WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.260 align:middle line:90% 00:00:06.260 --> 00:00:09.200 align:middle line:84% Now I'm going to read a very long poem called 00:00:09.200 --> 00:00:10.450 align:middle line:90% "The First Hour of the Night." 00:00:10.450 --> 00:00:12.190 align:middle line:90% How's the volume? 00:00:12.190 --> 00:00:14.255 align:middle line:90% Is there too much feedback? 00:00:14.255 --> 00:00:14.755 align:middle line:90% Is it OK? 00:00:14.755 --> 00:00:18.070 align:middle line:90% 00:00:18.070 --> 00:00:21.170 align:middle line:84% This poem has a number of sources, the most important, 00:00:21.170 --> 00:00:25.150 align:middle line:84% biggest one is an essay called "The Dream" 00:00:25.150 --> 00:00:30.190 align:middle line:84% by a German philosopher named Wilhelm Dilthey. 00:00:30.190 --> 00:00:35.230 align:middle line:84% And it is the basis of the central episode 00:00:35.230 --> 00:00:39.490 align:middle line:84% in the poem, a dream of the history of philosophy. 00:00:39.490 --> 00:00:42.730 align:middle line:84% You're going to get inundated for a while with philosophy 00:00:42.730 --> 00:00:46.300 align:middle line:84% and names of philosophers, and I hope 00:00:46.300 --> 00:00:51.760 align:middle line:84% it's not going to be too hard to be under the deluge. 00:00:51.760 --> 00:00:54.490 align:middle line:90% 00:00:54.490 --> 00:00:59.710 align:middle line:84% I don't expect the listener or reader 00:00:59.710 --> 00:01:02.523 align:middle line:90% to know a lot about these. 00:01:02.523 --> 00:01:03.940 align:middle line:84% I'm getting a lot of feedback now. 00:01:03.940 --> 00:01:05.023 align:middle line:90% I'm going to turn it down. 00:01:05.023 --> 00:01:13.570 align:middle line:90% 00:01:13.570 --> 00:01:15.210 align:middle line:84% Well, I actually like using the mic. 00:01:15.210 --> 00:01:17.890 align:middle line:90% 00:01:17.890 --> 00:01:18.940 align:middle line:90% OK, how's this? 00:01:18.940 --> 00:01:19.540 align:middle line:90% How's this? 00:01:19.540 --> 00:01:22.480 align:middle line:90% 00:01:22.480 --> 00:01:23.810 align:middle line:90% It was better a minute ago. 00:01:23.810 --> 00:01:26.320 align:middle line:90% OK, let's do it there. 00:01:26.320 --> 00:01:28.300 align:middle line:90% How's this, how's this? 00:01:28.300 --> 00:01:29.510 align:middle line:90% OK, thanks. 00:01:29.510 --> 00:01:30.010 align:middle line:90% Sorry. 00:01:30.010 --> 00:01:38.160 align:middle line:90% 00:01:38.160 --> 00:01:41.310 align:middle line:84% I don't expect you to recognize all the names, 00:01:41.310 --> 00:01:47.490 align:middle line:84% but I hope that the basic groupings that the philosophers 00:01:47.490 --> 00:01:49.605 align:middle line:90% are in will be clear. 00:01:49.605 --> 00:01:54.610 align:middle line:90% 00:01:54.610 --> 00:01:58.660 align:middle line:84% The entire poem is enclosed in quotation marks, 00:01:58.660 --> 00:02:00.790 align:middle line:90% except for the last line. 00:02:00.790 --> 00:02:02.320 align:middle line:84% So just before the end of the poem, 00:02:02.320 --> 00:02:04.780 align:middle line:84% I'm going to say unquote, and say one more line. 00:02:04.780 --> 00:02:16.960 align:middle line:90% 00:02:16.960 --> 00:02:18.760 align:middle line:90% "The First Hour of the Night." 00:02:18.760 --> 00:02:21.750 align:middle line:90% 00:02:21.750 --> 00:02:30.180 align:middle line:84% Quote, "This happened about 12 years before I died. 00:02:30.180 --> 00:02:33.610 align:middle line:90% 00:02:33.610 --> 00:02:36.730 align:middle line:84% What I have to tell you is the narrative 00:02:36.730 --> 00:02:39.700 align:middle line:84% of an evening and night, a little more 00:02:39.700 --> 00:02:42.070 align:middle line:90% than a succession of dreams. 00:02:42.070 --> 00:02:46.900 align:middle line:84% One anxiety following another, the whole somehow, 00:02:46.900 --> 00:02:50.875 align:middle line:90% for me at least, wound and bomb. 00:02:50.875 --> 00:02:54.060 align:middle line:90% 00:02:54.060 --> 00:02:58.470 align:middle line:84% The friend I've been closest to throughout my life three years 00:02:58.470 --> 00:03:02.130 align:middle line:90% earlier suddenly was dead. 00:03:02.130 --> 00:03:05.010 align:middle line:84% For three years, his son had invited 00:03:05.010 --> 00:03:07.590 align:middle line:90% me to visit the family home. 00:03:07.590 --> 00:03:12.480 align:middle line:84% The family seat, a great house inherited 00:03:12.480 --> 00:03:17.010 align:middle line:84% by my friend in his 20s at his father's death, 00:03:17.010 --> 00:03:18.930 align:middle line:90% inherited now by his only son. 00:03:18.930 --> 00:03:21.690 align:middle line:90% 00:03:21.690 --> 00:03:24.750 align:middle line:90% What used to return. 00:03:24.750 --> 00:03:26.610 align:middle line:84% During his life, both of us often 00:03:26.610 --> 00:03:29.490 align:middle line:84% insisted that our philosophical discussions, 00:03:29.490 --> 00:03:33.480 align:middle line:84% ebullient arguments, hydra-headed analysis 00:03:33.480 --> 00:03:37.710 align:middle line:84% of the motivations, dilemmas that seemed to block and fuel 00:03:37.710 --> 00:03:43.200 align:middle line:90% our lives were central, crucial. 00:03:43.200 --> 00:03:46.920 align:middle line:84% But after his death, all I now could see 00:03:46.920 --> 00:03:51.150 align:middle line:84% was the self-generating logic of his life. 00:03:51.150 --> 00:03:58.620 align:middle line:84% It's distant, inaccessible, self-sufficiency. 00:03:58.620 --> 00:04:05.820 align:middle line:84% He'd been a storm at sea seen from land. 00:04:05.820 --> 00:04:10.560 align:middle line:84% What used to return as I imagined standing again 00:04:10.560 --> 00:04:15.690 align:middle line:84% within that house, within that world he'd been given, 00:04:15.690 --> 00:04:20.040 align:middle line:84% but it's so transformed by his affections, curiosity, 00:04:20.040 --> 00:04:24.270 align:middle line:90% shifting enthusiasms, care. 00:04:24.270 --> 00:04:27.150 align:middle line:84% Walking up the central staircase. 00:04:27.150 --> 00:04:34.340 align:middle line:84% Then after 20 feet, entering his study, 00:04:34.340 --> 00:04:41.000 align:middle line:84% its obscure, arbitrary finality stopped my breath. 00:04:41.000 --> 00:04:44.160 align:middle line:90% 00:04:44.160 --> 00:04:48.390 align:middle line:84% Three years to the day after this first death of a friend 00:04:48.390 --> 00:04:53.970 align:middle line:84% my own age, his son wrote that I would do his father's 00:04:53.970 --> 00:04:58.440 align:middle line:84% only child a great kindness if once again, I 00:04:58.440 --> 00:05:02.850 align:middle line:90% came to stay, even for a night. 00:05:02.850 --> 00:05:06.660 align:middle line:84% The house was, of course, changed. 00:05:06.660 --> 00:05:10.950 align:middle line:84% I suppose I had expected a museum to my friend. 00:05:10.950 --> 00:05:16.170 align:middle line:84% Instead, I found the embodiment of different interests, 00:05:16.170 --> 00:05:21.870 align:middle line:84% as well as incomprehension of or even the desire to erase, 00:05:21.870 --> 00:05:28.720 align:middle line:84% to blur what in his father had seen bold or witty or coherent. 00:05:28.720 --> 00:05:31.620 align:middle line:84% An unsymmetrical, fragile, Indonesian rocker 00:05:31.620 --> 00:05:35.820 align:middle line:84% had been sold, because uncomfortable. 00:05:35.820 --> 00:05:38.760 align:middle line:84% Curtains obscured the high, bare rectangles 00:05:38.760 --> 00:05:41.220 align:middle line:84% of windows, whose light or blackness 00:05:41.220 --> 00:05:45.495 align:middle line:84% once was shut out only by recessed, seldom-used shutters. 00:05:45.495 --> 00:05:48.480 align:middle line:90% 00:05:48.480 --> 00:05:52.755 align:middle line:84% Half the books were stored were sold. 00:05:52.755 --> 00:05:55.670 align:middle line:90% 00:05:55.670 --> 00:05:59.690 align:middle line:84% After dinner, we went into the study. 00:05:59.690 --> 00:06:02.450 align:middle line:84% Neither of us sat in his father's chair. 00:06:02.450 --> 00:06:05.360 align:middle line:84% High-backed winged, it still stood 00:06:05.360 --> 00:06:08.420 align:middle line:90% at an angle right of the fire. 00:06:08.420 --> 00:06:13.310 align:middle line:84% And I sat facing it on the left where I had always sat. 00:06:13.310 --> 00:06:16.430 align:middle line:84% The couch to my right was still there. 00:06:16.430 --> 00:06:20.000 align:middle line:90% He slumped at its far end. 00:06:20.000 --> 00:06:25.220 align:middle line:84% The small coal fires always burned one's face 00:06:25.220 --> 00:06:30.320 align:middle line:84% and failed to heat the dark, huge room. 00:06:30.320 --> 00:06:33.080 align:middle line:84% He put his hands to his temples, making a kind of hood 00:06:33.080 --> 00:06:35.450 align:middle line:90% over his eyes. 00:06:35.450 --> 00:06:38.480 align:middle line:90% I couldn't see his eyes. 00:06:38.480 --> 00:06:39.155 align:middle line:90% Then he spoke. 00:06:39.155 --> 00:06:42.930 align:middle line:90% 00:06:42.930 --> 00:06:46.980 align:middle line:84% I can neither sell this house nor live in it. 00:06:46.980 --> 00:06:49.410 align:middle line:84% If father had a favorite horse, you and I 00:06:49.410 --> 00:06:53.070 align:middle line:84% could sacrifice and eat it next to his grave. 00:06:53.070 --> 00:06:58.560 align:middle line:84% Then set up its head on a stake driven directly into the grave. 00:06:58.560 --> 00:07:01.890 align:middle line:84% That's how Harva says the Tartars convince the dead 00:07:01.890 --> 00:07:05.250 align:middle line:90% to stay dead. 00:07:05.250 --> 00:07:07.260 align:middle line:90% They seldom succeed. 00:07:07.260 --> 00:07:11.280 align:middle line:84% If a dead man's widow and children grow sick, 00:07:11.280 --> 00:07:13.320 align:middle line:84% the shaman knows the dead are eating them. 00:07:13.320 --> 00:07:15.840 align:middle line:90% 00:07:15.840 --> 00:07:18.840 align:middle line:84% You've known me since I was born. 00:07:18.840 --> 00:07:22.770 align:middle line:84% You know that I wasn't waiting for father to die. 00:07:22.770 --> 00:07:26.580 align:middle line:84% I had my own work, friends, income. 00:07:26.580 --> 00:07:29.280 align:middle line:84% I admit that I've always been a spendthrift, 00:07:29.280 --> 00:07:33.720 align:middle line:84% but I wasted my own money, not his. 00:07:33.720 --> 00:07:37.890 align:middle line:84% The prerogatives that descended upon me at his death. 00:07:37.890 --> 00:07:40.860 align:middle line:90% Position, much more money. 00:07:40.860 --> 00:07:45.450 align:middle line:84% The freedom implicit in the demands now placed upon me. 00:07:45.450 --> 00:07:49.530 align:middle line:90% I didn't connive or even will. 00:07:49.530 --> 00:07:52.830 align:middle line:84% They came in the course of things, 00:07:52.830 --> 00:07:54.495 align:middle line:90% because he was not here. 00:07:54.495 --> 00:07:57.030 align:middle line:90% 00:07:57.030 --> 00:08:03.000 align:middle line:84% But I enjoy them and even now, expect them. 00:08:03.000 --> 00:08:05.620 align:middle line:90% 00:08:05.620 --> 00:08:10.300 align:middle line:84% Again and again I dream father has come back. 00:08:10.300 --> 00:08:14.620 align:middle line:84% He's standing in the hallway as I descend the staircase. 00:08:14.620 --> 00:08:20.260 align:middle line:84% He looks up at me tired, relieved to be home. 00:08:20.260 --> 00:08:25.510 align:middle line:90% He's whole, well, not changed. 00:08:25.510 --> 00:08:29.770 align:middle line:84% But even as I rushed down the steps to embrace him, 00:08:29.770 --> 00:08:34.450 align:middle line:84% even as the irreparable fact that drained and diminished 00:08:34.450 --> 00:08:39.220 align:middle line:90% the world isn't fact. 00:08:39.220 --> 00:08:43.090 align:middle line:84% I know that I don't want him to have come back. 00:08:43.090 --> 00:08:46.180 align:middle line:90% All this is his, not mine. 00:08:46.180 --> 00:08:48.895 align:middle line:84% I'm again what his death made me no longer. 00:08:48.895 --> 00:08:52.080 align:middle line:90% 00:08:52.080 --> 00:08:57.300 align:middle line:84% Before I reach him, an elated circle of servants and friends 00:08:57.300 --> 00:09:02.850 align:middle line:84% surrounds him and leads them off. 00:09:02.850 --> 00:09:09.690 align:middle line:84% As they disappear, his head turns back to look at me. 00:09:09.690 --> 00:09:11.820 align:middle line:84% Then I know that each object that father 00:09:11.820 --> 00:09:16.290 align:middle line:84% chose for this house, but absent now from it, 00:09:16.290 --> 00:09:20.370 align:middle line:84% says that everything ever unresolved, clearly forever 00:09:20.370 --> 00:09:24.120 align:middle line:90% is unresolvable between us. 00:09:24.120 --> 00:09:30.030 align:middle line:84% For though I must give it all back, I can't give it all back. 00:09:30.030 --> 00:09:31.845 align:middle line:84% I've already spent too much money. 00:09:31.845 --> 00:09:34.970 align:middle line:90% 00:09:34.970 --> 00:09:39.770 align:middle line:84% Thus, though I know that no creature possesses anything 00:09:39.770 --> 00:09:45.230 align:middle line:84% on this Earth, sweating, I wake up terrified 00:09:45.230 --> 00:09:48.440 align:middle line:90% that father's returned to it. 00:09:48.440 --> 00:09:54.785 align:middle line:84% Baffled and appalled to find that what I want is his death. 00:09:54.785 --> 00:09:59.510 align:middle line:90% 00:09:59.510 --> 00:10:02.180 align:middle line:90% Then he stopped. 00:10:02.180 --> 00:10:05.750 align:middle line:90% There was a long silence. 00:10:05.750 --> 00:10:10.910 align:middle line:84% The voice I heard as he said all this in a sudden intonation, 00:10:10.910 --> 00:10:14.870 align:middle line:84% a passing phrase, in the pervasive self-wounding 00:10:14.870 --> 00:10:22.070 align:middle line:84% relentlessness of its logic was his father's. 00:10:22.070 --> 00:10:24.200 align:middle line:84% The fist at the center of my chest 00:10:24.200 --> 00:10:30.050 align:middle line:84% refused to unclench until he and I, the furniture we sat on, 00:10:30.050 --> 00:10:33.800 align:middle line:84% the room, the house, the very world 00:10:33.800 --> 00:10:43.040 align:middle line:84% itself cracked apart then self-combusted, self-consumed 00:10:43.040 --> 00:10:45.560 align:middle line:90% by our own self-contradictions. 00:10:45.560 --> 00:10:49.460 align:middle line:90% 00:10:49.460 --> 00:10:52.170 align:middle line:84% I told him that when I was a child, 00:10:52.170 --> 00:10:58.280 align:middle line:84% I had a pony who was for a period, my life. 00:10:58.280 --> 00:11:01.850 align:middle line:84% Even now if I close my eyes and look into his face 00:11:01.850 --> 00:11:04.940 align:middle line:84% I'm a boy again, looking into the face 00:11:04.940 --> 00:11:10.400 align:middle line:84% of a neurasthenic, panicked, mute creature like himself. 00:11:10.400 --> 00:11:15.950 align:middle line:84% In secret alliance forged half against what we lacked, 00:11:15.950 --> 00:11:21.080 align:middle line:84% words, a world that demonstrated its mastery over us 00:11:21.080 --> 00:11:27.780 align:middle line:84% by coercive, involuted adult human speech. 00:11:27.780 --> 00:11:34.230 align:middle line:84% He was a high-strung intelligent miniature colt my size, 00:11:34.230 --> 00:11:35.850 align:middle line:90% the prize of my sixth birthday. 00:11:35.850 --> 00:11:38.780 align:middle line:90% 00:11:38.780 --> 00:11:41.420 align:middle line:84% Perhaps time and retrospect have improved 00:11:41.420 --> 00:11:48.380 align:middle line:84% our mutual, absolute trust, delight, connection. 00:11:48.380 --> 00:11:52.340 align:middle line:84% But this was the first of those passionate attachments, 00:11:52.340 --> 00:11:59.480 align:middle line:84% passionate judgments that here, like answers, like soul answers 00:11:59.480 --> 00:12:06.200 align:middle line:84% soul, which since my childhood, whether in relation to animal, 00:12:06.200 --> 00:12:10.880 align:middle line:84% friend, an artist or performer I've discovered, 00:12:10.880 --> 00:12:16.700 align:middle line:84% a work of art, except where feeling has been bewildered 00:12:16.700 --> 00:12:24.230 align:middle line:84% by the desire for the reciprocation of erotic desire, 00:12:24.230 --> 00:12:26.870 align:middle line:90% have never betrayed me. 00:12:26.870 --> 00:12:30.710 align:middle line:84% Never when I've encountered again in body or memory 00:12:30.710 --> 00:12:38.330 align:middle line:84% what I loved seemed then stupid, ill-founded, grounded merely 00:12:38.330 --> 00:12:41.210 align:middle line:90% in willfulness, more illusion. 00:12:41.210 --> 00:12:45.170 align:middle line:90% 00:12:45.170 --> 00:12:48.380 align:middle line:84% At nine, I was sent to boarding school. 00:12:48.380 --> 00:12:53.120 align:middle line:84% The approach of this cataclysm held no allure for me. 00:12:53.120 --> 00:12:57.470 align:middle line:84% Rather, I felt rage and a sense of betrayal. 00:12:57.470 --> 00:13:01.460 align:middle line:84% But in fact, within a few weeks, books, 00:13:01.460 --> 00:13:05.180 align:middle line:84% the desire to dominate the attention of my teachers, 00:13:05.180 --> 00:13:11.600 align:middle line:84% and even wary camaraderie with my peers, for the first time 00:13:11.600 --> 00:13:14.800 align:middle line:90% swallowed me. 00:13:14.800 --> 00:13:20.530 align:middle line:84% When I unwillingly arrived home on our first holidays, 00:13:20.530 --> 00:13:23.350 align:middle line:84% I was told that several horses had come down 00:13:23.350 --> 00:13:25.990 align:middle line:90% with a fever, including mine. 00:13:25.990 --> 00:13:28.540 align:middle line:90% 00:13:28.540 --> 00:13:30.010 align:middle line:90% That my horse was dying. 00:13:30.010 --> 00:13:33.180 align:middle line:90% 00:13:33.180 --> 00:13:36.540 align:middle line:90% The next day he was carted off. 00:13:36.540 --> 00:13:37.695 align:middle line:90% There was no grave. 00:13:37.695 --> 00:13:40.410 align:middle line:90% 00:13:40.410 --> 00:13:42.690 align:middle line:84% Perhaps my earliest memory that is absolutely 00:13:42.690 --> 00:13:48.990 align:middle line:84% fixed in scene and time is the black horseflies' biggest 00:13:48.990 --> 00:13:52.680 align:middle line:84% thumbs covering and clinging to his body, 00:13:52.680 --> 00:13:57.840 align:middle line:84% the weird unseasonable blood-red sunset saturating the world 00:13:57.840 --> 00:14:00.570 align:middle line:84% while I knew his body was being carried off, 00:14:00.570 --> 00:14:03.615 align:middle line:84% but howling, I was held back within the house. 00:14:03.615 --> 00:14:06.550 align:middle line:90% 00:14:06.550 --> 00:14:13.090 align:middle line:84% Much later, when I was 12, 13, 14, in my dreams, 00:14:13.090 --> 00:14:18.340 align:middle line:84% my little horse again and again came back. 00:14:18.340 --> 00:14:23.650 align:middle line:84% He wanted to play, for me once again to mount him and ride. 00:14:23.650 --> 00:14:25.930 align:middle line:90% But I had no time. 00:14:25.930 --> 00:14:27.640 align:middle line:84% What I now was interested in were 00:14:27.640 --> 00:14:32.050 align:middle line:90% friends, school, my studies. 00:14:32.050 --> 00:14:39.400 align:middle line:84% Besides, as I stood next to him, he was too small. 00:14:39.400 --> 00:14:44.770 align:middle line:84% I had grown and he was now too small to ride. 00:14:44.770 --> 00:14:50.170 align:middle line:84% With a shiver, a stamp and sound of torment, 00:14:50.170 --> 00:14:51.760 align:middle line:90% he seemed to take this in. 00:14:51.760 --> 00:14:54.600 align:middle line:90% 00:14:54.600 --> 00:14:58.590 align:middle line:84% I told my friend's son that what he had felt in his dream 00:14:58.590 --> 00:15:03.660 align:middle line:84% was nothing so simple as greed or selfishness. 00:15:03.660 --> 00:15:08.760 align:middle line:84% That later in my 30s, again, I had known very similar emotions 00:15:08.760 --> 00:15:11.580 align:middle line:90% after other deaths. 00:15:11.580 --> 00:15:14.370 align:middle line:84% That there seemed to be something structural 00:15:14.370 --> 00:15:22.170 align:middle line:84% in human relations making what we had felt, well, impersonal. 00:15:22.170 --> 00:15:25.800 align:middle line:90% 00:15:25.800 --> 00:15:29.280 align:middle line:84% So he thanked me for my generosity and candor 00:15:29.280 --> 00:15:34.470 align:middle line:84% and said that he felt not only exhausted, but somewhat better. 00:15:34.470 --> 00:15:40.800 align:middle line:84% As I mounted the stairs to my room that night, what I felt 00:15:40.800 --> 00:15:46.280 align:middle line:84% was a woe unameliorated, unappeased. 00:15:46.280 --> 00:15:50.660 align:middle line:90% 00:15:50.660 --> 00:15:55.640 align:middle line:84% Now follows my dream of the history of philosophy. 00:15:55.640 --> 00:15:58.430 align:middle line:84% For that night in my room as I threw off my clothes, 00:15:58.430 --> 00:16:03.140 align:middle line:84% seeking in sleep only oblivion, erasure 00:16:03.140 --> 00:16:07.470 align:middle line:84% of the throbbing, that irremediably ignorant eye, 00:16:07.470 --> 00:16:12.950 align:middle line:84% angry at I did not know what, above my bed, 00:16:12.950 --> 00:16:17.000 align:middle line:84% I saw again, what since my first visit 00:16:17.000 --> 00:16:22.280 align:middle line:84% had hung there, Volpato's fine etching of Raphael's 00:16:22.280 --> 00:16:25.100 align:middle line:90% School of Athens. 00:16:25.100 --> 00:16:28.190 align:middle line:84% I remembered with a sudden and flooding access 00:16:28.190 --> 00:16:35.090 align:middle line:84% of pleasure the first time I'd seen in Rome Raphael's fresco. 00:16:35.090 --> 00:16:39.860 align:middle line:84% Here, under the image of the many-breasted goddess 00:16:39.860 --> 00:16:43.940 align:middle line:84% of philosophy in a medallion in the ceiling, 00:16:43.940 --> 00:16:47.990 align:middle line:84% flanked by two angels announcing knowledge 00:16:47.990 --> 00:16:52.640 align:middle line:84% of the causes of things, at the center of the high arch 00:16:52.640 --> 00:16:55.340 align:middle line:84% of the fresco itself, framed there 00:16:55.340 --> 00:16:58.580 align:middle line:84% by a vast, symmetrical, seemingly 00:16:58.580 --> 00:17:01.250 align:middle line:84% stable, but essentially, at least 00:17:01.250 --> 00:17:05.660 align:middle line:84% according to some writers, unbelievable architecture, 00:17:05.660 --> 00:17:08.000 align:middle line:84% there are two heads isolated by three 00:17:08.000 --> 00:17:12.260 align:middle line:84% great descending central arches that dreamlike, 00:17:12.260 --> 00:17:15.109 align:middle line:90% open to the sky. 00:17:15.109 --> 00:17:18.740 align:middle line:84% Calmly presiding over an ideal assembly 00:17:18.740 --> 00:17:22.670 align:middle line:84% of the great philosophers of antiquity. 00:17:22.670 --> 00:17:26.480 align:middle line:84% Not only metaphysicians and scientists, but students, 00:17:26.480 --> 00:17:29.570 align:middle line:84% a soldier, the leaning, listening figure 00:17:29.570 --> 00:17:35.240 align:middle line:84% of a Averroes, commentator representative of Islam. 00:17:35.240 --> 00:17:41.630 align:middle line:84% Plato and Aristotle, by their parallel but opposite gestures, 00:17:41.630 --> 00:17:45.980 align:middle line:84% Aristotle pointing downward, Plato upward, 00:17:45.980 --> 00:17:52.040 align:middle line:84% divide and order this debating, brooding, teaching, writing, 00:17:52.040 --> 00:17:55.700 align:middle line:90% nearly disharmonious multitude. 00:17:55.700 --> 00:17:58.190 align:middle line:84% On the side of Aristotle, representatives 00:17:58.190 --> 00:18:01.970 align:middle line:84% of the exact sciences, Euclid, Ptolemy, 00:18:01.970 --> 00:18:04.850 align:middle line:84% with speculative thinkers, Heraclitus, 00:18:04.850 --> 00:18:09.980 align:middle line:90% Pythagoras on the side of Plato. 00:18:09.980 --> 00:18:13.610 align:middle line:84% Opposite gestures, the Janus-like 00:18:13.610 --> 00:18:19.100 align:middle line:84% show us where to seek the causes of things. 00:18:19.100 --> 00:18:22.970 align:middle line:84% In this ideal community of the spirit, 00:18:22.970 --> 00:18:25.520 align:middle line:84% the social world, as the social world never 00:18:25.520 --> 00:18:33.410 align:middle line:84% is, death, rage, and arrows have receded to adorn recesses 00:18:33.410 --> 00:18:35.390 align:middle line:90% in the architecture. 00:18:35.390 --> 00:18:39.800 align:middle line:84% On the left, under a yielding, even voluptuous Apollo 00:18:39.800 --> 00:18:43.550 align:middle line:84% holding his lyre, an aging Triton 00:18:43.550 --> 00:18:48.350 align:middle line:84% seizes the breast of a resisting sea nymph. 00:18:48.350 --> 00:18:53.600 align:middle line:84% On the right, Medusa's severed face, mouth frozen 00:18:53.600 --> 00:18:59.040 align:middle line:84% open in an O of horror, from Athena's victorius 00:18:59.040 --> 00:19:02.790 align:middle line:90% shield stares powerless. 00:19:02.790 --> 00:19:08.150 align:middle line:84% Athena, Goddess of Wisdom, protector of the home, 00:19:08.150 --> 00:19:13.820 align:middle line:90% family, reason, civilization. 00:19:13.820 --> 00:19:17.930 align:middle line:84% When I first saw this scene, the title, School of Athens, 00:19:17.930 --> 00:19:22.340 align:middle line:84% a misapprehension imposed on it in the 18th century, 00:19:22.340 --> 00:19:25.970 align:middle line:84% I was largely ignorant of the intricate iconography 00:19:25.970 --> 00:19:30.740 align:middle line:84% connecting the room's four walls and ceiling. 00:19:30.740 --> 00:19:35.720 align:middle line:84% Philosophy looks across at theology 00:19:35.720 --> 00:19:41.120 align:middle line:84% while poetry faces jurisprudence. 00:19:41.120 --> 00:19:46.910 align:middle line:84% Each itself divided, canon law and civil law, 00:19:46.910 --> 00:19:49.730 align:middle line:84% in the interrelations and elegant distinctions 00:19:49.730 --> 00:19:52.610 align:middle line:90% informing its walls and ceiling. 00:19:52.610 --> 00:19:55.430 align:middle line:84% This is a compendium even synthesis 00:19:55.430 --> 00:20:00.020 align:middle line:84% of Renaissance speculative religious aesthetic thinking. 00:20:00.020 --> 00:20:04.130 align:middle line:84% An ideal Renaissance, temple of the human mind. 00:20:04.130 --> 00:20:06.920 align:middle line:90% 00:20:06.920 --> 00:20:12.440 align:middle line:84% Its premise, the neoplatonic Christian humanist confidence 00:20:12.440 --> 00:20:15.410 align:middle line:84% that the world's obdurate contradictions, 00:20:15.410 --> 00:20:24.210 align:middle line:84% terrifying unintelligibility can be tamed by classification. 00:20:24.210 --> 00:20:26.850 align:middle line:90% Time now has effaced. 00:20:26.850 --> 00:20:29.360 align:middle line:90% 00:20:29.360 --> 00:20:35.030 align:middle line:84% This room, intended as the site of the Pope's personal library, 00:20:35.030 --> 00:20:38.480 align:middle line:84% then where he signed before assembled dignitaries 00:20:38.480 --> 00:20:44.000 align:middle line:84% of the highest papal tribunal bulls and official documents 00:20:44.000 --> 00:20:49.400 align:middle line:84% was the first of the rooms that Raphael painted for the Pope. 00:20:49.400 --> 00:20:54.200 align:middle line:84% Only 25 with little reputation, he'd been summoned from 00:20:54.200 --> 00:20:58.550 align:middle line:84% Florence to Rome at the suggestion of his patron, 00:20:58.550 --> 00:21:03.590 align:middle line:84% Bramante, architect of the new Saint Peter's. 00:21:03.590 --> 00:21:08.780 align:middle line:84% Decoration of the room was already begun. 00:21:08.780 --> 00:21:13.160 align:middle line:84% But no one is certain how much Sodoma, six years Raphael's 00:21:13.160 --> 00:21:16.460 align:middle line:90% senior, had completed. 00:21:16.460 --> 00:21:20.210 align:middle line:84% For when the Pope saw Raphael's sketches, 00:21:20.210 --> 00:21:23.090 align:middle line:84% there's never enough wall space here. 00:21:23.090 --> 00:21:27.470 align:middle line:84% At the center of power, he ordered everything 00:21:27.470 --> 00:21:32.600 align:middle line:84% that Sodoma had painted destroyed. 00:21:32.600 --> 00:21:37.910 align:middle line:84% In the fresco, next to Raphael's own self-portrait, 00:21:37.910 --> 00:21:41.870 align:middle line:90% is the face of Sodoma. 00:21:41.870 --> 00:21:44.660 align:middle line:84% Both stand behind Euclid, geometry 00:21:44.660 --> 00:21:48.560 align:middle line:84% is central to the painter's skill at perspective. 00:21:48.560 --> 00:21:53.330 align:middle line:90% Euclid has the head of Bramante. 00:21:53.330 --> 00:21:58.940 align:middle line:84% Raphael, without illusions, looks out at us. 00:21:58.940 --> 00:22:05.990 align:middle line:84% Sodoma smiles without rancor or humiliation, 00:22:05.990 --> 00:22:09.530 align:middle line:84% absorbed in the conversation before him. 00:22:09.530 --> 00:22:13.220 align:middle line:84% In this ideal community of the spirit, 00:22:13.220 --> 00:22:17.780 align:middle line:84% Socrates and Aristotle are modeled on antique busts. 00:22:17.780 --> 00:22:23.720 align:middle line:84% But Plato has the features of Leonardo, Heraclitus 00:22:23.720 --> 00:22:28.670 align:middle line:84% self-enclosed but writing, the short hooded stonecutter's 00:22:28.670 --> 00:22:32.250 align:middle line:84% smock of a pensieroso Michelangelo. 00:22:32.250 --> 00:22:35.920 align:middle line:90% 00:22:35.920 --> 00:22:39.490 align:middle line:84% The Apollo who shares rain with Athena 00:22:39.490 --> 00:22:47.950 align:middle line:84% here is the God not of reason, but poetry, I said to myself 00:22:47.950 --> 00:22:50.920 align:middle line:90% as I began to fall asleep. 00:22:50.920 --> 00:22:56.770 align:middle line:84% And then fixing the arc of the Fresco before my mind, 00:22:56.770 --> 00:23:01.210 align:middle line:90% here, everyone feels it. 00:23:01.210 --> 00:23:07.900 align:middle line:84% The gesture of Plato and the gesture of Aristotle are one. 00:23:07.900 --> 00:23:10.570 align:middle line:90% 00:23:10.570 --> 00:23:13.870 align:middle line:84% Knowing that I loved it, my friend 00:23:13.870 --> 00:23:19.440 align:middle line:84% once had placed the School of Athens above my bed. 00:23:19.440 --> 00:23:24.660 align:middle line:90% Smiling, now I remembered this. 00:23:24.660 --> 00:23:25.560 align:middle line:90% Now I'm asleep. 00:23:25.560 --> 00:23:28.490 align:middle line:90% 00:23:28.490 --> 00:23:36.710 align:middle line:84% Then to my humiliation and shame, I was in it. 00:23:36.710 --> 00:23:44.300 align:middle line:84% That tumultuous perished world now not perished lay before me. 00:23:44.300 --> 00:23:49.730 align:middle line:84% Out of estrangement, I had gained or been given entrance, 00:23:49.730 --> 00:23:53.360 align:middle line:90% privilege in no way earned. 00:23:53.360 --> 00:23:58.640 align:middle line:84% Above me, past the temple's multitudinous, strangely empty 00:23:58.640 --> 00:24:05.540 align:middle line:84% rising steps, Ptolemy still held aloft the green and blue globe 00:24:05.540 --> 00:24:06.155 align:middle line:90% of the Earth. 00:24:06.155 --> 00:24:08.690 align:middle line:90% 00:24:08.690 --> 00:24:14.000 align:middle line:84% Then as I turned to crouch or hide, 00:24:14.000 --> 00:24:17.750 align:middle line:84% from the distance on either side, 00:24:17.750 --> 00:24:22.520 align:middle line:84% I saw a long row of men dressed in the varied garments 00:24:22.520 --> 00:24:28.880 align:middle line:84% of succeeding centuries approach the steps where I stood. 00:24:28.880 --> 00:24:32.330 align:middle line:84% When each figure passed me, for a moment looking 00:24:32.330 --> 00:24:38.090 align:middle line:84% into my eyes full face, I tried to recognize him. 00:24:38.090 --> 00:24:41.060 align:middle line:84% There, just as I had imagined them 00:24:41.060 --> 00:24:46.190 align:middle line:84% in the light of their portraits, was Bruno, one button 00:24:46.190 --> 00:24:50.330 align:middle line:84% missing on his long, black scholar's gown, 00:24:50.330 --> 00:24:55.310 align:middle line:84% still smelling of sulfur from the fires of the Inquisition. 00:24:55.310 --> 00:24:59.840 align:middle line:84% He held a book titled Feast of Ashes. 00:24:59.840 --> 00:25:03.020 align:middle line:84% Descartes, priest-like in devotion 00:25:03.020 --> 00:25:08.900 align:middle line:84% to his self-made revolution, heavy-lidded, as if worn out 00:25:08.900 --> 00:25:14.780 align:middle line:84% by thought or lessons at dawn for the queen of Sweden. 00:25:14.780 --> 00:25:20.210 align:middle line:84% Hegel and Schelling walking hand in hand, as 00:25:20.210 --> 00:25:24.020 align:middle line:84% in the morning of their young collaboration 00:25:24.020 --> 00:25:29.360 align:middle line:90% before distance, fame, silence. 00:25:29.360 --> 00:25:38.000 align:middle line:84% These, and so many others, each alive as his voice on the page, 00:25:38.000 --> 00:25:42.290 align:middle line:84% each body now inseparable from its fate, 00:25:42.290 --> 00:25:46.940 align:middle line:84% yet with the unachieved, purposeful will of the living, 00:25:46.940 --> 00:25:49.280 align:middle line:90% ascended the steps. 00:25:49.280 --> 00:25:54.920 align:middle line:84% And without barrier, began to listen and mix and speak 00:25:54.920 --> 00:26:00.470 align:middle line:84% in earnest debate, yet strangers' courteous deference 00:26:00.470 --> 00:26:02.720 align:middle line:84% with the philosophers of antiquity. 00:26:02.720 --> 00:26:05.680 align:middle line:90% 00:26:05.680 --> 00:26:08.920 align:middle line:90% Irrational happiness seized me. 00:26:08.920 --> 00:26:12.160 align:middle line:90% Not at the absence of discord. 00:26:12.160 --> 00:26:14.920 align:middle line:90% Discord will come. 00:26:14.920 --> 00:26:18.040 align:middle line:84% But to see this that at last lies before me 00:26:18.040 --> 00:26:23.110 align:middle line:90% is as I have known real. 00:26:23.110 --> 00:26:27.130 align:middle line:84% After chimeras of contingency and resistless 00:26:27.130 --> 00:26:32.500 align:middle line:84% self-estrangement to see chimeras of the real. 00:26:32.500 --> 00:26:35.290 align:middle line:90% 00:26:35.290 --> 00:26:38.770 align:middle line:84% Then something happened which I did not 00:26:38.770 --> 00:26:41.620 align:middle line:90% expect, even in a dream. 00:26:41.620 --> 00:26:46.600 align:middle line:84% As if compelled or drawn by inner necessity, dividing, 00:26:46.600 --> 00:26:50.710 align:middle line:84% they rushed to join themselves into groups, 00:26:50.710 --> 00:26:53.230 align:middle line:84% groups that now I saw had been there, 00:26:53.230 --> 00:26:56.350 align:middle line:90% though I had never seen them. 00:26:56.350 --> 00:26:59.350 align:middle line:84% But my words are mere summary for what 00:26:59.350 --> 00:27:03.460 align:middle line:84% I remembered when I woke seeing the faithless shadow of what 00:27:03.460 --> 00:27:06.130 align:middle line:90% I had seen. 00:27:06.130 --> 00:27:09.190 align:middle line:84% First, the movement pressed to the right, 00:27:09.190 --> 00:27:12.580 align:middle line:84% where next to Ptolemy, wearing on his gown 00:27:12.580 --> 00:27:16.990 align:middle line:84% a resplendent globe of the heavens, Archimedes, 00:27:16.990 --> 00:27:22.660 align:middle line:84% leaning down to the stone beneath them, drew his circles. 00:27:22.660 --> 00:27:25.990 align:middle line:84% Here around these two figures gathered 00:27:25.990 --> 00:27:30.040 align:middle line:84% materialists, mathematical naturalists, positivists, 00:27:30.040 --> 00:27:34.120 align:middle line:84% I recognized Hobbes, Comte arguing with Descartes. 00:27:34.120 --> 00:27:38.460 align:middle line:84% Then restlessly circling at the edges of the group, 00:27:38.460 --> 00:27:41.800 align:middle line:84% D'Alembert, whose ironic smiles seemed 00:27:41.800 --> 00:27:46.870 align:middle line:84% to mock the dreams of the metaphysicians 00:27:46.870 --> 00:27:49.780 align:middle line:84% All those thinkers who see within the indecipherable, 00:27:49.780 --> 00:27:54.490 align:middle line:84% furious cataract of life, within bewildering, 00:27:54.490 --> 00:27:59.110 align:middle line:84% annihilating flux, a great intelligible 00:27:59.110 --> 00:28:07.090 align:middle line:84% process, measurable universal nature, impartial, 00:28:07.090 --> 00:28:11.620 align:middle line:84% noncensorious, whose unbreakable chain 00:28:11.620 --> 00:28:16.480 align:middle line:84% of unvarying coherent laws frees us 00:28:16.480 --> 00:28:20.980 align:middle line:84% from the prison house of human superstition, religious dogma, 00:28:20.980 --> 00:28:24.640 align:middle line:90% hallucination. 00:28:24.640 --> 00:28:33.880 align:middle line:84% Here mind and consciousness or body, free will, 00:28:33.880 --> 00:28:36.145 align:middle line:84% darkness still undispelled by science. 00:28:36.145 --> 00:28:40.350 align:middle line:90% 00:28:40.350 --> 00:28:44.700 align:middle line:84% Now Comte, systematizer of positivism, 00:28:44.700 --> 00:28:47.640 align:middle line:84% standing as if confident that he is heir 00:28:47.640 --> 00:28:50.220 align:middle line:84% to the immense authority, confirming 00:28:50.220 --> 00:28:54.240 align:middle line:84% its insight into reality conferred on science 00:28:54.240 --> 00:28:58.380 align:middle line:84% by its transformation of the world, 00:28:58.380 --> 00:29:03.630 align:middle line:84% announces to devoted listening thinkers from all nations, 00:29:03.630 --> 00:29:09.240 align:middle line:84% his face flushed, eyes shrewd but credulous, 00:29:09.240 --> 00:29:13.860 align:middle line:84% a new clergy, a scientific, industrial elite, 00:29:13.860 --> 00:29:19.560 align:middle line:84% henceforth translating to expectant hungry society 00:29:19.560 --> 00:29:23.850 align:middle line:84% invariable laws newfound by thickened science. 00:29:23.850 --> 00:29:26.500 align:middle line:90% 00:29:26.500 --> 00:29:33.970 align:middle line:84% As he spoke, Descartes, abruptly once again the French cavalier, 00:29:33.970 --> 00:29:40.150 align:middle line:84% striding forth with bold, setting forth with bold stride, 00:29:40.150 --> 00:29:43.810 align:middle line:84% disengaged himself from all these figures, 00:29:43.810 --> 00:29:49.030 align:middle line:84% turning his gaze irresistibly toward the center of the temple 00:29:49.030 --> 00:29:54.220 align:middle line:84% to a second group, which had assembled, arranged itself as 00:29:54.220 --> 00:30:00.040 align:middle line:84% if magnetized around Socrates at its center. 00:30:00.040 --> 00:30:04.780 align:middle line:84% With an old God like Plato and young Aristotle each writing 00:30:04.780 --> 00:30:06.025 align:middle line:90% down his words at his feet. 00:30:06.025 --> 00:30:08.830 align:middle line:90% 00:30:08.830 --> 00:30:13.570 align:middle line:84% Here, the conviction that mind, spirit, consciousness 00:30:13.570 --> 00:30:17.170 align:middle line:84% are merely an interpolation in the immense text 00:30:17.170 --> 00:30:22.120 align:middle line:84% of the physical universe was reversed. 00:30:22.120 --> 00:30:25.690 align:middle line:84% As Socrates spoke, among those listening, 00:30:25.690 --> 00:30:30.950 align:middle line:84% I saw Plotinus, Cicero, Christian theologians. 00:30:30.950 --> 00:30:33.970 align:middle line:90% Augustine held the confessions. 00:30:33.970 --> 00:30:38.410 align:middle line:84% Thomas Aquinas distractedly fingered strands of straw 00:30:38.410 --> 00:30:42.220 align:middle line:84% from a crown of straw on his head. 00:30:42.220 --> 00:30:46.450 align:middle line:84% As he explained it through dialectic dialogue, 00:30:46.450 --> 00:30:49.540 align:middle line:84% argument by contradiction proceeding 00:30:49.540 --> 00:30:52.960 align:middle line:84% to the reconciliation of contradiction, 00:30:52.960 --> 00:30:56.350 align:middle line:84% for only contradiction impels thought. 00:30:56.350 --> 00:30:59.950 align:middle line:84% And what is thought but the silently occurring 00:30:59.950 --> 00:31:04.960 align:middle line:84% internal dialogue of the soul with itself. 00:31:04.960 --> 00:31:08.480 align:middle line:84% Pug-nosed and pugnacious, Socrates 00:31:08.480 --> 00:31:12.550 align:middle line:84% had made me feel that he had seen in spirit what he 00:31:12.550 --> 00:31:15.580 align:middle line:90% struggled to express in words. 00:31:15.580 --> 00:31:20.680 align:middle line:84% As he explained it through dialectic or power of reason, 00:31:20.680 --> 00:31:25.210 align:middle line:84% we can make our way to an order past the delusions 00:31:25.210 --> 00:31:29.950 align:middle line:84% of custom self-deception, desire, 00:31:29.950 --> 00:31:40.270 align:middle line:84% and can then by an act of choice change, correct our lives. 00:31:40.270 --> 00:31:47.530 align:middle line:84% Suddenly, from behind his voice, blending with his voice 00:31:47.530 --> 00:31:49.810 align:middle line:90% was a woman's voice. 00:31:49.810 --> 00:31:54.070 align:middle line:84% I moved slightly to the left to see its source. 00:31:54.070 --> 00:32:01.090 align:middle line:84% There, were the seated figures of Dante and Sappho, 00:32:01.090 --> 00:32:05.680 align:middle line:84% who grasped disintegrating pages of a book in her hand, 00:32:05.680 --> 00:32:13.690 align:middle line:84% wrapped, silent before her, was Scheherazade 00:32:13.690 --> 00:32:18.370 align:middle line:84% seated on an embroidered pillow, wearing transparent silks, 00:32:18.370 --> 00:32:21.760 align:middle line:90% plucking an instrument. 00:32:21.760 --> 00:32:27.910 align:middle line:84% Whose wizard songs, I've known them since my youth, 00:32:27.910 --> 00:32:31.540 align:middle line:84% beguiled the sword that hangs above her. 00:32:31.540 --> 00:32:34.360 align:middle line:90% 00:32:34.360 --> 00:32:40.210 align:middle line:84% Troubled, excited voices soon broke my attention. 00:32:40.210 --> 00:32:43.840 align:middle line:84% Turning back, I saw the circle of listeners 00:32:43.840 --> 00:32:49.360 align:middle line:84% now had divided into disputing factions 00:32:49.360 --> 00:32:55.330 align:middle line:84% while Augustine, standing to one side, stared out at them. 00:32:55.330 --> 00:32:58.870 align:middle line:84% What one thinker confidently asserted, 00:32:58.870 --> 00:33:03.010 align:middle line:90% another spurned as illusion. 00:33:03.010 --> 00:33:08.380 align:middle line:84% What one human being flew from, another sought. 00:33:08.380 --> 00:33:11.410 align:middle line:84% Some struggled to reconcile the wisdom of Greece 00:33:11.410 --> 00:33:17.650 align:middle line:84% with Christ's revelation while other melancholy voices doubted 00:33:17.650 --> 00:33:21.280 align:middle line:84% the free, sufficient autonomy of reason 00:33:21.280 --> 00:33:25.630 align:middle line:84% and the human will, faced with our confusion, 00:33:25.630 --> 00:33:32.380 align:middle line:84% weak and isolated organs of perception, helplessness. 00:33:32.380 --> 00:33:35.710 align:middle line:90% The abrupt arrival of Descartes. 00:33:35.710 --> 00:33:39.850 align:middle line:84% For the first time, I noticed that the hair thickly growing 00:33:39.850 --> 00:33:45.010 align:middle line:84% beneath his lower lip on one side was shaved off. 00:33:45.010 --> 00:33:49.210 align:middle line:84% Then later, of the stooped, slightly built Kant 00:33:49.210 --> 00:33:51.910 align:middle line:84% with his cane and three-cornered hat, 00:33:51.910 --> 00:33:56.770 align:middle line:84% his features hardened as if by the strain of thought, brought 00:33:56.770 --> 00:34:01.270 align:middle line:90% brief order to this spectacle. 00:34:01.270 --> 00:34:04.630 align:middle line:84% But Augustine, pushing past all this 00:34:04.630 --> 00:34:07.540 align:middle line:84% with a gesture of revulsion, that 00:34:07.540 --> 00:34:13.510 align:middle line:84% seemed to rise from an intuition indistinguishable from himself. 00:34:13.510 --> 00:34:20.770 align:middle line:84% His hands now empty, already had abandoned the scene before him, 00:34:20.770 --> 00:34:24.429 align:middle line:84% turning to a third final group gathered 00:34:24.429 --> 00:34:30.460 align:middle line:84% at the left of the temple, whose center was Pythagoras 00:34:30.460 --> 00:34:33.670 align:middle line:90% and Heraclitus. 00:34:33.670 --> 00:34:37.630 align:middle line:84% From this milling, Mercurial crowd, 00:34:37.630 --> 00:34:41.949 align:middle line:84% Hegel now looked at one moment like Bismarck and another 00:34:41.949 --> 00:34:44.650 align:middle line:90% like Shelley. 00:34:44.650 --> 00:34:51.370 align:middle line:84% Words emerged, master and slave, predestination, 00:34:51.370 --> 00:34:54.699 align:middle line:90% preservation of the species. 00:34:54.699 --> 00:35:05.980 align:middle line:84% God imminent in nature, race, blood, stages of absolute mind, 00:35:05.980 --> 00:35:09.220 align:middle line:90% progress, class. 00:35:09.220 --> 00:35:16.150 align:middle line:84% The inexorable laws of history, the psyche, the age. 00:35:16.150 --> 00:35:24.010 align:middle line:84% Logos, the world as will and idea, the one. 00:35:24.010 --> 00:35:28.150 align:middle line:84% The inescapable society of the dead and the living 00:35:28.150 --> 00:35:29.635 align:middle line:90% who have made us what we are. 00:35:29.635 --> 00:35:32.950 align:middle line:90% 00:35:32.950 --> 00:35:34.740 align:middle line:84% Here, the materialists have been as it 00:35:34.740 --> 00:35:37.590 align:middle line:90% were turned on their heads. 00:35:37.590 --> 00:35:43.590 align:middle line:84% Now spirit, imminent, transcendent, or unknowable, 00:35:43.590 --> 00:35:48.690 align:middle line:90% is ground of body, governs body. 00:35:48.690 --> 00:35:52.140 align:middle line:84% The single human psyche powerless 00:35:52.140 --> 00:35:55.470 align:middle line:84% within the immeasurable power of its laws, 00:35:55.470 --> 00:36:02.090 align:middle line:84% goals, will, reached by daring to contemplate 00:36:02.090 --> 00:36:06.830 align:middle line:90% in a calm spirit, coherence. 00:36:06.830 --> 00:36:11.270 align:middle line:90% Or by hard-practiced submission. 00:36:11.270 --> 00:36:18.860 align:middle line:84% Freedom here is to accept necessity or else 00:36:18.860 --> 00:36:21.890 align:middle line:84% when intolerable existence wholly becomes 00:36:21.890 --> 00:36:27.680 align:middle line:84% the snake that swallows its own tail, to smash 00:36:27.680 --> 00:36:30.860 align:middle line:90% the head of the snake. 00:36:30.860 --> 00:36:35.570 align:middle line:84% Here, ceaseless human choices, decisions dilemmas, 00:36:35.570 --> 00:36:40.880 align:middle line:90% mortality itself is illusion. 00:36:40.880 --> 00:36:44.990 align:middle line:84% The cunning used upon us to silence the voice within that 00:36:44.990 --> 00:36:50.480 align:middle line:84% says, someone else led my life, I 00:36:50.480 --> 00:36:55.080 align:middle line:90% am an onlooker on my own life. 00:36:55.080 --> 00:37:01.260 align:middle line:84% Then among those listening to Schopenhauer, 00:37:01.260 --> 00:37:03.960 align:middle line:90% I saw my dead friend. 00:37:03.960 --> 00:37:09.030 align:middle line:84% I'm certain that I saw him, though when I approached him, 00:37:09.030 --> 00:37:14.730 align:middle line:84% standing just behind him, when he turned at my touch, 00:37:14.730 --> 00:37:22.920 align:middle line:84% his head was the cloud dispersed into discrete atoms 00:37:22.920 --> 00:37:26.550 align:middle line:84% as if I had drawn too close to a painting made out 00:37:26.550 --> 00:37:30.900 align:middle line:84% of discrete spots of separate color. 00:37:30.900 --> 00:37:35.280 align:middle line:90% He was no longer there. 00:37:35.280 --> 00:37:40.260 align:middle line:90% Inheritor inheriting inheritors. 00:37:40.260 --> 00:37:44.040 align:middle line:84% He'd worked to transform an inheritance, transformed 00:37:44.040 --> 00:37:49.110 align:middle line:84% in its turn, as if the soul delivered 00:37:49.110 --> 00:37:51.870 align:middle line:84% over unconscious and defenseless not 00:37:51.870 --> 00:37:57.270 align:middle line:84% only to this world of things, but to its own darkness. 00:37:57.270 --> 00:37:59.700 align:middle line:84% Flinging itself into the compensations 00:37:59.700 --> 00:38:03.930 align:middle line:84% that the world and its own self offer it, 00:38:03.930 --> 00:38:07.280 align:middle line:84% but finding the light of self-knowledge." 00:38:07.280 --> 00:38:12.089 align:middle line:90%