The Rudolf Steiner Archive

5. Theosophy and Tolstoy

[ 1 ] The two concepts that must guide us through the labyrinth of worldly phenomena are life and form. Life is constantly changing into a thousand and a thousand forms. This life expresses itself in its most manifold manifestations. It would be without any outward manifestation, without the possibility of presenting itself in the world, if it did not appear in ever new and new forms. Form is the manifestation of life. But everything would vanish into the rigidity of form; all life would be lost if form did not continually renew itself within life, if it did not again and again become a seed to shape new forms out of the old ones. The seed of the plant becomes the fully formed plant, and this plant must in turn become a seed and give existence to a new form. This is how it is everywhere in nature, and this is precisely how it is in the spiritual life of human beings. In the spiritual life of the individual and of humanity, too, forms change, and life is sustained through the most manifold forms. But life would stagnate if forms did not continually renew themselves, if new life did not spring forth like a seed from old forms.

[ 2 ] Just as the ages change throughout human history, so too do we see life taking on the most diverse forms in the course of that history. In the lecture on “Theosophy and Darwin,” we saw the manifold forms in which human cultures and what we call history have expressed themselves since then. We have seen some of these forms in the ancient Vedic culture of India. We have seen this shift in forms through the ancient Persian, then the Chaldean-Babylonian-Assyrian-Egyptian, then the Greco-Roman culture, and finally through Christian culture up to our own time. But this is precisely what is significant about the spiritual development of our time: that a shared life is pouring out more and more into outward forms, and our age may truly be called the age of forms, the age in which human beings are taught in every respect to express themselves through form.

[ 3 ] Wherever we look, we see the dominance of form. We have the most brilliant example of this in Darwin. What did Darwin study and pass on to humanity in his teachings? The origin and transformation of animal and plant species in the struggle for existence. This is proof that our science is focused on external form. And what exactly did Darwin have to explain—and openly declare? I have shown you how he specifically emphasized that plants and animals express themselves in the most diverse forms, yet that, according to his conviction, there were original forms into which life had been breathed by a world-shaping Creator. That is Darwin’s own statement. Darwin’s gaze is directed toward the development of forms, toward the development of external appearance, and he himself senses the impossibility of penetrating into that which animates these forms. He takes this life for granted; he does not wish to explain it. He does not look at it at all; rather, for him the question is merely how life takes shape.

[ 4 ] Let us consider life in another sphere, the sphere of art. I wish to speak of just one characteristic aspect of our artistic life, but I would like to examine it in its most radical form precisely in this context. What a stir the buzzword “naturalism”—not meant in a pejorative sense—caused, especially in the 1870s and 1880s! And this buzzword, “naturalism,” perfectly captures the character of our time. This naturalism found its most radical expression in the French writer Zola. How powerfully he depicts human life! But his gaze is not directed directly at human life, but at the forms in which this human life expresses itself. How it expresses itself in mines, in factories, in city neighborhoods where people perish in immorality, and so on—Zola depicts all these various manifestations of life, and essentially all naturalists depict the same thing. They do not direct their gaze at life itself, but only at the forms in which life finds expression. — Consider our sociologists, who are supposed to provide the data on how life has taken shape and how it should take shape in the future. The buzzword of the materialist conception of history and of historical materialism has been much talked about. But how do the sociologists view the matter? They do not look at the human soul, not at the inner workings of the human spirit; they observe external life as it manifests in our economic life, how trade and industry flourish in this or that region, and how people must live as a result of this external structure of life. That is the way sociologists view life. They say: What do we care about ethics and the idea of morality! Create better external forms for people, better external living conditions, and then morality and the quality of life will naturally rise to a higher level. — Indeed, in the form of Marxism, modern sociology has asserted that it is not the ideal forces in human life that are the most important, but the external forms of economic life.

[ 5 ] All of this shows you that we have reached a stage of development in which people’s gaze is primarily directed toward the form of external existence. If you take the greatest poet of our time, Ibsen, you will see in him, in particular, how his gaze is directed toward this form of existence, and how—because he is simultaneously filled with the warmest feeling for the life of the soul, for a free life—he has, so to speak, been driven to despair by the very way in which these forms have taken shape. This is the case with Henrik Ibsen. It is he who presents life to us in its most varied forms, who shows us how life in form always gives rise to contradictions, how souls perish and wither away under the pressure of life’s forms. It is virtually symbolic of the forgetting of the soul-spiritual that he concluded his play with the words: “When we dead awaken.” It is as if he had wanted to say: We modern people of contemporary culture are so completely enclosed within the external form of life that we have so often mastered . . . and when we awaken, how does the sight of the life of the soul present itself to us within the rigidly established social and ideological forms of the West? — This is the fundamental tendency in Ibsen’s dramas, which is also expressed in his dramatic testament.

[ 6 ] We have thus shed some light on the Western culture of forms. In our examination of Darwinism, we have seen how this culture of forms is directed toward the external, mechanical life of nature, and how our soul is constrained within completely regimented forms of life and society. We have seen how this has been achieved slowly and gradually, how our fifth, Aryan race, originating from the spirit of the ancient Vedic culture—which, as a result of direct perception, conceived of life as animated—passed through the Persian, Chaldean-Babylonian-Egyptian cultures, and then through the Greco-Roman culture with its view that all of nature is animated. Among the Greeks, even the philosophers conceived of all of nature as animated. Then, in the 16th century, came Giordano Bruno, who still found life in all of nature, in the entire universe, in the whole vast world of the stars. Then, in even later times, life gradually descended into complete entanglement with the outer form. That is the lowest stage. I do not say this in a disparaging way, for every standpoint is necessary. What makes a plant beautiful is its outer form; it is that which emerges from every potential within the seed. Our cultural life has become externalized in manifold ways, having attained the most diverse external forms. It must be so. Theosophy must understand this as an absolute necessity. It would be least fitting for theosophists to criticize this. Just as a culture imbued with spirit and life was once necessary, so is a culture of form necessary for our age. A culture of form has arisen in science, in Darwinism, a culture of form in naturalism, a culture of form in sociology.

[ 7 ] In the midst of this reflection, we must pause and ask ourselves: What must happen, in the sense of spiritual science—we will once again consider the necessary transformation of the human spirit as outlined in *The Basic Concepts of Theosophy*—what, then, must happen once the form has been expressed? — It must be renewed; new, germinal life must enter the form once more!

[ 8 ] Anyone who observes Zola’s contemporary Tolstoy—first and foremost the artist—with an attentive and unbiased eye, from the perspective I have just outlined, will find that in the artist, the observer of the various types of the Russian people—such as the soldier types, the type of the warrior, which he depicted in “War and Peace” and later in “Anna Karenina”—there is a completely different underlying tone than in Western naturalism. Tolstoy seeks something else everywhere. He can depict the soldier, the civil servant, the person of any social class, the person within a gender or a race—everywhere he seeks the soul, the living soul, which expresses itself in all of them, though not in the same way. He lays bare the simple, straightforward lines of the soul—but at the most diverse stages and in the most diverse forms of life. What is life in its various forms, in its manifold diversity; what is this one life?—this runs like a fundamental question through Tolstoy’s writings. And from here he then finds the possibility of understanding life even where it seemingly negates itself, where this life passes into death. Death, after all, remains the great stumbling block for the materialistic worldview. He who acknowledges only the external material world—how could he comprehend death, how could he ultimately come to terms with life, since death stands like a closing gate at the end of this life, filling him with dread and terror? Even as an artist, Tolstoy has already moved beyond this materialistic standpoint. Already in the novella “The Death of Ivan Ilyich,” you can see how the most material of all things is artistically overcome, how, in the character of Ivan, a complete harmony is established in his innermost life. We have before us a sick person, not one who is sick in body, but one who is sick in soul. We hear it and see it in all the words Tolstoy speaks to us: he does not believe that a soul dwells within the body that has nothing to do with the body; rather, we discern from his words that he finds the expression of the soul in the body’s physical manifestations, that the soul makes the body sick when it is sick, that it is the soul that flows through the body’s veins. We see from this form of artistic representation how life finds itself. And a peculiar conception of death confronts us there, not as a theory, not as a dogma, but in feeling. This idea offers the possibility of understanding death not as an end, but as a pouring out of the personality into the universe, as a losing oneself in the infinite and as a rediscovery in the great primordial spirit of the world. In this way, the problem of death is solved artistically in a wonderful manner. Death has become a joy in life. The dying person feels the metamorphosis from one form of life to another.

[ 9 ] Such was Leo Tolstoy as an artistic contemporary of the Naturalists: the seeker of life, the one who questioned the mystery of life in its various forms. It could not be otherwise than that this mystery of life should also take center stage in his soul, his thinking, and his feelings, both in a scientific and a religious sense. Thus he sought to explore this mystery of life; thus, beyond form, he sought life itself wherever it met him. Hence he has become the prophet of a new era that must overcome our own—an era that, in contrast to the development of natural science, will once again feel and recognize life. In all of Tolstoy’s criticism of Western culture, we see nothing other than the expression of a spirit that represents a young, fresh, childlike life, that seeks to infuse it into humanity as it continues to develop, that cannot be satisfied with a culture that is indeed mature, even overripe, as expressed in its outward form. This is the contrast in which Tolstoy stands in relation to Western culture. From this perspective, he criticizes the social forms and ways of life of the West—everything, in fact. This is the standpoint of his criticism.

[ 10 ] We have seen in Darwinism that Western science has come to understand the forms of life, but that Darwin declared himself incapable of understanding anything about life itself, which he takes for granted as a fact. The entire culture of the West is built upon the observation of form: we observe the outer form in the development of stone, plants, animals, and humans. — Wherever you open any book of Western science, it is form that is in the foreground. Let us recall once more what we have already considered: how Western researchers themselves admit that they stand before the enigma of life and are unable to penetrate it. The words “Ignoramus, ignorabimus” resound to us again and again whenever science is called upon to provide information about life itself. Science has something to say about how life takes shape in forms. But as for how this life itself behaves, it knows nothing. It despairs at the task of solving this mystery and says only: Ignorabimus. — Here Tolstoy has found the right word, the right principle for contemplating life itself. I would like to read you a decisive passage from which you will see how he represents the standpoint of life itself in relation to all science of the forms of life:

[ 11 ] “The false knowledge of our time” (in the West) “assumes that we know what we cannot know, and that we cannot know what we truly know. To the person with false knowledge, it seems that he knows everything that appears to him in space and time, and that he does not know what is known to him through his rational consciousness,

[ 12 ] To such a person, it seems that the common good and his own good are the most inscrutable objects to him. His reason, his rational consciousness, seems almost as inscrutable to him; he finds himself somewhat more comprehensible as an animal; animals and plants seem even more comprehensible to him, and dead, infinitely widespread matter seems the most comprehensible of all.

[ 13 ] Something similar happens with the human face. People always unconsciously direct their gaze toward the most distant objects—and therefore those that appear simplest to them in terms of color and contours: the sky, the horizon, distant fields and forests. These objects appear all the more distinct and simple to them the farther away they are; conversely, the closer an object is, the more varied its contours and colors become.” — “Does not the same thing occur with human false knowledge? That which is undoubtedly known to him—his rational consciousness—appears inscrutable to him because it is not simple, yet that which is beyond his reach—boundless, eternal matter—appears easily fathomable to him because it appears simple from a distance.

[ 14 ] And yet that is exactly the opposite.»

[ 15 ] The Western scientist regards inanimate matter as the primary, stable element. He then observes how plants, animals, and humans arise from it as the result of chemical and physical forces; he sees how inanimate matter moves, aggregates, and ultimately gives rise to the activity of the brain. But he cannot comprehend how life comes into being: for what he examines is nothing but the form of life. Tolstoy says: Life is closest to us; we are immersed in it, we are life itself; of course, if we want to comprehend life by observing and examining it in its form, then we will never comprehend it. We need only perceive it within ourselves; we need only live it, and then we have life. Those who believe they cannot comprehend it do not understand life at all. — Here Tolstoy begins his reflection on life and examines what a person can grasp as their life, even if the sophisticated, overripe way of thinking cannot comprehend it within the broad outlines of simple thinking: If you want to understand the form correctly, you must look into the inner self. If you wish only to explore the formal laws of nature, how then will you distinguish how a meaningful life differs from a meaningless one? It is according to these same higher laws that organisms are healthy and become sick; it is precisely according to these same laws of nature that a person becomes sick, just as he is healthy. — Once again, Tolstoy expresses himself in a telling manner in the essay “On Life”:

[ 16 ] “No matter how strong and rapid a person’s movements may be during a feverish delirium, in madness or agony, in drunkenness, or even in a fit of passion, we do not recognize that person as alive, do not treat them as a living human being, and acknowledge only the possibility of life in them. But however weak and immobile a person may be—if we see that their animal nature has submitted to reason, we recognize them as alive and treat them accordingly.”

[ 17 ] Tolstoy believes that external form only acquires meaning for us when we do not merely study it superficially, but when we directly grasp that which is not form—that which is purely spirit, the inner essence, the essential. We can never penetrate to true life if we seek only to grasp form; but we will understand forms when we move from life to form.

[ 18 ] But Tolstoy did not approach his problem solely from this scientific perspective; he also considered it from a moral standpoint. How do we, in our human form, attain this true life—that which is lawful right down to its outward form? Tolstoy clarified this for himself by asking: How do I—how do my fellow human beings—satisfy the need for our own well-being? How do I attain the fulfillment of my immediate personal life? Based on the structure of animal life, human beings have no other question than: How do I satisfy the needs of the external form of life?—This is a shallow view. Those who say the following hold a somewhat higher view: It is not the individual who must satisfy his own needs, but rather he must submit to the common good, integrate himself into a community, and not only provide for what satisfies his own external life in its form, but he must ensure that this form of life is fulfilled for all living beings. We are to integrate ourselves into the community and subordinate ourselves to the needs of society. This is what numerous figures, numerous ethicists and sociologists in the cultural development of the West regard as the ideal: the subordination of the individual’s needs to the needs of the community. But that is not the highest good—says Tolstoy—for what else do I have in mind but the external form? How one lives in the community, how one integrates into it, refers only to the outward form. And these outward forms are constantly changing. And if my individual personal life is not to be an end in itself, why then should the life of the many be an end? If the personal well-being of the individual human life is not an ideal, then the sum of many individuals cannot give rise to an ideal of the common good. Neither the welfare of the individual nor the welfare of all can be the ideal: that applies only to the forms in which life itself exists. Where do we recognize life? To whom should we submit, if not to the needs dictated by our lower nature, if not to what the common good or humanity prescribes?

[ 19 ] That which, in the individual and in the community, strives for well-being and happiness is, in its manifold forms, life itself. Let us therefore not define our moral, our innermost ideal by external forms, but by what reveals itself to the soul itself, by what presents itself to the soul within, through the God who lives within it, as an ideal. This is the reason why Tolstoy, in turn, falls back on a kind of higher form of Christianity, which he regards as true Christianity: seek the Kingdom of God not in outward gestures or forms, but within. Then you will realize what your duty is, when you grasp the life of the soul, when you allow yourselves to be inspired by the God within you, when you listen to what your soul speaks to you. Do not lose yourselves in forms, however great and mighty they may be! Return to the original, unified life, to the divine life within yourselves. When a person does not absorb ethical and cultural ideals from the outside, but allows what springs from his soul—what blossoms in his heart, what God has poured into his soul—to well up from within, then he has ceased to live merely in form; then he truly possesses a moral character. This is inner morality and inspiration.

[ 20 ] From this perspective, he seeks a complete renewal of all views of life and the world in the form of what he calls “primitive Christianity.” In his view, Christianity has become alienated, having adapted to the various ways of life that have emerged from the culture of different centuries. And he looks forward to a time when form will once again be pulsing with new inner life, when life must once again be grasped in a direct way. That is why he never tires of pointing out, in new forms and ever-changing forms, that what matters is to grasp the simplicity of the soul, not the complicated life that always seeks to experience something new. No! That the simplicity of the soul must strike the right note, that the confusion of external science, of external artistic representation, the luxury of modern life must first be connected with the immediately simple that wells up in the soul of every person, regardless of the form of life and society in which they find themselves: this is what Tolstoy prescribes as the ideal. And so he becomes a stern critic of the various cultural forms of Western Europe; he becomes a stern critic of Western science. He declares that this science has gradually solidified into dogmas like theology, and that the scientists of the West strike him as genuine dogmatists filled with a false spirit. He passes severe judgment on these scientists. Above all, on what is sought as an ideal in these scientific forms, and on those who seek the “be-all and end-all” of all striving in our material well-being. For centuries, humanity has strived to elevate these forms to the highest degree, to see the highest good in external possessions and external well-being. And now—we know, of course, that we must not condemn this, but rather regard it as a necessity—now this well-being is not to be limited merely to individual estates and classes, but is to become accessible to all. Certainly, there is nothing wrong with that, but Tolstoy objects to the form in which Western sociology and Western socialism attempt to achieve this. What does this socialism say? It proceeds on the basis of transforming the external forms of life. The nature of material culture is supposed to lead people to a higher standard of living, to a higher quality of life. And then it is believed that those who will be better off, who have greater external success, will also possess a higher morality. All moral efforts at socialization are directed toward subjecting the external structure to a revolution.

[ 21 ] Tolstoy objects to this. For it is precisely the result of cultural development that it has led to the emergence of the most diverse distinctions between social classes and strata. Do you believe that by pushing this formal culture to its extreme, you will truly arrive at a higher cultural ideal? You must grasp the human being where he himself gives himself form. You must improve his soul, pour divine moral forces into his soul; then he will transform the form from within life itself. This is Tolstoy’s socialism, and it is his view that no renewal of moral culture can ever arise from any transformation of the Western culture of form, but that this renewal must come from the soul, from within. Therefore, he does not become a preacher of a dogmatic moral ideal, but a promoter of a complete transformation of the human soul. He does not say that human morality is elevated when a person’s external circumstances improve, but rather he says: Precisely because you have proceeded from the external form, the gloom you live in has poured over you. You will only be able to overcome this form of life again when you transform human beings from within. — In sociology, just as in Darwinian scientific inquiry, we find the last vestiges of the old cultural form. But here we have the beginnings of a new culture of life. Just as we have the descending line there, so here we have the ascending one. Just as the old man, who has already reached his destiny, his way of life, is incapable of completely renewing himself—whereas, rather, the new way of life emerges from the freshly growing child through inner revitalization from that which is still undifferentiated and allows diversity to sprout—so too can a new way of life not emerge from an old civilized people. That is why Tolstoy sees in the Russian people a people not yet taken over by the cultural forms of the West; he sees in them the very people within whom this life of the future must sprout. Precisely by observing this Slavic people, who today still regard European cultural ideals—both European science and European art—with dull indifference, Tolstoy asserts that an undifferentiated spirit lives within them, one that must become the bearer of the future cultural ideal. In this he sees what is to come. His critique is based on the great law of evolution, on that law which teaches us the transformation of forms and the ceaseless, new, germinal sprouting of life.

[ 22 ] In the tenth chapter of his book *On Life*, he writes: “And the law which we know within ourselves as the law of our lives is the same law according to which all external phenomena of the world unfold, with the sole difference that we know this law within ourselves as one that we ourselves must carry out—whereas in external phenomena it unfolds according to these laws without our intervention.”

[ 23 ] Thus Tolstoy places himself within life as it is in the process of development, eternally changing. We would be quite poor representatives of spiritual science if we could not understand such a phenomenon in the proper sense; we would be poor spiritual scientists if we merely sought to preach ancient truths. Why do we make the content of ancient wisdom our own? Because ancient wisdom teaches us to understand life in its depths, because it shows us how the one Divine always appears again and again in the most manifold forms. A poor representative of spiritual science would be one who became a dogmatist, who sought only to preach what ancient wisdom contains, who withdrew and stood cold and alien to life, blind and deaf to what is happening in the immediate present. The wisdom teachings have not taught us ancient wisdom so that we may repeat it in words, but so that we may live it and learn to understand what is around us. The development of our own race, which has broken down into various forms from the ancient Indian culture to our own, this development is precisely described and mapped out for us in that ancient wisdom. And there we are also told of a future development, of a development into the immediate future. We are told that we stand at the starting point of a new era. Our mind, our intelligence, have attained their form as a result of passing through the various realms of existence. Our physical intellectual powers have achieved their highest triumphs in the culture of form of our time. The intellect has penetrated the natural laws of form and, in mastering these laws, has brought them to their highest expression—in the great and mighty advances of technology, in the great and mighty advances of our lives. Now we stand at the starting point of that epoch in which something must pour into this intellect—something that must seize the human being from within and shape him. That is why the Theosophical Movement has chosen as its motto and set as its purpose the formation of the core, the seed, of a universal brotherhood of humanity. No distinctions are to be made based on views, class, gender, or skin color, nor on religious creeds; life is to be sought in all these forms. What we envision as our spiritual ideal is an ideal of love, which the human being, upon becoming aware of their divinity, experiences as the Kingdom of God within them. Theosophy designates Manas as the culture of intellectuality, the culture of the mind; and Buddhi as that which is permeated by the inner essence, by love—that which does not seek to be wise without being filled with love. And just as our race has, through the intellect, attained the culture of Manas, so will the next step be to bring it to the individuality filled with love, where the human being acts out of the higher, inner, divine nature, and is not lost in the chaos of outer nature, nor in science, nor in social life. If we grasp the spiritual ideal in this way, then we may say that we understand this ideal correctly, and then we must not fail to recognize a personality living among us who seeks to give new impulses of life to the development of humanity.

[ 24 ] How beautiful and in harmony with our teachings are some of the things Tolstoy says regarding the conception of man in his immediacy. I would like to read just one more passage that is particularly characteristic of his moral ideal: “The whole life of these people is directed toward the imagined enhancement of their personal well-being. They perceive the well-being of the individual only in the satisfaction of their needs. They call the needs of the individual all those conditions of existence upon which they have directed their reason. The conscious needs, however—those upon which their reason is directed—grow endlessly as a result of this consciousness. The satisfaction of these growing needs closes them off from the demands of their true life.”

[ 25 ] Tolstoy thus says: Personality, however, does not encompass rational consciousness. Personality is a characteristic of animals and of humans as animals. Rational consciousness is a characteristic of humans alone. Only when human beings transcend mere personality, when they become aware of the primacy of individuality over the personal, when they understand how to become impersonal and allow impersonal life to reign within them, do they step out of a culture entangled in external form and into a vibrant culture of the future.

[ 26 ] Even if this is not what Theosophy recognizes as its ideal, and even if it is not the ethical conclusion we draw from Theosophy, it is nonetheless a step toward the ideal, since human beings learn to live only when they focus not on the personality but on the eternal and imperishable.

[ 27 ] This eternal and imperishable essence, the Buddhi, the seed of wisdom that lies dormant in the soul, is what must replace the mere cultivation of the intellect. There is ample evidence that Theosophy is correct in its view of the future of human development. The most important proof, however, is that similar forces are already making themselves felt in life itself; it is now a matter of truly grasping and understanding them so that we may then fill ourselves with their ideals.

[ 28 ] The great thing about Tolstoy is that he seeks to lift people out of the narrow confines of their own thoughts and lead them to spiritual depth; he wants to show them that ideals do not lie outside in the material world, but can only spring from the soul.

[ 29 ] If we are true Theosophists, then we will recognize evolution; then we will not remain blind and deaf to what shines before us in our present time in the Theosophical sense, but we will truly recognize these forces, of which Theosophical writings usually speak in poetic terms.

[ 30 ] This must be the defining characteristic of a theosophist: that he has overcome darkness and error, and that he learns to assess and understand life and the world in the right way.

[ 31 ] A theosophist who withdraws from life and regards it with cold detachment would be a poor theosophist, no matter how much he might know. Such Theosophists, who lead us from the sensory world up into a higher one, who themselves look into supersensory worlds, should also teach us on the other side how we can observe the supersensory on the physical plane and not lose ourselves in the sensory.

[ 32 ] We investigate the causes that arise from the spiritual realm in order to fully understand the physical world, which is the effect of the spiritual. We cannot understand the physical world if we remain within it, for the causes of physical life originate in the spiritual realm.

[ 33 ] Theosophy seeks to make us clairvoyant in the realm of the physical; that is why it speaks of ancient wisdom. It aims to transform human beings so that they may see clearly into the lofty, supersensory mysteries of existence, but this should not come at the cost of a lack of understanding for what is immediately present around us.

[ 34 ] As I said, he would be a poor clairvoyant who were blind and deaf to what is happening in the sensory world, to what his contemporaries in his immediate surroundings are capable of accomplishing; and furthermore, he would be a poor clairvoyant if he were unable to recognize in a personality that which, in our time, leads people into the supersensible. What good would it do us if we became clairvoyant and were unable to recognize what lies immediately before us as our next task?

[ 35 ] A theosophist need not withdraw from life; he must know how to apply theosophy directly to life. If theosophy is to lead us up to higher worlds, we must bring the supersensible knowledge down to our physical plane. We must recognize the causes that lie in the spiritual realm. The theosophist should be engaged in life, understand the world in which his contemporaries live, and recognize the spiritual causes behind the various epochs of evolution.