The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Goethe often described, in many different ways, a feeling of which he was persistently aware. He said, in effect: When I see the irrelevance manifesting in the passions, emotions and actions of men, I feel the strong urge to turn to all-powerful Nature and be comforted by her majesty and consistency. In such utterances Goethe was referring to what since time immemorial humanity had brought to expression in the Festivals. The Festivals are reminders of the striving to turn away from the chaotic life of men's passions, urges and activities to the consistent, harmonious processes and events in Nature. The great Festivals are connected with definite and distinctive phenomena in the Heavens and with ever-recurring happenings in Nature. Easter is one such Festival. For Christians today, Easter is the Festival of the Resurrection of their Redeemer; it was celebrated not only as a symbol of Nature's awakening but also of Man's awakening. Man was urged to awaken to the reality underlying certain inner experiences.

In ancient Egypt we find a festival connected with Osiris. In Greece a Spring festival was celebrated in honour of Dionysos. There were similar institutions in Asia Minor, where the resurrection or return of a God was associated with the re-awakening of Nature. In India, too, there are festivals dedicated to the God Vishnu. Brahmanism speaks of three aspects of the Deity, namely, Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. The supreme God, Brahma, is referred to as the Great Architect of the World, who brings about order and harmony: Vishnu is described as a kind of redeemer, liberator, an awakener of slumbering life. And Shiva, originally, is the Being who blesses the slumbering life that has been awakened by Vishnu and raises it to whatever heights can be reached. A particular festival was therefore dedicated to Vishnu It was said that he goes to sleep at the time of the year when we celebrate Christmas and wakes at the time of our Easter Festival. Those who adhere to this Eastern teaching celebrate the days of their Festival in a characteristic way. For the whole of this period they abstain from certain foods and drinks, for example, all pod-producing plants, all kinds of oils, all salt, all intoxicating beverages and all meat. This is the way in which people prepare themselves to understand what was actually celebrated in the Vishnu Festival, namely, the resurrection of the God and the awakening of all Nature.

The Christmas Festival too, the old festival of the Winter solstice, is connected with particular happenings in Nature. The days leading up to this point of time become progressively shorter and the Sun's power steadily weakens. But from Christmas onwards greater and greater warmth again streams from the Sun. Christmas is the Festival of the reborn Sun.

It was the wish of Christianity to establish a link with these ancient Festivals. The date of the birth of Jesus can be taken to be the day when the Sun's power again begins to increase in the heavens. In the Easter Festival the spiritual significance of the World's Saviour was thus connected with the physical Sun and with the awakening and returning life in Spring.

As in the case of all ancient festivals, the fixing of the date of the Easter Festival was also determined by a certain constellation in the heavens. In the first century A.D. the symbol of Christianity was the Cross, with a lamb at its foot. Lamb and Ram are synonymous. During the epoch when preparation was being made for Christianity, the Sun was rising in the constellation of the Ram or Lamb. As we all know, the Sun moves through all the zodiacal constellations, every year progressing a little farther forward. Approximately seven hundred years before the coming of Christ, the Sun began to rise in the constellation of the Ram (Aries). Before then it rose in the constellation of the Bull (Taurus). In those times the people expressed what seemed to them important in connection with the evolution of humanity, in the symbol of the Bull, because the Sun then rose in that constellation. When the rising Sun moved forward into the constellation of the Ram or Lamb, the Ram became a figure of significance in the sagas and myths of the people. Jason brings the golden fleece from Colchis. Christ Jesus Himself is called the Lamb of God and in the earliest period of Christianity He is portrayed as the Lamb at the foot of the Cross. Thus the Easter Festival is obviously connected with the Constellation of the Ram or Lamb. The Festival of the Resurrection of the Redeemer is celebrated at the time when, in Nature, everything awakens to new life after having lain as if dead during the Winter months.

Between the Christmas and the Easter Festivals there is certainly a correspondence but in their relation to the happenings in Nature there is a great difference. In its deepest significance, Easter is always felt to be the festival of the greatest mystery connected with Man. It is not merely a festival celebrating the re-awakening of Nature but is essentially more than that. It is an expression of the significance in Christianity of the Resurrection after death. Vishnu's sleep sets in at the time when, in Winter, the Sun again begins to ascend. It is precisely at this time that we celebrate our Christmas Festival. When the Easter Festival is celebrated the Sun is continuing its ascent which had been in process since the Christmas Festival.

We must penetrate very deeply into the mysteries of man's nature if we are to understand the feelings of Initiates when they wished to give expression to the true facts underlying the Easter Festival. Man is a two-fold being—on the one side he is a being of soul-and-spirit, and on the other side a physical being. The physical being is an actual confluence of all the phenomena of Nature in man's environment. Paracelsus speaks of man as the quintessence of all that is outspread in external Nature. Nature contains the letters, as it were, and Man forms the word that is composed of these letters.

When we observe a human being closely, we recognise the wisdom that is displayed in his constitution and structure. Not without reason has the body been called the temple of the soul. All the laws that can be observed in the dead stone, in the living plant—all have assembled in Man into a unity. When we study the marvellous structure of the human brain with its countless cells cooperating among themselves in a way that enables all the thoughts and sentient experiences filling the soul of man to come to expression, we realise with what supreme wisdom the human body has been constructed. But in the surrounding world too we behold an array of crystallised wisdom. When we look out into the world, applying what knowledge we possess to the laws in operation there, and then turn to observe the human being, we see all Nature concentrated in him. That is why sages have spoken of Man as the Microcosm, while in Nature they beheld the Macrocosm.

In this sense Schiller wrote to Goethe in a letter of 23rd August 1794: “You take the whole of Nature into your purview in order to shed light upon a single sentence; in the totality of her (Nature's) manifold external manifestations you seek the explanation for the individual. From the simple organisation you proceed, step by step, to the more complex, in order finally to build up genetically from the materials of Nature's whole edifice the most complex organisation of all—Man.” The wonderful organisation of the body enables the human soul to have sight of the surrounding world. Through the senses the soul beholds the world and endeavours to fathom the wisdom by which that world has been constructed.

With this in mind let us now think of an undeveloped human being. The wisdom made manifest in his bodily structure is the greatest that can possibly be imagined. The sum-total of divine wisdom is concentrated in a single human body. Yet in this body there dwells a childlike soul hardly capable of producing the most elementary thoughts that would enable it to understand the mysterious forces operating in its own heart, brain and blood. The soul develops slowly to a higher stage where it can understand the powers that have been at work with the object of producing the human body. This body itself bears the hallmark of an infinitely long past. Physical man is the crown of the rest of creation. What was it that had necessarily to precede the building of the human body, what had to come to pass before the cosmic wisdom was concentrated in this human being? The cosmic wisdom is concentrated in the body of a human being standing before us. Yet it is in the soul of an undeveloped human being that this wisdom first begins to manifest. The soul hardly so much as dreams of the great cosmic thoughts according to which the human being has evolved. Nevertheless, we can glimpse a future when people will be conscious of the reality of soul and spirit still lying in man as though asleep. Cosmic thought has been active through ages without number, has been active in Nature, always with the purpose of finally producing the crown of all its creative work—the human body.

Cosmic wisdom is now slumbering in the human body, in order subsequently to acquire self-knowledge in man's soul, in order to build an eye in man's being through which to be recognised. Cosmic wisdom without, cosmic wisdom within, creative in the present as it was in the past and will be in future time. Gazing upwards we glimpse the ultimate goal, surmising the existence of a great soul by which the cosmic wisdom that existed from the very beginning has been understood and absolved. Our deepest feelings rise up within us full of expectation when we contemplate the past and the future in this way.

When the soul begins to recognise the wonders accomplished by the cosmic wisdom and when clarity and illumination have been achieved, the Sun may well be accepted as the worthiest symbol of this inner awakening. Through the gate of the senses the soul is able to gaze into the external world because the Sun illumines the contents of that world. Fundamentally speaking, what man perceives in the external world is the result of the Sun's reflected light. It is the Sun that wakens in the soul the power to behold the external world. An awakening soul, one that is beginning to recognise the seasons as expressions of cosmic thought—such a soul sees the rising Sun as its liberation.

When the Sun again begins its ascent, when the days lengthen, the soul turns to the Sun, declaring: To you I owe the possibility of discerning, outspread around me, the cosmic thought that sleeps within me and within all other human beings.

Such an individual is now able to survey his earlier existence—one which preceded his present understanding of the activities of cosmic thought. Man himself is more ancient than his senses. Through spiritual investigation we are able eventually to reach the point in the far past when man's senses were in process of coming into existence, when only their very earliest beginnings were present. At that stage the senses were not yet doors enabling the soul to become aware of the environment.

Schopenhauer realised this and was referring to the turning-point when man acquired the faculty of sensory perception, when he stated: This visible world first came into existence when an eye was there to behold it.

The Sun formed the eye for itself and for the light. In still earlier times, when as yet man had no outer vision, he had inner vision. In the primeval ages of evolution, outer objects did not give rise to ideas or mental conceptions in man, but these rose up in him from within. Vision in those ancient times was vision in the astral light. Men were then endowed with a faculty of dim, shadowy clairvoyance. It was still with a faculty of dim, hazy vision that they beheld the world of the Germanic Gods and formed their conceptions of the Gods accordingly. This dim clairvoyance faded into darkness and gradually passed away altogether. It was extinguished by the strong light of the physical Sun whereby the physical world was made visible to the senses. Astral vision then died away altogether.

When man looks into the future, he realises that his astral vision must return, but at a higher stage. What has now been extinguished for the sake of physical vision will return and combine with physical vision in order to generate clairvoyance—clear seeing in the fullest sense. In the future, a still more lucid consciousness will accompany man's waking vision. To physical vision will be added vision in the astral light, that is to say, perception with organs of soul. Those whom we have called the leaders of men are individuals who through lives of renunciation have developed in themselves the condition which later on is established in all mankind—these leaders of men already possess the faculty of astral vision which makes soul and spirit visible to them.

The Easter Festival is connected spiritually not only with the awakening of the Sun but with the unfolding of the plant world in Spring. Just as the seed-corn is sunk into the soil and slumbers in order eventually to awaken anew, so the astral light in man's constitution was obliged to slumber in order eventually to be reawakened. The symbol of the Easter Festival is the seed-corn which sacrifices itself in order to enable a new plant to come into existence. This is the sacrifice of a phase in the life of Nature in order that a new one may begin. Sacrifice and Becoming are interwoven in the Easter Festival.

Richard Wagner was conscious of the beauty and majesty of this thought. In the year 1857 in the Villa Wesendonck by the Lake of Zurich, while he was looking at the spectacle of awakening Nature, the thought came to him of the Saviour who had died and had awakened, the thought of Jesus Christ, also of Parsifal who was seeking for what is most holy in the soul.

All the leaders of humanity who know how the higher life of man wakes out of the lower nature, have understood the Easter thought. Dante too, in his Divine Comedy describes his awakening on a Good Friday. This is brought to our attention at the very beginning of the poem. It was in his thirty-sixth year, that is to say, in the middle of his life, that Dante had the great vision he describes. Seventy years being the normal span of human life, thirty-five is the middle of this period. Thirty-five years are reckoned to be the period devoted to the development of physical experience. At the age of thirty-five the human being has reached the degree of maturity when spiritual experience can be added to physical experience. He is ready for perception of the spiritual world.

When all the waking, nascent forces of physical existence are amalgamated, the time begins for the spiritual awakening. Hence Dante connects his vision with the Easter Festival.

Whereas the original increase of the Sun's power is celebrated in the Christmas Festival, the Easter Festival takes place at the middle point of the Sun's increasing power. This was also the point when, in the middle of his life, Dante became aware of the dawn of spiritual life within himself. The Easter Festival is rightly celebrated at the middle point of the Sun's ascent; for this corresponds with the time when, in man, the slumbering astral light is reawakened. The Sun's power wakens the seed-corn that is slumbering in the earth. The seed-corn is an image of what arises in man when what occultists call the astral light is born within him. Therefore, Easter is also the festival of the resurrection that takes place in the inner nature of man.

It has been thought that there is a kind of contradiction between what a Christian sees in the Easter Festival, and the idea of Karma. There seems at first to be a contradiction between the idea of Karma and redemption by the Son of Man. Those who do not understand very much about the fundamentals of anthroposophical thought may see a contradiction between the redemption wrought by Christ Jesus and the idea of Karma. Such people say that the thought of redemption by the God contradicts the fact of self-redemption through Karma. But the truth is that they understand neither the Easter thought of redemption nor the thought of the justice of Karma. It would certainly not be right if someone seeing another person suffer were to say to him: you yourself were the cause of this suffering—and then were to refuse to help him because Karma must take its course. This would be a misunderstanding of Karma. What Karma says is this: help the one who is suffering for you are actually there in order to help him. You do not violate karmic necessity by helping your fellow man. On the contrary, you are helping him to bear his Karma. You are then yourself a redeemer of suffering.

So too, instead of a single individual, a whole group of people can be helped. By helping them we become part of their Karma.

When a Being as all-powerful as Christ Jesus comes to the help of the human race, His sacrificial death becomes a factor in the collective Karma of mankind. He could bear and help this Karma, and we may be sure that the redemption through Him plays an essential role in its fulfilment.

The thought of Resurrection and Redemption can in reality be fully grasped only through a knowledge of Spiritual Science. In the Christianity of the future there will be no contradiction between the idea of Karma and Redemption. Because cause and effect belong together in the spiritual life, this great deed of sacrifice by Christ Jesus must also have its effect in the life of mankind.

Spiritual Science adds depth to the thought underlying the Easter Festival—a thought that is inscribed and can be read in the world of the stars.

In the middle of his span of life the human being is surrounded by inharmonious, bewildering conditions. But he knows too that just as the world came forth from chaos, so will harmony eventually proceed from his still disorderly inner nature. The inner Saviour in man, the bringer of unity and harmony to counter all disharmony—this inner Saviour will arise, acting with the ordered regularity of the course of the planets around the Sun. Let everyone be reminded by the Easter Festival of the resurrection of the Spirit in the existing nature of man.

... In the first period after the great Atlantean catastrophe, the life of man was intimately connected with the spirit; each human being could be told the nature of his Karma, according to the moment of his birth. At that time astrology was not the dilettantism it often is to-day, but signified rather a living participation in the deeds of the stars. And from this living participation, the way in which each human being had to live was revealed to him out of the Mysteries. Astrology had a living significance for the experience of each human life. Then came a time about the sixth, fifth and fourth centuries before Christ, in which men no longer experienced the secrets of the starry heavens, but experienced instead the course of the year. What do I mean by saying that men experienced the “course of the year”? It means that they knew through immediate perception, that the earth is not the coarse lump modern geology sees in it. No plants could grow on the earth, if it were what geology imagines; even less could animals or human beings appear on it—this would be quite impossible; for according to geologists the earth is a mineral, and there can be direct growth out of the mineral only when the whole universe works upon it, when there is a connection with the whole universe. In ancient times men knew what to-day must be learned over again, namely, that the earth is an organism and has a soul.

You see, this earth soul too has its particular destiny. Suppose that it is winter where we are, Christmas-time or the time of the winter solstice,—then that is the time in which the soul of the earth is completely united with the earth. For when the earth is decked with snow, when as it were, a frosty cloak envelops the earth, then the earth-soul is united with the earth, rests in the interior of the earth. We find then, that the soul of the earth, resting within the earth, maintains the life of countless elemental spirits. The modern naturalistic conception which thinks that the seeds sown in autumn simply lie there until next spring is quite false, the elemental spirits of the earth must preserve the seeds throughout the winter. This is all connected with the fact that the soul of the earth is united with the body of the earth throughout the time of winter.

Let us take the opposite season: midsummer time. Just as man draws in the air and exhales it, so that it is alternately within him and outside him, so does the earth inhale its soul during the winter. And during the time of mid-summer in the height of summer, the soul of the earth has been exhaled entirely; breathed out into the wide spaces of the universe. The body of the earth is then, as it were, “empty” and does not contain the earth-soul; the earth shares with its soul in the events of the cosmos, in the course of the stars, etc. For this reason Winter Mysteries existed in ancient times, in which one experienced the union of the earth-soul with the earth. There were Summer Mysteries too, in which it was possible to perceive the secrets of the universe, when the soul of the initiate followed the soul of the earth out into the cosmic spaces and shared in its experiences with the stars.

The old traditional remnants still extant to-day can show that men used to be conscious of such things. Long ago,—it happened to be actually here, in Berlin—I often used to spend some time with an astronomer who was very well known, and who agitated violently against the very disturbing idea that the Easter Festival should fall on the Sunday immediately after the first full moon of spring; he thought it terrible that it did not fall each year, let us say on the first Sunday of April. It was of course useless to bring forward reasons against this idea; for what underlay it was this: If Easter falls each year on a different date, a frightful confusion comes about in the debit and credit of account books! This movement had even assumed quite large proportions. I have mentioned here before that on the first page of account books one generally finds the words “With God”, whereas as a rule, the things contained in such books are not exactly “with God”. In the times in which the Easter Festival was fixed according to the course of the stars,—the first Sunday after the spring full moon was dedicated to the Sun—there was still the consciousness that the soul of the earth is within the earth during the winter, and outside in the cosmic spaces during midsummer time, while in spring it is on its way out towards cosmic space. The Spring Festival, the Easter Festival, cannot therefore be fixed on a particular day, in accordance with earthly things alone, but must take into account the constellations of the stars. A deep wisdom lies in this, coming out of an age in which men were still able to perceive the spiritual nature of the year's course through an ancient instinctive clairvoyance. We must again come to this. And we can come to it again, in a certain sense, if we grasp the tasks of the present time by connecting them with what we have discussed and studied together here.

On several occasions I have stated here that amongst the spiritual Beings with whom man is united every night in the way I have described—for instance, with the Archangels through speech—there are some Beings who are the ruling spiritual powers for a particular period of time. During the last third of the nineteenth century, the Michael period began, that period in which the spirit otherwise designated in writings as Michael, has become the most important one for the concerns of human civilisation. Such things repeat themselves periodically. In ancient times, something was known about all these spiritual processes. The old Hebrew period spoke of Jahve. But it always spoke of the “countenance of Jahve or Jehovah” and by “countenance” it meant the Archangels, who were actually the mediators between Jahve and the earth. And when the Jews were awaiting the Messiah on earth, they knew: the Michael period, in which Michael is the mediator for Christ's activity on earth, is here; only the Jews misunderstood this in its deeper connection. Since the seventies of the nineteenth century the time has once more come on earth in which the Michael force is the ruling spiritual power in the world, and in which we must understand how to introduce the spiritual element into our actions, and how to arrange our life out of the spirit. “Serving Michael” means that we should not organise our life merely out of the material, but that we should be conscious that Michael, whose mission it is to overcome the base Ahrimanic forces, must, as it were, be our genius in the development of our civilisation.

Now he can achieve this if we remember how we can link again in a spiritual sense to the course of the seasons. There is really a deep wisdom in the whole world process, manifested in our being able to unite the Festival of the Resurrection of Christ Jesus with the Spring Festival. The historical connection (I have often stated this) is absolutely correct: the Spring Festival, i.e. the Easter Festival, can only fall on a different day each year, because it is something that is seen from the other world. It is only we on earth who have the narrow-minded conception that “time” is continuous, that every hour is just as long as another. We determine time mathematically, by our earthly means alone, whereas for the real spiritual world, the cosmic hour is endowed with life. One cosmic hour is not like another, but shorter or longer than another. Hence we are always likely to err when we try to determine from the earth what should be determined from a heavenly standpoint. The Easter Festival is rightfully determined in accordance with the heavens.

What is the nature of this festival? It is the festival that should remind us, and once did remind people in the most living manner, that a Divine Being descended to the earth, took His dwelling in the human being, Jesus of Nazareth, in order that during the time in which mankind was approaching the Ego evolution, human beings might find their way back, in the right way, through death into spiritual life. This I have often described. Thus, the Easter Festival is the festival in which man contemplates death and the immortality which follows it, through the Mystery of Golgotha. We look at this springtime festival aright when we say: The Christ has strengthened man's immortality through His own victory over death; but we human beings understand the immortality of Christ Jesus in the right way only when we acquire this understanding during our life on earth, i.e. if we awaken to life within our souls our connection with the Mystery of Golgotha, and are able to free ourselves from the materialistic conception which takes away from the Mystery of Golgotha all its spiritual nature. To-day the “Christ” is hardly taken into consideration, but only “Jesus”, “the simple man of Nazareth.” One would almost blush before one's own scientific knowledge if one were to admit that the Mystery of Golgotha contains a spiritual mystery in the midst of earth-existence, namely, the Death and Resurrection of the God.

But when we experience this in a spiritual manner, we prepare ourselves to experience other things also in a spiritual manner. It is for this reason so important for modern man to gain the possibility of experiencing the Mystery of Golgotha above all as something entirely spiritual. He will then be able to experience other spiritual things, and will find through the Mystery of Golgotha the paths leading into the spiritual worlds. At the same time, man must understand the Resurrection in connection with the Mystery of Golgotha, while he is still alive; and if he is able to understand the Resurrection in his feelings while he is alive, this will also enable him to pass through death in the right way. This means that death and resurrection, contained in the Mystery of Golgotha, should teach man to invert the relationship: to experience resurrection inwardly, within the soul, during life, so that after having experienced this inner resurrection in his soul, he may go through death in the right way. This experience is the exact opposite of the Easter experience. At Easter we should submerge ourselves in Christ's Death and Resurrection. But as human beings we must be able to submerge in what is given to us as the resurrection of the soul, in order that the risen human soul may go through death in the right way. Just as in the spring we acquire the real Easter feeling in seeing how the plants spring up and bud, how Nature reawakens to life and overcomes winter's death, so we are able to acquire another feeling when we have lived through the summer in the right spirit and know that the soul has ascended into cosmic spaces; that we are approaching autumn, that September and the Autumn Equinox are drawing near; that the leaves which were shooting so green and fresh in the spring, are now turning yellow and brown, are withering away; that the trees stand there almost bare of their leaves; Nature is dying. Yet we understand this dying Nature when we look into the fading process, when the snow begins to cover the earth: and say: the soul of the earth is withdrawing again into the earth and will be fully within the earth when the winter solstice has come.

It is possible to experience this autumn season just as intensely as we experience springtide. Just as we can experience the Death and Resurrection of the God in the Easter season in spring, so can we experience in the autumn the death and resurrection of the human soul, i.e. we experience resurrection during our life on earth in order to go through death in the right way. Moreover, we must understand what it means for us and for our age that the soul of the earth is exhaled at midsummer into the world's far spaces, is there united with the stars and then returns. He who fathoms the secrets of the earth's circuit during the course of the year will know that the Michael force is now descending again through the Nature-forces—the Michael force which did not descend in former centuries. Thus we can face the leafless autumn, inasmuch as we look towards the approach of the Michael force out of the clouds. The calendars show on this day the name of “Michael”, and Michaelmas is a country festival: yet we shall not experience the present spiritually, linking human events on earth with Nature's events, until we understand again the year's course and establish festivals of the year as they were established in the past by the ancients, who were still endowed with their dreamy clairvoyance. Men of old understood the year, and out of such mysteries, which I could to-day outline only briefly, they founded the Christmas, Easter and Midsummer (St. John) festivals. At Christmas time we give each other presents and do certain other things as well; but I have often explained in the Christmas and Easter lectures I have given here, how very little people still receive to-day from these festivals, how everything has taken on a traditional, external form. When, however, the festivals which we celebrate without understanding them, will again be understood, then we shall have the strength to establish out of a spiritual understanding of the year's course, a festival which only now for present-day humanity, has real significance: this will be the Michael Festival. It will be a festival in the last days of September, when autumn approaches, the leaves wither, the trees grow bare and Nature faces death,—just as it faces a new budding life at Easter time,—and when we experience in Nature's fading life, how the soul of the earth is then united with the earth and brings with it Michael out of the clouds. When we acquire the strength to establish such a festival out of the spirit,—a festival that brings with it once more a feeling of fellowship into our social life,—then we shall have established it spiritually: for we shall then have founded something in our midst which has the spirit at its source. Far more important than other reflections on social conditions—which can lead to no results in our present chaotic conditions, unless they contain the spirit—would be this: that a number of open-minded people should come together for the purpose of instituting again on earth something proceeding out of the universe, as, for instance, a Michael Festival. This would be the worthy counterpart of the Easter Festival, but a festival taking place in autumn, an Autumn Festival. If people could determine upon something, the motive to which can be found only in the spiritual world, something which can kindle feelings of fellowship amongst those who assemble at such a festival—arising out of the fullness and freshness of the human heart through immediate contact—then something would exist which could bind men together again socially.

For in the past, festivals used to bind human beings strongly together. Just think, for instance, of all that has been done and said and thought in connection with festivals for the whole of civilisation.

This is what entered physical life through the establishment of festivals directly out of the spirit. If men could determine in a dignified worthy way to establish a Michael Festival during the last days of September, this would be a most significant deed. But the courage would have to be found amongst them not merely to discuss external social reforms, etc., but to do something that connects the earth with the heavens, that reconnects physical with spiritual conditions.

Thus something would again take place amongst men, constituting a mighty impulse for the continuation of our civilisation and our whole human life; because the Spirit would once more be introduced into earthly conditions.

There is naturally no time to describe to you the scientific, religious and artistic experiences which could arise, just as in the ancient festivals—through such a new festival, established in a great and worthy way out of the spirit. How much more important than all that is going on to-day in the shape of social tirades would be such a creating out of the spiritual world. For what would that imply? It implies a great deal for an insight into man's inner nature if I can fathom his way of thinking, if I can really understand his words aright. If to-day one could see the working of the whole universe when autumn approaches, if one could decipher the whole face of the universe, and acquire creative force out of it, then the establishment of such a festival would reveal, not only the will of human beings, but also the will of Gods and Spirits. Then the Spirit would again be among mankind!

The subject of today's lecture is a kind of principle or rule for the explanation of fairy tales and legends. In a wider sense this principle can be extended to the world of myths, and we will indicate in a few words how this can be done. Naturally it is impossible in one hour to specify exactly how one should satisfy a child today with the fairy story itself and then later, when the child is older, with the explanation of it. I would now rather try to clarify what should exist in the soul of the one who wishes to explain such stories, and what that person ought to know.

The first thing we must determine when relating fairy tales, legends or myths is that we should certainly know more than we are able to say, indeed, a great deal more; and secondly, we should be willing to draw the sources of our explanation from anthroposophical wisdom; that is, we must not introduce into the fairy tales just anything that may occur to us but must be willing to recognize anthroposophical wisdom as such, and then try to permeate the fairy tales with it. Not everyone will succeed at once. But even if at first we cannot unriddle it all, we should gradually be able to find the right meaning. What is built on a good foundation will work out well, but where it is not, it follows that all manner of things can be construed into it. We speak both for those who are narrating and also for those to be instructed. Examples of the clearest possible kind will be given, to let us picture what it is all about. The first fairy tale we have to discuss can be told in the following manner:

Once upon a time it happened—where did it happen? where indeed did it not happen?—there was a tailor's apprentice. He had only one penny left in his pocket, and with this penny in his pocket he felt driven to wander forth. He soon became hungry, but with his penny he could only afford to buy some milk soup. When the soup was placed before him, a swarm of flies flew into it and when he had finished his meal the plate was covered with buzzing flies. He struck the plate once or twice with his hand, counting how many he had killed, and found it amounted to a hundred. So he got a slate from the innkeeper and wrote on it: “He killed a hundred at one blow!” And having hung the slate on his back he went his way. As he passed a king's palace, the king was looking out and seeing someone passing who had something written on his back, he sent his servant down to see what the writing was. The servant saw: “He killed a hundred at one blow!”—and told the king. “Ho!” said the king to himself, “That is someone I can make use of!” and he sent down and had him brought in. “I can make use of you,” said the king to the tailor. “Will you enter my service?” “Yes,” said the other, “I will willingly enter your service if you will give me a proper reward, but what that is I shall tell you later.” “Very well,” said the king, “I shall reward you handsomely if you keep to what you have promised. You shall eat and drink well, as long as you like. After that, you must do me a service, equal to your strength. Every year a number of bears come to my country and do fearful damage. They are so strong that no one can kill them. You will of course be able to kill them, if you live up to the statement on your slate.” Then the apprentice said: “Certainly I will do this, but till the bears come I must ask for as much to eat and drink as I want.” For the apprentice said to himself: “If I cannot slay the bears, and they kill me, I shall at least have eaten and drunk well.” And so it went for a while. When the time came and the bears were due to appear, he arranged the kitchen, set up a little table and left the door wide open; on the table he placed all manner of things that bears like to eat and drink—honey and suchlike; then he hid himself. The bears came along, ate and drank till they were gorged and then had to lie down. He cut off the head of each bear and in this way killed them all. When the king saw this, he asked: “Now how did you do it?” And the apprentice said: “I simply killed the bears and then cut off their heads.” The king took this on trust and said: “If you have done that, you can render me an even greater service. Every year great strong giants come to our country. No one can kill them or drive them away; perhaps you can.” The tailor replied: “Yes, I will do it, if afterwards you will give me your daughter as my wife.” Now it was very important to the king to have the giants driven away, and so he promised, and again for a time the tailor lived a good life.

When the time came for the giants to appear, he took all manner of things that giants like to eat and drink, and went to meet them. On the way he added to the rest a piece of cheese and a lark, and then with all his many things and the piece of cheese and the lark he met the giants. The giants said: “We have come again to wrestle with the strongest; no one has overcome us!” Then said the tailor's apprentice: “I will wrestle with you!” “It will go badly with you!” said one of the giants. The tailor said: “Show me your strength and what you can do!” The giant took a stone and pulverized it between his fingers. He then took a bow and arrow and shot the arrow so high into the air that it did not come down for a long time. “If you want to see my strength, if you want to wrestle with me, you must be able to do something better than that,” said the giant. The tailor took a small stone, and covered it secretly with a little cheese, so that when he pressed it between his fingers the cheese spurted out milk. Then he said to the giants: “I can press liquid out of a stone and that you cannot do!” It made a great impression on the giants that he could do something different from them. Then he also took a bow and arrow, but when he shot, unobserved by them he let loose the lark, which flew up and did not return. So he said to the giants; “Your arrow came down again, but I shot so high that mine never returned to earth!” The giants were astonished to find anyone stronger than themselves and said to him: “Will you be our comrade?” He agreed. Certainly he was small, but for all that he would be a good addition, so they took him into their company and he stayed a while with them. But it was galling to them that there should be anyone stronger than themselves, and once when he lay awake in bed he overheard them arranging to kill him. Therefore he made preparations. He got a big meal ready with the things that he had brought with him. The giants ate and drank all they could until they were gorged. Still they were determined to kill him. So he took a pig's bladder and filled it with blood, fastened it on his head and went to bed. The giant who had been chosen to kill him came and stabbed at his head, and when the blood ran out they were delighted, for now, they thought, they were rid of him, and they lay down and slept. But he got out of bed and killed one giant after another as they slept. Then he went to the king and related how he had slain one giant after the other.

The king kept his word and gave him his daughter for a wife, and the tailor was married to the king's daughter. The king marveled greatly at his son-in-law's strength, but neither the king nor his daughter knew who this man really was, whether a tailor or a king's son; they did not know it then, and if they have not found it out since, they do not know it even today.

This is one of the fairy tales that we want to take as an example. But before we go into it, let us put another beside it, for if you collect fairy tales, from whatever period or people, if they are genuine fairy tales you will find that certain basic ideas run through them all. I must call your attention to the fact that the giants were overcome by cunning. Now make a plunge back through the centuries and recall Odysseus and the giant Polyphemus in the Odyssey. Let us put the following fairy tale side by side with the first one:

Once upon a time it happened—where then was it? where indeed was it not?—there was a king who was so beloved of his people that he was always hearing them wish that he would take a wife as good and noble as himself. It was difficult for him to find anyone suitable for him and for his people. Now he had an old friend, a poor forester, who lived simply and contentedly in the forest and who was very wise. He might very easily have been rich, for the king would willingly have given him everything, but the forester wished to remain poor and retain his wisdom. So the king now went to his friend the forester and asked his advice. The latter gave him a branch of rosemary, saying: “Take care of this; the maiden before whom it bends is the maiden you ought to marry.” So the very next day the king had a number of damsels brought before him. He had pearls spread out before them, and every girl's name was written on the table in pearls; then he made it known that the maiden before whom the branch bent should be his bride; the others would have only the pearls. So he went around with the branch of rosemary, but it did not move; it bent before no one. The girls were given their pearls and went away. The second day the same thing was arranged, and again the same thing happened, and likewise on the third day. The next night, while the king slept, he heard something tapping on the window. It proved to be a little golden bird; it said to him: “You do not know it, but twice you have done me a great service; I will also do you a service. As soon as day breaks, get up, take your branch of rosemary and follow me. I will lead you to a place where you will find a horse; it has a silver arrow piercing its body; you must pull it out, and the horse will lead you to where you will find your bride.”

The next morning the king went out and followed the little golden bird until they came to a horse that was very weak and ill and that said: “A witch has shot an arrow into my body!” The king pulled out the arrow and at that moment the weak animal was changed into a wonderfully swift horse. The king mounted it, the golden bird flew on in front, and the rosemary branch waved ahead of the king on his magic horse. At last they reached a castle made of glass. Long before they reached it, they heard a buzzing and a buzzing and a buzzing, and when the king entered with the branch of rosemary and the little golden bird, he saw another king standing there, fashioned entirely of glass, and in the stomach of the glass king was an enormous bluebottle fly; it was this bluebottle fly that made the buzzing, and it was trying to work its way out. The king asked the glass king what it all meant. “Well,” said the latter, “just look towards the sofa: there sits my queen in a pink silk gown, and the secret of it all you will soon discover. The web that has been spun around the queen has just been torn away by a thornbird and will soon be quite torn off her. Then there will come a wicked spider to spin a new web around the queen, and while I am bewitched here in a glass body, my wife will be enmeshed by the spider's web. We have already been imprisoned like this for several hundred years and must remain here until we are released.” Presently the wicked spider appeared and spun her web around the queen, but while the spider was at work the magic horse stepped up and wanted to kill the spider. He was just about to put his hoof on her, when the buzzing bluebottle fly, which had worked its way out, came to the help of the spider, but the magic horse killed them both. Then instantly the glass king was turned into a quite human king. The thornbird was changed into a charming waiting-maid, the queen was freed from the cobweb, and the glass king related how it had all come about:

As soon as he became king he had had to suffer from the persecutions of a wicked witch who lived in a forest on the edge of his domain. The witch wanted him to marry her daughter, but as he had already chosen a wife from a neighboring fairy castle, the witch swore to be revenged on him; she changed him into a glass king and her daughter into a bluebottle fly, who gnawed at his stomach. The queen was tormented by the witch, who changed herself into a wicked spider and spun a cobweb around the queen; the maid was changed into a thornbird, and the king's horse was shot by the witch, whose arrow remained in its body. Now everything had been set right through the horse being freed and able to free the others.

Then the king asked the former glass king if he knew where he could find a suitable wife. The latter showed him the way to the neighboring fairy castle. The little golden bird flew on in front and when they came to the castle they found a lily. The branch of rosemary led them straight to it and bent before the lily, and at the same moment the lily was changed into a wonderfully beautiful maiden who had also been bewitched, for the queen of the neighboring castle was her sister. Now she was released, because of what had just taken place. The king took her back to his home, the wedding was celebrated, and they lived in great happiness, they themselves and all their people. They lived for a long, long time. No one knows how long, but if they have not died, they must still be alive today.

The first thing we must do in order to understand the meaning of genuine fairy tales and myths is to stop regarding them as fantasy derived from folk imagination; they are never that. The starting point of all true tales lies in time immemorial, in the time when those who had not yet attained intellectual powers possessed a more or less remarkable clairvoyance, the remains of the primeval clairvoyance. People who had preserved this lived in a condition between sleeping and waking where they actually experienced the spiritual world in many different forms. This was not like one of our dreams today, which have for most people (but not for everyone) a somewhat chaotic nature. In those ancient times, people with the old clairvoyance had such regular experiences that everyone's were the same or very similar.

What then really happened to human beings in this intermediate state between waking and sleeping? When people are in their physical bodies, they perceive the world around them as far as they can with their physical organs of perception but behind that world is the spiritual world. In this intermediate state it was as though a veil were lifted, the veil of the physical world, and the spiritual world became visible. Everything in the spiritual world was seen in some particular relationship to what lived inwardly in the human being. It is much the same in the physical world; we cannot see colors with the ear nor hear tones with the eye. The outer accords with the inner. In such an intermediate state, the external senses were silent, while the inner soul became active. Just as the eye and the ear connect themselves with the surrounding world, the different parts of the human astral body make their own connection, in this intermediate state of consciousness, with their surrounding world. When the outer senses are silenced the soul comes to life.

We have, to begin with, three members of the soul: sentient soul, intellectual soul, and consciousness soul. As the eye and the ear each have a different relationship to the surrounding world, so has each of these three members of the human soul its quite distinct relationship to its surrounding world. We become aware, in this intermediate state, of one or another part of our soul, which is directed to its surroundings. If the sentient soul especially is directed to its spiritual surroundings, we will see all those beings that are intimately connected with the ordinary forces of nature. People do not themselves see the active forces of nature, but they do see what lives in that activity: wind, weather and other natural phenomena. The beings that express themselves within it are perceived through the sentient soul. When that soul is especially active, it is exactly as if we were still living at the time when neither the intellectual soul nor the consciousness soul had yet been developed; we are transported back and see our surroundings as we did in ancient times, just as when we did not know how to use our intellectual and consciousness souls.

In those ancient times we were in very close touch with all the forces of nature and still bound up with them. We consisted, as everyone on earth did at that time, of physical body, etheric body, astral body and sentient soul alone. We ourselves were able then to do what now those beings around us that are active within the lower nature forces can do; they appear to us as the expression of what we once were, when in the howling windstorm men could tear up trees, when they could control the weather, the mist and the rain. The beings around us appear to us just as we ourselves once were when we still had the strength of giants, before we had withdrawn so completely from the forces of nature. The figures that appear around us are the facsimiles of our own former appearance, people with gigantic strength, “giants.” In such an intermediate state of consciousness, we see giants as real figures, representing a quite definite kind of being, men possessed of gigantic strength. The giants are also stupid, because they belong to a time when people could not yet use an intellectual soul—they are strong and stupid.

Now what can the intellectual soul see in such an intermediate state? It can see that things were fashioned in accordance with a certain wisdom. Through strength, through the giant in man, everything was formed and brought about; through what is in our intellectual soul when we are alive to it, we see beings around us who bring wisdom into everything, who regulate everything wisely. While the giants are generally seen in male form, we see the images of the intellectual soul as constructive female beings who bring wisdom into the activity of the world. These are the “wise women” of the tales, working behind everything that is formed and themselves forming everything. In these figures we see ourselves over and over again as we once were when we had acquired an intellectual soul but not yet a consciousness soul. Because we see ourselves intimately connected with such wise rulers at the back of things, we often feel when we enter an intermediate state of consciousness: “The wise female beings I see there are really related to me.” Therefore the idea of “sisters” often arises when these female beings appear.

Now there is something else our soul experiences when in this state of consciousness and this can be understood only very inwardly. In such a condition of soul we have withdrawn from ordinary physical perception, so that we say to ourselves, “Yes, what I see now in my soul is certainly contained in what I see during the day, in what is clear then to my intellectual soul—but when I see it by day, it is exactly reversed.” When in the intermediate state of consciousness we remember the impressions of the day, they appear to be the reverse of what we remember during the day of the perceptions we had during the intermediate state, of the various fleeting forms of our astral organization. When we recall the impressions of the day, it seems as though the subtle etheric forms behind ordinary reality were changed into stiff figures. Things during the day appear to us as though they were bewitched, with their real nature held prisoner within them. Wherever a plant or being appears bewitched, it has happened like this: we see the substance of a wise being behind the physical appearance and we remember, “Yes, by day that is only a plant; it is separated from my intellectual soul so that I cannot really reach it during the day.” When we feel this estrangement between the objects by day and what is behind them, for example the perception of the lily in the daytime and the form behind it related to our own intellectual soul, we will perceive that our intellectual soul has a strong kind of longing to unite with what is behind the object or the lily; it would be a “marriage,” a union of the night-form with the day-form.

The consciousness soul originated in human beings at a time when we had already distanced ourselves from the forces of nature and no longer could look into the mysteries of existence. What the consciousness soul is able to do is far removed from those strong forces we have described. Shrewdness is its essential quality, not strength nor any rough force. By means of the consciousness soul we can see all those spiritual beings that have remained behind at the stage where the human being had only the sheath of the ego. We see them living at that point, not able to do much with their minute strength, and as we see their forms in images according to their inner nature, they appear to us as dwarfs. In intermediate periods when we free ourselves from sense perception, we find the whole realm that lies behind sense perception peopled with such forms. In our more or less higher moments, when we feel our connection to the spiritual world, the outer events in life appear to be what they genuinely are: an imprint or reproduction of this whole relationship to the spiritual world.

If a person is especially shrewd in life and not only dry and prosaic but able to conceive the relationship of life to spiritual reality, particularly in such states in which human beings can still know something of spiritual reality, the following may happen. If he is a somewhat thoughtful person, he will observe that certain people with shrewdness are able in all sorts of clever ways to overcome the crude forces that otherwise dominate people's lives. He will then tell himself: “What actually happens in life is that rough strength is overcome by cleverness; for this we can thank the powers behind us, to whom we are related, for they have allowed a force to become conscious in us that overcomes rough strength with cleverness, the rough strength that we ourselves possessed when we were at the stage of the giants.”

The incidents of our inner life appear to us as mirror-images of events in the outer world that have passed away but can still be perceived in the spiritual world. In the spiritual world are reflected the struggles of those beings who, though weaker in bodily strength, are in consequence stronger in spiritual strength. Whenever the overcoming of the rough forces or the giants appears in fairy tales it is founded on the perception taking place in such an intermediate state of consciousness. Man wishes to gain a clear insight about himself; he has lost sight of the spiritual world, but he says to himself: “I can gain a clear insight when I am in such an intermediate state. Then I shall be so wise that intelligence and shrewdness will gain the victory over the rough forces!”

Powers appear and act and enlighten man as to what happens in the spiritual world. He then recounts what has happened in the spiritual world, and must recount it in such a way that he says: “What I have seen and related happened once upon a time, and is still happening behind the world of sense in the spiritual world, where there are different conditions of life.” It may be that every time he has seen it under such conditions, the event is already past, together with the conditions which made such an action possible. Yet it may still be there. It depends on whether someone entering an intermediate state observes that event. It is neither here nor there but everywhere where there is anyone who can observe it. Therefore, every genuine fairy tale begins:

“Once upon a time it happened—where then was it? Where indeed was it not?” That is the correct beginning of a fairy tale, and every fairy tale must end with, “I once saw this, and if what happened in the spiritual world did not perish, if it is not dead, it must still be alive today.” That is just the way every fairy tale should be related. If you always begin and end this way, you will create the right sort of sensitivity to what you are telling.

Suppose—like the king in the second tale—someone has to find a wife. He looks for a being in the human world who is as nearly as possible a picture of what he can find in the spiritual world as his archetype, and this can be found through the wise guidance of the powers that the intellectual soul can recognize. But in the outer world it cannot be found; therefore we have to subordinate the outer to the more inward element in ourselves. On the physical plane we are subject to error. Therefore we must allow deeply inward powers to rule, when we make such a search as the king is doing. Even today we are able to do this by putting ourselves in that intermediate state of consciousness, in order to make a connection with the powers ruling there. The persons who possess such powers, however, live in retirement where they are not distracted by the immense happenings of the world. And so the king has to go to his friend, the hermit, living alone and in poverty, who knows the secrets of the forces guiding human beings to the spiritual world. He is able to give the king the branch of rosemary.

The king cannot find, through any outward contrivance, what can be determined only by his archetypes in the spiritual world. Therefore he dreams first of all that a little golden bird comes to him and then he remains in a sort of waking-dream state. In this condition, through the transparent touch one has as a sense in the spiritual world, he experiences everything I have shown. Gradually he comes to find out, through the powers opposing human purity and nobility, something that has been preserved even into our own time: the possibility of being blessed with pure joy. None of the powers bound to the physical world today can bring him to this, only the power that appears to him when the intellectual soul or his general inner soul strength is directed towards the spiritual world. And this power comes to him in the image of the “magic horse.” In the physical world the horse is only the shadow picture of what lies behind it in the spiritual world. The harmful powers of soul embodied in the physical world have shot the arrow into the horse's body. The moment that these forces are plucked out and the horse is freed from them, the powers are aroused that enable the king to understand and assess all these relationships, so that by looking not only on outer appearance, he is able to find what is right for him. With ordinary intelligence, he might wander far into the world and find people here, there, and everywhere, but he would pass by the wife he is looking for; he would not understand at all what conditions are involved or what hindrances there are. The earlier conditions would be preserved.

The conditions he is looking for are there, but they are distorted by the outer physical world, where indeed most things do appear altered. We certainly do not have—in the physical world—the forces in their true reality. However, the transformed glass king finally appears in his true form and is the very personality who can point out where the other should look for a wife. Through the opposing forces of the outer world the glass king has been transformed; these forces assert themselves when the human being is completely entangled in the concerns of the external world. At first the glass king is completely enmeshed in outer circumstances and this has made him different inwardly from what he actually could be. We often have things like wrong-doing in our karma that are like an evil bluebottle fly. The truth lying at the bottom of all this is revealed in such pictures. We must be able to imagine the situation: what lies behind physical phenomena can be found in the forces awakened in the king. As his soul forces awaken and when he directs them well, he finds what the outer physical forces had hidden from him, his “bride.”

When some external happening like searching for a bride is pictured in such tales, it usually takes place not in an ordinary way but in circumstances where someone comes into contact with a sort of soul-shepherd, who will awaken the deeper forces within him, as the hermit did for the king. He is led thereby to the forces that make everything in the physical world appear unreal for a time; he needs this if it is going to be possible for him to discern the truth. And so we see that while outer conditions seem to be the source, other states of consciousness are present, calling forth genuine vision.

Every fairy tale can be explained in this way, but the explanation should come forth out of the spiritual reality that lies in back of the whole world of fairy tales. Everything that occurs in a tale, including all the small details, can gradually be found and interpreted. For example, the mysterious connection between the active forces of perception and the hidden forces of ordinary life can become visible when we begin to look at it more inwardly. This is beautifully symbolized in the touch of the little golden bird on the lily. Delicate, significant spiritual forces are indeed latent in the lily, but they only appear when they have been aroused by the golden bird.

The established belief that everything around us is bewitched spiritual truth and that we attain the truth when we break the spell, is the basis of the realm of the fairy tale. We must be quite clear that a fairy tale is primarily the account of an astral event. But by its constant repetition minor details are altered—people have an extraordinary talent for changing things! We carefully collect the tales as they are told again and again by simple people, and indeed these are remnants of an ancient picture seen in the astral world, but many of the details may well have been altered. And then the mistake is made to explain these alterations in a clever way. To explain fairy tales correctly, we must always go back to their original form and recognize it as such. Everything has to correspond to those astral experiences.

The question may arise whether the human being has the same form today as in those earlier times that are still contained in the spiritual experiences we have in the intermediate state of consciousness. The answer is no, we do not. We have passed through very different forms before developing into what we are today. However, what we have overcome and cast forth appears in a quite distinct, external form. In order to estrange ourselves from our giant power, we had to cast forth our giant shapes and overcome them, refining our forces and raising them to the intellectual soul and the consciousness soul. There are indeed beings who have remained at the stage of the rough forces. Wherever something evil appears and has to be overcome, something that has remained stationary on the astral plane, it always appears as a “dragon” or something similar; this is none other than the grotesque form, transformed in the spiritual world, of what human beings had to change and cast forth from themselves. We must be aware that this corresponds to an absolutely certain fact.

In conclusion, I should like to relate another fairy tale for you to ponder over for yourselves. It will contain the various motifs that come into play when the human being makes a connection with the astral world. If you apply what I have been describing to this somewhat complicated tale, you will be able to unravel the threads almost entirely for yourselves. This particular fairy tale is a kind of synthesis, bringing together the most varied, interweaving forces:

Once upon a time it happened—where then was it? Where indeed was it not? There was an old king, who had three sons and three daughters. When he was about to die, he said to his three sons, “Give my three daughters to those who first ask for them in marriage, that they do not stay single. That is my first charge to you. And my second is this: you must never find yourselves at a certain place, especially at night.” And he showed them the spot, under a poplar tree in the forest.

When the old king died, his sons were resolved to carry out his directions. On the first evening, something or someone shouted through the window, asking for a king's daughter. The brothers were willing and they threw one of their sisters out of the window. The second evening again someone or something shouted through the window, asking for a king's daughter. The brothers threw their second sister out of the window. And on the third evening again someone or something shouted through the window, asking for a king's daughter, and the brothers threw their third sister out of the window.

Now they were alone, but they began to be curious. They wanted above all to know why they should avoid the poplar tree in the forest. So they went out one evening and sat under the poplar tree, lighted a fire, and fell asleep. The eldest was to keep watch. While he walked backwards and forwards, armed with his sword, he saw something eating the fire; on looking closer he saw it was a three-headed dragon. He fought the three-headed dragon, he vanquished and buried it, but he said nothing about this to his brothers, and in the morning they went home. The next evening they went out again, lighted a fire, and lay down beside it. This time the second brother had to keep watch. Soon he saw something eating the fire, and on looking closer saw it was a six-headed dragon. He fought the six-headed dragon, vanquished and buried it, but said nothing about it, and the others thought nothing had happened; the next morning they went home. The third night the same thing happened; they lighted a fire, and the youngest brother had to keep watch. Almost as soon as the others were asleep, while he was walking up and down carrying his sword, he saw something eating the fire. He looked closer and hesitated a little, losing a few moments' time. Then he began to fight the dragon, which was a nine-headed one; but by the time he had finally vanquished it, the fire had gone out. Now he did not want to catch the others by surprise, so he set about finding a light. He saw a little light between the twigs, which he tried to get, but it was not enough. Then he saw something fighting in the air, and asked what it was, and the fighting Creatures replied: “We are the sun and the dawn, we are fighting for the day.” So he loosened a cord which fastened up his garments and tied the sun and the dawn together, so that the day might not begin. Then he went further to fetch light and fire, and came to a spot where three giants slept by a mighty fire. He took some of the fire, but as he tried to step over one of the giants, some fire fell on the giant and woke him. The giant seized him with his hand, showed him to the others and said:

“Look at the midge I have caught!” The king's son was greatly alarmed, for the giants wanted to kill him; however, they struck a bargain with him. There were three princesses they wanted to get hold of but a dog and a chicken at the door made such a noise that they could not get to them. The king's son promised to help them, and so the giants let him go free. A ball of thread was attached and the king's son went forward, carrying the ball of thread. It was arranged that every time he pulled the thread one of the giants should follow. He soon came to a river he could not cross. (All this time the brothers still slept.) He pulled the thread and one of the giants came and threw the trunk of a tree across the river so that he was able to go on. Now he came to the king's palace, where he expected to find the princesses. He went in and entered one of the rooms. There he saw one of the princesses. She lay on a copper bed and had a little gold ring on her finger. This he took off and put on his own finger and went on. Then he came to a second room where the second princess lay on a silver bed; she, too, had a little gold ring on her finger, which he took off and put on his own finger. Then he came to the third room, where the third princess lay on a golden bed, and he also put on her golden ring. Then he looked about him and discovered a very small opening which was an entrance to the castle. So he pulled the thread and the first giant came along; but the moment that the giant tried to get through the door, his head inside but his body outside, the king's son quickly cut off his head. He did the same with the second giant and the third, and so he killed them all. Then he went back to his brothers, after he had first unbound the sun and the dawn. They looked at each other and said; “Oh! what a long night!” “Yes,” he said, “it was a long night!” But like the others, he said nothing further, and they all went home.

Some time after this the brothers wanted to marry, and the youngest brother told the others he knew where there were a king's three daughters, and he led them to the castle. The three brothers married, the youngest marrying the most beautiful princess, the one who had lain on the golden bed. The youngest brother was the heir of his wife's father and had therefore to live in a foreign land. After a time he wished to visit his native land and to take his wife with him. But his father-in-law said to him: “If you set forth on this journey, your wife will be taken from you at the border, and perhaps you may never see her again!” They wanted to go, however, so they set out and took thirty horsemen to protect them. But when they came to the border, the wife was torn away as if by an unknown power. He went back and asked his wife's father how and where he could find his wife again. His father-in-law said;

“If you find her at all it will only be in the White Country.” So he set out to find his wife. But he did not know the way to the White Country.

At last he came to a castle, and went in to ask the way to the White Country. There he met the lady of the castle and saw that she was one of his own sisters whom her brothers had thrown out of the window. He asked for her husband, who was called in, and lo! he was a four-headed dragon! They asked him the way to the White Country; he did not know where it was, but his animals might know. The animals were called in, but none of them knew the way to the White Country. So the king's son went on and came to a second castle. There he found his second sister. He asked for her husband, and he was called in. He was an eight-headed dragon, and he, too, knew nothing of a white land. “Perhaps,” said he, “the animals might know.” The animals were called in, but none of them knew the way to the White Country, and so the king's son had to go on. After a time he came to a third castle, and there he found his third sister. He told her what he wanted, and she answered him very sadly. Her husband, a twelve-headed dragon was called in, and asked about the White Country; he said he knew nothing of it, but it might be that one of his animals did. The animals were therefore called in, but none of them knew the White Country. As the very last came a lame wolf. “Yes,” said he, “I once came to such a land; there I was wounded, and am now lame for evermore. I know the White Country, unluckily for me!” Said the king's son: “I want to be taken there.” But the wolf would not go, even though they promised him whole herds of sheep. At last he was persuaded to guide the king's son as far as a hill from which he could see the White Country. They came to this hill, and the lame wolf left him there.

The king's son found a spring from which he drank and felt greatly refreshed by the water. Then a woman came by, whom he recognized at once as his stolen wife. She also recognized him, saying immediately: “You cannot carry me off yet, for if you do, the magician who imprisons me here as his wife will at once bring me back on his magic horse. It flies through the air as quickly as thought.” Whereupon the king's son said:

“What then shall we do?” She answered: “There is only one way: we must have a swifter horse. Go to the old woman who lives at the border. Hire yourself out to her as a servant; she will set you hard tasks, but you will soon find out how to accomplish them. You must demand as wages the youngest foal and a saddle. Say to the old woman: ‘I want the old saddle that lies over there on the ground, covered with dirt.’ Thirdly, you will demand a very old bridle.”

With these instructions the king's son went on his way and came to a stream. As he rested beside it, he saw a fish lying on the bank. The fish begged him, “Take me and throw me back into the water; you will be doing me a great kindness!” He did so, and while he was doing it the fish gave him a whistle and said to him: “If you ever want anything, just whistle, and I will do you a service!” He took the little whistle and went on. After a while he met an ant who was pursued by her enemy, a spider. He freed her, and in return the ant gave him a small whistle, and told him that if he were ever in trouble and whistled, help would be sent him. He took it and went on his way. Soon he met a wounded fox, who had a silver arrow stuck in him. The fox said, “If you will draw out the arrow, and give me some herb roots for my wound, I will help you if ever you are in great trouble.” The king's son did this, and the fox also gave him a whistle. With these three whistles in his pocket the king's son went to the old woman who lived at the border. He told her he wished to hire himself out to her as a servant. “That you may,” said she, “but service with me is very hard; so far no one has been able to stand up to it.” Saying this she led him out into a field where ninety-nine men were hanging. “All these men hired themselves out to me, but none could do what I wanted. If you still wish to come and are also not able to stand up to it, you may be the hundredth.” However, he entered her service for a year.

Now in that district a year has only three days. On the first day the old woman made him a soup that sent people to sleep, a dream-soup, and then she sent him away with three horses. Having taken the soup he soon fell asleep, and when he awoke the three horses were gone. He bethought himself of the three whistles; he took the first one out and whistled. There was a kind of spring at that spot, and three little goldfish came swimming along. As soon as he touched them, they turned into the three horses, and so he brought the horses back to the old woman. She herself had changed the horses into goldfish. When she saw him return with the horses, she lost her temper and threw herself from side to side with rage.

The next day the old woman again made him a dream-soup, and sent him away with the horses. The soup sent him to sleep, and when he awoke the horses had disappeared. Then he whistled with the second whistle, and three golden ants instantly appeared. As soon as he touched them, there were his three horses again, which he brought back to the old woman. Then the old woman was quite wild, because she herself had enchanted the horses, and she railed against the horses. But the king's son was saved. The third day the old woman said to herself: “I must set about this much more cleverly.” She again made him a dream-soup, and sent him out with the horses. When the soup had sent him to sleep, she changed the horses into three golden eggs, which she placed under herself and sat down on them. When the king's son awoke, the horses were gone, and so he whistled on the third whistle. Now just imagine how cleverly everything happened. The fox came by and said:

“This time the task is a little more difficult, but we shall manage it. I shall go to the hen-yard and make a great commotion there. The old woman will spring up and go out, and at that moment you will touch the eggs and they will be changed.” And so it happened. The fox went to the farmyard and made a disturbance, and as the old woman sprang up and ran out, the king's son touched the eggs; when she came back there were the three horses! The old woman was now obliged to ask the king's son: “What will you have for your reward?” She expected he would want something very special. But he said: “I only want the foal that was born last night, the old saddle over there covered with dirt, and an old bridle.” These she gave him. The foal was so small he had to carry it on his back. When evening came the little foal said; “Now you can sleep while I go to a spring and drink.” Next morning it returned, and could already gallop with great swiftness. The second night the same thing happened, and the third day it led him to the place where his wife was. His wife was placed on the little horse—and this is the point that proves to anyone who understands these things the occult origin of fairy tales—and the king's son asked, “How fast shall we travel through the air?” His wife answered: “With the swiftness of thought!” Now when the magician who had imprisoned her noticed their flight, he mounted his magic horse to hurry after them. The horse asked him: “How fast shall we travel through the air?” And he replied: “With the swiftness of will or of thought!” He rushed after them, getting nearer and nearer—and when he was quite near, the magic horse told the one in front of him to stop. “I will only stop when you are quite close,” was the answer. At the same moment the magic horse reared, threw the robber off, and joined the little horse. So the queen was freed. The king's son was now able to go home with his wife, and they lived again in their own country. And if what happened did not fade away, they must still be alive today.

That is a somewhat more complicated fairy tale, containing the most varied features. Until the time comes when we can say more in explanation of this tale, we should just let it penetrate our souls in order to decipher the different features that are here harmonized so wonderfully. Of course, all that has been brought in through false tradition must naturally be sifted out of it. But you will be able to find the threads leading to every event if you follow the principle described here: the dragon-theme; the theme of the three sisters who were thrown out of the window; the theme of the conquest of the dragons at the fire; the theme of cleverness; the marriage theme (the intellectual soul with the outer world); and once again in a unique manner the theme of the cleverness of the magic forces. Then Nemesis or fate appears in a wonderful way when the king's son meets his sisters: the three brothers had thrown out their higher sisterly nature—hence the death of the dragons at the fire, and so on.

Such fairy tales are the experiences of certain individuals among people who are in the intermediate state of consciousness. The great popular myths of the gods are also representations of everything the initiates experience on the astral and higher planes. Fairy tales stand in relation to the great popular myths of the gods in the following manner: The myths can be understood when we realize the huge comprehensive circumstances of the cosmos underlying them, and fairy tales can be understood when we realize that the different happenings and pictures are nothing but the repetition of astral events. In far remote times everyone had astral experiences. They became fewer and fewer. One person told them to another, the other took them up, and so the fairy tales were carried from place to place. They appeared in the most varied languages, and we can note the similarity of the fairy tale treasures the whole world over, when we unveil the astral events that serve as their basis.

Any thoughtful person who travels about can even now find the last remnants of atavistic clairvoyance. Somewhere or other he may meet someone who relates what he has seen in the astral world as his own personal experience. Such a person in traveling about the world will hear fairy tales told by those who still possess a presentiment of the real truth. In this way they have been inscribed in our literature, and thus did the brothers Grimm collect their fairy tales; in like manner others have collected them, who were usually not clairvoyant themselves, but got them at second, third, or even tenth hand, so that they encountered them in a very mutilated form. But the time when people were still in such close touch with the spiritual world is approaching its twilight. Human beings are withdrawing more and more from the spiritual world. Atavistic clairvoyance is becoming rarer and rarer, at least, what may be called healthy clairvoyance, and true clairvoyance tends more and more to be attainable only through training, so that in the time to come most people who know anything of the matter will say about what people saw in ancient times: “Once upon a time old people related this or that from their astral experiences. Where was it then? It could have been everywhere.”

Nowadays, however, we can very seldom find anyone who can relate things from a genuine source, and it will be said of fairy tale experiences: “They happened once upon a time, and if they did not perish, these fairy tale experiences are still alive.”

But for most people, who are inwardly entangled with the physical plane, they have long since been dead.

There are several reasons why it would seem a somewhat risky enterprise to speak about fairy tales in the light of spiritual science.

First of all, the subject is indeed difficult, for the source of what one can call the true fairy tale mood lies deep down within the human soul. The methods of spiritual science that I have often described must take their way along extremely convoluted and lengthy paths in order to find this source. We little suspect how deeply hidden lie the springs that have given rise through centuries of human history to all the enchantment of genuine fairy tale poetry.

In the second place, it is just this poetic enchantment that causes one to feel strongly about fairy tales; studying them or trying to explain them with one's own ideas must surely destroy their fresh spontaneity, yes, even the whole effect of the tales. We often hear it said quite rightly that explanations and commentaries of poetry spoil the immediate, lively, artistic impression that a poem should give us; we want it to affect us simply on its own. All the more should this apply to the infinitely subtle and bewitching quality of the poetic tales arising from the deep, almost bottomless springs of the folk soul or from single human hearts. They flow out in such an original way that intruding our own strong judgment would seem like tearing a flower to pieces.

Nevertheless, spiritual research does find it possible to throw some light into those regions of soul that give rise to the poetic mood of the fairy tale. In doing this, the second doubt will be allayed. Simply by searching out the sources and wellsprings from which fairy tales flow, deep down in human soul nature, we can be completely sure that the explanations of spiritual science will touch those depths so gently that they are not harmed. Just the opposite: the wonder of everything lying down there in the human soul is so new, so original, so individual that one has oneself to resort to a kind of fairy tale in speaking about it all; nothing else will do to describe these hidden springs.

Goethe, for one, moving beyond his work as an artist in order to plunge fully into the wellsprings and sources of life, would not take to theoretical discussion nor destroy the fairy tale's living water with his scrutiny when he wanted to reveal one of the most profound insights into the human soul. No, as soon as he had won these insights, it seemed natural to use the fairy tale itself to describe what lives and comes to expression in the soul at its deepest level. In his Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily, Goethe tried to express in his own way the extraordinary soul experiences that Schiller brought forward in a more abstract, philosophical style in the Aesthetic Education of Man.

The very nature of fairy tale enchantment leads us to believe that explaining and trying to understand it will probably never destroy the creative mood; to dig down into those wellsprings with the resources of spiritual research is to discover something quite remarkable. If I were to talk about fairy tales as much as I'd like to do, I would have to give many lectures. Today it will be possible to bring only a few hints regarding the results of research.

A person who attempts the spiritual exploration of the fairy tale sources will find that they lie in far more profound depths of the soul than those from which other works of art emerge, even for instance, the most awe-inspiring tragic drama. In a tragedy, the poet shows us how the human soul experiences the gigantic powers of fate that exalt as well as crush their victim. Fate is the cause of the ordeals and shocks of tragedy. We find that the tangled threads woven together and then unraveled in tragic drama belong more or less to what an individual has to suffer from the outside world. However difficult this may be to discern, requiring as it does our finding the way into the uniqueness of a human soul, it is nevertheless quite possible for anyone sensitive to the impact of life itself upon the soul. A tragedy, we feel, shows us how an individual is entangled in this or that fateful life-situation.

However, the source of fairy tale mood and fairy tale poetry lies still deeper than the complexities of tragedy. For one thing, we can feel that tragedy concerns itself—as do other artistic creations—with an individual who in a certain period of life, at a certain age, is exposed to some kind of misfortune. We take it for granted that when tragic drama affects us, it is because a human being is brought through his own unique experiences to what is happening; we realize that it is one single person with his own special destiny that we must come to understand. Here, as in other works of art, we meet a particular, circumscribed sphere of life.

It is altogether different, we feel, when we come knowingly to fairy tale poetry and its mood. The effect of a fairy tale on our soul is spontaneous, elementary, and therefore remains unconscious. When we try to get a feeling for it, however, we can find that what a fairy tale expresses is not about one person in a particular situation in life, is not a limited portion of life, but rather something so integrated in human experience that it has to do with the comprehensive truth of all mankind. It is not about some special individual who finds himself at a certain time of life in a singular dilemma; what the fairy tale describes lies so completely in everyone's soul nature that it represents actual experience to children in their early years to persons of middle age and even to old men and women.

Throughout our whole lifetime the fairy tale happenings picture our most profound experiences of soul, even though the style is light, playful and picturesque. The artistic enjoyment of a fairy tale, in its correspondence to inner soul experiences, can be compared—a rather bold comparison—to the relationship of an enjoyable taste on the tongue to the hidden, complex proceedings in the rest of the body, where the food takes up its task of nourishing the organism. What lies in that further process, after our pleasure in its taste, is not at all evident to our observation or understanding. Both things seem at first to have little to do with each other; no one is able to say, from savoring a food, what its particular use will be in the life processes of the body. And so it is with our joy in the art of the fairy tale. It is far, far removed from what is happening at the same time, all unconsciously, deep in the soul. There the essence of the fairy tale is pouring forth, satisfying the soul's persistent hunger for it. Just as our body has to have nutritive substances circulating through the organism, the soul needs fairy tale substance flowing through its spiritual veins.

Using the methods of research described in my books as a way to approach the higher worlds, you will discover, at a certain level of spiritual knowledge, the spiritual processes working unconsciously in the depths of the soul. In our ordinary life we are aware of these spirit impulses within our soul only when they surface as gentle dreams, caught at rare times by our waking consciousness. Now and then we may have such a special waking up that we realize: You are emerging out of a spiritual world where there is thinking and where there are intentions, and where something was happening down in the unapproachable grounds of your existence that was somehow akin to daily happenings; this something seems an intimate part of your own being but is completely hidden from your waking, everyday life.

It is often the same story with the spiritual researcher, even when he has progressed as far as experiencing a world of spiritual beings and spiritual deeds. However much further he then advances, he nonetheless reaches again and again the same edge of a world out of whose deep unconsciousness there come towards him spiritual impulses, impulses connected with himself. They appear to his spiritual gaze like a Fata Morgana but they do not yield themselves up to him completely.

This very peculiar experience is what awaits one on looking into the unfathomable spiritual relationships belonging to the human soul. It is fairly easy to follow attentively and understand certain intimate soul happenings, for example, the emotional conflicts that also lie there within the soul and that are revealed in art, in tragic drama. But far more difficult are the quite common human conflicts, which in our daily life we simply cannot imagine are there, and yet every one of us undergoes them at every period of our life.

One such soul conflict discovered by spiritual research takes place without the ordinary consciousness being aware of it: our waking up every day, when the soul leaves the world it has been in during sleep and slips down into the physical body. As I said, we have normally not the slightest knowledge of this, yet every morning our soul is engaged in a battle that the spiritual researcher can catch only to a slight degree: it is the battle of the single, lonely human soul meeting the gigantic powers of nature. Thunder and lightning and everything else in the elements that we have to confront out in the world unload their great strengths on us as we stand there more or less helplessly. All that tremendous power, however, even when we meet it head on, is a small thing compared to the unconscious battle at the moment of waking up, when our soul—alive only to itself up to then—has to unite with the pressures and substances of a purely physical body. The soul needs this organism in order to use the bodily senses that are governed by the laws of nature and to use also the bodily limbs in which the powers of nature prevail. There is something like a yearning in the soul to dip down into this sheer natural state, a yearning satisfied each time by waking up, and yet at this very moment there is a shrinking back, a feeling of utter helplessness in the face of the eternal opposition existing between the soul and the nature-related physical body, into which one awakens. It may sound strange that this daily battle takes place in the depths of our soul—but then it takes place in complete unconsciousness. The soul knows nothing of what it has to undergo every single morning, but nevertheless it is burdened by the conflict, which affects its very nature and its individual character.

There is something else happening in these depths, which can be caught on the wing by spiritual research; it occurs at the moment of falling asleep. The human soul withdraws from the sense world and from the bodily limbs and has more or less left behind the physical body in the physical-sense world. Then there comes to the soul what one may describe as an awareness of its inwardness. At that moment it begins to experience unconsciously the inner battles caused by its constraint in a physical body in the waking state, where it has to act in consequence of its entanglement in matter. It is aware of its bent toward the burdensome sense-world, which, however, represses its morality. In falling asleep and during sleep, the soul is alone with itself and pervaded unconsciously by so moral an atmosphere that it can hardly be compared to the morality we know in ordinary life. Besides other impressions, it is this that the soul experiences when it is outside the physical body and living a purely spiritual existence between falling asleep and waking up.

We should not imagine that all these occurrences in our soul are simply absent when we are awake. Spiritual research can show one very interesting effect as an example: we do not dream only when we believe we are dreaming but we actually dream the whole day long. In truth, our soul is full of dreams all the time, even though we don't notice it, for our waking consciousness is more forceful than the dream consciousness. As a somewhat weak light is extinguished altogether in the presence of a stronger one, our day-consciousness extinguishes what is continually running parallel to it, the dream experience in the depths of our soul. We dream all the time, but we are seldom conscious of it. Out of those abundant and unconscious dream experiences—an infinitely greater number than our waking perceptions—a few rise up like single drops of water shaken out of an immense lake; these are the dreams we become conscious of. But the dreaming that stays unconscious is perceived by the soul spiritually. In its depths many things are being experienced. Just as chemical processes that we are unaware of take place in the body, there are spiritual experiences taking place within us in unconscious regions of the soul.

We can throw more light into these hidden depths of soul life by adding something else to the facts we have mentioned. It has often been emphasized, and especially so in my last lecture, [Raphaels Mission im Lichte der Wissenschaft vom Geiste (January 30, 1913); The Mission of Raphael (unpublished MS).] that in the course of evolution on earth, human soul life has undergone a complete change. When we look far, far back into the past of humankind, we find the soul of ancient man having totally different experiences from those today. In earlier lectures we spoke about early mankind's primitive clairvoyance; we will speak further about it in the future. We look out at the world today in the wide-awake condition of soul that is normal, taking in sense impressions from outer stimuli, working on them with our intelligence, reason, emotions, and will forces—but this form of consciousness is merely the one that holds good for the present day. This modern consciousness has developed out of the earlier forms in ancient days that we can call—in the best sense of the word—clairvoyant; people were able in certain intermediate conditions between waking and sleeping quite normally to experience something of the spiritual worlds. At that time a person, even though he could not become really conscious of himself, would not find the experiences we have been describing as taking place in the depths of the soul at all unfamiliar or strange.

In ancient times the human being could more fully perceive his union with the spiritual world outside himself. He saw how everything going on in his soul, the happenings deep in his soul, were related to certain spiritual realities alive in the universe. He saw these realities moving through his soul, felt closely related to the spirit-soul beings and realities of the universe. This was a characteristic of mankind's primeval clairvoyance. In ancient times, not only artists but quite primitive people frequently had a feeling that I am going to describe, which today we arrive at only in quite special moods.

It can really happen that, living gently in the depths of the soul, as gently as anything can be, there is an experience of the spiritual realities mentioned above, one that does not come to consciousness. Nothing of it is perceived in the wide-awake life of the day. But something is there in the soul, just as hunger often is there in the physical organism, and just as we have a need for something to satisfy our hunger, we have also a need for something to satisfy this delicate need in our soul.

It is at this moment that one feels urged either to come to a fairy tale or a legend that one knows, or else, perhaps, if one has an artistic nature, to create something of the kind oneself, even though one senses that all the words one could theoretically use would only reach a kind of stammering about such experiences. This is how the fairy tale images arise. The nourishment that satisfies the hunger we spoke of is just this conscious filling of the soul with fairy tale pictures. In the earlier times of mankind's evolution, the human soul was closer to a clairvoyant perception of its inner spiritual experiences; often, therefore, the simple country folk felt this hunger more distinctly than we do today, and this led them to search for nourishing pictures arising out of their creative soul life; we find these today in the fairy tales coming down to us as folk traditions in various parts of the world. In those earlier times the human soul felt its connection to spiritual existence and felt more or less consciously the inner battles it had to undergo, even without understanding them. The soul formed these into pictures and images which had only a distant resemblance to what was happening in its depths. But still one can feel that there is a connection between the happenings of a fairy tale and the unfathomable, profound experiences of the soul.

It is evident—many can confirm this—that the heart of a child often succeeds in creating for itself a comrade or “friend” who is present only for that child and who stays at its side through all its coming and going. Probably everyone knows children with such invisible spirit-friends. These unseen playmates you have to imagine as being with the child wherever he is, sharing all his joys and sorrows. And then you see someone coming along, a so-called “intelligent” person, who hears about this invisible playmate and tries to talk the child out of it, even believes it's a healthy thing he's doing—but it has a bad effect on the child's feeling-life. A child will grieve for his soul-comrade and if he is susceptible to spiritual-soul moods, the grief will be weighty and can develop into a pining away or sickliness. This is actual experience, related to deep, inward happenings of the human soul.

We can take to heart, without dispelling the fragrance of such a tale, the Grimms' story of the child and the paddock (a small frog). A little girl lets the paddock eat with her out of her bowl of bread and milk; the paddock only drinks the milk. The child talks to the little creature as to another human being, saying one day, “Eat the bread crumbs as well, little thing.” The mother hears this, comes out to the yard, and kills the paddock. And now the child loses her rosy cheeks, wastes away and dies.

In this tale we can feel an echo of certain moods that really and truly are present in the depths of our soul. They are there not only at certain periods of our life, but whether we are children or adults, we recognize such moods because we are human beings.

Every one of us can feel reverberating in us how this something we experience but don't understand, something we don't even bring to consciousness, is connected with the effect of the fairy tale on our soul like the taste of food on our tongue. And then the fairy tale becomes for the soul very much like nutritious food when it is put to use by the whole organism. It is tempting to search in these deep-lying soul experiences for what reverberates in each different tale. Of course it would be a tremendous task over a long time, given the great collections of fairy tales from everywhere in the world, to probe into them just for this. However, what can be looked at in a few tales can be used in a general way for all of them, if the few are genuine fairy tales.

Take one of the stories that the brothers Grimm collected, “Rumpelstiltskin”. When a miller claims that his daughter can spin straw into gold, the king has him bring her to the castle in order to test her art. She comes to the king, is locked in a room with a bundle of straw and “there sat the poor miller's daughter and for the life of her could not tell what to do”. As she begins to weep, there appears a little man who says, “What will you give me if I spin the straw into gold for you?” The girl gives him her necklace and the little man spins the straw into gold. The king next morning is astonished and delighted but wants more; she should spin straw into gold again. She is locked in another room with even more straw, and when the little man appears again and asks, “What will you give me if I spin the straw into gold for you?” she gives him her ring. By morning all the straw is spun into glittering gold. But the king is still not satisfied. The manikin comes again, but now the girl has nothing more to give him. “Then promise me, if you should become queen, to give me your first child,” says the little man, and so she promises. And when, after a year, the child is there and the manikin comes and reminds the queen of her promise, she begs him to wait. “I will give you three days' time,” he replies. “If you know my name by that time, you shall keep your child.” The miller's daughter sends messengers far and wide. She must find every name and also the particular name of the little man. Finally, after several wrong guesses, she succeeds in naming the little man by his right name: Rumpelstiltskin.

No other work of art gives us the feeling of utmost inner joy as the fairy tale with its unsophisticated pictures, yet we can also know the deep soul experience from which such a tale arises. It is a prosaic but accurate comparison to say, we can know a great deal about the chemistry of our food and still take pleasure in something delicious we're eating. And so we can know and understand something about these deep inner soul experiences in us that are felt but not “known”—and that emerge as the pictures of fairy tales.

Indeed our solitary soul, this miller's daughter, is a lonely thing, both in sleep and in waking life, even though she is harbored in our body. The soul feels (but unconsciously) the great antithesis she has to live in; she experiences (but does not understand) her unending task, her own anchorage in divine worlds.

The soul will always be aware of other insignificant abilities in comparison to those of outside nature. Nature is the mighty enchantress, who can transform one thing into another in a trice—something the soul would like to be and do.

In everyday consciousness, one can submit with a good grace to this disparity between the human being and the omnipotent wisdom of the spirit of nature. In the depths of the soul, however, things are not so simple. The soul would certainly come to grief if she did not surmise that within her own conscious being a still deeper being is present, something she can trust, something she might be able to describe like this:

You, Soul, are still at such an imperfect stage—but there is something in you, another entity, who is far more clever than you, who can help you to accomplish the most difficult tasks and give you wings to rise up and look over wide perspectives into an infinite future. Someday you will be able to do what is still impossible, for there is something within you that is far, far greater than the part of you now that “knows”; it will be a loyal helper if you can enter into an alliance with it. But you must truly be able to form a concept of this creature who lives within you and is so much wiser, cleverer, more skilful than you are yourself.

When you try to imagine this conversation of the soul with itself, an unconscious conversation with the more capable part of the soul, you can then try to catch this nuance in the Rumpelstiltskin fairy tale: what the miller's daughter had to experience in not being able to spin straw into gold and then finding a loyal helper in the little manikin. It is impossible to blow away the fragrance of those pictures, even when we know their origin, deep down in our soul life. Let us take another tale. Please forgive me if it is connected with things that seem to have a personal coloring; it is not meant to be personal. It makes it somewhat easier to explain if I add this small personal note.

In my book Occult Science [ An Outline of Occult Science, Anthroposophic Press, New York, 1972.] you will find a description of the evolution of the world. I don't intend to speak about it now—possibly on another occasion. During this evolution of the world our earth has passed through certain stages as a planet in the universe, and these stages can be compared to the stages of life in the individual human being. Just as individuals go through one life after another, the earth itself has had various planetary stages or embodiments. In spiritual science, for certain reasons, we speak about the earth—before its “earth” stage began—as having a “moon” stage and before that, a “sun” stage. There was a sun evolutionary period as a planetary pre-stage of our earth in the primordial past; an ancient sun was still united with the earth, from which—at a later stage—it split away. The moon also split away from what originally was the sun. Our sun today is not the original one but only a piece of it; we can speak of an ancient sun-stage of the earth and also of our present sun. Spiritual research can look back to the time in earth evolution when the second sun, our present one, developed as an independent body in the universe. In searching for the existence at that time of beings actually perceptible to the senses, it finds only the lower species up to the level of the fishes.

You can read all this in more detail in Occult Science, and there you will be able to understand it. The actual details, however, can be found only through the scientific methods of spiritual research. At the time they were discovered and I wrote them down (more precisely, they were not discovered just when I wrote them down but they were, one can say, discovered for me and I wrote them down in Occult Science) the following fairy tale was quite unknown to me—and this is the personal note I wanted to add. I can verify the fact that it was unknown then, for I found it much later in Wundt's Elements of Folk Psychology and traced it then back to its source.

Before I give you a short summary of the fairy tale, let me say this: Everything the spiritual researcher finds in the spiritual world—and what was just described had to be found in the spiritual world, for otherwise it would no longer exist—everything in that world is very much connected with the human soul. In the very deepest roots of our soul we are united with that world. It is always at hand; we enter it unconsciously as soon as we fall asleep in a normal way. In our union with that world, our soul holds within itself not only its sleep experiences but also all those experiences related to world evolution as we have described them. It is a paradox but one can say that the soul knows unconsciously that it experienced the stream of evolution from the original sun to its daughter, the sun we see shining in the sky, and to the moon that is also a child of the original sun. Moreover, the soul can recognize that it was living through a soul-spiritual existence at that time, for it was not yet united with earthly substance. It could look down then on earthly happenings, for example, when the highest animal organisms were the fish-prototypes, at the time when the present sun and moon developed by separating from the earth. In the unconscious, the soul is connected with these happenings.

Now look at this short folk tale that can be found among several primitive peoples: There was once a man who was made of resin. He worked only at night. If he had worked in the daytime, the sun would have melted him. One day, however, he did go outside, for he wanted to catch some fish. And lo! the man made of resin melted away. His sons made up their minds to take revenge. They shot off their arrows. They shot so well that the arrows formed figures, towering one above the other. They became a ladder, reaching right up into the sky. The two sons climbed up the ladder, one by day, the other by night. And one son became the sun, the other son became the moon.

It is not my custom to explain such tales with abstract, intellectual ideas. Everyone can realize, however, through spiritual research how the human soul is deeply connected with everything happening in the world, how the soul can be understood only through spiritual means, and how it hungers to enjoy the picture-images of its unconscious experiences—this is truly different. If you feel this, you will also feel, vibrating like an echo of this folk tale, just what human souls experienced at the time of the primordial sun and then at the origin of the sun and moon during the time of fish-development in earth evolution. It was for me a most important event—and this is the personal note—to discover, long after these things were described in Occult Science, this particular tale. Even though I would never wish to explain it in an abstract way, a certain feeling comes over me when I look at the evolution of the world, a feeling that is twin-brother to the one I get from immersing myself in the wonderful picture-images of the folk tale.

We can look at another story, this one from the Melanesian Islands. Before we hear it, let us recall that according to spiritual research the human soul is closely connected to the present-day happenings and facts of the universe. It may be too picturesque, but nevertheless quite correct from the spiritual-scientific standpoint, to describe the life of the soul when it leaves the body in sleep as completely related to and united with the whole universe. One possibility of remembering or understanding this relationship of our ego, for example, to the cosmos, at least to something significant in the cosmos is to look at the plants. They can grow only when they have the light and warmth of the sun. They are rooted in the earth and consist, as spiritual science tells us, of a physical body interwoven by an etheric body. This is not enough, however, to cause the plants to unfold and blossom; they must also have the forces of the sun shining down on them.

Looking at the human body during sleep, we see to some degree its equivalence to a plant. Our sleeping body is like a plant, in that it has the same power to grow. But the human being has freed himself from the cosmic order in which the plant is caught. A plant has to wait for sunlight to come to it, the rising and setting of the sun. It is dependent, as we humans are not, on the external cosmic order. Why are we not? Because of a fact that spiritual research has discovered, that the human ego, which in sleep is outside the plant-like body, unfolds for the body what the sun unfolds for the plant. The sun pours its light over the plant; the human ego shines too, resting spiritually over the sleeping body. And the human ego is related to the life of the sun; it is itself a kind of sun for the plant-like human body, engendering its growth during sleep, repairing its various forces that have been used up during the daytime. In perceiving this, we realize how much like the sun our ego is. As the sun moves across the sky—of course I am speaking of its apparent movement—the effect of the sun's rays changes according to the constellations of the zodiac from which they come to earth. In the same way, spiritual science shows us ever more clearly that the human ego passes through the various phases of its experience; the physical body is influenced according to each aspect. We perceive the sun's effect on earth, with the help of spiritual science, according to whether it is passing through Aries, or Taurus, or any other constellation. Rather than refer to the sun in general terms, it is preferable to describe the effect of the sun from one of the twelve constellations of the zodiac. As we consider the sun's passage through the constellations, we become aware of its relationship to the ever-changing ego.

All this is described much more fully in Occult Science; it can be acquired as spirit-soul knowledge. We can perceive it as something that takes place unconsciously in the depths of the soul and yet takes place as an inward involvement with the spiritual powers of the cosmos alive in the planets and constellations.

Let us compare these secrets of the universe, disclosed by spiritual science, with the following Melanesian tale, which I will sketch very briefly.

In the road is a stone. The stone is the mother of Quatl, and Quatl has eleven brothers. After Quatl and his brothers were created, Quatl began to create the world. But in this world that Quatl created, there was no change of night and day. Quatl heard about an island where there was a difference between the day and the night. He traveled to that island and brought a host of beings back to his own land. And through the power of these beings, those in Quatl's land came into the alternation of sleeping and waking. Sunrise and sunset occurred for them as soul happenings.

It is amazing what vibrates as echo from this story. If you read the whole thing, you will find that every sentence vibrates with the tones of world secrets, just as our soul vibrates in its depths when it hears how spiritual science describes those secrets. It is true: the source of fairy tale mood and fairy tale poetry lies in the depths of the human soul! The tales are simply pictures using external happenings to help characterize the soul experiences we have described; the pictures are nourishment for the hunger arising from these experiences. This must also be true: we are quite distant from the experience but nevertheless we can feel them echoing in the fairy tale picture-images.

When all this has been said, we should not be surprised to find that the most beautiful and characteristic fairy tales have come to us from those very early times when human beings had a certain clairvoyant consciousness. Because of this, they were able to come close to the wellsprings of fairy tale mood and poetry; it is not at all strange that from those parts of the earth where souls are closer to spiritual sources than in the western world, for example in India or the Orient, fairy tales can have an especially distinctive character.

Furthermore, in German we find Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm's Children's and Household Tales, which they collected by listening to their relatives or other more or less simple, unsophisticated people telling stories that remind us of the ancient European sagas; even the fairy tales contain elements of the great stories of heroes and gods. We should not be surprised to hear that the most significant fairy tales have now been proven older than the sagas. The hero stories, after all, describe someone at a certain time of life in a particular difficulty, while the fairy tales show us what is relevant to every single person at every period of life from his first breath to his last. Then we understand how a fairy tale can press into itself the deep-seated soul experience on awakening from sleep, of feeling completely inadequate in the face of the powers of nature; how, too, one feels equal to it only with the consoling knowledge that something greater than oneself is present in the soul that may even allow one to triumph over the forces of nature.

When you have a feeling like this, you will understand why there are so many giants that have to be dealt with in the tales. Indeed, they make their appearance without fail as an image out of the soul's mood on waking up—of its wanting to enter the body and seeing the “gigantic” forces of nature alive there. The battle the soul has to undergo is exactly what corresponds—though this cannot be understood perhaps with the intellect—to the various descriptions of people having to fight giants. The soul realizes when confronted by battles with giants that it has only one advantage—and that is its cleverness. This is the soul's perception: You can slip into your body but what can you do about those tremendous forces of the universe? Why, there's one thing the giants don't have that you do have ... cleverness! reason! Unconsciously this lives in the soul even when it realizes the small strength it has; we find that the soul, put into this position, can express itself in the following pictures:

A man was going along the road. He came to an inn, went in, and asked for a bowl of milk soup. Flies by the dozen were buzzing around; some fell into the soup, the others he swatted. When he counted a hundred dead flies on the table, he boasted, “A hundred with one blow!” The innkeeper hung a medallion around his neck that said: He killed a hundred with one blow.

The man went further and came to a castle where the king was looking out of his window. When he caught sight of the wayfarer and his medallion, the king thought to himself, “This is a fellow I can make use of!” The king hurried out and took the man into his service to do a certain task. “There is a pack of bears coming ever and again into my kingdom. Look! if you've killed a hundred with one blow, you can put an end to those bears.” The man said, “I'll do it!” But first he demanded his wages and plenty of food before the bears should arrive, for he thought he might as well enjoy his life for a while, in case it should be cut short. Now came the time when the bears were expected; he collected together all the sweet things bears like to eat, and laid them ready.

The bears came, ate up everything they found and were so well stuffed that they had to lie down to sleep off their greed. And now as they lay helpless, the man came and finished them off. When the King arrived, the man told him, “I simply chopped off their heads while they jumped over my stick!” The King was delighted with this brave fellow and gave him a still harder task. “Look! The giants will soon be coming back into my kingdom. You must help me with them.” The man promised and when the time came, he collected a great amount of good things to eat, which he took along with him, besides a young lark and a piece of cheese. Sure enough, he met the giants and began to boast about how strong he was. One of them said, “We'll show you how much stronger we are!” Taking up a stone, he squeezed it into a powder. “Do that likewise, little man, if you're as strong as we are.” The other giant aimed an arrow up into the sky, shot it off, and only after a very long time, it dropped down again. “Do that likewise, little man, if you're as strong as we are.” At that, the man who had killed a hundred with one blow told them, “I can do better than that.” He took up a stone, stuck his piece of cheese on it and said, “Watch me press water out of the stone!” Sure enough, when he squeezed, water squirted out of the cheese. The giants were astonished. Then the man took the lark and let it fly upwards, saying, “Your arrow came back, but mine will go up so high that it never comes back!” Sure enough, the lark did not return. The giants were so astonished that they decided that they would have to overcome him with cunning, for it seemed that they couldn't manage it with strength. However, they failed to get the better of the man with cunning, for he got the better of them. They lay down together to sleep and in the dark the man put over his head a pig's bladder that was blown up and filled with blood. The giants told one another, “We can't overcome him when he's awake, so we'll have to wait until he sleeps.” As soon as he was asleep, they attacked him with great blows on the head and broke the pig's bladder. The blood gushed out; the giants were sure they had finished him off. Therefore they laid themselves to rest and slept so peacefully that it was easy for the man to put an end to them.

Just as it is in dreams, this fairy tale peters out in a somewhat vague, unsatisfactory way; nevertheless we do find in it the conflict of the human soul with the forces of nature, first with the “Bears” and then with the “Giants.” But something more is in the fairy tale. The man who “killed a hundred with one blow” stands out so clearly that we feel something vibrating in the unconscious depths of our soul to the utter trust he had in his cleverness, even in the face of those powerful forces he found so “gigantic.” It is wrong to try to explain in abstract detail the picture-images created with such artistry, and this is not the intention here. Nothing actually can disturb the character of a fairy tale if you feel how it echoes our inward soul processes. And these inner processes—however much one knows about them, however much as spiritual science itself can know about them—you do become ever and again entangled in them; then, experiencing them in a fairy tale, you see them in their most elemental, primary form. Knowledge of these soul-happenings, when it is present, does not destroy the ability to transform them into fairy tale magic.

It is certainly stimulating for the spiritual researcher to discover in fairy tales just what the human soul has need of when confronting its innermost experiences. The fairy tale mood can never be disturbed, for research that is able to arrive at the wellsprings of the tales in subconscious life will find there something that becomes poorer for the ordinary consciousness when it is described abstractly. The fairy tale itself is the most perfect description of these deepest of soul experiences. Now one can understand why Goethe put into the manifold eloquent picture-images of his Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily the rich experiences of life that Schiller expressed in abstract philosophical terms. It was pictures that Goethe wanted to use—even though he was otherwise very much given to thought—in order to express his most profound perception of the subconscious roots of human soul life.

Because fairy tales belong to our innermost feeling and emotional life and to everything connected with it, they are of all forms of literature the most appropriate for children's hearts and minds. It is evident that they are able to combine the richest spiritual wisdom with the simplest manner of expression. One has the feeling that in the magnificent world of art there is no greater art than this one, which traces the path from the unknown, unknowable depths of the soul to the charming and often playful fairy tale pictures.

When what is most difficult to understand is able to be put in the most clearly perceptible form, the result will be great art, intrinsic art, art that belongs at a fundamental level to the human being. Human nature in the child is linked to the life of the whole world in such a primary way that children must have fairy tales as soul-nourishment. The expression of spiritual force can move much more freely when it comes towards a child. It should not be entangled in abstract, theoretical ideas if the child's soul is not to become dry and disturbed, instead of remaining linked to the deep roots of human life.

Therefore there is nothing of greater blessing for a child than to nourish it with everything that brings the roots of human life together with those of cosmic life. A child is still having to work creatively, forming itself, bringing about the growth of its body, unfolding its inner tendencies; it needs the wonderful soul-nourishment it finds in fairy tale pictures, for in them the child's roots are united with the life of the world. Even we adults, given to reason and intelligence, can never be torn away from these roots of existence; we are most connected with them just when we have to be fully involved with the life of the time. Therefore at various parts of our life, if we have a healthy, open-hearted mind, we will happily turn back to fairy tales. Certainly there is not a single age or stage of human life that can take us away from what flows out of a fairy tale, for otherwise we would be giving up the deepest and most important part of our nature; we would be giving up what is incomprehensible for the intellect: a sensing within ourselves, a sense for what is pictured in a simple fairy tale and in the simple, artless, primordial fairy tale mood.

The brothers Grimm, and other collectors like them, devoted long years to bringing the world the somewhat civilized fairy tales they had gathered out of the folk tradition. Although they had no help from spiritual science, they lived wholeheartedly with these tales, convinced that they were giving human beings what belonged intrinsically to human nature itself. When you know this, you will understand that although the age of reason did its best for a hundred years or so to alienate everyone, even children, away from fairy tales, now things are changing. Fairy tale collections like the Grimms' have found their way to every person who is alive to such things; they have become the property and treasure of every child's heart, yes, property of all our hearts. This will grow even stronger when spiritual science is no longer considered just a theory but becomes a mood of soul, one that will lead the soul perceptively towards its spiritual roots. Then spiritual science, moving and spreading outwards, will be able to confirm everything that the genuine fairy tale collectors, fairy tale lovers, fairy tale tellers wanted to do.

To sum up what spiritual science would like to say today in describing the fairy tale, we can take the poetic and charming tribute that a devoted friend of the tales [Ludwig Laistner (1848 – 1896)] liked to use in his lectures, some of which I was able to hear. He was a man who understood how to collect the tales and how to value them.

“The fairy tale is like a good angel, given us at birth to go with us from our home to our earthly path through life, to be our trusted comrade throughout the journey and to give us angelic companionship, so that our life itself can become a truly heart- and soul-enlivened fairy tale!”

My dear friends,

Speaking to you here for the first time in these rooms on an Anthroposophical subject, I feel I must express gratitude first of all-gratitude to those friends who, in my unavoidable absence, have devoted themselves to the arrangement of these rooms, which are to be used for our work and discussions. At the present time man's soul is of, necessity involved in great and far-reaching events of world and human development. So strong is their demand upon our will and energy if we would understand our place as man within world-history, that we cannot as in earlier, more peaceful times, attend with so great care to such outward things of beauty as the arrangement of a place devoted to ideal spiritual aims, so devoted that men can work towards them together, co-operating as in social life. Rightly seen, there is a certain connection between the recent great events throbbing through the world and such a dedication. The vital claims of the historical development of mankind demand that what men have hitherto sought in the form of beauty, artistic adornment for their personal life, should be transferred from that egoistic realm and centred more and more where separateness gives way to social co-operation. It would argue a very poor understanding of the future if we judged it by what appear today as aims. The social movements of the present do, of course, wear a “democratic” look, but we need only observe their transitory nature in the right light to make no mistake as to their character. Yet these social movements contain a hint of menace lest the beautiful, which runs through our earthly civilization as artistic quality, may not find in the future the same comprehension as in the past, when only the better-endowed classes could devote them­selves to its culture.

A time of transition may result in some dimming of the appreciation of beauty, but it is essential, if a really social kind of living is to come into being, that whatever occurs in space and time should tend to encourage appreciation of the beautiful: otherwise man­kind will sink into mere philistinism. So the simple beauty of these rooms, which our friends have tried to make appropriate to the serious things of life to be fostered here, may be taken as symbolical of the great events throbbing through our time. Out of such feelings I speak, as from you all, to thank our friends most heartily for the work which they have accomplished in this time of stress. It would, further, be wrong to assume that the future will so develop that personality and all that has its origin in the personal and individual will diminish in value by reason of what men call the “objective events.” That will not be the case. The three or four centuries ending with the nineteenth have made it seem justifiable, in the general evolution of mankind, to regard man as a “cog” in the world-machine. The task of the immediate future will be for man to work himself out of this world-mechanism.

We may say without hesitation that the great movement of the present day displays a thoroughly egoistic character. It is true, its aim is Socialism—but its basis is that of anti-social impulses and instincts. No mistake should be made. We see that the real reason in striving for Socialism is that men have become so anti-social in development and constitution of soul. If the social sense were more natural and obvious, fewer socialist “programmes” would be formed; they have been largely evoked by anti-social feeling and experience. In times like the present, filled with bewilderment, in which the basic cause, of social feeling is egoistic and anti-social, the moment comes when an immense impression is made by the sight of a noble, selfless devotion to an ideal, through genuine, unselfish human feeling. It was well if, in these serious times, we did not hold outward festival, but turned our thoughts to this—how valuable it is, amongst the vehement, egoistic strivings of our times, to find the opportunity to create, as has been done here, something for the furtherance of an ideal, spiritual task, even if it be on a small scale. So the highest festival we can hold is to consider subjects connected with the seriousness of the present time, drawing that seriousness into our souls, as well as fostering in our hearts thoughts deeply concerned with human evolution, thoughts of worth and value in the tasks to which these rooms are dedicated.

Looking at our own time critically, yet not captiously, we should be dishonest if we shut our eyes to the many forces of decline prevalent in all spheres of life. If with due earnestness we consider the present day, we cannot forget how frequently what is present in, consciousness and finds expression in the spoken word stands far apart from truth and reality. Indeed, any feeling for the gulf yawning between words and the truth is lost in many of our contemporaries and in place of the elementary flow of truth out of the human soul we have the catchword, the “slogan!” What is the characteristic of a “catchword?” The lack of connection of the word used with the inner fount of truth. We need only look at the expressions of universal untruth which have been prevalent in the world during the last four, five, or six years, to be convinced that the estrangement of the world from genuine reality has led to the “empty phrase” and, if uncountered, it will become more dominant. Nor is there anything, outside of this growth of “the phrase,” which has flourished so much in the present age, as indulgence in face of untruth, as a definite bias towards falsity. Nowadays we can find plenty of people forbearing enough to make excuses for the “catch-saying” with its absence of truth. These “tolerant” talkers always ask: “How did the person mean this? Had he not the best intentions? Did he not think he was actuated by the best of motives?” And how little there is of the conscientious regard for truth which lays the duty on a speaker to test the ground of his assertion before he makes it! The time must, come when it will not be enough to say of a man “he meant well” when he has given expression to an untruth. Rather when men will feel the deepest responsibility for testing truth, when even in good faith to have said something which does not correspond with facts will not excuse it, when a man will realize that subjective belief in the truth of what he says matters nothing to the objective knowledge of the world. It does matter whether his speech corresponds to facts or not, is true, or is not, in the objective sense. The very seriousness of our times demands that we should learn what phrases and catchwords really are.

Nowadays many people feel, although not altogether consciously, that we may hold any view if it is agreeable to us, a belief easily to be studied in the attitude they adopt towards current events. We have passed through a serious period, but men only judge of it as is agreeable to them, not according to its importance for the general development of humanity. We have seen some of our con­temporaries, in the centre of the stage during the happenings of the last four or five years, thrust forwards into the first place in dealing with them. These men—their destiny has overtaken them—but how little are we inclined to acquire an objective judgment of what has really happened, or to ask by what method of selection, in these critical times, our leading men have been raised to their dominant position to the detriment of mankind! Nothing is so essential today as to work our own way through all subjective opinions and reach some sort of objectivity with regard to these things. An idea is prevalent that it is easy to speak the truth. Far from it: truth has many enemies and to speak it brings swift retribution on a man, since it is taken amiss in all sorts of ways.

During the last few months I have often been told that what I have put forward on the subject of the social question is so hard to understand as to be incomprehensible, and I have had to assert over and over again that to grasp this social impulse requires a different frame of mind from that which has pre­dominated in mid-Europe for a long time, coming to a climax within the last four or five years. In these recent years people managed to grasp a good deal which I honestly could not grasp. All sorts of statements, elegantly set forth, have been made and people have taken them in. They could not have done that if they had possessed, a straightforward sense of truth—yet, they did it “to order,” everything “commanded by headquarters” was received. today the essential things are not to be so acquired, out of “obedience,” but through man's own freedom of soul. Men must first regain that quality: the last four or five years have made that plain. In face of the delusions men have grown accustomed to during these last years, it is no pleasant duty to speak the truth now, for truth is so serious a matter and people resent it so deeply.

In time to come our age will be envisaged in a quite peculiar way. Men's present duties differ from those of the immediate past. Therefore, we ought to get some idea how future ages will look at today's events.

Men must learn to turn their eyes, their spiritual gaze, to the great and revolutionary impulses occurring in the earthly path of development. One such change took place in the middle of the fifteenth century A.D. According to Anthroposophical Spiritual Science, it is the beginning of the fifth post­Atlantean epoch, which we know bears an entirely different character from the earlier Graeco-Latin one, which began in the eighth century B.C. The “fable convenue” usually called “history” gives no information regarding the vast difference in the qualities of the human soul in, for instance, the tenth century, and the centuries following the fifteenth. New soul-qualities and attitudes arose in humanity and we can really only understand what has entered its evolution if we turn our spiritual vision to the forces active within it and see, for instance, their effects in the revolution which occurred in the middle of the fifteenth century. Some time has passed since then, and we are now approaching the crisis due to what swept over civilized mankind at that point and has developed up to the present time—this critical moment, when man's full consciousness must be brought to bear upon it.

We have reached a time when man must awake to the consciousness that, as man, he has his position within the Earth's history, and that outside of him are the three natural kingdoms, the animal, plant and mineral. (We shall speak later of how this awakening is to be achieved.) To speak of this fact expresses only a half-truth from the standpoint of our modern consciousness, the consciousness, that is, of the fifth post Atlantean epoch. Before that epoch people could still speak of the three kingdoms as outside of themselves, because their view of the kingdoms of nature was essentially different. In earlier times people understood them as being spiritually controlled. Modern man has lost that; he must regain the consciousness in which he looks at the three kingdoms, knowing that, as he is related downwards to them, so he is related upwards to the three kingdoms of the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai. The half-truth becomes a whole truth when so completed, when we can look up to the realm of these three spiritual kingdoms. Our physical body has a relation to the three natural kingdoms, our soul-spiritual to what lives in the three Hierarchies; and while we change on the one side our relation to the three kingdoms of nature, so also, we alter our relation to the three kingdoms of Hierarchies which stand above us. I want to draw your attention today to this important fact in human evolution, for by holding fast to this thought we can best celebrate the inauguration of this Branch.

If we look back to earlier epochs, which culminated in the middle of the fifteenth century, we must say, if we still keep in view the higher Hierarchies: the Beings belonging to the Angels, Archangels and Archai have always occupied themselves with man in so far as he goes through his existence between death and a new birth, but have also been occupied and concerned with him in so far as he goes through his existence here upon earth. In our age, however, this preoccupation with mankind has in a certain sense come to a conclusion. Among the many activities belonging to the beings of these three Hierarchies is this: to work together upon the pattern, or picture, which underlies the physical organization of earthly man. We enter physical existence, at birth and grow therein: the pattern or image of humanity is stamped upon us.

In the primal times of human evolution this picture was quite different and it has passed through many changes. We need only call to mind what appears when we look back into the Atlantean period or even into the Egyptian: men were different even in their outer structure. The pattern of humanity has altered and it was the task of these three Hierarchies to work at it, giving it first the form it had in Lemurian times, then the form for the Atlantean, and lastly that of the post­ Atlantean age. The Beings of these higher Hierarchies gradually came to the point where, through transformation of older forms, they brought forth the model which today under­lies the form of man.

Then is to be observed the peculiar fact, shown by true spiritual observation that, with the actual working out of this human model, the Beings of these three Hierarchies have essentially finished their task in our age. This picture of mankind, in so far as it underlies the physical organization of man, is really completed. Let this significant fact work on you—the Beings of the Hierarchy of Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai have worked for thousands and thousands of years at the accomplishment of a picture as the basis on which man's physical organization has been achieved; and we live in the age in which these Beings of the higher Hierarchies say: we have laboured at the human picture, but we have finished; we have set man as physical man into this earthly world, and this part of our task is now completed.

If we survey this fact in spiritual vision, we shall feel with terrifying force that in these times the interest of the Beings of these three higher Hierarchies has not only waned—it has vanished as far as the production of the physical picture of man is concerned. Looking back into the Graeco-Latin age, we find that they had a lively interest in the bringing­forth of the picture of humanity on Earth. today they really have no further interest in it. They feel that they have finished their task and their interest from that point of view has disappeared. Men might see this as a very important fact, piercing deeply' into human nature, if they would only take time and trouble to observe even the outer facts of human evolution. In earlier times, as we can see from what has been handed down to us so that we are able to judge of it, certain thoughts rose up in people instinctively. Those in whom this happened we call “geniuses.” today at best we “believe” that such thoughts arise in some men. There is little “genius” on Earth now, for the forces of genius no longer arise from the bodily organization because the Beings of the three higher Hierarchies no longer work on it. They have lost their interest in the bodily formation of man.

It is because modern man is complete, with reference to the formation of his body, that he is in a certain respect so arrogant. There will be no further perfecting of the physical earthly form as man passes through the remainder of our Earth-evolution; the body itself can contribute nothing more to its own perfection. What had arisen in earlier times as instinctive originality and genius in man's soul had come from the body; at the same time, because it was the work of divine beings, it had an organizing power on the body. Homer's poems, for instance, possessed an organizing force which formed the Greek body. That which arose, with such concrete force, possessed at the same time a body-building power. What we moderns proudly exhibit as our “laws of nature” are in the main abstractions and have no formative force at all. We construct abstract thoughts, unable to govern social life, and abstract “laws of nature,” because the Beings of the higher Hierarchies no longer work upon us and we have no organizing thoughts arising within us. The being of our soul has become abstract, dwelling in us in such a way that, through the body itself, it is forsaken by the activity of the beings of the three higher Hierarchies.

The important thing now is to seek afresh, from ourselves outwards, the connection with the activity of these Beings. Hitherto they have approached us; they have worked on us. Now we must work for ourselves on the soul-spiritual that is in us. The result of that work, what we unveil out of the spiritual world through spiritual investigation, will become something in our human soul which will restore the interest of the Beings of the three higher Hierarchies. They will be in the thoughts and feelings belonging to us, which we acquire out of the spiritual world. In this way we shall once again link our own being to that of the higher Hierarchies.

So important is what is happening in our time that we must describe it as “a change in the attitude of the divine world to the human world.” Till now divine Beings have worked at the perfecting of the physical picture of humanity; man must now begin to work from his own soul-content, in order to find the way back to the higher Hierarchies. The difficulty of our time is that men are so proud of their external picture of a body, which has now reached its completion, and develop thoughts independently of the picture, thoughts having no connection with the spiritual world. Our real task, thus made so much the more difficult, is to seek this connection from out of ourselves, through devotion to spiritual know­ledge, sensitiveness to it, and a will obedient to it. We can only acquire a right attitude to our times if we have felt and experienced this great revolution, which, of course, lasts through centuries. Outer observations will not help, us to this attitude; today we must have the possibility of achieving it by an inner work on our own being. We have entered the period of the Consciousness Soul, and have passed out of that of the Intellectual Soul—which was the Graeco-Latin age. The Consciousness Soul must develop more and more in such a way that the Beings of the higher Hierarchies no longer work into man, for that would darken man's consciousness—but that he may consciously raise himself to them. Man's full clear day-consciousness is established when he works his way upward to the Beings of the higher Hierarchies. Spiritual Science is the beginning of such work, for it has not sprung from any arbitrary choice or caprice, but from the recognition of this revolution in our time.

But man must consciously develop many other things as well. He has always had to live according to karma, the great law of destiny; but he has not always possessed a knowledge of it. How amazing it was when, in Lessing's Education of the Human Race, the consciousness of repeated Earth-lives sprang forth from the new spiritual evolution! We are at the beginning of a time of change in man's relationship to his fellows—that is changed, even as is his relationship to the Beings of the three higher Hierarchies. The way in which human life was nurtured in the past does indeed extend into our own, time; but we would fail in our, duty to the present if we did not emphasize that new relations between human beings must now enter. It was of no moment in earlier times, when the duty was not yet laid upon man to develop consciousness embracing previous Earth-lives, that he should have, in contact with his fellows, no realization that they stood before him as souls which had lived in the spiritual world before birth, and before that in another Earth-life. Now it is of moment—the time is beginning when we may not leave this out of consideration. I will show this in a concrete case.

Among the things we have tried to set up as a part of the life of human society, is a school based on a real new spirit of humanity, the Waldorf School, in the first instance connected with the Waldorf Astoria Cigarette Factory. The opening ceremony took place last Sunday, 7th September 1919, preceded by a course for teachers which I ventured to hold. The important thing was to establish a pedagogy, an art of teaching and education which would take into account the fact that in a child a soul is growing, which has been through other earth-lives. Hitherto the teacher, however advanced in educational ideas, has felt no more than that he was dealing with the soul of a child, whose capacities it was his duty to develop, but he could only, more or less, take note of what could be perceived through the bodily nature. That will not be enough for the teacher of the future. He will need a fine feeling for what is developing in the growing child as a result of earlier earth-lives, and this comprehension will be the great achievement in the education of the future. A social attitude must be created, built up upon a spiritual relation to other men in the consciousness that when a fellow-man stands before us, we have to deal with a soul which has been through a previous incarnation. To hold the theory, of repeated earth-lives, based on intellectual philosophy, is not enough. The theory must become so practical that it forms the foundation of something like a real art of teaching and education. That is what first gives theory a living quality. It is natural that there is as yet very little willingness to receive such things and that the spiritual attitude of men who do realize the need of the times should be looked at askance. Further, it is necessary not merely to converse in terms of some sort of spiritual view of the world, but to establish institutions concretely and in the full light of knowledge, not only to profess some formula but to carry this knowledge right into the lives of men. Then that attitude will make itself evident as the foundation for a new pedagogy; the old times and the new meet in that phrase.

I have taken the trouble to find out a great deal about what is demanded in education on various sides. To give but one example: the question is often raised whether education should be more “formal” (classical) or “technical.” Should teaching be directed to fitting a pupil for this or that calling, so that he may be suited to serve the State or conduct other business; or should it aim at calling forth in him the common being of man and “developing what is universal in a humanistic sense?” All the arguments on the question are: simply words, words, because fundamentally what is said and what is the inwardly grasped truth have no correspondence at all. Is a man, then, anything but what he grows into? How is it, for instance, that men who follow certain callings in public life are fitted for them? It is due to the work of bygone generations; the public life of today is only the result of what they brought into being. How about the earlier teachers—did they educate “technically” not “formally?” Certainly not the latter. But it is all one and the same thing! Men dispute over things that are not really different. What is really important is this: that in the children of today we have the tendencies which will grow in the next generation and the one after that—which means that education is prophetic. “Technical” or “humanist” education are mere words. What matters is that we should educate prophetically, foreseeing the task of the next generation. That does concern the world, urgently.

“So difficult to understand,” people comment on all this! They must take the trouble to understand it, however, otherwise they will more and more fall out of the general evolution of the time—a momentous alternative, indeed! We must become conscious, in the most serious meaning of the word, of two necessities—first, the discovery of our connection with the activity of the Beings of the higher Hierarchies, and second, the establishment of a new relationship of man to man in the educational sphere. No longer must we contemplate mankind as simply the personalities standing before us, but as souls which have come over from earlier earth-conditions. We must keep that fact in our consciousness, but it is important to find a concrete relationship to the Spirit. Certainly what we know of karma, of repeated earth-lives and the constitution of man is a theoretic view of the world and mere theory will not carry us very far. Only when this theoretic view becomes “Life” is it what man needs for the immediate future—truths concerning the relation of man to the higher Hierarchies and about karma. A third thing may be added.

From my description in Knowledge of Higher Worlds you know that man, when he wishes to look into the spiritual world, must in some way pass through the experience, we call “the crossing of the Threshold.” It is described there by drawing attention to three forces of soul (or mind) in man, thinking, feeling and willing, and showing how the three, which in physical life work chaotically into each other, become ordered and self-dependent. This is the result of passing over the Threshold. In many ways the life-course of human evolution corresponds to that of the individual man, but not completely. This, the crossing of the Threshold, which a man must experience consciously if he wants to reach vision in the spiritual worlds, will be experienced unconsciously by the whole of humanity in this fifth post-Atlantean epoch. They have no choice, they go through it unconsciously—humanity, not the individual, but humanity in, general, and the individual together with the totality of human beings. What does that imply?

What now acts in man unitedly in thinking, feeling and willing, in the future will take on a separable character, and will assert itself in various fields. Man is just at the stage of passing unconsciously through a very significant gateway, easily perceived by the forces of seership. When a man goes through, this “crossing of the Threshold,” the spheres of thinking, feeling and willing fall apart. This imposes on us the obligation to shape the forms of external existence so that this revolution in our inner life may be carried through the external life as well. Since thought, feeling, and will, are to be more independent in the life of man, we must provide a basis on which that independence can be built up healthily. What has hitherto interacted chaotically in public life must be divided into three separate fields, those of economic life, political or juridical life, and the cultural or spiritual life. This demand for the “Threefold Order” is connected with the secret of man's development in this age.

Do not imagine that what is to become effective as the Threefold Social Order is a capricious, invention. It is born from the most intimate knowledge of human evolution, of what must come to pass if the aim of this evolution is not to be belied. The difficulty of finding an aim of a spiritual kind, of even admitting such aims, is one of the reasons for our having been involved in the terrible world­catastrophe of the last few years. From this chaos we must work our way out; the course of human evolution itself dictates that. For this reason, I think that the necessity for the Threefold Order will only be thoroughly recognized by those who start from an anthroposophical attitude, from knowledge of what is actually happening in human evolution. As yet there is no disposition to recognize such facts. Men like to attend to the problem immediately before them, to avoid involving themselves in aims of the deeper questions of existence.

This, it is which weighs so heavily on the heart of a man who can see into these secrets—humanity is little disposed to heed what is most necessary for it. Yet it is impossible to wish to remain stationary in the forms of ideas already expressed. We may say that all pessimism is wrong; but it does not, there­fore, follow that all optimism must be right. But it is right to appeal to the will. It is not a question of whether a thing happens this way or that, but that we use our forces of will in that direction where lies the true course of human evolution. Over and over again we must impress upon ourselves that; the old era is done with and that to reach a proper relation to the present we must close our account with the past. The new era will not allow us to reckon with it otherwise than spiritually. We dare not deceive ourselves into thinking it possible to carry over into the new what has been dear to us in the old; we must begin by turning to active new thoughts in outer life. Two paths stretch before man­kind. One leads through the “mechanization” of the spirit; very mechanical has the spirit become, especially as abstract “Laws of Nature,” which man has also carried over as laws governing social life. Mechanization of the spirit and “vegetization” of the soul. The plant-world sleeps; the human soul, too, tends to sleep. The most important events of the last years have literally been “slept through.” And the same thing is true of the important occurrences of today.

In Central Europe men have accepted the falsehoods told them from day to day about leading personalities in the world, and the same thing is being carried on now without their noticing it. They study the rate of exchange and find that the mark has fallen to 2.15 centimes, but I have not yet met anyone who sees the connection of the fall in the mark with other obvious events. Three syllables—I can only hint at them—would give the reason for the fall in the mark; but men's souls prefer to sleep, to sleep so soundly that in mid-Europe great disappointment has come over what we looked forward to with joyful anticipation. We were to have “double intelligence” in particular elections, because women were to take part in them. Then we had the “National Assembly”; but the intelligence, as compared with the old Reich­stag, was not double. We have seen the old parties continuing in existence at a time when they should have vanished, root and branch—and men have no inkling of what has happened, for their souls are asleep. Mechanization of the spirit, and souls as much awake as a cabbage [Vegetarisierung der Seelen]!

Look eastward. There we, see the active beginning of the “animalization” of bodies. The world of spirit is becoming mechanized in the American mechanical atmosphere, bodies are becoming animalized in the Bolshevism of the East. Criticism out of the emotions, comments on this and that; but what true life is, men will not grasp.

So humanity has its choice today—to go along the path which leads to mechanization of the spirit, plant-like sleep of the soul, and animalization of the body. Or to seek, on the other hand, to discover the way to the re-awakening of the spirit through the impulses corresponding to the age of the consciousness soul; to find the re-awakening of the spirit in the connection between the human soul and the activity of the higher Hierarchies, in the recognition of the fact that the soul comes forth from earlier earth-conditions, in the threefold ordering of social life. These things are all intimately bound up with each other. Those who are united in the movement we know as Anthroposophical Spiritual Science should feel themselves as a centre from which may radiate the force for this new social edifice. Much that comes from other sides for the reorganization of social life may be useful, but it must be worked on, for only spiritual impulses can bring genuine social transformation. The best understanding of these conditions should be expected from circles belonging to this Movement.

I have put before you some of the important things which may give you an idea of the necessities of our present age. I speak in these new rooms with the wish that in our work here we may always retain the consciousness of these truths, so important for human evolution. The more we carry such a consciousness into our anthroposophic work, the deeper is its consecration. And these rooms will be best consecrated through our feelings and perceptions, drawn forth from such deep sources of reality and truth.

In the last lecture the endeavour was made to show how necessary it is for men of the present day to turn the eye of the soul towards spiritual science, to those spheres of existence, of reality, in which the rule of the spirit within human evolution is clearly perceptible to anyone who has the faculty of sight in such regions.

As I said, the middle of the fifteenth century brought with it a complete change in the relation of civilized man's soul to the three Hierarchies next above man, the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai. Hitherto it has been out of their own interests and impulses that they worked in human evolution. In our times, this connection has come to an end. They have for the moment no interest in continuing to work as before on the evolution of man. They will only enter into a new relationship to us when human beings begin to develop an interest in the spiritual worlds, out of free will and of their own accord. If we would not lose all connection with the spiritual worlds, we must occupy ourselves with them in the near future, for the spiritual beings who have been connected with us so far have of themselves no reason to be further interested in us. We can only arouse their interest anew if out of our own souls we again concern ourselves with the spiritual world, fostering thoughts, sentiments, and impulses of will, into which spiritual forces can flow. The question may and must be asked, how can human beings manage so to concern themselves with the spiritual worlds as to maintain their connection with the higher Hierarchies as the Earth evolution proceeds. The answer may deal with things which apparently have little to do with the question; but we shall see that they do provide the foundation on which we can rebuild onwards into the future our, connection with the spiritual world.

The first thing which we must examine is the effect of the various confessions, the creeds, existing among civilized people. Hitherto they were necessary, to guide the heart and, mind to spiritual realms, but in future they will help to detach man from the spiritual world, unless they admit something entirely new into their efforts. Fundamentally speaking, the creeds of the present day are based on the egoism of man, as we shall realize if we put before our souls one question of such great importance that it forms, and always must form, a touchstone for their views, the question of the immortality of the human soul. We can see, from the way in which this question is generally handled by the creeds, that they appeal largely to man's egoistic instincts. Of course there are deeper foundations for their speech, but these we are not discussing today: as a rule the creeds speak of the “continued existence of the soul after death"—that is, the continuation of the life of the human soul.

To deal with the subject of immortality from this point of view is comparatively easy, for human egotism asserts itself there emphatically. Man simply cannot bear—apart from all truth about the question—the thought of utter extinction at death, so that a certain response is always to be found in man’s soul when "life after death" is mentioned. The treatment generally given today to the idea springs from an egoistic interest in people. They would prefer not to die as souls at physical death. Naturally, the soul's continued existence after death will be assumed in all our future discussions on immortality, but the way in which anthroposophical spiritual science speaks of the continued existence of the soul after death is very far from being accepted by the creeds.

But this also is important: that people of our day must hear a very different language about immortality from that to which they are accustomed. One who discusses the question of immortality should not only speak of life after death, but also of that life which is lived here in the physical world between birth and death. For as you know, this life is also a "continuation"; it is a continuation of the life passed between our last death and that birth through which we are now in the physical world. That is the view which men must learn to hold—that the life here is a continuation of the spiritual life before birth. In the growth of a child from day to day, from week to week, from year to year, we must notice forces from the spiritual world arising from its inner being, forces which have come with birth and work so as gradually to form the being of man as time goes by. In a sense we lift the veil of the God in man when we enter into the life of the child to develop it. Social relations must take on something of a religious impulse permeating the whole of life between man and man. For this the important, the essential thing is an attitude which never forgets that physical life is a continuation of a pre-natal life, of spirit and soul.

Many things will follow on this. For one thing we shall recognize that our real humanity lies in the depths of our being, gradually emerging. I have referred to ancient times of human evolution, known from an anthroposophical standpoint as the first and second post-Atlantean epochs. People in those days were as capable of development right into their old age as only the young are nowadays. A child goes through a physical evolution about its seventh year with the change of teeth; through another metamorphosis when puberty occurs; but after that what goes on in his evolution is outwardly less noticeable. In olden times this was not so; what man went through in soul and spirit expressed itself into much later stages of life. Nowadays old age sets in at seventeen or eighteen, and we are amazed at its evidences. Here is an example: a short time ago, in Stuttgart, at a meeting of the Cultural Committee where present-day education was discussed from the most varied points of view, a young man got up (let us call him "a young man" though he might equally well be called an "old boy"!) who told us we needed instructing about the true ideals of education! He began by uttering some very high-sounding words, then read out the programme of a modern Educational Society. After much stumbling he finally broke down, and, having no more to say, gathered up the threads with "I must there­fore claim to have proved that old age no longer understands its own youth," and went out. I replied that I quite saw we had not understood him, for the simple reason that his speech and behaviour had been those of an old man; he had in fact enunciated as principles, like an ancient grey-beard, the last word in abstractions. Old age, nowadays, means the limit up to which a man can develop. Up to a particular age a person can absorb all sorts of things, and is not ashamed to develop himself. But at about twenty years of age he feels shame at the idea of developing farther. Seldom nowadays do we find people with grey hair and wrinkles welcoming with joy the dawn of each year because each year brings new possibilities of development to the organism and new knowledge, unattainable before, is within reach. At the inconsiderable age of thirty men are ashamed to make themselves capable of development, or to learn anything more. The point is that we should actually retain the possibility, all through life, of rejoicing in the coming year, because each year charms forth the divine-spiritual content of our own inner being in ever new forms.

I want to emphasize this point. We should really and truly learn to experience our life as capable of development not only in youth, but through its whole span between birth and death. For this a new education will be necessary. We elders find that to look back at our own schooldays evokes few pleasant thoughts. We must manage to shape school­days for the children of today so that to remember them will provide an ever new and invigorating source of life. Now this will bring, as you can see, the possibility of opening for mankind real perception of the soul-spiritual within themselves, of experiencing something extending beyond the everyday life which is stirred and stimulated from without.

Other knowledge will be recognized as necessary. There is a secret, intimately connected with the present stage of human evolution, which is not known today. In earlier times, before the middle of the fifteenth century, it was not necessary to take much notice of it, but today it must be reckoned with. This mystery of life is that man, constituted as he is today in body, soul and spirit, every night looks, to a certain extent, at the events of the coming day, but without always carrying that vision over into full day-consciousness. It is his "Angel" who has that clear consciousness. But what is experienced at night in community with that being whom we call the Angel is a pre-vision of the coming day. This is no subject for human curiosity, but a matter for practical life. Only when the feeling of this fact fills our inner being can we make right decisions and bring right thoughts into the course of daily life. Let us assume that a man has something definite to do, say at noon. This that he has to do has already been arranged by his Angel and himself during the preceding night, though the fact is not necessarily kept in consciousness and human curiosity has no part in it. People should be filled with the conviction that during the day they should realize in a fruitful way what they have arranged at night in co-operation with this Angel being.

Much that has happened of late might draw men's attention with almost shattering force to what I have just said. The last four or five years of agony should have taught men that the consciousness of their association with higher beings through the experiences of the night did not, alas! exist. If the feeling had permeated men that their doings in the day were in harmony with the decisions made with their Angels in the preceding night, how different events would have been! These things must be spoken of now, to point out how man must learn to regard this life between birth and death as a continuation of the life of spirit and soul which was his before birth. It must be made known that man in future should be able to experience throughout his whole life the revelation of the Divine in his own being, and that through all his life in the day this vivid consciousness should persist as: "What I do from morning till evening I have discussed with my Angel, while I slept." Men must turn to feelings which are more concrete with regard to the spiritual world than the modern abstractions of various creeds, which at the same time claim that they appeal to unselfish, not to egoistic human instincts. From such feelings will arise that which will provide the necessary relation to the beings belonging to the Hierarchy of the Angels, who will once more be able to interest themselves on our behalf. Men's attitude to the spiritual world must move in this appointed direction.

Yet again we must observe something. The creeds speak much about "God" and "The Divine." What do they really mean? Surely something of which a vague conscious­ness, at least, exists in the soul of man. After all, it is not, what name is given to a thing that matters, but what it means to a man's soul. Men talk of “God" and of "Christ," but all the time they only mean the "Angel"—the Angel to which they turn because they meet a response in their souls. Whatever the creeds may speak of today, whether of God or Christ or other divine being, the substance of the thought only relates to the Angel Beings who are connected with man, the Angeloi. Higher it cannot rise, since people are disinclined to seek any wider relation to the spiritual world than an egoistic one. The relation to the Archangeloi, the Hierarchy of the Archangels, must indeed be sought in another way. Men's interests today must be considerably widened. I will show you how that extension must take place, so that from making response only to the Angeloi, they may rise in their feelings to the Archangeloi.

They must realize that they have passed through terrible experiences all over the civilized world during the last few years. Many have asked about the "causes" of, these events, with mutual imputations of "guilt " and " innocence ": yet we need only look below the mere surface of things and we shall have little interest in all this talk about “causes " and "war-guilt" or " innocence," simply because we can see that what has come up to the surface in these last four or five years is, like waves of the sea, always there, but brought up from the depths to the surface by the forces below. An upheaval of human forces had been going on; one people after another shared in the enormous folly of those years; one could but say: "Some turmoil of elemental forces is surging upwards into view. The sea of human life has become unquiet—What is it?"

We shall never get things clear if we do not connect this fact of humanity's unrest with the whole period we call "history." We must convince ourselves that the armed struggle of the last few years is only the beginning of events which will take place in quite other spheres, but which have never before existed among us in this particular form. We are not at the end of a stage of evolution—only superficial observation could lead to that conclusion—we stand at the beginning of the greatest conflicts, the greatest spiritual conflicts of the civilized world, and we must put forth our best efforts to be equal to them. Increasing opposition is threatened in the soul-attitude of East and West in the near future, for East and West have developed in two quite different directions. If we would see into these things, we must set before our­selves certain phenomena in their deepest, most fundamental form as riddles to be solved.

For decades we have heard repeated in socialist circles holding the Marxian theory, that everything man experiences as art, religion, custom, law or science is just "Ideology " (I have discussed this at greater length in the first chapter of The Threefold Commonwealth). This means that a view which had been developing amongst the middle classes for the last three or four hundred years, but which they were too timid to admit, has been frankly acknowledged by the socialists of the last half-century. They assert that the genuine reality of social life consists in actual happenings; therefore the real lies only in the economic forces. All conceptions of art, religion, custom, science, law, morality, merely form a kind of vapour rising from true reality, and are mere ideology, with nothing but a semblance of reality. The socialists conclude that it is only necessary to change economic life and all other changes will ensue, since everything else—morality, law, religion and so forth—is only an unreal vapour arising from the events in the economic sphere, which is the "only reality."

If, however, the world be considered in no restricted sense but as a great whole, we shall defend this word "ideology " which, but for their timid dislike of facts, the middle classes might have been using for three or four hundred years. They did feel that the economic life was the "only reality" and what displayed itself as science, art or religion was like a vapour; all life was based on this, and it was reserved for their pupils to carry their reasoning to its logical conclusion. Socialists are, after all, only extreme pupils of the middle-class world. This is the view which, forming in the West, reached its climax in the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Other impulses have formed the Eastern view of the world, and an Oriental would say: "I look at what is going on in the external world: I see what my senses convey to me, what I use as an instrument for transforming the world around, what shines down on me from the stars, and what I myself am as to my bodily nature—what is it all? It is Maya! What then is reality, and not illusion? Only what is experienced in the human soul—that is reality!" One who does not translate in terms of a dictionary, but according to the inner meaning, knows that the words "Maya" in the East and "Ideology " in the West mean one and the same thing. For thousands of years the Oriental has regarded the outer world which affects the senses—including economics—as Maya. The Westerner, on the other hand, sees his reality in what for the Oriental is "Maya," and what arises in his soul is for him "Ideology." Both views of the world have developed to a certain point. Talk with the leading men in the socialist parties especially in those places where the first Revolution (known here as the "November " Revolution) has not yet taken place, and it is evident that this revolution altered their ideas somewhat, but not their feelings. You hear the same views as obtained right up to the war, that it is not necessary to con­tribute anything from the will towards trans­forming, revolutionizing the world, but that all that will happen of itself. Something fatalistic has appeared in the West. People are convinced that they need only wait until the means of production are sufficiently developed, and then by a natural metamorphosis all that is concentrated in private capital will pass over into other forms. Thinking of this sort is as sensible as saying: "This room is full of bad air. I cannot breathe. The window could be opened, but I am not going to open it; I am waiting until the air improves of itself."

Fatalism of the West, Fatalism of the East—we know them well. In the East, though not at the very beginning, men fell into complete fatalism, as the philosophy of Maya developed. Every world-philosophy has, in its inner law, the impulse towards fatalism at some time, but we stand today at a point where we must get rid of fatalism. We must pass from mere observation and contemplation to the exertion of will and intention. We must rouse our wills by developing impulses from the truths I have described regarding birth as a continuation of pre-natal life, remaining young notwithstanding white hair and wrinkles, the playing in of the nightly work of the Angel into daily life. Man needs to acquire impulses for his life of will by widening his sphere of interest, by seeing not only what touches his own personal life but what affects the civilized world in manifold forms. Look­ing at the West, to which we ourselves belong, we see the inner world as ideology, the outer world as reality: in the East, ideology, Maya, in the outer world, reality in the inner world alone.  In the interaction of human beings at the present time, we have the task of finding the way of escape from that aspect of these philosophies which has already turned to fatalism. We must look for this way, and we shall only find it if we are in earnest about something which annoys people terribly today.

There was a remarkable example of this once, when my hearers were greatly vexed by something I said in a lecture in a South German town, though it was a truth necessary for the present time. The context of my lecture necessitated the remark that the leading classes of the present day have a decadent physical brain. Such statements are unpleasant both to utter and to listen to, but it is necessary that people should realize this fact. The very people to whom the present con­figuration of our times is due have, in achieving it, acquired a decadent physical brain. It is so, and we are in one sense in the same case as were the people of Europe during the, great migrations and the spreading of Christianity. The Christian impulse came over from the East, by way of Greece and Rome. Naturally the Greek and Roman world was far more highly developed than the. German. The Germans were barbarians. But the brains of the Greeks and Romans were decadent, there­fore the surge of Christianity was not absorbed by them in the same way as it was when it reached the Germans. That is a migration of peoples which went horizontally. today it is "vertical." today a wave of spiritual life is coming from the spiritual world. Just as Christianity was at first reflected from the Greeks and Romans, so the spiritual world is reflected from the bourgeoisie today, and that is decadent. The proletariat are not so yet; they are still able to understand what is meant by the spiritual world. But the others will need preparation through anthroposophy, through that part of the brain which is not yet physical that is the etheric brain. We are at present confronted with the fact that the leading classes are not only menaced with a decadent brain, but with entire decadence, if they do not realize that they must grasp the spiritual view of the world by supersensible means.

The tragedy of the bourgeois system is that it would grasp everything "physically," whereas our task today is to grasp things with the etheric brain, to take spiritual truths into our being. Modern humanity must steer in this direction, and the West must take the lead. Here we must take into account some­thing very important.

Observe the development of language, passing from East to West. Take the German language, today dreadfully misused. If we look back at the language of Goethe, of Lessing, we can see that not so long ago in the very words, through their peculiar quality, it was possible to express what of spiritual life lay within them. today we have dreadfully neglected our language, degraded it into phrases only; but that it can no longer express spirituality is not due to the language alone. The farther West we go as regards language, the more we find in speech, with its tunes and sounds, even with its grammar, a complete rejection of what is really spiritual. From this rejection of the quality of soul and spirit from the Anglo-American idiom follows the mission of the Anglo-American peoples. Their world­ mission consists in this: in learning, maybe instinctively, yet still learning (as they listen to other men, in course of acquiring world dominion), not only to comprehend the sound, but to interpret the gesture of the language, to hear more than the mere physical sound, to hear something which passes from man to man in speech, going beyond the spoken word. That works from etheric body to etheric body. Here lies the secret of the Western languages, that in them the physical tone loses its significance, while the spiritual gains it. It is part of their task to let the spirit filter into speech, not merely to hear physically, but to hear intuitively more than passes over into the sound. In the West, the spiritual must be sought behind language itself.

If we look at the East, we shall notice an ever-increasing urge among the peoples who, as we have seen, sink themselves into their own inner being, not to be bound by the old forms of conception as to "Karma," " Reincarnation," and so forth, but to look out into the world, and in that outer world to perceive something spiritual, even to establish a sort of Philosophy of Nature.

These are only trivial instances through which we can widen our interests from our own personality and our nationality to take in the whole of humanity, saying to ourselves "Here in the West is Ideology, though quite another Ideology from the Eastern one," and seeing how elemental forces are stirred up within earthly humanity as a result, of these antitheses. We learn to take our stand within the whole civilized world, and when we develop such knowledge of our position within it at the same time we build in our souls the means of acquiring feelings which lead higher than the sphere of the Angeloi. Our interests will be so much extended that we shall incline to ideas which ascend to the sphere of the Archangeloi, for all that I have been saying about the opposition of Ideology-Maya, etc., works in its primal force in the sphere beyond that of the Angeloi. We can see from this what is really needful for modern humanity. What will the so-called clever people call anyone who speaks of these things—Maya, Ideology and so forth—as having primal forces which function in the sphere of the Archangeloi? Just a fool, quite naturally, since men are so hide-bound by their acquired spiritual outfit that they feel no concern in the wider interests of mankind. That can only be achieved from a spiritual standpoint, by penetrating into everything which works for the great interests of humanity.

I have given you an idea of how to work up into the sphere of the Archangeloi. It is possible to rise stilt higher, and present-day humanity must learn that also. Our educated classes have, always been taught to look back to Ancient Greece. Young men (and in recent times young women also) have had to go through a certain schooling to absorb Greek culture, and have thus acquired an impulse which was enough to lead them to feel more and more deeply into the Greek world. This has a great significance for our civilization, that in our most important years of development we have learnt what Greece accomplished for the world. The Greeks did otherwise; it never entered their heads to teach their children the Egyptian tongue: they occupied themselves with immediate reality, for which they possessed a clear, sense. We occupy our young people, not with instruction concerning their environment and the impulses of reality, but with those of an olden time. We have no idea what we are really doing. It is not only that we teach our young children (I suppose I should say our "young ladies " and "young gentlemen ") the Greek language: for in a language, in the configuration of its sounds and its grammar, lies also the character of a whole people. In absorbing the Greek language, as is done today, man acquires the same soul-attitude in the world as was held in Greece. There all cultural life was such that only a small top-stratum shared in the culture; the rest were slaves. In Greece no occupation was worthy of a free man but science, politics and—even then in a supervisory capacity agriculture: everything else was a matter for slaves. This is hidden in the language, and when we take Greek culture and language into our own spiritual education, we unite aristocracy with it at the same time. For the Greek it was quite natural to construct his whole social organism in accordance with his intellectual tendency, for in his case that was connected with his blood. There were the ordinary masses: then those people of a higher type, who possessed the higher life of the mind through their blood. This finds expression even in Greek sculpture. Compare the position of nose and ears in the Hermes-type with that of the Zeus- or Athene-type. The Greeks knew perfectly well what they wanted to express when they set the Hermes-type over against the Aryan Zeus-type.

We are permeated with all this more than we think. When we form our views of the world, we really construct ideas still suited to what in the Greeks came through the blood. Our intellectual, our cultural life is saturated with what we absorb from the Greeks. Hellenism intrudes into our times luciferically. Hellenism, in the period which immediately followed it, was metamorphosed into Roman­ism. Compared with the Greeks the Romans were dull, prosaic people, but they did develop other aspects of life. They lived out in an abstract fashion what came to the Greeks from the blood. Unlike the Greeks they made even man into an abstraction, a "citizen of the State." A man, in the Roman sense, is not really "man"; he is a citizen of the State: an incomprehensible thing to the Greeks. To be born a human being did not make him a man, but being registered in some kind of State archives. This sometimes appears today in grotesque fashion. I once had an old friend, sixty-four years of age; one day he said to me that he had saved such and such a sum—he had always been very poor—and that he wanted to marry the love of his youth. He had become engaged at eighteen, but had no money to marry, and the couple had vowed to wait until they could. He returned to his birthplace, now that the way was open, but found that the marriage could not, take place because his community doubted his existence. Years before, the parsonage, with all the parish registers, had been burned down and there was no one alive who could give evidence as to his identity. My friend assumed that his existence was proved by his presence, but he had no "legal evidence." It is true the marriage did eventually take place, but the difficulties had shown him the much greater importance of a "birth-certificate " than of his own personality.

Men then are "citizens." They are what they are in an abstract connection. This view is essentially Roman, as is everything of this sort which we come across in ordinary life. Our education has been taken in hand by the State, which is already abstract, but will become more so under socialist influence. People are not educated today to take their place in the world as free human beings, but to have a professional calling and take their place in that. The State takes young people in hand, not at once, for then they are too “shapeless," so it leaves them for a time to their parents, then, stretching out its talons, it trains them to be useful to it, taking good care that they are so. It gives them an economic life, gives them everything prescribed, and then pensions them off. It means a great deal when a man can assure himself of a pension as well as an income—something substantial, which binds him to the abstract State and affects the rest of his mental attitude. The Roman attitude has passed into men of other times. Say to a man today: "to partake of immortality needs an activity of soul, that thou thyself mayst carry thy soul wide awake through the gates of death"; he will not understand. He has been made wholly un­accustomed to direct his understanding to such a question. Instead of this he is told: "You need only believe in Christ and in what the State does." First he will be looked after by the State, with a pension when he has worked long enough then the Church goes one bit farther; it offers a pension for his soul after death, so that neither in his lifetime need he do anything for his own soul nor when he carries it through the gate of death: A man is "registered " nowadays, and the political essence of Rome, already taken into our own being, will increase.

All sorts of dreadful experiences are possible because of this. Helping with the institution of the Waldorf School at Stuttgart, I have had to look at the various School Regulations. Looking back, I must admit that in the 'seventies and 'eighties of last century, the regulations were very small: they included what had to be studied in each class, the aim and the subject matter being given, but in everything else the teacher was left quite free. Nowadays we get an enormous syllabus with "Official," "Ordinance," written on the first page, and specific instructions as to the manner of teaching. So that what should only work on one living personality from out of another, is set down in rules and orders; it has become "official," it is "decreed "! That is the death of mind and spirit, directly traceable from Central Europe to Ancient Rome. This is the second thing we have absorbed—with Romanism, the politico­legal element.

In addition to this, however, there is some­thing which could not be transplanted from the old life into the new—the economic life, which can only be modern. It is possible to chew the cud of Greek knowledge, to allow the Roman political ideas to influence us, but we cannot "eat" what the Greeks and Romans have eaten. Economic life must be modern. We have gradually woven into our economic life the Greek life of intellect and the Roman life of rights, and our task is to disentangle them again. To understand that these three strata brought out of different epochs have, as it were, been joined together and must be separated means to extend one's interest in time (as, in the East and West in space) down to the present; that means to make ourselves capable of feelings which can raise us to the Archai! How few develop an interest for these things, an impartial interest in how the Zeitgeist (Time-Spirit) acts by thrusting one period into another. I spoke at Stuttgart on the artificial nature of our classical education. It may have been mere coincidence that a few days after there appeared in the papers great announcements signed by all kinds of Zöpfen—professors—(I beg their pardon!) to the effect that a classical education should not be undervalued, seeing that it had contributed to the greatness of the German people, so gloriously displayed in the latter days. This, literally, was to be read as the alleged opinion of educationists in April, 1919—after what happened in October, 1918! And to think that this and other things should be possible in our times!

Unless we reach a stage at which we can see things so as to absorb the impulses which work into our physical world out of the spiritual—unless we realize that man, just as he is connected through his bodily organization with the animal, plant, and mineral kingdoms, is also connected in his spiritual organization with the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai (Angeloi as the guardians of personal development, Nation Spirits as guardians of development of peoples in space, Spirits of Time as guardians of development through­out the ages)—unless we can understand these things from their spiritual foundations, we can advance no farther. Everything depends on man having courage and force today to look into the spiritual world. We are at the beginning of a hard struggle, in which will be stirred up all the instincts spring­ing from the one half-truth that economic reality is the only reality, that everything belonging to soul and spirit is Ideology; and from the other half-truth that the only reality is the psychic spiritual, all outside it is Ideology, Maya. These contradictions will let loose in human nature such instincts that the spiritual conflict will blaze for long periods in forms of which people at present have no idea. We must grasp this; and, further, learn how we are to raise ourselves, in harmony with our time, to a view of the spiritual world as we conceive it. It is this which the times themselves ordain and demand; to this we must turn our attention.

I have told you how at the present epoch in the history of human evolution men are confronted with great tests, though for the most part what these tests bring goes on in sub­conscious experience.

Men, as I said, can know, and must know what it means "to pass over the Threshold of the invisible world," when they go: through some kind of initiation and enter it consciously; but something like it—naturally not to-day or tomorrow but in course of a longer period of time—happens with humanity itself, in that it has to experience separation of the hitherto-interwoven forces of thinking, feeling and willing, when they fall apart, just as they become independent in the individual who passes the Threshold of the supersensible world. All this is bound up with significant changes in the depths of human nature, and it is one of the tasks of our age to make these changes part of our consciousness. The great obstacle to be overcome is the desire for comfort in man to-day, the unwillingness to know what is going on in humanity, the continued living in illusions and, in fact, dreaming about life.

We shall get the best understanding of my subject to-day by calling to mind some of the facts of supersensible life which have long been known to us. Let us recollect how the human ego and astral body leave the physical and etheric bodies as we fall asleep and return to them as we awake. That is a general description, a sort of sketch of the process. We can say in a general way that on waking man returns to his physical and etheric bodies, but then this return takes place in varying degrees. For instance, it can never be said of a little child that the ego and the astral body plunge fully into the physical and etheric bodies and become completely one with them as to activity. There is always something in his astral and ego which does not so unite. Yes, and if we look back into earlier times of human development, to the important dividing line which occurs in the middle of the fifteenth century, we must admit that, until that definite point, in human life as a whole there existed no complete immersion of the ego and astral body during the conscious waking hours.

The really important feature of our post­Atlantean age is that soul and spirit—the ego and astral body—have only recently been able to plunge entirely into the physical and etheric, and even so, not until after the 27th or 28th year. Conditions will change again with time. This is a significant mystery, in the evolution of mankind. What is the meaning of this complete immersion in the physical body? It signifies that by means of it we are able to develop thoughts and unfold ideas of the scientific, materialistic type prevalent since the days of Galileo and Copernicus. For these ideas and this scientific view of the world the physical body is the right instrument. The identification had not been achieved in earlier centuries, therefore there was no scientific thinking which is wholly bound up with the physical body. With this fact is connected everything else I have mentioned about the activity men must unfold in their spiritual-scientific attitude in order to regain the interest of the Beings of the three higher Hierarchies standing nearest to mankind. We owe it to them that we have the power to plunge completely into the physical body and therewith learn of the dead mineral external world through natural science.

It is man's duty to-day to become aware of these things. At our present stage of culture, without such a consciousness men live in a kind of sleep. That is why events happening around them do not penetrate into their drowsy minds. We simply must let these concrete facts work upon our souls in order to acquire a consciousness of what forces are dominant and active in our particular phase of evolution. In the extended span of time which we may call "the present," much must be made new—above all, the aims of education. I have already spoken of this from our own point of view. We must educate people from childhood onwards so that they can rightly enter. into an age marked by this complete plunging into the physical body, educate them to be able to take the complete plunge. Wherein will consist the success of our efforts towards a renewal of educational methods? In giving man, who is entering a new stage of development, preparation for the experience it brings. Anyone observing life to-day will know that at the present time there are a remarkable number of "broken” natures to be met with, natures unfitted to cope with life. Why are they not equal to it? Because, they cannot look back, as I have described, to the experiences of their education. Certain forces can only be developed in childhood. Once developed they remain throughout life; we have them, and can cope with it. If we have them not, we lack that power. It is in this sense that we must understand the feeling of responsibility we ought to foster with regard to education.

Further, we must fully realize that the Christ-Impulse entered into humanity in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, which began in, the eighth century B.C. and lasted until the fifteenth century A.D. When about a third of this period had elapsed, there entered into human evolution what gives meaning to the whole Earth-development—the Christ-Impulse, the Mystery of Golgotha. Man was then in process of developing the Rational or Mind soul, Gemüt-Seele, in which human thought and experience were more instinctive than they are to-day: this development was superseded in the fifteenth century by that of the Consciousness or Spiritual Soul, the period in which we live. The way in which the Event of Golgotha appeared as an impulse in world-history and human- evolution was suited, in the first instance, to the instinctive conditions of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, and was thus understood by the men of that time. It was natural for this instinctive understanding to believe that in the personality of Jesus of Nazareth the Christ Being lived, He Who had descended from cosmic heights in order to unite Himself with that body for earthly activity. Through feeling, everyone could realize that a great, important and super­sensible occurrence had, in the Event of Golgotha, entered human life. With the passage of time the capacities of the Rational Soul became less and less. The understanding of the Event of Golgotha which existed in the first Christian centuries could not last: it was bound to vanish with the altered soul­ constitution of civilized man. In consequence, with the uprising of the Consciousness Soul, the Event of Golgotha itself came to be regarded more materially. We see that the evolution of civilized mankind in the course of the last four or five hundred years so proceeded that the understanding of what really happened on Golgotha—the indwelling of the Christ in Jesus of Nazareth—became fainter and fainter. This great Mystery, perceived instinctively through the first centuries, was less and less understood, more and more materialistically regarded, until in our times it has become possible to take as a sign of progress that men no longer desire to know anything of the supersensible, cosmic Christ, but talk of Jesus of Nazareth simply as a man, an extraordinary man perhaps, but constituted exactly like other men.

Here, too, we stand at a turning-point. A new understanding of Christ must arise. It can only come if sought by the means provided by Spiritual Science, so sought that super­sensible means may discover what can only be accomplished within the supersensible and reveal itself in the sensible. The new understanding of Christ must arise from such depths in human nature that, confronted with these depths, differences of creeds, hitherto dominant amongst civilized mankind, will be as wreaths of vapour. These differences lie in a part of the soul more on the surface than that which to-day, out of the depths of Spiritual Science, must lead to a new understanding of Christ Jesus. Nor will understanding be complete, really satisfying the needs of man's soul to-day, unless it can bridge the differences among men imposed on humanity by the various creeds. Some­thing there is as a hope from this new Christ-Impulse, something we must all long for if we are serious and worthy in our wishes for humanity, something which is actually being sought in other spheres though very unintelligently.

Nowadays men talk of the so-called “League of Nations " and hope for something from it. It is remarkable how they long to understand reality by means of abstractions. Whence is to come the impulse, working through the peoples, which can evoke a unity such as this "League of Nations" is supposed to represent? Look at everything which has been produced in the way of spiritual impulses towards its establishment—nothing but a few abstractions. Yet men sleep through such things—how soundly, we may see from a fact like the following:

Woodrow Wilson, discoverer or at least rediscoverer of the League, announced at a time when America was not taking part in world-events as she does now, that the League could only be properly established if as a result of the catastrophe of the war there were no "victors" and no "vanquished."  That was an essential condition. Taken as earnest, that makes it impossible to take seriously what is said about the League now; the two cannot be reconciled, but that is not noticed. Here is a thing which militates against' a healthy development of mankind;  men are willing to accept the most impossible contradictions if only an interval of time separates them. It is as though present-day man in no way partakes with his soul in what is really happening.

The League is a nonentity, for what has to be established in humanity must well up from the depths of man's being to the surface. New comprehension of the Christ-Impulse alone can develop what is needed to-day in the whole civilized world, from human impulses suited to the times, on a basis which will not rest on the differences between peoples. The civilized nations, torn asunder by hatred and misunderstanding, can only be united by the Christ-Impulse, as presented by Spiritual Science. This f act must sink deeply, deeply as a conviction into the soul. All else, which does not lead in this direction, is only hindering the evolution of mankind. The needs of human evolution must be dealt with from its depths, not by any trivial speech. The Earth acquired its own meaning in relation to that evolution through the Event of Golgotha, and now the time has come when this meaning must be grasped in a different way. Until men realize the duty of this understanding there will be no remedy for the wounds of our times. What is designed can no longer be brought to fruition by nations side by side, but by nations as one. It is impossible: to establish a League of Nations by outside political arrangement. These things must come from within, arising from the deepest impulse, the Christ-Impulse in man.

Anthroposophical  Spiritual Science has the duty of pointing out what each man, merely as a personal individual being, can awaken in himself—but which simply must be awakened. Directly we touch on these things, the seriousness of our times strikes us with full force. It is tragic to see how little it is felt, how men avoid approaching the great knowledge or recognition that must be definitely incorporated in human conscious­ness. The epoch through which we have passed has led us away from that inner urge which could bring us to the knowledge necessary to-day. Suppose you asked a natural scientist of the day, what the evolution of the Earth would be if man had taken no part in it. Thinking logically on the basis of his hypotheses and opinions, he could but reply that even if man were absent, the Earth would develop without him, bring forth its minerals, plants and animals: things would go on more or less as they do now, except that man would not be there, and no cities or houses would be built. Therefore, from the standpoint of natural science, we should have to say that the Earth would have developed without man, just as it has done with him.

Yet this is a complete error. If you put together the various things to be found in our twenty years of lecturing, you will feel what I am saying as a self-evident fact, but attention must be drawn to it. The physical body of man is permeated during his existence be­tween birth and death by the soul; and in this present epoch it is so interwoven in a particular way: the ego and astral body plunge completely into the physical. Again, when either by cremation or burial, we give over the corpse of the physical body to the earth, it means to present-day science no more than that the body has consisted of various substances which at death are added to the earth and go their way according to the various principles established by organic and, more especially, by inorganic, chemistry. But that is all pure nonsense. It is emphatically not without significance, that from birth to death this human body is inhabited by a human soul-spirit being. We give the corpse over to the earth in a form and condition which it has only acquired from this fact—the indwelling from birth to death of a being, man's soul and spirit, which before birth (or conception) lived in the spiritual world. The Earth in its evolution would long ago have fallen into decay and desolation if it had not received as a ferment—whether through burial or fire-the human bodies which have been the dwellings of souls, though now deserted by them. In olden days when bread was baked (nowadays the thing is more artificial) a little of the dough was kept back, to be added as yeast at the next baking that was a necessary part of the process. In the same way the Earth would not be able to develop unless it received human bodies (not the animal body !) as a sort of ferment. By their means the Earth, which would otherwise long ago have turned to dust, is enabled to bring to completion what lies within its evolution. Man does have a share, and especially just now, in the whole evolution of the Earth, and even what we relinquish to the Earth at our death is important for it.

The other thing which happens to man, especially at this epoch of his evolution, is that when he passes a certain age of maturity, 27 to 28, he is in his waking life, as regards his physical body, in a relationship which works in a particular way on the spiritual, super-earthly world. This is a remarkable polarity in man's evolution. If he passes through the gate of death and leaves his body behind him, he releases something from the body which serves the Earth as a ferment in its develop­ment, whereas if he lives through the period from 28 to 35 on Earth, he gives the spiritual world something which it needs. (Things are somewhat modified in the case of people who die before 28—to consider this to-day would take us too far.) What we give to the spiritual world is the most important thing that we come upon-again when in the spiritual world we live our life backwards. We really do give something to the super-earthly world, just as we relinquish our body to the earthly world at death.

This is one of the secrets bound up with evolution, and nowadays it is essential that men should absorb them into their conscious­ness. These are certainly not sensational bits of knowledge—much more than that. To take them seriously and experience them in, the soul with full import brings an unusual earnestness of outlook on life, a deepened seriousness which is necessary to-day. The external understanding of what is included in our idea of the Threefold Commonwealth can and must be given to the outer, exoteric world, but the real, fundamental understanding which will lead to conscious co-operation in social evolution must begin with the seriousness based on the view of life gained through anthroposophical spiritual science. Otherwise we do not understand things deeply enough. All that is connected , with the Threefold Commonwealth must be proclaimed in the external world. In our movement we should awaken the needful enthusiasm and fire, so that the necessary understanding may be given to others through the personal conviction of those who can attain the right; comprehension from the standpoint of spiritual science. The ordinary superficial knowledge possessed by people in the external world, of the kind which leads, for instance, to the belief that the Earth could evolve even if man were not concerned in it, cannot produce the necessary understanding for our time. So it is that as we pass through our cities our heart bleeds when we realize the complete lack of contact with what is really going on in the evolution of humanity.

The immediate culmination, led up to by all these facts, was what we called the World War, that whirlpool into which were poured all the results of the superficial views which had begun to gather force. To-day it is man's duty to reach the triple deepening of which I spoke in the last lecture, concerning the beings of the three Hierarchies next above us. We must learn to see that we live and move among such a complex of facts. Humanity, and we as part of it, must go through the epoch in which, the ego and astral body plunge their deepest into the physical and etheric bodies and are exposed to the strongest temptations, which have their origin in the fact that as human beings we are so closely united with the physical. There are two forms in which this temptation can arise; one I would call the "Western," the other the "Eastern." We carry the Western form with peculiar strength in our own nature, but we see it more and more definitely the further West we turn our gaze. It lies in the fact that, as we plunge more and more deeply into the physical body, we come into inner connection with the earth forces with which it is associated. Our physical body is connected with these forces, and is only released from them when we consciously overcome the force of gravity and all the kindred forces which bind it to the Earth. People do not really know how, through their organization, they overcome the forces which are active in them. I once mentioned an illustration of this in the human brain, which is so heavy that if it exerted its full weight it would crush the blood­-vessels immediately below it: there is, how­ever, a remarkable arrangement in the human organization whereby the brain floats in the cerebral fluid. Now according to ' the principle of Archimedes, a body floating in water loses as much weight as that of the water it displaces; therefore the pressure on the blood-vessels is reduced, because the brain floats in the brain water and the weight of the brain is overcome. Thus we overcome much.

The same thing may be noticed in other parts of the body. Forces which are but little noticed show, even in the physical frame, what a cosmic wonder exists in the organization of man. We are necessarily connected with the forces of the earth, but we must not come into immediate contact with them. The temptation to make too close a connection with these forces is to be found in the Western world, in all the Western attitude towards life. This temptation is an Ahrimanic one. We can only combat it by gradually so deepening our knowledge as to become able to survey humanity's historical development and understand the Event of Golgotha as a real fact in the centre of it—just as we comprehend the position of Caesar Augustus or Socrates in history. For the Western world the only safeguard against this temptation and its consequences is to take the Christ into its scientific, exact view of things, that He should penetrate the entire Western view of the world. The Eastern view is exactly the opposite. The Oriental remains, in a sense, at the level of childhood, not allowing his astral body and ego to plunge down into the physical and etheric bodies although  at the present epoch it is fore-ordained that humanity should do so. The Oriental shuns this immersion. It is interesting to see the most important features of the day from this point of view. A number of Rabindranath Tagore's beautiful speeches have been translated. Read them and you will find in them an atmosphere quite different from anything spoken by a Westerner. An entirely different spirit speaks. Just as the perspective in an Eastern drawing or painting differs from a Western one, so the entire soul-mood of Rabindranath Tagore differs from that of a European or an American. This is due to the fact that even the educated Easterner of to-day, if rooted in Eastern culture, shuns the connection with the physical body. In this case the temptation is Luciferic—not to make proper use of the physical body, but to leave it unused. While the American strives to use the body to excess, the Oriental strives to make as little use of it as possible.

In this sense we must come to understand race-psychology. In the same sense, too, we ought for decades to have perceived the relation between the Eastern and Western peoples of Europe if the World War was to be avoided. It was not for nothing, but of purpose, that in 1910 I lectured in Christiania on the Folk-spirits. If you read those lectures you will find many indications of what has happened in the catastrophe of the last five years. The great thing in all these things is to prepare, earnestly and fully, not to shun reality, but to comprehend it in such a way that men can take their place in the development of the world, not selfishly subsisting alone, or bounded by their own immediate interests. We cannot fulfill our task to-day unless we develop the good will to take part in the whole development of humanity—at least in our consciousness. None of this is intended as a criticism of the past, for I have often said that such criticism is useless from the point of view of spiritual science. What matters is that we should act and think differently in the future from the past and be prepared to trans­fer into the future what we have gained from spiritual knowledge.

I have shown you during these few days how man should regard his entire life between birth and death. At birth we take over the forces of the supersensible world from our super­sensible existence into the physical sense-world. These forces continue their effect—a fact which is very hard for men of to-day to understand. How do they work? They work in all that man develops as spiritual life in this, world. There would be no possibility of poets being born among us, of philosophy or science, or of impulses towards the education of men—in fact, no possibility of developing any spiritual life at all, if we did not carry with us through birth those impulses which come from our pre-natal life. All that belongs to our spiritual life is of pre-natal origin. On the other hand, what we ourselves develop within the economic life, through our will-impulses, brotherliness love for humanity, thought and work for others, rather than for ourselves, what in a sense we do "on our own" because we are part of the economic life, all that provides the most important impulses, for what we carry over into the spiritual world. Just as we carry with us out of that world the forces which above all build our spiritual life here, so we take the forces developed in the economic life by human love and brotherliness back into the spiritual world at death.. There they accompany us and are our most important impulses. Looking at what emerges in a child's life from year to year, we see the inheritance of what is given from the spiritual world to enable man to unfold all that is spiritual on earth; and looking, in the economic life, at the results of our will to work for others, there presents itself the fruit we carry through the gate of death into the spiritual world. To the view of one who can see the spiritual world, these are the two opposite poles of development. In my book Theosophy, in the account of the soul-land and spirit-land, you will find this expressed in ideas which spring entirely from a living view of these conditions. We build up our own spiritual life with forces derived before birth or conception; the economic life we develop so that we can convey the forces belonging to it into the spiritual world; but the State, what constitutes the sphere of "rights" is the opposite of the impulses existing between death and a new birth; what is developed here on earth and belongs to the earth only is the life of polities, law, the State. That has no relation to the spiritual world.

We simplify matters by interpreting things of this kind as we find convenient. There are plenty of people who apply to the present day (perhaps with the idea of showing a little monarchical tendency in these republican times) the Biblical saying, "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's "—but it is a misapplication. The saying cannot be understood apart from the circumstances belonging to it. In those days the Roman Caesar was held to be "God" and demanded divine honours. Caligula enacted such worship for the statues of the Greek Gods which he trans­ported to Rome, beheaded, and adorned with his own head in exchange, as he deemed fit and proper. (The Zeus statue alone escaped this fate.) Even at the time when Jesus of Nazareth spoke them, these words meant "render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and reserve something for the God Whom you must seek in another being than Caesar." In many passages of the Gospels it is necessary in our time that they are correctly interpreted, and not as they usually are; so that we may be able thereby to struggle nearer to the conception of reality needed by our times.

During these few days it has been my task to show you, from various points of view, that the problem confronting mankind to-day is how to conduct this struggle, how to reach this view of reality, which can only be attained by grasping spiritual reality as something concrete, as concrete as sense-reality. Nothing does so much harm in the present day as shutting our eyes to reality. Men have gone on long enough with the policy of ignoring the truth, shutting their eyes to it. Anthroposophical spiritual science aims in seriousness at opening eyes to reality. To-day they are all but closed. Man's defective sense of reality is witnessed by the amazing things that are given out. I am obliged to draw attention to such things because they throw light on our times. A number of people, closely associated with the events which have brought such misery over Mid-Europe (misery not at its end, but only just beginning) have only disclosed their real countenances when the awful events of the summer, and particularly the autumn, of 1918, occurred. It was then that many men showed themselves in their true colours. They had arrived at remarkable positions, remark­able because so very different from their  earlier ones. I have known people who look with a sort of pity at personalities bearing such responsibility and yet never ask whether millions in the world are not worse off, in body and soul, than these responsible men who now hold a position so different from their former one. In these things it is important to have our eyes open and to have a sense of reality in our knowledge of the present. It is perverse fantasy to cling to our own pet ideas because they please us, without listening to the voice of truth. It is not pleasant to speak the truth about these things, but when we see with bitterness of soul how, these things have developed, how perverted fantasy appears where one hoped for practical help for life; how this fantasy asserted itself with shattering force while those who faced reality were called Utopian idealists, we are compelled to speak. No pity should prevent us, now that things are clear and we have their own confessions, from speaking our mind about such fanatics, in this tormented Central Europe, who have never deigned to see reality as it is but wish to mould it according to their own comfortable ideas. In this sphere, also, reality must be seen in the true light, for it is no small reckoning we have to make. All the miserable endeavours to justify themselves before the world are the strongest accusations against them. There will be no healing, no peace, until the necessity for earnestness is realized and for a serious recognition of reality. I did not come here to say these things from any desire to be clever: rather, as being associated with a serious spiritual movement, I feel it a duty—a necessity—to speak. We have seen (but could not talk of what we saw, for our lips were sealed) that men of absolute incompetence were called to positions of authority—standing like shadows beside the great truths destined to stream through mankind. I know many people still feel offended when told the truth, but this shutting of the eyes to facts must have an end; it is only by looking honestly at these things that the force can arise which is needed for human progress.

We need such a force. We must grasp something essentially different from the mental outfit of the men to whom we owe our present position. We must have the courage to lay hold of something new.

It is with a view to preparing this new out­look, even in outer reality, that I have spoken here and in other gatherings of the Anthroposophical Movement, not to give a kind of superior Sunday-evening sermon, but to emphasize the gravity of the times. He alone is an Anthroposophist, in the real sense of the word, who is gripped by the central purpose of his time and wills the truth, rejecting the lies which have entangled us so terribly in the conditions of to-day. I could wish that the few words in which I have given an outline of what is necessary might penetrate your hearts—it is not your minds only that I would reach, for it is from hearts that must arise the deep understanding so necessary for the times. We have to discover the impulse which will set humanity upright again, and to do that we must first of all learn how thoroughly we are ensnared by mere phrases and by untruth in all directions. From the spirit the truth will come. Wisdom lies in truth and truth alone—that should be graven deeply into our souls.

I have said a little about what is characteristic of our epoch of evolution from a spiritual standpoint. I have laid these matters before you because I believe that through them the most essential need of the present can be brought near to the human heart—the mood of soul from which that earnestness comes which is necessary in order to live in the service of humanity to-day. My aim this time has been to arouse such earnestness.

It is beyond doubt that the War and all its terrible accompaniments have given the social question a new aspect for men to-day. True, this change is not recognized by a sufficient number of people in the way one could wish; but it is there and will become more and more significant.

The members of the classes hitherto accustomed to lead and rule will find them­selves compelled by force of circumstances, in dealing with the social question, to abandon limited ideas and measures which deal with it piecemeal. They will be forced to turn their thoughts and direct their will to the social problem as the most important in the life of mankind, both to-day and in the immediate future. While they will only understand their times by adopting a wholly new conception of their problem in all their thinking, feeling and willing, on the other hand it will be necessary for the masses, the proletariat, to achieve an essentially different attitude to it.

For more than fifty years the mass of the people have been acquiring social and socialist ideas. Unless we have gone through the last ten years with our eyes shut we must have noticed what changes have come about inside the ranks of the proletariat with regard to the social question. We saw what form it took at the moment of the outbreak of the appalling catastrophe we know as the World War. Then came the end of that fearful disaster. The proletariat found itself in a new position, no longer confined by a social order dominated, at least in Central and Eastern Europe, by the old ruling powers. It was itself called upon, to a considerable extent, to set its hand to building a new form of social organization. And just in face of this fact, wholly new in history, we experienced some­thing extraordinarily tragic.

The ideas to which for years the proletariat had devoted itself with its heart's blood proved inadequate when realization became possible, and at this point occurred a great historical opposition, even a conflict. The facts of world-history taking place about us might have become the great instructors of mankind. They showed that the hitherto ruling classes had, during the last three or four hundred years, developed no ideas which can, or could, be any guide for all that was forcing its way out in the economic and other social facts of human experience. The remarkable thing was that those who had power to act in the world of affairs had arrived at the state of letting them take their own course. Their thoughts and ideas had become so restricted that they could not stretch them to include the facts, which had grown above their heads, out of reach. This had been evident for some time, especially in the economic life, in which protection and similar ideas had been superseded by competition for a free market as the only motive for regulation; in which ideas were active, not moulding the economic life solely with regard to production, distribution and consumption of goods, but unfailingly leading to continual crises owing to the hazard of the "free market." He who will is able to see that since the social impetus of these ungovernable facts had spread over the great imperial states, the affairs of these states had acquired their movement, susceptible to control neither by thought nor by any efforts towards adjustment.

Man should consider such things to-day, should be able to keep before his spiritual eye to-day's necessity of looking more deeply into human activities and of grasping such a thing as the "Social Question " with more intensity of purpose than is customary. It is, after all, obvious that ideas have become inadequate for the developing facts, yet men will not see it. Three or four hundred years of routine in business and public affairs have accustomed them to account it practical life and to regard anyone who sees a little further and can judge of things through longer vision, as Utopian or unpractical. I give you an illustration of this; for to-day, when the destiny of the individual is so closely bound up with the destiny of mankind, only examples drawn from personal experience and honestly meant can be sufficient illustration of the impulse and motives to be found in public life—therefore I may be pardoned if I give you one of my own. It is not intended in a personal sense. In the spring of 1914, in a series of lectures I gave in Vienna on spiritual-scientific subjects, I was forced, months before the outbreak of the so­ called World War, in the presence of a small audience (a bigger one might have laughed me to scorn) to sum up what seemed to me the view we ought to hold about the social development of the present conditions. I then said that for anyone looking with open eyes at what was going on in the public life of the civilized world, it appeared as infected by a social tumour, a malignant social illness or cancer; and this illness within our economic and. social life must express itself in a terrific disaster.

Now how was one regarded who, in the early spring of 1914, spoke of an imminent catastrophe, from his observation of events going on under the surface? He was "an unpractical idealist," not to say a fool. What I was then obliged to say was a great contrast to what at that time, and indeed even later, the so-called practical men were giving out—those men who were not practical at all, only revolutionists who scorned anyone who tried to comprehend the history of the time from some knowledge of its underlying idea. What did these "practical" men say? One such person, a Foreign Minister of one of the Central Euro­pean States, announced to the enlightened representatives of the people that the general relaxation of tension in the political situation was making pleasing progress, so that they could be assured of peaceful conditions - in Europe in the near future. He added that the relations with St. Petersburg were the most friendly possible. Thanks to the Government's efforts the Russian Cabinet took no heed of the publications of the Press, and our relations with St. Petersburg would continue friendly, as before. Negotiations with England were expected to be concluded in the near future on such a basis as to produce the best possible relationships. What a difference between "practical outlook " and "gloomy theory”!

Many more examples might be given to illustrate the view of, or rather the insight into, the facts at the beginning of the period which held such terrible things for humanity. It is very instructive to let the facts speak: these practical men spoke of peace and the next months brought a peace in which the civilized world occupied itself for several years in killing, at a low estimate, ten to twelve million men and crippling three times as many. I am not saying this to re-new a sensation: it must be mentioned because we can see by this how inadequate men's thoughts have become, that they are no longer far-reaching enough to master facts. We shall only see these events in the right light when we recognize in facts the strongest indication that for the healing of our social conditions what we need is not a small change in this or that arrangement, but a vast alteration in thinking and learning: not a trivial but a tremendous settling up with the old which is too foul and decayed, to be allowed to mingle with what the future may bring.

We might say the same thing about the life of rights or the economic life in detail as about the wider institutions of mankind. Every­where men's words betray that their thoughts are inadequate to master facts. We may say that the former leading and dominant class has the practical experience but lacks the effective ideas necessary to the practice of life. Opposed to these circles stands the great mass of the proletariat which has educated itself in a rigorous school of Marxian thought for half a century. It is not enough to-day merely. to look round on the proletariat to find out how they are thinking. It is comparatively extraordinarily easy to refute logically what the masses and their leaders think about economic institutions. That does not much matter: what does matter is the historical fact that in their heart and soul lies a sort of precipitate, formed out of the intensely active thoughts which have been converted into a "proletarian theory." This theory, which might, after the break-down of the old order have proved itself much more effective than it has in actual practice, shows a peculiarity which is quite comprehensible. For as a result of the way in which the social evolution of mankind has moved under the influence of the capitalist order and modern technical science during the last three to four hundred years—especially during the nineteenth century—the masses have been more and more closely confined within the economic system, so confined that each man was restricted to one small, limited piece of work. This strictly limited piece of work was fundamentally all he saw of the reality of the increasingly extending economic life.

What wonder that the workman experienced, in the effect on body and soul, that under the influence of technical science and private capital, developed by the new life of economics, he could not see the mainsprings which moved it. He might be the "worker" in this life, but his social position prevented him from looking rightly into its ordering, into the way in which it was controlled. It is quite comprehensible that as a result of such facts something grew up of which the fruits are before us; certain subconscious impulses and demands of the masses became a far-reaching socialist theory, really fundamentally alien to econo­mic and other social facts, since the proletariat could gain no insight into the actual driving forces behind the facts and simply had to accept the one-sided ideas derived from Marx. So we find that in the course of years, various things have eaten into the feelings of the masses which may in reality be ever so deeply justified but which, all the same, miss the facts. I should like to, give as an example the enormous effect of one slogan, amongst others poured out over the proletariat by its leaders. "In future no production for the sake of producing—production only, for consumption." Certainly a remark to the purpose, with the merit (rare in slogans) of being absolutely true; but becoming an unreal abstraction, elusive, when carried to its logical conclusion with practical sense and real insight into economic conditions. The chief thing in practice is "how things are made"—there is no meaning in the clamour" produce only for consumption" from a practical point of view. It calls up in the soul the idea of how beautiful the economic life could be if profit were ignored and consumption only were of consequence! But there is no indication whatever in this phrase as to how the structure of the economic life could be arranged so as to give effect to what is expressed in these words. Many other catchwords (of which we shall touch on some) have the same defect. They often have their origin in deep truths yet, when adopted as party slogans of the proletariat, have become abstractions, just Utopian pointers to an indefinite future. If we would be honest with the proletariat, we must say that this unfortunate proletariat which is raising its just claims lives as in a cloud of views which are theory, it is true, but remote from the facts of life, because they have no contact with the facts and are placed in an isolation from whence they can survey only a single corner of life.

That is the conflict to which I would draw your attention—on the one side the attitude of the ruling classes who have power over the facts, but no idea how to use it to control them: on the other, the proletariat with its acquired, abstract ideas which have no correspondence with the facts.

If we try to describe the genesis of all this in a few words, taking note of active forces and impulses, more essentially important than anything that has occurred hitherto in the course of human history, we can only rightly estimate expressions like "the lack of ideas in the practice of our leaders " and "the un­practical theory of the proletariat" if we have a feeling of the torrent pouring in the present-day development of humanity with such vigour and mutually destructive force. The existence of such a contrast between the attitude of soul of the dominant classes and that of the proletariat leads, and has led, to a deep cleavage between the thinking, feeling, willing and actions of the former and all the longings, wishes and impulses of the latter. We do not even understand adequately what is the demand of our age, of which we hear the first faint tone from the proletariat. We may understand the form of the words when they mention the theory of surplus-value, i.e., the theory that we should produce only for consumption, or that of transformation of private ownership into common property; but what are they in reality as expression of their wishes and ideas? Can they be regarded merely as a subject for logical criticism by the leaders of the well-to-do? It is hard to find a more naïve response than that of a director of some company who hears the "surplus value” theory from his work-people and answers that the surplus, made up of banknotes, etc., is so small that, divided among them, there would be no share for each worth having. I repeat, it is hopelessly naïve to deal in this way with the theory of "surplus value." The "calculation " of the directors is obvious and incontrovertible, but that is not the real point. To try to refute what are the actual words of the proletarian theory is just like having a thermometer in a room to indicate the temperature and applying a flame to the tube because it registers too low a temperature to please us. By this temporary expedient of tampering with the thermometer we do not occupy our­selves with the root-cause of the trouble. To take proletarian theory to-day and try to refute it is simple-minded, for such theories are nothing really but to use a classroom word—"indices" of something lying much deeper. Just as a thermometer indicates the temperature of a room, but does not produce it, so proletarian theories are a sort of instrument by which we can recognize the forces active in the social question from this aspect, now and in the immediate future. In this we are much too easy-going. The question has been regarded as purely economic because it first meets us in the economic sphere, based on the demands of the proletariat, hitherto entangled in economic life during the epoch of private capitalism and technical science: we have not seen lying behind the theories all that is betokened by them concerning capital, labour and goods. The workman experiences the whole sphere of human life in the economic field; therefore the social question appears to him entirely in an economic perspective.

Anybody who has the opportunity to acquire wider views is bound to see how clearly three spheres of life are to be distinguished, in which three fundamental aspects of the social question present themselves. To have learnt through his life's destiny not only to think about the masses or have feelings concerning them, but to think and feel with them, will have taught him to observe what is seething in the soul-depths of their best members, even in the phrases which run through all socialist theories - as their keywords. What are these?

First we have the phrase "surplus value," of which I have already spoken. Association as man to man with the proletariat is enough to show how deeply this phrase has sunk into their hearts. It is this sinking-in that matters, not the verification of any theory. Anyone who, like myself, has worked in Berlin at the ‘Workers' School founded by Wilhelm Liebknecht, while decisive events were taking place within the social movements of the new era, will know more about this question that I have, touched upon, through practical life, than perhaps some captain of industry does, especially if the latter should be—how shall I phrase it inoffensively—a revolution-profiteer, a superficial chatterer about revolution, even as we had war-profiteers. "Surplus value" was generally taken to mean something of this sort: the proletariat works productively and produces goods of some kind: the capitalist puts them on the market and gives the worker just sufficient wage to keep him alive, in order that he may continue to produce. Anything over and above this is "surplus value." As Walter Rathenau says—although in social questions he falls into great errors—it is true that this surplus value, divided, would not improve the condition of the masses at all; but through processes of calculation which float in space we do not arrive at the facts; we must deal with this surplus value correctly as to its social significance. Can it have as little, real existence as Rathenau, for instance, “accurately" reckons? In that case there would be in Berlin no theatres, no high schools, no public school, nothing of what we call cultural life, the life dealing with the human spirit; since that, for the most part, is really con­tained in the "surplus value." It does not really matter how this value is forced to the surf ace as "goods" or "cash in circulation": it is in this catchword itself that we find expressed the whole relation of our modern cultural life to the wide masses of the people who cannot directly participate in it.

Anyone who has taught for years amongst the workers and has taken the trouble to teach directly out of our common human feelings, speaking as man to man, will know what a spiritual education must be like if it is to be universally human and, further, how the form of education will differ from our present one, which has grown up during the last three or four hundred years under the influence of an economic order based on private capital and technical organization. If I may once again speak personally, to illustrate the general fact—I was well aware when I spoke to the workers, in lecturing or teaching, that in their souls kindred strings were sounding and that they were receiving a knowledge which they could absorb. But a time came when the proletariat had to follow the fashion and share in "education"—that education which was, from a spiritual point of view, the outcome of the dominant culture. They had to be taken to the museums and shown what had developed out of the experience of the ruling middle classes. Then if men were honest they must have known (if not, they invented all sorts of phrases about "popular education " and the like) that there was no bridge between the spiritual culture and education of the ruling classes and the spiritual needs and longings of the proletariat. Art, science, religion can only be understood if they issue from circles with which one has some common social ground, so that one can share their social feelings and attitude: not where there is an abyss between those who are supposed to enjoy culture, and those who can actually enjoy it. Here there was a vast cultural lie, and nowadays no benevolent mask must be spread over these things, but they must be brought into clear daylight. The lie consisted in setting up "People’s High Schools" or “Educational Schools" in which an education was to be shared by the masses without any possible bridge over which it could pass to them. The proletariat stood on one side of the abyss, looked over it at the art, science, religion, ethics, which had been produced by the leading classes, did not understand them, and took them to be something which only concerned those classes, a sort of luxury. There they saw the practical application of the "surplus value" which they had talked about, but they actually felt quite different from what was spoken in this "thermometer" language about surplus value. They felt: here is a spiritual life created by what we produce, by our labour, from which, however, we are excluded!

This is the way in which we must approach the question of the surplus-value, not theoretically, but as it really and vitally exists in life. Then, too, we can see the essential problem of the social question taken as a whole—its spiritual side. We can see that, side by side with the rise of the new technical science and new capitalist economics, arose an intellectual life only capable of living within the souls of men who were divided by a deep golf from the great masses to whose ,education they gave inadequate attention and from which they held aloof. The tragedy of it! The ruling classes discuss these problems in well-warmed, mirrored rooms, speaking of their brotherly love for all men, our duty to love all men, or of the Christian virtues, while a fire warms them which is fed with coals from the mines into which children of nine, eleven, thirteen years of age are sent down. In the middle of the nineteenth century this was literally so (things have improved since then, not, through any merit of the ruling classes but through the demands of the proletariat); these children went down before sunrise and only came up again after sunset, so that they actually never saw the sun the whole week through.

We are assumed to be agitating nowadays if we talk like this. Not at all! We have to say these things to show how the cultural life of the last few hundred years is separated from the real life of men. People have talked in abstractions about morality, virtue, religion, while their real practical life was in no way touched by the talk of brotherliness, love of one's neighbour, Christianity and so forth. Here, then, confronts us, as a distinct aspect of the social question, the spiritual problem. We stand before the whole sweep of the spiritual life especially as it relates to men of the present age and the immediate future in the realm of teaching and education. As a result of the way in which the territories of dukes or princes have been formed into single state-economics, the intellectual life in its wider form has been absorbed by the State organization. It is to-day a source of pride. that education has torn itself away, as regards science, as regards intellectual life generally, from its medieval association with religion and theology. Proudly it is asserted and repeated: "In the Middle Ages the intellectual and scientific life were in leading-strings to religion and theology." Of course we do not want to have these times back; we must move forward, not backward. We are living in different times: we must not simply point in pride to the way in which intellectual life was train-bearer to the Church in the Middle Ages. Something different is demanded. Let us take an example not so very far away.

A very distinguished scientist, for whom I have great respect (I do not mention these things in order to disparage people)—the Secretary of the Berlin Academy of Sciences—was speaking of the relation of this Academy to the State. He said, in a well-considered speech, that the members of this Academy regarded it as one of their highest distinctions to be "the scientific bodyguard of the Hohenzollerns." That is only one example of what might be repeated a thousand fold, bringing to our lips the question: "What nowadays has taken the place of the Church which formerly used intellectual life as its train-bearer?” Nor were things so bad in the recent past as they must become, if such State regulations were to be made as would favour the growth of that appalling State-regulation of teaching which has arisen in Eastern Europe and which has conclusively proved that it would bring about the death of all culture. We must look not only into the past, but above all into the future and assert that the time has come when intellectual and spiritual life must exist as a self-dependent part of the social organism and must be under its own control.

When a thing like this is mentioned, we are met by all sorts of prejudices, and we are reckoned mad if we cannot appreciate the enormous blessings to be found in State-control of education. But healthy conditions will never be found until education and everything connected with instruction, including , the teachers from the lowest form to the highest grade in the public schools, passes from the control of the State into its own control. That is one of the great objectives we must specially aim at to-day.

The men who first showed me any friendliness when it came actually to fitting the idea of the threefold organization into the present age are those to whom we owe the first really free Einheitsschule in Stuttgart. In connection with the Waldorf-Astoria Factory, we are establishing the first model Einheitsschule, based on the science of pedagogy and teaching which has its origin in the true and real knowledge of the growing human being. Social class and rank make no real difference to him between the seventh and fifteenth years—all human beings are at the same stage. But to be able to teach and educate him means learning first to understand him. As it fell to me to give the preliminary course to the teachers working at the school, there came under my notice certain things which are nowadays taken as a matter of course. The serious significance of such an acceptation is not realized. It has only developed fully in the last decades. Since these things are the subject of practical life-work and must form its experience, I may remark, on such an occasion as this, that my comments on them arise from no irresponsible youthful mind, I speak as one who has already reached the sixties. I can remember how in days gone by the syllabus was short: the subject of teaching was presented by means of lectures, books and the experiences of men who had living ideas of education, who were creative spiritually. But to-day we have no short syllabus; instead, we have thick books which not only direct us to take one subject in one year, another in another, but tell us how to teach it. What should be the subject of free instruction is to be—indeed is—a matter of regulations. Unless we have a clear, adequate feeling of how unsocial all this is, we shall not be ready to collaborate in the real healing of mankind. Therefore, in the establishment of a spiritual, intellectual life which is free and independent of the State lies the first, central problem of the social question. This is the first of the three self-dependent members of the threefold organism which we have to set up. If we represent these facts, pointing out how healthy it may be to have no authority within the spiritual part of the social organism save that of those who take some active part in it, then the teaching of the future will be seen to have little kinship with that of the present-day unitary State. The whole of life will resemble a model republic. Teaching will be created out of the spirit, to satisfy the demands of education, not given according to the claims of regulations. We shall not merely enquire what standard shall be set in the socialized State for a pupil of thirteen or seventeen, but what lies deeply in man himself, which we can draw out of him in such a way that when these forces, liberated from the depths of his being, are at his disposal, he will not be weak-willed or crushed, as so many men are to-day, but will be equal to his destiny and able to direct his forces with determination to the tasks of his life. This points us to the first member of the threefold social order.

To give utterance to such thoughts as these brings questions, objections, like the one I had to meet in a South German city. I was answered in the discussion at the end of a lecture by a secondary school teacher, some­what in this wise: "We Germans shall be a poor nation in the future, and here is a man who wants to make the spiritual and intellectual life independent: a poor people cannot pay for that, there will be no money, there­fore we shall have to draw on the national exchequer and pay for education out of the taxes. What becomes of independence then? How can we refuse the right of the State to inspect, when the State is the source of income? " I could only reply that it seemed strange to me for the teacher to believe that what was drawn from the Treasury as taxes grew there somehow or other, and would not in future come out of the pockets of the "poor nation." What strikes me most is the lack of thought everywhere. We need to develop a real practical thinking which sees into the facts of life. That will give us practical suggestions which can be carried out.

Further, just as on the one hand the spiritual life, in education, etc., must become independent, so on the other hand must the economic life. Now, two demands, rather remarkably, have lately arisen from the depths of human nature, the one for Democracy, the other for Socialism. They contradict one another. Before the War the two contradictory impulses were thrust into each other's company and a party was even founded with the title "Social Democratic." You might as well talk of "wooden iron." They are contradictory, yet both are noble and honest demands of our times. Since then, the catastrophe of the War has passed over us, with all its con­sequences, and now there is a new form for the social demands and a "democratic Parliament " is rejected. When such a theoretical demand, entirely unaccompanied by know­ledge of the facts, with its catchwords of an abstract kind, like " the seizure of political power " or " the dictatorship of the proletariat " and the like, is pushed forward, this originates in the depths of socialist feeling, but it shows that people have come to realize the contradiction between that attitude and the democratic one. In future, we shall have to take into account the realities of life, not be content with catchwords: we shall realize that a socialist is quite right when he feels there is something repellent about democracy. And the democrat is right when he finds "the dictatorship of the proletariat " an alarming prospect. What are the real facts in this sphere?

We must observe the economic life in its connection with the State in the same way as we did the life of the mind and spirit. A common idea of modern times, especially amongst people who consider themselves advanced thinkers, is that the State should more and more participate in industry. Post office, railways, should be under State control, and its authority should be even more widely extended. This is a very comprehensive sub­ject to touch upon in a few words; and since I must limit myself to a short lecture, I must risk being charged with superficiality in making these remarks, which are, however, really to the point, and can be supported by countless instances from modern history. They are far from being superficial. This idea of the "advanced" thinkers will reveal itself in its true form if we take socialism seriously. Moreover, we can ascertain that true form if we so regard a remark made by Friedrich Engels in one of his most brilliant moments, in his book The Development of Socialism from Utopianism to Science. There he says "If we survey the State, in its present development, we find that it includes management of branches of production and control of the distribution of goods; but, inasmuch as it has undertaken economic management, at the same time it controls men." The State laid down the laws according to which men who stand within the economic life must act whether within or outside of their economic activities. In future this must become different.

Engels was quite right. It was his opinion that within the sphere of economic production itself there should be no more control of men: control should be limited to the production and distribution of goods. A right view, but only half or one-quarter of the truth: because the laws effective within the economic sphere have hitherto coincided with the life of the State, and if the State is removed as controller and manager of economics, the economic sphere must have a place of its own, not one from which men shall be ruled from a centre, but where they will rule themselves democratically.

That means that these two impulses, democracy and socialism, point to the fact that by the side of the independent spiritual member of the social organism there must be two other separate spheres, covering what remains of the function of the former type of State. These two spheres are the control of economic life and the domain of public rights, this latter including everything on which a man is entitled to give judgment when he is of age. What is the meaning of the demand for democracy? It means that, as a matter of history, humanity is becoming capable of deciding, in the sphere of the free State and public rights, everything in which all men are equal, every question on which any man who is of age can pronounce, whether directly through a referendum, or indirectly by representation. In future, therefore, we must have an independent sphere of rights, which will take the place of the old State built up of power and might. We can never have a proper State based on law and right, unless the sphere of law is limited to those matters on which every adult human being is capable of judgment. There has been a good deal of talk on this subject among the workers, though, once again, we can only take their words as a social thermometer. There is a remark of Karl Marx which has sunk deeply into their feelings: "It is an existence unworthy of a human being when a worker must sell his labour-­power in the market, as if it were a commodity: we pay for a commodity at its market price and we pay for labour-power by means of wages which are the price of this commodity, labour-power."

This is a remark which has been significant in the development of modern humanity, not so much through its actual content as through the electrical effect it has had on the proletariat, an effect of which the ruling classes can hardly form any idea. What is at the bottom of it all? In the economic circuit, i.e., in the production, distribution and consumption of goods, which alone belong to this circuit, the regulation of labour, according to amount, time and character, etc., has been placed. We shall never have a healthy condition of things in this sphere until the character, amount and time of human work has been taken out of the economic circuit, whether the work be physical or intellectual. The actual regulation of labour-power does not belong to the economic life, in which the economically stronger can impose the type of work upon the economically weaker. The regulation of work as between man and man, what one man does for another, should belong to the sphere of law and right, where each adult human being is on a level with every other. How much work one human being has to do for another ought never to be decided on economic grounds, but solely on principles which will develop in the State of the future, the State of Rights as opposed to the present State of Might.

Here again we meet with a mass of prejudices. It is a commonplace nowadays to maintain that so long as the economic order is settled by the conditions of a free market, so long will it be natural for labour to depend on production and the price of commodities. But if we imagine that things must always go on as they do now, we are shutting our eyes to the different demands which are growing up as history unrolls. In future we shall see, for instance, how foolish it would be for men in control of some industry to meet and, examining their accounts for a certain year, to say: "We produced so much last year. This year, to equal that total we shall need so many days of rain, so many of sunshine, etc." We cannot dictate to Nature to accommodate herself to our prices; prices must be subject to Nature-conditions. On the one side economic life is bounded by natural conditions, on the other by the State of Law or Rights, through which, as we have seen, labour has to be regulated. Hours of work must be settled on purely democratic grounds and prices will follow them, regulated according to natural conditions, as is the case in agriculture. We have not to consider alteration in a few minor details of the system: we must change our whole way of thinking and learning. The unrest created at present in our industrial life will never disappear until labour-power is judged on an independent democratic basis, when one adult human being stands over against his fellow as equal and can, as free man, bring his work into the independent economic life, in which agreements about production will be made, not about work. This must be understood.

I can but touch on these things in the short time at my disposal. I would gladly give a whole course of lectures to deal with them, but that is impossible. I must just indicate what form this third member, the economic life, must take in the threefold social organism of the future.

In this economic sphere there must not be, as in the past, control of capital, of land, of means of production (which incidently is control of capital) and of labour: we may only admit control of the production, distribution and consumption of goods. And how is the essential fact of an economic life which is to be based only on knowledge of facts and on practical ability—this "settling of prices"—to be achieved? It must not be decided by the chances of a free market as has been the case hitherto in both national-economy and world- economy. By means of the Associations which will come into being to suit the circumstances existing between the various branches of production and consumption—Associations which will be composed of men whose position is justified by their knowledge of facts and practical ability—we shall obtain organically and rationally what is nowadays attained through crises in the chances of a free market. In the future, when a decision as to the kind and character, of human labour has to be made in the Rights State, it will happen in the economic life that a man will receive in return for his product enough exchange-values to supply his needs until he can produce another such product. To give a rough superficial example, I might explain that, supposing I produce a pair of boots, I must be able, through the mutually-fixed values, to get as much goods in exchange for my boots as I shall require for my needs until I have made another pair. There will have to be arrangements within the society for supplying the needs of widows, orphans, the sick, of education, etc., but the actual regulation of prices in this way—and that alone will be the task of the economic organization—will depend on the formation of Corporations (whether elected, or nominated from the Associations formed among the various branches of production combined with the Associations of consumers) whose business it will be to get at true prices in real life.

This can only be achieved if the whole economic life (not planned after a Möllendorff scheme, but in a living fashion) is so ordered that, for instance, notice is taken of actual conditions. Say that some particular article shows a tendency to become too expensive: that means that it is too scarce. Workmen must be diverted to that branch of production, through some form of agreement, in order to produce more of it. If some article is too cheap, factories must close down and the workers be transferred to other factories. “It is all very difficult," people reply when we mention this sort of thing to-day: but they should realize that to reject it as difficult, and to prefer to play about with minor improvements in social conditions, means to preserve present conditions as they are. What I have said shows you that, as a result of the Associations created simply out of the economic life, economic life can be made self-dependent, controlled only by the economic forces them­selves instead of being under the aegis of the State: and in such a way that within this self-dependent control the initiative of the individual will be maintained as much as possible. This cannot be done by a planned economy, by the establishment of a common organization of the means of production, but only by the Associations belonging to such free branches of production and their agreement with the consumers' Associations.

It would be a terrible mistake to push to extremes the State control which has hitherto been under the direction of the ruling classes, and extend "Corporations" over the whole life of the State, using the framework of the State for the purpose, a procedure which could but undermine all connection between such a planned economy and the economic forces outside it. The Associations, on the other hand, as part of the Threefold Organization, would aim particularly at maintaining the free initiative of those engaged in industry and at keeping open everything which unites a closed economic circuit with other economic circuits without.

Many things would look very different—for example, something I can only indicate by an analogy. Socialist doctrine demands "the abolition of private property " and "trans­formation of private possessions into communal, property "—mere unmeaning words, which can signify nothing to a man with practical knowledge of affairs. Yet they might have a meaning—which I can describe to you in pictorial fashion. We are very proud nowadays, for instance, of our philosophers, and in one way they do think fairly accurately, that is, where intellectual or spiritual work is concerned. In the material sphere they do not manage to think in the same healthy way. In the matter of intellectual possessions it is realized that what is produced in that realm by anyone is his own work, he has to be present. Nobody talks of its being produced by some common economy or corporate industry. Everything here must be left to the individual, for we get the best result when he is present with his faculties and talents at the work, not when he is cut off from it; but from a social aspect we think that thirty years or less after his death the spiritual product should no longer be the property of his heirs, but of any person who can best make it accessible to the community. That seems natural to us, because we do not value spiritual product as anything peculiar. But we make no effort, in the case of material property, to treat it in the same way, and see that it should only remain private as long as a man is in contact with it with all his faculties. When this is no longer the case it should pass over—not to the community (which has no real being) bringing fearful corruption in its train, but to the man who could in his turn by use of his faculties put it to the best use for the community.

It is easy enough to see clearly if we think impartially. We have undertaken to found a school for Spiritual Science, the Goetheanum, at Dornach, near Basel, in Switzerland. This has been its title ever since the world became "Woodrow-Wilsonized" and it became necessary for Germany's spiritual life-treasure to be boldly displayed before the world. A very different thing, this, from ordinary Chauvinism—a Goetheanum in a foreign country as the representative of German spiritual life. Fur­ther, it is being built, and it will be controlled, by those who have the capacities to call it into being; but to whom will it belong when these people are no longer among the living? It will not pass by inheritance to anyone, but to those who can control it best in the service of humanity. Actually it belongs to nobody. Social thought in economics will bring into being the things which are necessary for health in the future. I have dealt more fully with the circulation of private property in my Three­ fold Commonwealth, where I have shown how the social organism must be divided into three members, separate but co-operating as such:

(a) The spiritual organization with control of itself on the basis of a free spiritual life.

(b) The organisation of the State with political rights and with democratic control based on the judgment of every grown-up person.

 (c) An economic life placed under the control only of individuals, who have shown themselves expert and competent, and their Associations and Corporations.

All this seems so new that once when I was talking of it in Germany, someone objected that, I was dividing the State (which must be a unity) into three parts. I could only ask in reply whether I should be dividing a horse into parts if I said it must stand on its four legs? Or is a horse a unity only if it stands on one leg? Just as little can one expect that the social life should be an abstract unity, if such a unity could exist at all. We must not in the future allow ourselves to be hypnotized by the abstract idea of the "unitary State"; we must see that it must be divided into three members on which it can be supported—into a free spiritual sphere controlling itself, an organization of rights with democratic legislation, and an economic organization with expert and competent economic control.

One-half of a great truth was uttered more than a hundred years ago in Western Europe, in the words: "Liberty, Equality and Fraternity," three ideals which were capable of being graven deep into the hearts and souls of men: but it was not fools or madmen who maintained in the nineteenth century that these ideals were really contradictory, that where absolute equality rules, neither freedom nor fraternity can exist. These objections were sound, but only because they were made at a time when men were obsessed by the idea of the so-called "unitary State." Directly we free ourselves from the hypnotism of this idea and can understand the necessity for the three­fold social organism we shall speak otherwise.

I hope you will allow me in closing, to sum up in a comparison what I fain would discuss at greater, length. I have only been able to give an outline sketch of what I meant: I know I have but hinted at what needs a comprehensive description to be understood; but in conclusion I should like to point out what a hypnotic effect the "unitary State " idea has had on men, and how they have let the unitary State be dominated by the three great ideals of “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity." We shall have to change that idea. At present people look on the Unitary State as a sort of divinity. In this, their attitude is like Faust's attitude towards the sixteen-year-old Gretchen. It is like the lessons which Faust gave to the child Gretchen, suited to her years, but usually regarded by philosophers as something highly philosophical. There Faust says, "The All­-enfolding, the All-upholding, folds and up­holds he not thee, me, Himself? " (Faust, Part I, Scene XVI) This is almost the same view as of the Unitary State. Men are hypnotized by it as by an idol of unity and cannot see that this unitary picture must become threefold for the health of mankind in the future. Many a manufacturer would be only too glad to speak to his work-people about the State as Faust speaks to Gretchen: "The all-enfolding, all-upholding State, does it not enfold and uphold you, myself, itself? "—only he would have to clap his hand over his mouth lest he should say "myself " too loudly! The necessity of the threefold ordering must be realized, especially amongst the workers, but that will only be when their eyes are opened to the need. In future it will not be the cry of "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," with all the contradictions involved in these ideals. They will hold sway, but the independent spiritual life will be the domain of "Liberty " for there it is justified. "Equality" will be the rule in the democratic State, where all grown men will be equal in rights; finally, "Fraternity " will hold dominion in the economic life, independently controlled, supporting and sustaining every one. Thus applied to the three divisions of the social organism the three ideals no longer contradict each other.

And now, though we look in agony at what has happened at Versailles, seeing in it the starting-point of much misery, poverty and pain, yet we can still hope. Things external can be taken from us, yet if we have the vigour to reach back over the years in which we were false to our own past to the Goetheanism of the period at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when Lessing, Herder, Schiller, Goethe and others were active in other spheres: if we have the vigour to reach back in our time of need, in the strength of our own inner being, to the great glories of Central Europe, then, in spite of the stress of our times, will peal forth from Central Europe the complement to the half­truth of "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity " which rang out a hundred years ago, the other half—perhaps in external dependence, but certainly in inner freedom and independence.

Liberty in the Life of the Spirit.
Equality in the democratic Life of Rights.
Fraternity in the Economic Life.

In these words we can sum tap what men must think and say and feel if they are to comprehend the Social Question in its entirety. May it be received and grasped by many, many minds, so that what is only a question to-day may be the practice of tomorrow.

Rudolf Steiner: Regarding the 1919 appeal: On the one hand, it was very appropriate, but on the other hand, it had to be clear that it was a challenge to the professors and lecturers. Of course you can do that, but you also have to try to get through to them. It wasn't quite as bad as that, but it was similar to the cultural appeal in May 1919.

I don't think I can say that the positive outcome was what everyone had hoped for. This is not due to any carelessness or lack of activity within the student body, but to our current circumstances, which are really very difficult to overcome. It is all too easy to be seen as a rabble-rouser when characterizing today's conditions. But burying our heads in the sand is not helpful either. We have to be clear about one thing: the world needs anthroposophical will. We have to get through to it. The forms in which this anthroposophical will appears today may need to be replaced by others, and in this respect too, no stone may remain as it is; a breakthrough in this direction is necessary.

On the one hand, we have to admit this to ourselves. On the other hand, we will always be surprised to see the older generation today is afflicted with such indolence, with such a lack of interest in what is actually going on. There is such a terrible blindness, more a blindness of will than of the other powers of the soul. Say what you will about earlier times, but in terms of lack of willpower, our time is the most terrible that has been experienced in the history of humanity. One can only say that some people do not have good will, but good opinions; one experiences it again and again, one does not need to accuse anyone. For example, I spoke about the idea of threefolding in the political science association in Kristiania. You couldn't say that people didn't understand anything about it; it was clear from what was said: the professors, both theorists and practitioners, talked about the issues, but it didn't occur to them that something could follow from what they had absorbed that would be more than reading an interesting essay. People no longer grasp that something must be done in the world. That is the bleak part. It is, after all, the repelling of everything that actually means action. The younger generations, in particular, must feel this, must recognize it. We have a terrible selection process when it comes to leadership positions. I don't care whether someone speaks pro or contra in relation to anthroposophy. But what matters is the spiritual level of the speaker, as was demonstrated this morning by Dr. Tillich. That is why I said before that one looks like a rabble-rouser when one characterizes the times. Such personalities, who are blinded by blinkers, can become associate professors and licentiates. Such [note breaks off].

If Theosophy were to assert that it has in the last few decades brought any new thing into the world, it could easily and very effectively be contradicted. For it is easy to believe that any particular truth or achievement in a special branch of human knowledge, in man's conception of the world or in his world of thought, might enrich the advancing ages, but not that which concerns his innermost and deepest being—the source and origin of all human wisdom—could appear at any particular time. This in itself could not be believed; hence it is only natural that the belief that Theosophy could bring in or want to bring in anything completely new, must call forth a certain distrust against the movement itself.

But ever since Theosophy set out to obtain an influence upon modern civilisation, it has always described itself as possessing the old primeval wisdom, which man has ever sought and endeavoured to acquire in many different forms in the various ages. It is the task of the Theosophical Movement to look for these forms in the various religions and world-conceptions through which the peoples, throughout the ages, have striven to press through to the source of truth. Theosophy has brought to light the fact that in the various ages, even in the most primeval times, that wisdom by which man sought to attain his goal, has always in its really most profound essence been one and the same. That is a truth, Theosophy teaches us to be modest concerning the acquirements of our own times.

The well-known statement, which, in its lack of humility, boasts of the progress made in the 19th century, is felt to be particularly limited when we observe life in a deeper sense, extending through hundreds of thousands of years. But I do not wish to lead you back to those primeval ages.

I should like to ask you, by means of the example of a great personality of modern times, how he tried to carry out the wisdom-teaching inscribed in the Greek Temples; “Know thyself!” He, who made this saying his own, was really in complete harmony with the teaching and views of Theosophy. This personality is none other than Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. He certainly belongs not only to the German nation, but to many other civilized men of the present age and belongs indeed more or less to us all. Goethe is a spirit who affects us in a very special way. No matter to what part of his life we turn in study, we find, not only the great Poet very pre-eminently there, but, if we go more deeply into the subject, we soon discover in him the Wise One, to whose wisdom we turn back again after long years, always to discover something new.

We find that Goethe was one of those spirits who had within him an inexhaustible fund of greatness. And if we have learned to add to our own small stock of wisdom, by turning back to Goethe again and again, we are constantly astonished anew and stand in admiration before that which before was hidden from us, because there was in ourselves no responsive echo of the realm which expressed itself through him. No matter how polished a man may be, no matter how much wisdom he may have discovered in Goethe, if after some years he turns to him again, he will convince himself anew that there is still an infinite fund of what is beautiful and good in the works of Goethe. This experience may come in particular to those who believe profoundly in the evolution of the human soul. It has often been said that in his “Faust,” Goethe produced a sort of Gospel. If this be so, then, besides his Gospel, Goethe also produced a sort of secret Revelation, a sort of Apocalypse. This Apocalypse is concealed within his works, it forms the conclusion to his “Unterhaltung deutscher Ausgewanderten,” and is read only by few. I am always being asked where in Goethe's works this “Märchen” is to be found! Yet it is in all the editions and forms, as I have just said, the conclusion to the above. In this fairy tale, Goethe created a work of art of eternal beauty. The direct, symbolical impression of the work of art will not be interfered with, if I now try to give an interpretation of this fairy tale; Goethe put into this tale his most intimate thoughts and conceptions.

In the latter years of his life he said to Eckermann: “My dear friend, I will tell you something that may be of use to you, when you are going over my works. They will never become popular; there will be single individuals who will understand what I want to say, but there can be no question of popularity for my writings.” This referred principally to be the second part of “Faust,” and what he meant was that a man who enjoyed “Faust” might have a direct artistic impression, but that one who could get at the secrets concealed in “Faust” would see what was hidden behind the imagery. But I am not speaking of the second part of “Faust,” but of the “Fairy Tale of the Green Serpent and the Beautiful Lily,” in which Goethe spoke in an even more intimate way than in the former. I shall try to disclose in the course of this lecture the Mysteries concealed in these remarkable pictures, and to explain why Goethe made use of these symbolical images to express his most intimate thoughts. Anyone who is capable of understanding the Fairy Tale knows that Goethe was a Theosophist and a mystic. Goethe was acquainted with that wisdom and conception of the world which we try to give forth in a popular way in Theosophy; and the Fairy Tale itself is a proof of this; only, at the time when Goethe was writing, the endeavour had not yet been made to clothe the highest truths in words and to give them forth in open lectures by the power of reason; these most intimate human psychic truths were not then spoken of openly. Those who gave a hint of them put them into symbolical form, and expressed them by symbols. This was an old custom, dating from the middle ages, when it was thought that it would be impossible to put the highest insight into the abstract form, but that a sort of experience or initiation was necessary. This made it impossible for people to speak of these truths, who believed that a particular sort of mood, a sort of special soul-atmosphere was needed in order to understand such truths; they could not be grasped merely by the intellect. A certain mood was necessary, a certain disposition of the soul, which I will call a psychic atmosphere. The language of reason seemed to them to be too arid, too dry and cold to express the highest truths. Besides which they still retained a sort of conviction that those who were to learn these truths should first make themselves worthy of them. This conviction brought it to pass, that in the olden times, down to the 3rd century A.D.—the truth about the human soul and the human spirit was not given out publicly as it is now, but those who wished to attain to such knowledge had first to be prepared to receive that which was to be given to them in the Sanctuaries of the Mysteries. Therein all that had been preserved of the secrets of nature and of the laws of cycles, was given out as something which, to put it concisely, could not be learned and recognised as dry truths, but which the students had to recognise as living truths and learn to live them. It was not then a question of thinking wisdom, but of living it; not merely a question of permeating wisdom with the glow of the intellect, but of making it the mainspring of life, so that a man is transformed thereby. A certain shyness must possess a man before the Holy of Holies; he had to understand that truth is divine, that it is permeated by the Divine Cosmic Blood, which draws into the personality, so that the divine world lives anew within. The recognition of all this was included in the word “development.” This had to be made quite clear to the Mystic, and this it was which he was to attain through the stages of purification, on the way to the Mysteries, he was to acquire the holy shyness before the Truth, and to be drawn away from the longing for the things of the senses, from the sorrows and joys of life, from all that surrounds us in ever-day life. The Light of the Spirit, which is necessary to us when we withdraw from the profane life, we shall receive when we give up the other. When we are worthy to receive the Light of the Spirit, we shall have become different people; we shall then love with real, earnest sympathy and devotion, that which we are wont to look upon as a shadowy existence, a life in the abstract. We then live the Spiritual life which to the ordinary man is mere thought. But the Mystic learns to sacrifice the Self that clings to the everyday life, he learns not only to penetrate the truth with his thought but has to live it through and through, to conceive it within him as Divine Truth, as Theosophy. Goethe has expressed this conviction in his “West-Ostlichen Divan:”—

So lang dud as nicht hast,
Dies ‘stirb im Werde’,
Bist du nur ein trüber Gast
Auf der dunkeln Erde—

This it is that the Mystics of all ages have striven for,—to let the lower nature die out, and to allow that which dwells in the Spirit to spring forth; the extinction of sense reality, that man may ascend to the Kingdom of “Divine Purposes.” “To die in order to become.” If we do not possess this power we do not know of the forces that vibrate into our world, and we are but a “trüber Gast” (gloomy guest) on our Earth. Goethe gave expression to this in his “West-Ostlichen Divan,” and this he tries to represent in all the different parts of the “Fairy Tale” of the “Green Serpent and the Beautiful Lily!” The transition of man from one stage of existence to a higher one. That was the riddle he wanted to solve, the riddle as to how a man who lives in the everyday world,—and who can only see with his eyes, and hear with his ears,—can lay hold of this “dying and becoming!”

This was the question for the Mystics of all ages; and this great question was always called “Spiritual Alchemy.” The transmutation of man from the every-day soul to the Spirit-soul, one to whom the things of the Spirit are just as real as the things of this Earth, such as tables and chairs and so on, are to the ordinary man. When the alchemical transmutation had taken place in a man, he was then considered worthy to have the highest truths communicated to him, he was then led into the Holy of Holies. He was then initiated, and supplied with the teachings which instructed him as to the purposes of nature, those purposes which run through the plan of the world. It is an initiation of this kind which is described by Goethe, the initiation into the Mysteries, of one who has been made worthy to receive them.

There are two proofs of this—in the first place Goethe himself took a great deal of trouble to become acquainted with the secret which may be called the Secret of Alchemy. Between the studies he made at Leipzig and Strassburg he had already discovered that Alchemy had a Spiritual side, and knew that ordinary Alchemy was nothing but a reflection of the Spiritual, and all that is known of Alchemy consisted only in the symbolical expressions of realities. That is to say, he referred to that Alchemy which is concerned with the forces of the inner life.

Alchemists have also left indications of how this could be worked. As they were only able to describe the transmutation of the human forces by means of symbols, they therefore spoke of one substance being transmuted into another. All they related concerning the transmutation of matter, referred to what the human soul-life developed within itself at a higher stage, when it became transmuted spiritually. All that the great Spirits have disclosed about the Spiritual Realms to those men who are still bound to the life of every day, was taken by them as referring to the transmutation of substances and metals in the retorts, and they took great trouble to try and discover by what mysterious methods the transmutation of substances could be brought about.

Goethe, in one part of his “Faust,” shows us what he himself understood as to such things. In the first part of “Faust,” in the walk in front of the garden, he points clearly to the false, wrong and petty material conceptions that are held as to Alchemy. He makes fun of those who strive with such feverish efforts to discover these secrets, and who pour forth the lower substances, according to numberless receipts, in company of the Adepts.

“There a Red Lion, with the Lily wedded,
“A wooer bold, within the tepid bath,
“From bridal-bower to bridal-bower was speeded
“Racked by the naked fire's flaming wrath.”

The union with the Lily, which is made fun of by Goethe is what he wished to illustrate in his Fairy Tale, of the Green Serpent and the beautiful Lily.

The highest transmutation which man can accomplish is illustrated by Goethe in the symbol of the Lily. It is of like significance with what we call the Highest freedom. When a man follows the primal and eternal laws, in accordance with which we have to complete the primal and eternal circuit of our existence, and if he also recognises the primal and eternal evolution of his freedom, he will then find himself at a certain stage of his development which is accomplished by a disposition of the soul, which may be described by the symbol of the Lily. The highest forces of the soul, the highest state of consciousness, in which a man may be free because he will then not misuse his freedom, and will never create a disturbance in the circle of freedom,—this state of soul, which was communicated to the Mystics in the Mysteries, in which they were collectively transmuted,—this was from all time described as the “Lily.”

That which Spinoza expresses at the end of his “Ethics,” (dry and mathematical as he was in his other writings)—when he says that man ascended into the higher spheres of existence and penetrated them by means of the laws of nature,—this state of mind may also be described as the Lily, Spinoza describes it as the realm of Divine Love in the human soul, the realm in which man does nothing under compulsion, but in which everything belonging to the domain of human development takes place in freedom, devotion and utter Love, where everything arbitrary is transmuted by that Spiritual Alchemy in which every activity flows into the stream of freedom.

Goethe has described that Love as the highest state of Freedom, as the being free from all desires and wishes of our every-day life. He says, “Self-seeking and Self-will are not permanent, they are driven out by the Ego. Here we must be good.” The Divine Love, which is referred to by Spinoza, and which he wishes to attain through Spiritual Alchemy,—that it is with which man should unite himself, that it is with which man should unite his will. Human will active at every stage, is that which in all ages was known as the “Lion,” the creature in which the Will is most strongly developed, and that is why the Mystics have always called the will of man: the “Lion.” In the Persian Mysteries there were seven Initiations; there were the following: first the Raven, then the Occultist, then the Fighter; at the fourth grade the student was already able to look back at his life from the other side, and had really become Man, hence the Persians called one who had overcome the Lion stage a Persian. That was the fifth stage, and a man who had got so far that his actions flowed quickly along, just as the Sun runs its course in the Heavens above, was called a Sun-runner. But he who accomplished all his actions out of absolute and ceaseless love, was looked upon by the Persians as belonging to the grade of the “Father.” At the fourth grade, a man stood at the parting of the ways; he had then, besides his physical body, his etheric double, and that body which is subject to the laws of passions and desires, wishes and instincts; he was now organized for a higher life. These three bodies form, according to Theosophy, the lower part of man. From these the lower man is born. When a man was initiated into this grade and could see this connection the Persians called him a “Lion.” He then stands at the parting of the ways, and that which compelled him to act according to the laws of nature is transmuted into a free gift of Love. When he reaches the eighth stage of Initiation, when he has evolved himself into a free man, one who can allow himself to do, out of free love, what he was formerly driven to do by his own nature, this connection between the Lion and the free loving being, is described in Alchemy as “the mystery of human development.” This is the mystery Goethe represented in his Fairy Tale. First of all he shows us how this man of will stands there, drawn down to the physical world from higher spheres, from spheres of which he himself knows nothing. Goethe is conscious of the fact that man, in so far as his spiritual nature is concerned, comes originally from higher spheres; that he was led into this which Goethe represents as the world of matter, the world of sense-existence, this is the Land on the bank of the River.

But in the Tale of the green Serpent and the beautiful Lily, there are two Lands, one on this side of the River, and the other beyond. The unknown Ferryman conducts the man across from the far side into the Land of the sense-world;—and between the Land of spiritual existence and the sense-world there flows the River, the water which divides them. By water, Goethe describes that which the Mystics of all ages have symbolized as water. Even in Genesis the same meaning is applied to this word as we find in Goethe. In the New Testament too we find this expression in the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus. “He who is not born again of water and the Spirit, cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.” Goethe understood perfectly what was signified by the expression “born again of water.” And we can see in what sense he understood it by his “song of the Spirit.”

Seele des Menschen	Soul of humanity
Nie gleichat du dem Wasser!	How like to the water!
Schicksal des Menschen	Fate of humanity
Wie gleichst du dem Wind!	How like to the wind!

The world of humanity, the world of longing and wishes, the world of passions and desires, is a land inserted between our Spirit and our senses. Our senses know neither good nor evil, they cannot err. Anyone who goes into this question, knows that when we study the laws of nature, we cannot speak of good or evil. When we study nature in the animal world, we find that there are objectionable animals and useful ones, but we cannot speak of good and evil ones. Only when man plunges into the water—into the soul-world—does he become capable of good and evil. This world which is inserted between the Spiritual and the world of senses, is the River over which the Spirit passes from the unknown spheres. The innermost of man came across the River of passions and desires—and when he goes through further development he becomes like the Will-o'-the-wisp.

Thus man is subject to the laws within him, after he has crossed the River, and before he has received the Divine Spark which will take him across to the other world. He is therefore put ashore by the Ferryman who brings men across the River from the far bank to the near one. Nobody can be guided over by the Ferryman but all can be brought over by him. We feel ourselves being brought over without any action of our own, by the forces lying beneath our consciousness, which go ahead of our actions. By means of these forces we feel ourselves placed in the world of sense,—on the hither side; the Ferryman who brought us across from the Land of the Spirit, has put us into this world and cannot take us back to that country again to which we must however return, the Land of the beautiful Lily. The Will-o'-the-wisps wanted to pay the Ferryman his fare with gold, but he demanded fruits of the Earth, which they did not possess; they had nothing but gold, and he would not be paid with that. Gold coins, said he, were injurious to the River, it cannot bear such gold; which signifies that man can purchase wisdom with the fruits of the Earth. This is a profound wisdom; gold signifies the force of wisdom dwelling in man, and this is his guide through life. This force of Wisdom makes itself felt when a man is placed among the things of sense, as the forces of knowledge and reason. But this wisdom is not the wisdom which furthers his development. When it forms part of a man's nature, it makes him self-seeking and egotistical. If this force of reason and this knowledge were to join forces with what flows in the River, their passions would throw up huge waves; for whenever man does not place his wisdom at the service of selflessness, but simply throws it into the River, when he cultivates (frohmen) his passions, the River throws up great waves. Hence it is impossible to satisfy the River with gold; with that wisdom. So the Ferryman throws back the wisdom which has not yet passed through the stage of selflessness. He throws it back into the chasm, where reigns the profoundest darkness, and there it is buried. We shall hear why this is so.

The Ferryman demanded three cabbages, three artichokes, and three onions.—Thus he demands the fruits of the Earth. Now by what means can man attain his development? By ennobling the lower desire-forces of his nature, so that he purifies the sense-nature within him and casts this purified nature into the River, and thereby .................. this it is which Schiller refers to in his letters on the aesthetic education of man. He alone understands freedom who has set his own nature free;—when the outer sense-nature is so ennobled that it seeks for the good and the beautiful because it is no longer misled by passion, when we no longer throw our wisdom into the River, but reward our passions with the fruits of the Earth so that our sense-nature itself is taken up by them, just as the fruits of the Earth would be accepted by the River, we have then attained the first grade of initiation as expressed in the words, “Ye must know that I cannot be paid except with the fruits of the Earth.” Then the Will-o'-the-wisps proceed further on this side of the River, that means that man tries to follow his own way of life further.

On this side of the River he meets with the green Serpent, the symbol of human endeavours, of human knowledge. This Serpent had previously had a wonderful experience—the Ferryman had ferried over the piece of gold and concealed it in a cleft of the Earth, and here the Serpent had found it. The wisdom that brings men forward is still a hidden treasure, concealed in the mysteries, hence if a man wishes to find wisdom he must seek it far from all human self-seeking. When a man had made himself worthy to receive it, it will be found in its proper place;—the Serpent, the symbol of human striving after knowledge, permeates itself with the gold; this “self” is entirely permeated with wisdom, and becomes luminous. Then the Serpent desired from the Will-o'-the-wisps that which is a cause of pride to the self-seeking man, when he throws about him and pricks himself with,—this human knowledge which when used in the service of egoism is objectionable and worthless, will be attained when man crawls humbly on the ground as does the Serpent, and strives to recognize the reality piece by piece. If a man stands there, proud and stuck-up, he will never attain it, he can only receive it when like the Serpent, he goes horizontally on the ground and lives in humility,—then the gold of wisdom is in its place. Then the man may venture to permeate himself with wisdom—that too is why the Will-o'-the-wisps call the Serpent their relation, and say “We really are related on the side of light.” Indeed they are related, the wisdom that serves the self is related to the wisdom which serves humility; the Serpent is related to the Will-o'-the-wisps.

Now the tale relates further that the Serpent had been under the Earth in the clefts of the rock, and there had met something resembling human forms—the Serpent had reached a temple; this is none other than a symbol of the Mystery Temples of all ages,—this concealed Temple which was in the clefts below the Earth is the symbol of the Sanctuaries of Initiation. In this Temple the Serpent found the three great priests of Initiation; these priests were gifted with the highest forces of human nature, which theosophy calls Atma, Buddhi, Manas. They are called by Goethe the King of Beauty, the King of Wisdom, and the King of Strength or Will;—with these three basic forces of the soul, into which the human soul must be initiated, the Mystic had to be united in the Temple of the Mysteries—and Goethe represents the Serpent, all luminous within, because it had taken in the gold of wisdom, humility.

The old man with the lamp is another figure—what does he represent? He has a lamp which has the peculiarity of only shining when another light is there. Because the Serpent is luminous and illuminates the inner Hall of the Mystery Temple with its own radiating light,—Goethe expresses these thoughts in another passage in the words “If the eye were not sensitive to the Sun it could not perceive the light.” Here he expresses in poetic words what he expressed in the fairy tale in pictures; what we in Anthroposophy call “occult knowledge” is expressed by the old man with the lamp,—the light of occult knowledge cannot shine to anyone who had not prepared himself to receive it.

It appears to no one who has not worked his way up to that higher stage of development at which his higher self, his selfless nature shines forth from within, bringing light to meet light,—the highest wisdom is called occult, because it only appears when a man brings his own light to meet it. When those two lights, the intuitive light from above, and the light that comes from the personal, shine into one another, they then give that which man experiences in his transmutation as Spiritual Alchemy—then the space around him become light, he then learns to recognise the highest Spiritual forces, the gifts of the three Kings; Wisdom, Beauty, and Strength,—the gift of the golden King is Wisdom, that of the silver King is Beauty or Piety, the gift of the bronze King is Strength or force of Will. Man can only understand his innermost forces, he can only understand himself when he meets with the light of the lamp which can only shine when there is already a light. Then the three Kings appear in their radiance, and at the same time the significance of the fourth King becomes apparent—the King who is composed of the metals of the three others;—he is the symbol of the lower nature, in which the noble forces of Wisdom, Beauty, and Strength work together as disorderly and inharmonious chaos. These three forces that live in a highly developed soul are also to be found in lower natures, though there they are chaotic and inharmonious. This fourth King is the Kingdom of the present world;—the Chaotic mixture of Wisdom, Beauty, and Strength,—the soul-forces which can only attain the highest when they work together harmoniously,—affect one another in a chaotic way in the present age. The old man said of the fourth King “Er wird sich setzen” (here he will sit down)—The Chaotic mixture will have disappeared when that which Goethe so ardently longed for shall have come to pass, that is, that the Temple shall no longer be hidden, but shall be raised to the full light of day, when it shall have ascended from the depths, and all men will be able to serve in the Temple of Initiation, which will be a bridge across which all men may pass to and fro. That will be a time when all men will have made themselves worthy of being influenced by the highest wisdom, piety, and strength and will. The Temple will then have fulfilled its task. It will have raised itself above the river of passions, and the forces of passion will have become so pure and noble that the highest Spiritual can uplift itself in the Temple, in the clear light of day, above the stream of passions and desires. To this end it is necessary that mankind should be filled with the “Stirb und werde” (dying and becoming) which Goethe so distinctly outlined in his “West-Ostlichen Divan.” Goethe was frequently asked for the solution of the riddle and he replied “The solution of the riddle lies in the fairy tale itself, and not in one word alone.” There is a passage during the conversation in the Temple which we take to be the solution of the riddle. The solution is not a thing which can be expressed in words, but in an inner resolve; that was indicated by Goethe in the fairy tale. The Serpent said “I will sacrifice myself, I will purify myself through selflessness.” It is precisely this which must be taken as the profoundest solution of the riddle, it is an act, and not a doctrine. Till now one could only pass across the River in two ways. The one was when at noon the green Serpent laid itself across the River and formed a bridge, so that at the mid-day hour it was possible to go across the River. This means that at the present age there are moments in a man's life when the Sun is at noon for him, when he is ripe to yield himself to the highest Spiritual light; but he is always drawn away again and again from these noon-tide moments of life, into the lower world full of passions. In such noon-tide moments the elect of the Spirit can pass across from the shore of the sense-life to the shore of the Spirit.

But there is yet another way to pass over the River, and that is in the evening, when the shadow of the great giant is thrown across the River,—that too can form a bridge, but only in the hour of twilight. What is this shadow of the great giant? Goethe went into this question more deeply with his intimate and trusted friends; with them he spoke about the forces symbolized by him in the “Fairy Tale.” On one occasion when Schiller was planning a journey to Frankfort, Goethe wrote to him: “I am very glad you did not come here, to the West, for the shadow of the giant might have got hold of you unawares.” The meaning of the giant is moreover clearly expressed in the “Fairy Tale” itself, the giant who is weak, can do nothing of himself; but his shadow can form a bridge across to the far side. This giant is the crude mechanical forces of nature. Its shadow is sometimes able, when the light is no longer strong, to conduct the men of crude passions across the River. These are the people who, when their clear day consciousness is extinguished, pass over into the Land of the Spirit in trance, somnambulism, psychic vision, or some of the many similar conditions of the soul. Thus the clear day consciousness was also extinguished in the wild delirious acts by which at that time men tried to push their way into this realm of Freedom.

They wanted to penetrate into the realm of the beautiful Lily—But the shadow of the giant can alone reach across. Man is only able to overcome his passions in the twilight of his consciousness, when he is in an almost unconscious state, and not when living in clear consciousness. These are the two ways of reaching the opposite bank: First, in the holy moments of the noon-day hour, by the Serpent; and secondly, in the twilight of the consciousness—by the shadow of the giant.

But this one thing must be striven after:—the Serpent must sacrifice itself completely. Not only should it lead men over the River of passions at the noon-day hour, but at all hours of the day it should be ready to form the bridge from one side to the other; so that not only a few may be able to wander across, but that all men should be able to cross backwards and forwards at any time. The Serpent made this resolution, and so did Goethe; Goethe points to an age of selflessness, when man will not put his forces at the service of his lower self but at the service of unselfishness.

There are a few other thoughts connected with these basic thoughts about the Fairy Tale. I cannot go into them all today, and will only touch upon a few. We find the wife of the old man with the lamp, she is connected with the representatives of human occult knowledge. She keeps the house of the old man. To her come the Will-o'-the-wisps, they have licked off all the gold from the walls, and had at once given away all the gold which enriched them, so that the living “Mops,” who ate up the gold, had to suffer death. The old man is the force of reason, which brings forth that which is useful. It is only when occult force unites with this which forwards material civilization, when the highest is united with the lowest in the world, that the world itself can follow its proper course of development. Man should not be led away from everyday life, but should purify the everyday civilization. In the world man is surrounded in his dwellings by that which hangs as gold upon the walls. All that is around him is the gold. On the one hand he is a man of knowledge and on the other a useful man. Thus he has around him the two-fold experience of the human race; all the collective experience of humanity has been collected together in human science. Those who strive after this, seek what is written in the scriptures. They lick off the historical wisdom, as it were.

This it is which surrounds man in his strivings; this it is with which man must entirely permeate himself. But it can not be of use to that which is alive. The living Mops swallowed the gold and died of it. That wisdom which only rules as the dead wisdom of books, and which has not been made alive by the Spirit, kills everything living. But, when it is once again united with the origin of Wisdom, with the beautiful Lily, then it wakes to life again. That is why the old man gives the dead Mops to his wife, that she may carry it to the beautiful Lily. The Lamp has one great peculiarity, everything dead was made alive through it; and what was alive was purified by it. This transmutation is brought about in man by occult knowledge. Besides this, the old woman is begged by the Will-o'-the-Wisps to pay their debts to the Ferryman. These three fruits represent the human sense for usefulness in material civilization, which is to pay tribute to the passions. For from whence should the actual driving forces of nature come, if not from the technique, from the cultivation of material nature? It is an interesting fact that the shadow of the giant as it comes up from the River, takes one of the fruits of the Earth away with it, so that the old woman only has two left. Now she required three for the Ferryman and so had to renounce the River. Something then happens, something full of significance. She has to plunge her hands into the River, whereby she turns so black that she scarcely remains visible. She is still there, but she is almost imperceptible. That shows us the connection between external civilization and the world of the passions. Material civilization must be placed at the service of the Astral, of the soul. As long as the nature of man is not sufficiently ennobled to offer itself as tribute to the River of the passions, so long does technique remain in debt to the River of man (the soul of man). As long as human endeavours are devoted to human passions, man works invisibly at something of which he cannot perceive the final aim. It is invisible, yet it is there; it can be felt, but is not externally perceptible. Everything man does on the road to the great goal, until he pays his debts to the River or the Soul,—all that he has to throw into the River of passions becomes invisible, like the hand of the wife of the old man with the Lamp. As long as the sense-nature is not fully purified, as long as it is not consumed, as it were, by the fire of the passion it cannot shine, and remains invisible; that is what excites the old lady so much that she can no longer reflect any light of her own. This might be gone into more fully, in greater detail; every single word is fraught with meaning. But it would lead us too far to go into all that to-day.

So let us hurry on to the great procession in which we encounter a youth, who tried to capture the beautiful Lily too early, and in so doing crippled all his life forces. Goethe says (in another place): “A man who strives for freedom without having first liberated his own inner self, falls more deeply than before into the bonds of necessity. If he does not set himself free, he will be killed.” A man who has prepared himself, who has been purified in the Mysteries, and the Temple of the Mysteries, so that he may unite himself in a proper way with the Lily, he alone will escape death. One who has died to the lower to be born again in a higher sense, can grasp the Lily. The present time is represented by the crippled youth, who wanted to attain the highest by violence. He complains to all whom he meets that he cannot secure the Lily. He must now make himself ripe enough to do so, and to this aim those forces must be combined which are symbolized by those who took part in the procession. It consisted of the old man with the Lamp, the Will-o'-the-Wisps and the beautiful Lily herself. The procession thus included all the different beautiful forces, and it was led down into the clefts of the Earth to the Temple of Initiation. That too, is a profound feature of the enigmatical Fairy Tale, in that it allows the Will-o'-the-Wisps to open the door of the Temple. The self-seeking wisdom is not without object, it is a necessary stage of transition. Human egoism can be overcome if it is nourished by wisdom and permeated with the gold of true knowledge. This wisdom can then be used to open the Temple. Those who unconsciously serve wisdom in an external sense, will be led to the real sanctuaries of wisdom. Those learned men who only bury themselves in books are nevertheless our guides. Goethe does not undervalue science. He knew that science herself uncloses the Temple of Wisdom; he knew that everything must be proved and accepted by science, and that without her we cannot penetrate the Temple of the highest Wisdom. Goethe himself sought this wisdom everywhere. He only considered himself worthy of recognizing the highest revelation in Spiritual life, in Art, after he had gone through the study of Science. He sought wisdom everywhere, in physics, biology, etc.,—And so, he admits the Will-o'-the-Wisps into the Temple, they who resting on themselves alone occupy a false position towards the others, towards the others who enter through experience and observations, like the Serpent. They cause the Temple to be opened and the procession passes in. Now follows what Goethe intended to apply to the whole of mankind; the whole Temple moves up and ascends through the cleft in the Earth. The Temple can now be set up over the River of the Soul, over the River of passions and desires, because the Serpent sacrificed itself. The Self of man has become selfless, the Serpent is transformed into precious stone, which forms the piles of the bridge. And now men can more freely go to and fro from the world of sense to the world of the Spiritual.

The union between sense and spirit is brought about by man, when he becomes selfless, by a sacrifice of himself, such as was made by the Serpent, which offered itself as a bridge over the River of passions. Thus the Temple ascended from the clefts of the Earth and is now accessible to all who cross the bridge, to those who drive over as well as to those who go on foot. In the Temple itself we meet once more with the three Kings; and the youth who had been made pure by having recognized the three soul-forces, is now presented to them. The golden King goes up to him and says “Feed my Sheep,”—in this Goethe gave expression to a thought which was very deeply engraved in his soul, that of uniting beauty with piety. It is the commandment given in the Bible. He applied these words to the youth in the same sense as when in Rome he stood before the statue of a God, and said “Here is necessity (notwendigkeit) it could not be different from what it is, this is a God. I feel that the Greeks worked according to the same Divine Laws that I am seeking.” It is a personal note of Goethe's when he causes the silver King to appear as Beauty and Piety: And then the King of Strength comes to the youth and says “The sword in the left hand, and the right hand free,”—the sword was not to serve for attack but for defence. Harmony was to be brought about, not conflict. After this event the youth was initiated into the three soul-forces; the fourth King has nothing more to say, he subsides into himself. The Temple has risen from its concealment into the clear light of day. Within the Temple there was raised a small silver Temple, which is none other than the transformed hut of the Ferryman. It is a remarkable feature that Goethe transformed the hut of the Ferryman,—he who carries us over into the land of the Spirit,—into pure molten silver so that it becomes a small altar, a small Temple, a Holy of Holies. This hut which represents the holiest in man, the deepest core of his being which he has preserved as a recollection of the land from which he came and to which the Ferryman cannot take him back, represents something which existed before our evolution. It is the memory that we are descended from the Spirit,—the memory of this stands as a Holy of Holies within the Temple.—The giant,—the crude force of nature, which lives in nature without the Spirit, and could not work through itself alone, but only as a shadow,—has been given a remarkable mission. Now this giant stands upright, and now only does he show the time. This is a profound thought—when man has laid aside everything belonging to his lower nature and has become entirely spiritualised, then the lower forces of nature will no longer spring up around him in their original elemental power,—in the form of storms, as they now do—the mechanical crude force of nature will then only perform mechanical service; man will always require these mechanical nature-forces, but they will no longer have power over him, he will use them in his service. His work will be the hour-hand of Spiritual culture, it will be the hour-hand pointing to the regular mechanical necessity, and will go regularly as the course of a clock. The giant himself will then no longer be necessary. We must not interpret the Fairy Tale pedantically, by interpreting every word, but we must feel our way into what Goethe wanted to say, and which he painted in such beautiful pictures. Goethe in his Fairy Tale brought out what Schiller expressed in his Aesthetic Letters;—the union of Necessity with Freedom. What Schiller tried to express in these letters Goethe could not grasp in abstract thought, but gave in the form of a Fairy Tale. “When I want to express these thoughts in all their living force I require pictures and pictures and pictures, such as the ancient priests of Initiation made use of in the Mysteries.” He did not teach his pupils by means of abstract thoughts, but by bringing the whole drama of Dionysos before them, by showing them the great course of the evolution of man, of the resurrection of Dionysos; and he also showed that which went on invisibly in the drama of “Dionysos and Osiris.”

Thus Goethe wished to express what lived in him in the form of drama and pictures, so we will not interpret the Fairy Tale in the ordinary way, but as theosophy would teach us to do, as representing the uniting of the lower nature of man with the higher; the union of the physical with the etheric body; the life-force and the passions and desires, with the higher nature of man:—the three purely Spiritual soul forces Atma, Buddhi, Manas, which we represented as the three Kings. This is the course of the evolution of man up to the time when every man will be himself an Initiate. This is what Goethe tried to express in a truly theosophical fashion. Just as those priests of Initiation expressed their wisdom in the form of pictures, so Goethe expressed in pictures in his Apocalypse that which represents the evolution of humanity,—that which will some day become the highest act of man—the transformation of the lower nature into the higher and the transmutation of the lower metals, the lower soul-forces into the gold of wisdom. The transmutation of that which dwells alone in the pure noble metal of wisdom is represented by the King who is embodied in the gold. Goethe wished to express this human alchemy, this Spiritual transmutation, in a somewhat different manner from what he had concealed occultly in the second part of “Faust.” Goethe was in the true sense of the word a Theosophist. He understood what it means that all the transitory things we see with our senses, are nothing but symbols, but he also understood that what man is trying to do is impossible to describe, but can be accomplished by an act, and that the “Unzulängliche” is that which lives among us on this side of the River, and we must experience it if the purpose of human evolution is to be fulfilled. Goethe also expressed this to this end in the “Chorus Mysticus” and included it in the second part of “Faust.” The highest soul-force in man is symbolically represented as the beautiful Lily, and the male principle—the force of Will unites with her. He expresses this in the beautiful and expressive words with which the second part of “Faust” concludes. These final verses are a mystical creed. We can only understand them completely when we see our own intimate life come to life again in the story of the green Serpent and the beautiful Lily.

Even before the close of the 18th century, when Goethe passed on to his work on the second part of “Faust,” his nature had already been transmuted and he had attained the vision of a higher world.

It is of profound significance if we are able to understand the words written by Goethe in his testament, the second part of “Faust,” when he had completed his course on the Earth. After his death, this second part was found in his writing table, closed and sealed. He put this book as a gospel into the world, as a testament. And this testament closes with his mystical creed:

Alles Vergängliche ist nur sin Gleichnis
Das Unzulängliche hier wird's Ereignis.
Das Unbeschreibliche, hier ist's getan,
Das ewig Weibliche zieht uns hinan.

One translation is as follows:

All things transitory
But as symbols sent,
Earth's insufficiency
Here grows to event.
The indescribable, here it is done.
The Woman Soul leads us upward, and on.