The Life and Work of Rudolf Steiner
1903
The exceptional diversity of Rudolf Steiner’s knowledge is shown by the fact that he gave a lecture course in the first quarter of 1903 on The Anatomy of Man. According to his scientific conceptions, the systematic investigation of the spiritual nature of man called for a thorough knowledge of man’s physical make-up. That he had valuable new contributions to make to the science of medicine also is proved by the fact that, two decades later, there were active in various countries numerous physicians with a recognized successful practice based upon his special medical indications and lectures, and that clinics had been established and medical courses given. The first public expression by Dr. Steiner in the area of medicine was a contribution of the year 1901, when he published an article on Goethe and Medicine in the Vienna “Klinischer Rundschau,” and it is characteristic that in this field also he adopted Goethe’s organic view of nature as his point of departure.
About the same time he gave a series of historical lectures at the Freie Hochschule on German History from the Founding of the Free Cities up to the Great Inventions and Discoveries at the Beginning of the Modern Times; and the lectures of the previous year on The Evolutionary History of Man, with the sub-title Anthroposophy, were continued. In March began his public lectures in the Berlin Architektenhaus on The Principal Theosophical Teachings (Reincarnation and Karma), of which two lectures may be specially mentioned, dealing with the themes Theosophy and the Further Development of Religions and The Scientific Spirit of the Present Day. We notice again the consistent way in which Dr. Steiner took into account the two streams of human thought.
He now began his lecture tours to many cities, which later on grew ever more extensive. During these months he spoke, for example, in Dusseldorf on Man and the Riddle of the Universe, and a number of times in Weimar on the fundamental teaching of Theosophy, Reincarnation and Karma. It must have been a strange experience for him to be the one publicly to issue a challenge to a new step in knowledge in the very place where he was well known as the former member of the scientific group working at the Goethe Archives.
On June 24, 1903, he participated in a special commemoration of the brothers Wilhelm and Alexander von Humboldt, delivering an address on the significance of these two personalities in the scientific life of the age. Many prominent persons shared in this commemoration.
In July 1903, there occurred in London a conference of the General Secretaries of the European Sections of the Theosophical Society, which again took Dr. Steiner to England. He gave there an address of welcome and a lecture under the title The Connection of the General Spiritual Life with Theosophy and Its Prospects for the Future of German Culture. Special mention is made of this for the reason that, among numerous and often grotesque attacks, was the accusation that Rudolf Steiner had identified himself at that time with the strongly Oriental direction characteristic of the English Theosophical Society. The above lecture to this very circle offers proof that, on this occasion also at the very beginning of his work within the Society, he was determined to make clear his connection with the spiritual declaration and cognitional substance coming out of Occidental history. He spoke there also on the spiritual course of the lives of such personalities as Meister Eckhart, Tauler, Angelus Silesius, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Goethe, and Novalis. Few persons have contributed so much in mediating to the whole of humanity throughout the world the sublime gift of the spirit flowing from these sources.
During those early beginnings, Rudolf Steiner already indicated to his students how, in a spiritual Movement of this kind, there must needs be the few who carry out the pioneer work by means of inner esoteric activity —that is, through their own spiritual self-discipline—in order to prepare a germ for exoteric activity, for spreading abroad spiritual-scientific knowledge. He wrote in a letter to Frl. Mathilde Scholl in May 1903: “These matters will be completely grasped only by the esoteric workers, but they must stand together in a clearly conscious and certain manner, stimulating the rest.” Hence his special work with the esoteric circle. But that the knowledge gained might be at the disposal of the greatest number of persons, he added: “My next, exoteric task must be to extend the teaching as much as I possibly can.”
This summer there appeared the first number of the magazine “Lucifer.” Even this title was, of course, bound to create surprise later among his critics. If we open this first number, however, we find in the first lines in the introductory article a reference to “the legendary figure of Dr. Faust at the beginning of the age to which present-day humanity still belongs.” Connection was thus made with deliberate purpose with the historical tradition of the Mysteries, which had been chosen also by Goethe as the best historical source for spiritual striving. This title, however, served as a further clarification, considered necessary by Rudolf Steiner, in relation to the Oriental bias represented by the founder of the Theosophical Society, H. P. Blavatsky, who, although exceptionally talented, was often spiritually confused.
Rudolf Steiner gave more specific information on this point in a lecture cycle at Helsingfors in 1912, at the time of ultimate separation of the Anthroposophical Movement from the Theosophical Society. He showed how H. P. Blavatsky, in spite of her unusual gifts in the realm of occultism, was entangled, nevertheless, in a mode of thought which led her into error over one of the most vital questions—that “she was unable to arrive at just conclusions because of a certain antipathy to Christ.” He then said: “But it is essential that we should determine the true relations of things if we are to understand the significance of the once current saying: ‘Christus verus Luciferus’—‘Christ is the true Lucifer.’ This no longer sounds right today in the ears of men. Formerly (in the times of the early Mysteries) it did sound right, when men had knowledge from the old Mystery teaching that Lucifer, the Light-Bearer, manifests himself in the external physical light, but that, when we penetrate through the physical light to the Spirits of Wisdom, to Spirit-Light, we arrive at the Light-Bearer of spiritual light.”
We should bear in mind here a lecture which Rudolf Steiner gave in 1902 on Eduard Schuré’s historical drama, The Children of Lucifer. In contrast with the over-emphasis placed at that time on Indian philosophy, a connection was sought in this case with the Grecian and Christian historical current in the Mysteries. This was the line of spiritual development with which Rudolf Steiner felt himself identified, in which he detected future seeds no longer to be found in the philosophy of India. He said, therefore, in that same year of decision, 1912, regarding this spiritual tradition: “Therefore, the Indian philosophy, which at once made a transition into the Yoga teaching, offers scarcely any possibility of finding a transition to the Mystery of Golgotha. Greek philosophy, however, is so prepared that it yearns toward the Mystery of Golgotha. Examine, for instance, the Gnosis, how in its philosophy it requires the Mystery of Golgotha. The philosophy of the Mystery of Golgotha rises on Greek soil because the best souls of Greece longed to take up this impulse.” The fact was that H. P. Blavatsky and her followers thought in a manner that was not Christian, they looked for salvation by means of the Oriental wisdom of India, but that Rudolf Steiner thought in a Christian and Occidental way; that he sought for the way to knowledge of the spirit by the scientific method of the Occident. This fundamentally differing aspect of his thought extended to every sphere of science, art, and religion.
The first number of his magazine, “Lucifer” (later “Lucifer-Gnosis”), was based, therefore, upon the spiritual tradition of Goethe’s Faust and the truths of Christianity, and he wrote in this initial number in 1903:
“The aspiring human spirit has erected a significant legend at the opening of the present era. Like a symbol of the shock to thinking and feeling produced by Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler, stands the fabulous figure of Doctor Faust at the beginning of the period to which modern man still belongs. . . . What corresponds to man’s nature is not the rift between faith and knowledge, but the unconquerable impulse to seek through knowledge the path to the soul’s home. Hence they who hold that the rift is necessary are unable to work in preparation for the future. This, on the contrary, is the task for such as seek for a knowledge that reveals the meaning of life—a knowledge which, itself, explains the whence, the whither, and the why, which contains the force of religion. . . . The significant symbol of wisdom which is revealed by research is Lucifer, the Light-Bearer. Children of Lucifer are all those who strive for knowledge, for wisdom. . . . What does it avail if I discover the laws ruling the stars in their courses and know not that the forces which move the stars live, at a higher stage, in my own soul and guide it to its goal? He who follows the path of the newer natural science and expects to come by this path upon the laws of the soul should take to heart in a fresh form the words of the mystic Angelus Silesius, of the seventeenth century:
If Christ in Bethlehem a thousand times be born
And not in thee, thou art fore’er forlorn.“Today, one may say in the same sense: If the glory of the universe rise a thousand times for thee and thou findest not the law of the starry heavens in thine own soul, ‘thou art fore’er forlorn.’ This magazine will concern itself with the facts of spiritual life. The true spirit of the new natural science will find in it no rival, but only an ally.”
The Faustian aspiration which manifests itself in these words passed through many further stages, no doubt, in the case of Rudolf Steiner; and we shall recognize in the course of events how, after the end of the first seven-year period of this spiritual Movement, in the year 1909, he was able to bring before his students in full clarity the middle way, the path between Luciferic and Ahrimanic spheres, pointed to by Christ. But, even now in the year 1903, it is the tradition which arose from the Greek and Christian Occident that he contrasts with the outdated wisdom of the Orient. And, as Goethe sought for the sources of the Greek Mysteries on his Italian journeys, and caused his Faust to find a Christian way of redemption, so did Rudolf Steiner from the very beginning of the new spiritual Movement choose the selfsame path. This goal was not accessible by means of faith only, nor yet by means only of an abstract philosophy. For this reason he comments in regard to this problem:
“Philosophy has had its day. The philosophers have left their era behind them. The only function for philosophy today is to rescue the ego, the consciousness of self. It will be necessary for philosophy to understand this. Try, therefore, to understand from this point of view my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, wherein I have linked up with that which must carry philosophic consciousness over into the time now approaching, which must once more enter into human evolution, that which is able to form an image more exact than philosophy: there must enter into human evolution Theosophy. Theosophy will take the place of philosophy, in spite of all contradiction. It has a longer phase, so to speak; it exceeds in duration the lifetime of philosophy. From the philosophic point of view, man can be studied only for a definite period; as regards both past and future, the lifetime of Theosophy stretches beyond that of mere philosophy.”
In 1903 seven numbers of the magazine appeared, in which Rudolf Steiner discussed, among other things, Initiation and Mysteries; Reincarnation and Karma from the Standpoint of Conceptions Essential to Modern Science; How Karma Works—all of these articles later appearing in book form. Dr. Steiner did pioneer work in the field of reincarnation, forestalling later evidence, produced convincingly by general scientific and historical research, of the existence of a belief in repeated earth-lives among most of the civilized races of the world since earliest times, including the Germanic and Celtic peoples of Europe—to some extent even earlier there than in the case of the Oriental races. The source of Rudolf Steiner’s knowledge in this field was not spiritual tradition, but his own research. What he gave forth during 1902-1903 in lectures and writings resulted from concrete experiences which he had even as early as 1888—1889; which had, therefore, stood the test of fourteen years of verification. In his autobiography (chapter 7) he states with reference approximately to the period of 1888: “It was at the very time of my life which I am now describing that I succeeded in obtaining those definite views of the repeated earth-lives of man.”
For this reason, he says expressly and emphatically in one of his lectures:
“You are aware that I have always said that the law of reincarnation is to be derived from the spiritual life of the West itself, and that it needs just as little to be derived historically from Buddhism as, for example, the Pythagorean theorem needs to be taken over nowadays from historical tradition.”
Just as, in natural science or mathematics of the present day, it is possible at any moment to recognize and develop anew the Pythagorean theorem without being dependent upon study of Greek history, so modem spiritual science is in a position to investigate the troths of reincarnation and destiny and to extend them without limit, without depending upon Indian, Germanic, or Celtic mythology or history. Historical research provides, however, a valuable confirmation of the fact that the spirit of man, if he has a conscious relation with the spiritual worlds, arrives always at the same truths, although in each period at the stage of consciousness proper to that period and capable of ever higher development.
When Rudolf Steiner adopted the scientific standpoint of the West in presenting the spiritual organization which molds man’s course of life and destiny, and the development of this organization through the laws of reincarnation, he was able in doing so to form a connection with the stages of organic research already achieved. But entirely new possibilities were now provided for this research through the fact that he could combine his faculty of accurate supersensible research with the systematic application of the Goethean theory of metamorphosis.
In the Annals of 1790, Goethe recorded his point of view:
“I was fully convinced that a universal type, ascending by metamorphosis, runs through all organic creations; that it is open to observation in all its parts at certain middle stages, and must, moreover, be recognizable even at the point at which it modestly withdraws into obscurity at its highest stage, in man.
“All my endeavors were aimed in this direction; the problem was so great, however, that it could not be solved during a distracted life.”
What Goethe had recognized as the highest principle in evolution, and was the first to apply to the organic kingdoms of nature, up to man, but had been unable, on account of the circumstances of the time and his other tasks, to carry as far as the highest stages, in human existence, was later applied by Rudolf Steiner in his research, in the first place, to the earthly phases of human evolution; and, in the years following, was shown by him through systematic research to be valid also for the supersensible form of human existence, including the life between death and rebirth. In other words, he carried this forward logically even to the presentation of the spiritual laws of evolution. Thus only was man to be understood in his completeness, in his spiritual, psychic, and physical organization and the enhancement of these to their highest capacities.
He stated for this reason in his writing Reincarnation and Karma from the Standpoint of Conceptions Essential to Modern Natural Science:
“The individual man is more than a specimen of the human genus. In the same sense as the animal, he shares the traits of his genus with his physical ancestors. But, at the point where the characteristics of the genus end, there begins for man what is determinative for his special place and task in the world. And where this begins, there ends all possibility of an explanation according to the pattern of physical animal heredity. I can trace Schiller’s nose and hair—possibly certain temperamental traits, too—back to his ancestors but not his genius.”
The same law, of course, applies to each individual man in corresponding variations. The explanation for the development of the spiritual capacity of man and its enhancement Rudolf Steiner presented systematically during the decades following the turn of the century in numerous lecture courses and writings. Goethe’s demand for the application of the law of metamorphosis “to the highest stage in man” was thus satisfied; furthermore, knowledge was given of the deeper-lying causes and tendencies toward a constant enhancement of the human spirit, in the evolution of humanity as a whole and in that of the individual human being. In addition to working in these fields of knowledge, to which he was primarily devoting himself, he gave during the summer and autumn of 1903 a series of public lectures, with opportunity at the close for discussion: September 6, on The Transitory and the Eternal in the Human Being; September 23, on Cosmic Myths; October 3, on The Origin of the Soul.
During the same period, on October 10, he spoke upon invitation before the Association for Technological Pedagogy on Faust as a Scientific-Pedagogical Problem. The fact that Rudolf Steiner now lectured on education to educators, this evidence of such versatility, might have created surprise in those who did not know him well—even distrust among his critics. But any one expecting to find in this biography the description of a normal course of life might do well to lay the book aside, for it will acquaint its readers step by step with facts quite extraordinary. Rudolf Steiner spoke on pedagogy by no means on the basis of mere theory, but out of practical experience, developed during his Vienna period, and also out of a comprehensive knowledge of the whole nature of man—spirit, soul, and body. Such knowledge opened up new vistas and methods also in education. Today it is a fact that schools have been opened in many European countries and also in America as the result of guiding principles laid down by him—among these, one of the largest private schools in Europe, where thousands of children have been educated according to his methods. Moreover, his later courses of lectures and indications in this field have come to be recognized in all these countries as providing the essential basis for a new pedagogy.
Additional evidence of his versatility is afforded by an introductory course given between October and December at the Freie Hochschule on The History of Mathematics and Physics. In later scientific courses it was a part of his method to give information in the natural-scientific field not merely as such but in connection with the historic changes in human concepts, the different stages of consciousness passed through up to the present-day methods of questioning nature. This made manifest the fact that nature holds other answers in store for the future if man is willing to expand his consciousness into vaster planes of existence. It was for that reason that he began here with the history of mathematics and physics. The history of knowledge leads beyond the present to inquiry regarding future stages of human consciousness and methods of research.
These changes in the relation between man and nature were indicated also in the theme of a lecture of October 23 in Weimar on The Nature of Man, or Spiritual Chemistry. Truly exact science must always take into account the nature of the cognizing human being.
At the turn of the century, when materialism had become a form of dogma, and arrogantly assumed that it had reached a peak of scientific development, it was a lonely pioneering work to maintain such a point of view calmly against all opposition. Rudolf Steiner’s mastery of the scientific research of that period calls for no defense; suffice it to refer to his training at the Vienna Technische Hochschule; his editing of scientific writings of Goethe; his many-sided contacts with academic circles; and his individual research. He was in a position to maintain a connection with contemporary achievements and at the same time carry out the next steps toward the future. We shall later see how numerous activities and publications by specialists and experimental courses in specially built laboratories resulted from indications which he gave throughout the years in the fields of mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, etc. But even now, in 1903, his fruitful stimulations were already effective in all areas of the practical life as well as in natural science, medicine, pedagogy, and elsewhere.
In the autumn of this year new ways were to be indicated also in other areas of work. In October occurred the first General Meeting of the German Section of the Theosophical Society. On this occasion he gave a lecture on Occult Investigation of History with Special Regard to the Present. Since the term occult is nowadays subject to such misunderstanding and misuse, a brief definition will not be out of place to indicate how it was used by Rudolf Steiner. In the Foreword to his fundamental work Geheimwissenschaft (Occult Science), published in 1909, he gave the following explanation of the analogous German term in this title:
“It has come to light that the expression Geheimwissenschaft as used by the author of this book in earlier editions, has been objected to for the reason that a science cannot be something secret (geheim) for anybody. The objection would be justified if the term were intended in that way. Such is not the case. Just as little as natural science can be called natural in the sense that it is natural to everybody, just so little does the author think of a secret science under the expression Geheimwissenschaft; on the contrary, he thinks of a science of that which remains unrevealed in the phenomena of the world for the ordinary method of cognition: a science of the secret, of the manifest secret. But this science will be a secret for no one who seeks for the knowledge of it in the appropriate way.”
During the twenty-one years which lie between that important lecture on history, opening such wide vistas on the occasion of the first Annual Meeting in October 1903 and the last lecture on history which Rudolf Steiner gave in September 1924, he founded a new science of history, worthy in itself to represent the lifework of a great person, and opening a new epoch in historical knowledge and thinking. To recapitulate and present as one magnificent whole that historical picture of the evolutionary epochs of the past, the historical backgrounds of the present, and the accurate evolutionary perspectives of the future for which Rudolf Steiner is to be credited will be one of the most important tasks of future generations. For, in connection with all the stimulation and information which he imparted in various fields of science and of life, there stands always at the beginning the historical aspect of each new scientific, artistic, or religious impulse given by him, and this accompanies the impulse throughout its further development.
In this connection it is important, because of the central significance attributed by Rudolf Steiner to the science of history, to indicate certain of his fundamental points of view.
In this emphasis itself upon the essential importance of historical aspects of human knowledge and activity, the spiritual-scientific work of Rudolf Steiner is differentiated from the method of thought of those circles affected by Orientalism, who were then endeavoring to spread spiritual knowledge in the West. From the outset he called attention to the fact that, whereas the ancient Orient has based its world conception essentially upon a non-historical type of thought, it was and is the destiny of the West to develop a sense for history. This organ of knowledge for the spirit of history, needed for the future planning and work of the Occident, he endeavored systematically to develop. In the West also, numerous errors and cul de sacs in thinking had to be abandoned, and above all the pragmatic attitude toward history which arose in the last few centuries— especially during the age of materialism—which regards earthly events only in their aspect of cause and effect, wherein cause and effect are looked for exclusively in the physical realm, so that the picture of a nonspiritual necessitated course of events or merely of a time-conditioned opportunism results, which receives it impulse and laws of evolution purely from the physical sphere. To this one-sided and, therefore, untrue pragmatic view of history Rudolf Steiner opposed a symptomological view which recognizes in external events only the symptoms of a comprehensive reality, and bases upon this an insight into the manner in which the course of historical events has been determined and planned in all epochs and continuously under guidance and new impulses from the spiritual world. The history of the world in its broad outlines, rhythms, conformity to law, and its symptoms is but an expression of the history of the spiritual world.
This comprehensive insight into the meaning and goal of that which is coming into existence could be given by Rudolf Steiner for the reason that he was not merely a historian in the usual sense but also a researcher in nature and in the spirit. The union of these realms of knowledge is the most important characteristic of his lifework. Because of this fact, he was able to achieve the deed of uniting the spiritual-scientific presentation of the cosmogenesis with a systematic anthropogenesis traced back to the primordial beginnings of the evolution of the universe. While the world picture of the nineteenth century represented the human being as a late product in a physical evolution out of the animal kingdom, Anthroposophy raises the central position and mission of the spiritual nature of the human being, in an evolution guided by higher Spiritual Beings, into the consciousness of contemporary humanity. Thus do the fundamental works of Rudolf Steiner present this unity of the spiritual-scientific cosmogenesis and anthropogenesis; and so do his historical reflections of the following decades release the human being from imprisonment in materialism and place him once more, as conscious collaborator, within the spheres of impulses from the higher spiritual Hierarchies. Such a presentation of the interaction of spirit and nature in the history of the world could have been presented only by a person possessed, as we shall see, of such a comprehensive knowledge of natural science and of human history, and at the same time possessed of a clairvoyance capable of such exact application to supersensible problems.
The introduction of the action of spiritual realms into historical research places in the foreground the significance of the history of the Mysteries and of the spiritual life of humanity. It becomes clear that, in the early ages of humanity, the influence of the spiritual plan of the cosmos was brought to bear on the evolution of humanity, through the Mysteries of antiquity. This spiritual grasp upon history also shows the transition from the period of the Mysteries into the evolutionary epoch of the Middle Ages and of the rising intellectualism, when these influences could be guarded and made effective only in small circles of spiritually schooled human beings, nourishing the spiritual tradition up to the moment when a new form of knowledge of the reality of the spiritual worlds could be mediated to humanity.
One who considers history only in its external and superficial manifestations loses sight of what is really essential—the spiritual impulses working under the surface. But in periods when the spiritual seems to have been lost completely to view it is still present under the surface, prepared to place its imprint upon the following epoch.
The most exalted event in spiritual history was the Advent and the Deed of Christ, with all its determinative influence upon the earthly destiny of mankind. If, therefore, we find in Rudolf Steiner’s book Christianity as Mystical Fact that, at the turn of the century, he placed in the foreground the world-historical aspect of this step in evolution, which transformed the aspect of cosmos, earth, and man, we then find in the course of further developments in his historical research how, step by step, he leads on to the knowledge that with the deed of Christ, the central point in world history was established, the significance of which permits no comparison with any other historical event. For here there came to manifestation the profoundly transforming influence of the Creative Spirit of the universe upon the spiritual, psychic, and physical being of man, the interaction of world-plan and earth-evolution, of spirit and nature, in a unique world-historical example. History without Christology, therefore, is no true science. Moreover, whoever desires to investigate the beginning and the end of the world in the manner of modem science, in the aspect of the purely material, without taking into consideration the interaction of spirit and nature, fails to arrive at wholeness and, therefore, at truth.
To reveal as a systematic whole the symptoms and phenomena of the molding influence of Cosmic Spirit at work in man and nature was the task which Rudolf Steiner successfully set himself to accomplish in succeeding decades. His fundamental works in the years following the change of the century brought about, as we shall see, a spiritual-scientific cosmology, an insight into the coming into being of nature and man out of the womb of the spirit-cosmos. These works took knowledge back to the time of the world’s beginning, and out of the created world they developed the laws of future metamorphoses and rhythms in evolution all the way to the far vision of the world’s end. According to these laws, it is not entropy which awaits the earth’s end, as supposed by the scientific hypotheses of the nineteenth century, but a planned progression towards evolutionary conditions of the highest spiritual potency and structure. Between this world-beginning and world-end lies, as a world-historical event, the Christ Deed as world-middle, threshold between descending and ascending time-epochs in the terrestrializing and spiritualizing evolutionary curves. Christology is for this reason the most important chapter in the history of man and nature; and remote as this may now appear to be from much present-day thinking, it will yet grow to be a component, not only of spiritual history, but also of natural science. Toward this conception of wholeness we can today make only the first steps.
We shall have frequent occasion to revert to these problems, for this knowledge was gained by Rudolf Steiner only gradually, over the course of years, and others were schooled systematically by degrees, through the written and spoken word, to a thinking grasp of these truths and to a reading of the spiritual symptoms of history, until there stood forth that world-picture in which science, art, and religion could be experienced in their unity.
If these activities be examined in detail during their stage of development in the year 1903, it will be seen that, while he laid at first in a restricted circle the foundations for a view of history leading to the supersensible, he continued at the same time the public course already referred to on The History of Mathematics and Physics, and from the middle of October gave weekly one lecture in a cycle at the Free College on German History. Then, on October 28, he began a lecture course on The Astral World, in which was developed in first stages the theory of the etheric formative forces, which was of such decisive significance for his natural-scientific picture of the universe, and especially for research in organic nature and in man. Additional lectures of 1903 served to introduce the spiritual-scientific cosmogenesis, the astral world, the planetary evolutionary epochs, the knowledge of Saturn, Sun, Moon, and Earth conditions in evolution, all of which he brought together in comprehensive form in 1909 in his book Occult Science—an Outline.
At the time under discussion he gave also an introductory exposition of anthropogenesis. In 1903 he gave the first glimpses into the prehistoric phases of human development, showing how plurality developed out of primordial unity, how cosmic wisdom, which in the beginning built up and permeated the universe, gradually became incarnated in the course of time in man as an individualizing principle, and then became confined and metamorphosed in the consciousness-stages of evolving humanity. Building on this conception of the progressive development of human consciousness, from the primal unity with the spiritual of the cosmos, Dr. Steiner spoke of the further development of consciousness and perceptive capacity to continue into the future.
To many who think in terms of materialism, it may be difficult to see how the human being can and must free himself in future from this imprisonment in the corporeal, this limited perception of the sensible, through the systematic schooling of spiritual organs from potentiality to actual functioning. Such restricted thinking will not adapt itself to the possibility that developed inner organs will at a future time perceive the “aura” of man and of the things around him, that we are progressing toward a time in which man will learn to behold not only the corporeal but also the psychic and the spiritual in nature and in man himself.
To this end the development of certain fundamental characteristics of the soul is essential, and for this development Rudolf Steiner gave the first suggestions in magazine articles in 1903, which he then developed in his book published in 1909, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, and in further writings and lectures. Indeed, the lectures of the years 1902–1909 were thus devoted in an essential way to the beginnings of an introduction to spiritual schooling and research. After the comprehensive series of lectures on the history of humanity and related fundamental themes, Dr. Steiner dealt during the winter of 1903-1904 with the mysterious processes connected with human birth, illuminating the threefold relation of body, soul, and spirit; explaining the uniting of the physical germ with the spirit germ of man during the embryonic process. This was illustrated by numerous concrete examples and comparisons. Of further lectures in this cycle, the manifold content of which can only be hinted at, a few characteristic sub-titles may be mentioned: The Mystery of Birth and Death; The Higher Worlds and Man’s Part in Them; The Origin and Nature of Man.
In what is to follow it will not be possible to sketch the content or even mention the title of every lecture, since Rudolf Steiner’s activities in subsequent years assumed such proportions that lack of space makes even this enumeration impracticable. His lectures have been cataloged by Hans Schmidt, to the number of approximately 6,000. Here we can attempt, on the basis of the essential topics, publications, journeys, and labors of this unique personality, only to present a suggestive picture of the stages of his development and lifework. Winter lectures followed in Weimar, Cologne, and Hamburg, devoted to the theme Theosophy and the Cultural Tasks of the Present Day. Dr. Steiner commenced also during this year the series of lectures, continued until his death, on the great festivals of the seasons—Easter, Whitsuntide, Michaelmas, and Christmas —with the purpose of re-awaking a sense which had become lost for the significance of the rhythm of the year.