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

...not one of you has read over his manuscript, his typewritten manuscript and corrected the misprints. I've never seen such a treatment. This is just -- I mean, a pig wouldn't be treated this way. And I can prove it, because not one has any emendation on his typewritten errors. There is not -- never a pencil or a -- even bit of ink on any one of your papers, where you have been good enough to correct your own nonsense. Why should I read such stuff? It's really -- it took me quite -- I was very reluctant not to throw these papers into your faces. I'm not your wet-nurse. And you are so -- you have never grown up beyond the age of 2. You go to the toilet -- you are not toilet-broken. That's how I call this. This is what you are. I -- I really had to -- to use very much restraint to read these papers.

And the second thing: -- do you think I'm so stupid that I do not see that you copy literatim from another text? I've even mentioned it. It's despicable. You just have copied pages and pages from printed books. Do you think I'm such -- such an idiot? Num-- -- that's Number 2. What shall I do with you? I don't care. My -- I'm an old man, and I thought it was a privilege for you, that I -- well, that you could hear these things. You haven't treated me this way. You have made me understand that I'm just a fool.

These two external things are just incredible. I haven't even noted down when I knew that you were just copying pages from printed books. -- It's so stupid, even the -- quite out of the -- of place, I mean. Here, there -- {Histor- -- Scriptores Rerum Historia Augusta}, you come with Herodotus, and Thucydides, as though -- that was -- had anything to do with it, because the introduction to this -- in Loeb, probably, contains the such a -- such a retrospect of rhetorics and what-not. Nothing to the point.

There are s- -- of course some decent papers. You -- you know your own exceptions quite well. And I -- I'm quite satisfied. But most of you could do much better work than the -- you condescended to -- to do.

But these two points, gentlemen, that even the best of you do not read over their paper. I don't know why -- any -- you know very well that you make slips. This is a -- very strange. All of you have to learn to be clerks and secretaries for the end -- rest of your life, so teachers will all have to make reports, that it is obvious that you will never allow yourself to hand this into a principal without having read it over. But why not to me? And some of these misprints are just indescribable.

Now we come to the content. And there of course it's very hard to find any standard of behavior. One of you performs the -- a remarkable feat: he derives the Jews from Cain. Obviously not known who Cain was, and said that the story of the Jews was short, because it began with Cain. Now Cain is the son of Adam, so it's quite a long story, of course. And I thought -- that even you would know that the story of the Jews begins with -- with Abraham. And that's pretty late in the game. How -- anybody can offer me a paper -- with -- with such a sentence, I mean. This is not even in grammar school, because they wouldn't mention something they wouldn't understand. Can somebody explain to me how a man can begin the history of the -- Jews with Cain? He must be a dyed-inthe-wool anti-Semite, because -- Cain is the first murderer.

Who has written this? Confess. It's on the front page of my -- of my criticism. Here is -- must be the --. Then I give -- I mean, what's the use of teaching anything if this can happen? Mr. { } is not here. Wise. {Kranz}? Here. It's really in print here. "The Jews don't claim eternity, but begin their history with Cain." Quite some achievement. You do -- where is this man? Has he ever appeared here?

(Yes. He's here most every time.)

(Who?)

{Norman Kranz}.

(He's Jewish, also.)

(I was going to say, he probably's Jewish.)

(He is Jewish.)

He is Jewish? Well, that's a {specialist}. Well, I mean, he says it himself, so it must be true. You know him?

(I know him, yeah.)

Will you tell him? We accuse him of anti-Semitism. He's {ruinous}. I mean, this {record in Cain}?

(It's obvious he hasn't read Out of Revolution.)

What?

(It's obvious that he hasn't read Out of Revolution.)

Well, he hasn't to read Out of Revolution for the -- just to go to the encyclopedia, or something of this kind.

So I wanted to -- to read Barlow today, just to show you the -- the transformation of -- of an imitation of European models into a genuine American creation, as in Ben‚t. This is -- step is very great from Barlow's "Columbus"--which is still a vision from Europe, so to speak, of America--and this first poem, which takes explicitly its stand, so to speak, in the Rockies, and -- and does not start from the Eastern seaboard. But we don't have a copy on the shelves, strangely enough. It's either/or { } the one copy that isn't there. So this library of course is a very shoddy one. And you -- if you can do anything to spread the -- the word that this library has to get a shot in the arm. I mean, some million dollars have -- to be put into this library to make it into something, not just current expenses. It hasn't been done. And the -- the staff is always defeated. Whenever there are -- there were $2 million, you see, set aside for filling the gaps. And I'm told that $1 million immediately went into buildings, as they always do, you see. This country is intoxicated with brick. And -- and everything is overbuilt, you see -- in -- externally, and nothing is there to run the show, to put something inside. This {really} -- o- -- all over the country, I mean. Every donor, you see, gives $10 million, and $9 million have to be put into the building. Then there's too little left to fill it with anything that's going on inside, because it has to be showy.

Well, I haven't to tell you here this. Everywhere it's overbuilding, you see. You can run a good university without buildings, you see. But they think you can only -- you -- have a greater university by -- through buildings. This isn't true.

And the first thing, here, this library is not comparable to even -- to Berkeley, which isn't such an {extraordinary} library, either. And you can't get anything.

(Well, the downtown library is a pretty good supplementary -- institution. It has practically any book that I've ever tried to find. But even to get the books in our library at UCLA, you have to go through hell and high water. It's just discouraging.)

Well, that's of course, with such a { }. This cannot be helped. But -- there are just incredible gaps. And -- here, why didn't you go to the downtown library?

(Well, I got -- I have -- listened to the "Hasty Pudding" poem.)

It doesn't have it. But you could have gotten a copy of Mr. Barlow, I'm quite sure.

(At the downtown library.)

Well, this is our last meeting, so now I have a -- { } up { }. So let's forget about all this.

I would like you to -- to ask you -- do you feel capable now--and that should be one of the fruits, after all, of our gatherings--to define the difference of historical time and scientific time -- physicists' -- physical time? This -- at least -- I think would be some achievement or some understanding which should stay with you, { } other -- other things. That's the main problem, you see. Do you understand why historical time and physical time are not the same? Does anybody care to try to express this? We have talked about this time and again, last time again. But I would like you to -- to be able to articulate this yourself. Does anybody feel up to this? Wouldn't you try?

(Me? I could try.)

You can go to the blackboard if you want to. It may help.

(I'm going to sound like a machine, because I -- I feel so hesitant to try to --.)

Oh, Sir. Well then, never mind, I mean. I -- nobody will poke fun at you.

(First of all, the time of science examines things as -- as -- it just didn't -- in one area of time, they examine them in the present. It -- it -- it -- ex- -- science examines things and objects, and doesn't --.)

Well now you can even say it neglects time. I would even go so far. You say "present," but it isn't a true present, because it says, "This thing is," isn't it? That -- the expression for all science is "is," you see. And here is your mind, and here are--as you rightly say--the objects, you see. "This is": that's after all the formula of science.

(Whereas...)

In history, we don't speak this way.

(The language of an historian must look at the three elements of -- of time.)

Good. Now you come nearer to the truth. You can put these in opposition on the other side. No, put the future first, because they two --. You see, past and future he has on top, and underneath, as a result, the present. That's the story of the historian. In other words, the -- the historian, you see, here stands between mi- -- his mind and things. That's you -- what you always think you do, what you call "objective," you see. And then you have only as opposite "subjective." And I have tried to tell you that the historian has neither to do with sub- -- the mind's subjectivity, nor with the thing's objectivity. We don't know anything, except that at this moment, I'm talking to you. And yesterday I was not talking to you. Today I'm talking. Tomorrow I have talked. And this is history, that we can say of an event, you see, "I shall be talking," "I am talking," "I have been talking." That is, that we have landmarks to say whether we live before an event, in the event, or after an event. That's all what history is, but it's magnificent. And you want to magnify it into something quite different, you see. The great thing of -- of history is that -- that we can announce, prophesy, suffer, undergo, submit, and report, and praise, and remember. This is our movement through time. And by this, anything that has happened stays with us. You ha- -- if you want to -- take the story of the Jews, then you cannot begin with Cain, you see, bec- -- no, no, you stay.

(You told me to sit down.)

No, I'll { }. I yield. I yield to the gentleman, yes, { } {Arizona.} Come on.

(Because I -- when you -- I realize how hard it is to -- to explain these things when we just start with ourselves up here, all alone without any notes, because as we're going -- reading our notes and seeing all the things that you -- that you said, and we -- it just feels like -- it seems like we understand it, until when I meet someone who doesn't even know you, and they -- and I want to say that I met an instructor that I think has made some difference in my life, and he asks the question, "Why?" and I try to explain --.)

Kill him.

(I just say, "You have to meet him.")

Well, that's very good of you. But here, let's state what we have. I do feel that it is possible to formulate this in such a way that even the -- the cynic is put in his place. And I -- I want you to get that far tonight -- -day. So let's work on

this. It's really not so impossible as it -- as you --. Must -- don't give up, you see. Once you break the spell of these people's na‹ve faith, the past, you see, is what they have, what they own, so to speak, you see, that causes then the present, and then the past and present together, cause the future. That's all their superstition they have, you see, that the past is theirs, because they have totally forgotten that it isn't theirs, you see. It's just down in oblivion, it's in the abyss, most -- even all this -- really analyze what these people call the past, they think it's there, that nothing can happen to the past, you see. It is -- it is imperishable, so to speak. Now in -- history, that isn't true. Ja?

(I think that 1984 by -- Orthwell...)

Orwell.

(...by Orwell -- Orwell does a very fine job of alerting us to this problem and possible defeat of all our past by showing that it can be very -- and we can lose ourselves.)

-- It has helped some people when they think of themselves as sitting on a raft on a river, and this raft is longer than they themselves, that it expands backward up the river and down the river to a certain extent. This raft is our memory and is our historical sense. And we move on this raft backward and forward with a certain liberty. We can go up and down. Any tribal organization, any family organization through the grandfather and the grandchild has a raft that goes through five generations. The whole river of time is inaccessible to us. But the whole experience of backward and forward is already on this raft, you see. You go back, you see, to the Heck and you go forward--how do you call the -- the forward end of a boat?

(Bow. Prow.)

A bow. And -- and although you are very definitely aware that this is very limited, it gives you still a -- a feeling of expanse. Now the -- what all me- -- human beings, from -- since they buried their ancestors, have tried to do -- to remain, to expand the time after their death and before their birth. And the analysts have also made us aware of this simple drive today that anyone -- one of us wants to penetrate beyond his own lifetime in both directions, you see; and want to place this, his own lifetime, so to -- they hang it up in this, between past and future, to make it meaningful. That's called "education," Sir. The -- lifting up from the flat level on the ground, you see, where you lie dead with your own 70 years of life, you see, to lift it up in such a way that the past and future can stream through it, and can -- so that you become a part of this process of time which has existed when your parents marriage -- married, you see, without your

knowing it, and which will exist when your children marry. And which -- therefore man is lifted up higher and higher in the stream of time. If you only cover the time from your parents to your -- your children, this is a smaller education, you see, than the education to the highest, of the divine time of the whole creative process, when God said it was light, and -- to the Last Judgment Day, when He said "It will be o-" -- "It's over." If -- people want to behave right in this fuller time, our education will obviously have to dispense with all purely temporary act- -- goals and aims of ours, you see.

And just yesterday, one of my colleagues here said very nicely -- the meaning of my life must be to praise the -- the Lord. So whatever I do, I must try to make it a Psalm. Here, you see, my life must be a song of praise of my creator. This is a very wonderful way of expressing the real -- eternal relation of any one life, you see, to the whole process of creation. How do you cre- -- praise your creator? That's a different question. But he has felt he should lift himself out of the boots -- you see, out of the goals of his private life. And it's quite remarkable that a man at this university could formulate it this way.

And if you look at education as a constant attempt to reach this historical level in which all the influences of the creative acts of the past are allowed, are fostered by us, are promoted by us--so that we do not block them, do not obstruct them--you see that time has started. And we are purely accidental inside of this time. And I -- always mention this fact: you are obliged to teach your children the English language. And if you don't, you abdicate your parents' rights. And now the schools are already taking over, and now they say the parents cannot teach. In this moment, there are no parents. Then there is no reason why they shouldn't be gotten in -- in -- in ovens, the babies, I mean. And artificial semination is a complete consequence of this abdication of parents, you see, giving over to the schools the right to teach children English. Because to teach language, of course, is the acknowledgment of history. The English language didn't exist at one time, you see. It probably will not exist all the time.

If you enter history, you feel that at this moment, the English language is something still to be held onto. We do not say that it will be forever. We do not say that it has existed forever. But while it is here, you and I have to speak English, Sir. You must understand that this is an imperative. This is an order given. You -- this is a command: "There shall be English."

Now all history therefore cannot be understood without the future. Because you must know, when you take up the study of English in the English department, whether you mean still to say, "No English any longer, Esperanto," or whether you want to say, "Let's cultivate English." Therefore the future is a -- has a decisive voice in the stud- -- your study of English. Because if you want to

prove that it can go, that you no longer -- have to know English, that the universal language, you see, artificially seminated, can replace it--as -- like Volapk, or Esperanto, or how all these artificial languages now are called, you see--you will treat English, you see, as a superfluity. And therefore the history of English will -- sime -- seem to you a -- a fluke, that has passed like a dream in the night, as the Bible says of such things, you see. But if you say that English is so marvelous, and so rich, and so expressive of the history of the human soul, that it must not be abandoned, you see -- there are 40,000 words you cannot -- they cannot die, because they are all -- you see, verses of the spirit, that you will defend it, and you will be down on the artificial language, or you will put the artificial languages in their place, and say, "That's good for commerce. But that's not good, you see, for the deepest imaginations of -- of the human spirit." And so you see that first you know already whether you want to expand English or limit it. And from this on, you will study. And you will give hours of study and place to English, accordingly.

I only want to prove to you that even in the simplest way of using language, and teaching your daughter to speak, you see, we are not only turning to the past, in the English as it is written. We have decided that it is worthwhile to keep English alive. Now that's a decision over the future, don't you see? The same is true about political science. If you want to talk about democracy and its development, you -- you already have decided whether you want to abolish it, you see, or you want to cultivate it.

This -- only to bring out that there is no such situation in which the pressure is not on from both sides. This is why this figure is perhaps quite useful, you see. Now history is an attempt to unfold, backward and forward, and your freedom from these cynics is that you say that you do not live in past and -- and future, you see. That's part of the { }. We look backward, and we look forward, and the future looks on us, and the past looks to -- towards us. The past expects us to be saved from destruction. You -- on -- on you this English language depends, Sir. On you the Declaration of Independence depends. If you throw it into oblivion, you destroy it. That's an active act. Oblivion is destruction. You -- give it over to the -- to oblivion. So the past implor- -- knocks at the door and says, "Please," you see, "don't forget." Can you understand this? The past is not there, but it's a ghost that has to be en- -- encoun- -- wants to drink your blood again. And the future is impinging on you, saying, "What -- what do you think your future of the destiny of the human race is to be?" you see.

In this country, you are so hard-put, you -- all of you, because Manifest Destiny has meant a space development. To go West, that was Manifest Destiny. But please recover this wonderful word, "destiny." It's a notion in time. Your destiny, you see, is not geography, but is history. Obviously "destiny" means the

end of time. Can you see this?

And this is -- one of the reasons why Americans destroy history, why you are slayers of history. You are really -- you slay history, every day, every one. Every American is a destroyer of history, because you have transposed the term -- "destiny" into space. That's the fate of America, that an historical venture--to discover the West, you see--was allowed to absorb the whole term, "destiny," whether -- obviously that's a passing phase, that you went West. Here, you are in California, you see. This cannot be now further destiny, you see. Therefore, it is very difficult for you to recover a sense of sanity with regard to history, because it has all been dismissed into space. Destiny seemed a walk over into the Nor- -- Cas- -- or Rocky Mountains. But is this your destiny, Sir? Your destiny is whether you have 12 children or not, because that's in time, purely in time. If you can recover -- I don't know if the word "destiny" can be saved in this country. Would you say it can?

(I think so.)

That's why you do not understand predestination. You see, it's one of the wisest insights of the Christianity. You always say, "That's Calvinism, predestination." Don't believe it for a minute. It's in the Letter of -- to the Romans by the Apostle Paul. And it's the -- central word of Christianity, that man ha- -- is free if he changes his future. That is, if he hears the voice of the future, you see -- a new voice from the future, then he is predestinatus -- then his destiny is able to change his background. Obviously, you -- you just take any conversion of Paul, himself, as a "homo predestinatus" as a predestined being, you see, he can read that certain things of the past have to be changed. They have- -- he hasn't to adhere to them. That's destiny. In the light of destiny, all my past becomes movable, mobile, changeable, you see. I take it, yes, and I say, "Yes, but I have to do something with it. I -- it cannot go on like that, because my destiny, you see, is predestined."

So we go before this past into our origin, you see, into our father's hands and man is then -- God's thought. And even your mother and your father are already disguises of your full destiny, you see. They can be, because they have a limited environment. And they are just your step-parents. Because God wanted you as a creature as it -- has never existed before. And so that's the story of the Holy Ghost, that -- conceived by the Virgin. This is nothing -- all these superstitions are not there. The -- it's an attempt to express that Christ was a thought of his Father in Heaven before He was the carnal son of Joseph and Mary. And that's true of you -- all of us. You cannot live, if you do not believe that your -- everybody rebels against his parents, you see, now, because we are all just shot through with Christianity, and everybody believes that there is a destiny which

he has to re- -- discover, which makes him predestined, you see. That is, before he is determined by conditions -- that's the difference, you see, between determination and destination. My destiny is recognized destiny. And determination is outside of me, hangs over me as a cloud, and as a compulsion.

And so the -- history is the only means of -- for us to get outside our environment. And -- ja?

(I'm not -- I'm a little unclear about the difference between predestination and determination. It seems to me that the -- I got one glimmer there that maybe predestination is something from the inside, whereas determination is from the outside. Is that -- but I'm -- not clear.)

Yes. Come nearer to the sense of history, now. I mean, it is necessary when you make this distinction. Now the whole difference -- you -- nobody brought a Bible. Anybody has a New Testament here? That's all obsolete now. Well, if you read the letter to -- of -- of James in the Bible, there it's made very clear that he lived by the law of liberty. That is, whereas all things in nature live, you see, by the necessity of the law -- by natural law, James tries to express it in this stupendous way that he says, "We are children of the law of liberty." Now what's the law of liberty? It's a contradiction in terms. Where there is law, there seems to be no liberty.

If you take -- American teamwork, and improvising camps, settlements, Gold Rush, and {Klondike}, that's meant by the law of liberty, that in the process of being free, we discover the law of the action which this action needs from us, you see, to be fulfilled. What we call "teamwork" is such a law of liberty, that is, voluntar- -- -teers, you see, get together and in their good will -- people of good will discover the law that this one action, you see, makes necessary: the division of labor, building a bridge, you see, fighting a forest fire. These would all be laws of liberty, you see, because the first instinct is "I wish to help." And if I wish to help, I -- in order to implement this, there is obviously a lawful proceeding, necessary, you see. One has to be first, one has to be last, and so on, and so -- so forth.

The law of liberty is that -- a law that comes about by the power of our speaking to each other, our inviting, our obeying, by commanding. The wor- -- the word is the whole difference between a mute nature and humanity. You are called into life and your parents admit, by giving you a name, that you are bigger than just their dependents. They cannot kill you. They have to teach you language, you see, they have to make you a citizen, you see, of the kingdom of Heaven. Simply by -- teaching you English. You must not under- -- overlook that the fact that you learn to speak emancipates you from your parents. You see, if

you wouldn't speak, if you would be an animal, you see, with our constitution, we would be under -- under the yoke, you see, of servitude, all our life. Because never would we be able to get outside our environment, and to replace it, you see, to change it. To speak means to be no longer under the servitude of the accident of our own time and space. That -- to speak means already to meet our ancestors before our birth, and to meet our children after our death. This is the secret of -- the -- that's why the Gospel of St. John says, "In the beginning was the Word" for man.

We are only people because we speak and can therefore can speak us outside any casual form of existence, any passing, you see, chapter of our life. The word saves our identity -- you are still Mr. {Erskine}, you see, after this class. You are not the prisoner of any one state of affairs.

Now this is then the whole difference, gentlemen. Predestination means that you can, by the names from the future and from the past, by sacred names from the past and by sacred names {becking} you from the future, you see, as in Israel, you see, the -- the -- the -- the Messiah, the expectation of the Messiah beckoning from the future, and the creation of the whole earth by our Lord, makes you and me absolutely sovereign, compared to any one phase of history to which we are born. What does it mean, 1959? You see, I am of a much longer ancestry, you see. And the casual laws of this moment, you see, cannot bind me.

When the pope revolutionized the Church, Gregory VII in the 11th century, the imperialists, the people who were adherents of the old state of affairs said, "But -- but 400 years, the Church has lived by the rules of Constantine, or even 500, and 600. How can you revolutionize the Church?"

And he said, "What? Our Lord has allowed the -- the devil to govern the world 5,000 years before Christ came. And then He came. And so you see, 5,000 years makes no difference. There is no prescription. There is no statute of limitations for human abuses. If something has gone on for 5,000 years, that's no reason why it must go on any longer."

Now this is all human. And I think any American feels an echo of this in his -- in his person, you see. -- The statute of limitations doesn't run. Isn't that true? But how do you? How can you claim this? You can only claim it if the claim made on you is from time immemorial; that is, before you have been bewitched en masse into the temporary form of your existence. Otherwise there isn't. You have otherwise no claim.

Now all this then is put on us by being spoken into life. The language is very wise -- please take this down. Predestination presupposes that we are called

into life -- called into life, you see. That is, that we hear a voice that commands us to go beyond the present moment. This is very wise in the language, to call into life. That's why man has a calling, and why -- has a vocation, which is just the same word like "calling," you see. And why it has to be expressed in this way? Because when you wake up, here as students in this university, you have been talked into existence and called into existence for 20 years, and you must not overlook this fact that people already have constantly pressed home on you the fact that you are allowed to speak back. It is the gift of the community to you that you are allowed to speak, and that we expect you to speak.

You always begin with your own contradiction and say, "I." This is not the first sentence of the living word. The first -- word that is spoken to you is "you." Man wakes up as somebody else's you. Perhaps you take this down. You wake up as somebody else's thee. Because your parents say "thee" to you in the name of humanity, you are entering history, because you are called into this stream by being addressed. Not as an animal that wants to eat and to drink, but--to shit--but as a being that has to participate in the creative process of history. So you begin as a "you." And in this moment, you are made into a citizen of destiny. You take part in the direction of the march of events. Through being called by an older group of people, you see, strangely enough, the avenue into the future is open. This is this dualism of -- of life, you see, that because they hope and look into you, their expectation that you will continue, you see, you are suddenly thrown into the forefront of the future. But it is their throwing you, you see--that's the problem of your education, you see--that the educated person cannot be self-reliant. He must know that he has been thrown.

That's why I have called this, you see, this -- these two stages in my -- man is a traject from the past. And he is pr- -- prejected into the future. And in history, object and subject do not exist. But at this moment, gentlemen and ladies, here we are: trajects from history, you see, and prejected into the future. And this whole division, of object-subject, doesn't exist for the historian. If I tall -- tell you about the Declaration of Independence, you see, we recognize that somebody has thrown us here, you see, that we have been trajected over an abyss of time from before our birth, you see, into this moment. And we know that we are prejected into the future, you see, and have to reach by hook and crook through our great-grandchildren some future destiny of the human race.

If -- if you would see this, you would understand why the center of my -- my thinking has been crucial. You and I are not, as you think -- are -- we are here sitting on our fannies or standing in space. This -- this is, of course, the aspect of the schoolroom. That's why this whole idealistic philosophy was possible. Plato and his students, you and me, we sit here on our fannies. We don't move. We sit on a table -- in front of a table. So it's very easy to say, "Here is your mind, your

wonderful mind," you see, "the minds of men, and they are all abstracted into one mastermind"--whatever that may be; I've never seen one--and in -- in fact they are only 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 people at this moment, 12 minds, you see, forgetting their physical -- external, and using their brain. That is, the mind is the abstraction where I neglect the other limbs of my body for a moment, you see, and think on what can we agree. The mind is the instrument of agreement between people, isn't that? There -- in -- by neglect of time, and we sit here, and we stare then at history; and this has become our object.

Now gentlemen, this is an abstraction. I mean, that's a cross-section of your and my life. In fact, you are a steaming, breathing, loving, hating, aspiring being. And for a time you are just -- in -- in the refrigerator of suspended animation, can you see? You are kind enough to -- to be patient for an hour, and that's a stopping place, a railroad station. That's not the railroad of your life. Here we sit back, and meditate for a moment. In this moment, the world appears split in space in this manner. But if you kindly look at yourself, when you get up and leave this building, and run elsewhere, and have an appointment with your sweetheart, and are very anxious not to miss it, you see, and are looking forward to the next appointment when you have to leave her--because it is terrible to leave somebody we love--then you know that man is in agony -- "agon" meaning a race. You see, agonistics, as you know, Samson Agonistes, what is -- does it mean? You know Samson Agonistes? By whom is -- Samson Agonistes? Never heard of it? By Milton? Well, there is a book by Unamuno, The Agony of Christianism -- of Christianity, the great Spanish writer, you see. And it means, of course, the -- the fight in the arena of Christianity. That's the -- "agon" is the fight in the arena, you see, the--how do you call it?--th- -- well -- a match, you see. That's the a- -- agon.

And so we are in agony, constantly. It's a good word. Take it up, I mean. We are not just in agony when we are sick. All life is agony, you see, because it is all the time -- are -- we are in danger of leaving -- losing our breath, isn't that true?

And once you see men, panting -- like the -- that's why the Psalm says, "We are like" -- "the human heart is"--what does it say?--"like a heart panting --.

(As the water.)

Yes. Well, that's simply true. That's not poetical. That's a much better description of mankind, than to call him a -- a rational animal. We are panting, poor breath, because we are in such a hurry, and -- and have so many duties to fulfill, and so many desires to -- to -- to complete and -- and to -- to respond. And you see, this race run, and then I think I am right to say that in looking back-

ward, I recognize that I have been trajected from the cave man, through many dark ages, and here I am, you see, in the light of the present day, as a traject, over many abysses, through a mysterious bridge of human history. These human ancestors are the bridge-builders who have carried me along so that I haven't been -- I am not sunk. And I am already -- that's why I mean -- I'm already on a certain level of behavior. You take it for granted. That's, again, I mean -- the word "educated" means "lifted up and inducted into this tension between the past and the future."

And if you look -- think -- at the human situation, here you stand, or here you sit, or here you run. And at any one moment, you can allow yourself to sit back in space, and to take stock, and to measure, and count, and to -- to stand still. And in this moment, you become, you see, the subject of an objective world. And you follow out your objectives, and so on. But that's always in space. But when you treat creation as your brothers and sisters, like your sweetheart, you forget all about the -- she -- your -- your girl is not your object. And you -- Sir, I hope you will not think that love is something subjective. It is a pre- -- preject of the future. You assume that this is your destiny. And you are one, and not two. And -- as soon as a man or a woman dares to try a -- the man -- person of the other sex as their object, they become prostitutes, and they become murderers, you see. And they become perverts. The -- the English, and the whole Cartesian era, you see, has masochism and -- and -- and -- and what's the opposite?

(Sadism.)

Sadism for this reason, you see. It's a temptation of treating the person with whom we embark on a common life, you see, as an object. Cruelty is always the result. It's a very simple thing that in a Cartesian age, you must get masochism and -- and -- and sadism. They are simply the -- the -- the fact that the man has become so helpless that he thinks everybody, even the person he wants to melt in with as one body, is -- is an object of his lust. Then of course, it makes no difference, if you want to have objects around you, the best thing is to explode them. The atomic bomb is the -- is the best expression of a Cartesian age of space domination. Because the whole world is becoming an object to which I prove to myself, to my great satisfaction that I can do as I please.

So wherever there is -- there is love, the -- the -- the life -- looks like this, you see. Here is my mind, it is true. And here is some outside person. But we try to seize -- I want to make this girl from an object of my admiration and from my -- my good looks into -- into somebody who shares with me, into my -- as we say, partner. At this very moment, she has ceased to be my object, and I have to cease to be her subject, you see. We -- we must be pre-projected into a common future. And people who have a common future strive for a common history. And when

people have no common future, gentlemen, they are outside history. And Americans have no future at this moment. That's why they have no relation to history. That's corresponding.

You see, this may -- may solve your problem: mind and body--because, instead of "objects," you can also say "body," you see--mind and object are only split as long as this somebody who is against you--in the outside world, you see, in front of you, whom you see, whom you like to know--ceases to be an object, you see, and becomes a partner. And as a -- you see, the more you forget your own mentality in the process, you see, the more your mind and her body become one, or vice versa.

The whole illness of schizophrenia is, you see, that you can -- most people cannot do this. So they remain split in mind and body themselves. It is really very simple. I -- I feel -- you see, the -- the --. This I call the Cross of Reality, and I -- because man is in a crucial position. Your liberty is at every one moment to plunge into the stream of life, or to retire from it. In retiring, you objectify. In entering it, you take the plunge, and forget that there is this division between objects and subjects. If you become President Eisenhower, you are simply George Washington. You can't help it, you see. You are projected into this situation, whether you like it or not. And even a small man, like Mr. Truman, suddenly is president of the United States, you see. And he had this feeling, you see, that he was prejected, and had been trajected through a series of grand- -- you see, grandiose magistrates, into his own responsibility. And where there was no mind and no body, you see, he simply was acting out the voices of the past, trajecting them into the future. And it's the greatest story I feel in American history, that Mr. Truman was able to fire MacArthur, because he had read the story of Lincoln and McClellan. That's encouraging, you see. That's history. That's the sense of his- -- of history, you see. He had learned that in a democracy, the civilian authority has to remain, you see, on top of the generals. And that's the -- the great danger of any republic: it perishes as soon as this is, you see, lost sight of. It perishes. Whether you take General Boulanger in France, or whether you take Napoleon, or whether you take, you see, MacMahon -- I mean, the whole French story is of course--take Napoleon--strewn with these corpses of -- civilian authority. And McClellan, as you know, ran for president, and thought that he had it in his bag, and very tempting: the successful general, because he -- he invented a good pack saddle. He wasn't successful general, but he thought so.

Now Clemenceau said the same, you see: the war is too serious a business to leave it to the generals. And he deposed Monsieur Foch, and -- and made P‚tain, really, you see, the supreme commander. Very strange story, and -- because he -- he disliked P‚tain. But he said, "The man has faith, the man has the sense of the -- future survival of France, and Foch hasn't," you see. Or Joffre -- no

it was Foch.

And so -- ja?

(I don't know if this is -- I think this is -- might be on the point. But the word "subjective" has always bothered me for what might be a -- even a na‹ve reason, because I don't really understand what you mean when you say "subjective." I know that we're subjective in the sense of our feelings -- to -- to love someone you -- this is -- on the basis of our own purposes, and -- and we sort of throw a block off --.)

Good question. Good question, I {think}. Put your mind at rest. You are absolutely entitled to your feeling absolutely confused. The word "subject" has changed its meaning 200 years ago with its opposite. And literature is strewn with the corpses of the -- two usages, you see. So you are quite right to say, "I don't understand it." You --.

(It seems that --.)

It's just poison.

(It seems that what you -- what you have to appeal to, when you say you're being subjective, you appeal to some objective reason anyway, you appeal to the fact that I want to do this, because -- because I want to satisfy myself. This is { }.)

May I explain to you what it meant in the anc- -- with -- for the ancients, for the Greeks, and the Romans? "Subject" of course is the translation of "{hypokainenon}," that is, the underlying in -- in the -- in the Eng- -- Greek language. You don't have -- we have to -- { } in the Greek, but I want to explain to you that the grammarians--it's not a philosophical term originally, but a grammar -- term of grammar--said there is a verb. Most verbs have somebody who does the act. "The king reigns." So the king is, when I say this, submitted -- submits to the action as passing through him. And he becomes the vehicle, the instrument of this act, in order that -- that there is reign: "I need a man who does reign -- the reigning." This is the idea of the subject, that he is subjected to the act which passes through him, and thereby becomes invested in him.

And now you see the word "agent" is a very good ca- -- case in point. By acting, you become the agent. If you take upon yourself to perform a certain act time and again, you first are the agent--in real estate, you see, the agent in--finally you become the actor, as of the stage. Because 2,500 times, you will enact Tobacco Road. A decent person doesn't do this, just actors, you see. That's why

in the ancient world, actors were despised, as Plutarch says, you see. You remember -- we read the story of -- of { } in Plutarch. Don't you remember the chapter when he said, "A decent man isn't an actor"? -- You must understand that this is very deep-seated. An actor is -- who does arbitrarily subject himself to acts that aren't -- you see, not necessary in his own life. I still have a suspicion against actors. And I think it's an -- indictment of American society that the -- the movie stars are the one thing that is the shingle of this country, gentlemen. That's impossible. Actors are ab- -- subnormal people, because they submit voluntarily to repetitive actions. He is the greatest man on earth who did everything once -- does everything once, {when it is needed}, you see. That's the story of Jesus, why He didn't write any books, you see, had no bestseller, because He would have had then to revise the second edition. There are no second editions of any saying of Christ, in the Bible, you see. It's all original, and all once, because the -- what He wanted to preach was that every moment was absolute--fulfillment and prophecy--and had -- all related to the beginning of time, and the end of time, you see. Every minute being a -- a diamond in -- on this necklace of time.

And I mean it. I mean, a society that is for mass production must worship an actor who plays the same role 2,500 times, as they did in Tobacco Road. You must -- I despise these people. And I think it's right that they are overpaid, because they abdicate their soul. And the devil -- if you sell the -- your soul to the devil, you must get some reward.

I have never, to this day, ever repeated this -- a lecture twice. I have never given a lecture twice. But I have a colleague, when he came to America, as a young man, as a student, he told me the story himself. He was a German -- is a German professor. He said he gave the same lecture 200 times at 200 colleges, and thereby financed his travel to the United States. I looked at him in di- -- in dismay, because I certainly couldn't have financed my journey in this -- that way, because I cannot give the same lecture 200 times. You understand?

And this is why you have such a hard time today to understand history, because to you, doing the same thing every day is more -- so to speak, obvious, you see, than doing something different every day. The -- you are such -- you see, the routines of life, the schedule has come -- completely disjointed if you think it is normal to be -- go three times a week to a lecture. It isn't, Sir. Quite abnormal, you see. The great events are the great events, because they cannot be repeated. You can't miss them, because -- once you aren't -- been there, it's too late.

(I was just thinking. Wouldn't you say this is the reason that the diaries have gone out of vogue for quite a while, whereas in past times, people always

felt { }.)

Yes, always felt that days were different. Quite, quite, exactly. And you feel now it's the same thing every day. Breakfast food, et cetera.

So. The historical sense -- time will be sharp, now when you still agree that every day differs. As soon as you begin to think that the days are repetitive, just the same day all over again, you have ceased to live in the sense of destiny, because destiny, of course, is the creation of all time to its appointed end, of which you are a modest, humble servant, or -- or partner, or sharecropper.

And so the uniqueness of time is -- can only be reached by degrees. There are routines, of course, you see -- are less vital in our life. But every man says during the day one sentence which he hasn't said yesterday. And the -- he will not say again tomorrow. You read -- have an accident on the road, and there are certain outbursts of your feeling and of your -- you see, of your response. And they'll -- they'll stamp the day. And everything that is more unique is more historical. The more unique an event, you see the more it -- it belongs to history; and the less -- the less, the more it belongs to nature. If -- anything that is--like the sun rises, and goes--that belongs to astronomy. Already an eclipse and an earthquake belong to history.

Even they not quite, because they can pre- -- so to speak -- an earthquake, no, we cannot yet pre-figure, I mean -- we -- we are unable to do so. The earthquake of Lisbon is an event of human history, because in 1775, as you may know, the big city of Lisbon in Portugal was destroyed, and people in Am- -- in Europe--and America too--woke up to the fact that God was not a benefactor. Because there were thousands and thousands of people destroyed. And the deep pessimism of Volney's on the ruin -- A -- Sur les Ruines de l'Histoire, appeared in 1772, I think it was, and -- for the first time, you see, the Enlightenment was balanced, so to speak, and checked by an inkling that we did not live in -- in a good nature, that nature was not good, that it wasn't so simple as that. The optimism of the age, you see, preparing the French Revolution, the American -- you see, independence was crushed in the earthquake of Lisbon.

Only to show you that there can be events in hi- -- in nature, which, because they are so unique, you see, enter history. I mean, I think an historian of the 18th century must mention the earthquake of Lisbon, you see. He doesn't have to mention that it rained in spring, you see. Except in Los Angeles. And -- because that's repetitive. But the earthquake of Lisbon has, you see -- woke people up to a different sense of their existence.

This is just an example. You have a yardstick -- you see, all this is dynam-

ic, all this -- as you call it -- all this goes in degrees. There is more history and more nature, less history and less nature in any event. The most unique event is the original sentence spoken in a certain moment as in response to a certain need, you see, because the word is the freest; it is the most changeable; it is the most original. You see, it is least hampered by space, and environment, and conditions. The Gettysburg Address is immortal, you see. And that's very strange for you, but the -- the originality goes in this way, you see: spirit, passions, reason, rhythm. We say something has "neither rhyme nor reason," then it is quite dead, you see.

Rhythm is when you are in slee- -- asleep. Reason you use when you are awake. Passions you use when you are hot, on fire. And spirit you must use when you stand, when you are created, and when you -- have to act in the night of despair, in the place of God Himself, and if you have to say, "My God, my God: why hast thou forsaken me?" Because the son shall be equal to the father, you all, gentlemen, have in one moment in your life to take it upon yourself to say the word, to -- to stand up and be counted, you see. And if everybody says, "Yes," you have to stand up and say "No." And that's the moment, you see, of your -- that's not -- you don't do this impassionately, because you are in love with the girl, but simply because truth must not go out from this earth -- this a big lie, a lynching, you see--everybody wants to lynch, you see--you cannot -- you cannot go with it. Although you don't do -- do passionate, you do it for the sake of -- of the truth. And there are these -- these -- and this is down there, you see, there is just gravity. Now you can imagine what happens to a universe which is explained by gravity. This is Number 5; this is Number 4; this is Number 3; this is Number 2; and this is Number 1. Lynching, murder must be abolished. Human society cannot be based on murder. You will admit this, will you? Therefore the spirit rules, because this has to be upheld whether I like it or not, you see.

All spiritual demands are demands against my self-interest. I'm not asked whether it's interesting. There is no humanity left, speech is destroyed, if I can murder the man to whom I have spoken and who has spoken to me.

Therefore, everything is here, you see, on the creative side. It lays down the order of our existence on this {world}. The spirit pronounces judgment, how you and me--with regard to the dead and the living--shall behave. For example, can you kill a 90-year-old man, just because he's too old for you, you see, because you want to inherit him? He's no good for anything, but you have -- cannot, you see. He is your predecessor, you see. You have to wait till he dies. That's a very s- -- important rule, today, where people already begin to kill these people by retiring them at 65, and putting them into a -- old-age homes. That's a way of killing people. Don't be betrayed. That's a way of killing them, because what they need

is the spirit. And you deprive them of any participation in -- in the life of the community. And they do die. And they become of course terrible people, full of vengeance, and full of boredom, and -- and -- and they are like a blight on our society. Because you have murdered them. You can murder people through 20 years. I mean, don't be betrayed. Murder is not just shooting a man.

So would you -- if you take these things, you see: there are bodies that are ruled by gravity. And I meet you in the ro- -- and be polite, and I have only treated you as a body, you see, as a --. Obviously then we apology -- -ize. What does -- does it mean to excuse, gentlemen? To say "excuse me"? It's a very wonderful word. It means in the realm of causes and effects, we treat each other as dead bodies. "To excuse" means to eliminate a cause. It means to say this cause shall not produce the effect that you slap me in the face. Can you see this?

History begins where causes are eliminated, and are not allowed to take effect. That's history. History is the abolition of natural causes.

Now, for example, gentlemen. The first act in history is the funeral. The original idea of the -- process of death is that any -- animal goes -- leaves the herd when it feels it must die and it goes into a corner and dies. The Africans -- Negroes -- some still do this. That is, any horse in a herd, or any cow that feels her hour has come, runs away from the group. This is isolation. Funeral is the abolition of the isolation. It's the abolition of this cause of the breakdown of continuity in history. Where you do not bury the dead, gentlemen, you are outside of history.

That's why it seems so important in the -- when the Filipinos -- dies, the whole family, the whole clan crowds into the sick room in the hospitals -- 18 people, 25 people, because everyone has to receive the breath of the dying man. You know, that tooks -- takes some reluctance to overcome. You cannot do this. You cannot be in a dead room without feeling chilled. You run away. Most -- any man -- the natural man in us wants to have nothing to do with death. I assure you, that our tribesmen here, the -- Indians, are only men because they attend funerals. You see, this is the first victory over a cause. It's an excuse. That is, an excuse means, you see, to ex- -- eliminate the cause. Can you understand them? The word is very simple, but nobody pays any attention to it. When you say, "Excuse me," you want to abolish the effect of a cause. And you shouldn't slight this word. You should say, "Excuse me," and you shouldn't -- not say "Hello," as the people here say. It's a great word, because it's the first word of history, that we excuse. That man is able to abolish causes. That's his -- predestiny, as with your parents. You are predestined to excuse yourself from being just these parents' son. You have also a destiny. You have a higher office. If they want you to be a farmer, or a banker, or a teacher, you can say, "No. My destiny, you see;

excuse me." Because by all causes, you would be the heir to their fortune, you see. But you can excuse yourself.

You all admit this, but you never give it a thought that this "excuse" is an historical feat which doesn't exist in nature. In nature, every cause has its effect. But we can revamp the past by saying so, Sir. The word "excuse me," has this creative power backward, that you and I can agree, and be treated as though it hasn't happened.

Now you begin perhaps to see that the past is what we look into. Here, looking backward, I say of certain events, "They shall have no result." Cain murdered Abel. But that doesn't mean that everybody has to murder his brother, you see. So we abolish the precedent by saying, "No" to it. We negate it. Part of being in history has -- means that we eliminate certain causes, that would otherwise lead to constant bloodshed, I mean, disaster. The same with war. We conclude peace, we -- and say, "This war must not go on. It must not happen again." And if we abolish the causes of this war, you see, then it doesn't happen again.

So all history is an act of freedom, in -- of rewriting the past. This is the {secret}. That's why it has to be rewritten in every generation. There's plenty to do for an historian, you see, in every generation. Every past has to be rewritten in the light of -- of the present.

By the way, this is also done, I mean. Every generation of historians discovers a new slant and -- and do this. Only they say, "That's scientific progress." It isn't, you see. It's just their responsibility to the future which forces them to -- to eliminate certain causes from the past, you see, that -- are still hanging -- over-hanging us. Mr. Bar- -- Bird -- Beard, you see, tried to have a new economic order of the United States in the future, so he wanted to eliminate the worship of the rich in this country, you see. So he wrote his economic history of the United States. Can you see this? No?

(I don't understand it.)

You don't. Wie?

(I understand what you're saying. I haven't read Charles Beard.)

Oh, you haven't. Ah, -- it's very interesting. A very conscientious book, by the way, I mean. It isn't -- he is not a cheap man. He -- he was -- acted in good faith.

So if you kindly would -- would adopt this freedom, that neither objects nor subjects are the heroes of history. They are always heirs and ancestors, founders and -- founders and successors. These are -- I think all quite good words. We succeed into seces- -- successions of, for example, of speech, of writing, of law; and we found. And nobody escapes this. If you pass a law in the legislature, never think that -- the law is for yourself. The law is for -- you have suffered. You wake up to the necessity of a new law. To you, the law comes too late. You can put this down as a rule: all legislation comes too late to those who wake up to the necessity of a legislation, you see. And even if it happens to you a second time, the reason why you pass a law is that you care for somebody else who might be hit by this, you see. And it is this which makes legislation possible. The people who have suffered from an injustice do not enjoy, the -- you see, the result of the readjustment. Can you see this? Because in their life, years have been spent on this fight in the legislature, so their life has been licked. It has been -- used up.

({ } Lincoln's Gettysburg Address again, how he -- he keeps on emphasizing the fact that those who have died are not going to be able to enjoy the fruits of their victory, but we are { }.)

Ja, exactly. Once you see this, all your political, democratic ideas will be sobered by historical insight that it isn't for our enjoyment, or delight, or pleasure that we -- we pass laws, you see, that we are already there, enacting a process that reaches far beyond my generation and my own time. Even if -- if I should live 90 years, I will not be in this position which has sharpened my, you see, eyes that I have not suddenly known this was unjust.

I always appeal, when I have to speak to capitalists, to -- to their identity with their daughters. I say, "Nobody can protect his own daughter against becoming a secretary." Therefore, the richest man in this country still has a solidarity with the working man because his own daughter in due time, you see, may find herself in a dependent position. And today you should not appeal to the identity of mother and son, which is a prehistorical situation, but the situation of father and daughter, by which an employer, for example, you see, and a boss must identify himself with somebody in the next generation, for whom he cannot possibly make real -- real rules, except by law, I mean. Except that -- he creates a society in which young women are not abused, and not -- tortured. I feel that in this symbol of father and daughter, you -- you can melt the heart of the hard- -- most hard-boiled industrialist, you see. That's the only point where he is weak, and you can show him that his own daughter is the victim of the society which he runs. Because -- it is very simple, that in history, man -- the father is -- identifies himself not with the son--who is a rebel, anyway, you see, a no-good, an anxiety--and never does what he is expected to do, but the -- the

daughter is. There is the complete, simple identity. And -- and -- and through this, men -- fathers are living already in the -- in the future.

By the way, that's a -- interesting historical sidelight. The -- the real inheritance of the spirit, gentlemen, goes always through the maternal grandfather, you see: grandfather, mother, son. That's the true story. If you look into family relations, never look up the paternal grandfather, because that's just a misleading thing by name, you see. Because the name is the same: Smith, Smith, Smith. But the spirit is usually transmitted from the grandfather via the mother to the son. That's the true story. Because the mother is identified with her father, you see, and in turn is identified with her son. And the father is not identified with his son, but he's identified with his daughter. That's a good -- I mean, anybody has to read -- write a biography, I recommend highly this investigation, all the -- that's a true spiritual pedigree. The physical pedigree, and the name-giving, you see, is from father to son, to grandson; they call themselves "Seniors" and "Juniors," you see. But the originality of every one generation depends on this -- on this strange transformation, because that's another rule: only that is important, gentlemen, which can be expressed in both sexes. I mean, a truth that is just carried from man to man is little, programmed. I mean, free masonry, such things can be transmitted from male to male, you see. But the true spirit, you see, can only be transmitted if it stands the test of being -- can be expressed in feminine terms, and in male terms. The spirit has both sexes. The brain has- -- the mind hasn't.

Well, pardon me for getting so -- waxing so eloquent again. But I want you only to see that in history, we unfold; and in science, we shut up. In science, we say, "This is nothing but." And in history, you must always say, "But imagine!" you see. That is, history makes us always bigger. And nature makes us always smaller than we feel at this moment. You see, there are two tendencies towards growth and diminuti- -- diminution. Science catalogues you and says, "Well, don't get excited. I-- you see, don't -- you don't have to care. We know all about it," you see.

I had a colleague--I told you this, perhaps already--who used to say, "I can tell you all about Goethe in 10 minutes." Did I tell you this? You see. Never forget this. He -- he tried to -- to treat a -- a wonder of human, you see, history as a "nothing but." As a -- "nothing but." And so you must tell your cynics, that history and nature are two methods of dealing with reality. You can have a history of nature, which begins with the creation of light, and says, "Let there be light, and there was light." And then you build it up into something big. And you can tone it down -- scientifically, and say this is nothing but a source for -- that developed, and began to circle, and expanded, and -- and so on, and we get the solar system.

Every human being can treat a thing as doomed to die, and as predestined to live. You can treat me -- I have a very -- much shorter life expectation than you have, and you say therefore, "This man is already done in. He's nothing but a senile old quack." Or you can say the opposite, that -- you can admit that you learn something from me. In this very moment, I become very important, because I become the head of a school.

So will you kindly take this away? I think this is the very best I can offer you, that history and -- and science are two methods which cannot be confused. History is trying to educate you, you see, and nature is -- is a training ground, you see, to make you into an animal that jumps as it is expected to jump. -- Perhaps you now understand that there is really a difference between determinism and -- and predestination. Predestination depends on your cooperation, on your explicit participation. And determinism describes your actions, regardless of what you think about them. And -- would you now understand this? This is really something, you see. This is -- determinism comes from the outside, upon you; and predestination waits till you have heard, you see, and have reac- -- responded. Predestination is able to base the decisive act into your -- your own free will. Because hearing can be resisted, and it can be, you see, obeyed. And there it runs freely.

(I always get the feeling from Mr. Calvin, that there's something of this determination from the outside entering into it -- his idea.)

Well, I -- I -- if anybody's interested, I will -- illuminate this. This -- are you? I have a very fruitful argument on this for the last three years with a professor of -- who translates Calvin at this moment into a new English version. They commissioned, and he's the editor of the { } Calvin, so I'm in -- at the center of the controversy. And -- and it has something to do with our story.

You see, Luther is -- is so natural in history, that all Eur- -- Germans are by nature historically-minded, I mean. Histori- -- sense of history is -- is a German sense. And -- I just received a review that I was a German of the Germans, because of this historical sense. And I have inher- -- inherited that. But Calvin isn't. And there is -- is -- therefore we have to study this. It's quite good. If you have the level of determinism, of course, you have also predeterminism. You are predetermined by your hormones, and your genes, and your sex, and your -- environment, and so. And here we have predestination, and predestination can only be...

[tape interruption]

... and I, for 50 years, I assure you, never used the term "free will," because

I said it had been talked -- over-talked, and there are certain problems which one cannot deal with usefully, because they have just been, you see, have -- bandied around too much. Perhaps the time has come where we can fruitfully cope with it. Where does free will go? If you have a natural universe, ruled by natural law, free will is just like a cork on top of it. As many people, the -- the -- agnostic liberal will say: "Everything is determined by nature, you see, or by chance, or by fate, or by accident, or natural law. But man seems to have some leeway." And this is the argument of the natural man, of the humanist. "Free will is an exception from the rule; we don't know quite how." But humanists -- you find many humanists who -- who do not see the contradiction that there should free will in this one animal, you see, and the rest of the world is under iron law.

Now this then is the picture. Christ is predestined. Everybody has a feeling -- and I think there's even the -- the worst nihilist will admit that Christ gives you the feeling of freedom, that He -- He was free. In every minute of His life, as -- as Gals- -- Galsworthy has expressed it, "He is incalculable. Christ is incalculable." That's freedom, you see. You cannot predict Him. He's unpredictable. And to be unpredictable means to be free, and to be free means to be unpredictable. That's the same thing. And I think you should learn this, because today that's all confused. People do not -- no longer know what freedom is. It's not anarchy, you see, but it's only that nobody can, from any law, derive, you see, what he's going to do next. That's freedom.

And that's why there are so very few people in this country who are free. They pretend that they are free, but they aren't, because they never do anything in- -- in -- un- -- unpredictable.

(Everyone that I meet -- well, I -- I think all around us in this country, they want to be free. They want to be free to such -- to such a degree that they don't want to have any costs. And this is what these -- in -- in 180 the other day when these fellows were asking the question. This is the thing: they can't think of being free, and yet still have anything that's determining you in the sense of any -- any destiny.)

Destiny; well, I know that.

(To be free -- to be free means you can also be free in something that's making a demand on you, too at this point. Such as -- I think you're freer in a sense when you love somebody.)

Ja. Exactly. True. You're quite right.

(You're a lot more neurotic when -- and determined when I think -- in the

sense when you don't love anybody.)

Ja. Ja. Love makes you free, because it gives you the power to sacrifice. Where there is sacrifice, there is freedom, because it is unpredictable. You can never rely on a man's sacrifice. It's -- you see, it still is a miracle of -- our existence, that man can make sacrifices from love. The socie- -- the laws of a state cannot ask sacrifices, you see. They can ask duties, and service, and obligation. But a sacrifice is something beyond the call of duty. And anything beyond the call of duty cannot be predicted. Isn't that true? You cannot predict that a man will do something extraordinary. Or a mother will save her life, you see, as the -- this young woman who -- you -- you read in the paper perhaps, extraordinary story. She -- girl -- a little child was bitten by a rattlesnake, and the mother had the double presence of mind to--but she had learned it, of course, in first aid, I suppose--to -- first to -- how do you call it? Tour- -- tourn- --?

(Tourniquet.)

Wie?

(Tourniquet.)

Tourniquet, you see, turn on the tourniquet, and then suck -- suck it out herself, to -- for herself which is quite dangerous, of course. Sucked the whole poison out, and the child was saved. That's beyond the call of duty.

(I wanted to ask, are there in any sense of -- the use of free will, you submit yourself, or enslave yourself, or become bound to some -- something --.)

Well, now -- well, it goes in -- allow me to go on from here, you see. Because you are quite right. The question is: where is this free will really rooted? But let me -- let me finish this. Because you will see that this humanist position: here are these strange 2 billion human beings who allegedly have a little bit of free will, and here are the laws of nature. So then every man is a miraculous something, without direction, because it just -- he's just free to do something. But you don't know what. Is he going to restore the Stone Age? He's free to do that, you see. So life has no direction if everybody has his own free will, private. Therefore, with free will, we come to anarchy. With free will, we certainly cannot -- you see, history has no -- no -- no sense, no meaning. Two billion people just milling around, and doing arbitrarily -- you see, then this free will becomes arbitrary.

Now in this life on our earth, if you look up from below, you see here the earth, iron-clad, and here are the stars--also iron-clad--on top of us. And in the

middle, man is dancing a dance of free will. Isn't this ridiculous? And it is not free will at all, but it is 2 billion free wills, will of the wisps, you see. That's really the picture of humanism. And it is unsatisfactory. Then -- al- -- I will always surrender to economic materialism, and I say, "Marx is right." Because that's the better -- more reasonable solution, you see, that we are the products of our environment, I can -- understand. But I cannot understand why, in the midst of -- of earthquakes, and geology, and mountains, and rivers, I suddenly shall here be free, when all the animals, we say, are -- are subordinated to -- to laws. I am -- under law, too.

No, the -- story is very -- allow me to show you that it really is quite complicated. -- With Calvin, it was this way. Here are -- is stars -- I -- really, I think "stars" and "earth" is better than to say "nature." It's much clearer. The heaven -- the sky, you see, and the earth teach us laws. There are seasons, there are sunsets, there are sunrises, and please be concrete. It's the sun and the moon that make us feel that there is a lawful order that's repetitive, that we cannot change by our will. And without this majesty of the natural laws, the whole problem of free will wouldn't be so shaky, because -- if -- if the -- the world was anarchical, and wouldn't move in certain -- certain avenues, you see, if we -- then we -- as the old people, they had their freedom of the will, because they saw the lion, and the tiger, and the wild animals. And they seemed to follow no law, and so man was quite lusty about it, you see. They didn't -- very -- had no astronomy. And -- the oldest, the -- the Indians, and so, they based their faith in freedom, because they compare themselves to the royalty of the lion and the cruelty of the tiger. And they feel, "Well, we jump as they do." But stars and earth are simply {adamant}.

So here is law. Then you get this strange sphere of free will. And now enters of course the scene, the majesty of the creator of all this, the problem of the deity.

Now the unfortunate fact is that for historical reasons, because of the struggle for sovereignty in France, and in the Netherlands, and in -- all the states, secular states, the word for the majesty of the image of God on earth was "sovereignty." The high magistrates, the princes were not called "free to act," but they were called "sovereign." The word "sovereign" in the 16th century had a -- a tremendous theology, just like "economic materialism" or "revolution" today. And a man was a sovereign, because it had entitled him to revolutionize the government.

And -- and so God's sovereignty was abrogated. And it -- it was said that the community down on earth took part in the sovereignty. So Calvin would say that his church in Geneva was as sovereign as the papacy, in order to express his

equality with the papacy. He wouldn't speak of his own free will, but you would speak of the sovereignty of the church of Geneva -- of the church of God -- was as sovereign as God is Himself.

So you get a breek -- a bree- -- a breech in the vocabulary. Here is God and His church, which are sovereign. And here is free will for man--as an individual, everybody--and here is the -- the -- a law of nature. And of course, these three orders are so confusing--God is sovereign, man has free will, the earth is under law--that -- Calvinism can be accused of having -- made things un-understandable. And now I'll tell you the simple reason--that's my -- has been my argument with my Calvinistic professor in Hartford--that I said, the whole thing there could have been avoided, if Mr. -- Mr. Calvin hadn't always spoken of the sovereignty of God, but of the--or majesty, as he also does--but of His freedom.

I have written a book -- you may -- some of -- may have heard of you -- The Christian Future, in which I end on the note that God is free to re-create the world in the light of the mischief His children make. That is, He always opens new -- avenues when we have reached an impasse. And the divinity of an inspiration we -- is always when people find a way out -- after they haven't -- made a terri- -- terrific mess of things. When we say, "Excuse me," that's exactly what we try to do, to re-arrange the world, you see, regardless of something that has happened. That is, we abolish a certain consequence.

Now what Calvin tried to say, and what -- Jonathan Edwards tried to say in his famous book on the freedom of the will, was: that men were ambivalent. That is, they could -- throw themselves under the creative act of freedom by sacrifice and love, or they could follow the inclination, the first urge, the stimuli from their being, of course, involved in the process of nature. That is, man -- as separate from history, is unfree, as a part of nature. And as entering that which has to be done tomorrow in order to recuperate the past, you see, and to say, "Excuse me," you see, makes him a partner in the creation of the world by God, through all time. Because he can only reach this state of freedom if he does something that is meaningful in the continuity of the race. If he decides murder had to be punished, obviously he makes a law for the future, and he abolishes another law of anarchy or, you see -- or cruelty. Therefore, Calvin--and all theolog- -- -gians say that we are at -- every moment tempted to throw ourselves upon the creative freedom of God, and be partner of His freedom, or sink down into the -- into the magma of natural law. And it's either way. And you know it that it is this way.

Now, mercifully, however, the saints, the creators of new ways of life create institutions between God and the individual man--like Church, and state, and universities, and arts, and families. And so, even though you and I are not at

every moment up to par, and we cannot always be creative--that's nonsense; you are creative -- you see, one minute a day. But we can participate in all the sacrifices made by our forerunners and predecessors. And we can marry, and undergo the ceremonies, and the law of marriage, we participate in the acts of freedom which these monogamists created when they cured the Don Juans from their running after every {shirt}. And so on it goes.

Church, state, universities, families--whatever you take--the sports, the health, medicine, they are witnesses of God's freedom in former times, and man's participation in His creation in -- before. Therefore history looks up to the founders of these social orders. And there comes the law of the historian, gentlemen: the historian looks up to the people of whom he speaks, and the naturalist looks down on the things about which he talks. And if you do not look up to the history, don't -- don't say that you are an historian, you see. Plutarch is -- is humble before Pericles. And that -- that's why he's allowed to write about him. Can you understand this? And if you are not humble, you are not an historian, because the -- you as an historian are less important than the event which you try to -- to contin- -- you see, to report. Can you see this? This is a condition of history, that there is a -- a rank, and order, because we report the acts of freedom. But in the reporting, we -- we may be {appointed to do it}. But that's not bad. We participate -- we have the great honor of commemorating this event. But we can only commemorate it if we put him up and us down. And since this is never understood, we today have historians who act like physicists, you see. This is not -- nonsense. The physicist hasn't to respect electrons -- electrons, you see. But I have to respect George -- Washington.

Now -- so the whole problem today--and I think we enter a -- new era of theology, religion, in every field, because everything circles today around the question: is God fate, or is He free? What you -- you call Him "creator," you call Him "redeemer," you call Him "revealer"--doesn't mean anything if He isn't free. If everything is already known to Mr. Tillich, then it isn't -- God isn't free, you see. And you read these theologians, and they know God by heart, and they can never be surprised.

So the -- theology today has talked so much about God -- what -- who God is, as though they knew Him. And therefore, God's freedom today is not understood. If God isn't free, all the talk of human freedom is impossible, because you can only act meritoriously as a free -- an animal, if you participate in something that lasts beyond your life. That' why I told you, legislation is meant for your -- the next generation. Therefore, you would never be allowed to pass a law, because it comes too late for yourself, you see, and it must be valid for the future. Now if it is valid for the future, you take upon yourself to direct the stream of time. This you can only do if you know where you're coming from and

where you're going to.

(Would you say then that predestination is not something that is preordained for all men, but something which man can choose to enter into?)

That's why I put -- of course, you discover it! "Pre-ordained" would still be God's plan forever. You see? But "predestiny" means that before I go on from "pre" to "destiny," there is a hiatus in which the whole of creation holds its breath: will this man be tempted by the devil, or will he survive?

That's why the story of Jesus begins with the temptation in the desert. It He hadn't, in this hiatus of 40 days, you see, listened and weighed the other paths, down to gravity, to earth, He would just be a chi- -- an angel, but not a human being. We all are -- ambivalent, and the greatness of the -- perhaps the greatest pie- -- piece of evidence in the -- New Testament is that this story is reported. And at the beginning of His messianism is -- reported, you see, because that's unique. And it is unrepeatable, you see. Here, He must have told Peter and John the story, that -- that His -- His whole messianic office begins with His looking down on the temptations of the natural man in Himself, you see, feeling them very strongly and said, "I can become an emperor," "I can become an economist," you see, a big feeder, and "I can"--what's the third?--"become a genius." "I could jump down," you see. These three temptations, you see, is -- the pharaoh is the feeder, the chieftain is the tribal hero, and the genius is the Greek temptation. And these three -- He had to forgo.

And all antiquity gave itself rendezvous in His soul, you see. Because these were the three routines -- way of life: you could become a priest of Egypt, you see, a sorcerer; or you could become a chieftain giving laws; or you could become a genius, like Archimedes or -- or -- or Plato, you see. And this was not His business.

(Then is this why Calvinism emphasizes the fact that man is responsible to God for his acts, even though God predestines you because there is this hiatus in between where you can choose to accept God, anticipate Him, or fall from His grace?)

This hiatus -- these 40 days in the desert every one of you--women and men--have to undergo. You can sell yourself short in marriage, or you can wait for the right husband. I mean, it's the same thing. I mean, every woman knows very much about predestination. This is determined whom you marry, you see. But it is predestined. You can discover, but it is your word that makes the say-so stick.

No, I think the -- perhaps the whole word "pre-" -- "predestination," you see, is -- is doomed. I don't care to recover it. What I mean to say is one simple thing, gentlemen: that man as an individual is unfree; and man, as participating in history, is free. And therefore, I would -- propose that it is wiser to speak of God's freedom in which we participate by throwing us -- upon -- the not-yetexisting part of creation, by doing something unheard-of, you see, and -- participating in acts which good free souls have done before us.

If you -- if parents today send their children to school, they are act al- -- acting already under the Christian inspiration that the children must be emancipated, that the children have a soul of themselves, you see. This is all in Christian tradition, that they can discover their own destination. You understand?

So the -- in -- the 19th century, demanded from the parents the incredible sacrifice of their egotism, you see, to such an extent that we now recoil and said, "It goes too far." The parents have -- haven't allowed them -- the children to have their own religion, to have their own polit- -- politics, or their own convictions. And there is absolutely -- nothing that makes a parent into parents anymore. So we have gone too far in this respect. But I -- the hero -- I could -- you could write the history of the 19th century as the constant sacrifice of parents, you see, giving up their authority, and then asking the children, "Discover the truth yourself." It is not the much -- people in this country always speak of rebel thought. I think America are very soft, and just no rebels. But parents have forced their children to rebel, all through the 19th century, you see. They have inculcated into them this -- this -- these powers to go on their own -- to go it themselves.

And the greatest part of American life in the 19th century--I have seen it -- you must see it -- have seen it in many families--has been the willingness of the parents not to make any demands of their -- children to an excess which I think is exaggerated. I mean, it has gone too far. You -- if you raise families, you will not be able to -- to do the same. I mean, your children will demand from you authority, and leadership, and values. I'm quite sure -- they must. And you have to give it. And I think the situation is totally changed today, you see. Ja?

(I still get the feeling though, that with Calvin -- that the -- that the road -- whichever road the man takes is not of his own choosing.)

No -- well. Let me complete this argument. Jonathan Edw- -- there was a revolt in 1616, at the -- at the center of Dordrecht in -- Holland, the Arminians were condemned. And there came this break, which is -- goes through all Puritan tradition in this country, between Arminians, you see, and Calvinists. And the Arminians said, "Man is half-free and half-bound," you see. And the others said, "He is -- has no free will." Now I'm siding with the austere ones, with the Calvin-

ists. I think it is absolutely illogical to say that I and you are free, without a magnet which allows me to enter a flood of light, and freedom, and creativity. If I cannot participate in the history that has, you see, given me free choices already, you see; if I am not, as an historical being recognized as sharing -- as be- -- maying -- made a partner by the -- by the -- by -- the lure of the saints, so to speak, of the heroes, by the choice of my hero on whom I look as my predecessor, by the -- by the -- by the founding fathers, and their voices, then I have no freedom. All -- by himself, a man without speech has no freedom. To speak means to be able to listen to what people have said to me--and have asked you to perform, you see, and have challenged me with--and to speak myself into the future. So -- since I believe the Holy Spirit is the more important aspect of the deity than anything else -- if you and I today want to understand what is meant by God, you cannot be interested in the god of nature, and you cannot be very much interested in -- in merely individualism, but in the Holy Spirit that makes it possible that men, and women, and children, and old men speak the same language. Although they have different interests, they have a different outlook on life, you see, yet we can speak to each other. The miracle that is not the human mind, but the human spirit. You can take this down, too: "spirit" means that people of different interests speak the same language, of different insight, of different perspective. And "mind" means that people say the same thing about something. "Mind" is always identifying. In mind, you neglect sex, you neglect age, you neglect parties, you neglect -- religion, you see, "regardless of color, sex, and -- " et cetera. But "spirit" means that a Jew and a Catholic sit down together and have peace, despite the fact that they are Jew and Catholic. That's the miracle of the spirit. Or that a -- a child and a grandfather can act together, although the child has to have legends and fairy tales; and the grandfather, you see, is -- is enlightened, and -- and -- and has nothing of the kind. This is the miracle of life.

Children must read fairy tales. Don't make them into the Cartesians. But the greatness is that although they read fairy tales, you see, and you read scientific facts, you live together. That's the spirit. And that's not the mind.

Now it's so hard to talk to you, because you constantly -- you have not -- never heard of the spirit anyway. You don't know what the spirit does. That it does this multi- -- you see, this -- it allows you to be in harmony with people who say different things, and have different opinions. You think that the mind is the ideal, when everybody thinks the same. This is not an ideal at all. That's a -- on a very low grade. We must agree on things. That's science, you see. That's the mind. But you must never agree on anything important. Because the world exists only of mankind because a mother is interested in something different from the daughter. Heavens! What would happen in a family where mother, daughter, father, son would all have the same -- you see, ideal? You -- you would die from boredom. You wouldn't marry anybody. You would be impotent. Because you

only marry somebody who says something opposite to you. That's so interesting.

That's the spirit. Now in -- I do think therefore that the Arminians wanted to have it both ways. They said, "Man is half-free -- {heart} and free, and halffree." That's Arminianism. And that's usual American heresy. You both -- all believe this. I mean it. { } for daily life. Most people act as though it was -- couldn't be quite decided. Half -- so the psychologist -- treats you as not free, you see, he knows all your reactions in advance, and so on. And you go to him. And after all, by the free choice of this psychiatrist, because you think he's a good man. And so you get into this trap, you see, that he treats you--once you are in his room--as a mouse, you see. But you go there of course by attraction, that is, by a free choice of the allegedly better man. Well, this is still the humanist attitude.

Now I feel that it is -- I -- this is only what I come to believe. It is much more simple to say that man is not free. Man is under necessity. I must breathe, for example. It's obvious that I choke, if I do not breathe. It is necessity. So why quibble? I am under necessity, you see. But when I throw myself on the mercy of God, I am allowed to forget myself. All love forgets its own interest. All passion does. Even hatred does, you see. Hatred is self-destructive. So there are innumerable actions in our life. Even just rhythm, just marching in tune with the -- with the music. Where we forget ourselves, and where this -- this self-interest simply is not prevalent.

By the way, how do you spell "prevalent"?

(P-r-e.)

I mean, every one in this room seems to ignore the -- the laws of spelling. "Prevalent" is spelled p-r-e-v-a-l-e-n-t. And not as you have spelled it. Everyone here spells it pre-vel-ent. v-e-l. Just shocking.

So my { }. That's -- special, isn't it?

Now if you -- if you decide that man is unfree, then the divine is a voice inside himself. He is attracted by the creation that has already gone on before. There has been a Constantine. There has been Caesar. There has been Pericles and his funeral oration. We are all magnetized by the greatness of these men who overcame their natural fears and anxieties and spoke up. And therefore, we can throw and join ourselves on the mercy of God as I said. Or you can say join the -- the battalion of -- of freedom fighters. You can join the Lincoln Brigade and -- of life, of history. And in this moment where you forget yourself, you forget -- take -- you are inspired. And since the word "God" today is so shame-

faced, and should not be used in vain, anyway, forget about -- the sovereignty of God, call it "the freedom of the spirit" that it listeth where it blows -- or blows where it listeth. I al- -- never make out. Wie?

(Bloweth where it listeth.)

Ja. That's a very important saying, you see, that at every moment, the spirit seems to make the rounds and look for somebody who will act as its transmitter -- as His transmitter.

So if we become trajects of the spirit, we enter the not-yet-finished process of creation, because we excuse a part of the universe. What I'm -- what is meant by freedom is not to be subject to cause and effect. Not to be under necessity. You have two husbands. One is very rich, the other has a promising future. The wise woman will choose the man who has 30 years to go before you know who he is, and the -- will not marry the palace on -- in Beverly Hills. But why? The wider response, the more remote and the more invisible, you see, is the more delicate response of the deeper understanding of the layers of creation, because God moves, of course, more in centuries and generations than He moves as of the moment. Everything just of the moment is -- is the devil. The devil always sells you short. The devil doesn't do anything wrong, except that he says you can have it immediately.

Now the woman who marries the man who will be rich in 30 years listens more to the divine processes of creation than the person who wants to have it right now, you see, without marrying of -- either husband or wife, just by inheritance, because that's the devil. The devil sai- -- told Hitler that he could have an empire of -- for a thousand years to come, in 12 years. And after 12 years, it was all over. And that's a typical deviltry story. And I think it was enacted for your benefit, gentlemen, because you grew up in a world which doesn't believe in the devil. The devil is any moment the temptation to do something in a shortcut. To get something for nothing -- is the American description of the devil. And -- like the installment plan, you see, {culcating} your freedom by simply prepossessing your whole future. And the devil governs in this country for this reason at this moment, because everybody wants to have things faster than they -- he shall have them.

Wherever a man tries to get something faster or cheaper, you see, he's selling out. So that the creation is then destroyed and replaced by some substitute.

That's why I think the problem of God's freedom is not -- is -- is not abortive, or -- by the freedom of the spirit. It is a practical question today. If you want

to be understood in education or in law--take juvenile delinquency. Freedom of the person -- if you want to make him a child of God and of the s- -- allow him to be inspired, you will treat a -- a delinquent of 15 quite differently than when you think he has to be immediately reformed, you see. The problem: how much time do we have? is the assertion: how much faith do we have? Faith is the -- is the -- belief that there is time. War is always the expression that there is no time, and it's always an act of disbelief. I mean, the South in 1860 is a typical case of disbelief, you see, not even waiting for Lincoln, they said, you see, "We have to act immediately." It's a very good case of -- of -- of having no time.

(Well, the -- devil must really be in me, because I'm -- I'm very --.)

What?

(The devil must be into me...)

I'm sure it is!

(...because I -- I'm really in agony about this -- seems to me, I don't understand, and I'm -- I'm very anxious to find out what -- seems to me you've been using "freedom" -- the term "freedom," to mean that there is a choice which is -- well, and it seems to me now you're saying that there isn't, that -- that man is not free.)

Well, Sir, are you free to breathe? Or not to breathe?

(No, I'm not.)

Therefore, be careful, you see. Are you free to live forever, physically, I mean?

(No, I'm not.)

You are not. I mean, so let's not betray ourselves. Obviously the word "freedom" is -- is not something in the -- in the -- abstract, in the air, free. It is -- under the limitations of our earthly existence, isn't it?

(There are limitations to freedom, but you're not --.)

No, the meaning -- not even limitations. But -- I wouldn't call it "limitations," because it is -- if you do not first submit your earthboundness -- I -- I -- and your mortality, Sir, you cannot place that which is free in us in the -- perspective. The spirit is free; and the body is not. You want to place freedom where it

doesn't exist.

(No, no. I don't want to do that. But I'm just trying to understand what you -- what you mean when you say that it's a heresy to say that man is partly free and partly unfree. But it seems to me, you just said this, that there is a -- the spirit --.)

{ } it's -- the complicatedness that arises from this.

(But I'm just trying to understand what -- to reconcile what seems to me to be two conflicting statements, here.)

Well, "man" in the singular, this man--but be quite concrete, quite specific--this one man, is not at the same time half-free and half-unfree, because if he forgets himself, that he's just this man, and becomes an instrument--he can become an instrument of the devil or God, that's true--he becomes -- he joins in a partnership, the society of -- of souls, so to speak, of all souls, who take part in the creation. They become -- from creatures, creators. And in this partnership, the creation of the world, you see, his self disappears. He has an office. And therefore, I would not call this man then -- in -- in this this-ness, in this concreteness, "free"; but only in his holding office in the -- in the economy of salvation. That's a different thing. This man changes his -- his character. Anybody who forgets himself in -- in saving your child, this mother becomes from a -- this woman -- this child's mother, and the good angel of the child -- whatever you call it, you see. It is therefore that here falls upon us this mantle of history, of which I have tried to speak. You see, we are lifted up and hold office, again. And we are not -- our naked individual, but we are clothed in authority.

(Well, this is what I'm always felt -- or thought of as being a slave of the truth. I mean, if you -- do follow what -- your belief, then you no longer are free, once you --.)

Well, look, because I think we both share agreement, you see. You have here an -- an -- an order which has completely disappeared from human thinking, what the Bible calls "dominions and principalities," and "powers." And "angels and archangels," and "cherubim and seraphim." Now take the nation. America has -- is an -- an in-between -- God and you, because you feel it is enough to be Americans. But America is bigger than individual man, and has a -- kind of spirit, you see, of independence, and -- and -- and Manifest Destiny, and democracy, and -- and many, many qualifications, which say "this is" -- you say, "that's -- know-how, and that's America."

Now this I would call in the Bi- -- biblical sense, "principality," or "power,"

or "dominion." It holds dominion over every person who is born here. -- We just can't escape it, you see. It holds us in its sway. But it is not earth, because it is historically created. At one time -- America didn't exist, and it was created by the word. It was created by the Declaration of Independence, by the Covenant of the Mayflower--you see, by the word. This -- these words may have to -- may be transient, but they have created free men, participants in the process of creation. Wherever you participate in being an American, you are no longer -- not simply an environmentalist, so to speak, the product of your environment, but you are invited to share in the creation of the world, you see.

Therefore, above men are these offices. Degrees of office. I would say the simplest degrees of office, the simplest office is to be -- to be an American here in this country. Then you are an American missionary. That's already a very complicated office, if you go to Samoa. Then you are perhaps a senator. That's the devil. And then you become president. That's the archangel Michael. And this is a country under God.

Now any American has these temptations. Now to be just an American, and to be a missionary of -- ambassador of good will, as you call these children we have to send out to foreign countries, you see, in exchange; it's all the missionary idea, you see. And here you have politicians, you see. You are in politics, as in a good democracy. And I would say, for example, the college professors have no American office. If you are here a professor at the university, you are -- this is just a German or an English office, so to speak, that has been imported to this country. It's not a very American office, you see. I mean, it hasn't been created in America. It has been imported to this country. But I would say that missionary--and just being American, or pioneer--is -- is -- is -- is something only American. You have neither pioneers nor missionaries in the same, na‹ve sense as they are here, where everybody tries to pioneer some time in his life, and -- or to camp, at least, you see, and where everybody is also a bearer of good will. And -- and you -- I -- have been sending now a 16-year-old girl from our village to -- to Greece, as an ambassador of good will. That's a typical American, you see, idea which we are now spreading over the rest of the world, I think, with -- with great success.

So there are American offices into which every man is born. But obviously there is a moment where this same man has to ask God for a -- a new commission, which will not be simply missionary, or pioneer; there may be something new, you see. Perhaps there even has to be teacher -- teaching now invented in America -- as a specific American office. Because it -- has never been one here, yet. It's all imported.

And so I would say, whenever such a man is hit by a ray of inspiration, or

a ray of service, he ceases to be this man, what -- what Whittier calls, "The prayer is -- clothed me in my righteous mind," you see. A very beautiful idea, too. You know the hymn? Wie? No? By Whittier? The prayer, in -- this hymn. Asking of God to clothe us in our righteous mind, which means participating in His free act of creation. And therefore the word "m-a-n" then disappears. It is no use to imply that the naked man of flesh, the carnal being, you see, has freedom. So -- only if he gives himself up to the -- you see, does he become free. But then he receives an office.

(But it's the giving up which constitutes the -- the freedom, doesn't it?)

All right. The negation of my own will, "Thy will be done," and not "my will": this is the act by which man predestine -- recognizes his predestination.

(May I only ask one further question?)

So it's a "no" to oneself. That's why I call -- I shouldn't say "forget oneself," but I say, "negate oneself."

(But can you only then tell me, who is -- who is it that gives up?)

Wie?

(Who is it that does the giving up?)

The listener.

(The listener. All right. I have my answer.)

This is the quality which doesn't exist in nature, you see, that we can listen to voices from the past and the future. No animal can. An animal has only this -- present moment. But you can listen to voices that are not represented in the flesh. You can read the Bible, as Augustine did, and -- you see, and -- just be struck by something that was written 400 years ago.

(And this would be the first act of freedom, the -- the act of listening. And -- but then there could be --.)

That's why the First Commandment begins, "Hearken Israel." Without hearkening, no Ten Commandments.

(But then -- but then whether one actually heeds is also an act of freedom, isn't it? Or -- or a negation of freedom, you might say; if one does not heed, it's a

negation of freedom.)

Ja, but that's the power to love. I think you're quite right in asking this question. But that's not an intellectual question. It's a question of affection, you -- you see. Can you be affected by the word in such a way that all your passions are overcome by this greater love?

(This is outside of us.)

And that's not truth, you see, but love. Wie?

(This is outside a person, I mean. Whether he has the power to love is not something in his own -- of his own will.)

No, no, no. There come of course -- come these Augustinian secrets -- mysteries where you -- I'll tell you a joke. The -- the father confessor of the emperor of Austria in 1908 wrote a book on the -- on the -- on the fate of sinners after death, whether they all had to be in hell forever, you see, or whether in good universalist faith, everybody went to -- heaven finally. And at that time, there was already the softening of the brain, and -- universalism, you see, even invaded the Roman Catholic Church -- I mean. It was -- seemed to that -- be such a hard doctrine, that sinners were eternally damned.

So Mr. {Joseph Mechner}, father confessor of the emperor, Francis Joseph of Austria, wrote this book on the {Das Fortleben der Snder nach dem Tode}, the -- the -- what -- how you call it? The After-life of Sinners after Death. And I bought the book. And I am very proud that I own such a wonderful book. Because it says, "After all," at the end, after much discussion, "After all, you cannot -- we cannot be surprised that we do not know much about the after-life, because hell is so very dark."

And so I would say to you, you see, this is very dark. If you wants -- want to -- to quibble about the equipment of a man -- person to love, I think that's like a vicious circle, because the -- love is imparted to us. If a child is loved, it becomes not only lovable, but it becomes able -- capable of love. And people who are not given love, cannot hand it over. So that's what's meant by original sin, you see. The depth of our fall is in this, that the sins of the parents are visited on their children. I mean, if a child cannot love, and therefore cannot act in freedom, really, because -- cannot throw itself beyond its- -- love means to forget oneself. That's potency. And if a child hasn't been hurt -- we -- we talked about this professor in Harvard, you see, { } and his wife, who -- who brought up their child psychologically, because they -- anthropologists, and so he went to a jail, of course, because he was incapable of loving.

And you -- so there is the tragedy of man. We are so much under law, that my not loving is the consequence of your not having loved me. And therefore, we are all conc- -- there is a concatenation, there is a solidarity in guilt of the human race. And this is of course the deepest secret: that we are so much under the law, that you can never attribute to this man his failure to love -- alone, you see. We all have borne our share in -- in not loving, so that he cannot love. And therefore, you see, the -- nature in this sense, exists. The moaning and groaning creature. And therefore it makes no sense to speak of me in the singular, as "this man." Because I share this guilt of not enough love with, you see -- or I'm immersed into this guilt. I do not -- wouldn't say "share," but I'm a product there really of not enough love in -- in the world.

(Well, on this point, Calvin is compatible. I see no conflict.)

Quite.

(But now -- then the other day, you made the statement in class --.)

Well, you understand now. You see, the -- the -- the two logics are possible. Either I am immersed in this lovelessness of a society, and are for -- therefore simply an atom in this social pressure group, you see, and I haven't received enough electricity so I can't hand it on. Then I'm not counted as a person, you see. I'm not the person. But I'm just a particle of a mass. And on top, if I throw myself upon God's mercy, and be- -- ask for His commission, you see, I join the company of saints, or of the -- fellow travelers.

In between, there is my power to negate myself. This is the act by which I escape from hell and brimstone of the mass of {perdition}, you see, and so it is very true that this hyphen between "pre" and "destination" is the moment in which I become a person. And therefore it is not use to argue the man -- before he has become a person, as though he had qualities, before I have heard my own command, my own words addressed to me, alone, you see, among all millions of men, I am not a man and a person. That's the mistake of the individualist, who want to argue the case as though here is a man in the abstract, you see, and -- having, so to speak, to -- to decide -- with the -- here was this free will, and here was his necessity, you see, ja. This is not true. It's a process. You wake up one day, and are put up.

You see, there's a sane in Car- -- scene in Carlyle--I wish you would read this--on his experience of freedom and the devil. He goes in Paris to the Rue de St. Thomas de l'Enfer. Now that's -- has of course a symbolic value: Thomas de l'Enfer, Thomas of the -- of hell. That's one special saint -- the rue -- the street still exists. I've been through it. It's -- I think it's the most eloquent page in Thomas

Carlyle. There he describes himself, his discovery of being a person. And he has to make a decision, all himself. Before, he played, I mean. Playboys have -- are not persons. If any- -- everything can be taken back, you see, you are not yet -- yet a man, and you are part of -- {pathology}. There's one point where every man -- or -one made a decision, when he should have spoken, and doesn't, I mean, go to the mat, or where he does speak and becomes a man.

And so, you see, the argument runs this way: to speak of this man is in impermissible anticipation. What we really meet in -- in the world are products of environment, you see, to whom something is imparted. But there is this power to listen to the deeper voices, you see, who come to you on a -- on a wider wavelength, you see. And in this moment, you can be redeemed from the -- fetters of this immediate -- and you can -- the more fu- -- past a man acquires, the more future he acquires, you see. To be back to Adam means to be completely free as in the moment when God created man first. The funny thing about history is this: you have exactly as much past as you have future; and you have exactly as much future as you have past. Nobody can have future without past; and nobody can have past without future. That's all unscientific, you see. But it's true of a physicist. If Mr. Einstein understands Newton right, and -- and then he can go forward and -- you see, continue physics. But he has to dig up the first crevices of this science, in the dark past of Archimedes, in order to renew it. And that's what his principle of relativity, after all, did, you see: to go back to the premises of Greek thinking, that time could be neglected, and said, "No, it cannot be."

(Well, now we spoke the other day about such physicists as Mr. Einstein who now maintain that with regard to law, it is not something inherent in nature which the mind discovers, but rather a kind of a supposition of -- let us -- let us imagine that this law -- and let us see whether this might be a way of explaining nature. And -- from this, taking of law within society out, and seeing whether it applies, as against the opposite of seeing the iron-clad laws impinging on society, and governing us, there's a -- a similar conflict of freedom and --.)

That's why the Bible begins, it says -- "God created heaven and earth." So the laws of Heaven and earth are abolishable. That's the meaning.

I'll give you a very simple illustration -- { }. Can you still bear with me? Ja? I didn't { }.

The -- the Egyptians, you see, discovered the -- astronomy. They discovered the constellations. They discovered the movement of the stars. They figured the calendar. And they said, "Everything has to be kept moving." So the poor pharaoh had to move like a star, you see, every day he had to rise exactly with

sunrise, and had -- everybody had to behave, so to speak, astrologically. That's -- you still get from the horoscope. The simple experience of the Bible -- I think we talked about this before -- is to -- well, it is so important -- is to say, "We have the Sabbath." That is, we are not astronomical, you see. We are not always on the move. For a moment, like our creator, who created the stars, we set time aside, and we don't do anything. And this freed man suddenly from the -- you see -- completely apoplectic devotion to astrology, that there was one day in every week in which people -- the Jews laughed at astrology, and said, "The sun may have to rise, we don't." And we -- they -- the -- you see, the sun boils, in Egypt. It does, you see. And we -- we don't {bake bread}. { } No -- no -- no fire in the oven.

This negation is -- is the -- an act of freedom of the Jews. And -- bears out my insistence that it is this hiatus of the "no," you see, which creates freedom. As to the existing order, you have to say at one time, "no." I can only tell you, when I escaped from the academic clannishness, it happened in the -- exactly this way, that when the -- we -- at the end of World War I, I was asked to go back to the university, become a full professor, et cetera, et cetera. And I knew this -- had other offers, and I said to myself, "Well, I do not know what I'm going to do. I have to wait. I haven't got my commission." I -- I felt that since July '18, that something completely different would have to occur. But I did go back in January -- '19, when the troops returned home, and gave a lecture at six weeks, always with the deep feeling, "God, what shall I do? This is all over." But I -- only know that it is "no." I haven't found my "yes," you see. And the "yes" came then only four months later. So after all, a full year -- no, 10 months later, after I knew already that I was through with what I had been doing.

So I do think that a -- an inspirational freedom, I mean, an act where you do not act for your own aggrandizement or because to -- for self-expression, but because something has to be done or the world goes to pieces, you see, where you have to ask for -- obey the highest orders, you see, of your commander-inchief, the "no" precedes the "yes." And that's meant with the 40 days in the wilderness, I'm sure. In the -- and it's meant by the 40 years in the wilderness of the Jews, you see. That the "no" to Egypt had to precede the "yes" to the promised land. Now that's all against modern psychology. People think this is impossible. And -- on a lower level, you can only help a person usually to cross a -- cross a bridge -- cross a -- a stream when you have jumped across it, and pull him after you. And -- that's what love does, so that you see already where you're going.

On the highest level of human behavior, where you have a complete change of life, the "no" precedes the "yes." Because the "yes" is not yet created, it is an absolutely new thing you have to invent. I had invented a new career for me, that didn't exist. I had to persuade--very strange story--I had to persuade a

man that he needed it. Man like me, he didn't' believe it at all. You see, but finally he hired me, you see, to his own surprise. And -- an act of real creation, gentlemen--would you consider this for a moment?--new creation can only happen when the thing is unforeseen, untold, unpredictable, never has been mentioned before, you see, an act nobody thought of before. Like the rainbow in the sky. That's why the Americans worship the rainbow. It's unpredictable, you see. It's -- there it is. But you couldn't -- a minute before, you didn't know that it would come.

Now in order to make room for this rainbow of a new creation, you see, you have first to feel that something -- old is dead. So this is already over. But a wise person will then --. Take a daughter; she knows already she has to leave her parents' home. But the man -- right man hasn't turned up. She will be -- go on, and--at least she did in the old days. She doesn't have to go to college under all conditions. She can stay home, but she's through with it. But she serves it out, the full term. As Jacob did with -- by the way, with Laban. And I warn you: God is very original. Where God speaks, where the spirit speaks, the "no" is patient. And you know already that something is over and dead, but you wait before you -- know what positive steps you {may need}. You can only even probably receive the message of the positive, because you have inside yourself -- tugged yourself from the -- you see, allegiance to the old gods. Can you understand this, that the "no" is necessary to wipe the clean slate, so that you -- this new sound, this new command can be -- reverberate in you? You can be engraved on this waxen plate, which we are.

(This is why Augustine says that the only way he can explain God is by what He isn't, and not by what He is.)

Exactly. He is nothing preconceived. He is nothing preconceived.

No -- ja?

(There seems to be some confusion in my mind, arising out of this definition of man's freedom. You said that when he leaves his individual "this man" idea, and he enters his office, sacrificing, that this is when he attains his real freedom.)

Well, in grades -- in degrees. There are these nine degrees of the hierarchy of the angels of -- in -- in -- in -- . And it is not a bad idea, what the -- medieval people said. Look, you are an American. You are a pioneer. That is, you risk your life against grizzly bears. Then you are a patriot. You go to -- into the army. And you are -- can be shot dead, even by a stupid sergeant on the -- on the -- on the training field. And so everywhere you take upon yourself, you see, meritoriously,

sacrifices of self, in degrees. It isn't quite personal, yet. But it is already lifting you above the pigsty. Can you see this? And since you are not limited to the functions of your stomach, and your genitals, and your bowels -- movement, you see, when you entering -- a soldier has already a uniform, you see. But that's not the highest degree of personality, is it? If you would think in terms of personality degrees, really of the -- American discussions on -- on character, personality, and so would vanish, I mean. This boy in class -- who -- who -- who is -- attends this class?

(I am.)

(I am.)

Well, you know this, who -- what's his name?

(I don't know his name.)

What?

(His first name is Bill. I don't know his last name.)

Ja, well, he's a typical example of this unfortunate character who can only think in these abstract absolutes, you see. He never sees himself in these many colors which he wears, you see, in degrees. We are -- we are all -- already held by the grace of God in historical forms, you see. And he wants to have it in the absolute, you see, his mind. But I nowhere find people who have -- his mind. I, if anybody, have my mind, have I not? I mean, I have a good mind. But I cannot -- exaggerate its importance, I mean. I have so many ranks and orders surrounding me that this little bit of a mind at times is an excrescence, you see. That's not me.

So what was your question?

(So -- assuming these various degrees, can we say that there is one, definite, highest degree of man's personal freedom, or can't we make this --?)

Ja, ja. I would say. The going to the Cross. If you take this case of Bill Mitchell, for example, to heart. Here he is a -- participating in the freedom of a naval officer of the United States. That's all -- that's all right something -- that's already -- responsibility. And he is already beyond self-interest. I mean, any naval officer could say, "Well, I'm just a good patriot as you are." But there's an unpreconceived office which he takes upon himself. An office, you see, of contradiction -- -dicting the existing order. And that goes beyond the call of duty. And that's a higher freedom, is it not? But the so-called brass has its freedom, too,

because these people are fearless. They'll go to their death, these same captains who obstruct Bill Mitchell. In their own right, they are marvelous people, perhaps, you see, because they will take any risk, and any chances in the -- in the -- this jurisdiction of already known and conceived duty.

It is always the non-preconceived that -- that is -- has a higher rank. And this is why, today, you see, where the people poke fun at martyrs and saints, we are in a very bad way. If -- if a woman, historian, can write a book, The -- what was it?

(The "martyr complex.")

Ja, the "martyr complex." We are in a bad way, because the historian then is allowed to look down on -- on the leading creators of our lives, you see. We have nothing else but these saints and created -- martyrs, and revolutionaries, and heroes. They are -- that's me. We have nothing else. Don't look beyond. Through them, the divinity has entered -- humanity. We know nothing more, but there have been good people who went before us. And when we -- as soon as we turn the wheel, you see, and say -- look down on them, we are absolutely in the fog. We are -- we are just nowhere. And when women can do this, I think the country is -- is -- goes to ruin. She -- such a person has the obligation to make clear where she stands, you see. There can be martyr complex, perhaps. But nowhere -- I have read this book. Have you read it? Who has read the book, by the way? I think it's the great scandal of our time.

(You say there can be one -- there can be such a one? Did you say --?)

-- Well, of course you can be a sick person who simply wants to be a martyr, at all costs. I mean, I will not deny that there are fanatics, you see. But this is quite a different story. She simply -- she simply -- this woman has no -- no discrimination. Every martyr to her is just a fool, just stupid.

(Well, we don't even use the word "martyr complex," though. Even for these people we -- I mean, Freud has already called it "thanatos" or some such term.)

{ }. You have to discern the spirits. Anywhere where -- anywhere where people want to go behind the created persons of humanity in history to their own abstraction -- values, there's the devil. We have nothing else but the real sequence of the generations. And you have to choose your heroes to whom you look up. As soon as you give this up, gentlemen and ladies, you are absolutely lost. The idea that by -- by righteousness, virtue--all these abstractions which everybody can explain as he pleases, after all, you see--you can get rid of the

example of -- of Heracles, or Christ, or Moses, you are mi- -- completely mistaken. There is nothing to go behind these really -- real creatures of God. Isn't that -- any one of these people ten times more real than these abstractions of virtue, and faith, and justice, and --? These are just words. And you can put into -- into these words all the explanations you want. But you cannot deny that Moses forwent, for the sake of your and mine, the satisfaction of being a conqueror of a land. And he said he -- "I have to wash myself clean by 40 years of no- -- negation from these idols of Egypt." And what it means to believe in non- -- in a nonpreconceived god, we only owe to him. There's nobody else who has taught us this, you see, that God is incalculable, that God is not in any -- in any form of worship that is -- can be predestined. The -- the voice of the prophet must come tomorrow. You remember the --.

By the way, gentlemen, one of you had the effrontery to write that Ichabod was the son of Eli. Now we read this chapter together, that the glory has departed from Israel, and it said that the daughter-in-law of -- Eli begets this son, Ichabod. So pardon me, I have to end on this -- on this creaky voice -- note. Why -- do you do such a terrible thing and not even quote the Bible correctly? Cain is the fa- -- the founder of Israel, and Ichabod is the son of Eli! When the whole shame comes about, that the sons of Eli are no good, and Samuel has to be brought in, you see, as the real spiritual successor, as a prophet of -- of God's mercy, you see, of God's grace, and -- and Ichabod is the grandson of Eli. Who -- who wrote this? Con- -- admit it. Who -- who has -- who has said that Ichabod is the --?

(I was confused on -- on -- on the genealogy. I --.)

What? Well?

(I hope not. I -- I said I was confused on the genealogy. I might have put that in by -- by ignorance.)

But how can you? The whole story makes no sense. If Eli had said, "The glory has departed Israel," he wouldn't have lost his sons. Now, so --.

(Anyway, that's what I wanted to say about the scientific time { }. That's what I wanted to say about { }.)

Forgive me for -- for -- I have talked too much here. But please allow me to -- explain this to me. I have had to make a choice. I mean, if you have this opportunity in a -- in a -- in a -- and I said to myself, this is -- you will never hear these things again. And they aren't said in this country. And I felt it was more important that you heard them than that you would get a -- a fine training in -- in

stupidity. So thank you very much.