The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Twelfth Lecture

[ 1 ] In order to complete our task as far as it was intended, we must now study the character of our time in the same way as we studied the character of the four post-Atlantean periods that preceded the advent of Christianity. We have seen how, after the Atlantic catastrophe, the ancient Indian period, the Persian period, and the Egyptian-Chaldean period developed. And in characterizing the fourth epoch, the Greek-Latin epoch, we have seen that in a certain sense the human being worked his way into the physical plane and that the human being's working into the physical world had reached a low point.

[ 2 ] The reason why this period, which we call a low point in human development, is so attractive and appealing to today's observers is that this low point became the starting point for many significant events in our present cultural epoch. We have seen how, during this period of Greek-Latin culture, a marriage between spirit and matter was entered into in Greek art. We have seen that the Greek temple was a building in which God could dwell, and man could say to himself: I have brought matter to such a point that matter is for me an imprint of the spirit, that I can feel something of this spirit in every part of it. This is true of all Greek works of art. This is true of everything we have to say about the life of the Greeks. And this world of artistic creations, into which the spirit was implanted, made matter so immensely attractive that here in Central Europe, the great Goethe sought to portray his own union with this cultural epoch in the Helena tragedy in Faust.

[ 3 ] If culture had continued in the same direction in the following period, what would have been the result? We can illustrate this with a simple sketch. In the Greek-Latin cultural period, man descended to his lowest level, but in such a way that he did not lose his spirit in any piece of matter. In all the creations of this period, the spirit was embodied in matter. If we look at a Greek deity, we see everywhere how the Greek creative genius imprinted the spiritual on the outer substance. The Greeks had conquered matter, but they did not lose the spirit in the process. The normal course of culture would then have been to descend below that level, to plunge beneath matter, so that the spirit would have become the slave of matter.

[ 4 ] We need only cast an unbiased glance at our surroundings to recognize that this has indeed happened on the one hand. The expression of this descent is materialism. It is true that at no time in history has man conquered matter more than in our time, but only to satisfy physical needs. We need only consider the primitive means by which the gigantic pyramids were built and compare this with the momentum and flight of fancy that the Egyptian spirit was able to bring to bear on the mysteries of the world's existence. We need only think of the profound meaning that the Egyptian gods had for the Egyptians as impressions, images of what had happened in the cosmos and on earth in the past. Those who were able to look into the spiritual world in Egypt at that time lived in what had become invisible in the Atlantean era, but which was a fact of Earth's development in the Lemurian era. And those who were not initiated, who belonged to the people, were able to participate in these spiritual worlds with their whole feeling, with their whole soul. But the means with which one had to work outwardly on the physical plane were primitive. Let us compare this with our own time. We need only read the numerous eulogies of our contemporaries about the great progress of our age. There is nothing to be objected to on the part of spiritual science. Man is achieving more and more through the conquest of the elements. But let us look at the matter from another angle.

[ 5 ] Let us look back to times long past, when people ground the grain of the earth with simple grinding stones and yet were able to look up to tremendous heights of spiritual life. The majority of humanity today has no idea of the heights that were then attained. It has no idea of what a Chaldean initiate experienced when he saw the stars, animals, plants, and minerals in relation to human beings, when he recognized their healing powers. The Egyptian priest-wise men were people whom today's doctors cannot hold a candle to. People today cannot imagine these heights of spiritual life. Only spiritual science will be able to form a concept of what the ancient Chaldean-Egyptian initiates saw. What is given today, for example, as an interpretation of inscriptions that contained profound mysteries is only a caricature of the ancient meaning. Thus, in ancient times, we find little power of human beings over the means of work on the physical plane, but enormous powers in relation to the spiritual world.

[ 6 ] And the deeper human beings descend into matter, the more they use their spiritual powers to conquer the physical plane. Is it not perhaps the case that one could say that the human spirit is becoming a slave to the physical plane? And in a certain sense, it is descending even below the physical plane. If modern man has used enormous spiritual powers to create the steamship, the railroad, and the telephone, what does he need these things for? What an enormous amount of spirit has been drawn away from life for the higher worlds! The spiritual scientist, however, agrees completely with this; he does not want to criticize our time, because he knows that it was necessary to conquer the physical plane, but it remains true that the spirit has descended into the physical world. Does it mean anything special, anything more significant, to the spirit if, instead of grinding grain with a mortar and pestle, we use the telephone to call Hamburg and order what we need so that it can be sent by steamship from America? What tremendous mental power has been expended to establish a steamship connection with America and many other distant countries today! We ask ourselves, if we have established such a connection between all parts of the world, is it not only for the satisfaction of material life, of our physical needs, for which an enormous amount of spirit has been used? And since everything is distributed throughout the world, there is not much mental power left to man except that which he has used for the material world in order to ascend to the spiritual world. The spirit has become the slave of matter. Did the Greeks see the spirit embodied in their works of art? Today, the spirit has descended deeply, and we have proof of this in the many technical and mechanical devices of our industry, which serve only material needs. And now we ask ourselves, has man really descended so deeply?

[ 7 ] It would have happened, and it would have come to pass that man would have made the greatest and most powerful conquests on the physical plane in the future, if what we spoke of in the previous consideration had not occurred. At the lowest point of human development, the Christ impulse was incorporated into humanity, giving it the impetus for a new ascent. The entry of the Christ impulse into human development forms the other side of culture from then on. It showed the way to overcome matter. It brought the power through which death can be overcome. In this way, it offered humanity the opportunity to rise again above the level of the physical plane. This most powerful impulse had to be given, an impulse that became so effective that matter was overcome in such a magnificent way as has been described in the Gospel of John, in the baptism in the Jordan and in the mystery of Golgotha. Christ Jesus, who had been foretold by the prophets, gave the most powerful impulse to the entire evolution of humanity. Thus, human beings first had to separate themselves from the spiritual worlds in order to reconnect with the Christ Being. But we cannot yet fully understand this unless we delve deeper into the connections of the entire evolution of humanity.

[ 8 ] We must point out that what we call the appearance of Christ on earth is an event that could only occur at the lowest point, when humanity had sunk so low. The Greek-Latin period stands in the middle of the seven post-Atlantean epochs. No other time would have been right. Where man became a personality, God also had to become a personality in order to save him and give him the opportunity to ascend again. We have seen that the Roman only became conscious of his personality in the Roman bourgeoisie. Earlier, man had still lived in the heights of the spiritual world; now he had descended completely to the physical plane. And now he had to be led back up again by God himself.

[ 9 ] We must delve even deeper into the third, fifth, and middle periods. We must not engage in Egyptian mythology in a schoolish manner, but we must highlight the characteristic points that lead us deeper into the emotional and sensory life of the ancient Egyptians, in order to then ask ourselves how this reappears in our time. We must consider something here.

[ 10 ] We have seen how all the powerful images of the Sphinx, Isis, and Osiris in Egyptian myths and mysteries were memories of ancient states of humanity. All of this was like a reflection in the souls, a reflection of ancient events on Earth. Man looked back into his ancient past and saw his origin. The initiate could relive the spiritual existence of his ancestors, his fathers. We have seen how human beings originally developed from a group soul state. We have been able to point out how these group souls have been preserved in the four figures of the apocalyptic beasts. Human beings also developed out of such a group soul state, but in such a way that they gradually refined their bodies and came to develop individuality. We can trace this historically. Let us read Tacitus' Germania. In the times described there, which reflect the conditions in the Germanic regions in the first centuries after Christ, we find how the consciousness of the individual is still absorbed in a sense of community, how the tribal spirit still prevails, how the Cherusci, for example, still felt themselves to be members of their tribe. This consciousness is still so strong that the individual takes revenge for another member of the same group. It finds expression in the custom of blood feuds. So there was still a kind of group soul consciousness. This group soul consciousness persisted until late post-Atlantean times. But all these are only echoes. In the last period of Atlantis, group consciousness disappeared for the most part. We have just described the stragglers. In truth, people at that time knew nothing more about the group soul. In the Atlantean era, however, people still knew about it. They did not yet say “I” about themselves. This feeling of group soulhood was then only partially transferred to subsequent generations.

[ 11 ] As strange as it may seem, memory had a completely different meaning and power in earlier times. What is memory today? Think about whether you can still remember individual events from your early childhood. It will be very little. But you cannot go further back than childhood. You will not remember anything that happened before you were born. This was not the case in the Atlantean era. Even in the first post-Atlantean era, people remembered what their fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers had experienced. And it made no sense at all to speak of an “I” between birth and death. Memory stretched back centuries. The “I” extended as far as the blood flowed from the ancestors to their descendants. At that time, the group ego was not to be thought of as spatially spread out among contemporaries, but rather extending upward through the generations. That is why people today will never understand what echoes in the old patriarchal stories: that Noah, Abraham, and so on lived to such an old age. They counted their ancestors back through several generations to their ego. People today can no longer comprehend this. In those days, it would have made no sense to name an individual human being between birth and death. Memory continued through the entire ancestral line, up through the centuries. As far back as people could remember through the centuries, that was how far back they gave their names. Adam was, so to speak, the “I” that flowed through the generations with the blood. Only when one knows these real facts does one know how such things stand. In this line of generations, man felt secure. This is what is meant in the Bible when it says, “I and the Father Abraham are one.” When the confessor of the Old Testament said this, he felt all the more that he was a human being within the line of generations. Even among the first post-Atlantean humans, even among the Egyptians, this consciousness was still present. People felt the commonality of their blood. And this also had a special effect on spiritual life.

[ 12 ] When people die today, they have a life in Kamaloka, followed by a relatively long devachan life. But that is already a consequence of the Christ impulse. That did not exist in pre-Christian times; back then, people felt bound to their ancestral fathers. Today, people in Kamaloka must wean themselves of the desires and wishes they had become accustomed to in the physical world; the duration of this state depends on this. People are attached to their existence between birth and death; in ancient times, they were attached to much more. They were so connected to the physical plane that they felt themselves to be a member of the entire physical line of generations. In Kamaloka, one did not merely have to go through the clinging to one's individual physical existence; one really had to go through everything in Kamaloka that was connected with the generations back to the great-grandfather. One lived through this backwards. This had as its consequence what lies at the bottom of the saying: to feel secure in Abraham's bosom. — People felt that after death they ascended through the entire line of ancestors. And the path one had to go through was called the path to the fathers. — Only when people had gone through this path could they ascend to the spiritual worlds, only then could they walk the path of the gods. At that time, the soul went through the path of the fathers and the path of the gods.

[ 13 ] Now, cultures did not replace each other so abruptly. The essence of Indian culture has remained, but it has changed. It has remained alongside subsequent cultures. Something similar emerged in the Egyptian continuation of Indian culture. Today, it is easy to confuse what came later with what came earlier. That is why I have emphasized so strongly that I have only made allusions to the most ancient times. Among other things, the Indians have also adopted the view of the path of the fathers and the path of the gods.

[ 14 ] The more a person was initiated, the more he freed himself from attachment to his homeland and his fathers, the more he became homeless, the longer the path of the gods became and the shorter the path of the fathers. Those who clung to their fathers with every fiber of their being had a long path of the fathers and a short path of the gods. In Eastern terminology, the path of the fathers was called Pitriyana and the path of the gods Devayana. When we use the term Devachan today, we should be clear that this is only an expression we have had to use. An old Vedantist would simply laugh at us if we came to him with the descriptions we give of Devachan. It is not so easy to find one's way into the Eastern way of thinking and viewing things. We sometimes have to defend these truths against those who claim to give the Eastern truths. Many who today receive any kind of description as so-called Indian teaching are not aware that they are receiving a rather confused teaching. Today's spiritual science does not need to claim to be an Eastern-Indian teaching. In certain circles, people love what comes from far away, for example from America. But the truth is at home everywhere. Antiquarian research belongs to scholars, but spiritual science is life. Spiritual scientific truth can be researched at any moment and anywhere. We must keep this in mind.

[ 15 ] Now, among the ancient Egyptians, what we have just mentioned was not only theory, but also practice. What was taught in the great mysteries of Egypt was also practical. There was a special reason for this, which we will learn about when we delve deeper into them. The mysteries of the ancient Egyptians aspired to something very special. Today, people easily smile when they are told that the pharaoh was a kind of initiate at a certain time, when they are told how the Egyptians regarded their pharaoh, how they regarded their state institutions. For the European scholar of today, it is particularly ridiculous when the pharaoh gave himself the name “Son of Horus” or even “Horus” himself. It seems strange to us today, does it not, how a human being can be worshipped as a god; one cannot imagine anything more abstruse. The people of today do not know the pharaoh and his mission. They simply do not know what the initiation of the pharaoh really was. Today, a people is seen as nothing more than a group of people who can be counted. For modern man, a people is an abstract concept without substance; reality is merely a certain number of people who occupy a certain area. This is not what a “people” is for those who stand on the standpoint of occultism. Just as the finger belongs to the whole body as a single limb, so the individual people of a nation belong to a national soul. They are, so to speak, embedded in it, only the national soul is not physical, it is only real as an etheric form. It is an absolute reality: the initiate can converse with this soul. It is even more real to him than the individual personalities of a people, much more real than a single human being. For the occultist, spiritual experiences are also valid; the soul of a people is something entirely real. Let us consider this connection between the soul of a people and individuals in a very schematic way.

[ 16 ] If we think of the individual beings as small circles, the individual egos, then they are only individual beings from an external, physical point of view. Those who view them spiritually see these individual personalities embedded as if in an ethereal mist, and this is the embodiment of the national soul. Now, the individual human being thinks, acts, feels, and wants something. He radiates his feelings and thoughts into the collective national soul. This is colored by this radiation. In this way, the soul of the people is permeated by the thoughts and feelings of the individual human beings. And if we disregard the physical human being and consider only his etheric body and astral body, and then consider the astral body of an entire people, we see that the astral body of an entire people receives its shades of color from the individual human beings.

[ 17 ] The ancient Egyptian initiate knew this, but he knew something more. When he looked at this national substance, the ancient Egyptian asked himself: What actually lives in the national soul? What did he see there? He saw in his national soul the reincarnation of Isis. He saw how she had once walked among human beings. Isis was working in the national soul. He saw in her the same effects as those emanating from the moon: these forces were at work in the soul of the people. And what the Egyptian saw as Osiris was at work in the individual spiritual rays; in this he recognized the Osiris effect. But he saw Isis in this soul of the people.

[ 18 ] Osiris was therefore not visible on the physical plane. Osiris had died for the physical plane. Only when a person had died was Osiris presented to them again. That is why we read in the Egyptian Book of the Dead how the Egyptians felt that they would be united with Osiris in death, that they themselves would become Osiris. Osiris and Isis worked together in the state and in the individual human being as its members. Now let us look again at the pharaoh and consider that this was a reality for him. Before initiation, the individual pharaoh received instruction so that he not only understood this with his intellect, but so that it became a truth, a reality for him. He had to be brought to the point where he could say to himself: If I want to rule the people, I must sacrifice part of my spirituality, I must destroy part of my astral body, part of my etheric body. The principles of Osiris and Isis must work within me. I personally must not want anything: when I speak, Osiris must speak; when I do something, Osiris must do it; when I move my hand, Isis and Osiris must work. I must represent the son of Isis and Osiris, Horus.

[ 19 ] Initiation is not scholarship. But to be able to do something like this, to be able to sacrifice oneself like the Pharaoh, is connected with initiation. For what he sacrificed of himself could be filled with parts of the soul of the people. The part that the Pharaoh gave up, that he sacrificed, was precisely what gave him power. For legitimate power does not arise from elevating one's personality as one's own personality, but from taking into oneself that which transcends the limits of personality: a higher spiritual power. The pharaoh had taken such a power into himself, and it was represented outwardly by the Uraeus serpent.

[ 20 ] Thus we have again looked into a mystery. We have seen something much higher than what is given today as explanations when people speak of the pharaoh figures.

[ 21 ] If the Egyptians harbored such feelings, what must have been particularly important to them? It must have been important to them that the soul of the people became as strong as possible, that it became as rich as possible in good forces, that it was not diminished. The Egyptian initiates could not count on what people had through blood relationship. But what the forefathers had gathered as spiritual goods was to become the good of the individual soul. This is hinted at in the Last Judgment, where man is confronted by the forty-two judges of the dead. There the deeds of each individual are weighed. Who are the forty-two judges of the dead? They are the ancestors. It was believed that the life of man was interwoven with that of forty-two ancestors. Over there, he had to answer to them whether he had truly accepted what they had spiritually commanded him. Thus, what the Egyptian mystery teachings contained was something that was to become practical for life, but which was also to be used for the time beyond death, for the life between death and a new birth. In the Egyptian epoch, human beings had already become entangled with the physical world. At the same time, however, they had to look up to their ancestors in the other world and cultivate what they had inherited from them in the physical world. Through this interest, they became bound to the physical plane, having to participate in what their fathers had wrought.

[ 22 ] Now we must consider that today's souls are reincarnations of the ancient Egyptian souls. What does what happened then mean for the souls living today who experienced it in their Egyptian incarnation? Everything that the soul experienced between death and a new birth has become interwoven with the soul, is in this soul, and has been resurrected in the period that is ours, the fifth, which brings back the fruits of the third period, which appear in the inclinations and ideas of the present time, which have their origin in the ancient Egyptian world. Today, all the ideas that were planted in the souls back then are coming out again. That's why it's easy to see that what people are conquering today on the physical plane is nothing more than a coarsening of the focus on the physical plane that existed in ancient Egypt, only today people have become even more entangled in matter. We have already seen in the mummification of the dead a cause of what is lived out as a material conception on the physical plane.

[ 23 ] Let us imagine a soul of that time. Let us imagine a soul that lived then as a disciple of an ancient initiate. Such a disciple had his spiritual gaze directed upward through actual contemplation of the cosmos. The way Osiris and Isis walked on the moon had become spiritual contemplation for him. Everything was imbued with spiritual-divine beings. He took this into his soul. He is reincarnated in the fourth and fifth periods. In the fifth epoch, such a person experiences all this again. It comes back to him as a memory. What happens now? The disciple looked up at everything that lives in the starry world. This upward gaze lives again in some human being of the fifth epoch. He remembers what he saw and heard at that time. He cannot recognize it because it has taken on a material coloring. What he sees is no longer spiritual, but the material-mechanical relationships arise again, and he recreates the thought in materialistic form as a memory. Where he had previously seen divine beings, Isis and Osiris, he now sees only abstract forces without the spiritual bond. These spiritual relationships reappear to him in thought form. Everything arises again, but in material form.

[ 24 ] Let us apply this to a particular soul that at that time gained insight into the great cosmic connections; let us imagine that what was once seen spiritually in Egypt arises before this soul. It arises again today in this soul, in the fifth post-Atlantean period: and we have the soul of Copernicus. The Copernican world system arose as a memory image of the spiritual experiences in ancient Egypt. The same is true of Kepler's world system. These people reborn from their memory these great laws from what they had experienced in Egyptian times. And now let us think of how something like this revives in the soul as a faint memory; let us think that what such a spirit actually thinks was experienced by him in ancient Egypt in spiritual form. What can such a spirit then tell us? That it is as if he were looking back to ancient Egypt. It is as if he is now bringing this back in a new form when such a spirit says: “But now, after the first dawn has risen for me a year and a half ago, the full day a few months ago, and finally, a few days ago, the pure sun of the most wonderful contemplations, nothing holds me back any longer; I want to rave in holy fervor; I want to mock the children of men with the simple confession that I am stealing the golden vessels of the Egyptians to build a tent for my God, far away from the borders of Egypt.” Is it not like a real memory that corresponds to the truth? And Kepler made this statement. We also find the statement: ”The old memory knocks at my heart.” This is how wonderfully things are connected in human evolution. In many meaningful, enigmatic statements, light and meaning emerge when one senses the spiritual connections. Only then does life become great and powerful, only then do people feel themselves part of a great whole when they understand that the individual is only an individual manifestation of the spiritual that moves through the world.

[ 25 ] I have already pointed out that what the Egyptians depicted as gods in animal form is a materialistic coarsening of what has been resurrected in our time as Darwinism. I was also able to show that if one understands Paracelsus correctly, one can recognize that his medicine is a revival of what was taught in the temples of ancient Egypt. Let us consider a spirit such as Paracelsus. We find a remarkable statement from him. Anyone who delves deeply into Paracelsus knows what a high spirit lived in him. He made a remarkable statement, saying that he had learned much in many ways, but that he had learned least at academies; rather, he had learned much from the people and from ancient traditions during his travels through the countries. It is impossible for us to give examples of how profound truths still exist among our people, truths that are no longer understood, but which Paracelsus was able to utilize. He said he had found a book containing profound medical truths. And what book did he name? The Bible! He did not mean only the Old Testament, but essentially the New Testament. One only needs to be able to read the Bible to find what Paracelsus found in it. And what became of Paracelsus' medicine? It is true that it is an ancient reminder of the ancient Egyptian healing method. But because he took in the secrets of Christianity, the upward impulse, his works have been imbued with spiritual wisdom; they have been permeated by Christianity. That is the path to the future. That is what everyone should do who wants to find their way back out of the fall into matter in the most recent times. There is a way not to underestimate the great material advances. But there is also the possibility of allowing the spiritual to flow into them.

[ 26 ] Anyone who studies what material science has to offer today, who delves into material science and is not too comfortable to immerse themselves in it, is also doing well as a spiritual scientist. Much can be learned from purely materialistic researchers. We can permeate what we find there with the pure spirit that spiritual science can offer. When we permeate everything with the spiritual in this way, then that is Christianity properly understood. It is nothing but a slander against spiritual science when people say that it is a fantastical worldview. It can stand firmly and securely on the ground—on the ground of all reality. And it would be only the most elementary beginning of spiritual science to delve into a schematic representation of the higher worlds. It is not so important that the spiritual scientist merely knows things and learns the terms of spiritual science by heart. That is not the only thing that matters. What matters is that the teachings and views about the higher worlds become fruitful in human beings, that the true teachings of spiritual science are carried into everything, into everyday life.

[ 27 ] It is not important to preach about universal brotherhood. It is best to speak as little as possible about it. Such phrases are like saying to a stove: Dear stove, your job is to heat the room. Do your job. The same is true of teachings given through such phrases. It depends on the means. The stove remains cold if I merely tell it to be warm. It becomes warm when it has fuel. Human beings also remain cold when admonished. But what is fuel for modern human beings? The individual facts of the spiritual teachings are fuel for human beings. One must not be complacent and remain with the “general brotherhood.” Fuel must be given to people. Brotherhood will then arise of its own accord. Just as plants stretch their flowers toward the sun, so must we all look up to the sun of spiritual life.

[ 28 ] It is important that we do not merely accept the things we have looked into as theoretical teachings, but that they become a force in our souls. For every person, in every position in practical life, they can provide impulses for what they have to accomplish. People who today look down with a certain scorn on spiritual science feel superior to the “fantastic” teachings of spiritual science. They find in it “unprovable assertions” and say that one should stick to the facts. — It could easily happen, if the spiritual scientist were not strong but made timid by life in spiritual science, that he would be shaken in his confidence and energy when he sees how precisely those who should understand spiritual science absolutely do not understand it.

[ 29 ] Our age looks down so easily on what the Egyptians called their gods. “Insignificant abstractions,” people say. But modern man is much more superstitious. He clings to completely different gods, who are his authority. Because he does not bow down before them, he does not realize what superstition he is practicing.

[ 30 ] My dear friends, when we meet again, let us always remember that when we part, we should not only take with us a sum of truths, but that we should take with us an overall impression, an emotional impression that most accurately takes the form known to the spiritual scientist as the impulse of the will: that he wants to carry spiritual science into life and not allow anything to shake his confidence.

[ 31 ] Let us picture this scene in our minds. We so often hear people say: Oh, those spiritual seekers! They sit there in their lodges and engage in all kinds of fantastic nonsense. People who are at the height of modern life cannot get involved in that. — The followers of spiritual science sometimes appear today as a despised class of people, uneducated and uninstructed. Should this cause us to become timid? No! Let us bring a picture before our soul and awaken the feelings associated with it. We remember something similar in times past; we remember how something very similar happened in ancient Rome. We see how early Christianity spread in ancient Rome among a completely despised class of people. Today, we look with justified delight, for example, at the Colosseum built by imperial Rome. But we can also look at the people who thought they were at the height of their power at that time, sitting in the circus and watching Christians being burned in the arena and incense being lit so that the smell of burning corpses would not rise.

[ 32 ] And now let us turn our gaze to the ranks of the despised. They lived in the catacombs, in underground passages. This is where the spreading Christianity had to hide. Down there, the first Christians erected altars on the graves of their dead. Down there they had their wonderful signs, their sanctuaries. We are seized by a strange mood when we walk through the catacombs today, through the underground, despised Rome. The Christians knew what was in store for them. Despised was what was the first seed of the Christ impulse, enclosed on earth in the underground catacombs. What remains of imperial Rome? It has disappeared from the earth. But what lived in the catacombs at that time has been exalted.

[ 33 ] May those who today want to become bearers of a spiritual worldview obtain the security of the first Christians. May the representatives of spiritual science live, despised by contemporary scholarship, but may they know that they are working for what will blossom and flourish in the future. May they learn to endure all the unpleasantness of the present. We are working toward the future. This can be done with modesty and security, without arrogance, but with strength against the misunderstandings of our time.

[ 34 ] With these feelings, we try to make what has come before our souls into something lasting. Let us take it with us as a source of strength, and let us continue to work together in a spirit of brotherhood in the true sense of the word!