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

...storytelling, so to speak. Now that would be the first thing that the histori- -- philosopher is the judge of the historian. And I think you first -- what I read --.

(You yourself are a philosopher of history, aren't you?)

-- Well, I'm very willing to tell you this, yes. This is very {astute.}

(Hegel and Spengler are {the others}.)

I hope I'm not. I hope I'm just telling -- trying to tell history. And I'm tell- -- trying to tell you what historians do. It's not the same, you see, as judging the -- the histories told, you see, for the systematic meaning and the order of things. Well, we'll come to this. Ja, I'm glad you asked this question, { }. $64,000 question; only nobody pays me the $64,000.

Here, we have to read { }. Here. Perhaps you begin to read this. This is Mr. Collingwood who is dead by now. Was an English philosopher. And never dawned on him that he was involved in history himself, that he was a part of the history. He's a true philosopher of history. There's no doubt about it, that he tries to judge what his- -- what historians do. And -- and from what he--well, I suppose--called a "philosophical point of view"--whatever that may be--outside the -- not only the history, but even in the business of history writing. He's neither in the field of historians, nor is he engag‚, as people today say in existential philosophy, himself as the victim, or object, or member of the -- of the stor- -- story that's going on.

Ja.

("Greek Conception of History's Nature and Value.

"The ardor [ar-DOR] with which the Greeks..."

Ardor [AR-dor]. Not ar-DOR.

"...ardor with which the Greeks pursued the ideal of an unchanging and eternal object of knowledge might easily mislead us as to their historical interests. It might, if we read them care- -- carelessly, make us think them uninterested in history, somewhat as Plato's attack on the poets might make an unintelligent reader fancy that Plato cared little for poetry. In order to interpret such things correctly, we must remember that no competent thinker or

writer wastes his time attacking a man of straw. An intense polemic -- polemic against a certain doctrine is an infallible sign that the doctrine in question figures largely in the writer's environment, and even has a strong attraction for himself.

("The Greek pursuit of the eternal was as eager as it was, precisely because the Greeks themselves had an unusually vivid sense of the temporal. They lived in a time when history was moving with extraordinary rapidity, and in a country where earthquake and erosion changed the face of the land with a violence hardly to be seen elsewhere. They saw all nature as a spectacle of incessant change, and human life as changing more violently than anything else. Unlike the Chinese, or the medieval civilization of Europe, whose conception of human society was anchored in the hope of retaining the chief features of a structure unchanged, they made it their first aim to base and reconcile themselves to the fact that such permanence is impossible.

("This recognition of the necessity of change in human affairs gave to the Greeks a peculiar senstivit- -- -ness to history. Knowing that nothing in life can persist unchanged, they came habitually to ask themselves what exactly the changes had been which they knew must have come about in order to bring the present into existence. Their historical consciousness was thus not a consciousness of age-long tradition molding the life of one generation after another into a uniform pattern. It was a consciousness of violent, catastrophic changes from one state of things to its opposite: from smallness to greatness, from pride to abasement, from happiness to misery.

("This was how they interpreted the general character of human life in their dramas. And this was how they narrated the particular parts of it in their {history}. The only thing that a shrewd and critical Greek like Herodotus would say about the divine power that ordains the course of history is that it is --."

{ }. It is envious, and it is mischief-making, noise-making, or { } -- confusion-making.

(The Greek is --.)

{ }, wie?

({ } Greek words?)

Greek words. { }. { } is the -- important word, it's the envy of the gods, that the gods cannot see perfect happiness among mortals without disturbing it. Probably you know the story that Herodotus tells on this account; it's an important one, and always quoted { }. Polycrates of Samos, was in perfect bliss, and he received the visit of the Egyptian king. And the king said to him,

"My dear Polycrates, the gods have done too much for you. They will be envious. Do something to reconcile them to your bliss."

And Polycrates was quite willing to listen to reason. And so he took his -- the ring on his finger, which he prized very highly, and which the -- was the symbol of his statescraft--I mean, he sealed his laws with this ring--and threw it into the sea.

And while the king of Egypt was still with him, the next day, a fisherman brought a fish, and the fish had in his -- had in his mouth this ring, and so the -- king recovered the precious ring. Whereupon the king of Egypt took his departure in great haste and said -- "The -- the gods had not received your sacrifice, and therefore you are doomed. I will have nothing to do with you."

And a few -- short time later Polycrates was besieged, and deposed, and died in misery.

So this -- this is the envy of the gods. And it goes through all Greek tragedy, and is quite serious, I mean. There is a castle on the Mosel River in Germany, built by a very rich banker. He had a wonderful wife; and he was very wealthy; and was healthy, and everything went well. And one day, his Dutch friend, friend of the firm, eloped with this wife. And so this man had the great courage, the -- the -- the bereaved one, the one's -- whose wife had gone away from him. And you can read to this day, on the -- above the entrance to the castle of Cochem, on the Mosel River--it's one of the most beautiful places in Ger- -- in Ber- -- Europe--{"Begehre nie"} -- who know- -- does anybody know German? No, it makes no sense then to quote it in German first--"Never ask for too great a fortune or for too beautiful a wife, because the heavens might concede you your wish for your punishment."

So you should never ask, you see, too great a bliss, because in their wrath, they might -- they might concede it to you and then you lose it.

So that's quite bold. Certainly it doesn't go with the modern American tycoon's idea of -- of tumbling from one place in Reno into another place in Mexico City. But this country, of course, doesn't know what tragedy is. It's not admitted in America that there is real tragedy. But this man, this Herr vom Rath in -- in -- in Germany, had the -- had the courage to -- like Polycrates, to know that if you come under God's judgment, it is -- without remitment. It is -- there is no remission, easily. So that's the envy of the gods. Go on.

("He was only repeating what every Greek knew: that the power of Zeus was manifested in the thunderbolt, that of Poseidon in the earthquake, that of Apollo in the pestilence, and that of --

and that of Aphro- -- Aphrodite in the passion that destroyed at once the pride of Phaedra and the chastity of Hippo- -- Hippolytus.

"It is true that these catastrophic changes...")

These are all, of course, dramas, I mean, Hippolytus and {Phaedra} { }. Who has read PhŠdre, at least, by Racine?

("It is true that these catastrophic changes in the condition of human life, which to the Greeks were the proper theme of history, were unintel- -- -telligible. There could be no --.")

Knowledge. Knowledge. { } "knowledge."

("There could be no knowledge of them, no demonstrative, scientific knowledge. But all the same, history had for the Greeks a definite value. Plato himself played it down, that right opinion--which is a sort of pseudo-knowledge that perception gives us of what changes--was no less useful for the conduct of life than scientific knowledge, and the poets maintained their traditional place in Greek life as the teachers of sound principles, by showing that in the general pattern of these changes, certain antecedents normally led to the -- to certain consequence. Notably, an excess in any one direction led to a violent change into its own opposite. Why this was so, they could not tell. But they thought it a matter of observation that it was so, that people who became extremely rich or extremely powerful were thereby brought into special danger of being reduced to a condition of extreme poverty or weakness.

("There is here no theory of causation. The thought does not resemble that of 17th-century inductive science, with its metaphysical basis in the axiom of cause and effect. The riches of Croesus are not the cause of his downfall. They are merely a symptom to the intelligent observer that something is happening in the rhythm of his life, which is likely to lead to a downfall.

("Still less is the downfall a punishment for anything that in an intelligible, moral sense could be called wrongdoing. When Ama- -- Amasis in Herodotus broke off his allegiance...")

That is the king of Egypt.

("...broke off alliance with Poly- ...")

Polycrates.

("Polycrates, he did it...")

It was the ring, you see.

("...he did it simply on the grounds that Polycrates was too prosperous. The pendulum had swung too far one way and was -- likely to swing as far in the other.

("Such examples have their value to the person who can make use of them, for he can use his own will to arrest these rhythms in his life before they reach the danger point; and check the thirst for power and wealth, instead of allowing them to drag him to excess.

("Thus history has a value. Its teachings are useful for human life, simply because the rhythm of its changes is likely to repeat itself. Similar antecedents leading to similar consequence. The history of notable events is worth remembering in order to serve as a basis...")

Now listen well. This is all really what people today call "philosophy."

("The history...")

I'm -- I have -- to tell you the truth. I think it's all awful what this man does. Ja. Go on.

("The history of notable events is worth remembering in order to serve as a basis for prognostic judgment--not demonstrable, but probable--laying down not what will happen, but what is likely to happen, indicating the points of danger in rhythms now going on.

("This conception of history was the very opposite of deterministic. But the Greeks regarded the course of history as flexible and open to salutary modification by the well-instructed human will. Nothing that happens is inevitable. The person who is -- the person who is about to be involved in a tragedy is actually overwhelmed by it, only because he is too blind to see his danger. If he saw it, he could guard against it.

("Thus the Greeks had a lively--and indeed, a na‹ve--sense of the power of man to control his own destiny, and thought of his power...")

The na‹vet‚ is all on the side of Mr. Collingwood, who has the idea that he can control {his story}. It's just in of -- but this is the modern stuff that you get, you see. I'm just reading a book by a lady, which is real desert: The Martyr Complex in American History. This lady has the effrontery to -- to look down on the martyr complex of all the people who have made this country great. And she

of course, who will never be a martyr and never make a sacrifice, now writes a book, The Martyr Complex. And this is what happens among you people. I mean, the -- destruction of the -- of the tissue between -- the relationship between the people whom we owe our existence--the soldiers and the martyrs--and ourselves has reached the point where these people -- at their desk, who -- costs nothing to -- to sit in judgment, laugh at these martyrs and say they have a martyr complex. So they say, "Jesus committed suicide," you see, and "St. Stephen then has a martyr complex."

This is what we have reached. And this is the same superciliousness, you see. Here he says, "na‹vet‚." What does he know what na‹vet‚ is? He is na‹ve in his -- in -- at his desk, thinking that he is outside of history. The intellectuals in this -- in the Anglo-Saxon world all deserve to be -- to be hanged. The most destructive class of people I know. If I had -- something to say, I would close all the universities -- at once. Because they detach man -- the human society from -- from -- their victims and -- the people who make the sacrifices. Give me any soldier or sailor, any man as compared to a Ph.D.

(You're an Anglo-Saxon intellectual.)

I'm not. I'm a German intellectual. We at least knew that we had to stand upright for what we thought, that you have -- had to fight. This at least is the -- is the -- since Luther the tradition of a Protestant, that their -- their protest engaged -- involved you, you see, that we were part and parcel of the historical spectacle in -- in putting down what we thought. That it was risky. That we were just part of the story. This is -- at least, you see, was not forgotten. This comes of course from the fact that the professors in Germany made the Reformation, you see. Whereas in -- in England, they were cowards in Oxford and Cambridge, and did not protest. And followed Henry VIII.

(Doesn't claiming distinctness from Anglo-Saxon heritage or -- or claiming distinctness in German professorship put yourself outside the brotherhood of intellectuals -- brotherhood of --?)

I'm -- certainly do not belong -- do not want -- my -- my next door farmer certainly is closer to my heart, or a member of my congregation than the next { } professor. Should -- because I -- I -- cowards. They don't know what they do. They don't know that they are responsible for what they are saying. -- This is just -- a fact, you see. -- A missionary in -- in England has the faith of a professor in Germany, so to -- so to speak. A missionary -- is he not committed? He goes to India, I mean -- that's how the British Commonwealth has been built up, how the Pilgrim Fathers founded this country, you see. That's the spirit. With -- those people, I feel at peace. You understand?

(Yes.)

Who -- who knows? May -- we are all benighted here. Or {may be}. But at least we are willing to stand by our word and say, "I said it. Quote me on this," you see. Where I find the academic professionals here -- profession constantly telling me, "Don't quote me on this."

Pardon me for being quite frank, but you -- you -- this is a terrible situation in which I find myself, that I -- I'm find much -- myself. -- In my own town, you see, when the -- when the central school system was built, and the district schools were given up--which I think are in the -- the center of American democracy, that the children are educated not in big military institutions and { }, so to speak, you see, but in -- in -- at the place of where they -- where they live. The farmers came to me and -- and -- to defend them against this inroad of the intellectuals in our town. So I mean, I have even -- practically, you see, I was a lonely wolf on the side of the farmers to try to stave off this -- this orgy of modern education.

You see, that -- that to teach is not to be outside life, you see, looking at it, and talking about it. But it's a part of the -- of the -- of the process of letting the spirit run through the generations. This is here -- lost with this idea of objectivity, you see, that you only teach objective, let the people -- child themselves pick and choose. Whatever I bring before a child for this, I am -- remain responsible. Nothing will -- the -- the fiction that the child then chooses and makes a decision, you see, is all ridiculous. But today the program is that you -- you choose your courses. The 12-year-old chooses h- -- his courses. The 10-year-old girl says whether she wants to take science or mathematics. How can she? You see, it's all fiction, this free-will idea, you see. Practically, by psychological tricks, they bring this -- this little donkey, so that he -- the child -- still can only choose between cabbage and asparagus, after all, I mean, and artichokes. I mean, the things that are offered in the school are very limited.

Now it appears that the child chooses this, between three items after all, which confine the selection to very definite issues. Wouldn't it be much better if the teacher would say, "This is the in- -- heritage which every child has to -- has to receive, and -- imperatively so," you see? Dictatorially so. Why don- -- why don't we protect children from -- from their own nonsense? If they -- they cannot know what it is -- it means, you see. So we allow them to drop out of any such chosen subject, as you know, after a year. So they are the most unhappy people on earth, because nothing really enters them seriously, you see. They have {lifted} everything -- a little bit, you see, and never learned anything really. And this is called "education" in this country.

Where is your language? What -- what -- which foreign language do you --?

(French.)

Do you read it?

(No.)

Now, I mean.

(Not outside the textbook, no.)

Wie?

(Not outside of the textbook.)

So it's perfectly meaningless. As long as you do not subscribe to a French journal, or read French literature, voluntarily weekly, is the whole language requirement should fall whole. It's already -- it's all fictitious. That's one great item of waste. Meanwhile, because the teacher will not stand up and say, "This is necessary," you see. They will not take the responsibility of fighting for it.

Now, let's come on.

("Thus the Greeks had a lively and indeed a na‹ve sense of the power of man to control his own destiny, and thought...")

Don't you think Mr. Collingwood has the same na‹vet‚? He is even control- -- wanting to -- control the destiny of historians. This whole na‹vet‚, you see, which--like this lady with the martyr complex book, see--she thinks the martyr is na‹ve. And she -- doesn't know how na‹ve she is to believe that we can live without other people protecting our -- us with the investment of their lives, and this fortitude.

Whenever you read from an academic person the -- the term "na‹vet‚," turn around and look at him, and see how na‹ve he or she is. Any primitive person -- people are certainly less na‹ve -- know more the tragedy of life--than the people I meet in -- on this campus. And we call the primitives "na‹ve," and they know how tragic their life is. They know that -- what blood guilt is, they know what -- what -- what warfare is, what vendetta is, you see, et cetera. So these -- the -- I've never seen a -- a chieftain of an Indian tribe, and I have seen

some -- to be na‹ve. They are terribly -- they know exactly that every good thing costs its price. But we live in a fools' paradise -- we think we can have something for nothing, on the installment plan. And the credit card has never to be paid. The fools' paradise is with our -- is here. This is the -- na‹ve society.

Come on.

("Thus the Greeks had a lively, and indeed a na‹ve sense of the power of man to control his own destiny, and thought of this power as limited only by the limitations of his knowledge. The fate that broods over human-...")

Don't you think that's just what modern man in Hollywood thinks? Only limited by the -- limitations of his knowledge. Or don't -- don't we control nature? And don't we think that's all we have to do?

Ja.

("The fate that broods over human life is from this Greek point of view, a destructive power only because man is blind to its workings. Granted, that he cannot understand these workings, he can yet have right opinions about them, and insofar as he acquires such opinions, he becomes able to put himself in a position where the blows of fate will miss him. On the other hand, valuable as the teachings of history are, their value is limited by the unintelligibility of its subject matter. And that is why Aristotle says that poetry is more scientific than history, for history is a mere collection of empirical facts, whereas poetry extracts from such facts a universal judgment.

("History tells us that Croesus fell, and that -- Poly- -- Polycra- --?")

No, you bring it out yourself. I want first to hear you say it.

("Polycrates.")

Yes.

("Now, poetry, according to Aristotle's idea of it, makes not a singular judgment, but the universal judgment that very rich men, as such, fall. Even this is in Aristotl- -- Aristotle's view, only a partially scientific judgment, for no one can see why rich men should fall. The universal cannot be so di- -- strictly demonstrated, but it approaches the status of a true universal, because we can use it as a major premise for a new { }, applying these generalizations to fresh cases. Thus poetry is for Aristotle the distilled essence of the teaching of history. In poetry, the lessons of history do not become

any more intelligible. And they remain undemonstrated and therefore merely probable. But they become more compen- -- compendious and therefore more useful. Such were...")

What is "compendious." Do you know what it means? What is a compendium?

(A collection?)

Wie?

(A gathering-together, a collection?)

Yes, but a compressed collection. "Compendium" is an abbreviated, a short, or condensed form. That's what we mean by "compendium." "Compendious" means condensed, really.

("Such was the way in which the Greeks conceived the nature and value of history. They could not, consistently with their general philosophical attitude, regard it as scientific. They had to consider it as, at bottom, not a science, but a mere aggregate of perception. What, then, was their conception of historical evidence?

("The answer is that, conformly with his view, they identified historical evidence with the reports of facts given by eyewitnesses of those facts. Evidence consists of eyewitnesses, nar- -- narratives; and historical method consists of elic- -- eliciting them -- these."

(You want me to go on?)

I think we -- we have -- unfortunately. I wish we did -- wouldn't have to. But in order to do justice to this gentleman, you will have to read two more pa- -- pages, yes.

("Greek Historical Method and Its Limitations.")

And I grant you, if you follow--kindly pay attention to this--I think in we penetrate really into the strange relation in the last --. Since Mr. D‚scartes, many unfortunate things have happened to history. And -- this is all Cartesianism, you see, run am- -- running amok. And therefore, I think you have a good example of what philosophers make of history.

("Quite clearly, it was in this way that Herodotus conceived of evidence and method. This does not mean that he uncritically

believed whatever eyewitnesses told him. On the contrary, he is in practice highly critical of their narratives. And here again, he is typically Greek. The Greeks as a whole were skilled in the practice of the law courts. And a Greek would find no difficulty in applying to historical testimony the same kind of criticism, which he was accustomed to direct upon witnesses in court.

("The work of Herodotus or Thucydides depends in the main on the testimony of eyewitnesses with whom the historian had personal contact. And his skill as a researcher consisted in the fact that he must have cross-questioned an eyewitness on past events until he had called up in the informant's own mind an historical picture of those events far fuller and more coherent than any he could have volunteered for himself. The result of this process was to create in the informant's mind for the first time a genuine knowledge of the past events which he had perceived, but which, up till then, he had...")

"Opinion only."

("...opinion only, not --.")

"Knowledge."

("...not knowledge.

("This conception of the way in which a Greek historian collected his material makes it a very different thing from the way in which a modern historian may use printed memoirs. Instead of easygoing belief on the informant's part, that his prima facie collection was adequate to the facts, there could grow up in his mind a chastened and criticized col- -- recollection which has stood the fire of such questions as, 'Are you quite sure that you remember it just like that? Have you not now contradicted what you were saying yesterday? How do you reconcile your account of that event with the very different account given by So-and-So?'

("This method of using the testimony of eyewitnesses is undoubtedly the method which underlies the extraordinary solidity and consistency of the narrative which Herodotus and Thucydides finally wrote about 5th-century Greece. No other method deserving the name 'scientific' was available to the 5th-century historian. But it had three limitations. First, it inevitably imposed on its users a shortness of historical perspective. The modern historian knows that if only he had the capacity, he could become the interpreter of the whole past of mankind. But whatever Greek historians might have thought of Plato's description of the philosopher as the spectator of all time, they would never have ventured to claim Plato's words as a description of themselves. Their method tied them on a tether whose length was the length of living memory. The only...")

Ah, here we now come to the first so {-- wealthy} word. Perhaps you take this down.

"That whatever Greek historians might have thought of Plato's description of the philosopher as a spectator as that of all time, they would never have ventured to claim Plato's words as a description of themselves. Their method tied them"--funny, again, condescendingly expressed, quite wrongly, I think--"their method tied them on a tether whose length was the length of living memory."

That's all we need. Here we can stop. This is the only word of truth in the whole -- on these whole pages.

Historians continue living memory, Number 1 -- Sentence -- Thesis -- Number 1. They continue living memory, what the -- the people at the -- after the battle of Gettysburg told what the president wrote in his dispatch, what he mentioned in his speech, is then continued by the historian who gathers together all these people's living memories and tries to -- to cure them from their contradictions. So historians are doctors of human memory. They are the -- the physicians who try to cure contradictory memories. And the highest aim of an historian, as you can see from this--as in the case of Thucydides--is to reconcile the Corinthian, and the Spartan, and the Athenian memory of the war, so that they can all recognize that he -- he is right in -- in building up, in enlarging their memory to the complete picture.

So if you will understand the writing of history as a -- the curing the conflicts of living memory, you have the function of the historian in -- for any group, and for any warring number of groups. Conflicts of memory--as we know now from psychology only too well--constitute a trauma. Therefore humanity needs an office for confu- -- procuring the traumas of conflicting memories. So when the Americans and the English go to war in 1812, it is absolutely necessary that after 20 years, people begin to cure -- to make peace. So that -- they do this by writing the history in such a way so that both sides can agree that this is the history of the War of 1812. And as soon as such a history reaches this point of agreement between the warring parties, the war is over. And not before. That is, all war -- peaces are the continuation of war, until peace is concluded. And the great act of peace is not the treaty, but the great act is a tradition which unites both people. Today the independence of America can well be understood by the English, because their whole commonwealth has been saved by this experience, as you know. And they gave dominion status to Canada, and to the -- and thereby saved their commonwealth. They would have never learned this lesson probably without the American independence.

Therefore today, after a hundred and yea- -- a hundred years, it is possible to write this history of the Revolution War in such a way that this -- Englishman and an American can agree. That takes time. And that is what historians do. And on this they are working all the time. So they are inside so- -- in a society just as much as a doctor is with a baby, you see. There is an illness, and without illness, the human mind is never going to work. We only become conscious when something is wrong. When we go happy-go-lucky, we live unconsciously. All the parts of our nature which are in order escape consciousness. The whole idea that consciousness is a bliss is nonsense. Consciousness is a necessity. We have to focus attention on these points of life where there is a handicap, where there is a -- a frustration, where there is a block. If you want to open a door, and it doesn't open automatically by radar, you see, w- -- when you go in it--the famous eye--you -- you have to -- of course to do something to open this door, you see. So you have to become very conscious that this door doesn't open. The same is with the street light. As long as the lights are green, you just automatically drive along. You get this block of red, you have to become conscious. Now I have to stop. And if you dream, or -- listen to the radio while you are in the car and overlook this red sign, you see, then the lack of consciousness is -- is hurtful.

Again, the na‹vet‚ of the modern academic mind seems to me to be -- to think that we -- are expected to be conscious, and become more conscious, so to speak, that at the -- when we die, we are all consciousness. And this is all nonsense.

Consciousness is only used -- necessary where there is conflict. We need consciousness to focus attention. That's what pain, for example, does. It makes us conscious of that part of our body for which we have to go to the doctor. You see, as long as we have no pain, {be} not conscious of your health.

Consciousness is always the compulsion to look in a specific direction, to do something to remove an obstacle. Now between peoples -- the conflict of memories are a serious {business}. As long as the South -- the Southern white and the Southern black man look at the Civil War, it -- with different eyes, they'll never agree. There can't be peace. And that's the story, of course, to this day in the South, that the history which the black man in the South and the white man, you see, can -- can, so to speak, agree upon, hasn't been written. It's -- John Brown's Body is the attempt by -- Stephen Ben‚t to do just this. But I think he has not overcome, of course, the illiteracy of the black man in the South. That is, the black man just doesn't read -- Vincent Stephen Ben‚t's book, you see. If it would be recited publicly, if we had such an institution, you see, where people who do not read books still listen to -- to Homer, so to speak, to our Homer, I think John Brown's Body by Vincent Stephen Ben‚t could serve the purpose, because it was certainly written with this great devotion to curing suffering

memory.

This is -- see, that's why I think that the real historian of our era in this country is -- Vincent Stephen Ben‚t. And that it is put in poetic form, that must not faze you at all. I mean, that's all nonsense. How do we know in which form a -- a future book has to be written? The style of a book changes constantly. And do not be betrayed because one book is prose, and you say, "That's history," and the other is in verse, and then it isn't. If you want to achieve your end, any form that will achieve this end is -- you see, is the right form. And obviously for certain, I think for history, the poetical form -- the epical form is certainly much more adequate than the prosaic form.

Again, there is -- we are full of prejudice. If since history must be made into a science today, you see, therefore even the form must be as stultifying as this ridiculous scientific prose which people write today and think is the only way in which you can express truth.

The -- the historian is then the -- the physician or a healing process in society. He himself enters the process like pus enters a wound. The -- the -- the white blood corpuscles, you see, hurry to a place where there is an infection, and where the body has to become conscious of -- something has to be done. And that's where historians should hurry, where there are conflicting memories.

They go to this place. I will not even uphold that they are doctors. I -- I don't think that I am outside society when I write the history of a conflicting -- of conflict. But I am probably one of these blood corpuscles at this moment, you see. I'm very much inclined to -- to accuse my sociological and historical confrŠres of megalomania when they think we -- that we are the doctors of society. I am not a doctor of society because I am inside society in the body politic, and so I cannot be the doctor who would be -- outside, you see. So -- but there are physiological processes of healing in a body, you see. And I think the historian is one of these -- these viruses or healing processes, you see, and -- and goes to the spot where the conflict is, and tries to add that amount of unity which limits the -- the conflict first, and allows the whole body to live beyond it, like a scar that is healing, you see.

And -- so Mr. Collingwood admits this, but he -- admits it as a negative thing. He says, "It {tied} them on a tether whose length was the length of living memory." Now I would say that this -- strange expression, "tied them to the tether of living memory" is just -- their honor. As a doctor is not a zoologist, but is called in because a patient cries in pain and says, "Doctor, help me," so I feel this tether of living memory is -- just the honor of the -- of the physician, you see, of the -- of -- of -- in history.

This is the first thing I -- I would like you to understand, that the relation of an historian to the society inside which he moves is one of pain and healing, of -- softening suffering. And therefore, his relation to his patient, when he bends over the body politic of a bleeding country and tries to comfort the members of this community, or to encourage them, or to explain to them, or whatever you -- enlighten them about their own past, is a service which connects him much more closely to this body politic than to his so-called colleagues in -- in the history department. Any historian then is more closely related -- he's an excrescence, he is an organ of the body politic, and not of schools.

So once you transfer the place of the historian from the schools, organized departments of knowledge, you see, to his response--as in -- in Ben‚t's case, you see, who was not appointed for history, but became the historian of the Civil War--in this sense, we are all self-appointed when we listen to the cry of an emergency, you see, to an SOS and go there. It isn't the police who has to rescue a -- a -- a man from a burglar. It can be his neighbor. And then he -- the bur- -- neighbor is the -- is the congruous policeman, the real police at this moment.

And this has been lost sight of, that history i- -- follows a vocation, a calling, an immediate emergency. There is a call. Somebody has to write this history. So when Parkman decided to go on the Oregon Trail--as you know, he was a weakling; he had poor eyesight; he couldn't -- only read a few hours a day, he had to be read to; he -- he was a physical wreck--and when he decided, "Now just the same, I'm going to write the history of the white fathers in Canada, and of the Oregon Trail," he became the appointee of fate. And he -- the -- the professors of history in the various colleges of the land had absolutely no authority, compared to his original claim to be the historian of this western -- movement.

And so today, we read Parkman, and we don't read the -- the contemporary professors of history in Harvard College. And Parkman never was a professor. That has nothing to do with -- with history. Philosophers are not those people who are made professors of his- -- philosophy. And historians are not the people who are appointed to -- to teach history, you see. These are original responses, and because they have been given, because there has been a Thucydides, we think we should get acquainted in our schools with this, and so the schools are derivative, you see. The are pro- -- there are professors of philosophy who tell you that there is a Thucydides and Herodotus, just as I tell you here. As a professor, I -- I make you acquainted with historians.

Just as professors of philosophy in -- in -- in -- in schools are very rarely philosophers themselves, but they report on what -- philosophers have thought, you see. Cartesius, as you know--D‚scartes--never was a professor of philosophy. He never taught. But he is the greatest philosopher of the latest 3- -- 300 years,

just the same.

So as long as you do not re-establish the hierarchy of values, gentlemen, then an historian is a man with an intimate and direct relation to the people whose history he writes, and feels -- himself responsible either for their rebirth, for their renaissance, or for their -- their reconciliation with their neighboring enemies, or -- whatever his -- his story is, you have no way of placing the man. You will look for a place for him as an imitator of natural history, or as a mathematician, or a logician. That's not the case. An historian emerges in any country, and where you have no writing. In Yugoslavia, you had always an old man who had to sing the story of the wars between the Bulgarians and the Serbs. And there were no schools, and there was -- they didn't put -- have to write it. This was an oral man -- achievement. And it was for many centuries and many ages. But every group has to have a treasurer of memory. Just as you have a treasurer of -- of gold and money, you see, the historian is the treasurer of living memory. And since he sees that the currencies in this treasury are contradictory, and somehow debased, he will do something about curing the conflicts in this treasure. And that's why Mr. Thucydides calls his own work "a treasure forever." He called it this. We -- read this, did we? And that's not a -- not a -- ja?

(-- I was going to say that -- that we think then Thu- -- Thucydides satisfied more or less both parties in the war, and by being -- even though he was detached, he -- he was --. )

But dramatically engaged, you see. He was --.

(He could see it, the event clearly. He -- from both -- from -- from both sides.)

Ja, and suffered, so to speak. Through him, you see, both voices became -- became sympathetically understood. I mean, it isn't enough to say that he could see both sides. But he allowed both sides to enter his own heart; they penetrated into him, you see. I give voice to opposites, don't you think?

(Speeches { }; I have noticed that.)

That is just why the speeches -- make the whole thing real.

(Wouldn't you say possibly one of the reasons for this was his banishment?)

The reason for -- we don't know.

(I mean, it might help -- it might have helped him to --.)

Well, why the banishment was the reason for his history?

(Yes.)

Well, that has been debated. Who -- with whom did I talk about him? Ja. I -- we have too little to go by. He says, after all, that he wanted to write this history long before his banishment. In 431, he set out to -- to take down, { }. And therefore, he insists that the banishment has nothing to do with history. Now you are psychologizing and say it has. But...

(Yes.)

...I won't commit myself, because we just have no material to go by. This is just all vague. The -- I think that if one of -- somebody who knows Greek well could try to see whether the speeches after his banishment are -- are more passionate, you see, a -- change in character, so to speak, than before, then I would say perhaps that in the first years, the -- his -- his blood wasn't so -- running so high than later, when, under the pressure of his banishment he himself sought salvation -- tried to be saved, after all, to be -- have a meaningful function. As long as he was rich and general, this was an avocation. Then now it had to become his vocation, because nothing else was left. And perhaps in -- insid- -- I mean, a real investigator might s- -- feel that the later parts are more passionate, which would show an increase in heat, you see. And this fever curve in his writing would indicate that he later became even more upset by his task -- or more devoted to -- to his task than before.

(I might perhaps have a danger to over- -- to psychologize too much, but it seems to me that he -- since -- that he would be less identifying himself with the Athenians after the banishment, too, although identifying himself more with -- with his cause of writing the history. Because before the -- before the banishment, he had too much invested. He had to prove he -- he was -- he had to serve as an Athenian, primarily.)

Ja, -- you say this, my dear man.

(It's only -- it's only --.)

I don't know. You say this. Perhaps he was detached before. Perhaps he had already so much interest in the harmony between -- all the Greeks living in Thrace -- there in the north that he felt it was just too bad that there was not a larger comprehensiveness, you see. So all this is --.

(It's -- it's sheer speculation. Perhaps a map for future study. But it might even be because he had this tendency before to see both sides, it might have even affected the episode during which he was involved, which led to his banishment.)

Well, I -- I -- I think the -- this is going too far. I mean, we have no -- that's pure specu- -- speculation, and I think it's an insidious one, really. You have -- the only thing you have to go by is that there are not two parties, but more than two, that the whole fate of Greece is just involved in this fact that there are the Corcyreans in the north of the isl- -- of Greece, you see, and the Spartans, and the Athenians, and the Corinthians. There are four parties, my dear man. So it is a polyphonic enterprise. It's not just dualistic. Therefore it is a high- -- much richer canvas than is usual. All -- The Trojan War by Homer has two parties, you see: the Trojans and the Greeks. But Thucydides, you -- we should over- -- is -- has become the classical -- the historian, because he has just taken on as many parties as there involved -- were involved in the war. That is, the war dictated to him his method. You see, there was a war in which there were later the Sicilians, you see, who have quite different interests again from the people in -- on the mainland of Greece, and on the islands. And I feel therefore he is -- a good man rises to the occasion, gentlemen. And it's no excuse, because of the world War, there were 25 or 49 warring nations that a man then limits himself to the GermanRussian conflict, or the English-German conflict. Here -- if he is the historian of this event, he has to provide means to encompass it.

And therefore, to rise to the occasion in this case of Thucydides meant that he had to go beyond the already well-known epical tradition of reconciling two conflicting enemies; but he had to become polyphonic. It's like a step, you see, from -- from the piano into orchestra. You see, the orchestration of the histori- -- history is the great act of -- of Thucydides. That's Number 1. Let's put down what --. Only to show you that the Greeks were constantly aware of the neighborhood of history -- rhetorics, jurisprudence to life.

In my school in -- in Germany, there was written in our assembly hall in Greek letters, because we all had to know Greek -- { } {episteme} { }; { }. And that means, "All knowledge, all kinds of knowledge, separated from engagement, from efficacious action, is scoundrel-like, is the -- the thing of the scoundrel, and no wisdom goes with it."

So the -- I have been brought up with this -- with this doctrine that knowledge is not tolerable, unless we are engaged in the health and the salvation of that part of the world for which we have knowledge. Anybody who knows something becomes responsible. A forester who knows about the forest must do something about forestry. Can't you see this? That's why he knows

about the forest. And the man who is -- just knows about the forest and doesn't do anything about forestation is a scoundrel in my eyes. A scoundrel. And the mowle- -- mere knowledge without engagement is -- is -- is for scoundrels, is just robbery. You can rob money, but you can also rob knowledge.

The dilettante, I mean, for hobbies, that's all right. But I despise hobbies. We are not on this -- in this world to -- to -- to have hobbies. We are responsible. When we are -- know something, we suddenly grow -- above the normal stature of man--other peoples don't know--and knowledge is responsibility. If you know how a forest, you see, has to recover its existence, you are not Mr. {Schweigh„user}, you are not entitled to cut it all down. And Mr. {Schweigh„user}, as you know, the famous family in the north of Oregon and Washington state, they have all -- everywhere now signs that they are -- that they are responsible. In 1930, the Congress of the United States made a -- a scathing report on their vicious destruction of the forest in the north, and now they have scientific forestation, and they have schools of foresters, and -- in the hard way they learned the lesson that he who knows must -- must feel responsible for the reproduction of the forest, you see. Knowledge involves responsibility. For -- it's the same thing, I mean. We only know, because we are provoked to know. The doctor -- that's why the -- you see, research is there because we must teach. Because I must tell you history, therefore some research is necessary so that I purify what I tell you. Teaching is the -- is the master of research. Forestation is the master of the knowledge of the forest. You have to turn around everything you -- in this country, you see, at this moment, it's just an article of import -- is a complete misunderstanding--knowledge is separated from responsibility, and teaching, even. That's why teaching seems to me so very inadequate. But the teaching must go on. Living memory must go on. You have no living memory. I have to put it in to you.

So teaching is a subtle thing. In any moment, the older people must teach the young, is that not? Therefore histor- -- history -- scientific research comes in, because of course I want to give you the best, you see, of the living memory I can come to. And therefore, although I am -- have to tell you something about the history of the United States, I may improve, I may tell the story a little bit better. But there is no science of history. But there is a necessity of teaching the living memory to people who are not alive, as you. You live in apartment houses, or in barracks, or in -- what do you know? You only know that an -- an -- when an automobile runs. But what has gone on before, nobody told you so. So you live in stone -- in a stone desert of memory, and therefore, we make a special effort to reach you. And you have to be concentrated in big schools in order to replace what otherwise your father, and your mother, and your grandparents could have done to you.

And so research, gentlemen--as the word says, you see, re-search--is the honor of a teacher who wants to do the best of teaching. But the dogmatic precedence is with teaching. In -- in a living society, teaching is necessary, you see. Man must teach. If -- therefore they can improve on this teaching, by channels of research, because we don't want to teach you -- clog -- to clog your memory, you see, with -- with falsities. But as soon as you turn it around and say, "Not what we have researched is taught, but that which has to be taught must be searched for," you suddenly discover that to tell the story is the a priori, precedes the necessity of teaching history, you see, precedes all the tools and instruments of a little better research. The history of the Declaration of Independence has to be told long before the details are known of who had a cough, and who had -- had diarrhea on the day in which it was signed. These little items which the people now try to bring out. That's all right if they bring it out. But I have to teach you this even before this doctor thesis has been written, you see. So history has to be told long before it can -- has been analyzed, and -- and researched scientifically. All the time it has to be told. It cannot for one moment stop from being told. You cannot wait and say, "Fifty years from now we will know."

If this dawns on you that history is a necessity of a society for its survival, you suddenly give the historian back his real rank as a functionary of society. He's just as important and as necessary as the postmaster in Chicago. I mean, even more so. The postmaster exchanges the letters of the contemporaries, you see. But we exchange the letters of the dead, bring them to you. I'm the postman of the past. I deliver the letters which your -- which your ancestors are writing to you, and admonishing you not to forget them. That's, I think, a full expression, postmaster of the -- of the past, for an historian.

Now let's look at the -- at the philosopher of history. Here we have, I would say, the -- the -- before the historian, there are the events, and there are the -- perhaps we should call it the "reports." The great example is the Battle of Waterloo, because the great French writer, Henri Stendhal, Henri Beyle. Have you heard of his name, Stendhal? Who has read the name Sten- -- Stendhal? Stendhal? No?

(The novelist?)

Ja, the novelist.

(The Red and the Black.)

Wie? The Red and the Black. He has a famous description of the Battle of Waterloo. No? It's the other way around. Stendhal. He -- his real name was Beyle. Now Stendhal has given a description of the Battle of Waterloo, and it's a

stroke of genius, because he says -- shows that nobody who fought in the Battle of Waterloo, where Napoleon was defeated by the English and the Prussians, that in this Battle of Waterloo, nobody knew quite what was going on. There was a -- a horse was shot, and a -- a mill began -- caught fire, and the cavalry rode. And -- any number of things happened, but nobody knew -- knew quite clearly what was happening, certainly not Napoleon on that day. And it was fought over several village -- through several villages, and it had not even a name. So the event, the conflict, the more it is a conflicting event, is nameless. And the victor has the privilege of giving the name to the battle.

So the first historian is the general. That is, that this is the battle to be called "of Gettysburg," is already a part of the event, or is -- because before, it has not -- he hasn't gotten the name "Battle of Gettysburg," it is just three days of fighting. And a witty, anti-Lincoln man has said that if -- if they had called the battle not "Gettysburg," but "Cassville," the Gettysburg Address could never have made this impression, because "Cassville" is just such an impossible name for -- for such a heroic battle, you see.

Well, they -- have a point. The Germans and the -- and the continental troops at the Battle of Waterloo tried to call it "Belle Alliance," because there was a farm called Belle Alliance, which means "beautiful alliance." And they said, "Since this was a coalition which happily, you see, united, and we hope it will go on, this union between the Prussians, the Germans, the -- English, the Austrians, et cetera, and the Bavarians, We let -- let us call this Belle Alliance," you see. And in German textbooks, the battle is called not "Waterloo," but "Belle Alliance."

But the -- the -- the French -- when the English won out, and Wellington, because he held at -- at Waterloo, you see, call it "Waterloo." But there are still -- is still a conflict even in this tradition, that the name of the battle is not identical in the continental textbooks and in the western textbooks.

Now, when Mr. -- when the historian then takes over, he has events which he can test by counting the number of -- of -- of ammunition sold, of the cannons used. These are objective statements for which he doesn't have to even have eyewitnesses. He can just go to the reports, you see: how many cannons entered the -- this battlefield? And then he has the reports of the generals, what this man here calls constantly the "eyewitness report." And the -- this is not true that they are the eyewitness, but they are participants. The complete -- wrong idea that this is an eye- -- a general is not a witness, you see. He's done it. It's his own story. So he already is filled with the story. If you tell what you have done, that's not -- you cannot call yourself a witness, you see. But just you tell the story, you see. You narrate it. "You see, and then I fell into the water, and somebody drew me out." The -- I wouldn't call this a witness, really, you see. To -- to narrate

what has happened to my- -- oneself, or one's country, or one's hometown, or one's family -- that's not a -- a witness. So Mr. Collingwood, I think, makes this mistake, you see, that he only knows from the judiciary that we are witnesses. But when I remember something, and I have to tell it somebody else, I'm not the witness, you see. I'm the reporter, or I'm the teller. I -- to tell a tale is something quite different from being a witness in court.

There has -- therefore, in -- in the Battle of Waterloo, there is Blcher, there is -- Wellington, there is Napoleon, there are Napoleon's generals, there are the soldiers wounded, there are the letters they wrote home from the hospital. And these are not eyewitnesses. I think that cools again us into the scientific realm, into the refrigerator of zoological facts, observed by some onlooker. I am in it. I haven't looked at the battle. I have fought it. To tell me a wit- -- say I'm a witness is just ridiculous. I wanted to win. I'm a partisan. A witness is, after all, usually somebody who -- who ob- -- try -- can -- is able to be objective. But I do not demand from a man who has been defeated in battle that he should be objective. He should cry. He should weep. He should say, "I'm the" -- you see, "I'm the most unhappy, unfortunate -- I'm miserable." That's what I want to hear from him. Then I can write the -- later the history, because he has made me feel how he felt.

But this omission of feelings, it's a funny thing about historians. I'm only interested in -- if I want to write the history of a battle, of course -- what people felt at this moment. They felt that the -- the Heaven was -- was falling upon the earth, that the -- it was a catastrophe. It was the end of their world. If you cannot see that Appomattox was the end of Robert Lee's life, he's not a witness of what went on in Appomattox, you see.

But every -- why doesn't -- they say this? Because in court, we are supposed to -- you see, to be detached. And the whole idea of Mr. {Hollingwood} is to try to save history and to give it that little of scientific character which makes it then -- stand in line with the mathematical, and -- chemical, and physical sciences. If this is the honor of philoso- -- history, to become a science, then I'd try to get witnesses, because they objectify this, you see. And -- but I need people who tell the tale, with all their ludicrous involvement, pathetically weeping, laughing, sobbing, hysteric.

Then comes then the historian as the reconciliator, as I told you, of conflicting evidence. And he's only interesting in -- because -- more necessary, the more conflicting the evidence is. So that the historian's role, so to speak, is aggrandized, is -- is increasing in stature, the more conflict there is, you see. The simple story of the -- therefore, it is not great honor to tell us the history of Santa Monica. There have been no civil war, as far as I know, before the oil well was

begun in Santa Monica. Now there may become -- be a civil war if they build -- to -- dig this oil well. And then it would be necessary to get a real historian to write the story of Santa Monica. Today a chronicler is enough. The less conflict, you see, the less you need a specific -- the specific role of the -- of the historian. Also, you take a -- you take a -- it's the -- same with a doctor, I mean. You can get along with -- on Christian Science and on a midwife, as long as everything goes normally, you see. And only when the thing is very serious, it's a conflict between mother and baby, it's very serious; you have to go to the hospital and have -- get an operation.

And -- so I would say the -- between the chronicler, who is a midwife of past memory, and the doctor, there is this difference, that with the doctor, the conflict is -- is so serious, that he has to know more than the usual thing to understand the conflict, and to -- and to -- to compose it.

Now comes my philosopher. And gentlemen, what -- how would you define a philosopher? I would say, what is your first degree of what that is, a philosopher? What's the difference between a theologian and a philosopher? Then that's perhaps the { }.

(Well, a definition of a philosopher, a good one, would be: one who seeks the truth.)

Of what -- what is the tr- -- I mean? It must have some content.

(Nature.})

Good, ja, ja. That is, the philosopher tries to treat everything outside himself, including his neighbors, his family, as a part of the world. It's the wisdom of this world. That is, it's a tendency to say that everything outside my own brain is world, and is the con- -- has to be -- fall into a system of -- cause and effect, or of connections, which I carry and balance on my head.

So a philosopher is like the stag who tries to have -- the whole world as his antlers.

Now this is the -- an act, because a philosopher of course cannot treat his own wife and his children--if he happens to be married--or his parents as part of the world. They are part of himself. And an historian is on the opposite pole from a philosopher. A philosopher tries to transform everythi- -- even his own body, perhaps, into a part of the world. He tries to explain that -- why his body also must die.

(The -- "I think, therefore I am"?)

Wie?

("I think, therefore I am"?)

Ja. Quite.

So if you think of reality in which we are immersed, here standing here, sitting here in this room--here is around us -- walls, there is a building, there is the campus, there is Los Angeles, there is the globe--the -- the tendency of philosophy would be to dissolve this square of obscurity and -- confusion in such a way that on one side there is human reason. Even patriotism is just a part of the worldly process. Every group has patriotism, for example, he'll say, you see.

And -- now Mr. Collingwood tries to ascribe, assign to historians the idea of useful knowledge, that it can be used. And this is the first here- -- error, I think. I have tried to show you that a doctor, after all, is called in by the patient because the patient is in pain. And therefore he wants to get rid of his pain. And in the sense, peoples are in pain, because they cannot -- they have hereditary enmities. And they have -- call in the historian, or the historians -- feels called up -- to be called up to cure this disease. And that's all he does. And with the achievement, he goes out of business. So history is always dependent on customers. And it is rooted in pain, rooted in -- in experience, rooted in demand. Rooted in emergency.

All this is for the philosopher quite un-understandable. And so what we read here about Mr. Colli- -- from Mr. Collingwood's pen is an attempt to save history in the realm of technology, so to speak. He wants to know how we could use the product of history in the future. And of course he -- it is the same problem.

You know what the technologically minded man asked the -- the mother -- no, the -- the story is a little different. A man made a discovery, and the practical man said, "What's the use of your great discovery?"

And the man was very angry, and he s- -- you know the answer. You know what's the answer?

"Sir, what's the use of a newborn child?"

That's the only answer you can give to these practical men, you see, about any -- any group-like spiritual action. A sermon is of no use. It's an expression of

a liturgy of the Church. Nothing has use in the sense of the practical man. If I discover that the -- that the -- earth retreats around the sun, the only answer is that's as beautiful as that's the -- there is a new -- new baby. A baby has no use for anybody, you see. It's just a burden. And yet it is the most wonderful thing in the world. It has its own justification. God obviously created the world and put as its climax the baby. That's -- you -- that's why we have Christianity worshiping the baby in the cradle.

Therefore there is no -- the -- all the other things can be used by the baby, but the baby cannot be used by anybody for any other purpose, but its own happiness and bliss. And all the attempts you make to find how useful you are in society will all you -- drive you into the arms of illness and mental -- decrepitude, because there is no use for you. You are an end in yourself, and you are not a means. The -- mankind is -- is God's playmate, but He is -- God had -- didn't -- doesn't use us. But this is the -- again the heresy of the philosopher, who must find for anything in the world, you see, some practical application. Flowers have no -- they are just beautiful. And -- the girls are just pretty. And that's perfectly sufficient.

There you have to make up your mind. If you go with a philosopher, you allow yourself to -- to be made a part of a -- of a system in which you function. And this is true that to a part, in order to be supported by society, you must work. But that's not myself. That's only -- the earthly part of mine. With our body, and our earth, where we must eat, we must also give some work, and some sweat, and some toil, in order to make a living. But you can never define my whole existence by saying, "I'm a -- a worker in the -- in the Socony Vacuum filling station," you see. That's not myself. Because I'm just there employed for the time being, you see. Tomorrow I do something else.

The -- the temporary, in other words, the passing things, the techno- -- are the technical things which I have to perform. But they never -- can encompass me. And so the historian's task is something much more modest. It is not on the -- on the playing of usefulness. Here is the world of things. And here is the society of man. And here is the process of creation. And you may -- ambivalent between creator and nature.

Now, you all know the baby that is created belongs, it is -- it is true, to society. It's a child of the family. And it belongs to the world of things because, when you put it on the scale, it weighs so much -- many pounds. And therefore it's a part of this earthly system of gravity. And -- and -- and diver- -- and expanse. But this doesn't exhaust the smile of the baby. The baby is the end of creation. It's the most beautiful, you see -- destiny of all things on this earth, that such a beautiful baby should be born. All these things have to serve him, and

society has to serve him. And woe to the parents who enclose this child and say, "We own it." You are just part and parcel of society. This baby has a right to its own name. It has a right to speak out against the society. It can criticize society. It can leave the society. It can reform the society. In other words, this baby is a child of God. That is, it has an immediate rank, and it is irreducible. You can never explain this baby -- newborn baby by anything that has gone on before. Woe to you if you try. And it can never be explained by anything for whose use it can be used. That's why slavery is really impossible, why a newborn child cannot be enslaved just to serve the -- on a plantation. You cannot enshrine a human being, you see, in known purposes, or in known groups. Because it may be his -- his destination, to bring up this group -- this society as it exists, to be a rebel, be a reformer.

George Washington never thought of himself as anything but a British gentleman. And there he was thrown upon, you see -- it was thrown upon himself to become an American. You -- you mustn't think that he liked the idea. He -- he was forced into this, gradually. And his enemies forged letters in his name -- the famous Randolph letters, published in 1778, in which they make him complain that he doesn't want to be -- to cease to be a Britisher, that he was a British gentleman, and that was all he wanted to do. And you do not see what an agony it was for the man, you see, to have to cease to be a member of the existing society and order of things, and no longer be a subject of King George III. You -- na‹vely assume that it was very agreeable to him. But it wasn't. It was most disagreeable. He hated all -- the whole business. But as a baby of God, he had to listen, to obey orders that came to him, you see, outside this society of his, and outside, certainly, the w- -- the world of things, of dead things which -- which declared that Virginia after all was Elizabethan colony, and that everything there had to remain in -- within the British realm.

You can hardly imagine how difficult it was for a man like Washington to outgrow his society and to outgre- -- the nature of his environment. And his greatness is that he did. He became, out of a son of the British commonwealth, the father of this country. And why is he called the father of this country, you see? Because when he grew up, as a son, there was no such country. You can only become the father of this country if you are the first, you see, in whom this country takes shape.

This newness of the historical -- is our belief in history in our era, of which Mr. Collingwood doesn't take any cognizance.

So history has to do with the newness of {unwhole} events. That's the second thing. The historian deals with conflicts, but he will only remember those conflicts which have brought into being a new kind of man, or in which man has

asserted his right to re-create society, and to re-create nature. This is the second element. Now comes the third.

Mr. Thucydides, I told you, has immortalized the period, and he has insisted that the Peloponnesian War lasted from 431 to 403 or -4. And we all, ever since 1900 -- 2,300 years now, speak of the Peloponnesian War, on- -- although our only authority for this is Mr. Thucydides. And he has to fight the idea that this is not one war. And I tried to tell you that he has the same problem today, that as long as the two world wars are not considered one catastrophe, we will not be able to agree on its solution, you see. As long as you think that Hitler was a wicked man, or Roosevelt was a politician, and do not see that the emperor and -- and Mr. Wilson were engaged in exactly the same conflict, I think we -- you will not understand--neither the Russian problem, by the way, with their rejection of czarism--and -- nor the American problem.

So the third thing then is: that historians, in order to solve conflicts, must del- -- delineate epochs, events of a certain length of time. We owe to the historian the recognition of epochs. That is, in the atomized time, where every second is different from every other second, the historian gives us the insight into continuity. But he does this from concrete epochs. He doesn't side with the philosophy of history, and -- say that all times are always changing, as Mr. Collingwood there says. But he's quite satisfied, Mr. Thucydides, to create this one unity, 431 to 404. And around this you can append other facts, perhaps.

Well, all we owe to Thucydides is nothing that went on in history before, or after, and -- the philosopher despises concrete times. He wants to abstract from time and space. He wants to have a system that is valid for all...

[tape interruption]

...and misled. That there has been this tremendous calling-back of the nations of the western world into one order. And with the great sacrifice of the war, you will understand first that wars call the human race to order when any individual generation has gone astray. That's the first thing. Wars are visitations. And they are -- world wars are phyllogenetic. You know, we dis- -- distinguish in zoology between ontogenetic, which is a -- a problem ending my own nature, and phyllogenetic, which is a problem of the -- of the constancy of the human race, through many generations. "Phyllon" may -- being the -- the stem, or the tribe, or the -- or the unity through generations.

Now wars are phyllogenetic, and they prove it by demanding the sacrifice of life of one generation in order to intertwine and connect the preceding and the later generations. And in any war, the people who die on the battlefield make

the sacrifice so that their parents and their grandchildren may still see eye to eye. If they fail, the community is destroyed, as Troy. Their eyes -- you see, they are defeated. Victory means that this continuity, this unity between grandparents and grandchildren is re-established at the price of the physical life, the carnal existence of the middle generation. And whether there -- everybody is slain among the -- on the battlefield, or only one, makes no difference. Anybody's death in battle, which is the -- essence of war--that somebody is killed--means that there is one man willing to connect the phyllogenetic unity of an empire, a realm, a United States against the -- on -- ontogenetic madness of pleasure-seeking society, as of the day, where people forget the unity and -- don't want to pay the penalty of this -- for this unity.

Therefore, ja?

(-- Just on this topic, I was looking--you asked me { } Rudyard Kipling's "Recessional," on the next page. It deals with just what you're saying. I'd like to read it.)

Glad to, wonderful. Of course, he knows this.

("The Question, 1916"

("Brethren, how shall it fare with me, when a war is laid aside, if it is -- if it be proven that I am he for whom the world has died?

("If it be proven that all my good, and the greater good that I will make were purchased me by a multitude who suffered for my sake?

("That I was delivered by mere mankind, vowed to one sacrifice, and not, as I hold them, battle-blind, but dying with open eyes?

("That they did not ask me to draw the sword, when they -- when they stood to endure their lot, that they only looked to me for a word, and I answered them, `I knew not' -- `I knew them not.'")

"And I answered, `I knew them not.'" Ja.

("If it be found, when the battle clears, their death has set me free, then how shall I live with myself through the years

which they have bought for me?

("Brethren, how must it fare with me, or how am I justified, if it be proven that I am he for whom mankind has died?

("If it be proven that I am he, who, being questioned, deny -- deny.")

And it's an accusation of the United States. It's written in 1916, when the United States dis- -- you see, didn't want to enter the war. So this poet is very poignant. Kipling of course had this in his heart all the time, because he was married to an American, as you know, and so he -- he was deeply involved in this. It's really an incredible poem.

({ } to the United States of America { }.)

Well, I feel of course, you see, when I read in the papers today--and I may mention this, because I want you to say what you feel about it--I can re- -- off and on read about the Amer- -- English debt to America, in the {secu-} -- or financial debt, I mean. Now it is obvious that Mr. Roosevelt knew that this country should go to war right away in 1939, and was only restrained by political -- reasons of the domestic policy not to do this. It is also clear that if he had done so, the war -- Europe would have -- not have been destroyed first. And it's certainly true that England bled white, to death, so that the Americans might come out of this war as the victor over all other countries; whereas the British lost India, and practically New Zealand, and Australia, and -- and Canada to the United States.

Now I can hardly contain myself when I read then about these $4 billion of a debt, when the United States, like a Shylock, waited till -- England had bled white, and then entered the war. And -- let the whole burden in -- of the first three years be borne by the British. This is never mentioned here. But it was obvious to every statesman in the United States, that it was only the resistance of the British that has saved the United States. In 1939, gentlemen, in 1940, at the Stock Exchange in Wall Street, lectures were given -- about the fact that Hitler would now be in the United States six weeks later, and what would the Jewish bankers then in New York have to do? This is all forgotten today.

But the shabbiness of this country, that allows newspaper writers today to speak of these few billion dollars in 1940, you see, when the -- the -- the -- the whole British Isles, so to speak, were pawned for the -- for the victory of the United States later, that's { }. And that's how we to this day treat our -- our socalled -- the foreign aid, I mean, as though these people were outside our respon-

sibility. I mean, that's why this poem, you see, is exactly the -- right, because every Englishman died -- who died then, died for the greater glory of America.

(Well, that's not -- a lot of people think about the -- the Treaty of Versailles, that the biggest blunder of the Treaty of Versailles was the reparation payment that Germany had to make.)

That was acknowledged finally.

(And -- { } caused them to think that { }.)

But now it is even, you see, held -- held against the British, which I think is -- is more awful, because the solidarity of the British, the -- their resistance was only meaningful if there was a United States who finally would come forward, you see. The British would never win this war. Their resistance then in the Blitz, you see, was simply a delaying action. Don't you see this?

So they already anticipated that the United States at one time would -- would turn the scales.

So you only see, we -- we are in the same boat as Thucydides. If it can be done, that the people of the United States can be sold to the idea that they were in the war really in 1939, or in the days of Bill Mitchell already, you see, and not just in 1941 after Pearl Harbor, history would -- would -- would be the World War history, you see, and it would not just be the private history of how to convince you -- the people of the United States that they should enter the war. But the -- the fictions in this country about the war are -- are quite remarkable.

(Well, in 1936, it wasn't -- Hitler wasn't sure that France and Germany would even go to war with him. That's why, when he moved into the Rhineland...)

Oh, he trembled. He thought they might --.

(...He told his tank commander that if he met any resistance, to move back. And the same with Czechoslovakia.)

Ja.

(He wasn't sure whether he'd meet any resistance.)

Ja.

(So when he didn't meet any, I guess he knew that he had a free hand. And he knew America wasn't going to enter, either.)

Well, Mr. Borah, who -- had then passed this terrible neutrality legislation, you see, in this country, who -- who -- was pa- -- in German pay. The senator, the chairman of the foreign policy committee.

(What was his name?)

Oh -- Louis Borah, Senator Borah. Wie?

(Voted against -- the treaty. Voted -- one of the senators who voted against Wilson's {treaty}.)

(What was wrong with the law in Germany? To conquer all of Europe and unify it. Keep it --.)

Because they tried to colonialize it. You see, this would -- this would be debatable if you had -- know -- understood, if you had assumed -- could assume that he would give the others equality. He never meant to. He -- I -- I tell you, this is a very good question. In 19- -- on the 13th of January of this year, I -- I told you perhaps already, I was in Frankfurt attending a big meeting of 1500 people in the so-called Paulskirche. That is the center of democratic tradition in Am- -- in Germany, because the first German parliament met in this building. So it was quite a meeting.

And I defended my -- my thes- -- several theses there about the peace -- future of a peacetime society of worldwide character. And there was much giveand-take and discussion. And finally the -- the--how would I say?--the -- president, or I mean the -- the Eric Johnston of the enterprise, I mean the -- the -- the --how do you call it?--the manager, yes -- got up and said, "Gentlemen, here this man from America talks to you about a worldwide society. Be a little careful to -- and don't turn your -- turn your -- your back on this because after all we owe the world very much, because" -- and I heard -- this went out -- from his mouth, you see, for the first time -- "we have -- the -- Germans -- the Germans have tried to introduce --" oh, the -- my sermon had been on -- about the underdeveloped countries, the colonials, you see, the Africans, and so on, the { }. And he said, "Don't forget, ladies and gentlemen, that Germany from 1933 to 1945, has tried to treat its European nat- -- neighbors once more as though they were colonies."

And that's why this was not a question of the unification of Europe, you see, but it was really the brutal treatment of this -- Poles, you see, and Czechs, and so, as though they were -- African Negroes, you see, as though they were

colonies to be exploited.

And so, you see, it was impossible to accept, for any -- for any human being, this solution. Hitler, in his -- in his very strange hatred and -- of -- of probably his own ancestry, because I suppose that he is a Czech by -- was a Czech by -- by birth; well, however that may be, he hated, from his AustrianHungarian tradition--he was an Austrian-Hungarian, you see, and there the nationalities were all at war with each other. And so, feeling that he was on the German side, he simply wanted to put his foot on the -- on the Czech --.

[tape interruption]

(...{ } had Europe been united in this federation, then it -- would've -- have been permanent beyond Hitler's regime, or would have dissolved back into France, and Germany, and Italy, and Czechoslovakia and Austria. Because --.)

Assuming that he would have had greater wisdom, but then he would never have come to power, because the revenge of the German nationalism was after all the platform on which he was allowed to take over. And therefore -- since he wanted to revenge the defeat of Germany in 1918, and promised this, you see --. I don't think that anybody who promised the unification of Europe--reconciliation of France, and everybody--would ever have been allowed to -- to get into the Ger- -- government. And the French, of course, didn't want to -- know anything of the Germans, and the Italians, you see, were very -- megalomaniacs at that time. So -- and the British were islanders.

So I think if you -- if you take away Hitler, you don't find a possibility after this Peace Treaty of Versailles, of any man coming forward with authority, and uniting these -- reconciling these enemies of the First World War in -- a nice confederacy. The only people who could do this were the Americans. That's why there is no -- no future for any confederacy of Europe, if you omit the -- United States. The United States are the only country in which there live of -- descendants from all of these countries, Number 1, you see. That makes America more akin to any one of these countries than there is France to Germany, or England to Germany, or Holland to Belgium, or Belgium to Czechoslovakia. You see, among themselves, the Europeans are more divided than they are with relation to America. The bonds between any one country in Europe and America are much stronger than the bonds between, let us say, Italy and France. Very simply, because 6 million Italians emigrated to America, but no 6 million -- Italians, you see, made good in -- in France. A very simple reason. There are 40 million Germans who came to this country, you see. So it is very easy still to find -- you see, unity or reconciliatory tones between Germans and Americans, obviously.

(There are more Norwegians in the United States than there are in Norway.)

(Forty million Germans; I think, the population is France only.)

Fourteen, 14 million Germans.

(I'm just curious about one fact that might be off the subject. And that is, why the so-called democracies did not go to the Munich Pact with Hitler with clean hands, why they went there with dirty hands, and came back with dirty hands? By that I mean, the democracies, for their own safety, Britain and France, sold Czechoslovakia down the river, to stay in and buy time --.)

Well, my dear man. I still am not sure that the intellectuals of this country are not going to sell the -- 2 million people of Berlin down the river. They would like...

(That's the same uh- -- )

...exactly the same. We haven't seen the end of it.

(That will be coming up here on April 29th.)

The lackadasiacal attitude here of the educated people is, "Okay." What do they care? I'm very doubtful}.

(It's something to think about.)

Well, one point then, let us settle for today. The problem of the philosopher is that he wants to -- to generalize all times and all spaces. And the topic of the philo- -- of the historian is to save one period, one certain time, and one certain area from oblivion, and he creates epoch as a creature. Can you s- -- begin to think that perhaps 70 years or 30 years are just as much a reality which has to be sa- -- given its proper character, its uniqueness, you see, as if I -- you consider -- a person. The Thirty Years' War, or the War of Independence, or the Civil War cannot be reduced to four years in the abstract; but these five years from Fort Sumter to Appomattox are an event, one event. And just as you would admit that the redwood, and the rose, and the tulip are different creatures, and that we should honor them for being distinct creatures, I invite you to -- to consider that man must save the times, the high times of history from being just dismissed as physical -- having the physical character of four times 365 days, you see. The Civil War is not just any four times 365 days, but four times 365 days strung together in a unique pattern. And it is this uniqueness which the historian

creates, or supports, or pronounces, or proclaims, or whatever word you want to say for this. He stands for the unique character of the event which he re-creates, or which he reports, or which he -- makes into a treasure of mankind, in living memory.

Thucydides says, "I make this war," you see, "a gold mine for all times." That is, you can no longer say, "These are just 27 years of the past. What do I care for the past? All the past is dead," you see. And I just count it in the countinghouse, and say, "So many -- so many seconds, so many minutes, so many days, so many years." This is how the physicist creates time. The historian assigns to every time a unique character. And he says the Thirty Years' War, or the Hundred Years' War of the Roses -- you see, in England, or the Hundred Years' War between France and England, these are events--like the Trojan War, too, I mean, or like the Revolution War. Valley Forge is not explained by saying it consisted of 60 years of suffering. It's "Valley Forge." And the name "Valley Forge" is the seal upon the fact that it can never be confused or mistaken for any other -- period in the history of mankind.

Therefore, you must -- will now understand why I feel that the historian is threatened by the philosopher. Here. Here is the historian. And in front of him of course are just atoms of time. But he suddenly realizes, in sympathy with the suffering of the human race, that during 1860 and 1865, something was solved, something was done which made all these people move together so that -- and -- if he puts the seal under this event, this Civil War, or John Brown's Body, or whatever he does it, man will not have to repeat the performance. Out of the travesty of disorder and anarchy, of chaotic time, of just living day by day, there emerges at one time this pyre, you see. And the flames of this conflagration enlighten this historian. He's inflamed. He's really shot through with the meaning of this event. He says, "Don't forget the Civil War."

Perhaps now you'll read now "The Recessional." Would you?

("Recessional--1897

("God of our fathers, known of old, Lord of our far-flung battle line, Beneath whose awful Hand we hold Dominion over palm and pine-- Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget -- lest we forget!

("The tumult and the shouting dies; The captains and the kings depart: Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice, An humble and a contrite heart. Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,

Lest we forget -- lest we forget!

("Far called, our navies melt away, On dune and headland sinks the fire; Lo, all our pomp of yesterday Is one with Nineveh and Tyre! Judge of the nations, spare us yet, Lest we forget -- lest we forget!

("Yet {drunk with} sight of power We loose wild tongues that have not thee in awe Such boastings the Gentiles use Or lesser breeds without the Law. Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget -- Lest we forget!

("For heathen heart -- for heathen heart that puts her trust In reeking tube and iron shard, All valiant dust that builds on dust, And guarding, calls not Thee to guard, For frantic boast and foolish word -- Thy mercy on Thy People, Lord!")

{Ja.} That is really -- I -- he rises here to real -- to real responsibility, this -- this very -- this very neurologic man.

So -- the modesty of the historian is that he's perfectly satisfied of saving one little part of time from oblivion by giving it -- its unique name: "Civil War," "Battle of Waterloo," you see, or whatever it is. Once he has saved this one little color spot from the drabness of nothingness, of annihilation, there is hope that others -- the whole history will {begin} to become transparent as the creation of very beautiful flowers of -- of civilization, or -- or whatever you call this.

And therefore, the historian is perfectly satisfied if he can give to one event this lasting character. If he is able to write a world history, or a whole century, all the better. But that's so much gravy. The historian has already fully served the community if he makes them put their foot down at one event and say, "We won't forget that." Then they're already emerging from the fog, and the mist, you see, of day-by-day living. They already get a memory. And as soon as they have got -- memory in one spot, then they can enlarge on this. But you have first to hold onto one point, where you could emerge from casual, you see, accidental living and say, "This is -- was not an accident, that we occupy -- the Gold Rush of California, and the building of the railroad, and the statehood of California, we'll stand by that. California is a state and must remain a state."

Any one such memory saves us from this daydreaming in which most people indulge. I mean, if you -- I go in to Los Angeles, I feel most people are

daydreaming. They don't know at what time of history, in what hour of -- of history they live. They live -- try to live in a -- in a timeless disorder. They wouldn't know whether they live 1912, or 1959. They say, "What does it matter? I look up the calendar; the calendar tells me 1959." That has no meaning, I mean. That it means after the two world wars, they wouldn't admit for a moment. They just live and have their -- their appointment calendar, and it's just within the year that they get around. But 1959 is not different to them from 1940 or -- if you tell them tomorrow it's already 1975, they say, "All the better," you see. "Then we have saved a lot of time, and --." I mean, you can -- they play around with time. Because no year has its unique character. A nation has very great difficulties, you know.

I told you the tragedy of this country is that we have now Veteran's Day, which is a completely mythical day, which applies to any war, and has absolutely nothing to do with the achievements of the two world wars. When we had Armistice Day, it was at least a memory of the First World War. Now we are so modest, that since we have no peaces after two world wars, and just armistices, we call the 11th of November "Veterans' Day." Now Veterans' Day can apply to the year of the -- of -- against Great Britain in 1812, you know. And it can apply to the Mexican War. It makes -- it is just mythical war and peace rotating, you see. But the Mexican War is not the World War; and the World War, you see, is not the Spanish-American War.

And this is the creation of the historian, to make them incomparable, and in-confusable. The creation of uniqueness of time is as important as the creation of God when He created animals and trees. You take this for granted that the word "tree" is not all you have to say about a palm tree and an oak tree. And you leave to the oak and the palm their honor of being specific.

Now historians are specific. They create, you see, this great secret of creation is -- is: be specific. Creation is not a generalization. The philosopher, however, withdraws this seal of a -- special creature from the specific period, he wants to generalize. He wants to submer- -- emerge all times into some -- what he calls "time and space abstraction." And therefore philosophers destroy history. They destroy history. They must dissolve the achievements of the philosopher. If the philosopher, to put it -- I mean, I have -- I'm not a painter -- but if a philosopher is making knots, and he adds that 1812 and 1941 are unique events, but the philosopher comes and dissolves these kno- -- unties these knots and say, "Oh well, this is a war, and this is a war, many wars," you see. Therefore, I abstract from -- from the -- all your work you have done was to make 1912 unique. I, the philosopher say, "What does it matter? This was a war, { } war. People are always foolish. They always seem to go to war," you see. And so the philosopher will untie this knot and again, time will then just look, you see, platt -- as a plati-

tude, as a flat, platt plain.

And therefore, philosophers and historians are enemies. They do the opposite thing. And therefore, I think a philosophy of history is impossible.

(Could you speak about the relation between this tendency to abstract and be objective and the ever-in- -- what seems to be an ever-increasing tendency toward conformity?)

Has to do, of course with -- wherever you philosophize, you create for the mind a unified universe, and you dis- -- you abstract from all different -- differences, as you possibly can, I mean. One mind, everybody has a mind, so you have to agree to my system of thinking.

I start as an historian, of course, with the fact that there are children, and grownups, and old people, and silly people, and -- and educated people. I say, my problem is: how could they keep the peace despite the fact that they all have think differently? I'm not interested in the unity of reason, you see. I'm interested in the colorfulness of people at different times, and in different places, and different races, you see. And I wonder why God created so many different people. But philosophers wonder that all men can be substituted for every- -- -body else. This is to me, you see, the -- the boredom of philosophy, that it has to annihi- -- annihilate the colors of men. The salvation is of course, you can always beat a philosopher finally with his own arms.

Mankind, you see, is a species out of species. If you live right, at the end of your life you have to become -- have to be- -- have become your own species. Any great man in history, or any great woman--what we call a saint or a -- or a genius--is a species which can never be repeated. Saint Francis can never live again, you see.

And so if you want to save yourself from philosophy, keep in mind that man was created by God as a species out of species. That would be the Latin version of this, you see. Man is that strange being that -- whereas all the wolves belong to one species, in the human family, you see, every one of us is specific by his own name. And we are a family, a species, that consists of Lincolns, and George Washingtons, and Walt Whitmans, and -- and -- and -- and therefore, every one of us is specific. And your own task in life is to keep the solidarity with the human race, yes; but in it, become a species.

And that's what your tombstone must say. If the tombstone says, "Here lies a good man," it is meant that here lies an irreplaceable item, somebody who is unique, who can never be replaced, because he has left a good odor, and his

aroma, and what here -- his attitude to the -- world of the -- li- -- as a newborn baby is an end in itself.

("Now he belongs to the ages.")

Exactly. Exactly.

So the creation of uniqueness, gentlemen, is the task of history. The historian tries to save this uniqueness. He doesn't pretend that he makes the World War out of whole clothes, you see. He says, "There it is." He believes it. He accepts, acknowledges, recognizes, and makes recognizable God's creation inside history. The philosopher, however, tries to dissolve this pattern and start from scratch, because he was -- will -- always wants to go to the moment at which history begins. He wants to see the elements out of which this world is woven. Now you can dissolve any tapestry, and can say, "Well what is it? It's just -- on this loom." There -- how do you call the two things? The warf -- the war- --?

(It's warp and woof.)

Yes, you see.

And so you can dissolve any pattern of history, but -- dare you? May you? Can you dissolve the pattern of the United States and say, "We go back and start from scratch. And next time we go to the Antarctic and we don't go into the United States." You can, if this is at an end. But then you condemn the United States to be a worthless something that is decadent and must die.

So philosophers always are grave diggers. The philosophy of history can always say, "Dismiss a number of events that seem unforgettable and unique and say it isn't worth it." So Mr. Spengler writes The Decline of the West. Mr. Toynbee says, "23 civilizations have passed away." That is, he takes stock of -- you see, of things that have ceased to be. Whereas the historian tries to save what has happened from oblivion so that it can still function.

Grave digger, after all, and doctor are not quite the same. It may often -- one lead to the other, but then he's a poor doctor.

So there is enmity between the historian and the philosopher of history. The philosopher of history tries to bring out the elements out of which history started and to which it can be reduced. And the historian tries to save the creations out of these elements. The configurations, you may say--that's perhaps the most realistic expression, you see, or the constellations--to which these elements have been brought.

An Englishman, Mr. Sansome, has explained this -- this hostility between historian and philosopher in an interesting way in 1935. He is a chemist and you wouldn't expect -- a biologist, pardon me, a biologist, and he is a -- he is a member of the -- great English society of--how is it called? It is not called Society of Sciences --?

(Academy of Sciences.)

Academy of Science. Mr. Sansome -- N -- S-a-n-s-o-m-e. I wonder how you pronounce his name correctly. San-some or San-sum-ee? And he says, "For so long, we have wondered what -- about the problem -- what brings about change. Now, we have proven that change is going on all the time, perpetually, and therefore we begin to wonder what makes anything permanent. And so we have to change our whole system of questions." When philosophers would try to begin to understand how miraculous this is, that such a unique creation as the United States of America came into being, they will then join the historian in asking not the abstract question, you see, "What dissolves 23 civilizations?" you see, but "How do these support this civilization?" what the historian tries to do. In -- in making it so valuable, so unique, that we'll stand by it, and say, "It still -- be given a chance." It's -- if we only enter deep enough into the meaning of this body politic, you see, we will find a new lease of life for this.

At this moment obviously the United States are faced with this very question: What is the future of the United States? Then you have to dig deep into its continental mission among -- as a new world to get your courage up and say that we will live longer than the Russian system. That takes an act of faith. And for this, we need to re-create the uniqueness of the -- of the achievement and understand it as deep as -- -ly as possible in order to -- to have our faith reinforced.

Now philosophers then, gentlemen, dismiss faith, and historians build it up. -- History is always an article of faith. Because whenever you call your -- any out of the millions of women your bride, that's an act of faith, that she should be the one and only one. And this -- what the historians -- does. He clings to an event and says, "This is unique." And thereby -- God wanted -- has not created abstractions. Do not believe that God is not the most colorful. He created the sun, and the moon, and the constellations in Heaven, and every constellation is different. { }. God is the enemy of abstractions. And that's -- where you have abstraction dominant, as you have in this country at this moment, there's of course no vitality.

And now you understand why I -- I think I have understood very well what the philosophers try to do, and have followed the -- as far as dead things are concerned, philosophers are very necessary. I have to dismiss for -- even from

the construction of the United States those elements that are irrelevant, you see.

And -- for example, I -- always very angry when you -- I hear you say that Americans are a capitalistic country. That's accidental. Obviously the United States are quite indifferent to any social system. This is a free country. And we can -- we can do -- one way or the other. The building -- railroads were built obviously in a social- -- as a socialistic enterprise, because the states gave the -- the capital to build them. Now do you call this a capitalistic country when the government pays for the building of a private enterprise? That's all right, but it makes no sense to me. I call this a colonial system.

In colonies, you see, the -- the -- the -- there are many economic systems. And I -- I think any country must be able to buil- -- contain, use, employ any number of economic means, or systems, or -- forms of organization. As soon as you -- as you say, "America is a capitalistic country," I call the philosopher in and use him, so to speak, to dissolve these -- ele- -- elements and say that this wouldn't make the United States, you see, then -- then unique creation. That's a passing thing, and accidental.

Only to show you that I have some use for philosophers, because the ingredients of American history should be -- should be sifted for what is the real contribution of the United States, you see, and what is purely veneer, or cloak, or I mean, of passing, and has nothing to do --.

Give you -- an example. Mr. Morison, Mr. Samuel Eliot Morison, is a great historian in this country. And -- who has read a book of his?

(I'm reading his { }.)

Well, we are personal friends. And so he one day confessed to me that he had to use a certain philosophy in order to free himself from all his Bostonian environment as a -- as a blue-blood Bostonian.

And he's -- I -- I, being very anti-Socialist indeed, understood that this man used philosophy in order to find the pertinent things in his history, you see. Being an historian, he wanted to rise above the accidental. He didn't want to -- to identify the Lowells and the Cabots of Boston, you see, with American history. And feeling that he was so -- dyed-in-the-wool Bostonian, he looked for some critical, philosophical approach which would take down certain things that seem to -- you see, seem to the native identical with the -- with the meaning of history, you see, that God created Boston, the hub of the universe. And I admired him for this honesty with which he used, you see, a radical system of philosophy -- -phizing, you see, in order to learn to be a better historian.

So in this sense, philosophy is the critical faculty of warning us against arbitrary -- fanaticism, so to speak, you see, or devotion, you see. And in -- in this negative sense, I think historians can use and will always use philosophy as a sifting process, so that they are warned against falling in love with -- with accident, with -- with things that have not brought about the results they want to celebrate, or they want to stabilize, you see. Sometimes the -- the man who wore a blue cap is the leader, then everybody says a blue cap saved the country, you see. This -- a philosopher then can cure us by -- generalizing and saying, "Caps have nothing to do with patriotism." Can you understand my point?

(Then the proper use of philosophy is meaningful to the historian.)

Ja. Ja.

Because we all inspire and expire. We all inhale and exhale. And the negative attitude: "Oh no, that's not very much," is just as necessary as the other: "That's terrific." Obviously we have to move in both directions, and we have always to dismiss that -- that which doesn't deserve our admiration, or our allegiance, or our loyalty. And that it means to philosophize. And philosophizing is like exhaling, I think. But history is inhaling. Historians must inspire their readers. And -- and philosophers must detach their readers. And so you can also play -- make this pun, but puns are a little dangerous, I mean. Historians attach us to life. And philosophers detach us from life.

(The attempt of thinking -- their objectivity is -- is okay, as long as we have the historians to balance -- to balance it.)

Quite. But they are elsewhere. You see, you must not say that the philosopher of history makes history superfluous. You understand? The philosopher and the historian are just doing something quite different. The philosopher tries to submerge the individual times, and places, and people into some general system; submerge, you see. And the historian tries to make emerge the really created mountains and plains, you see, of real people into consistent survival. "Emersion" and "submersion" may be -- is quite a good word, you see. If I read a philosophy, everything is submerged under generalities, you see. Nothing -- any longer is important.

(Well, wouldn't the philos- -- the philosopher would probably say, "I see, therefore I believe." And the -- the hor- -- historian does not necessarily have to see to believe; he has the faith, without having to see to believe. Did you mention that a couple of lectures -- back?)

Ja. Perhaps we have still 10 minutes for Mr. Polybius, because that's just

an anecdote, it seems, but it shows you that this -- very sober--and -- people have s- -- even held of him, a very poor--writer -- as a writer, has real greatness as -- regard to the -- to the emergence of uniqueness. What's the story? Did you read this? Why didn't you?

(I couldn't find it in the library.)

Who has read it? Well, you're a good girl. -- Now will you give { }, will you? Read it out loud.

(Twenty-two, or a little bit of 21 which sort of introduces it more, which is down a little bit of that, prior to the part that you -- you wanted us to emphasize?

(The lead-in.)

(Yeah.)

Oh, yes, very necessary, very neces- -- now the situation is -- 146 B.C. Rome has conquered Greece. Rome has conquered Carthage, the great enemy. And the queen of Carthage and the commanding general are surrendering and approaching Scipio while the city down -- is ablaze. And so it's a great scene. And next to him is situated Polybius, his teacher and friend, who has accompanied him to headquarters. And here he receives the surrender, Scipio. Now go on.

("Turning around to me at once, and grasping my hand, Scipio said, 'A glorious moment, Polybius. But I have a dread foreboding that some day the same doom will be pronounced upon my own country.'

("It would be difficult to mention an utterance more statesmanlike and more profound, for at the moment of our greatest triumph and of disaster to our enemies, to reflect on our own situation, and the possible reversal of circumstances and generally to bear in mind at the season of success the mutability of fortune, is like a great and perfect man. A man, in short, worthy to be remembered.

("Scipio, when he looked upon the city as it was utterly perishing, and in the last throes of its complete destruction, is said to have shed tears and wept openly for his enemies. After being wrapped in thought for long, and realizing that all cities, nations, and authorities must, like men, meet their doom, that this happened to Ilium, once a prosperous city...")

That's Troy. Ilium.

("...to the empires of Assyria, {Medea}, and Persia, the greatest of their time, and to Macedonia itself, the brilliance of which was so recent, either deliberately or the verse escaping him, he said, 'A day will come when sacred Troy shall perish, and Priam and his people shall be slain.' And when Polybius, speaking with freedom to him--for he was his teacher--asked him what he meant by his words, they say that without any attempt at concealment, he named his -- he named his own country for which he feared when he reflected on the fate of all things human. Polybius actually heard him, and recalled { }.")

Gentlemen, in 1945, this country was very much enraged, because the Germans had dared to offer resistance at -- in the Battle of the Bulge, and at Christmas at Bastogne, and it was in -- you can hardly -- remember this. But while the Ger- -- Americans were really quite happy-go-lucky all the time before, this last moment of resistance seemed to spoil everything, and poison, so to speak, the mood. And people got -- became more anti-German than they had ever been before. And so in 19- -- in the middle of '45, the -- as you know, there was the Potsdam conference, and the -- the soldiers were forbidden to -- to speak to the Germans -- not only the German soldiers, but to the population, you see, and they were ostracized as {brutes}. And it was obvious that the Americans were so engaged in fighting the war after it was over, that the new enemy, the Russians, bec- -- remained invisible. And the Germans couldn't understand this. They -- all -- every German told at that time, the Americans, "Why don't you turn around and fight the Russians with us?"

Well, the Americans, of course, were stultified. They still had to live for another five years in the hatred of the Germans, because the hatred against Germany, as I told you, did not develop in 1939. It didn't develop in 1941, but it did develop at the end of the war in 1945. And so this -- the soul of man is not contemporary of the events very often, you see. You can bring about a -- quite a distemporanity, quite a discrepancy in the timing of human feelings, and in the timing of events.

So I invited Dorothy Thompson, who is -- was at that time a very famous columnist in this country, and myself, and a man who -- in the college who had been the chaplain and the founder of a new department there. So we three invited 35 colleagues of mine in the -- Dartmouth College to a meeting at my house, because I had the largest rooms. And Dorothy Thompson came, as a politi- -- -cian, and the old man came as a clergyman, and I came -- spoke as a former German, and an historian. And I simply read to them this -- this anecdote of Scipio, that this man had the na- -- at the moment of greatest triumph of Rome considered the inevitable onetime decline of Rome. And I went so far to say, "Now if you consider this, his tears obviously have made it possible that the Roman Empire went on for another 500 years. Because the sobriety of a victor

who can identify, you see, the vanquished with his own later fate, is of course much greater than that of the triumphant victor who only thinks that he, you see, cannot be reached, cannot be attained."

And therefore I think the Roman dignity -- the Roman -- what is -- has been called "pietas," piety of Rome, shows in this fear of the envy of the gods, you see. This is a through-going, ancient notion. And we talked about it in the beginning, that the gods who give such a complete victory will only tolerate it if the victors remain very sober, very, you see, debonair, very relaxed, and do not stiffen and say, "Now we can do as we please."

And -- so I tried to convey to them the fact that the future of Rome was created by this insight of the victor into its relative character -- the relative character of the victory. What happened was that these 35 gentlemen laughed. Laughed. They laughed. And so of course the Americans dismissed the army. They -- had to go through this terrible Korean injustice, where people were called up again to the colors, who had fought for four years in the World War, you see, and -- whose family life was destroyed, because nobody had served in the meantime and been prepared. I have seen this. I have three marriages that have been broken up, in my own friendship, because young -- these young naval -- fliers were completely overtaxed in their strength, and they had -- just a nervous -- nervous wrecks when they came back from Korea. One of the greatest injustices in this country, that people had to go to war twice, you see, because there was -- had been no substitution, you see.

And so I think the -- the -- that these people, who were all educated people, were all teachers, could laugh at this representation floored me. I have never been the same with these people, to tell you the truth. I was through with them. The cynicism, or the indifference, or the -- the flatness of their souls in such a situation -- it was -- after all, it was September '45, four weeks after the Japanese surrender; so, I mean, everybody was still living high, so to speak. But they only thought that we were pleading, you see, and that they were after all the victors, and they felt very good, and they could do as they pleased, and nobody had to tell them anything.

And -- ja?

(When they heard the -- these words of Polybius, I thought immediately of the 24th book of The Iliad, where Achilles can shed tears for Priam.)

Tears for Priam.

So -- I only think -- Polybius is rated even much more prosaic than Thucy-

dides, but in -- in saving this story, I think, he has shown that he feels, you see, that he creates the future by fully depicting the -- the -- the -- this moment, I mean. This story is written of -- obviously with great emphasis at the end. It's the end of the story. It's not the very last book. It's lost, unfortunately, the 40th book. It's a 40-book -- this is the 38th or the 39th book?

(Thirty-eighth book.)

Thirty-eighth book. And I think every one of you should take it into your notes. It's a unique thing. And I think it still should be repeated and repeated again to the United States' people, that the victor is only saved if he can see his own fate in the s- -- in the light of the vanquished.

But then you will understand that history is -- are not philosophizing. But that they put us in your place. They -- they -- you see, the same as prayer does. People always ask me, "Why do we pray, what -- does it make sense?" Because I only know from prayer who -- I am. In the addressing of the creator, I know that I am a miserable creature, a passing thing. And I have to pray, because you can't tell me who I am, and you can't tell me who I am, because all we are -- all labor under misunderstanding. Nobody knows the other fellow, you see. Only my maker can tell me who I am.

And so we -- we only know in dialogue who we are. And in the same sense, here, the historian, in the dialogue between past and future, makes us see the future -- makes it transparent, because we can see it in moderation, I mean, in measure. And just as people today dismiss prayer as ridiculous, when it's the only cure for a sick soul, so it is with history. If you philosophize on history, you -- it's -- one drabness. Everything -- all cats are gray at night, as you know, or black at night. But cats aren't black in reality. They have all kind -- different colors.

And so the -- the -- man lives in very beautiful gardens of his own creation. And I would think that any country should be treated as such a garden of Eden, which we will lose as soon as we do not pay the price for supporting it, and you no longer honor the -- the victims, the sacrifices that are made for us.

Let me end with a -- with a -- with a good anecdote, because I think it should be told. It has to do with this -- you may not see it right away.

-- Mr. -- Mr. Eliot was the great president of Harvard University. And he made it a great university. And he had come to be 90. So really, of course, retired already. But there was a meeting in 1919 in Boston about who had done more for the war effort, had made -- greater sacrifices: capital or labor? And the tycoons of

-- Boston business and the trade union men got together in a tow- -- in the city hall of Boston and discussed a whole evening: Who had made greater sacrifices for the victory, capital or labor? And at the end, the chairman of this boastful meeting--of course labor, you can imagine it; they just -- none of them would of course -- could have done less but save the country.

And so the chairman said, "Now we have the great privilege that Mr. El- -- President Eliot has come over from Cambridge to talk -- to be present. And since we have this privilege, I think I should now ask him, if he has a word to say to us."

It was 10 o'clock in the evening. It was very stuffy in this whole room. And the man -- the witness who has told me the story said it was like opening a window. Because there stood this very old man, 90--you know, that's --erect, and only said, "I don't care for the sacrifices made by labor. I don't care for the sacrifices made by capital. I only care for the real sacrifices made by the brides, and mothers, and sisters of the men who have died."

That settled the whole question, you see. The whole evening, you see, was -- was {over}. Wie? And that's a similar story, I think, as Polybius, don't you think? They could be put together.

So -- now we go into the abstract time.

And what did we -- what did we agree upon? What happens next time?

({ }.)

{ } do you think so? What -- did you speak of Caesar, or did we not speak of Caesar. Wie?

(We started Thucydides a couple of weeks ago.)

Who is studying American history? Well, shouldn't you bring an American historian? Should we now go into this, and look at an American historian? I don't care who. But it -- can be Bancroft, or it can be {Brown}. Or whatever you have.

({Mallory?})

Wie? Who?

(Do you know Dr. {Mallory}? {George Mallory}?)

What has he written? I don't know his book.

(He's written American Democracy. I guess it's just a textbook, actually.)

{ }. I {have a} textbook at this moment unfortunately myself. So I want to do something -- want something higher.

(Couldn't -- couldn't we study one of your books? Aren't you an American historian? An historian of American history?)

{ }. This library doesn't recognize my existence.

({ } library.)

How many copies of the -- of the Driving Power of Western Civilization is there -- are there? Do you have any idea? Do you know?

(I think there -- there were six copies.)

Oh, that's really too -- too few.

(How about Sandburg?)

What?

(Sandburg.)

You know, this -- may sound prejudiced, but I think biographies are at this moment tending to dissolve the reverence for history. It's a long story, and I -- you don't have to follow the whole argument, but I think that it is today an escape into biography, prevalent. And -- and history is not biography simply. And I am -- you might discuss this. Who has -- I'm -- willing, this is perhaps our good topic: biography and history. How would this be? Would you care --? When we -- I'm willing to start with -- with Sandburg, with Lincoln. Who has read Sandburg's Lincoln? The only man? Wie? Who has read Sandburg? Now, what Amer- -- biography of any American have you read? just let us ask around. Well, only if you remember it, is it important. Because it's living memory, you see; not dead memory. What have you read?

(Thoreau.)

His own life? Autobiography?

(Oh, autobiography.)

No, any biography.

(No, I read several biographies of Henry David Thoreau.)

By who- -- by whom?

(One was by J. B. Krutch, I think -- he I don't know if he was at Harvard -- Joseph -- Joseph Krutch, and --.)

Who has written a bio- -- read a biography? Yes, you, Sir. Have you read a biography?

(Of any great American, Jefferson? Hamilton?)

Yes. It could even be Jefferson Davis.

(I was thinking of Thomas Jefferson.)

It's just not much of a life. The man is not very -- what -- what's is the book you have read?

(Titled Thomas Jefferson.)

By?

(I don't remember.)

Then you haven't read it. No, I deny it. I deny it. If you don't know the author. Who -- after all, gentlemen, this is really a test of your living memory. You have read a book and you don't know the author. { } seem to you --.

(Why is the -- the author important?)

Your -- affection for the author is important, nothing else. He is not important. But we are made important by other people's love of us, you see. Nobody is important, but your affection might save this man from the grave, you see. But it hasn't. Therefore, you -- you didn't -- don't -- didn't grant him resurrection. That's why. You only live by the -- in the hearts of other -- our countrymen, my dear man, or other men { }. You see, a question is illegitimate, why should you remember the man's name? You see, because that means that this book has begun -- begun to be important in your life. If it hasn't -- it -- you dis-

miss it, and it's just as though you didn't read it.

(It's abstract. It's just another book on Jefferson.)

What?

(Just another book on Jefferson.)

Ja.

(Philosophy.)

Your contribution is your affection for the author. That's -- you see, if you have teacher and student, the teacher must have faith that you will remember something in the future. I have -- can bring no compulsion on you. So I act on faith. You act on hope that something I have known already may be worth your receiving, you see. You act on hope. We are -- however bound together by that much of -- affection which it is necessary that the hopeful and faithful can get together. My faith that this is necessary for you to know--because otherwise this country will perish and you are -- hope, that you may receive something which -- of which you are ignorant, which may be worthwhile--is tied together by the patience and forbearance we have for each other, you see. I call this "affection" with too emphatic a name, but it is, you see. It is a certain degree of mutual forbearance, and -- and you cannot listen to me if you are only hostile, you see. Then you will not understand what I say.

Therefore, really, I mean it. The -- the hope, faith, and love are elements of the problem of knowl- -- of -- process of knowl- -- knowing anything, my dear man. And the first thing, if you look -- like -- feel affection is that you ask for the name of the person who has given you pleasure. And if you say, "I -- he remains incognito," he -- you have philosophized him away into the elements of life, but he -- he hasn't reached you as a -- as an occasion to -- to come to life yourself. Just as you want to be introduced to an interesting person.

Now, who else can -- can testify? You want Sandburg, or what else?

(-- Also -- Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, and {Benjamin Thomas'} Lincoln, and so forth.)

And you, Lady?

(Also Benjamin Franklin, and Jonathan Edwards by Perry Miller and Grif- -- {McGiffert}? { } {McGiffert}? And Lincoln by { }.)

No wrinkles in your face!

(And { }.)

{ }, ja.

(Federalist Papers.)

(Channing.)

Wie?

(Channing, a biography on him.)

On Ellery Channing? The historian or the Unitarian?

(The Unitarian.)

The Unitarian. Well, what have you read, here?

(Well, as I said, you know, the same with Sandburg, and -- something { }.)

Well, I -- { } constantly, so you must know what you're reading. No?

Well, have you read a life of Henry James, or William James? Or any such thing? No. Roosevelt? Of Theodore -- have you read a life of Theodore Roosevelt?

(No.)

Now what's the cherry tree? It's -- I'm interested, really -- because if we want to have -- we have five more meetings, and the topic, biography in history, is -- is an important topic, and I think a fruitful topic. But then -- let -- allow me--do we have another five minutes, perhaps?--

(Yes.)

--to go into this. And that's why -- some background is -- I'm not asking you to ridicule this, but I'm really trying to find out what we can do. And if you -- there is no basis for discussion, we have to create it. Therefore I have to impose on you reading something. And so would you kindly go to the library and read for the next week, The Life of Pericles by Plutarchus? That has some connection,

after all, with our friend -- with our friend Thucydides. The Life of Pericles by Plutarch. In many editions available, probably also -- available here in the paper binding. You have the -- look at it here, you may -- we may even find it here. Isn't it in here?

(There is a paperbound edition of Plutarch's Lives, but there's -- yes, Pericles is among them.)

Well, I'm sure it is among them. But we'll go on and you read Pericles and {Cinna}. I think there are even -- no, there are -- who is {Cinna}? They -- always -- is one Roman and one Greek together, you see. I don't know who the Roman is. But you take Caesar and --.

(Alexander and Caesar are contrasted, as I --.)

No, I don't want Alexander. It's too complicated at this moment to make. But we -- be prepared. We have to have -- know -- need something. Now Plutarch's biographies are not what you would call biographies in the modern sense by a long shot. You may -- we may have to -- to analyze this -- to -- not to confuse the word "biography" in the ancient, pagan sense with what you call a life today. But on the other hand, I would like every one of you to pick out an American biography which he would -- wants to read within the next fortnight. And so that will be my assignment. Every one of -- I don't care that it has to be identical. I don't think that's necessary. But I want every one of you to -- to read fresh a new biography of an American person of the last 200 years.

(What do you mean...?)

250 years.

(What do you mean a new biography?)

Well, a book you haven't read yet. You have not -- that's all. You -- with regard to yourself. One can be as old -- as old as Methuselah.

(When did Plutarch live?)

He lived around the year 120 of our era. He was a Greek living in Boeotia, in Chaeronea, and -- being very prolific writer, and we owe him all kind of ethical investigations. And he had this bright idea of confronting always one Roman and one Greek statesman, philosopher, or person. And write therefore parallel biographies, pointing out, according to a -- that's just what distinguishes him from a modern biographer. He had a standard of biography, certain points:

descent, family, wealth, education had to be mentioned, you see. And he had to go by this very elaborate scheme, and fill it out, so to peak, as you have first a scheme, and then put the things in.

Now what we call a biography is genetic. Christianity has brought in -- everywhere the element of time. We even call nature now, "natural history." That's a Christian expression, you see. The ancients didn't know anything of natural history. They couldn't, because to them nature consisted of things as they are. And that's all forgotten today. "Na-" -- "Natural history" is -- simply a Christian term, because Christ, you see, is not in space, but in time. He's the morning star that rises, you see, over history. But He's not the morning star that rises in the horizon as the star Venus. And this transformation of space -- things in space in -- in processes in time, that's the whole story of the Holy Cr- -- Ghost, you see.

Now the Greeks were static. They looked at things. They wanted to -- to -- they believed in -- in -- in -- in -- in -- the Greeks were autonomous -- there was no world history. And everything was cyclical for this reason. And therefore, Plutarch is a pagan biographer. And everybody falls under the same pattern. It is not how this man became to be -- as we would, you see, are interested in -- came to be something, but who he was, a descriptive thing.

And all this is forgotten today, because this, of course -- the boast in -- of Americans is that they are purely Greek. They are. Nobody can. You couldn't be a Greek if you -- even if you wanted to.

So that's why Plutarch has to be read -- read by -- with a grain of salt, because you couldn't approve, so to speak, of such a biography, you see, today. And if you read this, you will find out about this.

And if you compared then what -- the story of Samuel, you will see how -- how much the Jewish history is one of becoming, and the Greek story is one of being.

Now I wonder -- Plutarch -- I -- I recommend then to you that you buy this. This is not very expensive. It's $1.50, I suppose.

(Thirty-five cents.)

Wie?

(Thirty-five or 50 cents. Maybe it went up.)

(Mentor Pocket Book. You can get it in the bookstore.)

So everybody goes and buys it. All right. Wonderful. And please come on with your perfect knowledge of the life of Pericles and Caesar.