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

...would you have -- all have me -- what does he mean by my saying that the Greeks did not define virtues, but just -- to -- I don't recall that.

(Well, you just said they -- they just talked. They didn't define, like we do, in the dictionary.)

({ } word meant, when they defined a word, it was in terms of a verb action, and that we { } to substitute a noun as a definition of something, rather than an experience.)

You see, if you have some -- an element --. I went to the -- 39 in {Haines} Hall, where Mr. {Bryan}, or {Byron} or whatever the man -- yesterday spoke, and there was hanging this tremendous map on the chemical, you see, elements. You know the -- the list of -- {Mendeleev's} series. And where you have reduced there the element to its name and the specific weight, isn't that?--that would be the idea, the most -- the final form of a defini- -- defining, you see, because it's reduced to a common denominator, a specific weight, you see. The only difference is the fig- -- the numeral in -- in which it stands, and then the name by which we recognize it. That's reduced to a formula "C"-"E"-"U" and whatever.

So that is the tendency, the trend of scientific definition: to brush aside all associations which the average layman has when he comes in touch with a rose. He -- he says it's fragrant. When a botanist comes in touch with a rose, he has classified it away, you see, and all the niceties and amenities about roses and the poetical flavor is gone.

Now this -- the -- you can however also define an element by what it does. And you can say, "Water is the most important of the elements." As Pindar's famous first ode on the Olympic Games, begins, you see: "The best is water." And then only comes gold; because water is more, you see, needed to our life, it's nearest to -- to life, really, of all the processes in nature. And so for California, I think it's a good quotation, from the -- the first line in Pindar's poetry is: "The best is water." { }. And this is anti-scientific, because it is a quality. It's a quality which is only personally to be realized. Still more, however, are you close to the -- to the process of experience if you say, "The water rushes." The water, you see --. That's -- what you perceive is the act. And you for- -- know nothing more than: "Something is moving," you see.

And so the -- the verb is the impression, and the empir- -- is empirical; and the definition is scholastic. And you are today inclined to -- to reverse the order

and think that the scientific definition is -- is empirical.

And the -- all Americans, as far as I know them -- today confuse experiment and experience. And I have tried to shield you against this error, you see. Empiricism is through actions, through processes. And all science works only experimentally. That is, you cannot experiment without first having defined what you take into the experiment, you see. There is no experimentation without definition, because you say, you see, "I omit this, and I admit this into the experiment." All experiments are stage- -- staged through a theory, you see. You want to prove a theory through an experiment. And you -- all the theoretical -- practical -- so-called par- -- "experimental physics" is based on theoretical physics. You cannot have -- run an experiment as empirical, and --. All -- every American has his loose bottom in his brain, that he confuses experience and experiment. So you don't know that all you do -- live in a second-hand world of theory to which you -- think that life is the experiment.

But experience is this side of theory, before you have anything -- any time to theorize, you are engulfed with something rushing, something thundering, something raining, something loving, something hating, certainly always threatening you, or caressing you, or doing something to yourself, before you had any emergence of your reflective organs, and before the mirror of -- of consciousness, saying, "Oh, that's nothing but." You can also say that you reach still then the first sense of wonder, the { } which Gre- -- the Greek philosophers held to be the center of philosophy, to be astonished. To be so astounded, you see, that you hardly know what to say, and you have to take a deep breath before you can articulate what you experience.

Now that's not the attitude of the experimental American, who is here, detached, and says, "I -- well, don't get excited"; "I don't care"; "This -- oh -- probably that's the -- that's probably nothing but a bug," you see. It's "nothing but." And you can always divide humanity, you see. The Russians are still in the age of the Greeks, and they still have -- speak also such a Greek language of -- of seven cases, and -- and a tremendous verbal -- word wealth. Because, you see, with them, you -- they are astounded all the time. And the whole attitude -- the -- your at- -- your whole education in this country is "Never be excited." Now not to be excited means "Never be astounded." "Never be astounded" means "Unable to experience." And all girls in this country are so terribly threatened by frigidity, because they can't be astounded. They -- it's all experimental. Sex is experimental. If it's experimental, you are already outside of it, you see. Because you have set it up, and observe it. So all -- everybody, his own observer in this country. And the -- the impotency of an American -- the American manhood is based on this: "Life is just an experiment." Gentlemen, if life is an experiment, you are outside of it.

The Quakers and the Puritans, when they came to this country, they said, "We are God's experiment." And they use the word "experiment" in a religious sense, where you were the metal in the crucible. And this has brought on the American confusion, you see. All your language is secularized Bible. And you don't know this. And therefore, the word "experiment," like "sal-" -- "happiness," you see, is a translation of "salvation," you see. Originally everybody in this country was allowed to pursue his own salvation, you see. And when the revolution came, people wanted to use a general term, so that no church would feel hurt. So they said, you see, "the pursuit of happiness." And if you do not read behind "happiness" the word "salvation," you do not understand the meaning of happiness in America. It has never had this notion in England, you see. The pursuit of happiness -- un-understandable in Europe. It's blasphemy there. We -- we in Germany, if we hear "pursuit of happiness," we think that you are lascivious epicureans, you see. Nobody can work out his happiness; can only work out your own salvation. But happiness is nothing but an American version of -- of salvation.

And -- and -- so the same is true of experiment. The Puritans in the 17th century in this country said that we were God's mighty experiment. God experimenting with us, you see, is something quite different when we -- experimenting with life. Can you see the difference?

And so we are -- you are all confused because the religious notion of experiment, and this physicist's -- chemist's notion of experiment, run into one in your mind. And most of all, you are -- you are terribly hurt, yourself, because you feel obliged to experiment with life.

If the ladies per- -- forgive me, but you remember in "History Must be Told," in -- in the "Shame" lecture, you see, the story of the American student who comes to Heidelberg, and shocks the whole town because he has -- makes love to various nice German girls, and has the effrontery, wherever the heart of heart is reached, to put on the gramophone and have all the noises recorded and then shows this later to his German friends.

And when I came to Heidelberg five years ago, they -- they said they had never seen such profligacy. They knew something about debauchees, and they know something of insolence, and shamelessness, but this -- this deprivation of Americans was unknown in Europe. You have to know this. Just because this man took it upon himself to experiment with love, instead of experiencing it. Can't you see this?

And -- this is the reputation of Americans in the world, gentlemen, abs- --of the women even more--absolute shamelessness. Because you and -- they

understand that you can experiment with your own soul, life, body and -- et cetera. You cannot. And this is the story with the -- this perversion, you see, of -- that's why I tried to warn you that ex- -- an experience, you see, note -- notes, acts, processes --. Mr. Whitehead, the great English philosopher, when he came to this country--and taught still ni- -- in the last years of his life in Harvard--wrote this book, Process and Reality, in which he tried to -- to describe to you the cosmos in which -- inside which we move still, as an -- as a surprising experience, as something that must astound you every minute. You must be astounded that I speak to you, that you can understand it, you see. You cannot -- but most students sit in my class and -- and define me. And say, "This is an interesting man," or "He's stimulating." You see, that's already breaking the spell of the immediate encounter.

That's why the word "encounter" today has this much -- so to speak, vogue, because people try to find the way back to immediate experience, you see. "Encounter your { }." "Encounter with God," Martin Buber's saying, et cetera. Well, it's is a rather helpless re-discovery of the most original relation of -- of life, meeting life. I mean, it's nothing special, encounter. It's the first thing. But you have perverted all the sequences of -- of the processes of life. To you, the mirror of reflection is the first, and then the acts come out of this. So you are all abstract, you see. You don't treat me as me, whom you meet here. But the -- first say, "He is a human being."

Gentlemen, that's deteriorating my -- my -- my impression on you. Perhaps I am not a human being. Perhaps I'm a devilish being, or a divine human being. I { } -- I'm -- disinclined to accept your notion that I'm just a human being. I'm not just a human being. "He's nothing but a human being." You can always say, "We are all -- all -- all -- we are all but human." In this very moment, the experience of the encounter is destroyed, you see, because you say, "It's nothing but." And you all do this.

That's here the low- -- low-brow style, you see, of dismissing everything of rank, everything of importance, every -- every superior humanity must be -- "Well, he's just a human being." Well, of course, he has to eat, and to sleep, and do all the other fun- -- func- --. But that -- does -- does this contain a man? And you are so satisfied when you -- can prove of every man his weight in the paper, and she has brown -- brown hair, and she weighs -- she's one -- five feet five. And you have the lady, you see. All these physical connotations which you add today in the papers to the description of a man, you see -- photographing Mr. Dulles' interior -- intestines. Is this Mr. Dulles?

And -- and this wouldn't be bad, gentlemen, if you would not hurt your -- your posterity, if you would be -- children that would come out of such alliances

are impotent. They have no -- no power, because they haven't come from a complete -- union and fusion of two people. But they have been planned, a martin- --.

I have a friend whose -- who said me, "This -- this child we made on March 19th." Now do you think that's something? Of course, they all have to go to the psychoanalyst. What does the psychoanalyst? Talk -- talks the reflection and all these people, once more, so to speak, you see. Thinking that two minus give plus. See, the -- the reflective mind of the patient, and the over-reflection of the psychoanalyst then shall restore innocence. Really. You all live a -- minus times minus -- in the hope that this will be plus. Well, why don't you stay here, in the plus -- realm of experience, and of wonder?

So -- you understand?

(Yes.)

All you have to do with the edu- -- in the word "education," here: preserve the sense of wonder with the children. That's all that's needed. If you destroy this by telling the child, "Oh, that's easy. Can tell you all about this in 10 -- two minutes," it's murder. You have murdered the spirit. And it is committed every day in all our schools.

And it's spreading. I read The Listener this morning, the -- English BBC paper, which is after all one of the better things of the human spirit at -- still at this moment. But there was half a column on Greece. And it said in -- in half a column everything about the Greeks. "The Greeks as They Were," it was called, or something. And it was a masterpiece of condensation, but it was all tincanned, you see. After you had read this half-column, the Greeks no longer existed, you see. You carried them -- away, you see, in a -- in a two-penny, you see, on a -- value -- two-penny stamp. And this shouldn't exist, I mean. The -- the -- one item out of Greece, you see, which makes you wonder, that's how you have to represent the Greeks to -- to a child, or to a a student, or to -- yourself. And not -- not by compressing everything, you see. But everybody here thinks to present the Greeks in two minutes is more meritorious than to present them in 10 minutes; and to present them in 10 minutes is more meritorious than to present them 60 minutes; and so -- on it goes. I mean, you think really that shorter is better. So the sense of wonder diminishes, you see, in your mental {profession}. Because the real sense of wonder is what? Infinite, has -- the quality of infinity. You see, you never come to an end with the wonderment. The very word "wonder," you see, is the English version of "miracle." And the "won-" -- you see, "to wonder" is to -- to change, to transform. And that's quite important for you -- so that you should reclaim the connection between the baton of the sorcerer, you

see, the wand -- wand and the wonder. This is the same root. And in German, of course, it has a very important role of "Verwandlung," which means "metamorphosis."

Now for the Greeks, and for the Germans--and I think for the Russians the same thing--the wonder is that we change, that we must be transformed. This is our sense of wonder, you see. Man is never the same. Every day he must be transformed by the encounter. And this is your biographical problem, too, you see, this sense of -- that God's wa- -- wand -- Prospero's wand, you see, which he puts down at the end of The Tempest, you see, transforms, metamorphoses, you see. That's the Greek -- Latin -- "transforms." Also, I mean, the simple word "mutation" of course is the same.

Now as you know, our biologists, in their strange experimental passion, have left God one loophole. They call what they cannot explain a "mutation." And if you -- study the word "mutation," it just means these are the spots where we cannot reason, where we have no arithmetic, you see. { } mutation, you see, the points where you still have to wonder, that you didn't foresee, you see, the behavior of the genes, of -- of your genetics -- game.

I -- I have a friend who's a geneticist; well, he's simply a madman. I -- I think they are all insane, these heredity people. Because at all decisive points, they have to say, "Oh, that's a mutation," which means -- formerly they said, "That's the divine providence," you see, "That's an act of God." Now they call it "mutation." But if you study the word "mutation," it means absolutely nothing. It is no explanation whatsoever, and all decisive -- steps in the history of the -- of the -- of life on this earth, they call "mutation." Well, exactly as the Jud- -- the Bible says, "a new act of creation." And they call it "mutation"; and mutation means transformation. And it evokes a sense of wonder that we suddenly see something is no longer the same. So there was a reptile, and now there is a quadruped, a mammal. "That's mutation." Laugh at these people. They're just silly asses, I mean. To hide the secret of creation under a new word which they never translate, and never tell you that "mutation" just means "a new act of creation." That's all it means.

The old thing doesn't work out mechanically anymore, so a new start. That's called "mutation" in this country. And nobody laughs. This is so funny. But you all sit down, and they even bind these books on heredity. I did it myself to sample it. I just -- it just -- good for the wastepaper basket, you see.

Because where we -- you and I in biography, for example, you see, want to know who made Lincoln, you see, which act of God produced out of this -- this man with the poor digestion, and a -- poor skin, and -- and ugliness, and --

and -- and illegitimate child, et cetera -- who made him into an angel of God, with a message for the whole -- for -- for -- for centuries to come? That's -- that's a question of history. And therefore, we, gentlemen, are closer to the real problem of history than all these naturalists. And you try to explain men from natural science, but I think they only tell you that the scientists, you see, are hangovers -- hang-on -- hangers-on to our problem of transformation, and try to see in nature those changes which start us thinking when we meet people.

Yesterday you met a man. Today he's blustering. Yesterday he was depressed. You wonder what did it, you see. And -- well, this man -- some people, it's money. With some people it's glory. With some people it's love. With some people it's success. You see, with some people, it's conversion.

So these great transformations of man have -- have men dis- -- may discover change. And what we do with the change in nature, you see, only was discovered in -- in parallel to your and my encounter where we discover suddenly: well, the man of -- yesterday is -- was a boy, and today that's a man. That's experience, you see.

So all real experiences are made between people, gentlemen. And all natural science, empiricism, or experimentation is applying certain notions we have of our -- experience in real life between people, and say, "Perhaps in nature, it's similar. Perhaps -- nature also undergoes shocks, and transformations, and so we boil with the water, and see it bubbling up." And this you only do after you have experienced the heartbeat of a -- of a foaming passion, of a boil- -- as we say, "boiling passion."

If you analyze all the words which we use in the -- chemistry, they all come from human experience, from "fury," and so on. "It boils furiously," you see. I just got a recipe yesterday that I -- should take, to prepare this tea, furiously boiling water. But what fury -- is, you only know from the heart, and no -- no way in the world outside ever to define "fury." So if you have to take furiously boiling water, the -- first you have to experience great wrath and anger. There are no furies in the outer world. They are all furies of vengeance.

Once you understand the relation of empiricism, and experimentation, you become again the universal man. And you look down at your social habitat of -- of America as a -- purely passing state of your soul. Nations, you see, are -- are ways of bewitching men into a shell of accident. No German can go to Heaven if he's just a German. No Jew can go to Jew -- Heaven if he's just a Jew. It's impossible. You have -- always to be more than what you are. This is your problem of your transportation, or your transformation, or your mutation, or your -- and you get this by a sense of wonder, because every morning, a new

sense of wonder gets you out of your hard shell, of -- of a "Hm, m- -- I don't care," you see. I could kill a child who says, "I don't care," because it has killed itself already. I have a right to feel that she -- I should -- could kill this brat, because this brat, by saying, "I don't care," has killed itself.

Tell you a story. The Angel of Siberia was a Swedish woman, the daughter of the Russian amba- -- Swedish ambassador to St. Petersburg in the First World War. And a very great woman she was. Elsa Brandstr”m was her name. Many routes, many -- streets in Europe are called now after her today. Because she went out to Siberia and took care of all the prisoners of war who were located in eastern Siberia, and of course suffered very much, and --.

And -- so after the war, she married a friend of mine in Germany. And he had to leave Germany, because he was a socialist when Hitler came, and became a professor at Harvard, and he's still there. And -- of education, by the way. Yes. And Elsa Brandstr”m so of course couldn't help being this magnanimous and generous person again. And she had -- they had a baby, a child. And this child grew up, and so they invited one day a group of American children to -- and -- for the birthday party of her -- their daughter. And of course they had ice cream. And Mrs. Brandstr”m passed around the ice cream, and said, "Don't you like a little more?"

And the children said with this imitable American accent, "I don't care. I don't care. I don't care."

She burst into tears and said, "But you must care." You see. You -- you have -- here, she was a woman who had seen all this misery in Siberia, but she felt even ice cream was deservedly, you see -- could only be acceptable and could only be served -- was only meaningful if people did care. Wherever you have a person who says, "I don't care," you know that she is--or he--is in trouble. They will -- he -- they will not be up to the dem- -- requirements of living. They will have to substitute for this some psychological treatment. And that's why you all run -- rush to the analyst, or to some other -- wise- -- wisecrack, who wants to -- has to restore, or to make up for your loss of vitality. And the loss of vitality, this is the spirit first, gentlemen. What you say is -- what your vitality, and not what your -- your muscles, and your blood do. You all are, you see, now -- in black sorcery, you take vitamins, and you took whole grain, and you take all these niceties, and orange juice all day long. You take far too much of these things. And you have to, because you try to build the body up without the spirit. That's impossible.

The sense of wonder is the growing point of humanity. If you wake every morning in astonishment, you will be healthy, because you can assimilate, you

can change, you can be transformed, you -- you stretch out for something bigger than you have been before. The sense of wonder is the growing point of the human soul. And you think weight is it, and the waistline is it, and the diet is, and slimness, and -- ridiculous. That's why you all make -- look under a tan-sun -- sunlamp so miserable. You can have all the nice colors of the world; everybody knows that you are bored and dead inside, before age.

This then is the first experience of the real man. We are centered in our growing point; that's the sense of wonder. Because there we stretch out for change, for being ready to become somebody different.

And I -- really I recommend to you. I mean, there should be a discussion on this campus between biologists and historians, you see, on the -- ridiculous invention of the word "mutation," you see. The biologist says, "I have 80 facts that are mechanical. And then I have one fact: I call this a 'mutation.' And there I stop, I mean. I capitulate { }," you see. We historians, we are honest. We say, "We have 80 facts of -- of transformation, of mutation, you see. There we begin, you see. The -- one word of love can change the whole world." What's -- what's the famous line, "One smile of -- " or "God makes the whole creation new" or what is it? There's an English verse to this -- in this --. No?

So we begin where they give off, you see. We begin with the miracle. And the -- a historian who does not -- is not shocked into writing history by something miraculous shouldn't write history, you see. That's our starting point, that there is some miraculous transformation, like the Peloponnesian War. We begin with the sense of wonder, and he is the real historian who keeps his readers under the spell of this sense of wonder right through. And this is John's -- Brown's Body from -- by Vincent Stephen Ben‚t, that you keep the sense of wonder, you see, from beginning to end. This is the whole merit of the story, that you never are -- dismiss it and say, "Oh, that's nothing but." And -- and this is unheard-of in this country, and so he had to put it into verse, you see. In other countries, this -- such a history can be written in prose, because we still allow an historian to shock you into a sense of astounish- -- astonishment.

Now it is -- this is only, you see -- in America has only occurred in the last 50 years. You live in a completely changed country. The -- in 1900, America was in no way different in its -- approach to poetry, life. If you read Emily Dickinson, she's just as astounded as any other human being every morning about every butterfly. Have you read her? Wie? Don't -- wouldn't you agree? Every qua- -- quatrain in her has the same ring, you see, of infinite surprise, infinite sense of wonder.

And -- so don't believe what you are made into today is -- is anything but

the result of pragmatism, the result of the -- cutting the anchorage from -- of Europe, deliberately; since 1910 has been done by Mr. John Dewey, and the Teachers Seminar in New York -- Teachers College, New York, and all the influences you now realize, you see, come from the -- child has no right to the sense of wonder. Everything is immediately explained. "Don't -- don't be surprised," you see. Why should you? "It's nothing but."

So newspaper clippings are -- are -- are assigned, you see--puns, $64,000 question, quiz kids--they are all giving you a superiority complex, you see. Because -- a quiz kid is ruined for life, I would say, you see. To be allowed to ask this question, you see, ask a child questions and pay it for knowing this nonsense, which they ask, you see. Give them the question --. But that's their relation to reality. The real -- relation to hu- -- of human beings to life is not question and answer. That's, you see, the curse of your misunderstanding of the -- the Socratic method. They -- the real relation is by learning by heart, the songs of the past, for example. And none -- no question and answer. Question and answer is only possible when you are stymied. When do you ask from the street, your neighbor, where the next house stands? In which case? When would you stop a passenger and have to ask him a question? Wie?

(When you're lost.)

When you're lost, when you are ignorant, you see. Life is this side of question and answer, because it's just flowing, it's functioning, you see. And you only ask when you become self-conscious and say, "Well, I may be mistaken. Is this the house?"

Any stranger must ask for the road. Any foreigner must ask for the name of a thing. The question always means that you are outside life. Anybody who asks is already flat on his fannies. He has fallen down. That's the fall of the Bible. You see, the question-and-answer situation is this, the experimental situation, the reflective. And innocence is where you do not ask the question, but where you listen. And where you believe.

Now how can you get into the swing of reality if children are allowed to ask -- they may ask, but never answer their questions. One of the curses of America is that children's questions are answered. One out of 10 questions of a child must be answered, because it's concerned. The other is just a way of -- of phra- -- way of be -- getting interested, of getting into the swing of things, you see. The child knows very well that it is not inside the process of reality, and so by the question, it wants to, like the foreigner, to find its way into this maze of life. But you do this child a much greater favor if you {commission it} at this very moment. When the child asks a question, you may sure that it has lost its way.

And -- so it sits back, and instead of joining the fray, you see, it tries to take stock of it. But it is always happy if you break the spell, forget about the question, and say, "You'd better put on your hat and go out and -- for a walk in the --" or whatever you have to -- to say to the child to free it from its questioning state.

I think that's one of your misunderstandings, because you think history begins with questions. History does not begin with questions, but it begins with the sense of wonder, you see, that you live inside history. That there is -- something has gone on before what? And -- you want to be told. At the very moment somebody tells you, you have no special questions -- any further to ask.

Well, how did this all come about? When you write a life of a single man, you take him already out of the context of history. Biography is late. When -- when Homer was in love with Achilles, he had to tell the whole story of the Trojan War. He couldn't write a life of Achilles, you see. Biography is taking the -- the carpet of history and dissolve it into its elements. And all biography is already second to history. You see, you first have the story of the World War, then you can write the life of Mr. Eisenhower. You see. You can never compose the -- Second World War out of the biography of {Sparts}, and Eisenhower, and Vandenberg, and Patton, and -- and, you see, Hitler. Would never lead you -- all the lives together never would give you any picture of the Second World War. But after you know the Second World War, you can say Churchill, and you can say Roosevelt. And you can distribute the roles in the drama, you see.

So if you would see this--this brings us -- me now to my proposition today--every life of a single human being is -- it is -- analysis of an historical event in which these people play roles. So -- how do you call the -- the people in a drama? Actors, or roles, or what -- what have you? persons, wie?

(Actors.)

You see. Biography is separating the individual actors of -- the drama, of history. It's an analysis of Julius Caesar, instead of seeing the play, Julius Caesar, acted in -- in which Brutus and the others, you see, counteract Caesar.

I think this may show you why the word "encounter" today is rediscovered. You see, the deep feeling that by anal- -- analysis of individuals, you never get into reality. So Mr. Buber says "Encounter," you see, "is really the creation of the agent, the various agents." And the "encounter" is today the word for "drama." Now Mr. -- in Plutarch, there is a so-called comparison between the Greek and the Roman hero of histor-- biographies, you see. And this rhetoric trick means that Plutarch replaces the dialogue of real life between Pericles and his adversaries, you see, by his mental reflection on the two, which he puts on an

artificial state. And -- this is the Greek -- everywhere the Greek reflection, still is so much bound by dramatic, dialogical experience that you have in Plato, the fiction of dialogue, at least; and you have in Plutarch, this remnant of the respect for reality that the heroes have at least to be compared in his mind. But the true biography of course is that you make the -- the man himself correspond and talk with his friends and enemies who make him.

So the best biography today is not the isolated biography of one man, you see, but it would be, for example, the life of the James -- William James family. And Mr. Matthiessen in this country--William Matthiessen--has ma- -- undertaken this. It's a great step forward in the art of writing biography. He suddenly saw that Henry James and William James, and their father, you see, produced each other constantly, provoked each other, give each other. And so he tried to recapture the real drama of this story of the James family. I think he didn't succeed. I -- I always want to write the books -- myself. It's a much greater drama than even Mr. Matthiessen realized. And I've been engaged in this for -- for man- -- two decades now, feeling that we will not recapture the -- this sense of wonder in biography, you see, if we isolate the individual agent.

And so Plutarch and the Greeks have handed us over a very dangerous heritage. I think that the modern biography is -- destroys your sense of history. You see, if you take a man's birth, and his ante- -- what would you call it?--antecedents, and you call -- take his life, and you take his after-life, the history comprises three generations. Here he is inactive, you see, and pa- -- you can even say "passive." Here he is active, And here he is effective. Or ineffective, I mean. If he is a failure, he's ineffective. That's the same. He's active or inac- -- he -- you can write the life of course of a prig, or of a -- of -- of a -- of a playboy, or Gloria Vanderbilt or what-not.

So biography belongs to three chapters of history. Every life should be treated when you treat the manners of the time in -- where -- in which you are born. The topic would not be you, because you would make such a -- you see, little -- little snowfla- -- -flake inside the blizzard of your youth, you see. There was a society moving, and you were -- was part and parcel of it. You were on the receiving side, were you not? So the agent of your own youth, and your own antecedents before your parents get married is not yourself. All attempts to make the hero the hero of his youth is ridiculous. And the old tribes knew this, and so they -- the youth of the hero is always shrouded in mystery. You have heard in anthropology, perhaps, this problem of the birth -- the youth of the hero. And where was Oedipus, before he come to Thebes, you see? And there is a whole literature today about the -- the youth of the hero, you see, the antecedents of the man in history. Where did he come from? And the reason is that he's not the agent of this prehistory, you see. He's prehistorical to his history.

And if you only would wake up to the fact that you are not able to speak of prehistory among primitive men, as long as you haven't discovered that you have a prehistorical existence, in which you are not the eye of his- -- your history, in which you are made. Your own his- -- there is much prehistory in all of us, you see. The hour hasn't come, yet, where we get ourselves under the -- under control, you see. We -- the biologist calls, we are lived, you see. We are lived. The life processes flood us -- through us, you see. Don't be ashamed of this. Say -- know that you are just as much prehistorical as historical. This is the tension, this is the polarity. You enter -- with every real con- -- responsible decision, you see, you change the relation between the eggshell and the egg, you see. But most of you are still very much in the shell. And -- and again, the American notion is "Oh no, the shell is also me." Don't believe this. Your shell -- eggshell is not your- -- yourselves. That's -- was produced by your antecedents around you. Most of you are held in -- in the view of the world, I cannot see you, yet. I see much more about your -- so-called background, which is your eggshell.

So that's why true history, you see, is dissolved by a too one-sided idea of biography, that this life is emanating backward into the womb of time. And so we get psychoanalysis of the embryo. The true story -- pre- -- history of mine is the marriage of my parents, you see, how they became one. And that's their history; not mine. And therefore it would transcend the limits of a pure biography, which only speaks of me, you see. I have to make other people, the -- the dramatists, the agents of the drama, you see, in order to get to my prehistory. I have been the -- the result of other people's responsible actions and experiences. And -- since people hate to admit this--you live in an era of guinea-pig thinking--you -- everybody today traces his biography to his genes, or to his physical, you see -- to the embryo in the mother. Actually they do analyze this now. It's a complete confusion, you see. It has nothing to do. We know nothing about it. We shall never know. But it's very important whether these parents ever got married, or just said so.

I mean, if there was a real fusion of two hearts, you see, if they became one body, then the -- you will not be a decadent. People who marry experimentally, you see, have children without heart, and without passion. They are very intelligent children, but usually very cruel children. Cruelty is also hereditary. It -- comes -- not by genes, but by the degree of fusion of the two beings who have produced you. If they are in love, the result is -- is -- is simplicity. And if they are not in love, you are split.

So now you see, the -- that's why biography is very late. It's always a -- a -- a warning: when biographies are written, history is usually in a mudhole. It's stuck. Because real humility is that the individual cannot be told without his prehistory, and without his posterity, and therefore it is only in -- in extraordi-

nary cases, you see, where the -- that we have to concentrate on the individual against the -- the tapestry of -- of -- the historical life.

And as I said, the comparison in Plutarch is the last remnant of this deep feeling that you cannot tell the secret of one person without holding him up against another, that the comparison, the so-called {"syncresis"} in Plutarch is the -- is the -- redeeming grace, so to speak, by which he begs his -- your pardon for having isolated the hero. So he puts him back into some context, at least. It's an artificial context of virtues versus vices, and so on. But at least he is there with somebody else. And this comparison of the Greeks is -- the essential Greek solution, you see. We have learned from the Greeks to compare. All comparative law, comparative s- -- lang- -- -guistics, comparative -- the comparison was the highest salvation -- element of salvation in the Greek world. And it isn't very high. But we have learned from the Greeks to compare, and to replace real life by comparison of my own mind, which is, you see, the bystander looking at two in comparison -- comparing them, although they belong one to Rome and to Greece. And if you read Homer, the comparison between Hector and Achilles, the comparison between Troy and the Greeks, you see -- that's his great invention. That's called "humanism." Humanism is not what you think, to be nice. But humanism is the power to take two people outside their environment and to compare them as to their third qualities, you see, regardless of their historical context. And in Plutarch, Homer is, so to speak, exaggerated. You see, every two--one Roman and one Greek--are shown in the same light as Achilles and -- and Hector. But you can see the limitations of -- of comparison. There the -- the contents is omitted. The contents is left aside -- outside.

So the onlooker's mind replaces -- the topsoil in which the heroes really are rooted and make -- lead their lives. And this is -- all philosophers do this, you see. What you call the Greek mind -- and you have to learn today that Gre- -- the Greek mind is only one-half of your spiritual heritage. Without a blend of the Bi- -- biblical and the Greek heritage, you are all absolutely lost, because you all end in chasing the tail of the cat, which is comparison; because you can compare forever, and never know anything absolute, you see. It's very nice to compare Alexander to Caesar, and Caesar to Alexander. But whether you want to dominate the world, that's not solved by this comparison of two people who try to dominate the world, you see. The direction of your life is not given by comparing two people who got lost in the -- woods. That -- they are lost in the woods, or they get -- didn't -- lost in the woods, you have to know from another source.

The destiny of men, gentlemen, is never explained by comparison. Ja?

(Is that what you mean, when you say that humanism -- humanists take the two individuals out of their context?)

Ja. He just -- resigns himself: this is how they were.

Now, so I would say today, you see, in all your literature on Plutarch, you will never find the {syncresis}, the comparison on your end taken seriously. And I would say that this is the umbilical cord with which -- by which Plutarch remained a devout spirit of Greek tradition. Had he not compared Camillus or--whoever it is, I mean, in this case, Fabius Maximus and Pericles, you see--he would have posed as a superball, as Emil Ludwig or some of these scoundrels of today. And -- godless people, you see, who take it upon themselves to create and dismiss theories according to their will. It's the comparison which keeps them -- the Greeks in line. That they are surrounded by -- by civilizations that -- seem to ex- -- to explain each other, to illuminate each other, and to enlighten each other. And here in this country, where you have the harbor of New York, and of San Francisco, and -- you -- you -- you nearly perish by comparison, because to compare means to sterilize the influence of somebody within your own environment.

(The lost {Puritan}.)

Wie? Ja, exactly, exactly.

Well, I tell you. You see, Germany is a very dead country at this moment. I was invited to teach there in 1950. Went to the University of G”ttingen. And I had a terrible experience. I was quite famous in Germany for my work in adult education. And the professor of adult education in G”ttingen was an old friend, and--I may even say, a student and disciple of mine. Not so -- he was 6 years or 7 years younger, and in our young days, we were -- that made a difference. You are 30 and the other man is 22, it makes a difference. If you are 70 and the man is 60, it makes no difference.

So he had learned a lot. { } never denied this. And so he invited me to his lecture course on adult education. He was very ambitious, and went on -- off on political campaign speeches at that time, and left to me his class. So I made a -- great point, you see, in giving the very best I had to -- to say -- in adult education in the great, you see, the disappearance of spiritual authority in Germany--with Bismarck, and Hindenburg, and Hitler. Everybody shown up as fakes. I asked the simple question, you see, in whom to put one's trust. And how could education proceed without any leading lights, without any -- having any points of reference in the past? And that's the situation in Germany at this moment.

And I think I -- I had 200 people in this class, and so I got going. And I thought I was -- it was so that I felt I had given this man an opportunity to -- to work with these people, and to lead them. And so when he came back--his assist-

ant had attended my lectures and had taken them down in shorthand--I said I -- it's very important that you should just now join, at the point, you see, at which we have -- I have be- -- I think I have moved them. They suddenly see that they themselves are in a unique position of -- you see, of -- without ancestry, without s- -- any spiritual ancestors. And this is a very dangerous position. They have no values to go by, you see. And it's only the admission of this -- this terrible vacuum which can save them, you see.

And so I was very anxious. And after all, we had been collaborators. And I said, "Now what I -- please, would you kindly step into my shoes now, and continue?"

He didn't listen to what I had to say. And he said, "Oh no, I have just thought on my journey what I would do. I would now make a speech characterizing you, giving a sketch on your character."

So I said, "Oh, my -- my obituary. This is not why I got up here, so that you can now depict me, and just take me out of commerce," you see.

What he did was, you see, to hang me up as a picture on the wall, you see, instead of entering this process of wonder which I had tried to start in them, you see. He immediately objectified me, took me out of context, you see, and -- and he thought it was a great compliment. He thought I -- he was flattering me. And of course, I preferred life to death. I -- I said to -- I'm not interested in my -- in my after-life, you see. You make me into some posthumous, you see, specter of myself. And he did -- and he's completely dead, and his -- his wife is dying from -- from this death of the man, for years, now. And she is an invalid, only because he has lost his soul.

This is always very simple. If you once have lived a little, the human tragedy is always the same. When the -- in this man, the sense of wonder, you see, have been -- has been destroyed in favor of his knowing everything. His -- and instead of meeting me in an encounter, you see, and joining me, you see, and marching forward on this -- at the head of this army of 2- -- after all, 200 listeners are not a small capital of human -- humanity. You see, he stopped them short, and said, "Oh, look at this man," you see. "He's such-and-such," you see.

And as -- the funny thing is, you see, that being completely Greek, he thought he gave me a compliment, you see, by acting as my Plutarch. And this was forbidden, you see. This happened now again with my -- Soziologie, you know, the -- the big universal history. A man has now published a long article on my -- very complimentary. But I'm as dead as a dodo, because he -- compares me with a great writer of the 18th century. That's all I can get. You see, instead of

saying you can learn something from me, you see, you -- act accordingly, you see, I am out of com- -- out of -- of the ocean, you see; I'm just -- you see, as low as -- I'm beneaped. Left stranded. Terrible. And you all do this.

It's -- has become a habit now, with objectifying a person instead of encountering him and -- marching along with him. The greatest favor you do a human being is to forget who he is and to take him up on what he says. You can see this.

Well, I have a -- I think something more to say about this -- this strange Greek behavior of all of you. If you have these three generations, these three chapters in every man's life, you see, I can tell you that there are to this day three modes of treating a human life. The Greek, the Egyptian, and the ecclesiastical. I would say -- use then -- two strange expressions to shake you out of your sleepiness. What has the Church to say about a man's life? When you read -- who -- who would be the people the Church is interested in? Wie? The saints, ja. They are not very interested in the sinners, but they say so -- but the saints.

Well, what is ma- -- what gives us -- what event connects a saint with the Church, with the memory of the Church?

(Martyrdom.)

Wie?

(Martyrdom.)

Yes, martyrdom, his death. So you find that the people, the names of a saint are mentioned in the calendar of the Church by its death -- his death, and you know it's even today demanded from a saint, if he wants to be canonized, that something is proved about the time after his death. What has to be proven in the Cath- -- Roman Church? It's -- may strike you as very odd, but it's important to think about it. What has -- the saint, the advocate of the saint, in the trial in Rome, whether he should be declared a -- you see, a saint? What has to be approved? You know it? At his tomb, something has to happen.

(A miracle?)

Quite. So in a strange and estranged way, you see, the -- the Roman Church has still the idea that man is a transformer. We are transformed in our youth, prehistorically and after life. Our after-life consists in our power to transform. -- Don't be stymied by the word "miracle," you see. If I can't do miracles, I'm not an historian. You see, we all, as loving people, transform. You transform

your bridegroom, if you -- you see, as a fianc‚e. You have to. That's your business. He must become a different human being.

And so -- but unfortunately, our modern world, miracles have been -- are pooh-poohed, and we only har- -- have them at the grave; and therefore, you think miracles are just out. I assure you that they are not out. My whole life has been only lived on miracles, and on nothing else. Whether you care -- call them miracles or not, I don't care. But certainly they have not -- it has not been lived experimentally. I can tell you that. And that's why I still think I'm quite healthy, and quite -- quite vigorous because I've never allowed myself to stand before the mirror and take stock of my reflections and base my life on my own ideas. I've tried to li- -- to listen to the commands that come to a man when he has to obey orders. That's the only way in which you can keep sound.

So in life, you see, of course, we have the Greek problem of a man's actions. Or acts. Or -- "action" is perhaps better. And so -- not miracles, but action. And you are all action-drunk. I mean, you want to know -- I mean, do something about it, and so on, you see. So no miracles, but actions -- over-actions.

Now there is an Egyptian tradition, and you can read it every day in the paper, that the life of a man hasn't to be explained by his actions, and hasn't to be explained by its after -- his after-life, but by what?

(The stars.)

Wie?

(The stars?)

Ja, the horoscope. His horoscope, you see. And -- please don't laugh. It's just as important for you to regenerate in you the sense of wonder about the stars as the sense of wonder about the miracles. The -- you have to find the new expressions for this, but it is simply true that there is a constellation when you are born. Think of Lincoln and the constellation of this country, which made him just the -- the -- the given man for the -- you see. A man not in the Church, but still imbued with the whole biblical wisdom, you see, so that he was able to -- to write the Second Inaugural. A mere barbarian couldn't do this, you see. Mr. {Knowland} couldn't have become president, you see, because he is not shot through with the language of the Bible. But you read any word of -- of -- of -- of Lincoln, and it is there. And I tried to tell you in my class, in 180, about Herman Melville, that he was the last who -- still spoke -- Bible and Shakespeare in every s- -- line he wrote, you see, so he could become Herman Melville.

So -- the horoscope. Now here you have the three elements of bi- -- of real biography. The constellation under which you are born: don't deny it. We are all -- in this sense horoscopal, because our environment, you see, gives us certain opportunities, and others, it doesn't. There's nothing, you see -- it's just not to be changed. We are born into a world: will you deny that it -- exists, that it has already its own -- its own purposes, its own forms, its own ways of moving and -- and determining you? And so the sooner you get together the Egyptian, the Greek, and the ecclesiastical, the more you can see that the biblical approach tries to comprehend all three. That the -- the -- what I would call the "biblical." What we saw in the story of -- of Samuel and -- his -- mother. His mother is, of course, his horoscope, his constellation, you see. Can't you see this? She devotes him to the -- to the -- to the -- to the sanctuary. She goes there, you see, in her great agony, you see. And that's all done before he is -- he is the -- responsible for this.

So the little story in -- that's why I feel the first book of Samuel is the key to -- our modern understanding of the Bible, more than the book of Genesis, because it is -- you can see it. You -- we can -- you can rebuild from biography, history again, you see. If you only complete the history, you see, and see that -- that the miracle of Samuel is then the production of this tension of David and Nathan, you see. That the fact that he calls him "Saul," and abdicates the thing--"Saul will now hear the commands of the Lord," you see--although this comes to nought, the fact that he, Samuel, creates Saul, enables later this dualism of Church and state in Israel, of -- of prophecy and kingship.

And this is his antecedent. This are -- is his miracle. And there is a miracle. We -- I tried to show you that the pro- -- the role of prophets in Israel is--you remember, we talked here about it, did we?--is miraculous. They have certainly -- have never existed before, because of Samuel and his mother's faith. Eli couldn't have done it, because -- he had these reprobate sons; that's -- have been completely decayed.

So please, this will be a -- lifetime job. Your generation has to reconquer the unity of the horoscope and the constellation of the time when you are born, you see, and your respect for it. You can't brush it aside and say, "environment," you see. It's -- it's more complicated. It's your mother. And you have your own actions, of course. And you have the after-effects. The productivity, the fecundity of your life in others. And this is usually beyond our own notion, as you -- it shows later, you see, beyond our -- preconceived notions of what we are doing, we do things that we do not even -- we do not know what we are doing.

(But can't you -- comment a little bit more on the difference between the kind of horoscope you first mentioned, namely the kind we see in the daily newspapers, and what you mean here. Because I think there's a difference.)

Well, isn't it too early? Mustn't I first make you wonder about the fact that we do -- are born in a constellation, you see? I mean, you want me to say now two things at once. I'm re- -- very -- I'm not superstitious. I don't believe in horoscopes. You understand that. This I haven't to tell you at this moment, isn't that right? But I have to wake you up to the fact that in the horoscope, there is left in a crude manner, you see, a separate approach to life, you see, which does not put all the emphasis on the existence between life and -- you understand, birth and death. But it warns you to say that there is an equally essential element, you see, in this. That's all I tried to say.

And so I -- I think at this moment, you have to swallow this hard word "horoscope," and -- as you have to swallow this word "miracle." Please invent better expressions in your own vocabulary for these terms. But make an effort to see yourself treated as a Trinitarian, {texture}, you see. There are -- three elements in your own -- own life. And don't be unhappy about it, because fortunately your parents and the people -- antecedents' generation loved you, and were your equals. They were your brothers, they were your sisters in time. They -- they didn't have, you see -- that's why I -- I at this moment do not shrink from the word "horoscope," because the constellation is already the product of human hearts, you see. They did marry, and they did found a -- a society, you see, and a state. And you can recognize, you see, this -- the -- the attitude toward the past is recognition.

It's the greatest thing if a -- son can understand, that his father did act just the same as he does now. That's more difficult than for a father to recognize that his son will act just the same as he does. That most fathers are quite willing to do, you know, you do -- are. But you are, you see, happy as soon as you understand that 30 years ago, you would have acted as your father has. And proud is the man who can. And you ha- -- it is very painful if you discover the weakness in your father where you say "No, I -- I'm sorry, I mean. He -- he's -- he went wrong. I have to make up for this." But this -- both do, I mean. You are -- you are your father's judge, and you are your father's brother. You are your judge in as far as you must not repeat his performance. And you are his -- his brother in as far as you rediscover his plight and your plight, regardless of the lapse of time, you see, are the same plight.

(I was already jumping forward to Hamlet: "There is a destiny that shakes { }.")

Well, I'm all for it. But you can do this, just the same. I have to -- first to -- to make you digest, you see, two things you have excluded really from your little mind. Pardon me for saying this, because it's a little mind that tries to put all -- everything on the individual. It -- it makes you small. If you try to justify your

existence only in terms of your, you see, your own consciousness -- and that's the disease of -- of this country at this moment, that you -- identify your existence with your consciousness. But consciousness is only, you see, there where we have to act. Your whole existence is not based on consciousness. It's only onethird of life that is based on consciousness. Fruitfulness is destroyed by consciousness. And gratitude is destroyed by consciousness. And grat- -- or tradition--or whatever you call, I mean--representative -- your representative character, that you are a representative of this country, or of your family, or of a -- of a de- -- talent, or whatever it is, you see, is destroyed by consciousness. You are not a good Presbyterian -- representative of what a Presbyterian should be by consciousness. But you just are the good Presby- -- you are whatever you are: a Mormon, or -- or a good woman, or a student. Represent here, you see, recognition makes us representative. So there is an interaction between recognition, which is backward-looking, and representation which is--and here you have my word for the horoscope, my dear --, you see. Then we become representative, then we are doing this because we have recognized, you see. That's an interaction between gratitude, you see, and -- and character. I become representative after I have recognized what I had to inherit, and what I have to -- re- -- remake present again. Because what "represent" mean? To make present again, you see, in my own generation.

Now here of course you have the relation of seed and fruit. And -- now I don't know what -- what we can use there in a spiritual, deliberate, and explicit situation: recognition and representation.

(Pollination.)

No, no. You have only -- you can -- { } here. Your father, or your -- the founding fathers of this country you recognize, so you become a representative American, because you can hardly become an American without represented -- that -- you see, recognizing first whom you represent. I mean, that's an interaction you can see. So we now have to find terms which do not use the syllable "re," but would have to use the syllable "pre." P-r-e, you see, because obviously -- you are the precursor, the precedent, you see, and the others follow through it, you see. The syllable "pre-" -- the antedating, you must become an antecedent. Mustn't you, you see? Here, in this case, you -- you appropriate your antecedents by recognizing them. These are the antecedents.

I had this on the blackboard before. And -- and this, well, "posterity" I may say, or -- and these -- is your own life. Well, we say "life," you see, the conscious life. What the Greeks call the "ethos," our word "ethics" comes from this, you see--"ethos" means character. And Plutarch is full of ethos. He tries to give the ethos of the hero. And that's -- you can call -- is an attempt to place him in space.

To -- to abstract from the chronological course of events, and to outline, as my- -- as this friend of mine, you see, who put me on the -- as a picture on the wall. This is the Greek idea, you see, that you can depict this man as a lasting character in his actions, regardless of what went on before, and regardless of what follows.

[tape interruption]

...please me -- we -- I need an expression of, well, "saintliness" has completely gone out of commerce. I mean, the -- the -- it's a useless word, but I -- if we have antecedents, you see, we could of course here use again the word "precedent." And what is a -- the -- the consequence -- who -- the people who live by precedent, how would you call them? I mean, whose life, so to speak, is formed and stylized by the fact that they can live by precedent?

(Orthodox?)

Ja, no. That's not a good term in your ears. I mean, it's not a recommendation today. Everybody today is proud of being a heretic. Well, who wants to be orthodox? I want to be orthodox, but I'm the only person I've met who thinks, when he hears the word "orthodox," of anything but the Orthodox Greek Church. I think we all have to try to be orthodox, but I don't think that you can use this term to -- does this -- ring a bell in your -- in your -- "orthodox"?

({ }.)

Wie?

(It does to me.)

It does. Good. I'm glad to hear this. Who -- who still feels that one should be orthodox? You don't.

(No, well, it depends on orthodox in -- in -- you have to select.)

Well, but give me a -- a -- word that expresses the same reverence, you see, for the -- fear to deviate from the -- from the revealed path of righteousness. I mean, this is what -- what we are trying to -- to establish between two generations, here. You see, that's the important life. What -- whereby has George Washington's life to be told? Or even Daniel Webster's life?

I read a very beautiful justification of Webster the other day, against "Ichabod," you know. We had "Ichabod" here, hadn't we? Well, they said, "Everything can be forgiven Daniel Webster, because of his tenderness for the whole

nation, for all Americans, that the South was in his heart, really." The word "tenderness" really made an impression on me, that that was his American orthodoxy, that he was tender, you see, that he cared for carrying all the others with him. You understand? There was no brutality in the man, in his spirit. He wanted to be so comprehensive, so compassionate. And this was his justification. Not that he was right, you see, not that he was orthodox. But that he was comprehensive, or how do you? -- or compassionate, or --. And that he sacrificed. I thought the word "tenderness" was -- surprised me. And I learned it, I mean. I -- I offer it to you --.

But I don't know what -- what you would say of -- of Jesus and the -- the Church. I mean, the -- the fruitfulness, as the result of a mental attitude inside the man who -- who forgoes too much consciousness, too much vanity, you see, too much purpose, too much -- deliberate, I mean -- who -- who -- who -- planning, you see, for allowing things to grow.

({Aklos} -- isn't there a Greek word "athos" mean "the spirit of the times," replace your "precedent.")

I mean, you should feel -- that would be wonderful if we could give "ethos" this meaning. It has it in Greek. "Ethos" means "kind."

(No, no, no. There was a word "athos," "a" -- not "e" -- a-t-h-o-s, I thought there was a -- a word there.)

Yes, eth- -- I understand what you're saying.

({ } spirit. I'm just -- there -- I know there's a -- I remember hearing that there was a Greek term that means the "spirit of the times.")

Kairos, you mean. Kairos.

(That may be it.)

(Athos is the -- the promontory where the monastery is located.)

Oh, Athos. That's A-t-h-o-s. You don't mean this. Athos is just --.

(No, no, no.)

No, he means ethos, e-t-h-o-s.

(I don't know the -- I'm -- I'm getting trouble here with the -- semantic

difficulties. But the idea is the "spirit of the times," rather than "precedent.")

That's kairos. That's Tillich's favorite expression, kairos. It's a very important word. You see, "khronos" means just time. "Chronology" means -- just the reckoning, computation of time. "Kairos" means occasion, to -- to sense the -- the sense of the time.

(The moment.)

The moment, yes. "Kairos" is the sense of timing, I have translated it this way, the sense for timing. Is this what you mean --? Or What is yours? I would like to know.

(Well, you're -- trying to establish here three specific sections. One here is precedence.)

Well -- I only wanted to have the syllable "pre-", yes, precedent, yes. It means the full risk, you see. Any -- the precedent is undecided yet, you see. One doesn't know the outcome. You -- even at court, you see, the precedent is -- when it is established -- not yet established, while you are before the court. I -- what I -- drop the word "precedent." Go to the thing itself. You -- you try to decide in your own terms. Please do.

(Initiative?)

No, you -- you say it once more. You have a Greek word in mind, which expresses what?

(The spirit of the times.)

Well, to tell you the truth, I really think the word "kairos" is the word. Mr. Til- -- Paul -- you have heard of Paul Tillich, perhaps. He is -- he is the theologian now in Harvard. And 40 years ago, he -- he founded a yearbook called "Kairos," to which I have contributed, myself. So I'm quite familiar with the whole story. And he said that the -- the problem of the living -- the Holy Spirit was the problem not -- of timing, of knowing when to move, you see, and -- that every moment had its own grace. I mean, "gratia" in the Latin sense, you see. The grace of God is in -- is depending on the time, and what you -- there is in Shakespeare the famous line, what you -- you have to take the -- the moment by the forelock, you see. Otherwise it will never come back, I mean. You have -- "There is a tide in the affairs of man." That's Shakespeare, too.

(There's a time and a tide -- yeah, there's a -- tide in the affairs of -- tide.)

(Yeah, tide. Which, if taken at the flood, leads on.)

Tide, ja. Not "time." Right. That's would be your -- isn't that your problem?

(Now I'm lost.)

Well, I want to find you -- after all, it's important. Wherever you have today the term "time," you hit on the important problem of our time. Because our time has lost the sense of timing.

I'm -- Thursday evening, I am going to speak in Riverside, as you know, on history, and the sense of time in an age of technology. And I want to show why in our time -- the -- the sense for time is destroyed. So you are hitting on the most important question of our time.

(Well, I'm getting the impression, um -- from this -- that you are developing a cycle of things.)

Oh, no, but --.

(Not -- not one that's not complete in itself, but it's an evolutionary thing.)

Well, I want to say something very simple, then. When a child opens its eyes to life, it is -- it is embedded in three spirits of three ages. And we are all three-agers, and not teen-agers. The -- you can only redeem a teen-ager by educating him to the three ages. And that's why this -- this country is in a bad way, because it has concentrated on action, and on -- concentrated on consciousness, and concentrated on will, and concentrated on reason. And therefore, the teen-ager who is yet unable to will, and unable to reason, you see, is completely lost, because he has lost the honor of being the -- the fruit of antecedents, you see; and he's never told that it isn't the -- the deficiency of his will that he has to suffer from, but the great hope that he will be fruitful. That deserves -- that all his austerity, all his shortcomings, all his -- abstemiousness--that he mustn't go to the brothel, that he mustn't use narcotic--is there, because he will have the -- the honor of being the ancestor of a great race. If you cannot make the third age, you see, and the first age potent in this boy's life--or in this girl's life, you see--if you only want to -- then he must compare himself to the willful great executive of 50, you see, with vice president or president. And he feels -- never do that; that's too far away. And therefore, you see, it's too big. And therefore he just goes to pieces. He says, "I don't care," I mean. He says -- "Then I'll have to go to prison, to a reformatory," or what-not. You see, it's too far away.

If you only compare the -- the little baby to the big shot, you see, the tycoon, the baby will remain a baby. And -- as they do now. Ninety percent of Americans want to remain babies till they are 70. They are afraid. But as soon as you see that there are three pea- -- mountain peaks in your life, that you are just as great as representative, you see, of past, as -- as a -- seed of the future, that you are in your own right on a pedestal of -- of -- of being admired by your contemporaries, you see, then this whole thing becomes a process, and it becomes possible. And I'm not then a -- a non-entity at this moment--while I'm not yet the tycoon, you see--but I'm just as important, because I have to represent, I have to recognize all the good people.

I can't tell you the expression of bliss and -- and vitality which my son had on his face when he was 10 and he was asked who his father was. And he beamed all over his face, and said, "My father is there to govern me." And you saw the -- what a burden was taken from his heart, because he didn't have to govern himself, but I had to govern him. Now this is impossible in America. A child wouldn't say that. And as long as it can't say this, this is a very unhappy creature.

(Is that not somewhat the relationship that the Puritans had to God?)

Of course, of course, of course.

So this triune business, gentlemen, don't take it as a luxury. It means that no one phase of our existence is so terribly im- -- is the whole thing. And as soon as you compare then the perfect man of one stage, with the imperfect, the imperfect will break down and just give up. And that's what you have, this -- today, that one-half of these people just give up the race, because they are only told that their honor is in being individuals, self-conscious, willful, planning, rational, impassionate, superior, or what-not. -- But half of my life I'm a child. And I want to remain one. But only -- one-third, you see. And as soon as you say, "You must remain a child of man, and you must be a man, and you must be a father"--or a mother, I mean, for that matter. And if you distribute this, it becomes a process in which everybody at every moment has still an important role to play. He's not just an agent, you see, but he's also the -- the fruit, and he's representative in this respect. And he's just as beautiful without acting. Can you see my point?

Wie?

(It's beginning to come through a little bit.)

Not much. Please contradict me.

(I have desire -- I have no desire to contradict you. But -- but I don't understand exactly what you're driving at.)

Well, I'm driving at the fact that the Greek type of biography is -- is -- is impossible for us today. We want to have these three different elements represented in a life, you see. The life's fruitfulness, and the -- life's transform- -- and the life's activity, certainly, and the life's constellation, or -- or -- what did we have?

({ }.)

Well, its -- its being the result and its being the fruit -- the seed. And the transformation between these three, that's the achievement of any human life, and that this combination -- one man wakes up to himself at 19, and the other wakes up to himself at 45. So therefore, once you have this -- these three elements in you, you see--the child, the man, and the founder -- I like to -- call the child not the "child" but the "heir." But with the modern inheritance taxes, there is so little to inherit that you -- you don't -- respect it, you see. But you are an heir, certainly, h-e-i-r -- you see. We all are heirs and heiresses. And it's terrible that the -- that the papers only call a rich person an heiress, you see.

-- If -- you discover the -- what makes an heir is the recognition, you see, of his relation to his -- to the testator. What makes a -- a man or a wife a woman, you see, their own -- taking their -- their fate into their own hands, you see, becoming self-reliant -- and what makes a -- however, a founder, you see -- doing things because they have to be done. The acknowledgment of a -- of a -- of a -- demands, you see, that do not care in the least for your happiness, but which make you happy because you -- you are in the gap in the armor of the human race, which only you can mend, because you only understand that there is such a gap. And you do it -- let the chips fly where they may. Any -- any grownup person is only -- healthy if this is his main concern.

I -- I always tell a very simple story to this effect that the -- I went to a doctor in England and -- I was in great pain. And my doctor in Breslau had given me the address of this man--and that's in Silesia--and said, if you are -- I had to go to Oxford to lecture there--and so as you arrive, after sea-sickness, you are very -- of course low, and you have more pains than you probably have. And -- and I went to this doctor. A Dr. {Sacks} was his name. He lived in this -- doctor's quarters where there is one doctor next to the other, as the Anglo-Saxons do it, you see. All the lawyers in one street. All the doctors on one street. Very funny arrangement. And so he said, "You are a scholar, and you are -- must lecture at Oxford."

"Yes," I said. And -- "But I'm feeling { } poor."

He said, "I'll tell you. Officers in the services and scholars, my -- in my experience go nuts if they are under medical treatment for more than a fortnight. Your -- it is your business to forget yourself and to think of others. And -- that's why you are a scholar. That's why -- what a military man has to do. So if you are asked to concentrate on yourself, on my treatment too long, that will harm you. Have your pains, and lecture. And that's better than anything I can do for you."

And the -- here was a man, you see, who was a founder instead of a doctor. A doctor is an active man who does what the profession demands. He was able to drop his profession, you see, and not to write a bill and not to medicate, but to think of the future, of myself, really in terms quite absent from my silly weakness, you see, of -- of trying to get -- get a cane, so to speak, to walk with, from him.

And I have never seen a -- a greater act of love. That is what love does, I mean, to -- to emancipate the person you love from your own self. And -- but I don't know if you realize that this man overstepped the boundary of his professional ethics and became a hum- -- you see, a full-fledged man, because he provided liberty for me from himself. You see, he freed me from my superstitions that it always had to be a doctor. So to speak, he became my Christian Scientist at that moment. Which is a -- a tremendous -- and every -- doctor today is asked to do today just that. You can't -- that's why medical ethics aren't enough, you see. Somebody has to tell the doctor, "Stop with your medicine. Send the patient home and say, 'Become well on -- under your own steam,'" in cases, I mean. Not always, you { } -- you understand. This liberty today is -- is the problem of all specialists. And this -- this is always not doing one's own will, but surrendering to a higher will. Don't you see that this man surrendered to a situation in -- the -- encountering me, which had nothing to do with his shingle, "Dr. {Sacks}," you see, "Internal Medicine." Can you see this?

And this overstepping your self-consciousness is your relation to the future, is your fruitfulness. If you could formulate this, this is why I'm asking for the term, you see: what did this man do at this moment? It's very -- this is -- you can't -- this is greatness. If you can see that this is greatness, you suddenly are in the real, you see, creative history of the human race. All the acts we have to remember are those acts where a man forgot himself. Can you -- will you take this down? It's the best -- solution of history I can offer you, you see. All the acts we have to remember are those acts in which a man forgot his -- his self-interest.

You don't have to remember the acts where a man looked out for himself. Heavens! That's {ceded}. You see. The Bible said they have their reward, you

see. But the reward you owe the people is to recognize that they did something, you see, beyond their self-interest. And that's all fatherhood, you see. A father -- it's against his interest. He wants to sleep with every woman. But in -- in fatherhood, he forgoes this privilege, and recognizes that he has to stick to one woman, you see. And that's his dignity. The children of this woman make him stay with her. And therefore fatherhood had -- in all -- former days this tremendous important that you attribute to a father that he does not do -- act for, you see, within the realm of his self-interest.

Take a farmer who wants to give his -- his son his farm, and one day discovers he shouldn't. The son must be left free to become a minister or a poet, you see. In this very moment, the father, you see, steps outside the realm of his own interest, you see, and forgets himself, and his interest, you see, in love to his son. Isn't that right? In this -- that's a great moment. It's the greatest moment in the history of the family.

And you can see that in biography and history, there are very few such important moments. Life doesn't consist of 24 hours. The decision, you see, that he will help his son to become something that is against his own interest -- to leave his -- his farm to his heir, you see, that's the histor- -- one historical action in his whole life. All the others -- count for nothing. That he eats well, drinks well, and so on, that's not historical. That's all just biological. The historical is always this one s- --you can take this down--the historical is always this one step where a man decides to be representative, or to be germinative, or how -- I -- I'm just looking for a word; it's not a good word, either, but I mean -- you see, instead of looking out for himself. Can you see this -- what I mean?

So that he com- -- he becomes a triune. Gentlemen, the Trinity is not written in Heaven only, that God is in three persons. It is your own experience that you are in three persons, you see. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit--that's the daily experience of every human being, because every moment you either recognize, or you decide, you see, or you sow. Or are sown. This is even better than "sow." We don't sow, but we are sown.

And that's our great honor. And that's why life is so astonishing, because the mixture, the admixture of these three elements is every day one's own free decision. That's why ev- -- no day is like the other. You never -- this doctor went -- before I came to him, had no idea that he had to become a hero in my eyes, you see. But he did. And he has forgotten it. Of course, he never thought much of it. But I -- you see, pronounce hi- -- proclaim his glory now for--how long ago is this?--1927 it had to be. Imagine! And now I'm still speaking of it. That's how -- how many years?

(Thirty-two years.)

Ja. So I -- I -- wish you would help me to find this, if you will, this interlacing, this -- of the -- of the three generations seems to me our answer to the Greek, Plutarchean biography, you see, where everything is contained within the consciousness of the man. And -- the antecedents are only given -- given to -- lead him up to it, con- -- his own consciousness. He uses it up, so to speak, you see.

You are -- you have a very -- the Greeks have this naturalistic idea. Here is the chicken, the chicken eats up the eggshells, and -- and -- and then it is sold. And we look at it, and admire it greatly, you see, and then it dies. Or is slaughtered, or what-not. That's the Plutarchean biography. And that's most unsatisfactory for you and me, I think. Or perhaps it isn't, I mean. Then you -- Plutarch to me is -- is -- is a -- is a rudiment -- rudimentary, I mean. It's one way, you see. And he saves the context, as I said, by comparisons. He has this shelf on which he compares the -- the different bottles, you see. But it is all -- at a standstill; it's all just viewed from -- you see.

All Greeks are, in this sense, voyeurs. They -- they look at things. Your world -- Look, View, See, of course are all Greek -- or the -- the preponderance of the eye sense. But with the past, we co- -- are connected by -- by obedience, and with the future, we are connected by smell, by scent, by flair, you see. You cannot reach -- this -- this man {Sacks} didn't find anything, this doctor, { } -- in his books to tell me this. He could only sense that he would do me wrong if he treated me, you see. That's flair, you see. He -- he sensed my -- my problem, or you say he had a "hunch" -- you can -- that's not quite as good, but you may -- use it. And all -- your important actions are done at the full risk that what we see tells against the decision. Here the man saw me in his office, after all. And I was the patient, and he was the doctor, and -- who didn't expect him to be anything but the doctor. And, you see, I had to be his patient.

So the sense, to have the sense to say, "This man must not become a patient," you see, is revolutionary -- you see. It takes me out of--and him, too--out of the environment, which is there to be, so to speak, in itself to operate on us. And he uproots this context, you see, and say, "I meet you in a free encounter. I'll look at you as who you should be outside this waiting room and this office." And so he saved me.

If you can learn to discern in every day, every one of us is -- is demanded to make these -- these distinctions. These -- all of you are triune. And the more you become a specialist, of course, you -- for you it is easy to grasp it. For a man who is busy, you see, in his office -- take an executive in industry. It is -- becomes

more difficult, of course, to -- to -- to remain to these three worlds, you see. Much more difficult. A man of 50, you see, is usually completely afraid to miss his -- his own self-importance, so to speak, you see. And one more appendicitis to a surgeon is very easily considered a success, you see, whereas obviously the surgeon should also be like my doctor, and say, "Don't ope-" -- or "I won't operate," you see. And you should gauge the reputation of a surgeon by the question, you see: How many operations has he de- -- de- -- has he declined? You see, instead of saying, "Oh, he does 300 a y- -- a month," you see. This shouldn't be a recommendation.

So my dear -- this word "horoscope" has one great connection with your question, Sir. The -- it means the -- the -- the view of the seasons, "horos-," of the -- and of the god Horus in Egypt--that's probably where it comes from, "horoscope." So it means this -- to view the spirit of the time as it already exists at the birth. And so the word "horoscope" at least has -- is better than -- than recognition and so on, perhaps. There is some time-sense in it expressed. If you -- if you would feel in the word "recognition" the same relation to the given conditions of history, you see, then you can drop the word "horoscope." But otherwise I would hold it up to you as a warning that it means that God has created the world before we were born, and that we can be in alignment and approval, that we don't have to be a rebel against everything that has gone on before, that we even can't, you see. This idea of rebel, you see, is purified by this idea that -- that long before we are born, history already had a direction, had a meaning, it had a -- and therefore imparts something to us, which we have to -- perhaps to single out and -- to -- but this is -- we are not this -- you see, the world doesn't begin with us.

(How about "heritage"?)

It's not -- it's not -- it has been abused. I mean it doesn't --. Yes, I --.

Now here is the -- is my -- my boys' present. Perhaps you take down this ti- -- title. I want to -- also -- to proclaim its glory forever. Friedrich Leo--L-e-o, like the lion--came out in Lip- -- Leipzig in 1901, and it is called Greek-Roman Biography in Its Literary Form. Greek-Roman -- The Greek-Roman Biography in Its Literary Form. And I think the title conveys to you a whole way of thinking which you should adopt, that biography is a great problem. It destroys history. And today I'm -- we have too much biography and too little history. People all take -- take this way out. The historians, you see, write one biography after another. Because they are all faithless, and godless. Modern agnosticism. It's much easier to describe a man just for his consciousness and for his actions, you see. And there is no miracle then performed. The entry into the stream of history is -- is omitted. The -- I think the -- the -- the saving grace from bio- -- for any

mere biography comes then from three -- from three attitudes of the historian, of the biographer. One is the encounter with friends and enemies in his own life. If you print the letters, not only written by your hero, but the answers that he receives, that would be the real biography with regard to the present time, to the -- to the -- to the -- his own life, to his own presence. And so I think the modern biographies are completely -- obsolete, because they do not publish the answers to the letters the -- the author -- the man himself writes. You have life -- the letters. And very often his letters. But what do you know of the man if you do not read the answers?

Because you do not -- recognize what ma- -- who -- how these people make him, you see, how they force him, how they shape him. And so a -- a good biography would -- would be dialogical and symphonical, you see, with regard to contemporaries. You must listen to the contemporaries speaking to this man in -- before you understand his answers -- his responses, as Mr. Toynbee calls this.

(The counter-point.)

Wie?

(The counter-point.)

Ja, ja. The counter-point.

With regard to the antecedents, recognition covers, I mean, his religious heritage, as you say, I mean. His -- what he -- because that's in the deepest sense, of course, the binding {forces really do}, you see. What binds us to the whole -- stream of history, you see. So a man's religion is a -- is a very serious part of a -- his biography, not in the sense of his conscious philosophy of life, but about the things he wouldn't overstep.

Take Ruskin, and his mother complex. He was unable even to marry, because he couldn't consummate a marriage as long as his mother lived. And she lived to be 91, and -- then he was 52, and was for late -- to him for marry -- to marry. So he was married for 10 years, but his wife could claim in court that he had never had her as his wife, because his wife -- mother was still alive, and {so} he thought it was obscene {to marry}. Tragic case. {Charles} Ruskin is the greatest case in the Anglo-Saxon life.

But I can't tell you how many famous men in the 19th century have been impotent in their own marriage, consummate their marriage. For moral or -- or -- for reasons, or for mother complexes, or for what-not. That is, self-consciousness makes impotent. No -- ever forget this, you see, that this is very strange. And

religious taboos, of course, too. And love is self-forgetful. And people who have been told that they always must have ethical standards, and must always know what they are doing, you see, are very lame ducks. Because self is -- is -- is made very -- is paralyzed by --by consciousness. It isolates. You cannot lose yourself if you -- if you constantly want to know what you're doing. And if you're always willful.

These are very serious questions. So the word "religion" will have to be translated, I'm sure. I've tried to represent -- to translate it into this interaction of recognition and representation. If you want to -- to do the two things together, it would be religion. But I have spared you the -- the -- the single word, so to speak, you see.

Where is my -- my chalk?

So we have here in the widest sense: recognition, representation. That's our religion. Where you are represented -- Abraham Lincoln is representative, and he recognizes. And that's his whole religion. He never belonged to a church, but you cannot deny that he is a religious, you see. And it comes out in every word he quotes, in every word he says, how -- what he recognizes is the biblical tradition, and the American tradition. He's not only the three -- scores and ten, that our forefathers did such-and-such, but he also says, "If the"--how is it in the Second Inaugural?--"If as the Bi-" -- he doesn't say, "As the Bible says." He has a grander way of quoting the Bible. But he does quote the Bible. Wie?

And that's his --. You see, I give you a better word, perhaps for "religion"; that's "authority." What are the authorities you recognize? That's your religion. And what is the authority you represent? That's your active religion, you see. When you can say in the name of a god, "Do this," you see, to your child, you are rep- -- you are in authority, representative, you see, of Him. and you yourself recognize, that's the authority again. And in authority, recognition and representation are unified. Is it understood, gentlemen?

({Al} and I are wondering whether one metaphor in music wouldn't be the overture?)

For what? For the relation of this and this?

(In the first. Page 1, here. The antecedent.)

Something warns me against that. Something warns me against that.

(The combination of many --.)

Pardon me?

(It's the combination of things to come.)

-- But there is no sacrifice involved. The father sacrifices his self. He forgets himself. The doctor sacrifices his doctoring. There is nothing of the kind in overture. Quite the contrary. It's a -- it's a holding up, you see, it's -- an advertisement, or -- in the good sense, I mean, it's a program of the whole.

(Often is complete in itself, or -- it stands out, detached from { }.)

Before I -- but it has not this going underground in order that the next may come up and be visible, you see, this --.

Goethe has expressed it in a strange way, which may show you how old existentialism is. He has said, "We have to place ourselves into non-existence in order to come into existence." That is the -- the selfless -- you see, the forgetting of self. And the existentialists today are so funny, because they want to have existence without non-existence -- you see, the --. Dis- -- we can only discover our -- the miracle of our -- personal, individual existence if we know that we come into existence after we have sloughed off the accidents of our alreadyexistence. What I -- seem to be at this moment I have to sacrifice if I want to attain that which I -- my heart is yearning to become. Yes?

(Heidegger would be an exception to that, wouldn't he? Except that he links it -- more metaphysical.)

Oh yes, yes. But the French, I mean -- Sartre, and so on. They -- they have -- they don't -- they want to have existence without non-existence. But the problem of the existentialist is, you see, the -- the sacrifice of all the accidental forms of my existence, that it would be -- to go as far as necessary to non-existence, you see. Jesus had to be -- to cease to be a Jew, which was His whole problem of His life: "How do I do this, without violating the law?" you see. So -- only by becoming its victim. And He's -- the Crucifixion is only the last step of His ceasing to be under Jewish jurisdiction. And the Christians have always held that His -- His contribution was that He spared any later this whole road, because He took it all upon Himself to live out this last phase, you see, of the law, at the ti- -- period of the temple. And by taking it all upon Himself, He freed all the others who had -- He had -- you see, not -- not to undergo the same -- the same duplicity, so to speak, of two allegiances.

It's a question of -- of all questions, you see, that you understand that self is sterile, is only contained between birth and death. Our selves are not immortal.

We are mortal. "Self" is another word for being mortal. Now we are, however -- come from far away. We are the children of Adam and Eve. And we are the children of God. That means that long ago, you see, we were necessary thoughts. We had to be -- come into this world to do what is needed. That is more than selfmade. By recognition and representation, we act -- under -- in auth- -- we are in authority, just as Jesus taught in the temple at 12, already, like a man who were -- was in authority. And the same is true about the future, you see. When we strip ourselves from the masks of society, for the sake of the future -- at this moment, we are -- bear fruit, because self cannot inherit the future, I mean. Your son cannot have anything to do with your mere self. This is not the inheritance you can give to him, you see. You must not want him to inherit your wrinkles, and your manners, and your, you see, all the mortal parts, the -- the self- -- the -- your conceit, so to speak, your conception you -- what you can be defined as, you see. What you must give him is the spirit. This is only where you free yourself from self. Where you -- and -- and for this I am still looking for the expression. You see, the -- but it of course means that we ourselves become authorities. But it's -- it's not the good -- best word. But it has something --.

This is, by and large, the relation, you see, that we become authorities only after our death. Authority, self, and authority: that's I think the road we travel. But at least this is not wrong. I mean, I don't say it's the best.

(Like a sine wave in physics.)

Wie?

(It's like a sine wave in physics.)

Explain, please.

(A sine wave, it goes up and down.)

What is a sign ware?

(It's a graphic portrayal of a cycle, but I don't think it's --.)

(Yes, but it can be linear, and that's what this --.)

(Yes, but -- it's only linear in a graphic sense, but the graph represents a cycle. So that in this sense of the word --.)

(But this is definitely a cycle.)

Ja, it is, but --.

(And it's linear. So I think a sine wave would --.

(Explain it. Put it on the board.)

Ja, I wish I learn something, here please.

(I doubt if I could teach it to you.)

(Well, now this is a challenge.)

Wipe it all off.

(Be yourself, then you can be { }.)

(Well, this I remember mostly from high school physics. It's really this: now when your -- your authority may be here, and your self may be here; I mean this again become authority and then self as a cycle -- linear. Oh yes, of course.)

Would you call this "sign"? I'm just looking for the German term. Of course, I learned my physics, you see, in Germany. But I taught physics in this country for two years. And -- { }, now, now -- wait a minute. But I never ran into the expression "sign ware." I mean, I just --.)

(Wave. Sine wave.)

Oh, not wave. Wave. I -- { }. Oh yes.

(Impulse. { }.)

Wie?

(The --.)

I'm only put off by the word "sine." I mean, wave -- if you had just said "wave," I would have understood. But sine wave, I -- { }.)

[overlapping comments by students]

When I taught physics here, I didn't have to use the term.

(How would this be like in a heartbeat, the systole and {diole}.)

Ja, very good. That's { }.

But you see, the miracle of transformation, of metamorphosis, takes place here. You who have been self become authority, you see, and -- so it -- you see, that one becomes one's own opposite number is the -- is the mystery of -- of your own existence.

(There's a -- there's an interesting supplement to this, in -- in the operation of the electric motor, because the magnet passes through the plus and negative on those corresponding waves. The -- so that the plus would be the authoritative, and the negative would be the self-forgetting.)

Would be the self- --?

(Self-forgetting.)

And where is the self?

(The self { } when you pass the line. Halfway in between, the polarity is balanced.)

(This isn't applied to everybody. I mean how --?)

Doesn't it?

(That is the line.)

(I mean, does it now, though? I mean, take a slight, a slight --.)

Take it or leave it. This is the question of your own free allegiance, I mean. Obviously that's your relation. Everybody -- you see, you must understand that there will always, and always has been, all the religions of the world simultaneously in existence. There is no history of religion. At any one moment, people have taken this mystery in--which contains us--in part or in whole. What we -- what I would claim of my faith is only that it is the most comprehensive. But you can of course get stuck in -- in the Stoics' attitude in saying, "self," I mean. You can take -- your root in the fatal- -- fatalistic attitude, it's all constellation. It's all horoscope, you see. And you can take it in the Latter-Day Saints, and the Jehovah's Witnesses, and it's all the Last Day of Judgment. It's all just the future. Nothing what you do now is important, and nothing what has gone on before is important. That is, I must leave to you the -- the emphasis, you see, on this cycle. I can only try to be -- to feel that it's comprehensive. You have to make your choices inside of this.

All religions seem to me to be related to each other not in any evolutionary way, but in this way, like a -- you see, but the most comprehensive, and then there are these subdivisions. And some are satisfied with this little residuum, you see. There, for example, the rebel. He says, "Well, I must be myself." All right. That's part of every religion. As one -- as one faith, you see. I could show you -- I mean, I have worked on this in larger detail. It's not just meaningless. There are these shades of -- of comprehensiveness. You can say "authority"; you can say "inheritance"; you can say "seed, fruitfulness"; you can say "self-expression," you see; "genius," you see; and you -- you say something, but you say it within a context in which all these things are within one economy, one -- one -- one budget. You can use -- people will always exist who deny this budget, this economy, and say, "It's all disorder, and I'm just living out my own self. And I know nothing else." So that's why I cannot answer your question. It's your decision.

In this sense, every -- we are all free to decide how much of this mystery is -- matters to you.

(Well then, this -- this is a mystery, you would say, Paul speaking about Ephesians?)

Exactly, exactly. He's full of this. He's full of it. That's where I learned it.

(This would be the { }.)

And you may understand that while the Gospels are contemporary with the great biographies of antiquity, Plutarch, and { } the Latin, who wrote the -- the life of the Caesars, you see -- came at an end of history, for the feeling of the ancients with the Roman Empire, history had come to an end, the times. The times were fulfilled, and now everything became cyclical. So they -- they filled out biography out of the context of history as the -- the thing that's still interesting. That's still enough surprising, sensational that you -- you concentrate on the individual, you see.

And against this, the Gospel, you see, is written in Greek against pagan Greek all the time. This is this paradox of the new biblical language in the Bi- -- in Greek, you see, that elements had to be introduced, like the word "Gospel," itself, "evangel," you see, which the Greeks didn't understand. The Greeks had lived by -- by news, you see. The Gospel says, "In this sense, the news is not better than the old." You see, sensation is not any better than itself. It -- its -- if it isn't part of the economy of salvation, you see -- if you do not wish to become authority yourself, your self is no good. You see, the measure -- yardstick of a man's self-consciousness and a self- -- a man's self-expression obviously is his

fruitfulness. "By their fruits ye shall know them," the Gospel says. The Greek says, "By your showiness, by the phenomenal character of yourself, you should show it to them." Hitler is a case in point, who says, "I'm phenomenal, I'm colossal." And { } at the beginning of -- history was the man who burned the temple of Ephesus in order to become famous. And it was a short-cut. An atomic explosion is always the simplest way of becoming famous.

(But you're not supposed to mention his name.)

Well, this -- what -- the others decided, yes, yes; you are quite right. And they -- they didn't get away with it. He managed to get into the records of history.

(It reminds me of the philanthropists who -- who donate so much money, and have their names put on all those libraries, { } dedicate.)

Exactly, exactly. Well, why we have this building mania in th- -- here in this country, you see. People overbuild in order to get their name there, and then they have nothing to run -- to run the building. The -- the whole problem of our endowments today, as you know, is the -- that the percentage that goes into building is far too high. So no salaries for -- for the people who live -- there, because the people want the -- have the big building visible and showy for their posterity. And that's of course fruitless.

I'm sure all the educational reforms which are needed in this country cost very little money. But the -- the quest will be for -- for larger buildings.

({ }.)

It's fantastic.

(I noticed a headline in The Bruin yesterday pertaining to the fact that the response, the student response for living in the new, big hall over there is very s- -- very low.)

Wonderful! Wonderful. Wonderful.

(Hooray! Perhaps there's some hope, yet.)

So I -- I think we are back really to the economy of the human spirit, because -- the -- the Roman biography reached its zenith at the very moment when the -- the Greek and Roman history came to an end.

(What do you mean by, "Biography is always late"? In that sense?)

Ja, because it is unraveling, this unity. I think a -- a -- the eminent historical people have a -- are quite unconscious of their importance. They are put on the spot, and they are just forced, you see, to act. I mean, the more the -- they are -- they are put on the spot, I think -- the -- more they have to rise to the occasion. And they never knew that they could do it. Like Truman, I mean. He's an historical person. His biography is absolutely meaningless, you see. But his act as a -- presidents are not.

({ } greatness shows much later than the act itself.)

(What's -- what the difference between a -- a man that's able to mark an era, to mark the end of it, so that it doesn't have to be repeated, say, like Whit- -- Whittier; and a man who marks the era, and becomes totally involved in it, like, say, Hemingway or F. Scott Fitzgerald. Or -- in a more critical sense, like T.S. Eliot, who marks the sterility of the 20th century? How do you distinguish the validity of one? One is a -- like -- Whittier as contributing, and the other is contributing nothing, except a -- a fashionable novel, like Hemingway. How do you make the distinction? What do you look for? Both of them mark an era.)

Well, I think the quiet recognition is lacking in Hemingway. This -- this -- he is not thankful. I -- there has been a movement in -- in -- in Holland, I was told a few days ago, which has -- may help to explain to you -- the incredible situation in which we live -- where -- a great scholar brought up his children forbidding them to say "thank you," ever. Now if you don't teach a child to say "thank you," you deprive it really some of the -- it's the root word, you see, of recognition, "thank" -- to say "thank you."

And you know how he argued? He -- he said, "It spoils the giver. The giver must give it without any -- expectation of gratitude." And so he took -- instead of looking to his child, and educating his child, he was the judge of the man who gave the child a present. And he wanted to save this man, so it was his business, you see. And thinking of the giver, he abolished the relation of the child to the things he received.

So if you tell a child it has nothing to be thankful for -- you ruin this child. You -- he took over, so to speak, the rebel thought, you see, into the youth of the child. So never was there -- should there be any experience of having received anything unasked, you see, and as a gift. As a -- being showered really, with -- with -- with gifts from the past.

I had a woman friend, the daugh- -- the mother of a great, very famous

man. You also Miss {Jacobs} of whom I'm talking. And -- and she -- she was very bitter, and her son was very sick, and her husband died. And she was -- and I said to her, "You can only be saved if you are able to say still 'thank you' for what you have received. And you have received tremendous gifts. You have this famous son," you see.

And she couldn't. And she died in absolute despair, at least. The word "thank you" was not in her vocabulary in a great sense, you see, of recognizing what -- what was given her. And so this -- this Dutch scholar, I mean, just fights with the {death}. But there has been no fashion in the last 50 years, you see, that hasn't come. And so in this sense, I think Hemingway was in danger of -- of leaving the -- the sine wave, you see, of -- yes?

(Well, I was just thinking on this -- on the three different ideas here, that are all connected. The first, maybe we could say, is "thank you"; and -- and the second, as you said before, when this child said, "I don't care"; this could maybe be the second -- second phase, here. And the third -- and the third, instead of saying "Thank you," or "I don't care," you're giving the ice cream to somebody.)

Well, I have written a -- the -- the four root words of all human language, in a biographical, or existential sense, in a real sense. Every day you have to -- to appropriate or to balance "thank you," "yes," "no," and "please." {In this you're a giver}, you see. "Accept this, please," you see. There you try to be fruitful. "Thank you," you are the -- yourself the recipient. "Yes" and "no," you cut out what is dead and what is living, you see. You affirm -- you say "yes" to the laws of your country or whatever it is, you see, to your environment, or the --. And "no" you distinguish yourself by not adjusting totally to your environment.

So I think if you -- this is what I call "the cross of our real existence," you see. It consists all -- every day in "thank you," "please," "yes," and "no." "Yes" and "no" are words of space, and "please" and "thank you" are words of time. Because "thank you" puts you into a chain of events that went on, you see, before you had made a decision, comes to you. And "please" is thinking of the future.

You can also say, "I am invited here," and "I invite." Isn't it, I mean? Every father invites his children. And therefore, these four root words, I think they are the kernels of education, of the -- educational problem, ja.

(Acceptance and invitation.)

Ja.

(RSVP.)

Pardon me?

(RSVP -- {r‚spondez} s'il vous plaŒt.)

Ja. And the Plutarch I would say is -- cutting out these -- these two words. He doesn't dwell on "thank you" and -- and "please." He takes these more or less for granted. And the biography of the secular type is only affirming the -- what the man stands for and what he has op- -- has been opposed to, I mean. You see, he's partisan, he takes sides, he -- you see. So a "yes" and "no" is for myself. But with "please," I enter the future, and by "thank you" I -- I join the past.

Now we come to -- didn't we decide to devote to -- to --? Ja. And we -- I think you -- the -- the John Brown's Body has all these four elements. In this sense, it is a -- a full, human document -- a fully human document. It has the four relations, you see. This -- every -- verse, I think, is full of acceptance, and full of -- of invitation. Just as much it is partisan, I mean--there is the South, and there is the north, and there is { } you see. The "yes" and "no" is our involvement in the tragedy of the day. But it isn't all just a daily affair. You recognize something eternal, and you recognize -- something that we must acquire forever. And of -- I still think that in this sense, Thucy- -- Thucydides is -- has this invitation, this -- this attempt to make the posterity, you see, live on behalf of this event, in -- in -- as heirs of this event. That's his great -- his great emphasis, I mean. That's why he's more, I think, than a Plutarch.

Who has read John Brown's Body already? Well, would you give me some example of a -- where you would you s- -- would -- you would say that this -- here the man is at his best? Would you -- would you be willing to pick out something?

(Where the man is at his best?)

What?

(Where the man is at his very best?)

Ja.

(Well, I think a situation where he had { } and -- I can't pronounce that fellow's name--{Ellis or Eilis}--their hope for the future, where he starts out on his -- or he says that he will start on his search for her, he's trying to regain the past after this -- after the interlude of the war is over, I think he reaches his -- his very highest there, where he has to start out on a new life.)

Can you find the place?

(Um, it's almost near the end, here. No, it's -- it's a few pages from the end. Oh, here it is. The build-up to this, on this -- in case you haven't read it, is -- this is a young soldier, who, during the war was captured by the Confederates, and then he escaped. Was hurt, went to the -- went into the -- forest. Was discovered by this young girl. Um, he had his convalescence; they had a -- an affair--of course, they fell in love--and then he went back to the war. And in the interlude, they lost contact with each other. And now she is starting to search for him, or he is going to start and search for her. And so here, this is the last -- I don't know which it is you want me to read, but --.)

How many pages is this? I'm -- because I think they should read it, but -- but I -- wonder if we should wait for the next time, so everybody can look at it. Perhaps this is wiser. We could stop here.)

(Well, it's -- it's about three pages long. But that -- they wouldn't get the whole picture until they -- I think until they --.)

So they would -- we should wait, I mean.

(One point we might mention at the very open -- very opening: Invocation.)

That's a tremendous {thing}.

(Even the first words, just the title "Invocation" { } to put us into the spirit.)

(Well, I don't think that's the spirit of it. I think that shows the actual decay, I mean, as far as the { } is concerned.)

(No. The very first --.)

(Oh, you mean the -- oh, I see. I was thinking of the second part, yeah.)

You have no copy, Sir? Kindly provide { }, because you are lost if you don't. I think everybody -- you should have a text, too.

Now listen. We are running a little -- let us do this next time. And we'll read the first -- the first -- you'll read it yourself. Because you are quite right. In this Invocation, I would like you to -- to see more than -- than a formality, because the -- the modern historian and biographer had no invocation, and I think

that's why we don't care. Homer has an invocation, and all the ancients had invocations. And today this is -- thought of as stilted. You have the prologue in Shakespeare sometimes, which is another form of invocation, of course.

And -- perhaps if we -- if you would study the Invocation, best thing would be to learn it by heart. I mean this. Poetry is not really read; it has to be learned by heart, and spoken. And you are very far from all poetic life, because you don't learn by heart. Poetry is just meant to be vibrating inside of us. It is not something to be read. And that's the -- the death of modern poetry. And -- so perhaps you do read it. Do me the favor, and take the Invocation very seriously. You will discover that -- that the -- the Invocation is -- well, how should I say? -- it's that moment in which authority and invitation--because "invocation" is also "invitation"--meet, where these three phases of human -- our human spirit are unified.

Well -- I don't wish to anticipate anything. Read it yourself, read the Invocation, and we'll read it together next time. And the -- the -- you see -- you see, the -- the -- respect for poetry, or the recognition that something is poetry, is that you can read it innumerable times. Never believe that poet -- a poem can be read once. Then it is a very poor poem. A poem must be quoted for the rest of your life, if it is a real poem, I mean. There are degrees, of course, of poetry. But as long as you think that a poem, after having been read, has done its duty, you have declared it is not a poem.

All poets, you see, want to illuminate permanently a situation where they have been our -- our mouthpiece, so to speak, or have been, you see, privileged to say for you and me, you see, what occurs eternally in any -- in a human heart. And -- "To be or not to be" is not something to be read, obviously, you see, but to be quoted. And -- and modern man is -- is -- absolutely, I mean, just self, and dead, and -- and -- and sick, because he is not filled with poetry. That's why the poet's only dignity is that you quote him, that he { } in you.

And -- and you should not -- here, Sir. You -- all--here; well, he doesn't look at me--learn things by heart. It's the only way in which you can live up to the -- to the life of the country in which you live. I mean, it is -- same with singing, of course, I mean. Everybody in this country sings doggerels and hits. But they are only the -- the weekday affair compared to the solemn hymns of the -- holiday. You all live lopsided, because you will still sing all this -- this trash, which is always the reflection, or the other side, of the solemnity, you see. The solemn song and the trash -- I am not down on the hit at all. And there must be these doggerels, and there must be these -- these cheap songs, you see. But only because there are expensive songs, I mean.

So the -- the balance is completely destroyed here in this low-brow country, you see, of yours, because you -- you think it is enough to be low-brow, but low-brow is only valuable as long as there is high-brow. And the -- without the balance, the low-brow is -- is just weeds. And so your -- your -- in your memory, you have innumerable trash. But if you analyze what you have in your memory to counter-balance the trash, you -- the -- the {schools} have denied you the honor of having the real -- the real flowers of poetry. And you only have the weeds. And it is -- you have to sow into your own memory real poetry, real verse. Whether it's the Psalms, or whether it's hymns, or whether it's Shakespeare, or whether it's Keats, I don't care. But the main thing is that you learn to distinguish between flowers and weeds. And -- and it is all full of weeds in you, because nobody can live without song, or without music. Therefore, the -- you -- you do keep all the silly songs. Because it just means that your field is a plowed field and wants to be -- cultivated and planted with something. And -- and you say, "No, I'm free, independent," in come the weeds. And since nobody can -- can live without song, you all have the -- the trash songs in your -- in your mind, and the hits. That's all right, as long as they -- you know they are the -- the cheapness that goes with the expensive things. Where you have genuine things, you also have false things -- or -- or, I mean, substitute things.

So please read the Invocation, and -- and learn it by heart. Greatest success of my life in this country has been that we -- we ran a camp, and I did succeed in making 120 men of 20 to 25 learn by heart "The Ballad of the White Horse" by Chesterton. And -- and they still live by this. And that's great poetry. It's just as great as John Brown's Body. It's for English consumptions -- has the same importance as the -- as the John Brown's Body. You haven't even heard of it, I suppose. It's the only modern English great poem, "The Ballad of the White Horse." It's the story of King Alfred. And the -- Times in -- of London printed -- the verses of this every day during the Blitz, because it was the one poem, you see, that -- aroused the -- the English to their -- to their own hour of glory.

So this I feel, John Brown's Body has the same -- the same...