Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy Live! » Volume 32: Universal History (1967)
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Perhaps it is wise to recapitulate what we have been trying to undertake. This migration not of tribes, but migration of men through history in this {course} is -- forced, so to speak, to a method which is not the usual one in history. If I teach universal history, I would get lost totally if I would -- tell -- teach you a world history from A to Z, from going -- from the year 0 to the year 1969. This is the method of the world, of worldly people. If you have no faith, but look on facts, then you have the privilege of doing this--what to me is very silly--this counting from beginning to end, which is a tremendous arrogance of the modern, scientific mind, that he can look into a dead -- on a dead cemetery of ossifica- -- ossified graves, pyramids, palaces, dates of government and then tell from the beginning to end, and end nowhere and begin nowhere.
We have to be a little more careful, because I have used this very proud term "universal." If the -- all deal with the universe, this universe is limited, this universe is whole. And this universe is just as much dependent on your understanding the end as your understanding the beginning. You cannot understand the beginning of Lincoln by just talking about the midwife. The interesting thing is that it is the story of Abraham Lincoln. And if you do not keep in mind that he came out as Abraham Lincoln, as in -- one of the immortals, all the stories about his birth and all the mistakes in hygiene made at that time in his little hut will make no sense, because the only miracle is that he -- survived it, despite the fact that this was a very cumbersome and very poor civilization. It's the -- victory over death, the victory over danger which is the only interesting thing in history. So if you tell the his- -- the circumstances of his birth in themselves, before you have told the great character of Lincoln, the whole thing makes no sense.
And to me, the world histories of which I read make absolutely -- no sense. It's in self-defense, that since my youth -- days of -- as a boy in school, I have tried to think up a history which differs. And universal history, of course, is the first longing of mankind--whether these are Quich' Indians in Guatemala, or whether these are Jews in the Bible story, or whether these are the Greeks--normal people, who have no Ph.D., want to know, you see, how this world in which we have to live came about. And this world is not the world. It is our future. It's our Heaven. It's our Hell. Dante's story is true world history, because he knows what has gone wrong. But in a world history, nothing has gone wrong. Everything just happened. There were the Egyptians; there were the Greeks; there were the Romans. What of it? You see. "Grandeur et misŠre, une victoire." It's all up and down, up and down the valley.
That's not universal. This world history is just a history of the world. And
what is the world in contrast to the universe? The world is this on which you can look with indifference; without trembling, yourself; without fearing your mistakes, your vices, your crimes. World history leaves the author of the world history himself, indifferent, because he cannot add to any one of his sentences, "This I shouldn't have done." He cannot identify himself with his ancestors and say, "This is me who did this. Terrible. And we have to repair the wrong."
You cannot look at the -- if you write the world history of the -- of the last 20 years or the last 30 years, you are not expected to say what now has to be right, what we have to do about all our cursed mistakes, our crimes, our cowardices, our own going wrong.
So "the world" is a term s- -- chosen very cleverly by these world historians in order to leave the author on his throne of science, indifferent, as in physics. And I told you that all these world histories are dominated by the great principle of the sciences, which is gravity. And "gravity" is just another word for death. We all die, because we are all dominated by the law of gravity. At the end, we go downhill.
But the whole hope of a universal history is that we do not go downhill, but that we conquer death. In which way, that's the story of the various chapters of the universal history. Every chapter of these seven chapters of universal history, of these seven universes, has found another way of conquering death. And that's why we are deeply interested in learning how our ancestors and our fellow man have felt that man is the only living being who, from the very first day, has two problems to solve: to live and to overcome death. He has not lived as a human being, but only as an animal if he has not contributed something to conquer death. Then he is not a man.
An elephant has a right to live 120 years. You know, they are now reducing the -- the number of years even elephants can live, to my great dismay. When I was young, they lived forever. They lived 200 years and 250 years. The latest research says they only live usually 70 years. That's only as long as we do live. So obviously the elephant left it to us to find something to get older than 70 years. We do. That's why I'm able here to stand and teach universal history, a term invented in the Bible 2,000 years ago.
This great notion, that there should be a universal history, I have inherited. I have not inherited by blood. I've inherited by teaching, by institutions, by books. And therefore, this is one great victory over death through the ages, that you and I are now summoned to listen to universal history.
But I can -- I hope I have -- you will now go -- take one step further and
see that man, in his eagerness to conquer death, uses all the experiments, and exper- -- -periences of former victories over death, and that is called "universal history," the record of all the previous victories. And they only make sense if you would like to participate, and you like to repeat them, if you would like to continue them. Otherwise, no person here should be in this hall who is indifferent to these victories, because it is your question, just as much as mine: we are heirs of a tremendous fortune, of a tremendous library, of a tremendous chamber of provisions for our own task, because you have to do the same. You cannot just beget children, and eat and drink. You have to tell your children something. Now what you have to tell them is very doubtful today. Most people don't know. They send therefore their children to school, thinking that the school people know what to teach. Of course, they don't know, either.
It's very funny how the -- the parents are today ab- -- obviously quite sure that if they send their children to school, or even to Cowell College, they do their duty. But does Cowell College know what to do? How do we know? Under what auspices, under what authority, my dear people, do you think we here teach? It's a very doubtful proposition, you see. Do we teach because 2 and 2 is 4? Well, in "2 and 2 is 4"--which is a scientific statement, I suppose--nothing is said about how you win out over death. "Two and 2 is 4" can mean "I must throw the bomb"; or it can mean "I must attack the Japanese"; it can mean "I lie down and play tennis and golf." It can mean everything -- from Camp David to golf.
Universal history now is very queer for one law: that we go backward in order to go forward. Or -- put it differently: man marches into the future with his head temporarily turned backwards. That's a very strange situation, you see. A hundred years ago, if you went to Harvard, or to Columbia, or to Berlin, or Heidelberg, or Paris, the historian would admit that he had to look backward; but he would deny that he had to go forward at the same time. That was -- you see, the nine Muses allowed him to spend his time in forgetting the future. And the ma- -- modern masses in the 19th century were left without any vision except one of utopia, or revolution. And the great masters of world history never, never felt that you learn anything from history. History was a fact on the cemetery of yesterday. And the modern masses had a revolutionary program like that of Mr. Marx, or somebody else of the same caliber, and so they ran forward into the future.
Obviously a universal history must proceed a little differently. We march forward, and man has always--at all times of life, except in the 19th century--known that we go forward with our head looking backward. The French call it "Reculer pour mieux sauter": we have to go backward in order to jump better forwards. If you do not leave the momentary present time in which you live, in -- by this twisted, double movement--going backwards in order to be
able to go forward--you will take no leap into the future. The march into the future is not that of a pedestrian. If you live in a pedestrian manner in a village in California, you will do routine. You will do the same. You have to look backward in order to learn what of the things in your own village, or town, or even in San Francisco are of a temporary character so that you can shelve them. So you can -- you can put them off like an old garment and say, "Well, this isn't of all times; this is just of the last century. Therefore it isn't important."
All the last centuries have to be discarded. And we do this by reculer pour mieux -- mieux sauter, by -- well, what is this best English expression? By -- not going backward, but by -- who can translate "reculer" into English?
It's a very fine word, because you -- you give way, and let yourself -- been drawn backward, you see, and then you can jump. As we do -- everybody who -- who is a jumper knows that he has to do this. He has to take a head start. But the word "head start" is not very dramatic and doesn't paint it all, you see. In a head start, you for a while go really backward. You give up in a head start, you see, what you already have gained in order to gain more. That's a very interesting movement. I feel our language really deserts us here, because "head start" does not express -- probably it's un-American to -- ever to admit that you give way. So you call it "head start," but it is "back start," isn't it? You go backward in order to jump forward. Now to -- I understand there is no other word than -- but "back start." Page, is this true?
(Page Smith: I suspect there is. Would "recoil" do?)
Ja, well, "reculer," that is literally true. But "re-" -- "recoil" is a -- pessimistic movement, you see. Most people recoil from education; of course they do. But they don't jump.
So -- so please, take this one dogmatic sentence. And it has to be dogmatic, because it is a decision, it is a break with the traditional attempt of popular history, that a -- no man can reach the future if he hasn't at a -- for a certain time turned backward, and looked backward in order to look forward more and better.
This movement is never described. I feel that all our books today of education try to persuade you that man always remains natural, normal; always goes in the -- with the penchant in the direction of his trend. The word "trend" -- you see, I would burn everybody who uses the word "trend." Trend is contemptible. A man who -- who follows his trend is not a human being. The great honor of a man is that we are free beings who alternatingly can look backward and forward. That's not following a trend. But it's deciding which trend to follow. That
we have trends, well, what a pity, I mean. { }, we have -- are hungry, we have sex appeal, or we have no sex appeal. These are all trends, but they have nothing to do with history. If you, as the newspapers do, identify a modern trend with modern history, you end in Hell. That's what Dante describes. So all the first part of -- of Dante is dedicated to describing trends.
So -- headed by Mrs. Luce.
We are not allowed ever to follow trends in themselves. You have always to stand there and reculer pour mieux sauter. You have to look at this trend before it was there, so that you can decide how long it is allowed to be there. The mortality of a trend is the condition for your well-being. To say, "We do this today," is no excuse for all the nonsense you do. You -- only are allowed to do something from conviction in the meaning that this is more than a trend; then you are perfectly welcome to do it. You can be burned at stake. This can be a very wholesome action, for both -- sides, probably. But somebody has to be burned at stake, because he rejects the trends of the time.
But you can only do this if you know that we all, as I told you at the beginning, live in three generations when we enter history. Any human being who reads a history book tries to read it like a boy or a girl, like a father, you see, and like an ancestor. There are always three generations who look at the event as having not yet happened, as being in process of now being suffered, and as having happened before and being remembered.
This is the secret, you see, of this reculer pour mieux sauter, which explains to you the three-generations law of history. In history, nothing is known, understood, identified, unless you can say to yourself, "I looked at it from the time when it didn't exist; I looked at it while it was coming into being; and I look at it, what do -- how does it block the path into the future, or how does it open up the -- the path into the future?
This three-generation law, as I told you in the very first meeting, you see, is unknown today, because people think that our knowledge is of the same character when it deals with dead things outside--with the world, with nature; and your own life. This is not true. You can understand the world with one-third of your being, with this little mind of yours, without the body and without the soul. You can only know history if you are able to mobilize even more than your poor self: heart and soul, mind and reason, and body and senses. I'll split up these three, because they are very rich indeed, you see. The five senses are more than what you think the body is. You think the body is what you can put on the scales. But look at these three partitions of mind, soul, and body, and you will to -- perhaps to your surprise, immediately become aware that there are three
universes. Because the senses which emanate from your body here, your living body, they are all the scent and flair for what is coming, what is future, what is promised, what should be. Your nose is the greatest organ of human history, because it tells you exactly what's dead and putrid, and what is flourishing, and bloom- -- blooming, and which pro- -- what promises future.
Anybody who deals with history without a nose is a bore and knows nothing. If he wants to know facts, well, facts -- the very word says it's the past; it's nothing of the future. You only know the future by smelling, you see. Putrid, dead things, burned things, they don't -- they smell so that you turn away from them. But anything inviting, like the smell of a flower, shows you that there is something you haven't yet seen, is promising. History without promises is no history. And that is based on your five senses. Because the eye says, "Oh, that's already there. I don't have to go there. That's the past."
You have to re-evaluate your senses -- your five senses if you want to enter universal history. In -- in the Museum of Modern -- of Past Arts, you can see everything. But in life, you have to discard anything that's already visible, that's already incarnated; that's of yesterday. You, my dear people, I cannot see; if you didn't contain a promise as of tomorrow, why should you go here, you see? The -- your last day of becoming is probably your day of examination. Later, you will not learn anything anymore. But still there is a little margin now of future in your being as you sit -- here. I hope that you will be different tomorrow from what you are today. Otherwise don't come here. It makes no sense. And what you are between today and tomorrow--or whenever that is, 10 years from now--cannot be seen. It cannot be touched. But it can be scented, and it can be heard. By your words, your promises, your courtship, your songs, I can divine that something big is going to come out of you. And I can hope and I can believe in this. And I can also say, "Well, that's the -- a second spring. That's something coming which I have never seen bloom before."
And so, in a universal history, the senses that are -- do matter are those which promise the unknown, the un-yet happened, the impossible. And the visible, which the physicist uses for his investigations is of no interest. I cannot see, from looking at the White House, what the president of the United States will do 10 years from now, whether this is a catacomb and a graveyard, you see, of American hopes, or whether it is a promise. Houses, homes, buildings, concrete do not say anything about the future. And they do not point into any direction. They have been yesterday.
I want to frighten you out of your idea that history can be known in the same manner in which facts can be known. Because history is always suspended between future and yesterday. And before I can say about the fact that the Civil
War ended with the victory of the North, I must know about the future.
You know, there were people three years ago in this country who said, "After all, the South has still won the Civil War." Just before the civil rights legislation started in the '50s, the people--like this Mrs. who now governs Alabama--said that they had won the Civil War. That is, they had eradicated the future, you see, by what they could see on the streets of this strange state of Alabama. They said, "After all, they are the slaves; and there are the white people. Nothing has changed."
You can -- you see, you can deny the future. It wasn't visible, the future. There was in fact already a hundred years of an attempt to break out. But it hadn't been done, and hasn't been done today.
I had a letter--I told you this, perhaps--from a -- from student of mine, who lives now in Mississippi, and he said--he went down as a lawyer to help out with civil rights--and he -- he wrote me a letter that his young wife was recommended to my care, if he would be murdered there. So that's a nice story, that this moment, 1967, that a young white lawyer from the North can feel that he is there trapped, you see, in a den of robbers. That's 19- -- 1860 -- or 1859.
So history can be seen only as to past. But to what it points can only be relied on if your other senses of scent, of smell, of expectation--your relation to the future--are taken into account. Every one of us is an -- is a -- in a crucial situation. You have just as much future as you have life inside yourself; and you have just as much memory as you have already incarnated. Here, your body, that comes from your ancestors. But what's going to be at the moment when you die, nobody knows. But you must -- may not know it, but you must feel it. You must have a flair for what's expected from you.
And I feel therefore this universal history has to be taught from the very moment on -- with your being conscious of the paradox, that while we are going backward, we are expected to go forward, with the help of this past. And so the terrible thing about the unscientific part of universal history is that it makes no sense, except for people who expect something from the future, and from whom the -- future expects something. You cannot know the past without identifying yourself with this great battle of man against death. Something that now is dying--as in the South--and something that is about to be born must move you in your understanding of the past. Otherwise, the history is a dead matter. Don't go there. Don't read history books. Don't go to museums; they are very dangerous places.
That's -- you see, people of course are always desperate. Now they have
founded museums of modern arts, which is a contradiction in terms. Yes, it is. You can see this. A museum is for the dead, of the dead. It would -- people are -- even a hundred years ago would have laughed at the idea that contemporary art should be -- should be brought into a museum, you see. Funny idea.
I have several friends of my own generation who have now concentrated on establishing all these chairs for contemporary history. Well, you can imagine what I think of them.
So we distinguish seven different universes which man has tried to create in order to be sure that while he was going forward, the achievement of the past would not relinquish him, would not desert him, that he could take them with him into the future, supported by these, and already stating that they were beginnings of something. If you count the year 1967--as you all still do, since you haven't become Isla- -- Mohammedans, I suppose--you do not count from 622 of our era, but you count the year from the birth of Christ, from the incarnation of the Spirit on this globe. And this means that we have a universal history; it may be incomplete, it may be unsatisfactory. But -- at least for the last 1967 years, any grandfather and any grandchild could agree on a common purpose. You are the first generation that cannot. And that will be -- you will all be wiped out unless you recover your sense of a unified purpose for the future, because then you are all working at cross-purposes. And most of you are, you see. You haven't even decided whether motorcycles can blow the horn. Because motorcycles blow the -- can blow the horn today, it's a better sale, you see: more noise for 16-year-old boys, well.
So you have to surrender. The same as we had the case with the gentleman from Cupertino. I mean, his reasoning about the war in Vietnam was of the same caliber as the reasoning of the manufacturers of motorcycles, who could produce quiet motorcycles, but who reason that they could sell one motorcycle more if it makes much noise, you see. So you and I are deprived of our sleep because of these damned motorcycles.
The logic is wonderful. Here, in this country, where -- you allegedly have democracy, you -- the -- the minority always wins. The motorcycles still are in the minority, but since the -- one manufacturer can make more money, you see, we can't say anything. That's { }. When one person can make more money, the 199 million American have to yield.
Well, to be now perfectly serious, the -- these six -- seven universes I think -- I have tried to open up to you by entering the first. And the -- the poor man, as he came naked out of his mother's womb, was very frail. Nine-tenths of the young people born in an old tribal civilization may have died, or at least three-
quarters is the assumption. Children mortality, as you know, down to the latest years of our order, have been terrific. So life was not predicated on any future, but three-quarters of life had to be sacrificed for the survival of one-quarter. We forget this very easily, but we are surrounded in -- on this globe by constant dangers of death.
Now to find tradition, to find unity in this, to find people who have lived for 300 years in a constant record of memory is quite remarkable. And I told you the story of these people in the Caribbean, where every -- former slave still knows from whom -- which tribe he came in Africa. And that this is his nobility, because it is a conquest over death, conquest of annihilation.
We must study today this conquest of death in a tribal order a little more carefully, because there is more to be said I think than we -- you are aware of. First, let me say that there are certainly more than 100,000 tribes in our record -- recorded. We know that there have been 9,400 languages known in Africa alone. Nobody has really counted the number of tribes. It is perfectly -- probably impossible ever to know, because it depends on your definition of what a tribe is, how far it goes, you see. But it is known that tribal languages have existed in far greater numbers than they exist today. And the number of languages, as you can see, is staggering. A hundred thousand languages. Make it 19,000; it's still a big number.
And what is this for? Well, a language is an attempt to use the ecstasy of a human life in his making love to the other sex for a purpose for which in the animal kingdom language is not used. sound is not used. The animals sing--and they sing very beautifully. And when they make -- mate, when they -- their courtship is an explosion. Beyond the self, song tries to find unity with the universe. And the first universe is really mating. And you all feel this in spring, I hope. And it is all -- of such a violence that most people succumb to it, and go crazy. Love is, after all, some -- some fury. Very dangerous. And -- but in man it is only the reflection of his higher power that he can speak and know who he is. No animal can in singing say, "I am a vulture. I am an eagle." But we do. You say you are an American, or you are a white man, or you are a Protestant, or you are the child of God. In all these cases, the power of articulation, the power of the sound, the power that is not in the eye, ladies and gentlemen--and it is not in the touch, but is in the hearing--enables you to become a tuning fork of the universe, of the universal history of mankind.
I think when I listen to the madrigal singers, at the -- at the day at which I saw that you all were absent, with great regret --. I think it was a scandal--pardon me--for an old man to -- saying this, that you didn't go to -- to the charter day. That's where you belong. And the 12 madrigal singers, or how many were they?
Twelve? Eighteen? Twenty?
(Fourteen.)
Fourteen. Good number. These 14 -- we have a German word, "Nothelfer" for -- what's the Amer- -- English for this? There are always 14 people who have to help out on Friday the 13th in --. The -- these 14 people acted as the tuning fork of the celebrating com- -- community. Because we people, we don't make the music. But we open up to the -- music of the universe, to the music of the spheres.
You read The Merchant of Venice, the last act, Shakespeare has something to say about this -- this music of the spheres. All the madrigal singers did, you see, was to remind people who spoke prose, and spoke English, and spoke educated language, you see, that there was a better language in the universe: music. And that if you -- open yourself to this -- these sounds, the harmony of the universe enters even a quarry.
Now this is the story of mankind in the first universe, the exploitation of our power to open up to sound, to articulate sound which ties people together when they sing the same melody. There is no tribe in the universe, among all the -- hundred thousand tribes that have been created, that does not rely on a melody which is proper to him, which we call his language.
You are, of course, since you belong to a scientific age--that is, an age that -- only deals with dead things--you have learned that speech is something that can be recorded on a -- I'm not recorded today. Or am I?
(Yes.)
Yes. Well. So I thought I was --. Half-dead, half-alive.
But now, seriously, I have to bring you back today in order to make you und- -- realize the sensation of creating a time that the lifeblood, the constitution of a tribal order is the melody, the tones that ran through such a tribe as you -- is
called a language. A lang- -- lingua, a tongue, is implanted, is planted into every member of a tribe, so that instead of having his tongue of flesh, he has a tongue of the spirit. The thousand tongues of the 100,000 tribes are quite literally meant. There are many ceremonies among the primitive people in which the initiated person receives a tongue into his own person, you see. So that his natural, simple, animal tongue is replaced by something just as sacred, and just as superior as the Holy Spirit today in church. You must not think that the ancient people were not just as good Christians, or good Jews, or what have you. The only thing they weren't were probably Mormons. But they were people who felt inspired.
Now you cannot feel inspired without living on three levels at the same time. My three levels of the three generations now returns to you inside the individual. I said to you, the old Spar- -- Spartan had always three choirs. One of the boys, before they were allowed to bear arms; one of the men, who were militant; and one of the senior citizens, you see, who played bridge.
And inside of you, inside of every individual, if you project these three generations into you and me, you will understand what the tribe did to get hold of the totality of human existence. Inside of you, you have your physiques, your physical strength, your individuality. Here is your body. That's visible, your -- your limbs, your -- your health, your strength, your five senses.
So the first thing that any organization of a society must satisfy so that the individual can say, "I know where I belong; I know that's right, because my five senses, and my body, you see, get their due," is of course the somebody. Any tribe must -- consist then of some bodies, and as our word very beautifully in English says, "Somebody" -- we say of somebody who is nondescript, but who is alive. He is somebody.
The second stage is that of ecstasy, that of making love, that of courtship, that of getting lost in great passion, of forgetting oneself. And so the second stage would be, call it as you like, call it "marriage," "courtship." So the second problem of a tribe is to introduce into the tribal experience the experience of ecstasy.
And the third, of course, as with the senior citizen, is to consider death, to consider oneself as already dead, or having been, or being on the way out. It's a man on the graveyard. The man on the horizontal -- in the horizontal position of being buried. The buried man, the funeral man, who also has to be reconsidered, because when he lies down, he must have the feeling that he has marched in the right direction of history, of life.
So we are born as somebodies, and until we are mature--to 20 or 25; of
course, you only mature at 30--the Americans, you know, are a little delayed, because they are so hasty. The -- well, I mean -- certainly. All modern man matures much later than the princes, and the counselors, and the warriors of old. I mean, at 18, a young queen Elizabeth, you see--Victoria, it was, I'm afraid--was quite reasonable. She was never -- was any better, later. We expect you, that as a Ph.D., you have come to your senses, you see; 10 years too late.
So modern man -- that's very -- a truism; you have heard this, you see, we have -- we are delaying the moment of initiation, the moment of maturity in order to develop man better, instead of asking you to -- to marry at 15, as in the old Jewish ghetto, we ask you to wait till you know already who you are, you see. And you have to discover yourself, and that is quite a struggle. And so if you would -- kindly marry at 25, it would be more reasonable, and more advantageous for society. You won't do it, of course. But --.
So if you say, "Over my dead body"--as I hope you will say at certain occasions, when a scoundrel comes in and tempts your soul--"Only over my dead body," you will say that you are meant to invest your life in a dangerous moment on the battlefield for something. That's Number 3, Man Number 3. The appeal to somebody is that you belong, that you feel at home, that you say, "My parents are the best people in the world," and thereby stay with them. "I can't do any better," or "It's Cowell College." Everybody needs a home. So -- Point 3 is that we have to -- create a civilization where somebody will say, "Only over my dead body." That is, it must be worth your life.
The first stage, however, is--the organization which has to be created at every moment -- at this moment, too--is something of which you can say, "It's worth living." You don't say, "Over my dead body." But you say, "Oh, let me enter; it's wonderful here," you see. "It's a playground for my development. I can unfold here, like a child in a nursery school. And the second is, of course, "Here I can realize the ecstasies of life, those acts in which I go beyond myself," where there is no question of self.
Anybody who speaks of himself in love doesn't know what love is. Love is that moment in which you definitely forget self. And that's what -- what is meant by love. I know that in modern civ- -- civilization, and scientific paperbacks, this is denied. People study the many -- ways you can -- in which you can -- well, I won't { };
Only to show you that no constitution, no historical event is important unless it can satisfy somebody's -- somebody's body, somebody's love or passion, and somebody's sacrifice. Life--in politics, in history--consists of these three strands which we have discovered already in the three generations, you see. A
young man must have somebody -- something that draws him into, and say, "I want to belong. I want to serve in the Marines." Why does he do it? Because of the record of the Marines, you see, of the uniform, I don't know. But of something that lies before him. It's his future that draws him into the Marines, or into study, I mean. It's -- can be anything. Research, you see. It's an attraction, is it not?
Here, at this moment, you must feel attracted to something in order to throw yourself into it. At the same time, there is nothing more noble than a young man who has these appetites, but sacrifices them for his country. Like -- Nathaniel Hale, isn't it? "I'm sorry that I only have one life to offer my country"?
Well, where you have the greatness of a moment. How old was he? Twenty, I suppose? Not very much more. And he could unite the two and three stages, you see. He felt attracted into the new 13-colony enterprise, and he felt willing to lay down his li- -- lie down his life for it. That's for 3. And he felt the ecstasy of his passion for this enterprise. So he found a substitute for physical love in this spiritual patriotism. And anybody who has been in the Great War--as some of you have, and I have, myself--knows that this is tremendous power, that you can throw away your personal appetites, and your personal instincts, and your personal lusts, and your personal future, because you feel that a bigger thing is at stake which has at this moment to be realized.
If you read "The Faith of a Soldier," by the old Wendell -- Oliver Wendell Holmes--he was the younger Wendell Holmes, but still he was very old--he wrote in 1895, 20 years after the Civil War, this famous essay, "The Faith of a Soldier." And in this "Faith of a Soldier" -- who has read it? Only ladies, of course. And -- you should read it, because it is the -- the key to historical existence. "The Faith of a Soldier," without Mr. Holmes' -- having studied universal history, or sociology, or psychology, or any of these modern fancies, simply says that the soldier embraces these three phases of your and every human being's life, you see. He must be somebody. And he must have some passion. And he stresses very much the passion of the soldier, you see. And he must have some faith.
Now faith is the power to survive death. Passion is the power to create beyond yourself, to forget self. And health, vitality--which is today bandied around in the form of vitamin C, and D, and E--is the power to live, yourself. That is, the first stage stresses self, the second stage forgets self, and the third stage discovers meaning beyond self.
This is what history is about. History is the problem of luring you and me into a stream of events in which your self is only one-third of the process; in which passion is only another third of the process; and in which sacrifice rounds
out the calcul- -- computation, so that something remains, despite of your poor self, and your poor passions, your passing fashions. And that's history.
Where there is not -- are not all three, there is at best pacifism. And that's why pacifists don't have the future for themselves, because they deny sacrifice. Where a man is not willing to lie down his life for his friends, there is no future. You can be sure of this. Future depends on this dark curtain beyond your own life. And anybody who does deny this is not fit to beget children. Any woman is in danger of life and that's why the pope, with great right, is very doubtful about Pills. Because it is not -- in the act you shouldn't swallow these pills, but you dim- -- diminish the importance of your love and of your passion. It's a minor matter. You can do this in any brothel.
It's a very serious question whether a man makes himself incapable of great passion, and of sacrifice. And a woman does risk her life in giving birth to children. That's very important, because it ennobles her. That's a woman, and not just -- I won't say what.
This is much more serious than the people today care to admit. If you are sure that the woman you love is willing to sacrifice at -- if it is necessary, her life, you can also spare her agony in -- in situations in which this is second-rate and -- not necessary. But to abolish the whole problem means that you live as you do live today, and try to live today, as one-third people. You are only one-third people, because you think if your digestion functions; if you take a sufficient number of vitamin A, B, C, D, E; if you eat three square meals a day, then you are a human being. You are not. A human being begins the -- at the other side of the elephant, and the eagle, and the -- and the melon, if he is capable of unifying in one life the sacrifice of his whole existence for a lasting purpose; the great passion of unifying his life with other people in a moment of ecstasy, and -- in a betrothal, in a marriage; and if he is also healthy enough to listen to the lure of nature, of sunshine, of rain, of the weather, or -- has all the physical abilities. I have listed them now in the -- in the wrong order, because unfortunately, my dear children, you are brought up in this crazy manner as though human beings begin with being healthy, and then they may add some ecstasy for five minutes, with the help of a condom. And then they may go on to greater deeds, and discover, and get the Nobel Prize for nothing.
No, gentlemen. The order is the opposite. You become a human being if the -- if you are a mother who is risking her life, or you are a soldier who is risking his life on a battlefield. Then down the grade, it is very excellent if you also are capable of great passions, by which you can found societies, fraternities, families, groups, you see, who by their friendship cohere, and therefore are able to do greater things than you could do singly, or with two or three. That's pathet-
ic. That's passionate. And then the last act, of course, you should have two legs, two eyes, two -- a stomach, which digests very well, you see, and -- so the -- you are -- that's very helpful. But the order of things in history is only: sacrifice; passion; grief, or five senses. It is not the other way around.
You will never arrive--if you get the perfectly healthy man--to anything of any importance. Don't think that you are interesting here that we -- I have to teach you, ladies and gentlemen, for the simple reason because you have two legs, a stomach, and five senses. That is no reason for me, as an old man, to waste my time on you. Because I believe that you are capable of great sacrifices, and I believe that you are capable of real passions. And I try to inflame you so that you forget your damned five senses, and do the thing of the hour and of the day which is now needed so that mankind can remain as a whole. And whoever you are--here you are many--whoever is found willing to listen to what I say, will also be probably found willing to act in the right moment. And those of you who -- who do not listen, but think it's very boring, you see, will probably go out of history and it is not necessary that you should live. There are many superfluous people today in the world, because they have the infamy to say it is enough to take pills, and to keep the bowels open, and that's all there is to it. This is -- these people -- I -- have nothing to do with me. I am not going to speak to them. I waste my time on -- to them.
Speech was invented to embrace these three stages in one act. Any tribe has solved this. In any tribe, death is overcome; love is sanctified; and health is guaranteed, or provided for. Now that's a great { }. It -- the se- -- the -- what time is it? The Holy Trinity, my dear friends, is not an invention of a Christian Church, or of a pope, or of some philosophers. It's a fact of life from the very first day of creation. Mr. Pike doesn't know it, but that can't -- I can't help him.
We are all trinitarians by our constitution. Because you all can say, "Only over my dead body." And I hope you will at some time, when it is needed. Don't waste it. Of course, not. You haven't to be a fanatic, but you must know that you will one day stand up and be counted. That's the same thing as -- as, of course, as "Over my dead body." It doesn't consist in somebody's shooting you right away. But to be counted means, you see, that you are singled out by your enemies as the next target, which is often very much more unpleasant than to be -- di- -- killed immediately.
The tribe does this. How does he do it? I say "he." You can also call -- say "she." The tribe didn't know more than that he had been -- beyond sex. All the origins of the tribes' stories go back to some spirit who embraces both sexes, because he must transcend the -- the sexual orgy, the passion, you see. It must be more; it must be the whole; the -- the man that arises, that originates, that is born
out of the melting of two sexes, and yet is la- -- is to last.
The lasting character of the tribe is embodied in all these innumerable legends, and heroic stor- -- tales that there was in the beginning a great mother, or a great father, or a mating of two spirits. It is -- makes no difference how these people express it; they are all after the same secret: what is there beyond the mating, beyond your being "Mr." and the other being "Miss"?
The problem of the beyond is not a pro- -- an empty problem of fantasy. The beyond is a problem for you and me every day. What is beyond your passions, you see? What remains? Are the royalties that a writer gets for his book all that is produced by a book? That's -- seems to be in modern America the idea of publishers. So there is no result; there is no third degree, so to speak, of life. If he is satisfied with -- for his passion, and gets well paid, then you think that's literature. It's a cloaca maxima. And that's what it is. And American -- the Fifth Avenue, or Madison Avenue. Don't go there. This is not the spirit. This is not that which the oldest tribe has solved. We don't solve it. We cannot distinguish today a spiritual creation from the mating, you see, beyond passions from this great willingness to lie down your life for something higher.
If you want to understand how the tribe felt, then you -- I must quote you a very simple sentence by William James, the one great American philosopher. There are no others. William James lived from 1842 to 1910. And he's very important, I assure you. Because he gave Americans the place for that same passion or energy which creates societies, and governments, and states. Because he said of the literary men -- of America, "Our literary men are sacrifices." He meant Herman Melville, and such people { }. "Our literary men are sacrifices," because they stand up for something, and are willing to be counted. And therefore literature is an element of founding of states, even if it is only Thomas Paine. It is still better than nothing. I mean, you can't found the United States on Martha Washington.
"Our literary men are sacrifices" is so important to me; it was said by a very fine, secular mind like William James. And he is the only man I know in American literature who seriously introduced the word "sacrifice" into non-religious literature. Now we are doomed if you -- you go on in quoting Christian hymns for Sunday use. Christian hymns are only valid if you quote them on weekdays. It's obvious that they have nothing to do with Sundays. They are true! The Trinity is true! There has never been anything else in the world but to believe in these three great layers of hum- -- human existence: sacrifice, passion, reason. Of which reason is for the moment, and your personal satisfaction; in which passion is for the changing of your environment; and in which death is for creating a long-lasting future. And that -- if this is not the Trinity, I don't
know what it is. That's exactly how the Trinity is described in the dogma. It's not my fault that the cardinals have forgotten it.
This Trinity is the Father, and the Son, and the Spirit. And we won't go into this now. We'll come to this if we speak of the attempt of the Christian universal church to make this universe open to all tribes. Today we have only to cope with the strange fact that there are 100,000 tribes, and that every one tribe has always believed and still believes that it is the whole man; a tribe is the assertion that in this group, all of humanity that matters is alive, continually alive.
Therefore, the difficulty you have today with anthropology, psychology, sociology, history, et cetera, and museums of any -- some kind, is to believe that these primitive people, these Pygmies in the -- in the trees of the Congo, and the Yaruros at the -- Venezuela, at the Amaz"nas River, at the Orinoco River, and the Quich' in Guatemala, and what have you--and the Eskimos at the Arctic Sea, the first pacifists of -- organized status, that people of -- of Alaska { }--that these people all insisted that they did the necessary thing to stay human, and that they had to forgo any connection with the others, because only in their midst were they certain that they would fulfill their creator's purpose of being trinitarians, of being the Son, and the Father, and the Holy Spirit, of unifying--that is, the past and the future--of unifying the here and there in the couples who fell in love with each other; and the third thing, to satisfy man's own constitution so that he could live peacefully and gaily with himself and sing a song.
This is hard to understand, and that's why I have asked you to repeat my dogmatic statement. Of course I -- truth is always dogmatic. And it is not a reproach to be dogmatic, as you think. It is a reproach to be non-dogmatic. See, fools today who say, "Don't be dogmatic" are just fools. If it is -- you aren't dogmatic, it isn't worth knowing anything. If you -- if this lady to whom you propose can ask you, "Are you dogmatic about your love?" and you say, "No" -- .
It's one of these weasel-words, you see, invented by the Arthur Brisbanes, you see. Arthur Brisbane was that journalist who had the greatest income as a -- newspaperman in the United States ever paid: $226,000 a year. so he could write left, right, up, and down, you see; it didn't matter. In one day, seven opposing sentences fell from his pen, because he served seven different papers. This is the state of mind to which America is degraded today. If you say something is dogmatic, you mean it as a reproach. Gentlemen, it's the greatest praise you have. It means that you are in touch with lasting truth.
Do you really think that the technicality, how to run a car a little faster--that is, for invention and for improvement--has anything to do with dog-
-- with truth? It's a -- it's a gadget. Of course, you can improve gadgets, but you cannot improve the truth. Or you -- deny that there is any truth, which of course most people in this country today can afford to do. And so look what -- I won't say now.
The -- the first tribe and the last tribe, as long as tribes were created--and it went on till -- through the {great} empires of Egypt, and Assyria, and Babylonia, and China, and Maya, and -- and Mexico--these first -- tribes, these 100,000 tribes, as I said, had to concentrate on their oneness. One tribe was enough, because death is such a provocation, is such a danger, that if you do not concentrate on winning out over death in some place, you will not win -- in any place, you see, you must -- it is very difficult for me to make you see that the fact that a tribe could last 7,000 years is such an immense achievement that anything else pales. It isn't important that this tribe wouldn't speak to other tribes, you see. They could forget this. The task was so immense to make people know that their great, great- , great-, great-grandfather had already told them how to live.
If you do not concentrate for one minute on this fantastic effort of a tribe to be there in perpetuity, you will never do justice to the great problem of the -- of the chartered person, of the -- of the company, and the incorporation of something. You are accustomed that you can incorporate your family fortune; you can incorporate a university; all this didn't exist with the tribe. There is the -- the wood, the forests, the serpents, the animals, the seasons; and here are the weak, naked natives, and they undertake to form something that will last over the death of all the living, beyond anything; without writing, without building. You see, the only thing we have to assume is fire, that they had -- probably man begins, it seems, with the mastery of making fire. That's -- I say with some reservations, but I think so. So that the only one invention which makes man different from the -- from the animal is that he doesn't run away from every danger, but that he can approach danger. The second quality--that man can do this, that he can play with fire--is also that he can turn play to seriousness. You all are great players. Any American knows how to play. But the great thing in history which makes a tribe an historical event is that he can transform something which he discovers in play into a serious act.
To give you -- the outstanding example is the medicine man. The medicine man -- has learned from his tribe's experience, his comrades' experiences, that he can play the eagle; he can play the fish; he can jump into the water and swim, and rescue, you see, some comrade and come back again; he can make a fire; he can climb a tree; and he can watch the -- the birds and foretell in which the direction the wind is blowing, and what the weather will be. So he can transform himself in a playlike fashion into all the creatures of the universe in Heaven, earth, and water -- and sea.
And all tribes are connected with these three great elements, which for a long time--and I think they still should--serve as the three representations of the created universe: Heaven or sky; ocean, and sea, and water; and earth.
Now this transformation is one which endows you and me with this tremendous power constantly to change, to alternate between seriousness and play. Every one of you has this tremendous authority of the Holy Spirit, or of God the Father, or God the Son--however you label it, it is the same divine power--to decide what is serious and what is play. You can swim for pleasure. But you can also become, you see, a diver and make it a profession. Constantly man, that's his nature -- in his naked state already, had the power to transform plays, which he played, into serious vocational enterprises.
You read in textbooks of sociology very often that man has a great power to play. But I think the greater power which you should note is that he can transform plays into offices, into functions of a lasting character. From our plays, we seem to have inherited the putting them to use for social functions. Sometimes you play. But the next day you say, "Oh, in my play, I realize, you see, this is this, and so therefore now I can jump into the water and rescue somebody and carry him home as a lifesaver." Before, this was just play. You didn't think anything about it. You didn't make it do- -- a dogma, you see. But now lifesaving has become quite dogmatic. And I hope it has. Don't say you won't be dogmatic about saving other people's lives. You must. But it has arisen from play, from the experience that somebody fell accidentally into the water, although he was terribly afraid, and then learned how to swim.
Our natural books, you see, they are all very -- unimaginative, I mean. Since Charles Darwin, stupidity has governed the world of nature -- natural sciences. And he has no imagination, this man. He had always headaches. I -- I don't wonder. Charles Darwin has never understood that the greatness of man is in his faculty to play. And he -- you can transform, as he did; he became serious, and he did himself--that's why he is still a great man, despite all his idiosyncrasies--because he had the money to go on this trav-- -- travel, and he took it terribly seriously. Until two world wars developed from it. Because -- the -- in the battle of the--how is it? -- of the stronge- ? how do you call this? the struggle for survival, and all these wonderful things, you see--they made the -- the world wars inevitable. Because he set down the rule that you -- you have to kill in order to live. Survival of the unfittest, yes. That's what it is.
We are -- you will -- you live in a -- in a world of such heresies today. No trinitarianism any longer, you see. You don't know that reason is the lowest faculty of man, and not the highest, because it's a faculty for your private, individual body. It is not the faculty for being at peace with -- with your equals, your
contemporary. And certainly it is not your faculty of establishing peace with past and future generations. Reason can't tell you this. Sacrifice will tell you this. Ask your parents how many sacrifices they have to make -- had to make to forget their self and their self-interest. A parent who thinks of his self interest, you see, will slaughter his -- his son, as Abraham was tempted to do, when he said -- thought he -- for the benefit of Abraham, Isaac had to be sacrificed. And the great conversion of Abraham, of course, was that he learned that Isaac had as much right to live as he himself.
So the greatest temptation of a tribe has always been sacrifice. Just as this gentleman of Cupertino, you see. Sacrifice 15 Americans per week, and you have prosperity. The tribes were of course of the same blindness and same avarice as this -- this John -- Jack {Slade} of Cupertino. We should a build a monument for this pig.
Sacrifice, gentlemen, is the condition of history. There is no history if the -- living generation does not limit its exploits of foodstuffs, of trees, of forests, you see, in such a way that the posterity can live. It's obvious. I mean, you just take the whole problem of conservation in this country, and of urbanization, and of { }. It's a question of -- not just of survival of the fittest, but the -- of the death of the fittest. That would be the correct answer, because "fit" today is called a man who collects, who gets rich, and gets power. Well, he has to get out of the way. Sacrifice him. We live at this moment not in an animal kingdom, but in a den of robbers, because the newspapers take it upon themselves to preach Darwinism day and night. And -- Darwinism is a decay, is a -- decadence, because it tries to establish an order out of the -- the lowest common denominator, your body; and not of your passions and not of your sacrifices.
Now to come back to the tribe. I have -- still have five minutes, have I? No? Page, you give me five more minutes?
(Page Smith: I'm not the official timekeeper, really.)
Don't be dogmatic. What -- ja, but still I will follow your -- your rule.
(Go on. We have five minutes.)
Well then, the thing I want to -- would like to leave with you today for the next time -- as a -- as a title or -- is that this consciousness of the threefold character of our existence on this globe, which distinguishes all men from all plants and -- animals is this connection of your existence with some future and some past which makes law, or which commands as much as your own appetites. You cannot eat another man's living body because you are hungry. If -- if self was the
rule, you see, and your reason was the rule, rationalism, then you could. And you know in great emergencies, people have eaten their equals. The cannibalism of the party who crossed the -- here the -- the mountains--wie?
(The Donner party.)
Of course--is a very important story to tell, because it's a measure of man which is -- has been taken there. And you all know what you would answer in this place. You probably would say, "I had better have been the victim than the eater." Isn't that true?
So from the very first beginning, the tribe has asked for the consent of his sacrifices. Iphigenia of Tauris and Isaac went to their sacrifice willingly. That's the whole problem of our religion, from the first day of mankind to the last. And that has nothing to do with any ecclesiasticism or any dogmatism of one church. It's a constant problem: how do you make the victim willing to be the sacrifice? You can only have this order of -- mankind if our sacrifices are made voluntarily. And that's why William James said, "Our literary men are sacrifices," he proclaimed the unity of victim and liberty, of sacrifice and volunteering.
Any society -- ours today at this moment, too, you see, is based on this profoundest act of faith that in any moment the order can be restored of a lasting, permanent continuity if the necessary sacrifices are made voluntarily.