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Joseph Botond-Blazek [probably]: (Ladies and gentlemen: welcome to the 9th annual Tippett lectureship. I would like first to give you a few announcements. On your green sheet, there are certain changes. Tomorrow the faculty meeting -- or the faculty luncheon is not going to be in the president's dining room, but in the {Callison} minstrel gallery, in {Callison} College. It's this thing about the dining room.

(Also tomorrow evening, the second lecture is not going to be in the {Albert Cavel} Hall--or dining hall, but in the north quad {Callison} College dining hall. And -- and finally, those who would like to get in touch with Professor Rosenstock-Huessy either individually or in groups, you can call up the secretary of the dean of the chapel, and make arrangements there of where you can find him. The phone number is 218, extension 218.

(I'm not going to give any normal annou- -- normal introduction to Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy. I don't -- I'm -- I'm not going to talk about how he is a great expert in theology, philosophy, law, history, sociology, grammar, and of how many Ph.D.s he accumulated. If you would like to find out about these things, you can get a copy, a 10-page introduction to his new book, which will come out this summer, called -- Judaism despite of Christianity. And you can read here and receive a deal of information. And if you still want more, you have a book available, called The Christian Future, or The Modern Mind Outrun, which we have some 30 copies here. And you are able to purchase that for two th- -- $2.35 now or -- I mean, after the lecture and during the -- the reception, which is going to be in that door. We have to go through, and we have a reception there.

(I would like though to mention three things which I consider very important about Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy. One is that Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy started out after the First World War what became here in United States Camp William James--you know William James' remark, "the moral equivalent to war"--a -- a camp, a labor camp you might call it. And that out of this came the idea of the Job Corps and the Peace Corps. Sargent Shriver and J. F. Kennedy were roommates at Harvard at a time when Rosenstock-Huessy was professor at Dartmouth, and had a great impact on -- young people.

(Secondly, I would like to mention to you of how many students of Rosenstock-Huessy became resistance fighters in Germany against Hitler. And in a -- in a memory of them, I would like to ask you in a moment to have a moment of silence, because many of them gave up their lives, following their teacher's command, which was that you cannot ever say something without meaning it,

and living it. You cannot have theories and then not practice them. One of them was Helmuth Graf von Moltke, whose widow, Mrs. Moltke, is now here with us, and who is a steady companion of Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy. He -- he was killed by the Nazis after July 20th attempt to assassinate Hitler, and his was discovered.

(And thirdly, I would like to talk a bit in a -- more personal terms of what it means to me to have known and to know Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy. This is the reason why I was really chosen to be the introductory speaker -- or introductory -- introductory introductor to the first Tippett lecture today -- tonight. Twelve years ago, a few years after I arrived to this country--having lived in four different countries before, throughout the whole Second World War, and afterwar period in Germany, I was a very confused young man. I didn't know whether I was coming or going. I didn't know what -- why it was worthwhile living.

(And then I went to UCLA, and took up a totally new field, which I never had before--namely history--just on a whim, I would say, because it seemed to be the only field available where you were able to specialize in diversity, and to really find out of -- who you are, what you are, et cetera, the burning questions which every sensitive human being has. When I went in 1955 to UCLA, I found a big factory there, with a great deal of faculty running around and doing their publish-or-perish game. And I discovered one human being there who was what the -- what the Yiddish would say, a Mensch. Somebody who was a real human being, who was not harassed, always {doubted} things, but for whom another person was more important than anything else. And that man was Page Smith, who is now the provost of Calif- -- of Cowell College in the -- Santa Cruz, University of Ver- -- Santa Cruz.

(It was not so much what Page Smith told me, or gave me to read, but it was rather what he was, a man of a certain quality which I didn't find very often. As a matter of fact, I didn't find at all, especially in those difficult years of my life. I could never understand about Page, of how he could have so much patience with me, and have so much compassion, and not looking at me as a student, or some other "it," but as a rather -- rather as a {dao}, somebody who really counts, or -- somebody who really deserves all the time that he has.

(Well, Page Smith literally saved my life, and I am openly acknowledging that. But I didn't know, that -- except two year -- two years later, when I left this college, University -- University of -- University of California, that only after I left it, I found out that the same story happened once ag- -- before, around 20 years ago, in 1935, -36, when a very young, confused undergraduate student by the name of Page Smith, disillusioned as many other sensitive people were in 1935, with Christianity, capitalism, democracy, and everything else, threw himself into

the arm of Marxism, and wanted to change the world as a Marxist. And then he went to Dartmouth College, and there he encountered a man--a Mensch, as the Yiddish say--Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy. And what Page Smith became was largely the result of Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy.

(When I began to understand that, I began to really experience what it means, what is called the "bond between the generations," what it means to be able to live in generations and not in an isolated hell of -- only -- only of one's own generation.

(So I would like now to stop, and offer to you this wonderful man, my intellectual and spiritual grandfather, Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy.)

* * *

Ladies and gentlemen, this morning we drove to Sacramento. Being here in California, I felt I had to find something that could connect us, you and me--I am coming from the East--but something Californian I thought might interest you. We drove to the railroad station, and there in front of the railroad station on the one-hand side stands the last Southern Pacific steam engine, banked there in 1957; and on the left-hand side, there is a very inconspicuous monument. And this monument, because it is so inconspicuous, is the best introduction to our theme of the next four meetings. It's a monument in honor of Theodore Dehone Judah, the man who inspired the Californians to build the Californ- -- the railroad, the Southern Pacific--the Central Pacific at that time--and connect by rail the East and the West, and thereby make California the first state of the Union, which it is at this moment.

The man paid with his life for this venture. He was born in 1826 in the East, took his wife out West in -- 1856, developed this plan of a railroad, managed to convince four hard-headed dry-good merchants in Sacramento that this was feasible, and these four men and he laid down the first rail on January 3rd, 1863. Six months la- -- seventh months later he was dead of yellow fever in the Canal Zone.

His widow could write with great pride 20 years later to the railroad queens that she was not a railroad queen, that she hadn't -- inherited any of the riches of this world. But she had enabled the railroad queens to become railroad queens. Who were these railroad queens? There was Mrs. Crocker, and Mrs. Huntington, and Mrs. Leland Stanford, and Mrs. Mark Hopkins.

Now all four of them are quite well known to you. They have left their mark. They have built these fantastic mansions on Nob Hill in San Francisco.

One has founded Stanford University in memory of his son who died at 16 years of age, in 1886. Mr. Huntington is immortal because his nephew bought all the libraries in the world between 1910 and 1925 and assembled them in Pasadena. And Mr. Crocker is not very well known for anything immortal, but his money is immortal.

Now this is a parable of very serious content, because that is history. That's how real, secular history, as it is taught today in our schools, looks. There is a man who has an idea, who sacrifices his life for it; others get rich on them, and get the fame. The -- this little tablet in honor of the real man, this Theodore Judah, was -- erected--and I still blush when I think of it--in 1930, nearly 70 years after his death. Not by the railroad kings or railroad queens who made the money, but by the employees of the railroad, who were tithed -- on this, you see, by collection. So they had to make him immortal. That's how justice is done in this world. That's how our Lord was paid. And --.

I'm reminded of drawing a comparison between the four evangelists and these four railroad kings. After all, it's a similar story. A very short dawn of a morning, a bright light for a few months; then this light is extinguished. And then gradually, the people come to the fore and become famous, who build on this man's seed. We take this all for granted. Note, Mrs. -- Mrs. Judah never--as I told you--got any compensation or any acknowledgment. She is not even mentioned on this monument. She is not mentioned; neither is the birthday of Mr. Judah mentioned on this monument. He just had existed between 1863 January, and November 196- -- 1863, when he died. That's all.

Perhaps genius is always of this type. Certainly the story of Christianity should be revised in the light of this very true story of California's immer- -- immortals. Mr. Stanford is immortal. Many students go to Stanford University, und praise -- some even praise Mrs. Stanford. It's very strange, I think. I'm quite upset by the fact that no protest is { }. They -- they dominate the scene. Everybody goes and glories in -- in Huntington -- the Huntington collection in Pasadena. Some- -- there's something ironical about a worldly history which needs sacrifices; then forgets the sa- -- the -- the victims, and praises the sacrificers. No letter, and no -- no -- summoni- -- summons ever moved these four railroad kings to do anything for the memory of Mr. Judah. He was wiped out. And it was -- obviously, it was disagreeable to mention that they didn't have the ideas, because they were dry-good merchants. And you can't be dry if you do something so intoxicating.

What's the doc- -- lesson? We have at this moment in this world receded into a pre-Christian scheme of history. This is literally true. When the First World War broke down, in the last days of 1918, I managed to be -- the army was dis- --

German Army was dismissed. I was an officer, and I went to Munich, where at that moment a man who became very famous later had published his great book, The Decline of the West. His name was Oswald Spengler. And some older people among you may rem- -- know that he had great fame in his time. A little bit like Toynbee nowadays. We have quite a similar prophet.

Now compared to these four railroad kings, Mr. Spengler held the same philosophy. He said, "Cultures come and go; civilizations rise and fall; there's nothing you can do about it. It's like the morning and the evening, of a sun -- sunrise, and sunset. So the West had its sun rise, and now it's setting. The East will follow. Then there will be another civilization; probably at the southern Pole, and the next on the North Pole."

Then we got Mr. Toynbee, of whom more of you younger people will know. He figured out that there might be 500, or 600, or 700 -- civilizations all -- all following each other in a cycle. And so with a gesture in the 19th century, in the second half, after the American Civil War, and after various other tragedies, the Christian era was abolished. People were back to paganism. And if you read any course of lectures in the American university, you are just back to normalcy, because paganism seems to be normal. The ordinary human mind is pagan.

I have a friend in Stanford who told me that we -- of course we had to throw the bomb on China right away, and had to have -- to wipe out these 700 million Chinese. I was a little a- -- frightened, and I said, "How come? What's your authority for this?"

"Well, they can't live with us. They can't live --."

I thought -- I told him that I thought God had created a very varied world, and obviously the problem was to live with the Chinese. He didn't understand this. And his wife was even more energetic that the Chinese should disappear.

That is paganism. If any part of the universe is declared to be satisfactory and sufficient, and the other part is not accepted, we are back to paganism. And I move among pagans today. Most people are in some chapter of their -- judgments, pagans. They aren't brutally -- dogs are treated very well. Horses even better. But Chinese? No. Nor the Vietnamese, no. I mean, napalm is good for the Vietnamese, and sugar is good for cats.

Nobody says anything. The historians do not take issue. There is no Christian history. If you read a -- a book on -- on antiquity and -- and Middle Ages, the transition is made without a word about the Crucifixion. There is Augustus, and there is Tiberius, and there is Nero, and then comes Constantine. Nothing has

happened. And they can't explain why there should be a difference, a distinction.

So when I call the topic of this lecture, "The Chaos of Pagan History," I unfortunately meant business. I meant that we are the pagans, not the pagans of antiquity, who were very pious and religious people, and searched certainly for an order, and to get out of the cycle of the cycles. Today, nine-tenths of the people who teach history proclaim cycles, the eternal return of some nonsense. And they call this "science." And we -- our children, and we ourselves live in midst -- in the midst of this chaos, because if we move in cycles, then we don't move at all.

The Indian chieftain in 1820, who was met by the Christian missionary from Yale University, said, "My people move in cycles. That's why I have to get into Christianity. It's the only religion which doesn't move in circles." It's true. But you have to be a Christian for this. And if you are just an historian who calls himself a Christian, that doesn't prove that you have moved out of the cycles. Today the cyclical -- doctrine is taught in nine-tenths of our schools.

However, I'm still very old-fashioned, and hope we -- {new fashions} tomorrow. And I believe that in this Christian era, we have -- made a jump out of the cycles, of the Egyptian, or the Syrian, or Babylonian -- darkness and obscurity. But of course, we have to make an effort today to prove it to the unbelievers, to the learned ones, who believe that cycle is the last thing that the human mind can worship, or can perceive.

It comes of course from our paralysis through physics, and natural -- the natural sciences. You and I observe facts in the natural world, outside ours- -- our own family life, outside our own love affairs, outside our own bankruptcies, and our own sicknesses, and breakdowns. And if you look into nature, you find geological layers. You find yesterday, and today, and tomorrow; you find what they call the past, and the present, and the future. And now by a strange ruin of language, of our expressions, most people understand that history is the contamination in some way of past, present, and future. But that's only true of preChristian history. And it will be now my topic for the next three times to convince you of the fact that this cheap allo- -- allegation--that history is the knowledge of the past, to take it into the future, given you at the present--is utter nonsense, and that no human being has ever lived in this manner. You all can test this.

One of the greatest -- that's why I have called this lecture series, "The Cruciform Character"--or "Structure"--"of History." I want to wake you up to the fact that the word "history" has been stolen by the pagans, by the natural scien-

tists from -- people -- from the believing Christian world. It is the cowardice of the theologians, the cowardice of the Christians which has allowed this { } of course. We are at fault. Christians are always at fault themselves, you see. It's very bad. We have no alibi. It's always our fault, because we are too timid, or too -- too silent, or too -- too --. We adapt ourselves to -- to the domination of the world, and in the last centuries, the domination has been with the railroad kings, and people back of the railroad kings, you see, with the natural scientists.

So it is no wonder that poor Judah, you see, never got his due from these railroad kings. We did the same. Or we do the same. We also say that causes produce results, and that the future--as Mr. Laplace, the great physicist, in 1800 framed this foolish sentence, that the -- past and the present produce the future. This is believed in all schools of the country -- not only here, but in Europe too. Only the Russians know better. That's why they are partial Christians. They say the future produces the present and destroys the past. And that's true. That's simply true. That's what our Lord did. But you don't know it. And you all live in this Egyptian darkness in which you say that the past and the present produce the future. What is the present, ladies and gentlemen?

Before I answer this--you can answer it, yourself, too--let me give you some examples of how inveterate today--the 19th century and the 20th century--this heresy, this superstition, this nonsense has spread.

I was intrigued when I -- after I had formulated my theme for you, Sir, that I remin- -- remembered that Benedetto Croce, the Italian philosopher socalled, has in his name "the cross." And he was very strong in pretending that history moved as a spiral. You know what a spiral is: up, up, up, up. Now -- nothing ever more nonsensical has been proclaimed. I have analyzed this in a whol- -- in this Christian Future book at some length. I don't want to bore you now, except that I have to say -- mention it as an example of human folly. Nobody quite knows what -- why a spiral is the model of human history, you see. It's very hopeful, you see. I go up, and I go down, and I don't know quite where I am, which is probably true of most human beings. You see, "I know not if I sink or swim." You know this famous English folk song. "But not as deep as the love I am in; I know not if I sink or swim." Now from this lover, I will accept this sentence, you see. He doesn't have to know. But from a philosopher, to be told that history moves in spirals, I just have nothing to say to such utter nonsense. What is a spiral? Nobody has ever seen it as a natural building. And you and I -- I see you a little higher than me, and I a little lower. No, Sir; next moment I am higher. Does it make any sense? Has -- anybody ever seen human beings move in a spiral? Perhaps you still go -- staircases, but even they are not in a spiral.

It's a pure invention of the imagination, because of course, since the poor man was called "Croce," he wanted to avoid the Cross. There are people who suffer from their name. And Benedetto Croce all his life suffered from this closeness to Christianity. So he had to prove that he was a secular philosopher, you see. A new Hegel.

The spiral is just one example of the attempts to avoid this one very disturbing part of history: that we are in the midst of it. Mr. Croce could call history mov- -- as a spiral, because he looked at it. He was a philosopher. And philosophers, as you know, have to be -- have the privilege to stand outside, unmoved, unshaken, you see. {Si fractos illa { } orbis im parvidum ferient ruine} -- Horace has described the Stoic philosophy, you see: "If the earth breaks down in fragments, he, the thinker, will remain unmoved." Where he stands, he doesn't tell you. But he is quite sure that he is outside -- outside the disturbance, you see. He looks at it.

I don't look at things, gentlemen. I am looked on by my creator. He looks at me and says, "What a fool are -- you are." That's all we know of ourselves. And to believe that we look at the world is very funny indeed. Do you think Mr. Judah had time to look at the world? He built the railroad, and he died over this, and that's a real man. And he had no idea of formulating history as a -- as a spiral. And who is more in history, Mr. Croce or Mr. Judah?

This is fantastic. Today these people who write articles in the newspapers and the magazines, they dis- -- determine what history is, instead of the people who -- experiences, and -- create it. And they are the great victims of this. But don't be -- I don't understand the world anymore, when I see that you are willing to listen to these apes. And they are apes because they pretend that they are not inside the suffering cauldron, but they are outside, and they look at something, like all --.

I visited Mr. Spengler in -- at Easter, 1919. For you, that makes not -- is not important, the younger one of you don't know how Oswald Spengler at one time dominated the imagination of the Europeans. He was the man who had something to offer about the order of the universe. In this book, The Decline of the West, he describes how now Europe was declining, and then the next -- third millennium, another part of the world would decline. And he was very eloquent. He was very clever. And he was totally unmarried. And he was totally without any love or affection for anything. And so he had really an attitude which you only find with scales or instruments. He was a natural scientist, pure { }. That's not good for history, because it is untrue that anybody can be without sympathy, without hope, without wishes. He was. He was a bachelor. He was his mother's son. He had never been--how do you say this?--the umbilical cord had never

been cut. And as such introverts go, he didn't care. It's quite interesting. He died in the '30s, when the Nazis came to domination. And -- not from a broken heart. He for- -- declined to say -- admit that he had a heart. But he was in the -- is the only man whom I've ever met who was in every sense of the word an atheist. He thought that mechanical reasons produced mechanical results, that the universe consisted of spouts, to so speak, of -- which spat out civilizations. And just as later, Toynbee.

It was quite remarkable, this conversation between him and me. I was hurt by the end of the war, by the decline of Europe, and by the terrible degeneration of -- and the { }. All my friends had been killed. I myself had been in the war for six years. And to talk to Mr. Spengler was a revelation, because he was without any sympathy for anybody. He was indifferent. And he was very proud of his indifference. He said, "That's my -- you see, my business, to be indifferent. Otherwise I wouldn't recognize anything."

So I said to him, "You can't recognize anything because you are indifferent," you see.

Now that's an eternal decision, or division. One group says you can only know because you are indifferent. And the ander part says you can only know because you are not indifferent. This decision will have -- always be fought out in politics, and in battlefields. And it is the real, religious decision of all times. And that's why religious wars are unalterable, and unavoidable. The world can never become tolerant. That's all silly. And what we have to reproach the liberals with is this idiotic idea that -- that indifference is better than fanaticism. It isn't. Only you have to know the true fanaticism. The fanaticism of indifference is more cruel than the fanaticism of taking sides.

The doctrine of the cycles, the doctrine of the spiral, all this is as hopeless and as unwarranted as anything that results from a look at things. Because you and I, we are not things, and we cannot be looked at. We cannot. If you try, your wife will very much re- -- resent it. You have to talk to her. And you even have to -- allow her to answer, which is much more bitter.

That is, man is not defined by himself, by his self, by his brain, by his mind, by his insight. He is not determined by any of these things. He is only determined by the passions that -- allow him to rule. He can be ruled by love. He can be ruled by envy. He can be ruled by hatred. But it -- are his passions who rule him. And that is then -- the result is the world which is created by these passions. And it is a very mixed world, half diabolical, and half divine.

And the whole problem is: will the divine part in us be one inch stronger,

wider, farrer-reaching than the diabolical? Every moment--in this moment, here too, my dear friends--it is not yet certain who wins. It is a very uncertain battle between these two aspects of our creation, whether the powers that form this into a unity, and figure that California should remain a part of the United States, and the United -- should remain a part of humanity; or the other party who says, "The other parts of humanity are there to serve the United States, and the other states of the United States are there to serve California." That's -- you have to decide. And every day some part of this decision is made one way or the other.

And life is very risky. Don't think that your Constitution, because happens to be 177 years old, is so -- or how long -- old is it now? Much more. Hundred--what's the lates- -- cal- -- calculus? How old is this -- Constitution? I always -- hear people boast that it is so very old. I do not think that's a recommendation. Pardon me for saying this, being not an American. You think old things, you see, are recommendable, because you have too few of them. But when I hear a constitution praised for being very old, I'm a little skeptical, you see. I think that this in itself is no recommendation. It can be, but then you have to look at what it produces.

So old age is one of the historian's bugaboos, in both ways. One recommended, and one de- -- deprecated. I think that in history, and -- as in life, and as in your own love story with other peoples, age alone doesn't justify anything. Age can be abused, age can be glorious, age can be -- to be venerated and worshiped; but in itself, without any qualification, history is not based on old age. I don't see why a great event, completed to- -- accomplished today should rank less than the Exodus. The Jews thought that the Exodus was so much more recommendable than the Crucifixion, because it had happened so long ago. Now you see very clearly that this is not a good reason, because the result is the Crucifixion.

And that's with all our life. Every day you are tempted to say, "These are old ways; therefore they are honorable ways and good ways." I don't think that we know anything in this direction. Old and new are no qualities of life, which is very disagreeable. It would be so convenient. For fraternities, it may be possible, because they are not important.

But where are we left? How can I open a path that leads us a little beyond this dilemma? Here are the unbelievers, the people of fact, the scientists. They say, "I look at history, and I see that something has been in the past, and then something has come about in the present, and then the future must be its result."

What are they do- -- where are they going wrong? If I can tonight say that much, why I think that they are going wrong, that they have overlooked the

main thing, the main question of history, then I would -- you would perhaps be prepared to listen to me and to accept the answers that have been given since the Revelation came into this world, and has asked people to jump out of this morass of physical causes and physical effects.

They tell you that every cause has its effect, or every effect had its cause--it amounts to the same thing--and that we look at these causes, and then we study them, then we know ahead of time the effects. For all dead things, for all things under man's domination for the creatures who are only creatures, that's true. We, however, figure time in quite a different way. If you look how you experience time yourself, the best way you are sure that you know what has happened is that you say, "At one time, I expected this to happen." A mother expects a child to be born. Then the child is born. And then she can begin to name the child and to {found its days}. But the great thing about historical experience of humanity is that the same event at one time was in the future, and only then entered the past. That is history. And that's overlooked today in all our textbooks. History is not that what has happened either to your grandfather, or to your father, or once to yourself when you went to school. But history is only that event which you have dreaded, expected, hoped for, which you then have seen -- helped to bring about, and which at the end is there, and you have to cope with it, because it is your own doing.

Whenever your grandfather has done something meritorious, whenever the railroad was built by the Leland Stanfords, then of course, the heirs, the students at Stanford University now say, "Thank you, Mr. Stanford. You did a great thing." And they repeat his performance as still not done, as undone, as future. And because they have an inkling that it was an heroic courage that made these four men build the railroad, it is quite right that they now should have some grate- -- gratitude for these people, because they -- you enjoy the fruits of this founding. But it isn't the -- the brick of Stanford University, but it is their ability to share the hopes, the expectation, and the courage of the founders which allow them now to say, "That's history. That's past. Now it exists, it goes on forever" perhaps, you see, or for centuries.

So the heresy of the modern historian consists in this very strange alienation--you know, "alienation" is now a very much bandied-around term for the -- for the mental -- the--no, how do you call them?--psychiatrists. We are all under psychiatric treatment and there is no field of human endeavor which is not -- has not fallen into the hands of some Freudian psychiatrist. And -- but the terrible thing with -- history is that the psychiatrists haven't yet found out, that the people who deal with the his- -- with the past by itself have no idea of what history is. History is the power of you and me to add to something in the future the predication that now it is -- exists, and has passed into -- into being. A person

who cannot fathom that this thing is in the future has no understanding of what it is now.

Nobody who -- can understand the Church who cannot understand how the Lord went to the Cross. That's obvious, that without Easter, you cannot understand Pentecost. Now what does it mean? In -- at Easter, the event hasn't happened, yet. Nothing looks like the Savior. Nothing looks like the Church. Nothing looks like redemption. Everything looks like despair. If you cannot delve into this event at the moment in which it hadn't yet happened, you will never understand Christianity. And that's why most people don't understand Christianity. Christianity is either accessible to you as well in the future as in the present or -- and in the past, or it doesn't exist. It's a dream -- as our pagan historians today treat Christianity. It's an event on the -- on the margin, you see, in a footnote.

In the days of the Emperor Augustus, there was a strange man, you see, who pretended that he was the son of God, but -- Augustus knew better and said he was the son of God. Well, there you are.

Future and past cannot be separated in our speech, in our thought, in our sentiment, in our judgment. Only that of which you can understand that it was in the future have you any idea what it was and is now in the past, and how you treat it. You have otherwise no way of knowing when to abolish it, when to enlarge on it, when to preach it, when to condemn it, when to ameliorate it, when to embellish it. The only way in which you become an integrated person in your own mind is that -- when you know that you yourself one day change the phrase, "It shall be" into the phrase, "It has been." Or "It has become." That's the man's great power -- that's what we call grammar. And this despised grammar today is the only mental -- mental faculty which you still can cultivate with fruitful results. Philosophy, sociology, economy me- -- all means bankruptcy. But if you -- but if you would know what a power is in this fact that you can say, "This despised man is the -- to become the savior of the world," you can become a Christian. It is difficult, but it is possible.

In other words, the very simple grammatical tenses--future, present, and past--are not organized as Mr. Laplace has held, that the -- past and the present produce the future. That's utter nonsense. That's good for lead, and iron, and water. Then you can find heavy water. But heavy living is quite different. The heav- -- heaviness of life consists in the fact that you are born into a world which expects your contribution, and at -- in fir- -- at first it looks very easy. And you dream, and you dance, and you get engaged, and you get divorced, and after the divorce, you begin to weep. And you see it's all different. It's very different, and you have to pay the penalty of the first half of life wasted and sacrificed. And

then you understand that the three tenses--future, present, and past--are your way of orienting yourself in life, under one condition: that the future governs. As soon as the past governs, that you become--because you are your grandmother's granddaughter, you have to marry some member of the Morgan family--you are -- out of luck, just out of luck. She must not know, your grandmother, whom you are going to marry. Then you can perhaps become happy. That's very strange. But the future is not to be -- derived from the past. And no foundation can help, you see. That's why foundations are such a -- such a terrible thing for schools.

This is what stands on its head today in this country, that you really believe that the past precedes the future. It is not true. Only this has become past which at one time beckoned the people as future. And only that deserves to exist as long as it still enlivens and enthuses people as a dream of the future. Because something is there, that's no justification. That's what the Jews said against the Lord: "Of course. Very simple. We have no better things to say than the high priest in Jerusalem."

If this is your justification as a professor of history, that things have been, let them have been. Their justification of course that at one time, they redeemed people, they made their eyes big, and their breath vivid, and that, when you had to follow the -- the oracle, so to speak, and build, for example, the transatlantic railroad -- the transcontinental railroad.

The spirit of Mr. Judah, therefore, cannot be omitted from the story of Mr. Crocker, of Mr. Hopkins, of Mr. Stanford, and of Mr. Huntington. And there is something very wrong in the way the history of the Southern Pacific is written. And I resent very much that the life dates of Mr. Judah -- Judah are not on the monument. And they are nowhere. This monument, as I said, was set by the employees. And the employees, of course, as all modern factory workers, had an inkling of being treated as cogs on the wheel: nameless, and hopeless, and without a future. So they had sympathy with the first man who was treated in this way by these millionaires on Nob Hill.

And we have not solved this problem today. And it will never be solved forever. Every one of you has to solve it in his own life. The future becomes past. And anybody who has -- has lived a good life knows that that is the proof, that -- he, the things he worships belatedly are not the things that made him rich, or famous, even. But they are things, nobody else may ever know that he has done them, you see. But at one time they made his breath wide and his heart big; and he did them, and he's proud of them, and he will remain proud of them, and he will remain -- be a different person for this reason. And everybody has this. I don't -- I -- I think man is much better than he today poses in -- in -- in mental -- in mental statistics, and psychiatrists, and --. I think most people have very great

memories of the great acts in their life where they believe, where they helped do something unexpected, unforeseen, which seemed impossible.

Some contribution every one of us has made in this respect. But these are the historical acts. That is the real history. What are these four people, these drygood merchants who built the railroad, I mean? For -- if you promise me $20 million or--they made $30 million, you know--it's very easy then to -- to go out and -- and do this, you see.

So we have a very strange scale of values. Every one of us has an anonymous life in which he dreams, hopes, says, "This should be." And he's -- at least will not stand in the way when this comes about, because in his better -- self he will know that this is due, and it should be done. And even this not standing in the way is already a right to be counted in, into the great galaxy of the people who have done it, who later can say they are a part of the whole story. And we become part of the story only when we take part at a time when the story hasn't yet become history.

So I plead for you tonight -- with you tonight for a reform of the term "history." And I give you the gr- -- the secret by which you will be able to recognize it against all the scientific historians: these cooks and these chemists. The people who speak of time in this observant sense that they look at the time process: "Oh, that's 7,000 years ago"; "These people had 6 million years before this -- this ape, and this gorilla." That's not how human beings speak. Our speech is a little different. If you feel that something should be done, should have happened, you say, "It began in this manner, it was continued in this manner, and now God has allowed us to put the final touch to it." Jesus is not the en- -- the middle of an -- of a past, between a past and a future. He is the middle of a beginning and an end. The religious terminology is that our Father has created the universe, and has allowed us to participate in it, and that He is going to finish it, whether you like it or not.

Now the beginning and the end are something totally different from the past and the future. The suffering of the physicists and the chemists--these very poor people, I always pity them for their vocation--is that they have no beginning and no end. They only have past and future, you see. Something was there; now they do this. They cook it, and then later it stinks. No, I -- I'm not -- this is the world. This is the earthly part of us. We are, of course, ourselves in this process of just being things that are changed. But God is not changing the world all the time. He is creating the world, is He not? If He is creating the world, and we are participating in His creature -- creative acts, then it leads to a certain end, as it had a certain beginning. And in the beginning was the Word, and God spoke, and there was light. And there it was -- and still is. That is, the his- -- real

history of humanity has a beginning, a middle, and an end. The history of the sciences, the history of nature has no beginning and no end. It goes from cause to effect. And it goes on and on and on and -- to something. But just to something. But fortunately your and my history does not go on to something. It doesn't even go to somebody. It goes forward to that person whom you love, or whom you hope will love you.

Thank you.

Joseph Botond-Blazek: (Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy prefers not to answer questions here, but rather during the reception, or tomorrow. After tomorrow, he likes to meet people on a different grounds than the lecturing ground. Thank you very much.)