The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Human Life and Anthroposophy

[ 1 ] Dear attendees! As with the first lecture I was allowed to give here on Spiritual Science or anthroposophy at the beginning of this year, my aim with today's lecture is not to promote this Spiritual Science or anthroposophy in any way. Rather, I am simply interested in providing who wants to know something about this Spiritual Science or anthroposophy, some basic principles, principles that one would rightly expect to be provided, given that the building in which this Spiritual Science or anthroposophy is to be pursued is currently under construction in this very area.

[ 2 ] The next thing that people who initially hear about this Spiritual Science or anthroposophy more from the outside, as something that is just emerging in our time, the next thing that these people will quite understandably form as an opinion, or at least can form, is this: What is the purpose of all this [spiritual] endeavor that has entered the spiritual life of the present in such a seemingly [inexplicable] way? One might [ask], mustn't one think that some people who, in a sense, have too little to do in life, have too much time on their hands, have joined forces to pursue all kinds of useless activities, at least for real, so-called human life, pursuing things that are actually of no concern to people who want to spend their time working, doing what really serves humanity and its well-being and needs?

[ 3 ] This opinion, dear attendees, can only arise if one does not thoroughly familiarize oneself with the conditions of human progress, and with what has actually emerged in a completely natural way as something new in human development over the last three to four centuries, and especially during the nineteenth century and up to the present day.

[ 4 ] How has the world in which human beings live been transformed during this time, viewed from a purely external perspective? What new forces of nature have been discovered, and how have these new forces of nature changed the whole of human life, including social life, all the demands and all the needs of human beings? If one had a certain justification in the not-so-distant past for saying: Well, human beings are simply placed into the life of the world and have their work to do, to which they become accustomed, which is taught to them in the course of their childhood and youth. Then the need awakens in them to know something about the meaning and the actual significance of life.

[ 5 ] Human beings cannot be satisfied with what they see through their senses, with what they have to work for with their hands. In the course of their lives, they become attentive to their soul life and must ask: What is the meaning of this soul life within the outer physical world? But as I said, one can say: The outer world satisfies what that which human beings are able to question; after they have been placed in the work of external life, it brings them religion, the religious element. Through this, the eternal meaning of what lives in the external physical world of human beings is revealed to them, and thus the gate that seemingly closes this physical life is transformed for him into the gate of ascent to the eternal, immortal life of the soul.

[ 6 ] Well, one could say, and one would be correct for a time that, as I said, is not very long behind us, one could say: Man is introduced into his physical body in such a way that he is a capable member of earthly life between birth and death, and thus he is made aware of his immortal part through religious life. Why is anything else necessary, such as Spiritual Science or anthroposophy, which seeks to intrude between this outer physical life, between physical work and religious revelation, the religious proclamation of the immortal part of the human being?

[ 7 ] Anyone who, from this point of view, finds Spiritual Science or anthroposophy unnecessary is not taking into account what the last centuries, especially the most recent times, have brought us, have brought us in terms of insights into nature, have brought us in terms of knowledge, in terms of admirable knowledge about the forces of nature, and in completely different opportunities to become acquainted with things in early youth that are very different from what people in earlier centuries became acquainted with in early youth. Just think carefully about how children and young people today go through school and apprenticeships and are then sent out into life with knowledge and skills that are completely different from those of earlier times, because they are taken from the great advances of the last centuries and the immediate present.

[ 8 ] Now one could indulge in the belief, which many people in the nineteenth century really did indulge in, that natural science — which is certainly not misunderstood by Spiritual Science, but is fully recognized and greatly admired precisely for its great advances — one could say, surrender to the belief that natural science solves the great mysteries of existence with its means, that it introduces us to certain questions that human beings must ask if they want to gain meaningful insight into their own nature. This was believed, especially in the nineteenth century. But those who, with deepened soul forces, immerse themselves in what natural science has brought what it contributes to human progress, will become increasingly aware that, when it comes to the highest questions of human existence, what natural science brings are not answers but, on the contrary, ever new questions. And the people of the nineteenth century, including the scholars of the nineteenth century, took far too little account of this. They believed they were getting answers to certain enigmatic questions. But the most admirable achievements of natural science have given rise to new questions that humanity had never known before. These questions are, so to speak, instilled in us.

[ 9 ] These questions are there, and these questions demand [an answer].

[ 10 ] Now, those people, those personalities who come together in what is called the Anthroposophical Society, are in a certain sense pioneers of a new era in that they feel particularly deeply what questions, what enigmatic questions arise from this new life, which we do not create arbitrarily, but which is simply the natural, necessary progress of humanity, questions that are posed by modern science, but not only posed to those who are deeply involved in science, but posed to everyone who participates with deeper senses in our school education today, which is very different from that of centuries ago.

[ 11 ] Such questions arise in every such [person], demanding answers. And if no answer were to come to such questions, certain consequences would ensue for human life which, one might say, if one were to describe them today, would appear in a certain respect gruesome for the future of humanity. One might think that people would become numb to the questions and mysteries just discussed. Becoming numb, numbing oneself, so to speak, is possible. But then one paralyzes certain mental powers that humans once had, that are natural to human nature. One paralyzes them, and then the human soul enters a stage that can be compared, figuratively speaking, to the state one would be in if one knew that one had two hands, but they were somehow bound; one could not unfold them, one could not do anything with them. Powers that humans have and cannot use have a paralyzing effect on them. And through the ever-increasing feeling of such paralysis of certain soul forces, human life would enter into a state of indifference. The fact that one must numb oneself to certain existing forces would inevitably lead to indifference, to a complete lack of interest in religious questions and religious feeling.

[ 12 ] The harbingers of such indifference toward religious life were certainly present in the nineteenth century. I want to speak of one example—not an example that can be found among the numerous scholars who believed that natural science could replace religious life, who believed that as scholars they could reject everything directly spiritual—but I [would like] to talk about a simple man from the people who, in a sense, could be said to be a precursor for many, many who are to come. I am referring to the farmer who lived in the Upper Austrian Alpine region in the nineteenth century and who, one might say, lived like a martyr: Konrad Deubler. Deubler introduced himself into the scientific life of the nineteenth century. He lived in the second half of the nineteenth century. In his youth, he first immersed himself for a time in a personality who is particularly well known here in Switzerland, who in a subtle way attempted to penetrate the spiritual mysteries of the world in his own way, in Zschokke; but he soon strayed from this soulful immersion in the world. And Konrad Deubler allowed himself to be completely taken in by the materialistic conception of Darwinism, became completely carried away by Haeckelism, and finally came to believe that everything said about any spiritual world from any source was nonsense, and believed that the world was built only of material substances and material forces. He, the simple farmer, became a complete denier of all spiritual beings and all spiritual forces. And one may call him, in a sense, a martyr to his convictions, for within a clerical area he had to sit in prison for years in the 1850s, when that was still possible, because of his convictions. So, he is not a person who has adopted this view from some external source, but a person who has been completely seduced by the currents and aspirations of his century into this kind of materialistic view of life.

[ 13 ] What is becoming common in humanity is revealed in such individual harbingers. There could be — Deubler is only the most famous example — many such examples could be cited. They would provide proof that there is indeed an aberration of the human mind in believing that natural science can, in a sense, provide a comprehensive explanation of the meaning of the world. But this gradually leads to the indifference and lack of interest that has been described. And one completely misjudges what is alive in recent developments if one believes that the The life of Spiritual Science cannot be stopped, for it is embedded in the institutions that human beings need, in all that is useful in existence, and human beings accept this. But if the human mind is focused one-sidedly on this natural science, then human beings lose their connection with spiritual life, with the immortal within themselves. Therefore, those who have come together in the Anthroposophical Society are well aware that there is nothing misguided or anti-religious in Spiritual Science or anthroposophy, but on the contrary, a link between the great advances in scientific knowledge and the religious life of human beings.

[ 14 ] If one really penetrates the meaning of natural science, dear friends, one can say in a certain way, it leads people to a knowledge that cannot extend beyond themselves. Incidentally, this was recognized by more profound natural scientists in the course of the nineteenth century. And the speech that du Bois-Reymond gave in Leipzig in the 1870s, which concluded with the Ignorabimus, has become famous; we will never solve the mysteries of the world, we will never know, said du Bois-Reymond, why. He meant: No matter how much we explore the secrets of nature using scientific methods, we will never find a way to explain what touches us mysteriously and confronts us in human life itself: human soul consciousness. Indeed, we cannot even find a way to explain what underlies matter itself out there in the world. Natural science is not suited to explaining matter and consciousness. This means that a perceptive natural scientist, who is not yet perceptive enough, admits that science must close the door on the most significant mysteries of human life. And in many other respects, too, it can be said that natural science, in a sense, pushes human beings as spiritual beings out of its research. It pushes them out. This becomes apparent when one considers something that has emerged as the newer view of the development of the universe.

[ 15 ] I am well aware, dear audience, that this view has undergone many changes, and that some may already consider what I am about to say to be outdated. But that is not the point. What is said today about the same thing is based on the same spirit. Gradually, a view has developed, a scientific view, of how the Earth was formed. The Earth was formed from a kind of primordial nebula, a primordial nebula in which nothing else existed but loose forces. Through the agitation and rotation of this primordial nebula, the Earth and the other planets gradually separated, and through the further development of the same forces that once existed in this primordial nebula, everything that we now admire on Earth came into being, including human beings. This view is extremely easy to prove, and it is taught to children in school. It is easy to prove — because you only need to show children a very simple experiment, and you can clearly demonstrate — and people today love clarity — you can clearly demonstrate how such a rotation of a physical body can actually create a small world system.

[ 16 ] All you need to do is take a drop of a substance that floats on water, a spherical drop, divide it at the equator, so that you cut through a map sheet that you have cut to the size of the equator, then stick a pin in it and place it on the surface of the water and turn and turn, and indeed, small droplets detach themselves, a small world system emerges! How could you not say: Well, look, there you have the entire creation of the world in miniature. Children understand this, because nothing is more comprehensible than this. Only one thing is always forgotten — and even if it is sometimes good in the world, quite good, to forget oneself, it is not good when conducting scientific experiments. This droplet would not separate into small droplets if the teacher were not standing there turning the needle! But since everything that is necessary for the creation of something must be taken into account, the person demonstrating this to people must make it clear to them that there must also be a great professor or teacher a giant professor out there in the universe who sticks a needle through it and keeps the whole thing rotating — otherwise one forgets oneself.

[ 17 ] However, people who were able to delve deeper into what lives and weaves in the world have always recognized the unhealthiness of such a view. And I would now like to give an example that I cited in my last book on the “human enigma.” I would like to cite just one example of a man who, not out of Spiritual Science, but out of a certain feeling, energetically rejected the idea that such a mental image could in any way contribute to a real explanation of the riddles of the world and humanity. Herman Grimm, the great art researcher, held the view that Goethe would never in his life have accepted such a purely external explanation of the development of the world. Herman Grimm says:

Long ago, in his

— Goethe's —

youth, the great Laplace-Kant fantasy of the origin and eventual demise of the globe had already taken hold. From the rotating nebula — children already learn this in school — the central gas drop forms, which subsequently becomes the Earth, and, as a solidifying sphere, goes through all phases in inconceivable periods of time, including the episode of habitation by the human race, only to finally fall back into the Sun as burnt-out slag: a long, but completely comprehensible process for today's audience, for the realization of which no external intervention is now necessary other than the effort of some outside force to maintain the sun at the same heating temperature.

It can.

— Herman Grimm continues —

no more fruitless perspective for the future can be imagined than the one that is being imposed on us today as scientifically necessary. A carcass around which a hungry dog made a detour would be a refreshing, appetizing morsel compared to this last excrement of creation, as which our Earth would ultimately fall back to the Sun, and it is the thirst for knowledge with which our generation accepts such things and believes them to be true, a sign of a sick imagination, which can be explained as a historical phenomenon of our time,to which scholars of future epochs will once devote much acumen.

Never

— says Herman Grimm —

Goethe has given way to such desolation.

[ 18 ] What appeared in Herman Grimm, even before the emergence of Spiritual Science or anthroposophy, as a feeling, deserves to be taken into account, for it shows that there is a feeling in human beings that urges a different solution to the great question of world existence than that which can come from the, admittedly — and this must be emphasized again and again — admirable natural science. No, the actual course of scientific development shows that natural science is capable of raising questions, but that the answers to these questions must come from another source. And it is Spiritual Science or anthroposophy that seeks to provide these answers. However, Spiritual Science or anthroposophy must resort to completely different powers of cognition; than those to which natural science rightly adheres.

[ 19 ] I spoke about the development of these powers of cognition, these supersensible powers of cognition in human nature, in the previous lecture I was allowed to give here. I do not want to repeat what I will not repeat what was said in that lecture, but only point out that, in addition to the ordinary soul forces that human beings possess and use when they recognize things scientifically, other forces can be developed so that these other powers of cognition, which the human being then has, can be compared with the ordinary powers of cognition, just as the musical ear can be compared with the perception, I might say, of the mere vibrating string, or with the calculation of the mere vibrating air wave.

[ 20 ] Certainly, in the external world, intuition rightly shows us, science shows us, that when we hear something, even when we hear the most complicated symphony, there are certain movements in the air. These movements in the air can be illustrated by scientific knowledge; but human beings do not stop at merely observing what is happening in space, for they have a musical ear through which they perceive what is out there in a different way what is out there, as if they did not have a musical ear. In a sense, a spiritual researcher is a person who has developed a capacity for perception of the world that is like the musical ear to the non-musical ear. The phenomena of the world are truly accepted by the spiritual researcher in the same way that natural science accepts them. But the spiritual researcher has developed powers and abilities within themselves that enable them to perceive what cannot be perceived without these abilities. I do not want to repeat how these abilities are developed, as this was the subject of a lecture at the beginning of this year, which has also been printed under the title: “The Task of Spiritual Science and Its Structure in Dornach,” so that it can be read. I will only mention that by no means does everyone who wants to make Spiritual Science or anthroposophy fruitful for their soul in an appropriate way need to become a spiritual researcher.

[ 21 ] The spiritual researcher does not relate to other people, who only learn and absorb the results of spiritual research, in the same way that the natural scientist relates to other people who communicates results that are then received as revelations about nature — no, the spiritual researcher himself, in a sense, only prepares the instrument. By acquiring certain abilities, the spiritual researcher does not actually prepare the results of knowledge, but rather the instrument, which is always purely spiritual-soul-based and which can be initiated into that which then was or can be heard. While the person who prepares the tools for an external chemical or clinical experiment assembles external tools through which some secret of nature then becomes visible, the spiritual researcher also prepares only such a tool, but one that is purely soul-spiritual. Once he has achieved this, it can be truly useful for anyone who is unbiased, because it flows completely into the words that can be communicated, into the concepts and ideas that can be communicated.

[ 22 ] Therefore, literature from Spiritual Science must also be understood differently from other literature. Scientific literature communicates certain results, from which one learns. Literature on Spiritual Science should not be understood in this way. In terms of its content, literature on Spiritual Science is, of course, an instrument in the soul of every individual. If one immerses oneself in these concepts, which are laid down in literature on Spiritual Science or anthroposophy, then one does not have a mere dead result from which one learns, but a living result, an instrument. And those who read a Spiritual Science book, if they read it properly, with real inner involvement, then what is written in it will enter into their soul life, then their soul life itself will enter into a kind of resonance with the whole spiritual existence, and they will grasp what they would otherwise only grasp with their senses, they will grasp it spiritually.

[ 23 ] If this is still little recognized, dear attendees, the reason for this is to be found solely in the fact that we are only at the beginning of development in Spiritual Science. If this development in Spiritual Science continues, then people will recognize more and more that a book written in a truly spiritual scientific way is not like an ordinary book, [but rather] like a scientific instrument with which one can carry out an experiment that reveals certain secrets and hidden connections. One must only be clear that the instrument of Spiritual Science is a purely spiritual-soul instrument, that the concepts and ideas we take in through such an instrument are effective in our soul. Even if the majority of those who are already members of the Anthroposophical Society do not yet appreciate this in the right way, it will come.

[ 24 ] And precisely for this reason, dear attendees, because Spiritual Science or anthroposophy is still in the early stages of its development, it is quite understandable, I would even say obvious, that today people still laugh at and mock the results achieved through the developed abilities of spiritual researchers. But this laughter, this mockery, will become more and more more as the needs that are still dormant in the majority of people today awaken, it will disappear! And as with many things that have arisen for humanity in the course of its development, general recognition will also come for Spiritual Science.

[ 25 ] The spiritual researcher first recognizes that in the human being as he stands before our senses, as he can also be researched by ordinary natural science working with external means, only a part, only a limb of the whole human being stands before us, and that within the whole human nature, in addition to this sensory human being, to this physical external human being, there is a supersensible human being — a supersensible human being who works and lives in the sensory human being, and without whom the sensory human being would have to be a corpse at every moment of his life, could not be a real human being, but would have to be a corpse. For the spiritual researcher discovers that just as one sees color through the physical eye, one can see through the — to use Goethe's expression again, as I presented to you at the beginning of this year — one can see through this “spiritual eye” within this physical human being the so-called — the expression is not important, and I ask you not to take offense at the words, I could just as well use another word — the so-called etheric human body.

[ 26 ] The etheric human body is contained within the physical human body in a supersensible way; it cannot be seen with the physical eyes, but can be seen with the spiritual eye. One may scoff at the fact that the spiritual researcher adds this etheric human being to the physical human being; however, just as the human being as a physical human being — this is an achievement of modern natural science — has within itself the forces and substances with their effects that are in its physical earthly environment, so too does the human being have spiritual forces within itself. First of all, we consider those of the so-called etheric body. He has spiritual powers within him, and we can seek out these spiritual powers in the human environment just as we find the physical powers that man carries within himself in the earthly environment through natural science. But then we must look with the awakened eye of the spiritual researcher at what is also spiritually present in our environment.

[ 27 ] Now I would first like to present a result to your soul, dear audience, which is intended to show you a certain connection that exists between spiritual processes in our environment and spiritual processes, these so-called ethereal, supersensible processes that I have just mentioned in connection with the connection that exists between the outer ethereal and the inner ethereal, just as there is a connection between the outer physical in nature and the inner physical in human beings. With ordinary human perception , we experience how, when spring comes, the plants sprout, how they become more and more green, how they later develop flowers, how the fruits develop in the flowers. We experience again the withering, the passing of the plants. We experience, alternating with the summery flourishing in nature, the wintery tranquility, as one might think. This is how the course of the year presents itself to the outer sensory observation. But for this sensory observation, dear attendees, only that which someone who is deaf would see in another realm, who would only see the vibrating string on the violin and would not hear that this sounding string is accompanied by tones. The spiritual eye, the spiritual power of perception, adds to this alternation between growth and rest, which is there for the spiritual researcher like the vibrating string, a kind of spiritual hearing and spiritual seeing. And while one physically sees the plants sprouting out of the earth, just as they can be seen before the eye, so the spiritual researcher sees, to the extent that the plants come out of the earth, beings moving toward the earth from the surroundings of the earth, from the extraterrestrial. Really, as paradoxical as it still sounds today, really, just as people use electricity, which they did not recognize in the past, not only recognize it, they will also recognize what flows in with each spring, what does not initially flow in from the extraterrestrial world in winter. And while with the physical eye one sees only physical plants growing up from the ground, so to speak, one sees spiritual beings, ethereal beings descending from the entire cosmic environment.

[ 28 ] And to the same extent that the physical plants become more and more perfect and greener and more colorful, one sees how, as it were, that which streams in from the entire earthly environment, from the farthest regions of space, as living spirit beings, sinks into that which grows out of the ground . And only when the fruit begins to develop, when the flowers begin to wither, only when autumn approaches, does one see how that which has connected itself with the earthly, which has, as it were, disappeared within the plant world from the etheric environment of the earth, how that withdraws again. And so one perceives spiritually an inflow and outflow of a supersensible element. Much more lively supersensible plants grow out of the etheric, as it were, but they disappear into the physical plants. And those who merely experience winter by looking at the snow, the snowfalls, and feeling the cold, do not know that the earth in winter is something completely different as earth than in summer. The earth has a much more intense, more active spiritual life during the winter than during the summer. And if you live yourself into all these conditions, then you experience the changes of the etheric winter-summer life, you experience something spiritual, as you would otherwise only experience the processes of your own human body life, I would say in falling asleep and waking up.

[ 29 ] And indeed, one learns to recognize this change between winter and summer when one, I would say, adds the knowledge of rhythm to the knowledge of what I have called the mere vibrating string. One learns to recognize how certain beings are not connected to the earth in winter, but are only in the cosmic environment of the earth, how these beings descend to earth with the spring, flow down, connect with plant life, and in a sense enjoy a kind of peace by connecting with earthly life. This peace that these beings have, however, stimulates earthly life itself by the fact that the spiritual has now connected with the earth, and in winter the earth itself, as a being, has something like a memory of this summertime togetherness with the extraterrestrial world space. That which is otherwise not even suspected rises out of the surrounding nature, as if one suddenly became able to hear, while one was previously deaf, the mass of sound ringing out from the mere vibrating string. One learns about the etheric life.

[ 30 ] And this etheric life, which consists in certain beings in the earthly environment, certain beings connected with other world bodies, connecting themselves with the earth during the summer and withdrawing again during the winter, this life means that, in a sense, the Earth sleeps during the summer—the Earth as a being, not as a dead body as theology or other external natural sciences regard it—that the Earth as a being sleeps during the summertime; but during the wintertime, when it lives in living memories—certain memories live in it as earthly beings—it remembers what connected with it in the summer, then the earth awakens. The opposite is true, which can be revealed and discovered through a certain [simplification]. While one might believe that the earth wakes up in spring and falls asleep in autumn, Spiritual Science brings us the insight that the warm, sultry summertime is the earth's sleeping time, and the cold time, when the earth is covered with snow, is the earth's waking time.

[ 31 ] One learns about the sleeping and waking of the Earth's life itself. I emphasize explicitly: Spiritual Science does not [create] anthropomorphic ideas, like the philosophers of the nineteenth century, but these are insights, these are real perceptions. When one is imbued with the knowledge that flows from such observations, then one learns to understand in a certain way how human life itself flows. For of all the mysteries that confront us in the outer world, human life itself is the greatest mystery.

[ 32 ] Of course, in a short lecture I can only sketch out very little of what Spiritual Science or anthroposophy has to say about the mysteries of human life. But I would like to suggest that those who have become accustomed to spiritual observation sees a continuous rhythm in human life itself. We notice how something [unfolds] in human life in a very regular [manner] during a certain spiritual period of childhood. We want to skip over this period, which would also be interesting to observe but cannot easily be discussed in a public lecture, we want to skip over the period of human development from conception to birth; we want to consider the development of human life as it presents itself to us from birth to a stage that is extremely interesting for our purposes, up to the second teeth, approximately the sixth to seventh year. This is the first essential stage in human development.

[ 33 ] Now, dear attendees, there is so much going on in human development, so much going on that insightful educators have said:

Even if a person becomes a circumnavigator, they learn more from their mother or nurse in their first years of life than they can learn from all peoples as a circumnavigator during the rest of their life.

[ 34 ] That which happens within us in the first years of life through the way the spiritual works in us, that which happens within us, how the inner organs develop, how they become internally strengthened, how the first teeth are finally pushed out within the organism by supersensible forces working in the human being, and the replacement by the second teeth — how strangely the human being adapts to the universe, developing from a position that is not yet upright to the ability to stand upright, how the ability to speak develops in human beings, from which in turn the ability to think emerges — this is one of the most admirable things in the whole realm of existence.

[ 35 ] But, dear friends, what happens from birth to the change of teeth around the age of seven can be recognized by the spiritual researcher if he considers only earthly conditions. However, he must add to what the senses can perceive on earth that which is the spiritual eye, so that he can perceive in the manner indicated. But what happens in the human being up to the age of seven can then be understood from all the events that take place on earth.

[ 36 ] But then a phase begins in human life, from the seventh to about the fourteenth year, when the human being enters into maturity. A phase begins which, for the spiritual researcher, reveals itself in such a way that it can no longer be explained from what is active and alive on earth itself, physical, and spiritual, but only when one considers what I have just explained, how cosmic, extraterrestrial life descends into plants, what forces live in this flow, then one can again see what one discovers spiritually in this connection between the earth and the universe, with the world of the stars, through plant growth. What one discovers in terms of forces there can be rediscovered in the forces that are effective in human life from about the time of tooth replacement to maturity, up to about the age of fourteen; only that what takes place in the plant development of the earth in interaction with the extraterrestrial takes place seven times faster, namely in one year.

[ 37 ] In the human organism, it develops seven times more slowly, in about seven years — not to use the mystical number seven, but simply because that is how things appear — so that we can only explain what happens from the change of teeth to the development of maturity in humans in terms of Spiritual Science if we know: that which exists spiritually outside in the unfolding and withering of the plant world in the course of the year, that which lives there, lives as if enclosed in the human organism as the etheric body; only that plants have it in connection with the extraterrestrial etheric world; human beings have it through the mysteries that take place before their birth, torn from the extraterrestrial forces. The etheric body lives in the human being. And the most important phases of development in the second phase of life in the general rhythm of life from the seventh to the fourteenth year take place under the influence of these forces. Then it becomes apparent that in what develops in the human being from the seventh to the fourteenth year, human beings no longer represent themselves as earthly beings, but as the image of something supernatural, albeit something supernatural that still exists in the sensory realm, something that exists in the extraterrestrial sensory realm. Thus, we see how earthly forces develop in particular that which is developed in the human brain. This is developed by earthly forces. As strange as it may sound, it is developed by earthly forces. For to a high degree, around the age of seven, the human brain has also reached a kind of completion in its development — not in the development that consists in the absorption of concepts and ideas, of course, but in its inner formation, shaping, in the hardening of its parts, and so on and so forth.

[ 38 ] But to what has hitherto been the development of the human being must now be added something that is not contained within the earthly realm, but comes from the extraterrestrial realm and causes the forces that develop in the human being from the seventh to the fourteenth year, outside of the brain in the rest of the organism, outside his brain in the rest of his organism, now also push their way into the development of the head. At the age of seven, the human being gives birth, as it were, to a super-earthly, etheric human being within himself, who works freely and vividly within him. Just as his physical body enters physical existence at birth, so now an etheric, super-earthly body comes into existence. And the result of this is that what can be described as the becoming more defined of the facial features is expressed; everything that comes from the respiratory and circulatory systems, which are more strongly active in the human being through the etheric body, pushes its way out of the rest of the organism into the human face, which now becomes more and more spiritual. But because it is no longer exclusively the head that is active with the earthly forces, but because the etheric body intervenes and shapes the supernatural aspect of human nature, that inner life develops which then accompanies the human being throughout his or her life as his or her emotional and feeling life.

[ 39 ] However, spiritual research has not yet exhausted human nature by recognizing this etheric body, which humans have in common with plants. When spiritual researchers turn their gaze from plants to the animal world, they find that something further supersensible lives in the animal world, but a supersensible that cannot now be found through the supersensible of the plant world in the extraterrestrial environment, [but] a real, a spiritual real that can be found neither within the earthly nor within the extraterrestrial, that is already in man from birth, already from conception, but which is only noticed in humans as particularly effective, as particularly formative, from about the age of fourteen, again through a period of about seven years, during which humans develop as a result of their respiratory and circulatory systems now functioning internally in a completely different way than before. This is because humans are permeated by a supersensible element that is now different from the merely etheric. For the etheric is found in the extraterrestrial environment, while this superterrestrial element is no longer found in space. But humans can now become acquainted with this supersensible realm again. They can become acquainted with it when they go beyond what the earth was in the previous period.

[ 40 ] If human beings, through the development of the abilities I have spoken of, really succeed in thoroughly exploring the Earth so that they recognize the spiritual nature of the Earth, then they will learn to understand that the Earth body on which we now live is just as much a descendant in the universe, in the cosmos, as a descendant is the son in relation to the father, except that the son resembles his father in form, but the Earth body has emerged as a descendant from another planetary existence. We learn to recognize this other planetary existence when we observe the Earth in winter, when it awakens, so to speak, when it can develop memory, a kind of memory, a cosmic memory. Then we learn to recognize how the Earth, even now, still holds within its entire nature the state, as in a cosmic memory, that the Earth went through before it became Earth. Today, these things all still sound paradoxical, perhaps even foolish and crazy; but that is how all those things sounded that later became self-evident in science. Once one truly learns to recognize how that which lives extraterrestrially as spirit beings and unites with plants and then preserves itself in memory throughout the winter, then you also learn to recognize, as it were, through the retained memory of the earth, through the inner memory of the earth being itself, what the earth was before its earthly existence. What is now the mineral kingdom did not yet exist.

[ 41 ] It is a long road, dear attendees, that spiritual research must travel in order to arrive at the conclusion that in the predecessor of the Earth, in the father of the Earth, so to speak, a mineral kingdom did not yet exist. That which today reigns, lives, and weaves separately as the etheric outside of Earth, and which only unites with the Earth's body during the summertime, which incidentally contains the mineral kingdom within itself today, was, always connected to the Earth's body when the planetary ancestor of the Earth was there. This means that before it became this mineral kingdom, the Earth was a being that was itself alive. The Earth as a whole was a living being and went through — just as it goes through certain stages today, which geology seeks to describe — has undergone stages of life. One then learns to recognize how the Earth has been led from a former existence into its present existence. One learns to connect the later with the earlier in the world and learns to recognize a higher living being in time than merely in space. And when one learns to recognize this higher living being, which can no longer be found in space — not in earthly space, not in super-earthly space, like the life ether —, when one learns to recognize this living being in time, then one learns to recognize that which is particularly effective in human beings as something thoroughly supersensible, even super-spatial, which manifests itself effectively in human beings, which, as I said, is already present from conception, but is particularly effective in the further stage of life development from about 14 to 21 years of age, when the powers of will become more energetic, when everything intervenes in the human being, which can also be observed in the animal world, but which has a different effect in the human being than in the animal world.

[ 42 ] During this time — whether you call it the astral body or whatever you like, the terminology is not important — during this time, it intervenes in a human way in the human organization and makes the human being an image of something that already existed before the Earth existed — namely, in that ancestor of the Earth of which I have spoken —, while from the age of fourteen to twenty-one this human element that already existed before earthly existence makes the human being into its special image, even into the body, during these years, it is already present earlier, from childhood onwards. Only, it develops gradually to such an extent that it not only works in the soul, but can reach down into physical existence.

[ 43 ] And then what lives in the passing of time really shows itself there. Time in its flow gains an inner life, and I can say — although I cannot prove this in the short time available to me — you can read about this in anthroposophical literature — time is filled not only with life, but with a continuing consciousness. For in fact, the earth has a consciousness into which one can live oneself, from its earlier state, which I have characterized, when it was still a living being without the mineral kingdom of today. In this way, human beings learn to recognize the conscious life in the progress of time. This conscious life permeates the various species of animals, causing the ancestor to be repeated in the animal's offspring. The following is now connected with the past through what one might call a dreaming consciousness, which really exists and spreads as a dreaming consciousness over the entire animal species, living supersensibly, just as the beings that connect with plants live supersensibly. This is what makes the animal kingdom and the human kingdom on Earth possible.

[ 44 ] But now we learn more, as the abilities that the spiritual researcher can acquire deepen, we also recognize beings that do not merely live as conscious beings in time, in the continuous flow of time, but live in such a way that time can be interrupted, so that such a being lives in a certain time, forms an outer organism, and then for a certain time is not connected with this outer organism, but then takes hold of it again and repeats a previous life in a continuous rhythm. This is only a higher stage of life, but spiritually, what presents itself as a continuous life of time in animal life must be regarded; this life — but with interruptions in relation to the existence of the senses — presents itself in human existence. That which now becomes particularly effective in human beings from the age of 21 — although it is certainly already present in the soul earlier — from the age of 21 to 28, and at the age of 28 growth ceases in the rhythm of life, because what was effective from the age of 21 to 28 changes its effectiveness in a certain way, so that at the age of 28 actual growth ceases.

[ 45 ] We have the fourth seven-year epoch of human life before us. What now intervenes in outer physical life not only makes man the image of something that lived before him, but now makes him the image of something that has, in a sense, interrupted time in relation to his development. This is actually what the spiritual researcher calls the I. And this life of the I now leads us completely out of the earthly, even out of the pre-earthly, into a higher spiritual realm, a spiritual realm in which animals have no part, the spiritual realm in which the I lives. It contains the I forces that are now introduced into the human organism in such a way that, for the spiritual researcher when he observes the introduction of spiritual supersensible forces into human nature from the age of 21, it becomes clear that this earthly life is a repetition of other earthly lives that have already been lived through; so that the entire human life, not for the sake of any speculation, not for any philosophy, but for immediate observation, as unfolding in individual earthly lives separated by intermediate lives of a purely spiritual nature, in which the human I gradually settles into a world that is neither the earthly nor the outer cosmic world, but a purely spiritual world that human beings live through between death and a new birth.

[ 46 ] Thus, the entire earthly existence is structured for the human being in such a way that his ego lives out its life in repeated earthly lives, and that these repeated earthly lives take place in the course of earthly existence itself. But this earth once emerged from another body and will be transformed into another planetary body. In the predecessor of the earth, the repeated earthly lives were not yet developed in the same way as here in the earthly existence. Likewise, human beings will develop in a different way than in repeated earthly lives when this Earth enters its twilight and comes into a different planetary state — [gap] , while the life [gap] appears in which no mineral kingdom existed at the time when the Earth did not yet exist, but its predecessor existed entirely as a living being, when conditions existed that did not develop in repeated earthly lives. Through these repeated earthly lives, the human being brings what he has achieved in one life through death and carries it over into subsequent earthly lives, after he has developed it in a purely spiritual life between death and a new birth.

[ 47 ] For the spiritual researcher recognizes, when he truly adds to the ordinary sensory powers of perception of which I have spoken, spiritual research recognizes how the human being, between his birth and death, in which he lives in his physical body, mysteriously acquires something in the way of powers that can be compared to what what develops in the seed capsule of the plant, which rests inconspicuously inside the flower, but which is capable, when winter is over, of becoming a new plant. Thus, something spiritual and soul-like develops mysteriously within life in the physical body, that cannot yet contribute anything to our present life, but which is active within and remains active when we shed the physical body, like the withered leaves are shed by the plant in autumn, and pass through the gate of death. We then carry what the spiritual researcher sees developing like a bud of destiny between birth and death through the gate of death, bedding it for a long time in a spiritual world that exists between death and a new birth, and carry it again into a new earthly life. And what we see developing, which does not develop in human life in the way I have described, but which sleeps in with childhood and gives the human being a particularly individual character, we carry over from experiences in a previous earthly life.

[ 48 ] I have described to you, dear audience, a few things from the anthroposophical worldview, albeit in a very sketchy way; for I would have to speak for many, many hours if I wanted to even begin to describe the detailed research that has led to the assertions I have just made. For these things are based entirely on careful, conscientious research with the help of those powers and abilities that I have only hinted at today, but discussed in more detail in my previous lecture. And when a person experiences a certain fate in their life, they contribute to this fate in such a way that they bring in inclinations and tendencies from their previous life, which mysteriously draw them to this or that. This can become their fate. In Spiritual Science, we learn about the influence of previous earthly lives on this earthly life. And a certain understanding spreads about the spiritual connection of human life. We add to what natural science can say about the physical body — the physical body of the human being — the spiritual, which surrounds us just as much as what is contained in the physical-sensory outer world that is similar to our physical-bodily nature.

[ 49 ] In this world, as I have already indicated, which we enter through our developed spiritual abilities, we see certain beings that, I might say, grow downwards in an ethereal way, just as plants grow upwards physically. Here we have, so to speak, the first harbingers of spiritual beings and spiritual forces into which we grow, just as we grow into the sensory world through our senses. But as we become acquainted with the higher worlds, those of which human astral life is a part, the human ego, we get to know a spiritual world with real spiritual beings in our environment, the spiritual world in which there are also those who have already passed through the gate of death, either by completing their lives or by dying in early youth. However, it must be emphasized that it must not be believed that any relationship with the dead — I have already spoken of this in the previous lecture — can be sought arbitrarily. That would be a completely false view. If we are to come into the vicinity of a dead person, then this must come from the dead person themselves. Then, through their will, we can somehow develop a revelation from them for spiritual contemplation in these worlds. But what we can recognize of the spiritual world through the deliberate development of our abilities is that which concerns us ourselves, which will add to those answers that are needed by those people who, in the sense of today's lecture, at least in the sense I have indicated I have expressed, which are needed precisely for questions raised by natural science.

[ 50 ] Natural science is in truth a raising of questions; Spiritual Science is in truth the answer to this raising of enigmatic questions. Spiritual Science leads us into the spiritual world through deliberate development, a world that concerns us, that we must know, so that indifference and disinterest do not arise toward that to which our soul-spiritual existence itself belongs, so that the paralysis of the soul does not ultimately set in, which would make us listless and joyless even in our outer work, and which would also alienate us from religious life, which wants to speak to us from our soul.

[ 51 ] People will come to recognize what is still widely doubted today, that Spiritual Science does not in the least detract from religious feeling or the religious life of human beings. On the contrary, Spiritual Science will find the bond that will reconnect human beings, who are developing in the age of natural science, to the mysteries that can become available to them through religious revelations. Spiritual Science will become the true link between natural science and religious life. This Spiritual Science is in no way contradictory to natural science, nor is it in any way contradictory to religious life. Let me speak about these two points after I have given an outline of some of what can be known about Spiritual Science, let me conclude by speaking about these two points.

[ 52 ] Over time, natural science itself has recognized that it is a big question, that something must be added if it is to truly mean something to human beings in a deeper sense, that something must be added to it. What hopes did natural scientists still have in the middle of the nineteenth century and, I would say, even well into the latter half of the nineteenth century ! How did natural scientists believe that they could answer the riddles of life based on materialistic Darwinism, based on the external knowledge of chemistry, physics, and physiology? I do not want to speak from opinions, because I do not believe at all that human beings should only give opinions. What I have presented to you as anthroposophical truths are not opinions, but simply the narration of facts that arise from spiritual observation. So I do not want to simply state my view on natural science, but rather show, from the historical development of natural science itself, how natural science has led to the recognition of what I have just said.

[ 53 ] Here I may allude to a fact that is interesting, especially in explaining the development of natural science: the great hopes of Darwinism, of Darwinist research, as well as the great hopes of spectral analysis and everything else related to chemical and biological advances, were there. At the end of the 1860s, Eduard von Hartmann wrote his “Philosophy of the Unconscious.” In this “Philosophy of the Unconscious,” it was not yet a spiritual researcher who spoke, but a human being who pointed to what would first be conquered for humanity through spiritual research, initially through hypotheses, sometimes still quite illogical hypotheses, through philosophical speculation, to what I have indicated today through beings that one gets to know by looking — on plant life descending from the world mist. Hartmann cannot yet speak about this in such concrete terms. But Eduard von Hartmann simply constructs something essential, an unconscious that stands behind the conscious. So he philosophically senses what could actually be given by Spiritual Science. But because he sensed this, he could not agree — despite the admirable form that materialistic Darwinism, indeed natural science in general, had already taken in the 1860s — he could not agree with what the natural scientists believed, believed when they said: The physical and chemical forces, the purely externally perceptible biological forces, explain what what happens in the external world. We have seen that spiritual research does not go back to a purely mineral earth body, which then leads to the primordial nebula described in such drastic terms by Herman Grimm, but that we are first led back to a living being that is the predecessor of the earth. From this living being we would be led to a spiritual being if we could go further. Today, however, we do not have the time for that today.

[ 54 ] Before it was a living being, the Earth was a pure spirit being. But human existence was already connected to this spirit being in some way — you can read all about this in my book “An Outline of Esoteric Science.” What emerges as fact through Spiritual Science — Hartmann sensed that a spiritual development underlies even the mineral world, but above all in the plant, animal, and human realms in the highest sense. And he showed everywhere in his Philosophy of the Unconscious how inadequate Darwinism is, how it raises questions but is powerless to show how what it describes comes about — because then it would have to point to the spiritual, and Darwinism at that time did not want to do that.

[ 55 ] How did natural scientists react to what Eduard von Hartmann said about natural science in his “Philosophy of the Unconscious”? Well, in the same way that certain people today react to what spiritual researchers say, especially when these people want to believe that they are well versed in what they call real, genuine, true science. Those who believed themselves to be well versed in real, true science at that time also said: Well, Eduard von Hartmann is just a dilettante who knows nothing and recognizes nothing of what is the true essence of the findings of natural science; one need not concern oneself with this stupid “Philosophy of the Unconscious,” because only a layman, only a dilettante, could write such a thing. And many responses appeared, all of which portrayed Hartmann as a dilettante, seeking to show that Hartmann did not understand what natural science had to say.

[ 56 ] Among the many responses was one from a man who did not give his name, an anonymous writer—one of the most spirited writings, which natural scientists immediately recognized. It was a critique of Eduard von Hartmann's scientific follies that was devastatingly sharp, completely devastating; it showed how foolish, how amateurish everything that Eduard von Hartmann wrote was. Prominent natural scientists, such as the famous Darwinian Oscar Schmidt, and Haeckel himself, said at the time: It is a pity that this unknown person did not reveal his name to us, for he is a true natural scientist who knows what is important in natural science. Let him reveal his name to us, and we will consider him one of our own! And the natural scientists contributed greatly to this little book being discontinued very soon, because they had every interest in destroying Hartmann's “philosophy of the unconscious,” as it was becoming established in their otherwise interesting minds, in the minds of people.

[ 57 ] A second edition was soon necessary. And now the author revealed his name, and this author was — Eduard von Hartmann! That was a lesson taught to those who, in the style of the natural scientists of the time, condemn what they believe because it is not limited to what they themselves know, but goes beyond what they believe, dismissing it as amateurish, dilettantish, or even fantastical. But just as Eduard von Hartmann showed at the time that he could speak just like a natural scientist and that he can himself put forward everything that a natural scientist has to say against him, so today's spiritual researcher could, without any particular effort, also put forward everything that is very often put forward in his defense by those who criticize him as a fantasist. Humanity should learn something from such lessons, such as the one given by Eduard von Hartmann back then!

[ 58 ] But the matter goes further, I would like to say, and the development it has brought about is becoming increasingly interesting. Haeckel, Oscar Schmidt, and a legion of others, who first promised to regard the unnamed author of the refutation brochure as their own, fell silent — no longer propagated the writing, which now bore the name “Eduard von Hartmann.” But something else happened. And this is characterized by an example that I give. Many such examples could be cited, however.

[ 59 ] One of Haeckel's most important students, that is, the one who most radically represented the materialistic direction of Darwinism — where it is justified, Haeckel is also fully justified; this is not directed against Haeckel, I mention those researchers who are particularly significant in their field, because insignificant ones can easily be refuted —, one of Haeckel's most important students, Oscar Hertwig. Hertwig—I myself have heard Haeckel mention him on several occasions as one of his most important students, who has settled well into Darwinism—has written a whole series of books. One has just been published, entitled “Das Werden der Organismen” (The Development of Organisms), a refutation of Darwin's theory of chance. A remarkable book! We see that it did not even take longer than the time it took for the teacher's students to grow old. In this book, Ernst Haeckel's student provides a complete refutation of Haeckelism, the materialistic view of Darwinism. And Oscar Hertwig quotes Eduard von Hartmann again and again in this, his book, thus pointing to the validity of what Hartmann has argued in a devastating manner against the materialistic view of Darwinism. Here we see how natural science has developed in such a way that, although it has produced great things, its most important representatives themselves show how they transcend it. This will become more and more apparent, and when it is fully recognized in wider circles, then, dear audience, the time will have come when people will not only acknowledge what Eduard von Hartmann and the speculative philosophers of that time had to offer to natural science, but when they will also acknowledge what Spiritual Science has to say.

[ 60 ] I would have much more to say, but time does not permit it if I am to explain the complete harmony because such harmony does exist, no contradiction between true natural science and Spiritual Science as it is now emerging. But I would like to conclude by pointing out in a few strokes how there is no contradiction between what religious revelation is and what Spiritual Science wants. I already pointed out important points in this regard last year, and you will also find these important points in the aforementioned brochure: “The Task of Spiritual Science and Its Structure in Dornach.”

[ 61 ] But today I would like to use a specific example to show once again that even those who are deeply committed to their religious life, if they are of good will, cannot object to Spiritual Science, provided, as I said, that they are of good will. And I would like to use this example — not precisely because I believe that everything can be shown through this example, but because it is an example that singles out one case from a long development — I would like to use this example, which may be of particular interest to Catholics, but also in a certain sense to Protestants, to show how the opposition between Spiritual Science and religious life is based solely on a misunderstanding. And here I would like to speak quite impartially about one point, the point that can be discussed when one rejects human thinking in terms of conditions that now lie far behind us, in a medieval era, when one rejects human thinking in terms of philosophy, in terms of the Catholic church philosophy of Thomas Aquinas.

[ 62 ] Those who do not engage with Spiritual Science will readily say today, if they believe they should be proper Catholics: Spiritual Science cannot be reconciled with the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas — to which every Catholic is bound — cannot in any way be reconciled with Spiritual Science. And if we take a closer look at points of philosophy, as I said, the Catholic Christian philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, which has even recently become the ecclesiastical philosophy of Catholics through a papal encyclical, this philosophy distinguishes between two kinds of knowledge. Of course, I cannot go into this philosophy in great detail, but only into what is relevant to the present discussion. This philosophy distinguishes between two types of knowledge: firstly, knowledge that must necessarily be left to divine revelation, which man must receive as if through a communication from divine revelation. According to Thomas Aquinas, such truths are the truth of the Trinity, of the triune nature of the divine being, Father, Son, and Spirit. Such truths are the doctrine of the temporal beginning of earthly existence, the doctrine of the Fall and redemption, the incarnation of Christ in Jesus of Nazareth, the doctrine of the sacraments, and a number of other doctrines. But these are the most important truths that humans must accept solely on the basis of communications from divine revelation. This means that humans should not attempt to to investigate the Trinity, the doctrine of the sacraments, the Incarnation, the doctrine of the beginning of the earth, of redemption, and so on, through other powers of knowledge that he develops on his own.

[ 63 ] In addition to these pure truths of faith — as Thomas Aquinas puts it — Thomas Aquinas recognizes those insights that humans can develop on their own, by activating and setting in motion their cognitive faculties. These insights, which are not reserved solely for the truths of faith, are the so-called Preambula fidei. Thomas Aquinas includes in the Preambula fidei all those truths that relate to the existence of a divine spirit in the world. In other words, the existence of a divine spirit that is the creator, ruler, maintainer, and judge of the world, cannot be recognized merely as a truth of faith in the sense of Thomas Aquinas, but as a knowledge that belongs to the so-called Preambula fidei. This can be recognized through the effort of the human powers of cognition themselves. But then, everything that lies within the realm of the Preambula fidei also includes that which relates to the spiritual nature of human soul existence. Then everything that relates to the correct distinction between good and evil also belongs to it. Everything that forms the basis for ethics, for the moral teaching of human beings, also belongs to it: for the [gap], for everything that we today call natural science, aesthetics, and anthropology. We see, then, that in the view of this ecclesiastical philosopher, we must recognize, first, truths of faith that cannot be attained by human powers of cognition acting on their own, and other truths, the praecambula fidei, which can be attained by human powers of cognition acting on their own.

[ 64 ] Now it is easy to prove that neither the truths of faith in the sense meant by Thomas Aquinas are affected by Spiritual Science in a sense that Thomas Aquinas excludes; Furthermore, it can be demonstrated that the further development of those insights that Thomas Aquinas summarizes under the concept of the praemulga fidei, in the sense of Spiritual Science, does not violate the principles that Thomas Aquinas develops in relation to the praemulga fidei. One need only delve deeper into the teachings of Thomas Aquinas. First: the Trinity, the sacraments, and the doctrine of the physical origin of the earth are truths according to the desire of Thomas Aquinas, to which human knowledge left to itself cannot rise. Spiritual Science fully recognizes such knowledge. For Spiritual Science, there are certainly insights that must be treated in the same way as these truths of faith, and even insights that are much closer than these truths of faith. You all know that human beings can only recognize something for themselves through communication if they first have something in the realm of external sensory life , namely what happened to them around the time of their birth and up to the point in time to which they can remember. This must be communicated to them. They can only remember up to a certain point in time.

[ 65 ] When a person develops the spiritual powers of cognition that I have spoken about today, they can look back beyond this point in time; they can trace themselves back to the moment of birth, to conception, and [back] to the time they experienced between death and birth. But from the moment they can remember back to, their vision becomes an inner, spiritual one. What we see here externally as an external event, we do not see as an external event through the development of spiritual abilities, otherwise it would be impossible for us to acquire the sensory abilities through sensory [observations]. We do see inwardly back to the moment of our birth, but we must see the external world externally. And from the moment to the point at which one remembers back to the birth itself, one must also rely on the communications of one's surroundings, even when one sees through the inner world. What one sees, the outer world, which is then a spiritual outer world, begins again a little before birth, for a time before birth, when one knows oneself to be in the spiritual world, which one has passed through between death and a new birth. The inner viewing only begins again a period of time ago.

[ 66 ] So there is something that, despite all spiritual development, is accepted as communication even within this earthly existence. Of the same character, only with reference to a higher level, are those truths that Thomas Aquinas calls “truths of faith.” What is communicated to one about one's birth and childhood is understood by learning to recognize the inner spiritually; but one only learns to understand what has been communicated, one then comprehends it in a different way. In this way, through Spiritual Science, one also learns to know, in a completely different sense than through ordinary reason, what Thomas Aquinas calls truths of faith — the Trinity, the beginning of the earth, and so on. But these truths, and strangely enough precisely those which Thomas Aquinas calls truths of faith, must be obtained through what has actually come into the sensory world from the super-sensory worlds in the course of the revelations of the Bible and the revelations of tradition, insofar as they are justified. messages from supersensible worlds have entered into the sensible world. In the field of Spiritual Science, we also speak of spiritual beings that we discover, of a trinity, but we do not speak of this trinity other than as we observe it in spiritual beings. Then we learn to recognize how the trinity lives in a being and know how to apply it when it is communicated to us through revelations, through the objects of the truths of faith. Through Spiritual Science we learn to recognize the beginning of the earth. But we know very well that when we learn about the beginning of the earth, we have it from the earth's memory, that we have, so to speak, its spiritual counterpart, and that we must receive a message about it that comes from the sensory worlds, just as the messages about our birth and the following years come to us from the sensory world.

[ 67 ] I can only hint at what could be explained at length, but it can be shown in all areas that although Spiritual Science leads into the spiritual worlds, there remain a number of truths precisely those that Thomas Aquinas counts among the truths of faith, which can be approached with full understanding if one has them from revelation, but which cannot be found by the spiritual powers left to themselves. They can be verified, but they cannot be found. They can be verified if they are given, understood if they are given. In contrast to the truths of faith, says Thomas Aquinas, human cognition has only one [apologetic] use, a defensive use. In the sense that I have now explained, this is also the case with Spiritual Science in relation to the real, revealed truths, except that Spiritual Science provides a more intimate understanding of these truths than mere external reason.

[ 68 ] And if we move on to the other thing that Thomas Aquinas counts among the preambula fidei, we find that he first considers the existence of God to be comprehensible to reason. For the spiritual view of the world that I have developed, it is not only the divine spirit, but also other spiritual beings that Thomas Aquinas still recognizes, because he still sees spiritual beings in the stars, for example, and therefore has an inkling of those spiritual beings that I have spoken of today, that they come down to the plants and connect with them. Spiritual science adds to this from its own perspective that the soul is also a spiritual being. spiritual beings in the stars and therefore has an inkling of those spiritual beings of which I have spoken today, that they descend to the plants and connect with them. Spiritual Science adds from its own powers of cognition to the spiritual powers of cognition, to the Preambula fidei, other Preambula fidei that can be recognized through spiritual vision and which, of course, because they are spiritual, provide truths that are closer to the truths of theology itself than mere external rational truths.

[ 69 ] The same applies to the other things that Thomas Aquinas places in the realm of the preambula fidei. From this we see, dear attendees, that those who truly recognize the character of the preambula fidei, and not what Thomas Aquinas himself lists as preambula fidei from the standpoint of human progress at that time, do not transgress—even against Thomas Aquinas—by progressing beyond mere external rational science to the Spiritual Science. . It can be proven in the strictest sense that the character of the Preambula fidei is maintained if one also develops what Thomas Aquinas shows to be the Preambula fidei into knowledge, expanding it in the sense of today's Spiritual Science. One need only be imbued with the impulse of true human progress, one must recognize that progress can be made in both fields, then even if one wants to refer to this philosopher recognized by the Church, one will not be able to find a real contradiction between Spiritual Science and religious revelation, if one is of good will.

[ 70 ] This good will, dear attendees, is of course necessary for Spiritual Science or anthroposophy, both in relation to natural science, which it does not contradict but only expands, and in relation to religious belief, which it does not contradict but only provides a secure foundation for in modern times. But those who still seek their convictions in this Spiritual Science today, which is supposed to provide them with a link between external science and religion, must also be somewhat imbued with the feeling that comes from observing the historical life of humanity, from truths themselves that first emerge from the darkness of human striving and are only gradually recognized.

[ 71 ] Then the spiritual researcher, faced with the ridicule and scorn that is still often directed at him today, thinks about how other things that are easier to integrate into the outer world because they appeal to the principle of utility have fared. Well, in the nineteenth century, railways were first introduced into external cultural life. An administrative body, which even then included modern physicians, had to give its enlightened opinion on whether or not railways should be built when the first railways were to be built in Central Europe. At that time, this enlightened administrative body, which also included enlightened physicians—this has now been proven by documentary evidence—passed the following judgment: Railroads should not be built, because the people who wanted to travel in them would never be able to tolerate traveling in railroads for health reasons. And if there were indeed people who wanted to travel in railroads, then, according to the vote of this enlightened body, high wooden walls would have to be erected on both sides of the railways! Ladies and gentlemen, this is documented and only a few decades behind us. High wooden walls would have to be erected because otherwise those passing by the railways would suffer concussions from the rapid movement of the trains. I am not telling you a fable, but recounting a cultural event of the nineteenth century. However, intellectual matters are sometimes no better off, intellectual matters that are later fully recognized.

[ 72 ] I would like to see someone today who would not be delighted when listening to Beethoven's Seventh Symphony. This Seventh Symphony is, of course, recognized by everyone as a great work of art. When it was first performed, it was not an insignificant person — one really does not need to refer to insignificant people if one wants to refer to those who cannot understand that certain truths and cultural achievements progress —, not an insignificant man, but the famous composer of “Der Freischütz,” Weber, made this statement. He heard Beethoven's Seventh Symphony in such a way that he said:

The extravagances of this strange genius reach their ultimate in this Seventh Symphony; Beethoven is now ripe for the madhouse!

[ 73 ] Weber, the composer of “Der Freischütz,” made this judgment. And Abbot Stadler, who heard Beethoven's Seventh Symphony at the same time, only understood the E in this symphony, which is so admired today, and said:

That E again! The fellow can't think of anything else; it has become dreary with him!

[ 74 ] When one studies the development of truths and the establishment of truths in human progress, one must pay attention to such things, which could be listed by the hundreds and hundreds. . Only then can one learn to gain confidence in what one recognizes only inwardly in one's power of cognition and truth, and which is still foreign to the world around us in many respects. But in relation to such things, we may also remember greater things. And in view of something that has entered into the spiritual development of humanity as something greater, those people who have come together in the cultivation of Spiritual Science or anthroposophy out of the needs characterized in this lecture can look to the future with confidence. If we look back to the beginning of the modern era, if we look at the development of the Roman Empire, how it developed in the sense of what, at the beginning of our era, in the first century of our era in Rome, as that which was of interest, as that which was worthy of an educated person, as that which alone was worthy of attention. And let us then look at what later found its way into the hearts of people through rapid development, let us look at Christianity itself . There we have, in the first century, above ground — and here it is also spatially true — above ground, Roman life, and below ground, in the catacombs, those who, surrounded by their beloved dead, perform the first services to the Savior. And let us remember how they performed the first services to the Savior around their dead, down in the catacombs, how they were not only found unworthy to associate with those who lived by the education of the time and in the education of the time, but how they became martyrs. Let us take a close look at this upper human life in ancient Rome and this underground life in the catacombs, and turn our gaze to Europe a few centuries later; the life above had disappeared [gap] and risen up, [humanity's soul] conquering that which was banished to the underground spaces at the beginning of our era!

[ 75 ] Holding fast to this great example, dear attendees, those who today call themselves anthroposophists may already gather in their rooms, in the rooms which people are beginning to disparage, finding them amateurish and so on, as living, in a sense, in spiritual underground catacombs, and they may calmly look upon those who believe themselves to be in possession of today's science, who believe that what comes from anthroposophy is unworthy of this dominant science that rules the world. The real historical — not the arbitrary — judgment will only be made in the centuries to come, perhaps even much earlier, when something similar has happened, when that which is still despised today will have risen and conquered the souls of human beings as a link between outer natural life and spiritual life.

[ 76 ] [Those who wish to strengthen their convictions through anthroposophy or Spiritual Science, who seek in it the path to external natural science, to external life in general, and to religious life, face such a fate for the life of truth. And if they truly penetrate what can become a feeling for them from the contemplation of this fate of truth, then it does not disturb them that opposition, perhaps even ridicule and scorn, still affects what appears to them as sacred truth. For with the feeling that one gains from contemplating such events — such as Christianity itself, the greatest earthly event — with the feeling that one gains from observing these events, what the human soul must feel, but can also feel, towards the truth it believes it has recognized is strengthened, despite all contradiction, despite all ridicule and scorn. The development of the world is such that truth will prevail. And in the awareness that truth will prevail, those who are imbued with even a truth that is just beginning to blossom can be imbued with a feeling that sustains and supports them; for this feeling gradually develops in such a way that it truly receives warmth and light, felt by life [illegible] is [gap]. Despite all external adversaries, truth will always prevail in the world.