what I'm trying to tell you is -- is generalized Marxism, so to speak. I've never been a socialist. I've never been a Marxian. I've always felt it was quite arbitrary to put so much emphasis on the class issue. But the sense of history -- that's a different thing, you see. That is an act of liberation from the abstract idea of physicists' time, of -- of non-historical time, in the -- you see, with -- which only applies to dead things for which we have to put up an abstract time.

(What you said about the class war, with regard -- I -- wasn't quite clear on that point. Could you -- could you repeat that?)

Well, I'm -- I have told you. I feel that we have to rescue Marx today from the Marxians. Kierkegaard and Marx, the two -- these two people, you see, went against the Enlightenment in the--and Nietzsche, by the way, too; and there are others, I mean: Ferrari in Italy, a forgotten man, partly; and Melville in this country, you see, I talked about him yesterday; Herman Melville has his great

role in this country--that they have this deep feeling of the now, and that all we know about time is only the concrete time of our situation, between the past and the future. And what the phy- -- scientist tries to -- sell you as -- is an abstraction. That's not lived and experienced time. But that only applies to chairs, and -- and walls, and bricks, and geology. Abstract time. And you know how far they go. They tell you that there will be no time in space, so that a man will not have to eat for 10 years if he's up in the air in this -- this is all nonsense. It won't go. It's today in the paper again. I just had to laugh. You know better than these physicists. They tell you, if you go in this abstract space, then you suddenly will stop growing, or shitting, or breathing, or -- or sleeping. I mean, they have gone mad, because they have -- they think this is dead, you see. Well, this is just empty, the stupidity of this.

And so -- will you kindly take this? What you know is that you live here in this classroom, the schedule of your studies. This hour is a part of your being a student, is it not? Therefore this hour is contained in your -- the term. And the term is contained in the academic year. And the academic year for you is contained within the four years you spend in this college. And if you look it all up, it's all your education, as you call it, you see. Now education has its own time process. The mind can be developed regardless of your social ties. At the same time, your family has a time. That's another time process that goes on. Your parents age, and your ch- -- your sisters and brothers grow up, and you grow up and you want to get married. And therefore, while the academic clan doesn't care for your -- for your biological time as a family man, that's a reality, too. That's another time. And it may be a tragedy {involved} { }. A -- a girl wants -- has to marry a year too early before she can finish her studies. Or opposite. She -- she thinks that it's so important that she gets her degree that she makes her man miserable, because she says she won't marry him.

And so there are conflicts. Concrete times are plural. We live in more than one order of time. Comes the war, the man is drafted, and you have to become a nurse, or a WAC, or a WAVE. There is a third time. The conflicts of nations, the history of mankind is quite merciless about your family, and -- and your studies, you see. So you get a third time. And I -- I have written many books on this problem of the plurality of the calendar, of the human calendar, you see. Man lives in more than one calendar range.

Now -- here is 9 to 10, and here is your working day, from 8 till--let's say--to 10 in the evening. And obviously my hour today here is embedded in this larger rhythm, you see, of mine and of yours. Then I'm -- we live in an election year -- my -- next year, perhaps, and then of course -- we perhaps -- on November 4th, there will be no lectures, because the political calendar of the country, you see, says, "No lectures today," and that crosses out this rhythm. And then

another -- quite a different rhythm comes in, as your citizen calendar. And then comes the soldier's calendar.

This leads us too far. What I wanted to say is the abstraction of time per se is taken from the experience of more than one calendar. And when philosophers talk to you big about time and space, laugh them into their face. It is nothing but a generalization. All we know are definite calendars, definite times. There is a political calendar of -- in the life of the United States. There is a family calendar where your nephew has to be christened, or your sister has to be -- you have to go to her wedding as her best man, or what-not, I mean. And there -- and there is a funeral, you see. This has nothing to do with politics. But it has very much to do with your life, because at the funeral, and you may meet your future bride. I mean, these occasions of family calendars are of the first-rate importance in your biography.

I have such a colleague who -- who -- who married -- his best friend committed suicide. And for the funeral, the sister of this man, of course, came. And he as a friend, and the sister as a bereaved sister, went together to the funeral, and they were both 40 years of age, and both bachelors and never thought of marrying. And the shock of this event was so, you see, total that they surrendered their isolationism, and got engaged, and now they live here in Claremont, or in Riverside. And there is -- so far beyond their expectations this one event, you see, in their lives, this funeral service made history. And that's a real story. Don't -- I mean, this had to -- only this catastrophe of the brother, you see, opened their hearts to each other.

And so we would be all the poorer if we hadn't this family calendar. These are important things. The best marriage is always the marriage concluded on the wedding of the -- on the previous wedding. I mean, the -- the friends of the bridegroom are the given candidates for marriage for his sister. And if this would happen more often, it would -- there would be better marriages. The reason for this is, if you have first a friend, and then you marry his sister, you have something to talk about, because the exchange with your man has been on intellectual grounds, very often. They have something to share. But if you meet the girl, you see, just for her good looks, that's not a good basis for marrying.

(That's unique.)

What?

(Unique.)

Yes.

(It was unique that they met at the -- funeral --.)

Ja, exactly. Weddings and funerals are matchmakers, should be. So they are epochal events in the smaller range of this calendar, you see.

Now, would you understand: what the philosophers and the physicists call "time" is the abstraction in the literal sense, the generalization of real times, in -- experienced by you. Because we have a political calendar for the great history of the United States; a family calendar; and an individual, educational calendar; a career calendar you may say; and a work calendar, there has of course been a natural instinct to -- to speak of time in general. However, my dear people, if you have here seven -- these books, everybody who then speaks in the abstract of "book," knows that he first had to experience books, you see, before he can give a general definition of a "book." However, with regard to time, these people try to make you think that you can define time without having experienced it in real life. And this is incredible. The abstraction of time is always based on the empirical experience of time, is it not? But nobody in the last 150 years, since Mr. Jefferson--he is of course one of the culprits in this process, you see; he is this abstract thinker, and that's why he's so dangerous--people have said that you can understand life by abstracting from the date from which it occurs. And you cannot. In 1800s, it's very different from 1959. Everybody knows that there is a spirit of the times, the rhythm of life. And what you experience at 20 is not the same as what you experience at 60. How could it be? And what you experience today is not the same as what -- when you did the same thing at the age of 10, is it not?

And therefore, the rule I want you to understand is: philosophers abstract from times really experienced. And you cannot therefore allow them to go along and define time from dead objects, and -- and astronomical time. They have to dig down to the experienced time, which they never do. They abstract -- the word "abstract" may have no horrors for you. For me, it has. God created the concrete world. He didn't create geometry. Geometry is the abstraction from real bodies, and real lines, and real points. Jefferson says that the geometer knows the thoughts of God better than the chair-maker, you see, or the carpenter. This is nonsense. God created things, you see, with time and space -- spaces, and -- and expanse. And what you call "geometry" is an abstraction.

(Is that the influence of Plato?)

Of course it is! Down with Plato! Down with Plato!

You see, I was called as a student, "Plato," and so I have some right to say that I have been imbued by him. And -- and he's a very great man. But today he's

-- he's a -- does much -- just harm. The human mind is ruined. Plato replaced the five regular bodies, you see -- his mathematical {weight} -- discovery of the five regular bodies, and thought that was God's greatest creation. Imagine, a cube God's greatest creation! When -- when a baby is God's greatest creation, and a flower is God's greatest creation. That is, all the irregular things are His real creations, you see. And those regular abstractions, they are for this impoverished human mind who can only think in straight lines, and points, and squares, and cubes, and circles. And you can -- decide on -- if you meet a person who believes that mathematics is divine and creatures are distorted, so to speak, and irregular, shun such a person. Shun them, because they are doing an injustice to God's creation. God has created a world -- world in which in every moment you have to re-perceive His -- the beauties. There is -- everything is different, you see. Every moment is unique. Every flower deserves to be looked upon for -- on her own merits. You can't get away by saying, "Oh, this is just a rose." You have to write a poem on this rose. You have to talk her up, and not down, this rose, you see. And anybody who tells you "that's just" that, dismiss him. He's the enemy of the human race. Oh, "We have seen all the pictures," "-- That's just politics." This man, you see, doesn't allow this moment to become divine, to become alive. He says, "It's just politics," and he goes home. And -- you see -- and sleeps. And therefore, nothing is done.

The difference between the naturalist -- and the historian is: the historian says, "Think of it! It's really this!" And the naturalist says, "Oh, it's just --."

And these are the two at- -- eternal attitudes in your own heart. You see, it's like breathing out, exhaling, and being -- inhaling. And that's why people today are so very shot. You have given up the word "inspiration," because if you would use it, you would know that we -- look at things as na- -- natural when we expire, when we try to get out of it. And we are inspired, and we get involved. Today they say "philosophy of engagement," you see, for this reason, "engag‚." Philosophy of the involvement, existentialism. Well, these are desperate cries of people who want to get back, you see, into the empirical time. You have heard these -- these -- these slogans.

That's the old contrast between the biblical tradition of time and the -- platonic tradition of time, you see.

(But everyone's conception of God, for example, must be timeless. I mean, He's supposed to be some...)

Oh, but it's all Greek. Don't believe it for a minute. Any person who has ever prayed knows better. How is God timeless? God becomes man. God comes to earth. History is His revelation. You -- don't believe it. God created the world,

and He is still creating it. It's a process. How can He be out of time? These are all Greek words. Nowhere does the word -- does the word "timeless" occur in the Bible. Show it to me. It's the invention of the platonists. Of course, we are flooded with these neo-platonists, platonists, theologians, you see, who sell you their -- their -- their Greek philosophy as Christianity. It has nothing to do with biblical tradition. And it has nothing to do with Christianity. It's the -- it's the living truth as against the school-man's truth, you see. People who want to look at the world better abstract from time and space. But people who want to live, can't afford that. You have to hear the rhythm, you see, that tells you today to take a day off. That's a decision you have to make, you see.

I have a -- in Germany -- in German there is a pun possible between "man" and "when." And I had to -- made a -- gave a big address to -- for the industrialists of Germany on the -- January 30 of this year, and so it's quite fresh in my memory. And I -- well, I -- the whereabouts would lead us too far. But I made this pun -- or that -- this point there that industry -- industrialists themselves could not just outproduce them- -- his -- their competitors. They had also to learn when to stop. And I said -- because this they had in common with the poor customer, whom they wanted to -- to -- to deluge, that when you are at your best in eating, you have to stop, not go on eating. When it tastes -- very well, stop. When you are tired, you have to know how to sleep. And an industrialist who doesn't -- can't sleep, and has to take tranquilizer is already, you see, destroying himself.

Here I am told at the college they give you tranquilizers for the exam. If this is true, I mean, this college has to be closed right away. It's a de- -- diabolical institution, because the time rhythm is no longer relied upon, you see. It's not cultivated. Because "tranquilizer" means that the rhythm isn't functioning. You -- that's why you are not allowed to -- tranquilizers. Girls shouldn't smoke, I can't help feeling, because they have a deeper necessity for being in tune with the universe. Your rhythm, you see, is -- is -- is the most sacred thing you have received. We are -- far more apt to break rhythms, because man must create new rhythms, and you must preserve the existing rhythm. Man is the institutor of the next rhythm. For example, in a factory, there is a new rhythm of production. That's -- is man's contribution. But women have to cultivate all the existing rhythms. From holidays, you see, to -- to weekdays, and to sleeping matters, and so -- if -- if the mother doesn't provide enough sleep for her children, she's a murderess.

Now I said, there is a man in us, and a when in us. Usually, in a good marriage, she is the "when" and he is the man. And the woman has to say to a man, "Now you stay home tonight, and that's just too much," you see. She has to -- to -- to cure the rhythm, when he breaks it by overwork, or by worry, or whatever it is, you see. In a good marriage, this is the case.

So I have a -- had a very intimate friend present at this speech, a head of a big school system in Germany. And he has many troubles at home -- in his marriage, and he said -- then we -- we had dinner together after this speech. And he said to me, grinning, "You know, that's all right with a normal marriage, that he is the man, and she is the when. But in my marriage, I have to be the when."

So I was very proud, because it had so affected him that he immediately could see that -- that in his case it should be -- had to be the other way around. And obviously it's in many such cases that one has to play the role of the other. When and man.

All nature considers man without his when. Once you understand -- this, you will -- open up avenues into history which you haven't seen before. History says, "When was man created?" and "When were the United States founded?" "When was the time which tries men's soul?" And this greatness of Paine's pamphlet, you see, which made him a great man, is that he went to Valley Forge and wrote, "Now is the time which tries men's souls." And in this, he became just as the -- Jefferson of the Louisiana Purchase, bigger than Thomas Mai- -- Paine's little Reason. The man who wrote Reason, you know -- you know, he wrote this later, was a dogmatist and a fanaticist. He wrote this in -- in France. But the man who wrote, you see, the pamphlets of the Revolution War was in the thick of fighting, and he knew exactly what had to be said now, at this moment, regardless of what would have been said later. And he re-established his own freedom, you see, that you say different things at different hours of life.

So the unique character of the date makes then -- makes only -- has to be added to the theory that history deals with unique events, because very often, it is only that this happens, at this moment that the event is -- is unique -- becomes unique. It's enough for an event to be needed at this moment in the -- in the process -- in the creative process of the whole. So time is a quality of living bodies on processes. And where you have dead processes, it's the -- the quality is not inherent in the process, the time.

So never take nature -- natural science as the judge of historical processes. -- The natural process is impoverished by the time element that's lacking.

Take a sleeper and a dead person. The sleeper at this moment has no consciousness. But he's fully alive, his rhythm, you see, is waking him up at one time; and therefore, as a sleeping individual, we still belong into history. And the person who sleeps well, or -- as you know, the Bible says, "To those whom He loves, God gives it in their sleep." And there's some great truth about it, because to be able to sleep well is a condition of -- of being a -- a fruitful and creative person. And therefore, all this overrating of consciousness is nonsense, you see.

The secret of an historic -- person in history is that he is just as much at peace with the world when he sleeps as when he is awake.

And the -- so this constant improvement of Mr. Jeffer- -- -son- -- and all his adherents get more intelligent. No more, you see, solve all the quizzes, you see; become a quiz kid. And so -- this is all bl”d -- nonsense. The problem is the alternation between consciousness and unconsciousness.

I had a big debate. One of my dearest -- or closest disciples is very down on me, because I -- I have no love lost for the Jeffersons, for the Enlightenment. And he wants to save the Enlightenment. And so our whole ar- -- he's quite a dangerous fellow, because he has the press at his fingertips, I mean, at his -- he has the means of production and -- in Europe. And so he -- he can print what he pleases. And so we nearly fell out. On the one-hand side, he -- he worships me; and on the other had, he hates me. It's a very heated-up situation, and a terrible situation, because you never know what's happening next. And in order to defend himself against myself, he has grown a terrible beard, and -- the -- and my psychiatrist friends s- -- tell me that I'm always in danger of being shot by him.

And I tried to tell him that God created just as much night as He cri- -- -ated day. And that to demand from a child prodigy to sleep less and know more is just murder. You see, you kill this child. And perhaps the plant in us and the animal in us are -- have to be balanced. And we have just to much -- you see, always sink back into unconsciousness as we have to wake up to consciousness. And that's just hateful to him. He wants to see more light -- more light. I can't see that. More -- neon light is blinding. I would -- don't want to have any neon light around my house. I want to have it dark at night.

And the -- I think we have reached this stage--you can understand this very well--that man has so much light and has abolished night to such an extent that philosophers, certainly, thinking, have to add this condiment, this grain of salt, that this enlightenment cannot go on, you see. More light is not in itself a blessing. It has to -- have the right proportion of light, the right amount of light. And you have to sink back into -- into pre-consciousness. And I don't think there is -- is anything -- such thing as subconscious, I mean. That's an invention of the Enlightenment. If you have enlightenment as a normal state, that everything is known and conscious, you see, then you have to coin this phrase, "subconscious," you see. But I mean -- is -- since -- when -- I know that to be conscious is a disease, and that when I am sound asleep, you see, I must dismiss my consciousness, to get a new one the next morning. It has -- the mind has to be recreated all the time, after all. I have to dismiss it. I have to be able to forget. That's as -- as healthy as to remember, you see. If I cannot forget, I am sick. I can't

-- forgive any -- my enemies -- I can't forgive my enemies if I can't forget.

And therefore, as soon as you see that this rhythm is the problem of history, you -- you do not believe any more that to -- to know more, and to become more conscious -- informed, and I think -- and you will discover that the human soul has always been the power to change one's mind--has been called this way. That's the so-called subconscious. And you -- it is only when people are--as in Vienna, there were -- in the days of Mr. Freud, also whoing -- hewing this Jeffersonian line that to know more and more and to be conscious of everything you do all the time was ideal, then you -- you created a subconscious, because you were just unable to perform. Subconscious is, so to speak, after you over-strain your intention to be conscious of everything, then you can't swing it and the unpleasant things are dismissed into your subconscious, you see. You have tried to become aware of everything, but you can't swing it. It's -- they call this "repression," or whatever they do, you see.

A -- a normal person can dismiss, you see, because it has never -- I have never thought that my conscious life is identical with my person. I'm much richer than my little consciousness. And as soon as you admit this, it has no need to speak--when you mean the human soul--speak of the subconscious. That's an area -- I think that is in a gray area, you see, between the realm of the soul and -- where we dismiss mental impressions and thoughts and say, "I've been stupid. Don't think about it. Forget about it." We say this when we are normal, don't we? And we can. And -- the -- Enlightenment however has preached for the last 200 years, "Forget nothing. Buy the Encyclopaedia Britannica." And "Read the Hundred Greatest Books." I've never heard a more idiotic proposition, because I read a book when it is time to read it. And out of time, the Hundred Books must not be read. They is -- are some mathematical books in the Great -- Hundred Books of -- of Mr. Hutchins which have to be read when you are out for mathematics. And they are -- that's -- you can't read them out of time, out of your lifetime, out of your biography. They are devaluated. You are, you see, this -- this -- this is treating your intellect to a feast which will spoil your -- stomach.

All adult education has this tremendous problem to -- to teach these adults here -- this man is in this terrible labeled industry of -- of -- of -- of adult education. And the whole problem of adult education is to -- to -- to re-evoke in an adult the usually lost sense of the timing, or when he should now go on a hike, and when he should now study this and that, you see, to -- it is not the problem of a hobby, but when to have a hobby. That makes this difficult in adult life. You will all discover how difficult it is to know, you see, when to stop.

Well, -- I -- I think the last thing -- thing I wanted to leave with you today is -- is that the way you read in the papers about time and space should be criti-

cized by you, and you should become aware that the times of which we know are all in the plural. I've written now a universal history with the title--it cannot be quite translated into English, but the title is quite eloquent, I think--The Vollzahl der Zeit, the "full number of the times." And I have put--although it is an historical book on the history of mankind from the caveman to today--this plural of "times," to emphasize that it is not a philosophy, but experienced time of empires, and peoples, and kingdoms, and cities, and -- and -- and families. The comp- -- I mean, the -- the Bible of course has this expression of "the fullness of the times." And I've preferred not to have any biblical allusion in it, and just to say -- speak normally today, the full number of -- of the times.

So the cure is use the words "space" and "time" always in the plural, and you can't go wrong. Speak of "times" and speak of "spaces." And never say "space and time." Doesn't exist, except in -- in the abstraction of the geom- -- you see, of the -- of the mathematician. There it's quite legitimate. But you are not allowed to speak of space and time, or you will destroy yourself. Your life is lived in this room, and in your living room, and in the library in spaces, you see, and in places. And in -- your time is -- is divided up into various rhythms of the calendar. You -- your -- your studies, and--as I said--and your military service, and your political career, and what-not. And therefore "times" and "spaces" are the historical expressions.

And Thucydides has created this stern epoch of the Peloponnesian War, this specific epoch. We -- we just ended there, didn't we? So forgive me, I think I have taught you something useful outside what I was going to tell you, but it is important, too.

[tape interruption]

So whose paper do I still have {to} get?

(The other side, too.)

{ }. But I'm -- I'm forgiving. So -- when are you going to {serve}?

(Um.)

(What time were { } --?)

(He has to check his paper for 180, too -- also.)

What?

(Also. He has to a paper for 180 also.)

({ }. No -- Friday, Friday. Thursday. Friday. The next class meeting.)

But { } {is not writing}. What are you saying?

(No. I have to do the paper for 180 yet { }.)

Well, if you -- you are not very -- very cautious. If you had said, "I couldn't give you this paper today because I had to write the other paper," I would believe you.

(I did.)

But now you said you had to write all the three papers, and not one is on time. This makes no sense.

(No! Tomorrow -- the paper for 180 is due tomorrow, and I'm handing that one in tomorrow.)

Are you sure?

(I'm positive.)

Well, that you should have made more clear, you see.

So please.

(It'll be there.)

Now, I'm back to Thucydides. The -- I was asked by one of you a very pertinent question. He said, why is this { } a possession forever, if after all our life is in process, and how can anybody proclaim that his book on history should be an eternal question? I -- I do think that to come after an event is an educational problem. That you come after the Fourth of July of 1776 is something that has to be impregnated on every generation, you see. I have this disk, "History Must Be Told," for this very reason. People today try to go naked and to believe in nature only, and to be tanned, and -- and muscular, and -- and healthy, and what-not, and analyze away from all historical complexions and complexes -- are such -- try so much to believe the animal in themselves that you think history happens to you without a deliberate effort. And -- you see, into this abstract time which other people measure, you can be lifted -- you can be taken by the astronomer who tells you that you were born after 1940. But -- where's some chalk?

(You deposited some --.)

I usually put it in my pocket.

(I don't think you'll be able to grasp it.)

Thank you, thank you, thank you. And -- would you kindly begin to see that children are not in history, that they have to be lifted up upon this time level of historical -- of the life of nations, or the world of the human race, by education, by a deliberate effort? As long as you think that children enter the historical process automatically, you have not understood the difference between this pluralistic, experienced time and--where you have to take your stand between past and future by your own freedom to look backward and forward, by this experience, what the old people who converted -- who were revivalists who call "conversion," you see, by this power to free yourself from the accident of birth, and to become a decisive factor in the life of the race. However you express this--you can express it religiously, you can express it mentally, you can express it just by power of your own -- of your own power to doubt yourself, to -- to be shaken up, so to speak, to -- to split, you see, and -- don't be down on the schizoid. -- A certain amount of splitting is necessary for the human -- to become a hu- -- historical being, you see. You have at one time to say that part of you belongs to the future, and part of you is an eggshell that has to be -- that has to be dismissed.

And therefore today that we have schizophrenia in these quantities is the result only of your not getting hold of your schizophrenia, because you should -- it's just as much a curse -- blessing as it is a curse, that we can doubt, that we can split into two beings, one being part of our mother's womb and our father's society; and one being a prophet of the future and of future things. Today nothing is made of it, because you are told that younger people are the future. I assure you one thing -- of one thing. Future people -- children are unhistorical and block the future. The future is created by old men. Mr. Lincoln is much more a man of the future, you see, than the children that lived in his day.

But this is the superstition I think one cannot -- that comes from our -- your pragmatic education, it comes from progressive education, it comes from the cult of the -- the child in the last hundred years, that you think children automatically belong to the future and old people belong to the past. It's just the other way around. All people in responsible positions create the future against the dreams of their children. Children are prehistorical. They are not in history. They are down below. They are on a level of a -- of playing with the past. And this is perhaps the most shocking thing to you.

But Mr. Thucydides knew this. If a Greek grew up without reading his history, he could assume that to go to the Olympic Games, or to ask for an oracle in Delphi, that was enough; that made you a Greek. He says, "People who haven't taken to heart the tragedy of the decisive conflict between Sparta and Athenian cannot in the future be called Greeks," you see. And this means that they have to face tragedy. Now who wants to face tragedy? You see, the Civil War came about because people couldn't face tragedy in time. And they could have. I mean, as you know, there was a proposition to indemnify the slave-owners. The -- the North was willing to pay two-third of the -- of the -- cost. And it is wasn't even debated in the South. You couldn't get the people to -- to anticipate, you see, to believe that the issue was -- was to be settled.

So most people live prehistorical. If I go around in Los Angeles, this is the ideal situation of a prehistorical humanity. You are all prehistorical except for your car, which reminds me that you are very modern indeed, and the smog. The smog is the history of Los Angeles, you see, and the people are the children. The -- you are all prehistorical. That is, you are far behind the decisions that would have had to be taken in the town against the smog long ago. And they're postponed, and postponed, and postponed; and things will have to get much worse before anything will be done against the smog. You know this, I mean. Now they say it's too expensive. And when the first corpses will lie in the streets from too much smog, then they have -- will have to do -- do something, of course. Nobody has yet died officially from smog, so nothing is done.

You can always say that before death is stalking in the room, people will daydream, and say "It isn't so bad." -- The Civil War, I mean. Before people were killed, you see, in a war, simply the -- there was no discussion possible, because people didn't -- think it was a vital issue. Vital is that -- something that entails death, gentlemen. Will you take this down? It's a good historical sentence. Now, the -- { } possession, vital issues are such that will not be faced before somebody has to die for them. That's a vital issue. And all the rest is bunk. And that's so -- when -- why history is so cruel. And that's why wars ha- -- have their way, because people will not believe the time in which -- at which they are living before the shots are fired. Before they say, "Oh, it isn't that bad." So they are out of history. They are out of the time stream.

And you have to decide it yourself. If you say children are -- these natural brats, these -- these ghastly people, the young, cruel, oblivious, reckless, ruthless -- children are not beautiful in themselves. That's nonsense. That's all sentimentality because it is very good for the modern adult to say that so that he can shift all the responsibility on the children. "They'll do it." They'll never do it, unless the -- old gives the example.

The old have to do the new things. The children? What do they do? A -- a girl plays with dolls. What are dolls? They are a reminder of old fashions and customs. You play wedding, and funeral, and -- and edu- -- and -- and school, and -- and birth. What do chil- -- boys play with? With soldiers, or with builder -- building stones, or with machinery that has already been invented. All children play with the old forms of life. They play themselves into life by using up the old historical forms. The oldest plays of the children are also the oldest institutions of mankind. A pawn -- have you ever -- you see, these pawn games. That's the old way in which justice was done. In the courts, that the party that sued had to put down a pawn so that the judge knew that he would comply, you see, that he wouldn't run away after the judgment. The parties had to give a -- an earnest of seriousness to the judge. That's the pawn which you -- you know these pawn games, with -- you still play it here in society? where everybody -- everybody puts in something into the common -- into the common -- ?

(Kitty.)

Wie?

(Kitty.)

Ja.

So children play with the past, and that's called "education." But the moment in which they take up a stand in society comes very late. In your life, it may never come, because you are employees. Employees are never asked to make a decision. And we have today a society where I have to tell you these things, because if people at the age of 50 and 60 are still just employees, they'll never grow up. They'll never make decisions. They always play another man's game. And therefore today we have--through spiritual means, through -- through deliberate teaching of the adult--to cover this lost ground. You have to recapture what industry denies you, by en- -- a tremendous effort to get into the -- your own time.

And this is what Thucydides feels the historian should do. Anybody who have read his book is now a Greek, because he has been able to live through tragedy. -- It's the same, as I told you before--I may repeat it, perhaps--that John Brown's Body, you see, was written by -- Vincent Stephen Ben‚t in the hope that anybody who reads it would live after the Civil War, you see, would -- would know that these sacrifices cannot be -- have been in vain. And -- there are two parties today in the world. The one who says, "The future comes about automatically by the newly born," and the other who knows that the future has to be wrestled from the resistance from this prehistorical dream world of the children

by grave decisions of the adult.

(Doesn't this all relate -- as an example of something which reinforces this, I was thinking of the film, "He Who Must Die." It's to me one of the most compelling films I've ever seen.)

Who has seen it? Only one. Well -- it's extraordinary. As you know, it's this Greek passion play. It's in the Egyptian Theater?

(No. It's the Sunset Theater, at Sunset and Western.)

It's an extraordinary play. You would oblige me if you would go there, because I think we could then really speak about what history is and what it isn't. It's a -- it's a great play. Have you seen it? It's unfortunate that such a great play--it's a French play on a Greek -- based on a Greek text--that such a -- such a thing should not go over big, I mean. I can't under- -- it's just so eccentric, you see, the mov- -- a foreign movie, and so it doesn't seem to hit the center, the bull ring. I'm sorry. It's an important movie.

And our friend Thucydides has done this. The funny thing is, I told you, that he has created this one period as a period in which the -- Greek mentality gels. And we take it -- this to be the mature Greece. And after all, the Age of Pericles to this day is there and we only owe it to histor- -- historian. So for you people who study history, I think it is an -- an incredible experience to see that here, a man who writes history simply changes the living picture of the past as it lives in every human being today. This is quite some achievement. Mr. Nehru, who certainly -- you see, a purely Eastern man in his Glimpses of World History, is still influenced by Thucydides. You wouldn't believe it, but in this -- this tremendous power, history writing has, you see, that he thinks -- Nehru thinks that the Age of Pericles -- is great -- great time. And he only knows anything about -- Pericles from this speech which Thucydides makes Pericles deliver here in -- where is this speech? Have you found it?

Ja. Who has read it, by the way?

(Everyone who's got the book.)

(Thucydides himself admits that at some of these speeches he wasn't present; but {that he writes} others' opinions of what was said. Now how do we -- how do we know that Thucydides was present when Pericles made -- I mean, at the funeral oration { }?)

Oh, you're quite right. The authenticity in the modern sense of source

research is most doubtful in all these respects. What I have, however, tried to make you able to believe--{perhaps you won't do}--is that the historian is the li- -- last tuning fork which revib- -- -verberates the events; that in him, they still work themselves up to such a pitch that he must witness to them. He is a witness of the events. Homer is the witness of the Trojan War {without which} the Trojan War cannot end. All human life has only been lived where it is told. This is the -- the essence of my -- disk, which perhaps for you it is very hard to get. You live in a scientific era so much that you think, "Here are the things," and then there is a science of these things, and books are written about it, you see, the history books; and they are just a -- apart as this is: event, and here's the book. And I can write the book, I cannot write the book, you see. Perhaps an historian or there are many historians who study this. But they are in some way of life here, and there is an event that is all closed and it has gone by.

My whole experience of history has been the other way around, that an important event also finds his -- its -- its singer, its herald, its historian. Its importance is measured by the greatness of the story that is told. That is, it is not arbitrary, you see. You live in this natural box. You see, here is -- natural man; and he can do as he pleases, with all the things he finds that may have gone on before.

I don't think we live that way. It is forced out of you. If there is a crime in your family, you have to bring it out in your genealogy, you see, if there is a mysterious story in your own {background}. The same is true of nations, and peoples, and humanity. A great event must become articulate. I always make this very simple point, which of course the modern sex -- sex { } do not understand that the difference between sex, and marriage, is that love wants to be declared. The declaration of love is -- is one phase of the love process. Sex doesn't want to be; it wants to be hidden. And that's why love is not sex, you see. Sex is a process in the physical realm. And it means that we are still separate and very unhappy, because in -- sex is not meant to be contained within the individual, but it is a bridge into the formation of social bodies. The declaration of -- of love is the step outside yourself, beyond yourself, in which you admit this. That's why you have to declare this love.

Therefore the declaration of love is a phase of love itself. Therefore it is not a description of love, you see, as a naturalistic process would have to be described by some onlooker. But it is me in the phase of declaring. And therefore love itself -- has this one phase of being declared. In the same sense, an event is only fully an event when it is declared, Sir. And the war is not fought before 70 years later it can be peacefully declared. And what we call "concluding peace" is nothing but the first word of this great song about the war. Because the -- we conclude peace so that we may lift this burden and begin to speak about it,

because in the war, we are not on speaking terms, Sir. You know that's the -- all the whole story of war.

Love and war are the two great events, after all, in the human -- in human history. And both have to be declared. War has to be declared and love has to be declared. And marriages have to be -- concluded, and peaces have to be concluded.

And there is a great place is Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressid, which I recommend to your attention, where Shakespeare, who is of course, our master in all these things, speaks of the "married peace of states." Where he -- instead of saying "the concluded," he says -- calls them "the married." And you could say -- say therefore instead of "marriage," you could say "concluded," you see. Love is concluded. That's marriage, you see. And peace is married. You can have this interchange, according to Shakespeare, just as I tried to -- to interchange here Jefferson and Marx.

And therefore, to me Thucydides, you see, is the man through whom the -- the Peloponnesian War could make peace in the hearts of the Spartans and Athenians, and all the other partisans of Greece, could unite them. They could agree on this one issue. And there -- I assure you, Sir, there will not be peace on this globe unless you can write -- somebody can write the history of these two world wars in such a way that the Russian, and the British, and the German, and the American will say, "That's it." And that's exactly what John Brown's Body is written about. The end of Vincent Stephen Ben‚t is "Don't argue. It's just there." Have you read it?

(Yes.)

You remember?

So Vincent Stephen Ben‚t would agree that he is part of the Civil War, the last. He is the concluding chapter. He concludes it, which had never been concluded, because the armistice of Appomattox was not the conclusion of a peace. The United States have an unfortunate habit, as a purely naturalistic nation, you see, of immigrants, to say that when the shooting stops, the event is over. You see, you haven't -- you see, this -- 1865, it has happened this way; it has happened with the Philippines; it has happened with Cuba -- you see just Fidel Castro now and his relation to the United States; it has happened with Germany twice. The American people think history has not to be told, not nec- -- "the event -- it is natural thing, the -- the -- the mute things speak for themselves." They don't. And { }.

And it is so boastful, you see. The -- the Indian wars. Everything in this country is only written like Parkman's History of the Missions, you see, written from one point of view. That's not history. That's still -- I wouldn't say "vainglorious boast," but it is -- it is not the history. Because the history must be accepted by the warring parties. The -- Thucydides is an historian, because the Spartans and the Athenians, after reading the story -- the Corinthians, the { }--everybody, you see--could say, "This is it."

(Is this how Ben‚t concludes the peace, as opposed to the end of the hostilities by the fact that { } its collective idea, that all sides saying, "This is it"?)

Ja. Haven't you read it?

(Yes.)

That's the last word. "It's just there," he says. I think that's the last line. Or "It's there."

He -- yet you could -- if you think of the procession in Thucydides, exactly the same terms, this. "There's lying something," you see, "in what you said." This is what Ben‚t -- where Ben‚t formulates it about the Civil War. "It's here, lying before you, I'm will enable you to pick it up and to -- to have it."

I think your generation has a tremendous task to fulfill in this country, to restore the power of the -- of the telling, of the -- of the saying of things. Is today not an angry generation, or a lost generation, or a beat generation? It is a generation that is destroying human speech for its proper purposes, you see. Go to the logical semanticists. Who has taken a course with them? They only know the indicatives. They never know the optative, or the subjunctive, or the imperative, you see. They think speech consists of saying, "This is a book. Let's then analyze." I told you -- tried to tell you this is not speech. For this purpose to say, "This is a book," or "2 and 2 is 4," speech would have never been invented. Speech has been invented to -- to get a group out of the grave into the future, to say, "He is dead," or "They are dead and we are alive," or "This is the future," "God is coming," or whatever you express it, I mean. And -- it is this decision which the historian made, because he says, "Some things must never be fought about again." You see, the Civil War cannot return; you will admit that. But three years ago, there was great prospect that in our Little Rock, the Civil War would get started again. This is -- I mean this. People had forgotten all about it. The governor of Virginia laughed and said, "After all, it still seems now that we have won the Civil War."

And -- this backsliding is -- is at this moment not yet quite overcome. I

think the young -- the young generation in -- in Virginia and -- and so has just grown up with so many different influences that they no longer understand their -- their old -- not quite.

There was a -- speech given by a -- by a student in Charleston about -- on the -- the -- saying to his elders that they had never lived in the solid South. They lived in the liquid South. But I think the solution has not been coming. I still think that the black man in the South has to get a senator in every one of the six -- seven states. We might have to be restricted to one senator. That would be justice. And I don't see any other solution. They'll never go together. Never. The white men -- they will die for the last -- white supremacy is such an item with them. It is not a question of segregation desecrated; it's white supremacy. It's the political -- they will not accept laws given by the black man in their legislature.

So I think the issue is absolutely irreconcilable. I don't believe in any gradual improvement there. But you have to take other steps to restore justice. This is -- you have to go -- you see, you just have to -- to think, "What is the right of a black man in a -- in a state in which he is denied the rights of citizenship?" That's the situation. And the sooner they think about this, I think, the better it is. They will not accept the testimony of a black man against a white man in court to this day. They just won't. You know this. I mean, you think of the Mississippi case, where everything was proven, and the man was acquitted. You remember? Who was the boy?

({ }.)

Terrible case. { } murder, man is acquitted. In no other country -- is this thinkable. It's a unique American institution.

So the funny thing is that Thucydides -- you say -- speak about these speeches, you see. To Thucydides the speeches are simply a way of saying how he has understood the history and the war. What he puts in the mouth of these speakers, you see, is the -- the -- instead of the bones, it's the -- it's the blood running through the -- the -- the deeds. He wouldn't argue with you -- your --. Your question, he wouldn't und- -- you see, he would not care. You think that the speech is a fact. But I tell you: the speech is that what -- what still rings in my--the historian's--ears, of the event. It's a little different relation, you see.

And believe one thing. The -- the -- today there are two worlds. The world of the scientist, who says, "Here are objects, and I speak about them. And God is an object, and I speak about God. And wars are topics, and I speak about this war. And the Athenians are a topic, you see, of conversation; I speak about the Athenians." But I have never believed this. As an historian and as a -- as a crea-

ture, I allow God to speak through me, and I allow the Athenians to speak through me. They make me speak. And the laws of this country makes me eloquent, you see. I want to protect them, and I am made to speak. And I am -- anybody who speaks about God is despicable. You cannot speak about God. And God is the power that makes you and me speak, Sir. That's a different story. We speak, because we must speak. We must testify, must we not?

And -- and all these modern definitions--for example, of God--are so ridiculous. God is not the maker of the universe. In the first place, everybody knows that there is a God, because He -- you speak to Him, and you listen to Him. And the power that makes us speak is the power that is the first in experience. And then we delve from this power that God makes us speak, that He's the spirit alive in you and me, that He also probably created the other things that do not speak. It's the other way around, you see. The -- the article of the Holy Spirit is the first article of experience. Everybody wants to speak. And a child wants to become eloquent, and he wants to convince his elders; and the historian wants to -- to make these dead sacrifices and victims speak so that they shall not have died in vain. "Lest we forget." You know the "Recessional" by Kipling, do you? Who knows the "Recessional" by Rudyard Kipling? You bring it next time. Rudyard Kipling, "Recessional."

So -- I -- I -- pardon me for becoming always so passionate about this, but I know I'm fighting a whole world of prejudice of the 19- -- of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment has built up this wall that we speak about things. And that's true of dead things. That's true of things who cannot speak. But people who have said something! If I speak of my marriage of my parents, I can only testify to their love by having listened to what they say to each other, and what they have told their children. And then I can understand that they once bef- -- long before my own days, they made love. It's the hardest thing for a child to understand, the pre-history of their -- the parents, you see. That's -- and that's what the historian has to do. He has to penetrate before the state which he takes for granted. Into this moment, you see, at which it was -- didn't exist. The great -- if a child can understand the -- the engagement period of his parents, he is an historian. Because he speaks of something, you see, on which his own existence very much depends indeed, you see, as having once not existed. And if you would have -- two people have the power to understand what brought your two parents together, you would have no problems of psychoanalysis, because your -- the problem of the unity of these -- these people would outweigh by far all the repressions and all your mother -- Oedipus complexes and so on, all this nonsense what they tell you today.

Why is that today? Why does the -- the psychoanalyst say you have to analyze the embryo for his traumas? Because they do not understand that the

historical problem before the -- child is to understand the history of his parents. So he puts it into the embryo -- nine months in the mother's womb, you see. What has to be done by deliberate spiritual effort of the child to understand how his two parents got together and to marry each other. That's the first historical task of every human being: to penetrate before his birth. But not before his birth into the sperm, and into the material something, you see. The hormones. That's all nonsense. Perverse.

And we live in this. Now everything has been perverted into material nature. What you have to hear is the word spoken, and the letters exchanged between your parents. That's why it is -- every family is very lucky where such letters have been preserved, because when you can read about the days of your grandparents in their own letters, you see, you live a life larger than you -- if you only treat yourself as an individual whose embryonic existence as a fish in your mother's womb has to be -- has to be analyzed by a hired -- a hired psychoanalyst. It's just -- but you live in this world today. That's why I have to tell you.

It seems to me -- all these people -- project, instead of dealing with the history of their parents, you see, they project themselves into -- into -- into geology, and into history of man for 500 million years backward; and they have all these fantasies.

I had to laugh. There is this boy -- this Japanese prince marrying this commoner. The pa- -- papers in Los Angeles, in a city with a university can afford to write, "The first time in 2,690 years that this happens." Now the whole Japanese empire only exists for {1500} years. The rest is all mythology. And typical of all mythological people, they always project and double the time that has elapsed. And this paper accepts on face value this Japanese myth that the -- that the history of Japan goes back to 660 B.C. There's not a word of truth in this. It's a natural projection of unpurified minds to double the time that has elapsed, you see, to make it more interesting. And it is much more difficult, you see, to read the history of the -- Peloponnesian War, of the Civil -- of the World War, too, at this moment, than to deal with -- with these geological times. If you read the read the history of -- World War II, you are shocked by the omissions. What we have not done, you see. And we are shocked by the bombs on Hiroshima, et cetera. But if you read the history of mankind, you see, of ape man in 400 million years before, you have no responsibility. You are {in nature}.

And this is what goes on, on this campus all the time, I feel, that the -- the -- the difficulty is to get the unfinished business before you. That's history. Yes. Can you understand it? The unfinished, the still-reverberating thing, that the harmony of which has not been yet caught by your ear. There are so many disharmonies still hanging, suspended over you, as you see, in the clouds, over

this country, that have not been harmonized. Unsolved, unconcluded peaces.

So the historian is the -- is the doctor, is the med- -- the healer of society, I assure you. He heals the conflicts by hearing them so ineradicably; still, you see, reverberating, that he has to speak of them. And by -- by speaking of them in such a way that -- that the whole makes itself heard, he -- he -- he makes the peace in his own day possible.

And then you understand then that for ancient historians, the speeches were his hearing device. By the speeches, he simply identified himself with the people who spoke at the time. Perhaps this -- this answers your question { }. Does it? Ja?

(Hm.)

There is not this division of: here is a man making a speech, and here is the historian. But in the speech, the historian tries to express what he has heard these men saying. And so he -- it's his own reverence for history that is expressed. He is not the master of his -- of his task there, you see. But he is submitting to this tremendous burden of the historical facts, that he can only solve -- relieve -- get relief if he makes these people speak through him. In this sense, it's -- you may say it's dramatic history, because he is the dramatist whose persons, you see, walk up to you and speak in their own tongue what they have to say.

This is -- now there are some elements about Thucydides. He -- how does he write this history? We talked about this. I mean, the -- the -- the funny fact distinguishing him from -- of course from modern historians is that he's a contemporary. Our friend -- my friend Page Smith, here, Professor Smith, is now publishing an article in which he proves that the best -- history of the colon- -- of the Revolution War was written by a contemporary. You have s- -- wie?

(He talked about it.)

Ja. Very exciting, you see, that even this law of Thucydidean history -- writing of history is true today. And -- there is no science of history, because there is no accumulation. Every -- generation has to be brought into this same commotion, and emotion, you see, and interest by a different means, because the more you are removed from a -- from an event, the difficult it is, of course, to prepare the ground in you, that you still see that it is vital, that you may have to go to war for it. Ja?

(Is it perhaps possible then that such a history as that of Winston Churchill would -- would stand as the contemporary history -- of World War II?)

Ja, you know, I'm an admirer of Winston Churchill as a statesman. I'm not an admirer of him as this -- having written this last history. If you want to know what Churchill can do in history, read his Marlborough. That's a great book, the history of the Duke of Marlborough. And that's of course -- there is -- his whole heart is there. He is, as you know, the younger son of the famous Churchill family, and this Duke of Marlborough was the target of much abuse by the -- by the Whig history -- -torians in Great Britain, Macaulay hated -- hated Marlborough. And Churchill simply obviously was intrigued by the task of rescuing this really very wicked ancestor. And I feel that's a great book, that he has written a very beautiful book about his own youth, A Roving Commission. Has somebody read this book? He wrote it in a chasm of deep despair when there seemed to be absolutely no future for himself in 1931. A Roving Commission. That's an autobiography.

Now I invite you to read these books to show what a -- what refinement and subtlety he had at that time. I mean, simply -- English writing and in -- in -- in humanity. These are like murals, you know, frescoes, these new books. And -- I -- I think his -- his -- his shortcoming is his lack of identity of the -- with the rest of the human race outside the British empire is -- is most galling. And -- he -- the man is absolutely divided, you see. He's the -- on the one-hand side, he's -- he's really down on everybody who is not an Englishman. And the other hand, he's enough of an American--after all, he's half-American, you see--to -- to know better. And he has this other, this all-human ring. But I think in these last books, the -- the recon- -- the peace is not established between his two natures.

And this is -- frankly to say that I'm -- I'm -- I -- I have not -- I feel that he has done better -- better history writing. In his great moments of defeat in his life, he has reconquered himself by saying, "Well, if I cannot make people listen to me, I'll make them listen to the great voice of history." And -- and he has.

(Well, I was just grasping for some instance to illustrate the principle that perhaps the best history writing is by contemporaries.)

Ja. Well --.

(But if not Churchill, whom might we look to for the history of World W- -- of the world wars, or at least of World War II?)

Well, I highly recommend the first volume of de Gaulle. Is -- has that been translated into English? Of course, I read it in French, but it -- I think it has come out in English. That's a -- it's a won- -- it's very fascinating, de Gaulle's memoirs of war.

(Yes, they're in English.)

(When was Crusade in Europe written?)

(1948.)

Wie?

(Crusade in Europe, he said.)

Ja. It's not a bad book. But it's not a good book, either. I'm told that he didn't write it. And I hate ghostwritten books { }. I mean, if somebody else writes it, his -- this name should appear in it, you see. It just isn't right.

It's all -- have you read it?

(No. I haven't. I was just wondering if it was written during the war or after it?)

Oh, after. There are very nice pieces in it.

(He has the feeling of the Russians' side { }.)

Oh ja. Oh ja. Oh ja. No. He's at his best in the book. I -- have to admit that.

No. All I want to say is that it's a very -- a story of Mr. Eisenhower's role in the war, but it isn't really the story of the World War. He -- he doesn't have...

(Doesn't he try to justify a lot of the things he had done { }?)

Ja, quite. So it isn't Crusade in Europe, it -- is Mr. Eisenhower's part in the crusade in Europe. That's really -- it's a -- it's a modest book, an agreeable book. But it hasn't this reconciliatory effect that after you have read it, you are glad the thing was done, and -- and has come to an end. I mean, it isn't this -- has nothing of the -- of the fate knocking at the door, of -- you know. No -- you don't feel that--despite of -- the title--you are not taken into the confidence of the great powers of darkness and light who are fighting in this -- in this incredible conflagration. You -- you don't understand anything about the issues. The -- the future -- is nothing.

(Well, in any case, there are -- there are still many contemporaries who are at work writing history. So that perhaps we may see yet a contemporary history

produced.)

Ja, but -- oh, not "but" -- only let me add this one thing. We mustn't be impatient. I think it wouldn't be surprising if it would take two generations before the ma- -- this one song of humanity can be sung, because the task is so new that the whole world has gone to war. And suddenly we had to go twice, because people didn't even understand what had happened then the first time. Certainly this country hadn't understood it; the Germans hadn't understood it; the British, you see. Everybody was still thinking that it was the -- the continuation of their own national destiny. Now we know -- or I think some people know that it was the end of all independence, you see. And that this interdependence is -- is really with us.

Therefore, you cannot wonder that it will take a singer who is already wakening up with this lightning, you see, inside of the interdependency, who has not gradually to be convinced of this, as all these people have. And Churchill hasn't. Churchill has been backsliding, I think, be- -- before, in his writing, before the war. He's a -- he is -- and I do think the man had to do so much to -- to digest his American mother, and to become purely Eng- -- well, as you understand, the problem being, after all, for the leading Amer- -- English statesman to make the people feel that he was not American, you see, was -- and -- that I think the -- he had always to narrow his comprehensiveness into the English pattern, by an effort. You see, he had to remain British when, perhaps by his background, he had already the wider conception of a -- you see, of an intercontinental missile -- mission.

And -- and therefore, we need a man who comes, quite the contrary, from {this} { } -- you see, limited --. And unfolds, without this fear of -- after all, from 18- --when was he born? 1880 is it? 1878--in the times of the darkest nationalism, he goes to the Indian service. He goes to Egypt. Everywhere it's the British empire in which he wants to prove himself. His father was Randolph Churchill, as you know, one of the most unhappy, and most ingenious statesmen of Great Britain. And he has Miss Jerome for his mother. And his mother, as you know, behaved really very much like an American. As soon as the father died, she married a young journalist, 10 years her younger--which -- typically of an American lady--and -- and disappears from the scene. And he's without any family background. And poor -- they're -- also are the Churchills, you see, this branch. They have nothing to do with the Duke of Marlborough family, and their fortunes. And was -- he was very lucky. He married this wonderful person. This -- his wife of course was his great bliss. But he must make the Amer- -- English public always forget his mother, and that he may have some loyalties with this country, you see.

So he can't be jingoistic enough, you see. That's why Indian service, you see. And Sou- -- he goes to the South African war, as a war correspondent; he's nearly shot dead there. Every scene of a -- Great Brit- -- the British empire, you see, is for him, because he must, so to speak, stake out his claim to be contained within the British empire. Can you see this? This is his -- driving force of his life.

Ja.

Would somebody -- in the college library, there is a book by Polybius, that's the -- the second historian of rank in antiquity. He lived from 201 B.C. to 120--this is estimated; we don't know for sure, but it must be about right--201 B.C. to 120 B.C. And in his 30 -- let me give you the exact place--is the college library a standing library or is -- a lending library? What is Col- -- in the catalog it says "College Library."

(That's the undergraduate library.)

(You can borrow from --.)

Wie?

(One week only.)

Well, so you won't take it out. But -- is it available? I mean, can you go and -- to the stack -- shelves?

(Yes.)

Well, there is this man, Polybius. Loeb edition. In six volumes. As you know, there is the Greek and the English text. And I want you to read up the fragments of the -- 39th book. There are only a few fragments left. And the last is -- the whole history in 40 volumes. And this fragment of the 39th volume I want you to read. Then you will see what speeches have to do with history, because it's a great -- it is the strange thing. And in my own life, it has played quite a role in this country. So you -- I think it makes it even more interesting. It's called -- "Fragment on Scipio When He Conquers" -- can -- you can't miss it: "Fragment on Scipio When He Conquers Carthage in 146." The 39th book deals with this. It's a very short paragraph, but every one of you kindly will read this.

And you will find it in Loeb -- in the sixth volume, I suppose. This is the little -- these little B„nd- -- volumes, and -- and it's in -- I think in the last volume. And don't take it out, but allow every one -- member here of the seminar to read it on the -- on the spot, there. It's so short. It's one page. But I think this -- I even

recommend highly that you copy it, verbatim. Every one of you. It deserves it. Then I'll tell you the story which has played in this country after the Second World War.

So I'll make a real effort not to talk so much next time.