The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The light of the sun is flooding
The realms of space;
The song of birds resounds
Through fields of air;
The tender plants spring forth
From Mother Earth,
And human souls rise up
With grateful hearts
To all the spirits of the world.

Those of you who were present at the performance in Munich will remember that this children's song was the prelude to the Rosicrucian Mystery. Tonight, something of a spiritual scientific nature should unfold itself to us in connection with the content of this drama and with what, one could say, has come to life in it.

If I may, I would like to touch on the long, slow spiritual path that led to this Mystery Drama. When I think about it and look at it, its origins go back to the year 1889, twenty-one years ago; it is not approximately but exactly twenty-one years that bring me back to the germinal point of this drama. In these matters, absolute exactness can be observed. The direction has been quite clear to me in which, in 3x7 years, these seeds have grown (without any special assistance, I can say, on my part), for they have led their own individual life in these 3x7 years. It is truly remarkable to follow the path of such seeds to what may be called their finished form. Their progress can be described as a passage through the Underworld. It takes seven years for them to descend; then they return, and for this they need seven more years.

By then, having reached more or less the place where they first engaged a person before their descent, they must go in the opposite direction for seven years toward the other side; one could even say, onto a higher level. After twice seven years, then, plus seven more years, it is possible to try to embody them, foreseeing that whatever has been right in their development can take on a distinct form. If I were not convinced that within the Rosicrucian Mystery an individual organism has lived and grown for 3x7 years, I would not venture to speak further about it. I feel not only justified in speaking, however, though this is not really the question, but also in a sense obligated to speak about what lives in this Rosicrucian Mystery, not only between the lines, between the characters, in the What and the How, but what is alive in everything in the drama and what must be alive in it.

In various places since the performance of the drama in Munich, I have stated the fact that many, many things of an esoteric nature would not need to be described, that lectures would be unnecessary on my part, if only everything that lies in the Rosicrucian Mystery could work directly on your souls, my dear friends, and on the souls of others, too. I would have to use the enormous number of words necessary in my lectures and speak for days, for weeks, even for years, in order to describe what has been said and what could be said in the single drama. Everything you find in my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment,¹ which is written in a somewhat tentative style—and in esoteric matters it is certainly correct to write thus as a description of the path into higher worlds—combined with what was said in Occult Science,² can be found, after all, in a much more forceful, true-to-life, and substantial form in the Rosicrucian Mystery. The reason is that it is more highly individualized. What is said in such a book as Knowledge of the Higher Worlds about human development had to be applicable to every individual who wishes to direct his path in some way into higher worlds, applicable to each and every person. Because of this, the book takes on—even with as much concreteness as possible—a certain abstract character, or you might call it a semi-theoretical character. We must hold fast, however, to this point: human development is never merely development in general. There is no such thing as development per se, no such thing as common, ordinary, orthodox development. There is only the development of this or that particular person, of a third, fourth, or twentieth human being. For each individual in the world, there must be a different process of development.

For this reason, the most honest description of the esoteric path of knowledge must have such a general character that it never in any way will coincide with an individual development. Should one actually describe the path of development as seen in the spiritual world, one can do it only by shaping the development of a single human being, by altering for the individual whatever is universally true. The book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, contains, to a certain extent, the beginning of the secrets of all human development. The Rosicrucian Mystery contains the secrets of the development of a single individual, Johannes Thomasius.

It was a truly long descent from all the occult laws of development down to a single, actually real human being. In this process, on this path, what has a tendency to become theory in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds had to be turned almost completely upside down. If it was to go beyond mere theory and particularly if it was to enter the artistic sphere, it had to be completely reversed, because the laws of art are quite different from any others. Just as there are natural laws, so there are also artistic laws, and these cannot be manipulated by the ordinary human consciousness, for then only dry-as-dust allegories would be the result.

Artistic laws must be handled just as Mother Nature handles her own laws when she lets a child, a plant, or an animal come into existence. If everything we can know about the world of nature is to be seen from the one direction that reveals its laws and secrets to the beholder, then whatever is to be revealed in art—any kind of art—must be seen from the other side, from just the opposite point of view. Therefore, it would be the worst imaginable interpretation of a work of art to start from ideas, concepts, or laws we have picked up somewhere, when we approach, say, a poem. Whoever thinks of explaining a work of art by means of abstract or symbolic ideas cannot be considered artistic. The poorest method of looking at a piece of work from the past in which true esoteric power has been invested, for instance, Goethe's Faust, would be to search within this work of art for the ideas and concepts one already has. Bad habits of this kind once prevailed in the theosophical movement in the most horrible way. I can remember something that happened just last year when we were performing Schuré's play, The Children of Lucifer. How shocking it was to the dramatist, who is an artist in the best sense of the word, when someone came up to him to ask, “Does this character represent Atma, this one Buddhi, a third Manas, or maybe this one is Kama Manas?” etc., etc. This kind of allegorizing is simply impossible in a truly creative, artistic process, and it is just as impossible in an explanation or interpretation. Therefore, it can now be said that no one should be pondering the anthroposophical meaning of Johannes Thomasius. To this question there is only one answer: as the main character in the drama, he is nothing more than Johannes Thomasius. He is nothing more than the living figure, Johannes Thomasius, in whom nothing more is portrayed than the mystery of development of one man, Johannes Thomasius.

If one speaks in too general a way about the various characters, one thing will be missing, which is hinted at in the words of the drama itself:

There forms itself out of this circle
a knot out of the threads
which karma spins in world becoming.

There is no development evolving at any point of human history without the knotting of threads within that development, “spun by karma in world becoming.” And no individual development can be described without showing what is at work in the realm of the occult, that is, in the physical environment one looks at with the forces lying behind that physical environment. Therefore, Johannes Thomasius must be placed in the human surroundings out of which his development is proceeding in the real world of physical men and women.

For this reason, the drama has to have a double introduction. The Prelude shows how the cosmic world in which the threads are knotting together for Johannes, threads that “karma spins in world becoming,” how this world confronts the ordinary outside world. One can certainly ask if this must be shown, if there must be a Prelude to show how this cosmic world looks from outside. Yes, it has to be shown. Something would be lacking if it were not so presented. The world in which karma spins its knots was quite different in 5000 B.C., for instance, from the world in 300 B.C. or in 1000 A.D. or today. The exoteric, ordinary, outside world is always changing, too, and its own karma is connected with the environment of a person who wishes to develop himself. Thus, the circle is drawn from outside inward. On the inside is the small circle in which Johannes Thomasius stands: the second Prelude. In the ordinary world outside there are trivial waves touching the shore; in the small circle, great waves are surging high. They show their turbulence, however, only within the soul of Johannes. That is why we are introduced first to the physical plane, and it is shown to us in such a way that the threads, which karma is spinning everywhere within this physical plane, are pointed out.

When you look with occult vision at any group of people, you will find that there are strands extending from one person to another, tangled in the most astonishing way. You see human beings who apparently have little to do with each other in ordinary life, but between their souls are flung the most important, most vital connections. Everything so tangled together has gradually to be illuminated, with the focus on one particular knot. Sometimes, however, whatever is in the process of becoming must be hinted at more subtly. These delicate tones had to be sounded in Scene One, where the action is taking place on the physical plane and people with a wide variety of interests are coming together. Outwardly, they chat about this or that. As they talk, however, more or less on the surface, they are revealing karma. Everyone we first meet in Scene One on the physical plane is bound to the others by destiny. What is most fundamental is how they are bound by destiny. None of the connections have been simply thought out; they are all based on esoteric life. All the threads can come to life, and each thread is quite unique.

The remarkable character of these connections you can guess at when you find such figures as Felix and Felicia Balde meeting with Capesius and Strader. What they say is not the important thing; it is that just these persons say it. They are living persons, not invented characters. I, for one, am well acquainted with them; by that I mean they are not thought out but fully alive. They are real. I have taken especially the figure of Professor Capesius, who has grown quite dear to my heart, directly from life. The extraordinary scene of the seeress Theodora had to be brought into this setting of our ordinary world. She, as one who sometimes looks into the future, now foresees the event that is to happen before the end of the twentieth century, the coming Christ event. It is a future event that can be explained karmically, although it would be wrong to interpret other events so precisely.

Then there is the karmic relationship existing between Felicia Balde and Professor Capesius, which we find hinted at by the peculiar effect on Capesius of Felicia's fairy tales. When, too, we see Strader deeply moved by the seeress Theodora, it suggests that karmic threads are arising in Strader's heart, connecting him to her. These are all threads that lie occultly behind the physical occurrences, and they seem to be spun by karma and directed toward one point, Johannes Thomasius. In him they come together. While so much is being spoken about on the physical plane, a light begins to radiate in Johannes' soul, a light that arouses terrible waves within him. At the same time, however, this light kindles his esoteric development; as a distinctly individual development it will cross his own karma with world karma. We see, therefore, what a strong impression the happenings around him on the physical plane are making on him and how the unconscious greatness in his soul is striving upward to higher worlds.

The journey into higher worlds, however, should not take place without a compass; there must be guidance and direction. Into the midst, then, of these many relationships comes the one who is described as the leader of the group. He is also the one who understands the cosmic relationships and discerns therefore “the knots that karma spins in world becoming”; it is Benedictus, and he becomes Johannes' guide. The karma working in Johannes Thomasius, which perhaps otherwise would have to work another thousand or even thousands of years, is kindled and set ablaze in one particular moment through a karmic relationship between Benedictus and Johannes, lightly drawn in the Meditation Room scene (Scene Three). There we find ourselves at the point where a human being, destined by karma to develop himself, begins to strive upward into higher worlds. In order not to do so blindly, he will be led by Benedictus in the right direction. These thoughts will become clearer when the following passages of Scene Three are presented.

A room for meditation.
Benedictus, Johannes, Maria, and a Child.

Maria

I'm bringing you the child.
He needs a guiding word from you.

Benedictus

My child, from now on you shall come
to me each evening to hear the words
that then should dwell with you
before you enter the soul realm of sleep.
Will you do this?

Child

I'll do it gladly.

Benedictus

This evening fill your heart,
till sleep enfolds you,
with strength from these few words:
‘The heavenly powers of light are carrying me
into the spirit's house.’

(The Child is taken out by Maria, who then returns.)

Maria

And now that this child's destiny shall in future flow
within the shadow of your paternal care,
I too may ask your guiding counsel,
for I've become his mother
through powers of destiny,
if not by blood.
You showed me how
to bring him up
from that first day
when I discovered him,
left by his unknown mother at my door.
And all your rules
I followed for his guidance
worked wonders on my foster child.
For every force could come to light
that in his body and his soul lay hidden.
It soon was clear that your advice
sprang from the realm
which sheltered this child's soul
before it built its body's sheath.
We saw it hopefully unfold
and shine more brightly each new day.
You know how hard it was for me at first
to gain the child's affection.
He grew up in my care,
yet nothing more than habit
first joined his soul with mine.
He looked at me, perceiving only
that I gave him all he needed
for the well-being of his body and his soul.
Then came the time when in his heart
love was enkindled
for me, the foster mother.
An outer cause brought forth this change.
The seeress came into our circle.
The child became attached to her
and learned, enchanted by the way she spoke,
one or the other charming word.
Then came a moment when exaltation
laid hold of our strange friend;
our child could see
the glimmering light within her eyes.
He felt his young soul shaken to the core
and, frightened, rushed to me.
From this time on
the child has been devoted
to me in warmest love.
Yet since he now received his care from me
not just through natural impulse
but with awakened feeling—
since his young heart stirs warmly
whenever he looks lovingly at me—
the treasures of your wisdom
have lost their fruitfulness.
And withered now is much
that had already ripened in the child.
I saw revealed within his being
what for my friend has proved so terrible.
I'm ever more a dark enigma to myself.
Do not deny my asking this grave question:
why do I ruin friend and child
when lovingly I try to do for them
the work that spirit guidance
lets me perceive within my heart as good?
You've shown to me the lofty truth:
illusion's veil is covering the surface of our life.
Yet I must have clear knowledge,
if I must bear this destiny
which is so cruel and which works such evil.

Benedictus

There forms itself within this circle
a knot out of the threads
which karma spins in world becoming.
O friend, your sorrows
are part of such a knot of destiny in which
the deeds of gods entwine themselves with human life.
When on the pilgrimage of soul
I had attained that stage
which granted me the honor
of serving with my counsel in the spirit spheres,
there came to me a higher being
which should descend into the realm of earth
to take up its abode within a human body.
Man's destiny is now demanding this
at such a turning point of time.
A great step forward in our evolution
is only possible when gods
unite themselves with man's own lot.
For spirit eyes, which should awake
in human souls, can only be evolved
when first a god has laid the seed
within a human being.
The task was now assigned to me
to find that human being
who might be worthy to accept within his soul
the seed-force of the god.
I had to link a deed of heaven
unto a human destiny.
My spirit's eye made search—
it fell on you.
Your course of life had fitted you
as mediator for new healing forces.
In many lives you had acquired
an openness for the nobility
alive in human hearts.
The precious quality of beauty,
the highest claim of virtue,
you carried in your gentle soul
as spirit heritage.
What your eternal ego
brought down into this life through birth
matured to ripened fruit
in your first youthful years.
You did not scale too soon
the lofty spirit heights.
The longing for the spiritual world
did not arise in you
till you had fully grasped
the senses' innocent delights.
Your soul encountered love and anger while as yet
your thought was far away
from all desire for spirit.
To drink the joy of Nature in her beauty
and pick the fruits of art
was all you wished to find as riches in your life.
And you could gaily laugh
as only a small child can laugh
who has as yet no knowledge
of life's grey shadow side.
You learned to fathom human happiness,
and mourn men's pain, in times
when not an inkling had yet dawned
of questioning the roots of joy and sorrow.
The soul who shows such character
encounters earthly life
as the ripe fruit sprung from many lives.
Its childlike nature is its blossom, not
its root of being.
It was this soul alone that I could choose
as mediator for that spirit
who should attain to active power
within our human world.
So comprehend now that your being
must change into its opposite
when pouring forth from you to other beings.
The spirit in you works
in everything that can grow ripe in man
as fruit for realms eternal.
And therefore much it must destroy
that only has its place within the realm of time.
Its sacrifice in death, however,
is seed of immortality.
What flourishes for higher life
must bloom from death of lower being.

Maria

So this is how it stands with me.
You give me light,
but light that robs me of the power of sight
and tears me from myself.
Am I then nothing but a spirit's mediator
and not my own true being?
No more will I endure
this form of mine,
which is a mask and not the truth.

Johannes

Dear friend, what is it?
Your gaze has lost its light.
Your body's turned into a pillar.
I take your hand—
and it is cold as death.

Benedictus

My son, you've had to meet with many trials;
but now you stand before the hardest one.
You see her body's covering.
And yet before my gaze
her Self soars into spirit spheres.

Johannes

O see, her lips begin to move.
She speaks ...

Maria

You gave me clarity,
yes, clarity that shrouded me
in darkness on all sides.
I curse your clarity,
and you I curse
who made of me
a tool of those wild arts
through which you seek to misguide men.
Not for one moment have I ever doubted
how high you stand in spirit.
Yet now one single instant has sufficed
to tear all faith in you out of my heart.
And I must recognize that they are hell-born beings,
the spirits whom you serve.
I had to mislead others
because you misled me!
I'll flee from you to regions
wherein no word of yours can penetrate,
and yet be near enough
so that my curses can still reach you!
The fire of my blood
you've torn away from me
and given to your own false god
what must be mine.
The fire of this blood,
O may it burn you!
I had to trust
in lying and deceit,
and to accomplish this
you had at first to make of me
a phantom form.
I've often had to see
how deeds and thoughts of mine
were changed into their opposite.
So now let all
that once was love for you
be changed into wild hatred's fire.
I'll hunt through all the worlds
to find that fire
that can consume you.

I cur ... ah ...

Johannes

Who is it that is speaking here?
I do not see my friend—
I see a gruesome being!

Benedictus

Maria's soul is hovering in the heights;
she's left behind her here with us
her mortal semblance only.
And where a human body
is left without a spirit,
there's room which then
the enemy of good seeks out
to step into the realm of visibility.
He finds a body's covering
and through it he can speak.
Just such an adversary spoke
who strives now to destroy the work
I must fulfill
for many human beings' future,
for you as well, my son.
For could I take these curses,
just spoken by Maria's vacant shell,
as other than the tempter's guile,
you should not follow me.
The enemy of good was at my side;
and you, my son, have seen
plunge down into the darkness
the temporal part of her
to whom your whole love radiates.
Because so often spirits
have spoken to you through her lips,
world karma has not spared you
from hearing through them also
the prince of hell.

Now you can seek her finally
and learn to know her being's core.
For she shall be the image of that higher man
to whom you shall aspire to raise yourself.
Her soul is soaring forth to spirit heights
where men can find their being's primal form
that in itself is rooted.
You now shall follow her to spirit realms
and see her in the Temple of the Sun.
There forms itself
within this circle
a knot out of the threads
which karma spins in world becoming.
My son, you have stood firm so far;
you will progress still further.
I see your star in its full radiance.
There is no place in sense existence
for battles such as men must fight
who strive for consecration.
What sense existence hides as riddles
which can be solved by intellect,
what human hearts receive from such existence—
no matter if it comes from love or hate
or whether it bursts forth with frightful power—
this for the spirit seeker must become
a field on which he, uninvolved,
directs his vision from without.
For forces must unfold themselves for him
which are not found upon this field itself.
You had to wrest your way through trials of soul
which only come to those
well-armed to meet those powers
belonging to the spirit worlds.
And had those powers not found you ready
to tread the path of knowledge,
they would have had to lame your feeling
before you were allowed to know
what now has been revealed to you.
The beings who can gaze at world-foundations
lead men who strive into the heights
at first up to that summit
where can be shown
if they have strength
for conscious spirit sight.
Those who possess such forces
can be released out of the world of sense.
The others still must wait.
You have sustained your Self, my son,
when powers of the heights have shaken you
and spirit forces shrouded you in dread.
Your Self has strongly battled its way through,
when doubts were wrestling in your breast
and sought to give you over to dark depths.
You have been my true pupil only
since that portentous hour
when you, despairing, felt
that you yourself were lost,
and yet the strength in you still held you firm.
I was allowed to grant from wisdom's treasures
what gave you strength
to hold yourself,
though you believed no longer in yourself.
So was the wisdom which you conquered
more truthful than the faith
bestowed on you.
You are now found mature.
You now may be released.
Your friend has led the way.
In spirit you will find her.
I can still further give you the direction:
Call forth the fiery power of your soul
with words which, uttered through my mouth,
give you the key to spirit heights.
They will accompany you
when nothing longer guides you
which eyes of sense can still behold.
With your whole heart now willingly receive them:

Light's weaving essence radiates
through far-flung spaces
to fill the world with life.
Love's blessing pours its warmth
through time's long ages
to call forth revelation of all worlds.
And messengers of spirit join
light's weaving essence
with revelation of the soul.
And when with both, the human being
can join his own true self,
he is alive in spirit heights.

O spirits who can be perceived by man,
quicken with life the soul of this our son.
Let shine in him
what can illumine
his soul with spirit light.
Let sound in him
what can awaken
his self to joyous spirit growth.

Spirit Voice (behind the scene):

Thoughts now guide him
to depths of world-beginnings;
what as shadows he has thought,
what as phantoms he has felt
soars out, beyond the world of forms—
world, of whose fullness
men, when thinking,
dream in shadows;
world, from whose fullness
men, when seeing,
live within phantoms.

(As the curtain falls slowly, the music begins.)

Those last tones of music, composed by our dear friend, Arenson,³ bring to expression what is echoing from higher worlds into Johannes Thomasius' soul in the drama. It follows the solemn experience he has had in the Meditation Room, which proved him genuinely mature and strong enough to ascend into these higher worlds. At the end of the scene just recited, we hear words actually sounding out of the spiritual worlds in a completely real way, into a soul that up to a certain level, if I may so describe it, has stood the test. The imponderable had to be touched on gently with words that are more meaningful than one at first believes.

It must be quite clear that the knot spun out of the threads of world karma presents to Johannes Thomasius a fact of the most sublime and powerful nature in that solemn place. What is actually happening?

Johannes Thomasius has to perceive a soul to whom he is joined karmically in a wonderful way (as shown later in Devachan, Scene Seven), ascending directly before him into the spiritual world. It is a unique moment in world history when such a soul enters divine worlds. Naturally, not everything connected with this moment can be fully described, but it is definitely a real happening that anyone conversant with occult life will recognize in its frightening and powerful interweaving of light and shadow.

Such a person knows, too, what happens in the physical world at the shattering moment when a soul disappears into the spiritual world, not with the gradual step of individual karma but suddenly, challenged by world karma. These are moments that are vital for the evolution of mankind. They are also moments when the real, ever-present forces of temptation, peering into our physical world out of the spiritual world (just as the powers of good do), have the strength to take possession of deserted physical sheaths and use them as platforms for their guile and powers of deception. The body is the point from which they launch their attack. Immediately, then, the situation will show itself as maya, illusion, of the worst kind.

Confronted with the small deceptions of karma, a person who is not far developed will be unable to withstand temptation. Confronted with much greater deceptions of karma, something that at a certain stage of development one would no longer have believed to be possible, a soul will recoil terrified, unless it has already gone through certain tragic depths of life experience. One can imagine some people saying that they, too, could have withstood what happened in the Meditation Room—but they should really find themselves sometime in the same situation! The reality is far different from what we might think it to be. In a spiritual reality, strange forces are at work. If someone does not believe this, he should just consider whether or not he has had any genuine experience with a human physical body abandoned by its own soul. Human beings know only ensouled bodies. In this case quite different forces come into play, and it is against these forces that Johannes Thomasius has to stand firm, having been guided to this moment in world karma.

Now two things come into question. Johannes Thomasius first has to endure what is usually known as kamaloka, the world in which there appears to us as a mirror image what we ourselves truly are. Again, this sounds milder when spoken about than it is in reality. When it appears in its reality, there is not merely a picture limited in space to tell us what it is, but it intones this from every corner of the world around us. The whole world is we ourselves. For this reason, when you hear in Scene Two how Johannes Thomasius descends into the depths of his soul where he is “among rocks and springs,” it is not a single mirror image he conjures up, speaking to him out of his soul, but it sounds to him from everywhere around him, out of the rocks and springs, out of his whole surroundings. At such a moment, words that were tame enough as they came out of world theories or philosophical works, or even spiritual scientific writings, suddenly grow into terrifying power, for they sound forth out of the whole world from every side as though, reflected from unending space, they are caught up in the various processes of nature.

O man, know thou thyself!

Thus, they sound when they become audible after living year after year within the soul. The soul then is left, lonely and forsaken, and stands before its Self. Nothing is there but the world—but this world is one's own soul; it contains everything the soul is, what its karma is, everything it has perpetrated.

In a poetic work, only a special theme can be singled out—for instance, an action far in the past, the desertion of a woman—but this comes fully alive to confront Johannes Thomasius' soul. I can say only a few words about this. When it happens, Johannes loses what is necessary for him to lose: confidence in himself, in his strength, even in the ability to find in loneliness the healing for what brings him such agonizing pain on the physical plane when experiencing it there. The following words, therefore, I beg you to take as they should be taken, that is, as shaking the soul and filling it completely. When Johannes Thomasius hears from all the world around him the words, “O man, know thou thyself,” his soul answers, as though his ego were not present:

For many years these words
of weighty meaning I have heard.
They sound to me from air and water;
they echo up from depths of earth.
And just as in the acorn secretly
the structure of the mighty oak is pressed,
within the power of these words
there is contained
all that my thought can comprehend
about the nature of the elements,
of souls as well as spirits,
of time and of eternity.
The world and my own nature
are living in the words:
O man, know thou thyself!

This is answered powerfully “from the springs and rocks.” Then his whole inner being is turned outward:

And now! within me
it is becoming terribly alive.
Around me darkness weaves,
within me blackness yawns;
out of the world of darkness it resounds,
out of soul-blackness it rings forth:
O man, know thou thyself!

(There sounds from springs and rocks:
O man, know thou thyself!)

You must try to imagine how the Self joins the cosmic process outside. Usually, we stand still or go about our hourly tasks and fail to see what is happening out there. We have no idea of it and believe that we are within our own inner being. But Johannes is following consciously what is going on. Consciously, he keeps pace with the power of all the elements, moves with the hours of the day and transforms himself into the night.

The earth I follow in her cosmic course.
I rumble in the thunder,
I flash within the lightning.

All this leaves the impression with him: I am. This is the moment, however, when the I am becomes the Daimon of his own soul. In the process, man's self-assertion is completely silenced. One can scarcely try to speak out, “I am,” but the soul replies:

... But oh, I feel
already separated from my being.

Then Johannes' own being appears in a limited, constrained form:

I see my body's shell.
It is an alien being outside myself;
it is remote from me.
There hovers nearer now another body ...

Now he can no longer speak with his own mouth but with the mouth of another person. It is the woman to whom he has done a wrong:

‘He brought me bitter sorrow;
I gave him all my trust.
He left me in my grief alone.
He robbed me of the warmth of life
and thrust me deep into cold earth.’

Then he returns to his own body:

She whom I left, unhappy one,
I was now she herself,
and I must suffer her despair.
Self-knowledge lent me strength
to pour myself into another self.

At this point a path is begun that is afterward described at the close of the scene in the words showing the effect of the world and the effect of solitude. In the world everything that streams in from outside works in the most frightful way. What comes from within works in such a way that the solitude is absolutely filled with people. This is a test, a test designed for the purpose hinted at in the words recited to you earlier:

The beings who can gaze at world foundations
lead men who strive into the heights
at first up to that summit
where can be shown
if they have strength
for conscious spirit sight.
Those who possess such forces
can be released out of the world of sense.
The others still must wait.

At this moment Johannes Thomasius would have lost consciousness and been flung back into the sense world if he had not held his ground in Scene Two, the scene we have been discussing in which he confronts his Self. Two things then became clear: his Self, as far as it is aware, has little strength; this deprives him of self-confidence. But the eternal “I” within him, of which he as yet knows nothing, has immense strength. It buoys him up and helps him to surmount the experience in the Meditation Room when Maria's soul departs. He needs, therefore, only the words of Benedictus, the force of those words, to guide him upward.

In the lines read to you, you must sense a Mystery of Words. What this means is not merely something written down in a play. In these lines, cosmic forces are actually contained, down to the very sounds. Indeed, the sounds cannot be changed. The opening of a door into the spiritual world is provided by these words; therefore, they must be heard just as they are spoken. Anything of the nature of the following lines cannot be put together in an arbitrary manner:

Des Lichtes webend Wesen, es erstrahlet
Durch Raumesweiten,
Zu füllen die Welt mit Sein.
Der Liebe Segen, er erwärmet
Die Zeitenfolgen,
Zu rufen aller Welten Offenbarung.
Und Geistesboten, sie vermählen
Des Lichtes webend Wesen
Mit Seelenoffenbarung;
Und wenn vermählen kann mit beiden
Der Mensch sein eigen Selbst,
Ist er in Geisteshöhen lebend.

Light's weaving essence radiates
through far-flung spaces
to fill the world with life.
Love's blessing pours its warmth
through time's long ages
to call forth revelation of all worlds.
And messengers of spirit join
light's weaving essence
with revelation of the soul.
And when with both the human being
can join his own true self,
he is alive in spirit heights.

Only after this can there sound from out the other world what is to sound into the soul. These are only hints, as has been said before.

Johannes Thomasius is then really impelled into the spiritual world. He cannot, however, rise directly into this world into which every person must go; he must first pass through the astral world. In Scene Four you have the astral world represented as Johannes Thomasius perceives it on the background of his own particular, individual past experience. It is not a universal description of this world but rather a description of what, for example, Johannes Thomasius had to experience there. The astral world is quite different from the physical. It is possible to meet a person there and see him as he was decades before, or to see a young man as he will become in future years. They are both realities. In your soul nature, you are still the same today as you were as a child of three. What you see in the soul world is by no means what is shown in man's outer physical form. The physical appearance conceals at every moment what was true before and what will come as truth in the future. When we look into the astral world, it is first of all necessary to overcome the primary maya of the sense world in order to understand the illusory power of time. For this reason, Johannes Thomasius sees in the astral world the person he has met on the physical plane, Capesius, as he once was as a youth, and he sees the one he knows as Strader just as he will be as an old man. What does this mean? Johannes knows Strader as he is now in the sense world with the forces present in his soul on the physical plane. But already within Strader are the conditions for what he will become after several decades. This also has to be included in our knowledge of a human being. Thus, time is rent asunder. It is really so that time is quite elastic in its nature when one enters the higher worlds. In the physical world Johannes Thomasius knows Capesius as elderly, Strader as young; now they stand together in the astral world: Capesius young, Strader old. It is not that time is stretched forward and backward but that one man is shown in his youth, the other in his old age. It is an absolutely real fact.

Something more is shown in this scene, something people react to with adolescent scorn. This is the fact that our soul experiences are greater than we usually think they are, that good and bad have their consequences when experienced within the soul. For example, if we think thoughts that are cruel or even false, they stream into the depths of the world and back again; we are closely connected in our soul experiences with the elemental powers of nature. This is no mere image. From the esoteric point of view, for example, it is a reality when Capesius is brought before the Spirit of the Elements, who leads every human being into existence. Actually, Capesius is confronting what the Spirit of the Elements is concerned with—and concerned with in such a way that when we experience anything in the soul, it is related to the elemental forces of nature. Johannes Thomasius is shown that both Capesius and Strader, out of the depths of their souls, can arouse the opposing powers of the elements. In that world, therefore, thunder and lightning follow what they have felt in their souls as pride or haughtiness, error, truth or lies. In the physical world, the error or lie a person has in his soul is quite peculiar. Someone can stand before us with error and lying in his soul and may appear to be quite innocent. But the moment we look at him with astral vision, we can see raging storms that otherwise are represented on earth only as a picture by the most terrible convulsions of the elements. All this Johannes has to experience and everything, too, that in the astral world can show him the remarkable connections he did not recognize when he met them on the physical plane.

The names given in this Rosicrucian Mystery are not given just by chance. Names such as “the Other Maria,” and so on, all point to definite relationships, so that the “one” and the “other” Maria are not merely “two Marias” but present themselves as Maria-forces to the other characters. “The Other Maria,” the mysterious nature figure, is revealed to Johannes Thomasius as the soul living below the ordinary conscious soul quite inaudibly and imperceptibly as long as man lives only in the physical world. But you must not take these relationships and characters as symbols. The Other Maria is absolutely a real person, a reality, just as the first Maria is. They should be taken for what they really are.

Everything that Johannes Thomasius has experienced passes before the eyes of his soul. He has experienced the astral world. This he can now bring into his consciousness by saying:

In realms of soul I find again
the human beings who are known to me.
The man who spoke about Felicia's fairy tales:
I could behold him here
as in his younger years;
and also he who as a youth
had chosen to become a monk:
here as an old man he appeared to me.
And with them was the Spirit of the Elements.

(End of Scene Four)

Johannes Thomasius has passed through what wipes out time before his eyes, because he has now become mature, sufficiently mature to see into the astral world. Is this world free from error? No, it is not. But in the astral world one thing can become a certainty for man. It will become a certainty for him, if he enters it in purity and without guilt, that there is a higher world shining into the astral world, just as the astral world shines into the ordinary physical world. The only question is whether or not he can see this as it actually is. People who go about in this physical world are themselves only a kind of illusion, in that they have something behind them leading them into the higher world. They stand in contrast to what they have perhaps been in distant or more recent times and what they will become in the future. But certain errors do not show us the astral world in which one is quite entangled in the world of the senses. For instance, they do not show the relationship of the three great forces of our existence: Will, Love, and Wisdom. This is so difficult to discern and understand in its reality that it remains hidden for a long time in the astral world. It is not an easy matter to discover it there. Besides, some relationships that are errors in the sense world are continued on into the astral world.

The working together of will, wisdom, and love, which at this point can only be touched on, takes place in the physical world through human beings. In the higher worlds, it takes place through the beings who expend their forces whenever, on the physical plane, the forces of supersensible beings descend into human souls. This happens through initiates in those temples where there are human representatives for the single world-forces, where human beings have come so far as to renounce the desire to portray the whole human being as he is but limit themselves to portraying a single force. It is the representatives who have taken over. But when man looks into the astral world, those holy places of the representatives of the powers of will, wisdom, and love are shown to him in a picture filled with maya. Therewith is woven a fearful web between the illusion of the sense world and of the astral world.

Now, I should have to talk for weeks if I wished to explain how it is with that figure of the higher powers shown as the initiate of the powers of will; he has met Johannes Thomasius on the physical plane, and there he really seems to be an ordinary, superficial fellow. In such a case the question can arise: are the primal forces of will supposed to work through such a person? Yes, they are. We can perhaps understand that the force manifesting the powers of will can permeate just this kind of less developed human being in the same way as the radiance of wisdom enters a man like Benedictus. We must grasp the following. If we have a beautiful flower in full bloom and place a seed beside it, it may be that the seed when developed will bring forth a still more beautiful flower. The flower can at this moment be considered quite perfect, but, according to cosmic reality, the seed is actually something more perfect. Hence, we have these opposites: Benedictus, the eminent bearer of wisdom, and the man who on the physical plane behaves in such a strange way toward everything said about the spiritual worlds and in such a strange way rejects it all. When in a group of people he hears talk about the spiritual worlds, he says, as if he were unwilling to listen:

I cannot find the bridge that leads across
from mere ideas to actual deeds.

(Romanus, Scene One)

He is a man who finds elsewhere what leads to deeds; to him, any talk about the spiritual is simply empty talk. You could tell this fellow beautiful things about theosophy; to the man he is, now, on the physical plane, it is nothing but words. What he finds worthwhile is the working of machines. When he hears about the Other Maria, how spiritual power has become part of her, kindling a strength of feeling and love in her so that she can perform healing deeds, he is the one who rejects all this, saying merely, “That comes from her having a good heart!” He remains wholly on the physical plane, where he is indeed a philistine, an ordinary fellow, but also at the same time an energetic, determined man of will. Hence, he says:

If this good person has achieved so much
the impulse lies
in her warm heart.
When work is done, men surely need
refreshment and renewal from ideas.
But only training of the will,
combined with skill and strength
in all the genuine work of life,
will further human progress.
When whirr of wheels
is humming in my ears,
and when contented human hands
are labouring at machines,
it's then I feel the powers of life at work.

This is the man of will, the man of action. If you were to talk to him day in and day out about the spirit, his only response would be, “You can't turn a winch with that; meanwhile, what are people going to eat?” This amounts to saying, “Turn your winches all day long, and then, if you have a little spare time, talk about the spirit for amusement!” Here are the forces still latent in the seed, and they are good forces, important forces. Through the powers of will they stream into the world. When people hear about spiritual worlds and receive what is said, each in his own way, this must not be judged theoretically, for it is extremely difficult to arrive at the truth. If you do not understand that a seed must be looked upon as the counterpart to such a person as has just been described, you will be experiencing the same kind of illusion as the one presented by the Subterranean Temple. There it is an astral maya. There is reality in what Johannes Thomasius perceives in the scene with Capesius and Strader when he sees them at different ages. But in Scene Five a maya, a Fata Morgana of the spiritual world, is pictured, from which, after it has been experienced, the soul must free itself. Therefore, you have to take Scene Five as justified only by the fact that reality is intermingled with the maya.

No part of this scene would contribute to Johannes Thomasius' development unless it bore the same relationship to astral experience that the concepts and ideas of the physical world bear to our understanding of the world. What scientific knowledge is for the physical plane, the “Maya Temple” is for the astral world. The “Maya Temple” is no more a reality rooted in the spiritual world than a concept is something we can eat. But concepts must live in the world for an understanding of the world to be possible. Only in this way can there play in from another world what is profoundly illuminating for Johannes Thomasius, that is, to recognize the definite knot in world karma formed when Felix Balde comprehends that in solitary wanderings about the world he must not bury his soul treasures but must bring them to the temple.

Then, for the first time, it is possible for Johannes Thomasius to perceive relationships in the spiritual world that are, so to speak, much more real, and of a more delicate and intimate nature. For example, the projection of the astral world into the physical world takes place when such a thing happens as the inspiring of a man like Capesius by someone who does not really know, herself, how much is living in her soul. In the Mystery Play, Felicia Balde does not know this. In the case of a man of intellect, a man who works intellectually, everything passes through his intellect. There is nothing whatever in the intellect that can give us strength while it instructs us about the world. This lies outside the capacity of the intellect. In a person of exceptional intelligence, a force coming from the spiritual world may pass through the intellect and then continue. At this point, he will be able to speak of the spiritual world in splendid, theoretical terms. The mind, however, does not influence the degree of inner esoteric life or the content of the soul. What comes from theories may reach the soul even without passing through the intellect; it can discover a person who is receptive to the fountainhead of spirit and who can summon up something there that Capesius, for instance, describes on the physical plane. This is clearly shown in his words about Felicia Balde, who lives out there in the solitude with Felix, and what she really means to him—when he says how gladly he listens to her because she speaks out of the most profound, age-old wisdom. It is important for us to grasp fully what Capesius is saying: on the physical plane, there is a woman to whom he likes to listen and from whose lips come things welling up from occult sources. She cannot clothe them in elegant words, but when her words reach the ear of Capesius, he can say:

I must allude
if I'm to tell about it,
to something which in truth
seems far more wonderful to me
than much that I have heard of here,
because it speaks more to my heart.
I scarcely should be able in another place
to bring the words across my lips
which here I find so easy.
I feel my soul, at times,
as though entirely empty and exhausted;
it is as if the very fountainhead
of knowledge had run dry within me,
as if I could not find one word
that seems worthwhile to speak or to be heard.

(Scene One)

Such things exist. Such people, however much they know, feel at these times as if they could get no further.

And when I feel such barrenness of spirit,
then I escape and go where these good people
have their refreshing, quiet solitude.

Then his soul begins to open out, because that is for him the door into the occult world.

And there Felicia tells me many a tale
in pictures fabulous,
of beings dwelling in the land of dreams
and in the realm of magic fairy tales,
who live a motley life.
The tone in which she tells of them
recalls the bards of ancient times.
I do not ask the sources of her words,
but this one thing I clearly know:
that new life wells and flows into my soul
dispelling its paralysis.

The reality of all this Johannes Thomasius can observe on the physical plane, for he is present, but to be able to explain it to himself he has first to look into the astral world. In Scene Six then, in the astral world, Felicia Balde appears to him “just as she is in life.” She gives the Spirit of the Elements one of the hundreds of fairy tales she has told Capesius. Now, however, comes the reciprocal movement to what takes place below the threshold of consciousness.

Felicia has told Capesius her fairy tales. When she tells one that she herself does not understand, the forces arise in his soul that banish his mental paralysis; then he can, in turn, relate something to his audience. It sounds, however, quite different from what Felicia has related. Mysterious forces are active even in Capesius. When one seeks to discover them, he will find their origin in the astral world, where it can be seen how they call forth countercurrents. Wherever there are elemental powers, they call up the kind of reverberations that Felicia's words awaken in the soul of Capesius. The same kind of thing occurs in our brain. A little spirit lives there who perhaps thinks out the most wonderful things. When we try to discover how he comes out of the macrocosm, we are likely to find the Earth-brain, which thinks thoughts on quite a different scale from those appearing in the small human brain. A man will often assert something he does not see in his own brain, but it will look grotesque when it is reflected in the giant Earth-brain. This has to be reflected; hence, the relationship of Gairman, who appears on the physical plane and then as the Spirit of the Earth-brain. About this, too, one could speak for a long time. Were we to look with soul vision at what takes place in the lonely cottage when Felicia tells her fairy tales and afterward behold the Spirit of the Earth-brain, we would discover many a secret, as, for instance, how ironical this Spirit of the Earth-brain is and how often he mocks. Ridicule has to be a concern of his, because he finds much to laugh at in what human beings do.

From an artistic point of view, it is justifiable that the moment this mockery is out of place, Gairman appears in the role he has so often to play and shows himself in his true guise. We see then, after Felicia Balde has told one of her fairy tales before the Spirit of the Elements in Scene Six, how an abnormal effect is produced on the Spirit of the Earth-brain, who translates the tale in quite different words. Felicia relates the story:

... Once upon a time
there was a Being
that flew from East to West,
following the journey of the sun.
It flew on, over lands and over seas;
and from the heights it watched
the busy life of men.
It saw how men love one another,
and how in hate they persecute each other.
Nothing could hinder
this Being in its flight;
for hate and love create
always the same a thousandfold.
But over one house on its way
the Being had to pause.
Within, there was a tired man
who pondered over human love
and pondered, too, on human hate.
His pondering had carved
deep furrows on his brow,
had turned his hair quite white.
In its concern for him,
the Being lost its guide, the sun,
and stayed at this man's side.
It was still in his room
at evening when the sun went down;
and when the sun returned,
the Being was once more
caught upward by the spirit of the sun.
Again it saw the many people in love, in hate,
continue on their earthly course.
And when it came a second time
above the house, still following the sun,
its gaze fell there
upon a dead old man.

The Spirit of the Earth-brain responds in a way that is naturally not at all justifiable:

Once upon a time there was a man
who tramped from East to West;
the urge for knowledge lured him on
to travel over lands and seas,
and by his rules of wisdom
he watched the busy life of men.
He saw how men love one another
and how in hate they persecute each other.
At every single instant
he saw himself at all his wisdom's end.
For how it is that hate and love
forever rule the earthly world
could not be brought into a law.
He noted many thousand cases,
yet lacked a comprehensive whole.
This dry researcher
encountered on his way
a Being of the Light,
upon whom life weighed heavily,
for it was in a constant battle
with a dark shadow-form.
‘Well, who are you?’
inquired the dry researcher.
‘Oh, I am Love,’
one being answered.
‘In me behold dark Hate,’
so spoke the other.
The man, however, could
no longer hear these beings' words.
As deaf researcher, tramped on
from East to West, this man.

These things are distinct experiences of the astral world. Johannes Thomasius has to pass through them in order to ascend into the spiritual world.

Today I will only say briefly that it is necessary for Johannes Thomasius, in order to reach the spiritual world itself, to make a real connection with that world on threads already woven in the physical world. As you will hear later in the recitation of Scene Seven, his connection with the spiritual world arose out of the karma encompassed by incarnations, and this could be revealed only to Devachanic vision. Devachanic elements actually have to play their part. Therefore, I ask you to notice how everything is alive in the living, weaving Devachanic ocean. This can be described, but the details must more or less be hinted at. For a real description, we must go further. Let us not think that we know anything of higher worlds by speaking about them with the words sentient soul, intellectual soul, consciousness soul, alluding to Philia, Astrid, and Luna. These three figures are in no way personifications of the three soul principles, nor are they symbols for them. Listen to the vowels with which each of these characters describes her activities. Try to hear what lives in the vowels. Then you can follow how the sequence of single vowels and single words make clear what is given in a different way as sentient, intellectual, and consciousness souls. Should you delete any part of it, it will no longer be intact. Therefore, it is important to listen carefully to the words when, for instance, Luna speaks, so as to get an understanding of the Devachanic element in the consciousness soul:

Ich will erwärmen Seelenstoff
Und will erhärten Lebensäther.
Sie sollen sich verdichten,
Sie sollen sich erfühlen,
Und in sich selber seiend
Sich schaffend halten,
Dass du, geliebte Schwester,
Der suchenden Menschenseele
Des Wissens Sicherheit erzeugen kannst.

I will enwarm soul-substance
and will make firm life-ether.
They shall condense themselves,
they shall perceive themselves,
and in themselves residing
guard their creative forces,
that you, beloved sister,
Within the seeking soul
may quicken certainty of knowledge.

(Scene Seven)

In the movement of the words can be heard in this description of Devachan what otherwise cannot in any way be expressed. This, too, must be taken into consideration. When speaking about higher worlds, we are definitely obliged to speak in many different ways. What I could never say theoretically about the sentient, intellectual, and consciousness souls you may perceive, if you have the desire to understand it, from the characterization of the three figures, Philia, Astrid, and Luna. But you must understand that these three are not symbols or allegories of the sentient, intellectual, and consciousness souls. Should you ask, “What are these three?” the answer would be, “They are persons who are alive; they are Philia-, Astrid-, and Luna-people.” This always must be kept firmly in mind.

How karma, finally intertwining and twisting itself together, can display in a picture what as microcosm Johannes Thomasius experiences in his soul—this was portrayed in the whole closing scene of the Munich performance. Showing how karma is at work, the various characters stood in their places. Each had his position according to his relationship to another person. If you imagine this actually mirrored in the soul of Johannes Thomasius, you will then have more or less what is contained in this picture of the spirit realm in Scene Seven, which could only with great difficulty be given verbal expression.

(There followed a recitation of Scene Seven by Marie von Sivers, accompanied at the beginning and end by the music of Adolf Arenson.)

• 1. Rudolf Steiner, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, Anthroposophic Press, Inc., Spring Valley, NY, reprinted 1983.
• 2. Rudolf Steiner, An Outline of Occult Science, Anthroposophic Press, Inc., Spring Valley, NY, 1979.
• 3. Adolf Arenson (1855-1936) composed the music for the four Mystery Dramas at the request of Rudolf Steiner.

Let us consider today the second Mystery Drama, The Soul's Probation. You will have noticed that in our various stage performances, and especially in this play, an attempt was made to bring the dramatic happenings into connection with our anthroposophical world view. In this play in particular, we wanted to present on the stage in a very real way the idea of reincarnation and its effect on the human soul. I need not say that the incidents in The Soul's Probation are not simply thought out; they fully correspond with observations of esoteric study in certain ways, so that the scenes are completely realistic in a definite sense of the word. We can discuss this evening first of all the idea that a kind of transition had to be created, leading from Capesius' normal life to his plunge into a former life, into the time when he lived through his previous incarnation.

I have often asked myself since The Soul's Probation was written, what enabled Capesius to build a bridge from his life in a world where he had known—though certainly with a genial spirit—only what is given by external sense perception with a world view bound to the instrument of the brain; how it was, I say, that a bridge could be created from such a world to the one into which he then plunged, which could only be revealed through occult sense organs. I have often asked myself why the fairy tale, with the three figures at the rock spring (Scene Five) had to be the bridge for Capesius. Of course, it was not because of some clever idea or some deliberate decision that the fairy tale was placed just at this point, but simply because imagination brought it about. One could even ask afterward why such a fairy tale is necessary. In connection, then, with The Soul's Probation there came to me certain enlightening points of view about the poetry of fairy tales in general and about poetry in relation to anthroposophy.

A person could well put into practical use in his life the facts implicit in the division of the soul into sentient, intellectual, and consciousness souls, but when he does, riddles of perception will loom up in a simply elemental- emotional way with regard to his place in, and relationship to, the world. These riddles do not allow themselves to be spoken out in our ordinary language, with our ordinary concepts, for the simple reason that we are living today in too intellectual a time to bring to expression in words, or through what is possible in words, the subtle distinctions between the three members of our soul.

It is better to choose a method that will allow the soul's relationship to the world to seem diversified and yet quite definite and clear. What moves through the whole of The Soul's Probation as the connecting link between the events themselves and what is significant in the three figures, Philia, Astrid, and Luna, had to be expressed in delicate outlines; yet this had to call up strong enough soul responses to bring out clearly man's relationship to the world around him. It could be presented in no other way than to show how the telling of the fairy tale about the three women awoke in Capesius' soul, as a definite preparation for his development, the strong urge to descend into those worlds that only now are beginning to be perceived again by human beings as real.

There will now be a recital of the fairy tale, so that we can reflect upon it afterward.

(Scene Five: Tale of the Rockspring Wonder)

Once upon a time there was a boy
who lived—the only child of a poor forester—
within a woodland solitude. He knew
besides his parents hardly any other people.
His build was slender,
his skin almost transparent.
One could look long into his eyes:
they treasured deepest spirit wonders.
And though indeed few people entered
the circle of his life,
he never was in need of friends.
When in the nearby mountains
the golden sunlight glowed and glimmered,
the boy's rapt, musing eye drew forth
the spirit gold into his soul
until his heart resembled
the morning brightness of the sun.—
But when through darkening clouds
the morning sunrays could not pierce
and dreariness hung over mountain heights,
the boy's eye, too, grew dull;
a mood of sadness filled his heart.—
The spirit weaving of his narrow world
took hold of him so fully
that it was no less strange to him
than were his body and his limbs.
The trees and flowers of the woods
were all his friends:
there spoke to him from crown and calyx
and from the lofty tree-tops spirit beings
and what they whispered, he could understand.—
Such wondrous things of worlds unknown
unlocked themselves before the boy
whenever his soul conversed
with what most people would regard as lifeless.
At evening his anxious parents
from time to time missed their beloved child.—
The boy was at a spot nearby
where from the rocks a spring burst forth,
and waterdrops, dispersing thousandfold,
were scattered over stones.
When moonlight's silver glance,
in sparkling colours' sorcery,
was mirrored in the water's misty spray,
the boy could sit for hours on end
beside the rock-born spring.
And figures, formed by spirit-magic,
arose before his youthful vision
in rushing water and in moonlight's glimmer.
They grew into three women's forms
who told him of those things
toward which his soul's desire was turned.—
And when upon a gentle summer night
the boy was sitting at the spring again,
one woman of the three caught up a myriad of drops
out of the glittering spray
and gave them to the second woman.
She fashioned from the tiny drops
a chalice with a silver gleam
and passed it to the third.
She filled it with the moonlight's silver rays
and gave it to the boy,
who had beheld all this
with youthful inner sight.—
Now in the night
which followed this event,
he dreamed that he was robbed
by a fierce dragon of the chalice.
After this night the boy beheld
just three times more the wonder of the spring.
Henceforth the women came no more
although the boy sat musing
beside the rock-born spring in moonlight's silver sheen.
And when three hundred sixty weeks
had run their course three times,
the boy had long become a man
and left his parents' home and forest country
to live in a strange city.
One evening, tired from the day's hard toil,
he pondered on what life had still in store for him,
and suddenly he felt himself a boy,
caught up and carried to his rock-born spring.
Again he could behold the water-women
and this time heard them speak.
The first one said to him:

Remember me at any time
you feel alone in life.
I lure man's eye of soul
to starry spaces and ethereal realms.
And whosoever wills to feel me,
I offer him the draught of hope in life
out of my wonder goblet.—

And then the second spoke:

Do not forget me at the times
when courage in your life is threatened.
I lead man's yearning heart
to depths of soul and up to spirit heights.
And whosoever seeks his strength from me,
for him I forge the steel of faith in life,
shaped by my wonder hammer.—

The third one could be heard:

To me lift up your eye of spirit
when your life's riddles overwhelm you.
I spin the threads of thought that lead
through labyrinths of life and the abyss of soul.
And whosoever harbours trust in me,
for him I weave the living rays of love
upon my wonder loom.—

Thus it befell the man,
and in the night that followed this
he dreamed a dream:
a savage dragon prowled
in circles round about him,—
and yet could not come near him.
He was protected from that dragon by
the beings he had seen beside the rock-born spring
and who with him had left his home
for this far-distant place.

It seems to me that the world of fairy tales can quite rightfully be placed between the external world and everything that in past times man, with his early clairvoyance, could see in the spiritual world; with everything, too, that he can still behold today if, by chance, either through certain abnormal propensities or through a trained clairvoyance, he can raise himself to the spiritual world. Between the world of spirit and the world of outer reality, of intelligence, of the senses, it is the world of the fairy tale that is the most fitting connecting link. It would seem necessary to find an explanation for this position of the fairy tale and the fairy tale mood between these other two worlds.

It is extraordinarily difficult to create the bridge between these spheres, but I realized that a fairy tale itself could construct it. Better than all the theoretical explanations, a simple fairy tale really seems to build this bridge, a tale that one could tell something like this:

Once upon a time there was a poor boy who owned nothing but a clever cat. The cat helped him win great riches by persuading the King that her master possessed an estate so huge, so remarkably beautiful that it would amaze even the King himself. The clever cat brought it about that the King set forth and traveled through several astonishing parts of the country. Everywhere he went, he heard—thanks to the cat's trickery—that all the great fields and strange buildings belonged to the poor boy.

Finally, the King arrived at a magnificent castle, but he came a bit late (as often happens in fairy tales), for it was just the time when the Giant Troll, who was the actual owner of this wonderful place, was returning home from his wanderings over the earth, intending to enter his castle.

The King was inside looking at all its wonders, and so the clever cat stretched herself out in front of the entrance door, for the King must not suspect that everything belonged to the Giant Troll. It was just before dawn that the Giant arrived home and the cat began to tell him a long tale, holding him there at the front door to listen to it. She rattled along about a peasant plowing his field, putting on manure, digging it in, going after the seed he wanted to use, and finally sowing the field. In short, she told him such an endless tale that dawn came and the sun began to rise. The wily cat told the Giant to turn around and look at the Golden Maid of the East whom he surely had never seen before. But when he turned to look, the Giant Troll burst into pieces, for that is what happens to giants and is a law they have to conform to: they may not look at the rising sun. Therefore, through the cat's delaying the Giant, the poor boy actually came into possession of the wonderful palace. The clever cat at first had given her master only hope, but finally, with her tricks, also the great castle and the vast estate.

One can say that this simple little tale is extremely significant for its explanation of fairy tale style today. It is really so that when we look at men and women in their earthly development, we can see what most of them are—those who have developed on earth in the various incarnations they have lived through and are now incarnated. Each one is a “poor boy.” Yes, in comparison to earlier historical epochs, today we are fundamentally “poor boys” who possess nothing but a clever cat. We do, however, it's true, have a clever cat, which is our intelligence, our intellect. Everything the human being has acquired through his senses, whatever he now possesses of the outer world through the intelligence limited to the brain, is absolute poverty in comparison to the whole cosmic world and to what man experienced in the ancient Saturn, Sun, and Moon epochs. All of us are basically “poor boys,” possessing only our intelligence, something that can exert itself a little in order to promise us some imaginary property. In short, our modern situation is like the boy with the clever cat.

Actually, though, we are not altogether the “poor boy”; that is only in relation to our consciousness. Our ego is rooted in the secret depths of our soul life, and these secret depths are connected with endless worlds and endless cosmic happenings, all of which affect our lives and play into them. But each of us who today has become a “poor boy” knows nothing more of this splendor; we can at best, through the cat, through philosophy, explain the meaning and importance of what we see with our eyes or take in with our other senses. When a modern person wants somehow to speak about anything beyond the sense world, or if he wishes to create something that reaches beyond the sense world, he does it, and has been doing it for several hundred years, by means of art and poetry.

Our modern age, which in many ways is a peculiarly transitional one, points up strongly how men and women fail to escape the mood of being “poor boys,” even when they can produce poetry and art in the sense world. For in our time (1911), there is a kind of disbelief in trying to aim toward anything higher in art than naturalism, the purely external mirroring of outer reality. Who can deny that often today when we look at the glittering art and literature expressing the world of reality, we can hear a melancholy sigh, “Oh, it's only delusion; there's no truth in any of it.” Such a mood is all too common in our time. The King of the fairy tale, who lives in each one of us and has his origin in the spiritual world, definitely needs to be persuaded by the clever cat—by the intelligence given to man—that everything growing out of the imagination and awakened by art is truly a genuine human possession. Man is persuaded at first by the King within him but only for a certain length of time. At some point, and today we are living just at the beginning of such a time, it is necessary for human beings to find once more the entrance to the spiritual, divine world. It is today necessary for human beings, and everywhere we can feel an urgency in them, to rise again toward the spheres of the spiritual world.

There has first, however, to be some sort of bridge, and the easiest of all transitions would be a thoughtful activating of the fairy tale mood. The mood of the fairy tale, even in a quite superficial sense, is truly the means to prepare human souls, such as they are today, for the experience of what can shine into them from higher, supersensible worlds. The simple fairy tale, approaching modestly with no pretension of copying everyday reality but leaping grandly over all its laws, provides a preparation in human souls for once more accepting the divine, spiritual worlds. A rough faith in the divine worlds was possible in earlier times because of man's more primitive constitution, which gave him a certain kind of clairvoyance. But in the face of reality today, this kind of faith has to burst into pieces just as the Giant Troll did. Only through clever cat questions and cat tales, spun about everyday reality, can we hold him back. Certainly, we can spin those endless tales of the clever cat to show how here and there external reality is forced toward a spiritual explanation.

In broad philosophical terms, one can spin out a long- winded answer to this or that question only by referring to the spiritual world. One still keeps all this as a kind of memento from earlier times; with it one can succeed in detaining the Giant for a short time. What is with us from earlier times, however, cannot hold its own against the clear language of reality. It will burst into pieces just as the Giant Troll burst, on looking at the rising sun. But one has to recognize this mood of the bursting Giant. It is something that has a relationship to the psychology of the fairy tale. Because I find it impossible to describe such things theoretically, I can get at this psychology only through observing the nature of the human soul. Let me say the following about it.

Think for a moment how there might appear livingly, imaginatively, before someone's soul what we recently described in the lectures about pneumatosophy,¹ depicting briefly some details of the spiritual world. In these anthroposophical circles, we certainly speak a good deal about the spiritual world. Before a person's soul, it should come at first as a living imagination. There would be little explicit description, however, if you intended only to describe what urges itself forward toward the soul, even toward the clairvoyant soul. A queer sort of disharmony comes about when one mixes such truths as those about ancient Saturn, Sun, and Moon conditions, as described in our last three anthroposophical meetings,² into the dismal, ghostlike thoughts of modern times. Over against those things raised up before the soul, one is aware of man's narrow limits. Those secrets of divine worlds have to be grasped, it would seem, by something in us resembling a troll. A swollen, troll-like giant is what one becomes when trying to catch hold of the pictures of the spiritual world. Before the rising sun, then, one has voluntarily to let the pictures burst in a certain way in order for them to be in accord with the mood of modern times. But you can hold something back; you can hold back just what the “poor boy” held back. For our immediate, present-day soul to be left in possession of something, you need the transformation, the matter-of-fact transformation, of the gigantic content of the world of the imagination into the subtlety of the fairy tale mood. Then the human soul will truly feel like the King who has been guided to look at what the soul, this “poor boy” soul, actually does not possess. Nevertheless, it does come into possession of riches when the gigantic Troll bursts into pieces, when one sacrifices the imaginative world in the face of external reality and draws it into the palace that one's phantasy is able to erect.

In former times, the phantasy of the “poor boy” was nourished by the world of the imagination, but in view of today's soul development this is no longer possible. If, however, we first of all give up the whole world of the imagination and press the whole thing into the subtle mood of the fairy tale, which does not rely on everyday reality, something can remain to us in the fairy tale phantasy that is deep, deep truth. In other words, the “poor boy,” who has nothing but his cat, the clever intellect, finds in the fairy tale mood just what he needs in modern times to educate his soul to enter the spiritual world in a new way.

It therefore seems to me from this point of view to be psychologically right that Capesius, educated so completely in the modern world of ideas, though certainly with quite a spiritual regard for this world, should come to the realm of the fairy tale as something new that will open for him a genuine relationship to the occult world. So there had to be something like a fairy tale written into the scene to form a bridge for Capesius between the world of external reality and the world into which he was to plunge, beholding himself in an earlier incarnation.

What has just been described as a purely personal remark about the reason I had for putting the fairy tale at this very place in the drama coincides with what we can call the history of how fairy tales arose in mankind's development. It agrees wonderfully with the way that fairy tales appeared in human lives. Looking back into earlier epochs of human development, we will find in every prehistoric folk a certain primitive kind of clairvoyance, a capacity to look into the spiritual world. Therefore, we must not only distinguish the two alternating conditions of waking and sleeping in those early times, with a chaotic transition of dream as well, but we must assume in these ancient people a transition between waking and sleeping that was not merely a dream; on the contrary, it was the possibility of looking into reality, living with a spiritual existence. A modern man, awake, is in the world with his consciousness, but only with his sentient consciousness and with his intelligence. He has become as poor as the boy who had nothing but a clever cat. He can also be in the spiritual world in the night, but then he is asleep and is not conscious of it. Between these two conditions, early man had still a third, which conjured something like magnificent pictures before his soul. He lived then in a real world, one that a clairvoyant who has attained the art of clairvoyance also experiences as a world of reality, but not dreamlike or chaotic. Still, ancient man possessed it to such a degree that he could encompass his imaginations with conscious clarity. He lived in these three different conditions. Then, when he felt his soul widening out into the spiritual cosmos, finding its connection with spiritual beings of another kind close to the hierarchies, close to the spiritual beings living in the elements, in earth, water, air, and fire, when he felt his whole being widening out from the narrow limits of his existence, it must have been for him, in these in-between conditions, like the Giant who nevertheless burst into pieces when the sun rose and he had to wake up.

These descriptions are not at all unrealistic. Because today one no longer feels the full weight of words, you might think the words “burst into pieces” are put there more or less carelessly, just as a word often is merely added to another. But the bursting into pieces actually describes a specific fact. There came to the ancient human being, after he had felt his soul growing out into the entire universe and then, with the coming of the Golden Maid of the Morning, had had to adapt his eyes to everyday reality, there came to him the everyday reality like a painful blow thrusting away what he had just seen. The words really describe the fact.

But within us there is a genuine King, which is a strong and effective part of our human nature; he would never let himself be prevented from carrying something into our world of ordinary reality out of that world in which the soul has its roots. What is thus carried into our everyday world is the projection or reflection of experience; it is the world of phantasy, a real phantasy, not the fantastic, which simply throws together a few of the rags and tatters of life, but it is true phantasy, which lives deep in the soul and which can be urged out of there into every phase of creating. Naturalistic phantasy goes in the opposite direction from genuine phantasy. Naturalistic phantasy picks up a motif here and a motif there, seeks the patterns for every kind of art from everyday reality and stitches these rags of reality together like patchwork. This is the one and only method in periods of decadent art.

With the kind of phantasy that is the reflection of true imagination, there is something at work of unspecified form, not this shape nor that, and not yet aware of what the outer forms will be that it wants to create. It feels urged on by the material itself to create from within outward. There will then appear, like a darkening of the light-process, what inclines itself in devotion to external reality as image-rich, creatively structured art. It is exactly the opposite process from the one so often observed in today's art work. From an inner center outward everything moves toward this true phantasy, which stands behind our sense reality as a spiritual fact, an imaginative fact. What comes about is phantasy-reality, something that can grow and develop lawfully out of divine, spiritual worlds into our own reality, the lawful possession, one can say, of the poor lad—modern man—limited as he is to the poverty of the outer sense world.

Of all the forms of literature the fairy tale is certainly least bound to outer reality. If we look at sagas, myths, and legends, we will find features in all of them that follow only supersensible laws, but these are actually immersed in the laws of external reality as they leave the spiritual and go into the outside world just as the source material, historical or history-related, is connected to a historical figure. Only the fairy tale does not allow itself to be manipulated around real figures; it stays quite free of them. It can use everything it finds of ordinary reality and has always used it. Therefore, it is the fairy tale that is the purest child of ancient, primitive clairvoyance; it is a sort of return payment for that early clairvoyance. Let old Sober-sides, the pedant who never gets beyond his academic point of view, fail to perceive this. It doesn't matter; he needn't perceive it. The simple fact is that for every truth he hears, he asks, “Does it agree with reality?”

A person like Capesius is searching above everything else for truth. He finds no satisfaction in the question, “Does it agree with reality?” For he tells himself, “Is a matter of truth completely explained when you can say that it accords with the external world?” Things can really be true, and true and true again, as well as correct, and correct and ever correct, and still have as little relationship to reality as the truth of the little boy sent to buy rolls from the village baker. He figured out correctly that he would get five rolls for his ten kreuzers, but his figuring did not accord with reality; he practiced the same kind of thinking as the pedant who philosophizes about reality. You see, in that village, if you bought five rolls, you got an extra one thrown in—nothing to do with philosophy or logic, just plain reality.

In the same way Capesius is not interested in the question of how this or that idea or concept accords with reality. He asks first what the human soul perceives when it forms for itself a certain concept. The human soul, for one thing, perceives in mere external, everyday reality nothing more than emptiness, dryness, the tendency in itself continually to die. That is why Capesius so often needs the refreshment of Dame Felicia's fairy tales, needs exactly what is least true to outer reality but has substance that is real and is not necessarily true in the ordinary sense of the word. This substance of the fairy tale prepares him to find his way into the occult world.

In the fairy tale, there is something left to us humans that is like a grandchild of the clairvoyant experience of ancient human beings. It is within a form that is so lawful that no one who allows it to pour into his soul demands that its details accord with external reality. In fairy tale phantasy the poor boy, who has only a clever cat, has really also a palace obtruding directly into external reality. For every age, therefore, fairy tales can be a wonderful, spiritual nourishment. When we tell a child the right fairy tale, we enliven the child's soul so that it is led toward reality without always remaining glued to concepts true to everyday logic; such a relationship to reality dries up the soul and leaves it desolate. On the other hand, the soul can stay fresh and lively and able to penetrate the whole organism if, perceiving in the lawful figures of a fairy tale what is real in the highest sense of the word, it is lifted up far above the ordinary world. Stronger in life, comprehending life more vigorously, will be the person who in childhood has had fairy tales working their way into his soul.

For Capesius, fairy tales stimulate imaginative knowledge. What works and weaves from them into his soul is not their content, not their plot, but rather how they take their course, how one motif moves into the next. A motif may induce certain powers of soul to strive upward, a second motif persuades other powers to venture downward, still others will induce the soul forces to mingle and intertwine upward and downward. It is through this that Capesius' soul comes into active movement; out of his soul will then emerge what enables him finally to see into the spiritual world. For many people, a fairy tale can be more stimulating than anything else. We will find in those that originated in earlier times motifs that show elements of ancient clairvoyance. The first tales did not begin by someone thinking them out; only the theories of modern professors of folklore explaining fairy tales begin like that. Fairy tales are never thought out; they are the final remains of ancient clairvoyance, experienced in dreams by human beings who still had that power. What was seen in a dream was told as a story—for instance, “Puss in Boots,” one version of which I have just related. All the fairy tales in existence are thus the last remnants of that original clairvoyance. For this reason, a genuine fairy tale can be created only when—consciously or unconsciously—an imagination is present in the soul of the teller, an imagination that projects itself into the soul. Otherwise, it is not a true fairy tale. Any sort of thought-out tale can never be genuine. Here and there today, when a real fairy tale is created, it arises only because an ardent longing has awakened in the writer toward those ancient times mankind lived through so long ago. The longing exists, although sometimes it creeps into such secret soul crevices that the writer fails to recognize in what he can create consciously how much is rising out of these hidden soul depths, and also how much is disfigured by what he creates out of his modern consciousness.

Here I should like to point out the following. Nothing put into poetic form can actually ever be grounded in truth unless it turns essentially to such a longing—a longing that has to be satisfied and that longs for the ancient clairvoyant penetration into the world, or unless it can use a new, genuine clairvoyance that does not need to reveal itself completely but can flash up in the hidden depths of the soul, casting only a many-hued shadow. This relationship still exists. How many people today still feel the necessity of rhyme? Where there is rhyme, how many people feel how necessary it is? Today there is that dreadful method of reciting poetry that suppresses the rhyme as far as possible and emphasizes the meaning, that is, whatever accords with external reality. But this element of poetry—rhyme—belongs to the stage of the development of language that existed at the time when the aftereffects of the ancient clairvoyance still prevailed.

Indeed, the end-rhyme belongs to the peculiar condition of soul expressing itself since man entered upon his modern development through the culture of the intellectual or feeling soul (Verstandes- oder Gemütsseele). Actually, the time in which the intellectual or feeling soul arose in men in the fourth post-Atlantean cultural epoch (747 B.C. to 1413 A.D.) is just the time when in poetry the memory dawned of earlier times that reach back into the ancient imaginative world. This dawning memory found its expression in the regular formation of the end- rhyme for what was lighting up in the intellectual or feeling soul; it was cultivated primarily by what developed in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch.

On the other hand, wherever the culture of the fourth epoch had penetrated, there was an incomparable refreshment through the effects of Christianity and the Mystery of Golgotha. It was this that poured into the European sentient soul. In the northern reaches of Europe, the culture of the sentient soul had remained in a backward state, waiting for a higher stage, the intellectual soul culture that advanced from the Mediterranean and Southern Europe. This took place over the whole period of the fourth epoch and beyond, in order that what had developed in Central and Southern Europe, and in the Near East, could enter into the ancient sentient soul culture of Central Europe. There it could absorb the strength of will, the energy of will that comes to expression chiefly in the sentient soul culture. Thus, we see the end-rhyme regularly at home in the poetry of the South, and for the culture of the will that has already taken up Christianity, the other kind of rhyme—alliteration—as the appropriate mode of expression. In the alliterations of Northern and Central Europe we can feel the rolling, circling will pouring into the culture of the fourth epoch at its height, the culture of the intellectual or feeling soul.

It is astonishing that poets who want to bring to life, out of primeval soul forces in themselves, the memory of some primeval force in a particular sphere sometimes point back to the past in a quite haphazard fashion. This is the case with Wilhelm Jordan.³ In his Nibelungen he wished to renew the ancient alliterations, and he achieved a remarkable effect as he wandered about like a bard, trying to resurrect the old mode of expression. People did not quite know what to make of it, because nowadays, in this intellectual time of ours, they think of speech as an expression only of meaning. People listen for the content of speech, not the effect that the sentient soul wants to obtain with alliteration, or that the intellectual soul wants to achieve with the end-rhyme. The consciousness soul really can no longer use any kind of rhyme; a poet today must find other devices.

Fräulein von Sivers [Marie Steiner] will now let us hear a short example of alliteration that will characterize how the artist, Wilhelm Jordan, wished to bring about the renewal of ancient modes.

Und es nahten die Nomen, von niemand gesehen,
Zu geräuschlosem Reigen und machten die Runde
Um diese Verlobten. Ein leiser Lufthauch,
Das war die Meinung der Minneberauschten,
Winde sich murmelnd herein zum Kamine;
Doch hinunter zur Nachtwelt, zu Nibelheims Tiefen,
Und hinauf zu den Wolken zu Walhalls Bewohnern
Erklang nun für andere als irdische Ohren
Vernehmlich wie Seesturm der Nomen Gesang:

Dein eigen ist alles,
Dein Heil wie dein Unheil,
Dein Wollen und Wähnen,
Dein Sinnen und Sein.
Wohl kommen, gekettet
In ewige Ordnung
Die Larven des Lebens,
Die Scharen des Scheins.
Sie ziehen die Zirkel,
Sie zeigen die Ziele,
Sie impfen den Abscheu,
Sie wecken den Wunsch;
Doch dein ist das Dünken,
Und wie du geworden,
So wirst du dich wenden,
Wir wissen die Wahl.

Rough English Translation

And the Norns then came nearer but no one could see them;
In soft silent steps they circled and swayed
Around the Betrothed—who, burning with love,
Thought a breath of sweet air was blowing about them;
While down to the night-world, in Nibelheim's nethermost,
And high in the heav'ns to the hosts of Valhalla
The Norns sang their song, for other than earth-ears
As clear as the clamorous raging of sea storms:

All is thine own:
Thy healing or hating,
Desires or delusions,
Thy thought and thy life.
Chained will come, cheerless,
In order eternal,
The hosts of the hidden,
The Larva of Life.
They mark out their measures,
They forecast fulfillment,
They implant raging passion,
Awaken the will.
Yet thine is the thinking,
The fashioning, forming,
The testing and turning:
We challenge thy choice.

Wilhelm Jordan really did bring the alliteration to life when he recited his poetry, but it is something that a modern person no longer can relate to completely. In order to agree sympathetically with what Jordan proposed as a kind of platform for his intentions,⁴ one has to experience those ancient times imaginatively in those of the present. It is much like bringing to mind all the happenings of these last few days in our auditorium in the Architektenhaus during the Annual Meeting,⁵ and perceiving them shrouded in astral currents that make visible what was spoken there. Then one can also discover that what in these days repeatedly played into our efforts for knowledge and understanding is the pictorial expression of a Jordan idea; that is, one could rightly understand what he set up as a kind of program to revive a mood that had held sway in the old Germanic world:

... der Sprache Springquell ...
Bedarf nur der Leitung, um lauter und lieblich
Mit rauschendem Redestrom bis zum Rande
Der Vorzeit Gefäße wieder zu füllen
Und new zu verjüngen nach tausend Jahren
Die wundergewaltige uralte Weise
Der deutschen Dichtkunst.

(The source of speech requires only guidance to fill again to the brim the ancient vessels with rushing streams of verse, sonorous and beautiful; and after a thousand years to bring anew to life the wonder and the power of the ancient German art of poetry.)

But to attain this goal, an ear is needed that can perceive the sounds of speech. This belongs intrinsically to the imaginations of the ancient clairvoyant epoch, for it was then that the feeling for sounds originated. But what is a speech sound? It is itself an imagination, an imaginative idea.

As long as you say Licht (light) and Luft (air) and can think only of the brightness of the one and the wafting movement of the other, you have not yet an imagination. But the words themselves are imaginations. As soon as you can feel their imaginative power, you will perceive in a word like Licht, with the vowel sound “ee” predominating, a radiant, unbounded brightness; in Luft, with its vowel sound “oo,” a wholeness, an abundance. Because a ray of light is a thin fullness and the air an abundant fullness, the alliterating “I” expresses the family relationship of fullness. It is not unimportant whether you put together words that alliterate, such as Licht and Luft, or do not alliterate; it is not unimportant whether you string together the names of brothers or whether you put them together in such a way that the hearer or reader feels that cosmic will has brought them together, as in Gunther, Gemot, Giselher. Such an ancient imagination the sentient soul could perceive in the alliteration.

In the end-rhyme the intellectual soul could recognize itself as part of the ancient imagination. When language is made alive, its effects can be felt in the soul even into our dreams, where it can secrete certain imaginations for a person to become aware of in dream. These imaginations appear also to clairvoyance, correctly characterizing, for instance, the four elements. It does not always hold good, but if someone truly feels what, for example, Licht and Luft are, and lets this enter into a dream, there often blossoms out of the dream-fantasy something that can lead to a characterization of those elements, light and air. Human beings will not become aware of the secrets of language until it is led back to its origin, led back, in fact, to imaginative perception. Language actually originated in the time when man was not yet a “poor boy” but also when man had not yet a clever cat. In a way, he still lived attached to the Giant, imagination, and out of the Giant's limbs he was aware of the audible imagination imbuing each sound. When a tone is laid hold of by the imagination, then the sound originates, the actual sound of speech.

These are the things I wanted to bring to you today, in a rather unpretentious and disconnected way, in order to show how we must bring to life again what mankind once lost but that has been rescued for our time. Just as Capesius wins his way to it, we must win it back, so that human beings can grow rightly into the era just ahead of us and find their way into higher worlds, thus truly to participate in them.

• 1. Rudolf Steiner, The Wisdom of Man, of the Soul, and of the Spirit, Anthroposophic Press, Inc., Spring Valley, NY, 1971.
• 2. Rudolf Steiner, Inner Realities of Evolution, Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1953.
• 3. Wilhelm Jordan (1819-1904), Nibelungen, Canto One, Sigfridsage.
• 4. In the 1925 German edition of this lecture there is the following footnote: “Translated into the language of spiritual science, one could say that Jordan wished instinctively to revive for the consciousness soul as poetry what the sentient soul had earlier developed quite naturally.”
• 5. December 10, 1911. Discussions took place on December 12, 14, 15.

When we wander at this time of year through the streets of large cities, we find them full of all sorts of things which our contemporaries want to have for their celebration of the approaching Christmas festival. Indeed, it is one of the greatest festivals of the year which humanity can celebrate: the festival which commemorates the most powerful impulse in the evolution of mankind. And yet, if we contemplate what will take place in the coming days in large cities such as ours, we may well ask: Does all of this correspond rightly to what is meant to flow through the souls and hearts of man?

If we don't give ourselves up to illusions but simply face the truth, then perhaps we cannot help but admit to ourselves: All these preparations and celebrations of the Christmas festival which we see in our time fit in very poorly on the one hand with all other happenings of modern civilization around us; and on the other hand they fit in equally poorly with what should live in the depth of the human heart as a commemorative thought of the greatest impulse which humanity received in the course of its evolution.

So it is perhaps no overstatement if we express the following view: There is a lack of harmony in what our eyes perceive, when we wish to permeate ourselves with the Christmas mood, and wish to receive this Christmas mood from what we can see in today's environment. There is a discord in seeing the streets bedecked with Christmas trees and other decorations in preparation for the festival, and then seeing modern traffic rushing through the midst of it all. And if modern man does not feel the full extent of this discord, the reason may well be that he has disaccustomed himself to be sensitive to all the depth and intimacy which can be connected with this approaching festival. Of all that the Christmas festival can do to deepen man's inner nature, basically no more is left today, especially for the city dweller, than a last faint echo. He is hardly in a position to feel even vaguely its former greatness. His habits prevent him from perceiving this greatness any longer, a greatness to which humanity had become accustomed in the course of centuries.

It would be totally wrong if we would look with pessimism at the fact that times have changed, and that in our modern cities it has become impossible to develop that mood of profound intimacy which prevailed in earlier times with regard to this festival. It would not be right to allow such a pessimistic mood to arise, for at the same time we can feel an intimation—in our circles this feeling should certainly be present—that humanity can once again come to experience the full depth and greatness of the impulse which belongs to this festival. Seeking souls have every reason to ask themselves: “What can this ‘Christ festival’ mean to us?”. And in their hearts they can admit: Precisely through Spiritual Science something will be given to humanity, which will bring again, in the fullest sense of the word, that depth and greatness which cannot be any more today. If we don't succumb to illusion and phantasy we must admit that these can no longer exist at present. What has become often a mere festival of gifts cannot be said to have the same meaning as what the Christmas festival meant to people for many centuries in the past. Through the celebration of this festival the souls used to blossom forth with hope-filled joy, with hope-borne certainty, and with the awareness of belonging to a spiritual Being, Who descended from Spiritual heights, and united Himself with the earth, so that every human soul of good will may share in His powers. Indeed, for many centuries the celebration of this festival awakened in the souls of men the consciousness that the individual human soul can feel firmly supported by the spiritual power just described, and that all men of good will can find themselves gathered together in the service of this spiritual power. Thereby they can also find together the right ways of life on earth, so that they can mean humanly as much as possible to one another, so that they can love each other as human beings on earth as much as possible.

Suppose we find it appropriate to let the following comparison work on our souls: What has the Christmas festival been for many centuries, and what should it become in the future? To this end, let us compare, on the one hand, the mood which social custom creates nowadays in certain parts of the world around us, with the mood that once permeated the Christmas festival. On the other hand, let us compare this mood of the present time with what can come about in the soul as a renewal of this festival, made as it were timeless, through Spiritual Science.

For a modern urban dweller it is hardly possible to appreciate truly the full depth of what is connected with our great seasonal festivals. It is hardly possible to experience that magic which like a gentle breeze permeated the mood of soul of those who believed that they bore the Christ in their hearts during the great festivities surrounding Christmas or Easter. Today it has become very difficult indeed, especially for the city dweller, to sense anything of this magic, which permeated humanity like a gentle spiritual breeze during those seasons. For those who have had the opportunity of experiencing even a little of this magic wind which permeated the soul mood in those times this will most certainly be a wonderful, glorious memory. As a young child I was able to behold the last remnants of such a magic wind as it permeated the souls, the mood, of country folk in certain remote German villages. When the Christmas season approached I could behold how something arose in the deepest, innermost soul life of young and old, which differed essentially from the feelings and sentiments that prevailed during the rest of the year. When Christmas approached this could still be sensed quite distinctly in certain farming villages as recently as a few decades ago. The souls had then a natural way of making themselves inwardly beautiful. And they really felt something like this: “Into deepest night-enveloped darkness has the physical sunlight descended during autumn. More outer physical darkness has come about. Long have the nights become, shortened are the days. We must stay home much of the time. During the other seasons we used to go outside, to the fields, where we would feel the golden rays of the morning sun coming to meet us, where we could feel the warmth of the sun, where we could work with our hands during the long days of summer. But now, we must sit inside much of the time, we must feel much, much darkness around us, and we must often see, as we look outside through windows, how the earth is being covered with its winter garment.”

It is not possible to depict in detail all the beautiful, the wonderful soul moods which awoke in the simplest farm homes on Sunday afternoons and evenings as the Christmas season approached. One would have to depict very intimate soul moods. One would have to tell how many, who had been involved in a good share of fights and mischief during the rest of the year, would feel a natural restraint in their souls, as a result of being filled with the thought: “The time of Christ draws near.” They would feel: Time itself is becoming too holy to allow mischief to occur during this season.—That is only a minor aspect of what was extensively present in past centuries, and what could still be seen in its last remnants in those remote villages in recent decades. When the celebration of Christmas retreated into the homes as a family festival you would see there no more than a little display representing the stable in Bethlehem. The children would enjoy everything connected with it, as they saw Joseph and Mary, with the shepherds in front, and the angels above, sometimes done in a very primitive way. In some villages you would find such a display of the “manger” in almost every home. What had thus retreated into the homes was more or less a last echo of something which we will touch upon later.—And when the main days of the Christmas festival, the 25th and 26th of December, had passed and Epiphany, the festival of the Three Kings, approached, you could still see a few decades ago small groups of actors wandering from village to village—the last actors to present plays of “the Holy Story.” The actual Christmas plays had already become quite rare, but a last echo of “The Play of the Three Kings” could often still be seen, as it might be even today (1910) in some remote villages. There were the “Three Holy Kings”, wearing strange costumes, different for each one, with paper crowns and a star on their heads. Thus would they move through the villages, seldom lacking humor, but with humor and reverence together. With their primitive voices they would awaken all those feelings which the soul should feel in connection with what the Bible tells of the great Christ Impulse of human evolution.

The essential thing is that a mood prevailed during the Christmas season, the days and weeks surrounding the Christmas festival, to which the heart was given over, a mood in which the whole village would participate, and which enabled people to take in with simple immediacy all the representations that were brought before their souls. Grotesque, comedy-like presentations of sacred scenes, such as have become customary in our time in imitation of the Passion Plays of Oberammergau, would have met with no understanding in those days. The memory and the thought of the great periods of humanity were then still alive. It would have been impossible to find anyone willing to experience the events of the Holy Night and of the Three Kings during any other days of the year. And it would have been just as impossible to accept the Passion story at any other time but Easter. People felt united with what spoke to them from the stars, the weeks, the seasons, what spoke out of snow and sunshine. And they listened to tales of what they wanted to feel and should feel, when the so-called “Star-Singers” went around, wearing paper crowns on their heads, and lately wearing simply a white jacket. One of them used to carry a star, attached to a scissor-like device, so that he could project the star some distance out. Thus they would wander through the villages, stopping at various homes, to present their simple tales. What mattered most was that just at this time people's hearts were rightly attuned, so that they were able to take in everything that was supposed to permeate their souls during this season. I myself have still heard quite a few times these “Star-Singers”, reciting their simple poems as they wandered through the villages, and this is for me still a beautiful memory. An example follows *:

In God's Name now our tale begins.
From Orient came the Holy Kings.
They ride with speed on distant ways,
Four hundred miles in thirteen days.
They ride by Herod's palace-walls
As Herod from his window calls:
Whither go ye, relax your speed!
To Bethlehem our journey does lead.
Ye Holy Three Kings be guests of mine,
I will draw plenty of beer and wine,
I will serve venison roast and fish;
To know of the newborn king is my wish.
In truth, we cannot tell just where;
We have to follow the star we bear:
Over the house the star will shine bright.
Over the mountains the holy men ride.
There found they Jesus Christ, our Lord,
Who is the Savior of all the world.¹

The whole village would take part in such things. As certain lines were recited the star would be projected far out. This star of Christmas, of the Three Kings, was an expression of the consonance of the season, the festivity, and the human hearts. That was a great thing, which had spread through centuries like a magic breath of air over large parts of the earth and into the simplest hearts and minds. We must try to place something like this before our souls. As seekers after spiritual knowledge we are able to do so, because through our years of contemplative work on this great event we were able to develop again a feeling for the real power which was thereby given for all of mankind and for the whole evolution of the earth. And it is to this event that our thoughts should be directed during this festival season.

So we may expect to gain some understanding of how in times past the whole Christmas season was immersed in a festive mood, especially among the people of Germany and Western Europe, and how this festive mood was achieved by the simplest means. But perhaps only the spiritual seeker can understand today what was essential in those ancient Christmas plays. What I have presented to you just now as the “Star-Song” is, in fact, only a last remnant, a last ruin. If we would go back several centuries we would find vast regions where Christmas plays were performed when this time approached, in the presentation of which entire villages took part. As regards our knowledge of these Christmas plays we may well say that we were merely in a position of collecting something that was rapidly vanishing.

I myself had the good fortune of having an old friend who was such a collector. From him I heard many stories of what he encountered as a scholarly collector of Christmas plays, especially in German-Hungarian regions. In certain “language islands” in Hungary the German language had been kept alive both as a mother tongue and for colloquial speech, up to the time of the so-called magyarization in the fifties and sixties of the nineteenth century, when the Hungarian language was imposed. There one could still find many of the Christmas plays and Christmas customs which had vanished long ago into the stream of oblivion in the German motherland. Individual colonists, who migrated into Slavic regions during the previous centuries, had preserved their ancient heritage of Christmas plays, and they renewed them, whenever they could find the right people to play the parts, always recruiting the players from among the villagers themselves. I can still well remember—and perhaps you will take my word for it—with how much enthusiasm the old professor Schröer spoke of these Christmas plays, when he told of having been present when these people performed these plays during the festival season.

We can say without exaggerating, that an understanding of the inner nature of the artistic element in these plays can only be reached by actually visiting these village people and witnessing how they have given birth to the simple artistry of such Christmas plays out of a truly most holy mood. There are people today, who believe that they can learn the art of speech and recitation from this or that teacher. They will go to all sorts of places in order to learn certain breathing exercises which are considered to be the right ones for this purpose. And there exist nowadays dozens of “right” breathing methods for singing and for declamation. These people believe that it is essential for them to make a real automaton of their body or their larynx. Thus they cultivate art in a materialistic way. I would only hope that this strange view will never really take root in our circles; for these people have no idea how a simple, yet true art was born out of a most reverent mood, a prayerful Christmas mood.

Such art was actually performed by village lads who engaged in good-for-nothing pranks and behaved in a very loose way during the rest of the year. These very same lads would act in the Christmas plays with a most profound Christmas mood in their souls and hearts. For, these simple people, who lived beneath their thatched roofs, knew infinitely more about the relation of the human soul, even the whole human being, and art, than is known today in our modern theaters or other art institutions, no matter how much ado surrounds these things. They knew that true art has to spring from the whole human being; and if it be sacred-art then it must spring from man's holy mood of devotion. That, indeed, these people knew! And this can be seen, for example, in the “four principle rules”, found in those regions which Schröer could still visit.

As the months of October or November approached, in the regions of Upper Hungary, one person who knew the Christmas plays would gather those people who he felt were suitable to perform them. These plays were passed on by oral tradition. They were never committed to writing. That would have been considered a profanation. And during the Christmas season some people were considered suited, of whom one would perhaps not have thought so at other times: really roguish good-for-nothing lads, who had been involved in all sorts of mischief during the rest of the year. But during this time of the year their souls immersed themselves in the required mood. The participants had to abide by some very strict rules during the many weeks of rehearsals. Anyone who wanted to take part had to adhere strictly to the following rules.—Try to imagine life in these villages, and what it would mean not to be allowed to participate in these Christmas plays. “Anyone wishing to act in the plays must:

1. stay away from the girls,
2. sing no bawdy songs during the entire Holy Season,
3. lead a decent life,
4. obey my orders.

A fine will be levied for all violations, and also for each error in memorizing your lines.”²

Do you recognize in this custom something like a last echo of the kind of consciousness that prevailed at the holy sites of the ancient mysteries? There too, one knew that wisdom cannot be achieved by mere schooling. Likewise, an awareness prevailed here that the whole human being, including his mind and morals, must be cleansed and purified, if he wished to partake in art in a worthy way. These plays had to be born out of the whole human being! And the attunement to the Christmas mood brought about something like this, brought about that devotion and piety would take hold even of the most roguish lads.

These Christmas plays, of which I have just told you, and which Schröer and others could still observe and collect, were the last remains of more ancient plays, indeed, merely the last ruins. But through these plays we can look back into earlier times, into the 16th, 15th, 14th century and even further, when the relations between villages and cities were quite different. Indeed, in the Christmas season the souls of village people would immerse themselves into an entirely different mood through what these plays would offer them, as they presented with the simplest, most primitive means the holy legend: the birth of Christ with all that belongs to it according to the Bible. And just as Christmas day, the 25th of December, was preceded in the church calendar by the “Day of Adam and Eve”, so what was considered the actual Christmas play was preceded by the so-called Paradise play, the play of Adam and Even in Paradise, where they fell victim to the devil, the snake. Thus in the most primitive regions where such plays were performed, people could gain an immediate insight into the connection between the descent of man from spiritual heights to the physical world—and that sudden reversal which was bestowed on man through the Christ Impulse, upward again towards the spiritual worlds.

Suppose when reading the Epistles of St. Paul you would sense the greatness of the Pauline conception of man, who descended as Adam from the spiritual world to the world of the senses, and then, of the “new Adam and Christ, in whom man ascends again from the world of the senses into the world of the spirit. This can be sensed and felt in Paul in a grandiose way. The simplest people, even down to the children, could sense this in an intimate, loving, fulfilling way in the depth of their hearts and souls when they beheld in this season in succession first the fall of man in the Paradise play of Adam and Eve, and then the revelation of Christ in the Christmas play. And they felt profoundly the mighty turning point that had occurred in the evolution of humanity through the Christ Event. A reversal of the path of evolution, that was the way the Christ Event was experienced! One path, that led so to say from heaven to earth, was the path from Adam to Christ; another path, that leads from earth to heaven, is the oath from Christ to the end of earth time. That is what many thousands of people felt in a most intimate way, when the two plays which I have just characterized were so primitively performed before their eyes. These people really could then experience the complete renewal of the human spirit in its very essence through the Christ-Impulse. Perhaps you can feel in all of this a kind of echo of something that was once felt in regard to this reversal of the entire progress of humanity through certain words which have come down to us from very ancient times, from the first Christian centuries. These words were often spoken, even in the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries, in those regions of Europe where Christianity had spread. There people felt something tremendous when words such as these were spoken:

Ave maris Stella
Dei mater alma
Atque semper virgo
Felix coeli porta

Sumens illud Ave
Gabrielis ore
Funda nos in pace
Mutans nomen Evae!

Ave (I greet you) star of the sea
Divine youthful mother³
And virgin eternal
Thou happy portal of heaven.

Receiving this “Ave” (greeting)
From the mouth of Gabriel
Be thou our foundation for peace
By reversing the name Eva!

When these words were spoken people felt man's path from heaven to earth through the Fall—and the ascent of man through Christ from earth to heaven. They felt this even in the names of the two female characters, the name Eva (Eve) and the name they associated with the mother of Jesus, with which one greeted her so to say: Ave! Ave is the reverse of the name Eva. When you spell Ave backwards you have Eva. That was felt in its full significance. These word; express what people sensed in the most elementary phenomena of nature, and at the same time, what they saw in the human elements of the Holy Legend:

Ave, star of the sea,
Divine young mother
And virgin eternal
Thou happy portal of heaven.

Receiving this “Ave”
As a greeting from Gabriel
Be thou our foundation for peace
By reversing the name Eva!

In such simple words one felt the greatest mysteries, the greatest secrets of human evolution. And in the reversal of the name Eva to Ave people would feel in a subtle way that same truth which we can learn in a grandiose way from the Epistles of Paul when we read his words about Adam, the “old” Adam, and Christ, the “new” Adam. This was the mood in the days of the Christ-festival when these plays were performed one after the other in that primitive way: the “Paradise play” which shows us the Fall of man, and the “Christmas play” which awakens the hope for the future, in which each single human soul can share by taking up the force that lies in the Christ-Impulse. But it should be perfectly clear that to feel this requires a mood, an inner attunement, which simply cannot exist in this way anymore today. Times have changed. Back then it was not as impossible to look towards the spiritual worlds as it is today. For, that fundamentally materialistic trait, which permeates today the minds of the simplest as well as the most sophisticated people did not exist then. In those times the spiritual world was accepted as self-evident. And likewise a certain understanding was present of this spiritual world and how it differs from the world of the senses. Today people can hardly conceive how one could feel spiritually as late as the 15th or 16th century, and how an awareness of spirituality was present essentially everywhere.

We intend to present such a Christmas play in our art center. It is one from the region known as the Upper Palatinate (Oberpfalz). If we succeed, understanding can again be awakened, also in the outer world, for the spiritual mood that lives in such plays. For us, certain lines in such a Christmas play should become signposts, as it were, by which we recognize the spiritual sensitivity of the people who were to understand the Christmas play at the festival season. For example, if in one or another Christmas play Mary, expecting the Jesus-child, says, “The time has come, I see a little child”, this means she clairvoyantly beheld the child in a vision in the days preceding the birth. Thus it is in many Christmas plays. And I wonder where you could find a similar tale today for such an occasion. The time when a conscious connection with the spiritual world was present is no more. You should appreciate this fact neither with optimistic nor with pessimistic feelings. Nowadays you would have to go very far afield, to the most remote and primitive rural areas, to find instances of a vision of the child that is to be born in a few days. But it does still happen!

What people brought to the Christmas season by these primitive memories and thoughts of the greatest event of human evolution, this could only be carried by a mood such as we described. Therefore, we must find it quite understandable that in the place of this former poetry, this simple primitive art, we have today the prose of electric railways and automobiles, speeding forth so grotesquely between rows of Christmas trees. An aesthetically sensitive eye must find it impossible to view these two kinds of things together: Christmas trees, Christmas sales, and cars and electric trains running through their midst! Today this impossible situation is naturally accepted as a matter of course. But for an aesthetically sensitive eye it remains nevertheless something impossible. Even so, we want to be friends of our civilization, not enemies. We want to understand that it must be so as a matter of course.

But we want to understand too how much this is connected with the materialistic trait which has pervaded not only those who live in the city, but those who live in the country as well. Oh, by listening carefully, we can actually detect how this materialistic mood has taken hold of human minds. When we go back to the 14th or 13th century we find that people knew full well that something spiritual is meant when such a thing as the tree of knowledge in paradise is mentioned. They understood rightly what was presented in the Paradise play. When they were shown the tree of knowledge or the tree of life they knew to what to relate it spiritually. For in those days superstition about such matters had not yet spread to the extent it did later, in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries. In fact it can be historically documented that already in the 15th century, in the vicinity of the city of Bamberg, people went out into the apple orchards on Christmas night because they expected to see physically, materially, that a specially chosen apple tree would bloom that night. Thus people's minds became materialistic, in the period beginning in the 13th or 14th century and extending into the 16th and 17th century. This happened not only in the cities, but also in the souls of simple country folk.

Even so, much of the ancient poetry found its way into the homes, with the Christmas tree. But what wafted through the ancient villages as a most sacred mood, like a mystery, has become merely external poetry, the poetry of the Christmas tree, still beautiful, yet merely an echo of something much greater.

Why is this so? Because in the course of time humanity must evolve, because what is most intimate, what is greatest and most significant at one time, cannot remain so in the same way for all times. Only an enemy of evolution would want to drag what was great in one time over into other times. Each period of time has its own special mission. In each period we must learn how to enliven in ever new ways what should enter the souls and hearts of man. Our time can only appreciate that real Christmas mood, which I have sketched here in brief outline, if this mood is seen as a historic memory, a thing of the past. Yet, if we do accept the symbol of the Christmas tree also into our own festival gatherings, we do so precisely because we connect with Spiritual Science the thought of a new Christmas mood of mankind, of progressively evolving mankind. For Spiritual Science means to introduce the secrets of Christ into the hearts and souls of man in a way that is appropriate for our time. Even though modern conveyances rush past us when we step outdoors, or perhaps will even fly away with us through the air—and soon these things will awaken humanity quite differently to the most sobering and terrifying prose—nevertheless men of today must have a chance to find again the divine-spiritual world, precisely by an even stronger and more meaningful deepening of the soul. This is the same divine-spiritual world which in bygone centuries appeared before the eyes of those primitive minds when they saw at Christmas time the Holy Child in the manger. Today we need other means to awaken this mood in the soul. Certainly we may like to immerse ourselves in what past times possessed as ways to find the Christ Event, but we must also transcend what depends on time. Ancient people approached the secrets of Nature by merging with her through feeling. That was only possible in a primitive time. Today we need other means.

I would still like to give you some idea how people felt their way into nature when the Christmas festival approached. They did this quite primitively, yet they could speak in a very real and living way out of their sensing and feeling of the elements of Nature. If I may share with you a little “Star Song”, you will perhaps feel only through one single line, how the elements of Nature spoke out of the soul—the rest of the song is rather primitive. But if you listen more carefully you will be able to observe this Nature mood in several other lines.

Namely, when the one who gathered his actors for the Christmas play, or for the Three Kings play, would wander with them, and when they would then perform at some place, they would first extend a greeting to those who were assembled there. For, the sort of abstract attitude which prevails today between actors and audience did not exist in those earlier times. People belonged together, and the whole gathering was enveloped by an atmosphere of community. Therefore the actors would start by greeting in a primitive way those who were present, as well as those of the community who were not there. This really would bring out the Christmas mood.

The Star-Song

The star singer:

Beloved singers mine, let's gather as a clan
Like fritters in a frying pan,
Beloved singers mine, take up your place,
We want to pass our while with singing in this space.
Beloved singers mine, so strong and smart,
With greetings do we want to start.
Let us greet God-Father on His highest throne
And let us greet also His only Son.
Let us greet the Holy Spirit by name
And then greet all three together again.

Joseph and Mary enter the stage.

Let us greet Joseph and Mary mild,
And we also greet the little child.
Let us greet the ox and also the ass,
Which stand near the crib with straw and grass.
Let us greet them through sunlight and moonshine
That shine on the sea and the river Rhine.
Let us greet them through foliage and grassy blade,
Through the holy rain that has wet us all made.
Let us greet the emperor and his crown,
And him who made it, a master of great renown.
Let us greet the squire, Sir Palfi by name,
Also his officers we greet the same.
Let us greet our fathers of the church, so stern,
Because this play they allowed us to learn.
Let us greet the judge and the jury elect
With worthy honor and respect.
The whole honored community we greet
All who together here we meet.
Let us greet the honored council of this place
By God ordained to serve in this space.
Let us greet them through the roots, large and small,
Which are in the earth, many and all.
Beloved singers mine, turn now to another thing.
To greet the star we shall now sing.
Let us greet the slats, so carefully matched,
To which our star is then attached.
Let us greet the scissors that can stretch out far
By which can wander around the star.
We greet all the little slats of wood
As many as make our star look so good.
Beloved singers mine, harken well to my words
We sang to the star and to all of its parts.
Now we greet our master singer with glee
And also his hat which here you see.
Let us greet our teacher, who indeed,
With God's help taught us what we need.
Beloved singers mine, note well this thing,
To all of these we did now sing.

Now I ask you, please notice what this means: to call upon Nature in such a way that one greets everyone whom one wishes to greet with a certain mood in one's heart, a mood which arises from: “the roots, large and small, which are in the earth, many and all.” That is empathy for Nature's own mood.—Thus we must recognize that people in those days were connected with all that was holy, with all that was great and spiritual, right down to the roots of trees and grass. If you can enter into such a feeling, then, through a line such as the one I have just cited, you will feel something grandiose in the secrets of the evolution of mankind. The times are past when such feelings were naturally present, when they were a matter of course. Today we need to make use of other means. We need ways which will lead us to a well-spring in human nature that lies deeper, to a wellspring of human nature which, in a certain sense, is independent of external time. For the course of modern civilization makes it impossible for us to be bound by the seasons. Therefore, if you truly understand the mood which was felt in olden times as the Christ mood of the holy Christmas night, you will also be able to understand our intent, as we attempt to deepen artistically what we can gain from Spiritual Science. We strive to enliven that well-spring in the human mind which can take in the Christ Impulse. No longer can we awaken this great impulse directly within our souls during the Christmas season, even though we would be happy if we could. Yet we constantly search for it. If we can see a “Christ-festival of the progress of humanity” in what Spiritual Science is intended to be for mankind, and if we compare this with what simple people could feel when the Child in the crib was displayed during the Holy Christmas Night then we must say to ourselves: Such moods and feelings can awake in us too, if we consider what can be born in our own soul when our inner-most wellspring is so well attuned to what is sacred, so purified through spiritual knowledge, that this wellspring can take in the holy mystery of the Christ Impulse.

From this point of view we also try to discover true art which springs from the spirit. This art can only be a child of true devotion, a child of the most sacred feelings, when we feel in this context the eternal, imperishable “Christ festival of humanity”: How the Christ-Impulse can be born in the human soul, in the human heart and mind. When we learn to experience again through Spiritual Science that this Christ Impulse is a reality, something which can actually flow into our souls and hearts as a living strength, then the Christ Impulse will not remain something abstract or dogmatic. Rather this Christ Impulse, which comes forth from our spiritual movement, will become something able to give us solace and comfort in the darkest hours of our lives, able also to give us joy in the hope that when Christ will be born in our soul at the “Christmastide of our soul”, we may then look forward to the Eastertide, the resurrection of the spirit in our own inner life.

In this way we must progress, from a material attitude which has entered and taken hold of all minds and hearts, towards a spiritual attitude. For, that renewal, which is necessary to counterbalance today's prosaic ways of life, can only be born out of the spirit. Outside, the traffic of cars may move by, electric trains may speed on, perhaps even balloons may fly across the sky. Nevertheless, in halls such as these, it will be possible that something of a holy mood lives and grows. This can however only happen as a result of what has flowed to us from spirit knowledge throughout the entire year. When this fruit of the entire year brings Christ closer to us, as could happen in former times in a much more childlike mood, then we may rightly hope that in a certain sense these halls will be “cribs”. We may then look upon these halls in a similar way as the children and the grown-ups used to look on Christmas eve upon the cradle that was set up for them at home, or in still earlier times, in the church. They used to look at the little Child, at the shepherds before Him, and at “the ox and also the ass which stand near the crib with straw and grass”. They felt that from this symbol strength would stream into their hearts, for all hope, for all love of man, for all that is great in mankind, and for all goals of the earth. If on this day, which shall be consecrated and dedicated to remembering the Christ Impulse, we can feel that our earnest spiritual scientific striving throughout the entire year has kindled something in our hearts, then on this day our hearts will feel: “These our meeting halls are truly cradles! And these candles are symbols! And just as Christmas is a preparation for Easter, so these cradles, by virtue of the holy mood that fills them, and these candles, through the symbolism of their light, are meant to be a preparation for a great era for humanity, the era of the resurrection of the most Holy Spirit, of truly spiritual life!”

So let us try to feel that in this Christmas season our meeting halls are cradles, places in which, secluded from the outer world, something great is being prepared. Let us learn to feel that if we study diligently throughout the year, our insights, our wisdom, can be condensed on Christmas eve into very warm feelings, which glow like a fire, fueled by what we have gained throughout the whole year by immersing ourselves into great teachings. And let us feel that thereby we nurture our remembrance of the greatest impulse in human evolution. Let us also feel, therefore, that in these halls we may have faith that what now begins to burn within such a confined cradle as a holy fire, and as a light, filled with certainty of hope, will find its way to all mankind at some future time. Then this fire and this light will be strong enough to extend its power even to the hardest, most down to earth prose of life, to permeate it, to enkindle it, to warm it, to enlighten it! Thus can we feel here the Christmas mood as a mood of hope in anticipation of that World-Easter-mood which is to express the living spirit, needed for a renewal of humanity.

We best celebrate Christmas when we fill our souls in the coming days with this mood: In our Christmas we spiritually prepare the “Easter festival of all mankind”, the resurrection of spiritual life. Yes indeed, cradles shall our places of work become at Christmas time! The child of light is to be born, whom we have nurtured throughout the entire year by immersing ourselves into the wisdom-treasures of Spiritual Science. In our places of work Christ is to be born within the human soul, in order that spiritual life may be resurrected at the great Eastertide of humanity. In its very essence humanity must come to feel spirituality as a resurrection, by virtue of what streams forth as Christmas mood from our halls into all humanity, in the present time as well as in the future.

• 1. From “Deutsche Weihnachtspiele aus Ungarn”, described and communicated by Karl Julius Schröer, Vienna, 1862, “Oberschützener Sternsinger” (The Star-Singers of Oberschützen), p. 160.
• 2. See “Weihnachtspiele aus altem Volkstum; Die Oberufer Spiele” (G.A. 43, Dornach 1965), Christmas Plays from Oberufer, translated by A.C. Harwood, Rudolf Steiner Press, London.
• 3. A more conventional translation of alma is ‘bountiful’, but Rudolf Steiner translates it as ‘young’.

This is the 8th of 17 lectures given by Rudolf Steiner at various cities, in 1911. The title of this series of lectures is: The Mission of the New Spiritual Revelation. This address was given following a Concert at the Berlin Group of the Anthroposophical Society, at which Mendelssohn's Overture of the Hebrides had been played).

Through the tones and harmonies of this Overture we have been led in spirit to the shores of Scotland, and in our souls, we have thus followed again a path of travel which, during the course of human evolution, has been deeply influenced by the secrets of karma. For, from entirely different parts of the western hemisphere of our earth, as if through a karmic current of migration, various peoples were once transplanted into that region, and its vicinity, to which these tones now lead us. And many strange destinies are made known to us. We are told, both by what Occultism relates as well as by outer historical documents, of what these peoples experienced in very ancient times on this particular part of the earth.

A memory of the mysterious destinies of these peoples arose again, as if newly awakened, when about 1772 the cave on the Island of Staffa belonging to the Hebrides, known as Fingal's Cave, was rediscovered. Those who beheld it were reminded of mysterious ancient destinies when they saw how Nature herself seemed to have constructed something which may be likened to a wonderful cathedral. It is constructed with great symmetry in long aisles of countless pillars towering aloft: above there arches a ceiling of the same stonework, while below the bases of the pillars are washed by the inrushing foaming waves of the sea which ceaselessly beat and resound with a music which is like thunder within this mighty temple. Dropping water drips steadily from strange stone formations upon the stalactites beneath, making melodious magical music.

A spectacle of this kind actually exists there. And those who, upon discovering it, had a sense for the mysterious things which once took place in this region, must have been reminded of the hero who once upon a time, as one of the most famous individualities of the West, guided destiny here in such a strange way, and whose fame was sung by his son, the blind Ossian, who is like a western Homer—a blind singer.

If we look back and see how deeply people were impressed by what they heard about this place, we shall be able to understand how it was that Macpherson's revival of this ancient song in the 18^th Century made such a mighty impression upon Europe. There is nothing which may be compared with the impression made by this poem. Goethe, Herder, Napoleon harkened to it—and all believed to discern in its rhythms and sounds something of the magic of primeval days. Here we must understand that a spiritual world such as still existed at that time, arose within their hearts, and felt itself drawn to what sounded forth out of this song! And what was it that thus sounded forth?

We must now turn our gaze to those times which fall together with the first impulses of Christianity and the few centuries which followed. What happened up there in the vicinity of the Hebrides, in Ireland and Scotland—in ancient Erin, which included all the neighboring islands between Ireland and Scotland, as well as the northern part of Scotland itself. Here we must seek for the kernel of those peoples, of Celtic origin, who had most of all preserved the ancient Atlantian clairvoyance in its full purity. The others who had wandered farther to the East had developed further, and so no longer remained in connection with the ancient gods. The western peoples, however, had preserved for themselves the possibility of experiencing an ancient clairvoyance now entirely immersed in the personality, in the individuality. And they were led to this particular part of the earth, as if for a special mission, where a structure confronted them which mirrored their own music's inner depths and was itself architecturally formed entirely out of the spiritual world, a structure which I have just tried to characterize with a few words—Fingal's Cave. We shall imagine these events rightly if we realize that the cave acted as a focus point, mirroring what lived in the souls of these human beings who, through their karma, were sent hither as to a temple erected by the gods themselves. Here those human beings were prepared who should later receive the Christ Impulse with their full human being and were here to undergo something extremely strange by way of preparation.

Again we shall be able to imagine all this if we realize that here particularly those ancient folk customs were preserved whereby the tribe was divided into smaller groups based upon family. Those who were related by blood felt themselves closely connected, while all others were looked upon as strangers, as belong[ing] to another Group Ego. During the migrations from Atlantis toward the East, all that the Druid priests, who remained behind here in the West, were able to give to the people poured itself out over these individual groups as a harmonizing influence. And what they were able to give still lived on in the bards. We shall only rightly understand what worked through these bards, however, if we make clear to ourselves that here the most elemental passions met together with the ancient powers of sight into the spiritual world, and that those who, with powerful life forces, sometimes with rage and passion, fought as representatives of their clan against other clans, perceived at the same time impulses working out of the spiritual world which directed them in battle.

Such an active connection between the physical and the soul realms cannot be conceived of today. When a hero raised his sword he believed that a spirit out of the air guided it, and in the spirit he beheld an ancestor who had fought upon this same battlefield in former times and who had gone up yonder to help now from over there. In their battle ranks they felt their ancestors actively aiding them, their ancestors on both sides—and they did not only feel them ... they heard them clairaudiently! It was a wonderful conception which lived in these peoples, that the heroes had to fight upon the battlefields and to shed their blood, but that after death they ascended into the spiritual world, and that their spirits then vibrated as tone—sounding through the air as a spiritual reality.

Those who had proven themselves in battle, but had trained themselves at the same time so that they could listen to what sounded out of the winds as the voice of the past, who were blind for the physical world, who could no longer see the flashing of the swords but were blind for the physical plane—these were highly honoured! And one of these was Ossian. When the heroes swung their swords, they were conscious that their deeds would resound further into the spiritual world and that bards would appear who would preserve all this in their songs. This was perceived in living reality by these peoples.

But all this creates an altogether different conception of humanity. It creates the conception that the human being is united with spiritual powers which sound forth out of the whole of Nature. For he cannot look upon a storm or a flash of lightning, he cannot hear the thunder or the surging of the sea without sensing that out of all the activities of Nature spirits work who are connected with the souls of the past, with the souls of his own ancestors. Thus the activity of Nature was at that time something altogether different than for us today. And it is for this reason that the rhythms and sounds of this song are so important, which, after being handed down for centuries through tradition only, were revived by the Scotsman Macpherson so that they create for us again a consciousness of the connection of the human being with the souls of his ancestors and with the phenomena of Nature.

We can understand how this Scotsman had in a certain sense a congenial feeling when he described how a line of battle stormed into the field, sweeping darkness before it, even as did the spirits who took part in the battle. This song is in reality something which was able to make a great impression upon spiritual Europe. The whole character of the description, even though given in a rather free poetical form, awakes in us a feeling for the kind of perception which lived in these ancient peoples. There was active in them a living knowledge, a living wisdom, concerning their connection with the spiritual world and the world of Nature in which the spiritual world works.

Out of such wisdom the finest sons from the different tribes—that is, those who had the strongest connection with the spirits of the past, who more than others allowed these spirits of the past to live in their deeds—were chosen as a picked band. And those who had the strongest clairvoyant forces were placed at its head. This band had to defend the kernel of the Celtic peoples against the peoples of the surrounding world. And one of these leaders was the clairvoyant hero, who has come down to us under the name of Fingal. How Fingal was active in the defense of the ancient gods against those who wished to endanger them—all this was handed down in ancient songs, heard out of the spiritual world—the ancient songs of the bard Ossian, Fingal's son, so that it remained alive even into the 16^th and 17^th Centuries. What Fingal achieved, what his son Ossian heard when Fingal had ascended into the spiritual realm, what their descendants heard in the rhythms and sounds of Ossian's songs with which they ever and again ensouled their deeds, this it was which worked on so mightily even into the 18^th Century. And we shall win a conception of this if we realize how Ossian allowed the voice of his father, Fingal, to sound forth in his songs.

We are told how the heroes find themselves in a difficult position. They are almost overthrown ... when new life fills the band: “The king stood by the stone of Lubar. Thrice he reared his terrible voice. The deer started from the fountains of Cromia. The rocks shook on all their hills. Like the noise of a hundred mountain streams, that burst, and roar, and foam! Like the clouds, that gather to a tempest on the blue face of the sky! So met the sons of the desert round the terrible voice of Fingal. Pleasant was the voice of the king of Morven to the warriors of his land. Often had he led them to battle; often returned with the spoils of the foe.”

“‘Come to battle,’ said the king, ‘ye children of echoing Selma! Come to the death of thousands. Comhal's son will see the fight. My sword shall wave on the hill, the defense of my people in war. But never may you need it, warriors; while the son of Morni fights, the chief of mighty men! He shall lead my battle, that his fame may rise in song! O ye ghosts of heroes dead! Ye riders of the storm of Cromia! Receive my falling people with joy, and bear them to your hills. And may the blast of Lena carry them over my seas, that they may come to my silent dreams, and delight my soul in rest’ ...”

“Now like a dark and stormy cloud, edges round with the red lightning of heaven, flying westward from the morning's beam, the king of Selma removed. Terrible is the light of his armor; two spears are in his hand. His gray hair falls on the wind. He often looks back on the war. Three bards attend the son of fame, to bear his words to the chiefs. High on Cromia's side he sat, waving the lightning of his sword, and as he waved we moved ...”

“Fingal at once arose in arms. Thrice he reared his dreadful voice. Cromia answered around. The sons of the desert stood still. They bent their blushing faces to earth, ashamed at the presence of the king. He came like a cloud of rain in the day of the sun, when slow it rolls on the hill, and fields expect the shower. Silence attends its slow progress aloft: but the tempest is soon to arise. Swaran beheld the terrible kings of Morven. He stopped in the midst of his course. Dark he leaned on his spear, rolling his red eyes around. Silent and tall he seemed, as an oak on the banks of Lubar, which had its branches blasted of old by the lightning of heaven. It bends over the stream: the grey moss whistles in the wind: so stood the king. Then slowly he retired to the rising heath of Lena. His thousands pour around the hero. Darkness gathers on the hill!”

“Fingal, like a beam from heaven, shone in the midst of his people. His heroes gather around him. He sends forth the voice of his power: ‘Raise my standards on high, spread them on Lena's wind, like the flames of an hundred hills! Let them sound on the winds of Erin, and remind us of the fight. Ye sons of the roaring streams, that pour from a thousand hills, be near the king of Morven! Attend to the words of his power! Gaul, strongest arm of death! O! Oscar of the future fights! Connal, son of the blue shields of Sora! Dermid, of the dark brown hair! Ossian, king of many songs!—Be near your father's arm!’ We reared the sunbeam of battle; the standard of the king! Each hero exulted with joy, as, waving, it flew in the wind. It was studded with gold above, as the blue wide shell of the nightly sky. Each hero had his standard, too, and each his gloomy mien!”

Thus Fingal stormed into battle, thus he is described by his son Ossian.

No wonder that this life, this consciousness of a connection with the spiritual world which sank deep into these peoples, into the souls of the ancient Celts, is the best preparation whereby they could spread the personal divine element throughout the West in their own way and from their own soil. For what they had experienced in the form of passion and desire, what they had heard sounding forth in the melodies of the spiritual world, prepared them for a later time when they brought into the world sons who revealed these passions in their souls in a purified and milder form. And thus we may say—it seems to us as if Erin's finest sons were to hear again the voices of their ancient bards singing of what they once heard out of the spiritual world as the deeds of their forefathers, but as if in Erin's finest sons the ancient battle cries had now been formed and clarified, and had become words which could express the greatest impulse of mankind.

All this sounded forth out of olden times in the songs about the deeds of the ancient Celts who fought out many things in mighty battles in order to prepare themselves for further deeds of spiritual life in later times, as we recognize them again today in that which the finest sons of the West have achieved. These were the impulses which flowed into the souls of human beings in the 18^th Century, when these ancient songs were revived. And it is this which was remembered by those who saw again the wonderful cathedral, built as if by Nature herself, and which caused them to say to themselves—“Here is a site, a gathering place, given to man by karma, in order that what the bards were able to sing about the deeds of their ancestors, about all that the heroes did to steel their forces, might sound back to them as in an echo out of this temple which they themselves did not have to build—out of their holy temple which was built for them by the spirits of Nature and which could be an instrument of enthusiasm for all who beheld it.”

So the tones and harmonies of this Overture which we have just heard offer an opportunity which allows us to sense, in our own way at least, something of the deep and mysterious events which do indeed reign in the history of mankind, events which occurred long before our present era on almost the same soil upon which they now continue to live. As we must deepen ourselves in all that lives within us, and as all that lives within us is only a further resounding of what was there in the past, so this feeling, this sense, for what once was and now works further in mankind is of great significance for occult life.

Here in Berlin, as well as in other localities where our Society has spread, much has been discussed that concerns the comprehensive realm of theosophy, that emanates, so to speak, from the high regions of clairvoyant consciousness, and it is natural that a desire should have arisen to do something toward a serious and adequate substantiation of our spiritual current.

The present General Assembly, which brings our members together here at the seventh anniversary of our German Section, may be taken as the proper occasion for contributing something toward strengthening the foundations of our cause. This I shall attempt to do at this time in the four lectures on Anthroposophy.

The lectures in Kassel on The Gospel of St. John, those in Düsseldorf on the hierarchies, those in Basel on The Gospel of St. Luke, and those in Munich on the teachings of oriental theosophy, were all occasions for rising to high altitudes of spiritual research and for bringing back spiritual truths difficult of access. What occupied us there was theosophy and, at least in part, its ascent to exalted spiritual peaks of human cognition.

It does not seem unjustifiable, given a gradually acquired feeling in the matter, to see something deeper in what is called the cyclical course of world events. At the time of our first General Assembly, when the German Section was founded, I delivered lectures to an audience composed only in part of theosophists; those lectures may be characterized as the historical chapter of anthroposophy. Now, after a lapse of seven years that constitute a cycle, the time seems ripe for speaking in a more comprehensive sense on the nature of anthroposophy.

First, I should like to make clear through a comparison what should be understood by the term anthroposophy. If we wish to observe a section of country, together with all that is spread out there in the way of fields, meadows, woods, villages, roads, we can do so by going about from village to village, through streets and meadows and woods, and we will always have a small section of the whole region in view. Again, we can climb to a mountain top and from there overlook the whole landscape. The details will be indistinct for the ordinary eye, but we have a comprehensive view of the whole.

That approximately describes the relation between what in ordinary life is called human cognition or human science, and what theosophy stands for.

While the ordinary search for human knowledge goes about from detail to detail in the world of facts, theosophy ascends to a high vantage point. This extends the visible horizon, but without the employment of quite special means the possibility of seeing anything at all would vanish. In my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, is set forth how one can reach this ideal peak without losing the power of clear vision.

But there is a third possibility, lying between the two described. It is to ascend part way, remaining half-way up. At the bottom you cannot survey the whole; you observe only details and see the top from below. At the top, everything is beneath you, and above you have only the divine heavens. In the middle you have something above and something below you, and you can compare the two views.

Any comparison lags and limps, but all that was intended at the moment was to place before you the manner in which in the first instance theosophy differs from anthroposophy. The latter stands in the middle, the former on the summit: it is the point of departure that is different. Thus far the comparison is helpful, but it is inadequate in characterizing what follows.

Devotion to theosophy necessitates rising above human points of view, above the middle, from self to higher self, and it implies the ability to see with the organs of this higher self. The peak attained by theosophy lies above man, ordinary human knowledge, below, and what lies half-way between, that is the human being himself: between nature and the spiritual world. What is above reaches down to him; he is permeated by the spirit. In contemplating the world from a purely human angle, he does not take his point of departure from the summit, but he can see it—see the spirit above. At the same time he sees what is merely nature beneath him; it reaches into him from below. There is a risk connected with theosophy; unless the above-mentioned means are employed to see with the higher self—not with the ordinary self—there is danger of losing contact with the human element, and this results in forfeiting the ability to see anything at all adequate, of recognizing reality below. This danger disappears, however, as soon as those means are employed. Then we can say that theosophy is what comes to light when the God within man says, “Let the God within you speak; what He reveals of the world is theosophy.”

Take your stand between God and Nature and let the human being in you speak. Speak of what is beneath as well as what is above you, and you have anthroposophy. It is the wisdom spoken by man.

This wisdom will prove an important fulcrum, a key to the whole realm of theosophy. After a period of immersion in theosophy, nothing could be more profitable than seriously to seek the firm center of gravity provided by anthroposophy.

All that has been said so far can be historically substantiated in many directions. We have, for example, the science calling itself anthropology. As it is practised, anthropology comprises not only the human being, but everything pertaining to him; all that can be gleaned from nature, everything necessary for understanding man. This science is based on moving about among objects, passing from detail to detail, observing the human being under a microscope. In short, this science, which in the widest circles is regarded as the only one dealing authoritatively with man, takes its view from a point beneath human capacities. It is chained to the ground; it fails to employ all the faculties at the disposal of man, and for this reason it cannot solve the riddles of existence.

Now contrast all this with what you encounter as theosophy. There one searches the most rarefied regions for answers to the burning questions of life. But all those who are unable to keep pace, whose standpoint is anthropology, consider theosophy an air-castle, lacking foundation. They are not able to understand how the soul can ascend step by step to that summit from which all is spread out beneath it. They cannot rise to the planes of imagination, inspiration, and intuition. They cannot ascend to the peak that is the final goal of human evolution.

Thus we find anthropology on the lowest step, theosophy on the summit. What becomes of theosophy when it wants to reach the top but is not in a position to do so with the right means? We can find the answer in the historic example of the German theosophist, Solger, who lived from 1770–1819. Conceptually, his views are theosophical, but what means does he employ to attain the summit? Philosophical concepts, concepts of human cerebration long since sucked dry and emaciated! That is like climbing a mountain for the purpose of observation, and forgetting to take your field-glasses; you can distinguish nothing whatever down below.

In our case the field-glasses are spiritual, and they are called imagination, inspiration, and intuition. Man's ability to reach that peak diminished more and more through the centuries—a fact that was clearly felt and acknowledged as early as the Middle Ages. Today it is felt too, but not acknowledged. In olden times that capacity to ascend existed, as you know, though only to a minor degree. It was based on a clairvoyant twilight condition in man. There really was an ancient theosophy of that sort, but it was written that such revelations from the summit should come to a close, that they should no longer be open to the ordinary means of cognition.

This old theosophy, which considers revelation a thing of the past, became theology, and thus we find theology running parallel with anthropology. Theology's ambition is to climb the heights, but for its means it depends upon something that was once revealed, was then handed down, and is now rigid; something incapable of continually revealing itself anew to the striving soul. Throughout the Middle Ages, anthropology and theology frequently opposed without rejecting each other, but in recent times the contrast is sharp. Nowadays theology is admitted along with anthropology as something scientific, but no bridge is found between the two. If we do not stop with the details but ascend half-way, we can establish anthroposophy by the side of theosophy.

Within modern spiritual life attempts have been made to practise anthroposophy, among other things, but again, as in the case of theosophy, with the wrong, inadequate means of a defunct philosophy. The meaning of philosophy can really no longer be understood by philosophers—only by theosophists. Historical contemplation alone yields this understanding. Philosophy can be comprehended only by contemplating its origin, as can be seen by an illustration. In former times there were the so-called Mysteries, abodes where the higher spiritual life was cultivated, where the neophytes were guided by special methods to spiritual vision. One such Mystery, for example, was in Ephesus, where the neophytes could learn through their training the secrets of Diana of Ephesus; they learned to look into the spiritual worlds. As much of such matters as could be made public was communicated to the profane and received by them, but not all of these realized that higher secrets had been revealed to them. One of those to whom such communications from the Mysteries of Ephesus had penetrated was Heraclitus. He then proclaimed these, by means of his partial initiation, in a way that could be generally understood. In reading the doctrines of Heraclitus, “The Obscure,” we still find immediate experience, the experience of the higher worlds, shining through between the lines. Then came his successors who no longer realized that those doctrines originated in direct experience. They no longer understood them, so they began to improve them, to spin them out in concepts. They began to speculate intellectually, and this method persisted through the generations. Everything we have in the way of philosophy today is but a heritage of ancient doctrines squeezed out and sucked dry of all life, leaving only the skeleton of the concepts. Yet the philosophers take that skeleton for a living reality, for something created by human thinking. There is, as a matter of fact, no such thing as a philosopher who can think creatively without having recourse to the higher worlds.

Just such a skeleton of concepts was all that the philosophers of the nineteenth century had to work with when they took up what may be called anthroposophy. The term actually occurred. Robert Zimmermann wrote a so-called Anthroposophy, but he constructed it of arid, empty concepts. Indeed, everything that has attempted to transcend anthropology without employing the right means has remained a shriveled web of concepts no longer connected with the subject.

Like philosophy, anthroposophy too must be deepened through theosophy; the latter must provide the means for recognizing reality within the spiritual life. Anthroposophy takes the human, the middle standpoint, not the subhuman, as does anthropology. A theosophy, on the other hand, as practised by Solger, though spiritual in its point of view, employs only inflated concepts, and when Solger arrives at the summit he sees nothing. That is spinning at the loom of concepts, not living, spiritual observation. It is something we do not intend to do. We aim in these lectures to confront the reality of human life in its entirety. We shall encounter the old subjects of observation, now illuminated, however, from a different point whence the view is both upward and downward.

The human being is the most important subject of our observation. We need but to contemplate his physical body to realize what a complicated being he is. In order to gain a sentient understanding of anthroposophy's aims, let us first ponder the following. The complicated physical body as we encounter it today is the product of a long evolution. Its first germinal potentiality came into being on old Saturn, and it evolved further on the old Sun, the old Moon, and the Earth. The etheric body was added to it on the Sun, the astral body on the Moon. Now, these members of the human being have changed in the course of evolution, and what we encounter today as the complicated physical human body, with heart, kidneys, eyes, ears and so forth, is the product of a long development. It has all grown out of a simple germinal form that originated on Saturn. Through millions and millions of years it has continually changed and been transformed in order that it might achieve its present perfection. If today we wish to understand a member or an organ of this physical body—say, the heart or the lungs—we can do so only on the basis of this evolution. Nothing of what we encounter today as the heart existed on the old Saturn. Only gradually did these organs assume their present form, one being developed and incorporated earlier, another later. Some organs we can actually designate Sun-organs, as having first appeared during the Sun evolution, others Moon-organs, and so on. If we would understand the present physical body of man we must assemble our concepts from the whole Universe—that is the theosophical method of observation.

How does anthropology set to work? Theosophy ascends to the ultimate heights and from this spiritual summit examines individual phenomena. Anthropology remains on the ground, takes its point of departure from the details, and now even investigates individual cells in their juxtaposition. Everything is mechanically lined up and the cells are studied individually, but this does not reveal their relative age. Yet, far from being immaterial, it is important to know whether a given group of cells developed on the Sun or on the Moon. Much more could be said concerning these complicated conditions. Consider, for example, the human heart. True, as constituted today it evolved late, but as regards its first germinal potentiality it is one of the oldest human organs. During the period of the old Sun, the heart was dependent upon the forces governing there. During the Moon period its development continued; then the Sun withdrew from the Moon, with which it had been united, and henceforth its forces acted upon the heart from without. Here the heart underwent a different development, so that from then on a Sun element and a Moon element can be observed in its tendencies. Then Earth, Sun, and Moon were united again and worked upon the heart. After a pralaya the Earth evolution followed, during which the Sun first withdrew again. This separation resulted in an intensification of the Sun's influence from without. Then the Moon withdrew as well and also acted upon the heart from without. So, being among the oldest human organs, the heart comprises a Sun element, a Moon element, a second Sun element during the Earth evolution, a second Moon element during the Earth evolution, and finally, after the withdrawal of the Earth, an Earth element—all corresponding to cosmic evolution.

If these elements of the heart accord, as in the cosmic harmony, the heart is healthy; if any one element preponderates, it is sick. All human sickness derives from disharmony among the elements within the organ in question while their cosmic counterparts are in harmony. All healing depends upon strengthening the element that lacks its share, or subduing superfluous activity, as the case may be, thereby bringing the elements into harmony again. But talking about this harmony is not enough. In order to effect it one must really penetrate into the wisdom of the universe; one must be able to recognize the different elements in each organ. That will suffice to give an idea of genuine occult physiology and anatomy, which comprehend the whole human being out of the whole cosmos and explain the details out of the spirit.

Occult physiology speaks of Sun and Moon elements of the heart, larynx, brain, and so forth, but since all these elements are at work upon man himself, something in him confronts us today in which all these elements are consolidated. If we look into the human being himself and understand these elements, we also understand the etheric body, the astral body, etc., the sentient soul, the intellectual soul and the consciousness soul, as man is constituted today. That is anthroposophy, and in anthroposophy, too, we must start at the lowest step, gradually ascending to the highest.

Man's lowest member is the physical body that he has in common with the sensory world that is perceived through the senses and the sensory-physical mind. The theosophical point of view, starting from the universe, contemplates man in his cosmic contexts. In the matter of the sensory-physical world, anthroposophy must start from man, in so far as he is a sensory being. Only then can we deal appropriately with the etheric body, then the astral body, the ego, and so forth, and what is to be learned from them.

Observing the human being in this anthroposophical sense, we ask what it is that must first engage our interest. It is his senses, and it is through these that he acquires knowledge of the physical-sensory world. Starting from the physical plane, it is therefore these that anthroposophy must consider first. Let the study of the human senses then constitute our first chapter. Thereafter we will ascend to the study of the individual spiritual regions in man's nature.

Beginning with the study of the human senses, we at once find anthroposophy invading the territory of anthropology, for anthroposophy must invariably start from all that the senses tell us is real. But it must keep in mind that what is spiritual, influences man from above. In this sense it is genuine anthropology. Ordinary anthropology has thrown everything pertaining to the human senses into complete confusion, groping its way from detail to detail and examining only what is on the ground, so to speak. Important matters are disregarded because men have no Ariadne-thread to lead them out of the labyrinth of facts into the light. Anthropology cannot find its way out of this maze and must fall a victim to the Minotaur of illusion, for the saving thread can be spun only by spiritual research.

Even in the matter of the human senses, anthroposophy has a different story to tell than has external observation. At the same time it is interesting to note how external science has lately been forced by material facts to go to work more thoroughly, seriously and carefully. There is nothing more trivial than the enumeration of the five senses: feeling (touch), smell, taste, hearing, and sight. We shall see what confusion reigns in this enumeration. Science, it is true, has now added three more senses to the list, but as yet doesn't seem to know what to do about them. We will now list the human senses according to their real significance, and we will endeavor in the following to start laying the foundations of an anthroposophical doctrine of the senses.

The first sense in question is the one that in spiritual science can be called the sense of life. That is a real sense and must be as fully acknowledged as the sense of sight. What is it? It is something in the human being of which, when it functions normally he is not aware. He feels it only when it is out of order. We feel lassitude, or hunger and thirst, or a sense of strength in the organism; we perceive these as we do a color or a tone. We are aware of them as an inner experience. But as a rule we are conscious of this feeling only when something is out of order, otherwise it remains unobserved. The sense of life furnishes the first human self-perception; it is the sense through which the whole inner man becomes conscious of his corporeality. That is the first sense, and it must figure in the list just as does hearing or smell. Nobody can understand the human being and the senses who knows nothing of this sense that enables him to feel himself an inner entity.

We discover the second sense when we move a limb—say, raise an arm. We would not be human beings if we could not perceive our own movements. A machine is not aware of its own motion; that is possible only for a living being through the medium of a real sense. The sense of perceiving our own movements—anything from blinking to walking or running—we call the sense of our own movements.

We become aware of a third sense by realizing that the human being distinguishes within himself between above and below. It is dangerous for him to lose this perception, for in that case he totters and falls over. The human body contains a delicate organ connected with this sense: the three semicircular canals in the ear. When these are injured we lose our sense of balance. This third sense is the static sense, or sense of balance. (In the animal kingdom there is something analogous: the otoliths, tiny stones that must lie in a certain position if the animal is to maintain its equilibrium.)

These are the three senses through which man perceives something within himself, as it were; by their means he feels something within himself.

Now we emerge from the inner man to the point at which an interaction with the outer world begins. The first of such reciprocal relations arises when man assimilates physical matter and, by doing so, perceives it. Matter can be perceived only when it really unites with the body. This cannot be done by solid or fluid matter, but only by gaseous substances that then penetrate the bodily matter. You can perceive smell only when some body sends out gaseous matter that penetrates the organs of the mucous membrane of the nose. The fourth sense, then, is the sense of smell, and it is the first one through which the human being enters into reciprocal relationship with the outer world.

When we no longer merely perceive matter but take the first step into matter itself, we have the fifth sense. We enter into a deeper relationship with such matter. Here matter must be active, which implies that it must have some effect upon us. This takes place when a liquid or a dissolved solid comes in contact with the tongue and unites with what the tongue itself secretes. The reciprocal relationship between man and nature has become a more intimate one. We become aware not only of what things are, as matter, but of what they can induce. That is the sense of taste, the fifth sense.

Now we come to the sixth sense. Again there is an increase in the intimacy of the interaction. We penetrate still deeper into matter, things reveal more of their essence. This can only occur, however, through special provisions. The sense of smell is the more primitive of these two kinds of senses. In the case of smell, the human body takes matter as it is and makes no effort to penetrate it. Taste, where man and matter unite more intimately, is more complicated; then, matter yields more. The next step offers the possibility of penetrating still more deeply into the outer world. This takes place by reason of an external material substance being either transparent or opaque, or by the manner in which it permits light to pass through it, that is, how it is colored. An object that rays out green light is internally so constituted that it can reflect green light and no other. The outermost surface of things is revealed to us in the sense of smell, something of their inner nature in taste, something of their inner essence in sight. Hence the complicated structure of the eye, which leads us much deeper into the essence of things than does the nose or the tongue. The sixth sense, then, is the sense of sight.

We proceed, penetrating still deeper into matter. For example, when the eye sees a rose as red, the inner nature of the rose is proclaimed by its surface. We see only the surface, but since this is conditioned by the inner nature of the rose we become acquainted, to a certain extent, with this inner nature. If we touch a piece of ice or some hot metal, not only the surface and thereby the inner nature are revealed, but the real consistency as well because what is externally cold or hot is cold or hot through and through. The sense of temperature, the seventh, carries us still more intimately into the fundamental conditions of objects.

Now we ask ourselves if it is possible to penetrate into the nature of objects still more deeply than through this seventh sense. Yes, that can be done when objects show us not only their nature through and through, as in the case of temperature, but their most inner essence; that is what they do when they begin to sound. The temperature is even throughout objects. Tone causes their inner nature to vibrate, and it is through tone that we perceive the inner mobility of objects. When we strike an object its inner nature is revealed to us in tone, and we can distinguish among objects according to their inner nature, according to their inner vibration, when we open our inner ear to their tone. It is the soul of objects that speaks to our own soul in tones. That is the eighth sense, the sense of hearing.

If we would find an answer to the question as to whether there exist still higher senses, we must proceed cautiously. We must beware of confusing what is really a sense with other terms and expressions. For example, in ordinary life—down below, where much confusion exists—we hear of a sense of imitation, a sense of secrecy, and others. That is wrong. A sense becomes effective at the moment when we achieve perception and before mental activity sets in. We speak of a sense as of something that functions before our capacity for reasoning has come into action. To perceive color you need a sense, but for judging between two colors you do not.

This brings us to the ninth sense. We arrive at it by realizing that in truth there is in man a certain power of perception—one that is especially important in substantiating anthroposophy—a power of perception not based on reasoning, yet present in him. It is what men perceive when they understand each other through speech. A real sense underlies the perception of what is transmitted to us through speech. That is the ninth sense, the sense of speech.

The child learns to speak before he learns to reason. A whole people has a language in common, but reasoning is a matter for the individual. What speaks to the senses is not subject to the mental activity of the individual. The perception of the meaning of a sound is not mere hearing because the latter tells us only of the inner oscillations of the object. There must be a special sense for the meaning of what is expressed in speech. That is why the child learns to speak, or at least to understand what is spoken, before he learns to reason. It is, in fact, only through speech that he learns to reason. The sense of speech is an educator during the child's first years, exactly like hearing and sight. We cannot alter what a sense perceives, cannot impair anything connected with it. We perceive a color, but our judgment can neither change nor vitiate it; the same thing is true of the sense of speech when we perceive the inner significance of the speech sound. It is indispensable to designate the sense of speech as such. It is the ninth.

Finally we come to the tenth sense, the highest in the realm of ordinary life. It is the concept sense, which enables us perceptively to comprehend concepts not expressed through speech sounds. In order to reason we must have concepts. If the mind is to become active, it must first be able to perceive the concept in question, and this calls for the concept sense, which is exactly as much a sense by itself as is taste or smell.

Now I have enumerated ten senses and have not mentioned the sense of touch. What about it? Well, a method of observation lacking the spiritual thread confuses everything. Touch is usually tossed in with our seventh sense, temperature. Only in this meaning, however, as the sense of temperature, has it in the first instance any significance. True, the skin can be called the organ of the temperature sense—the same skin that serves also as the organ of the touch sense. But we touch not only when we touch [TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: The verb tasten can mean “to touch.” Indeed, the sense of touch is der Tastsinn, but more often it signifies something like our “groping,” as one gropes in the dark by means of the sense of touch: “feeling around for something.” In this sentence the first “touch” is to be understood in this sense, the second (berühren) as meaning “to come in contact with.”] the surface of an object. We touch when the eye seeks something, when the tongue tastes something, when the nose smells something. Touching is a quality common to the fourth to seventh senses. All of these are senses of touch.

Up to and including the sense of temperature we can speak of touching. Hearing we can no longer describe as touching; at least, the quality is present only to a small degree. In the senses of speech and concepts it is wholly absent. These three senses we therefore designate as the senses of comprehension and understanding. The first three senses inform us concerning the inner man. Reaching the boundary between the inner and the outer world, the fourth sense leads us into this outer world, and by means of the other three we penetrate it ever more deeply. Through the senses of touch we perceive the outer world on the surface, and through those of comprehension we learn to understand things, we reach their soul. Later we will deal with other senses transcending these.

Below the sense of smell, then, there are three senses that bring us messages out of our own human inner being. The sense of smell is the first to lead us into the outer world, into which we then penetrate deeper and deeper by means of the others. But what I have described to you today does not exhaust the list of senses. It was only an excerpt from the whole, and there is something below and something above the ten mentioned. From the concept sense we can continue upward to a first astral sense, arriving at the senses that penetrate the spiritual world. There we find an eleventh, a twelfth and a thirteenth sense. These three astral senses will lead us deeper into the fundamentals of external objects, deep down where concepts cannot penetrate. The concept halts before the external, just as the sense of smell halts before the inner man.

What I have given you is an urgently needed foundation upon which to build cognition of the human being. Through its neglect in the nineteenth century, everything pertaining even to philosophy and the theory of knowledge has been most horribly jumbled. Merely generalizing, people ask what the human being can learn by means of the individual sense, and they cannot even explain the difference between hearing and sight. Scientists talk about light waves in the same way they do about sound waves, without taking into account that sight does not penetrate as deeply as hearing. Through hearing we enter the soul-nature of things, and we shall see that by means of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth senses we penetrate their spirit as well: we enter the spirit of nature. Each sense has a different nature and a different character.

For this reason a great number of expositions given today, especially in physics, concerning the nature of sight and its relation to its surroundings may be regarded unhesitatingly as theories that have never reckoned with the true nature of the senses. Countless errors have arisen from this misconception of the nature of the senses. That must be emphasized, because it is quite impossible for popular representations to do justice to what has here been set forth. You read things written by people who can have no possible inkling of the inner nature of the senses. We must understand that science, from its standpoint, cannot do other than take a different attitude. It is inevitable that science should spread errors, because in the course of evolution the real nature of the senses was forgotten.

This true nature of the senses is the first chapter of anthroposophy.

In dealing with the human senses in our first lecture we merely enumerated them, though in a manner gleaned from the human being himself. We did not confuse and jumble them, as inevitably occurs in the external physiology of the senses where their relationships are not known, but rather, we enumerated them all in the order that accords with the nature of man. Today it shall be our task to examine the realm of the human senses more closely, as this is most important for a deeper fathoming of the human being.

We began with the sense we called the sense of life—the feeling of life, the vital sense. What is this sense based upon, in the true spirit of the word? In order to visualize its source we must delve rather deep down into the subconscious mind, into the substrata of the human organism. This method of spiritual-scientific research discloses first a peculiar co-operation of the physical and etheric bodies. The lowest member of the human being, the physical body, and the second, the etheric body, enter a certain mutual relationship whereby something new occurs in the etheric body. Something that is different permeates and flows through the etheric body, and actually, men of our time don't in the least know in a conscious way what this “something” is. It saturates the etheric body as water does a sponge. Spiritual science can tell us what it is that acts thus in the etheric body. It is what corresponds today to what men will develop in a far distant future as spirit man, or atma. At present, man does not possess this atma as his own. It is bestowed upon him, so to speak, by the surrounding outer spiritual world, without his being able to participate in it. Later on, in the distant future, he will himself have developed it within him. That which saturates the etheric body, then, is spirit man, or atma, and at the present stage of human evolution it is in a sense a superhuman being.

This superhuman atma, or spirit man, expresses itself by contracting the etheric body—cramping it, as it were. Using an analogy from the sense world, we can compare the effect to that of frost, which cramps and contracts the physical body. Man is as yet not ripe for what one day will be his most precious possession, and therefore, in a sense, it destroys him. The result of the contraction described is that the astral element is pressed out, squeezed out. In proportion as the etheric body is pressed together the physical body as well undergoes tension, whereby the astral body makes room for itself. You can visualize it approximately by imagining a sponge being squeezed out. Now, the activities in the astral body are all emotional experiences—pleasure, distaste, joy, sorrow—and this process of being squeezed out communicates itself to sentience as the sense of life. This is the process that takes place in the astral body, and it expresses itself as a feeling of freedom, of strength, of lassitude, etc.

Now let us ascend a bit. As the second sense, we listed the sense of our own movements. In this case, again, an extraneous principle is at work in the etheric body, and again it is one not yet indigenous in man. He has not achieved it through his own efforts; it flows into him out of the spiritual world, and, as with atma, the etheric body is saturated with it as a sponge with water. It is the life spirit, or buddhi, which in time will permeate him, but which for the present he holds as a gift, as it were, from the life spirit of the world. Its action is different from that of atma. As water seeks its level, so buddhi effects proportion, equilibrium, in the etheric and physical bodies, and hence in the astral body as well. This condition operates in such a way that when the balance is disturbed it can re-establish itself automatically. If we stretch out an arm, for example, destroying the balance through this change of position, the balance is immediately restored because the astral body is in a state of equilibrium. In proportion as we stretch out an arm the astral current streams in the opposite direction, thereby re-adjusting the balance. With every physical change of position, even merely blinking, the astral current in the organism moves in the opposite direction. In this inner experience of a process of equalization the sense of movement manifests itself.

We come now to a third element that can permeate man's etheric body, and this, too, is something that has entered human consciousness only to a negligible extent: manas, or spirit self. But inasmuch as precisely at this period it is incumbent upon man to develop manas, this being his earth task, manas acts differently upon the etheric body than do atma and buddhi, which are to be developed in the distant future. Its action is to expand the etheric body, effecting the opposite of what was designated “frost” in connection with the sense of life. This activity could be compared with a pouring, a streaming, of warmth into space, and this expands the elastic etheric body. We have something like streaming warmth when this semi-conscious expansion of the etheric body occurs. The consequence of this elastic expansion of the etheric body is a corresponding rarefaction of the astral body, which can thus expand as well. It need not be pressed out; by having more room it can remain in the expanding etheric body. While the sense of life becomes conscious through the contraction of the astral body, the static sensation results from the expansion of the etheric body, which thus makes more room for the astral body. In the way of a comparison it can be said that the texture of the astral body becomes rarefied, less dense. This thinning of the etheric and the astral bodies offers the possibility for the physical body to expand as well—in a sense, to extend itself.

Through the action of atma the physical body is contracted, through the action of buddhi it is stabilized, through the action of manas it is unburdened. The result is that at certain points it pushes out tiny particles, and this occurs in those three marvelous organs, the semi-circular canals of the ear. Such spreading out of physical matter does not arise from a forcing from within, but from a cessation or diminution of pressure from without, through the unburdening of the physical matter in question. This in turn enables the astral body to expand more and more. It makes contact with the outer world and must achieve equilibrium with it, for when this is not the case we cannot stand upright; we even fall over. If we would move in space we must take our bearings, and for this reason those three little canals are arranged in the three dimensions of space at right angles to each other. If these canals are injured we lose our sense of balance, we feel dizzy, we faint.

In the animal kingdom we find that everything of the kind in question results from the animal's premature descent into physical matter. A certain hardening is the consequence. We even find little stone formations in them, the so-called otoliths, that lie in such a way as to indicate the measure of balance.

A study of these three senses shows us clearly the difference between the factual results of spiritual-scientific research and the opinions held by the present-day inadequate thinking of the savant group soul, which clings to externals. Thus far we have considered three senses, passing outward from within, and the last of them lies close to the boundary line between what we experience within us and what must be experienced without if we are to identify ourselves with the outer world. We must distinguish clearly between facts and the inadequate thinking of the savant group soul. Just here, for example, the latter has shown us how we must not think. Quite recently, special events have brought external science face-to-face with the necessity for at last recognizing these three sense regions, but its failure to do so has proved how badly it must stray without the right guiding thread. These formations that signify a human sense organ were promptly compared with certain organs in the plant kingdom; in certain plants there appear formations that up to a point can be compared with the semi-circular canals in the human ear. Modern thinking, which as a rule is abandoned by logic precisely at the moment when adequate judgment is called for, infers from the appearance of these similar formations in plants that the latter, too, have a sense of equilibrium. It is not difficult to carry such logic ad absurdum. If you maintain that a plant has a sense on the grounds that it purposefully rolls up its leaves, a sense that goes so far as to entice and snap up its nourishment by means of certain contrivances, I can suggest a being that can do all that just as efficiently, that is, a mousetrap. What science has put forth concerning the human sense organs can be applied quite as logically to the mousetrap as to the plant. With equal propriety it could be maintained that scales have a sense of equilibrium. Mental derailments of this type derive from an inflexible sort of thinking that cannot really penetrate into the nature of things.

Until modern science learns to illuminate the edifice of the human organism with the light of theosophy, it will not be able to master the nature of these three senses. Theosophy enables us to understand the entire structure of the human organism anthroposophically. By means of spiritual-scientific observation, man in his entirety must be comprehended through his own inner nature.

We pass to the sense of smell. The reason for not occupying ourselves particularly with what science calls the sense of touch has already been indicated. As generally described, it is a mere figment of the imagination, an invention of physiology, hence we will disregard it. Because I can give but four lectures at this time I must pass rapidly over certain matters and utter many a paradox. In dealing with a number of senses we can speak of touch sensations, but not of a special touch sense in the way modern physiology does. All that takes place when we touch something is wholly comprised in the concept “sense of equilibrium.” If we press down on a table, stroke a velvet surface, pull a cord, everything that there manifests itself in pressure, stroking and pulling as a process of touch is nothing but a change of equilibrium within ourselves. While all this can be found in the sense of touch, the sense of touch proper must be sought higher up in the sense of equilibrium—there where this sense comes to fullest expression. An unimpaired sense of equilibrium provides the sense of touch. In science the most distressing theories prevail concerning this sense of touch.

Pressure is something that does not interest the ordinary human being. He speaks of “pressing,” but does not enquire further into the nature of the phenomenon. But from the spiritual-scientific point of view the question must arise. What takes place in pressing? What occurs in the sense of equilibrium? What compensation is effected by the astral body? The extent of misconception connected with the sensation of being pressed is revealed in physics. Physics talks of atmospheric pressure, and when some alert boy asks his teacher how we can stand the high atmospheric pressure without being squeezed to death, he receives the answer that pressure and counter-pressure are always equal; we are filled with air, so the outer pressure is canceled. But if the boy is bright enough he will object that he has often sat in the bathtub, completely surrounded by water, and although he was not filled with water he wasn't squeezed to death.

If the state of affairs were as represented by the physicists, an enormous atmospheric pressure would be exerted on the body's surface, and they explain our unawareness of it by the counter-pressure, by our being filled with air. This is one of the absurdities resulting from purely materialistic explanations. No, what we have to deal with here is an eminently spiritual process. The human being is so strong that he can push the astral body into the constricted portions and thereby re-establish equilibrium. When pressure is exerted, a little lump, as we may call it, always results, and this effect is so strong in the astral body that the latter, from within, overcomes the whole pressure of the outer air. In this realm the spirit is literally tangible.

After this short digression we will now return to the sense of smell. Here the human organism is taken in hand and affected by something other than was the case in the senses just dealt with, something less remote from human consciousness, that is, by the consciousness soul itself, which comes into action in the process of smelling. We shall see why all such things are accomplished by means of special organs. The consciousness soul not only effects an expansion and rarefaction at a certain place in the organism, but causes the astral body to extend its impulses beyond the organism. In proportion as the gaseous substance penetrates the mucous membrane of the nose, the astral substance presses outward, leaves the organism, penetrates the gaseous substance, and experiences something in it, not only in itself but in the substance. What it thus experiences it calls aroma, pleasant or unpleasant scent, etc., as the case may be. It is an antenna of the consciousness soul, projected by the latter through the agency of the astral body.

In the fifth sense, taste, the mental soul is active. It pours its astral currents outward through the organ of taste, sending the astral substance to meet whatever matter comes in contact with the tongue. The resulting process in the astral body is of a special nature. Let us first recall and examine the sense of smell. What is the nature of the stream emanating from the astral body in smelling? It is none other than the nature of will. The impulse of will that you feel within you streams forth to meet the inflowing matter. The process of smelling is one of resistance, an impulse to force back the instreaming matter. Spiritual science can tell you that this substance flowing in is but maya; it is external will. Your inner and your outer will attack each other and fight. Smelling is a conflict of will forces. Schopenhauer, who had an inkling that the interior and the exterior wills hinder and obstruct each other in the activity of the senses, built a philosophy of will upon it. But that is unsound metaphysics because this interplay of the two wills actually occurs only in smelling. In the other cases it is merely read into the processes.

Now, while in the sense of smell the outgoing stream is of the nature of will, it pertains to feeling when the current results from tasty food. What enters as food is also mere maya, an external image that is experienced as feeling. In the process of tasting, the interplay is between feeling and feeling. That is the real process of tasting; the rest is merely an outward image, and we shall see that the tongue is formed accordingly. For this reason this sense of taste is a sense of touch [TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: It is perhaps not without significance that Gefühl can mean “touch” as well as “feeling.” With this in mind let the student now read the sentence as follows: “For this reason the sense of taste is a Gefühlssinn.” It is most suggestive but unfortunately untranslatable, a sort of higher play on words. Cf. also footnote on p. 16.], notably of feeling, agreeable or disagreeable, repulsive, and the like. The point, however, does not center in feeling as such, but in the clash of feelings and their interaction.

In the sixth sense, sight, it is the sentient soul that works on the etheric body and flows into it, but strange to say, this effect partakes of the nature of thought. It represents a mental principle, and the thoughts constitute the subconscious element of the process. The sentient soul subconsciously bears within it what the consciousness soul then raises to consciousness as thought. What flows out of the eyes is a thinking in the sentient soul. Real thought substance streams out of the eyes from the sentient soul. This thought substance has far greater elasticity than the other substances that flow out when the sense of smell or of taste is active. It can reach out much farther toward its objects—indeed, it is a fact that something of an astral substance streams forth from men to far distant objects, unchecked until some other astral element offers resistance.

The scientific explanation that in seeing, ether waves enter the eye and the latter then projects the image outward, can mean nothing to sound thinking. Somebody would have to be inside to work the projecting business, wouldn't he? What a horribly superstitious notion, this “Something that busily projects!” When in trouble, science, so proud of its “naturalism,” does not disdain the assistance of that “imagination” it professes to scorn.

It is something astral, then, thought substance, that flows toward the object. An astral element leaves the body, streams toward the object, and continues onward until opposed by another astral element. The conflict between these two astral elements engenders color, which we sense as pertaining to objects. Actually, the genesis of color occurs at the boundary of objects, where the astral element emanating from the human being collides with that of the object. Color comes into being where the inner and the outer astral elements meet.

Here spiritual science leads us to a strange phenomenon. We learned that really a kind of thinking resides in the sentient soul, but that its first appearance is in the intellectual soul and that it only becomes conscious in the consciousness soul. In the sentient soul it is subconscious. Now, when we look at an object with both eyes, we have two impressions that in the first instance do not reach our consciousness, although they originate in an unconscious thought process. Two mental efforts must be made, because we have two eyes. If we are to become conscious of these mental efforts, however, we must travel from the sentient soul by way of the mental soul to the consciousness soul. This path can be readily visualized by means of a simple analogy from the sense world. We have two hands and we feel each one individually, but if we wish this feeling to become conscious, that each hand should feel the other, they must touch each other, cross. If the impressions gained in the sentient soul through mental effort are to enter our consciousness, they must cross. In that way you feel your own hand; you render conscious what you ordinarily do not feel. Just as you must touch an external object to become conscious of it, so contact is here necessary if objects are to enter our consciousness. That is also the reason why the two optic nerves in the physical brain are crossed. Through this crossing, an effort made subconsciously in the sentient soul is raised into the consciousness soul; one effort can be sensed by means of the other. That is an illustration of the way anthroposophy teaches us to know the human being down to the most intricate anatomical details.

Seventh among the senses is that of temperature, and again there is something in man that transmits it. It is the sentient body itself, which is of an astral nature. It transmits the sense of temperature by sending its astral substance outward. An experience of warmth or cold occurs only when the human being is really able to ray his astral substance outward, that is, when nothing prevents this. Such an experience of warmth does not occur when, for example, we sit in a bath of the same temperature as our own body, when equilibrium exists between ourselves and our surroundings. We experience temperature only when warmth or cold can flow out of or into us. When our surroundings are at a low temperature we let warmth flow into them; when our own temperature is low we let warmth flow into us. Here again it is obvious that an inflowing and outflowing takes place, and always the effects of the human sentient body are involved. If we are in contact with an object whose temperature is steadily increasing, our sentient body will stream out more and more strongly, until the limit is reached. When the object has become so hot that nothing corresponding to it can flow forth from us, then we can bear the heat no longer, and we are burned. When it is no longer possible for the sentient body to stream out, the heat becomes unendurable and we are burned. When we lack sufficient astral substance to equalize the outstreaming warmth ether, when we can send out no more sentient substance because the object cannot absorb it, it would seem as though in touching an extremely cold object we should have a burning sensation; as a matter of fact, that is exactly what occurs. In touching a very cold object we have a burning sensation that can even raise blisters.

Now we enter the realm of hearing, the eighth sense. What active principle is it, we ask, that participates in the process of hearing? The human etheric body. But this human etheric body, as constituted today, is in reality unable to serve us, as the sentient body still can, without incurring a permanent loss. Ever since the Atlantean time the etheric body has been so constituted that it cannot possibly give off anything, so that a more powerful action must be brought about by means other than through the sense of temperature. The human being can contribute nothing; he possesses nothing by means of which he might develop out of himself a sense higher than that of temperature. No higher senses, therefore, could come into being were it not that at this point something special takes place in man that provides what he lacks. Higher beings permeate him—the Angeloi, the Angels—that send their own astral substance into him. They place their own astral substance at his disposal, and what he cannot ray forth they supply for him. Essentially, then, it is foreign astral substance that permeates man and is active in him. He appropriates it and lets it stream out. The beings active here, the Angels, absolved their human existence in the past. Their astral substance enters us, and then streams forth from the sense of hearing to meet what the tone brings. On the wings of these beings we are carried into the innermost nature, the soul, of objects, so that we may know them. Beings of an order higher than man are here active, but they are of the same nature as his own astral substance.

As a still higher sense, the ninth, we mentioned the sense of speech, the word sense, the sound [TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: Throughout this exposition the term “sound” (Laut) refers to the kind of sounds of which spoken language consists, notably, but not exclusively, the vowels. Articulation in the narrower sense.] sense. To the functioning of this sense the human being can again contribute nothing by himself, can produce nothing. He has nothing to give, hence he must be entered and helped by beings of a substance similar in its nature to that of the human etheric body. These beings possess the corresponding astral substance as well, but this is forced out into the surrounding world during the process in question. They are the Archangels, who permeate the human being with their etheric bodies, which he can then pour out into his surroundings. The Archangels play a far more important role than the Angels. They enable man to hear a sound. They are in man. They enable him not only to hear a tone—say a G or a C-sharp—but to perceive a sound, like “ah,” together with its meaning. Thus we can experience the inner nature of a sound we hear. These beings are at the same time the Spirits of the several folk individualities, the Folk Spirits.

In the sense of hearing the Angels give outer expression to their activity through the medium of the air. They work with the air in the ears, and this results in external activity of the air. The Archangels, on the other hand, produce activity in the lymphatic fluids, as in a watery substance. They guide the circulation of these fluids in a certain direction, enabling us to perceive, for example, the sound “ah” in its full significance. The outer expression of this work is the forming of folk physiognomies, the creation of the particular expression of the human organism as related to a certain people. From all this we can infer that the lymphatic fluids in man flow in a different manner, that the whole organism makes a different impression, according to the way in which the Archangels of the people in question have imparted a certain sense of sound by means of the lymphatic current.

When a people designates the ego with the word Adam (irrespective of the theories it holds regarding the human ego), the Folk Spirit speaks through the two a's that succeed each other in consecutive syllables. A certain basic organization results. A member of that people must feel the nature of the ego to be such as corresponds to the two a's, to “Adam.” The consequences are different when a people expresses the ego with the word “ich.” [TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: Ich means I (or also, ego). As the vowel sounds are so important it should be kept in mind that the i in ich is pronounced as in the word “if.”] Such a people must have a different conception of the ego. A different feeling results when, in place of the two a's, the sounds “i” and “ch” are linked. A certain nuance, a certain color, is inherent in the “i,” suggesting what the Folk Spirit infuses into the individual organism in connection with the conception of the ego.

Through the sequence a-o something different is infused into a people than through the sequence i-e. The words amor and Liebe are very different things. When the Folk Spirit says amor we have one shade of feeling, and quite a different one when he says Liebe. Here we see the Folk Spirit at work, and we also see why the differentiation of sounds came into being. It is by no means immaterial, for example, that the word “Adam” was used in old Hebrew to denote the first human form, but by the ancient Persians to designate the ego. The fact shows that quite different feelings and quite definite trends of these feelings are expressed in this way.

Here we have the first hint of the mystery of speech, or rather, of its first elements. What is involved is the activity of spirits of the order of Archangels, who penetrate man with the sense of sound and vibrate in his whole watery substance. One of the greatest experiences vouchsafed him who ascends to higher cognition occurs when he begins to feel the difference between the various sounds in relation to their creative force.

Tone force manifests its pre-eminent activity in the air, sound force only in the watery element.

Here is another example. When you designate some being with the word Eva, and then wish to express something more, something that is related to this word as the spiritual is to the material, you can apply the reflected image, Ave. This sequence of syllables by which the Virgin is addressed actually affects in the human organism the exact opposite of the word Eva. Here we also find the reason for another variant of E-v-a; place a j before Ave, and you have Jave. When progressing to higher cognition, penetrating the secret of sound, you can learn to know all the connections between Jave and Eva. You will know what a higher being of the order of Archangel has inspired in man. The truth concerning the nature of speech is that it is based upon a real sense, the sense of sound.

Speech did not arise arbitrarily. It is a spiritual product, and in order to perceive it in its spiritual aspect we have the sense of sound, which in a systematic enumeration of the senses is exactly as justified as the others. There are still deeper reasons why the senses must be listed in just this manner. In the next lecture we will ascend to the sense of concept and the higher senses in order to understand the microcosm anthroposophically.

In the last lecture we dealt with the sense of speech, and today we will examine the sense of concept. The term “concept” is, of course, not intended here as pure concept, but in its everyday meaning. That is, I hear a word spoken and I visualize its meaning. This sense could also be called the sense of visualization.¹ In order to understand how this sense comes about we must glance back once more to the sense of tone or hearing and to the sense of speech or sound, asking ourselves what it means “to have a sense of speech.” How does the perception of sound² come about? What particular process takes place when we perceive a sound like “a” or “i”? To grasp this we must understand the apparatus of sound perception, and we will give a few indications that you will be able to substantiate later.

In music we distinguish between the single tone, the melody, and the harmony. Harmony implies perception of tones occurring simultaneously, melody calls for the mental co-ordination of a sequence of tones. The mechanism of sound perception can be comprehended by studying the relation between the tonal element in sound and sound itself.

Suppose we could raise into consciousness what we accomplish subconsciously in perceiving sound. We would then no longer be dealing merely with a sense perception but with a judgment, with the formation of a concept. If we were able, in hearing a melody, so to crowd the single tones in time as to perceive them simultaneously, to cause past and future to coincide; if in the middle of a melody we already knew what was to follow, knew this so vividly as to draw the future into the present, then we would have consciously converted the melody into a harmony. We are not able to do that, but what we cannot execute consciously actually takes place unconsciously in the sense of sound. When we hear an “a” or an “i” or other sounds, a subconscious activity momentarily transforms a melody into a harmony. That is the secret of sound; it is melody transformed into harmony. This marvelous subconscious activity proceeds in approximately the same way as the various refractions in the eye are carried out according to physical laws, which is another process we can call to consciousness after it has taken place.

But this subconscious activity that instantly converts a melody into a harmony is not enough; something more is needed if the sound is to come forth. A musical tone is not a simple thing. A tone is a musical tone only by virtue of its harmonics³ (overtones) that sound with it, however faintly, in contrast to noises, which have no harmonics. In a harmony, therefore, we hear not only the separate tones but the harmonics of each tone as well. Accordingly, if we crowd a melody into a harmony, we have not only the separate notes of the melody crowded into simultaneity, but the harmonics of each note as well. Now, the final step. Through the agency of that subconscious activity, the attention of the soul must be distracted from the fundamental tones of the melody. These must in a sense be aurally disregarded, and only the harmony created by the harmonics be comprehendingly heard. A sound comes into being when a melody is transformed into harmony and then the fundamentals disregarded, attention being directed exclusively to that harmony of the harmonics. What these harmonics then yield is the sound “a,” “i,” etc. In this way we have explained sound perception as taking place in the same way that sight does in the eye.

The next question is difficult but important. How does the perception of visualization come about? How does it happen that when we hear a word we understand its meaning by means of the word itself? That this is a question by itself can be seen from the fact that in different languages the same thing is designated by different sounds. While the sound we hear is a different one in every language (amor and Liebe), it nevertheless points the path to an identical underlying conception. Whether the word used is amor or Liebe, it appeals to the sense of visualization underlying it. This underlying sense of visualization is always uniform, regardless of all the differences in the sound formations. But now, how is this perceived?

In studying this process, the perception of visualizations or conceptions, we should keep in mind our premise that conceptions reach us by way of sounds. To enable a conception to come about, attention must be still further diverted; the whole harmonic series must be ignored. At the moment when the soul as well is unconsciously distracted from the harmonics, we perceive what has incorporated in the sounds, what pertains to them as conception or visualization. This implies that the visualization reaching us through sounds—the visualization that, as something universally human, pervades all sounds and languages—comes to us slightly colored, toned down.

Incorporated in this harmonic series, which creates the timbre and intensity and the various sounds in the different languages, which vibrates into the human organism, are the Folk Spirits. These manifest themselves through the sounds of the language. Language is the mysterious whispering of the Folk Spirits, the mysterious work upon the fluids, that vibrates into our organism through the harmonics. But what underlies the harmonic series is the universal human element, the common spirit of man that suffuses the whole earth. The universal spirit of man can be perceived only when each of us, from his own particular locality, ignoring the harmonics, listens for what is inaudible, for what belongs in the realm of conceptions.

In the course of historical evolution, men did not acquire the capacity to comprehend what is universally human until they learned to recognize common factors by disregarding, as it were, the shades of sounds. Only in our life of conceptions can we begin to grasp the Christ Spirit in His true being. The spiritual beings whose task it is to proclaim Him in manifold forms—His messengers to whom He has assigned their missions and tasks—are the Folk Spirits of the various folk individualities. This thought has found very beautiful expression in Goethe's fragment, Die Geheimnisse.

That will give a picture of what the sense of visualization is, bringing us to an important milestone. We have exhausted what we have in the way of ordinary senses, finally arriving at the study of the subconscious human activity that is able, through the force of the astral body, to push from consciousness even the harmonic series. It is the human astral body that pushes aside this harmonic series as though with tentacles. If we achieve this power over the harmonics, which means nothing else than the ability to ignore them, it signifies increased strength in our astral body.

But even this does not exhaust the capacity of the astral body; it is capable of still higher achievements. In the cases we have so far discussed, the appearance of a visualization has presupposed the overcoming of an outer resistance; something external had to be pushed back. Now we find the astral body to be endowed with still more power when we learn that its astral substance enables it not only to push back what is outside, but also, when there is no outer resistance, to stretch forth, to eject, its astral substance through its own inner strength. If one is able thus to stretch forth the astral tentacles, so to speak, with no resistance present, then there appears what is called spiritual activity; the so-called spiritual organs of perception come into being. When the astral substance is pushed out from a certain part of the head and forms something like two tentacles, man develops what is called the two-petaled lotus flower. That is the imaginative sense, the eleventh.

In proportion to his capacity for stretching out his astral tentacles, man develops other spiritual organs. As his ability to thrust out astral substance increases, he forms a second organ in the vicinity of the larynx, the sixteen-petal lotus flower, the inspirational sense, the twelfth. In the neighborhood of the heart the third organ develops, the twelve-petal lotus flower, the thirteenth, the intuitive sense. These three senses, the imaginative, the inspirational and the intuitive, are additional, astral senses, over and above the physical senses. Beyond these there are still higher, purely spiritual senses, but let them here be merely mentioned.

The question now arises as to whether these three astral senses are active only in more highly developed, clairvoyant people, or has the ordinary human being anything that can be called an activity of these senses? The answer is that everybody has them, but there is a difference. In clairvoyants these senses operate by stretching out like tentacles, while in ordinary people their effect is inward. At the top of the head, for instance, just where the two-petal lotus flower forms, there are tentacles of this kind that reach inward and cross in the brain. In other words, ordinary consciousness directs them inward instead of outward. All that is outside us we see, but not what is within us. Nobody has seen his own heart or brain, and it is the same with spiritual matters. Not only are these organs not seen, but they do not even enter consciousness. They can therefore not be consciously employed, but they function nevertheless; they are active. Here consciousness makes no decisions whatever regarding reality.

These senses, then, are active. They direct their activity inward, and this impulse directed inward is perceived. When the imaginative sense pours inward there arises what in ordinary life is called outer sensation,⁴ outer perception of something. We can have an outer perception only because what appears in the imaginative sense works its way into us. By means of this imaginative sense we are able to “sense” a color, and that is not synonymous with seeing a color, or analogous to hearing a tone. When we see a color, we say, for instance, it is red. But through the activity of the imaginative sense we can also have a sensation connected with it—that color is beautiful or ugly, pleasant or unpleasant.

The inspirational sense also directs its activity inward, and this produces a more complicated sensation: feeling. The entire life of feeling is an activity of the inspirational organ streaming inward.

When the intuitive sense pours inward, thinking proper arises, that is, thought forming. So the order of the processes is: We sense something, we have a feeling connected with it, and we form thoughts about it.

Thus we have ascended from the life of the senses to the soul life. Starting from without, from the sense world, we have seized hold on the soul of man himself in its activities of sentience, feeling and thought. Were we to continue along this path, examining the still higher senses that correspond to the other lotus flowers—they can hardly be called senses any more—the entire higher life of the soul would be revealed to us in their interplay. When, for example, the eight- or ten-petal lotus flower directs its psychic activity inward, a still more delicate soul activity is engendered, and at the end of the scale we find the most subtle one of all which we call pure, logical thought. All this is produced by the working of the various lotus flowers into the inner man. Now, when this inward motion is transformed into an outer motion, when the astral tentacles stretch outward and criss-cross, directing, as so-called lotus flowers, their activity outward, then that higher activity comes into being through which we rise from the soul to the spirit, where what normally appears as our inner life (thinking, feeling and willing) now makes its appearance in the outer world, borne by spiritual beings.

We have arrived at an understanding of the human being by ascending from the senses by way of the soul to what is no longer in him, to spirit acting from without, which belongs equally to man and to surrounding nature, to the whole world. We have ascended to the spirit. As far as we have gone, I have described the human being as an instrument for perceiving the world, experiencing it with his soul and grasping it spiritually. I have not described something finished, but something that is active in man. The whole interplay of forces and activities of the senses, the soul, and the spirit is what shapes the human being as he stands before us on earth. How does this come about? We can give but brief intimations, but such as we find substantiated on all sides.

What we see before us in observing a human being merely with our senses really does not exist at all; it is only an optical illusion. Spiritual-scientific observation actually perceives something quite different. Remember that sensibly we cannot perceive ourselves completely. We see but a part of our surface, never our back or the back of our head, for example. But we know, nevertheless, that we have a back, and we know it by means of the various senses, such as the sense of equilibrium or of motion. An inner consciousness tells us of the parts we cannot perceive externally. Indeed, there is a great deal of us that we cannot perceive unless the appropriate organs are developed.

Let us further consider the portion of the human being that he himself can perceive sensibly—with the eye, for instance—and let us delimit it. Through what agency is he to perceive it? Actually, all that we can see of ourselves with our eyes we perceive through the sentient soul; the sentient body would not be able to perceive it. It is the sentient soul that really comprehends. The portion of the human being that he sees with his eyes, which the sentient soul confronts, is nothing but the image of the sentient body, the outer illusion of the sentient body. We must, of course, extend the concept a bit to cover those portions of the body we can touch though not see, but there, too, we have the image of the sentient body. Perception comes about through other activities of the sentient soul. The latter extends to every point at which outer perception occurs, and what it perceives there is not the sentient soul but the illusion of the sentient body. Could we perceive this, we would see that astrally something endeavors to approach but is pushed back.

This image of the sentient body comes about as follows. From back to front there is co-operation of the sentient soul and the sentient body. When two currents meet, a damming up occurs, and thereby something is revealed. Imagine you see neither current, but only what results from the whirling together of the two. What shows as a result of this impact of the sentient soul thrusting outward and the sentient body pressing inward from without, is the portion of our external corporeality that the eye or other outer sense can perceive. We can actually determine the point on the skin where the meeting of the sentient soul and sentient body occurs. We see how the soul works at forming the body. We can put it this way. There is in the human being a cooperation of the current passing from back to front and the opposite one, resulting in an impact of sentient soul and sentient body.

In addition to these two currents there are those that come from the right and from the left. From the left comes the one pertaining to the physical body; from the right, the one pertaining to the etheric body. These flow into each other and intermingle to a certain extent, and what comes into being at this point is the sensibly perceptible human being, his sensibly perceptible exterior. A perfect illusion is brought about. From the left comes the current of the physical body, from the right that of the etheric body, and these form what appears to us as the sensibly perceptible human being.

In like manner we have in us currents running upward and downward. From below upward streams the main current of the astral body, and downward from above the main current of the ego. The characterization given of the sentient body as being bounded in front should be understood as meaning that it operates in a current upward from below, but that it is then seized by the current running forward from the rear, so that in a certain sense it is thereby bounded.

But the astral body contains not only the one current that runs upward from below as well as forward from the rear, but also the other one running backward from the front; so that the astral body courses in two currents, one upward from below and the other backward from the front. This gives us four intermingling currents in the human being.

What is brought about by the two vertical currents? We have one current running upward from below, and if it could discharge unobstructed we would draw it thus as in the diagram, but this it cannot do. The same is true of the other currents. Each is held up, and in the center, where they act upon each other, they form the image of the physical body.

Actually, it is due to the intersection and criss-crossing of the currents that the threefold organization of man comes into being. Thus the lower portion that we ourselves can see should be designated as the sentient body in the narrower sense. Higher up lies what in the narrower meaning we can call our senses. This portion we can no longer perceive ourselves, because it is the region where the senses themselves are located. You cannot look into your eyes but only out of them, into the world. Here the sentient soul, or its image, is active. The face is formed by the sentient soul. But the two currents must be properly differentiated. The lower currents, streaming from all sides, are held down from above, and this lower part we can designate the sentient body. Below, the impulses proceed largely from without; while above, it is principally the sentient soul that makes itself felt. From above there streams the ego, and at the point where this current is strongest, where it is least pushed back by the other currents, the intellectual soul forms its organ.

Now, in addition to this ego current we have one from left to right and one from right to left. Again the whole activity is intersected. There is further a current running through the longitudinal axis of the body, effecting a sort of split up above. At the upper boundary a portion of the intellectual soul is split off, and this is the form of the consciousness soul. There the consciousness soul is active, extending its formative work into the innermost man. Among other things, it forms the convolutions in the grey matter of the brain.

The nature of this spiritual being helps us to understand what exists in man as form. That is the way in which the spirit works on the form of the human body. It evokes all the organs plastically, as the artist chisels a figure out of stone. The structure of the brain can be comprehended only with the knowledge of how these separate currents interact in man; what we then see is the joint activity of the various principles of the human being.

Now we must go into a few details in order to show how these facts can be fruitful when they will have become the common property of a true science. We have learned that up above there came into being the organs of the consciousness soul, the intellectual soul, and the sentient soul. The ego acts downward from above; the main portion of the astral body, upward from below. In their mutual damming up, a reciprocal action takes place that extends along the whole line, so to speak; it forms the longitudinal axis of the body, and the effect of this will be a different one at every point of the line. When the ego, for instance, is called upon to perform a conscious act, this can only be done at the point where the sentient soul, the intellectual soul, and the consciousness soul have developed their organs. Through the intellectual soul, for example, reasoning comes about, and a judgment must be localized in the head because it is there that the appropriate human forces find expression.

Now let us assume that such an organ is to come into being, but one in which no reasoning takes place, in which the intellectual soul has no part, an organ independent of the work of sentient, intellectual and consciousness souls, in which only the physical, etheric and astral bodies and the ego have a part—an organ in which an impression received from the astral body is immediately followed by the reaction of the ego, without reasoning. Suppose that these four members of the human being—astral body and ego, etheric body and physical body—are to cooperate without any delicate activity such as reasoning or the like. What would be the nature of an organ in which these four currents work together? It would have to be an organ that would not reason. The reaction of the ego would follow directly, without reasoning, upon the impression received by the organ in question from the astral body. That would mean that the ego and the astral body act together. From the astral body a stimulus proceeds to the ego, the ego reacts upon the astral body.

If this is to be a physical organ it must be built up by the etheric body. From the left would come the current of the physical body, from the right, that of the etheric body. They would be dammed up in the middle and a condensation would result.

In addition, the currents of the ego and the astral body, from above and below respectively, would undergo the same process.

If we draw a diagram of such a structure, where in one organ the currents of the physical and etheric bodies are dammed up against those of the ego and astral body, the result is nothing less than the diagram of the human heart with its four chambers:

That is the way the human heart came into being. When we consider all that the human heart achieves—the co-operation of the physical, etheric and astral bodies and the ego—it will be borne in upon us that the spirit had to build the human heart in this way.

Here is another example. We have learned that in visual activity there is really a subconscious thought activity present. Conscious thought activity comes about only in the brain. Well, how must the brain be built in order to make conscious thought activity possible? In the brain we have the outer membrane, then a sort of blood vessel membrane, then the spinal cord fluid, and finally the brain proper. The latter is filled with nerve substance, and when sense impressions are communicated to this nerve substance through the senses, conscious thought activity arises. The nerve substance is the outer expression of conscious thought activity.

When an organ is to be created in which not a conscious but a subconscious reaction to an external impression is to take place, it would have to be built in a similar way. Again there must be a sheath and something like a blood vessel membrane against the back. The spinal cord fluid must dry up and the whole brain mass be pushed back to make room for a subconscious thought activity undisturbed by a nervous system. Were the nerve substance not pushed back, thinking would take place there; when it is pushed back, no thinking can take place. Thus an external impression is first digested by subconscious thinking on the part of those portions not interlaced by the nervous system, and only later does it penetrate to the instrumentality of sentience, feeling and conscious thought.

The result of this pushing back of the brain, so to speak, to the rear wall is that the brain has become an eye. The eye is a small brain so worked over by our spirit that the nerve substance proper is pushed back to the rear wall of the eye and becomes the retina. That is the way nature's architects work. A single plan governs in building really all of the sense organs; it is merely modified in the case of each organ as occasion demands. At bottom, all sense organs are small brains formed in different ways, and the brain is a sense organ of a higher order.

There is one more detail to be studied, but first we will interpolate a few elucidating remarks in the nature of theoretical cognition, which in turn will clarify the standpoint of anthroposophy.

We have said that the standpoint of anthropology lies below, among the details of the sense life, that theosophy stands upon the summit, and anthroposophy half-way between the two. In a general way, anyone can become convinced of the existence of the sense world by means of his senses, and with his mind understand the laws governing there. For this reason most people believe unhesitatingly anything resembling their sense experiences, which can be checked. It could easily be demonstrated that formally there is no difference whatever between the spiritual scientist's statements concerning the existence of spiritual worlds and the belief that there was such a person as Frederick the Great. Formally there is no difference between the belief that there are Spirits of Will and the belief that there was a Frederick the Great. When someone constructs for you the life of Frederick the Great from external data, you believe that there was a person with the attributes set forth. The human being gives credence to what is told him, provided it resembles what he finds in his own environment. The spiritual investigator is not in a position to deal with such things, but it is none the less true that there is no difference in the attitude assumed toward such communications. We have described the standpoints of anthropology and of theosophy. Ours is between the two. A feeling of confidence and faith in theosophy's message is fully justified by our sense of truth; there is such a thing as well-founded acceptance of theosophic truths.

Coming to the third possibility, the standpoint lying between the other two, we find that from this vantage point we can distinguish intelligently that there is a sense perception; I believe because I can see it. There is a spiritual perception; I believe because the spiritual scientist tells me it is there. But there is a third possibility. Here is a hammer; my hand grasps it, picks it up, and raises it from the horizontal to the vertical position. We then say that it was moved and raised by my will. That will not strike anybody as remarkable, for we see the underlying will embodied in the man that raises the hammer. But supposing the hammer were to raise itself up, without being touched by a visibly incorporated will. In that case it would be foolish to imagine such a hammer to be the same as other hammers. We would have to conclude that something invisible was at work in the hammer. What conclusion would we draw from this embodiment of a will or other spiritual force? When I see something in this world acting as it could not act according to our knowledge of the laws of outer form, I am forced to conclude that in this case I do not see the spirit in the hammer, but it is reasonable to believe in it; in fact, I should be a perfect fool not to believe in spiritual activity.

Suppose you are walking with a clairvoyant and encounter a human form lying motionless by the way. With the ordinary senses it might be impossible to determine whether it was a living being or a cardboard dummy, but the clairvoyant would know. He would see the etheric and astral bodies and could say that that is a living being. You would be justified in believing him, even though you could not perceive the etheric and astral bodies yourself. But now the figure stands up, and you see that the spiritual scientist was right. That is the third possibility.

Now I will tell you a case that you can observe and verify in ordinary life—close at hand in one sense, though not in another. We have considered the various currents in the human being and found them to run as follows:

From left to right, the currents of the physical body.
From right to left, those of the etheric body.
From the front backward, those of the sentient body.
From the rear forward, those of the sentient soul.
From above downward, those of the ego.
From below upward, those of the astral body.

The ego, then, acts downward from above; so how would its physical organ have to lie? The physical organ of the ego is the circulating blood; and the ego could not function downward from above without an organ running in the same direction in the human body. Where the main direction of the blood-stream is horizontal, not vertical, there can be no ego, as in men. The main direction of the blood-stream had to raise itself in man to the vertical in order to enable the ego to lay hold on the blood. No ego can intervene where the main blood-stream runs horizontally instead of vertically. The group ego of animals can find no organ in them, because the main blood-line runs horizontally. Through the erection of this line to the vertical in man, the group ego became an individual ego.

This difference between men and the animals shows how erroneous it is to set up a relationship inferred from purely external phenomena. That act of rising from the horizontal to the vertical is an historic incident, but it could no more have taken place without an underlying will, without the co-operation of spirit, than the raising of the hammer could have done. Only when a will, a spiritual force, courses through the blood can the horizontal line pass over into the vertical, can the upright position come about and the group soul rise to become the individual soul. It would be illogical to recognize the spiritual force in one case, that of the hammer, and not in the other, in man.

That is the third possibility, a middle way of conviction, as it were, through which we can verify all theosophic truths. The deeper we penetrate into these matters, the clearer it becomes that this middle path to conviction is universally applicable—this middle way that fructifies ordinary experience through spiritual science. External research will be stimulated by spiritual science. Comparing the results of genuine spiritual-scientific research with outer phenomena, we are forced to the conclusion that all external processes are really comprehensible only if we take into account, without prejudice, the experiences of spiritual science. Thus to observe the world without prejudice, that is the standpoint of anthroposophy. It receives fruitful impulses from above, from theosophy, and from below, from anthropology; it observes the facts of the spiritual world and the things of this world, and explains the latter by means of the former. The building of each of our organs can be explained through spiritual activity, just as we described the transformation of the brain into an eye, and the build of the heart.

By showing how spiritual facts and earthly things are interwoven, how spiritual truths are verified in outer phenomena, anthroposophy leads to the conviction that it is senseless not to acknowledge the higher truths that spiritual science is in a position to bring us.

• 1. The verb vorstellen means imagine, in the loose sense (“I can imagine”), but we have no noun in English that exactly reproduces Vorstellung. “Visualization” must serve, but the reader should understand that its application is not limited to the visible; it covers abstract ideas as well as concrete objects—anything we “call to mind.” The terms “visualization,” “conception” and “mental picture” are here used interchangeably.
• 2. Always the spoken sound is meant.
• 3. Dr. Steiner refers here to something much more definite than what is suggested by our “overtones,” a term that has almost lost its original significance. The harmonic series as it is known in the field of music is the series of intervals into which a vibrating body (a string, a column of air, etc.) divides itself unassisted by artificial means. Under favorable conditions some three to five of these harmonics can be detected by a keen ear. They come out most clearly in large church bells.
• 4. There is no wholly satisfactory English equivalent for the noun, Empfindung, though the adjective empflindlich is exactly “sensitive.” The term “sensation” is used in this translation (occasionally varied by “sentience”), but it should be understood that only the meaning it has, for example, in “a sensation of warmth” is here applicable, never that in “the news created a sensation.” In other words, it is the noun corresponding to the adjective “sentient,” not “sensational,” and to the verb “to sense.”

We have been dealing with the various force currents that shape the human organism and give it form in a manner enabling us to comprehend it. If we really learn to know these formative forces, we must perceive that they could not function otherwise, that our heart, our eyes, inevitably had to become exactly what they are. We have traced the sense image of ourselves back to those super-sensible currents that flow back and forth in different directions, from above downward, from right to left, from the back forward, and so forth. At this point someone may try to catch me out by objecting that while dealing with the currents I had failed to explain a certain significant phenomenon in the human organism, that in addition to the asymmetrical organs (heart, liver, stomach, etc.) there are those that are arranged symmetrically. You might say that my description could at a pinch be accepted if the whole organism were laid out asymmetrically, but not in connection with the symmetrical organs. This objection, however, can be cleared away, too, as follows.

We have learned that the physical and etheric bodies stream from left to right and from right to left respectively, that is, in the plane in which the human being is formed symmetrically. Spiritual science teaches us that the physical body is an ancient entity, stemming from the old Saturn, while the germs of the etheric body, the astral body, and the ego were prepared on the old Sun, the old Moon, and the Earth respectively. In its first appearance on Saturn the physical body was asymmetrical, conditioned by a current corresponding to the one active today from left to right, and the first germ of the etheric body was also asymmetrical, with a current from right to left. Thence development proceeds; the physical body is further formed on the old Sun, the old Moon, and so on. Had this not occurred, the physical body would have remained lopsided, asymmetrical. As it actually happened, however, the further development of the physical body and of the other members continued on the old Moon and on the Earth, during which something occurred that altered the whole previous development and brought about a turnabout, so to speak, a reversal of the direction. If the physical body were to be formed, not into a lopsided but into a symmetrical structure, the Saturn current running from left to right had to be opposed by one running from right to left. How was this brought about? By the separation of the old Sun from the old Moon. The Sun forces, which hitherto had worked on the physical body from within, acted henceforth from without, that is, from the opposite direction. The physical body, as it was constituted up to the time of the old Moon, was then influenced by the Sun from without.

The etheric body experienced a similar transformation. You might ask why it is that this other side of the physical body, the result of Sun forces acting from without, is not much smaller, in a sense stunted, in comparison with the first, the older portion? It is because those beings that left the Moon and passed over with the Sun could develop stronger influences from their new sphere of action, owing precisely to this separation that meant a higher development for them. They had a more difficult task than the Saturn beings, for they had to counteract what was already developed in one direction. This condition obstructed the whole process of formation, so they had to become more powerful if they were to fulfill their task. This, in turn, necessitated their acting from the Sun during the Moon period, whereby their influence was intensified. In this way these younger but more powerful currents—from right to left—balanced the weaker ones—from left to right—and the physical body became a symmetrical structure.

We will now examine more closely some important details of the effects of those force currents, remembering that the sentient body sends its forces into the human organism from the front backward, but that the emanations of the sentient soul run forward from the back. Given the existence of the physical and etheric bodies and the general background, we ask in what manner these forces proceed to build the human organism?

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

By being dammed up, stopped by the physical body, the backward-flowing currents of the sentient body could now bore into the human organism and build divers organs into what was already there. At the same time the sentient soul works in the organism from the back toward the front. The currents of the sentient body are dammed by the physical organism and bore their way in. In this way they are obstructed by the physical body, so they really had to bore holes, as it were.

In front (cf. sketch) we have the currents of the sentient body boring their way in. They form the sense organs. In the rear the formative forces are active that build the brain over them; this gives us the diagram of the human head seen in profile. The openings represent the eyes, ears, organs of smell, etc., and the brain is superimposed behind and above them. If spiritual science tells the truth, it is clear that the human head could not possibly appear different from the way it actually does. If a human head were ever to come into being at all it would have to look as it does. It does look that way, and that is evidence proffered by the world of outer phenomena itself.

In that connection there is another point to mention. The work of the sentient body proceeds inward, that of the sentient soul outward, or at least, it has that tendency. As a matter of fact, it is obstructed before emerging; it remains in the physical body of the brain and emerges only at those points where previously the sentient body had, so to speak, bored the holes for the sense organs in the front of the physical body. What we find, then, is that a part of our inner life flows outward as sentient soul.

The intellectual soul would not be capable of this. It is completely dammed up within, and no currents come to meet it from the opposite side. That is why human thinking takes place wholly within. Objects don't think for us; they don't show us the thoughts from without, nor bring them to us. That is the great secret of the relation of human thought to the outer world. With our sense organs we can perceive outer objects, and if these organs are healthy they do not err. The mind, on the other hand, which cannot directly contact objects, is the first inner member of the human being that can err, because its activity is completely dammed up within the brain and does not emerge. From this it follows that our thoughts about the outer world cannot be correct without an inner tendency to permit right thoughts to arise within us. What the outer world can give us is correct sense perception but not right thoughts. Thought is subject to error, and the power of right thinking is something we must have within ourselves.

For the thinker this fact alone points to an earlier, prehistoric existence of man. It is incumbent upon him to form right thoughts concerning the wisdom of the outside world, but his thoughts cannot emerge or come in contact with what he perceives. Nevertheless, that wisdom must be within him as well as without; it must permeate him just as it does in what surrounds him. The two currents, therefore, belong together, though they are now separated.

At some time, however, they must have been united. That was before the human ego had begun to dam up the currents within us, at a time when it still received the wisdom of the world directly. There was a time when the currents of the mental soul were not held up but flowed out, and that was the time when man directly envisioned the wisdom of the world. What is now relegated to the brain as thinking was once in contact with the outer world, like our sense perception, so that man could look at his thoughts. That was a form of clairvoyance, though not a conscious one irradiated by the ego. Man must have passed through earlier stages in which he possessed a dim clairvoyance, and again it is the human physical organization itself that shows us that in bygone times he was differently constituted.

Something important for practical life follows from the foregoing. In all cases involving the sense world, sense perception (apart from illusions) can be taken as truth, for there the human being is in direct contact with the outer world. But concerning all that is within him, his knowledge is limited to what he acquires by thinking. Now, the separation that exists between our intellectual soul and the objects in space, and that makes it possible for our thinking about those objects to err, does not apply to the ego. When the ego streams into us it is within us, and it is natural that we should have a voice in its activity. The meeting of the intellectual soul and the ego is what produces the purest thinking, the thinking that is directed inward. This form of thinking, having itself as the object, cannot be exposed to error in the same way as can the other kind, which is occupied with outer objects and roves about in an endeavor to form judgments by observing them. The only thing they can yield is sense perception. What we must do is meet them with concepts, as though holding up their mirrored reflection to them. Thinking is herein free from error only in so far as it is attracted to the tendency to truth. Out of a right tendency to truth we must let concepts of things, thoughts about things, rise up in us.

In the first instance we can form a judgment only of such things in the outer world as are encountered by the senses. The senses themselves cannot judge what is beyond their reach; no such judgment can be arrived at from the physical plane. If the intellectual soul nevertheless does just that, unless it be guided by the inner tendency to truth, it must inevitably fall into all sorts of errors.

To clarify these conditions by an illustration, let us turn to the various doctrines of the descent of man. Here we distinguish between two kinds of ancestors. You are familiar with one of them from theosophical research, which tells us of the different forms we passed through in former periods, such as the Lemurian. That is disclosed by spiritual science. We have seen how wonderfully comprehensible everything perceived by the senses becomes when we have made this teaching our very own, and it will reveal more and more.

In contrast, we will now consider material research, the materialistic doctrine of descent, the crux of which is the so-called biogenetic law. According to this, man in his germinal states passes through all forms recalling animal stages, thereby repeating, in a sense, the various forms of the whole animal kingdom. At the time when this doctrine was rampant the conclusion was drawn that man really passed through these forms that thus appear in the germ state. In itself that is not erroneous because in prehistoric times man actually did develop through such forms. Fortunately, as we can say in view of the materialistic doctrine of the descent, the foresight of the gods kept this fact secret until such time as the opinions regarding it could be corrected by spiritual science. The development of man before he became outwardly perceptible on the physical plane could not have been observed. It was shrouded by the gods and withdrawn from observation, otherwise people would have evolved even wilder theories regarding it than they do now. The facts are there, but they are frequently misinterpreted because the senses that speak the truth cannot perceive them. In reasoning, however, the power of the intellectual soul becomes active, and this cannot reach what is imperceptible to the senses. In reality, the facts referred to prove the exact opposite of what people try to infer from them. Here we have a striking example of the way the power of judgment can plunge into a sea of errors when its approach to external matters is purely by way of the mind.

What is shown by the fact that on a certain plane man resembled a fish? Precisely that he never was a fish; indeed, that he had no use for the fish nature, that he had to expel it before entering upon his human existence, because it in no way pertained to him. This he did in turn with all the animal forms, because they were not of his nature. He could not have become a human being if he had ever appeared on earth in one of those animal forms. He had to discard these in order to become what he did. The fact that in the germ the human being resembles a fish is the very proof that never in his whole line of descent was he like a fish or any other animal form. He had to expel all these forms because they were inadequate and he therefore must never resemble them. He had to slough off these forms, eject them. They are images he never resembled. All these forms of germinal life show shapes he never bore. Thus we can find out precisely through embryology how prehistoric man never looked. He cannot be descended from something he had expelled. To infer that he passed through these forms would be the same as to imagine that the father is descended from the son. The father is not descended from the son, nor the son from himself, but the son is descended from the father.

That is one of the cases in which the mind has proved wholly incapable of thinking the facts of reality through to the end. It has exactly reversed the order of development. Certainly these pictures of the remote past are extraordinarily important, because they show us how we never looked. But that is something that can be learned even more readily in another way, namely, through realms that lie open in the sense world, that are not hidden from us. There we have all those forms—fishes and so forth—and they can be properly studied with the ordinary means of human observation. As long as men restricted themselves to observing outer objects with the senses, and did not occupy their minds with matters concealed from sense perception, they avoided arriving at false conclusions; they were rightly guided by their natural sense of truth. They would look, for instance, at a monkey and doubtless experience the queer sensation that every normal human being would have, a certain sense of embarrassment. This judgment expressed through feeling means that the monkey is really a retarded being, having remained behind in the evolution of man. This feeling is nearer the truth than is the later judgment of the erring mind because it embodies the realization that the monkey is a being that dropped out of the human current, that had to be divided off from man if the latter was to achieve his goal. The moment our fallible mind approached this fact it inverted it; instead of realizing that the monkey was eliminated from the evolutionary human current it concluded that the monkey was the starting point of human descent.

Here the error comes to light. In judging external things accessible to the senses we should never forget that they are built up from within, through the agency of spiritual currents. Suppose we are observing those parts of the human being that are accessible to perception proper, or we observe part of another person that the eye can see—his face, for example. In studying this face we must not imagine it as having been built up from without. On the contrary, we must realize the need to distinguish between two currents flowing into each other, the current of the sentient body running backward from the front, and that of the sentient soul running forward from the rear. In so far as we perceive the human countenance by means of the senses, the sense image is true. That is given us by sense perception and we will not go astray there. But now the human mind joins in, at first subconsciously, and is at once misled. It regards the human countenance as something merely fashioned from without, whereas in reality, this fashioning occurred from within, through the agency of the sentient soul. What you see is not really outer body; it is the outer image of the sentient soul.

Disabuse your mind of the notion that the human face might be outer body, and you will see that in truth, it is the image of the soul. A fundamentally false interpretation results from reasoning in a way that ignores the true nature of the countenance as being the outer image of the sentient soul acting outward. Every explanation of the human countenance based solely on physical forces is wrong. It must be explained through the soul itself, the visible through the invisible. The deeper we penetrate into theosophy the more we will see in it a great school for learning to think. The chaotic thinking that today dominates all circles, particularly science, finds no shelter in theosophy, which is therefore able to interpret life correctly.

This ability to interpret phenomena correctly will further stand us in good stead when, in the course of our investigations, we come to phenomena that lead us out of the region of individual anthroposophy into the realm of the anthroposophy that concerns the whole of mankind.

Returning once more to the sense of sound and the sense of visualization, let us ask ourselves which of these came into being first in the course of human development? Did man learn first to understand words or to perceive and understand the conceptions that came to him? This question can be answered by observing the child, who first learns to talk and only later to perceive thoughts. Speech is the premise of thought perception because the sense of sound is the premise of the sense of visualization. The child learns to talk because he can hear, can listen to something that the sense of sound perceives. Speech itself is at first mere imitation, and the child imitates long before he has any idea of visualization whatever. First the sense of sound develops, and then, by means of this, the sense of visualization. The sense of sound is the instrumentality for perceiving not only tones but also what we call sounds.

The next question is how it came about that at one time in the course of his development man achieved the ability to perceive sounds and, as a result, to acquire speech? How was he endowed with speech? If he was to learn to speak, not just to hear, it was necessary not only that an outer perception should penetrate, but that a certain current within him should flow in the same direction as that taken by the currents of the sentient soul when they press forward from the rear. It had to be something acting in the same direction. That was the way in which speech had to originate, and this faculty had to appear before the sense of visualization, before man was able to sense the conception contained in the words themselves. Men had first to learn to utter sounds and to live in the consciousness of them before they could combine conceptions with them. What at first permeated the sounds they uttered was sentience.

This development had to take place at a time when the transposition of the circulatory system had already occurred, for animals cannot speak. The ego had to be acting downward from above with the blood system in a vertical position. As yet, however, man had no sense of visualization, consequently no visualizations. It follows that he could not have acquired speech through the agency of his own ego, but rather, he received it from another ego that we can compare with the group ego of animals. In this sense speech is a gift of the gods. It was infused into the ego before the latter itself was capable of developing it. The human ego did not yet possess the organs needed to give the impulse for bringing about speech, but the group ego worked from above into the physical, etheric and astral bodies, and as it encountered an opposing current, a sort of whorl came into being at the point of contact. A straight line drawn through the center of the larynx would indicate the direction of the current employed by the speech-giving spirits, and the larynx itself represents the physical substance, the dam, that resulted from the encounter of the two currents. That accounts for the peculiar shape of the human larynx.

It was under the influence, then, of a group soul that man had to develop speech. In what manner do group souls operate on earth? In animals the current of the group soul passes through the spinal cord horizontally, and these force currents are in continual motion. The force currents running downward from above move constantly around the earth, as they did around the old Moon. They don't remain in one spot but move around the earth retaining their vertical direction of influence. If men were to learn to speak under the influence of a group soul, they could not remain in one place, they had to migrate. They had to move toward the group soul. Never could they have learned to speak if they had remained in one spot.

What direction, then, would men have to take if they were to learn to speak? We know that the etheric currents flow from right to left and the physical ones from left to right, and this is the case not only in man but on the earth as well. Now, where are the group souls that endow man with speech? Let us look at the earth in its peculiar development. Man learned to speak at a time when his outer structure was already complete. Strong currents were therefore needed because the larynx had first to be transformed from a soft substance that in no way resembled a larynx. This called for special conditions on earth. Suppose we stand facing east. There flow in us from left to right the currents connected with the formation of the physical body. This current exists outside us as well; it was present during the formation of the earth. Running from north to south are those strong currents that produce solid physical matter. From the other direction, from the south, flow the etheric currents that lack the tendency to solidify the earth. This explains the lopsidedness, the lack of symmetry on the earth. In the northern hemisphere we find the great continents, in the southern, the vast oceans; the tendency of the earth was asymmetrical.

From the south the current acts that is of the same nature as the one that runs from right to left in man, but while the current from back to front streams outward, the one from front to back originates in the sentient body and enters the sentient soul. With all this in mind we understand why the attainment of speech called for a current passing outward from within; this current had to encounter a group soul current in order that the two could be dammed up in man's own organism. Man had to move toward a current that could act upon his astral element. He could therefore go neither toward the north nor toward the south, but had to take a direction at right angles to these. It was latitudinally that man had to proceed when he was acquiring speech, that is, from east to west. At that time he inhabited ancient Lemuria, where today we have the ocean lying between Asia and Africa. Thence, in order to learn to speak, he migrated westward into old Atlantis, to meet the group soul that was to engender speech in him. There he had to develop the organism suitable for speech, and thus it was in old Atlantis that he learned to speak.

The next step was to develop the sense of visualization by means of the speech man had acquired, but in order to do this he could not continue in the same direction. He had to proceed in a way that would cause the same current to act from the opposite direction. Recall here what was said in the last lecture concerning the origin of sound and of visualization. Sound comes into being when we subconsciously convert a melody into a harmony, ignore the fundamentals themselves, and mentally hear only the harmony produced by the harmonics (overtones); visualization arises when we push back and disregard this harmony of the harmonics as well. So, if we are to develop the sense of visualization, we must destroy on the one hand what we had built up on the other. We must face about and proceed in the opposite direction. One element of speech has to be suppressed, the harmonics must be pushed back, if we are to develop visualization. The old Atlanteans had to face about and migrate eastward; by doing this they were able effectively to develop the sense of visualization. This could not have been accomplished if they had continued westward. It was the tragic fate of the American aborigines to migrate in the wrong direction. They could not hold their ground, but had to yield to those who had migrated properly and returned to them only later.

In this way a great deal becomes clear. When we know the secret of those currents that fashion man and the earth we can understand the organization of the earth, the distribution of oceans and continents, the migrations of men. Anthroposophy leads us into that life through which the outer world becomes transparent and comprehensible.

Evolution proceeds. Humanity was not destined to stop at visualizations but to achieve concepts as well, and in order to accomplish this it had to ascend from mere visualizations to the soul life proper. After the sense of visualization, the sense of concepts had to be developed, and again a new direction had to be taken. In order to gain the life of visualizations, humanity—or as much of it as comes into consideration—moved eastward, but pure concepts could be acquired only by returning in a westward direction. We could similarly present the migrations of peoples in the four post-Atlantean periods from an anthroposophical viewpoint, and you would see a wondrous interplay of spiritual forces at work upon the whole shaping of man, and of what comes to expression in forming the earth.

But this is not the end. We have dealt with the currents running downward from above, forward from the rear, etc., but in a sense we now appear to have reached a dead end. Spiritual science, however, discloses higher forces holding sway above the capacity for visualization and forming concepts, that is, the imaginative, the inspirative, and the intuitive senses. We have learned that as a rule these stream inward, but in clairvoyants, outward. All these currents must operate too, and for that purpose must develop the necessary organs. So we ask how they do this? How do they live and operate in the physical human being?

In order to answer this question we will first consider a force possessed only by the human being, not by animals: the inner soul force of memory. Animal memory is a pure figment of the scientists' imagination. Animals have no memory; they merely manifest symptoms to be explained by the same principle as those of human memory. In order to produce human memory, the main position of animals would have to be raised to the vertical, so that the ego could stream in. Since their principal position is horizontal, they can have no ego. But in certain animals the forward part of the body is in the same position as that of the human being, hence it can act intelligently, although this intelligence is not permeated by an ego.

This is the beginning of a vast region of misconceptions. When an animal manifests a capacity similar to that of memory and acts intelligently, nothing more is proved by these facts than that a being can be guided by an intelligence without being intelligent itself. Phenomena resembling memory can appear in the animal world, but not memory itself.

In memory we see something special, something quite different from what we find in mere intelligent thinking, for example, or in visualization. The essence of memory lies in the retention of a visualization we have had; it is still present after the act of perception has passed. The repetition of an action previously performed is not memory. A clock would in that case be endowed with memory, for it does today exactly what it did yesterday. If memory is to come about, the ego must seize a conception and retain it.

If the ego is to seize a conception in this way, an organ must be formed for the purpose, and this is accomplished as follows. Out of its own essence the ego must engender special currents and must pour and bore these into the various horizontal currents already active minus the ego. The ego must overcome currents. When a current appears running inward from without, the ego must be able to produce within itself a counter-current.

That the ego was originally not capable of this we learned when studying the origin of speech; then the group ego had to co-operate. But when the soul life proper commences, beyond visualization, when a higher faculty such as memory is to be developed, the ego must activate new currents independently, currents that bore into others already there. Of this process the ego is clearly aware. In developing the senses up to and including visualization, this activity of the ego is not required, but when a higher activity is to be brought about, the ego must oppose the currents already functioning. This becomes manifest through the addition of a fourth phenomenon to the three currents at right angles to each other in space. This boring in of the ego becomes perceptible in the consciousness of time, and that is why memory is linked with temporal conceptions. We do not follow time in any spatial direction, but into the past. The direction of the past is bored into the directions of space. That is what occurs in all that the ego develops out of itself. Through spiritual science we can even indicate the current that comes into play when the ego evolves memory. It runs from left to right, and when habits are developed by the ego, the currents run from left to right as well. The ego bores its way into the opposing currents, those that were formed without the ego. Here the law is exemplified that tells us that the higher activities of the soul always have currents running in the opposite direction from that of the next lower activity.

To gain inner contact with the ego, the intellectual soul had to develop up to the ego plane. Now we ascend to the consciousness soul. When this functions consciously its active current runs in the opposite direction from that of the intellectual soul, which is still able to function subconsciously. Under certain earthly conditions the following law in human evolution can be proved. Learning to read is an intelligent activity, but one that does not necessarily proceed from the consciousness soul. The idea of learning to read and write occurred to men before the consciousness soul was developed. Reading by means of the intellectual soul had its inception in the Greco-Latin epoch. Then followed the ascendancy of the consciousness soul, and the direction of the current had to be reversed. Arithmetic could only develop with the consciousness soul. The European peoples read and write from left to right, but they figure from right to left, as in adding. It will be seen from this how the currents of the intellectual soul and of the consciousness soul overlap, and we can actually understand the nature of the European peoples by pondering the matter.

But there have been other peoples with other missions. They were advance guards, so to speak, and their task was to develop, or at least prepare, the feature of the intellectual soul that the European peoples, who had postponed their cultural development, did not evolve until after the consciousness soul had become active. Those were the Semitic peoples, who write from right to left. They were the peoples who were to prepare in advance the later period of the consciousness soul.

In such considerations we find the means for comprehending all cultural phenomena on earth. We shall learn to know everything of that sort, down to the letter formations of the various languages. The reason why peoples write from top to bottom, from right to left or from left to right follows from an understanding of the underlying spiritual facts. It is the mission of spiritual science to see that light dawns in the minds of men, and that the obscure becomes clear.

At the General Meeting last year you heard a course of lectures on Anthroposophy. This year I shall deliver a series entitled, Psychosophy, from a similar point of view, and later on it will be necessary to give a third course on Pneumatosophy. In this way the three cycles will combine and form a bridge connecting the three worlds in which we live. This will close the circle that takes us in a roundabout way back to our starting point.¹

Psychosophy is intended as a study of the human soul starting with what it can itself experience here in the physical world, but then ascending to higher realms in order to show that the life we encounter and can observe in the physical world leads up to glimpses of a higher soul life, from which the light of theosophy will come to meet us, as it were. A variety of considerations will occupy us during these lectures. Beginning with apparently simple matters, we will ascend to a contemplation of those phenomena of the soul life that we call attention, memory, passions, emotions. We will consider the realms of the true, the good and. the beautiful. Then we will examine the phenomena that affect human life beneficially or harmfully, out of which arise actual causes of sickness that at the present time intervene and influence our soul lives. This will bring us to the point where the psychic element enters our physical life, our daily work. We shall have to study the interaction of bodily weal and woe, and the forms of the soul life. Our observations will lead us up to the high ideals of human society, and we will consider phenomena of our daily life, such as the origin of means for passing the time and how these, in turn, affect the soul life and reveal themselves in manifold concatenations. Then the curious effects of boredom and much else will be presented, as well as remedies for poor memory, lack of forceful thinking, and the like.

You will readily understand that a detailed exposition of the soul life calls for consideration of the adjacent realms. Theosophy, of course, has provided you with ready mental images for relating the soul life of man to other realms. You are familiar with the organization of the nature of man as body, soul, and spirit, from which it is natural to infer that the soul life comes in contact on the one side with the bodily life and on the other with the spiritual life. This is the step that leads up from anthroposophy to psychosophy, and at some future time we must ascend from psychosophy to pneumatosophy.

If we would study this soul life by itself, within its two boundaries, we must ask what it is. Well, all that we are accustomed to call the outer world, all that we see before and about us—animals, plants, minerals, clouds, rivers—whatever we encounter on the physical plane, we do not include in our soul life, no matter what mental pictures we may add to our perceptions.

A rose, when encountered on the physical plane, is not a part of our soul life, but when the rose gives us pleasure, when it stimulates something like gratification in our soul, this fact then pertains to our soul life. To meet a person and to form a conception of his hair, his expression, etc., is not a function of the soul life, but to take an interest in him, to feel love or antipathy for him, that is an experience of the soul. That is the way in which matters pertaining to the soul must be characterized.

Now let us turn to something different. Suppose we are watching a man carrying out some action that induces the feeling in us of a good deed, morally laudable. A psychic experience of that sort comprises something more. Here it is not a question of how the action arose, nor even of whether we were moved by love or hate in estimating it; we find something beyond what has thus far been characterized. As soon as we judge an act to be good or bad, higher interests play a part. When we call an act good, we know that it would be wrong for this quality to depend upon our verdict. We must dissociate our personality from the question of whether an act is good or bad. True, the verdict must arise in us, but independent of ourselves. Nothing in the outer world can tell us that the act is a good one; the verdict must come about within ourselves, but uninfluenced by love or hate. In all such inner experiences that nevertheless have a significance independent of our inner frame of mind, so that it is immaterial whether we pass judgment or not—in all such experiences the spirit plays a part in the human soul. Thus we have characterized the relation of the soul to the outer world by reviewing these three cases precisely from the outer world.

Summing up, first, we observe something as pertaining to the outer world: the rose. Second, we experience something in connection with it: pleasure. Third, something arises in us, but something that must be independent of us: judgment (good or evil). The outer world must reveal itself to the soul by way of the body. Soul experiences take place wholly within us, and the spirit declares itself within the soul. The point is to keep firmly in mind that the soul flows and ebbs in inner facts.

It now remains to find something through which the character of our soul life is brought to our consciousness from within as well. Thus far we have considered the soul life as it is bounded from without. Now we shall see how it can be characterized from within, disregarding what is adjacent, and clearly expressing in a conception what we mean by the pure soul principle. We must acquire a mental picture of the nature of the soul as it has its being on the physical plane.

The basic character of pure soul, of pure psychic experience, can be described in two ways. Speaking accurately in regard to earthly conditions, and indicating the inner phenomena of the soul life exactly as far as its boundaries, there are in the first instance two conceptions that we can apply to man's pure soul experiences and to nothing else. The inner phenomena of the soul life—its inner fluctuation—clearly indicate its boundaries, and the attributes of these boundaries must be mentioned. My next task will therefore be to characterize these inner phenomena of the soul life, and this, as I said, can be done in two ways. We will devote today's lecture to gathering conceptions, but never mind; it will greatly help us to understand phenomena that concern us intimately. It is a matter of gleaning hints that are extraordinarily important in connection with the soul life, whether healthy or diseased.

One conception by which the pure soul principle can be characterized is reasoning. Reasoning is one activity of the soul, and all remaining psychic experiences can be summed up in what we may call the inner experiences of love and hate.

Rightly understood, these two conceptions—reasoning, and love and hate—comprise the entire inner soul life. Everything else denotes something that derives from without through the body or from within through the spirit. We shall see how fruitful a careful study of the two psychic activities can become. Everything pertaining to the soul, then, is either reasoning or living in love and hate; at bottom these two conceptions are the only pure soul activities. Reasoning on the one hand, loving and hating on the other—these are the forces of the soul life exclusively pertaining to it.

If we are to understand each other aright with regard to these two basic forces of the soul, it behooves us to visualize clearly first, the significance of reasoning within the soul life, and then, the role played in the soul life by love and hate. I refer to reasoning not from the standpoint of logic, but of the activity comprising the inner soul process of reasoning; not judgment, but the activity, reasoning.

If you are led to concede that the rose is red, you have reasoned; the activity of reasoning is involved. If you are inwardly constrained to say that the rose is red, that man is good, the Sis-tine Madonna is beautiful, that steeple is high, you are dealing with activities of the inner soul life that we designate as reasoning.

Now, how about love and hate? A little introspection will show you that we do not pass by the outer world in such a way that our soul remains untouched by the majority of external phenomena. Passing through a landscape you see cloud-capped mountain peaks, and you experience joy in your soul. What underlies this is that you love what you experience through this landscape. Whatever exists of joy or horror in an experience, that is love or hate. If love or hate hides in many kinds of soul experiences, that is merely because these accompany us incessantly from morning to night. If you see someone committing an evil deed and are repelled by it, you have a hidden experience of hate, exactly as you have when you turn from a malodorous flower. Love and hate accompany the soul life continually and so does reasoning.

If we now observe an important concomitant of reasoning, we can learn to know the phenomena of the inner soul life better still. It is this, that all reasoning has an effect in the soul life, and this fact is the key to the soul life. By forming the judgment, “the rose is red,” “that man is good,” you retain a result in the soul. It can be characterized this way: When you have given the verdict, the inference is the conception, “the red rose,” “the good man.” The verdict “the rose is red” has been transformed into the conception “the red rose.” As a being endowed with soul, you then continue to live with this conception. Every judgment is a confluence of conceptions. Here we have, on the one hand the rose, on the other, red. These flow toward each other and combine in the conception “the red rose,” which you carry with you in your further soul life.

This may sound dry, but it is indispensable for an understanding of the soul life. Neither the soul life nor its relation to the higher planes could be accurately comprehended without the knowledge that judgments converge into visualizations.

Experiences of love and hate, on the other hand, do not give rise to the question of how do they converge, but rather as to where they arise. In the case of reasoning, the question is, Whither? and the answer is. Toward the conception. But with regard to love and hate the question is. Whence? We will always find one impulse in soul experiences themselves that gives rise to love and hate, an impulse that breaks into the soul life from another quarter, as it were. All love and hate can finally be traced back to what within the soul life we call desire. Entering from another direction and underlying love and hate, as these manifest themselves in the soul, desire can always be found streaming into our soul lives. Into one side of it flows desire, manifesting itself in love and hate. On the other side the activity of reasoning leads to visualization.

Desire is something you can easily recognize as arising naturally out of the inner soul life. The external cause of it may not at all be known to you, but you do know that it appears in your inner soul life, and that invariably love and hate result. In like manner you realize that your verdict “the rose is red” arises in the soul, but when this verdict has culminated in a visualization, the latter must have external validity. Reasoning takes place in the soul; it arises out of the inner life. We can put it this way: primarily, desire—for reasons not known to us today—manifests itself in the soul and expresses itself in love and hate. But in the same way—also for unknown reasons—the soul is impelled to permit judgment to enter from the wellspring of its own being, and provided the verdict has been arrived at in a certain way, the visualization must be valid for the outer world.

It will seem strange to you that I should be so prolix in expounding the elementary concepts of the soul life. You may think that these matters could be skipped over more rapidly, and indeed, they could, but just because these relationships remain largely unnoticed in scientific circles, error after error is committed. I will mention one prime error common today. By drawing far-reaching conclusions, those guilty of this error become entangled in misconceptions; they start from entirely false premises. In many books on physiology you can find the statement that the raising of a hand or leg is brought about by the fact that we have two kinds of nerves. Those that run from the sense organs to the brain or the spinal cord and that transmit messages to the brain, so to speak, are supposed to be contrasted with another set, called motor nerves, as against the sensory or perceptive nerves. According to this theory, when an object is seen, the message of the sense organ is first carried to the brain, where the stimulus thus exerted is supposed to stream out into a nerve that leads to a muscle, and only then does the impulse arise that entails motion. According to spiritual science, however, that is not the case. What is called the motor nerve does, in fact, exist as a physical unit, but it does not serve to instigate the motion. It serves only to enable us to perceive the motion ourselves, to check up on it, to bring our own movement to consciousness. Just as the optic nerve, through which we perceive an external event, is a sensory nerve, so the muscle nerve leading to the hand is also a sensory nerve, whose function is to keep track of the movement of our hand. This example of faulty scientific thinking is a prime error that has poisoned all physiology and psychology.

Our task is clearly to understand the role played by these two elements of the soul, reasoning, and love and hate. They play an enormous role, for the entire soul life runs its course in manifold combinations of these two elements. We should misconstrue this soul life, however, if we failed to allow for extraneous forces, not properly psychic, that constantly enter in across the border. The first example that occurs to us, to be met with everywhere in daily life, around which, indeed, our everyday soul life is built, is that of sense experiences. These are the various experiences brought about by the ear, the eye, the tongue, the nose, etc. What we experience through our sense organs we take into our soul, in a way, and there it lives on. With this in mind we can actually speak of our soul reaching as far as a certain boundary, which is the boundary of the sense organs. We have posted sentinels, as it were, at the boundaries of our soul life, and what these sentinels report of the outer world we take into our soul life and carry further.

We can now ask about those impressions in the soul that we experience through our sense organs. What is represented within the soul life by what we experience through the ear as tone, through the eye as color, through the nose as smell? Well, the study of these sense experiences is as a rule pursued in a lopsided manner. Science fails to face the fact that the processes taking place at the boundaries of the soul life are composed of two factors, two elements. One element is perception, our immediate experience of the outer world. You hold the tone, the color, the smell, and so forth—that is, the impression of these—only as long as you are in contact with the external stimulus. The impression, the interaction of inner and outer factors, ceases at once when you turn away, close your eyes, or the like.

What does that prove? If you consider the immediate perception in conjunction with the fact that later you know something (you know the tone, the color, etc.), it proves that you have retained something of your experience of the outer world, even though the experience has ceased. What does this imply? That something has completely entered your soul life. Something that has become part of your soul life must inevitably run its course there because you carry it with you. If it were part of the outer world you could not carry it with you. You can continue to hold the impression of color, the perception of the color impression, only if it has remained within your soul.

It is necessary to distinguish between a sense perception proper and what you continue to carry in the soul, what you detach from the outer world. The experience you thus derive from objects we will call perception, and what you continue to carry in the soul, sensation. As a foundation, then, for subsequent expositions, keep in mind the sharp distinction between sense perceptions and what we retain as sensation (sentience). The perception of color ceases when you turn away; the sensation of it remains. Ordinarily such fine distinctions are unnecessary, but for these four lectures they are apposite.

So we continue on our way, carrying these sensations about with us in our soul. We now ask if it could be that these sensations, derived from external objects, constitute a new element of the soul life, as opposed to reasoning and the phenomena of love and hate, which we termed the exclusive elements? If that were the case I should have been guilty of omitting to name something that also constitutes an inner experience, namely, sentience. But that is not the way matters stand; sentience is not a separate element of the soul life.

If you have sensed the color red, the color red is not an inner soul experience, for it is the object that is red. If “red” were an inner soul experience your whole color-perception of red would avail you nothing. The quality “red” did not originate in your soul life. What did arise there was the activity in which you engaged for the purpose of carrying away with you something of the red. What you did while confronting the rose, that is inner soul life. This activity of your inner soul is in reality nothing more than a fusion of what I have described to you as the two basic elements of the soul life.

But then we must consider the following. If what I have told you of the two elements is true—if love and hate, deriving from desire, and reasoning lead to visualization—then what was characterized as sentience would have to be related to those two elements in the case of a sense experience as well. A sense experience must be accompanied by love and hate, and reasoning. Imagine you have a sense experience of color, and observe closely what happens:

Desire and reasoning flow to the boundary of the outer world and become visualization of the material object.

Above the heavy line is the outer world, below it the world of the soul. The line is the boundary. When at this boundary an object makes an impression upon the sense organs and induces an experience—for instance, of color, this experience must be met by the result of love and hate and of reasoning, emanating from the soul as visualization. Nothing else can flow out of the soul.

Note, however, an important distinction that can exist between different kinds of desire, different kinds of reasoning. As an example, let us assume that while you are waiting for a train, day-dreaming, the visualization of a disagreeable past experience appears in your soul life, and side by side with this appears another, namely, everything unpleasant that has happened to you since then as a result of that experience. Then you can sense how these two visualizations combine into a more intensive visualization of that distressing event. During this process nothing related to it has occurred in the outer world. A judgment has been reached that remains wholly within psychic experience. Nevertheless, love and hate appeared in the soul life; they amalgamated with the visualization, as it were. As you sit there dreaming, your environment need show nothing of all this; your surroundings are of no consequence; yet something occurs. A visualization comes about through love and hate, and reasoning, without any stimulus from without.

That is quite a different thing from confronting a sense experience. When we perform such an inner act—let judgments arise, provoke love and hate—we remain within the sea of our soul life. But when a sense experience arises we must advance to the boundary of the outer world, and there it is as though the currents of the soul life were directly stopped by the outer world.

Whenever a sense experience is involved we are stopped by the outer world. Desire, love and hate, flash to the boundary; the capacity for judgment flows there too, and both are obstructed at that boundary. The result is that reasoning and desire are checked. They are there, but the soul does not perceive them, and the sense sensation is brought about by this flowing to the boundary and there being stopped. The sense sensation is nothing but a phenomenon of love, hate and reasoning that remains unconscious, though these are obstructed and held fast from without (cf. previous diagram).

We can put it this way. Ebbing and flowing in the sea of our soul life, psychically substantial, is what can be designated love and hate, and reasoning. This manifests itself in various ways.

When a judgment is reached within the soul itself, the soul is aware of the activity of reasoning as visualization.

When the soul directs the activity toward the outer world, it must stop at the boundary and it perceives the outer world: perception.

When, however, the soul directs the activity toward the outer world but stops before it is reached, sensation arises. Sensation is the confluence of desire and reasoning within the soul life.

If we consider what the soul life ordinarily comprises, we find that our inner experiences really consist, as a rule, of what we have carried away with us from sense experiences. A little introspection will convince you of this. If you want to create higher visualizations for yourself, you will notice how helpful it is for your inner soul life to try to substantialize what is not of the senses, to imagine it pictorially, to clothe it in a garb that is faintly a sensation of color or tone. Speech itself could teach us how extensive is the soul's need to express higher things in such a way as to symbolize them in sense sensations. As a rule, the symbol is a necessity, though people usually have no inkling of the fact, because in symbols the likeness is shadowy, nebulous.

Try, for a moment, to imagine something without the aid of a symbol—a triangle, for example; a triangle without color or any link with any sense sensation. Just try it, and you will see how difficult it is to visualize a triangle un-symbolized, that is, a visualization not associated with any sense picture. Most people are quite incapable of accomplishing this. Symbols alone provide the possibility of rising to higher visualizations. Even language is aided by symbolization. Observe how we are forced at every turn to symbolize speech. I said that a symbol must be verknüpft (linked) with the visualization of a triangle: what a crude conception, knüpfen!¹ Even words themselves disclose the prevalence of symbols, and we see to how great an extent the soul life consists of products of sensations.

We have just one conception that cannot be directly classed as an outer sense experience, although it keeps recurring as an inner soul experience and we must continually relate it to the outer sense experiences: the conception of the ego. If we face the purely psychic state of affairs, we must concede that man lives largely in a world of sense sensations. In this world the conception of the ego keeps bobbing up and crowding forward, but this ego is not always present as a conception. It would be foolish to assume that the ego conception could be present continually or for a prolonged period. Fancy what it would be like to keep saying to yourself, to keep visualizing incessantly, I, I, I ...! No, that is not what you do. You have other conceptions, such as red, blue, tone, large, small. Nevertheless you know that your visualizing occurs in your ego, that your ego must participate whenever a sense experience takes place. What we call soul experience is in a sense at the same time ego experience. You know that soul experiences—desire, reasoning, etc.—must always be opposed by the ego, but no matter how insistently visualizations are stimulated by the outer world, the conception of the ego can never possibly be created merely through the outer world. It does not enter from without. True, the ego sensation, the ego conception, invariably accompanies these sense conceptions that originate in the outer world, but it does not itself arise there. It emerges from the sea of the soul life and, as a visualization, joins the other visualizations, as it were.

Out of the sea of soul experience the other sense experiences emerge as well, but only when outer causes are in question. In this fact is to be seen primarily the sole difference between the ego sensation and sensations consequent upon sense perception. A significant phenomenon thus confronts us. In the midst of our soul life there appears a conception that joins the others coming from without. How is this to be explained?

Among present-day philosophers and psychologists, even outside the anthroposophical movement, there are some who point out the importance of the ego conception, but strangely enough these psychologists, no matter how well-meaning, invariably overshoot the mark. The French philosopher, Bergson, was one who emphasized the significance, the distinctive character, of the ego conception. From this the philosophers infer a permanence of this ego conception, or at least, that it points to something permanent, and they substantiate this view as follows. The ego differs from all other experiences of the senses and the soul by participating, as it were, in the other experiences and conceptions in such a way as to lend them their true form; ergo, it must be of a permanent nature.

Here, however, a grave error appears, and a certain objection that must be raised against Bergson's argument proves quite fatal for his inference. Let us assume that the ego conception yielded something that constitutes the soul within itself. The question would then necessarily arise as to what happens to this during sleep at night. The ego conception ceases entirely, of course, during sleep.

All these concepts concerning the participation of the ego in visualizations apply only to our waking life. They merely appear anew every morning. If the ego conception were to prove anything concerning the permanence of the ego, it would have to remain present during sleep. From the absence of the ego conception during the night it follows that after death it need not necessarily be present either. Thus there is no testimony available for the permanence and the immortality of the ego. It might be lacking, for it disappears every day.

Hence we must keep in mind that, on the one hand, the presence of the ego conception without external stimulus is significant, but that, on the other, this presence in no way proves the permanence of the ego, as the latter is away during sleep. In this way we have today reached an inference upon which we shall build further.

We have seen that two elements emerge from the surging sea of the soul life: reasoning, leading to visualization, and love and hate, deriving from desire. At the boundary of our soul life is the confluence, of which we are not aware, of desire and reasoning. An ego conception appears without external stimulus, but it shares its destiny with the other visualizations of the soul life; just as tone, color, and so forth, come and go, so does the ego conception emerge and disappear.

In the following lectures we will examine the connection of this ego conception, this soul center, with the other conceptions of the soul life—sensation, desire, reasoning, love and hate.

• 1. A transcription by Dr. Steiner of Goethe's youthful poem. The Wandering Jew, referred to by Frau Marie Steiner toward the end of her Preface, was recited at the beginning of this lecture, following a few explanatory remarks. The original is little known in Germany and entirely unfamiliar to American or English readers, and it is unthinkable that Dr. Steiner's transcription of it could have any meaning for those unacquainted with the original. The extraordinary experiment, however, is so fully explained in the course of the lecture that both the object and the method are wholly clear, even without a knowledge of the poem in either version. Since Frau Marie Steiner was herself in doubt about the advisability of having it appear in the published version of the cycle, she would surely approve of omitting it in the translation.
• 1. Knüpfen means literally to knot together.

Yesterday we concluded our psychosophical observations by pointing for one thing to our surging soul life that can be reduced to two elements, reasoning, and the inner experiences of love and hate. Then we referred to the sensations given us by the soul, those that fill our soul life like the continually rising and falling waves of the sea. Finally, we indicated one sensation appearing in this restless sea that is radically different from all other everyday experiences of the outer world. We experience our sensations while in contact with the outer world, and they are then transformed within us in such a way as to enable us to live on with them. But in the midst of this surge stimulated by the messages of our senses, one perception makes its appearance totally different in kind from all other perceptions. All others are instigated by external sense stimuli, are further worked over within us, and become sensations. They start as perceptions, then become sensations within perception, and finally live on in what remains of the sensations in us. The ego perception, however, is an entirely different matter. The perception of the ego appears in the midst of the other surging activity; it is omnipresent and differs from all other sensations by reason of the fact that it cannot be engendered from without. This condition discloses a sort of contrast in the soul life, the ego sensation as opposed to all others.

The mysteries concealed in this contrast will come to light in the course of these lectures, but it is not too soon to acquire a feeling for them by keeping the contrast clearly in view. Into all other experiences we infuse our ego perception, so that even from a quite abstract consideration of this contrast we can learn that everything surging in the soul comes from two directions. What we must do is to envision the contrasting elements of the human soul life both abstractly, in detail, and concretely, comprehensively, until we feel it in our soul.

In truth, man's soul life is primarily anything but a simple entity. It is a dramatic battlefield upon which the contrasts are constantly in action. A finely attuned feeling harking to the life of this human psyche will not fail to recognize the dramatic character of the human soul life, and we cannot but feel a certain impotence in facing these struggling powers in our souls, a certain submission to the conflicting elements of life. The most insignificant among us, as well as the greatest genius, is chained to this conflict, to this dual nature of soul life.

In order to arouse the feeling within you that even the greatest genius is subject to the domination of these conflicting elements, a poem by Goethe was recited at the beginning of yesterday's lecture. Should any of you have picked up his Goethe since then and re-read this poem, he must have experienced a strange sensation—one that should underlie this lecture cycle. It is not our intention to describe in an abstract way, but rather to infuse blood, so to speak, into our description of the soul. We want to enter into the living soul.

If you heard the recitation of the poem, The Wandering Jew (Der Ewige Jude), that was given yesterday, and later read it over at home, you must have been struck by the difference in the two versions. As a matter of fact, something was done that so-called science would term barbarism; the poem was specially prepared for the recitation, cuts and alterations were made, and the whole thing was changed to present an entirely different picture. Philologists would frown upon such a procedure, but it is justified by its special purpose of opening up a wider perspective into the human soul.

The alterations were made for the following reason. Goethe wrote the poem in his earliest youth, but the content of the version you heard yesterday is such as the mature soul of his ripe age could have endorsed. He would have been ashamed, however, of the portions omitted, would have turned from them. Only one who approaches Goethe with such profound veneration as I feel for him may be permitted to speak of one of his poems, upon occasion, as I have done today of The Wandering Jew.

This poem is the work of Goethe's early youth. Youth expresses itself here as youth naturally does. Goethe wrote it when he was a regular good-for-nothing, one from whom surely nothing could be learned. But may we say this of anything he wrote? We can say unhesitatingly that at the time he wrote The Wandering Jew he could not even spell correctly, hence it should be permissible to point out worthless passages. There is a strong proclivity nowadays to unearth the earliest works of great men, if possible in their original form. Now, the youthful soul of Goethe embraced something that was not himself. Conceptions rumbled there that derived entirely from his environment, his milieu. The nature of his environment, to be sure, does not concern us, that concerned only Goethe, but from all this something fused in his soul, something composed on the one hand of what was properly psychic in his soul, and on the other, of its eternal-spiritual content, of a temporal and an eternal-spiritual element.

The result of all this is something eternal, and it does concern us. These two aspects, one of which concerns only Goethe and the other, us as well, these two souls in the youthful Goethe were separated in yesterday's recitation as by an incision. Whatever remained in the old Goethe of what had swayed the young Goethe was retained. All that was present only in his youth was extirpated. There you can see how two kinds of forces influence a genius: those proceeding from his environment and those working out of himself toward the future.

As we contemplate Goethe's soul in his youth it appears as a battlefield upon which a struggle is in progress between the Goethe that accompanied him throughout his life and something else—something he had to fight down. Without this struggle, Goethe would not have become Goethe. There the antithesis becomes patent. It is indispensable to the progress of humanity, for were the soul a unified being it could not progress but would remain stationary.

It is, therefore, important to acquire a feeling for the polarity, the struggle of contrasting elements in the soul life. Unless we do so we shall not be able to understand what must be said concerning the soul life. It is precisely when contemplating such a typically magnificent soul life as Goethe's that we look upon it as upon a drama; we seek to approach it in timid veneration, because this conflict, unrolling as the life of a soul, reveals in a single incarnation the entire destiny of the soul life.

Another point arises in connection with this soul drama. Let us recall the contrasts in Goethe's soul, as they were disclosed in yesterday's recitation, and see what else we can deduce. We find that in later years Goethe followed but one of the impulses we discussed yesterday. He embraced in his soul what we disentangled from the temporal elements that he later discarded. Throughout his life and involuntarily Goethe, like every man, was subject to these two powers of his soul life.

By reason of possessing a soul, nobody is altogether his own master. Man is subject as well to an inner influence that has power over him, that his knowledge cannot compass at the outset. Had Goethe at that early age been able to grasp all that was active in his soul, he could not have written the poem as he actually did. Man is a vassal of his soul life. Something holds sway and acts there that presents itself to the soul life as an outer world.

Just as the red rose forces us to visualize it as red, and as we carry the red color with us as memory, so there lives in us something that compels us to fulfill the inner drama of our soul life in a certain definite way. In the matter of all sense perceptions the outer world masters us, and a similar inner master must be recognized in our soul life as well if we observe the latter as it progresses in time from day to day, from year to year, from one life epoch to the next, and becomes ever richer as it is driven forward by an inner power. This simple, concrete case alone suffices to show that in our soul life we must recognize an outer master, the compulsion of sense perceptions, but also, that we have an inner master as well. Failure to recognize this inner master leads to illusion.

In so far as we stand at a given point in space, we have a master in the outer world, and as we progress in our soul life it is incumbent upon us to observe the dramatic contrast within us, for thus we will know that there is such a master within us as well, the master that causes us to lead a different soul life at seven than at twenty-one, thirty-five, or a still greater age.

In the last analysis this soul drama, so concretely exemplified in Goethe, is composed of reasoning and the experiences of love and hate. It was said that reasoning leads to visualization, and that love and hate have their source in desire. You might object that the statement, “reasoning leads to visualization,” contradicts the simple fact that visualizations arise from sense sensations of the outer world because, when we see a rose, the visualization “red” arises without our reasoning. Hence, in this case at least, reasoning does not lead to visualization—rather the reverse; the visualization would have to be there, and then the reasoning would follow. But that only appears to be a contradiction. Keep it firmly in mind, for it is by no means easy to fathom. We must observe a number of matters if we would find the key to this seeming contradiction. First of all, you must pay attention to the fact that visualizations lead a life of their own in the human soul life. Please grasp that sentence in its full significance. Visualizations are like parasites, like live beings in the inner soul, that lead their own existence there.

On the other hand, desire as well leads to an existence of its own in the soul life, and the latter is actually under the dominion of these independent visualizations, longings and desires. You can easily convince yourselves of the independence of visualizations by remembering that it is not always in your power to recall them at will. Occasionally they refuse to be recalled, and we say that we have forgotten, and the possibility of forgetting proves the presence of a foreign force that opposes the reappearance of these visualizations. Sometimes those we had but yesterday resist our greatest efforts to remember them. This conflict is actually a struggle that takes place between visualization and something else that is present in our soul in this epoch.

The visualization need not necessarily have vanished for good. It may return some time without anything having occurred in the outer world to cause its reappearance. It is simply that a visualization is a being that may temporarily refuse to appear in our soul. The adversaries we meet there, the opposing visualizations, act in different ways with a great variety of results. This conflict between our own soul forces and the visualizations varies greatly in different people, to such an extent, in fact, that the distance between the extremes is terrifying.

There are people, for example, who are never at a loss to recall their store of conceptions and knowledge, and others so forgetful, so impotent in this respect as to overstep the bounds of what is normal and healthy, so that they are rendered unfit for life. For a genuine psychologist the readiness with which he remembers, recalls conceptions, is of great importance because it is a measure of something lying much deeper in his soul life. The proximity or remoteness of his visualizations is for him an expression of inner health or sickness. All of us, in fact, can find in this detail a subtle indication of our constitution, right down to our corporeality. Judging by the intensity with which man must combat this resistance of the visualizations, the psychologist can diagnose his ailment. His gaze penetrates the human soul and observes something beyond in the soul life.

In addition to this, there is something else to be considered if you would visualize from another angle how these conceptions lead a life of their own within us. Our visualizations at any given age, in their totality, are something we do not wholly master, something to which we submit. Under certain life conditions we can realize this as, for example, whether or not we understand a person speaking to us depends upon our soul life. You, for instance, understand what I say in my lectures, but if you brought others unacquainted with my subject, many of them, no matter how well educated, would understand nothing at all. Why? Because those in question have for years been accustomed to other conceptions. These constitute the obstacle to an understanding of the other, more up-to-date concepts. Thus we find that it is precisely the old conceptions that combat the new ones approaching them. It is of no avail whatever to want to understand something unless we have within us a store of conceptions that will make it possible to understand. Conceptions are opposed by conceptions and, if you examine your soul life, you will find that your ego plays a minor role in the process.

Watching or listening to something that interests you offers the best opportunity to forget your ego, and the more deeply you are absorbed, the greater is this opportunity. Looking back at such a moment, you will realize that something was taking place in you in which your ego had little part. It was as though you had forgotten your ego; you had lost yourself, entranced. That is what always occurs when we understand something particularly well. What happens, though, when we fail to understand something? We oppose our present store of conceptions to the new ones, and something like a dramatic conflict takes place in our soul. Conceptions battle with conceptions, and we ourselves, within the soul, are the battlefield of the two armies of conceptions.

There is something significant in the soul life that depends upon our having or not having the conceptions necessary for understanding a matter. If we listen unprepared to an exposition, for example, a curious phenomenon comes to light. At the moment when we fail to understand, something like a demon approaches us, as it were, from the rear. When we listen understandingly and attentively this does not occur. What is this demon? It is one's ego, weaving in the soul, attacking from the rear. As long as we understand and can remain absorbed it does not put in an appearance, only at the moment when we fail to understand.

What is the nature of this inability to understand? Undoubtedly something that weaves its way into the soul life, so to speak, and engenders an uncomfortable feeling in us. One's own soul makes itself felt as uneasiness, and an examination of this condition shows the soul life to be of such a nature that the conceptions already there are not indifferent to the new ones that approach. The new ones impart to the old ones a feeling of well-being or the reverse. Though this feeling of uneasiness is not necessarily violent, it is nevertheless a force that continues to work in the soul life, attacking something deeper.

The malaise resulting from failure to understand can have a detrimental effect even on the body. In diagnosing the finer shades of sickness or health—those that are connected with the soul life—it is of great importance to note whether the patient must frequently cope with matters he does not understand, or whether he readily comprehends everything with which he has to deal. Such considerations are far more important than is generally believed.

We have learned that visualizations lead their own life, that they are like beings within us. Recall, now, those moments of your soul life during which the outer world gave you nothing; even when you wished to be stimulated by it, it passed you by, leaving no impressions. This is another case in which you experience something in your soul. It is something that in everyday life we call boredom. In everyday life, boredom is a condition in which the soul longs for impressions; it develops a desire that remains unsatisfied.

How does boredom arise? If you are observant you will have noticed something that is not often recognized. Only the human being can be bored, not animals. Whoever believes that animals can be bored is a poor observer of nature. People, on the other hand, can positively be classified according to their capacity for boredom. Those leading a simple soul life are bored far less than the so-called educated ones. In general, people are far less bored in the country than in the city, but to verify this you must there observe the country people, not city people who are momentarily in the country. People of the educated strata and classes whose soul life is complicated are prone to boredom. We find, then, a difference even among the different classes.

Boredom is by no means something that arises simply of its own accord in the soul life, but is a result of the independent life led by our conceptions. It is these old conceptions desiring new ones, new impressions. The old conceptions crave fructification, desire new stimuli. For this reason we have no control whatever over boredom. It is merely a matter of the conceptions having desires that, unfulfilled, develop longings in us. That is why an undeveloped, obtuse person with few conceptions is less bored; he has few visualizations that could develop longings within him. But neither are those who continually yawn with boredom the ones who have achieved the highest development of their ego. This is added lest you might infer that the most highly developed people would be the most bored. There is a sort of cure for boredom; and in a higher stage of development boredom again becomes impossible. More of this later.

There is a definite reason why animals are not bored. When an animal has its eyes open it is continually receiving impressions from the outer world. External events run their course as a process of the outer world, and what occurs within the animal keeps pace in time. The animal has thus finished with one impression by the time the next one comes along. Outer occurrence and inner experience coincide. It is man's prerogative, on the other hand, to be able, within himself, to hold a tempo in the sequence of his soul events different from the one obtaining in the world process outside. As a consequence, man is able to close his mind to stimuli that have repeatedly made an impression on him in the past; he shuts himself off from the outer course of time. Within him, however, time continues to pass, but because no impressions reach him from without, time remains unoccupied, and this time void is permeated by the old conceptions.

Now, the following can occur. Observe the progress of the animal's soul life; it parallels the external course of time. The inner soul life of the animal proceeds in such a way that the animal is actually subject to the outer passing of time or—which is the same thing—to the perceptions of its own life and body (this becomes outer perception too, as in digestion). That is something that interests the animal tremendously. The animal is constantly receiving inner stimuli from the outer course of time, and every moment of its life is interesting. When the outer perceptions of an animal cease, the passing of time ceases as well.

This is not the case in human beings. For us outer objects cease to be of interest when we have seen them too often. We no longer let them enter our soul worlds, yet the external passing of time continues just the same. Our inner soul life stops, and time flows on with the soul. What is it, though, that acts upon this void in time? It is the desire of the old conceptions yearning for the future. There emanates from the soul, from the old conceptions, the desire for new impressions, new contents. That is boredom. The difference between man and animal is that man has the advantage of conceptions that live on and develop their own lives oriented toward the future; that means that he has a soul life directed toward the future.

While animals are continually stimulated from without, the human being is constantly swayed by the desire of the soul life, because the old conceptions crave new impressions. Later I shall draw attention to possible illusions.

As stated above, however, there is a cure for boredom. It is brought about when the old conceptions persist not merely as something that excites desire, but when they have a content of their own, so that through our own incentive we can infuse something into the time not filled from without. When our conceptions themselves carry into the future something that interests us, we have the higher soul development. Whether or not this power plays a part in a man's development, whether or not his conceptions embrace something that interests him, satisfies him, constitutes a significant difference.

Beginning, then, at a certain stage of development, the human being can be bored, but he can cure himself of this by filling himself with conceptions that will satisfy his soul life in the future as well. That is the difference between those who are bored and those who are not. There are people who can be cured of boredom and others who cannot, and this points to the independent life of our conceptions, a life we cannot control, a life to which we are subject. Unless we see to it that our conceptions have content we must inevitably be bored, but by giving them a content we can for the future protect ourselves against boredom.

This again is extraordinarily significant for the psychologist, for our normal life demands a certain balance between fulfillment of the soul's desires and outer life itself. When this balance is not maintained, boredom results, and an empty, bored soul—destined nevertheless to continue living in time—is poison for the body. Much boredom is a real cause of sickness. The term “deadly boredom” rests on a true feeling. It acts as a veritable poison, though one does not exactly die of it. Things of that sort have an effect far transcending the soul life.

These elucidations may seem pedantic to you at the moment, but they will enable us later on to shed a wondrous light on the miracles of the human soul life. Fine distinctions are necessary if we are to become acquainted with this wonder drama of our soul life playing around its hero, its ego. Hidden in our soul life is someone who is really infinitely wiser than we are ourselves; indeed, the prospect would be black were this not so.

In ordinary life people indulge in the most curious conceptions regarding the nature of body, soul, and spirit. These things are jumbled in the wildest ways. What was formerly known by means of more clairvoyant observation has gradually been forgotten and eradicated. At that time people analyzed life correctly, distinguishing between the physical, the psychic and the spiritual life in which man has his being. Then, in the year 869, the Ecumenical Council at Constantinople felt impelled to abolish the spirit and to set up the dogma that man consists of body and soul. A study of the dogmatism of the Christian Church would reveal to you the far-reaching consequences of this alteration, this abolition of the spirit. Anyone still recognizing the spirit became at once a preposterous heretic in the eyes of the Church.

The aversion to the spirit is based upon a misinterpretation of the absolute justification for the relation of body, soul, and spirit. Everything becomes confused as soon as one ceases to think of body, soul, and spirit, but then, that's the way people have become; they confuse everything. The result in this case is that a clear view of the spiritual life has disappeared.

Even though nowadays people habitually fall into the error of inadequate differentiation, there is a good spirit watching over them who has kept alive a dim feeling for the truth. This is brought about by the fact that in man's environment something like the spirit of speech is active. Speech is really more intelligent than human beings. True, people abuse speech by regulating and distorting it, but it is not possible to ruin it altogether. Speech is more intelligent than human beings themselves, hence the stimuli it holds for us exert the right influences; whereas, when we bring our own soul life to bear, we make mistakes. I will show you that we have the right feeling when we speak, that is, when we yield ourselves to the soul of speech, not to our own.

Imagine you are in the presence of a tree, a bell, and a man. You begin to reason from what the outer world has to tell you, from immediate sense impressions. In other words, you set your soul life in motion, for reasoning is, of course, something that takes place in the soul. You look at the tree; the tree is green. The inference expressed in your verdict, the tree is green, is expressed in accord with the genius of speech. Now suppose you want to express something regarding the bell, something to be judged through sense impressions; the bell rings. The moment the bell rings you will express your perception in the verdict, the bell rings. Remember all that while we now turn to the man. This man speaks. You perceive his speech, and you express outer perception in the words, the man speaks. Keep in mind the three verdicts—the tree is green, the bell rings, the man speaks. In all three we are concerned with sense impressions, but when you compare these with the judgment of speech you will feel that they reveal themselves as something quite different. When I say, The tree is green, I express something that is conditioned by space; the form in which the judgment is expressed implies this. I express what is true now, what will be true three hours hence, and so forth; something permanent.

Take the next verdict, the bell rings. Does this express something spatial? No, that doesn't exist in space; it proceeds in time, it is in a state of flux, in the process of becoming. Because the genius of speech is highly intelligent you can never speak of something fixed in space in the same way as you do of something proceeding in time. If you examine these verdicts more closely you will find that in referring to all that is in space speech permits only the use of an auxiliary verb, not a direct verb: an auxiliary verb that helps you, in speaking, to live in time. True, we can employ a verb when we may have something else in mind. We can say, “The tree greens,”¹ without the auxiliary verb, but when we do that we are switching from what is purely spatial to something that moves in time, that becomes, to the rise and decline of the greenness. Truly, a genius works in speech, even though much of it is ruined by man. Speech actually does not permit the use of a direct verb in connection with a spatial concept. The purpose of a verb is to indicate something temporal.

The employment of a verb necessarily indicates a state of becoming. You might object that instead of saying, “The bell rings,” we could say, “The bell is ringing,” but think what that would involve! A paraphrase of that sort ruins the language.²

Now we come to the third verdict, the man speaks. There, too, you use a verb to express sense perception, but consider what a difference there is. The verdict, the bell rings, tells us what is in question, the ringing, but in the verdict, the man speaks, something is told that is not the point at all. The sense stimulus arising from speech is not the point. We are concerned with something that is not expressed at all in the verb, namely, the content of what is spoken.

Why does speech stop there? Why do you halt, as it were, before reaching the point? Because when you say, “The man speaks,” you wish your own inner being to confront the man's soul directly. You wish to characterize what confronts you as something pertaining to the inner life. In the case of the bell, this quality is inherent in the verb, but when your inner life meets a living soul you take good care not to intrude thus.

There you see manifest the genius of speech, expressed in the difference between what relates to the locality (space), to the process of becoming (time), and to matters of the inner man (the soul). In describing it we halt as in timid awe before the inner substance, before the matter that really concerns us. In speaking, therefore, and halting at the portal, we do homage to the inner soul activity. In the course of these lectures we will see how important it is for us to rise to a certain feeling for the matter, a feeling that will enable us to define the soul life as something enclosing itself on all sides, something surging to this boundary and there piling up against it. It is important that you should learn to know the soul in its true being as a sort of inner realm. You should understand that what must come from without meets something resisting from within, so that when sense experiences approach the soul we can think of the soul as a circle within which everything is in flux. Sense experiences approach from all directions; within, the soul life swirls and surges. What we have learned today is the fact that the soul life is not independent; the soul experiences the independent life of the visualizations that lead an existence in time.

This life of the visualizations in the bounded soul is the cause of our greatest bliss and our deepest suffering, in so far as these originate in the soul. We shall see that the spirit is the great healer of the ills caused in our souls by sorrow and suffering. In physical life hunger must be appeased, and this acts beneficially, but if we overload ourselves beyond the demands of hunger we tend to undermine our health. In the soul life the case is analogous. Conceptions demand to be satisfied by other conceptions. New conceptions entering the soul can also act beneficially or detrimentally. We shall see how in the spirit we have something that not only acts beneficially, never the reverse, but prevents and opposes the overloading of the soul life as well.

• 1. A bit far-fetched in English, or at best specifically poetic, but quite a common form in German.
• 2. Not the English language, of course, but in German that particular use of the present participle is a sort of last resort. It sounds so artificial that one can simply say that it is not German, though it occasionally appears in doubtful verse for purposes of rhyme or meter.