The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Dearly beloved! Whoever gazes at a cloud, or at a cloudy sky, would never guess that in the next moment lightning will flash out of the cloud and thunder will rumble. Lightning and thunder are phenomena hidden in the cloud. This is an image for the things around us; there is also much hidden that can be awakened from its slumber.

I will now try to characterize this hidden world. In theosophy, it is called the three worlds. These three worlds are not separate from each other, but they rest within each other; they are present within this world of ours, but they only emerge under special circumstances. The physical world is visible, audible, tangible, and so on, for the ordinary person. The other two worlds rest hidden in the physical world; but they can be brought out.

An often-used image can help us to understand what is meant by this. Let us think of a person born blind, whose eyes are opened and who can now see. Until now, he has felt his way around; now he has had an operation and can see. The same objects, whose properties he could previously only explore by touching, take on shine and color now that his eye has been opened to the light. In this sense, one speaks of higher worlds. They are there, but the higher sense, the spiritual eyes, must first be opened in order for them to be revealed to the person.

Another comparison that has been made here before: two naturalists were observing three Moluccan crabs in an aquarium. One of them had fallen on its back and was so unhappily placed under an iron bar that it was unable to right itself. The other two crabs tried in vain to help their comrade back on his feet. After they had tried for a long time without success, they left. The naturalists waited to see what would happen. After some time, the crabs returned and brought two more brothers with them. These four then managed to get the crab back on its feet by working together.

I am not telling this story to give an example of mutual aid in the animal kingdom, although it is a fine testimony to it. It is intended to lead us to a different consideration. Suppose the naturalists had lost their patience and reached into the water and turned the cancer back over; and then imagine the crabs endowed with human intelligence, the following would arise: The cancer society would consider this strange case. First, there would be the orthodox, the conservatives; they would say: A miracle has occurred. Then there would be the monists, the materialists; they would say: There are only cancer forces, no other forces exist; a higher intervention is impossible. They would have to leave the case unexplained. Thirdly, the cancer theosophists would come; they would say: No, there are no miracles, everything is based on law; but there is also a higher law that goes beyond the ordinary comprehension of cancer. We theosophists extend the law into higher realms beyond the ordinary comprehension.

Let us now realize what it depends on to perceive these supersensible things. All our senses are active and serve us to perceive the things around us. But we also become aware that the senses decrease, die, and then the ability to perceive ceases; but life does not stop with that. So you can live in the world without perceiving. Whether or not we perceive things depends on whether we have the senses necessary to perceive them. Admittedly, it is not unacceptable that we live in countless worlds for which the senses have not yet been awakened.

The real purpose of the theosophical movement is to awaken man to these higher senses. Some people go wild when you talk to them about supernatural things. They cannot grasp that one can really gain an insight into these things, that not everything that is said about them is based on hypothesis. But they do not consider that there are many things around us that pass us by without a trace because we do not recognize them.

An example of this: a famous singer was invited to an elegant society event; she was late – as famous personalities sometimes are. She was seated between two gentlemen; one was Mendelsohn, whom she knew and with whom she had a lively conversation. The gentleman on her other side tried repeatedly, in his polite, modest way, to draw her into the conversation, but she didn't like him and asked Mendelsohn quietly, “Who is that stupid fellow?” The famous philosopher Hegel, was the reply. Had she known beforehand that she would meet Hegel there, she would have made every effort to engage him in conversation. Now she had sat with him – and had not recognized him.

Could it not be that many a person who is endowed with higher faculties is merely a “stupid fellow” in the eyes of many people? Let us think of Christ Jesus; now, after all that the Church and time have made of him, it is indeed easy to recognize him. But just imagine he were to enter this hall today. Who would recognize him then?

Therefore, we may admit the possibility that there may be people who are endowed with higher senses than the ordinary ones, without the ordinary man in the street perceiving anything. Such a person is called “one with a higher state of consciousness”.

Actually, every human being lives in these different states of consciousness. We must realize that the human being really lives in different states of consciousness. First, in the physical world during the day, in the normal state, he has the waking consciousness. Second, the dream-filled state of sleep. It is not uninteresting to study the experiences of dreams. If you pay just a little attention to them, you will find a certain regularity in the dream images. Dreams are symbolic. The dream experiences show that we are dealing with rudiments of our daytime consciousness.

I would like to make this clear with a few examples, which, like all the examples I give, are based on real experiences. Someone dreams that they have caught a tree frog, vividly reliving the entire chase until they hold it in their hand. With the feeling of the soft, slippery thing in their hand, they wake up and realize that they had a corner of their bedspread in their hand. There the dream consciousness had symbolized the soft mass of the bedspread and transformed it into a tree frog.

A dream is also a playwright. Example: A woman dreams that she is in church, the preacher is giving an uplifting sermon, gradually his raised hands turn into wings – she finds this quite natural in the dream – then his lofty speech turns into cawing and outside the cockerel crows. - How the dream is a symbolist and a playwright, Schubert described in “The Night Side of Nature” from the hidden side of man. Heinrich von Kleist received many suggestions from him about this matter.

Thirdly: the state of consciousness of dreamless, unconscious sleep. Everyone will admit that a person is present, even when he is unconscious in his sleep, that he does not cease to exist in the evening and come into being again in the morning. And yet his consciousness perceives nothing of what is going on around him. These three states of consciousness change significantly when a person undergoes a spiritual, mental development. Then the divine man is awakened in him. He learns to perceive the mental processes. With the help of higher, more perfect people, mental organs develop in him that change the first two states of consciousness, so that the person not only perceives fleeting images, but a new world opens up to him that speaks to him in symbols. It is not enough for a person to be conscious only in dreams; he now also learns to bring dream consciousness into daytime consciousness, and in this way all irregularities will be regulated. Gradually, the confused dreams become clear symbols. If one receives guidance, one also learns to understand these symbols. Something real may then well occur. For example, it may occur that the student dreams of something ugly that is connected with a particular friend, who moves him; he learns that the friend has fallen seriously ill. A real condition has been expressed in the ugly dream.

In this way, a new world gradually opens up for the dreamer, and he learns to take this spiritual world into the ordinary world. He also perceives the soul in his fellow human beings. He also perceives soul-spiritual beings that he has not usually seen before.

The world that opens up to the human being is the “astral” world. Just as lightning and thunder issue forth from the cloud, so things emerge when the astral senses are awakened. Why is this world called the astral world? Those who understand only one sixteenth of it have quibbled a lot about the name. The people who have always been theosophists, the ancient mystics, used this name for good reason. What is the astral world? It is an expression of the soul world.

What is physical about me, my bones, muscles, and skin, forms the physical body. What is mental about me, my instincts, passions, and desires, is just as real as my hand and my head. These [mental qualities] form the astral body.

A person stands before me. I see his form, his hair, his face, his skin; but just as real as this visible person are his desires and cravings, instincts and passions before me, they are just as real for the astral world as the visible body is for the physical world. It has been suggested that it should be called the “drives-body”, but that is no better; it could lead to the erroneous opinion of the materialists, who believe that the drives emanate from the physical body. Before man was born, the soul of man was there, which has embodied itself in the body. The drives, instincts, passions and so on were there, and they are what shaped the physical body. So we can give a very definite answer to the question of where the physical body comes from.

Imagine a glass of water with a piece of ice floating in it. Ice is water. It is formed from water through cooling. This is roughly how we can imagine the process. The astral is to the physical as water is to ice. Ice is condensed water. The physical is the condensed astral substance. This is the relationship between the desire body and the physical body. Just as water crystallizes into snowflakes, all worlds have been created through crystallization processes. Our visible world has also emerged from the astral one. Goethe knew this process and tells us about it in the words of the world spirit:

In the floods of life, in the storm of action
I surge and surge again,
Weaving to and fro,
Birth and grave,
An eternal sea,
A changing weaving,
A glowing life.
Thus I create at the whirling loom of time
And work the living garment of the Godhead!

Just as our earth was created from the astral matter that surrounds it and consists of it, so the astral matter and the other matter consist of the same matter as the whole world of stars. The physical matter of the earth is related to the physical matter of the stellar world, the astral matter to the astral matter of the same and so on. The astral matter permeates everything. The mineral contains forces and substances. The plant also has substances and forces and life. The animal feels and senses, but more unconsciously. Man, finally, who still has the animal in him, consciously gains control over it and thereby rises above the animal. He is, as it were, a summary of all physical realms and has the essence of all of them within him.

The materialists claim that instincts arise from the physical. Theosophy claims the opposite. Our desire body is related to the world of desire around us.

Thirdly, dreamless consciousness: human consciousness develops ever higher and higher. Then not only dream consciousness emerges from the dark night, but something new emerges that cannot be compared to light images. It speaks to the human being in sounds, as it were. This sound of the higher spiritual world was well known to the Pythagoreans; they called it “the harmony of the spheres” or “music of the spheres”. Goethe also tells us about it in his “Faust”. The “Prologue in Heaven” introduces us to this third world. What Goethe presents to us here is not just a poetic image, but reality. — The archangel Raphael sings:

The sun resounds in the ancient way
In brotherly spheres of song,
And its prescribed journey
It completes with a thunderclap.

What resounds is not the physical sun. This physical sun is only the body for the sun spirit. This “resonance” is perceived by the more highly developed people. From the dark deep sleep, it “resonates” up to him. This is what Goethe means when he says “the sun resounds”. He sticks with this image. In the second part of “Faust” it says:

Tönend wird für Geistesohren
Schön der neue Tag gebören:;

This third world is the mental world, the spiritual world. It can be perceived in its true state with proper concentration. Once man has reached this level, he knows that the mere thought is something real. Heaven – Devachan – can be conjured up.

This state is called the continuity of consciousness. When the ear is opened to this sound, the actual spiritual world, the world of the spirit, opens up to man. Just as man is plant, animal and mineral, he is also astral and mental; it is possible for him to live entirely within himself, in the spirit.

Man lives in the three worlds. During the day he lives in physical consciousness. At night, during sleep, he initially perceives nothing that is perceptible to his senses. How is it that man is unconscious during sleep? There is a very specific reason for this. Man divides his being. During the day, the human being uses the powers of the physical and etheric bodies. The powers for the waking consciousness are taken from these two bodies. These powers must be renewed; this is done during sleep; the actual human being uses his astral and mental bodies and their powers to work on the physical body.

The person who wants to develop himself higher must acquire special moral qualities, whereby he can make the work of the astral and mental bodies superfluous.

How can a person make this possible? When he enters the “Chela path”, which has been discussed in detail here. The qualities that are necessary as preparation for this path have been mentioned here many times. The first main condition is the control of thoughts; one must not let them stray; then comes the control of passions and desires, great composure, and so on. When all this has been achieved, after years of practice, what happens then?

A calmness comes over the physical and astral life, a feeling of well-being, an inner health, and thus the astral and mental forces are released from their work during sleep; they no longer have as much work to do on it. These unused forces are now used to draw out hidden abilities in man and to develop clairvoyant organs, to form the “eyes of the soul”. These organs are called “lotus flowers” or “chakras”; they are described in detail in “Lucifer - Gnosis”. With these organs, the astral world can be perceived.

In this way, a person develops through virtues, especially through calmness and composure. Once he has achieved these, he may use the freed-up energies to develop the higher organs. Those who want to develop these higher organs without these virtues are drawing on physical forces that the physical nature still needs. The result is that the person becomes nervous, even mentally and spiritually ill. In this way, the human being can open up the two higher worlds. The astral matter is thin, thinner than air. It appears in the astral light as a human aura. It is a radiation that extends one and a half times the length of the head. This aura expresses the character of the human being's innermost being in different color tones. The newcomer to the astral plane is struck by the fact that everything is read there as in a mirror image, in a most strange and shocking way. Above all, he sees the mirror image of himself there, which seems to be coming towards him, while in reality it emanates from him. If, for example, one sees the number 164, one must read 461.

What takes place in relation to time also runs in the opposite direction. You first have to learn how to orient yourself in the other world. It is very important to know that the passions show themselves there in an ugly, demonic form; one's own passions pounce on the clairvoyant as demonic figures – in the mirror image.

That is how you get to know yourself. Those who have had experience in this and have previously learned the context know how to judge and deal with this phenomenon correctly. Many a person who has attained abnormal vision without having received proper training, but has broken into the astral unprepared, describes it that way. That comes from materialism. Theosophy is quite serious. It can only confuse those who approach it without understanding. But for those who look deeper into it, theosophy brings spiritual health. Materialism, on the other hand, makes people ill. If the religious element slumbering in every human being is not satisfied, it will eventually break through the brain; the brain does not understand it and becomes ill. The higher worlds break in on man, and he does not understand them. That is the essence of mental illness.

The “sounding” is then the third world.

The human being lives in these three worlds one after the other. After he has ended his life here in the physical, he discards his physical body, then also his etheric body; then the astral body remains, in which he now lives. He really lives in the astral. When we say we live in this or that, we mean that we have something in common with the world around us. Now, one thing in particular is no longer the case. Even during sleep, the astral body is separated from the physical and etheric bodies, but they are still connected by a magnetic bond. This now falls away. The human being now becomes aware of this. It is a very peculiar awareness that confronts him. He is accustomed to perceiving and doing everything through the senses; for example, he is accustomed to enjoying food and delighting in the taste through the palate; the longing for enjoyment has remained with him; he must first get used to doing without these pleasures.

This happens for all the senses. This happens through this deprivation of the senses. Through this deprivation of the senses, two conditions arise violently. First, a burning thirst that arises from the inability to satisfy desire. This acts as a kind of fire — the purgatory of Catholics. He must first get rid of his desires. The other concerns action. He is accustomed to acting; but he lacks the hand to act, the foot to walk, and so on. This feeling of inability causes a state of coldness. This state is called Kamaloka, the place of desires. This state is caused by the desires in man, which are still active and find no satisfaction. It is the state of disaccustoming.

If a person has already become accustomed to living in the spirit during his lifetime, this disaccustomment will not be difficult for him. Christ Jesus says, “The kingdom of heaven is within you” (Luke 17:21), so that a person can already live here in the spirit, in the third, the mental world, in Devachan. If he has then passed through Kamaloka after death, he comes to Devachan. That is the state in which the divine man truly lives in his element. When he is no longer attached to the lower, his own divine self comes to life in his inner being.

I have now shown how man, by opening up the higher senses, becomes familiar with the two hidden worlds, which are hidden only to the extent that colors and light are hidden things for those born blind.

The time has not yet come for everyone to follow this hidden path of knowledge. But people must hear about the higher worlds, become familiar with them, try to grasp them intellectually, and let them tell them about themselves. That is the first step towards finally entering them. Man should create concepts for himself, he is a self-creating being.

We live in an important time, when great movements of a spiritual and intellectual nature are taking place. Much is being told publicly about supersensible facts that used to be kept secret. Then some people come and say: Yes, you are telling us all kinds of things; and we are to believe in you. — Once a personality in Berlin was literally enraged. To this personality I said: You don't need to believe me at all. I don't care what you think about me. If I draw you a map of Asia Minor, indicating the outlines, the rivers with lines and the cities with dots, you can say: 'What are you making up, Asia Minor doesn't look like that. No, it does not look like that, but if you go there, you will see that the drawing was correct. That is how it is with the drawing I have sketched for you of the transcendental worlds. For the time being, you are welcome to think of me as a fraud who is telling you something, but – listen! – after death everyone is in a position to apply what they are now learning.

But culture will soon produce blossoms that will only be understandable to those who understand the occult. Therefore, it is advisable to listen quietly and to process what you hear. If you can do this without inner contradiction, life will open up for you in a completely new way; you will learn to understand it in an unimagined way.

In this way, one struggles upwards to knowledge, to that which never fades, to the realm of heaven. We develop ever higher and higher, through the three worlds first. The first stage is the physical, the second the astral, the third the mental, the spiritual. The first step consists of man's turning from the transitory to the eternal. The astral life of mind and desire turns either downwards to the transitory or upwards to the eternal; it has two sides. The third world, the spiritual world, encompasses what man recognizes as his own spiritual being.

Anyone who wants to become an esoteric in the theosophical sense must train his thought life so that every thought is thought through sufficiently. Short thinking is the sign of a materialist. Theosophical esoterics must not fall into comfortable thinking. Take the thought of social democracy: Change the circumstances and a man will have better living and working conditions—that's a belief of materialism, short and deceiving. This belief is very paralyzing for every study of social life. Now how can a theosophist free himself from this materialistic belief that existence and even morality would improve if one would just improve outer conditions? Let's begin with the reflection that every change has to be made by human beings and that therefore every condition that's brought about for the social order arises from human thoughts and feelings. Once one has this thought firmly in mind one can free oneself from the materialistic view that everything is brought about by external conditions.

A budding esoteric should gather proofs that no improvement of the world occurs through the creation of better outer conditions. Theosophy tells us that the social order is created by men and that it's the result of human thoughts and feelings. So one should cultivate thoughts and feelings and not change the social order. An esoteric asks: Where does this condition that's worthy of being changed come from? And if the condition is not veiled by nature he sees that the condition was brought about by the thoughts and will impulses of men who lived before him. So conditions are the way they are now because men made them that way through their inadequate thoughts and feelings. Spiritual science wants to implement a mighty education of our innermost soul forces so that the social life will shape itself out of other thoughts and feelings. What this means is that spiritual science has no patented recipe about how this or that is supposed to be done on this or that post, it doesn't judge anyone, but it's very confident that everyone will arrive at a right judgment if he's permeated by the fundamental truths. One such truth is that poverty, misery and suffering are nothing but the result of egoism. One should look upon this as a law of nature. A man is egotistical as soon as he lives in accordance with the principle: I must be remunerated personally, I must be paid for the work that I do. An esoteric must ask himself whether work is really what sustains life. Work is of no importance if it isn't directed wisely. What serves men can only be produced and made through the wisdom that men put into it. One who doesn't understand this and who sins against it even slightly, sins against the social thinking of the present time.

Reflection on this in all of its possible phases strengthens thinking. A social democrat who reflects on how to create work to get rid of joblessness is thinking antisocially in the highest degree. Instead the main thing is that work should only be used for human beings, to create valuable produce. In a social community the work impulse must lie in devotion for the whole, and never in a man's personality. It follows from this that real social progress is only possible if I work for the good of the whole. In other words: The work I do mustn't be for myself. Social progress is completely dependent on the acceptance of this statement, that one doesn't want to get paid personally for one's work. A man owes work to the social community. Conversely, a man must restrict his existence to what the social community gives him. The counterpart to such social thinking must also be followed exactly. You know the example that a seamstress works for little pay and that social democrats tell the workers: You're being exploited. But now the seamstress goes out and buys a cheap dress to go dancing on Sunday. She asks for a cheap dress. But why is the dress cheap? Because another worker was exploited. So in the end, who's exploiting the worker? Certainly the seamstress who wears a cheap dress to go dancing on Sunday. One who can think clearly here already gets away from the distinction between rich and poor, for this has nothing to do with wealth and poverty. Therefore the foundations must first be created so that in future men will work hard and devotedly without thinking of personal advantage.

Suppose that someone invents a remedy and wants to patent it right away. This shows that he was thinking of a personal advantage and that he isn't filled with love for all mankind. For if men's health was the most important thing for him he would be anxious to report what's in the remedy and how it's made. And something else would happen—he'd be convinced that the remedy that was made with his sentiments was the better one.

Here we've come to a statement that's very important in esotericism: Ways of ennobling the soul must be arrived at. One who uses his thinking to attain beneficial progress must first see to it that human souls are ennobled.

Therewith we'll place the Rosicrucian verse at the end:

Dear attendees! That the theosophical worldview is not just a series of doctrines and dogmas and that professing them is not the main thing will be best shown when we practically consider the great cultural issues of our time. Today we want to look at educational issues from a theosophical point of view. What more beautiful fruit could arise from this world view than if it led us into the depths and into all corners of human nature, if it taught us to understand the human being and thus the art of influencing it. That would, of course, be different from if we came only out of curiosity or a desire for knowledge, to hear and learn unknown things about the mind, soul and body of man.

This path alone – the path of learning – cannot be called theosophical, because the theosophical path is only the one that passes through practical life. For those who do not delve deeper into the teachings in their daily lives, they remain incomprehensible. You only get to know the human being in terms of soul and spirit if you work with the undeveloped life of the same. This also gives you insight into the higher worlds. And we cannot deny that an intimate understanding of the soul is needed if we want to be leaders.

The human being consists of different parts, of which the physical body is only one. It is of great importance to know this, because the person who knows that the soul of this child has already led a rich life, that it has already taken many steps through many lives on earth, will relate to the growing child quite differently. What appears at birth in the way of aptitudes and abilities has been acquired in previous lives.

Anyone who knows that the soul gradually evolves out of its shells sees the child with completely different eyes. Not only with regard to the more intimate knowledge of human nature, but also to the whole process of human development in time, Theosophy sheds new rays of light.

We must distinguish between two aspects of the human being: firstly, an eternal core that gains new experiences in the most diverse embodiments, in that it takes something of an extract from each life on earth, so to speak, and secondly, the lower human nature, which only forms the shell of the actual self. Let us briefly repeat what this lower nature consists of.

We have, firstly, the tangible, visible physical body; secondly, the etheric body, which creates the shape of the human being; thirdly, the desires, instincts and passions – the astral body. The higher self is enclosed in these sheaths. We have the physical body in common with the mineral kingdom, the etheric body with the plant kingdom, and the astral body with the animal kingdom. Only the fourth, the I, is possessed by the human being alone. The sheaths that surround the I serve the human being as instruments, as tools, in which the actual I, that which already existed, lives out.

With each new birth, these three sheaths are formed anew. However, we do not have to imagine these sheaths as onion skins that seal off the core of our being from the outside world. Rather, the bodies penetrate each other, and the I penetrates the bodies.

Only those who know the growing human child not only in terms of their physical body, but also take into account their developing and growing etheric and astral bodies, can fully influence their education.

But there are other fundamental questions to be grasped. Great progress has been made in the art of education for over a hundred years. Pestalozzi on the one hand, Rousseau on the other, as well as Herder, have paved the way for the attempt to find the way to make a whole human being out of the child. Deep attempts have been made. Through theosophy, these attempts are becoming even more profound.

Since the subject is so vast, this evening we will limit ourselves to a few educational questions with regard to the finer limbs of the human being.

As long as one regards people as a real mess, one can only achieve results from observations. It is quite different for someone whose gaze is able to perceive the four limbs of the human being, or who at least has knowledge of the connections between these things. The child develops differently in the first years of life and differently in later years. We will now ignore the ego for the time being and deal with the physical, etheric and astral bodies.

Let us consider the child as it stands before us after its birth. There we have the physical body, which is most important. Then, from the seventh or eighth year onwards, it is particularly important to take the greatest care of the etheric body. At the time of the onset of sexual maturity, the astral body requires a very unique educational treatment.

What should happen in the first years of life? The etheric body is devoted entirely to the growth of the physical body during this year, so that the etheric body is not yet free for the astral body according to its natural disposition. Only later, when the physical body is formed, is the etheric body freed for independent growth; for the occult eye, this is connected with the will, which sits deepest.

The one thing in man that he most easily changes is his concepts and ideas. The concepts we form of things in earliest childhood differ significantly from what we think about them in later life. Our emotional world is also changeable, although it changes more difficult than the conceptual world. If, for example, a child has a grumpy disposition, it will be difficult for him to get rid of it. Temperament and character change more slowly.

The most difficult thing of all is the basic character of the will, because the will has its seat where the human being can do the least. He can create new understanding, acquire new feelings, but there is one thing he cannot do: he cannot work on the physical body; and it is the physical body that gives the basic shade to the character of the will. It is only possible to work on the physical body in the first years of life. The educator must always bear this in mind. It is now up to him to develop courage of will in the early years; he must devote himself entirely to its pure development; he must beware of interfering by wanting to teach the child concepts too early. So the will must be developed above all else. The human being has an instinct for imitation. The educator's attention must be focused mainly on this instinct for imitation. He must ensure that good role models are available for the child to imitate. The educator must have an effect on the child through his mere presence. The foundation for some good qualities, such as fearlessness and presence of mind, must be laid in the first year. Until the age of seven, the main focus must be on educating the physical body to become a useful organism.

Is it not possible to influence the etheric body at all during this period? The educator should not intervene much. He must work through his presence. He will then realize that feelings and thoughts are facts. He must not believe that only a slap in the face, a push or an upset stomach are real, but he must be aware that whether he has a good or an evil disposition is just as real, and that it matters who cares for the child. It is not what one does with the etheric and astral bodies of the child that matters, but rather with what thoughts, with what attitude, with what atmosphere one surrounds the child. Depending on the environment, the child's attitude will also be noble or ignoble. Thus it is possible to influence the child systematically, with full consciousness, by setting an example in ordinary, daily life. Everything the child absorbs, it absorbs through the senses, and what it absorbs, it imitates. In this way one is able to influence it harmoniously.

It would be very important if this idea were thoroughly worked on from a theosophical point of view, so that one would learn to recognize better and better the tremendous importance of the environment for a young child. Let us try to make this clear to ourselves in a few details. Some people believe that they are doing a child a great service by giving it a beautiful doll. This is the worst thing possible in the eyes of the occultist. With the beautiful doll, the child's instinct for imitation, which is to be stimulated, is forced into certain channels. The creative power is killed. If you observe a child closely, you will often see that it throws away the most beautiful toys and creates a new one for itself from the simplest material. You should not give the child a reflection of reality. Imitation must not be allowed to restrict the imagination. The child must live in an illusory world; the imagination must occupy the child. It must develop its own powers and create its own world of ideas. And this inner strength remains idle in the face of a beautiful doll. The child's games are reproductions of what they hear and see; they demand mental effort. This awakens two kinds of energy: skill and the ability to maintain balance in a wide range of circumstances. These are some of the aspects from which the education of a young child must be considered.

Around the seventh year, the etheric body becomes freer. The physical body has now acquired the vitality to develop further. Now it is important to influence the etheric body and develop its powers, which are memory and attention. Good habits should be instilled during this time. The educator must now develop these soul powers.

This has also been considered by today's educators. The astral body must not be influenced yet; that comes later; in these years, formal education is the main thing. It is not about acquiring a lot of specific knowledge at first, but about the human being itself. What the person does not learn in the way of geography and so on during these years can be made up later, but what cannot be made up is the acquisition of memory and attention. And these powers should be strengthened so that the person is later protected from flightiness, so that he learns to stand firm and not become fickle. So it is important to teach formal education at this age.

In this regard, big mistakes are made. As early as possible, one wants to develop the child's judgment, to answer the why and wherefore. This is not the right time for that. Rather, one should offer the child a sum of contemplation and thus strengthen his memory. Inner silence must be encouraged, one must try to limit the incessant questioning in order to promote a rich inner life. It is not a matter of saying no and yes, but of developing the possibility of one's own judgment; this would be restricted by saying: This you should do, that you should leave, but one should work more through examples and stories. The spiritual must be reflected in the symbols, fairy tales and mythologies that are communicated to the child; this awakens deeper soul forces. By saying yes and no, we restrict these forces; they should develop out of themselves. No ready-made morals should be given to the child; one should try to create great thoughts and feelings for great people. If possible, little doctrine. Stories of great personalities work better than moral rules. Describe the world, but don't teach rules and laws. It is not one's own judgment and views that should be cultivated at this time; the child is not yet mature enough for that. But what is missed in the development of memory between the ages of seven and fourteen cannot be made up for later. For example, in arithmetic: If the foundations have been laid through visual instruction, then memory must be used to learn the multiplication table. The same applies to languages and other things.

The educator has to gradually withdraw his personality and become a servant to the child. He must not only fill the child's soul with wisdom; he must approach the child's nature and slip out of his soul. He must be a puzzle solver. It is a great gain for the soul when the etheric sheath is given a fixed form in the seventh to fourteenth year. When the memory is practised, when the ability to dwell on one object in quiet concentration is developed, these are firm and solid habits that become constant in people, remaining with them for life.

Whatever we can do must be practised. During these years, everything must be repeated over and over again to become a habit. Formative, creative powers are developed in the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth year. The task of the educator is now to lead from example to the ability to judge; the child should learn to use his finer powers. The soul must not be influenced alone, nor must it be guided only by precept and prohibition. Pythagoras struck a balance here and gave wise teachings clothed in a form that held the middle way between example and principle. Thou shalt not beat fire with thy sword, that is, a person in anger wastes strength. He now expresses this in a way that not only appeals to the abstract mind, but he also frames the teaching in a picture that stimulates the child's imagination, develops his fantasy, his imagination. The Pythagorean tenets are something between a picture and a principle. The aim should be to work towards the child learning to form his or her own opinion. The child's opinion should not be narrowed down by strict doctrines, but broadened. And this is done through images, through symbolic representations of the great truths. During the first years of school, the aim is to bring calm and work into the right relationship with the etheric body. As the time of maturity approaches, it is necessary to bring the right balance to maturity, so that the person can live out in the three worlds. The first task was to free the etheric body from the demands of the physical exertions of the body; this required careful observation in order to steel the body through gymnastic exercises and make it mobile, and then to give it the necessary rest, to get it used to rest while the etheric body works.

The tasks of the educator become increasingly difficult as the third period, the time of sexual maturation, approaches. Here, the astral body must be treated with care. Only now has the time come when the child must be taught to form their own judgment. Before that, it was necessary to encourage taciturnity. In the first period, the senses impel the child to imitate; the task is to create the right model for him. In the second period, the child should be influenced by authority; this is natural and has a beneficial effect, inspiring faith and trust. Happy the child who looks up with reverence to an authority that is everything to him. During the third period, the educator has to let his own wisdom take a back seat to the wisdom of the person he has before him in the growing child. Sexual maturity is connected with the independence of the human being. Preparation is necessary for this. What the astral body is to absorb must be prepared in the etheric body. This relates to the harmonious development of the emotional world. If we succeed in awakening graceful, aesthetic feelings in the child, this has an effect on the astral body and produces a normal, harmonious, aesthetic power of judgment.

It is not good when children of 16 or 17 approach us with ready-made judgments; this takes its toll bitterly. We should bring them noble figures from history, beautiful poems, the works of our great masters, but not a confession. Confessions evoke a yes or no, but not a rich inner life. And those who have not had the good fortune to see authorities before them will not come to their own judgment either.

Now is the time when we must strive to develop the relationship between people. In the past, it was important to awaken the spirit of worship; now he must learn to recognize the value of different people himself. Now he learns to distinguish his earlier relationship to people as man to man, recognizes what is worthy and what is unworthy. For what must now be awakened? The affects, the sensations, the feelings of pleasure and suffering. The astral body develops through our dealings with the world around us. Therefore, we must first cultivate the astral body in such a way that it works inwards. Now it is coming to the fore. If it is to make the right use of its freedom, the etheric body must be prepared for it. The astral body was otherwise called the body of instincts and desires. If it is not properly prepared, it will express itself in wild desires and the vices of academic life. If it is not prepared for freedom, the driving force that wants to live it up becomes wild and unrestrained; it must be strengthened in earlier years by educating the etheric body.

Through theosophical knowledge, the educator will be able to deepen and spiritualize his pedagogical skills. Thus, Theosophy becomes useful when it is used to influence young people. The usefulness of having these concepts will be recognized by those who try to apply them in practice in their lives. He will then gain knowledge from life itself, even if he renounces the theosophical worldview. And this practical knowledge is worth more than curiosity and a thirst for knowledge.

External material knowledge often does not depend on us. The state, the class, the circumstances are often decisive; but that is not the most important thing either. What is required by profession and station can take a good or a bad direction. Even with the most flawed curriculum and the most overcrowded classrooms, you can still be effective if you know the person. If it is true that the human being can develop all his powers harmoniously, then this can only happen if you recognize the person from the first year of life, even before birth.

Spiritual things are real. It matters not which thoughts surround a child, not unimportant who receives the human being. It depends very much on whether the person who receives a human being has good or evil thoughts and feelings; doctors and midwives should be priestly educated, ennobled personalities. If this is the case, then the human being enters a pure atmosphere at birth, and that is not insignificant. The spirit is a real thing. This is an area where an insightful education can do a lot of good, and conversely, ignorance can do a lot of harm. Imperfectly, the human being comes into existence. He comes into existence to acquire higher abilities; he must pay for the possibility of rising higher with his helplessness. He must be helped. In this we recognize the solidarity of all humanity, the necessity of mutual aid. Thus, all humanity is one great body, of which individuals are only members. This gives us an understanding of brotherhood, the first principle of the Theosophical Society.

When a human being comes into existence, it is not a matter of a finished life in the most eminent sense; the task of the educators lies in educating him for culture, and this can only happen if it is done out of a sense of brotherhood, out of a sense of community.

Answering questions

One teacher, who was obviously deeply moved by this clear and convincing speech, asked a question about inheritance.

Answer: Above all, the educator must be an observer. He must observe human nature in the child. In doing so, it does not matter at first whether he has a materialistic view that the child's abilities and drives come from heredity, or a theosophical view that the child has acquired his abilities in previous lives on earth and is therefore born into certain circumstances with certain parents. The facts, the result of observation, will always be the same. The educator must be careful not to intervene forcibly in the child's development. Here is an example: an educator had to deal with an eleven-year-old boy in a family. He was retarded and his body was not normal either; he had a large head. He had never progressed beyond the lowest class. His arithmetic books, among other things, were in a sorry state. When he had calculated a task, it was never right, and he kept erasing until everything was full of holes.

The educator did not despair and said to himself: the soul would form the body. He carefully set about educating the child's soul, working according to the principle of the smallest measure of force. He started from very specific points of view and learned that one learns to solve puzzles. He succeeded in educating the boy into a normal child in a year and a half because he was able to recognize the causes of the characteristics. The large head gradually took on the right shape; the boy then developed normally and was later able to study.

It would be very desirable if the question of education were to be thoroughly elaborated in the light of Theosophy.

Dear attendees,

As we look around at our fellow human beings and consider the spiritual striving with which they seek to satisfy their inner yearning for something higher, we find that a major change has taken place over the past century. For a long time, the prevailing tendency was to seek only in the material, the obvious, that which has value for them. For them, the spirit was the emanation of the material, just as the hand of the clock is the expression of what is happening inside the clock, namely the wheelwork. They sought to explain all forces in terms of the material. Anyone who still talked about the divine spirit, about the soul, was, in the opinion of those setting the tone, stuck in outdated views. All life should arise from the material.

In recent years, a major change has taken place in this respect. There is a deep yearning in the world for a spiritual deepening, for solving the mystery of what lives within form. Even today's natural scientists no longer shy away from speaking of soul and spirit.

From three sides, today's humanity is trying to penetrate into the depths of existence. The most comprehensive research is the theosophical worldview. It emerged thirty years ago as an association of philosophy, science, religion and morality. Theosophists are spiritual researchers who strive to explore the spiritual life with the highest powers of man. But Theosophical research is just as certain as science. It aims to recognize the truth and only accepts what has been found through the strictest research into the truth. This is a difficult path, and our aim is to make this path popular.

The second area in which man tries to approach the spiritual and soul is the area of hypnotism and suggestion. For some time now, abnormal phenomena have been observed that cannot be explained by the mechanism of the brain. However, it is becoming apparent that there are many things in the world that our conventional wisdom did not dream of until thirty years ago. Scholars have been forced to take note of some inexplicable phenomena.

When Wilhelm Preyer, who wrote The Life of Darwin, pointed out that there were phenomena that could not be explained by conventional theories, his colleagues shrugged off his claim. Yet the phenomena increased. The appearance of the Danish mesmerist Hansen caused a great sensation among laymen, as many will still remember. He sat a person on a chair and could then do whatever he wanted with him. He gave him a drink of vinegar-sour liquid, telling him it was delicious wine, whereupon the person drank with pleasure; and only when he awoke from the state into which Hansen had put him did he shake himself and spit out what he had drunk. Or he would give him a potato and tell him it was a beautiful pear, which he would then bite into with relish. Yes, he would make him crawl on all fours and bark like a dog.

Some naturalists shrugged their shoulders and smiled, saying that these were just abnormal phenomena; but they did not engage in any attempt at explanation. However, there were individual researchers who wanted to try to see if something could be explored in this way about the hidden aspects of a person's mental life.

The third field in which his followers are so keen is spiritualism. Those who are not spiritualists or spiritualists cannot understand how otherwise reasonable people can come to believe that they can summon any deceased person to learn all kinds of secrets about the afterlife. The fact that some people make an effort to gain knowledge in other ways does not impress the spiritualists at all. What such a person says is considered fantastic by them. They think that to get to the source, you just have to die. They often turn to those who had no special higher wisdom in them while they were alive, and believe that now that they are dead, they can explain the most difficult areas of existence.

These are the three areas in which people seek enlightenment about the supernatural life.

The first, the theosophical area, is nothing more than the popular proclamation of a mystery wisdom that has always existed. The mysteries always showed the development of man, including that of the spiritual world.

There stands before me the perfect animal; was it really made out of a clod of earth? No! It has developed from imperfection to perfection. Honest theorists have also recognized this and traced this development from undeveloped sea animals to apes. The same development that the physical form has undergone has also been experienced by the soul. The human soul has also developed upwards. We become aware of this when we compare a “savage” who blindly follows his instincts and desires and devours his fellow human beings, with a European man of culture who submits to the commandment when it says: “You must not do that.” The latter has gradually learned to let duties take the place of desires. From an average person, we look up to Schiller. How much higher he stands above the average person! He has already cast off his desires. From there we come to the higher human being who has raised himself through piety, like Francis of Assisi; from there we look up to the initiates like Plato and Pythagoras. Between these and the ordinary person, the difference is just as great as between a cartilaginous fish and a lion.

The theosophically minded person says to himself that this soul of Schiller — or even the soul of Buddha — may well have developed itself to this height, that it has gone through the same primitive foundation from ancient times as today's savage. Thus, he sees ever higher stages of development before him. He sees the possibility for every soul to swing itself up to ever higher knowledge, to an eternal goal in life. What has lived in the soul before birth and what will live on after death also lives in us today. Why can't we see this soul? Because we lack the organs to perceive it. Living and perceiving are two different things; there is a great difference between them. The blind person also lives, but he does not perceive. If a person does not perceive the soul within him and the souls around him, it is because he lacks the organs to perceive it. But in man these organs can be awakened. Just as the blind man sees when the cataract is removed, so can the higher organs of perception be awakened in man, and then he can perceive from his own vision, and then he can enter into the higher worlds.

At first, this happens during sleep, when the body is resting from the work done. Gradually, the brain then transmits to the mind what the spirit has perceived during sleep, and the mind also learns to find its way in the higher worlds. The world of the senses envelops us in darkness. No man can say, if he is reasonable, that the inner nature of man is dead; but he does not perceive it. But there is the possibility to make it perceptible. Just as a whole new world of light and colors opens up for the blind-born after the operation, so it is for the person to whom the spiritual eye and ear is opened through practice; the deep night that surrounds him gradually brightens and begins to perceive the spiritual things that surround him. When man's inner life is thus awakened, the whole of nature comes to life for him. He finds the soul of the forest, the soul of the plant, the whole world is ensouled for him.

Some will say: I know nothing of this. That may be so; but he is a poor critic who wants to judge something he knows nothing about. Only he who has seen for himself can judge it.

What world is this that man enters in this way? It is the same world that the ordinary person enters at death. The clairvoyant consciously enters the world that one otherwise only enters after death. For him, death is only a change in life. For those who cannot see, survival after death is a matter of faith; some deny the fact. For the one who can see, all doubt disappears; for him, death is only the laying aside of the physical garment; for the one who has the organ of perception, the soul is there just as before.

What is important, therefore, is that we create organs for ourselves and develop our own soul upwards to the spiritual world, to the disembodied souls. All will struggle through, all will become companions, citizens of the spiritual world; but it is a slow process. Therefore, the call goes out to everyone: Develop your soul! Today, admittedly, there are only a few who have grown beyond the average human being and who, from their own experience, bear witness to the higher worlds. But today, through the theosophical world view, this knowledge is to be brought to all people.

Listening to the stories of the soul's development is the first step towards developing one's own spiritual life. Becoming familiar with the theosophical teachings is quite different from scientific learning. There is a big difference between reading an ordinary book – once I have taken note of its content, it has given me what it is supposed to give – but when I read a theosophical book, it gives me spiritual nourishment in a special way; by awakening thought powers in me, it ignites a fire in my soul. And these powers of thought are life-giving, awakening the slumbering powers in the soul. And so reading a theosophical book or listening to a theosophical lecture is the first step towards one's own independent realization. And just as the first step on this first path to the realization of higher worlds takes place in full day-consciousness, so every step forward is taken in bright day-consciousness.

Even if a person initially has his experiences at night while sleeping, he still takes the perceptions into clear day-consciousness and is awake from morning till night. As he develops further into the higher worlds, he will also be able to see the spiritual light that always surrounds us during the day. In true, correct clairvoyance, the person must be firmly and securely conscious at the center. Only a very reasonable person can enter this path, because only such a person can rationally grasp and logically think through each step forward. This is the clairvoyance to which Theosophy wants to lead people.

You can also achieve a certain clairvoyance by tuning down your consciousness. Souls are constantly around us; for the clairvoyant in the above sense, the spiritual light is not extinguished by the lamplight or daylight. For a different degree of clairvoyance, it is necessary to dim the lamplight so that the weaker light can be recognized. Let us be clear about this. If we want to recognize a small light that is outshone by bright lamplight, we can achieve our purpose in two ways. Either we can dim the lamplight so that the weaker light can shine in the darkness, or we can fan the small light or fire so that it outshines the flame of the lamplight. The theosophically trained clairvoyant does the latter. In full day-consciousness, he can make the light shine, whether daylight or lamplight or darkness surrounds him. The situation is different with mediums, in whom clairvoyance of a different kind occurs, not in full day-consciousness, but in a trance. Thus in a state where day-consciousness is extinguished; there the soul is given the opportunity to see the intermediate light because the waking mind consciousness is immersed in darkness. With the clairvoyant, the world, which is otherwise darkness, becomes light. With the medium, this world begins to shine when the visible has become invisible to the medium. The other two areas do not deal with the waking consciousness; they appeal to the trance consciousness.

We now come to hypnosis. Through some influence or other, a person's consciousness is so subdued that he can no longer control his actions; to varying degrees, the bright consciousness of day is subdued. Suggestion has such an influence on people. The man to whom you say, “Here is a pear,” while a potato is put into his hand, has not lost the ability to see; he can hear and see, but he has lost the ability to control the perceptions through the ear and the eye. Consciousness is dulled to the extent that he is only receptive to what you tell him. As long as he is awake, he can say and do whatever he wants; then he can control his actions. Now that the waking daytime consciousness has faded away, the mental consciousness is still there. Through various means, one can put a person into such a state, for example, by looking at a shiny object. When consciousness is tuned down to a certain degree, the person is a suitable subject for suggestion. He then does things that he would not do if he were awake, for example, he will crawl on all fours like a dog and bark. He hears what is being said but cannot make sense of it. But suggestion can also be carried out without such means. This is called verbal suggestion or suggestive hypnosis, and many contemporary researchers believe that everything comes from such verbal suggestions. What seemed miraculous to us — the barking of the hypnotized person — no longer seems miraculous to us now that we have seen that when the physical-sensory consciousness is extinguished or dulled, the soul-spiritual rapport from soul to soul has been established.

If you go through life with an open mind, you can observe this soul-to-soul rapport in many aspects of daily life. Not only what we hear and see has an effect on us; souls have a direct effect on each other; this also explains the otherwise inexplicable sympathy and antipathy. However, much of it is based on suggestion. Anyone who observes the workings of the soul will also be able to explain the powerful influence that some speakers exert on the masses, even though they give no logical reasons for their convictions. These are subtle effects of suggestion. Interesting observations can be made in this area. The well-known theater director Laube had a subtle suggestive effect on the audience. He brought the great actor Sonnenthal and the actress Wolter to the top. At first the audience did not want to know anything about them; but Laube was sure of his cause. He said: “Not today, but they will eat them!” The Viennese laughed at first, then mocked, but finally they also recognized the greatness of the excellent actors. Through continued listening, the audience's opposition was lulled and they became receptive to the impression that the great actors made on them.

How does science view these phenomena of suggestion? Wilhelm Wundt, who is almost worshipped like a god by some scientists, could not deny the facts, but he did not seek or find a satisfactory explanation for them either. He realized that a part of the brain was switched off during hypnosis, but he could not give a scientific explanation for it and shrugged his shoulders because he did not believe in the existence of the soul. His students tried to track down the existence of the soul and its effects.

The ancients were well aware of the suggestive effects. [Kircher] proved them to his contemporaries as early as 1646 by means of a simple experiment. He took a chicken, put it on the table, hit it a few times on the head with his fist, then drew a straight chalk line on the table, and the chicken obediently walked along this line without thinking of flying away. — It is also known that farmers would draw a thick circle of chalk around geese that were not supposed to fly away; no goose dared to leave the circle.

The knowledge of suggestive effects was buried under the rubble for a long time until the half-quack Hansen uncovered it again. The scholars mostly behaved dismissively towards the phenomena that were new to them. However, there were also unprejudiced men, especially doctors, who took a closer look at the matter and soon realized that a whole new avenue was opening up for them in particular. While it was previously believed that the soul has nothing to do with the body, it was gradually realized that the errors of the soul can even have a harmful effect on the body. The sick bodies are built by errors of the soul, the healthy bodies are built by healthy souls.

All of you gathered here will not be able or willing to dispute spiritualism, the third area we want to turn to. So we don't need to dwell on the evidence for its real existence. If we look at the spiritists, we will notice something. Most of them are quite gullible when it comes to the spirits they want to see, and incredulous when it comes to the spirit that lives in man.

You spiritists want to see the spirit! Why not enrich yourselves by recognizing your own spirit! You really often do much wiser things in your ordinary life than sit down at the table to converse with departed spirits!

When nine people sit around a table, there are nine spirits present, and it seems to me much more useful for these nine spirits to converse with each other than to summon foreign spirits to converse with them. Because spiritualism is known, it is known that a lot of fraud is done in the process; but it is also known that many interesting phenomena occur.

For the theosophist, the question arises as to whether it is appropriate to approach the spiritual world in this way. For the clairvoyant, the disembodied souls are of course companions, and he advises people to develop their own soul so that they too can see. The spiritist says: Why should I become different from what I am? I can save myself that; I don't like developing my mind. – The spiritualist seeks to make the spirit manifest itself to him. The theosophist wants to develop himself up to the spirit, to experience the spirit through his own soul.

The spiritualists are materialists. They say: What do I care about the spiritual worlds? I want to see! - Spiritism originated as a reaction against materialism. People believed in the material, they longed for the spiritual. And so they also wanted to make the spirit materially visible. This did not prove useful for human culture. What was needed was this: to descend even deeper in order to learn to understand the world from within itself. By trying to draw the spirit down to themselves, spiritists lose all control over the spiritual world. One thing is clear: only those who retain their rational minds can judge correctly.

Spiritualist séances whet our curiosity, and curiosity is selfishness. It should not be ignored that many are driven by noble motives and that they mean well. But on the whole, the matter cannot have a moralizing effect, since it leads to the most blatant materialism, in that one even wants to materialize spirits. Fortunately, a large number of spiritualists have saved themselves by joining the theosophical movement.

In this science, every step forward is controlled by the logical mind. So what might happen in a seance? When a person dies, he discards his physical body; the corpse decays; the soul leaves him, and this dissolves soon after death. The human being then still has the astral body; much, much later he also discards this when he enters devachan. Then he leaves an astral corpse in Kamaloka. This has no intelligence, but it can still respond to questions in an automated way. It is these shadows that manifest themselves very often. It is nonsense to turn to the astral corpses. The phenomenon may be correct, but man is not able to judge it. In other cases, one is not dealing with human beings at all. Confusion also occurs frequently. It can be compared to using the telephone; you hear a voice but do not see the person speaking. Confusion of voices can also occur. You speak to a different person than you think. It is like that and much worse in the spiritual world. Everything is uncertain; nothing gives us sufficient guarantee. Everything is withdrawn from clear day-consciousness.

This is how Theosophy stands in relation to the other two fields. The first materialists claimed that no stone could fall from the sky. And now we find meteorites in every natural history museum.

When we look at hypnosis, we see that the scientific world was quite dismissive, even mocking and hostile towards it. But gradually the scientists have been tamed by hypnosis to register the phenomena, and hypnotism has gained respect.

The spiritualists, who long so much for certainty, often become fanatics; but a little bit of materialistic spiritualism has served to reveal the mystery of the invisible world.

Mysterious in broad daylight
Nature cannot be robbed of the veil,

says Goethe, and Goethe was a theosophist.

The scholars only engage in what they can register; only series of numbers and percentages count for them. They achieve a little, and many of the researchers deviate from it nevertheless. They examine the phenomena for their authenticity with the greatest accuracy. Whether they come across the spirit in this way: In the meantime, their scientific endeavors may be quite good until they learn to take the only right path to knowledge.

The theosophical worldview truly leads people to higher things. It wants to guide people with bright, clear clarity and bring them proof that all their yearning for clarity can be satisfied, as Goethe said from his own spiritual insight:

The spiritual world is not closed, your mind is closed; your heart is dead. Rise up, bathe, disciple, undaunted

The earthly breast at dawn!

It may appear peculiar that spiritual science deals with such a topic like the question of women's rights, an urgent question that almost touches the issues of the day. For spiritual science commonly looks for the deepest riddles of the human existence and the world. One takes the view in many circles, which deal with spiritual science, or in such circles, which have heard something of the spirit of this worldview, that spiritual science is said to be something that does not care about the issues of the day, about the interests of the immediate life. One believes—namely the one reproaches that and the other credits it highly for it—that spiritual science should deal only with the big questions of the eternal that it should hover over the everyday events. One regards it as something impractical in the good and in the bad sense. However, if spiritual science should fulfil a task and mission in our time, it must intervene in that which moves the heart, and then it must be able to take a stand on those questions, which influence our everyday thinking and our everyday striving and hope. It must have a say in something that takes place in our time. Why should it not be that today the questions, which come as near to the human soul as the question of women's rights, which should occupy us today, why should it not be that a worldview assesses the big problems of existence? One often criticises spiritual science just for this rightly that it has not found the way to the real life praxis. Nothing would be more wrong, if spiritual science led more and more into an ascetic direction, in a direction hostile to life. On the contrary, it will prove itself establishing a real basis of the life praxis. It must not live in the cloud-cuckoo-land, it must not lose itself in mere abstractions, and it must have something to say to the present human beings.

Just as we have spoken here about the social question, we also want to speak about the question of the women's rights from the great cultural point of view, from the spiritual-scientific point of view. Of course, nobody should imagine that spiritual science speaks about the question of women's rights in the same way as the day-to-day politics or journalism. However, one must not believe that only that is practical which signifies a kind of parish-pump politics.

Somebody has always turned out to be a real practitioner who is able to look out at the immediate present. Who was the practitioner at that time when in the last century the postage stamp was invented and introduced in life which reshaped our whole system of communications, our whole social life since that time? It is somewhat more than fifty years ago. At that time, the idea of this institution whose practical relevance nobody doubts today did not come from a practitioner. The Englishman Hill (Rowland H., 1795-1879) was no postal practitioner. Someone who was a practitioner said these witty words: one cannot believe that this institution can cause such a big reversal in the system of communications; however, if it were the case, the post-office buildings would no longer be sufficient for the transportation of the letters.

Another example. When the first railway should be built from Berlin to Potsdam, the general postmaster Nagler (Karl Ferdinand Friedrich von N., 1770-1846) said, if people absolutely want to pour their money down the drain, they should prefer to do this directly. I let two stagecoaches drive daily, and nobody sits in them.—You know the other thing that happened in the Bavarian Medical Board: there one asked the learnt gentlemen because of unhealthy effects whether it is good for the nervous system if one builds railways. The gentlemen said that it would be impractical to the highest degree, because this would cause serious impairments of the nervous system.

This as an illustration of the relation of the practitioners, if it concerns the questions of the day, to those who look out with a more farsighted look at the future. The latter notorious idealists who are not stuck in that which is usual since time immemorial are the real practitioners. From this point of view, the spiritual-scientific worldview also appears as an engine for the practise of many questions and of ours. Hence, somebody who treats the questions from a higher point of view may accept such a reproach quietly and remember the other examples where people who believe to have the monopoly of practise judged in such a way.

Few people deny that the question of women's rights is one of the biggest questions of our present civilisation, because this has become a fact today. There are opponents of certain views in the question of women's rights, but nobody denies that it exists. Nevertheless, if we look back at times not so long ago, even important people regarded the question of women's rights as something fantastic, as something that had to be suppressed by any available means.

One example: I would like to remind you of the explanations of a significant man, the anatomist Albert (Eduard A., 1841-1900, Bohemian surgeon), who vehemently opposed the licensing of the women to the academic professions 25 years ago. He wanted to prove from the point of view of his anatomical-physiological science that it is impossible that women get licensing to the academic professions that they would be able to fill the medical profession one day. With the big authority of the physical science, one cannot be astonished at all that one gives those credit for a judgement, who were in the know of the human being because of their scientific views. Still recently, the witty pamphlet has appeared here in Germany, On the Physiological Mental Deficiency of the Woman. This pamphlet is due to a man who is, however, by no means a quite unimportant physiologist, Möbius (Paul Julius M., 1853-1907, neurologist), who has said some good things, who has not disgraced himself but his physiological science, while he made various important persons of the world-historical development of the last time like Goethe, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche appear as pathological phenomena. He did that so absurdly and radically that one would have to ask with every genius of the spiritual life: where is insanity in him, actually?—Goethe, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, they all are treated from the point of view of psychiatry, of the psychological pathology.

If one goes deeper into these matters, they all fall in a category that is characterised by the example of a famous naturalist who wanted to deduce the minor talent of the woman from the lower weight of the female brain some time ago. It is no fable: the man stated that the size of the mind depends on the size of the brain, and that on average women have smaller brains than men have. It really happened that one applied the method of this scholar to him. One weighed his brain after his death, and it came to light that he had just an abnormally small brain, a much smaller brain than those women had whom he had just regarded as inferior because of their lower cerebral weight. It would be somewhat malicious if one tried to examine such a pamphlet once from the psycho-pathological point of view, like this about the physiological mental deficiency of the woman, and if one tried to use the result against the concerning author as against the professor Bischoff (Theodor von B., 1807-1882, physician, biologist).

Thus, you see that the question of women's rights does not exactly testify that those were very judicious who opposed it. The question of women's rights is much more comprehensive than the question of the licensing of the women to the learned professions, than the educational question of the women; the question of women's rights encloses an economic, social, and psychological aspect and still some other matters. However, just the educational question of the women has shown wonderful fruits in the facts. Almost all theoretical judgements have been disproved by the practise in this field.

Bit by bit the women have ground out the licensing of the most professions against the opinions of the men's world, to those of the lawyers, doctors, philologists et cetera. The women took up these professions under substantially more unfavourable conditions than the men. One must only take into consideration, under which unfavourable conditions the women recently have approached the universities. It is easy with the normal pre-educational background; however, the women came with an insufficient preparatory training. They have overcome all difficulties in a large part not only with tremendous diligence but also with comprehensive abilities. They were in no way inferior to the men, concerning sobriety or diligence, or the mental abilities, so that the practise has solved this matter completely differently than some people theoretically imagined twenty to thirty years ago. Various professors, led by their prejudices, denied the women the access to the universities. Today many women with completed professional training know what life is about and they are as judicious and reasonable as the men are.

However, this only lights up the external situation, and it just shows us that we have to look deeper into the human being, into the being of the woman if we want to understand the whole matter. For there is nobody today who is not touched anyhow by the importance of this question. Even if the woman has ground out the licensing to the learned professions, also to numerous other occupations, even if in practice a big part of the question of women's rights is solved: if we want to advance consciously and reasonably, if we want to discuss this question in all directions, we have to look deeper into the human being.

What has one not spoken about the difference between man and woman! You can read it already everywhere in short overviews how differently one assessed the difference between man and woman and how one wanted to form a view about this question from these assessments. A lot has been written about the psychological aspect of the question of women's rights. There is no better book about this aspect, as far as a non-theosophist has written it, than that of a spirited woman who is generally active in the present literature: To Critics of Femininity by Rosa Mayreder (1858-1938, Austrian author, feminist). You can find the judgements somewhere else, let only some of them pass by. There we have a man Lombroso (Cesare L., 1835-1909, Italian physician, criminologist). He characterises the woman in such a way: her feeling of devotion and dependence is in the centre of her mental character. George Egerton (pen name of Mary Chavelita Dunne Bright, 1859-1945, feminist) says that any woman, considering a man impartially, looks at him as a big child and that just from that her domineering nature comes, so that the domineering nature moves into the centre of the woman's soul more and more. A great naturalist, Virchow (Rudolf V., 1821-1902), says that, if one studies the woman externally physiologically, one finds gentleness, mildness, and calmness at the bottom of her being. Havelock Ellis (1859-1939, physician), a good expert of the matter as well, says that the characteristic of the female soul is a choleric temperament, initiative, and bravado. Möbius finds the characteristic of the woman's mind in conservatism. Being conservative is the real life element of the woman's soul. Let us confront that with the judgement of an old, good soul expert, Hippel (Theodor Gottlieb H., 1741-1796, author, On Improving the Status of Women, 1792). He says that the woman is the real revolutionist of humanity. Go to the people, there you find a quite peculiar, but quite popular judgement about the relation between reason, passion, and soul with man and woman. On the other side, have a look at Nietzsche's judgement. He says that the woman preferably has reason, the man soul and passion. Compare this with the popular judgement, it is just the opposite.

We could talk a lot that way and register those judgements on one side, which attribute all passive, all weak qualities to the woman, on the other side those judgements, which just say the opposite. Nevertheless, certainty is lacking if so different judgements are possible.

Also the natural sciences have dealt a lot with the question and they are held in high esteem. However, also the statements of the naturalists contradict themselves concerning the real basic character of the woman. If we go over from the naturalists and psychologists to the history of civilisation and adhere to that which is always said: the man is the actually creative one, the woman is more the companion, the reproducing one, then such a judgement, would be impaired by the fact that one considers too short an interval. One needs only to look around a little bit with those peoples who show old cultural leftovers, or with primitive tribes, and one needs only to pursue the developmental history of humanity, then one sees that there were times and that there are even today such peoples where the woman participates in the male workings most eminently.

Briefly speaking, the assessments fluctuate in every direction. It must appear even more conspicuous to us that the woman of a nation differs from the man of the same nation much less than the woman of this nation from the woman of another nation. We can conclude from this that we are not allowed to say: man and woman, but that beside the gender character possibly something may be that is much more important in the human society than the gender character and that is independent of this gender character. Just if one looks impartially at the human being, one can normally differentiate what is necessarily connected with the relations of the genders and what goes beyond these relations and points to quite different regions. Indeed, a materialistic view of the world and the human being which at first only sees the palpable and obvious, sees the big physiological differences of man and woman, of course. Somebody, who is stuck in this materialistic view, simply overlooks what is much bigger and more drastic than the gender differences; he overlooks the individuality that goes beyond the gender, beyond that which is dependent on the gender. It must be the task of a worldview directed to the spirit to consider the human being correctly.

Before we consider the question of women's rights from this point of view, we want to present something to us of that which the question of women's rights constitutes today. One speaks of a question of women's rights in the general, but also this is an impossible generalisation like the concept of the woman. One should not speak, actually, of the question of women's rights in the general, because this question changes according to the different social classes of humanity. Does the same question of women's rights exist possibly in the lower classes, in the classes of the labourers, as in the educated ones? The lower classes, the real labourers, strive with all available means for getting the women from the factory and from the trade to give them to the family. The higher classes strive for exactly the opposite. They strive for the possibility that the women in the families get the possibility to work in the public life. This is something of the social aspect of the question of women's rights.

Of course, the general social question of women's rights exists besides which demands the same rights for the women in political and cultural respect as the men have them. People have the view today that one speaks, actually, of matters that would have to result from the nature of humanity itself. However, one does not think that the life of humanity changes much faster than at the first glance. A man who dealt from his political point of view also with the question of women's rights, Naumann (Friedrich N., 1860-1919, Protestant pastor and liberal politician), endeavoured once to study the negotiations of the St. Paul's Church of 1848 concerning this matter in which many human rights were discussed. One debated the natural rights of the human beings back and forth. However, he could nowhere find that these rights should be applied to men and women in the same way. This crossed nobody's mind. The question of women's rights came to this direction only in the second half of the 19th century. Hence, it probably seems justified to put the other question: where from does it result that this aspect of the question of women's rights has only been rolled up in our time?—Let us realise this completely.

One shows the question of women's rights from the male and female view in such a way, as if only now the woman must get a significant influence on all areas of life. In certain respects, the arguments reveal a big short-sightedness, because you must ask yourselves, did the women not have any influence in former times? Were they always enslaved beings only? It would be a lack of knowledge if one wanted to argue that way. Let us look at the Renaissance age and consult one of the most common books, Burckhardt's (Jacob B., 1818-1897, Swiss historian of art) book about the Renaissance (The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy, 1860). There we see which deep influence the women had got, for example, on the whole spiritual life of Italy, how the women stood in the foreground of this spiritual life, how they were equal to the men and played great roles. Finally, would one have spoken about the women's lack of influence in the first half of the 19th century compared with such a personality as Rahel Varnhagen (1771-1833, writer) was? She would have been highly surprised that one raises such a subject. She would not have understood at all how one gets around to thinking in such a way.

But many a man who exercises his general voting right today or even debates in the parliament and delivers long speeches is really a mere nobody if one considers the whole cultural process which the above-mentioned woman caused. Who studies the spiritual life of the first half of the 19th century and sees, which influence this woman had on the men of the 19th century is no longer tempted to say that the woman was a being without influence at that time. The matter is simply based on the fact that the views have changed. At that time, one did not believe that one needs a general voting right that one has to debate in the parliaments that one has to study at the university to have great influence on the cultural process. One had other views in any direction. I do not say that with a conservative intention, but as evidence of the fact that the whole question is a product of our present civilisation and can be put only today as it is put, and can be put only in all areas of life today, not only in the field of education, of the higher spiritual education.

Have a look at the relation of man and woman in former times when still other economic conditions existed. Have a look at the farmer and his wife in former centuries. One cannot say that the farm woman had less rights than the farmer, or a lower sphere of activity. She had to care for a certain realm and he for another. The same applied to the craft. What has become, actually, the question of women's rights today in the working classes has originated because during the last centuries, and in particular in the last century our civilisation has become a decidedly male civilisation. The machine age is a product of the male civilisation, and simply the way of this civilisation limits the activity of the woman more than the former economic life limited it. The woman does not fit into the factory, and completely different calamities result from it compared with the conditions when she was occupied in the farmyard, at home or in the old craft as a manager or co-worker.

Also in relation to the learned professions, everything has changed in our whole life, in our view. The whole esteem of the learned professions has become another one. It is not yet long ago that that which one understands today as a learned profession was more or less a kind of a higher craft only. It was a way to be professionally active in the law, medicine, and it would not have crossed anybody's mind before relatively short time to derive a kind of religious worldview from that which medicine, law, natural sciences offered. It is the special science of that which is investigated in the laboratory, which has become bit by bit the domain of the men from which a higher worldview is attained. Against this, once religion and philosophy hovered like a spirit over all matters that were done in the faculties, and a higher education was only to be found in them.

The actually human, that which spoke to the soul, that which spoke about his longing for eternity, that which gave the human being strength and assurance in his life that was common to man and woman. This arose from another spring than from the laboratory or from the physiological investigation. One could come without any university education to the highest heights of philosophical and religious education. One was able to do this any time, also as a woman. Only because the materialistic age has made the so-called positive sciences with their so-called facts the basis of the higher problems, a train of the heart, a longing of the soul had to drive the woman to look herself into the secrets, which the microscope, the telescope, the investigations of physiology and biology reveal to us. As long as one did not think that anything about life and immortality could be decided by the microscope, as long as one knew that this truth must be taken from completely different sources, such a desire for scientific studies could not arise as it is today. We must hold this against ourselves that the direction of our time has produced this drive for the university education, and that generally the question of women's rights is put in the whole way of the civilisation of our time.

However, a movement almost disregarded up to now, the spiritual-scientific view, opposes everything that this new age has brought, that is founded on an only material base. The spiritual-scientific worldview has to solve the vital question and has to co-operate in all cultural currents and cultural attempts of the future. One cannot misjudge this worldview more than believing that it is nothing but the chimera of some daydreamers. It is the result of the spiritual research of those who know the needs and the longing of our time best of all and take it most seriously. Only those who want to know nothing about the needs of our time can keep off this eminently practical world movement intervening in all questions. Spiritual science is nothing that indulges in an infertile criticism, nothing conservative. It considers it as something beneficiary and reckons that materialism has appeared last century.

It was a necessity that the old religious feelings and traditions lost their validity compared with the claims of the natural sciences. Spiritual science understands how it happened that the physiologist and the biologist deny immortality even if he also does not concede it. That had to happen this way. However, humanity will never be able to live without looking up, without knowledge of the real supersensible spiritual things. A short time only one will be able to go on working as it has come about today with the specified science and with that which often comes from this direction as a religious result or non-result. However, the time will come when one feels that the springs of the spirit must be disclosed in life. Spiritual science is the outpost of this struggle for development of the real spiritual springs of humanity. On a much broader base spiritual science is able to tell humanity again about the being of the soul, about that which towers above the transient and passing. On a broader base than it ever was the case in the popular world, spiritual science will announce what gives assurance, strength, courage and perseverance in life what can light up those questions which occupy the everyday life and are to be solved not only from the material side.

It is a peculiar chance—some will understand it—that at the starting point of the theosophical movement a woman stood, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. One experienced the incredible example, just here, that a woman with the most comprehensive sense, with the most urgent power and with mental energy composed writings compared with which really everything that the intellectual culture has otherwise produced is a trifle. Believe nothing of that which you can read about so-called esoteric doctrines, which insights of the spiritual world you read possibly in Isis Unveiled or in the so-called Secret Doctrine by Blavatsky. Believe nothing of that, but consult the book and ask yourselves how many spirits of the present have known anything more powerful about so many matters than Blavatsky did. The two immense volumes of the Secret Doctrine give information about almost all fields of the spiritual life, about ancient cultures, ancient religions, about all possible branches of the natural sciences, about the social life, about astronomy, physiology. May that be wrong, which you read therein, but I ask you who is able to say even wrong things about all these fields proficiently and to show with it that he has familiarised himself emphatically with all that? You need not only consider the correctness, but also the comprehensiveness of the mind which you cannot deny, then you have the example of a woman who has shown not only in any branch of the intellectual culture, but in the whole spiritual life what the female mind can perform concerning a higher worldview. Even if one reads Max Müller's (1823-1900, Orientalist) religious-historical treatises and compares their contents with the comprehensive of the Secret Doctrine, one sees how much the latter towers over the first. Thus, it is a peculiar chance that a woman stands at the starting point of this theosophical movement. One may explain that just from those matters which have also shown us the question of women's rights as a birth from our present spiritual life.

If we look deeper into the spiritual development of the human beings, then that, which can, astonish us otherwise, may appear to us as a necessity in the history of thought. However, to be able to do this in fertile way, we have to go into the human nature briefly. We want to outline the human nature with a few brief strokes.

The spiritual-scientific research, theosophy, regards that which materialism and the everyday worldview know of the human being only as a part of the human being. I can only give you some outlines today, not daydreams, but matters that are as certain as mathematical judgements for the mathematicians. What the usual science knows of the human being is his physical body. This physical body has the same physical and chemical forces, principles, and substances, which one finds outdoors in the so-called lifeless nature. The forces that form the dead stone outdoors and the “life” in the stone are the same in the physical body of the human being.

However, the spiritual-scientific worldview still sees additional members of the human nature, at first the second member that the human being has together with all plants. Modern science already speaks speculating about something that spiritual science aims at, about a particular life principle, because the reasonable scientists have overcome the laws of materialism, which still applied to many people fifteen years ago. Nevertheless, the modern physical research will only extrapolate this second human member speculatively. However, the theosophical spiritual research refers to the testimony of those who have higher intuitive faculties who relate to the usual average human being as a sighted person relates to a blind one. It refers to the testimony of such persons who know this second human member as something real, as something that exists. Someone who knows nothing does not have the right to judge, as little as the blind person has a right to judge about colours.

Any talking of the limits of the human knowledge is nonsense. One should ask, is the human being not able to rise to a higher level of knowledge? May that not be real which one calls spiritual eyes and ears? There have always been human beings who developed certain slumbering abilities and who can thereby see more than others can. Their testimony must apply exactly the same way as the testimony of those who look through the microscope. How many people have seen what the evolution theory teaches? I would like to ask you, how many human beings have seen that about which they talk? How many people, for example, have clear proofs of the development of the human embryo? If they introspected, they would see what a belief controls them. If it is a justified belief, that belief is also justified, which rests on the testimony of the initiates who speak about their spiritual experience.

We speak of the second member of the human being. We find the same in the Christian religion with Paul, who called it spiritual body. We speak about the etheric or life body. A certain sum of chemical and physical forces would never crystallise to life if they were not formed in particular by that which penetrates every living body as a life body or etheric body. The human being has it in common with the whole plant and animal realms. However, a plant does not have impulses, desires, and passions. A plant feels no joy and sorrow, because one cannot speak of any sensation if one sees that a being only reacts to something external. One can speak of sensation only if the external stimulus is reflected inside, if it is there as an internal experience. This part of modern physiology, which speaks of a sensory body of the plant, only shows a tremendous dilettantism in the view of such concepts.

Where the animal life begins, where joy and sorrow, where impulses, desires and passions begin, one speaks of the third member of the human being, of the astral body. The human being has it in common with the whole animal realm. Now there is one thing that reaches within the human being beyond the animal realm and makes him the crown of creation. We realise it best considering it subtly.

There is a name within the German language, which differs from all other names. Everybody can say “table” to a table. However, one name cannot be applied that way. Nobody can say to me “I”, so that it would signify me. “I” can never sound to our ears if it signifies me. One felt this always as something essential. Even in the popular older religions, one found that there is an important point of the soul. Where the soul starts feeling the divine in itself, where it starts saying in this dialogue with itself to itself “I,” speaking with itself in such a way as from the outside cannot be spoken, there the divine being of the soul begins its development in the human being. The god in the human being announces himself there. The old Hebrew secret doctrine had felt this. Therefore, one called this name the inexpressible name of God that means, “I am the I-am.”

According to the Old Testament, the name signifies the announcement of the godhead in the human soul. Therefore, immense emotions and sensations penetrated the crowd when the priest announced this name of the godhead in the soul: Jahveh.

This is the fourth member in the human being where his external nature ends and his divinity begins. We have now seen how the human being is led as it were by external forces up to the “I”, the ego. There he stands, and from there he starts working in himself. This ego works down into the three other parts of the human being. Realise the difference between the human beings from this point of view. Compare a savage to a European average person, to a noble idealist, possibly Schiller (1759-1805, German poet) or Francis of Assisi (1181/1182-1226, Italian Catholic friar and preacher).

If the astral body is the bearer of desire and passion, we have to say, the astral body of the savage is surrounded by the powers of nature; however, the European average person has worked something into his astral body.

He says of certain passions and desires to himself: you are not allowed to follow them.—He has reshaped his astral body. Such a personality like Schiller transformed it even more, even more such a personality that is not related to the passions like Francis of Assisi who was completely purified and who was master of all impulses and desires in his astral body. Thus, you can say that the astral body of someone who worked on himself consists of two parts. One part is given by nature, by divinities; the other part is that which he himself has produced therein. We call this second part, transformed by the ego, the spirit self or manas.

Now there are matters that go deeper into the human nature where the ego works only in the astral body. As long as you tame your vices with the mere principles of morality or law, with logical principles, you work on your astral body. However, there are other cultural means, namely the religious impulses of humanity by which the ego works on itself. What comes from religion is a working engine of the spiritual life, is more than external principles of law and morality. If the ego works because of religious impulses, it works into the etheric body.

Also, if the ego is merged in the consideration of a piece of art and receives an inkling that behind the sensuous existence anything everlasting, anything concealed may be embodied, then the artistic image works not only in the astral body, but the human being improves and purifies the etheric body. If you were able to observe as practical occultist how an opera by Wagner (Richard W., 1813-1883, German composer) works on the different human members, it would persuade you that the vibrations of music deeply penetrate the etheric body.

The etheric body is also the bearer of everything that is more or less remaining in the human nature. You have to realise which difference is between the development of the etheric body and the astral body. Let us remember our own lives. Think about what you have learnt since your eighth year; this is very much. Consider the contents of your soul: principles, ideas et cetera. These are transformations of your astral bodies. Now think how little customs, temperaments, and abilities of most human beings change in general.

If anybody has a bad temper, this became apparent early on and has changed a little. If one was a forgetful child, he is a forgetful person even today. One can use a small example of this disparate development. This development behaves in such a way, as if the changes of the astral body are shown by the minute hand and the changes of the etheric body by the hour hand of the clock. What the human being changes in his etheric body, what the ego has made of the etheric body, one calls buddhi or—if one wants to use an English word—life spirit.

However, there is an even higher development, which the chela experiences, because one becomes another human being in the etheric body. If the usual human being learns, he learns with the astral body. If the student of the esoteric science learns, he becomes another human being. There his habits and his temperament must change. For this makes the difference that allows us to behold into other worlds. His etheric body is gradually transformed there.

It is the most difficult for the human being to learn to work into his physical body. One can also become master of the blood circulation; one can get influence on the nervous system, influence on the respiratory process et cetera. One can also learn that. If the human being is able to work into his physical body and learns to be connected with the universe, then he develops his atman. This is the highest human member, and because it is associated with the development of the respiratory process, one says atman (Sanskrit, German atmen = breathe). Then the spirit man is found in the physical human being.

Thus, we have seven human members, just as the rainbow has seven colours and the scale has seven tones. So the human being consists of the physical body, secondly of the etheric body, thirdly of the astral body, in fourth place of the ego, fifthly of manas, sixthly of buddhi, seventhly of atman. When the human being arrives at the highest level of development, when he makes his physical body, then we have the spirit man.

Concerning our today's question, we have to look closer at this being, at this nature of the human being. There a riddle of the relations between man and woman is solved out of the human nature in a peculiar way. Just esotericism or this intimate consideration of the human nature leads into the physical body, into the etheric body, into the astral body, into the ego and into that which the ego has made.

With every human being—this is a fact—the etheric body is dyadic, and the etheric body of the man as it lives among us presents itself with female qualities, and the etheric body of the woman with male qualities. Plenty of facts in our life are explained if we know that in the man something is of the female nature, and just that which we have discussed as dependent on the etheric body has more female nature with the man and more male nature with the woman. Hence, one can understand that certain traits can appear with the man. In truth, we never have in the physical material human being something else before us than a physical expression of a complete personality. The human soul builds the body as the magnet has two poles. It forms a male part and a female part, once one part as a physical body, the other time as an etheric body. Hence, the woman shows apparently male traits connected with the etheric body: devotion, bravery, and love; the man shows rather female traits sometimes. However, with reference to all traits which are connected more to the physical body the consequence of the gender appears in the external life.

Therefore, it must seem explicable that we have in every human being—if we want to look at him completely—an appearance before us with two parts, an open material one and a concealed one, the spiritual one. Somebody is only an entire human being who is able to connect inside a female nice character with external masculinity. The greatest spirits, in particular the mystics, always felt this in our past cultural life.

This is an important point. The man played a great role, because materialism pushed to the external civilisation. This external civilisation is a male civilisation because it should be a material civilisation. However, we have to be clear to ourselves that also in the world-historical evolution the culture epochs take turns, and that this one-sided male civilisation must find its complement by that which lives in every man. One felt this just in the time of the male civilisation. Hence, the mystics if they spoke about the deepest of their souls also called this soul something female. That is why everywhere you find the comparison of the soul with the woman receptive to the world, and on that, Goethe's saying is based in the Chorus Mysticus (Faust II):

All that is transitory
is only a symbol;
what seems unachievable
here becomes fact;
what's indescribable
here it is done;
the eternally-female
draws us upwards.

It is nonsense to interpret the saying trivially. In the sense of Goethe and of true mysticism one interprets it correctly saying, someone who has known something of noble spiritual culture has also pointed to the female character of the soul. Just from the male culture the saying originated, “the eternally-female draws us upwards.” Thus, one imagined the macrocosm, the universe, as male and the soul as female, which is fertilized by the universal wisdom.

What is this peculiar attitude, the logics, developing in the man for millennia? If we want to look into its depth, we have to see something female, the imagination, which the male principle has to fertilise.

Thus, we see the higher nature of the human being, if we consider what outgrows the gender difference. Man and woman have to regard their physical bodies as tools, which enable them to be active as a totality in the physical world in one or other direction. The more the human beings feel the spiritual in themselves, the more the body becomes the instrument, however, the more they also learn to understand the human being, if they look into the depth of the soul.

Indeed, this gives you no solution of the question of women's rights, but a perspective. You cannot solve this question with trends and ideals! You have to solve it in the reality, creating that soul image, that soul constitution, which makes it possible that man and woman understand each other from the view of the totality of human nature. As long as the human being is prejudiced in the material, a fertile consideration of the question of women's rights is not possible.

Therefore, you must not be surprised that in an age which has born the male culture the spiritual culture, which began in the theosophical movement, should almost be born from a woman. Thus, this theosophical or spiritual-scientific movement will turn out to be eminently practical. It will guide humanity to overcome the gender in itself and to rise to a point of view where spirit-self and atman are which are transpersonal and beyond the genders, the purely human. Theosophy does not speak about the general humanisation, but about the general human, so that it is recognised gradually. Thus, a similar consciousness awakes in the woman gradually as it has awoken in the man during the male culture.

As someone of those who have deeply spoken about the soul said: the eternally female draws us upwards, those will understand spiritual-scientifically who feel the other side of the human being as a woman in themselves. They speak about it in the correct practical sense, about the eternally-male in the female nature, and then true understanding and true mental solution of the question of women's rights is possible. For the external nature is a physiognomy of the soul life. We have nothing else in our external culture than that which the human beings have created what they have transformed in machines out of their impulses, in industrial matters, in the law. As the soul develops, the external institutions develop. However, an age that stuck to the external physiognomy wanted to build barriers between man and woman. An age which does no longer stick to the external, to the material but has the knowledge of the inside beyond the genders, wants to improve and embellish the sexual, without wanting to crawl away to the wasteland, to asceticism or to deny the sexual, and wants to live in that which is beyond the genders. Then one will understand what brings the true solution of the question of women's rights because it offers the true solution of the everlasting human question at the same time. One will no longer say when one speaks of things of the everyday life: the eternally female draws us up, one will also no longer say, the eternally male draws us upwards, one will say with deep understanding: the eternally-human draws us upwards.

It may perhaps seem strange that something like our theme today, which touches so strongly on current everyday issues, could be considered from the world-view of Spiritual Science, from a view of life and the world today which looks to the very greatest enigmas of human existence. In many circles which occupy themselves with Spiritual Science, or in such circles as have heard something of the spirit in this world-outlook, there is the view that Spiritual Science is something that does not concern itself in any way with current questions, with the interests of immediate life. People believe—some as a reproach to the Theosophical movement, and others seeing this as one of its advantages—that Spiritual Science concerns itself only with the great questions of Eternity, that it holds itself aloof from everyday events. People consider it, in both a good and a bad sense, to be something unpractical. But if, in our time, Spiritual Science is to fulfill a task, a mission, then it must take hold of what moves the heart, it must be able to take up a position with regard to those questions which play into our day-to-day thinking and into our day-to-day striving and hope.

It must have something to say about those questions which are a part of our times. For how could it be that questions which come so close to the human soul—like the question concerning women which is to occupy us today—how could it be that these, too, should not be judged from a world-view which looks to the great problems of human existence. And it is just this that is often and rightly said against Spiritual Science; that it has not found the way to life as it is in reality. Nothing would be more wrong than if Spiritual Science were to be led increasingly into asceticism, into a direction hostile to life. It will prove itself far more by building a real foundation for the practice of life. It must not float in Cloud-cuckoo land or lose itself in bare abstractions, but must have something to say to human beings of the present.

Just as we have spoken here about the social question, today we want to speak from a great cultural standpoint, from a spiritual-scientific standpoint, of the question regarding women. Of course, no one must imagine that Spiritual Science should speak about this question in the same way as do politics or current printed matter. But then again, one should not believe that what, in effect, is a sort of parochial politics is the only thing that is practical. The individual who has always shown himself to be truly practical is the one who can see beyond the immediate present. And who was the practical individual when in the last century the postage stamp had to be invented and introduced into everyday life, and which since then, has transformed the whole of our life of public commerce, our whole social life? It happened little more than fifty years ago. The idea of this arrangement—the practicality of which is doubted today by no one—came at that time from someone not engaged in practical things. The Englishman, Hill, did not work for the Post Office. But one who did, had the following ingenious comment to make; One could not believe that this arrangement would cause such a great change in commercial or business life, but were that to be the case, the post office buildings would not be large enough to cope with the postal demands!

Another example. When the first railway was to be built from Berlin to Potsdam, the head of the Post Office, Nagler said, ‘Well, if people want to throw their money out of the window they might as well do so directly. I send two post-coaches and nobody travels in them.’ And of course you know the other incident which occurred in the Bavarian college of doctors: the learned gentlemen were asked, purely from a practical, medical point of view, if the nervous system could stand it if railways were built. The learned gentlemen said it was unpractical to the highest degree, because it would cause severe damage to the nervous system.

This is by way of illustration of the relation of the ‘practical people’—in matters of the issues of the day—to those who, with somewhat broader vision, see beyond into the future. These, the disparaged idealists who do not remain attached to what has been the ‘done thing’ since the days of yore, these are the really practical ones. And from this point of view Spiritual Science appears also today as a vehicle which carries the answers to many questions—and also for our question today. For this reason anyone who deals with these questions from a higher point of view can accept such a reproach without feeling uneasy, and can remember other examples where, believing they had a monopoly in practicality, people have judged in a similar way.

Few will deny that the question regarding women is one of the greatest present questions of our culture, for today this is simply a fact. There are opponents to certain views on the question of women, but the fact that this question exists will be denied by no one. Yet if we look back to times that are not so far behind us, we find that even the leading scientific and other great minds have seen in the women's question something absurd, something to be suppressed by all possible means. As an example, we can recall the statements of the anatomist, Albert, a truly significant man, who twenty five years ago, pitted himself with the greatest energy against the admission of women into the learned professions, and who, from the standpoint of his anatomical-physiological knowledge, tried to prove that it would be impossible for women to get into the educated professions or ever be able to fulfill the profession of a doctor. With the great authority of natural science it is hardly surprising that one believes those to be capable of judgment who, in relation to the natural-scientific view of the human being, are supposed to know something. A short while ago a booklet came out in Germany: ‘Uber den Physiollogischen Schachsinn des Weibes’ (Concerning the physiological feeble-mindedness of women). This booklet stems from a man Möbius, who indeed, is not at all an insignificant physiologist, who has said some good things, but who, on the other hand, has exposed not so much himself but the science of Physiology to ridicule by presenting, little by little, all the various great personalities of world-historic development of recent times—Goethe, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche—as pathological phenomena. He has done this, furthermore, in such a grotesque and radical manner, that one would have to ask with each genius, ‘Where does the insanity lie?’ Goethe, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche—all are dealt with from the standpoint of psychiatry, of psychological pathology.

When one goes more deeply into these things, they all fall into only one category—one that is characterised by the example of the famous naturalist who tried some time ago to attribute the ‘inferior talent’ of women to the lighter weight of the female brain! This is no fable! This man asserted that the greatness of the spirit was dependent on the size of the brain, and that women, on average, have a smaller brain than men. And quite truly it then happened that the methods of this learned professor were applied to himself. After his death, his brain was weighed, and it turned out that he had an abnormally small brain, a much smaller brain than those women whom he held to be of inferior mind because of their lighter brain weight. It would be mischievous if one were to try and examine, from a psyche-pathological standpoint, a booklet like this one on the physiological feeble-mindedness of women, and if one were to try to catch out the writer in question as happened in the case of Professor Bischoff.

So you can see that the women's question does not bear witness to the fact that those who opposed it were particularly discerning The question regarding women includes far more than that of admitting women into the learned professions, and of the question of women's education. The issue concerning women embraces an economic, a social and a psychological side, and many other aspects as well. But it is precisely the question of women's education that has, in fact, borne fruits. Almost all the opinions in this area that have been formed out of theory have been refuted by actual practice. Little by little women have fought for, and won—in spite of the opposition of the opinions of a man's world—admission to most male professions, including that of lawyer, doctor, philologist and so on. Women have taken up these professions under significantly less favourable conditions than men. One has only to consider under what unfavourable circumstances women have recently entered universities. With the normal educational preparation this is really not to difficult, but women had to get there with very much less preparation. Not only through tremendous hard work, but also through a broad spectrum of abilities, they have for the most part overcome all the difficulties. In determination, in hard work, and also in mental ability they are in no way inferior to men, so that reality in practice, has resolved the matter in a completely different way than many, twenty to thirty years ago, had imagined in theory.

Various professors, led by their prejudices, refused women entry into university. And yet today, very many women graduates stand in the world, in no way less able or less perceptive than men.

This however, illustrates the outer situation alone, and only shows us that we must look more deeply into the nature of the human being, into the nature of women, if we want to understand the matter as a whole. For there is no one today who would not be affected in some way by the significance of this question. Although women have won access to the learned professions—and to numerous others—and although, in actual practice a large part of the question concerning women's abilities has been answered, nevertheless, if we wish to progress consciously, clearly, and with insight, if we wish to discuss this question from all sides, then we must look more deeply into the nature of the human being.

What a lot has been said about the difference between man and woman! Everywhere today you can read in short reviews how many different opinions there are concerning the difference between men and women, and how, from these differing opinions people have tried to form a view concerning the question of women. A great deal has been written on the psychological aspect of the women's question. There is no better book on this aspect—in so far as such books are written by non-theosophists—than the one by a gifted woman who is active generally in present day literature: ‘Zur Kritik der Weiblichkeit’ (A critique of femininity) by Rosa Meyreder. You can find different views catalogued elsewhere so let us look at a few of them.

Let us take the man Lombroso. He describes Woman by saying that at the centre of her emotional character is the feeling of submissiveness, the feeling of dependence. George Egerton on the other hand says that every woman who looks dispassionately at a man sees him as a big child, and it is precisely from this that the love of power, of domination comes, which is so totally inherent in a woman that it insinuates itself more and more into the central position in the female soul.

A great scientist, Virchov, says that if one studies Woman from an external, physiological standpoint, one finds gentleness, mildness and calmness to be the basis of her being. Havelock Ellis, an expert of equally high standing in these matters, says that the fundamental characteristic of the female soul is quick temperedness, initiative and daredevilry. Mobius finds the basic feature of the female nature to be conservatism: to be conservative, he maintains, is the life-element of the female soul. Against this we can put the judgment of an old and good expert of the psyche, Hippel. He says that the real revolutionary within humanity is Woman.

Go to the vast majority of people and you will find a very strange but fairly common view of the relation between intellect, feelings and passion in men and women. Then, in contrast look at Nietzsche's view. He says that the intellect belongs primarily to Woman, and feelings and passion to Man. Compare this with the common view. It is the exact opposite. Thus we could say a great deal and, on the one side, could list all the views which ascribe to woman all the passive, the weak qualities, and on the other side all those which maintain the opposite. But certainty comes somewhat to a standstill when so many different views are possible.

Science too has occupied itself a great deal with this question, and Science enjoys great authority. But the statements of scientists concerning the real fundamental characteristics of woman immediately start contradicting one another. And if we move on from scientists and psychologists to cultural history and hold to what has always been said—that man is the really creative active one, and woman more the companion, the follower—then such a view would be prejudiced because we have taken too short a time span into consideration, one has only to look at those peoples who still represent what is left of ancient cultures, or at primitive peoples, and one has only to follow the history of humanity's development to see that there were times once, and there are still such peoples today, in which the woman, in the most eminent sense, participated and participates in ‘masculine’ work.

In short, the opinions vary in all directions. Even more noticeable for us is the fact that a woman of one particular people (or nation or tribe) will differ far less from a man of the same people than from a woman of another. From this we can draw the conclusion that we should not talk at all in terms of man and woman, male and female, but that, alongside the characteristics of sexual gender, there is possibly something far more important in human society than the sexual characteristics of gender and which is quite independent of them. If one looks impartially at the human being, it is usually possible to distinguish what is of necessity connected to all that is related to the sexes, and what points beyond these connections into other realms entirely. Of course a materialistic view of the world and of the human being, which recognises only what can be touched and seen, naturally sees in man and woman only the big physiological differences; and anyone who remains with this materialistic view will simply miss, will overlook something that is far greater and more decisive than sexual differences—he will overlook the individuality which goes beyond gender and is independent of it.

To shed light here, to see the human being here in the right way: this must be the task of a world-view oriented towards the spirit.

Before we look at the women's question from this point of view, we will just look at aspects of what this question represents.

People talk about ‘the women's question’ in general, but this also, like the concept of Woman, is an unacceptable generalisation. One should not really speak of the women's question in general at all, because this question must he modified in relation to the different social classes of humanity. Does the question concerning woman exist in the same way in the lower classes, in the manual-worker class, as in the educated classes? The lowest classes, the actual manual workers, try with all means at their disposal to get their women out of the factories and the textile mills, so that they can be with the family. The higher classes strive for exactly the opposite. They strive to make it possible for the woman of the family to work in the world outside. This then is something of the social aspect of the women's question.

Alongside this, of course, there is also the general social question concerning women which demands for them in the political and cultural context the same rights as those enjoyed by men. People have the view today that they are speaking of things which must follow from the very nature of humanity itself. People do not consider, however, that the life of humanity changes far faster than on the surface it may appear to do. A man, Naumann, who from his political standpoint also occupied himself with the women's question, was at pains to study in connection with this the St. Paul's Church discussions of 1848 in which a lot was said concerning human rights. There they debated to and fro the self-evident rights of man. Nowhere, however, is it mentioned that these rights should be the same for women as for men. That never entered anyone's head. The women's question came into this area only in the second half of the 19th century. And it seems fully justified here to throw up the other question: How is it then that this aspect of the women's question has been considered only in our time? Let us be quite clear about this.

In many ways today the women's question is presented, from both the masculine and the feminine side, as though it is only now that women have to struggle to gain a definite and significant influence in all areas of life. In many respects these discussions are characterised by great shortsightedness, for one must ask oneself: In other times, in all earlier times, have women then had no influence at all? Have they always been fettered beings? It would be ignorance if one were to assert such a thing.

We can look at the age of the Renaissance and take one of the most widely-used books about that period—the book by Burckhardt. Here we see what a profound influence women had, for example, on the whole intellectual life of Italy; how woman stood in the foreground of intellectual life, how they were equal to men and played a great part. And finally, had one spoken of women's lack of influence in the first half of the 19th century to such an individual as Rahel Varnhagen, she would have been astonished that such a theme could have been brought up. She would not have understood how anyone could think in such a way. But there is many a man today who exercises his general right to vote, or even debates in Parliament and gives long speeches, who is truly a non-entity when one thinks of the entire cultural progress that has been brought forth by this woman, Rahel Varnhagen. Anyone who studies the intellectual life of the first half of the 19th century and sees what sort of influence this woman had on the men of the 19th century, will no longer be tempted to say that woman was a being without influence on those times. The matter simply rests on the fact that opinions have changed. One did not believe at that time that one needed a simple right to vote, that one had to debate in Parliament, or that one had to study at university in order to have an influence on the course of culture. One looked at it differently in every way. This is not said with any conservative intention, but as evidence that the whole question is a product of our present culture and can be posed only today in the way it is posed at present, and can be posed only today in all areas of life (not only in the area of higher education).

Just take a look at the relation of man and woman in earlier times when quite different economic conditions prevailed. Look at the peasant woman, the female labourer in earlier centuries. One cannot say that the peasant woman had fewer rights than the peasant, or a more limited sphere of influence. She had one particular department to look after and he another. And it was just the same in the crafts. What in the working classes has today become the real women's question has become so because in past centuries and particularly in the last century, our culture has become, in the greatest sense, a male culture (Männerkultur). The age of the machine is a product of the male culture, and it is simply the quality and nature of this culture that renders far more impossible the way a woman can work and be active than was the case in earlier economic life. Woman is not suited to the factory and there are quite different problems there than when she is engaged in the farmyard, in the house or in the old craft-industries as manageress, contractor or co-worker. Also, as regards the academic professions, everything in our world, in our perception, has changed. Our whole estimation of the professions has become something different. It is not so long ago that what today is regarded as a learned profession was really little more than a higher craft. There was a particular way of being active in law, in medicine, and even a relatively short time ago it would never have entered anyone's head to derive a religious world-view from what was presented in medicine, in law or in natural science. Today it is the specialist knowledge of what is researched in the laboratory that has gradually become the domain of men; and it is from this that a higher world-view is extracted. Earlier, however, like a spirit over everything that was studied in the university faculties, there hovered Religion and Philosophy—and it was within these, to begin with, that higher education was to be sought. The truly human element that which spoke to the heart and soul, that which spoke to the human being of his yearnings and hopes of eternity, that which gave him strength and certainty in life—this element was the same for both men and women, it arose from an origin other than from the laboratory or from physiological research. One could attain to the highest heights of philosophical and religious development without any kind of academic education at all. One could do this at any time—even as a woman. Only because the materialistic age has made so-called positive science with its so-called facts and basis of higher problems only because of this is it so that, alongside the general inclination arising from practical life, another inclination, one of the heart, a longing of the soul had to arise and drive women even to look into the mysteries offered us by the microscope, the telescope, and the research of physiology and biology. For, as long as people thought that decisions could not be made by means of a microscope concerning the life and immortality of the human being, so long as people knew that these truths had to be drawn from quite other sources, there could not be such a clamouring for scientific studies as there is today. We must be aware of this: that the trend of our age has generated this desire for academic education and that the women's question itself has come up in our time through the whole nature of our culture.

However, in contrast to everything that this new age has brought, in contrast to everything that rests on a purely materialistic basis, we also meet, in the spiritual-scientific outlook, a movement that is still little heeded. It is the spiritual-scientific world-view which will have to solve the questions of Life and co-operate in all the cultural streams and strivings of the future. But no one can fail to recognise this world-view when one believes it to be nothing but the imaginings of a wild fantasy. Yet it is the outcome of the spiritual research of those best acquainted with the needs and longing of our time, who take it most seriously. Only those who do not wish to know anything about the needs of our time can still remain distant from this world-stream which extends eminently and practically into all questions. Spiritual science is not something that indulges in unfruitful criticism, it is not something conservative. It regards materialism as justified, and takes into account that it arose in the last century. It was necessary that old religious feelings and traditions lost their importance in comparison to the claims of the natural sciences. Spiritual science can see how it has come about that physiology and biology have become deniers of immortality, even if it doesn't agree with them. This had to happen. But humanity will never be able to live without a glimpse of, without knowledge of real super-sensible, spiritual things. Only for a short time will people be able to keep on making do as they do today with specialist knowledge and with what arises in many ways from this direction as religious results or non-results.

But a time will come when people will feel that the wellsprings of the spirit in life must be opened. And Spiritual Science is the advance post of this battle for the opening of the true spiritual wellsprings of humanity. Spiritual Science will, on a much broader basis, be able again to tell humanity how it is related to the being of the soul, to what rises up above the transient and the fleeting. On a far broader basis than was ever formerly the case in the public world, Spiritual Science will proclaim that which gives certainty, strength, courage and endurance in life, that which can shed light into those questions which occupy day-to-day living and which cannot be solved from the material side alone.

It is a strange coincidence—many will understand this that at the beginning of the Theosophical movement there stands a woman, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky—that precisely here we have the unprecedented experience, that here we have a woman with the most all-embracing mind, with the most penetrating force and energy of mind who has written works compared to which all the spirituality which our culture (Geisteskultur) has otherwise produced is but a trifle.

Now, perhaps you believe nothing of the so-called occult teachings, the so-called insights into the spiritual world that are contained in Blavatsky's ‘Isis Unveiled’ or the so-called ‘Secret Doctrine’—perhaps you believe nothing of this; but take a look at these books some time and ask yourself: ‘How many thinkers of today have known more penetratingly about so many things as Blavatsky?’

The two enormous volumes of The Secret doctrine give information on almost all areas of spiritual life, ancient culture, ancient religion; on all possible branches of natural science, social life, astronomy and physiology. Perhaps what is said there is incorrect; but even if it were, I would still ask you: who is in the position today to speak in such a competent way even if incorrectly—about all these areas, and to show thereby that he has acquainted himself deeply with all of them? you need only take into account not solely the correctness, but also the breadth of mind—which cannot be denied—and you have the example of a woman who has shown, not in this or that branch of human thinking, but in the entire range of human mental and spiritual life what the female mind can achieve with regard to a higher world-view. Even if one takes an unbiased view of Max Muller's works on religious history, and compares their content with the all-embracing content of the Secret Doctrine, one will see how far the latter surpasses the former. Thus it is a strange circumstance that a woman stands at the outset of this Theosophical movement. This is perhaps explained precisely through those things which have also shown us the women's question as arising from our present intellectual and spiritual life.

If we look more deeply into the course of human spiritual development, then what otherwise might astound us will perhaps appear as a spiritual-historical necessity. In order, however, to be able to do this fruitfully, we must briefly look once more into the being of Man. We will give a picture, sketching human nature in broad outline.

What materialism, what the everyday world-view of human beings is aware of, is regarded by spiritual-scientific research, by Theosophy, as just one part of the human being. I can only give you a few rough sketches today. They are not mere imaginings or daydreams, but are things that are as certain as mathematical judgments are for mathematicians.

So, what the human being knows in his everyday view, in his usual knowledge of human beings, is just one part of the human being: the physical body. This human physical body has the same physical and chemical forces, laws and substances that are found outside in so-called inanimate nature. Outside are the forces which form the dead stone and are the ‘life’ within the stone and the same forces are also in the physical body of the human being. Beyond this, however, the spiritual-scientific world-view sees a second body in man's nature, to begin with, which man has in common with plants. Present-day science in its speculations already speaks a little of that which Spiritual Science is pointing to, of a particular ‘life-principle’, for the laws of materialism which, fifteen years ago were still valid for many, have been overcome by those with insight. But present day scientific research will only be able to deduce this second body through a kind of speculation. Theosophical, spiritual research, however, has reference to the testimony of those who have a higher faculty of perception, and who have a similar relation to the average person in the street as does a sighted man to a blind one. This research has reference to the testimony of such individuals who know this second body as something real, something actually there. Anyone who knows nothing of this has no more right to judge than a blind person has the right to pass judgment on colours.

All talk of limits to human knowledge is a nonsense. One should rather ask: Is it not possible for the human being to rise to a higher level of knowledge? Are not what one calls the eyes and the ears of the spirit perhaps a reality? There have always been individuals who have worked on certain latent faculties and who can thus see more than others. Their testimony might be just as valid as the testimony of those who look through the microscope. How many people have actually seen what the scientific history of creation teaches? I would like to ask, how many people have seen what they talk about? How many, for example, have in actual fact, proof of the development of the human embryo? If they were to ask themselves such questions they would see what a blind faith it is that governs them. And if it is a justified faith, then the faith based on the testimony of the Initiates who speak from their spiritual experiences is equally justified.

Thus, in a spiritual-scientific sense, we speak of a second body of man's being. It is the same thing which, in the Christian religion, we find designated by St. Paul as the spiritual body. We speak of the etheric or life-body. Any particular sum of chemical and physical forces would never crystallise themselves into a life form if they were not formed principally by that which permeates every living body as its etheric or life-body. Thus we call this second body the etheric or life body. It is that which the human being has in common with the entire plant and animal world.

But the plant does not have what we call urges, desires, passions. A plant has no inner sensation (Empfindung) of pleasure or pain, for one cannot speak of sensation when one observes that a being reacts only to what is external. One can only speak of sensations when the outer stimulus is reflected inwardly, when it is there as an inner experience. This domain of present-day physiology, which speaks of a body of sensations in the plant, only shows a tremendous dilettantism in the comprehension of such concepts.

Where animal life begins, where pleasure, pain, urges, desires and passions begin, one speaks of the third body of the human being, the astral body. Man has this in common with the whole animal world.

Now there is something in the human being which goes over and beyond the animal world and which makes man the crown of creation. We can best bring this before our souls by making a small and subtle observation.

There is in the whole range of the language one name which differs from all others. Everyone can say ‘table’ to a table, or ‘chair’ to a chair. But there is one name which cannot be used in the same way. No one can say ‘I’ to me and mean me. The word ‘I’ can never fall on our ears when it means me. People have always felt this to be something of essential importance. And one found, even in the most popular of ancient religious faiths, that an important point regarding the soul lay here. Where the soul begins to feel the divine in itself, where it begins in this dialogue with itself to say ‘I’ to itself, to converse with itself in such a way that cannot come from outside, then that is where the divine being of the soul begins its path of development in man. The god in the human being is made known here. The secret and ancient teachings of the Hebrews perceived this. Thus this name was called the unutterable Name of God, the name which means: “I am the I-am”.

In the belief of the Old Testament, this name signified the annunciation of the Godhead in the human soul. For this reason tremendously powerful feelings and sensations went through the throng when the priest announced this name of the Godhead in the human soul: Jahve. This is the fourth body in the human being, with which his external nature ends and his divinity begins. And we have seen how man is guided, as it were, by outer forces upwards to the ‘I’. There he stands, and from then onwards he begin to work in himself. This ‘I’ works downwards into the three other parts of the human being. Be quite clear about this difference that exists between human beings from this point of view. Compare a savage with an average European, or with a noble idealist perhaps Schiller or Francis of Assisi.

If the astral body is the bearer of desires and passions, we must say: the astral body of the savage is completely surrounded by the forces of Nature, but the average European has worked something into his astral body. He says to himself of certain passions and desires, ‘you cannot pursue these’—for he has transformed his astral body. And it has been transformed even more by such a personality as Schiller, and still more by a personality who stands in no relation at all to passions—such as Francis of Assisi—and who has completely purified and is master of this astral body, over all urges and desires. Thus one can say of a human being who has worked on himself, that his astral body consists of two parts. One part is that which is given by Nature, by divine powers; and the other is that part which he himself has developed within it. This second part, the part transformed by the ‘I’, we call Spirit-Self or Manas.

Now there are things which go more deeply still into the nature of man, where the ‘I’ works down further than just into the astral body. As long as you check your vices simply by moral and legal maxims, you are working on your astral body. But there are other cultural means whereby the ‘I’ works on itself, and those are the religious impulses of humanity. What stems from religion is a driving force of the spiritual life, is more than external legal maxims or moral tenets. When the ‘I’ works on the basis of religious impulses it works into the etheric body. In just the same way, when the ‘I’ is absorbed in gazing on a work of art and gains an intimation that behind the existence of the senses there can be embodied an eternal, hidden element, then the artistic image works not only into the astral body of the human being but ennobles and purifies the etheric body. If you could only observe, as a practicing occultist, the way in which a Wagner opera works on the different members of the human nature, it would convince you that it is especially music which is able to send its vibrations deep into the etheric body.

The etheric body is also the bearer of everything that is more or less permanent in human nature. One must be quite clear what kind of difference exists between the development of the etheric body and the astral body. Let us recall our own life. Just think of all you have learnt since you were eight; it is a tremendous amount. Consider the content of your souls: principles, mental pictures and so on. These are changes, transformations of your astral body. But now think how little in most people—there has been a change in what we call habits, temperament and general abilities. If someone is short-tempered, this already showed itself early on and has changed little. If someone was a forgetful child, he will still be a forgetful person today. One can show this unequal development by a small example. Think of this development as if the changes in the astral body could be shown by the minute-hand of a clock, and the changes in the etheric body by the hour-hand. What the human being changes in his etheric body, what the ‘I’ has made out of the etheric body, is called Buddhi or, if one wishes to use the term—Life-Spirit.

There is a still higher development which the occult pupil undergoes. This rests on the fact that one becomes a completely different human being in the etheric body. When the ordinary person learns, he learns with the etheric body. When the pupil of Spiritual Science learns, he must become a different person. His habits and temperament must change; for it is this that allows him to see into other worlds. His whole etheric body is gradually transformed.

The most difficult thing for a human being is to learn to work, even into the physical body. One can become master of how the blood circulates; one can gain influence over the nervous system over the process of breathing and so on; one can also learn here. When the human being is able to work into his physical body and learn thereby to enter into a connection with the Cosmos, he develops his Atman. This is the highest member of the being of Man; and because it is connected with the process of breathing (Atmung) it is called Atman. Spirit-Man is then found in physical man.

Thus, just as the rainbow has seven colours and the scale seven notes, so we have seven members of the being of man. The human being, then, consists of: first, the physical body; second, the etheric body; third, the astral body; fourth, the ‘I’; fifth, Manas; sixth, Buddhi; and seventh, Atman. When Man arrives at the highest stage of his development, when he makes his own physical body, then we have true Spirit-Man.

Now with regard to the question concerning us today, we must look more closely at this being, at this nature of Man. A riddle in the relations between man and woman will resolve itself here in a strange way out of human nature itself. It is precisely occultism, or the intimate observation of the human nature, that guides us into the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, the ‘I’, and that which the ‘I’ has done.

In every human being—this is a fact—the etheric body consists of two parts; the etheric body of a man, as he lives among us, shows itself to have feminine features, and the etheric body of a woman to have masculine features. Many facts in life become clearer when we recognise that in a man there is something of the feminine nature, and in a woman, a more masculine nature. From this it can be explained why certain character features can arise in Man. In truth we never have before us in the physical, material human body anything other than a physical expression of the totality of the individuality. The human soul forms for itself a body with two poles, just as a magnet does. It forms for itself a masculine and a feminine part, each of which can be either a physical body, or reacts at another time as the etheric body. Hence, with regard to those emotions which are associated with the etheric body—devotion, courage, love—a woman can clearly evince masculine characteristics, and a man womanly characteristics. In contrast, with regard to all those characteristics which depend more on the physical body, the consequences of gender will express themselves in outer life.

Hence it seems clear that in every human being, if we wish to consider him as a totality, we have a phenomenon before us with two parts—one revealed and material, and one hidden and spiritual. And only that man is a complete human being who is capable of combining an external masculinity with a beautiful feminine character within. And it is precisely this that the greatest spirit, namely, those of a mystical nature, have always felt in the spiritual life of the past.

This is an important point. Men have played a greater part because materialism impels itself towards an external culture. This external culture is a man's culture because it was meant to be a material culture. But we must also be aware that in the development of world history one cultural epoch gives way to another, and that this one-sided masculine culture must find its completion through that which lives in every human being. One senses this precisely in the age of this masculine culture. That is why, when the mystics spoke from the innermost depths of their souls, they defined this soul as something feminine. And it is from this that you find everywhere the comparison of the soul, receptive as it is to the world, with Woman; and on this is based Goethe's saying in the ‘Chorus mysticus':

Everything transient
Is but illusion
The inadequate—
Here it becomes event;
The indescribable—
Here it is done;
The Eternal-feminine
Bears us aloft.

It is nonsense to analyse this saying in a trivial way. One can analyse it in a right way, and in the true Goethean sense, when one says: He who knew something of noble spiritual culture also pointed to the feminine character of the soul; and precisely from this masculine culture did the saying: ‘The Eternal feminine bears us aloft’ struggle free. Thus the greater world, the Macrocosm was pictured as a man, and the soul, which was fructified by the wisdom of the Cosmos, as the feminine.

And what then is this peculiar way of thinking which has developed in men over the centuries, this logic? If we wish to look into the depths of its nature, then we must see something feminine—imagination—which must be fructified by the masculine.

Thus, when we consider that which grows over and beyond the differences of gender, we see the higher nature of the human being—that which the ‘I’ creates out of the lower bodies. Man and woman must look on their physical body as an instrument which enables them, in one direction or another, to be active as a totality in the physical world. The more human beings are aware of the spiritual within them, the more does the body become an instrument, and the more do they learn to understand people by looking into the depths of the soul.

This, indeed, will not give you a solution to the Woman's question, but it will give you a perspective. You cannot solve the Woman's question with trends and ideals! In reality you can only solve it by creating that concept, that disposition of soul which enables men and women to understand each other out of the totality of human nature. As long as people are preoccupied with matter, a truly fruitful discussion on the Woman's question will not be possible.

For this reason it should not surprise us that, in an age that has given birth to a masculine culture, the spiritual culture which has begun in the Theosophical movement had to be born from a woman. Thus this Theosophical or spiritual-scientific movement will prove itself to be eminently practical. It will lead humanity to overcome gender in itself and to rise to the level where Spirit-Man or Atman stands which is beyond gender, beyond the personal—to rise to the purely human. Theosophy does not speak of the genesis and development of the human being in general, so that it is gradually recognised. Thus there will gradually awake in woman a consciousness similar to that which, during this masculine culture, has awoken in men. Just as Goethe speaking from the depths of soul, once said, ‘The Eternal-feminine bears us aloft’, so others too who, as women feel in themselves the other side of the human being, and who, in a truly practical sense understand it spiritual-scientifically, will speak of the Eternal-masculine in the feminine nature. Then true understanding and a true solution of soul will be possible for the Women's question.

For external nature is the physiognomy of the soul life. We have nothing in our external culture other than what human beings have created, what human beings have translated from impulses into machines, into industry, into the legal system. In their development, external institutions reflect the development of the soul. An age, however, which clung to the outer physiognomy, was able to erect barriers between men and women. An age that is no longer entrenched in what is material, what is external, but which will receive knowledge of the inner nature of the human being which transcends sex, and will, without wishing to crawl into bleakness or asceticism or to deny sexuality, enable and beautify the sexual and live in that element which is beyond it. And people will then have an understanding for what will bring the true solution to the woman's question, because it will present, at the same time, the true solution to the eternal question of humanity. One will then no longer say: ‘The Eternal-feminine bears us aloft’, or ‘The Eternal-masculine bears us aloft’, but, with deep understanding, with deep spiritual understanding one will say: ‘The Eternal-human bears us aloft’.

Most people don't know much more about the word Logos than that it consists of five letters. What they say about these high beings, the three Logoi is often just dilettantish talk. A comprehensive, preparatory understanding is necessary to look into the world of the three Logoi. But men often think that they can understand the very highest things right away. “In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was a God. Everything was made by the same, and without it nothing that was made came into being.” If we let this opening of John's Gospel reverberate in our soul, we get an inkling that something very high is being referred to.

How is the present sun related to the Sun condition that preceded the Moon condition? An advancement has taken place. The present fixed-star sun was previously the planet Sun. The best forces and beings separated from the planet sun, and those that were less highly developed went on with the Moon and then with our earth. Every planet eventually becomes a fixed star.

Our earth is an ensouled being with lower and higher beings on it. When a planet develops into a fixed star the beings who are embodied on it also go higher. The best forces and beings of old Sun became the fixed-star sun. When our earth has gone through the Jupiter condition, and as Venus is almost a sun, the human being will be similar to the sublime beings who now live on the sun. And then what does a sun become? When a sun has attained maturity a zodiac forms. Zodiacs also arise and perish. Even more mighty and sublime beings work down from a zodiac than from a sun. The sun that shines down on us now will someday shine down as the stars of a new zodiac. The spirit beings of this new zodiac will be creative souls, creative beings at the highest stage of development. If we look at human development we also see organs that are standing at the end of their development and are withering, and others like the heart will be a voluntary muscle in future, and the larynx will creatively speak out human descendents with the word. This will begin when the earth planet becomes a fixed star and then a zodiac. Beings who went through worlds before the earth was Saturn sounded down the creative word when the earth was at the beginning of its evolution. “In the beginning was the word” should be taken quite literally. At the end of evolution man will be a being who creates through the word. He arose from a creative Logos and he'll later be a creative logos himself.

The creative word is the third Logos of the Trinity. He's the world sound that resounds through the world. A higher, more sublime power is the creative light. Man will also be a shining light later. Warmth that's raised to a higher level becomes light. In the future man won't just be sound—he'll become a radiant, shining being that is light. The creative light is creative for our world as the second Logos. The world aroma goes through the cosmos as the highest revelation; it's a higher principle of creation than world sound and world light. World sound is the third Logos, world light is the second Logos and the universe's aroma is the first, most creative and highest Logos. In folk sagas we have the opposite, bad aroma of the devil, that indicates that he's the destructive being of the world. In occultism one calls the eternal part of man that goes through all evolutions his personal, spirit aroma.

The right hand is created out of confidence and is meant for work. The left hand is created out of love and is made for blessing. The right foot is formed out of certainty, the left one out of steadfastness. The heart is the center of the human body.

Each of the seven cyclical archangels reign for a certain period. Their opponents are Mammon's hosts who throw hindrances in their way. Masters must fight against all kinds of hindrances also.

The period in which Anael reigns is the age of love; before him is Oriphiel who brings the wrath of the Gods. In the Oriphiel age Christ Jesus will walk on earth again, but in a very, very different form. We're supposed to prepare for this time. We'll reincarnate sooner to work in the Oriphiel age.

In the Bible Gabriel is the proclaimer of birth; it's Gabriel who prepares the developing human being. He's the preparer and Michael is the one who lets if flow out.

Man is interwoven, divided up and cut into pieces in the whole cosmos. That's what the saga of Dionysos means. He was cut into pieces, but Zeus swallowed the heart and gave rise to the younger Dionysos.

With somebody who hears the word “social question” today, the most different sensations stir according to his situation and experience and the seriousness with which he is able to take life. Thus, it must be compared with a question that should deeper occupy our time, actually, than it occupies it. Indeed, this seems to be paradoxically expressed. Those who are touched immediately by that which the word social question encloses deal indeed enough with it. However, those who are preserved even today to come into immediate contact with that which forms the basis of the social question as a cause are not still convinced thoroughly enough that every thinking human being should absolutely occupy himself with it.

Those who take each day as it comes and probably blink the requirements of the day may experience that either they themselves or their descendants have negative experiences just because of their ignorance. You hear even today when people speak of the social question in the sense that our time must find a way out from the situation in which many human beings got into because of the form of our social life: there were always rich and poor people; there was always a social question as long as humanity lives and strives. Hence, it is not surprising if in our time those want to express this more or less distinctly who are not blessed with worldly goods and want to conquer that in conflict which fortune does not give them. There were always rich and poor human beings, those who were depressed and those who were blessed more or less with possessions.

With these words, one probably wants to wipe away the peculiarity of the social question, wants to darken it. One points to the slave revolts of antiquity, to the revolts in the Middle Ages and to other events where the depressed ones tried to get their rights, and one consoles himself with such phenomena.

Today everybody should know, actually that the social question is really something new in the human life, that it is something different from similar movements in other times of the historical life. For those who look for a solution of the social question today are persons within our social order first who exist with this character and stand before us since a short time only. This depressing fact is a result of the last 120 to 130 years at most; this originated due to the present, infinitely important progress of the human civilisation. We see this progress coming up at the end of the 18th century, when those machines etcetera emerged from the heads of our inventors.

Since life flows together more and more in the industrial centres and cities, the wageworker, the proletarian appears in the modern sense of the word. One cannot separate the social question from this human class actually created due to the immense progress of civilisation. The slave of antiquity struggled, actually, only if he felt depressed in particular, and he did not have the consciousness that his life could be improved or his oppression could be reduced with any other social order. It was similar in the Middle Ages, too. However, the modern proletarian demands more and more that not this or that single matter is to be combated, but that only a thorough reform, maybe also a radical change of the conditions, can generally change his situation. This conviction has found an immense propagation, a much bigger propagation within the working class than those believe who close their eyes. It is sometimes for someone who figures the matters out quite astonishing that; nevertheless, there are always still people who do not have seriousness enough to go into these matters.

It could seem rather odd if anybody examined such a practical demand of the day, such a question of life from the point of view of spiritual science. For the most people have the idea of it that it is something impractical, the most impractical stuff of the world that it has arisen from the heads of some dreamers and deals with all kinds of matters not dealing with reality. Indeed, people hear that there is the spiritual-scientific movement, which teaches about various things and beings of a supersensible world round us and about the supersensible basis of the human being himself. Indeed, one also hears that this spiritual research speaks of many facts, for example, of the repeated lives on earth and of the great principle of the spiritual causing of our actions and destinies. One hears that it leads up to all kinds of higher worlds et cetera. Now someone can simply think, which practical and interesting facts of such a question of life like the social one can anybody recognise who occupies himself with such things!

However, life praxis has a particular explanation. We want to speak once about this subject just to show how spiritual science has a real significance only if it is able to intervene in the practical questions of life. At the same time, we ask ourselves, what have we to direct our attention upon, if there is talk of the social question?—The social question exists, the appearance can convince us of it, and this appearance convinces somebody most urgently who deals with life. We could show that with the boom of our industry—just in England—social conditions of the most dreadful kind have originated. It was for those who wanted to make industry fertile for what they called their world solely the question: how does one get labour force the cheapest?—There we see those excesses then which were often described how industry also produces strong shadow beside strong light and how the blessings of our machines, railways, and steamboats develop during the 19th century. However, we also realise that in the wake of that the human being must work, now and again for working hours, which certainly exceed all that is humanly possible. We know that in the 19th century not only adults had to work for 12, 16, 18 or even 20 hours. People who are not immediately touched know nothing about these matters. We also know that one employed children of the tenderest age in an almost unbelievable way in factories. We know how people have become blind to the impossibility of such a thing.

We only need to point to a fact that once in a parliament one discussed whether it is not incredible that children are employed in the industry for eighteen to nineteen hours, as it was the case, and a doctor countered that this had to be that way in some cases! One asked the gentleman whether he did not regard a working time of 24 hours as something impossible. He replied, I have convinced myself by deep reasons that the commonplaces that are talked in such matters cannot always be taken seriously, and I cannot furnish particulars of any working time below 24 hours, which could be anyhow detrimental to health.—Such a thing characterises the situation more than even the fact in which humanity has been brought by that which is such a blessing for it at the same time. Who has not realised in life—if he is able to open his eyes—that now and again human beings of the tenderest age cannot learn anything if they are sent to school. All attempts and ideals to make them human beings are of no avail because they are not equipped—because of the social need—with those forces which are sufficient to a humane existence.

It is impossible to describe the social need in which humanity was often brought; I had to unroll too many pictures. However, we can no longer deny that one fact is sure: that big progress of the human mind, which has constructed the machines etcetera, which has spun round our whole earth with a matchless traffic network, this development of the human mind did not keep abreast of the reflection that is the optimal way of the human living together. Today nobody would believe that a machine constructs itself that no intelligence, no mental power must be applied to bring a machine into being and to create a traffic system. However, how many are there today who—even if they do not admit it—take the view in their innermost feeling that the human co-existence originates completely from itself that one does not need any mental strength to intervene in it as one intervenes in a factory.

Indeed, one does not need to go as far as a great naturalist of the 19th century who said, oh, humanity has made immense progress of the knowledge and understanding of the world; however, concerning morality it has not taken a step forward!—One does not need to go so far, but it is a fact which nobody can deny that only a very few human beings who are not immediately touched by the social misery feel the necessity today to deal with the social question.

However, if we look at those who deal or should deal with the social question, what about them? There a book appeared, for example, not so very long ago by the councillor Kolb: As a Worker in America (1904). The man left his office with immense unselfishness, with a real devotion for a while and went to America. He worked hard in a bicycle factory to get to know the social life. I have to say first—that nobody may reproach that I judge unfairly—that his action is an exceptionally meritorious one that one cannot appreciate it enough. However, we want to look at a single statement of this book. You read a rather typical sentence in it: “How often have I asked once seeing a healthy man begging with moral indignation: why does this beggarly fellow not work?—Now I knew it.” He adds, “In theory, one looks at it somewhat different from in practice, and one deals even with the most joyless categories of economics still quite tolerably with the study.”

One would like to say that a whole world of human sensations and human work speaks from such a sentence. We have a man before us who got the position of a councillor. He discloses that he has known life so little that he called everybody a beggarly fellow who did not work, that he had to leave his office and go far away to America to get to know the life for which he should give advice, to which his actions referred. One can study; one can advance to an excellent position and can be in need of such! One does not have eyes to see to the left and to the right; one knows nothing about life. This is possible!

If we notice such a matter, we may raise the question whether it could not be that the conditions of certain matters are bad because anybody on whom it depends disdains to get to know life. One talks about a lot of improvements, proposals, and matters that one should establish. Human beings must establish them. May there not be a little difference between things, which persons have established who understand something of life, and things, which such persons have established who admit so brilliantly that they understand nothing? What is the use of all talking if one does not see that it depends on somebody who talks about it and knows something about it? How much of that which whirrs through life may be quite empty gossip and how much could be really accomplished and come into being?

The question is probably justified. Many people think about the social question; too many, if we consider the question more seriously if we consider what is necessary to understand something useful of this question. Today there are many people who say: at the moment when the conditions become better when the conditions are changed, the life of the human beings and their situation will be better, too.—We know that above all the most comprehensive social theory in the present, socialism, also positions itself on this point of view. We know that it always stresses, do not give us all kinds of proposals how the human beings should become better how the human beings should behave! Do not give us all kinds of moral demands! What it depends on, is merely—they stress this—to improve the conditions.

Symptomatically you can face such a starry-eyed idealist who represents his social theories at different places of Germany and says repeatedly, yes, people state that the human beings had to become better first if the conditions should become better. However, he says, everything depends on the fact that humanity is transported to the right conditions.—He also tells that one limited the pubs here and there once and that then less drunkards were there, and, therefore, some people were doing better. Then he preaches to the workers that charity, mutual brotherliness is an empty phrase. Everything would depend on causing such conditions of employment and life that everybody has his sufficient existence, and then the moral condition would already become better by itself, too.

You know that socialism develops such a view extensively. This is nothing else than a result of the materialism in our time, that materialism which cannot look, like spiritual science, into the inside of the human being and cannot recognise that any social condition is created by human beings, is the result of human thoughts and feelings. Socialism, however, believes that the human being is a product of the external conditions. This belief paralyses the fruitful consideration of the social life in the highest degree. It is paralysing, and we do not want to state any theoretical proof of it, but we want to adduce a historical evidence.

If anybody was suited for a social reformer, it was Robert Owen (1771-1854) living around the turn of 18th to the 19th centuries. He had two virtues that enabled him to intervene in the social life from his point of view: a candid look for the industrial progress and for the damages, for human welfare and human luck, which this progress brings. He had a candid look and an open heart for human grief, and on the other side, he had a good will and initiative to give at least a number of human beings a worthy existence. He lived in a materialistic time at first and, therefore, he was, like so many, depending on the theory that one needed to cause suitable conditions only to develop a thoroughly moral humanity.

Therefore, he founded a little colony in America, which one could call a model in every respect if the condition had been right. He had guaranteed a humane existence by means of external facilities to the people. Among diligent and keen people, he had neglected ones whom the example of the first should inspire to become decent human beings. An exemplary economy developed that induced the idea in him to try the same in a bigger scale. Then there came the second colony, which was formed as practically and humanely as the first. However, he who had put up not only the theory that the improvement of the conditions must cause the improvement of the human destinies had to experience the disillusion which we characterise with his own words. Because the human beings were not ripe for the conditions he wrote, what does any improvement of the conditions help if not the general moral and knowledge are raised before? First, it depends on informing the human being about his inner life, above all, about his soul forces; then only one can envisage to solve the social question rather worthily.

A practitioner, no theorist judges that way, and it is typical in certain respect how little humanity learns from facts that one maintains the same theories in spite of this repeatedly. However, someone who is able to see a little deeper into the human souls knows that such an individual case is generally connected with the development of the human souls in the present. Whether the one or the other admits it or not, it is the basic conviction that everything can be done if one changes the external conditions, and finds a remedy quickly with the damages which threaten humanity. These are the basic convictions in our time. If we see, for example, repeatedly that laws are justified saying: one is not allowed to deliver the inexperienced humanity to these or those people, and then one does not notice at all that one would have another task than to make laws, that one should teach the inexperienced humanity, so that it could determine their actions itself.

One does not easily look from the conditions to the human beings. However, this is the task of spiritual science. It completely turns away from the conditions and completely to the human beings. We ask ourselves, where from do the conditions round us come?—In so far as they are not imposed by nature, they are the results of the human feeling and thinking. The conditions of today were thoughts and intentions of human beings who have lived once. The conditions are in such a way because human beings have thought them that way. If we want to improve conditions, we have to learn above all to develop better thoughts, feelings, and intentions. However, if we look around among the social theorists, even among the most radical ones, the social democrats if you like, then these theories mostly do not go beyond that which the human beings have always thought. They have originated from the same thoughts and impulses from which our conditions have arisen and have led to our situation. We must be able to have human beings who know life and know what is about the forces that work behind life.

What did Robert Owen lack? He himself had to admit: knowledge of human nature!—One never gets to know the human being if one puts up a worldview that is directed only to the external appearance. As long as the human being does not know what is hidden behind this physical corporeality and he thereby does not attain the ability to look, so to speak, behind the scenes, he is able by no means to understand something about the forces controlling life. However, this is just the task of spiritual science. One may admit that it does not fulfil its task everywhere sufficiently; one has to admit that within the circles looking for it one often plays with the highest questions of existence. That does not matter, but it matters what the spiritual investigation can mean to us. It can be not only something that teaches us that gives us dogmas, but it can be a powerful education of our innermost soul forces. This is the best that one can gain from spiritual science if we consider the spiritual-scientific worldview from the point of view how it transforms the human being. Then the picture presents itself this way.

We speak here about views that the spiritual investigation has about the various fields of life. We were able to speak about this and that of its teachings. However, we will not speak about that. Someone who familiarises himself with spiritual science will notice one thing: concerning one important point it distinguishes itself from everything that is, otherwise, theory today. This is important. In most cases, the human being soon finishes if he should develop a worldview, and he likes it very much if he can have a rounded off worldview as soon as possible. It is clear to experts of the conditions that many a materialist is a materialist only because he does not go far with his thoughts because he falls short. Materialism makes it easy for its followers, very easy. One can oversee the construction of the world from purely material facts easily and see—particularly if it is still illustrated with photos—how the human being has developed. One needs only to stare at them and can pursue the whole way of the world evolution using the usual ideas of life. It is simple to follow what the materialists say about the riddles of the world because the thoughts do not tangle up because no particular requirements are imposed.

The matter is not so easy with spiritual science. It does not make it easy for the human being, because it starts from the real and the true requirement that the secrets of the world are deep and that you must dig up deeply into the basis of the things if you want to understand the world. What spiritual science teaches about the development of the universe and the human being gets the thoughts in manifold tangles. That forces the human being sometimes to deal with details and, on the other side, he is led to the greatest perspectives. However, that has a certain result, and about this result, I want to speak openly. It trains and prepares thinking there where we face this complex human life in the single case to understand this life. Someone will say, the worlds that spiritual science describes have made me quite dizzy.

Is this a bad sign of spiritual science? It would be better if this approach did not make the human being dizzy, but strengthened him, and then he would be ready to understand life with strong soul forces. However, the practical ideas about the world and life are such ones: if a human being thinks about the riddles of the world in short thoughts, he also thinks about the social order in short thoughts. Thus, we see that that which famous people think about social questions is a rather precise picture of that which is offered to us as a materialist worldview unable to penetrate into the depths of life. Besides, everybody has the uncertain feeling that that which causes difficulty for him is a fantastic, dreamlike stuff, and that spiritual science would have to be a fantastic, dreamlike, at least rather idealistic stuff, in any case, unsuitable for practical purposes in life. Indeed, Fichte (Johann Gottlieb F., 1762-1814, philosopher) said more than hundred years ago to his Jena students: those practical people to whom comprehensive ideas always seem impractical because ideas and ideals are not always applicable in life prove only that in the plan of creation one did not count on them. May a benevolent providence give them sunshine, food, and clever thoughts!—Fichte also spoke about the incapability of some people to imagine the spiritual aspect of the ego: “One could most people convince to regard themselves as pieces of lava on the moon than as egos.” However, it is a necessity of life to imagine the ego.

If we consider life and the social question from this point of view, we must say that we consider spiritual science as the great school of life. It makes it impossible that one goes through life, receives a certain position, even becomes a councillor and becomes a life coach, and has to go far, far away to get to know life once during a vacation in order to be convinced of the fact that not everybody who does not work is a beggarly fellow. Such a thing becomes impossible by spiritual science.

Hence, we do not speak only about a spiritual point of view, about any spiritual-scientific views concerning socialism, but we talk about something else. We consider spiritual science as a real thing, not only as a sum of dogmas, but as something that gives knowledge and wisdom, which flows directly in the immediate life at every moment and opens our eyes, so that we cope with this life. Thus, spiritual science is the general basis of any judgment whether we judge in the field of the social life or that of education.

Our judgment becomes sounder because it arises from the true human nature, if we start from spiritual-scientific points of view. We say that someone himself, who is infiltrated with that which spiritual science is able to give, gets to a correct judgment. Anybody may ask, how does a follower of spiritual science think in which way this or that parliamentarian has to judge about a question if he has judged wrongly according to his view?—This is no correct question from the spiritual point of view, but one has to say, it does not concern of saying how this or that should think, but one is convinced that he has—if he is filled with basic truth—a clear judgment on every post. We do not dictate his judgment to him, but he finds the correct judgment. In this respect, spiritual science is the most liberal life principle that can be there. It is not dogmatic, but it gives the human being the possibility to have his own, sound free judgment always and everywhere.

Conditions—we have started from it—are often regarded as that which can change the human being, and one thinks in the abstract how conditions can be changed. Spiritual science is solely concerned with the real human soul, with the relations from human being to human being. It is quite impossible today to go into single concrete matters of the social question. However, I want to point to this or that to find the components that show us the way where we are in life to intervene correctly. For it is our task to intervene. If we want to find the components, we ask ourselves, which is, actually, the basic fact, the basic phenomenon on which all misery, all social grief may generally depend in the world?—Spiritual science can show us this basic fact, putting us before a fact that most people do not understand and acknowledge today. This fact is connected with a basic phenomenon of any development. I would like to say, speaking dryly, it shows us by deeper views on life that poverty, grief and misery not only—and least of all if one finds the underlying cause of the things—depend on external conditions, but on a certain soul constitution and in the connection with it on its external effects.

The practitioner who regards himself as much cleverer thinks that this is ridiculous. However, one can only stress that it is the most practical in life. It is the sentence of which you persuade yourselves more and more that need, misery and grief are nothing else than the results of egoism. Like a physical law we have to understand this sentence, not in such a way that possibly with a single human being need and grief happen if he is always selfish, but that this grief is connected with this egoism—maybe at another place. Like cause and effect, egoism is connected with the need and grief. Egoism leads to the struggle of existence in the human life, in the social human order. The struggle for existence is the real starting point of need and grief, if they are social. Because of our modern way of thinking there is a conviction to which appears absurd what I have just stated. Why? Because one is persuaded today that a big part, by far the biggest part of the human life must be built on egoism. Indeed, with words and theories, one does not want to admit it, but in practice, one will soon admit it. One admits it in the following way. One says, it is quite natural that the human being is paid for his job that he receives the yield of his work personally—and, nevertheless, that is nothing but the implementation of egoism in the economic life. Egoism controls us as soon as we live by the principle: we have to be paid personally; one has to pay to me what I work.—Truth is a long way from this thought so that it seems quite senseless. Who wants to convince himself of the truth about egoism has to go more intimately into various universal principles. He would have to abandon himself thoughtfully to the question whether the work that is paid personally is really life-sustaining, whether it depends on this work?—It is curious to put this question. However, not sooner than one thinks about it, one is able to inform about the social question.

Imagine—this is a paradoxical comparison—a man transported to an island. He has only to supply himself. You say, he must work!—However, he must not only work, this is not the point, but something must be added to his work. If the work is only work, it can eventually be useless for his life. Think once that the man on the island would do nothing but to throw stones during fourteen days. This would be a strenuous work, and according to usual human concepts, he could earn quite a lot of wage. Nevertheless, this work is not at all connected with life. Work is life-sustaining and has value only if anything else is added. If this work consists of the cultivation of the soil and one receives the products of the earth, then work has something to do with life. We see even with lower beings that work is separated from production. Thus, we see a possibility to get to the tremendously important sentence that work as such has no meaning for life, but only that work which is guided wisely. What is to be produced using human wisdom serves the human being. The modern social thinking offends against this sentence because it does not understand in the least.

It does not depend on the fact that anybody invents beautiful abstract theories, but the real progress depends on the fact that every single human being learns to think socially. Modern thinking is often antisocial. It is antisocial, for example, if anybody is on Sunday afternoon outdoors and says, animated by occasion: I write twenty postcards. It is correct and socially intended to know and to feel that these twenty cards cause so many postmen climbing so and so many stairs. It is social thinking to know that any action, which one does, has an effect in life. Now, however, somebody comes and says that he thinks socially inasmuch as he understands that more postmen must be employed and get their bread because of this card writing.—This is, as if one thinks of anything that one wants to build in order to employ unemployed workers. However, it does not depend on job creation, but that the work of the human beings is used solely to create valuable goods.

If one thinks that through to the last consequences, it does no longer seem so strange if the ancient sentence of spiritual science is pronounced which sounds today as incomprehensible as possible: in a social living together, the impulse of working must never be in the own personality of the human being, but only in the dedication to the community. This is also often emphasised, but it is never understood in such a way that misery and need originate from the fact that the single human being wants to have paid what he has worked for. However, it is true that real social progress is only possible if I do that which I work for in the service of the community, and if the community gives me what I need, if, with other words, what I work for does not serve me. The social progress depends solely on the recognition of this sentence that someone does not want to get the yield of his work as a personal remuneration. Somebody leads an enterprise to quite different purposes who knows that he should have nothing for himself from that which he works for, but that he owes work to the social community, and that, vice versa, he should claim nothing for himself, but limits his existence to that which the social community gives him. As absurd this is for many people today, as true it is. The opposite fact influences our life today: by the claim of the worker to get the full yield of his work more and more. As long as the thinking moves in this direction, one comes into worse and worse situations.

This antisocial thinking tempts to shift all concepts. Think once how within the widespread socialism one speaks of exploiters and exploited. Who is the exploiter, and who is the exploited from the view of clear thinking? Let us look at a worker who produces a garment for starvation wages. Who is his exploiter? Perhaps, the man who buys the garment and pays a very low price for it. Does only the rich man buy this garment? Does the same worker who complains about exploitation not buy this cheap garment? Does he not require today, within the social order, that it should be as cheap as possible? You see the working woman who works with bloody fingers during the week can wear the dress for a cheap price on Sunday because the human labour of another person is exploited!

That has nothing to do with wealth or poverty in front of the clear thinking, but solely with our idea of human relations in the world. Anybody could easily say, if you demand that the existence of the human being should be independent of his performance, then an official complies with the ideal most nicely. The modern official is independent. The measure of his existence is not depending on the product, which he produces, but from that which one regards as necessary to his existence.—Indeed, but such an objection has a very big mistake. It depends on the fact that everybody is able to respect this principle and to implement it in life freely. It does not matter that this principle is carried out by general power. This principle has to penetrate every single human life to make the personally acquired independent from that which one works for the community. How does it assert itself?

There is only one possibility to assert itself, which will seem rather impractical to the so-called practitioner. There must be reasons why the human being works; nevertheless, namely rather diligently and devotedly if no longer the self-interest is the impulse of his work. Somebody does not create anything real concerning the social life in truth, who takes out a patent of any achievement and shows this way that he regards the self-interest as significant in life. However, somebody works really for life who is led by his forces to right achievements merely by love, by love to the whole humanity, which he gives his work with pleasure and willing. Thus, the impulse of work must be in anything else than in remuneration. This is the solution of the social question: separation of remuneration from work. For this is a worldview which aims at the spirit to wake such impulses in the human being that he does no longer say: if my income is secure, I can be lazy.—A spiritual worldview can only achieve that he does not say this. Any materialism solely leads to its opposite in the long run.

Anyone may now say: this is a nice little test of the social question; this is rather cute! Have we not always preached this, the one may say, that the human beings are selfish, and that one must count on their egoism? Now there comes the spiritual worldview and says that this can change.—Indeed, one has always preached that this could not be different and one was very proud of it and said, someone is a true practitioner who counts on the human egoism.—Indeed, but here the thinking of the people does not turn the tables. For those who blame everything for conditions, for facilities must admit that at least—because just the conditions were in such a way as they have developed up to now—that also this desire and impulse came into the human being. However, there the thinking becomes too short. For, otherwise, they would have to say, yes, quite different surroundings are created at any rate, if the idea becomes established that it is indecent to found everything on personal self-interest. Materialism becomes inconsistent there even compared with its own requirements.

We must understand that the impulses of spiritual science could never be given to the human development up to now. In this respect, it is a new spiritual movement, and it will have the strength to work on the innermost soul because it penetrates into the innermost world. Only a worldview that penetrates the core and fetches truth there can show us the true face of the world. It is never right that we can become bad by true knowledge if we see the true face of the world. Nevertheless, it is true that the bad in the human being can come only from mistake and error. Hence, spiritual science bases because of its knowledge of the human nature on the fact that it will achieve that with which just the noble Owen deceived himself so much.

He says, it is necessary that the human beings are enlightened first so that moral is improved.—Spiritual science, however, says, it is not sufficient to emphasise this principle, but the means must be given by which the soul can be improved. If a spiritual worldview improves and strengthens the souls, the conditions and external relations will follow because they are always reflections of that which the human beings think. The human beings are not determined by conditions, but the human beings make these conditions, as far as the conditions are social. If the human being suffers from conditions, he suffers in truth from that which his fellow men bring on him. Any misery that has come with the industrial development came only from the fact that the human beings did not bother to apply the same strength of mind, which they had applied to the beneficial external progress, to the improvement of the destinies of those persons who are needed for the transformation of this progress.

Whatever you have studied in the external life, study the laws of the human living together equally busily! If, however, human beings live together, not only bodies, but also souls, minds live together. Hence, only spiritual science can be the basis of any social worldview. Thus, we see that, indeed, the deepening of the mind can enable us to assist from our low posts within our sphere in the big social progress. For this progress is not achieved by an abstract rule, but it is a sum of that which the single soul does. Only a worldview like spiritual science approaches the single soul in such a way that it really raises this soul above it. If our social misery has its reason in the personal self-interest, in the position in our social orders, then only a worldview can help which raises the ego out of the personal self-interest. As peculiar as it appears, food originates not only from our work; food originates also from the spiritual-scientific deepening instead of need, grief, and misery. Spiritual science is a means to give the human being food and prosperity, in the true sense of the word.

Thus, it is really justified, even concerning our changed conditions, what Goethe said about the real liberation from all obstacles and misfortune of life. Goethe says in the poem The Secrets: “From the power that ties all beings that human being frees himself who overcomes himself.”

That sentence that Goethe said about the single human being also applies to humanity in as much as this human being is a social being: those human beings who overcome themselves free the world from the power that ties all beings.

Our lectures ¹ upon the Gospel of St. John will have a double purpose. One will be the deepening of the concepts of Spiritual Science themselves and their expansion in many directions, and the other will be to make this great document itself comprehensible by means of the thoughts that will arise in our souls in consequence of these deepened and expanded concepts. I beg you to hold clearly in mind that it is the intention of these lectures to proceed in these two directions. It should not be simply a question of explanations of this Gospel, but rather that by means of the latter we shall penetrate into the deep mysteries of existence and we should hold very clearly in mind how the perceptive method of Spiritual Science must be developed when we are dealing with any of the great historical records handed down to us by the different religions of the world. In fact we might imagine that if the exponent of Spiritual Science speaks about the Gospel of St. John, he will do so just as others have often done, that is, he will take some such document as this Gospel as a basis in order that he may draw from it the truths that are under discussion and present them on the authority of this religious document. But this can never be the concern of a spiritually scientific, cosmic point of view. It must be a quite different one. If Spiritual Science is to fulfill its true mission in respect of the modern human spirit, then it should point out that if men will only learn to use their inner forces and capacities—their forces and capacities of spiritual perception—they will be able, by applying them, to penetrate into the mysteries of life, into what is concealed within the spiritual worlds behind the world of the senses. The fact that men can penetrate to the mysteries of life through the use of inner capacities, that they are able to reach the creative forces and beings of the universe through their own cognition must be brought more and more into the consciousness of present day humanity. Thus it becomes evident that a knowledge of the mystery of this Gospel can be gained by men, independent of every tradition, independent of every historical document.

In order to make this absolutely clear, we shall have to express ourselves in quite radical terms. Let us suppose that through some circumstance all religious records had been lost, and that men possessed only those capacities which they have today; they should, nevertheless, be able to penetrate into life's mysteries, if they only retain those capacities. They should be able to reach the divine-spiritual creating forces and beings which lie concealed behind the physical world. And Spiritual Science must depend entirely upon these independent sources of knowledge, irrespective of all records. However, after having investigated the divine-spiritual mysteries of the world independently, we can then take up the actual religious documents themselves. Only then can we recognize their true worth, for we are, in a certain sense, free and independent of them. What has previously been independently discovered is now recognized within the documents themselves. And you may be sure that for anyone who has pursued this path, these writings will suffer no diminution in value, no lessening of the respect and veneration due them.

Let us make this point quite clear by means of a comparison with something very different. It is true that Euclid, the old geometrician, first gave us that geometry which every school boy today studies at a certain stage of his school life. But is the acquisition of a knowledge of geometry absolutely dependent upon this book of Euclid? I ask you, how many pupils today study elementary geometry without knowing the least thing about this first book in which Euclid presented the most rudimentary geometrical facts? They study these geometrical facts quite apart from this Euclidian book, because geometry originates in a capacity of the human spirit. If the pupil has first studied geometry by means of his own spiritual faculty, and afterwards takes up the great work by Euclid, he then understands how to appreciate it adequately. For the first time then he finds in it what he has already made into a capacity of his own mind, and he learns to value the form in which the corresponding knowledge was presented for the first time. Thus it is possible today to discover the great cosmic facts presented in the Gospel of St. John by means of the forces slumbering within the human soul without knowing anything about the Gospel itself, just as the pupil acquires a knowledge of geometry without knowing anything about the first book of Euclid.

If previously equipped with knowledge about the higher worlds, we take up this Gospel and inquire into what is disclosed therein concerning the spiritual history of mankind, we find that the deepest mysteries of the spiritual world are concealed within a book, are given to mankind in a book, and because we already know the truths concerning the divine spiritual world, we can now recognize the divine-spiritual nature of this document, this Gospel of St. John. For this is altogether the right way to approach those documents which deal with spiritual things. What is the position of the exponent of Spiritual Science in relation to those researchers of records dealing with spiritual matters who understand very well, from the standpoint of language, everything presented in documents like the Gospel of St. John; in other words what is his position in relation to those who are pure philologists? (Even the theological researchers of a certain type are today only philologists in respect of the content of such books). Let us take once more the parallel of the geometry of Euclid. Will the best expounder of geometry be the one who in his own way can make a good literal translation without the vaguest conception of geometrical knowledge? Something very extraordinary would result were such a person to attempt to translate Euclid, understanding previously nothing at all about geometry. On the other hand, even if the translator himself were a poor philologist, but understood geometry, he would still be able to give the proper value to this book. The exponent of Spiritual Science is in a similar position in relation to many other researchers of the Gospel of St. John. Today this Gospel is often interpreted in much the same way as the philologist would explain the geometry of Euclid. But from Spiritual Science itself we can gain knowledge about the spiritual worlds recorded in this Gospel. So the spiritual scientist stands in the same relation to this spiritual document as the geometrician to Euclid. He has brought with him something which he now is able to discover in the Gospel itself.

We do not need to dwell upon the objection, that in this way much is “read into” the documents. We shall soon see that whoever understands the content of the Gospel of St. John need not put into it something that is not there and if he understands the nature of the Spiritual Science interpretation, he will not need to concern himself much with this reproach. Just as other documents do not depreciate in value or lose in veneration when their true content is known, so too is such the case with this Gospel. To anyone who has penetrated into the mysteries of the world, it becomes one of the most significant documents in the spiritual life of mankind.

If we consider its exact content, we may then ask: Why should the Gospel of St. John, which for the spiritual researcher is such an important document, be pushed more and more into the background in relation to the other Gospels by the very theologians who should be called upon to explain it? We shall touch upon this as a preliminary question before entering upon a consideration of the Gospel itself.

You all know that in respect of this Gospel, extraordinary points of view and opinions have possessed certain minds. In olden times it was revered as one of the deepest and most significant documents in the custody of mankind concerning the being of Christ Jesus and His activities upon earth; and in the earlier periods of Christianity, it would never have entered the mind of any one to consider it other than a powerful, historical testimony of the events in Palestine. But in recent times this has all changed and just those who think they stand most securely upon the foundation of historical research are the ones who have, for the most part, undermined the foundation upon which such a concept rests. For some time, and this can now be reckoned in centuries, men have begun to notice the contradictions present in the Gospels, and after much vacillation, the following has become the accepted view especially among theologians: We find many contradictions in the Gospels and it is impossible to see how it happens that in the four Gospels, from four sides, the events in Palestine are so differently related. When we take the descriptions given according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, we have so many different accounts of this or that event that it becomes impossible to believe they are all in agreement with the historical facts. Little by little this became the opinion of those who wished to investigate these things.

In more recent times, the point of view has developed that it is possible to establish a certain harmony between the descriptions of the events in Palestine in the first three Gospels, but that the Gospel of St. John, however, differs greatly in its narrations from the other three. Therefore, in respect of the historical facts, it is preferable that the first three Gospels should be believed, the Gospel of St. John possessing less historical authenticity. Thus gradually the time came when it was stated as a fact that the Gospel of St. John was not written with the same purpose as the first three. The authors of these other Gospels, it was said, wished only to relate what occurred, whereas the writer of the Gospel of St. John did not have this purpose, but quite a different one. And, for various reasons, these critics have yielded to the supposition that the St. John document was written at a comparatively late period,—but we shall speak of these things again. Most of the researchers believe it was not written until the third or fourth decade of the second century A. D.—although perhaps even in the second decade. Therefore they say it was written at a time when Christianity had already become wide-spread in a very definite form and when, perhaps, it already had its enemies. For hostility against Christianity arose from various sources and those who held this opinion said that in the author we have a man before us who endeavoured to present a book of instruction, a kind of apotheosis, or something like a vindication of Christianity in the face of those streams of opposition which had risen up against it. But this writer, they said, never had the intention of picturing accurately the historical facts, his idea being rather to present his own position in relation to his Christ. Thus many see nothing more in this Gospel than a kind of poem imbued with religion, which the author wrote out of a religiously poetical feeling for his Christ, for the purpose of inspiring others also and bringing them into a similar mood. Perhaps this opinion is not expressed everywhere in such extreme terms, but if you study literature, you will find this opinion to be wide-spread, that it has a response in the souls of many of our contemporaries;—indeed, such a belief harmonizes exactly with the sentiments of our contemporaries.

A certain disinclination toward any such idea of an historical beginning as we find depicted in the very first words of the Gospel of St. John has been developing for several centuries among men who have come more and more to a materialistic way of thinking. I should like you just to remember that the very first words permit of no other interpretation than that in Jesus of Nazareth, who lived at the beginning of our Christian era, a being of a very high spiritual order was incarnated. When the author in his wholly characteristic manner spoke of Jesus, he could not do otherwise than begin with what he calls the “Word” or the “Logos” and say: “the Word was in the beginning and all things came into being through It.” If we consider the Word in its full significance, we should say that the author of this Gospel felt impelled to speak of the Logos as the origin of the world, the highest to which the human being can lift his spirit, and to say that through the Logos, the First Cause, all things have come into being. Then the writer continues: “The Logos became flesh and dwelt among us.” This simply means: “You have seen Him who dwelt among us, but you will only be able to understand Him if you recognize the same Principle dwelling within Him through which everything that is about you in the plant, animal and human kingdoms has come into being.” If we do not interpret with too much artificiality, then we must say that according to this document a Principle of the highest order at one time incarnated in human flesh. Let us compare the appeal which such thoughts make to the human heart with the words of many modern theologians. You can read the following in present day theological works and hear it presented in various ways in lectures: We no longer call upon some Supersensible Principle. We prefer the Jesus described in the first three Gospels, for that is the simple Man of Nazareth who is like other men.

In a certain sense this has become an ideal for many theologians and an effort is being made to place everything that has become a part of history as much as possible upon the same level as ordinary human events. It disturbs people that any such exalted being as the Christ of the Gospel of St. John should tower above all others. Therefore they speak of the Christ as the Apotheosis of Jesus, “the simple Man of Nazareth” and He appeals to them in this character, because then they can say: “Yes, we have also a Socrates and other great men.” To be sure they make him different from these others but still they are using a certain standard for an ordinary humanity when they speak of “the simple Man of Nazareth.” This expression “the simple Man of Nazareth,” which you can find today in innumerable theological works, also in theological-academic writings in what is called “Liberal Theology,” has a very close connection with the materialistic tendency of mankind which has been in process of development now for centuries. According to this “Liberal Theology” there is only a physical sense-world; at least it alone has significance.

But in those periods of human evolution in which humanity could still lift its perceptions to the unseen world, it was possible to say: Of course this or that historical personality outwardly, in external appearance, may be compared with the “simple Man of Nazareth,” but in what is spiritual and invisible in His personality, Jesus of Nazareth stands before us as a unique figure. However, when men had lost their insight into the super-sensible and invisible world, then the standard for a humanity above the average was also lost and this is especially noticeable in the religious conceptions of life. Let us have no illusions! Materialism first forced its way into the religious life. Materialism in its relation to the facts of outer natural science is very, very much less dangerous for the spiritual development of mankind than it is in its relation to the interpretation of religious mysteries.

As an illustration, let us consider the true spiritual interpretation of the Last Supper, the changing of Bread and Wine into Flesh and Blood and we shall see that the Last Supper loses nothing in value and importance through this spiritual interpretation. It will be a spiritual interpretation about which we are to hear. This was also the early Christian conception when there was still far more spiritual understanding among men than there is today, and it was still current in the first half of the Middle Ages when many could comprehend the words, “This is my Body, this is my Blood,” as we shall here learn to understand them. However, in the course of centuries, this spiritual interpretation was necessarily lost. We shall learn the reason why.

In the Middle Ages there existed a very extraordinary current which streamed more deeply through the souls of men than is possible to believe, for we learn very little from present-day history about the way human souls were gradually evolved and what they have experienced. About the second half of the Middle Ages we find a deep current of thought flowing through the Christian minds of Europe, for it was then that the earlier spiritual interpretation of the doctrine of the Last Supper was authoritatively changed into a materialistic one. In these words, “This is my Body, this is my Blood,” men could only imagine a material process, a physical transubstantiation of bread and wine into flesh and blood. What was formerly conceived in a spiritual sense began to assume a grossly materialistic meaning. Here materialism crept into the religious life long before it seized upon natural science.

Another illustration is no less significant. We must not imagine that in any of the authoritative explanations of the Middle Ages concerning the Story of Creation, the six days of Creation were interpreted to mean days of twenty-four hours, such as we have today. This interpretation would never have entered the minds of any of the leading theological teachers, because they understood what was presented in these documents. They still knew how to attach a meaning to the words of the Bible. Has it any meaning whatsoever in discussing these documents about the creation, to speak in our present manner of days of creation twenty-four hours long? What is the meaning of a day? A day is what results from the mutual relationship between the rotating earth and the sun. We can only speak of days in our sense when we think of the relationship between the sun and the earth with its movement as it is at the present time. But we find in the Book of Genesis the first narration of any such mutual relationship between sun and earth in connection with the fourth period, the fourth “day” of creation. Therefore “days” in our sense could not possibly have had their beginning prior to the fourth day of the history of creation. Before that time it would have been foolish to imagine days as we have them now. Since only on the fourth “day” conditions arose which made day and night possible, one cannot speak of days in the present sense before that. Then came a time when men no longer recognized the spiritual significance of the words day and night, when they were of the opinion that the only kind of time possible was what they knew in connection with physical days. So to the materialistically minded man and even to the theologian, a day of creation also meant a day like our present day, because they knew of no other.

The older theologians spoke differently about these things. Such an one would have said, first and foremost, that nothing non-essential was to be found in important passages in the old religious documents. To illustrate this, let us consider one special passage. Let us take the twenty-first verse of the second chapter of the First Book of Moses. There we read: “Then the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the human creature, and he slept.” The earlier commentators laid very special importance upon this passage. Those who have understood a little of the evolution of the spiritual forces and capacities of mankind know that there are different states of consciousness, that what we call sleep in the average man is only a transitory state which in the future will develop into one in which the human being, independent of the body, will perceive the spiritual world. (This is today already the case with the initiates.) Therefore the commentators said: God permitted Adam to fall into a deep sleep and then he could perceive what he could not otherwise perceive with the physical sense-organs. This means a clairvoyant sleep—and what is related here is the experience of a higher state of consciousness. So Adam fell into a deep sleep. This was an old interpretation and it was said that a religious document would not have spoken of God's permitting a deep sleep to fall upon the human being if, at an earlier time, he had already gone through such an experience. We are thereby shown that this is the first sleep and that before this time the human being was in states of consciousness in which he was still able constantly to perceive spiritual things. This is what was related to the people.

Today it is our purpose to show that there were, at one time, wholly spiritual interpretations of Biblical documents and that when the materialistic tendency arose, it read into the Bible what is now objected to by liberal-minded people. The materialistically inclined mind first created what it then itself later opposed. So you see how in fact the materialistic tendency in mankind arose and how, because of it, the real, true understanding of religious documents has been lost. If Spiritual Science performs its task and points out what mysteries lie hidden behind physical life, then it will be seen that these very mysteries have been described in the religious documents themselves. The outer trivial materialism which is today considered so dangerous, is only the last phase of the materialism I have described to you. The Bible was first materialistically interpreted. Had this never been done, a Haeckel would never have interpreted nature materialistically in an outer physical science. What was sown as a seed in the realm of religion in the 14th and 15th centuries came to fruition in the 19th in natural science. This brought with it the impossibility of reaching any understanding of the Gospel of St. John except by penetrating into its spiritual foundations. If it is not understood, it will certainly be underrated. Because those who no longer understood it were sickened by a materialistic mode of thought, it appeared to them in the light described above.

A very simple comparison will explain how this Gospel differs from the other three. Let us imagine a mountain and on the mountain and mountain slopes at certain levels, four men are standing and these men—let us say three of them—sketch what they see below. Each of them will make a different sketch according to the position at which he stands, but of course each one of the three pictures is true from its own standpoint. The fourth man, who stands above on the very summit and sketches what is below, will perceive and draw yet another view. Thus it is with the point of view of the three evangelists, the synoptists—Matthew, Mark and Luke—in contrast to that of the evangelist John, who merely describes the facts from another standpoint. And to what lengths have learned interpreters not gone in order to make the Gospel of St. John comprehensible! Often one must really marvel at exact researchers' explanations of what would so easily be seen through were our age not one of the greatest possible belief in authority. Belief in an infallible science has today reached its highest point.

Thus the very prologue to this Gospel becomes something very difficult for the theologians imbued with materialism. The teaching about the Logos, or the Word, has caused great difficulties, for they say: We should have liked so much to have everything plain and simple and naive, then along comes the Gospel of St. John speaking of such lofty philosophical things, of the Logos, of Life, of Light! Philologists are always accustomed to ask about the origin of a thing. With the writings of recent times it is the same. Read what is written about Goethe's Faust. Everywhere you find pointed out the origin of this or that motive. Thus books hundreds of years old have been ferreted out in order to discover, for example, the origin of the word “Worm,” employed by Goethe. In the same way the question is also asked, where did the Evangelist John get the idea of the “Logos?” The other Evangelists who spoke to the simple, plain human understanding did not express themselves in such a personal way. It was said further that the author of this Gospel was a man of Greek education, and then it was pointed out that in Philo of Alexandria, the Greeks have a writer who also speaks of the “Logos.” So it was thought that in cultured Grecian circles one spoke of the Logos when wishing to speak of something exalted, and that it was from this source that St. John derived this word. This again was considered as a proof that the writer of the Gospel of St. John did not rely upon the same traditions as the writers of the other Gospels, but that influenced by Greek culture, he re-coined the facts in accordance with it. Thus, it is alleged, the very first words of the Gospel, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was a God” show that the Logos-idea of Philo had entered into the spirit of the writer of this Gospel and had influenced his form of presentation.

The attention of such people should be called to the very first words of the Gospel of St. Luke:—“Forasmuch as many have undertaken to speak of those events which have thus happened amongst us, even as they have been transmitted unto us by those who from the beginning were eye-witnesses and ministers of the Word (Logos), it seemed well to me also, having examined with diligence all things as they were from the beginning, to relate them unto thee, most excellent Theophilus.”

Here at the very beginning we read that what he is about to relate is what had been transmitted by those who have been eye-witnesses and ministers of the “Word.” It is extraordinary that St. John should have received this from his Greek culture and that St. Luke, who according to this view belonged to the simple folk, also speaks of the “Logos” without this culture. Such things should call the attention of even believers in authority to the fact that arguments which lead to such conclusions are really not exact ones, but only prejudices; (it is the materialistic spectacles that have brought out this idea of the Gospel of St. John). They should call attention also to the fact that the St. John document should be placed alongside the other Gospels in the manner just characterized, because in the Gospel of St. Luke the Logos is also spoken of. What was said by those who were eye-witnesses and ministers of the Logos shows that in olden times the Logos was spoken of as something which the people knew about and with which they were familiar. And this we must particularly hold in mind in order that we may penetrate more deeply into the first paradigmatic verses of the Gospel of St. John. What was a writer speaking about, if at that time he used the word “Logos” or “Word” in our sense? What could he have meant?

You will not come to this ancient conception of the “Logos” through theoretical interpretations and abstract intellectual discussions, but you must enter in spirit into the entire feeling-life of all those who have spoken in this way about the “Logos.” These people also observed the things about them; but it is not sufficient that we simply observe what is in our environment, the important thing is that the feelings of our hearts and souls should also participate in what we observe. We should consider a thing of greater or less importance according to what we are able to discern in it. We all observe the kingdoms of nature about us, the minerals, plants, animals and man. We call the human kingdom the most perfect creation, the mineral the most imperfect. Within the respective kingdoms of nature we differentiate again beings of higher and lower grades. Men have experienced this quite differently in different ages. Those who spoke from the standpoint of the Gospel of St. John found one thing above all else to be of very great importance. They looked down upon the lower animal kingdom and let their glance sweep up as far as man and in this evolutionary sweep they traced something very definite. They said: There is one quality which shows most profoundly the superiority of the higher beings over the lower. This is the capacity to utter aloud in words what exists within the soul, to communicate thoughts to the surrounding world by means of words. Behold the lower animals! They are mute, they do not express their pain and pleasure. They squeak or make other sounds, but it is the outer scraping and rubbing of the physical organs which produce these sounds, as in the case of the lobster. The higher we go in evolution, the more do we see the capacity developed for expressing the inner feelings in sound and communicating in tones the experiences of the soul. Therefore, they said, the human being stands thus high above other creatures, because not only can he express his pleasure and pain in words, but because he is able to put into words what rises above the personal, that is to say, the spiritual, the impersonal, and to express this by means of thoughts.

And there were among the followers of the Logos-doctrine those who said that there existed a period prior to the time when man had developed his present form, a form in which it is now possible for him to express in words the most intimate experiences of his soul. It has taken a long time for our earth to evolve to its present form. (We shall hear later how this earth came into existence.) But if we examine the earlier states of the earth, we do not yet find mankind in its present shape, nor do we find any creature which could utter aloud what it was experiencing inwardly. Our world began with mute creatures and only by degrees did beings appear upon this dwelling place of ours who could express aloud their innermost experiences through having acquired a command of language.

The followers of St. John said further: What appears last in the human being existed in the world in the very earliest times. We fancy that the human being in his present form did not exist in the earlier conditions of the earth. But in an imperfect, mute form he was there and little by little he evolved into a being endowed with the Logos or the Word. This became possible through the fact that what appears within him later as the creative principle was there from the very beginning, in a higher reality. What struggled forth out of the soul was in the beginning the divine creative principle. The Word, which sounds forth from the soul, the Logos, was there in the beginning and so guided evolution that at last a being came into existence, in whom it also could manifest. What finally appears in time and space was already there in spirit from the beginning.

In order that this may be quite clear, let us make the following analogy. I have here a flower before me. This corolla, these petals, what were they a short time ago? A little seed. And in the seed, this white flower existed in potentiality. Were it not there potentially, this flower could not have come into existence. And whence comes the seed? It springs again from just such a flower. The blossom precedes the seed or fruit and again in like manner, the seed, from which this blossom has sprung, has been evolved out of a similar plant.

Thus these followers of the Logos-doctrine observed the human being and said: If we go back in evolution, we find him in earlier conditions still mute, still incapable of speech. But just as the seed came from the blossom, so likewise the mute human-seed in the beginning had its origin in a God endowed with the power of uttering the “Word.” The lily-of-the-valley produces the seed and the seed again the lily-of-the-valley; in like manner the divine creative Word created the mute human seed—and when this primeval creative Word had glided into the human seed, in order to spring up again within it, it sounded forth in words. When we go back in human evolution we meet an imperfect human being and the significance of evolution is, that finally the Logos or Word which discloses the depths of the human soul may appear as its flower. In the beginning this mute human being appears as seed of the Logos-endowed human being, but, on the other hand, has sprung from the Logos-endowed God. The human being has sprung from a mute human creature, not gifted with speech, but: In the beginning was the Logos, the Word.

Thus those who understand the Logos-doctrine in its earlier significance press forward to the divine creative Word which is the beginning of existence and to which the writer of the Gospel of St. John refers. Let us hear what he says in the very first words:—“In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was a God.”

They will ask where is the “Word” today? The Word is also here today and the Word is with men and the Word has become man! Thus the writer of the Gospel of St. John forges a link between man and God and indeed we find sounding forth in the beginning of this Gospel a doctrine easy for every human heart to understand.

In this introductory lecture today, I wished to picture to you in simple words—but more from the standpoint of feeling and of inward sensing—how originally a believer in the doctrine of the Logos interpreted these words of the Gospel of St. John. And after having entered into the soul-mood which existed when these words were first heard, we shall be that much better able to penetrate into the deep meaning which lies at the foundation of this Gospel.

Further, we shall see that what we call Spiritual Science is in fact a restitution of the Gospel of St. John and that it puts us in the position of being able thoroughly to understand it.

• 1. The reader will please remember that he is reading a lecture, something given by the spoken word, hence very different from the written word. The lecturer was speaking to students and had often to repeat. He was moreover never able to correct the stenogram. Ed.