The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Special Lecture

[ 1 ] The individual who, through the feelings and longings of his soul, feels the urge to join the Theosophical Movement will—perhaps without always being fully aware of it — seek satisfaction for what his heart personally desires, for what can personally bring him peace regarding the great mysteries of existence, regarding those questions which he feels he cannot cope with life in the epoch into which he has been placed through his present incarnation without their answers. If the individual then finds here or there within the spiritual life of his epoch that which he can receive in order to attain these satisfactions for his anxious and, for him, necessary soul-mysteries, then he should also strive to penetrate to an understanding of the fact that such a spiritual life, which establishes itself in any given epoch, can truly bring to the individual soul only that which connects this individual soul to the spiritual in the right way—without this correctness always becoming conscious to the individual soul—when such spiritual life is in harmony with the overall evolution of humanity and is able to give an account to the overall evolution of humanity. A spiritual movement may arise here or there; individual souls may believe they can find what they need for themselves in such movements. Yet what the soul thus receives, and with which it believes itself to be satisfied, may be worthless for the soul’s true development, for the true powers the soul must seek, unless what it encounters as spiritual life can assume full responsibility before the spiritual guidance and leadership of humanity in any given epoch, unless this spiritual movement can present itself before those powers that guide the spiritual life of humanity and account for itself before these powers, receiving from them, so to speak, the affirmation: Yes, what is happening within the spiritual movement is what the times demand, what the spiritual forces projecting into the present era demand. — The individual theosophist may well feel the need from time to time to look around and see how what he receives relates to the whole of spiritual life or manifests itself in the most diverse fields; but this perhaps expresses more a longing than a need to expect from the times the solution to the enigmatic questions that are to be resolved through Spiritual Science. When the theosophical soul looks upon what it receives with some satisfaction from Spiritual Science, it may sometimes view with dissatisfaction—or perhaps even with distaste—the spiritual life that surrounds us everywhere in our time, a spiritual life that presumes to deal even with the highest questions of existence, the greatest mysteries of human life. Much of what appears out there and struggles for the solution to the mysteries of existence, for the answer to the questions of existence, may be perceived as materialistic, superficial, and insufficient by many a soul that embraces Spiritual Science. Yet there are many in this outer life who are unbiased observers, who know nothing of Spiritual Science, who cannot even begin to guess what lives in what we call Spiritual Science, and who sincerely and honestly strive for the truth in our age—whose souls feel the deepest longing for the mysteries of existence. We should not survey our fellow human beings, that which lies outside of us, with a superficial, all-leveling gaze, but with a discerning gaze, for only through this can we gain the ability to connect in the right way with what is there. Of course, in a one-hour lecture, it is not possible to mention much of what those who are the spiritual leaders of our movement must address today, what they must take fully into account. Therefore, only individual points can be highlighted, and individual examples will be used to show where, out in the world, the enigmatic questions are pulsating—questions that Spiritual Science seeks to answer and resolve.

[ 2 ] If you look at the world, you will find, in particular, that searching souls—souls deeply moved by the mysteries of existence—ask themselves: What do we need today? What questions must we ask? Where can we find insight into the goals of life? — Souls who feel this way are found in great numbers, especially among those who are working their way up from practical technology, the practice of life, and the practice of work. Not even among those inclined toward philosophy are there as many who think in such an anxious way as among the practical people of life, who toil with their hands amid the mechanization of life, but who look toward what often fills the soul when it must ask about the mysteries of life. We must certainly listen to such souls, for we must create a mental image of Spiritual Science one day having to answer, to give an account to the ruling powers of the world. But such souls belong to the finest seeking souls of the present, and an era may come when they approach the leaders of spiritual life, and when these must answer the mysteries of life that have emerged under the pressure of life’s practical interests. We need only not delude ourselves; we need only have a sense of what is happening in life, and it will meet us everywhere where the true voices of the seekers of the soul are to be found.

[ 3 ] Anyone who has recently walked past bookstores or browsed through the displays at train station bookstores—and who did not go there merely with the intention of selecting only what they intended to buy—will have found, prominently displayed everywhere, a book that, if they are a Theosophist, cannot read with much interest if they are thinking only of satisfying their own soul’s needs, but which they will read with interest if they ask themselves: how must things be arranged if we wish to meet the seeking souls with answers to the questions about life’s mysteries? There lay a book by a man who excelled in practical life, and if one read the first few pages, one could see that he has a good overview of our age, that our time is moving toward the mechanization of external life, that the forces of human labor are being pushed more and more into machine-like work. It is the book Zur Kritik der Zeit by Walther Rathenau. It is a book by a man who knows our time, whom anyone who wishes to have a say in Spiritual Science should also get to know. It describes how everything is being mechanized in our time, and why this had to happen. In terms of comprehensive concepts, this is largely presented inaccurately; indeed, one may not be able to agree with any of the expressions used, but that is not the point. Rather, the point is what the seeking souls of our time are saying, and what are the forces with which they seek, especially when it comes to a person of practical life, as the author of this book is. I would like to read to you at the beginning of our reflection a passage from this book that seems to me to speak from the very heart of the mood of the souls of Europe and America. One can literally hear in it what countless souls cannot express, what can stir questions within them, when one understands such a personality speaking from within about time and the spirit of the age, saying: “Time—it seeks its soul and will find it”—yet throughout the entire book you cannot find a single clue as to how time might find its soul, only longing, the drive toward something unknown—“admittedly against the will of mechanization.” This epoch had no interest in unfolding the soulful aspect of humanity; it sought to make the world usable and thus rational, to push back the boundaries of the miraculous, and to conceal the otherworldly. Yet we remain, as ever, surrounded by mystery; beneath every smooth surface of thought it comes to light, and from every everyday experience it takes but a single step to reach the center of the world.” Nowhere in this book is there any indication of how this step is to be taken from the mysteries surrounding us to the center of the world. “The three emanations of the soul—love for creatures, for nature, and for the divine—mechanization could not rob the individual life of; for the life of the whole, they were reduced to insignificance. Love of humanity . . .”—so says a contemporary practitioner who, with a sober view of his time, opposes it as best he can; who for decades has himself attacked what in Europe and beyond are the threads of economic life, and who has himself contributed to it— “Love of humanity has sunk to cold compassion and a duty of care, and yet it represents the ethical pinnacle of the entire epoch; love of nature has become a sentimental Sunday pastime; love of God, obscured by the orchestration of mythological-dogmatic rituals, has entered the service of interests in this world and the next, and has thus become suspect not only to base natures.” Rathenau goes on to say words to which anyone who wishes to meet the spiritual needs of the time with good will must listen, even if they are partially incorrect, for they express what rightly flows from the souls and will flow ever more from the souls in times to come: Feelings against which no one who pursues Spiritual Science may rebel without being struck by the karma of the times. “There is probably not a single path on which it would not be possible for a human being to find their soul, even if it were the joy of the airplane. But humanity will take no detours.” That is the need of the times. We can hear how the times will refuse to accept anything that speaks directly to the depths of the soul, anything that speaks supernaturally to the depths of the soul. These times will say: “No prophets will come, nor any founders of religions, for these deafened times no longer allow a single voice to be heard: otherwise they might still be listening to Christ and Paul today. No esoteric communities will take the lead, for a secret teaching is already misunderstood by the first disciple, let alone the second. No unified art of the world will bring its soul, for art is a mirror and a play of the soul, not its creator.” One might say: This is what a man said a few months ago. And what have we done for the past ten years? We have striven to find an answer to what is spinning out of the times as their forces. And he goes on to say: “The greatest and most wonderful thing is the simple. Nothing will happen except that humanity, under the pressure and drive of mechanization, of lack of freedom, of fruitless struggle, will cast aside the obstacles that weigh upon the growth of its soul. This will happen not through brooding and thinking, but through free understanding and experience. What many speak of today and a few understand, many will later understand, and ultimately all will understand: that no power on earth can withstand the soul.”

[ 4 ] No earthly power can stand against the soul! This is the foundation of our confidence that we will move forward into the future with what we have, knowing that we are in harmony with the best minds of our time—who know nothing of us or wish to know nothing at all. But we do not want to be tempted to do anything against what our time thirsts for, for we know that the guidance of humanity is entrusted to higher, spiritual powers, and what manifests itself in humanity comes from these spiritual powers, even if it may itself appear different from what we ourselves want, when it appears to be brought about not by some arbitrariness, but in such a way that it emerges as if by elemental force from the center of souls with the impulse of the times. Thus our time speaks to us. How do the phenomena that have brought about our time speak to us?

[ 5 ] I would like to begin with a topic that has already crossed my mind during this series of lectures. Among the various personalities I encountered during the time when I was not yet a member of the Theosophical Society was—as I mentioned a few days ago—the art historian Herman Grimm, who, in everything he accomplished in detail, sought nothing other than to consciously attune himself to the needs of our time. One could experience very remarkable things with him. In the 1860s, Herman Grimm set out to write a biography of Michelangelo. Anyone who picks it up today, provided they are not prejudiced, will find it to be the finest work ever written about Michelangelo. Through years of labor, Herman Grimm strove to create a well-rounded picture of Michelangelo’s life and work. He also succeeded in creating a portrait of that era. He then began writing a biography of Raphael as well. It was one of the constant admissions one could hear from Herman Grimm that his experience with Raphael was quite different. He was able to describe Michelangelo in such a way that he could present a complete portrait of that personality, but with Raphael, he could never quite achieve that for himself. Why? Herman Grimm was a man who, in everything he sought to understand, always looked for the original causes, and with Raphael he simply could not find those original causes. Whenever he felt he had somehow finished something about Raphael, he would find that the matter had, after all, been resolved in a highly imperfect way. Nevertheless, he kept trying again and again—even shortly before his death—to write a biography of Raphael, but it was never completed. A short fragment of it later appeared in his posthumous fragments. Herman Grimm himself asked himself something like: “Will I succeed differently this time, if I live long enough to produce something that, for me, corresponds to what one would like to know about Raphael?” It was shortly before his death that he began again, for it was the fragment that he had set down before passing away. It is only a fragment, as he himself had not yet gotten around to writing a “Life of Raphael.” When I read these words in his posthumous papers, I myself had to recall a moment when I was once together with him in a small circle and spoke, as I wished, about the spiritual affairs of humanity. I was very fond of Herman Grimm and will always love him just as much. He was a personality, strictly confined to the spiritual realm he had prepared for himself, and he had an answer to what I would so much have liked to bring in. It consisted of the following: it was a mere gesture of the hand, a gesture of rejection toward whatever might have entered the island of his spiritual life from the outside—toward that which could not be absorbed by him with the powers available in his time. Those who knew how to deal with him understood him and his hand as it moved in a gesture of rejection around the corner of the table. For me, this hand gesture marked the boundary between the limits of a mind that seeks to revitalize the spiritual elements of its own era, and what must flow into our time as new forces. That was in the year 1892.

[ 6 ] Why—I would simply like to stir up everything else within your souls at this moment—was Herman Grimm unable to come to terms with Raphael’s life through the spiritual elements that lived within his own soul? Find the answer for yourselves, with all that will be necessary for the spiritual life of an age that will want to understand something like the life of Raphael. By this I do not mean to say that the life of Raphael must be something higher than, for example, the life of Michelangelo; rather, I am simply presenting a fact before the human soul. Try to find an answer for yourselves. One can find it by letting one’s gaze wander over the first image that opens our third Mystery Play, “The Guardian of the Threshold.” There you will find four figures: Elijah, John the Baptist, Raphael, Novalis. With what has come to light in the course of our many years of work in Spiritual Science—so that it might appear plausible and convincing—we have endeavored to show how a single soul-individuality—reincarnating—passes from Elijah to John the Baptist, is reborn in Raphael, and then reappears in Novalis. As fantastical as this may seem today, it will be found to be true in a not-too-distant future: one will fail to comprehend the world unless one draws upon the idea of the reincarnation of the human soul and the karma that runs through the various earthly lives—what is called the spiritual interconnections of the world. Only those who proceed from the life as recognized by Spiritual Science will be able to describe Raphael’s life. In our time, the interconnection of spiritual life throughout the world approaches the human soul everywhere with urgency and inquiry, posing questions such as: How is it that thoughts suddenly arise in human life as if springing from one’s own soul—thoughts that existed in times long past and now reappear? — One can gain insight into the way spiritual life truly works, how it causes thoughts to appear again and again in successive epochs, if one is familiar with the spiritual thought processes that Spiritual Science is able to reveal.

[ 7 ] Something of the utmost significance has appeared in German intellectual life in recent weeks. It may seem strange to you that I consider it significant. But I must consider it significant, for it is symptomatically significant. While I was engaged with Goethe in Weimar, I met many figures who are at the forefront of German scholarship. Among the various Germanists, I encountered one at that time from whom I could expect something extraordinarily significant in his field. It is Konrad Burdach, who was a professor in Halle at the time, then left that post to continue as a private scholar. Now, in recent weeks, Konrad Burdach has presented a highly interesting treatise at the meetings of the Berlin Academy of Sciences. Although it initially appears only among the academic writings, it raises a significant question—but one that cannot be resolved by Konrad Burdach’s methods, but can only be answered through the methods of Spiritual Science. You will see for yourselves that it is very natural for the individual soul, when reflecting on the connections of life, to ask itself: How does the Faust poem relate to the modern soul? — Have we not portrayed in Faust the practical man of our time who—having reached the end of his long life—has above all a practical ideal before him? Let us look at Goethe in his practical work: we can observe how he speaks to Eckermann, his faithful secretary. Goethe is compelled to depict Faust’s spiritual development. The spiritual content of Raphael’s Sistine Madonna comes to mind; he was only able to grasp this in his later years, because he had not yet grasped it, for example, during his first visit to Dresden. He wanted to depict how, in the end, Faust’s immortal essence is received into the higher worlds. We see that he wrestles with his problem to such an extent that he once said to Eckermann: It is strange how demonic forces move through the world and cause figures like Raphael to spring forth from an unknown supersensible realm, how one cannot come to terms with figures like Raphael without explaining them in terms of their emergence from the supersensible. — One can get a sense of how Goethe wrestled with the gradual passing of the entelechy, with the gradual passing of the figures into the higher worlds, until he finally came to terms with a human being whom he simultaneously presented as a practitioner of life for the centuries to come.

[ 8 ] Konrad Burdach has presented philology with something remarkable. Anyone who reads his treatise gets the feeling: it is indeed strange how pure philology has managed to place a parallel image from earlier centuries alongside Faust. The ancient figures are presented anew only in a modern form, as if Goethe himself had created them. The entire story of Moses is presented in this way, as if Goethe had conceived it for his own time. Konrad Burdach seeks thereby to show how everything that has developed around the figure of Moses flows into Goethe’s way of thinking.

[ 9 ] Thus a man stands before the gate behind which lies the supersensible world, which provides answers to the question: To what extent are thoughts and spiritual forces real powers that work through time and re-emerge in various eras in a manner appropriate to those times? Everywhere we look today, the world is knocking at the gate of the supersensible world. It is our duty—and part of our sense of responsibility—to listen to the world, when it asks honestly and sincerely, not out of personal caprice, in a way that is appropriate to the sensibilities and feelings of the soul. In doing so, it does not matter what we ourselves imagine the true development of humanity to be. Rather, we should read from the truly best and yearning souls how they themselves wish to enter the spiritual world, and set aside what we ourselves consider important for ourselves, so that we may give it to those who are seeking there. In the face of a culture such as the one from which we seek to work—and in which many friends abroad in Europe and America collaborate with us because they know it has nothing to do with nationality—it is not fitting to argue over what is Oriental and what is Occidental, in a culture where a leading spirit has said: “God’s is the Orient, God’s is the Occident!” These are Goethe’s words, which live in our souls, and from which we draw our inspiration. But in the souls—not merely in our own, but also in those to whom we must listen—there live not only our arbitrary thoughts, which dictate to us what we must give to others, but in the souls there live feelings that the spirits of the centuries have created. Let us seek out one of the groups that confront us. Come with me to one of the works that—like Goethe’s—are extraordinarily indicative of the emotional life in relation to the spiritual world and to the figures who act in the spiritual evolution of humanity. Let us turn to a chapter of Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister. Let us follow together how he consciously intended to present Wilhelm Meister as the representative of humanity. There we see how Wilhelm Meister arrives at a castle, how he is guided by the castle’s guide and shown the castle’s beauties, including the picture gallery. This gallery also contains what can depict the course of humanity’s development through the various epochs, and one can see from it how humanity has developed from ancient times onward, further and further, up to the destruction of Jerusalem. Through the successive images, one is to understand how the forces at work in the evolution of humanity led to the destruction of Jerusalem. The one being guided, Wilhelm Meister—whose spiritual education is to be described to us—asks his guide: Why is the course of human development up to the destruction of Jerusalem depicted here, and not at all within this course what entered into development shortly before it: the life of Christ with all that he accomplished in Palestine? Then the guide says to Wilhelm Meister: “To depict this in the same way as the rest of the course of human development is forbidden to us by that which is our most sacred. What you see depicted here is that which works as forces in world history and works in such a way that, in its interplay, it concerns groups of people, the nations, but not the forces that have intervened individually in the lives of single human beings. It would be wrong to place Christ within this series of images, for Christ addresses each individual soul intimately, and each individual soul must come to terms with him. Then the Guide leads Wilhelm Meister into a second, more secret chamber, where what cannot be placed within the epochal course of human development in the ordinary sense is depicted. There are pictures there again: set apart is that which connects to the Mystery of Golgotha. Everything connected to Christ is depicted before Wilhelm Meister in pictures, up to—yes, up to the Last Supper. What follows the Last Supper as the actual Mystery of Golgotha is not there. Why, Wilhelm Meister asks his guide again, is what leads up to the Last Supper depicted here in this more secret chamber, and not what follows it? He is told that, for the time being, no human soul is capable of depicting what follows in such a way that it would not wound the human heart. Even in his own time, Goethe sensed from his spiritual nature the inability to depict the great mystery, because he knew—one might say, even through an unconscious impulse—that the deepest feelings of the soul’s life must be drawn forth if one is to strive for what is most sacred to the soul and present it before the soul. Thus his Wilhelm Meister shows us how one must pass through a double gate of the esoteric if one wishes to approach this sacredness within one’s soul.

[ 10 ] What was expressed in Goethe’s soul at that time? What was expressed was that, when the soul in modern culture truly grasps itself, this modern culture instills within the soul something most sacred, something most sublime, which Goethe could not help but feel. But what was not yet available in his time to represent this most sacred thing must come. It must work in the souls through entirely different means. Whoever feels a sense of responsibility toward that which has brought about such feelings in the course of time now faces the spiritual world with a full sense of responsibility and believes that they can serve this sense of responsibility only by doing nothing other than pointing out to souls how, in our time, the epoch is ripening so that souls, as they grow into spiritual life, will attain that which, for Wilhelm Meister’s gaze, is to be revealed only after twice passing through the gate to the higher mysteries. Such would be the atmosphere flowing into our souls from the spiritual life of the age if we were to speak of the Christ Mystery that is to be revealed to us, if we were to speak of the intimacy that will exist between the soul and this mighty power of world development when every single soul matures, so that the Christ, newly revealing himself from the spiritual world, will intimately draw near to every single soul.

[ 11 ] We knew that we had no choice but to follow the guide of Wilhelm Meister. He leads first to what characterizes the epochs, then to what is enclosed in the more secret chamber, and finally to make special, most sacred preparations for what, once we have crossed the second gate, may speak to each individual soul only through free decision. If we disregard what otherwise speaks to the souls from the ages, then—unless an external fate or the like is at work—one cannot draw a human soul’s attention to what it is to experience or expect, but rather to what, through the grace of the spiritual guidance of human development, will take root within the souls. We sense at work here what the spiritual life has prepared and what has then become the spiritual life of our time. There we stand and feel our responsibility toward those who were the genuine seeking souls, and we feel how we can account for what we have done. But we also learn that we must not say out of our own caprice: this is how it should be, or this is how it must be done! For why should not this or that be justified in one way or another? No, we feel obliged to do what the creative forces of the time demand of us, not what we ourselves demand or can demand. We feel obliged to continue creating in the spirit of those who spoke before us, and say: We wish to hold nothing sacred other than what you held sacred and longed for. But we want to be faithful to what has flowed to you through the spiritual powers. Then you will understand this and will not say, in response to the many questions that individual souls may have raised in these days, that something has flowed out of harmony here; rather, you will say to yourselves: these people could not have acted otherwise, but they also knew what they were doing.

[ 12 ] Everything was moving toward the most comprehensive spiritual life that Spiritual Science will offer the world, if we consider the times that have passed. Do not look at what flows from some arbitrary aspirations of the times, but look at what the times themselves bring forth as necessities. Do not ask how this or that person, who believes they stand on the firm ground of natural science, intends to think about the mysteries of the times and the human soul, because they cannot see the whole picture. Ask the great ones who have long since passed away, who speak to our souls with objectivity. Ask a man who did so much for 19th-century natural science as Alexander von Humboldt, who in his Cosmos sought to present such a comprehensive picture of the development of nature; ask him where he sought to think beyond what interests the naturalist, where for him the deepest mysteries of all questions of nature are touched upon. And his answer is: That is the 104th Psalm of David! — Yet this same Alexander von Humboldt was also a soul yearning for something more, a soul who—fully immersed in the scientific culture of his time—looked beyond the 19th century toward what had flowed from the fervent feeling of the spiritual world, as it comes to light in the 104th Psalm of David. Now ask yourselves how much of what speaks to the human soul in a hymn-like manner in the 104th Psalm can be found in concrete form—as is necessary for our time—in Spiritual Science! If we consider this, we may ask: What does the soul of Alexander von Humboldt say to us in response to what we are doing? — It would answer us by saying: We have longed for what you are attempting, and we sensed that it must come! — And Wilhelm von Humboldt, Alexander’s brother, the great linguist, the last of that era when the great poem I spoke of yesterday—the Bhagavad Gita—became known in Europe, this great spirit spoke in much the same vein, saying that he had already lived enough after the Bhagavad Gita entered his life.

[ 13 ] Thus, the 19th century prepared those souls who were most in search of truth to receive, objectively and without prejudice, the spiritual treasures bestowed upon humanity across the entire globe. In this way, it prepared itself to avoid falling into one-sidedness.

[ 14 ] I did not want to present you with theoretical arguments. I always consider theoretical arguments to be very one-sided, even when they are the very best. I wanted to use examples to show you what the facts are, and how souls feel when confronted with the force of real facts. I would like to return to something that was on Herman Grimm’s mind, something he spoke to me about on a journey from Weimar to Tiefurt, something that lived in his soul like a building he wanted to construct, and about which he himself speaks in the introductory remarks to his posthumous fragments, saying that it always hovered before his soul, and that all his individual works flowed from what lived in his soul in this way. What was it that always hovered before him? It was nothing less than a history of the development of humanity, which he wanted to present as a history of the development of the national imagination of humanity across all peoples and times. That was what he set out to create. He wanted to investigate, for example, how the creative power of the imagination had worked in Greece, how it had placed a Homer, an Aeschylus, a Sophocles in their respective places, how it had passed through the ages up to the modern era, and had placed everywhere what was to be portrayed. A man walked beside me who had faith in the truth of the imagination, in the creative power of the imagination, but all around him was a world that had no inclination to believe in this creative power of the imagination, in the descent of the imagination from the Father of Truth! The feeling that you now find again in the third Mystery Play, “The Guardian of the Threshold,” where Frau Balde appears like a ghost in the heavenly realms—but like an inverted ghost, for otherwise ghosts come from the supersensible world, but Frau Balde looks up and appears there just as the supersensible beings descend to earth—this feeling pressed itself into my soul at that time and took shape as the destiny of the imagination. One must bear this fate of the imagination in mind if one wishes to address what Herman Grimm had in mind, without knowing anything about the imagination’s descent from the Father of Truth. What Herman Grimm had in mind never came to pass. He sensed vaguely that something would come to pass if he succeeded in what he wanted. But—it did not work out. Why did it not work out? It did not work out because, if one wishes to regard the imagination merely in the general human sense as a creative world-power, it continually slips away. One always senses how the power we call imagination, though derived from truth, cannot lead to truth itself but only to maya, and how behind everything to which imagination leads stands the spiritual world, toward which Herman Grimm made that dismissive gesture.

[ 15 ] In recent days, this feeling has once again come to mind regarding the man who sought to describe the course of human development from a purely imaginative perspective, so that I said to myself: He had the ideal of finding satisfying answers to the mysteries of the world through spiritual life and the spiritual means his time provided him. But what he could attain from his time, what he could honestly and sincerely take into his soul, did not provide him with the solution. And because he was honest, he refrained from doing so! From this we see how our time yearns for what can unveil the mysteries of the worlds, what can provide enlightenment about the creative forces and creative powers that stand behind sensory phenomena and bring about the signature of sensory phenomena. Why has this come to my mind recently? I have never shied away from mentioning the personal, provided the personal is objective, and everyone may think of it as they will. I strive to view the personal entirely objectively. It came to mind because it struck me quite naturally how a spirit desired something but could not achieve it, and how this has now come to pass in a certain beautiful way through the book by our esteemed Edouard Schuré, L’Evolution divine. Read it and resolve to read it in such a way that you penetrate the spiritual power that lies behind all apparent meaning, but which has also worked as creative imagination in the course of the ages. And you will see how our time begins to respond to what were the passionate, yearning, sometimes not even fully conscious questions of our spiritual life. Then you will find in your soul the answer to what Spiritual Science should be, but also the answer to how Spiritual Science should be.

[ 16 ] It was important to me to tell you this morning how we need to think in order to foster harmonious cooperation in the intellectual life of our time.