Late, Late Lecture; Moses Hadas - The Ancient Ideal And Its Survival

Now, the thing I wanted to talk about is humanism, which is a very slippery word. Anybody that says he's going to talk about humanism should be suspect, at least for sloppy thinking, perhaps even disingenuousness, because the word means so many things. It means a kind of rampant secularism on the one hand, on the other hand we do have Christian humanists, very great ones and very sincere ones. It means a bias against science, it means a bias in favor of science. We know that all of the words which denote a kind of commitment to a way of life always fought about, take even a word like democracy, we think we know what it means, the Russians think they know what it means, they talk about democracy, well it's quite easy to look up the dictionary and see if it means rule of the people and try to determine which of

us comes nearest to that definition. Curious thing about humanism is that it does in fact mean all of these things quite legitimately. The way the word started is quite interesting. I had always thought that it went back to the ancients, of course it doesn't, it's a modern word, and it came into use in the Italian universities before the Renaissance. These universities were divided up by faculties, faculty of law, faculty of philosophy and so on, and if a man wanted to study language and literature, he didn't belong to any faculty, and he was said to be studying literary humaniores or the humanities, humane letters. And of course the only literature and language that was worth studying in actual fact was the Greek and Latin at the time, of course modern literatures have since developed and

they're dignified enough to be worth studying, that was not always the case, and we still have traditions of humanist studies, the humanities in that same kind, for example, a secondary school on the continent, which goes in heavily for the classics, it's called a humanistic schismnasium, or my opposite number in the Scottish University would be called the Professor of Humanity, he still is called that, and the two things about it as far as studying is concerned, which seem to be important, one and probably the most important is that it's non-professional, it is what the ancestor of our liberal arts idea is, you're studying something from which you could not conceivably make a living, the minute it's possible to make a living out of it, it's ceases being humanity, except for us who get a living by teaching it, that's one, the other is a distinct bias in favor of the ancient books, so they didn't clumb your college, and in many, many other colleges, if you have a course

label to humanities, which would deal with monuments of literature from beginning of western civilization until today, you would find usually at least half of them belong to antiquities, so that's still that, now humanities stand for many things, it is the literature, it is what comes out of the literature mainly that has to do with classical antiquity, mainly Greece of course, mainly 5th century Greece, but in 5th century Greece you did not have an orthodoxy, you did not have a revelation, anything like ten commandments, you had many strands of thought going along together, and a man who was looking for corroboration for his ideas from classical antiquity could find them whatever they are, you wouldn't of course have Christianity with notions of sin and grace and so forth, but you would have the dualism of Plato which comes very near it, aspiration towards an ideal that's outside

of humanity, assimilation to something more than human, and the notion that the body and the soul are distinct entities, and it's the duty of man to suppress the body and favor of the soul, on the other hand you can have the outright stark man, the measure idea formulated by a protagonist, a notable suffice in the 5th century, who did say man is the measure of all things, this was the kind of humanism which fard people's imagination in the period we call humanists, 16th century about, and it's the kind which has been meaningful in modern Europe and until this day, and I tell you that this is the kind I'm going to talk about without evangelism, without trying to convert anybody to anything or away from anything but to make clear a different point of view which has been meaningful in

the intellectual history of Europe. I think I'd better start with one statement at the beginning since I am in a consecrated building. When you say man is the measure of all things, which suggests the relativism in morality, which just suggests that you reexamine everything every day, see whether it still works and if it doesn't work rejected, which is what the suffice said, this would imply and has been said to imply quite often a kind of atheism. I insist that it does not because the same protagonist who said man is the measure of all things continued instead of the gods, I do not speak because I cannot know. All that I can know is one side of the equation and that when I talk about that does not mean that the other side does not exist. And I may say that a development of that kind of

thinking so far from being atheist has led to some of the noblest, loftiest theological thought in the world, the kind of thinking which says that any predication about deity is blasphemous, that it's as wrong for a man to say God is good, as it is for him to say God is evil, because who asked him, that is any statement that you make implies that you're putting yourself out of the way, watching what God is doing and saying that's very good, I will sing you him to you and give you a brass button. Now I'm not saying I repeat gentlemen that this is what I am necessarily teaching, I'm explaining. There's a school of Arabic philosophers called the Muta Kalimun which held that very firmly. It may be the doctrine behind the book of Job, I personally believe that it is, to put it briefly, we

Job's friends are so sure of ourselves, we know that turn to make for, we watch the divine operations when turn to make for, we say fine, but why should we, because if the divine wishes to make turn to five, why not, this is not our business, we've only got to see that when we add turn to we get four, and the others completely beyond our control. I think probably you get to the height of this kind of thinking in Spinoza, who says that you should love God, he was the God intoxicated man, with no expectation of being loved and return, the thing that we like to think of, the friend behind the phenomena, just simply does not exist. Now I think that the humanism of this sort of man, the measure, can start at the very beginning of Greek thought, continues in a strong stream until the end of antiquity,

the rise of Rome and of Christianity, then is drowned into a trickle or ashes, embers if you prefer that image, and busts out again in a flame in the 15th and 16th century, and has controlled our outlook on things until this day, not for the worst necessarily. I think that a good deal of our troubles is that we try perhaps to follow one system, say lip service to another. My personal feeling is that many of our psychiatrists live on that dichotomy. Well, this thing started as I say with the beginning, and I would say that from Homo, who is the earliest one we have, to the Epicureans who have had a very bad press because both Christianity and Rome were against them. You talk about, Lee, Drinking

and Mary, for tomorrow we may die, which is not really fair to them, I shall try to show. It's a continuation, and the doctrines of Epicureanism, the doctrines of the Sufists who have also had a bad press are implicit in Homo, and I'll start with Homo. I don't know how many of you remember him, but you know that Achilles is a great hero in the Iliad, and you know also if you read Homo with any thoughtfulness that Achilles is an extremely bad citizen, he's unlike any other hero that we have in Western literature, because he starts out by refusing to fight in time before, because his ego has been affronted. He sulks. He prays that his own side should lose, so that his own glory should be enhanced. When his closest comrades are in trouble, he won't help them. This is an absolute obsession with ego. It hurts, it would seem monstrous, it is in fact monstrous. This obsession. Nobody

says anything against it, he seems to be a good man, and people are grateful to him for having somehow extended the horizons of what is possible for humanity. You begin to look a little closer and you'll find one line, which is repeated two or three times in the Iliad when a father sending his son out into the world. It tells him to remember this. I don't know whether any helleness here, but I do remember the line in Greek and we'll translate it. I.A. Aristurane, ca hyperachoneminai allone, always excel, always be ahead of everybody else. This is the conviction, which the young man went out into the world, that his job is to be number one, whatever he's doing. If he happens to be a warrior, we can understand how, but if he is a doctor or a carpenter, it's still a play. Now, it's often said that whom there's a bible of the Greeks, this is wrong, it didn't have that kind of authority.

It was, however, the mainstay of education, and in the historic period, and Homo comes before the historic period, every Greek that knew anything knew Homo by heart. This was the beginning of his education, the main substance of his education. And I would suggest that boys brought up on this doctrine would accept this compulsion to be number one, with this little question as you accept the facts of the multiplication table. You don't go and check them, this is part of what is accepted. I think if you look at how the Greeks operated in the classical period, you notice some strange things, what scholars call the agonistic element, element of rivalry. If you wanted to write a play, for example, you didn't just sit down and write a play, you entered a play into a competition. It's the only way you did it, and you got first, second, and third plays. And if you got first plays, this was terrific. You got your name in the books, and on a monument. You didn't get

much else incidentally. Just as when you won in the games, you got a crown of wild olive or parsley, or some other vegetable, which didn't amount very much. But the name, the assition, was the most important thing. I've always been interested in the fact that pottery, cheap kinds that you would expect to buy in a five and ten-cent store for household wear, are all always signed. The name is important. And although the whole idea is an aristocratic one, I think that perhaps the greatest of all things that the Greeks did, which is democracy, would again have been impossible without this absolute edge to sit yourself in B number one. They didn't have representatives of democracy. Everybody was a member of the ecclesia. Everybody could, and most did, speak out. So that you have this terrific edge, we associated with a heroic ideal, the chivalry, but then our bourgeois poet, Hesiod, who is

next in time to home, a may even be contemporary, who is a peasant poet, glorifies work, and is against riding around and pushing people around. There's a wonderful passage at the very beginning. He says, there are two kinds of strife in the world, Eris. One is a bad kind, causes quarrels, causes bloodshed. He says, but there's a good kind, which when a man knows he will love. And this is the kind that improves everything we've got and makes it abundant. He goes on to say, how? He says, potter, in this potter or rivals potter, poet, rivals poet, beggar, rivals beggar. All of these professions, whether you're a potter or poet or a beggar, you're a better potter, make better pots, you're a better beggar, better poet, because it is so important for you to sit your ego yourself. I mean, you mentioned that if you look at this entire sweep that I've spoken of, you will find

this strenuous desire to record your name among the Greeks. It continues until the Roman period, where you begin to get an anonymity. A man has swallowed up in the larger cause. This loose again in the humanist period, where people again are signing things, writing books about the dignity of man when they're doing the writing biographies again, which they didn't do like Vassari. And when a man like Michelangelo doesn't sign his name with letters, he signs in the way that's at least as clear. I mean, the individual comes out very strong, you see. Now, one could say that the enormous effervescence at the end of the fifth century, which started off our literature and philosophy in our cannons of art and everything else that our civilization is built on. It's built on so firmly that we don't even recognize it as alien elements as part of the warp and woofer of our civilization

may have been made because of the succession. I'll grant you very readily that it is an obsession, in a way. Some of the things are very amusing. You get a touching play like the Trojan women. There's Hekibu, who is represented and has this having lost 50 sons in the war, kingdom has gone and so on. Somebody is consoling her and seeing an effect. You know, if these terrible things hadn't happened, you wouldn't have got your name in the paper. And getting your name in the paper is apparently enough consolation for all of these terrible things and makes it all worthwhile. Always get back to Homer and go down quickly in succession. The next thing after Homer would be the tragic poets. And I'd like to say a little bit about them and the two things that are involved in Homer. It is the gods and the heroes. Those gods are very troublesome. Critics at the turn of the century thought they were merely decorative and you could leave them out. Of course, you

can't. Gods appear on every page and they function. Our first question is, how, with the gods so prominent in the action, can you talk about the self-impelled hero who is asserting himself? After all, he shouldn't be a marionette being pulled by a wire. And this is a great question. Because the point of the Iliad, the reason that people have hung on to it for so long is this picture of the heroic ideal. Or what about a heroic ideal if a man is only being pushed by a wire, pulled by a wire. And the answer there, I think, is interesting. You will have to forgive me for being very short on this. And therefore, being unfair, Homer's complicated poem with many strands. I think the essential one and the one that's continued in Sophocles and Euripides is a concept of the world which fits in with this man the measure. There are gods, world of gods, there's a world of men.

The two are separate. Quite separate. There are two spheres. The gods attend to their sphere to come for to know that they're there. They keep the world going. Men can only attend to their sphere and the two don't intersect. And the fact that gods are like men having the same appearance except that they're more beautiful and so on, the same emotions only makes the difference worse because they live forever. You find gods in the Iliad capable of saying when they're tempted to intervene, why should we bother with these creatures of a day? We won't soil our hands with them. Let's go off and lead our divine life and leave them to their petty devices. This explains a complete view of life, a tragic view. What is man to do? He used to do the best that he can, choir man by his lights. If then he

is tripped up as humanity frequently is tripped up. By forces not only out of his control but out of his calculation, this is what tragedy is. The man is doing the best he can by the only light that he has because he is not God or revelation. And in fact the gods aren't interested in setting up a pattern for mankind. Their pattern is different. When you get to the sophisticated Epicureans who are saying the same thing, they say in so many words, what's the use of being a God if you have to keep book on man all the time? So the gods and the Epicurean system off having a picnic all the while. And the Epicureans have their morality. Of course they have, but it's the calculus morality. It's arithmetic. For example if you have the big bottle of gin sitting here. And well why should I not drink that bottle of gin? I do it on calculus. If my arithmetic is good I figure out that

the hangover will be worse than the pleasure. Therefore I refrain. If I knew there'd be no hangover there'd be no earthly reason why I should not. And therefore these Epicureans whose goal was at her exit being untroubled and who identified man's end as happiness, as the absence of pain. Actually what were they doing in this garden? Eating drinking and being married. In fact is that they were mostly doing geometry because they found out the geometry gave the most pleasure with the least hangover. So that on their calculus of hedonism this was a good thing to do. I think it's interesting to look at. These are the gods. Now how about the heroes? The heroes are something very interesting in the Greek view. You see the anthropologists will tell you a hero incidentally less to find it first. It isn't the principal character in the work of the imagination like a novel or a play.

The word is technical. It means a man who by his career doing or suffering has earned a cult which is to say that either little shrine or piece of wood or something is put up as his memorial. And on his name day, his annual day, a handful of flowers, a little wine or something is offered. He might be invoked in prayer in the realm in which he was concerned. Now the anthropologist know all about this. They say that the hero originally simply means a ghost. The offerings are devised to lay the ghost because he'd be inclined to come back and hurt you so you keep the piece that way. And you have parallel things in other cultures. For example, you've got in Egypt, what do you do with the dead there while you mummify them? If you're going to fort it, you put in a spare head out of stone, case the fist head should deteriorate. If you're going to fort it, you put in even a second

spare head of stone, case the fist head should deteriorate in the passage of time. After you've done all that, you seal it up. It's very clear that this head is for the use of that deceased and nothing else. You're doing it perhaps out of fear, perhaps out of love, but there it is. It's for him. The Greek view was like ours, celebrating Lincoln's birthday, Washington's birthday. We're not doing it to do a favorite Lincoln of Washington. They don't really need it. We're doing a favorite ourselves because we're remembering certain qualities, certain virtues, to good first to keep in mind, to have a particular occasion for keeping in mind. But I think the great difference is between the Christian notion of the saint, which is very closely parallel, except for one very great difference. The saint attains sainthood by assimilating himself to an ideal outside of humanity by shaking off humanity. The more he shakes off the flesh and assimilates himself to an ideal that

above the human, the closer he approaches to this be attitude. And he's always a very good man. And the curious thing about our Greek heroes, and this is something worth looking at, again gentlemen, I'm not trying to sell it to you, just to look at it, that the Greek heroes so often, such a rough character, model is Achilles himself. You couldn't tolerate him as a house mate at all. But the thing is, if you want certain qualities which he has got, if those qualities enrich life somehow, then you cannot take your coin and split it in two and say we would like Achilles over here, his prowess. But we would like a plaster saint on this side because men don't come that way. And the price of the one is the other. The plays of Sophocles in particular, almost all trials, to see where the people who were on record as heroes were in fact heroes. And the first of these plays which ever read

as puzzled by, seems to me to be very eloquent and very useful. The earliest one is Ajax. And the critics all try to save Ajax. The thing is Sophocles isn't trying to save Ajax. Ajax is a brute in the play intended to be shown as such. Mean to his wife, mean to the chorus that depends upon him, absolutely obsessed with self and nothing else. Very unpleasant man. We even know Sturry's about him. When he left home, his father told him, pray to the gods and you will have a good career. And he said, hell, which that effect anybody can do that, I'm going to have a good career without praying to the gods. There's a magnificent scene when he is fighting in the Iliad, he is consistent. And the sun suddenly darkens. He's fighting hard and he offers prayer for the first time. He said Zeus, I don't need any help. I can take care of myself. I don't want you to do anything. Just let me have

a little light so I can see what I'm doing. I won't light the fight by, but nothing else you stay out. You see, this is Ajax, this toughy who is obsessed. But Ajax is the only man in the Greek army that can hold back all of the Trojans. Now what do we want? Us, little people. Because in Sophocles, it's always the little people must stay in line. The chorus and the lesser character. It's the great character who goes out of line, who breaks his neck doing it, but he's done something for all of us. I can't tiggin it. We shouldn't do what I'm tiggin it does, but it's a fine thing for the rest of us that one woman had the courage to do it. It enlarges their horizons. Here is Ajax, you need him, because he alone can do things, but you're not going to get a man that can hold the whole Trojan army back and get cast for milk toast. And you just have to decide, are you going to take this toughy, are you going to pay for it or not? Don't expect him to be outside of humanity, but the hero is doing his emphasizing the best qualities that humanity is capable of.

He gets into trouble because things beyond his calculation have tripped him up. You see this beyond the calculation? It's almost like this is unreasonable because we don't think in these terms. It's almost like gravity, let's say, or electricity. No question of fairness. A piece of wire, copper wire says, don't touch. Well, you touch it. You expect to stain your fingers and get a tingle. You oughtn't to be killed. That doesn't seem to be an adequate right punishment for disobeying a little sign. But if there's enough current you are killed, you see, or if you walk down and something is falling down a piano or something out of the 13th floor, you don't stop to argue with the justice of gravity and so on. You get out of the way if you can, but the question of the motivation and so on is not for you. This is no use troubling your head about it because you can't really know, as Portagra

said. I see this system goes on. The sophists systematized it to this degree. They again have had a bad press because all of our books were written by people on the other side who were actually in the minority, Plato, and Aristophanes and so on. What the sophists said, they're trying to rationalize this, very simple. Look at every human institution. Well, I'll start at the beginning. How did they decide this? It was a scientific man who started it. Hypocrite is the doctor. He cut people up and he says, you know what? All of these people belong to the same species. And when you cut them up, you can't tell whether Greeks are barbarians, slave of free kings or commoners. Species are the same. Because he says they all take food alike and they produce sounds alike. These were his two criteria. Therefore, they must be the same species. This was taken over by the sophists. What hypocrite said is that the changes, the differentiation

between men which he recognized are not matters of nature, feces. These are matters of convention. There is a man who's a king and others a commoner and this is the way it should be because society has ordained it this way and then went to ask, ask no further questions. He's a doctor just as business decide these things. But the sophists, in particular one antifon, who's fragments have been found incidentally in the present century, reduce this to a system and you can see what protagonists man and the measures coming out of. He says you take every human institution and you look at it and you decide is this the way it is because of nature, feces, or is it the way it is because of norms, law, convention? If it's the way it is because of nature, there isn't anything we can do about it except to accommodate ourselves to it. If it is the way it is by convention, it was created

by people for the sake of expediency and therefore when it's no long expedient, not only may but must be changed. For example, this we get in the place of Euripides, we take the position of women and we've always assumed that they're inferior or barbarians, foreign as that is. We've always assumed they're inferior. What does this inferiority rest upon? Is it a question of nature? If so, there's nothing to be done about it. If it is convention, then something should be done about it, it can be done about it. That's what the idea is about. She's a woman and a foreigner and because we've ignored that she gets pushed into. The apologists, the apologists, is illegitimate. Why this, why the stain of illegitimists? Nature are convention. You know that this seems to us very simple. You begin to realize why Plato and Aristotle both very conservative talk about certain people being slaves by nature.

Why do they insist on this by nature? Justify the whole institution of slavery, you see. If they didn't put in by nature, then the sophists come along and say what's the difference between this man and anybody else. Plato and Socrates are both said, probably it's a powerful story, but it might well have been true. To have got up each morning and offer three prayers of thanksgiving. One, I'm a Greek and not a barbarian. Two, I'm a man and not a woman. Three, I'm free and not a slave. Because the other things are different not only in the different in nature, not only by convention. We might decide conventionally that a woman should not own property or have beyond a certain disability. Fine. But you see how subversive, how uncomfortable this would be to every conservative. My father, dofftist, had to your father. Is there any reason under the sun? That probably was right and proper. Why should doffman had to you? I have to reexamine this every day to see

where the situation is. On these things which have to do with convention. This is an extreme uncomfortable doctrine as you can recognize. Tradition has less and less value. Morality becomes relative and you have to reexamine every day. Well, now this line which I could go on great length illustrating continues. You get down to the Epicureans who, because they insisted on this nature convention dichotomy, insisted on a materialistic universe. What Epicureans was concerned with was to free men, as he said, from fear of bogies, fear of death, fear of the gods. And so in order to insist that there was no divine direction to human life, everything was said to be world is made of atoms, the void, and nothing else. This is their formula. Atoms, the void, and nothing else. And everything is created

by a fortuitous concatenation of atoms at a mouthful. But it's all chance. There are gods who are also atoms, the more refined kind. There is no providence. There's no reason to fear death because the atoms dispish. They're indestructible. They lost forever. But they take new combinations. Oh, this is rationalizing, making sophisticated doctrine. It seems to me is implicit along the whole line here. And I mention it because it is very different from one strand of European thought. You can see why the Christians, and you can see why the Romans, both of whom in both of which systems' providence was essential, patriotism and religion were not very far apart, could not tolerate this kind of belief, and it became nathema. There's something else that happens. When Rome comes in, the first authors in Rome

were just as much obsessed with self as the Greeks were. I don't know how many of you may have read, let's say, Horace, exegy monument to my adepeteneus. I've blooded me a monument more during than bronze. I will last forever. My name will go through the ages. All my shoulders are beginning to age because the wings are sprouting and I shall fly through. It's really repulsive, and with the most of, by the fact that he was right because he has continued. But you soon stop. I think that the comparison between Achilles, this Greek hero of the Greek epic, and a neus, the Roman hero, is one of the most illuminating things, not only for antiquity, but for all time. Achilles is obsessed with self and prays for his own side to lose so his self can come up. A neus is a slave of destiny. He's an instrument of divine providence. It is his duty to found Rome. It is his duty to himself to be a model

for all succeeding Romans, who are called Ainia Die, children of a neus, almost children of Israel. And you fulfill yourself as a Roman by carrying out this great mission. And you yourself don't matter. This is your complete fulfillment. This is your duty. And the neus himself, who is the model, is constantly gets tired on this journey, tempted to stop let's say in Africa with Daido, who's a good cook. And he is tired, but he has to go on. And when he goes on and shocks all of our school boys by leaving Daido in the lurch, it's just then always that the poet uses the epithet pius, pius and neus, because he knows his duty. As far different from this other notion as it can possibly be, he here is the European hero. I mean, the man who is carrying out this charge, and what Rome is going to do, you see the in the Greek empire. Some of you I hope know the Billion dialogue at the end of the fifth

book of Thucydides, where the Athenians say we are running an empire, not because we're better than anybody else. We happen to be stronger. And it is the way of nature for the strong to rule a week. And when you become stronger, we will, you will rule us and we won't complain. Nature is red and tooth and clawed. This is the nature of man. We think it's also the nature of God. Nobody has told us to the contrary. Where the Romans begin carrying the white man's burden. And they say, we don't, we are just instruments to bring light to the dark corners of the earth, to police the world and so on. They're very different thing. And you can see concomitantly, and there's actual physical evidence, because we do have lots of stones and books and whatnot. There are just many fewer names known, and the names become fewer and fewer. You ask any literate Greek who built the Parthenon? He could tell you at once the name of the architect, the name of the artist, and so on. Well, who

built a great cathedral? Which is also a very complicated work of art, much more complicated in fact. You don't know. I mean, this was a service to a greater cause where the individual doesn't matter. One of my special studies is the works of the apocrypha. I've published editions of several of the pseudo-pigraphy. And one thing that interests me, take the two books of the Maccabees. They're both written by Hellenistic standards of historiography. One of them, the first Maccabees, we know is we have them only in Greek. The first Maccabees is a translation of a Semitic original, either Hebrew or Arabic. It's a fine book, completely anonymous, no title. The second Maccabees says in its preface that it's an epitome of a longer work by Jason of Cyrene. His name is there. No Greek is going to write a book and not put his name on it, you see. Two different views. I mean, the one view where

what you get said is what's in the book, particularly those apocalyptic works, dealing with eschatology. You submerge yourself. The cause is very much greater, but the Greeks didn't submerge themselves, and this is one very great difference. And then these embers, it gets quieter and quieter down, isn't it? People weren't working in the Middle Ages. They weren't voted, and I suppose having good time. We even have some secular poets. We have to give them names, just artificial names to identify them, because they didn't put their names down. The change which comes in in Italy with a humanist period is one of the most striking things in the world, aside from all other changes, there's suddenly emergence and anonymity. This hectic insistence on signing your name. It even works in theology instead of talking about salvation of groups and so forth, it's the individual salvation.

So this thing goes on. I think I would like myself to mention some of the humanist books in which this comes about. Mind you, not only Machiavelli, who is shocking, why is he old Nick? He's telling the truth about the political nature of man, but he's telling it purely on human grounds. He talks about religion, he says it's good for the prince to appear to be religious. Good for the prince to keep his word. He must, however, not get so into the habit of keeping his word that he finds it difficult to break it. This is Machiavelli, the old Nick. Even Utopia, which was written by Saint Thomas, if you please, who deserved

his beatification if any man ever did, I think. The only truly tolerant man that I'm sure of whose tolerance I'm sure, because he himself suffered martyrdom, which takes a lot of doing. And in his Utopia, he will run out of town anybody who speaks against anybody else's religion, or who's too ardent in preaching hellfire. This is a man that I call really tolerant, because as one standard for himself, it's not just indifference. And that is a control society, but it's a society, the whole aim of the control as a policing function to release the individual for his own self-improvement of the highest degree, Maintain you. One piece called on the cannibals. And he's describing the way the cannibals live and how different their ideals are from those in Europe. And then at the end, he has several good things that the cannibals do. For example, they don't lie, they haven't got a word for lying,

they call everybody a fraction of everybody else, a moiety, this one is a fraction of somebody else. And he has a lot of good things about them. Then he winds up and saying, but what's the good of all that? They don't wear pants. Which I think is terrific. This is enormous and feces with a vengeance. We will not accept their notion because we have done what? We have taken things which are enormous. That is wearing pants, if you like, and have exalted it into feces. It's a nature of man to wear pants. Man that doesn't wear pants, wears a kilter or a toga. What can he say to us? He can't say anything to us. He's a different species, you see. I think this, I think perhaps the most shocking to the modern reader and the most lightful is rabbley. In his little utopia, he's got the abdiff to them. The light ful fry, fry John, John, a wonderful character. He's got to be rewarded. So he has given

a monastery. And this is described in detail. And you wonder what the system of the description is. It's very easy to see the system if you stop for a minute to think of what monasteries were like. First place was built in the sort of hexagonal shape with the largest possible number of windows, not dank and cold and gloomy. The second place was monks and nuns, young men and young women, finishing school. All people of education, well educated, and they wore the most beautiful possible clothes, silks, brightly colored, and so on. In fact, the ladies would send word to the gentleman every day what colors they were wearing so the gentleman could match neckties or whatnot so they would look harmonious. There was absolutely no clock in the place, clocks are absolutely forbidden, and the motto do what

thou wilt. Well, this is very easy because the monk is supposed to have certain laws. He's supposed to be poor, poverty. Well, let's throw out of the window. You wear so clothes and you dine as sumptuously as possible. Supposed to have chastity here, men and women are together. And of course, obedience. So you have hours all the time. You do this on this hour, and nuns, terraces, and so forth, out with it all. Now, suppose, in what the what-fried John hopes is that the young men and the young women will go hand in hand out of the monastery into the world and live happily ever after. Now, suppose a prude comes along and he catches one of these fries, chucking a sister under the chin and saying, kuchi kuchi or whatever, is this shocking? Well, the answer is that if this is what well-bred, well-fed, well-educated people do, and they all seem to do it, then you'd better change your notions

of what is shocking. This is again. A rabbley was a friar to the end of his time. He was a devout man. He took the service very often. We have documents showing it. He was released from certain functions. But this is a new wind. If this isn't man, the measure I don't know what is. This isn't for disilluteness or anything else. But when you're approaching your goal, your ethical goal, not by conforming to an extra-humans' standard, but by doing the best you can, quite human, by the best lights that you have. And this is, I put it in the most shocking possible way because I think this is an implication of what's being said. If the monk makes a pass at the nun, what about it? Well, what about it is, if the admissions office has done its work properly, these are good people, they're well-educated people,

they're all right. And this is the way all right people behave. Then it's all right for all right people to behave this way. And you just got to change your rule about it because man is a measure. And it's mountainous, says somewhere. Oh, he's very shocking line. He says, I'm a Catholic by the same title that I'm a perigordian. This is awful. I mean, if Catholicism is a soul, exclusive belief, how can he say he's a Catholic by the same title that he's a perigordian? If he lifts somewhere else, he would have been something else. See, this is, this in itself is shocking. And then he goes on to say, and he lived at a time when people were burning each other, you know, Saint Bethalam, you know, and so on. And what he says is, it takes a great deal of assurance that you're right. If you're going to burn your neighbor for not agreeing with you, people who burn other people always righteous people are very sure of their righteousness. But he says, you've got to be really very,

very sure that you're on the inside track before you start burning other people for not agreeing with what you say. Now, I think that this impulse, this release has continued with ups and downs until our own time. I think that perhaps even the obsession with the name is maybe sick, but it characterizes us. I'm a very great optimist about what we're doing. I'm supposed to look back always to the fifth century, which is my natural habitat, maybe. And they did wonderful things. I don't believe there's been a concentration of genius ever. And I'm supposed to deploy what's going on today. Well, I think that our centrist has done quite as much, quite a different way with not a question of repeating, imitating, even emulating. But it's done it, I think, because of this same release. And our finishes, I started with the kind of apology, saying that there's something that's worth looking

at here, I think. And if you examine dispassionately the whole line of development, and I would also insist this, and here I'm being a little bit pedantic and scholarly and perhaps even a little bit warm, because so many people have said otherwise that when you look at Protagros, man is a measure of all things. You're not dealing with the village atheist. This is not the man who, you know, is just rebelling for the sake of rebelliousness. You're dealing with a person that's potentially profoundly religious. A person that potentially is doing, as I said, before the same thing that Job did, that the Mute Kalimund did. And as far as doctrinal things are concerned, and like you reflect a little bit on this notion, which I'm not saying that you should throw all the himmels out, you shouldn't have some very nice tunes in them, and I was brought up on some of them.

But when you get to this level where any predication about deity is a sign of arrogance of spirit, it seems to me you've gotten to profound in a lofty kind of belief. I will hasten to say, I see a gentleman on the wall whom I've heard and who has a wonderful little book about prayer. I still remember one line out of it, and this book was published in the early 20s, at least that's when I read it, and he's talking about prayer, and he is aware of the arrogance in some people's minds. And I still remember one line there, he says, prayer is good for you, the way sweeping is good for broom, broom's improved when it sweeps, and I think this is a good doctrine, but I think the other doctrine also is worth looking at. I tell you the forces that have most to do with our outlooks

today, and this may shock you, and it doesn't matter whether you've read a line of a manata three, and one of them is Darwin, and the other one is Marx, and the other one is Freud, and if you stop and reflect on all three of these, on their basis, whether it's Freud, or whether it's Marx, or whether it's Darwin, they are all continuing just precisely where the fifth century left off, the discussion is going on with certain bases, always man the measure, this is where Freud is looking, and this is where Marx is looking, now as far as the Marxian doctrine, I think poor man, his economics are awful, I mean this he is one of the most overrated people as far as economics are concerned in the world, his politics probably equally bad, his impulses none of us can help at marrying,

his impulses were the impulse of a prophet, he saw great suffering, degradation in the factories of his time in Europe and he wanted to do something about it, who cannot admire that, now what happens with the commissars afterwards is quite a different story, this is what makes me believe in original sin and Augustine, this is the nature of people to do this, but I would like very much to take Marx apart into two, the sound is the cheritivism, impulses are beyond question to me, and I think he is impractical like ever prophet is, but particularly his descendants who have exploited it in wrong ways, but you see he again starts out with rough language about the establishment, because the establishment is what is responsible, and it is so easy, I am not using any allegorical

interpretation by saying that what he is doing is saying, look you good people, you have confounded feces and nomus, and what you have said is that well we will take it over to Americans and slavery, these are the sons of Ham and they have got to be enslaved, but it isn't like that, and the hard classification which you are yielding to because you think this is the way of nature is only the way of convention, it was established by convention and therefore it can be changed, it is susceptible to change, now how his politics are, I trusted we are all adults, so they are for kind thing to say about Marx, it is not enough to string me up, but this is the way I look at it, and it is the same thing with Darwin who I am not a scientist who probably has been discredited also, but he again is taking, well he can further down as far as nature is concerned, species and so forth, which of course all descended from those that went into the arc two by two,

and well it isn't like that you see, and Darwin I think I don't know much about him as a devout man, I think each of these people had their own devoutness, I think each of them loved mankind very much because only people who love mankind do this kind of thing, don't brush them aside, I mean you get, I have often thought of Swift who is one of my favorite authors, goodness how he loads these little mean creatures, says terrible things about him, the little apputions and the junims, but if you didn't love them he wouldn't have talked that way about, he would have said well I blessed you all and I will go and do my business, I had time, that's where I would go on, I'd be treading ground that is much less familiar to me than the ground that I have been treading, but it seems to be so clear that if you take the three

people who are most responsible for our outlooks today, responsible for them, whether we've read a line of them or not, that doesn't really matter, just as the Greeks are responsible for a lot, many of us haven't read either and we're not aware of it, but you can look at each of them and his modus operandi, his premises, his aspirations and to me it's such a clear thing, here's a conversation that's been going on, it's been interrupted, people have dozed off and the conversation has taken up again and been very fruitful, I think it's been responsible for the very great advances, we're a little bit hesitant about them, people always were in this piece that Jake was kind enough to mention, I've started with a stir of Prometheus, this is a familiar one, Prometheus stole fire and gave it to mankind and Zeus punished him for stealing the fire,

and we look at that, Shelley particular looks at that and says this is outrageous, this is a tyrannical thing and we should rebel against this, well maybe Zeus is very wise, maybe it's we with our sedenties, that fire and therefore tools, all of these things which come out of fire, very good things and why should the man who liberated us be punished, will answer the very simple one and now I feel quite in the mood of churchliness, what Zeus knows is that if he gives man fire then he sure as sure as can be he's going to make an atom bomb just a question of time and is this the best thing to do, the question of the inscrutable Zeus not as a gesture of piety but as a genuine lack of knowledge and not an assumption the this arrogant assumption with which the Jewish and Christian tradition has made central

that God's chief job is to take care of mankind, keep watch on him, I mean this is part of what's going on in a divinely ruled universe but I think that the I'd like to talk a whole lot about Ezekolus's Prometheus where I think all of this is implied very clearly, so did you see this man the measure thing has its weak spots by the traditional upbringing of most of us but it has its very strong spots to in a purely spiritual way