[147] Now this produces the mystery of understanding^a, which is one of the most important things in all humanities. And this is not only a matter of us sitting here, 3000 or 2400 years AFTER PLATO, but it is also a matter of Plato^b himself: when he tried to understand his OWN texts, he never understood them---of course it is humanly impossible---exactly as he had written them. All of us who ever have written books or papers which they have preserved, and read them again after a certain reasonable time, in which something happens in their own development, will realize that these texts do not mean the same to them now than they did at that time; you don’t know any more exactly what they meant at that time. They mean often something not absolutely different, but quite different. This is one of the most interesting experiences. And I would like that sometimes, some of you, or some other doctorandus, would sit down for two years, or ten years, and look at the more important philosophers who had a development, and show the self-interpretation of their own texts by these philosophers in the later stages of their development. And they will find astonishing results! They are the FIRST one to create a "third" out of the text and out of their own means of understanding. Then their disciples follow---and how DISCIPLES understand masters, or teachers, is very well exemplified in that saying by Hegel^c which is probably apocryphal, but in any case is very good, as most apocryphal sayings are: "I have only one pupil who has understood me, and he has misunderstood me!"* Now this kind of thing is something which one should not take in terms of understanding or misunderstanding. All the pupils in the Hegelian school have understood him, ------------------------ * In private conversation, with myself and Horst Bürkle^d, then a Union Seminary colleague student, now a specialist in world religions in Germany, Prof Tillich expressed a doubt whether even Prof. James Luther Adams^e had understood him rightly. --Ed. My substitution for PT's "cryptic". -- Ed.