The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Report on the First Public Anthroposophical Congress in Stuttgart

My dear friends!

As I said yesterday and the day before, I will not be giving a regular lecture today, but intend to speak about what has happened in Germany in relation to our Anthroposophical Movement. Above all, I have to report on the Stuttgart Anthroposophical Congress.

This Stuttgart Anthroposophical Congress is indeed a milestone for our Anthroposophical Movement. It has shown that today we can speak of an Anthroposophical Movement that is desired by the world and that fully corresponds to certain longings that exist in the world. This Anthroposophical Congress was entirely the sporadic idea of the leading personalities in Stuttgart. I myself had very little to do with this Stuttgart congress, its intention or its overall organization. With the exception of being present at an initial consultation and having individual aspects of the program discussed with me, the congress was entirely the initiative of the Stuttgart leaders, above all Ernst Uehli. The point was that for Ernst Uehli and those who joined him in holding the congress, the main thing was to first hold a kind of examination to determine the extent to which the anthroposophical movement as such can take root in our time, in the consciousness of people of our time. And I myself, as you may know, was not even present in Stuttgart at the very beginning of the congress. I only arrived on the evening of the second day, when I was to give my own first lecture there. So everything concerning the organization of this congress was taken care of in Stuttgart. And it turned out that this congress really did become a kind of milestone for our anthroposophical movement, because it was attended by far more people than we had expected. 1600 people took part in this congress.

Now, my dear friends, try to find a conference these days that 1600 people attend! From the outset, the conference was not just intended for members of the Anthroposophical Society, but was intended for a broad audience, for all those who are currently interested in the anthroposophical movement. And so this conference is a kind of milestone because it has brought together people who are interested in the anthroposophical cause in general, and because it was not just held for the members of the Anthroposophical Society.

It has become apparent in the most eminent sense that the interest that exists today in anthroposophy extends far, far beyond the membership of the Anthroposophical Society, which has now grown to over eight thousand members. But, as I said, this is about the anthroposophical movement as such. I ask you to bear this in mind, especially in connection with some things that I will have to say later.

When I came to Stuttgart, I was informed that the beginning of the congress had been promising in terms of content, that a lecture by Dr. Unger, in particular, had been extremely well received, and it was clear that there was not just a general sensational interest in what was to come to light at the conference, but that people really did have an inner relationship to what was presented. In particular, it was clear that the majority of those present took the endeavors seriously that aim to truly introduce anthroposophy into contemporary scientific life.

But one has only to imagine how difficult this task is. Nowhere is there more aversion to - if I may put it this way - an invasion of something new than in scientific circles. Nowhere is there more talk of dilettantism and amateurism than in these scientific circles. Nowhere is there more reluctance to allow a voice to anything that cannot prove its right to be heard by its own qualities than in these circles. Whether this reluctance is justified or not is not what we want to discuss today; today we just want to point out the fact. But one can say: If it were possible to get more and more positive collaborators, people who, with a completely scientific training, can bring the cause of anthroposophy into the world, then the situation is such that one can say that anthroposophy has the potential to achieve this goal of penetrating into the individual sciences and being taken seriously in them.

We must also be clear about how those who, in the usual sense, practice criticism or want to pass judgment on something like what took place in Stuttgart are completely at a loss and deeply hostile to such a thing. The benevolent assessments were those that actually remained silent. The others have continued to put forward all sorts of things from their unobjective, untruthful bases, which basically had nothing at all to do with what was discussed at this congress.

At this congress, a lecture activity was initially developed in a very serious way. In the mornings, lectures were given on the various branches of science from an anthroposophical point of view. Philosophical, scientific, medical and historical problems were discussed, as were economic, linguistic and historical-philosophical problems. And it is fair to say that the seriousness with which the issues were treated here must have made a serious impression on 1600 people. In this respect, the fact that 1600 people were simply brought together was something eminently significant.

Just imagine what the helpless journalists – I mean the helpless journalists in the face of such a thing – would have done if a congress had taken place under some old flag, in whatever field, at which 1,600 people were present!

We then organized the matter in such a way that in the morning the positive lectures on the most diverse branches of scientific life were held. The afternoon lectures were arranged in a special way, in such a way that one imagined that one of the luminaries of contemporary science had given a lecture or written a book here or there, and that a counter-presentation from an anthroposophical point of view should now be given against this lecture or this book. These counter-lectures were held in the afternoons. So, the idea was not to speak in some kind of theoretical way from some kind of background, but to introduce oneself in a very specific way: from this or that direction of contemporary science, this or that would have been discussed by very specific representatives, and one would have had to comment on it.

These co-presentations were, I believe, an especially good idea. And above all, these co-presentations have given us all sorts of extraordinary things worth listing. I leave it to others to judge other co-presentations; I would just like to mention two of these co-presentations here, as I have already done in other places.

First, there was a lecture by Dr. von Heydebrand. This lecture was directed against something that has been advocated by so-called experimental psychology and pedagogy of the present day. This is something that almost dominates today's pedagogical direction: experimental pedagogy, experimental psychology. And Dr. von Heydebrand had set out to give a counter-lecture. This counter-lecture – I do not shy away from making such judgments because it is necessary to make such judgments in the present – was indeed an epoch-making act. In this counter-presentation, we were dealing with a complete destruction of what is unjustified in experimental psychology and experimental pedagogy; of what is currently occupying all pedagogical circles so much and which, basically, is only proof of how the human soul has become inwardly alienated from the human soul, and how one wants to get at the child's soul through all kinds of external machinations, because the human soul is so alien to the child in teaching. It is no longer possible to approach it inwardly; man has gradually acquired an intellectualistic soulless nature; therefore, by experimenting on the child externally — which, in fact, in individual cases, it should not be denied, bears good fruit, especially when it is immersed in anthroposophy. We try to achieve what we can no longer achieve inwardly in an outward way, and we do not even know how to put the useful results of experimental education and experimental psychology into the right perspective.

My dear friends, if Dr. von Heydebrand had given this lecture at a teachers' conference, or even at a teachers' club, it would have been discussed at length in all the teachers' journals. The pros and cons would have been debated at length. This is the kind of judgment that one has to form at some point. We must be clear about one thing: what has emerged from earlier times, what was still significant just a few years ago, what was still a matter of time, must be replaced by something else; and we must decide to recognize where there is recognition to be had. We will not make progress in our movement, my dear friends, if we move forward in isolation from the world and do not consider what our movement can actually be in the here and now. We must be clear about the fact that it is of great significance that such an achievement is being brought into the world by the Waldorf teaching profession. That is what characterizes anthroposophy and the anthroposophical movement today. Anyone who today tries to find something radical in what is recognized as spiritual life will not be able to find it, and we must have the courage to make initial judgments.

My dear friends, if the Anthroposophical Society wants to fulfill its task, it must not limit itself to engaging in sectarianism in small circles here and there, but must go with the great tasks of the time. Then, however, this Anthroposophical Society must decide to offer disinterested recognition – not of the person, but of the matter – where such disinterested recognition is justified. And one must also have the courage to say: Here is an epoch-making achievement! That is what I wanted to mention as an aperçu emerging from the Stuttgart conference.

My dear friends, it cannot be the sole task of an Anthroposophical Society to hold introductory courses; they must be held, of course; everything that is customary must be done; but it cannot be the only task to do such things, but the task is to keep an open and alert eye for what is really emerging from the bosom of the anthroposophical movement and what is happening that fits into the overall spiritual movement of the present day. And only when we do not just sit down at such a congress and listen, sleepily listen, as if it were taken for granted, when we then go away and in our branches begin to , but if we actually spread the possibility within the entire Anthroposophical Society of bringing what is happening to direct consciousness, then the Anthroposophical Society fulfills its real task in relation to the present-day Anthroposophical Movement. It is not only important that we read books, not only that we pass on what is in the books, but that we grasp the movement as a living one, that we become aware that something like this lecture has happened; that we have to be a living work, that we have to come to such an understanding of the anthroposophical movement as an immediate reality, as something living.

And I would like to mention a second lecture. This is the one that Emil Leinhas gave in response to Wilbrandt's latest book “Economics”. I would like to say that this lecture by Emil Leinhas on Wilbrandt's “Economics” needs to be discussed from a wide variety of perspectives. You see, in Robert Wilbrandt we are dealing with a university political economist who is perhaps the most amiable and likeable of this body of political economists at the university, and his book “Oekonomie” is, after all, something that, in addition to the theoretical discussions, also contains many human nuances. Therefore, it is a book that is characteristic in the best sense, not in the worst sense, of contemporary university economics. But precisely by giving the counter-lecture against this book, Emil Leinhas was able to show how this whole economics, which even appears in an amiable way in one respect, how this whole economics is absolutely useless for anything alive. Our universities reflect on economic matters. These reflections seep out until they shape the popular lay theories that then take hold of millions and millions of people, who are now pouring over the civilized world in a destructive manner. The whole hollowness, the whole uselessness of this national economy has been exposed here, and indeed by a man who has spent his whole life immersed in the living economy, who always emphasizes, when asked, that he never actually attended a university, but who has gained all that he has gained from direct practice; a practitioner who, however, through his practical genius, has understood that which is contained in the “key points of the social question” and is inaugurated with it, to consider it with full seriousness; he has succeeded in delivering something in this co-presentation - I would characterize it as follows: If this had been said at any other congress, even in a restricted assembly for my sake, the first columns of all the major newspapers would have been talking about it for weeks, and then only further weeks with many pros and cons would have come. Because in fact, the whole university economics will be destroyed on the ground if what has come to light in this co-lecture is further developed.

My dear friends, if things are taken as they have often been spoken of here, then one must say: the courage must be mustered within the Anthroposophical Society to take a stand on such things, to make an initial judgment, to immediately recognize the value of such a thing, in order to feel in the Society as in such a community where something like this happens. Because it is not just a matter of developing theories, but of shaping a very specific life. We must have the courage to say what is and what is going on within the Anthroposophical Society. As I already indicated, the whole Corona cannot just sit there and then endure these things and afterwards take it for granted that two epoch-making deeds have occurred at such a congress. If we sleep through this as something self-evident, then, my dear friends, little by little the Anthroposophical Society will prove to be something that will gradually become a serious obstacle to the spread of the anthroposophical cause. This Stuttgart Congress must at least teach that the Anthroposophical Society must not be an obstacle to the spread of the anthroposophical movement. Today we can say that the anthroposophical movement is here, in the world. The Anthroposophical Society has been here for decades. Today it must grow into the anthroposophical movement. In a sense, it has seen the anthroposophical movement growing beyond it. It must grow into it, and it can only do so if it finds the courage to really recognize the things that need to be recognized. I consider myself particularly fortunate that we now have Emil Leinhas as managing director at the head of the “Kommender Tag” in Stuttgart - this has come about through various circumstances. After my return from Berlin, it was my task to assist in the appointment of Emil Leinhas as General Director of “Kommender Tag.” It must be considered a significant matter that this could happen immediately after this epoch-making “act” had been performed. But it must be said again and again about such things: What can the individual do when the sounding board is not there?

These things must be understood, because only when they are understood will they be met in the right way. And then the help will be there that even the most capable person needs if they are to apply their abilities in a single place. But at any rate, it should be clear in the souls of anthroposophists that it means something that a personality is now at the helm of the 'Der Kommende Tag' enterprise, whose capacity for such a task is to be discussed in the way that I have tried to do here tonight. I am reporting in this way, my dear friends, because I see the necessity for the Anthroposophical Society to grow into its necessary task, to grow into what the Anthroposophical Society can become when its stars are seen in the right way. The anthroposophical movement, by virtue of what it has been from the very beginning, tolerates no kind of sectarianism, no kind of obscurantism; it tolerates only an open, truthful, honest effort to work into the civilization of the present. But for this it is necessary to have the courage to fully recognize human values.

That, my dear friends, is what I would like to say in this regard. The Anthroposophical Congress in Stuttgart showed that anthroposophy can indeed have a broad cultural impact, and so it was not only our task to give two very well-attended eurythmy performances at the “Wilhelma Theater” in Stuttgart, but we also followed up the lectures presentations with short satirical and humorous eurythmy performances, in such a way that the mood that had developed in response to the serious presentations could continue during the short eurythmy performances that followed immediately.

So, what might it have been like? First came the serious lecture, where each afternoon we dealt with contemporary spiritual currents. One could be outraged by what was unhealthy, or perhaps even see the humor in what was coming out of this or that corner. When the eurythmic-satirical performances followed after a quarter of an hour's break, one could simply continue in this mood, but it then just erupted into laughter. It is always a very beautiful continuation when something that must be taken seriously can continue in laughter in a very dignified way. And from the mood with which 1600 people received all these things, one could see that strings in the soul are actually struck when the arrangements are made in just such a way - if I may use the philistine expression.

Then the intervals between the lectures were filled with negotiations: negotiations among the students, negotiations among the medical doctors, and so on, and so on, among the natural scientists, among the teachers. I could not be present at these negotiations because I was always involved in eurythmy rehearsals during this time. This is often overlooked, that things also need to be prepared. But overall, it seems that these discussions also took place in an extremely objective and animated manner.

During the course of the conference, we also had an anthroposophical assembly. Of course, the actual General Assembly of the Anthroposophical Society still cannot be held due to the current circumstances. So, in a sense, we had an independent anthroposophical assembly that was only open to members of the Anthroposophical Society. The living conditions of the Anthroposophical Society were discussed at this assembly. It became clear that the Central Board had to reorganize itself. I say had to reorganize itself because those who know the principles of the Anthroposophical Society as I drafted them at the time will already know that this is the right expression. The Anthroposophical Central Council is not based on election, but on the fact that the first three members of the Central Council simply went public and asked for members, so that those people who wanted to come did come and joined the Central Council of their own free will. I recall the words of our friend Michael Bauer, who said at the time: We are standing here, and anyone who wants to join, may do so! It is therefore something that is based on freedom in the broadest sense, but which should prevent impossibilities from occurring with regard to the composition of such a central committee.

You know that the first members of the central committee were: Dr. Unger, Dr. Steiner and Michael Bauer. Michael Bauer was sickly and for a long time was unable to fully perform the duties of a member of the Executive Council. Dr. Steiner resigned earlier because from a certain point on she did not want to associate matters of a purely business nature with my name, because everything concerning the Anthroposophical Society must be done independently of me. I have always emphasized that I attach a certain importance to the fact that I myself am not a member of the Anthroposophical Society. So Dr. Steiner resigned years ago, and she requested Mr. Walther in Berlin to manage the business until such time as the central board could be reorganized, so that Dr. Unger was left alone on the central board, so to speak. When the Stuttgart conference approached, Mr. Walther resigned his office into the hands of the central committee, namely into the hands of Dr. Steiner, who had entrusted it to him as her successor. The problem was that Dr. Unger was now actually alone and had to co-opt the other two members. And of course something like that has to happen – I would like to say – with the consent of a certain majority, but they don't need to be elected in a certain philistine sense. And so the Stuttgart Central Council came about – it is called the “Stuttgart” because it has to be together if it is to be effective – so the Stuttgart Central Council came about through Dr. Unger, Emil Leinhas and Ernst Uehli. These personalities are, in their work, a sufficient guarantee that everything that must lead to certain results, which are necessary today for the anthroposophical movement, but can also lead to them if the necessary support is provided by the membership, will now happen from the center of the Anthroposophical Society.

I was then asked to say my piece at this anthroposophical meeting; but I had to point out precisely those things that are connected with what I have already said here today: that a living life must actually come about within the Anthroposophical Society, such a living life that what is happening is really seen and presented to the world everywhere. There will be enough to present to the world if the individual branches really take up what the central committee approaches them with, since it is the central committee's responsibility to ensure that this vibrant life reaches every single member. But that must happen. I can say: my speech, which I was asked to give, became a kind of diatribe; but that is what was expected of me after some of the things I have said over the years. Because, my dear friends, there has not always been enough preparatory work for what needs to be demanded. This unsparing, uncompromising recognition of what is happening, and above all the effort to judge when such things happen, as in the case of Miss Doctor von Heydebrand or Emil Leinhas, that, that is not sufficiently widespread. We will first have to get used to these things, because they cannot rest on that eye-rolling following, which has always formed out of a certain nebulous mysticism, and which works in small circles here or there or also in larger circles; these things have no real significance for the seriousness of the anthroposophical movement. What is to be recognized in the anthroposophical movement must be based on sound judgment and, above all, on something that is viable in the present state of the world.

So the tenor of the anthroposophists' assembly was actually that the anthroposophists were asked to take on the anthroposophical movement, to not lose this anthroposophical movement out of their hands, so to speak. To do that, the Anthroposophical Society needs to be reformed. And there is every reason to hope – and the names vouch for this – that the present central council will indeed leave all the drivel and ramblings unconsidered. : disregarded; of course it cannot be forbidden, that goes without saying - disregarded all the prattling and rambling in order to devote itself to the serious great tasks that really exist in all areas of life. But he must also find a willing response. And just as little as the individual can do anything, so three wise men can do something if the others do not exceptionally accommodate them and, above all, join in. It is this living interaction that must come into the anthroposophical movement as a reform before anything else.

The Stuttgart Congress, which was also dedicated to the memory of Goethe, took place in just such a way. I would like to mention only what, so to speak, was a kind of underlying theme running through the discussions at this congress.

My first lecture, which I gave on Monday, August 29, immediately after my arrival in Stuttgart, started with a description of the prevailing agnosticism of our time. What actually prevails in the present is a worship of agnosticism. You find it in the natural sciences, you also find it in the historical sciences, in the economic sciences, you find it in art, you find it in religion – you find this agnosticism everywhere. And it is only in the last third of the nineteenth century that a person who was a serious thinker was actually only considered to be one who was an agnostic, who said: It is right to observe the world of phenomena, to abstract the laws of nature from this world of phenomena, but for knowledge to renounce both what the phenomenon is in the world of external phenomena and what is deeper in the world. No Gnosticism, Agnosticism, that is what has emerged in all fields. One need only mention two pillars of agnosticism in Central Europe, as has already been mentioned here: the lecture given forty-nine or fifty years ago in Leipzig by the natural scientist Du Bois-Reymond, who concluded with the now famous words “Ignorabimus”, “We shall not know”, namely, we shall know nothing about that which is behind the external phenomena and which we call matter, and we shall know nothing about what is in the depths of human nature itself. That was the proclamation of agnosticism for Central Europe. For the West, Spencer and others have done it.

In the present day, all life is fundamentally dominated by this agnostic mood. In the field of history, this agnosticism found expression in the person of Leopold von Ranke, who said that one should follow the phenomena of history from the oldest times, as far as records are available, to the present day; but then there is the phenomenon of Christ Jesus; as Ranke says, he belongs to the “primal elements”. Here history cannot set about it, here history must pronounce its “Ignorabimus”, here we will never know anything.

Thus, in the face of that which, according to our anthroposophical view of all historical development on earth, basically stands as the primal factum on which all others depend, in the face of this primal factum, one of the greatest historians, Leopold von Ranke, “Ignorabimus,” as one of the greatest naturalists of modern times, Du Bois-Reymond, would say when he raised himself to the level of the essential entities that are active in the workings of nature, as the former said, “Ignorabimus”.

This agnosticism was not opposed by the work of the entire Stuttgart congress, not by the old Gnosticism, as slanderous people say, not by anything old at all, but by something completely new, something that has flowed from the spirit of contemporary science, that does not tie in with old traditions, which is thoroughly the spirit of the present, which must not be confused with all the mumbo jumbo and drivel that is constantly linked to ancient Egyptian and Oriental, but which is directly from the present, but which is a gnosticism against agnosticism.

And now, my dear friends, if I turn to the content of the Stuttgart conference, I would say that the general mood of the conference showed that the people who, for decades, have been the sign [gap in shorthand] that these have representatives among them again, have people within them who accept a new Gnosticism, who have an understanding for it, an understanding for the word: Man is there to know – and to act fully consciously and deliberately out of this knowledge. Gnosticism, in turn, has land in the world. This should be the conclusion drawn from what came to light in Stuttgart, for the reason that, although Gnosticism is also discussed elsewhere, it is done in an unscientific way; in Stuttgart it was done in a strictly scientific way, and not only in an abstract-general but in a strictly scientific way, in the most concrete fields of medical science, psychology, philosophy, linguistics and so on. So this Stuttgart congress was held under the sign of asserting Gnosticism against agnosticism.

I believe, my dear friends, that after what had preceded it, those who had not yet seen the Goetheanum in Dornach, when I presented the pictures of the Goetheanum in a slide lecture, could feel that these people were already in the right mood to sense what is actually wanted here in Dornach for contemporary civilization, as they could also feel from the eurythmy performances and other things, that anthroposophy is not some nebulous mysticism to which individual mavericks turn, but something that is primarily working on the great tasks of the time and in all different fields, for example, in the fields of art and the arts. That is what I would like to say to your souls, my dear friends.

Of course, many of you were not present at the Stuttgart Congress. But that is not the point. I used his example only to draw attention to the way in which members of the Anthroposophical Society should now take a living stand on what is happening, what is happening every day; how they should not just make themselves the bearers of theories or of something that satisfies them personally, but how they should feel as members of the Anthroposophical Society. If the members feel that they are members of this Anthroposophical Society, then what must come about will come about: the Anthroposophical Society will grow into the Anthroposophical Movement; because that is what we need, my dear friends.

Now, my dear friends, you see, there are also other symptoms that testify to the fact that the anthroposophical movement as such is now self-supporting. It is indeed precisely because of what happened in Stuttgart that much has been done to ensure that we have an anthroposophical movement today. But now that the anthroposophical movement is here, it is working through its own strength. This is shown, for example, by the fact that my Berlin lectures in the “Philharmonie” were not arranged by any anthroposophical group or branch or even by any anthroposophists, but entirely from outside, from the world, by people completely uninvolved in the Anthroposophical Society, namely from the Wolff'schen Konzertbureau, without anyone from the Anthroposophical Society having any part in the arrangement, and this lecture was truly sold out many days before it took place, and I was requested by the organizers, who were not Anthroposophists, to repeat it on the 22nd in Berlin. And I was asked to give these lectures in ten other German cities, immediately following that event, which was also not organized by the Anthroposophical Society or anything like that. Now, my dear friends, I could not do all that. I had all sorts of other tasks; many of you are here today. And so I could not give the second lecture and, of course, now that I have tasks burning on my fingers, I could not even do anything to give these lectures in the other ten German cities. I had to postpone it all. And I would say that it is necessary, my dear friends, that it be postponed. Why? Yes, my dear friends, because I have to return to the concerns here. Of course, I am always happy to return to what Dornach has become, but because I have to return to the concerns here! I spoke of these concerns when the general assembly of the “Goetheanum” was held here. At the time, I made an appeal to the members, which said: It is truly necessary that, now that the Mittelland can no longer make sacrifices because of the foreign currency issue, sacrifices be made from elsewhere so that we can continue this building in Dornach. Otherwise, as I said at the time, we will have to close this building within a short time. You can imagine that I could not possibly travel around Germany with a calm heart and simply forget these worries.

So far, I have not heard much that my appeal at the time has been met. Of course, my dear friends, I know all the things that are said as a justification for this lack of response, so to speak, but I also know how many things are not done that could already be done. And finally, it should not be the case that the central point remains in a state of limbo when the movement in those areas that are currently most in turmoil and suffering takes the course that I have just been able to tell you about. Well, I hope that you can imagine in your own souls what it would mean now that, precisely where everything is at its lowest point with regard to the old, people are longing for the new, how precisely there, I would say, how from the very core of the world's being the call comes that one should not abandon what wants to arise here as a central point.

Since that General Assembly, a few months have passed, and it should actually be seen whether that appeal has borne any fruit, or whether it must be the case that the anthroposophical movement must simply flee there – it does not need to flee, but I can put it that way – to where it is desired.

You may say: This has now become a diatribe. Yes, but my dear friends, we are also facing a serious matter, and in such a serious matter it is not always possible to speak only of beauty, but rather to speak the truth. But I would like to separate the latter completely from what the moral side of the matter is, which after all consists in the fact that the Anthroposophical Society must become an instrument that is the bearer of the anthroposophical movement. Then we can go through all the enmities that are blossoming in such abundance in all possible places in the world. But within the Anthroposophical movement itself, this must become our attitude, especially in view of what has happened in Germany.

You see, my dear friends, a whole series of eurythmy performances has been grouped around my lecture in Berlin. These eurythmy performances — how they were reported to you just a few weeks ago in the “Basler Nachrichten”! What vulgar attacks these eurythmy performances have suffered! Eight days ago today, we had a eurythmy performance in Berlin at the “Kammerspiele” theater. It was sold out many days in advance, and in the days leading up to it, requests for tickets kept coming in — the phone didn't even want to stop ringing —. It was completely sold out. And it can be said that this eurythmy performance was a success, a real, unfeigned, honest success, which can perhaps only be compared with the successes that Gerhart Hauptmann has had in the Deutsches Theater in recent decades, a completely undivided success. And the same was true of the performance that took place the day before in our own space on Potsdamer Strasse. The Potsdam venue is not smaller than the “Kammerspiele”, but larger, and it was not just for anthroposophists, but for the general public. I was unable to attend the following performances. There have been two more performances in Berlin so far, and I have been told that the success is increasing. Yesterday there was a performance in Dresden, but I have not yet received any report on how it went. Then two more performances will take place in Berlin.

So you see, we can move forward. What follows from anthroposophy as an art form is what is needed today. Don't think that I am deluding myself; I know how much sensationalism and how much sensation there is in these things, but that doesn't matter in this case because the thing is not calculated on sensation because the matter is serious, and if the supporters of the matter take it seriously, then now is the time to keep the matter warm; otherwise, of course, what has been achieved will mean a kind of culmination, and it will pass because there is a lot of sensation on the part of the outside audience. But many of those who today take up the matter only as a sensation will one day become serious people if the Anthroposophical Society finds the strength to support the matter.

So the fact that something has been achieved does not mean anything other than that a possibility has been given. But for us today, this possibility is a task, a task that will certainly lead forward if we show ourselves to be up to it. And it is a matter of rising to this challenge. In order to emphasize this in the right way, my dear friends, I wanted to give you this report today, which should stand out from the series of regular lectures, and which should show how the Anthroposophical Society should think about its reform and its progress. And basically, it should be one of the tasks of the Anthroposophical Society to constantly take care of what is happening, to know what this Anthroposophical Society actually is. My dear friends, the essence of the Anthroposophical Society is not something that is mentioned here or there in a brochure or that appears in the title “Principles of the Anthroposophical Society”, one, two, three and so on. The essence of the Anthroposophical Society is what happens every day. What is printed as statutes and so on — well: in all philistine honor. I don't want to say anything else. But that is not reality; reality is what happens every day in reality, and furthermore, how what happens every day lives in our souls. And so the Anthroposophical Society should take it upon itself to care about what happens, to know what is going on.

Sometimes this Anthroposophical Society seems very strange to me. You ask: Anthroposophical Society, yes, what are its principles? Then you want to have a little booklet that tells you what it is. It seems to me as if I were presented with an 18-year-old person and did not take him or her as a living human being with all that he or she is, and say: I want his or her baptismal certificate, I want his or her birth certificate; in these I find everything worth knowing, and perhaps some notes that were made at the time or in the course of his or her life. That is what matters: always living in the present, because the eternal must be realized in the present, and not in things that have become acts.

It is something that matters – I hope that others will do it differently – it is important to me to emphasize these two achievements of the Stuttgart Congress that I have highlighted today; but everything that happens should be evaluated and understood in this way.

Really, my dear friends, I know that something like this can be misunderstood. It can be misunderstood on the numerous sides where ill will against us is so strong today. Recently in Dornach we had a special occasion to reflect on who now has authority in relation to the representation of a matter, and to which names one should turn. Nothing was found that was right, and in fact, all the names have been used up. Those who still had a full sound in 1914 are gone, especially if you look at it seriously. Now one should also dare, one should have the courage to say: something is coming! For try to find a teacher today who gives a lecture like Fräulein Doctor von Heydebrand! Try to find an economist or a political economist who gives a lecture like the one Emil Leinhas gave in Stuttgart! We must have the courage to recognize the significance of something even when we have the opportunity to listen to it ourselves, and not just accept it as an order from some authority, even if that authority is the fact that the people concerned hold a professorship or are directors of some famous bank or belong to this or that group, and so on. We also need the courage to judge. This is precisely what the Stuttgart conference and all the events in Germany are now proving. We must have no respect for what today, in any case, cannot begin to do, such as the Stuttgart conference, the Stuttgart congress. But we must have all the more feeling for what is actually there as living life.

And so, my dear friends, I would ask you to take this to heart, what happened in Stuttgart, for these things must have an effect. Hopefully in the future we will be able to bring about a congress here in Dornach; but for that we must maintain the continuity of the building of Dornach. For that we must really be able to continue building the building of Dornach. You will say: We have had courses here at the School of Spiritual Science and so on. We certainly have had those, but we also had them in Stuttgart; I did not speak of them today, but rather of the Stuttgart congress, which addressed everyone oriented to anthroposophy and which was attended as a congress, and which was something else again, which above all showed: There, there they come, there they have their longing. We cannot really say that about the summer course that immediately preceded it, and I would very much like to say so, because anthroposophy must not be a matter of necessity, which it is to a large extent in the Central European countries. Anthroposophy must be a matter of insight, of insight into the necessity for humanity to renew its spiritual life.

That is what I wanted to show by this example today.

The Earthly, the Cosmic and the Present Christ

My dear friends!

Before I say anything else, please allow me to give you a brief report on the last few weeks. I will mention only a few things so that you here at the Goetheanum may be informed about what is going on in our movement.

After I had left Dornach and had dealt with other, internal matters in Stuttgart, the beginning of my public activity was on November 19 in Berlin, where I had to give the second lecture — the first is known to you - in the great hall of the Philharmonie, which was again filled to capacity. Then, after a eurythmy performance in Berlin, the Kristiania tour began. The first lectures in Copenhagen were on November 23 and 24. These two lectures were held at the request of the Pedagogical Association in Copenhagen. In them I had to discuss the principles and methods of anthroposophical education and didactics and to say something about the way the Waldorf School is run in Stuttgart. These lectures took place at the “Nobel Institute” and were very well attended. They were mainly attended by teachers; only a small number of seats had been allocated to members of our society. The second lecture — that was on Thursday, November 24th — was preceded by a lecture on the Vidar branch in Kristiania.

On the 25th, I then had to give a public lecture in Kristiania, organized by the student body, on “The Paths to Supernatural Knowledge”. It is worth mentioning that the lecture was able to be held in the largest hall in Kristiania, which holds over 2000 people, and that this hall was full to the last seat. Considering that there may not be many people in Kristiania who understand German to any great extent, one must nevertheless come to the conclusion that the anthroposophical movement is currently expanding to some extent.

On Saturday, November 26, I had to give a lecture at the student body of Kristiania itself, as part of the weekly student gatherings held on Saturdays. The public lecture on the previous Friday was arranged by the student body, but was open to the public. This lecture on Saturday had the same topic, but was of course then treated for the student body and within the framework of student associations.

On Sunday we had a eurythmy performance at 1 p.m. in the Kristiania National Theatre. Our friends were a little anxious, because it was a risk to give a eurythmy performance in the National Theatre, and besides, the house holds 2400 people when it is fully occupied, I believe. But on this day, it was filled to capacity. Taking all the circumstances into account, the audience received this eurythmy performance with great friendliness.

At 6 p.m. the second event for the “Vidar branch” took place. That was on Sunday, November 27th. And on Monday morning we were inundated with a veritable flood of sewage from all possible newspapers in Kristiania. It presented the absolute opposite of the picture that could actually be gained from the previous day. I have already experienced very bad things from these pages, but what has been done here is pretty much one of the very worst newspaper diatribes that can be mustered.

I had to remind them that a long time ago, when the intention of presenting eurythmy to the public was expressed, I gave a lecture to our eurythmists in which I pointed out that if eurythmy was brought into the public eye, it would experience the very worst of abuse. And this prophecy has rarely been fulfilled in such a magnificent way as on that Monday and Tuesday. The things lasted for a long time, because some people ranted two or three times.

On Monday evening, the first public lecture on anthroposophy organized by our friends took place in the old university auditorium. It was well attended and very warmly received, and not the slightest hint of what had happened outside in journalism was to be noticed. Then, on Tuesday at noon, I was invited by the theological association in Kristiania to speak about the Christ problem in a university auditorium, and that same evening I gave the second anthroposophy lecture organized by our friends.

On Wednesday, the lecture on economic issues, “The Cardinal Question of Economic Life,” took place at the request of the State Economic Association, also in the university auditorium. This lecture was attended by both economic theorists and economic practitioners. This was followed, not in the hall, but at a supper that had been organized, by a lively discussion of the relevant economic issues. The topics of the previous days of anthroposophical lectures were on Monday: “The Foundations of Anthroposophy”, on Tuesday: “The Human Being in the Light of Anthroposophy”.

On Wednesday we also had a very special treat. There was a very excited debate about whether a second eurythmy performance should be organized after the way things had gone. I said: perhaps it would have been possible to discuss whether a second eurythmy performance should take place in a city that is not too big after all, considering that 2400 people had already seen it – if it hadn't been for the ranting. But as it was, it was self-evident that I, for one, could not do without the second performance, so that every effort had to be made to get the National Theater for the second time, and if it could not be obtained, then another theater would have to be taken. - Now the greatest efforts were really made.

In particular, our friend Ingerö has earned the greatest merit.

On Wednesday there was a meeting of the 'Theater Association'. Among others, the father of our friend Morgenstierne, who is a professor, belongs to it. When he came to the supper of the State Economic Association that evening, he declared, “I have been slaughtered.” It had been such an agitated meeting that he felt slaughtered, and rightly so. And now, of course, we were refused the theater.

I thought that we should now definitely take on a different theater. That happened, and rehearsals were to begin on Thursday. Then there was a fire at the power station. Kristiania was plunged into darkness, and of course the theater was in darkness all day, and we had to hold the rehearsals by candlelight, but of course we did not let that stop us. Of course, we couldn't do any light experiments, because it was dark. This darkness began on Friday. On Friday evening, my second public student lecture was to be held in the large university auditorium. It was very uncertain whether anyone would come at all, because it was simply impossible to illuminate the university auditorium. It didn't seem to me to be an obstacle either, and we boldly made the attempt. I arrived in the evening. It was difficult to pass through the corridors, one had to be guided by a candle light. Then the lecture was held in the packed University auditorium with three acetylene lights. The topic was: “On the Necessity of a Renewal of Culture”. The lecture was very well received. One could not notice anything of the newspaper ranting, because they had now smelled a rat and continued their ranting throughout the whole week. It was, however, typical that in the middle of the first week, for example, an article was published that was compiled from all the criticism of the “Kommende Tag” and the “Futurum” that had ever been published in German newspapers. It was a very select selection that was published. In response, our friend Morgenstierne sat down and wrote a reply. Another friend went to the editor and said: “It's all lies, how can you print such a thing?” He replied: “Yes, I don't know anything about the matter myself, I haven't read anything by Dr. Steiner, I don't know anything, but the article was sent to us from a proven source, and that's why I printed it.” — “Yes, but then you also have to print a reply.” — “Yes!”

Our friend Morgenstierne then sent the retort, the publication of which had been promised. The next day there was an even bigger rant, which took up almost the entire page, and the retort was printed in very small print at the back of the page in the classifieds section.

An employee of a more decent newspaper did, after all, report quite objectively, for example, about the pedagogical lectures and the public lecture. In general, the lectures were not even treated unobjectively.

Then Saturday came. A dress rehearsal had to be done with a specially compiled program for certain reasons that I don't want to discuss here. This dress rehearsal could only be carried out by candlelight, so there was no lighting test, and I said we would just have to wait until the electric light came back on. It came back on at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, and then the theater declared: We have to have the first rehearsal ourselves, because we've been waiting for it all these days. So we couldn't do the light test at 4 p.m., but only at 7 p.m. The performance was scheduled for 8 p.m. At 7:45 p.m., the doors were opened and the audience was let in. The performance was received in an extraordinarily friendly manner. The hall was not full; but that is only due to the fact that very few people could have considered that a theater might be lit in that particular neighborhood. But relatively speaking, the performance was not even poorly attended and, as I said, was received extremely warmly. On the other hand, the next day a review appeared in which it was said that it had been a scandalous success.

On Sunday I held the branch meeting for our members and that was the end of the campaign in Kristiania. There was then another eurythmy performance and then a branch event on Wednesday in Berlin. So these are the events that have taken place recently.

When I arrived here about three hours ago, I opened one of many letters by chance that was very interesting. Namely, three or four weeks ago a paper was published in Germany by a publisher in Hanover by a Dr. Michel called: “Rudolf Steiner, the Anthroposoph, a Philosophical Execution”. I believe that this paper has even been reviewed in the Threefolding newspaper. The letter I received today has the following content:

Darmstadt, 14.11. 21, Saurbergstr. 66

Dear Mr. Steiner,

the publisher Paul Steegemann of Hanover announced in the latest issue of the German book trade journal, Börsenblatt, a pamphlet of mine with the title: “Rudolf Steiner, the Anthroposoph; a philosophical execution”. This pamphlet does not and will not exist; I have not written it and will not write it. It is true that I promised Steegemann Publishers a collection of essays, which would include my article “The Anthroposophists” that appeared in the Berliner Tageblatt. It is also true that I am opposed to what is referred to as anthroposophy and what was presented here as such a few months ago. But this brochure does not exist; I would not have chosen the crude title “Execution”, quite apart from the fact that I do not know those of your achievements that are most highly regarded by your followers. I would like to add with all due respect that I don't feel the need to get to know you, but I am so unhappy about the tasteless publicity that the publisher has done without my knowledge that I would like to distance myself from it in any case. The publisher also claims that I am from Keyserling's Wisdom School, which is also a blatant lie. I am sharing all this with you for the sake of truth and to get out of the false, distorted light that this kind of advertising casts on me.

Yours very sincerely

Wilhelm Michel

So you see, you can't even rely on the authors anymore, because the authors declare that they didn't write the books!

Now, another letter stated that one can still say with a clear conscience today that anthroposophy is nevertheless making its way; but the anger is also growing ever greater, precisely because it is making its way. These things are definitely connected. So another letter brought a larger number of signatures from professors at the [Copenhagen] University, inviting me to give anthroposophical lectures there. What will come of it all, I do not know at present.

It is indeed the case that the anthroposophical movement is making its way through the world, and above all, it can be seen everywhere that there is a lively interest in the various branches that have emerged from the anthroposophical movement. On the other hand, however, the opposition is growing monstrously. Just to mention one example of this opposition: when I arrived in Berlin before the trip to Kristiania, our friend Mr. Gantenbein came to me and said: “I have just received a telephone call from Stuttgart telephone conversation that on the 24th in Munich a lecture will be given by the director of the Haeckel Archive, Professor Schmidt, on the basis of documents and letters that are in the Haeckel Archive. Now Dr. Kolisko wanted to know – because he might want to intervene in the discussion in Munich – what kind of criminal act the letters I once wrote to Haeckel could represent. I said that, of course, I could not at that moment reconstruct every single sentence that I had written to Haeckel about 25 years ago, but he should go there and see for himself what was going on. Well, he went. I then received a report about the Munich meeting.

Professor Schmidt gave a lecture in which he did not dare to say much about anthroposophy itself, as I believe he said himself. Instead, he read out some passages from letters that I had written to Haeckel. I was then sent the copies of these letters, and it was an extraordinary interest to me to read them again, for one after another begins [something like this]: “Dear Professor! I must express my most sincere thanks for the latest of your works, which you have again sent me.

The letters contain essentially nothing but expressions of gratitude for the books Haeckel had sent me about himself. But two letters that were not from me were particularly serious. I still have not seen them; but they were written to Haeckel by a friend of mine in 1901, I believe, without my knowing anything about it. Haeckel had known me for quite some time, to the extent that he had given me almost all of his works, bit by bit. Now this friend wrote to him that I was doing very badly and had no money, and that he should use his influence to get me a lectureship. I knew nothing about it, otherwise I would have pointed out the folly to him. I only learned of this fact now. And on the side of one of the letters was written, “Steiner — Theosophist,” in Haeckel's own pencil, so I heard. That seemed to be the only point of complaint, because it was used to construct: Aha! He didn't have any money back then, so he became a Theosophist to make as much money as possible. - I don't know, though, whether it would have been possible to get out of this dilemma that way, because Theosophical leadership in Germany was entirely honorless.

So that was contrived. The meeting seems to have been extraordinarily instructive, because it was held in a monist alliance. The chairman seems to have been extraordinarily amazed at this outpouring of monistic wisdom and says that he certainly cannot comprehend how it came about that this was organized; he is in favor of hearing about anthroposophy first and foremost. Dr. Kolisko was invited to speak, I believe. But that is something that perhaps should not be pointed out, otherwise it will be rescinded.

As you can see, the whole affair seems to have been a terrible embarrassment, but at least it shows you the means that are being resorted to. You have probably been able to read in the Dreigliederungszeitung what the “Bund zur Abwehr der anthroposophischen Gefahr” (Federation for the Defence against the Anthroposophical Danger), which was founded in Darmstadt, has achieved. As I said, I just wanted to give you this one example of the particular way in which such things are now being done. I could tell you a great deal about the most diverse kinds of opposition. But it is already clearly visible today that things grow with the spread of the movement.

After my return from Kristiania, I received an article from the “Kölnische Zeitung”, in which a geologist speaks out in an extraordinarily dismissive manner against the way in which I arranged the geological writings for the Weimar Goethe Edition in the 1890s; he would have arranged them quite differently, and he finds it completely ungeological the way I arranged them.

I do have my particular opinion about this kind of execution by a university geologist, however; because in the first paragraph of this newspaper article, it says that it is indeed strange when a young man writes such writings about Goethe; but he admits – the person in question – that he does not understand them. Well, I think that it is not particularly valuable to pass judgment on the fundamentally rather secondary question of whether a Goethe essay will be included in the edition sooner or later; after all, one can have the most diverse views on this, because one bases one's judgment on the principles one has formed about Goethe.

And if someone cannot understand these principles, then their judgment is not to be trusted. But I would like to give such gentlemen a piece of advice: they should dispute most vehemently any judgment of mine about linguistics. Because after going back so far in the decades, one should just go back a little further and check my school notebooks in Wiener Neustadt. I can guarantee that these school notebooks always contained a large number of grammatical errors up to the age of 14, and that punctuation in particular was extremely poor. I therefore believe that one can draw the justified conclusion from this that it is completely impossible for me to make a valid judgment about anything linguistic today! It seems to me that the investigations will soon have to be driven into this quagmire.

It occurred to me, without me wanting to draw a comparison, that the poet Robert Hamerling published his high school teaching certificate in his memoirs. This certificate, which was issued by the enlightened high school teaching examination board when Robert Hamerling was to take his high school teaching qualification, contains the following passage: The candidate is eminently qualified to teach Greek and Latin, however, one cannot help but say that with regard to the German language and style, he can hardly meet the most basic requirements of a grammar school teacher of the lower classes. Such samples could indeed be collected in many ways. Those who have experience in this field know how these things actually come about, that is, how they arise from the mind, because that is the more important thing.

That, my dear friends, is what I wanted to tell you about the progress of our movement. I must repeatedly draw your attention to the fact that you must be fully aware that the opposition is growing ever greater and greater.

Today I would like to say a few words that could be a kind of continuation of the explanations I gave you before my trip. I would like to talk about how, in a sense, what I have said on various occasions about the Christ problem can be summarized. I would like to do this because a paper has recently been published that characterizes, as it were, “newer religious movements,” and among these also discusses anthroposophy. In this paper, one might say, the tone is actually quite benevolent. You see, I have given our friends in Kristiania some consolation for the terrible things that they too have had to endure in the newspapers. I said: If the newspaper reviews had been so one-sided as to bring them extraordinary praise, then I would have had to consider what is wrong with anthroposophy and what can be improved. But now, for some time, one can be encouraged again; because it would have been very bad if things had turned out differently.

So, a publication has appeared that expresses itself in an actually benevolent intention about the religious content of anthroposophy. It is said that it would be quite nice if the religious feeling of the present were to receive support from anthroposophy. But that cannot be the case, because then the religious movement would have to watch as anthroposophy points people to the higher worlds. The higher worlds would be pointed out from a different side than that of the appointed representatives of religion, and if that were to attract followers, they would not be followers of religion, but followers of anthroposophy, from which one must therefore conclude that the life of anthroposophy means the death of religion.

This sentence is included in the first part of these discussions as something special. And there it is, as with so much, referred to the Cosmic Christ. Of course, everything that can be said about gnosticism and the like is brought up again, and then it is said: To present the Christ as an extraterrestrial, cosmic being is an insult to anyone who feels religious.

Now, since this is actually being said from a benevolent side, benevolent in relation to anthroposophy, as well as in relation to religious renewal, I must confess that I found that the matter had to be considered: How is it that people who, after all, cannot change their minds but are nonetheless well-meaning, come to the conclusion that the Christology of Anthroposophy is even offensive to a Christian, as he should be according to the opinion of such public representatives - because the person in question who wrote the book is a professor of theology. So it is a matter of considering what is actually at the root of this.

My dear friends, first of all we must consider what we have always presented regarding the twofold experience, the Father-experience, that is, the experience of God permeating the world, and the Christ-experience as such, which, for example, is not separated by people like Harnack from the general experience of God, from the Father-experience. I have presented this to you. It can be shown, and this must actually be striven for in the present, that there must be two experiences in man: one that comes from a truly correct contemplation of nature and of the physical existence of man, and the other that comes from the soul to the experience of the Son. The two experiences must occur in man in a completely separate way, so that the Christ-experience is a special experience. But this is not the case with most of the present official representatives of the Christian denominations. In his book 'The Essence of Christianity', for example, Harnack says that Christ does not belong in the Gospels, only the Father; so it should not be about having Christ or an image of Christ in the Gospels. The Gospels are not meant by rights to speak about the Christ, but only about what the Christ says about the Father.

This is extremely characteristic, because for anyone who can think impartially, Harnack's concept of Christ is denied the ability to be a Christianity at all. For there is no difference between the old teaching of Yahweh and Christology when it is said: the Christ does not belong in the Gospels, only the Father. For then the Christ is merely the Father's teacher, and then we really have no difference between the Christ-Jesus of these theologians and the Jesus whom, for example, an ordinary secular historian, Ranke, describes. That is just “the simple man from Nazareth,” certainly a peak of historical human development, but just the simple man from Nazareth. Actually, there is nothing of the Mystery of Golgotha in

such a so-called Christian discussion. But the individual human being can have the separate Christ-experience in the present, especially if he feels the modern sense of self in the right way. But then, I would like to say, one has the Christ who is present and walking among us spiritually, and not yet the historical Christ-Jesus who went through the Mystery of Golgotha.

Now it is a matter of also understanding this Christ-Jesus historically. This can be done in the following way. One follows the historical development of humanity up to the time when the Mystery of Golgotha took place. You know that this is the fourth post-Atlantean period.

Now let us assume that I have to talk to you today about the historical development of humanity without the Mystery of Golgotha having taken place in the Pauline sense; then I would not be able to talk to you about anything other than the pale skull site of Golgotha. Because what happened at this pale skull site of Golgotha would not have a supersensible significance. The Christ could not be understood as a supermundane, cosmic being.

During this period, the preliminary experience of the I first occurred. This can also be proven philologically by examining the languages. However, the actual experience of the I for Western humanity in the various branches of the life of consciousness did not occur until the first third of the 15th century, but it spread from the fourth post-Atlantic period.

The peoples who lived before the mystery of Golgotha had, as you know, an ancient wisdom in the most ancient times. This primal wisdom has indeed taken on very different forms among different peoples. But, however it may have been differentiated in the most diverse ways, in religious terms it was a wisdom of the Father-God, and anyone today who, in complete impartiality, takes in what can be established about the primal wisdom of different peoples, what can be gleaned from the records and documents of the nations, even in the Vedas, which I have often discussed, one will find that one must have the deepest reverence for what appeared in the most ancient times as primordial wisdom in the development of mankind

and has always been directed by the mysteries to the appropriate heights. But now this ancient wisdom is gradually dying out, and it is diminishing to the same extent that the instinctive old way of consciousness is diminishing. But to the same extent, self-awareness is also emerging in humanity, and with it the claim to human freedom.

Why was it that ancient pre-Christian humanity could have a wisdom of God that still instills the deepest reverence in us today when we look at it impartially? Precisely because consciousness had not yet penetrated to egoity, to the I, because what man brought forth from his being, when he considered himself in connection with the environment, gave him the Father consciousness in the most diverse forms. I have said it before: one cannot become an atheist if one is completely healthy. Atheism can be traced back to some kind of physical deficiency. But because these ancient peoples had a certain divine inheritance, this father consciousness arose from their overall feeling as human beings, from their total feeling and from the intuitive wisdom that flowed from it. As I said, this faded towards the fourth post-Atlantic period.

Everything is individual when it is really considered impartially, not in the sense of today's inadequate scientific method. In the deepest sense, it points to what has just occurred as a break in human development in this fourth post-Atlantic period, for example between Greek and Latin-Roman development. I have already mentioned many things, and I could still characterize many more. I just want to draw attention to one thing: if you still learn Greek today, you have to give the letters names: Alpha, Beta and so on, while in Roman times the names for the letters have already been absorbed; it is now just an “alphabet”, A, B, C and so on.

This happened during the transition to the abstract nature of the Roman language, the Romance language, and as a result, the understanding that something was originally given with language that had an inner connection, and that with language, humans were given a gift from the genius of language at the same time, was actually lost. These things must be researched because, as I am only able to hint at today, we cannot arrive at a thorough didactics of language teaching, as it must be in a truly serious school, such as a Waldorf school, if we do not pursue serious language studies; today's studies are not serious if we do not understand what it means that we now take the Greek letters alpha, beta, gamma and so on for granted, and merely refer to the Latin letters as letters: A, B, C and so on. Something of the genius of language was given to humanity, which I have to describe to you - as you know - as a real, actual being. In all kinds of orders one speaks of the “lost word”, but nowhere does one know what it is. It was simply with what we call the alphabet, if one simply pronounced the letters in succession, a world proclamation was given. Take for example the Greek Alpha. For anyone studying languages today, this is of the utmost importance. I hope that these language studies in particular can now be pursued in detail by Waldorf teachers, whom I have encouraged to do so, because we need these things in order to be able to use them practically in our teaching. If you form the word Alpha - but you have to take it fully - you have something that means “man”; and in “Beta” you have “house”. So that the word pronounced in the first two letters means: Man in his house. And then it continues through gamma and the other letters. And when you complete the alphabet, you get a deep meaning from the simple enumeration of the respective words that the letters mean.

This was later lost, completely disappeared in humanity, when the word that consists of all the letters of the alphabet. And today one speaks in “Freemason orders” of the “lost word”, but actually does not speak of something that really exists, because hardly anything suspects this reality.

But analyze the Greek alphabet and you will trace it back to the Hebrew: Aleph, Beth and so on, the alphabet always begins with: Man in his house. And then it continues. So world wisdom is revealed with the alphabet. Now, in the fourth post-Atlantic period, that which leads more and more to self-awareness emerged. It happened in stages, and I have already hinted at the important events that took place in the fourth Christian century, for example. However, as the sense of self emerged, something else emerged to the same extent. The I, the sense of self, that which the human being experiences by coming to full self-awareness, comes only from the physical body. Study everything else today, and you will receive influences from a supersensible existence, an existence from outside of life between birth and death. The sense of self that the human being has is a creation of what is experienced in the physical body between birth and death. In the next reflection, I will explain the full significance of self-awareness to you, but for now I would just like to mention it. However, the fact that the self-awareness of earthly man initially only comes from the physical body made those who were initiated through the mysteries in the fourth post-Atlantean period feel ill. They felt the culture was mentally ill. And that was a mystery view of the fourth post-Atlantic period: culture is mentally ill and needs a healer. This was deeply ingrained, and it is interesting to see how the Greek people, who were striving for health through and through, perceived this cultural illness.

You see, long, learned treatises have been written about the word “catharsis” associated with the mysteries. This was used to describe something that lives in the development of a tragedy by Aeschylus or Sophocles for the Greek tragedy. As I said, great scholarly treatises have been written about it. You know that from Lessing to the present day, speculations have been made about it; half-truths and quarter-truths have been found, but the right one has not been found. Lessing said: Fear and compassion should be stimulated, which in turn should be overcome. The soul should, so to speak, be healed of these passions by evoking them in this way.

But the most important thing is that “catharsis” is actually a medical term, and that it indicates that in Greece there was still an essential connection, let us say, for example, between Hippocrates and Aeschylus. The healthy Greek feeling sensed the cultural disease, and in the Aeschylus drama one sensed something like a healing. Therefore, one spoke in favor of the course, for the construction of the drama of catharsis, of the crisis that is overcome. One really spoke in medical terms of this catharsis. And if you look at historical development from this point of view, you will look with a special eye at the Essenes, especially at the therapists. Why did they call themselves “therapists”? Because they wanted to work on the recovery of the culture that had become ill.

And all this was preparation for the great healer, for Christ Jesus, for the actual savior. And it is not some superficiality, but is deeply rooted in the mystery knowledge of human development that the entry of the Mystery of Golgotha signifies a therapy for the historical development of humanity, and that if one were to speak of human development today without the Mystery of Golgotha having been there, one would have to say: human development is going downhill. One could only point to the bleaching skull place of Golgotha.

With full consciousness, it must be pointed out that the Mystery of Golgotha occurred at the right time and that it could not have come from the earth, but from outside the earth. For everything that had happened on earth in the development of humanity was at the stage in which the Greeks and the people of the Near East saw it, the therapists, until the “great therapist” came.

This actually leads to a correct and inward view of history. And from such a view of history, one is simply led to the historical event of the Mystery of Golgotha, to the historical Christ-Jesus. That is the way. This will be further explained next time.

But why does theology in particular oppose this extraterrestrial, this cosmic Christ? Why does theology say: That is insulting, that the Christ should be a sun being? Well, my dear friends, the reason for this is that theology itself has become materialistic. If we go back to the ancient wisdom, which was still instinctive, we see that people did not look up into the cosmic order and say: up there is the sun, which is a glowing ball of gas, but they looked up to the spiritual beings that were in the starry heavens. Whoever speaks of the being of the sun as the Christ does not speak of the material sun, but of the spiritual essence of the cosmos. We know how it is spoken of in theology today; there, too, one sees nothing but something that is calculated like a machine. And because extraterrestrial space is merely material — according to the view of such materialistic theologians —, anthroposophy, of course, makes the Christ, by declaring him to be a solar being, a merely material being as well.

So, because contemporary theology is so deeply infected by the materialism of the present day that it is taken for granted that when one speaks of the solar being, one is only talking about something material, it says: It is insulting. Because, isn't it true that anyone who, infected by conventional science, imagines a sun being coming to earth, imagines – and I don't mean to make a slip here, but I say this out of a desire to be understood – that something flies out of the sun and onto the earth, at most thinks of a shooting star. And so the theologian, based on his materialism, basically has the opinion: yes, when anthroposophy speaks of the Christ as a being of the sun that comes from the sun to the earth, it speaks of the Christ as a shooting star, a meteor. This can only come from materialism; people can no longer think in any other way than in material terms.

You have to go back to the elements if you want to understand at all why theologians might say that it is offensive when anthroposophy associates the Christ with an extraterrestrial being. Here you can see how contemporary theology is caught up in materialism, so to speak.

Now, I have tried to make it clear to you that Christ as the savior must be understood in a real, higher, medical sense. Of course, this will offend many theologians, because the fact that I have associated the word savior with the Heliand of German poetry, “Heliand,” has, it seems, deeply hurt Pastor Kully, who finds it extremely offensive and believes that it is as hollow as his own arguments. But I would like

emphasize: the benevolent theological writing I spoke to you about is not by Pastor Kully – lest you fall into the error of thinking it is – but from a slightly different source. From this, my dear friends, you can see that the Christology of anthroposophy can and must always be further deepened, because the present time demands that the Christ be understood again, that we can again rise to a real understanding of the Christ in the Jesus.

Report by Rudolf Steiner on the Berlin School of Spiritual Science

[My dear friends!]

Allow me to say a few words today about the course of the Berlin School of Spiritual Science and then, tomorrow, to conclude with a reflection that should be of particular interest to you as a further elaboration on this very topic.

The Berlin School of Spiritual Science had organized its program in a special way. The aim was to show the relationship between certain branches of life and science in the present day and the anthroposophical world view. Each day was to be devoted mainly to a particular branch of science or life. The week was organized so that it began on Sunday, which was to be devoted to inorganic natural science; Monday was to be devoted to organic natural science and medicine; Tuesday to philosophy; Wednesday to education; Thursday to economics; Friday to theology. Saturday should be devoted to linguistics, and then on Sunday the whole thing should come to a certain conclusion with a performance of eurythmy at the Deutsches Theater.

The program was so well thought out that each day was to begin with a short lecture by me. Only the first Sunday could not begin in this way, since I could not yet be in Berlin at that time. So on Monday I had to summarize both inorganic and organic science in my introductory words; then the day should have a unified character. After my introductory remarks, two more lectures took place in the morning; then there was a short break for refreshments, but – as had already been announced – no refreshments were available in the Singakademie rooms, and a discussion was scheduled to take place from 1 to 2 p.m. The last lecture of the morning was then to follow from 2 to 3 p.m. It was a bit of a strenuous program!

In the evening, there were lectures, some of which were held by me in the Philharmonie, and some of which were held by others in the rooms of the Berlin University. Every evening there was a lecture, and for the other lectures, except for mine, there was still some kind of discussion in the evening after these lectures. So the days were extremely full.

Now, the entire structure of the program can actually be called interesting, especially through the formulation that the individual 'daily programs had experienced. To some extent, each day had an overall title, and the formulation of these overall titles for the days is really interesting, because they reveal so much that is significant. If you go through these formulations of the daily programs, each individual day has something positive in its formulation, except for Friday, which was dedicated to theology.

This is significant, not so much in terms of an awareness of the times, but in the way the program formulators related to the development of anthroposophy on the part of those who formulated the program. One simply felt compelled to formulate the other daily programs in a positive way. And we only need to look at these formulations to find out what is significant.

Sunday, March 5: “From hostile mechanistics to true phenomenology” - so in the formulation of the program, the hope is expressed that through anthroposophy one will come to find a phenomenology as the basis of inorganic science.

The program for Monday is summarized even more positively: “Ways of anthroposophical human knowledge in biology and medicine”. And the program for Tuesday on philosophy is just as positive: “The foundation of anthroposophy from the philosophical consciousness of the present”.

The program for Wednesday was equally positive: “From modern pedagogical demands to their realization through anthroposophy” — so here, too, the idea is that there are such pedagogical

demands in the present that can be realized through anthroposophy.

Thursday, which was devoted to social science, had a very auspicious title in the overall formulation of the program, although what was presented was less auspicious. Thursday even had an extremely auspicious title that sounds very positive: “National Economic Outlooks”.

Saturday, which was devoted to linguistics, bore the title: “From dead linguistics to living linguistics”.

So you see, these title formulations are the basis for everything: the aim is to point out the path that leads from the present into the anthroposophical shaping of the spiritual path in question. One has an idea of how the individual disciplines take their starting point from the given scientific formulations of the present and run into certain other insights, which are to be given by anthroposophy — everywhere absolutely concrete ideas about possible paths. Only - as I said - Thursday has the extraordinarily promising title: “Outlook”, even “economic outlook”, which is an abstract formulation, but which, in its abstractness, points out that one does not want to go, but to leap.

If we then look at Friday in the general formulation of the daily program, it reads as follows: “The Decline of Religion in Contemporary Theology and the New Foundation through Anthroposophy”. - So here, first of all, it is formulated quite negatively: The decline of religion in contemporary theology, and the new foundation - so it is only pointed out, even in a negative way, that there is something like anthroposophy, and that through it theology and religion can experience a renewal. It is not shown in this title in such a concrete way how the path out of the present confusion can lead into the anthroposophical formation.

If you compare this with the formulation from Sunday, for example: 'From mechanistic materialism hostile to life to true phenomenology', you even have a very specific term for what is to come in the word 'phenomenology'. Likewise, in the word 'human knowledge' from Monday, you pointed to something very specific. In philosophy you pointed to the philosophical consciousness of the present, and so to something concrete; in education you pointed to the pedagogical demands of the present, and in linguistics you said, at least, that we must move from the study of dead languages to the study of living languages, and so you formulated something concrete too.

Now, it is extraordinarily significant that this entire university course, which essentially culminated both internally and externally in the Friday event, which basically – especially the feeling that arose – had a theological character, which, while otherwise extremely well attended, on Friday, the theological day, had an attendance such that it was “packed”, overcrowded —, [it is extremely significant] that this course, in the formulation of the day for the theological program, had something negative,

Of course, these formulations arose out of the circumstances of the moment, and the speakers tried in all honesty and sincerity to express these circumstances as they arose, on the one hand from an awareness of the present and on the other from an idea of what can become of this awareness of the present through anthroposophy.

If we then go through the individual days, we naturally encounter things that are mostly familiar to us. Sunday: From mechanistic materialism hostile to life to true phenomenology: The point here, then, is to point out how we should overcome all speculation about atomism, about a mechanistic view of inanimate nature, how we should come to a pure observation of what is present in phenomena, in appearances, how these appearances themselves should speak for themselves, how they themselves should provide their theory. So it is expressed in this formulation that one wants to pursue Goetheanism in natural science.

In organic natural science, it is then expressed that the entire scope of organic natural science must be based on knowledge of the human being, that it is therefore necessary not to study nature in its kingdoms in a fragmented way, as is currently the case, but that, above all, one should start out from getting to know the human being, and from there explore the other kingdoms of nature.

If we then look at philosophy, the question on Tuesday was how philosophical consciousness has reached an end of a kind. It is interesting to think of this formulation in connection with Hegelianism, for example. In his philosophy, which dates back to the beginning of the nineteenth century, Hegel said that all philosophy of the present is an end in itself, and that basically, in philosophy, one can only look back on how things have come about, but that further development is not possible.

Now, on this Tuesday, it should be shown how a beginning, a new beginning, can arise from the end of philosophy, if one allows this beginning in the anthroposophical sense.

In education, the aim was to show that all truly thinking people today actually make certain educational demands, but that these cannot be met by the pedagogy currently being developed. These demands, which are basically made by all thinking people, can only be met by anthroposophy.

In linguistics, it should be shown how language itself, as a living organism, should be understood in the context of the human being, and not merely from the dead records, as is the case with contemporary linguistics.

As for social science, it can only be said that Emil Leinhas, in an extraordinarily illuminating way, has said something quite significant about the monetary problem of the present day based on his sound knowledge; but, as you yourself may sometimes feel, not an awful lot of positive things can be said about the monetary problem of the present day. You will already feel this here in Switzerland, in this country with its almost supreme currency. But you will believe that not much positive can be said about the money problem when you cross the border! So it is true that not an enormous amount of positive things could be said. The next two lectures did not bring any such positive results either, and this national economic day in particular showed how, basically, the cultivation of the national economic within our anthroposophical movement is what has actually failed through and through. For we have basically not been able to bring it about, despite the fact that the necessity in this area has been emphasized time and again. We have not been able to bring it about that in economics, on the part of those who are involved in economic life itself, something truly future-proof would have been put forward; namely, something that would meet the extremely difficult demands of the present. And so, for this day, the title “Nationalökonomische Aussichten” was basically something of a dancing promise; but what the day then brought was a more or less limping follow-up to this dancing promise.

As for theology, the three titles of the lectures that followed my introductory words were just as interesting as the general formulation of the day's program. The first title of Licentiate Bock's lecture was: “The Decline of Religion into Psychologism”; the second of Licentiate Doctor Rittelmeyer was: “The Decline of Theology into Irrationalism”; and the third lecture by Doctor Geyer was: “The Decline of Theology into Historicism”. So we have been given a threefold description of the decline of theology and religion in these days.

In a sense, the situation of the time had naturally led to theologians speaking, who explained how they come to a dead end within their theology today, based on their particular experiences of thought and feeling. Basically, there was a tendency among theologians to show how they come to a dead end within the theology that is presented to them at the present time.

And if we then consider what has been presented in a positive way, what has been said this Friday can be summarized as follows: Theological consideration of religion – as Mr. Bock, the licentiate, was probably thinking – comes down to looking only at the spiritual experience that can be described as a religious experience, perhaps as an experience of God. It is found that among the various inner experiences of the soul, the human being also has the religious experience, the experience that in a certain respect points to a divine one; but that, if one is unbiased, one can say: Yes, you just have a subjective experience. You have something purely psychological. There is absolutely no guarantee that this experience corresponds to anything in the objective world. The subjective experience of God is not such in modern theology that it can lead to a real acceptance of God, let alone to a view of the essence of the divine in the world. It stifles, as it were, the religious element in the consciousness of man in the psychological fact: Yes, we need a religious life. But there is nothing that can provide the certainty that this need will somehow be satisfied. The psychological fact is there that man needs religion, but the present knows of no content of this religion. - The result of the first lecture by Licentiate Bock would be something like this.

Dr. Rittelmeyer then explained how theology had become tired of rationalism, how it had come to no longer want to formulate the essence of the divine in the world in thought, that it no longer wanted to say: this or that is the content of the divine that permeates and animates the world. Thought was to be excluded from theology. The rational, the one stemming from reason, should be eliminated, and the irrational, the one that excludes thought, should become the content of theology. So that in fact in theology one arrives at nothing but the most extreme abstractions. One no longer wants concrete thoughts, one wants the most extreme abstractions. One does not dare to say: the essence of God can be grasped by this or that thought. One dares only to say: the Being of God is the Unconditional, the Absolute. One pins down a completely indeterminate concept, the “irrational,” that which no reason can grasp.

Would it not be so, in every other area of life, it would be strange to characterize something so negatively. If someone were to ask, for example, “Who is the head of the Goetheanum?” – [And one would answer:] The board of directors is the one who is not the board of directors of any other institution. – One would not get any information about who the board of directors of the Goetheanum is. Of course, you don't get any information about it if you say: The ratio of the divine being consists in the fact that God is the irrational, that which cannot be grasped by reason. – It is all just negation.

Rittelmeyer then linked this to some of the things these contemporary irrationalists have to say. For example, how man behaves inwardly when he wants to rise to this God, who can only be grasped in an irrational way. How does he experience this rising? He experiences it in silence. This is not the silence of mystical experience, which can be very positive, but the absence of speech, the cessation of speaking to oneself inwardly in thought. It was then further explained how this silence should take place in worship. It is out of the absolute powerlessness to formulate anything at all, to take refuge in silence.

It was interesting to hear two gentlemen speak, a private lecturer and a pastor, who defended this irrationalism in turn in order to show that irrationalism is particularly prevalent in the present day. For example, one private lecturer said: Yes, that would be quite right, it would be nonsense, for example, to say that one could find God less in nature than in the spirit. Nature is no more distant from God than is the spirit. Knowledge of the spirit provides no more for God than does knowledge of nature, for God is precisely the absolute that breaks through everywhere. This was repeated very often: that God is the absolute that breaks through everywhere.

Theology... Faust would have said “unfortunately” not just once, but three times; Faust would have to be rewritten: I have now studied, alas, philosophy, jurisprudence, medicine and, alas, alas, alas, also theology. So when one has to hear again and again: God is the absolute, which breaks through everywhere... one imagines it everywhere, and then it breaks through, breaks out... but it is precisely the indeterminate that breaks through everywhere! The last lecture was that of Dr. Geyer, who dealt with the decline of theology in historicism. Geyer tried to show how theology gradually came to have nothing creative of its own, but only to observe what had already been, always studying history, what had already been, in order to arrive at a content - but which naturally leads to the fact that at most one can say: In the past, people had a religious consciousness, but today they only have the opportunity to look at these different stages of religious consciousness in the past and choose something they still want to keep. Unfortunately, by making that choice, they are left with nothing of all that is served up to them from the different epochs of the past.

I myself began this day's program by noting that anthroposophy does not want to appear as a religion, that it wants to be a knowledge of supersensible worlds, and that, if theology wants to be fertilized by it, it may do so. Anthroposophy will, of course, say what can be said about the supersensible worlds, and it can wait to see what theologians can use from Anthroposophy for themselves.

For anyone who is able to see the big picture of the present situation, one deficiency has become very apparent today – but one that naturally arises from the circumstances. At least, if the topic of the day had been exhausted – as has been attempted with the other topics of the day and, with the exception of social science, has been achieved to a certain extent – a Catholic theologian should also have spoken. For all the lectures that have been given have been given solely from a Protestant perspective.

A Catholic theologian would have been in a completely different position from these three Protestant theologians. A Catholic theologian does not have a historically handed down theology, but a historically handed down and eternally valid theology, a theology that must be grasped in the present as vividly as it was grasped, let us say, in the third or second centuries of the Christian era. Of course, the councils and, in the eighteenth century, the Pope, who had become infallible, added many things. But these are individual dogmas, these are additions. But the whole essence of Catholic theology is something that, first of all, does not depend on the development of time, and that, in itself, through its own way of knowing, should have a perennial, an everlasting character.

Perhaps if a more progressive man had spoken about Catholic theology, it might have been possible to present the struggles of Catholic thinkers such as Cardinal Newman in an extraordinarily interesting way. If a less advanced Catholic theologian had spoken, he would have presented the essence of the eternal doctrine of salvation, that is, Catholic theology. Then questions of tremendous importance would have arisen. [For example] the question: What exactly is given in Catholic theology for today's man? In Catholic theology, as it appears today, there is undoubtedly nothing living for the present consciousness. But it was once something living. Its content is based entirely on the results of old spiritual knowledge, even if it is atavistic. What Catholic theology contains, say, about the fact of creation, of redemption, about the content of the Trinity, about all these things, these are real concepts, this is something that – only that it has content, which modern consciousness can no longer grasp, but instead dresses it up in abstract, incomprehensible dogmatics or does not dress it up at all, but accepts it as incomprehensible, dry dogmatics.

It was particularly the development of Catholic theology in the nineteenth century in such a way that it was no longer recognized what is contained in the dogmas. On the other hand, there is – or was, in the case of this university course in Berlin – an interesting experience.

On Friday, in my introduction, I said the following, based on my direct experience, which you already know: I said that the one who experiences what is in our natural environment and in what follows on from this natural environment comes, if he is not somehow inwardly crippled, to an awareness of the Father-God. Those who, during their lifetime, recognize the inadequacy of the Father-God and experience a kind of inner rebirth come to an experience of the Son-God, the God-Son. And then, in the same way, by progressing further, one comes to the spiritual experience.

Now a Protestant private lecturer, Lizentiat X., thought: Aha, there is the Trinity, you have to construct it. And he called it a construction, not realizing that there were experiences on which it was based... that was quite foreign to him. Well, those experiences on which the Catholic dogmas are based have become just as foreign to the modern consciousness of the nineteenth century.

These Catholic dogmas, of course, originally go back to spiritual realities. But they are no longer understood, they have become empty concepts. But in the nineteenth century, people wanted to get back to being able to revive a little externally what lives in Catholic theology. You are well aware that this urge to at least be able to understand a little of what lives in Catholic theology arose particularly under the pontificate of Leo XIII, hence the Catholic decree at that time, the Roman decree for all Catholic theologians to return to the study of Thomistic philosophy, the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, because all later philosophy is no longer useful for grasping something like what lies in Catholic dogmas. All philosophy that followed Thomas Aquinas is only useful for understanding natural existence, for providing a foundation for the natural sciences, but not for understanding spiritual realities. These are indeed unknown even in the Catholic Church, but they are formulated in Catholic dogmas – they were formulated at a time when these spiritual realities were still known. For this purpose, all later post-Thomistic philosophy is no longer suitable. Therefore, when the need was felt to understand something of what lies in the Catholic dogmas, the renewal of the study of Thomistic was demanded, which is indeed the actual philosophical endeavor within Roman Catholicism today.

There are historical realities at the root of this. And if we compare what is actually necessary to gain access to spiritual things again, we can see that, of course, Thomistic theology alone is not enough to revive what is contained in the old dogmas that have become ossified in Rome. A completely different approach is needed.

Please just remember what a completely twisted view I put forward for such a contemporary literary historian before I left here, in the last lectures, where, by going beyond everything that is space and time, I was able to show you how Hamlet is a pupil of Faust, how Hamlet sat at the feet of Faust for ten years, during those ten years when Faust led his pupils by the nose straight and crooked, how Hamlet was one of those who were led by the nose straight and crooked and criss-cross at the time. Such connections, which are of course an abomination to the present-day literary historian – but then, almost nothing of significance can be said today in the intellectual field that would not be an abomination to the official representatives – is that it is almost the stigma of the real truth today that it is an abomination to the public representatives of real science... Well, if you take this for such a profane area, then you will see what is necessary to really come to that agility of mind that can provide a basis for grasping what is preserved in the dogmas. How one must go back to a completely different state of mind in order to enter into the way one lived in such dogmas is shown precisely by the development of Cardinal Newman.

In Berlin today, it is perhaps still taken for granted that such a university course only addresses Protestant points of view and disregards the Catholic point of view; but you still won't get a picture of what actually prevails there today if you are not somehow able to discuss the Catholic point of view, especially today, when we once again need to look at the whole world.

We have to get beyond just talking today. You know about parochial science and parochial politics. But there is also such a thing as a parochial worldview; it comes across very strongly when you see something like the event on Friday evening, when Dr. Theberat gave a lecture on the topic: “Atomistic and Realistic Consideration of Chemical Processes.” That is to say, Dr. Theberat, who is now employed at our research institute in Stuttgart, tried to show how atomism must be abandoned and how phenomenology must also be introduced into chemistry. Dr. Kurt Grelling then entered the debate. I do not want to talk about Dr. Kurt Grelling, who more or less follows the recipe: Yes, all sorts of things are said in anthroposophy, but all that is not yet probable to me. What is certain, however, is that 2 x 2 = 4, and one must hold to what is certain: 2 x 2 is 4, this is certain. He asserted this already last summer in the Stuttgart course and then even called in two university teachers to help him assert this, that 2 x 2 = 4, on a special evening.

Of course, one could not contradict him. I mean, I only want to hint symbolically at what he said; because 2 x 2 is really 4. I could not contradict him. I could not even contradict him when he said last Friday, again completely out of context: I had admitted in Stuttgart that 2 x 2 = 4. Of course, I cannot deny that. I don't just mean 2 x 2 is 4, but rather things that are just as valuable in the overall context, he put forward at the time... but actually I want to say something else with this. He then claimed: Yes, the question that is being put forward can be decided on the basis of phenomenology, it cannot be decided from the point of view of natural science, but only from the point of view of philosophy.

Now, I am not saying that this is just a Göttingen thing, but at least it is not thought in a cosmopolitan scientific way today, because in England, for example, one would not be able to make sense of a sentence like that. If someone says: This cannot be decided scientifically, this can only be decided philosophically - because this difference is something that is, isn't it, a parochial worldview. This formulation is only known within certain Central European circles.

In any case, when we are talking about such questions, we need a broader perspective today. And it is impossible, for example, to keep talking about the center, west and east – formulation of the Vienna Program: there is constant talk of the west and the east and the center, which I do not criticize, I think it is quite great-spirited when there is talk of the west and the east and the center – but I think you then have to broaden your concepts a bit, they then really have to span these areas. You cannot, of course, embrace the world from a limited point of view. Well, for example, something is missing in relation to the western development of religious life if one completely leaves out Catholicism. Because this western religious life has nothing in it of what one touches when one speaks only of Protestant theology. One does not even come to talk about how... let us say, for example, Puritanism in England or the High Church in England or things like that.

I am not putting all this forward as a criticism, because the things that have been put forward were, of course, excellent. But I would still like to talk in the narrower anthroposophical circle about what needs to be said in connection with all that has happened.

And then it would have become clear how current thinking is not at all able to approach what was once the source of the theological content. So that in Berlin there was no bridge between what modern Protestant theology is and what is now to come from Anthroposophy to enliven religious consciousness. There were only ever indications that this should come from anthroposophy. But how it should be developed was not actually discussed.

These are things that may give you an idea of the struggle on anthroposophical ground, which has now found its most beautiful expression in Berlin. It was clear from the participation of the most diverse circles in Berlin – the lectures were extremely well attended, even the morning lectures – and it was clear from the participation of wide circles that something is definitely alive in the anthroposophical movement, which strikes strongly and intensely at the consciousness of the present.

And sometimes we also did not hold back on our part in the sharpness of expression, which should be characteristic of what is. I remember, for example, with a certain inner joy, when on Saturday Dr. Karl Schubert, who was speaking within the framework of “Anthroposophy and Linguistics” and who also wanted to show how linguistics should play a role in the political life of thinkers and races, became spirited in the debate. He wanted to point out what linguistics is today when you look at it... and what it must become through anthroposophy. It was spirited when he then said: Yes, he had been to Berlin, studied linguistics with a wide variety of teachers, and then came to anthroposophy to enliven this linguistics... and only then did it become clear to him... and there he found what this present linguistics is: a dunghill! And then he banged on the table! Well, there was no lack of spirited expressions to characterize the present situation. So it was already strongly felt what one could feel. The opponents have not exactly... yes, spirited I can't really say, I don't want to say anything that — well, I won't say anything like that!

The evening events were such that one tried to give a picture of the anthroposophical content. It was particularly significant this time that both Dr. Stein and Dr. Schwebsch, two teachers at the Waldorf School, gave vivid pictures of the educational work in the Waldorf School itself.

I would like to say, between the lines, that one could experience many strange things. The whole course ended on Sunday, and I had to give the final evening lecture on Sunday, but the morning events ended with a eurythmy performance at the Deutsches Theater, in front of a full house, which was an extraordinarily successful event.

I hardly need to say that if you should come across any newspapers, you will read the opposite of what happened. But a gentleman, for example, who wrote an article in a Berlin paper that some consider to be pro-Anthroposophy... well, I don't want to comment on that – he then asked another paper, a large paper, if he could also write an article about this college course. They asked: pro or contra? He said, because he thought his article was pro: pro. They said: No, we only take contra.

So they don't care what anyone writes, they just buy “contra”! And of course you won't get any idea of what happened there if you get other reports from outside.

It is a pity that apart from this eurythmy performance at the German Theatre, and the short eurythmy performances on Thursday and Sunday, more eurythmy was not performed; for that might perhaps have led to the situation – along the lines of the Stuttgart Anthroposophical Congress – that the honored attendees would not have had to bear the burden of these packed days quite so heavily. Because I could well imagine that it was quite hard! You see, take any of the days, an average day, when there were no meetings for a number of people, well, the person who experienced everything heard five lectures and a discussion. That is a bit much for a person today: five lectures and a discussion in one day! There were actually two discussions on a normal day. So one had the opportunity to live in such thoughts from 9 a.m. to [3:00 p.m.] and then again from [8:00 p.m.] to about [10:30 p.m.]. Of course, it would have been much better if, in between, as was the case in Stuttgart, witty eurythmy lectures could have taken place.

Yes, I was in a city and had the opportunity to speak to a theologian. He said: We were at a theological meeting in Eisenach; they showed us something like eurythmy there! Well, it must have been something else, but that is what he thought. 'I don't know,' he said, 'what we theologians should make of it; we were all quite amazed, we didn't know how we came to see something like that. But on the whole the result is an extraordinarily significant one, and otherwise, I would say, the inner characteristics of the times presented themselves in an extraordinarily eloquent way. For example, at the theologians' conference, a gentleman asked to speak who once had to give a lecture on the whole field of anthroposophy in one evening; he came to the Philosophisch-Anthroposophischer Verlag in Berlin that morning Berlin and bought, or rather was given, the books he needed to prepare for his evening lecture, in which he wanted to explain to a larger audience what anthroposophy is, because he was the one who had to give the lecture. Then the gentleman in question seems to have heard one of my philharmonic lectures in Berlin. He ranted terribly about it in a lecture he gave afterwards; among other things, he said that he had actually seen, when he looked around with the opera-goer during my lecture, that someone had even slept on individual benches. And on that theological morning, he spoke.

You couldn't really see the context of this discussion, neither with the topic of the day nor with what

what had been said, nor with anything else. I just kept hearing: “The Gospels shall greet us.” But I had no real idea how it related to the whole. Then he explained that the things had all been so significant that one must have the most ardent desire to unite the whole into one book in order to sell it. Yes, that is the essence of the present-day culture: essence.

I wanted to give you a kind of overview of what has been going on. I don't want to fail to mention that a very pleasing influence has emerged in Berlin, particularly within the German anthroposophical movement: the student influence. With a real inner devotion and with extraordinary zeal, one could see a part of the student body attached to anthroposophy. And that afternoon during the week, it was Friday, when I was with the students to discuss in their way what they wanted to know, that afternoon was a very beautiful part of this entire college course for me.

It is perhaps also worth mentioning that such an afternoon also took place in Leipzig – with a small group of university students devoted to anthroposophy. But the fact that, if one really wants it, a scientific discussion can take place between well-meaning people of current scientific practice and anthroposophy was demonstrated on that very afternoon in Leipzig, when the well-known anatomy professor Spalteholz was there and actually talked to me mainly about the relationship between current natural science and anthroposophy in front of the students. I believe that the students present learned an extraordinary amount from this conversation.

You can see from such a fact that it is actually quite unobjective reasons that official science, slandered and hereticized, is the one that is anthroposophical; while, if if someone were to be found who would deign to enter into a dispassionate discussion, such as Professor Spalteholz in Leipzig, then something very fruitful could come out of it, even if a full understanding is not reached. A complete understanding cannot yet be reached today because there is an abyss between the two sides. But at least a beginning can be made by saying in front of young people what can be said by both sides if we listen to each other. That is the essential thing, and that was the case on that Saturday, March 4, when a number of Leipzig students were with Professor Spalteholz and me to talk about anthroposophy and science. And in fact, many extremely important things were discussed.

Tomorrow we will then address a specific question. I just have to say that tomorrow evening will begin with an artistic eurythmy performance, in which new students will perform, supported by some older eurythmy performers. We will start with the eurythmy performance at [7:30] p.m., and then my lecture will follow.

[My dear friends!]

As you know, my intention today is to discuss some of the experiences in Holland and England. As you know, the Dutch friends organized an Anthroposophical School of Spiritual Science this spring, which took place from April 7 to April 12. A large number of our lecturers were present. The topics were from a wide range of scientific fields. However, the main aim was to provide an insight into the extent to which the anthroposophical worldview is rooted in scientific life and the extent to which it must be taken seriously by today's scientific community. That was actually the task at hand. The fact was that although a large number of our Dutch anthroposophical friends were present at the lectures, we were essentially dealing with an audience that was still quite unfamiliar with anthroposophy, an audience recruited from the student body of the various Dutch colleges, and which, above all, mostly wanted to have something like a first acquaintance with anthroposophical ideas. This was particularly the case with this Dutch course, which is now the case with regard to anthroposophy in general: a large proportion of young people who are scientifically oriented regard anthroposophy as a matter of time. Of course, the circumstances of the present time are such that only very few of those who want to address this question muster the courage and inner strength to really get close enough to anthroposophy. But even if the effects in this direction are slight, it is still apparent on such occasions, when anthroposophy is seriously sought, as in this Dutch course, that a few individuals, especially among the younger contemporaries, are becoming aware that anthroposophy, in addition to the satisfaction it offers in religious and other respects, is thoroughly scientifically grounded. And we were also able to perceive this in Holland, that among the younger contemporaries who were present were those who, after completing the course, had the feeling that here we are dealing with a scientifically serious matter.

An extraordinarily lively discussion was provoked by the lecture by Dr. von Baravalle, who spoke in a very stimulating way about mathematics in the light of anthroposophy. The discussion that followed was interesting because one older lecturer and one younger student who took part in the discussion really did try to engage scientifically with what Dr. von Baravalle had presented, and in a very forceful way.

It is a satisfying fact that specific details, for example in thermodynamics in physics, can be discussed in an appropriate way based on anthroposophy. Of course, discussions also occur in other scientific fields; but the point of view that Dr. von Baravalle took is truly quite far removed from the points of view that are adopted in present-day thermodynamics; and one is accustomed that those who are firmly seated in their chairs and well established in the present as scientists, simply dismiss with a slight wave of the hand these things that are so far removed from what they are accustomed to thinking. That this can no longer be the case today, that one must at least consider the corrections of formulas that one is able to make to current science through the results of anthroposophy, is an extraordinarily satisfying result.

Unfortunately, with such short lecture courses as we still have to give, one is obliged, I would say, to pick out individual short chapters from large areas, and that therefore hardly anything else can be given through such courses but a very inadequate stimulus. But for the time being we have to be satisfied with that. It is not yet possible, given the circumstances of contemporary life, to give more than this.

My first task was to elucidate the position of anthroposophy in the spiritual life of the present day. I endeavored to show how the spiritual life of the present day has, after all, taken on a kind of scientific character in all directions. Even if this is denied, it is still found that scientific thinking asserts itself everywhere; only the peculiar phenomenon emerges that, on the one hand, scientific life is declared to be the only one with authority, while, on the other hand, one is forced to let certain other areas, such as art and religion, move away from science as far as possible. On the one hand, one wants scientific certainty. But with this scientific certainty, which one strives for, one cannot do anything in art; one cannot do anything with it in religious life. Therefore, one tries to base art, if possible, only on fantasy and entertainment, not on a deeper penetration into the secrets of the world and their reproduction, and to base religion not on knowledge but only on faith. It is therefore peculiar that on the one hand one seeks a panacea in science, and on the other hand, in order to save other areas of intellectual life, one tries to distance them from science as much as possible. This is something that must and does create deep divisions in the lives of serious people today. Today they remain unconscious in many ways, showing only their effects, but they are present and lead our civilized life into the abyss.

My initial task was to show this and to show the truly scientific character of anthroposophy. But then I tried to show how, in particular in the visual arts, when it is understood that it reveals the secrets of the world, there is something that really does create out of the ethereal life of beings, and only through this does it acquire its true content, and how a natural path can be created through the anthroposophical worldview into art.

Then I had to speak about the anthroposophical research method and individual anthroposophical results. These are things that you know well, and that I therefore only need to discuss in terms of the topic. And then I had to speak about anthroposophy and agnosticism. It is a topic that I discussed quite extensively last summer at the Stuttgart University course, at the Stuttgart Congress, actually. But in The Hague I had a reason to approach the subject from a different point of view. In Stuttgart I had approached the subject, agnosticism, that is, the view that one has limits to one's knowledge, which necessarily prevent man from really penetrating into the very foundations of existence with knowledge, with reference to the damage it does to the whole of human feeling and willing, how it paralyzes the powers of will, how it paralyzes artistic development, how it paralyzes religious depth, and so on. I had characterized agnosticism in Stuttgart as the bringer of cultural damage.

I had not set myself this task in The Hague, but I had set myself the task of clearly explaining the significance of current scientific knowledge. It leads to not transcending the sensory world, and instead to constructing all kinds of crazy theories about atoms, which in the very latest times have even led to the fact that now, everywhere in the feature pages of newspapers, it is reported to the more popular audience that reads things that Rutherford has succeeded in splitting atoms by a kind of cannonade! One always wonders what people actually imagine when they are presented with such articles, especially as laymen. No one gets any idea from such articles of what actually happened in the laboratory. Because if he did get an idea of that, he would just see what a grandiose nonsense it is, which is even going around the world in a popular way.

The newer natural sciences have not grown through these fantasies of the atomic world, but rather by adhering to the phenomena, the appearances, the facts that can be observed by the senses. But in doing so, it has necessarily come to agnosticism, because one can indeed trace the fact back to its archetypal phenomena, but one cannot thereby advance to the archetypes of the world. But by being driven in a justified way through phenomenalism to agnosticism, one is precisely compelled to seek paths to the archetypes of existence in another field. Take an older form of knowledge: people still saw spiritual entities in every spring, in every bush, everywhere. There was still spirituality in the whole environment. When you find spirituality in the whole environment, you also find moral impulses in the environment at the same time. Because we have come to phenomenalism and thus to agnosticism, we are surrounded only by nature, and if we still want to seek a moral worldview, we must look for the basis for it in moral intuition, as I have explained in my “Philosophy of Freedom”.

This means that agnosticism helps us to look first for purely spiritual impulses in the moral realm. Then, by first seeking the moral intuitions, we are driven further to those imaginations, inspirations and intuitions that otherwise arise for the world. And so agnosticism has this good side to it, that it deprives man of the possibility of finding the spirit outside through ordinary cognition. Thus, cognition must develop its own strength; it must become more active. We can no longer speak of some kind of given moral commandments. We must speak of moral intuitions. I have shown this in my “Philosophy of Freedom”. This is where the good side of agnosticism comes to the fore. And it is necessary to make it clear: a truly meaningful view of the world allows everything to appear from the most diverse points of view. One can just as well speak pro agnosticism as contra agnosticism. It is then always only a matter of what one says. And only by approaching the world from the most diverse points of view can one arrive at a real content of knowledge that is then useful for life.

Of course, it is an abomination for the philistines when one deals with agnosticism in its effect, in that it causes nothing but damage to civilization and culture, and then one looks at agnosticism from the other side, in that it - I would say - causes as a reaction that which is precisely the spiritual world view. For according to the commandments of philistinism, I don't know how many, one may have only one view of any given thing, and if one illuminates the different sides, if one does that at different times, then philistinism finds contradiction upon contradiction.

We can say that, according to the Dutch organizers, the lecture course in Holland, this university course, has nevertheless brought a satisfactory result for the anthroposophical movement. Of course, it is still difficult today to penetrate with anthroposophy, even to a very small extent, here or there. But we must be thoroughly satisfied with every small step that can be taken in this direction.

For me, the Dutch School of Spiritual Science was followed by a trip to England at the invitation of the “New Ideals in Education” committee, in order to give two lectures at the events that took place in Stratford for a week this year to mark Shakespeare's birthday.

The events in Stratford were a festival that was organized in honor of Shakespeare's birthday and in memory of Shakespeare. A wide range of speakers gave talks from Tuesday to Monday, and one could learn a lot from these lectures about what contemporary English intellectual life is like and what characterizes it.

It is not my job to speak critically about what has been organized during these days, I would just like to note that some things were quite remarkable. For example, an interesting lecture given by Miss Ashwell on Wednesday about drama and national life, in which she explained with great inner strength how difficult it is in England to muster enough enthusiasm to cultivate dramatic art in the right way. The dramatic arts are, to some extent, suffering from the fact that they have to be performed by individual troupes, which in turn have to take into account the tastes or lack of taste of the audience, so that real artistic development is extremely difficult. With a certain strong emotion, this was particularly expressed in Miss Hamilton's lecture on trends in modern drama next Thursday.

Now, that this already points to certain deeper things, is also evident from something else. Every evening we spent in Stratford, we went to the theater performance that was given in parallel by a special troupe. The first evening, which

“The Taming of the Shrew” showed the director on stage after the performance, and the director apologized for the lighting effects and other aspects of the production not being up to standard by saying: Yes, you just can't do everything the way you want to according to your artistic conscience, because we are actually in a movie theater. So one learned that the “Shakespeare Memorial Theater” had actually been converted into a movie theater in modern times, and only during these festivities had it been converted back into a theater!

We have read in the last few days that the Berlin State Opera has already started showing films, and we are well on the way to phasing out the dramatic arts in modern civilization and replacing them – how can one put it without offending people? – with cinematic inartistry. But even that will be taken amiss by some who are enthusiastic about the cinema. I believe that the cinema system shows just how many destructive elements there are in our present civilization.

Now, I had announced two lectures for this Stratford week, one lecture on drama in relation to education for Wednesday afternoon and one lecture on Shakespeare and the new ideals for Sunday afternoon. It is natural that when, as is the case in our college courses and as was also the case at this event, lectures follow one another in quick succession throughout the day, as in a timetable, it leads to difficulties when lectures like mine have to be translated and thus take up twice as much time. And so, of course, on Wednesday I could only say part of what I would have liked to say, since time was already up. I had the satisfaction of being given a kind of petition the next day, asking that I present what was missing on one of the following days in a subsequent lecture, and this lecture could then be given on Friday. Then I gave my lecture on Shakespeare and the new ideals on Sunday.

I organized the lectures for this Shakespeare event in such a way that they were thoroughly based on anthroposophy, although they were actually given in the style of a Shakespearean celebration. And so too in the examination of Shakespeare's drama, which has proved its mission in education in world history by simply showing itself to be historically pedagogical in the tremendous effect it has had on the education of Goethe. One need only recall that Goethe named the three personalities Linnaeus, the naturalist, Spinoza, the philosopher, and Shakespeare, the poet, as the ones who had the deepest influence on his life. But we must bear in mind how different these influences were. Linnaeus, despite having such a great influence on Goethe, actually only had the influence that Goethe opposed him, that he developed the opposite view. Spinoza only influenced Goethe to arrive at a certain mode of expression, but he never appropriated Spinoza's inner life. He only appropriated a kind of language through Spinoza, whereas through Shakespeare he really had a living impulse that continued to work in him. I then expanded on this in particular on Sunday in the lecture on Shakespeare and the new ideals, by pointing out what actually had such a strong effect on Goethe from Shakespeare. I characterized this in an objective way at first by saying: There are whole libraries about Shakespeare; if you put together the books that have been written about him, you could fill this wall with them just about “Hamlet” alone. But the influence of Shakespeare on Goethe can be explained by the fact that all that is written about Shakespeare in these books had no effect on Goethe; that something quite different had an effect that cannot be found in all these books; that one can leave all that out and must look for the matter in something quite different. Yes, I even said that one can take everything that Goethe himself said about Shakespeare – theoretically, intellectualized – and regard that as false; that not even what he himself said theoretically about Shakespeare is the actual impulse; he may have erred, and what he said about Hamlet can be refuted. What matters is something else. And actually the most significant expression that Goethe made in relation to Shakespeare is this: These are not poems, this is something like the omnipotent book of fate, open in front of you, where the storm winds of life turn the pages now and then. With this emotional thing that Goethe said about Shakespeare, the power with which Shakespeare worked in an educational way in Goethe is actually meant.

On the one hand, I was now able to take the path in the first two lectures to explain our educational principles, as you know them so well. On the other hand, however, I was also able to characterize the relationship to anthroposophy by linking Shakespeare to Goethe, Goethe to the Goetheanum, the Goetheanum to anthroposophy, and so it was a complete circle. So it was possible to bring to bear the spiritual life, as it develops as a Central European spiritual life on the one hand, as an anthroposophical spiritual life on the other, especially at such a Shakespeare festival.

It may also be said that it is fundamentally different what one feels when one has to represent anthroposophical being on the continent and when one has to represent it over in England. I had the two things in immediate succession: in Holland the School of Spiritual Science, in England something completely different. On the continent, there is now a strong and growing need to uncover the firm, secure scientific foundations of anthroposophy everywhere. As a result, the latest phase of our anthroposophical life has taken on a certain character, which can certainly lead to very popular presentations, as I am now doing in public lectures, but which must be adhered to in a certain sense. Such a need does not exist in England. On the other hand, there is a pronounced need there to be brought closer to the spiritual world in a more direct way. And so I tried to characterize, now from a deeper spiritual point of view, what it actually is that led to Goethe taking such an intense interest in Shakespeare, one that was meaningful for his entire life, and how Shakespeare was able to remain a driving impulse in Goethe until a very late age. For me, the decisive factor was that if you take Shakespeare's dramas, both tragedy and comedy, and really let them take effect on you, the figures all come to life. And if you now, equipped with imaginative and inspired knowledge, take what you experience with the living figures of Shakespeare's plays into the spiritual world, you experience something very peculiar: the figures continue to live. They do not do the same things that Shakespeare has them do on the physical plane; they do different things, but they live. So you can certainly take the characters out of a Shakespearean drama from the drama itself: on the astral plane, let us say, the characters do something different from what they do in “Othello” or in “The Taming of the Shrew” or the like. The whole thing can be transferred to the astral plane: the people do something completely different, but they act, they live, they are living beings over there.

With a Captain or the like – one has a hobbyhorse with Captain, the other with Sudermann, that is why I mention as many as possible and actually none at all – but with the others, who are less concerned with imagination than Shakespeare, who are more concerned with imitating something in life, it is quite different. You see, Shakespeare does not actually imitate life. You won't be able to point to real life when you have Shakespearean characters. He creates them. And how does he create them? By knowing that he is creating them for the stage. Shakespeare is a theater realist, he creates for the stage. He knows that the stage has only three sides. The newer playwrights, especially the naturalists, have always forgotten that the stage is open on one side, because they write their plays so that they would actually have to be closed on four sides. Otherwise – well, the audience could have a strange pleasure if the play were performed in a room closed on all sides. But Shakespeare knew that you can't bring characters imitated from life onto the stage. He knew it, just as a painter should know that he has to paint on a surface, not in space, and that he must therefore treat the colors so that the surface comes into consideration.

Shakespeare is not an imitator of life, Shakespeare is a creative spirit. But he reaches into what is available to him. That is how he created his living figures. That is how one can still look up to the astral plane, to the Devachan plane, into the whole spiritual world; the people there do something different than they do on the physical plane, but they live, they do something. If you take naturalistic poets into the spiritual world, the

figures become like wooden puppets. They are no longer alive, they cannot walk or stand, they cannot do anything, they are no longer alive.

What one experiences through spiritual contemplation, Goethe felt — this original life, this being brought forth from the spiritual world — in Shakespeare. And that is what makes Shakespeare's drama so significant for the age in which Shakespeare created it: it was indeed a continuation of the ancient mystery dramas, which I also spoke about in the lecture on Shakespeare and the new ideals on Sunday.

The entire lecture on Shakespeare and the new ideals had the following meaning. I said that one would expect me to now begin to enumerate these new ideals: first, second, third. One person enumerates three, another enumerates five, another seven. But I said: The world already has enough of that, because such new ideals are indeed being fabricated and developed everywhere. But it is not a matter of setting up such new ideals, as others also have them, or of developing others before the world today, but rather it is a matter of finding the real strength to achieve an ideal life. Many people today think up ideals, but the strength to live by ideals can only be found by becoming aware of how real spiritual life has worked, say, in older art, in the art that still emerged from the mysteries and that was ultimately effective in Shakespeare. Even if Shakespeare is still very much a theorist, we must recognize how this spiritual life has worked in the Shakespearean plays and how we can arrive at a new ideal by absorbing this impulse, by allowing meaning and understanding of the spiritual world to arise from our soul life. Whether or not we then formulate this in detail is up to us.

So in three lectures during this festival, I was able to develop just what can be said about anthroposophy, about Goethe, about Shakespeare and about education in this context.

During the event, a strangely interesting fact came to my attention. There was an exhibition that interested a large number of people very much: an exhibition of remarkable works of art that a Viennese professor - yes, how should I put it - produces in children from the ages of 8, 9, 10 up to sexual maturity. These children really paint in such a way that one is extraordinarily captivated when looking at the things with the understanding that many people today have for art. Individual scenes are painted with great perfection, street scenes with types of people – some say “criminal types”, such as are often found on the streets today – painted with great perfection. The children paint these pictures. They paint them, and then, when they reach puberty, in their 14th, 15th, 16th year, they lose their ability to paint. After that, they can no longer paint anything. And the professor — I can only say: He makes them able to do it! Today, one marvels at such a thing. What is it really? It is pedagogical nonsense of the worst kind.

Of course there are all kinds of subconscious and subconsciously acting forces that can be used to influence children in such a way that they arrive at such demonic paintings from the rhythmic system of their being, for there the lung and heart demon paints in the children. And one would actually only need to understand what I just said about human development in my Christmas course on education here last Christmas, then it would be a completely understandable phenomenon that such nonsense can be achieved; but one would also see that it is completely harmful.

Once again, we are dealing with only a single phenomenon. But these phenomena are very numerous today, and they can only be understood with an unbiased approach, if we really look at our pedagogy and didactics. Because then you realize that, as you know, the head system prevails in the child until the second dentition changes, and the rhythmic system prevails from the second dentition change until sexual maturity; but that the demonic, which possesses the child, has an effect in this rhythm – and that it is precisely in the child that what is called for here should be fought. And then people are amazed when the child reaches sexual maturity and can no longer draw anything. It is quite understandable that it can no longer draw anything if you do not teach it to draw itself, but if you cause the ahrimanic demon to draw!

How important it is to address the damage of our present civilization in an anthroposophical way is shown by such a heartbreaking example, which sensationally produces this admirable result of such a false education and does not even see what is important.

I am saying these things, of course, only because it is necessary to form a sound judgment within anthroposophical circles about what is present in our present-day civilization. I can say that I am extremely grateful to the committee “New Ideals in Education” for giving me the opportunity to speak about anthroposophy, Goetheanism, education and Shakespeare, and to say what I have tried to say in these three lectures. And I would like to say: It is indeed a guarantee that if we as human beings all over the world were to cultivate anthroposophy in the appropriate way, we could achieve many things that are very necessary for the reconstruction of our culture.

What has been achieved by the “New Ideals in Education” committee is connected to what has been achieved before and after by the activities of our anthroposophical friends in London. After the Dutch course ended on Wednesday, April 12, I gave my first lecture on Friday to anthroposophists and an invited audience in London on Knowledge and Initiation; then on Saturday the second lecture on the anthroposophical path to the knowledge of Christ, and a more intimate lecture on Sunday morning. In these lectures I tried to say what can be said in the present phase of our anthroposophical life, taking into account the way in which such things can be understood in England in particular.

On Sunday afternoon we were in the school in the London area, at the Kings Langley boarding school, which is run by the lady — Miss Cross — who was also here for the pedagogical Christmas course, and were able to see how a number of children are educated and taught in such a boarding school. It is extraordinarily interesting to see how, in this boarding school in particular, children are actually brought closer to life in a certain way, based on certain ideals of the present day. The forty to forty-five children who live in the boarding school have to do absolutely everything; there are no servants there. The children have to get up early, take care of the whole institution themselves, and also clean their boots and clothes. They have to make sure that the necessary eggs are available by raising the chickens, which they also take care of, and many other things that you can imagine. They clean everything themselves, they cook everything themselves, they take care of the garden. The vegetables that are served are first grown, harvested and cooked by them, and then they eat them. And so the child is really introduced to life in a very comprehensive way and learns a whole range of things.

The intention has now arisen here during the Christmas course at Miss Cross's to set up this boarding school in the sense of a Waldorf School, and this is considered to be a very serious plan. Mrs. Mackenzie, who was one of the main driving forces behind my invitation to this Shakespeare festival, is very much in favor of our school movement, based on anthroposophy, gaining a certain foothold in England, and the aim now is to form a committee to set up this school based on anthroposophy in line with our education.

This will be a very significant and important step forward. And with the kind of determination that characterizes these individuals, especially Miss Cross and Professor Mackenzie, it can be assumed that something like this can be achieved after overcoming many obstacles.

We all hope that the course I will be able to give in Oxford in August of this year will contribute to the further development of this plan, in which the few suggestions I was able to give in Stratford this time can be expanded in all directions.

In this way, eurythmy will also be shown to advantage, which could not be included this time, at least not in an official way. So it is hoped that all this will now be able to contribute well to the anthroposophical school movement in England.

Monday was the day we went to the Shakespeare festival. On Sunday I had the last lecture on Shakespeare there, and we returned to London on April 24, where I gave a lecture for our members in London that evening. That was essentially all there was to do and experience in England.

Thus, without doubt, a further step has been taken in the development of our anthroposophical life, which is particularly important because it has made it possible to carry anthroposophy across the borders that have unfortunately been created during the war catastrophe.

I would like to emphasize once more that I am extremely grateful, above all to our Dutch friends, who, after many weeks of selfless work, have brought about the Dutch School of Spiritual Science, which, with regard to everything concerning the organization of the course and also the arrangement of the details, meant an enormous amount of work on the part of the organizers. And I would like to emphasize that I am deeply grateful to our English friends for what they did on the one hand for my participation in the Stratford Week, and on the other hand for what I was able to do for Anthroposophy in London. And I am also grateful for what they have done for the inauguration of an anthroposophical school movement in England, which I believe has done something extraordinarily important for the anthroposophical movement.

My dear friends!

Congresses, such as the first Stuttgart and then the second Vienna Congresses were, have actually become a necessity for the anthroposophical movement, as a result of external pressure. From the very beginning, the anthroposophical movement has worked from within the esoteric, and it is self-evident that an esoteric movement does not appear in an agitative way, but rather seeks its way in such a way that, although it gives everyone the opportunity to hear, it only addresses those people who feel a certain inclination towards it from their hearts and minds, and who then, it must be said, find their way to it in a fateful way. But now, from a certain point on, our literature in particular has spread very rapidly and has thus come into the hands of many people, especially those who have a certain scientific orientation in the sense of the current times. All kinds of scientific schools of thought then began to deal with anthroposophy in a polemical or other way.

This in turn inspired many to defend this anthroposophical worldview with the scientific tools that were their own, and so it came about that – one might say – challenged by the world, the anthroposophical movement had to be active in the most diverse branches of life. It is fair to say that this simply came to us from outside; at first we were not at all inclined to deviate from the old ways of spreading anthroposophy. We were forced to do so.

At the beginning, we were on the defensive on many different fronts. Anthroposophy was attacked, and usually in the most unobjective way. However, a number of extraordinarily capable people gradually grew into the role of defending it, and are indeed able to apply the basic anthroposophical principles and also anthroposophical research to the individual fields. Little by little, work could begin on developing a large number of important branches of life and science in the anthroposophical sense. The fact that publications were then also issued in these various fields meant that the anthroposophical movement was all the more exposed to the most diverse circles, and after a certain time it was simply necessary to go before the general public. From the anthroposophical point of view, too, there were the great issues of the day, at least from the standpoint of culture, to which one had to take a definite stand, for the reasons we have often discussed here. It was this that essentially provided the impetus for something like the first Stuttgart Congress and, now, the Vienna Congress.

Now our friends have set the Vienna Congress a special task. This task was obvious. It was obvious, I would say, from the nature of Vienna – the nature of Vienna within the Austrian nature. And recently there has been a lot of talk among us about the special cultural characteristics of the East and those of the West. From this, one tried to recognize the foundations from which, in the face of the forces of decline that are so active today, forces of the rising will arise. This led to the fact that in this particularly suitable place, in Vienna, this approach was moved to the center of the congress negotiations. The congress was named the “West-East Congress”. This was based on the conviction that we are now at a point in the history of Western civilization where we need to come to an understanding of the entire cultural world of the earth, and this must come primarily from intellectual and spiritual sources.

I have also pointed out here, as was rightly said by an English colonial minister, that the point of consideration for world affairs is actually shifting from the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. One can say – and this is an extremely significant statement – that in the past, Europe and the connection between Europe and America were what mattered, and what has actually mattered since the fifteenth century, since Asia was more or less cut off from Europe by the Turkish incursion. At that time, a great cultural upheaval took place, and what then essentially became the cultural life of modern times was a Western-oriented cultural life. Now, with the shift in the focus of external cultural life across the Pacific Ocean, the beginning has been made that the whole earth must become one large area to be treated uniformly in terms of all cultural issues. But since understanding and trust are necessary between people who want to have anything to do with each other at all, this must first be preceded by an understanding in the spiritual realm.

If we look across to Asia today, we see everywhere that people are living in the last remnants of an ancient and magnificent spiritual culture, a spiritual culture that has driven out everything else, both in terms of state and legal life and in terms of economic life. We, like these people in Asia, cannot understand the people of the West, how they look at the machine-like nature of the West's external culture, how they find that something machine-like also appears in the external social order, how they look down with a certain contempt on the externalized view of life in the West. On the other hand, we know how the West has produced those cultural forces that must now develop in the future, and how the West also carries a spirituality within it, but which has not yet fully emerged today.

But everything depends on the West learning to look again with a greater understanding at what the East contains, even if today it is definitely producing and even feeling a sense of decline, and on the East learning to look at the West in such a way that it affirms it, not just negates it, as has been the case so far. Of course, a great deal remains to be done in order to create the spiritual foundations necessary for such an understanding. Today, when economic conditions are so extraordinarily pressing for cooperation, we cannot hope that the order of these economic conditions, even if it sometimes appears so, can achieve anything other than a surrogate, which will wait for a definitive solution for so long that it will have to wait until an understanding of the spiritual conditions has been reached that extends to the very core of human nature. Our Congress of Vienna should serve this understanding in a certain way, and I would say in the central intellectual field.

And in this respect, one could indeed indulge in certain hopes. One must take into account the whole Austrian essence in order to find such hopes justified. You see, my dear friends, for many decades people have been predicting the dissolution of Austria, and it has not happened. It took a world war for it to come to this dissolution. At present, the situation is such that the German part of Austria is actually in a terrible position. This German part of Austria cannot, in principle, survive on its own. For however much could be objected to the old Austria, the individual areas that now form the successor states could only advance together for certain reasons within Europe, especially in Central Europe. And this is particularly evident in those parts of the old Austria that are inhabited by Germans, where the purely nationalistic idea will be impossible to implement in the long term.

It is, after all, a purely abstract idea and essentially arose from the fact that, in the absence of a real intellectual life, the national question in the nineteenth century increasingly came to be seen as a surrogate for intellectual life.

What exists today as German Austria has no economic means of surviving independently, and in particular it has no means of having Vienna as its capital. The fact of the matter is that Vienna, in the size to which it has gradually developed, could only survive as the capital of old Austria; now it is much too big for what remains of German Austria, and therefore does not internally provide the conditions for a viable existence everywhere.

But again, it must be said that this Austria, also “German-Austria”, has absorbed cultural enzymes in the course of its development, which nevertheless offer the possibility that precisely this Austria, especially in intellectual terms, could create a bridge between the West and the East, between which it is stuck precisely because of its peoples and its geographical location.

One must only realize the following: In Austria, the “fact exists that the German element forms a kind of cultural basis everywhere. Start from the east of Austria. You will find a pure German people, the Transylvanian Saxons, mixed with Romanian and Serbian ethnic elements in old Transylvania, who had retained their German identity until well into my youth. But the Transylvanian Saxons were an ethnic element that contained a thoroughly German core and a very specific type of German individuality, which was, I would say, a cultural colony.

Then go further up, south of the Carpathians. Hungary did indeed extend as far as these Carpathians. Today, north of the Danube, lies the Slovak part of Czechoslovakia. It used to belong to Hungary. Of course, there is a Slovak population there, and there has been extensive Magyarization, especially through schools, since the 1860s. But the Spiš Germans and the other Germans lived there like a cultural ferment, scattered everywhere as far as Pressburg. And everywhere in Slovak-Magyar culture, the German element lives on the bottom, although in the second half of the nineteenth century it was on the verge of disappearing. From the western part of this German element, as you know, we borrowed our Christmas plays, which were transplanted there from more western German areas centuries ago.

If you go back down to the area between the Theiss and the Danube, that is, to central and southern Central Hungary, you will find a Swabian population, a Swabian-German population. Go to the west of Hungary, where Hungary bordered on present-day Burgenland, and you will find the so-called “WasserKroaten”, a thoroughly German population. So in this eastern part, you will find the formerly immigrated Germans at the bottom of the population speaking other languages. They often adopted the other element in later times, but they were very effective; blood does not deny itself there. And above all, it does not deny itself in the thought forms. Anyone who is well versed in such thought forms knows how to distinguish between them, even if they are still present in Magyar or Romanian, or even if they appear in another language, such as the Germanic elements that migrated there in earlier centuries and were gradually dying out, but which nevertheless continue to have an effect.

If you go over to the present-day western part, to Czechoslovakia, to the former Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia, you will again find a German population everywhere at the bottom. Not only that there is such a closed population south of the Erzgebirge, but you will find everywhere - in Prague, for example, about a third or a quarter of the population was German - everywhere, as in the other areas, too, Germans were scattered. The process was definitely such that although German culture gradually disappeared, German culture asserted itself everywhere, even in areas where other languages were spoken.

If you go to the south, for example, in southern Slovenia, in a Serbian area, you will find a district – the Gottschee region – with a small German cultural colony interspersed among it. And you will find a compact German community in northern Styria, in Salzburg, in northern Tyrol, where it meets other populations to the south, but where Germans were scattered everywhere down to the German national borders in Austria. You will then find the compact German population in Upper and Lower Austria. That was the old Austria.

More and more, the individual nationalities came to the fore. More and more, the individual nationalities asserted themselves. But basically, there was no area in which the German element – I would say – had not somehow found its way in, as a force, and was not somehow effective.

But still, Austria was changing more and more. And then it came to the point that more and more of the other nationalities asserted themselves: the Romanian, the Ukrainian, the Ruthenian, the Polish, the Hungarian, the South Slav, Serbian, Slovenian, Croatian and the Slavonic, the Italian, the Bohemian, that is, the Czech. Today we see the process taking hold in the interior of Austria as well. It is hardly possible to say that Vienna is a German city in the other sense, that at least German is still spoken there. But even if it should come to pass that the Slovenian element from the south and the Czech element from the north spread further and further, and that the German character of Austria would disappear altogether, the German forces would still be present throughout Austria as effective forces. But the essential thing is that precisely within that which originated in the German element in Austria, a certain independence asserted itself against all other Germans on the European continent. The Austrian element, however intimately it interacted with the rest of the German character, was always something thoroughly independent. And that came about because Catholicism in Austria retained a certain form.

Now, it is of course very easy to misunderstand me in my present arguments, but since I cannot be sufficiently explicit, I must expose myself to these misunderstandings. It is true that one can, of course, object to much of what was present in the domination of Catholicism in Austria – and this was done within Austria itself. But this Catholicism in Austria always gave Austria and especially Vienna a very specific character. One could see how a liberal wave of cultural life was sweeping over Austria in the 1860s and 1870s, a liberal wave that only looked at – I would say – external forms of thought. But even within these external forms of thought, what was contained in Catholicism continued to have an effect.

You only have to consider how long it actually was that in Austria, with the exception of very specific areas of educational life, no one could actually become an educated person, a truly scientifically leading person, without somehow joining the leading forces of Catholicism. One studied at grammar schools, which were essentially run by monks. The monks were everywhere grammar school professors, for the most part exemplary grammar school professors. The strict scholastic thinking in its further development into the nineteenth century was something that was imposed on the whole of Austrian educational life, and on Austrian scientific life, and which has remained to this day.

We must not forget such phenomena as, for example, that in my youth the textbooks – up to those of descriptive geometry – were written by Benedictine monks or other monks. The individual grammar schools were looked after by the clergy, who certainly had to pass their state exams, but who brought a very specific spirit, a very specific way of thinking, into Austrian grammar schools. The Austrian grammar schools, which one could say only brought down the liberal era, had been liberalized by an excellent man, who, however, made them into excellent grammar schools: by Leo Thun in the 1850s. So that if you really want to understand much of what Austrian educational life is, you have to go to the monasteries, not exactly to the archpriests, not to the archbishops and bishops, but to the monasteries. Throughout the entire 19th century, there was still an incredible amount of learning in the monasteries. The learning that was then expressed by the most important researchers at the university was in the monasteries. The most important researchers had emerged from the monasteries, or if they had not emerged from the monastery, they were still part of an educational tradition that was deeply influenced by the monasteries. Only Austrian Catholicism, until it experienced its reaction at the end of the nineteenth century, was actually a development trend that moved towards an extraordinarily liberal element. You could see everywhere in the monks in the various branches of science how the sharply trained thinking that the monk had acquired from the old scholastic science had an effect on science, and especially on the pedagogy of science, and how only the Catholic, theocratic essence should remain untouched, so to speak. So that actually everything that did not reach the level of a world view developed within Austria, and thus the concept of the sciences in their specialties developed something extraordinarily significant.

You see, one of the most important researchers in the field of modern science, who is now mentioned everywhere, is Gregor Mendel. He was an Austrian religious in Moravia. While we were holding our Congress of Vienna, anniversary articles about Gregor Mendel appeared everywhere. It was perhaps the most interesting side event of our congress that the newspapers everywhere were full of tributes to Gregor Mendel. It was the case that this Gregor Mendel had actually emerged from the monastic education, that he had become a natural scientist who is now recognized everywhere, and whose theory of heredity is regarded as something extraordinary throughout the world. And Gregor Mendel is truly the type of person who, growing out of the Austrian essence, is active in individual fields of knowledge.

But there were many others like Gregor Mendel, people of action – not all of them made epoch-making discoveries – in nineteenth-century Austrian education, so that one can say that it was precisely in the field of science that Catholicism bore its most significant fruit. In addition, there was something else that is often overlooked.

A German who outgrows the Austrian way of life also outgrows a dialect. In addition to this dialect, there is a kind of general Austrian language that is not really spoken from the heart by anyone, but which is all the more suitable for being a language that goes beyond the needs of the day and which has then become the language of science. Because it is elevated above the dialects, it has also found its way into Latin logic in an extraordinary way. In the Austrian form of expression there is something on the one hand that is extraordinarily pliable, but on the other hand there is also something lively. All of this is just there.

If you take that as a basic feature of the Austrian character, then again you also have to take into account the external Austrian character. You see, my dear friends, certainly one could come to Austria in the 1970s, in the 1980s, in the 1990s, one could come to Austria in the twentieth century, one can come now, one finds, of course, in Austria everywhere in a certain sense also that which is otherwise also in the world. The inventions and discoveries, even the scientific achievements come everywhere, of course. Of course, Vienna and Austria have not been spared cinemas and so on. But in all this, there is still this very peculiar essence of Austria. And one would like to say: throughout the entire nineteenth century, perhaps precisely because of its close ties to Catholicism, there was no particular inclination in Austria to become more intimately connected with what was flowing in from outside. The Austrian retained himself when he began to dress in the French or English fashion for my sake, but always something specifically Austrian up to the aristocratic classes.

Now, my dear friends, you know that I don't really want to become a psychoanalyst – you know I have no particular inclination for it – but when it comes to the Austrian character, I feel like saying: external circumstances force you to develop something like psychoanalysis, because when you get to the Austrian character, there is something everywhere that is not fully realized in consciousness.

The Austrians readily absorb everything foreign; in many respects they are even extraordinarily proud of this foreignness. But then, inwardly, in their consciousness, they have no full connection with it. And just as when one psychoanalyzes an individual person, one searches for hidden “soul provinces,” so one is always tempted, when one comes upon the Austrian character, to search for such hidden soul provinces, even in the individual Austrian. If one approaches him with a psychoanalytic eye, one finds everywhere: He carries something with him from earlier. It is buried deep in his unconscious being; it sometimes comes to the surface. But it must first be brought to his attention, or he must do it himself. And if you go about it thoroughly, if you just analyze enough, you will discover in almost everyone, especially in the educated Austrian – in the uneducated, it can be seen from the outside – something that Emperor Joseph, Emperor Franz and everything that came later in the nineteenth century, actually has little to do with it; you go back to Empress Maria Theresa and even further back than Maria Theresa. Something from the eighteenth century comes to light everywhere. Every Austrian has something from the eighteenth century at the bottom of his soul, a hidden province of the soul; just as a psychoanalyst seeks out this repressed region of the soul and then detaches it from the soul, because people have not processed the eighteenth century at all, it is as if the whole of Austria has not fully processed the eighteenth century, as if at some point in time of Empress Maria Theresia this had settled in the soul and then it was brought up again. So that one really has to reckon with an extraordinary amount of instinct, but, I would say, historical instinct. You come across a lot of things that existed earlier, hidden in the heart, when you get to know the Austrian completely, as they say in Austria, inside and out. And in Austria, people try to get to know each other inside and out. All this predestines the Austrian to build a kind of bridge between West and East. Much of what has led to the tearing down of this bridge, what especially the present time in the West and in the East and also in the center just outside of Austria carries within itself, that comes to light when one looks at Austria so superficially , but if you look at the deeper level, you will find that there are hidden soul provinces everywhere, from which much can be brought up to build this bridge between West and East.

You see, with the West-East Congress we were now placed in this life, we were really placed differently than in Stuttgart with the first anthroposophical congress! We were placed quite differently, I would say, by the whole outward nuance in Stuttgart! Yes, in Stuttgart, right, there spoke for my sake = let's say - Hahn next to Kolisko, Blümel next to Fräulein von Heydebrand, Leinhas next to Baravalle. That makes no difference for Stuttgart.

Yes, for Vienna it made a very considerable difference, of course, and you could notice this difference everywhere you listened. You were simply placed in a very special element at this West-East Congress. And our Austrians made no effort at all at this West-East Congress to somehow deny their Austrian identity. For example, I paid particular attention when an Austrian came, and I always thought to myself: now I am curious to see if he will start his speech with “if”. He put a conditional sentence at the beginning! This is something that is deeply rooted in the character. It announces something that works quite differently in the Austrian. On the one hand, there is something in the Austrian that wants to look very thoroughly at the conditions of his own behavior, but on the other hand, there is also something in him that always wants to apologize a little. And all of this can be done better through the conditional sentences than if you thunder out a position.

Yes, these are the things that must be considered if one wants to understand the full significance of this West-East Congress. Isn't it true that everything was geared towards building a bridge between the West and the East? Scientific results, scientific methods, the artistic, everything was considered in this sense.

It is extremely difficult for me to express what I would like to say as impressions; but it seems to me that if I summarize this in a few images, these images could indeed convey some of the impressions that one can have.

You see, in our Austrian speakers at the Congress of Vienna, Austrianness was not completely denied. You could still psychoanalyze the speeches. I hope you won't take offense at this, because it's meant well, and after all, it doesn't do any harm if we can reach a general understanding. You see, there is our extraordinarily capable Kolisko. But if you want to grasp his individuality, if you want to grasp what he presents himself as when he speaks in Vienna, then you have to say: you are actually quite involuntarily led to the question: what kind of monk would he have become if he had sought his path of education in the pre-Deserian era? Well, our dear Kolisko would undoubtedly have become a Dominican, just as Baravalle and Blümel would undoubtedly have become Benedictines, Doctor Schubert would have become a Piarist and Doctor Stein would have become a Cistercian.

So, you see, today we can see – I would even say with our own hands – what was there at the bottom of their souls. I would like to say: someone who has an ear can still hear today from Baravalle and Doctor Blümel the fine spirit that once only the Benedictines had within Austrian education; from Doctor Schubert one can hear what the Piarists had, from Doctor Stein what the Cistercians achieved, and likewise the trained dialectic and sharply contoured concepts sharp-contoured concepts, the scientific method of searching thoroughly, all this, when viewed from this perspective – which is only possible if one takes a cultural-historical approach, as Dr. Kolisko did at the Congress of Vienna – is reminiscent of what was brought into Austrian education by the Dominican element.

I would remind you that Austrian university professors used to be Dominicans. They no longer know this, but in their soul province it is present, they were in an old Dominican monastery! And one must only be aware of the fact that a very old element is present there. The Austrians, and the other numerous foreigners – the congress was extremely well attended from all over the world – also hear this specific coloration, which is then incorporated into the entire congress proceedings. It is certainly the case that because there are so many Austrians among us, our lecturers, especially the Viennese, undoubtedly felt a sense of home in Vienna.

Now, one must just be clear about one thing: the other gentlemen, let's say, our dear Uehli, Hahn, Schwebsch, Dr. Heydebrand, Rittelmeyer, Leinhas, Husemann, Unger, Heyer - yes, in Austria these are the very clever foreign gentlemen who come as guests. And that is how they are perceived: the very clever foreign gentlemen who come to visit, who are only allowed in at the border, if you notice that they are clever, because there are enough of the other kind in the country. You see, I'm not saying this on my own initiative, but only what the mood is: these are the clever guests – just as one has always appointed strangers to the universities, right, who then actually have the task of being clever! That is something that is taken for granted. One becomes more objective. One becomes more objective in Vienna in particular. Then something as magnificent as the first lecture by our dear friend Dr. Hahn was this time seems tremendously incisive. And then, in turn, a certain impartiality that has remained comes into play.

For example, there was something extraordinarily beneficial that came out of the whole event, in that Dr. Schwebsch treated Bruckner with North German thought-forms; and then there was also the Bruckner performance, and something - I would say - not only Austrian, but generally cultural played into the matter. But because it was like that, the congress took on an extraordinarily pleasant character – I am really saying this now, whether someone I am talking about is there or not: I speak in the same way. For my sake, everyone I am talking about could be there.

The congress was given a particularly pleasant touch by the fine lecture given by our dear friend Steffen. In Vienna, we have a particularly fine sense for this nuance. On the one hand, we clearly felt the connection – the Swiss connection. In a sense, there is something Swiss about it, but the Austrian has a small reservation. He feels uncomfortable when he is in Vienna, and the Swiss – he comes by train. He actually expects the Swiss to come on foot and to have stayed in Innsbruck, Salzburg and Linz beforehand, and that people there had already heard of him and that he had written letters to people there. Otherwise, people are too surprised by the one who killed Gessler, aren't they, because that's the Swiss in Vienna after all. And so, at first, what brings the Swiss to Vienna is something amazing, and people are then angry. And that was certainly the case with our dear friend Steffen, that he did not give further lectures. And I am convinced that people would have wanted Steffen to have given at least three lectures of the exquisite subtlety that he gave in Vienna. The only reason I might not have wanted it was because he would have been so well understood that they would not have let him leave. He is needed here in Dornach.

So you see, there were various nuances. Yes, I am not just saying this out of theory, I have already received voices in the last few days that have told me: We could make good use of Steffen in Vienna, can't we have him? But I declined. So not out of theory — as I generally speak out of experience more than it might initially appear.

Well, it's true that I myself have been away from Vienna and Austria for so long that all these things are less relevant to me; but of course, when you enter Austria, you feel all that I have said. And that is why you feel compelled to place your own things in what is there in such a nuanced way that it takes into account what it is all about. For example, I have been away from Austria for so long that people have naturally forgotten that I was ever there and no longer give any credence to the fact that I was there. But Dr. Kolisko, you see, a mishap occurred that was quite fatal at this congress. Dr. Kolisko was invited by the Viennese medical association to give a lecture to this association as early as May 26. Now, this has its downsides; it is always unpleasant to give a lecture on a completely new field, on a completely new treatment method, only to experts, and as they say in Austria, there was a huge fuss, a terrible row, which of course was a bad start to our congress. The commotion did not continue into our congress, which was extraordinarily harmonious in all respects, but the doctors actually stayed away from the congress in their entirety. And since important medical matters were to be discussed in the seminars, this was of course a significant failure of the whole congress. We wanted to engage with the people. But that didn't happen at all. The medical profession wasn't there. And that is something that will probably trouble us for a long time to come, and it will make it extremely difficult to assert the medical side in Austria. And that would have been extremely important for the very reason that medicine in Austria has always had an extraordinarily respected representation.

Just think, if we had succeeded in making even a small initial breakthrough with the medical profession in Austria, it would have been a tremendous step forward for our medical cause. That is something we missed out on. It would not have led to anything if I had advised Dr. Kolisko against attending the conference, because it was not possible, since he had already been invited. On the other hand, we could not say that we would or wanted to withdraw from this invitation. That could not be said either. So there was a certain difficulty. That was the general difficulty, that Dr. Kolisko's excellent discussion was mocked and laughed at, and that it led to the medical profession sabotaging the congress.

But in the case of Dr. Kolisko, something specific was added. Otherwise I would not have said that I had been away for so long. But Dr. Kolisko wanted to come up with something really drastic. So people said to themselves: Dr. Kolisko, the son of a pathologist at the University of Vienna who was still famous in his nineties, who studied with us, who is a true member of the Viennese medical school, who also worked as an assistant in Vienna, yes, can he really do that? He still has the pencil that he bought in Vienna, that was used in Vienna at the time to copy the lecture notes, which he has now sharpened so often that it is now a tiny stump. He is using our pencil to write down the Anthroposophical matter, that is of course not allowed, we cannot allow that!

Yes, you see, that was of course also effective. Such things must certainly be taken into account. And so of course we had this somewhat unpleasant start. But despite that, our congress went really extremely well. It can be said that the individual contributors expressed themselves in the very best way there, and it can be said that the Viennese audience really went along with it in a very unique way.

Now, we must not forget in all of this: the congress was extremely well prepared in a certain direction, and our friends van Leer, Polzer, Breitenstein, Zeissig, Eichenberger and many others went to great lengths, really worked for months in the most intensive way because preparing for the congress requires an extraordinary amount of work to do everything that was necessary to administer it, so that the congress was prepared in a truly extraordinary diligent and dedicated manner. At the same time, it was the case that, for the first time, we were working in full public view, so to speak. Of course, this was also the case with our other endeavors. But it was not the case in the way it was in Vienna, where we worked in full public view and the Congress was taken as something that the whole Viennese public took for granted as being their concern. The whole of Vienna's public was involved with this congress, and of course all kinds of phenomena arose from that; for it is natural that people could not immediately digest everything we had to give them, everything we had to present to them.

But it must be said that, both in the way the lectures were received and in the way the eurythmy presentations were received, which were never actually as warmly received as in Vienna, and also in the way, for example, the declamatory was received, everywhere it has been shown that with a certain artistic feeling, apart from listening only to the dogmatic, in an artistic grasp lay only that which actually came towards one.

And so it is precisely at this congress, with its artistic aspects – with the Bruckner performance, with the performance of the Thomastik Quartet, with the very beautiful evening that was organized by Mrs. Werbeck-Svärdström, ärdström, who has supported this congress with her art in a truly devoted way. In all that we have been able to offer artistically, and in the artistic reception of the lectures, there has been a very special atmosphere. And at least the feeling will have remained there that one would have to deal with the problems that were at issue, that the question of East-West in such a way, which goes back to the spiritual, must actually be tackled.

And in this respect, Vienna was a well-chosen place, that is, the given place, because in no other city would one have been able to feel just as much the need to grasp the matter spiritually today. The fact is that this Austria, which is so terribly afflicted today, is not really paying much attention to the other areas of life; they go on as usual – or rather, they do not go away. But precisely because everything else is already so far in decline in this rump of Austria, in this “German-Austria” with the much too large city of Vienna, that is why people there turn to the spiritual. And that is precisely the advantage of Austrian Catholicism, that it has never sworn by dogma like any other Catholicism. Austrian Catholicism is actually much more based on looking, on feeling. Even within the clergy, the dogmatic is something that is respected and cultivated, but it is not what actually has an effect. In Austria, people do not think that they have to swear by a dogma or be as strongly opposed to a dogma as they do in Switzerland or Germany. A dogma is something that is also regarded more like a work of art.

And so this very ancient Viennese culture, with its strong artistic influence, has indeed been extraordinarily receptive to what we were able to bring from our side, especially from an East-West point of view, so that it really must be said: everything went as each individual event increased more and more.

And when the conference was over, it became clear from talking to people in Vienna that the conference was seen as a strong stimulus everywhere, quite apart from the fact that it was possible to see how strongly what had emerged from anthroposophy in recent years had taken effect in Vienna, particularly in certain sections of the population. It is the case that, for example, the threefold social order is very much on people's minds there, without it being mentioned, without anything being said about its origin. They are thinking in this sense, in this style. So, looking at the course of the congress itself, one must say: I know, of course, that there has been a lot of grumbling and there will be a lot more, the worst is yet to come in this regard, that is not the question now. But one must say: there is a growing interest, a participation of all sections of the population.

On the last evening, a number of workers who had attended the entire congress appeared before me and expressed their great interest. Other groups, including some that used to belong to the upper classes, also showed great interest. This congress has already had such an impact that one has to say: It means something within the outer element of our anthroposophical movement. And of course we will have an extraordinary amount to learn from what happened there, because now, for once, complete outsiders were present who, even though they emphasized that they disagree with much or even everything, at least see the matter as something that needs to be addressed.

This is something that, if understood in the right way, can be pursued very specifically in the wake of the Congress of Vienna, so that the world will judge: this is something that a person who cares about something must take into account and deal with today, not only with the forces of decline but also with the forces of the rising.

It can certainly be said that apart from the external success, which was indisputably there in the benevolent reception of all our speakers, the approval that our speakers received, the approval that our artistic performances received, there was also undoubtedly a certain internal success. And from this, in turn, new duties arise for us, duties that are actually of a very profound nature. For we will again have to become a little more broad-minded if the congress is to be what it can be. It is precisely under the effects of this congress that we will have to become more broad-minded again. It is absolutely necessary that we do not close ourselves off within the Anthroposophical Society, but that we draw the threads to everything that confronts us today, even if it often has a very unclear striving within itself; that we also not avoid coming into contact with our opponents in those relationships that can at least open up the possibility – even if one has to be a fierce opponent – of somehow engaging with each other in certain forms. This is something that is at least imposed on us as a duty.

Another duty is that we must try to work out ever more clearly the fact that anthroposophy can truly work fruitfully in all areas of life. So that one can say overall: the Congress of Vienna is a kind of turning point in relation to what the anthroposophical movement should be.

I do not believe that I have left anything to be said about the details of the Vienna Congress unconsidered, although I have spoken in seemingly general terms. But I believe that one can only understand the Vienna Congress if one understands it in terms of the whole will of the anthroposophical movement and if one understands it in the way it was able to work into the specific Austrian being. And there it has worked in a characteristic way. Those of our friends who were present from all countries will have felt this, and I believe that on the one hand the anthroposophical movement has every reason to welcome with deep satisfaction the fact that so many friends were really there from all over the world, and that on the other hand these friends will not regret having taken part in this event in Vienna.

I do not want to fail to explicitly mention in this reflection that it gave me great satisfaction that this call to come to Vienna found an echo in so many of our friends in different countries, that so many came. It was important that a great many of our friends were there to take away what was said, sung, played and so on. But it was also important that a great many of our friends take with them the feeling that created a special atmosphere there. That is how I wanted to describe this congress.

Concluding words at a meeting for the orientation of members.

Some time ago, a few young theology students came to me to talk about their inner struggles, and the way they spoke gave the impression of the utmost seriousness. This was because, in their words, there was a very specific undertone of the soul that was not clearly expressed at the time, but which was extremely strong in these younger souls. If I am to characterize what actually manifested itself as this underlying resonance of the soul, it is this: they were young theologians who were about to complete their studies and who looked ahead to their future with a certain sense of responsibility, but who looked back on what they had lived through during their studies of theology had gone through, with a certain bleakness, at least looking back on it in such a way that they showed: they do not feel able to really do justice to the responsibility they felt towards their task.

It is obvious to think about the source of this underlying feeling, which was basically a kind of inner disharmony. It came from the fact that in the present, the most earnest souls, those souls who want to take their life's task seriously on the basis of religious work, cannot take with them from their studies the inner strength that is necessary to carry out this mission.

Now, it was the case that at that time this unspoken thing that came from these souls affected me more than what was said, that this or that was to come.

Now, my dear friends, you have heard a lot today from a theological point of view about the causes of these inner soul disharmonies. On such an occasion one would like to point out that a long time ago a large number of people felt the need for something that we all know here and that has been characterized today in its relation to the religious questions before you: the need arose for anthroposophy. And that something is being sought in anthroposophy that is missing where it should not actually be missing is shown by the fact that, in the past, young life beginners, if I may put it that way, came to the very conclusion that they should at least ask how one could come to have the strength of which one had the dark awareness that one needed this strength, and one could not find it where it should actually be given.

Since Dr. Geyer, Dr. Rittelmeyer and Dr. Bock have already discussed on previous occasions what theology, as it is offered today, has gradually become, I do not need to explain to you how little the one who is chosen to proclaim religion, to work religiously, can see himself supported by theology as it is. Anthroposophy has also occasionally had the opportunity, albeit not in a very intensive way – but that may also have its reasons – to see the illumination of contemporary theology in anthroposophical events. Perhaps some of you were there. A representative of today's theology turned up and spoke against what Dr. Geyer, Dr. Rittelmeyer and Licentiate Bock had said. He presented his view of theology to anthroposophists. If I pick out the most important thing in that speech — the other had even less content —, it is that this gentleman said to the young theologians, who now want to be given the strength to work religiously in the world, “Oh, we don't need any of that, what anthroposophy says. We don't need other teachings and insights that speak about God, about the divine and so on, all that actually hinders religious life. The most important thing is that the divine breaks through everywhere.” – This gentleman repeatedly stated that the divine breaks through everywhere. This breaking through of the divine, he emphasized so sharply that I could not think of anything else but that when he now teaches his theological course at the university, he always talks about this breaking through of the divine. Well, certainly no one sitting there got an opinion, an idea, a feeling of where and what is breaking through. Yes, where? Everywhere.

If you really look at these things with attention, you have to say: it's just bleak. And it's so incredibly bleak because the people who are mostly appointed as official representatives, especially in the theological field, have no idea how far removed they are from all that religion was actually founded on. It is indeed the strangest phenomenon that in our time people have emerged who have set themselves the task of proving that there was no Christ at all, but that Christ formed himself as an idea out of social life, after the Near Eastern, Greek, and Roman world had entered a certain stage. Then people would have had such ideas, and that out of social need, and would have made the idea of the Christ out of it, which then just lived on and held people together.

Yes, my dear friends, there is the peculiar phenomenon that Christianity was founded and now a person feels the mission to place himself in a real Christian community today with the task of actually destroying Christ. Representative of such a debate was, for example, the theologian Kalthoff. Well, there are man-eaters, and there are those who don't eat the whole person, don't they, who leave something over. Yes, such a Kalthoff, he destroys the whole Christ. Others did it more partially, as already mentioned, by proclaiming as the result of theological research into the essence of Christianity: What happened in the garden, of which Christian tradition says that Christ rose there, is not known, but the belief in resurrection - or actually the person in question says: the Easter belief - emerged from this place and then spread further. - Well, it doesn't destroy the whole of Christ, but it is a good part of it.

And you see, you don't have to go far to find that - it was in Basel, as I have already pointed out - a theologian felt compelled to provide a kind of very

proof that there is still much that is Christian in the present day, but that at any rate theology is no longer Christian. During his professorship in theology, Overbeck wrote an excellent little book entitled “On the Christianity of Our Present-Day Theology,” which also made an extraordinary impression on Nietzsche.

Yes, you see, my dear friends, with just these few sketchy words I would like to suggest that one must look at something bleak if one wants to look at what confronts young “theologians who, after studying theology ‘through and through with hot endeavor,’ are then to stand before the communities and introduce these communities to the experience of the living Christ.

But now we can also look at the picture from the other side, from the side of the faithful. From the side of the faithful, it appears that these believers have an honest need, an honest longing for a revival of spiritual strength within themselves. But one cannot say how nothing is the nothing that these believers actually feel is coming towards them most of the time.

Now, my dear friends, in describing all this with a few sketchy words, I actually feel as if I have to squeeze every word out of myself. I would rather not talk about it at all. Why? Because it is something that, when you take it completely seriously, can no longer be characterized because it has lost its content. But precisely when one, I would like to say, with a compressed chest, wants to recall in words what actually lay at the root of it back then, when young theologians came to talk about their needs, precisely when one really visualizes this, then one will also understand that one can look with deep satisfaction at those who have spoken here before you today and who, out of their intimate knowledge of what it means to live this life, have spoken out in favor of a renewal of the religious life of humanity, and have not only spoken out in some vague, abstract, idealistic way, but have spoken out in the way that needs to be spoken out today if it is to lead somewhere. Perhaps some of you were even surprised that there was so much talk about worship and the necessity of worship. Well, precisely because everything

that has developed outside of Catholicism in recent times has been so very much outside of the cultural-religious and has developed more and more outside of this cultural-religious, precisely because of this, the intellect has been driven more and more to the surface. Ultimately, religious life became the domain of the intellect. Whether a preacher delivered his sermon in a somewhat rougher voice, which was taken to mean that he was more knowledgeable and reflective, or whether another preacher delivered his sermon with less emphasis on being knowledgeable for for easily understandable reasons and therefore his words sounded more in certain unctuous emotional nuances, that didn't make a very big difference in terms of the presentation, at least not in terms of really standing in an immediate spiritual way.

You have to bring all this to mind if you want to, I would say, gain the right heart for what has been said here today. Now, you yourself have sought a path to the spiritual by becoming an anthroposophist.

When I was approached with the matter I have just described, I had to say to myself, in view of the seriousness with which the whole thing was approached: here something is wanted in a particular field of anthroposophy, and it must be fulfilled as well as it can be fulfilled. And although I am completely down to earth, leaving the anthroposophical movement to be anthroposophical, as it has been so far, and certainly not feeling any kind of mission to found a religion myself, I still felt that I was obliged to actually fulfill everything that was asked of me in terms of giving content to this religious movement. And so it has come about, in the way it has been described to you, that this religious renewal movement will soon begin its work.

It is self-evident that this religious renewal movement should not be confused with the course of the anthroposophical movement itself. What I wanted to add here at the request of the honored speakers this evening is this: that in this case anthroposophy was confronted with a need that arose from religious life itself. And that is actually what should be particularly emphasized now that this religious renewal movement wants to get down to business in terms of its work. It was not the Anthroposophical Society that wanted to step forward and say: I now want to found a religious renewal movement. Rather, the longing for renewal arose from religious life itself, and Anthroposophy was sought out to provide the content for this renewal idea. And so, the content of Anthroposophy will be there, waiting to be asked for, and insofar as it is asked for.

But it is also up to you, my dear friends, who are Anthroposophists, to show understanding for this matter, but active understanding based on the matter itself, by contributing on your part to the fulfillment of those wishes that Dr. Geyer, Dr. Rittelmeyer and Mr. Bock, who are now facing with their whole personality all the storms that will undoubtedly come when this movement steps forward into the world.

We have indeed experienced many such storms in relation to the Anthroposophical movement. Believe me, my dear friends, even if what was to be experienced passed by many anthroposophists in this way – I am not saying anything bad, but only pointing out facts, that these anthroposophists closed their eyes and slept gently, even if some of these storms became bigger and bigger and stronger and stronger because they were not paid attention to. I do not wish to bore you, for if I talk at great length about these things, then again — although the present company is always excepted, well, then we imagine we are speaking to those who are absent —, then again this state of sleep could occur, which always occurs when how strong the storms are that are battering against our movement from the outside, and then we find that we are not there to be talked about in polemics and the like; so we turn to those who treat us in the way that is happening today. One should not oversleep that! You see, I just want to explain the matter by telling you a little story from recent times. A few days ago in Vienna, a man was arrested for advertising all kinds of dance performances and then, under the guise of all kinds of dance performances, carrying out criminal, immoral acts with young people. And then, in these days, one could read an article by someone who has also written about the Viennese anthroposophists, which began: “I have long since pointed out the harmfulness of Steinerism, and it is absolutely necessary that we now finally learn from such excesses of Steinerism what needs to be done.” Well, it is true that in a sense such things grow to monstrous proportions if the will is not there to be with one's whole personality with the one to whom one's thoughts turn.

Therefore, I would like to take this opportunity to point out once again that anthroposophists should understand if personalities - first and foremost those who have spoken to you today, but also those who will initially work actively for this religious renewal - have to face all the storms that can be expected in our time when people want to work honestly and sincerely from the spiritual realm. It is always a little unpleasant that it is supposed to be heard in our time. But it is.

Therefore, at least those who have the opportunity to understand something about spiritual movements and spiritual currents must also be fully engaged in them with their whole soul and approach with understanding those who are seeking such understanding, first of all in the Anthroposophical Movement. Because if it is not there, one might well ask: Where should this understanding begin today? And it must begin. For it is self-evident that this religious renewal cannot be limited to the Anthroposophical Society, but only makes sense if it takes effect outside the Anthroposophical Society. But we in our circles have a great need to show understanding for it.

I just wanted to add this to what has been presented to you today.

The First Goetheanum in the History of Architecture

It is, of course, a matter of the fact that when one looks at something artistically, a great many intuitions or imaginations run in a region that is too sharply contoured when one attempts to describe the unconscious processes — or intuitive tive and imaginative processes — that are, when you realize something, aren't they, exactly the same; the subconscious processes and the imaginative and intuitive processes are the same for the result, for the production, for that which arises. And it is always dangerous to bring these things too much into consciousness through intellectual considerations, because it is very easy to lose sight of the actual field of interest.

I would say: this reflection would have been extraordinarily beautiful if it were a matter of showing how, in a certain sense, certain formations of the human being in different fields go hand in hand in the development of humanity. Let me give an example: the archetypally significant thing for the content of this examination of the cross is that, from the perspective of world history, analytical geometry first considers the coordinates, that is, the transformation of the old Euclidean geometry, which worked directly with intuition, into constructions with the cross: we have to trace it back to a very specific developmental force in human development. In the time of Descartes, this tendency to introduce the cross into mathematics arose through Descartes himself. Now we can – and this is what you also wanted to say – not, in fact, parallelize the emergence of the cross shape [...] in architecture. I think this parallelism is what you wanted to point out?

Isn't it true that if we now understand this in such a way that in the course of human development certain links or elements, let us say, within human nature are detached from the whole of human nature, then such parallel phenomena are extraordinarily significant.

We can say: If we go far back in human development, we find man more as a whole and he also feels more as a whole. The further we come up, the more we find that individual elements of human nature are at work as what man then feels within himself. Then the purest feelings can arise, which then together make up the human being.

If we have to assume that the invention of analytical geometry is based on a very specific use in our physical nervous system, the use of organs in our physical nervous system that were not used separately before, then the emergence of this analytical geometry, built on the cross, is an external symptom, proof that man has grasped certain inner parts of his being. Then he can just as well grasp others at the same time, and a specialization arises in what he will bring forth.

In this way we come to what is probably ever more interesting and ever more interesting. And that is what the lecture offered: the prospect of an interesting and ever more interesting psychology, historical psychology in the development of the human soul. Such things, grasping the matter much less inwardly, are also taken up by Spengler in his book, for example. It is certainly right that we can view the development of the human soul in this way.

On the other hand, with regard to the actual study of art, art history, we are too distracted from the artistic grasp when we bring up the other parallel phenomena. In this respect, one thing was extraordinarily interesting about the lecture: the explanation of the relationship between the shape of the cross and the two-dome shape, namely to the intersection of the two circles here at the Goetheanum. That is something that can actually be said. But then it is perhaps necessary to lead back into the artistic again.

Because in fact, it seems to me – I don't want to talk in a very abstract and intellectual way here, because one doesn't like to do that when one has done something artistically – but it seems to me that when we go up from older times, say Egyptian, especially also Near Eastern , that we then pass from an eminently artistic form — even if we still take the Greek —, from an eminently artistic form through a less artistic one, when we come up to the Gothic and to the forms that go hand in hand with the use of the cross shape in mathematics. We come to something less artistic because, basically, we are entering into something more mathematical.

If you take the intersection of these two lines and then the intersection of the circles, mathematically, in one direction, that is basically what falls under one and the same category. Because, taken synthetically, the straight line is a structure that does not have two ends, but a single endpoint. Whether I go here or here (right, left), I always come to the same endpoint. So I can say that if I follow the line here, I have a closed line, because it closes, the line; only the closing is stretched out to infinity. This line closes just as well. And in reality, in the shape of the cross, I still have the intersection of two circles, correctly the intersection of two circles, only these two circles have been distorted into the abstract, namely into straight lines – the straight line is flattening out compared to the round – these two circles have been distorted into flattening. The whole formation, understood artistically, has been blown up into the boundless. But by fading into the boundless, the artistic is driven out to a certain degree.

You can therefore use these two intersecting straight lines as an axis of coordinates (arrow). If you use them as an axis of coordinates, you get coordinates that give a curve. That is, from the abstract of the coordinate axis system you get the concrete, the vivid, the immediately vivid of the curve, where you can begin to feel the matter.

Here you have to think, and it is not at all easy for you to understand that a straight line – to put it synthetically – only has one end point, not two. With a curve, you will feel that a circle has a different equation in the coordinate system than an ellipse. The ellipse has a different equation than a hyperbola, and the hyperbola has a different equation than a parabola. And you will now feel when you are shown that – let us say here a hyperbola branch is on a design, then this has developed in the artistic from an essentially abstract one, which has passed over to the concrete. Art is thus, as it were, led to the concrete as if by an inner compulsion. Everywhere we see that if we are to feel something, we must be pushed towards the concrete.

Now, if you think that I look at these two circles that intersect as a coordinate axis and construct the corresponding coordinates for myself, then I would already get in the coordinates what I have to treat in any case, as I am already treating in the coordinates, that is, I allow the same treatment to occur that I allow to occur when I come to the figure. So I have coordinate figures. Here, for example, I have circles – I could just as easily have ellipses if I wanted something different – so I have figures that have already been transformed into concrete figures. So I am already starting from what is there as concrete figures, and let that be my starting point. What will be next? What will be the result if I relate to my figures in the same way as to a coordinate axis – if you expand the word axis, you can of course only do that – if I relate to the figures as a coordinate axis in the same way as I relate to the cross as a coordinate axis here. What will come out of that?

With the cross I get a figural coordinate axis – a figural cross, that is, a figural coordinate. If you follow it further, it leads directly into spiritual life itself. So if you follow this argument consistently, in the same sense that we go from the cross extending into infinity to the merely figural, which recreates life, you must absolutely go further and enter into life itself. That is to say, what is being striven for above all at the Goetheanum is that which, through Gothic and Baroque and Rococo, strove out into the more indeterminate, into the more intangible, that this in turn is summarized in the directly experienceable, that everything is summarized in the experienceable. And with that one can then come across into the qualitative.

And when you get into the qualitative, then of course you have to conclude exactly as the esteemed previous speaker had to conclude. You can then become aware that in the further development of architecture, it must actually be a matter of overcoming the crucifix, Christ on the cross, the dead Christ, through the Risen Christ, through the Christ who has been led back to life. And if we can accomplish this in architecture, then the mission of humanity in the future is actually the one that truly encompasses the whole meaning of the earth: to come from the crucifix, from the dead Christ, to the resurrected one, that is, to the one who appears again as revived or as revived reappearing - better said, to the one who has risen. We can only do that if we, like the speaker, have the experience that arises from total feeling, but we can only have this experience in architecture if we have the total feeling.

Now, however, you could describe the wide stream, I would say. The facts are much more concrete than the esteemed speaker suggested. Perhaps some of you here today remember a lecture I gave here a long time ago, in which I pointed out how certain Near Eastern pre-Greek buildings can only be understood if they are seen as representing people lying on the ground and raising themselves up with their heads – naturally translated into the architectural – certain Near Eastern buildings.

If we then go further up, as man stands up more and more, as he rises, stands up from lying - that which actually comes to the fore in the architectural form that has been particularly characterized today - we have not yet fully , the human being who has not yet fully risen, but who also asserts himself outwardly, as is still the case in particular with the Rococo and Baroque, where one does not merely show the human being's forms, but almost as if he were wearing clothes. This is just a little more artistically conceived. Now, my point is this: if we look at the Orient, we can see everywhere how the idea of building has actually emerged from an intuitive understanding of the human form.

Now, however, imagine, when you look at such forms – parallel forms, hyperbolic forms, elliptical forms – the building forms from the period that has been characterized today, then you must have the feeling: you are looking at them, it is a figure that you are looking at, traceable to the cross-shaped figure that you are looking at. Here the cross is, or rather, it is not there. Mathematically speaking, it is more correct to say: it is not there. The ellipse is there, and to the ellipse I then add the cross and then find the equation of the EIl here. So the ellipse is what matters. I have to add the cross. What I look at is the figurative, the reproduction of the living.

Now please follow me in the next step: cross, reproduction of the living, figurative; I have to look at it. Figurative has meaning only when I look at it. If I then want to think it, I can trace it back to the cross. But now think: instead of the cross, I have the two intersecting circles. These are now my complicated coordinate axes. If I now want to move on to what corresponds to the figurative, what is that?

You can only imagine this in concrete terms, just as you can imagine the mathematical process of drawing up a coordinate system and making a figure here, looking at the figure and thinking in terms of the coordinate system – in the same way, you can go over to the construction site, imagine yourself as a living person in this coordinate system, and the figure is yourself.

What arises is you with your feelings, you with your soul. There is the most intimate interpenetration of what is built and what can be experienced. Now you have complete possibility, the congruence between forms of world view and what you experience inside, as with the human body and the human soul. The human body is also configured in all its parts to the soul, just as a coordinate system is configured to the figures. And so it is there with the coordinate system and the human being. So that you have here, in a very lively presentation, achieved that which otherwise has to be constructed must be experienced. And when it is experienced, then the human being stands in this coordinate system with what he experiences in it. In short, the one who stands in this Goetheanum, together with the Goetheanum, represents soul and body, very organically within, without having to interpret it or anything like that.

If you continue your meditation, you can go back to the Gothic style. I have often said that a Gothic cathedral is not complete when it is empty. It is only complete when the community is inside it – just as a Greek temple is only complete when the god is inside it, or at least an image of the god.

The Gothic cathedral, which has the shape of a cross – and Gothic cathedrals always tend to take the shape of a cross; you have that inside the Gothic cathedral – it is the cross, the shape of a cross; the cathedral itself is built on that. The congregation is inside it. The cross extends into infinity on all sides, into the immeasurable. It corresponds to that time in which the idea of God led into the immeasurable, where one wanted to seek God only in the expanses.

Now we bring God into a house where he can really live so vividly that man can partake of him. So at the same time, you can also carry out the internalization of the idea of God in this progression of architecture.

Now, I don't attach any importance to the individual contents that I have said, but more to the way in which I have now presented them: The whole matter, again, transferred from the constructive, more intellectual, to the artistically rounded, where one must point out that in the transition to the artistic, everything always leads directly into life, and one constantly wants to move from the concept - I would say - into drawing and painting itself. Even when talking, one would much rather not talk, and above all not think, but one would like to draw and paint and point to the living.

So that is what I actually meant. It is extremely interesting when one starts from such considerations.

Now, I believe that not only in a historical sense was it very beautiful, as the lecturer pointed out, that architecture must see a certain perspective before it, but it is also important that we train our thoughts, which follow the development of humanity, more and more in such a way that they turn from thoughts into living spirit, so that we get beyond abstract thinking to the living spirit within us. For we as humanity have now thought long enough. We must learn to experience spiritually again.

It shouldn't be just any criticism, but only a small addition.

We are beginning our work!

You Seraphim, you Cherubim, you rulers of the world, you who, like lightning, take up the veils of the Cherubim through the spiritual currents, marrying them to the creative existence of the world, you high thrones, we call upon you as protectors of our actions, and you, you wisdoms, you who radiate that which exists in man before all his own existence, and you, you keepers of the eternal forces of the world, and you, you formers of our existence, you who place the form of all being into the currents of existence: We call upon you to be protectors of our actions. And you, you personalities of the spiritual stream, and you helpers, the archangeloi and the angeloi, you who are the messengers of the spiritual life of man to the earth, we call upon you all to be the protectors and guides of this our action. We call you down upon the soul of the human being whom we wish to consecrate, insofar as this is in our power. We approach this human soul, which we wish to consecrate to the work that, to the best of our knowledge, should serve the times.

We have formed this stone as a symbol of the human soul that consecrates itself to our great work. It is a symbol for us in its double twelve-foldness of the striving human soul, as a microcosm sunk into the macrocosm. Anthropos, the human being, as he derives from the entities of the divine-spiritual hierarchies. So this cornerstone is a symbol of our own soul, which we incorporate into what we have recognized as the right spiritual striving for the present. Thus we will sink this stone, which is shaped according to the world pictures of the human soul, into the realm of the elements. Within this stone, taken from the denser realm of the elements, are two rocks that best express how the forces of the macrocosm interact in the denser realm of the elements. This twelve-part structure, we will sink it as the actual sign of the human soul into the place above which will rise that which, if we understand it correctly, my dear Theosophical friends, will become a sign of our work this evening. And with this stone we want to sink that through which we commit ourselves to that which we have recognized as the right thing in our spiritual life.

This document is sunk into our stone; it bears the inscription:

In the name of the seraphim, the cherubim, the thrones, the wisdoms, the movers, the shapers, the personalities, the archai, the archangeloi, the angeloi!

Man, Anthropos, lives as a microcosm in the macrocosm, and is also depicted here as a twofold twelve-membered image, a symbol of the spiritual world. And within this symbol, the well-known saying of Rosicrucianism expresses the meaning of our striving:

Ex Deo nascimur
In Christo morimur
Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus

As the formula for an oath, do we understand this correctly? It is written on this stone, which as the cornerstone expresses the human being who wants to seek himself in the spirit, who wants to feel himself in the soul of the world, who senses himself in the world-I. We sink this stone into the condensed realm of the elements, as a symbol of the power towards which we strive, placed by the Johannesbau-Verein Dornach on the 20th day of September 1880, according to the Mystery of Golgotha, that is 1913 after the birth of Christ, when Mercury was the evening star in Libra.

As master builder:
Carl Schmid-Curtius

As members of the administrative council of the Johannesbau-Verein:
Sophie Stinde
Emil Grosheintz
Hermann Linde
Felix Peipers
Pauline Gräfin Kalckreuch
Carl Unger
Emmy Gumppenberg
Mrs. Bürgi
Mrs. Schieb
Mrs. Hirter-Weber

As the Central Council of the Anthroposophical Society:
Marie von Sivers
Dr. Carl Unger

and Dr. Steiner as the spiritual leader of the action.

This document, it is incorporated into the symbol of the human soul, and then into the denser realm of the elements.

[The document is inserted into the copper container and soldered.]

The stone, the symbol of our souls, is lowered into the condensed realm of the elements.

[Dr. Peipers and four other men place the foundation stone in the foundation stone pedestal. It is placed so that the larger dodecahedron faces east and the smaller faces west, i.e., the opposite of the building, whose larger dome faces west and the smaller faces east. Rudolf Steiner then descends into the foundation stone pit himself.

The stone, as a symbol of our soul, has been sunk into the earth; it is a symbol of the striving for knowledge, for love, for strong action, a symbol for humanity. It shall be a symbol for our souls that we will always hear the deepest meaning of the word of the world:

Ex Deo nascimur
In Christo morimur
Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus

Thus the symbol of the human soul becomes a sign of the human soul. I consecrate you as a sign of the human soul with the first blows that will be struck at this, our work of creation.

[Three, five and seven blows are struck on the small, then twelve blows on the larger dodecahedron.

The stone has thus become a sign from the symbol. And now we want to entrust it to the realm of condensed elements, the earth, into which our soul has been sunk in order to develop that which is the earth's mission in the evolution of humanity. The stone from the sign becomes veiled when we entrust it to the earth. The human soul ascends three times to the three secrets of existence: at first they are symbols, then signs, when the soul reads the eternal word of the world. But the deepest depths of the secrets of the world are brought to life and united with the soul when this soul from the realm of the hierarchies is able to give itself the covering. Thus be veiled! A veiled one shall become from the symbol and the sign, so that you may be a firm cornerstone of our striving, our seeking, as we have recognized it to be right in the evolution of humanity. Thus we want to make the stone, which is the sign of our soul, the veiled one.

[Architect Schmid-Curtius and engineer Englert then cover the stone, on which Marie von Sivers has placed a bouquet of roses - 12 red and one white rose - with soil. Then Dr. Steiner hands the cross-folded hands of those present at the laying of the foundation stone, Dr. Peipers, Dr. Grosheintz, Miss von Sivers, architect Schmid and engineer Englert. Everyone leaves the foundation pit and Rudolf Steiner returns to his place on the axis of the foundation stone, where he began his address.]

My dear sisters and brothers!

Let us understand each other correctly on this festive evening. Let us understand each other to the effect that this act, in a certain sense, signifies a vow for our soul. Our striving has brought it about that we are allowed to erect this symbol of spiritual life of modern times here in this place, from which we look far out in the four elementary directions of the compass rose. Let us understand that today, by feeling our souls united with what we have symbolically sunk into the earth, we are committing ourselves to this spiritual evolutionary current of humanity that we have recognized as right. Let us try, my dear sisters and brothers, to make this vow of the soul: that we want to look away at this moment from all the pettiness of life, from all that connects us, must necessarily connect us as human beings with the life of everyday life. Let us try to awaken in us at this moment the thought of the connection of the human soul with the striving in the turn of time. Let us try to remember for a moment that, in doing what we have committed ourselves to doing today, we must bear in mind that we have to look out into the far reaches of time to see how the mission, of which this building is to become the emblem, will fit into the great mission of humanity on our planet Earth. Not in pride and arrogance, but in humility, devotion and willingness to make sacrifices, we try to reach up with our souls to the great plans, the great goals of human activity on earth. Let us try to put ourselves in the position in which we should and must actually be if we understand this moment correctly.

Let us try to remember how the great message and tidings of the eternal gospel of divine spiritual life once took time to evolve on Earth, when the divine spirits themselves were still the great teachers of humanity. Let us try, my dear sisters and brothers, to transport ourselves back to those divine times on earth, of which a last yearning, a very last memory still arises in us, when we hear about the eternal ideas and the eternal shell of the world in ancient Greece, for example, with the last tones of mystery wisdom and at the same time with the first philosophical tones of the great Plato. And let us try to comprehend what Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences have taken hold of our evolution on earth since then. Let us try to realize how the connection of the human soul with the divine existence of the world, with volition, with feeling and with divine spiritual cognition has been lost. Let us try at this moment to feel, deep down in our souls, what human souls feel out there, in the countries of the east, west and south, who we can recognize as the best and who cannot go beyond what we can express with the words: an indefinite, inadequate yearning and hope for the spirit. Look around you, my dear sisters and brothers, and see how this indefinite yearning, this indefinite hope for the spirit, prevails in humanity today. Feel and listen, here at the foundation stone of our emblem, how in humanity's indefinite yearning and hope for the spirit, the cry for the answer can be heard, for that answer that can be given where spiritual science prevails with its gospel of the spirit. Try to write into your souls the greatness of the moment we are going through this evening. If we can hear humanity's yearning for the spirit and want to build the structure from which the message of the spirit is to be proclaimed more and more and more – if we feel this in the life of the everyday world, then we understand each other correctly this evening. Then we know - not in arrogance and not in overestimation of our striving, but in humility, in devotion and willingness to sacrifice, we know - that we must be in our striving the continuers of that spiritual work that was triggered in the Occident in the course of a progressive human development, but which, through the necessary counter-current of the Ahrimanic forces, must ultimately lead to humanity standing at a point where souls would wither and become desolate if the yearning for the spirit were not heard. Let us feel, my dear sisters and brothers, these fears! This is how it must be if we are to continue to fight in that great spiritual battle, which is a battle glowing with the fire of love; in that great spiritual battle, which we are allowed to continue, which was fought by our ancestors when they distracted the Ahrimanic onslaught of the Moors.

We are now, guided by karma, at the place through which important spiritual currents have passed: Tonight, let us feel the seriousness of the situation within us. Once upon a time, humanity had reached the end of its striving for personality. Since the old heirloom of the divine ladder of the original beginning of earth evolution had withered in the abundance of this earth personality, the world word appeared over there in Asia:

In the beginning was the word.
And the word was with God.
And a god was the word.

And the Word appeared to the human soul and spoke to the human soul: Fill the evolution of the earth with the meaning of the earth. Now the Word Itself has merged with the earth aura and is absorbed by the spiritual aura of the earth.

Four times the world word has been proclaimed through the centuries, which will soon have been two millennia. Thus the world light has shone into the evolution of the earth. Deeper and deeper sank and had to sink Ahriman. We feel surrounded by human souls in which the cry of longing for the spirit resounds. But, my dear sisters and brothers, do we not feel how these human souls must remain with this general yearning, because the dark Ahriman spreads chaos over the aspired spiritual knowledge of the worlds of the higher hierarchies. Feel that the possibility exists in our time to add to the fourfold proclaimed spiritual word that other, which I can only represent in symbols.

From the East it came – the light and the word of the proclamation. From the East it went to the West, proclaimed fourfold in the four Gospels, waiting for the mirror to come from the West, which would add knowledge to what is still proclamation in the fourfold spoken word of the world. It goes deep to our hearts and souls when we hear about that Sermon on the Mount, which was spoken when the times of the maturing of the human personality were fulfilled, when the old light of the spirit had faded and the new spiritual light had appeared. The new spiritual light has appeared! But since it had appeared, it went through the centuries of human evolution from the East to the West, waiting for the understanding of the words that once sounded in the Sermon on the Mount into human hearts. From the depths of our world evolution sounds that eternal prayer that was spoken as the proclamation of the World Word when the Mystery of Golgotha was fulfilled. And the ancient prayer resounded deeply, which was to proclaim to the microcosm in the deepest soul, from the innermost part of the human heart, the secret of existence. It was to resound in what was proclaimed to us as the Lord's Prayer when it sounded from the east to the west. But this cosmic word, which descended into the microcosm at that time, waited to resonate with the fifth gospel. Human souls had to mature in order to understand what was to echo from the West as the most ancient, because the macrocosmic gospel, like an echo of the gospel of the East. If we show understanding for the present moment, then we will also understand that a fifth gospel can be added to the four. So let the words that express the secrets of the macrocosm resound this evening, in addition to the secrets of the microcosm. The first of the fifth gospel to be heard here is the ancient macrocosmic world prayer, which is connected with the moon and Jupiter, just as the four gospels are connected with the earth:

AUM, Amen!
The evils prevail,
Witnesses of dissolving egoity,
The guilt of selfhood incurred by others, Experienced in the daily bread, In which heaven's will does not prevail, Since man has separated himself from your kingdom And forgot your name, You fathers in the heavens.

The Lord's Prayer was given as a gift: given to mankind. The microcosmic Lord's Prayer, proclaimed from East to West, is now echoed by the ancient macrocosmic prayer. Thus it resounds again, when it is rightly understood by human souls, sounding out into the world and being returned with the words that have been shaped from the macrocosm. Let us take with us the macrocosmic Lord's Prayer, feeling that we are beginning to gain an understanding of the Gospel of Knowledge: the fifth gospel. Let us carry home into our soul with earnestness and dignity our will from this important moment. Let us carry home the certainty that all wisdom sought by the human soul - if the seeking is a genuine one - is a countercurrent to cosmic wisdom; and that all human love rooted in selfless love of the soul is fruitful from the love prevailing in the evolution of mankind.

Throughout all the ages of the earth and in all human souls there is at work, arising from the strong human will that is imbued with the meaning of the earth, a strengthening through the cosmic power that humanity is invoking for itself today, looking vaguely towards a spirit that it hopes for but does not want to recognize, because an unconscious fear has been cast into the human soul Ahriman wherever the spirit is spoken of today. Let us feel this, my sisters and brothers, in this moment. Feel this, and you will be able to prepare yourselves for your spiritual work and reveal yourselves as spiritual light, “thought-powerfully even then, when, through fully awakened spiritual vision, the dark Ahriman, dimming wisdom, wants to spread the darkness of chaos.”

Fill your souls, my sisters and brothers, with the longing for true spiritual knowledge, for true human love, for strong will. And try to stir up in you that spirit that can trust the language of the word of the world, which echoes to us from the far reaches of the world and from the widths of space, entering into our souls. That is what he who has grasped the meaning of existence must truly feel this evening: human souls are at a turning point in their striving. Feel in humility, not in arrogance, in devotion and willingness to sacrifice, not in arrogance of your self, what is to become of the symbol for which we have laid the foundation stone today. Feel the significance of the realization that we are to become through the fact that we can know: In our time, the cover of spiritual beings must be pierced in the vastness of space, when spiritual beings come to speak to us about the meaning of existence. Everywhere in the surrounding area, human souls will have to take on the meaning of existence. Hearken how in the various spiritual places, where spiritual science, religion and art are spoken of and acted upon, hear how the powers of striving in the souls become more and more barren, feel that you are to learn to fertilize these souls, these powers of striving in the soul, out of the spiritual imaginations, the inspirations and intuitions. Feel what he will find who will truly hear the sound of creative spirituality.

Those who will learn to understand the meaning of the Lord's Prayer in the light of the Fifth Gospel will be able to recognize this meaning thoroughly in our new era. When we learn to understand the meaning of these words, we will seek to absorb the seeds that must flourish if earthly evolution is not to wither, if it is to continue to bear fruit and flourish, so that the earth may achieve the goal set for it from the beginning through human will.

So feel this evening that wisdom and the meaning of the new knowledge, the new love and the new strong power must come to life in human souls. The souls that will work in the flowering and fruiting of future earth evolutions will have to understand what we want to incorporate into our souls for the first time today: the macrocosmically resounding voice of the ancient eternal prayer:

AUM, Amen!
The evils prevail,
Witnesses of the dissolution of the ego,
Selfhood guilt incurred by others,
Experienced in our daily bread,
In which heaven's will does not prevail,
Because man has separated himself from your kingdom
And forgot your name,
You fathers in the heavens.

So we part, taking with us in our souls the awareness of the significance of the seriousness and dignity of the act we have performed, the awareness that should remain from this evening, igniting in us the striving for knowledge of a new revelation given to humanity, for which the human soul thirsts and from which it will drink. But only when it will fearlessly gain the faith and trust in what the Science of the Spirit can proclaim, which in turn should reunite what had to go through the evolution of humanity separated for a while: religion, art and science.

Let us take this, my sisters and brothers, with us as something that we, as a commemoration of this jointly celebrated hour, do not want to forget again.

before the lecture

My dear Theosophical friends!

We who are gathered here around our building, which is to become a symbol of the spirit, are undoubtedly all under the impression of the events that have befallen Europe while we were still fully occupied with our building. Those of our dear friends who have listened more closely to some of the things that have been said in our circles in recent years know that we have always been in some sense influenced by what has now broken in so terribly, and that many things have been said with the perspective of what had to come upon the peoples of Europe and what, for certain reasons, did not come earlier – for reasons that will be superfluous to discuss at this very moment.

But as we here on the one hand have the painful events in our immediate vicinity, and on the other hand are protected from them by what is happening in the country to which our good karma has carried us with our construction – we, who are standing in direct view and yet protected from the events, we may and must actually at this moment place two thoughts quite seriously before our soul. The thought that we tried to express in the last of our reflections here, - the thought that can inspire us in our deepest hearts: unshakable trust in the power and effectiveness of the spirit, in the victory of the spirit and its life. And we would be poor members of our spiritual movement if we did not have this thought in our souls, if we had not won it for ourselves over the years that we have stood within our movement, if we did not carry within us the firm certainty: Whatever may come in the way of serious trials, whatever may happen to us, we hold within us the unshakable trust in the power and victory of the spiritual life! if we do not feel that in the end the spirit will triumph!

But another thought must be added to all that inspires us with such confidence. This is the thought of - it need not be misunderstood, but it may be expressed and can be understood - the present physical weakness of what can be done for the spirit. To put it before our minds, let us think of a contrast that may weigh dreadfully on our hearts at this time: let us think that we have three principles, and that the first of these principles must be to cultivate in ourselves a spirit of brotherhood that transcends all nations. There is no doubt that the faith we have in the spirit will clearly permeate us with the awareness that this ideal, too, is a legitimate and great one.

But let us compare this ideal with the present in which we live; let us compare it not in the abstract, but in the immediate, concrete form that concerns each and every one of us: and then we may come to the conclusion how little it has been possible for us to date to contribute even a little to the realization of this, our very first thought! We need not consider in detail what is being spread about the events, but the mood of the mind is something we must consider very carefully. And then we will feel: We travel around the world, a large number of us, from country to country, everywhere we are lovingly received, everywhere we feel how necessary it is to carry the spiritual seed everywhere, and we now see how across the borders and areas in which we have thought, lived and spoken so lovingly, how across these borders moods of hatred and antipathy are sent to each other to such an extent!

The contrast is there before our mind's eye, how great the demands of the spirit are, and how little we have been able to do for our very first thought. And if we, who are now gathered here in our ranks, around our building, which is supposed to be an expression of our spiritual striving, could now force a model and pattern into our hearts, into our mutual behavior, a model of brotherly spirit, it would have to be this thought.

May it serve to inspire each of us to recognize each of the others in our hearts! We can only do our part in the construction of our society with bleeding hearts, knowing how little of what is happening corresponds to what should be happening. We may console ourselves with the thought that our ideal, which we have in relation to our construction, will triumphantly go forth into the world in the future: this is not a thought of weakness, it will change in us into a thought of strength.

Many things will have to change, my dear friends, if we are to approach the minds that are out there in this terrible life again. We shall find many things changed, many minds will meet us differently than before, and many things that have been done in our movement will have to be done differently in the future. And if we want to do something for the spirit in the turmoil that will develop, then we must not continue to cultivate old ideas. We will need new ideas; those that the situation demands will develop. But we will only be strong if we arm ourselves with the thought: Wherever events may place us, whatever they may demand of us, we will do it in the confidence of the spirit's victory.

Our building rises up in peaceful thoughts and peaceful work. In these times, when everything seems to be shaken, let us strive to be a group that cherishes and cultivates peace and harmony in each other's hearts, so that each of us has the best thoughts about each other, without envy, without discord. That, my dear friends, will be the only thing that makes it possible, in the face of painful events, to continue what must be continued. For our work must and will be continued, despite all the obstacles that pile up. What must happen in the sense of our movement will happen. It will happen, no matter what obstacles appear to us!

But it can only happen if we try to keep love and peace in our hearts, which should be generated by holding on to the spirit within our hearts. Without this, the world outside cannot progress either; but for the group gathered here, it is even more important to keep love, peace and harmony in our hearts. Because whatever we are building will be disrupted if it is not built with these feelings of love and peace; it will be disrupted by envy and discord. Only when thoughts of harmony, peace and love are built into the forms we are working on will they be what they should be for humanity when peace returns to the world. The more harmony we can muster in our hearts, the more these forms and means of expression, which our building has in itself, will be imbued with them. If we really understand this, then it may be possible for us to imbue ourselves with the attitude that is the ideal of our spiritual striving.

I wanted to say these words at the beginning today, as words that should justify the fact that we are continuing to work here in peace and quiet during these times, and are not going out to take part in the events that are taking place outside. But as for what the individual is called upon to do in this regard, it can only be said that the individual is doing his duty. If we now hold on to this ideal with all our strength and with courage and confidence, then it will grow more and more and, when peace has returned to the world, it will be able to fulfill its mission. Of course, it will be necessary to a much, much greater extent than it has been in our ranks for us to try to put aside our own personal aspirations and strive to imbue our entire spiritual movement with what is like a spiritual lifeblood.

As these words come from deep within my heart, my dear friends, I want them to go deep into your hearts as well!

My dear friends!

One of the things that I otherwise always find difficult, despite what one might think, is speaking, and it always means a kind of difficult decision for me to speak, despite having to do so so often. It seems particularly difficult to me in this day and age, in this time when the heart and soul are burdened and weighed down by so many things.

Not only do I long to be with you, my dear friends, again after a long time, but today there is also a very special reason for our being together. Today is the eve of the anniversary of our laying of the foundation stone. It will be exactly one year from today, Saturday; according to the date, it will be one year tomorrow, Sunday. We will therefore gather today and tomorrow, and I ask our dear friends to please gather in this room tomorrow at six o'clock as well. We will not read the drama, as was the custom during the time I was not present, but we will try to spend the evening in a different way tomorrow. The drama reading can take place again in the near future.

But today, above all, I would like to remind you of the ideas, feelings and emotions that moved our souls when we laid the foundation stone for this building here on this hill a year ago. Even though few of you, my dear friends, were present at that time in terms of your external, physical personality, in terms of your hearts and feelings, you were all there. And all those who have since then worked so lovingly and selflessly on this building have experienced for themselves and also shown how closely they are connected to the feelings and emotions that, at that time, in the most beautiful sense of the word, namely, glowing with divine fire, when we - it had to be so; it was brought about by the circumstances of the time - laid the foundation stone in a small circle.

At that time, we tried to use few words to guide us in the soul, which spirit this building should be. We tried to envision how we could see from this hill to the north, south, east and west, and how we want to serve that spiritual life, which we are convinced humanity in the north, south, east and west needs if the development of the earth is to proceed in the appropriate way intended by the spiritual hierarchies.

Indeed, I also believe I have sufficiently pointed out that it is not a proud feeling with which we present our view of spiritual life as the one that must be intimately connected with the salvation of humanity. Rather, this emphasis is truly connected with the feeling of humble modesty that we only want to be servants of that spiritual life that wants to flow in, through the peaceful harmonies of the higher hierarchies, into the salutary development of the human race.

So we understand the matter, that we do not rise in pride because we believe we recognize something special, but that we feel blessed by the divine spiritual beings, feel blessed to be allowed to be servants in the development of the stream of spiritual life to which our soul, our heart, our whole human being is attached.

And it was at that time, my dear friends, that I was allowed to speak for the first time the words of which I not only believe I know, but – with all the certainties with which one can know such a thing – I truly believe I know that they were heard from the divine-spiritual heights by that entity that was to become the bearer of the Christ who would harmoniously unite people.

It was one of the most uplifting moments for me that I have experienced in our movement when I was allowed to speak the words for the first time:

Amen!
The evils prevail,
Witnesses of dissolving egoism,
Guilt of selfhood incurred by others,
experienced in daily bread,
in which heaven's will does not prevail,
because man has separated himself from your kingdom
and forgotten your name,
you fathers in the heavens.

In these words, whoever reflects on them often enough will gradually find that they contain everything that can move human hearts and souls in a great and sublime way. But these words also contain everything that can cause human pain and suffering in human hearts and souls. And if we allow them to work in the right way in our souls, these words contain the strength that can sustain us in the sense of our spiritual current, can endow us with inner security, in whatever situation in life we may find ourselves, whatever life circumstances we may be forced to face.

What, my dear friends, inspired us when we turned our thoughts to such a building, as it now stands before us as a landmark, years ago? We were inspired by the conviction that the salvation of humanity depends on not only the theoretical knowledge and conviction of the existence of the spiritual worlds flowing into humanity, but also on our direct experience of them, on our being united with the spiritual worlds in our souls.

We are permeated by the belief, my dear friends, that this spiritual life is present in the world everywhere, but that it is up to people to grasp it, because man is meant to be free in the world, and this spiritual life approaches him only on condition that he wills it, that he take it up into his will. This justifies the necessity that we find imposed on us by karma to do everything that can release this sacred human will from the depths of human nature, wherein it is often so hidden that it may unite with the converging will of the hierarchies, who will then choose the earth as the site of a cosmos where, in the future, holy, spiritual Christ-sunlight will shine if humanity wills it, if humanity wants to mature for it.

The thought occurred to us at the laying of the foundation stone before the year was out - but it did not live much longer, but that is our karma - that with the last days of July this year our building would be ready, so that it could be spoken in the sense that had been indicated by the reality of spiritual life and its reception by man.

Of course, karma willed otherwise, and the human soul must learn to submit to necessity through spiritual science. If the idea of coping in July had been realized, then, my dear friends, we would now be able to feel how, during the entire construction of the house dedicated to our sacred cause, we could look down – as we looked down at the time of the laying of the foundation stone to the north, south, east and west – on the peace that prevailed among people.

Now, that did not happen. The last work of our construction must look down on a completely different world, my dear friends, on a different world, which can truly evoke deep feelings of suffering in those hearts that have already been filled to a certain degree with the spirit of the spiritual life that we mean.

However, as I already indicated when I last spoke to you from this pulpit, it would be a sign of weakness for those who are engaged in the spiritual life if we did not , at least in our inmost being, we have developed the faith in the one great victory that must come – may it come in whatever way – in the victory and the victoriousness of the spiritual life. We can celebrate, my dear friends, the annual festival of a building that is intended to serve in the most eminent sense to bring together human souls across the earth in harmony. If it should happen, as honestly and uprightly as it can happen, then the way we stand by our building should correspond to what is the first principle of our spiritual movement, and what is expressed in the foundation of every single, even artistic, form of our building.

If anyone takes the trouble to study the individual artistic forms of our structure, they will find that, in addition to everything I have allowed myself to say in the course of the lectures in this room about the meaning of the forms of our structure, every detail expresses the sense of the true Christ impulse to embrace all human hearts, as they are found among the peoples and races of the earth. For, my dear friends, the spiritual life of humanity, life in the spirit, is one; and from the words I spoke here last time, you will have gathered how this must be understood in the most earnest and worthy way.

The spiritual life of humanity is one. But if we want to make this sentence completely our own in the immediate present, we will have to take some of what we have learned in the course of our spiritual work over the years seriously, deeply, deeply seriously.

And let us not hide from ourselves that it will be difficult for some souls to perceive the things that have been accepted as truth in the deepest peace, in the immediate present with the same intensity as truth. But on the other hand, let us remember that this is precisely our test in the present time: to take things seriously.

Now, my dear friends, let us look at an example. It was during the time of deepest peace that I spoke to a number of our friends in the north, in Christiania, about the nature of the folk souls and their significance in the evolution of humanity. There is no doubt that the lectures given at that time on the nature of the folk souls were understood by our dear friends in an objective way; but it is also equally certain that many other people in the world who are outside our society could have understood these lectures in an objective way at that time.

It cannot be assumed that we would be able to accept such lectures with the same objectivity today without being truly moved in our innermost being. And yet, I would like to say, how instructive for today, for the immediate present, what was said in Christiania at that time about the nature of the souls of the people could be! Perhaps we may be permitted to remind our friends of some of the lectures of those days, and particularly of what was said at the time of the greatest peace, at least for the greater part of the European nations.

My dear friends, before I draw your attention to what was said about the national souls of Europe in the course of these lectures, let us consider a fact, a fact that is, so to speak, intimately connected with a correct, deep and serious understanding of our spiritual science. This is this: our soul nature itself, our individual soul nature, is by no means the simple being that exoteric science would like to present it as out of convenience. It is one of the simplest things we have to recognize when we place ourselves on the ground of spiritual science, that we see what a complicated being works and lives in our own inner being. We immediately get to know in our soul being: sentient soul, mind soul and consciousness soul, and how the I is predisposed in it and the striving upwards to the higher members. Immediately we are confronted with a fivefoldness of effective elements. There are still people today who laugh at this description of the soul's elements. But a time will come when people will recognize the complexity of the human soul life, when they will turn their gaze - because life will become more and more difficult in the course of our development on earth - to what so irrefutably shows the multiplicity of our soul elements. This is that our soul members can come into inner conflict, into inner soul war.

We know, of course, how the human soul can feel divided within itself in everyday life at these or those times. The more one delves into the life of the soul, the more significant it becomes when the individual soul members, as it were, rebel against each other within the human being. One perceives how they stand within the human being, one cannot say otherwise: fighting against each other. And the way we are tuned, our state of soul, whether we are more inclined to immerse ourselves in a matter with the element of feeling or more in a rational frame of mind, is reflected in the structure of our being, which is meant to express this.

However, the soul members will only behave correctly if each one finds its corresponding weight, with which it draws the human being, so to speak, to the truly true earthly task required by the spiritual hierarchies, when the soul members come together in harmony. They will become so in the highest sense when they overcome the difficulties that lie in the mutual struggle of the soul members.

In one of the Mystery Dramas there is a scene – in the Test of the Soul – where this inner working, surging and weaving is pointed out in the most eminent sense, but also the fighting of the individual soul forces.

But there is also a representation - and this representation forms the final tableau of the Gate of Initiation, the first mystery play - where what basically lives in the individual soul is distributed among what stands before us in the final tableau. There are Mary and Thomas Aquinas, Lucifer and Ahriman, the hierophants, and so on. They speak with each other, and their voices reflect what speaks in the individual human soul. The goal of the human spirit is to be found in such a union, as depicted in the final temple tableau, where every single soul force and every single personality is placed in its proper place and each contributes what lies in its nature.

I would like to point out the many-sidedness of the human being and how it has been attempted, in the various representations and discussions, to show what works and weaves in the human being in connection with the many-sidedness of the human soul , how we can look into our own soul in true, not theoretical self-knowledge at many an inner war and struggle, and how we can look at the lofty solar ideal that wants to be achieved in human, harmonious cooperation. Basically, our spiritual scientific literature contains everything that can give us not only comfort but also security and support and strength, at least for the inner life of our soul, even in the most difficult situations in life.

Now, in that lecture cycle in Christiania, it was shown how what we otherwise find in the individual soul is, as it were, distributed among the folk souls of Europe. Read about it in the lecture, I think it is the penultimate one, how it is pointed out how the three western folk souls relate to the middle and in turn to the eastern folk soul. Read it up and bear in mind the fact that everything in the evolution of humanity is based on repetition. Bear in mind the fact that the folk soul that prevails on the Italian and Spanish peninsula expresses in a special way what we know as the essence of the sentient soul - a repetition of what was connected with the essence of the sentient soul in Atlantean times. Read up on what has been said about the shades and nuances of the French folk soul and its relationship to the mind soul, and about the British folk soul in its connection with the consciousness soul. Read further and see that in Central Europe, above all, the nuance of the I exists, which prevails in the three folk souls.

Once historians write history in connection with spiritual science, they will be able to objectively describe the rule of the I in Central Europe, from the moment when the army of the Goths and Alarich's wild hordes passed through these lands, through all phases into our and even later times, which are to shine forth in Europe's east: Then they will show what will once be allotted to a distant future.

Yes, so certain, my dear friends, so reassured I would like to say, could one say this a few years ago and know that not the slightest sensitivity could be seen in any of the listeners, but rather it could be seen how what humanity is to achieve is to be achieved in community, but in such a community that flows from objective knowledge, from knowledge that comes from spiritual science.

And now take together what has been repeatedly said about the character of our time, how our time is the period in post-Atlantean cultural development that strives to cultivate the consciousness soul, how all soul forces must work together to give our time the nuances of the consciousness soul. The human I must assert itself in such a way that it finds a way through the consciousness soul, which must necessarily unfold the greatest egoistic strength in order to find the way up into the spiritual self. Not only deeper thoughts, but deeper feelings, feelings of understanding for human development and the character of the times, can move through our soul when we allow such things, as they were spoken at the time and printed as a lecture cycle, to enter our soul with seriousness and dignity.

How does it appear before our soul, this I in relation to the consciousness soul and mind soul, striving upwards to higher realms, forging the way through struggle and war? Frankly, my dear friends, one could not touch these truths again, which were expressed and felt in the deepest soul at the time, in such serious times as ours; they would have been spoken in vain, they would have been understood as a childish game with intellectual concepts and theoretical scientific ideas.

But these things do not only mean that our soul plays with them and finds a theoretical stimulus, satisfies a curiosity about knowledge. The significance of these things lies in the fact that what lies in them can really become the power of our soul. If it becomes a force in our soul, then we can find our way, we can find the possibility to understand ourselves when these things hold their earnest countenance towards us, we can find the possibility to understand them as far as we have to understand them through the power and consciousness of our soul. I know that these must also be the thoughts with which I would like to greet our building one year after the laying of the foundation stone: that it will become a symbol of the strength that we can gain in the sense in which the words just spoken are meant.

“Do we not belong to this building?” one might ask. We belong to the building in a different way than the Gothic church and the community.

It has already been discussed that we form the larynx in the same way as the gods speak. But when we mature and pay attention in our soul so that we receive the science of orientation, the science of finding our way, revealed, then we will recognize in the forms from which our structure is composed the letters of a divine language. We will learn to speak many things differently in the course of human development when we gradually understand this structure.

Time itself is pressing, I would say, out of the configuration of our words often what should no longer be in our words. But everything that is in the spirit of our spiritual science will come, if only we honestly strive to pursue this spiritual science with all the powers of our soul and our mind. We should not be surprised – at most, we may wonder about the point in time at which these things have occurred, and this point in time is explained to me by some occult insights that have been granted to me recently – we should not be surprised, especially not on the basis of our spiritual science, that these events have occurred.

My dear friends, how often have we heard it said that there are basically two currents flowing through the evolution of humanity. One of these currents is still weak, it is the spiritual current to which we want to cling with all our hearts and minds. The other is one that has a materialistic character. I have often spoken to you over the past years about the many forms this materialistic character takes. But you could learn from all that I have said about the materialism of our time that materialism has an effect on all the individual main and secondary currents. Materialism does not only enter into theoretical views. How often has this been emphasized, for example in the last Hague cycle of lectures. Materialism enters into the whole of human coexistence. It has a strong power that is by no means exhausted, that will continue to have an effect in one area – my dear friends, it is good to be clear about how materialism expresses itself; based on the words I have said before, I may assume that the words I will have to follow shortly cannot be misunderstood – [that] will continue to have an effect in the area of human coexistence.

Among other things, materialism has been asserting itself for some time in the fact that – yes, it is difficult to find words for such things – an idea has arisen in the life of European nations that is not really an idea at all and that, in certain respects, is a major step backwards from earlier times: it is what is often referred to as the nationality idea.

Much would have to be said if this nationality idea, which should not be called that at all, were to be discussed exhaustively. But a sense of what prevails in this area can run through our soul when we remember earlier times, times that seem so backward to our supposedly enlightened humanity. Let us remember that a time of ours has preceded, which is called the dark ages, in which people of all nations = one may think otherwise about this time, as one wants - have fought for religious ideas, for ideas that have gone beyond the idea of nationality.

What is present in the spirit as the content of an idea can become present in the spirit and can take hold of the human being as such. It is something that has entered into the formula that was presented here last time as the conversation between the individual and the spirit of his people. But the life of the spirit has receded. Natural scientific thinking and naturalistic feeling have taken hold of humanity. How this presents itself in the field of philosophy is shown in The Riddles of Philosophy, which you will find discussed in my latest book; the second volume also offers an outlook on anthroposophy.

How did it come about that what is called the nationality idea has emerged, I might say as a reflection of the darkening of spiritual life? As soon as one comes to the national aspect – please take this quite objectively – as soon as one comes to the national aspect, the forces that can no longer be overlooked by the spiritual core of our soul come into action. They pulsate through the human organism in an ahrimanic-luciferic way and dissolve into what are called ideas, but which are not ideas.

It may be said here: the more a person frees himself from this nationalistic thinking, the more he comes to see the spiritual world.

I am not saying this out of arrogance, my dear friends, but rather, I would like to say it with inner humility. I grew up in a country in which the most diverse nationalities are not even as far apart as they are here in Switzerland, but live in complete confusion, where one could experience as a child everything that is connected with the rise of the national principle, the national impulses. I do not have one, precisely because of this circumstance – I say it objectively, you may judge it as you will – I have no homeland and I do not really know, from subjective feeling, what is called the feeling of home. It is connected with a certain strange inner tragedy, which is perhaps difficult for someone else to understand if one is prepared by one's karma to be homeless. But all this enabled me to hold my head up high, even as a child, in a country where the individual powers of the soul, like the individual people, stood in relation to one another.

In the middle of the picture of the clashing nationalities, I was in my youth in Austria in it. There one learns about the origin of the nationality idea in a different way than one can learn when living in a homogeneous national body. I was also unable to acquire what is usually called “patriotism” or “national enthusiasm” by working for it. »; nor to the people whose language I speak, for the reason that at the time when one acquires these feelings, when one experiences these feelings, the people among whom I lived were filled with a hatred that can truly be called »hatred of Germans«. Nowhere was this hatred of Germans more intense than in the area of Austria where I grew up. I got to know it in my own family. I did not grow up or was educated in the love of Germanness.

Perhaps some of you recognize that it was precisely because of this homelessness that I was entitled to speak in our area about things about which I would otherwise have to remain silent. That is how it is in my feelings, that is how it is when you struggle through life and its pitfalls. And one can only justify a judgment in one's own soul if one has truly fought for it for decades. I would not make anything out of all the studies I have devoted to the current European situation, I would not believe that I could see the big picture if I did not feel justified in speaking about these things in a few words as I have just done.

One must submit to necessity. But how tempting it is to judge great situations such as the one we are facing on the basis of individual experiences that one has here or there. How tempting it is to judge an entire nation on the basis of individual experiences, which may – as is inevitable in the present day – be rather poorly substantiated.

But occasionally we may also, dare I say, rise a little on a hill, as symbolized by the hill on which our building stands, and look at the matter with the eye of the soul, which the years of working in spiritual science can give us. There would be much to say and perhaps much will be said when calmer times return. But the one thing I would particularly like to emphasize this evening, my dear friends, is how – I would say – those impulses that are now discharging in such a heartbreaking and often horrific way were prepared within European humanity. One could see, as it were, how, with forces still superior to our own, what is expressing itself in our time seized everything that strives towards the true goal of humanity out of goodwill, but less out of insight, because only spiritual science strives out of insight. I say this without arrogance, because it strives under the motto: “Wisdom is only in truth.”

My dear friends, a peace movement spread across the various countries. When the Libyan war broke out, the members of the movement in Milan united and passed a resolution in favor of the Libyan war. They expressed their confidence in the minister who had unleashed this war. Facts are what matter, not opinions. And how could it have been hoped otherwise than that it would have to turn out as it has in Europe now, since, I would like to say, for centuries materialism, rooted in the most diverse living conditions, produced the impulses that are now there. The beginning of the 19th century still saw the Napoleonic campaigns across European soil. I do not want to talk about them, but I want to draw attention to one thing that we must write in our souls when we are carried away by what the individual hears: a saying that Napoleon said to the Austrian Chancellor Metternich:

"You, Metternich, were never a soldier and therefore do not know what goes on in a soldier's soul. I came of age on the battlefield; a man of my stamp does not care in the least whether a million soldiers have to bite the dust. I spared the French wherever I could. Of the 300,000 men that Moscow cost me, only 30,000 were French. As long as I could, I sent Germans and Poles into the fire...

I think we have come a little further than we were at the time when Napoleon, of the 300,000 people who lost their lives at Moscow, sent not Frenchmen but Germans and Poles into the fire.

“Any weak-kneed protection of human life is a dangerous mistake in war. That Louis XIV turned the Palatinate into a scene of fire was not, as our miserable histories gossip, worthy of blame, but of the highest praise. But the glory of this act belongs not to the king, but to the minister Louvois.”

Goethe, who was undoubtedly intimately connected with the whole of modern intellectual life, was not inclined to underestimate the man who cherished this attitude. Goethe, who was therefore accused of unpatriotism by lesser minds, hurled the words at all those who reproached him for it: “The man is too great for you.”

Yes, my dear friends, objectivity does exist. As Hegel was writing his Phenomenology of Spirit, the thunder of the French cannons was rolling near Jena; and as he watched Napoleon ride past his window, he said: “It is nevertheless an uplifting feeling to see the world soul riding past on horseback at your window.” He was the great master whose military writings and sentiments are still studied in all European war colleges to learn what he thought about war. One must not forget how Europe learned war.

Goethe had a different view of revolution from that of the German princes. This is clear from the words he wrote in Verdun in 1792:

"Between order and disorder, between preservation and ruin, between plundering and paying, one lives after all, and this may well be what actually makes war pernicious for the mind. One plays the bold, destructive part, and then again the gentle, invigorating one; one gets used to phrases in the midst of the desperate state of inspiring hope and invigorating. This gives rise to a kind of hypocrisy that has a special character and is quite distinct from the priestly, courtly – or whatever else they may be called – quite distinct.

My dear friends, the certainty of recognizing the great necessity of spiritual science can plant that in our soul.

We can see what historical necessities are at hand, we can see how I and consciousness soul, mind and soul of mind and soul, under the influence of the impulses of which has been spoken, could give the world such a picture as we now have before us. It is wrong to apply the everyday standard to these things, and wistfully, I may say, it may make one's heart sink when one has experienced what I have already modestly related to you.

This book, the second volume of my work Die Rätsel der Philosophie (The Riddles of Philosophy), was completed up to page 206. From page 199 to page 204, it deals with French philosophy as represented by Boutroux and Bergson. The book was finished up to this point. It could only be printed during the war. I hope that you will be convinced that, just like everything else, French philosophy by Mr. Boutroux and Mr. Bergson has been treated objectively.

It makes one's heart ache to hear the words as they are spoken by the West and to see what is happening in Europe. One then realizes how much needs to be done for the spiritual life and how much to struggle to be objective.

But there are other things that confront you, my dear friends. I have had a lot to go through in the last few weeks, I have seen and experienced many things. It is remarkable how karma manifests itself in the smallest details of the day.

When I was traveling from Vienna to Salzburg, I happened to come across an Austrian magazine dated September 1, 1914, at a train station. In addition to many other articles, this magazine contains a piece written by Robert Michel while he was in the field. So a soldier in the field wrote this article. He describes how the soldiers were loaded into the wagons, how they were sent into the field, how many were wounded and fell, how the Samaritans came and so on. I do not need to elaborate further. But the conclusion of this article speaks deeply to my heart. I will read this conclusion to you in context. Pay attention to one sentence and listen to the remarkable thing that is said to us:

"But every single person left behind in the monarchy has a duty to support them to the best of their ability until the victorious decision has been made. All the good words, hearty cheers and blessings that were bestowed on the troops as they left increased their courage and confidence, they were tiny splinters of strength that were by no means lost. This boost of mental strength must continue to be given to the poor, and the will to win must be passed from each individual to the fighters at the front. Therefore, let no one rush ahead of the decision that is being prepared in the north. Those who are lucky enough to be able to actively help should stretch their strength to the utmost. But those who must idly watch the tremendous power of the army and the empire should try to contribute their mite on the path that Scelic forces are taking: those whom God hears, pray; those who cannot pray, he should gather all his thoughts and willpower into a fervent desire for victory; and he who can do nothing else should press his fingers into the palms of his hands and say: We must go, we must win! ... In this way, the least and weakest will also have contributed to the victory that we are preparing to fight for, even if it is with the sacrifice of our last drop of blood!"

What education! For years we have spoken of the reality of the powers of thought and will. Here it comes back to us like an echo: “Those who cannot pray should gather all their powers of thought and will in a fervent desire for victory.”

I have to think of what I said to you last time. I said that human evolution must progress; by a certain point something must give way. To do this, it is necessary that in our time a certain amount of selflessness and willingness to sacrifice is achieved. Our spiritual science knows that this must come, but whether it is heard is another question. What must happen, must happen.

And now the second great teacher enters the stage. Does he not teach people what seems like an echo of what we have been saying from soul to soul for years – the appeal to the reality of the powers of thought and will?

We must only find the possibility, through all our efforts and through a non-arrogant nature, to rise to the greatness that the problem of our time presents.

How could it not be self-evident, my dear friends, that what occurs as a force between individual human souls should also occur in the external world, and that we must preserve it so that we can judge great things with a healthy view, that is the sense of justice and truth.

The world will only learn the truth about past events little by little. Our spiritual science gives us guidelines for everything, if only we want to use them to find the right tones and nuances of feeling in our hearts, as far as possible removed from all criticism. But understanding must

s achieved who but, my dear friends, how, under the influence of the other impulses, the constellation has arisen in such a way that, on the one hand, what has come as materialism can neither be lived out differently nor fought differently than as it happens. We must take things objectively, we must be clear about the fact that only the lack of spiritual impulses has gradually led to the surfacing of nationality principles based in instincts rather than in spirituality. We must be clear that only by freeing ourselves from this instinctual life can we move forward.

And how can our Russian friends, embraced by our hearts, not consider that the noble Russian people today must especially take to heart the spiritual science that will enable those who want to see things objectively and clearly to truly distinguish between the great task of this people and has been conjured up by an excessive imperialism, by an excessive materialism, which only wants to make up for a defeat by attacking European culture, and what has been conjured up by the foolish and mendacious talk of Pan-Slavism. Our Russian friends, who have our full support, must gain the conviction from the humanities that they must distinguish between the noble forces that lie in their nationality and the collaboration with what is not fundamental to their national soul, with what has happened in such a terrible way, to justify which would represent a lack of inner objectivity.

They [you?] will find each other in their hearts and minds if they [you?] keep an open mind for objectivity, for the objective.

I know, my dear friends, that there is a way and that there is ground – if you just look for it – on which our English friends can judge the statesman Grey just as I judge him. This ground exists, and it is the most sacred task, the most sacred task, to find this ground. If we find it, we will understand this structure, which we laid the foundation stone for a year ago. We will find the paths from soul to soul, from heart to heart.

The present is also expressed through something else. I only need to give a few figures to show the contrast we are facing. I am not criticizing these figures, far from it. But we must be aware of the figures, because figures speak for themselves, and since we live in a neutral country, I will use the figures of this neutral country.

My dear friends, we face each other according to our principle: heart to heart, soul to soul. What stands in Europe facing us? There is no rejection in this, no blaming criticism. In Europe, we face each other on the field that we looked out on a year ago as such a peaceful field. Now we face each other with fighting armies in their wartime strength, and this wartime strength speaks a clear language. First, France has a war strength of 4,372,000 men; second, Germany has 4,350,000 men; third, Russia has 3,615,000 men; fourth, Austria-Hungary has 1,872,178 men; fifth, England has 1,081,294 men.

To get a sense of the statistics, let's compare Germany, Austria, Hungary and France with Russia and England. Germany, Austria and Hungary, where the ego comes to life, have a total wartime strength of 62,221,780 men. France, Russia and England have a total of 9,068,694 men. The peacetime strength shows somewhat different numbers. At that time, when there was still peace, it amounted to 655,899 men for Germany, 414,679 men for Austria-Hungary, a total of 1,070,578 men, compared to 609,865 men for France, 1,384,000 men for Russia, and 254,968 men for England, a total of 2,248,833 men. The latter three empires thus had more than twice as much as Germany and Austria-Hungary in peacetime.

My dear friends, I would rather not comment on these figures, because it is difficult to do so at this time. It is really necessary that we let these official figures, which I have not taken from any of the individual states, but from this country, which is neutral to our satisfaction and where we are allowed to be with our construction with thanks, have an effect on us. I will not add anything to these figures. They speak of the necessity that the world now faces. It is necessary for us to be objective. No matter how trivial this truth may sound, I am not afraid to emphasize it again and again, because I know how difficult it will be to be objective in this time, justifiably difficult, naturally difficult, excusably difficult! After all, one can only see what is closest.

But, my dear friends, let us allow the spiritual science within us to be a truth! Let us not forget that what we have worked for over the years is not a game. Let us not forget, my dear friends, that we have no right, after having gone through all this and looking into the structure of the interrelationships of the folk soul, to fall back on the words of a Maeterlinck, who only drew his wisdom from Novalis and is now taking such a strange and ungrateful stand on current events. It is heartbreaking to see how he reflects what he has drawn from Novalis. It is heartbreaking, but I say it without bitterness. And it may be received without bitterness, even though today, of course, we are confronted in the outer world with what has really occurred after every outbreak of war: that it was always the other person's fault. That was always the case and, of course, it is the case today. That is understandable.

But for us it should not be about the guilt of the other, but about the realization of the necessity of existence and, in the second place, about what necessarily arises from our spiritual striving. It should be about learning to distinguish between those who made the war - these will not be the nations, but individual people, cliques and so on - and those who have to endure the war.

I would rather just hint at this as a question today, my dear friends. Let us build on what spiritual science can give us. In it we will find the possibility of coming together across all boundaries, from soul to soul, and we will grow stronger and stronger in forging this bond that leads from soul to soul. We will not grow stronger in this if we are unjust and unobjective towards individual nations, but [we will grow stronger] if we really find the hill, the spiritual hill, on which our judgment and our feeling, [like] our building, to which we laid the foundation stone with sacred feelings a year ago, stands symbolically on a hill.

That is my constant yearning now, the thought I pursue and which I would very much like to share with those of our friends who have some of the insights that I believe I have gained from the spiritual world.

You know that I do not want to claim authority, but I will say over and over again what lives in me as my faith, my conviction, my knowledge, as that which I myself have experienced and must experience anew every day and every hour: May our spiritual current may our spiritual current pass the test that must now be passed, by acquiring the right feeling and objectivity towards the events we are now experiencing; by acquiring feelings that exclude injustice towards the individual nations that are now fighting each other.

That is some of what I wanted to say to you at the present time.