The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Today I will have to say a few things about more recent historical developments from the point of view of the spiritual science which we are considering in these lectures. It will be necessary to take as read some of the things I said in the earlier lectures. Essentially this will be the only precondition. Something else which I will not be able to repeat, time being limited, in so far as it applies today is that along the lines I tried to give in the first lecture, this science of the spirit can confirm that human beings, striving with their powers of soul, must come to recognize a supersensible world, and that a specific training of these powers of soul—I have characterized this at least in principle—will enable human beings to gain insight into the facts pertaining to this supersensible world.

It is now a matter of applying these fundamental truths of anthroposophically orientated spiritual science to one of the most significant fields in human life, the field of history. I will, of course, have to limit myself to what is of most immediate concern to us, the historical evolution of humanity in more recent times. People who do not look far into the development of human civilization take history to be a very old field of study. The truth is, however, that history really only came to life just before the second half of the 18th century, arising from beginnings that could not yet be called history. And in the sense in which we are accustomed to think of history, having learned this at school, namely that history serves to study the laws that govern the evolution of the human race in the course of time—in this sense history is really only a child of the 19th century.

The study of history arose from the interest that people have always shown in other people and their destinies, in so far as those other people and their destinies had a connection with one’s own life, being on the periphery of one’s personal life experience. We might say it is a straight line from the family records that people use to inform themselves on their own nation and native land, and ultimately the efforts made to gain insight into the laws that govern the evolution of humanity as a whole. It is significant that the study of history, which before was always within the above-mentioned narrow confines, thus came to be extended to the whole of humanity. It has only been in the recent times which we intend to consider here that a wholly general, human interest in the evolution of humanity as a whole arose from the more or less narrowly defined interest shown by people.

This alone will show anyone who is prepared to see that human beings showing pure interest in other human beings as such is essentially of recent origin. Now the situation is such that exactly because history arises from people’s interest in people, an obstacle arises when history is supposed to rise to a higher level where insight is gained into the laws that govern human evolution. For here history is very easily taken into an abyss that at some time or other has threatened every kind of scientific study. The natural-scientific approach has almost completely overcome this in more recent times, but it will often and quite unconsciously influence the way people look at history. We may call it the anthropomorphic view. It arises because something found in the human being himself is taken out into the world and the phenomena which present themselves in the world. The most obvious, happily overcome in natural science, is that a person finds that when he achieves something he has been following a purpose, an aim. People are therefore inclined to look at anything that happens in the natural world, and also at historical developments, by looking for purposive actions in the same sense as one finds them in the inner human being, that is, in oneself.

Natural science has grown great in the more recent sense exactly because efforts are made not to take an anthropomorphic view, though this is in many respects unconscious. Goethe was justified in saying that people do not know how anthropomorphic they are.¹¹¹ In the case of history, however, there is the special temptation to see the things which we find in ourselves also in historical developments outside, for we are trying to consider something that is human. We overcome the obstacle—which existed to a greater or lesser degree for the most hardworking thinkers of recent times when they wanted to establish a kind of philosophy of history—basically only by going beyond the narrow limits set to human nature even as we consider the human being himself. Those limits are set because human beings act according to something that is immediately subjective, according to such aims as are possible in their inner life between birth and death.

If you overcome an inner nature that relies on the senses, with the life of the soul bound to it between birth and death, by rising higher and going beyond the senses, you can take the discoveries made in supersensible study of the human being out into historical evolution. For human beings go beyond themselves when they rise to their supersensible nature, and they can then no longer be anthropomorphic in the study of history, for they are no longer so in the way they look at their own essential nature. By just making efforts to overcome a particular obstacle to seeing the world clearly, we are thus taken beyond ourselves into the supersensible sphere.

If we are thus equipped to approach historical evolution with the powers that take us into the supersensible world, the facts of historical life appear in a completely new light, purely because one sees them in the light of the supersensible sphere. In this new light you ask yourself: What is the real situation? Have certain facts that have been recorded so that we find them in our usual history books truly had such a close connection with the human being as they are often said to have, with the view expressed that the human being, as he stands before us, is a product of historical development, a product of the past? However, if we ask these questions only in the light of supersensible insight, we soon discover, on turning our attention to historical events, how little people are able to say with the impulses of the lives in which they find themselves at the present time, for example: This or that is connected with this or that historical event in the past. Just as natural science, if pursued consistently, takes us beyond itself, so does the study of history take us to the point where we have to say: In a sense, the historical events are falling apart. We cannot just speak of cause and effect in the usual sense, considering the present as though it were due to the influence of the past, certainly where this contains whatever may be found in the world perceptible through the senses. We can only see history truly if we connect the human being with the supersensible and do not look in historical facts for anything they appear to be on the surface but for something that initially is only given as revelation—a supersensible process in world events, with human beings involved in it.

Then history becomes something other than a study of consecutive events. It becomes a symptomatology, as I’d like to call it. We then consider individual events not just the way they present in the life perceived through the senses but as symptoms that allow us to penetrate into a supersensible process behind them that goes beyond history itself. It will then also no longer be possible to seek absolute completeness in the usual way—anyone who has been working with historical material in some area or other will know that such completeness can never be achieved. Instead you will try to take the facts that can be discovered, regarding them as symptoms, and penetrate into the great spiritual scheme of things that lies behind them.

Taking this road you will soon find yourself compelled to abandon the old distinctions we know from our schooldays, where the study of recent history begins with all kinds of reflections on the journeys of discovery and the importance of discovering America, or on inventions and the like. Instead you feel compelled to say: Where can a point be found—if we start from the present time and go back in historical evolution—where a major change came in the course of human evolution, with new ways of life and new conditions for life?

People who like to take the easy way in looking at the world often tend to say that one thing simply arises from another that went before, and that there are no significant changes or turning points. They will even quote the soothing words: Nature does not take leaps.¹¹² But just look at the natural world and the leaps that are made! A plant will first develop green leaves and later transform them into petals of different colours—a leap. And such leaps exist everywhere in the natural world, refuting common prejudice that people find comfortable.

Even a superficial look will in fact show that in the European world, the 15th century brought a major change in all ways of life. A change came in the characteristic state of soul humanity had had until then, and in the way humanity made this inner state of soul into external historical actions. With regard to symptomatology, we can point to something of a landmark at an earlier time, an important turning point in the historical life of more recent humanity. This was when the French forced the Pope to move his residence from Rome to Avignon in 1303.¹¹³ Almost at the same time the order of the Templars, a very special community that had a strange relationship to the Church, was destroyed by the French government, its properties being confiscated.¹¹⁴

Those events were turning points in more recent historical evolution because they showed that people were going against something that for centuries had been characteristic of the whole civilized world. This characteristic was reflected in the strange hostilities between central European imperialism and the Popes, as well as the mutually supportive alliances that resulted from them. All those hostilities were in the light of a quite specific fact. The peoples throughout the civilized world of that time were not divided into groups such as national and other groups the way they came to be in later times, for beyond any such division reigned something that people had in common; we can only say that a universal idea reigned in the human race, influencing people’s actions, and on the one side this came from the Roman papacy, which felt itself to be something that brought people together. Medieval imperialism was equally universal, except that it was often fighting that universal community.

The element that came with the turning point of which I spoke goes against this way of holding people together. The kind of cohesion which existed through the Middle Ages, with people feeling themselves to be part of a great whole, was for centuries based on certain unconscious impulses that dwelt in human beings. The leaders knew them and used them in bringing people together. They addressed a particular sum total of unconscious powers of soul in bringing people together from the above-mentioned points of view in the civilized world of that time. The event at Avignon created breaches, perceptible breaches in that cohesion. We can sense that a new element thus had to come into the constitution, into the state of soul, of occidental humanity.

We also see that the forces at work in the European West had for a long time been affected by an event that had come from the East like a force of nature. I only need to mention everything that started with the Mongolian hordes, and the migrations from East to West, from Asia to Europe, that followed. Both were turning points, and at the dawn of the 15th century they gave Europe and its people the structure of community life. Despite all attempts to preserve the past, this structure was different from the earlier one, when it depended on unconscious impulses. Humanity found it increasingly necessary to be consciously aware also in areas where they were previously given cohesion on the basis of unconscious impulses.

Something highly significant happened with these changes in the West of Europe, especially in areas where people had until then be used, more or less so but significantly, to find cohesion through that universal idea, universal impulse, which I have been characterizing. We see something completely new arise in those areas. The national element came to take over from the old, more spiritual element of the Catholic Church in providing cohesion. We see England and France become a new kind of nation-states, setting a pattern, as it were.

Let us try and consider the way in which the new element was taken particularly into those areas of Western Europe. Initially the two countries were united until the movement arose in the 15th century which we may also call a turning point, in 1428, when in a certain direction a dividing wall came between England and France. This came to expression in the events that happened around Joan of Arc.¹¹⁵ The seed was then sown for the mutual independence of France and England; before that there had been a degree of connection between them. This is a tremendously significant phenomenon. For we shall see many things grow from this differentiation, which only came at that time, in the 15th century, things that will again prove symptomatic in the further evolution of history.

Another change came when a kind of national feeling, at the time preparing the way for an independent feeling of being Italian, developed in Italy from the very element which had led to the papacy being so powerful in that country, overshadowing all such national and similar groupings. Letting the eye roam across Europe we also see ourselves—I can only refer to these things briefly here—coming closer to the time when a major struggle arose between central and more or less eastern parts of Europe, the Germanic and Slavonic cultures. We see how the power of the Hapsburgs arose from the struggles in those regions, with the Slavs attacking, and Slav and Germanic cultures mingling. We also see highly individual structures, which before that had not emerged in such a way from the universal impulses, now with individual views and individual purpose. From the 13th to the 15th centuries, city states flourished throughout the occidental civilization of that time.

Again, once national aspirations had become differentiated and France and England were separate, we see long periods of civil war in England leading to the parliamentary system, as the world was to know it, being the goal of a social structure that arose from mutual understanding among individual people.

These, then, are not all, but some of the symptoms from more recent history. I merely have to add that as the groups formed from those impulses everywhere in Europe, there slowly arose in the East, still only in its early beginnings, from struggles that had to lead to its emergence, what later was to be the Russian structure. A strange structure. Seen from Europe it evolved in such a way that to our feeling it will always be a riddle. The most important impulses living within that structure were not really sentiently perceived but welded together, I would say, from something that had survived through all kinds of migrations—passing through Byzantium, arising from a certain metamorphosis of Roman Catholic life; something had come together that arose from what had sprouted forth as the blood of the Slavonic and Norman cultures. In ways that are familiar enough to you, it took in much of the Asiatic inner attitude of soul, a state of soul—I am now referring to the best parts of it—that through millennia had turned away from anything immediately coming through the senses and towards great mystic approaches, hoping to penetrate into a supersensible world with which the sensual life of human beings is connected.

If we take these and perhaps also many other symptoms of more recent historical development and truly consider them from the point of view of the issues considered earlier, a characteristic emerges clearly from these symptoms. We come to perceive it if we ask ourselves: How does the element that comes to expression in these symptoms inwardly differ from anything which in earlier centuries and millennia showed itself in a similar way in a historical evolution of humanity that was more at an unconscious level? We need to consider these things without any sympathy or antipathy, in a wholly objective way. It is only then that we will discover the characteristic element in the phenomena we are considering.

It is strange, when we ask ourselves: What do all these symptoms—for instance those I have given as examples today—have in common if we compare them with earlier impulses that came into historical evolution? I won’t speak of the fruitful way, for example, in which Christianity came into the world in a positive way, creating something new for the soul. I won’t speak of this, but only of the kind of impulses that were, for example, often given in ancient Greek life, when a new impulse would simply be given as though produced from inmost human nature. This would then come into its own in a completely new configuration of reality; or the way it was given, let us say, to Roman civilization in the days of Augustus. None of the impulses that come now are of that kind. The most evident impulse we see, for example, is the national one, based not on national cohesion—as one often sees it identified today and considered to be a state cohesion—but on the national element in so far as it bases on natural principles deep down in human nature. We see it as an impulse that people take up without having produced it inside. A person is French or English on account of his nature. And when in establishing the historical configuration he refers to his nationality he is not referring to something produced in his mind and spirit, but something he has simply accepted from outside.

If we compare the national principle as it has come up in history with those earlier impulses, we discover that all the impulses which we have seen coming to humanity in Greek and in Roman Latin times were infinitely much closer to the productive side in human nature. What came there was retained and preserved. When one takes up something new in more recent history, this is something one is not producing oneself, something which comes to the human being from outside.

Having attempted to gain our orientation more from the outer progress of more recent European history, we’ll now attempt to penetrate to the inner aspects. Within the soul’s inner state, we see a very similar onrush in the inner state of soul against the universal impulse that had counted on the unconscious, an impulse given through the ages. We see the onrush of Huss in the 15th century, Wiclif even before him, and then Luther and later Calvin. We see something human beings want to give, to put into history much more than anything that went before, when it was thought of in more universal ways; this is something individual, welling up from human nature itself. Strangely, however, we also see how in discussion, everything is always related to what went before. What is new is that the human being was referred to his own nature. Decide for yourself what the nature of the eucharist is. Decide for yourself on your attitude to your priest, do not let it be forced on you through a universal impulse coming from outside.

Yet when we consider the subject of the discussion, the dogma of the eucharist that had earlier been produced into humanity, had existed for centuries in history, or in human life altogether. Nothing new was being produced from the soul and given over to historical life, but the old was produced and preserved, everything that was there without human beings contributing anything. All that happened then was that the human being entered into a new relationship to it.

In following this inner process in European development we see infinitely much of the old torn apart, changed, metamorphosed in the onrush against the universal impulse that had reigned before. We can see it exactly from the way knighthood scattered and vanished. The whole of its inner state of soul—you only have to study the crusades—was connected with the universal impulse. Again we can refer to a turning point that will provide the orientation for everything else that happened. This was the battle of Murton in 1476, towards the end of the 15th century, fought against knighthood connected with the universal impulse. We may see it as representative of a struggle that happened in many places.¹¹⁶

We also find a change in the ecclesiastical authority in connection with all this. This ecclesiastical authority had assumed a strange form, and you can find this characterized in any work on history. During this time and because of the onrush, a need was felt for inner regeneration and improvement. The onrush against it really made the Church itself change many things internally. Yet we see everywhere how the element that had raised the Church up in the course of human evolution, having spread it in form of a universal impulse, was to be given a new relationship to each individual human being. We see this happening all over Europe. We see how the English Church made itself independent. We see how in central Europe growing independence joined forces with political powers. We see how everywhere the individual and personal rose against the universal, in other words how something that the human mind was to make its own raged against an earlier inner human nature that had been more unconscious or subconscious, and we see what followed from this in historical terms.

Counter forces did, of course, also arise, like the counter reformation against the reformation. But if we study the symptomatology, the struggles this caused immediately show something of the greatest importance with regard to more recent history. We see the Thirty Years’ War arise from everything that happened in connection with the symptoms I have characterized. Studying the Thirty Years’ War,¹¹⁷ we discover something strange. It arose from opposition arising among the confessions in Europe. It began with all the impulses connected with religious struggles, and it ended as a purely political phenomenon. It turned into something completely different as it progressed. If we now ask ourselves how its evolution looks to us with regard to the confessions which then existed in Europe, we find that in 1648 people were exactly where they had been in 1618. The whole 30 years really changed nothing of any significance as regards the relationship between Protestants and Roman Catholics, and so on. All this remained as before. However, in the course of that war quite different powers intervened, and this gave the European national structures a completely different configuration.

If you study the Thirty Years’ War in this way you will be truly convinced that we cannot see history as something that follows as an effect connected with what went before and call the latter the cause. Nothing that came from the Thirty Years’ War was genuinely connected as effect with anything we can call cause in the true sense. Studying the evolution we see how events happening on the outside can only be a symptom for something that happens deeper down. This is particularly evident in the case of the Thirty Years’ War. But what did happen? It was the western countries and above all France which advanced as a result of the events that came in the course of that war, and not its causes. The consequences of the Thirty Years’ War later led to the whole regal glory of France. We see how the royal power of France shone out over Europe in the time that followed.

Then again, something arose in the womb of what was evolving there, taking the old national impulse forward in a most eminent sense. This new element went far beyond anything merely national; it broke the national idea apart, as it were. Individual, personal nature arose, later to come into its own in the French Revolution. The human individual, standing by himself, wanted to emancipate from the compulsion of a community that had not arisen from some productive impulse but been taken up into the human state of soul from nature, from the world surrounding humanity. Again, in looking at the symptomatology, we see how Napoleon then arose, quite inorganically we might say, without any evident motivation. He was the executor, as it were, of the French Revolution’s will and testament. At the same time we also see a strange, a great and tremendous turning point arise. This significant turning point in more recent history came on 21 October 1805, when the battle of Trafalgar prevented Napoleon from extending his tentacles across to England. Something which earlier had only been potential, the separation between England and the Continent, was then made complete.

We can now let things that are generally known pass quickly before the inner eye. We find that parliamentary life going in the direction of liberalism evolved further in an independent England. We see a more tumultuous evolution in France during the 19th century. Then, however, we see emerge in a new form, symptomatic and shining out over what is really happening at the foundations of European history, how the European west and centre needed to come to grips in the 1850s with something that was like a dark riddle in the European east, with the Russian configuration that had arisen. This was like a question posed with regard to European development. We then see certain ideas gaining strength in the 19th century, other ideas going against them, and how ideas of the one kind or the other became impulses in historical development. We see how everything was building up in the 19th century towards the storm which then broke in 1848.¹¹⁸ And we see evolve from all this the social movement that was later to be so comprehensive and today has a profound influence on human evolution. We see how one especially noteworthy event came among everything that evolved in the 19th century, something the people of Europe were able to observe quite profoundly. Out of the glory that had arisen with France becoming a national state, a kind of demand or claim arose and continued to spread.

Let us not put values on things here. We do not follow them with sympathy or antipathy, but quite objectively. We see how out of the relationship between developments in west and east something arose that was considered an insoluble problem—insoluble for Europe at least for the time being—by people who had the necessary insight at the time, irrespective of the attitude they took to it, to whether it should happen or not. We can even completely leave aside the question as to whether Alsace was occupied by the French originally or later by the Germans, but the Alsatian question, as it is known today, evolved out of European life.

If you study history, and especially things said by people with insight at the time in question, you will know that even then they foresaw conflicts arising from this, conflicts that were really insoluble in either direction because they had to do with all the difficult questions concerning the European east. Those questions arose because the European west—the Crimean War¹¹⁹ was symptomatic of this—was forced to come to grips with the European east, which was behind all the phenomena like an enigma. We should really consider and feel it to be extraordinarily significant, especially in these days, that something which appears insoluble is given in the way in which central Europe must face up to western Europe because of a question which under specific historical conditions may be asked to be solved in one way or another, a question that has arisen from the national impulse emerging in France but cannot be solved in national terms.

I could give you many more symptoms apparent in recent history, but I only want to mention just one thing which enters deeply into the whole of human evolution in recent times. Although the connections cannot always be clearly seen, I want to refer to the emergence of the more recent scientific way of thinking. I have characterized its significance from other points of view in my earlier lectures here. The scientific way of thinking is evolving. What does it do? It makes the human being stand on his own. It is exactly this thinking which separates the individual out from the community. It is in many respects also the driving impulse in all the other things I have mentioned. This modern scientific way of thinking has something in it which strangely does betray the significance which it has in more recent history.

Two kinds of problems arise. Let me show you the one by referring to a fact. This is that in 1830 a friend found Goethe in a state of sheer excitement. Asked what was the matter, Goethe said: The news coming from France are overwhelming; the world is in flames; something new is beginning to emerge. Soret, the friend to whom Goethe said these words, did of course think he was speaking of the 1830 revolutions. ‘No,’ said Goethe, ‘I am not talking about that but about the revolution which is taking place between the two scientists Cuvier and Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire.’¹²⁰ Cuvier held the view that all life forms in the natural world exist side by side and each had to be taken on its own. Saint- Hilaire was looking for a common type in the organic forms, he set the whole of organic life in motion, so that one could only get an overview in this state of flux if one looked at nature itself in an immediately productive spirit, experiencing the spirit to be as much in flux as nature itself. Goethe sensed something in Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire that ultimately, when taken from seed to fruit, will be the supersensible concepts of natural phenomena which I characterized here the day before yesterday.

Initially, however, the world was overshadowed by everything that came with the other way of looking at nature, where the human being is taken out of any living, immediate relationship to the phenomena of nature. This approach, which has not been taken hold of by the impulse of which Goethe spoke, gives insight into the part of nature that is nonliving, into the dying element, where nature dissolves, and this is connected with the element that is mortal in us, as I characterized it the day before yesterday.

The study of nature from which Goethe turned away is such that it can only work with the gradual process of decay in nature. Efforts are then made to rise to something that cannot be shown by these means but only by supersensible vision, and those are the symptoms of ascent, of growth, of being born and thriving. But, though this does again sound paradoxical, this approach to nature, which really focuses on whatever is dead within living nature, cast its deep shadows on the whole of modern social life. Essentially it created a new universal impulse for humanity in more recent times, but this is a universal impulse against which the human being himself as an individual must rebel all the time, for it takes him out of nature, so that he must look for the real whole over and over again. The knowledge gained puts him outside. He needs to look for the real whole again in something other than the area in which he seeks such knowledge. The result is dualism in the way the human being relates to his environment and hence also in life. This natural science flows into modern industrial life which supports the whole of modern civilization; its influence is highly significant.

With the impulses we considered earlier, for instance the national impulse, we saw that old tradition was preserved and no new productive element introduced into life. With the riddle of the European east we see how a nation remarkably stimulated to be productive in the spirit ties itself up so that it truly cannot be productive, although it has the potential to be highly productive, truly tying itself up in the most extreme bonds of the old Byzantine Church community. Old things are thus preserved. We see how with the views from natural science that are poured out over modern humanity something universal is created, something universal which also does not consider anything the human being produces out of himself, but exactly the knowledge that is gained in cutting things off from himself, knowledge concerning decay in natural phenomena. This can also only be brought into civilization in the sphere of industry, with the natural element killed off.

Initially by not being productive in the old sense, humanity has been gaining the full conscious awareness which began to develop in the 15th century. Earlier, they maintained their connection with nature and the world at a subconscious level rather than in full conscious awareness. In addition to preservation of old things we see a process of educating the human race in more recent times which is given out of something new but nevertheless is along the lines of the old. The principles developed for industry only seem to arise from productive ideas. For those productive ideas do not arise as independent green plants in the human soul—the supersensible, if it is to be sought, must arise as an independent plant in the human soul—but from calm contemplation of objective natural phenomena.

We see how an event that has had a significant influence on more recent developments is particularly connected with this modern industry, for it is now becoming apparent that modern industry develops progressively in our times and that colonization also gains significance; for colonial and colonizing life is closely bound up with the element that enters into industry through natural science.

Let us now take a general view of what all these symptoms are more or less telling us. We see that anything which has come up as something new since the 15th century has not come from productive human nature. Looking at these things we find it necessary to take a wider view of historical evolution and to acknowledge—supersensible insight makes us acknowledge this—that there is not only ascent in this human life, not only what in abstract terms is usually called progress, but that ascending, sprouting and shooting life goes hand in hand with a descending life. Life is bound up with a principle that is all the time leading to death.

When we consider an individual human life, birth, growth and development are presented separately from dying and decay. But it only seems like that. When we consider life in the outside world, developments that have come particularly in more recent history show that dying, descending and ascending development are immediately next to one another and influence one another. We see that descending evolution, which is the evolution that takes historical death into itself, had great significance actually for the beginning of this more recent period in history which began in the 15th century, doing so initially for several centuries and right into our own time. The life of decay, of death, has greater significance than ascending, sprouting and shooting life. We see how the mind of modern man as it evolves is connected with the element in him which is mortal, and how he is able to sense that the element which drives him towards death is also the element that helps him to advance in knowledge. Whilst sprouting, shooting life lulls him as if in dreams, we can see that the spiritual soul is evolving from the more unconscious state of soul which humanity developed from the 8th century BC until the 15th century AD, and that it has influenced the history of more recent times. We see that there is need, for a first education towards developing this spiritual soul, that symptoms of decay, of dying life take effect particularly also in human civilization. We cannot understand more recent historical life unless we are able to develop the thought—in spite of all admiration, in spit of all the good will and recognition that has to be given for the great, tremendous achievement of modern industry, of modern national impulses—that descending life moving towards the death of historical evolution must be present in it all, and that an ascending, sprouting and shooting life must be born into this descending life.

This has caused people of more recent times who have insight to develop something we might call a pessimistic view of civilization. Thus Schopenhauer¹²¹ looked at more recent historical developments. In spite of all the achievements they seemed rather trivial to him. The only thing Schopenhauer appreciated was anything that could be achieved in the minds of single individuals. Pessimists are themselves mere symptoms in recent historical development, but they have a feeling that the greatest and most significant element in that development which we are used to seeing as a characteristic of more recent historical evolution has been the death impulse entering into it.

What has been the consequence? Something we may call tragedy coming into the historical life of more recent times. Promotion of the impulses that we may consider to have been partly traditional and partly coming from natural scientific views is a matter of course. All this is such that we have to say to ourselves: We must encourage it, we must take it up, it is a necessity of our more recent history; human beings absolutely must make it part of developments in world history, but it must of necessity also lead to its own decline and death in everything that arises, that is achieved in this field. The tragedy is that something has to be encouraged and considered an achievement of which one knows that in creating it one is creating something that must at the same time also decay. We actually start the decay as we create it.

Anyone who thinks that the events arising in more recent historical development from the impulses I mentioned can stand on their own, is like someone who thinks a woman can give birth without conception, without the one principle being connected with the other. The element arising from those impulses presents as something one-sided that needs something to come from another side if it is to survive. Within itself there is only the power to die. Let us take everything that has come with modern industry and social relationships in more recent times, be they commercial or other kinds of connections. Let us take all this—on its own, seen in accord with its own impulse, it is infertile and always leads to its own death, I would say in rhythms. We have to realize that we need to look at it in such a way that we say: For the sake of something else, this dying element has to enter into our modern world as an achievement.

What is this something else? Well, we have seen that the strange thing I hinted at shows itself as we follow more recent history with its sequence of what we consider to be different symptoms. On the one hand we see the spiritual soul come into flower from the 15th century onwards, and this happens exactly because of the unproductive principle. On the other hand we have seen this spiritual soul grow great in that initially the stimulus for the productive element was withdrawn from its environs, so that it took its guidance from the principle that was all the time leading to a dying process in civilization. This has made the human being independent. The outside world does not stimulate something in us that has productive life but all the time something that bears the seed of the dying process in the insights gained. The human being grows up in his individual and conscious natural development in a way where the outside world does not raise him for life, nor to something that will take him higher, but is all the time preventing anything intended to take him higher. As a result, the human being stands by himself.

Looking at the situation purely in the light of supersensible insight, we see that this inner life of the human being, with the movement towards the spiritual soul from the 15th century onwards, also has something that corresponds to it on the outside. This could not emerge in the early centuries but shows itself immediately if without bias we consider the human heart and mind in the present time when it has once again gained an inclination towards a supersensible life. Many are, of course, still unconscious of this, but this inclination towards a supersensible life now exists for very many people. Someone working with the science of the spirit with an anthroposophical orientation knows that the principle of dying which developed in the outer material civilization of recent times was only of a passing nature and that we are at a great turning point in time which will bring a new revelation of the supersensible to human beings from outside, this time not through nature but stimulated in the way I have shown when I spoke on anthroposophically orientated spiritual science.

We see it approaching everywhere, this new revelation of the supersensible. It will now be gained in a different way from earlier times when human beings were connected with nature unconsciously, through their instincts, finding in nature itself the principles that also held true for the soul and which they could also introduce into social and historical life. A productive, supersensible life will develop that goes beyond anything which this study of nature and the old impulses in more recent historical developments are able to give. It will be revealed from the world of the spirit. And if we look particularly at the terrible catastrophe that has arisen in our time—what is it, seen in the genuine light of truth, but something in which elements that are dying crowd together?

Much will die within this catastrophic life. Anything that has the principle of dying within it in the way I have characterized will die more quickly. No reason for pessimism, even if there is reason for pain with all the things that can come to us from watching and being involved in this catastrophe. There is no reason to be pessimistic about civilization if we consider life in the light of anthroposophically orientated spiritual science. For it is apparent now in one point in recent historical evolution around the globe that the dying process which otherwise is distributed across material life comes powerfully together. This gives more recent events their tragic note. At the same time it shows us that everything that comes into the world in the way I have characterized earlier must be fruitless and needs to be made fruitful with what we receive out of the supersensible.

Anyone who considers the principle which makes the development of the spiritual soul complete and the new revelations from the supersensible with an open mind will raise his head, however much it may be bowed down in pain over the things that are happening now, and say to himself: It is the first flush of dawn for something that must come and will trigger the impulse in humanity to turn towards the supersensible. All the suffering and pain over the present collapse would be in vain, and so would be all the feelings, the justifiable pain felt by those who see this collapse, if these feelings could not take us forward to the realization that as with everything in nature that is destined to die, so with this dying, too, something new is arising. However, the new development will only be possible if humanity has the will to take up the principle that will make things fruitful, a principle revealed to us from the supersensible world.

The spiritual soul has evolved. Nature must now no longer give us unconsciously the things we introduce into the world of social and historical development. Humanity of our time must now also consciously receive, willingly receive, the new kind of supersensible revelation that comes to the spiritual soul if this spiritual soul wills it. It is exactly when we consider the tragedy of modern life without prejudice that the redeeming impulse reveals itself on the other side. It reveals itself in that we feel the need to acknowledge the revelation of a new supersensible element which now also has to be there for the spiritual soul.

We thus see through the symptoms and perceive what humanity is going to be and what is to be revealed to humanity out of the universe. In Graeco-Latin times, which began in the 8th century before the Christian era and came to an end in the 15th century, the inner life was still bound up with outward physical life. This led to the great achievements of Greek and Roman times that were passed on to the Middle Ages. In the 15th century evolution took a great leap as the powers of conscious awareness began to evolve what we may call the spiritual soul. We are now in this stage of evolution. We see that for a true science of history human beings must take up the principles that are revealed behind the symptoms. We must have the courage to admit, however, that death is all around us as much as life, and that death is necessary so that new life may come. It has also been necessary for death to be overwhelming for a time, so that human beings might all the more develop the powers of the spiritual soul. When no more is given to us from outside, we feel the need to look inside for the spirit, the supersensible principle.

Some may of course object and say: Well, where are those people, how many of them are there? Not many have developed their powers of soul so that they are able to point to the supersensible world. We certainly have to admit that there are only few of them today. Their numbers will grow apace; but it is not a matter of how many find their way to the supersensible sphere which is needed to make the sensual fruitful. What matters is that one does not have to take the road to supersensible insight oneself, for, quite apart from how and for what you estimate the individual who provides the fruits of the supersensible, once they have been uttered, once they have been cast into human culture, they can be understood with the understanding that is perfectly common in the age of the spiritual soul. People can largely understand everything brought to them from the sphere of the supersensible, unless they create obstacles for themselves with prejudices which they then find insurmountable.

There is, however, one thing which is needed. Just consider that with the view of history I have outlined one finds it necessary to admit to oneself, in insight, as it were, and in full awareness, that what has to be done—what is a necessity of the age and will be a necessity more and more—is at the same time something that is all the time also dying. It does take some courage to acknowledge that one has to be active so that that active principle may perish and be the soil for the Father principle of the spiritual, supersensible sphere. It does need such courage for all supersensible insight. Fear of supersensible insight prevents many people from entering into it. There is one field at least where in more recent times we face the immediate necessity to develop such courage if we want to be at all considered for human development. This is the field of history. Those who know something of supersensible insight always speak of crossing the threshold, and of a guardian of the threshold.¹²² They speak of crossing the threshold because one has to abandon many things that seemed to be absolutely solid ground before one crossed the threshold in finding one’s way into the supersensible world. Unconsciously people feel it is a relief not to have to cross the threshold. Yet something that had to be done at a particular time for historical development is becoming more and more of a necessity. And this is again part of the inner progress of historical development from the 15th century onwards. It is becoming more and more of a necessity to say to oneself: You are actively involved in the creation of processes of dying, processes of decay. You need to devote yourself to these processes of decay, and this will bring your inner power to life; it is exactly because of this that you will be able to come close to the supersensible. You must abandon what you used to consider a foundation in mind and spirit before, cross the threshold to the supersensible world, losing the ground under your feet, as it were. And in its place you must find within you the firm focal point where you can maintain yourself even in the face of what in sensual terms has no ground.

The human being needs to find a new focus for the whole of his inner life. Historical necessity will make us look for this focus more and more in future. The fact that we thus gain insight will not change things. We are, as it were, facing the process of dying—in the sense I mean here. The fact that we admit it is a dying process will not change it. But it is exactly by this that one must feel driven to try and fructify the living principle that is the counter force. For the situation is like this: Inscribed above the search for supersensible insights there has always been the great, tremendous demand: ‘Know yourself.’¹²³ And it is still the demand made on human beings who are seekers. Seeking to gain this insight today people can only do so by rising to worlds that can take them beyond finite existence. Above all, impelled by the necessities of human evolution, they will have to admit to themselves with regard to historical life in more recent times, that the spiritual soul is a goal that has been implanted with regard to more recent history, to know themselves more and more. In coming to know themselves, they are facing the necessity of going beyond themselves. In going beyond themselves, perceiving his supersensible nature within their sensual nature, they also come to the supersensible that is active in history, with external facts merely symbols for it. We will only have a history that is fruitful for life if we look for the supersensible behind the symptoms, just as we do behind the phenomena of nature.

The look we have taken at history has shown that more recent developments impose trials on human beings, the trial where they must consider descending as well as ascending life, involution as well as evolution. With supersensible insight into history people will find this gaining of insight to be a great trial for the soul for they must cross the threshold and find a new focus in the inner life of the soul, so that in having gone through the trial they will have the strength to go through the other trials that life will present more and more out of historical events as they move towards the future. We may say, however, that human beings only grow strong and robust and truly fit for life by going through trials. Fear of insight should not prevent people from entering into the trials. Instead, courage to gain insight should make them prepared to accept these trials. They will develop those trials on the road to insight into powers that will also guide them to be active human beings who are involved in evolution and fruitful in the course of history.

Questions and answers

Following the lecture given in Zurich on 17 October 1918

The suggestion has been made that 1 should briefly say something about one particular phenomenon in more recent history that is particularly relevant to human life, and that is the evolution of speech and language. This could, of course, be another whole lecture if I were to treat the subject exhaustively. I would, however, like to take up the suggestion, apart from anything else because I would indeed like to draw your attention to the fact that anthroposophically orientated spiritual science in the sense of which I have been speaking truly is such that it does not owe its existence to a sudden idea that came like a shot, nor is it made up of sudden flashes of insight. No, if you study the literature you’ll find that this anthroposophically orientated spiritual science gathers what it has to say from the whole breadth of observation, the whole range of phenomena in the world.

Of course, when one has to cover vast areas in an hour—and I am sorry that it always takes longer than this anyhow—the impression inevitably arises that one is moving in abstract regions; on the other hand the intention is not to convince anyone, but merely to encourage them to take this further, for then people will see that this science of the spirit is based on careful, conscientious and methodical investigation, serious research, more so than in any other kind of scientific endeavour.

It is interesting to consider the principles which I have been characterizing in general terms today in a single phenomenon such as the development of human speech and language. When we say anything today, we do not usually consider the fact that talking is actually at every moment forcing us to be inaccurate. Fritz Mauthner has written three volumes as well as a dictionary of philosophy to show that everything we produce in philosophy and science is based on language and that the language is imprecise. Because of this, he says, we can really never have a body of true knowledge.¹²⁴

Well, when it comes to the science of the spirit this is, of course, a foolish thing to say, even in three volumes. It is, however, significant to consider the partial phenomenon that lies behind this. Going back in the development of language we find—unlike the superficial anthropological linguistics where the means are inadequate—that the further back we go, human beings were progressively more closely connected with anything their speech expressed, inwardly so, and again instinctively and unconsciously. Human beings are gradually also separating from the things that lie in their own inherent nature, just as they are from the outside world of nature.

Thus they also cease to be so closely connected with their speech. Speech thus becomes something external. A marked dualism arises between the thoughts that live in us—and some do not even have them any more, because they remain in the sphere of language—and the words that are spoken. If we do not give ourselves to illusion at the point in human evolution where we are today, in the age of the spiritual soul, we need to take a real look at the way language has already separated from the human being. It is really only proper names relating to a single individual that are truly appropriate to that individual. As soon as we use general terms, be they adjectives, nouns, or whatever, they are imprecise about what they are meant to tell us. They are abstract, they are like generalities. We will only understand the relationship between language and human life rightly if we take it really as gesture; if we know: just as I point to something in a direct, living way when I point to it with my finger, so I also point in a kind of gesture at the entity to which the sounds of speech refer when I produce sounds, using my larynx. To take speech as gesture, this is what matters. In earlier times, people had a vague feeling, I would say it was instinctive and lay in the subconscious, as to how their inner life was connected with sound in a kind of gesture. They did not confuse their experiences in inner life with the things brought to expression in speech.

We ourselves have tried to develop endeavours in this direction in a field of spiritual science, using the element of gesture to make speech visible. This is in the art we call eurythmy. Efforts are made to get the whole human being moving, and express in gesture—in the movements of the limbs, movements of the human form in space, the movements in groups and relationships between individuals—what is otherwise expressed in gesture, though not perceived as gesture, through the human larynx and its neighbouring organs. We call this art of movement, something new which has to come to humanity, eurythmy. We had intended to follow this lecture here in Zurich with a eurythmy performance. This had to be put off for another time, for we were given permission to give these lectures, in what is now a difficult time,¹²⁵ but not to give a eurythmy performance. The intention was to show how the whole human being becomes a larynx, as it were. In becoming aware of what speech is, we come to something that is particularly important, fundamentally important, for life in the present and future.

Nothing happens more frequently in human life today but that someone makes a statement of some kind, as I am doing with regard to the science of the spirit, for instance, and then someone else will come along and say: ‘I have read this before,’ showing you something which at least in parts has exactly the same wording. I could give you striking examples of this, but will give just one which I found illustrated the situation perfectly.

One thing I truly endeavour to do is to apply all the things that demand consideration in spiritual science to life and thus enter into the true impulses in life. For a long time I have thus been reflecting on the whole way of thinking, the whole attitude of thought, shown by Woodrow Wilson.¹²⁶ I found it interesting to study especially his essays on historical method, the study of history and American historical life. He plays such a major role in present-day life that one has to get to know him—this is what someone would say who does not want to sleep through current events but observe them with his senses wide awake. I have come to admire the magnificent way, truly apt in an American way, in which Woodrow Wilson presents the evolution of the American nation, this advance from the American east to the American west, with American life emerging in a quite specific way, that came only once people had advanced from east to west. Woodrow Wilson characteristically speaks of everything that went before as mere appendage to European life. This uprooting and overcoming of nature, overcoming the native population of the American west, this specific way of making history, which shows some similarity to what has happened in human life generally yet also differs in quite specific ways—this is magnificently presented. It is therefore also interesting to see how Woodrow Wilson develops his method of history.

I looked at the descriptions he gave of his own method of history and found something quite peculiar. Sentences come from this man, who is wholly and entirely American, that seemed to me to almost word for word in agreement with sentences written by a completely different person, someone who truly arose from an entirely different approach to life and way of thinking. Statements Woodrow Wilson made in his essay on the methodology for history that bore such excellent fruit for him, could be transposed word for word into essays by Herman Grimm, who is entirely within the Goethean development of our time, and out of this development presents as a truly Central European mind. We might say that you need only take sentences from Herman Grimm’s essays and transpose them, or include sentences by Woodrow Wilson in Herman Grimm’s essays, and you would not see any great difference in the wording.

What we learn from such things—to put it in ordinary words, though I want to say something highly significant in this way—is that when two people say the same thing, even using the same words, it is not the same. We have to learn from this that it is necessary to enter not only into the wording, which comes from speech, but the into whole person. This will reveal the specific differences between Herman Grimm and Woodrow Wilson. You will find that with Herman Grimm, every single sentence is worked out with the spiritual soul wholly present. The progression one finds in Herman Grimm’s spirited essay where he writes about historical method and the contemplation of history is truly such that one sees him progress from sentence to sentence through an inner struggle in his soul, so that nothing remains unconscious and everything is brought to conscious awareness. All the time one sees this inner progression in the soul.¹²⁷

Looking across at what we see in the case of Woodrow Wilson, we see how the statements arise from subconscious depths of the soul, as though out of the human being as such rather than inner activity. I don’t mean anything bad by this, but I would like to say, if I may be paradoxical about it, that with Herman Grimm I always feel that in the region of wholly conscious inner life, all the life of the soul proceeds as statement follows statement; with Woodrow Wilson I feel he is as if possessed by something that lies within himself and lets his own truths shine up in his own inner life. As I said, I do not mean anything sympathetic or antipathetic by this, merely something I want to characterize. It is given to him from the depths of his own soul. So we find, and it is truly evident, that even if the wording is the same, two people are saying the same thing yet it is not the same. We only discover what lies behind it if we learn to go not by the wording but by what arises from the whole way the person presents himself in life.

You see, modern humanity must learn to overcome the general habit of judging anything that is presented only on its content. We will have to learn that the content is not really what matters. When I speak about the science of the spirit, I do not focus on the way I formulate my sentences, on the content, but what matters is that something which has truly been projected from the supersensible world flows into what I say. Considering the How more important than the What, so that one can sense, or feel, that these things are said out of the supersensible world. This is what matters.

This is how we must altogether learn in a way in the present time in contrast to ordinary life. A paper, or a journal, may say the nicest things—people can say the most beautiful things today, for ‘beautiful ideas’ and ‘nice things’ are commonplace today—but it is not the words which matter but the inner attitude from which they arise, so that we look through the statements and the words to symptoms, to the human being. We need to penetrate language and wording as if they were a veil and thus come closer to the human being himself again. We are made aware of this in more recent developments in language, for here the human being’s inmost nature, his spiritual soul, has become separate from speech and language. Out of ourselves, therefore, the necessity arises to consider not just the words, but see through them to the human soul, doing so in every possible direction and way.

It will, however, be necessary to overcome something else if one wants to go on in this direction. People are still used to abstract notions today, to going by the immediate content in what I might call an uninspired, middle-class way. When someone speaks of an ideal, however beautifully formulated, we need to be aware that this is something that is a hundred a penny today, for the ideas have been given form. You can put all kinds of ideas to people and nations today, and they will be formed. It will depend on where they come from, where they truly arise in the inmost soul, in the soul region. Life will be tremendously enriched if we are in a position to see it like this.

Perhaps I may also be permitted to say something personal. You see I am often presented with people’s poetical productions. All kinds of people produce them nowadays. Among them are some that are perfect in form, beautifully expressing something or other, and others that seem awkwardly phrased, bumpy or indeed primitive, having problems with the language. Someone taking a point of view that is not yet modern will of course delight in the beauty of the language, especially if the forms are perfect. He will not—not yet today—feel that Emanuel Geibel¹²⁸ was right in saying that his verses would have a public for as long as there were young girls. They are beautiful, polished, and will have a public even among those who believe Wildenbnich¹²⁹ or similar people to be poets—and there are many of these as well.

Today, however, a different view is taken. This is also the case with other arts, but I am here talking about language. There are poets today whose verses make us stumble; you may have problems with the awkward words, but there is a new impulse in them. This is something we must feel! We must be able to see through the veil of the language and see the inner superficiality reflected in polished verse. For polished poems, beautiful poems, much more beautiful than Goethe’s poems, are a hundred a penny today; there it is the language itself which is producing the poetry. But a new inner life springing directly from the source of all life—this is something one must look for. It sometimes comes to expression exactly by having to battle with the language, so that we might say it has only got as far as being a stammer. Such ‘stammers’ may, however, be preferable for us to something that is perfect in itself but only reflects superficiality of soul. There was an occasion where I was given some verses. We needed verses, because we had to make a translation from another language. Very beautiful verses. I grew angry about them and wrote bad verse myself. I am aware that as poetry they are much poorer in quality. I knew, however, that in that case it was a necessity to express what needed to be expressed in a language that may perhaps seem rough and bumpy if one was drawing on the source spring of life that had to be sought in that case. I certainly do not overestimate what I undertook to do; but I also do not overestimate the polished verse I was given at the time.

The human being seeking through speech and language in the age of the spiritual soul—this is something which becomes life practice when we truly consider the life of language. Today I have therefore also tried to speak in a way where I did not deal with spiritual science in every sentence, always wanting to prove the supersensible, and instead tried to put this into the How of looking at history. And I think this is also the important thing, that one does not only call someone a true spiritual scientist whose every fifth word is ‘spirit’ and ‘spirit’ and ‘spiritual world’, believing in the suggestive effect of this, but someone who shows in the way he looks at the world, even in completely outer terms, by the way in which he presents things, that the inner guide, who takes us from thought to thought, from view to view, from impulse to impulse—that this guide is the spirit. If it is the spirit we need not keep on chirping the word all the time.

Here you can see how one can substantiate in speech and language something which I might also present in an extensive lecture.

• 111. Sprüche in Prosa. See note 10.
• 112. Nature non facit saltus. First in Fournier, Varietés historiques et litteraires, 1613, IX, 247, then in Leibniz, Nouveaux essais sur I’entendement humain, 1756, preface and IV ch. 16, and in Linnaeus, Philosophia botanica, 1751, No. 77.
• 113. At the request of Philipp IV, Pope Boniface VIII was taken prisoner at Anagni on 7 September 1303. He died soon after. The French pope Clement V did not go to Italy but resided in Avignon from 1309. The Papal Court had its seat there from 1309 until 1377.
• 114. The Order of the Templars, established in 1119 for the protection of the Sacred Tomb in Jerusalem and the pilgrims who visited it, was accused of heresy by French Kind Philip IV who wanted them suppressed and their property appropriated. The Papacy, then wholly under the French influence in Avignon, acceded to this. Following inquisition and torture, the Order was suppressed in 1312. The remaining Templars who had been arrested in 1307 were burned.
• 115. In the Hundred Years’ War between France and England, Orleans was under siege by the English in 1428. It was relieved in April 1429 by a small army led by Joan of Arc.
• 116. The attack by Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, was successfully beaten off by the Swiss at Grandson and Murten. Charles was killed in the decisive battle of Nancy in 1477.
• 117. 1618-1648, power struggle between kings of France and Habsburg rulers of Holy Roman Empire and Spain, with added overtones of conflict between Calvinism and post-Tridentine Catholicism. Other powers that became involved included German principalities, Sweden, Denmark and Transylvania. [Tr.]
• 118. Revolution broke out in many European countries in 1848—France, Italy, Austria, Hungary, Germany and other areas. In England this was reflected in a final outburst of Chartist agitation [Tr.].
• 119. Britain and France fought Russia in 1854-6, originally because the Russians had successfully fought the Turks in the Black Sea region. European peace was under threat.
• 120. The talk between Goethe and Frédéric Jean Soret took place on 2 August 1830. Conflict between Etienne Geoffrey de Saint-Hilaire and Georges Cuvier had started in February that year at the Paris Academy. Goethe had above all studied Saint-Hilaire’s writings, publishing a review entitled ‘Principes de Philosophic zoologique’ in 1830/32. In Goethe’s scientific writings. See note 10.
• 121. See note 33.
• 122. See also Rudolf Steiner’s Knowledge of the Higher Worlds (GA 10); tr. G. Metaxa; Bristol: Rudolf Steiner Press 1993; chapter on the guardian of the threshold.
• 123. Words of Solon or Chilon on the Apollo Temple at Delphi.
• 124. Mauthner, F. Beiträge zu einer Kritik der Sprache, 3 Bde, Stuttgart 1901-1903. Wörterbuch der Philosophy, see note 27.
• 125. An influenza epidemic had led to a partial ban on gatherings.
• 126. See note 88.
• 127. It has not been possible to establish exactly which essay this was. See notes 44 and 46, however.
• 128. Geibel, Emanuel (1815–1884), German poet and dramatist.
• 129. Wildenbruch, Ernst von (1845–1909), German writer and dramatist, wrote patriotic poems during the Hohenzollem empire.

Report in the “Züricher Post”, November 24, 1905

Theosophy and the “world riddles”. We request the following lines to be included:

Th. S. On the evening of November 13, in front of a large audience of around 250 people, Dr. phil. Rud. Steiner from Berlin spoke about Theosophy and “The World Riddles” by E. Haeckel in the courtroom of the Schwurgericht (court of assizes). The speaker explained that the worldview called “Theosophy” (the wisdom of God) originated about thirty years ago. It is a spiritual movement that encompasses and unites religion, science, philosophy and ethics and answers questions about the origin, nature, purpose and goal of human beings. The world riddles are solvable; but only Theosophy is able to solve them, and in a way that satisfies all people, learned and unlearned. It is Theosophy that creates peace between the different worldviews, sciences and religions, all of which have a kernel of truth. But above all, Theosophy does not contradict the achievements of the natural sciences.

The lecturer now turns specifically to Haeckel's work “Die Welträtsel” (The Riddle of the World), whose widespread popularity is a testament to humanity's great interest in the most important questions. Many Theosophists speak out very sharply against Haeckel. I, the speaker continues, do not want that. Rather, I want to contribute to an understanding of Haeckel's world view. Haeckel's importance lies in the continuation of Darwinism, in the expansion of the evidence that all living things are based on a unified organization and that humans are also a link in the one great series of the animal world. But all this was recognized long before Darwin, for example by Goethe. However, his thoughts were in too lofty regions to be accessible and comprehensible to all people. Darwin's and his epigones' most significant work consists mainly in the fact that they drew the ideas of the unified context of all organisms (including humans) down to a level accessible to all of humanity, proved them to be true, and thus made them understandable to the mind. In this respect, Haeckel's “Welträtsel” (World Mysteries) is an astonishingly great achievement.

But great men also have great faults. From a theosophical point of view, there is nothing to be said against Darwin's theory of the origin of species. However, a distinction must be made

between Darwin's Darwinism and Haeckel's Darwinism, because in his writings, Darwin speaks of the “Creator” and the “Omniscient and Almighty, who foresees everything”. However, the original Darwinism occurred during a materialistic era and therefore received a thoroughly materialistic interpretation and explanation from its followers and developers. And it is only against this interpretation and explanation that Theosophy is directed.

The material and visible world is based on a transcendental and invisible one. If Darwinism had come into a spiritualistic-idealistic age instead of a materialistic one, it would undoubtedly have been interpreted and explained in a spiritualistic-idealistic way. But in an age when even the smallest living creature, the cell, can be seen by the armed bodily eye, the materialistic world view – and especially materialistic biology – is understandable. The “habits of thought”, whether religious, idealistic, materialistic and so on, play a major role. But thinking purely materialistically is a mistake; for there are perceptions (for example, the perception of the color red, the scent of roses, the sound of an organ) that cannot be conceived and explained in a materialistic way. They are based on material impulses, but these are not the deepest, ultimate cause. Materialism cannot solve the riddles of the world; this was also recognized, for example, by Du Bois-Reymond in his famous Ignorabimus speech. Haeckel's mistake, then, is that he brought his materialistic thinking habits into Darwinism, and that he also wants to explain mental and spiritual processes in material terms. But Theosophy does not want to criticize Haeckel's explanations of the physical or sensual, but to recognize them.

Steiner now turns specifically to Theosophy, which recognizes two entities in man, one soul or spiritual and one physical or material, and claims, for example, that these two entities are separate in the sleeping person. The fact that the soul or spirit does not express itself and does not feel in deep sleep is only because it lacks the organs to do so. Therefore, it is the task of every human being to recognize this and to decide to provide his soul with certain means corresponding to the sensory organs of the supersensible. The moment this happens is what the theosophist calls “rebirth”. Through the continued use of these means (which, however, were not mentioned), the soul or spirit develops into an organized supersensible, true or divine human being, to whom the dream world is also an entity and who can see the spirits with the “inner eye” just as the sensual human being can see the bodies with his outer eye. The body is transitory, the spirit or soul is eternal, an ineradicable unity. Therefore, theosophy is monism in the highest sense.

Will the newly formed “Theosophical Society Zurich” prosper and turn us all into Theosophists? The author of these lines does not think so. He believes it is a mistake to consider that what we call mind or spirit is not physical or natural, and finds it curious that we need to obtain organs for it. The theosophical identification of the terms soul and spirit is also unlikely to fall on fertile ground. Although today's state of science allows for certain differences, it no longer allows for sharp boundaries between what we call spiritual, mental and physical. Of course, theosophy has its merits in that it opposes crude materialism and seeks to give the spiritual side of man its due. But the theosophical degradation of the physical side of man, which, after all, also – to quote Darwin – originates from the “almighty and omniscient Creator” as his material and spiritual product, cannot stand up before the judgment seat of true science, such as natural science.

The series of lectures we are having today and tomorrow could perhaps be used to discuss things that are similar; except that they are discussed one time as they should be discussed for members and for those friends who have spent a certain amount of time within a branch to base their world view on the points of view from which we start, while tomorrow, at the public lecture, similar things and similar starting points are to be considered, but in a way that is more suitable for those who, so to speak, come to the movement directly from the outside world, still little acquainted with spiritual science.

Today, we will take as it were the starting point of what is a well-known demand for all those who not only want to advance in spiritual science alone, but perhaps also in the development of their inner being. It is emphasized time and again that for a person's inner development — so that it may lead to his having experiences in the spiritual world — purity and loving aims and intentions are of the utmost importance. We could perhaps say, even if it is somewhat one-sided (for everything one says must be one-sided), that a spiritual researcher, or anyone who wants to ascend into the spiritual worlds and somehow find something of these spiritual worlds for themselves, must above all have a certain soul quality. This quality of the soul must be such that he sympathizes, and indeed strongly sympathizes with what is good, noble, and beautiful, and that he feels a kind of repulsion for what is evil and ugly. The purity of the soul's moral nature is repeatedly called for in relation to the path into the spiritual worlds, and we could well say: For an ascent into the spiritual worlds that is truly in line with our present time, it is absolutely necessary that the soul be completely imbued with true, moral intentions and goals. We shall hear later that it is indeed possible to develop clairvoyant powers without these basic conditions; but to acquire clairvoyant powers without the just characterized basic conditions, always has something dubious.

To understand this, let us now try to understand what we actually mean by the moral nature of man. We are led to speak of the moral nature of man when we consider, on the one hand, the impulses that come to man from the outside world to act, to will or to desire. When man is moved by some natural need, such as hunger or thirst, to perform this or that action, or even to desire or will this or that action, we do not say that such desires or wills are moral actions. Of course, that does not mean that they are immoral. But when a stone falls to the ground, that is not a moral act either, and we do not feel at all inclined to apply morality as a standard. Nor do we feel inclined to speak of morality when a person satisfies the natural demands of his organism by eating and drinking. Nor do we feel compelled to speak of morality when a person sees a beautiful flower or something else beautiful somewhere and, because it makes a beautiful, pleasant impression, is prompted to desire it. Here, too, we do not speak of morality.

When do we actually speak of morality in human nature? But only when it is not such external inducements as hunger and thirst or the sense of well-being that some object arouses in us that are the inducement to do this or that, but when the inducement arises from the innermost core of our being, like a command from within us that is independent of external inducement. We become particularly aware of the difference between this moral and what I am not saying is immoral, but morally indifferent, when we consider how we might do this or that through external inducement, but do not do it because of the inner command, which we call a moral impulse.

Take, for example, the very obvious and trivial case of someone having a powerful tendency to drink too much. Then, if he were able to do so, he would just drink. Or he can also follow an inner voice that has nothing to do with the inclination, but is opposed to this external inducement and says: What this external inducement wants to happen should not be! - Here we see that something can speak in us that contradicts the external inducement. Now, anything that amounts to such a contradiction and inner condemnation of our actions, we call a moral thing. We can only speak of a moral action if we disregard all external impressions, everything we are forced to do by external circumstances, and only look at what speaks from within us. It is precisely this ability to hear something within ourselves that goes beyond external inducement and can even contradict this inducement from outside that makes us human and sets us apart from animals.

We must feel that we have something in morality that is true in itself. This is the essential feature of all moral impulses: that they are true in themselves, and that external circumstances can contribute nothing when any action is to be designated as moral or immoral. When we do seem to designate something as moral in response to external circumstances, we are often indulging in an illusion when we make such a designation. If, for example, we were to say that a person organizes his life in such a way that he does not merely follow hunger and thirst with regard to eating and drinking, but follows the principle that it is necessary to take care of his organism in order to sustain himself in the outside world, so that we can see the external requirements of life as the decisive impulses, then that would be an illusion. Morality can only be established if we can add to the external impulse the internal impulse that it is right and good for man to sustain himself on earth, and not only for the sake of the external task, but for the sake of the internal task that can follow from it. Otherwise it is only an apparent one. The hallmark of what is moral is therefore that the impulse is not caused by the outside world, but arises purely from the powers of our soul. Now, of course, someone might say: But there are also evil voices within us; we often follow impulses that we clearly recognize as inner impulses and that are certainly not ones that we can describe as moral. One could say, however, that we cannot discuss this chapter in detail today because we have set ourselves a different task today: when a person follows such seemingly inner impulses that are bad and evil, he is not truly following himself, but rather he is following impulses whose origin he does not know and which he confuses with those that come from within. We all know the luciferic forces from our spiritual scientific considerations. These do not come from within, but, so to speak, from without, in that the luciferic entities have taken hold in our astral body and not in our I. Thus, if we define morality in this way, we are exposed to numerous contradictions. If we look at this more closely, we find that the characteristic of the moral is that all moral impulses must arise from our innermost core of being. We can then present what we, so to speak, morally like, what arouses our moral approval, and can fill us with delight and enthusiasm, as an ideal, so to speak, for which the human being is so completely at one with himself, so completely at home within himself. And if it is extremely useful and necessary in ordinary life for a person to realize that he is only completely himself when making moral judgments, or judgments that arise in a similar way, then this is an absolute basic requirement for practical occultism. It must be recognized as a principle of the occultist. It is important that all events in his life should follow the pattern of moral impulses, that nothing should happen in the soul when one enters the higher path of knowledge that does not follow the pattern of a real moral impulse.

It is important that the person who wants to become a practical occultist, who wants to follow the path of knowledge, should not undertake anything that he cannot say: If I compare it with what is in the human soul, what I call moral, the two must be similar. The path of knowledge must not deviate at any stage from that which proves similar to the moral behavior of man. The similarity of the path of knowledge to moral impulses even extends to the details. This will be illustrated by a very specific example.

As people are in the present day, morality is something very special. Basically, the Ten Commandments are still the most important of our laws. The Ten Commandments are constructed in a very special way. Of the ten, only three are constructed in such a way that they say: You shall do something. The other seven are constructed in such a way that one says: You shall not! It follows that the world powers see much more necessity in giving people moral laws that say: You shall not do something - than in giving them laws that say: You shall do something. For not doing what is commanded is in the ratio of seven to three to doing what is commanded. We may therefore say: Morality in general must work in human nature in such a way that it particularly takes the standpoint of saying, “Thou shalt not.”

We can compare this ratio of seven to three in the Ten Commandments in more detail. If we look at the seven commandments that say, “You shall not do something”, they all refer to things of the external world, to what one should not do in the physical world; whereas the three commandments that contain the “You shall” actually refer to that which goes beyond the physical world. There it says: You shall believe in one God, you shall not take the name of this God in vain, and so on. From this we see that in relation to the actual spiritual matters of the soul, the commandments are positive; on the other hand, all commandments that relate to actual moral behavior in the outer physical life have a “you shall not”. Even if we believe that the fourth commandment, “Honor your father and your mother, that you may live long on earth,” is positive, we still feel that it is fundamentally very negative, like the other six commandments. It is a kind of transitional commandment that, although it refers to the physical world, nevertheless leads from this physical world up into the spiritual world. We can prove this in minute detail, I might add, for in all ancient peoples the so-called ancestral service of religion was based on the fact that there was something divine in the ancestors, the forefathers. In this respect, the veneration of the ancestors, of whom the immediate ancestors are only a special case, was a kind of transition from the sensual world to the higher world. But this fourth commandment was especially related to the immediate physical world, to the relationship between children and parents. In relation to parents we can fulfill this commandment, we can feel that the fourth commandment is given in a positive way, that it is set up over man to prevent something from happening. In the case of the first commandments, the object to which they point does not yet exist in the physical world.

The structure of the nature of the Ten Commandments points to what constitutes an essential feature of morality in the world of the senses: that moral impulses may contradict what a person would do if he were to follow only the impulses of the physical world. This makes it clear for the path of knowledge, which must be built according to the pattern of moral impulses: We must moralize our entire knowledge on the occult path of knowledge, our otherwise merely theoretical laws of knowledge must become inner moral laws. Thus, what primarily relates to the physical plane must be so organized that it extinguishes what is directly before it, that it says: I extinguish it, just as lower inclinations are extinguished when the moral “Thou shalt not” calls. Indeed, for this reason, every true description of the path of knowledge points out that it is by refining the moral impulses that one most surely lifts the powers of knowledge up into the higher world. This is expressed in all its details. Let us assume we have some kind of plant. What can we initially identify as an external impulse that emanates from it? Let us take the plant's leaf. We can identify as an external impulse that the leaves appear green to us. Thus, for example, rose leaves are green in the physical, sensual world. Now, let us assume that someone who really wanted to attain higher knowledge as a practical occultist was required to educate himself according to the pattern of moral knowledge. Most images would have to arise in such a way that he holds up this green leaf and, in the face of the greenness of the plant, the inner impulse awakens: You shall not be green. It should be possible to look at the green leaf with such vision that the external impulse does not work, that just as the bad inclination disappears before the moral judgment, the green color of the leaf disappears through another, let's say clairvoyant power. In fact, when man develops his clairvoyant powers in the right way, as described in “How to Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds”, he learns to look at the green leaf and, just as moral judgments extinguish bad inclinations, so the greenness of the leaf, which applies only to the physical plane, is extinguished. And where green would otherwise appear, we have a light pink or peach-like color in relation to the clairvoyant ability in this case. This color appears when we can remove through our clairvoyant power what is in the Maja, what is on the physical plane. Thus, through the clairvoyant power, we remove what is on the physical plane and trigger what, as a supersensible element, underlies the sensible. We can say that entering the path of knowledge really happens in the same way as a person's moral experience. The confrontation of the supersensible and the sensory world works in just the same way as the moral impulse works on immoral inclinations. If, on the other hand, one were to look at the roses themselves, for example this rose here, which has such a rich red color on the physical plane, one would see a bright, transparent green for this rose, and for the lighter rose a kind of rich green with a slight blue nuance.

Thus we have seen in a single case that occult judgments, which correspond to clairvoyant vision, are built up psychically, like the moral judgments that extinguish what is immoral. From this we can conclude that what we said at our starting point is confirmed. In order to arrive at higher knowledge, we must learn to extinguish all immediate impressions of the physical, external world, to make maya disappear, so that something else takes the place of maya. Now, as is well known, the best way to learn something is to memorize it through things that are similar to what is being learned. No one will practice things that have nothing to do with the subject in question in order to learn. I have never heard that someone became a mathematician by going for a walk, simply because it is not similar. Thus, we can acquire such abilities of the soul that are similar to moral impulses only by practicing on what a person already has in ordinary life. He does not yet have clairvoyance, which is something that must be acquired slowly and laboriously. But man always has the opportunity to reflect in his soul, asking himself: Which things do I find morally good and which morally reprehensible? Most people do not act immorally not because they do not know what is moral, but only because their inclinations, drives, desires or passions contradict their moral knowledge. Then, when we have examined ourselves in this way, we can go back to what we discover in ourselves, such as agreement with what we can call moral. And if we now practise this meditation by asking ourselves: How can we imagine this or that in the world according to our moral judgment? — and create images for ourselves and immerse ourselves in them, we will experience things and emotional habits in our soul that are akin to clairvoyant powers.

So the next thing a person can do to awaken their clairvoyant powers is to become one with morality and action. This is the best training for clairvoyant powers. That is why it is always emphasized that one should actually only come to have clairvoyant powers by improving one's moral character.

If we consider this, we will indeed have to ask ourselves the question: Are there perhaps no other ways to develop clairvoyant vision? We often see people develop high levels of clairvoyant ability who do not make a particularly good moral impression on us, so we cannot assume that they first cultivated their morals, their approval and disapproval, and their enthusiasm for moral judgment. We see that people who have developed clairvoyant powers through all kinds of other things show certain bad qualities that they did not have or hardly had before; for example, they become real liars when they begin to develop clairvoyant powers. Yes, sometimes it becomes a very dangerous thing for a person's character, especially when they develop clairaudience. Clairvoyance is not yet as dangerous as clairaudience. How does that fit in with what has been said? Well, as you may recall, in my writing “How to Know Higher Worlds,” it is pointed out everywhere at the crucial points that the path to knowledge of the higher worlds, as it has been characterized today, must be followed. But it is equally certain that there are other paths as well. This path must be studied in the right way, then one will soon see why qualities can arise as they have just been characterized. We must be clear about the fact that we first have within us the spiritual-soul core of our being, which we summarize in its center when we say “I” or “I am”. This spiritual-soul core of our being is embedded in the astral, etheric and physical bodies. Just as the human being lives in the world now, we actually live when we live inwardly, in our I; for all soul activities in the awakened human being are in some way connected with the I, and all appear, as it were, in the background of the I.

I have often given the example of a schoolmate of mine who, even as a young pupil, was a thoroughly materialistic thinker and said: When we think and when we feel, we are only dealing with processes in the brain; we think and feel by virtue of the movements of our brain. Even then he developed quite materialistic theories: How can one speak of the self, of the essence of the being? It is the brain that feels, wills and thinks! – I replied: Yes, but why do you then keep lying and always say: I think, I feel, I will, when you know that your brain does that? – Of course one could say that this is a cheap, trivial objection; but what matters is that it is correct, significant and immediately valid. We live in connection with our ego from the moment we wake up until we fall asleep, and we cannot separate our ego from anything we think, feel or want. Now, what we experience inwardly and what is so linked to our ego is embedded in the astral, etheric and physical bodies. We do not experience these bodies directly in normal life. All kinds of hidden, inexplicable things emerge from the astral body, but what happens in it is unknown to the person, just as what happens in the depths is unknown to someone who only looks at the upper wave of the sea. A person should just observe life and see how little is known about what goes on in the hidden depths of life.

For example, we have a child who, in the seventh year of his life, experienced only once being treated unfairly by his father or mother. This resulted in a certain agitation in the child, but it was not noticed because it apparently disappeared very quickly for the outside world. But it only descended into the astral body; down there it surges and drifts. The child lives on until the age of sixteen or seventeen. He is at school. Something happens, the teacher does this or that. Another child would just have been upset about it, but this child commits suicide! Anyone who looks at this child's life only superficially will talk about all kinds of reasons that led him to commit suicide. Only he who looks at life in its depths, where it surges and drives, in the astral body, will know that one of the most important causes was the experience of injustice in the seventh year. This lives on down there in secret and is only brought to the surface by the incident at school; if that had not happened, the suicide would not have occurred.

What happens just below the threshold of consciousness, when the astral body has experiences in the immediate present, we cannot even be certain about that, much less about how the astral body is structured, formed, composed, what its elements, its beings are. We are embedded in what the spiritual and soul powers, which we know as the hierarchies, have organized for us. Down there in the astral body there are many forces, just as there are many in the depths of the sea that cannot be seen, only the ripples on the surface. And just as the ripples on the surface are related to what is below in the depths of the sea, so is the conscious I related to what is going on in the astral body. Only a diver who can submerge himself in this world of the astral body can do this, and this diver is precisely the clairvoyant.

This applies to an even greater extent to the etheric body; there we have even more hidden depths. And only with the physical body! Although the human being has it in front of him from the outside, he has the least control over it and can only do what the stomach wants. If he had to choose between fighting an upset stomach or immoral tendencies, he would set aside all moral efforts and strive for a healthy stomach. The physical body is subject to laws that man does not have in his conscious ego, but which he acquires from outside in maya. The astral, etheric and physical bodies are permeated with forces from the beings of the higher hierarchies. But this does not prevent these from playing up into the conscious ego, that forces flow from the hidden depths of the human being into the conscious ego, as we saw in the case of the child that really happened. From the age of seven, a force had been released in the astral body through the injustice that had occurred. This force then played itself into consciousness when the teacher took the cloth used to wipe the blackboard and, when the boy, who had since turned sixteen, had given him a slap in the face. He leaves the classroom, happens to find the chemistry room open, goes in and takes poison. With all the means of psychological science, one could prove how the violence of what was down there in the astral body brought this about.

But what is present down there in the human being can also be drawn up into the conscious I through certain behavior. We could pump up forces from the astral body through the conscious I and thereby come into possession of clairvoyant, that is, supersensory powers in consciousness. But in doing so, we are pumping up forces from what the gods have given us. This is indeed something that is often recommended in books that give instructions on how to enter a path of knowledge. It is very often the case that those who write such books also have no idea of the true process, because these things are not done with the conscientiousness with which they must be done. But it is to be understood that the forces that are instilled by higher hierarchies into our astral, etheric and physical bodies belong there. If we pump them up, we withdraw something from our organization; we take away something from what the gods have given us, and we weaken ourselves as a result. The weakening can show itself in such a way that the truthfulness instilled by the gods is damaged. These powers, which previously prevented people from lying, are pumped up to such an extent that they now begin to lie. Here is the great difference between this way of acquiring clairvoyant powers and the one described above, which you find consistently carried out in my writing “How to Know Higher Worlds”. What is this way based on? Exactly on the fact that nothing is developed on the path of knowledge that is not carried out according to the pattern of purely moral judgment. But this never flows from the astral body, but must be acquired as something that arises in the conscious ego like an inner voice. For we cannot regard as a moral being that which has no consciousness. We speak of morality only in relation to a being that is capable of allowing impulses to arise out of the core of its nature, which is connected with its inner being.

But now, in addition to moral forces, there are also those that lead the soul up into the higher world. If these are not to come from our astral body, then they cannot come from within ourselves at all. They cannot possibly come from within ourselves, because what comes from within ourselves would have to come from the conscious ego. But apart from moral impulses, at most aesthetic judgments, which decide on beauty, and, in a sense, mathematical judgments arise from the conscious ego. But the astral body should not be pumped up; so where can they come from? From the supersensible world, in which we are placed and which has indeed produced our three bodies. But these forces do not have to come from these three bodies themselves. So it is not the detour through the three bodies that must be chosen, but a path that brings us directly into contact with the spiritual realms, with the beings of the hierarchies, so that these forces of the higher world flow directly into us. We must therefore have access to these worlds through which higher forces can flow into our souls. For this it is necessary that all higher knowledge is connected with something other than with ordinary knowledge. With ordinary knowledge one does not enter into the higher worlds. To enter into the higher worlds, a very specific basic mood of the soul is necessary. This is the first thing that even the ancient Greek philosophers emphasized: Someone who can only think well, who only wants to grasp things intellectually, through mere thinking and philosophizing, cannot enter the spiritual worlds. One must start from something else. Before one can confront a thing cognitively, one must confront it in a different way.

All knowledge begins with wonder, and only those who start from a place of wonder are on the path to true knowledge. Nothing that we do not first face in wonder can lead to the path of knowledge at all. Let all pedagogy declaim that one must start from observation; if wonder is not there first, it remains mere intellectual cognition. Wonder is the first thing one must have.

The second thing that allows us to enter the spiritual world is to learn to worship. To worship that which works through the object. Knowledge that is not so connected with the soul that the soul walks the path of knowledge in the sense that it first lives in awe and in worship of that which manifests itself through the object, does not go beyond intellectual knowledge.

The third is to feel in harmony with world events. The spiritual teaching provides many means for this, in particular by carrying the idea of karma within us with all the seriousness of life. It is a long way from being convinced of karma in human life to the point where it becomes a true seriousness of life. If we are truly convinced of karma, then when someone slaps us, we must not say, “I don't like you slapping me!” Instead, we should ask ourselves, “Who actually slapped me? I myself, because in my previous life I did something that caused the other person to give me this slap, and I have not the slightest reason to tell him that he is doing me wrong, but in a sense I have set up an automaton for myself. — Not being in contradiction but in harmony with world events is the third thing. The Gospel itself gives a corresponding teaching: If someone strikes you on the right cheek, then offer the other one as well. If one knows that through karma one has to look for the cause within oneself, if one recognizes how one only lives out what one has brought about through one's own arbitrariness, through one's own guilt, then one comes to know oneself in harmony with the world process. That is the third.

And the fourth is: complete surrender to the process of the world, seeing oneself as if one were actually only a part of it. So that we can list four qualities with which we can relate to the outside world, to the outside of life: first, admiring, marveling; second, venerating; third, knowing ourselves to be in harmony with the world process; fourth, completely surrendering ourselves to this world process.

By developing these qualities, we open our soul, open it so that those forces can flow into it that flow out of the spiritual world in a virginal state, as it were. We inhale these forces like fresh mountain air, after having previously inhaled air that has been consumed by other organisms. Thus we see what a great difference there is between what can be given, as it were, by grace through the higher hierarchies themselves, and what we acquire by pumping up something out of the forces they place in our organization. By such a consideration we learn truly to distinguish between two paths that both lead to real clairvoyance. But one path leads to clairvoyance through the fact that man himself encounters the beings of the higher hierarchies directly.

Man has not always been a moral being. As long as man had only developed the astral body, the etheric body and the physical body, one could not speak of moral impulses. We speak of ancient sun-men who appropriated the etheric body, and of moon-men who acquired the astral body. But there was nowhere a realm of morality during these periods of development. The mission on earth is that morality is added to what man can otherwise experience. This is the task for the acquisition of such powers that lead to the spiritual world: man must develop beyond what he has acquired in the course of Saturn, Sun and Moon evolution. From all this it can be seen that, because it can be directly proven by reason, one cannot say that man can entrust himself to the offered paths of knowledge without judgment, to black magic as well as to moral impulses. One must only be willing to test everything through reason. If you try to respond to it correctly through today's description, what has been said will prove to be true, so that if you apply such standards to the description of paths of knowledge, you can really distinguish them without further ado. And it is important that man learn to say to himself: For me, the description of a path of knowledge in which not everything is patterned after a moral impulse is suspect from the outset. A person who does not consider a path that contradicts what one can actually feel as a moral impulse to be suspicious, who cannot feel the necessity of moral impulses, would have to ascribe it to himself if he were to get into danger. Therefore it was not at all unnecessary to include this consideration among the reflections that can be cultivated, because it is indeed right and good that someone who is interested in spiritual science today not only accepts the things that have been researched, but also, to a certain extent, familiarizes themselves with how things are found. Let us assume that someone wants to accept spiritual science but does not want to enter the path of knowledge for this incarnation. It is also useful for him to get an idea of how the knowledge is gained. He can gain an understanding of it, just as a chemist accepts a truth because he is told the experiment by which the knowledge in question is gained, even if he has not done the experiment himself.

Now, in our time, it is especially necessary for those who want to follow the path to higher knowledge to observe the things that have been characterized today; for we live in an age in which man is called upon by higher powers to become more and more independent and self-reliant. In the times that have passed until the Mystery of Golgotha, it was the case that man, without his doing, was in a certain way imbued with clairvoyant powers; this was like an inheritance from primeval times. But since the Mystery of Golgotha, man lives in such a way that he must consciously face things. Therefore, it is necessary that man learn to appropriate that very mood in the soul that is achieved through the four virtues, through the four powers: marveling, admiring, venerating, feeling harmony with the process of the world, and to devote himself to the process of the world, and that he may open himself freely to those influences that may come to him from the higher hierarchies precisely through the development of these virtues.

Now there is a possibility, so to speak, of moving out of the most fundamental soul impulses into such an attitude towards the world as in these four virtues: If we repeatedly and again and again devote ourselves to the thought in our souls that we, as we stand in the world, as we are interwoven in the world of Maja, the great illusion, have sprung from the divine forces with this Maja, this illusion, which always has its origin in the spiritual world. The fact that we live in the world of Maja, of illusion, does not prevent us from surrendering to the spiritual forces in the world of Maja and illusion, from which they have arisen. Maya is like the life in the play of waves on the sea, but it is still raised by the sea and is formed from the substance of the sea. Just as the play of waves comes from the world of the sea, and the foam is a formation from the substance of the sea, so the world of Maya arises from the spiritual underground, so that we can say: Even though we are wrapped up in this world of illusions, we have emerged from the Divine. This is expressed in Western esotericism by the words: Ex deo nascimur – we are born of the Divine.

And a second fundamental feeling is that we must not pump up the forces that the divine powers have placed in our astral, etheric and physical bodies, but that we must devote ourselves directly to the spiritual world, dying to the world. We do this through the four virtues: awe and wonder, reverence, harmony and devotion to the cosmic process. These are the things that bring us ever deeper into the mood that Western esotericism expresses as follows: In Christus morimur — in Christo morimur.

Then we can hope that we are heading towards awakening in the spiritual world, that we are opening up to the forces that are being newly bestowed on us there, as they were once bestowed on the astral body. Through the Holy Spirit we will be awakened again, we will be transported back into the spiritual world, so that man can ascend again into the higher world: Per spiritum sanctum reviviscimus.

We should know that any esoteric teaching that is correct for today's world must banish all methods that pump forces from the lower bodies up into the ego that are supposed to lead to higher knowledge; for we are healthy when these forces remain below. It is a false esoteric path when we befog ourselves in this or that way and then consider certain things to be right simply because we have pumped up the forces that would not allow us to think these things are right if they remained in their place. These are serious matters, leading to a true understanding of why, in the book “How to Know Higher Worlds,” the powers for developing clairvoyant abilities are localized directly in the area of our larynx. They are, in the highest sense, moral faculties, and are also presented in the Buddha's teaching as the eight-fold path. To a certain extent they are moral; in the broader sense they lead man upwards to a thorough moralization of our knowledge as well, to an impregnation of it with that which otherwise is only in our morals.

The truths we look for in spiritual science should not be dead facts, but should bring with them understanding of such a vital kind that it finds entrance into life in all circumstances and at every point. Taken in the abstract, as is often the case at present, spiritual science may seem to offer a diluted and unproductive kind of knowledge, and it is natural that people who know very little about it should be induced to ask: What, after all, is the use of learning that man consists of such and such parts; that humanity has developed, and will develop further, through different epochs of culture, and so on? Those who feel that a realistic attitude is demanded by modern life find spiritual science unprofitable. And it is often applied in an unprofitable way, even by its most devoted adherents.

Nevertheless, spiritual science itself is infinitely alive, and is something which in the course of time can and must bring life into our most external concerns. I should like to make this clear today by a particular example. Most of us know that our present age was preceded by the so-called fourth post-Atlantean culture epoch, during which the most important peoples were the Greeks and Romans; that the following centuries down to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries continued to be influenced by impulses preceding from that epoch; and that since the fifteenth century mankind has been living in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, into which we ourselves in our present incarnation have been born and in which humanity will be living for many hundreds of years to come. We know furthermore that in man in the fourth post-Atlantean period of civilisation—the Graeco-Roman epoch—was built up pre-eminently the so-called intellectual soul through external culture and work and that cultivation of the consciousness soul is our present task. What does the cultivation of the consciousness soul mean? This abstract statement, rightly understood, contains the destiny of mankind for our entire fifth post-Atlantean period. In order that the consciousness soul may be brought to expression, the various peoples of this period of culture should work together. All the conditions and circumstances of life proclaim this truth; on all sides we find it confirmed that our age stands for the development of the consciousness soul.

Human life was completely different in the preceding Graeco-Roman period when, according to the stage of development mankind had reached, the faculties of intellect and of feeling were bestowed upon them. Intellect covers a wide field; today this is not sufficiently understood. In their soul-life the Greeks and Romans were dependent upon it in a different way from ourselves in the fifth post-Atlantean period. They received the intellect, in so far as they needed to make use of it, “ready-made”, as a natural tendency of their stage of development; there was no need to cultivate it as we must do at present, and as will be increasingly necessary in the further course of the fifth post-Atlantean period—it developed as a natural tendency. The child grew up, and as his natural tendencies developed, the natural intellect—in a certain sense—developed with them. Growing up in ordinary conditions in a particular incarnation he either possessed an intellect, or he did not. The latter case was considered pathological, or at any rate abnormal, out of the common.

And so it was with heart-and-feeling. Appropriately to the fourth post-Atlantean period heart-and-feeling developed. And though history tells us little of such things, it is nevertheless true that two people meeting for the first time knew how to tune in to each other. In this respect there is a great, difference between the preceding centuries down to the fifteenth century, and our own time. People, then, did not pass each other by with the complete indifference often shown nowadays. At present we are slow, as a rule, to make friends. We must know a great deal about each other before confidence can be established. But what is now only to be arrived at after long acquaintance—if at all—in former centuries, particularly during the Graeco-Roman period of civilisation, could be won at a stroke. In virtue of their respective individualities people were drawn rapidly together, without so much need to exchange feelings and thoughts. Acquaintance was quickly made, in so far as it might be good for the two persons concerned, or necessary to a group of people forming themselves into a community. Heart-and-feeling in the one could still reach out more spiritually and make immediate contact with heart-and-feeling in the other. Up to the present, through the medium of our senses, we can still accurately distinguish the colours, and so forth, of plants; but it will no longer be possible to do this spontaneously in the seventh post-Atlantean epoch when learning to know nature will necessitate special conditions. And there is a resemblance between our actual connection with plants and human connections in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. We must remember that this kind of feeling-and-heart connection was well adapted to that age, but a very different network of feelings and sensations spans the world of today. In the fourth post-Atlantean epoch human relationships and undertakings depended to the greatest possible extent upon personal contacts. The art of printing which has done so much up to now, and will do more and more in the future, to establish impersonal relationships, belongs to the fifth post-Atlantean epoch; and modern terms of intercourse are such that, fundamentally speaking, connections formed at a stroke are no longer even beneficial, and people can only approach one another on far more impersonal grounds.

Towards this, modern man is developing; he is no longer possessed of a ready-made heart-and-feeling with its spontaneous reactions, nor of a penetrating intellect, but impelled by the consciousness soul to develop something far more detached, more individual, more dependent upon egoism, upon human loneliness inherent in the organisation of his own body, than was the intellectual soul or mind soul. Through the consciousness soul man is much more an individual, a solitary traveler through the world. And the tendency people now show to withdraw into themselves is becoming [a] more and more pronounced characteristic of our time. The hallmark of the consciousness soul is the urge towards an isolated life, secluded from the rest of mankind. Hence the difficulty of getting to know one another, especially of establishing confidence, without the transition period of formal acquaintanceship.

The significance of all this becomes clearer if we give due weight to the spiritual-scientific truth that in the present age we are not thrown together by chance with other people. That the path of life brings us into contact with certain people and not with others depends upon the working out of individual karma. For we have entered upon a period of human evolution which brings man's preceding karmic developments to a culminating point. Think how much less karma had been accumulated in the earlier periods of earth evolution! With every incarnation fresh karma is made. At first, people had to meet under totally new conditions, with the possibility of forming fresh connections. But through repeated earth-lives we have gradually reached a point at which, as a general rule, we do not meet anyone with whom in former incarnations we have not shared this or that experience. And these experiences bring us into contact again with those who shared them. We meet other people as it would appear by chance but in reality because in former incarnations we had already met, and on the strength of this are brought together again.

Now the self-contained consciousness soul can only develop—and its development is destined to take place in our time—when less importance is attached to what takes place at present between one person and another than to what works inwardly in solitude as the result of former incarnations. In the Graeco-Roman period two persons meeting for the first time made an impression upon each other which worked with the immediacy of a blow. At present, if a meeting is to take place that is to further the development of the consciousness soul, the moving factor between them must be what emerges in one or [the] other as the result of previous incarnations. This takes longer than recognition at first sight; it implies the gradual coming to the surface, little by little in a feeling, instinctive way, of what they formerly lived through together. What we ask today is that in becoming acquainted individual corners should be rubbed off. Because it is in the becoming acquainted, this rubbing off of corners, that the still unconscious, instinctive reminiscences and after-effects of former incarnations strike upwards. The consciousness soul can only develop when our contacts with other people are made from within; whereas the intellectual and mind soul develops more through immediate contact.

What I have now described for the fifth post-Atlantean epoch is only in its initial stage. And as the epoch continues it will become increasingly difficult to bring ourselves into a right relationship with others, because this demands inner development, inner activity. A beginning has been made, but what has begun must continue to spread and become more and more intensive. How hard it is already in this present time for people drawn together by karma to understand each other, perhaps because owing to other karmic connections they have not the force instinctively to conjure up all the relations leading over from former incarnations. Stirred by certain after-effects of previous earth-lives, people are drawn together in love; but other forces work against these rising memories, and friends grow apart again. And this putting the durability of their relationship to the test is not only for those who meet in life as friends; it will also be increasingly difficult for children to understand their parents, parents their children, brothers and sisters each other. Reciprocal understanding will become more and more difficult, because of the increasing need to free what is karmically imprisoned within us, and to let it rise to the surface.

Now this negative prospect of ever increasing difficulty in reciprocal understanding in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch requires of us that we should not dream our lives away in the dark, nor close our eyes to the condition of evolution, because this is an absolutely necessary condition. If the difficulty of coming to mutual understanding were not hanging over fifth post-Atlantean humanity, the consciousness soul could not develop, and people would have to live their life in common dependent upon their natural tendencies. And cultivation of individuality—which belongs to the consciousness soul—would not be able to develop either. This must take place. Men will have to undergo this test.

Nevertheless, if only this negative aspect of evolutionary conditions in the fifth post-Atlantean period were to prevail, war and strife would inevitably arise, and find their way into even our most unimportant concerns. I need refer only to one thing and it will be plain to all of us how the remedy is to be sought for one of our necessary ills—for the difficulty we find in understanding each other. I need only say—because we are living in the age of the consciousness soul, as the fifth post-Atlantean epoch proceeds more and more conscious interest will have to be felt for SOCIAL UNDERSTANDING. In this term needs are summed up which in the fourth post-Atlantean period did not exist to at all the same extent. Anyone able accurately to study the history of ancient Greece and Rome knows that for these peoples the individual was not yet possessed of the abilities that can now be made use of by European humanity, and by their American connections. This becomes clearer if we compare human beings with an animal species. Why do animals of the same species live, within certain limits, harmoniously together? For through their group soul, the soul of their species, they have this inborn faculty; it is inherent in the species, and a matter of course. But this represents a stage of development at which the animal remains stationary, but which man must outgrow. Every single human being must develop himself as an individual, and particularly in our modern age of the consciousness soul this self-culture of the individual is one of the most important matters. The Graeco-Roman civilisation is still coloured by a group-soul element. We find its peoples making part of a social order, the structure of which, though certainly derived more from moral forces, is in itself a fixed structure and will in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch be increasingly broken up. This group-soul element in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch has no longer any meaning for the fifth. A conscious form of social understanding must take its place, proceeding from a deep knowledge of the true being of the human individual. And it is spiritual science which will first develop this understanding. When spiritual science blossoms more and more out of the abstract into the concrete, into fullness of life, among its adherents a very special knowledge of, a very special interest in, humanity will be aroused. There will be people with special gifts for teaching others about the different temperaments and characterological tendencies, how this person with a particular temperament should be taken in such a way, whereas that other person with the same temperament but with a different trend of character requires different treatment. These specially gifted men will say to those who are ready to learn: “Look carefully; there is this type of person and there is that other type, and, with each, must deal differently.” Practical psychology, practical knowledge of the soul, but also a practical knowledge of life, will be cultivated, and out of this true social understanding for human development will grow.

What have we had up to now in the shape of social understanding? All kinds of abstract ideals, concerned with national welfare and human happiness, this or that form of socialism, have made their appearance. And only when certain sociological ideas are really on the point of being put into practice, is the acknowledgment of their impracticability forthcoming. What in the first place is important is not to found sects and societies with fixed programmes, but to spread the knowledge of men, notably such knowledge of human nature as will enable us to understand the growing, developing human being, to understand the child, and how each child develops according to its particular individuality. In this way we shall learn so to adjust ourselves in life that when confronted by karma with a personal connection to be made, a connection to be drawn closer, we shall establish a real and enduring relationship, of the kind which can prove itself in life to be most truly fruitful. Practical knowledge of man, practical, effectual interest in humanity, this is what counts. Up to the present mankind has gone only a short way along this path and with small success. For how do we judge a person whom we meet nowadays? As being agreeable to us, or the reverse. Look about you and you will find that this is, in most cases, the sole criterion, or if more than one opinion is pronounced there is only one point of view; “This man appeals to me, another does not. I like this about so-and-so, but I do not like that.” Foregone conclusions! We make for ourselves an idea of what someone should be, and when we find that they differ from it we criticise. No progress will be made towards a true practical understanding of man until we do away with these prejudices and fancies for this person or that, and make up our minds to take people as they are.

How often, when two people meet for the first time, one of them arouses instantaneous antipathy in the other, whom he dislikes so much that afterwards whatever they have to do with each other is coloured by this dislike. As a consequence the karmic connection between them can be entirely blotted out, or set on a false track, and will have to be laid aside until the two meet again in their next incarnation. Sympathy and antipathy are the greatest enemies of true social interests, though only too little heed is paid to the fact. But to anyone deeply aware of the importance of true social understanding for the further development of mankind, it is distressing to watch the effect teachers in a school often have upon their pupils, when out of prejudice they show preference for one rather than another, whereas it is important to take each of them as he is able and to make the very most of that.

But here we are up against regulations. Our regulations and social laws often so implacably wipe out individuality in the teacher himself, that any real effort to uphold individuality as such is impossible.

Understanding for spiritual science would cause practical knowledge of the human soul and practical knowledge of man to become matters of general interest. This is a necessity for social understanding if it is, to some extent, to create the opposite pole to the difficulty of understanding one another. It is what must come in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch of the consciousness soul is to develop fully. Man must go through trials and provings, for the opposing forces set snares in our way. And accordingly feelings of sympathy and antipathy will be widespread, and it is only by consciously combating these superficial feelings that we shall bring the consciousness soul safely to birth. Social understanding between man and man will also be more and more powerfully opposed by those nationalistic feelings and emotions, which only assumed their present form in the nineteenth century but are gaining the upper hand more and more. And since good is to be found only in the overcoming of them, these national antagonisms, these national sympathies and antipathies,[as they arise] are so strong that they are fearful testings for mankind. Were they to gain the upper hand, as they bid fair to do, we should dream away the development of the consciousness soul, because nationalism works in the opposite direction, and stands in the way of man's independence by tending to make of him a mere reflection of this or that national group. This is the first thing to bear in mind if we want the otherwise empty saying to become a reality in our souls: that the fifth post-Atlantean epoch is in particular for the development of the consciousness soul. And further to this development: if as individualism increases religion does not adapt itself to the needs of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, but remains as it was suitable for the fourth post-Atlantean period, a certain drying up of the religious life must take place.

Religious groups were bound to arise in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch because at that time mankind lived more as groups. It was necessary for authority to pour out dogmas, principles of religion, religious thought, upon groups of people, as common to them all. But because the urge to develop individuality through the consciousness soul in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch is becoming stronger and stronger, that which speaks out of the group religions can no longer find its way to human hearts, and individual human souls. And what comes from these group religions will simply not be understood. In the fourth post-Atlantean epoch it was still possible out of the group to teach people about Christ. But in the fifth period Christ is already actually entering the individual soul. Already, unconsciously or subconsciously, we all carry Christ within us. But through ourselves alone we must find the way to understand Him anew. This will not come from the imposing of fixed dogmas, only from doing all we can to further what will make Christ universally comprehensible, to further the spread of universal religious knowledge in general, and to search out everything which can work to this end. Hence in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch the need for more and more tolerance, particularly where thought in connection with religious experience is concerned. And whereas in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch those who worked to spread religious truths did so by imposing certain dogmas and fixed principles, in the fifth period this must all completely change. It is a question of something entirely different. Because men are becoming more and more individual an attempt should be made for anyone to describe his inner experiences completely freed from dogma to another, in such a way that the latter might also be able to develop his own free life of religious thought as an individual. It is a fact that dogmatic religion, the fixed dogmas of the religious confessions, will kill the religious life of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. So that a fresh start from this age must consist in making it clear that in the first centuries of the Christian era this or that may have been adapted to man's development at the time, and that in the following centuries something different is needed. Also that there are different religions. We must try to make the essential nature of the different religions intelligible, to make clear different aspects of the Christ-conception. In this way we bring to every soul what it requires for its particular deepening. But we do not ourselves intervene in the moulding of the soul; we leave the soul, especially in the sphere of religion, its own liberty of thinking and scope to unfold this liberty.

Just as social understanding is necessary for the fifth post-Atlantean period at the point I have described, so is liberty of thought on religious grounds a fundamental condition for the development of the consciousness soul. SOCIAL UNDERSTANDING IN THE SPHERE OF HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS. LIBERTY OF THOUGHT IN THE SPHERE OF RELIGION—of the religious life.

This effort of ours to understand the religious aspect of life more and more, to penetrate it, and by so doing to come to terms with our fellow men even though each of them may have his own religious life to unfold, must be kept clearly in view because it is a basic need of the fifth post-Atlantean period and something humanity must acquire by consciously drawing upon their own strength. In this very age of the consciousness soul, the ahrimanic powers are most fiercely renewing their attack upon liberty of thought—the nerve and sinew in the stream of the spiritual scientific conception of life—and we know what opposition it encounters from the religious confessions in general, and what calumnies are directed from every side upon spiritual science, on account of its complete and luminous acceptance of the birth of the consciousness soul, and its refusal to take part in propagating the kind of religious life which is still dependent upon the support of the intellectual or mind soul, as in the fourth post-Atlantean period. The various forms assumed by Christianity were established in the fourth post-Atlantean period according to the requirements of the Graeco-Roman civilisation. As Church-forms they are already unsuitable and will become ever more unsuitable for the growth of free thought which must take place.

And in the age which prompted by modern life feels the first stirrings of a need to think freely, we find the opposing power at work in the so-called Jesuitism of the different religions—although much comes under this heading which would have to be described in detail. It is actually brought to life in order that the strongest possible resistance may be offered to liberty of thought, so vital a necessity for the fifth post-Atlantean period. It will become more and more necessary to exterminate Jesuitism, the enemy in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch of free thinking, because from religion outwards liberty of thought must spread over every sphere of life. But as it must be striven for independently, mankind is put, as it were, to the proof, and difficulties spring up everywhere. These difficulties will increase as men of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch advance towards clear consciousness, yet feeling this at first to be a disadvantage, and in many respects stupefying themselves.

So we find the clash of sharp conflict between germinating liberty of thought and the principle of authority which works into our times like a hang-over from the past. And there is a passion for dulling the consciousness and for self-deception where belief in authority is concerned. In our time putting faith in authority has become so great and so intensified that under its influence people are losing their power of judgment. In the fourth post-Atlantean epoch they were endowed by nature with sound understanding; now they must acquire it, develop it, and their belief in authority holds them back from doing so. We are becoming bound hand and foot to our belief in authority. Only think how helpless human beings appear when compared to the unreasoning animal creation! How completely the animal is guided by instincts which lead it in a sound way even from sickness back to health; whereas modern man fights against sound judgment in this respect and submits himself entirely to authority. He has very little wish to acquire discernment for healthy conditions of living, although it is true that praiseworthy efforts are made in this direction by various societies and institutions. But these efforts need to be very much intensified; above all we must realise that we have increasingly to contend with our own trust in authority, and that whole theories are being built up which in their turn will become the basis of convictions only serving to uphold belief in authority.

In medicine, in law and in every other sphere people declare themselves from the outset incompetent to judge, and accept what science tells them. The complications of modern life make this understandable. But under the pressure of authority we shall become more and more helpless. And systematically to build up this force of authority, this habit of authority, is actually the principle of Jesuitism. And Jesuitism in the Catholic religion is only a special instance of other less noticeable performances in other directions. It begins in the sphere of ecclesiastical dogma with the tendency to uphold papal authority projected over from the fourth post-Atlantean period into the fifth where it can do no good. But the same Jesuitical principle will gradually transfer itself to other spheres of life. In a form hardly differing from the Jesuitism of dogmatic religion, we already find it in medical circles where a certain dogmatism strives after more power for the medical profession. This is typical of Jesuitical aspiration everywhere; and it will grow stronger and stronger. People will find themselves more and more tied down by what authority imposes upon them. And in face of this ahrimanic opposition—for such it is—salvation for the fifth post-Atlantean epoch will be found in asserting the rights of the consciousness soul which is wishing to develop. But as the gift of reason is no longer bestowed upon us like our two arms by Nature, as was still to some extent the case in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, this can only come about through our good will to develop the faculties of understanding and sound judgment. The development of the consciousness soul demands liberty of thought; and this can flourish only in a particular aura, in a certain atmosphere.

I have pointed out that the fifth post-Atlantean epoch is beset with difficulties on account of its pressing forward in a certain direction, to the development of the consciousness soul. The consciousness soul—just because it should develop as such—must encounter opposition and pass through trials. We see what tremendous and growing opposition there is to social understanding and liberty of thought. But this opposition is not acknowledged to be such; it is looked upon in the most extensive circles as right and proper, as something in no way to be condemned but on the contrary most carefully to be fostered.

There are, however, a great many people whose sincerity and clear vision make them fully aware of what dangers modern man is exposed to and who have a keen sense for what is already plain to see: that karmic connections having entered the period of crisis described above, the moment has come when parents and children, brothers and sister peoples and nations will no longer understand each other. There are already a sufficient number of people who realise that these necessary conditions can work for good only when they are faced with the understanding which rises from the very life of the heart. For the impulse for this new world-working must be consciously wrung out of the heart's blood. What comes spontaneously brings estrangement between individuals. We must consciously strive after what springs from the human heart. Every single soul has difficulties to encounter in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch because the consciousness soul can develop only through the testing occasioned by the overcoming of these difficulties.

How often nowadays one hears: “I don't know what to do with myself, I don't know how to organise my life.” This comes from inability to see clearly what the needs of the present time are, and what man's position is with regard to them. Many people are reduced by existing conditions to physical illness, physical strain and loss of balance. And a real understanding for this must be more and more intensively cultivated because what threatens us, and is at the same time a necessity for the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, is the danger of DESTITUTION OF SOUL—destitution of the particular “shade” described in today's lecture. Many people see what this means and feel how necessary it is that we should come to social understanding on the one hand and liberty of thought on the other. But today very few are inclined to make use of the right means to this end. For social understanding, what would be necessary to achieve it, is only too often served by a hotch-potch [hodge-podge?—e.Ed] of high-sounding phrases. There is a lot of talk nowadays about the necessity for the individual treatment of the growing child. What long-winded theories are devised in every branch of pedagogy! Very little of this is to the point. Whereas an intelligent circulation of as many positive descriptions as possible of how the human being actually develops, a positive natural history of individual development, is needed. Wherever possible we should describe how the human beings A, B and C have developed and enter lovingly into such human development as takes place before our eyes—this is what we need. Above all the study of life is necessary, the will to gain knowledge of life itself, rather than to make out programmes. The theoretical programme is the enemy of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch of culture.

Now when a society is formed, this should take place in accordance with the aims of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. This means that the members of it must constitute the chief reason for its existence, and the exchange of ideas between these actual men should yield the best results possible; and if sufficient attention is given to this, very individual results will show themselves. At present, what is the usual procedure? It begins with a drawing up of rules. This can be quite good, and may be necessary, because external conditions demand rules and regulations. But on our own ground we must be very clear that talk about programmes and regulations is merely a concession to the outside world; that what concerns us must be the life in common as individuals, what issues from actual human beings; that reciprocal understanding is what counts. This will make it possible even in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch—which has centuries yet before it—that from among those who understand such things, understanding could go forth for vital individual development in the world generally, which at present puts everything into sections and regulations as if into a straight jacket. From thence come the high-sounding doctrines which from pulpit and platform proclaim the art of living. Theories crop up on every hand, dripping with abstractions and demonstrating every imaginable idea and ideal. So importance can be attached to them, but only to what is concrete, and to a comprehending penetration of the actualities of life. How can this come about?

It stands to reason that to what has been said the following objections would be justified: “Yes, indeed—but we are not qualified to pronounce an opinion upon what experts nowadays officially give out. Only consider”—it might be objected—“what the medical student has to learn! That he should learn it is right and proper, but we could not; and then add to this what the lawyer must know, and the art student, and so on.”—It is certainly out of the question that we should learn these things; but we are not called upon to be creative, we need only be capable of judging. We must allow the expert to create, but we must be able to criticise the expert. And this faculty of judgment we shall not acquire by specialising, but only by cultivating in an all-round way our powers of understanding and our faculty of judgment. This, however, can never come about through expert knowledge in some particular branch of science, but only through the all-embracing knowledge of the Spirit.

Spiritual science must be the centre around which all the sciences revolve; for it not only throws light upon the connections in human evolution, but the way of thinking peculiar to it develops in us sound understanding, and this must be produced and given out from far deeper depths than during the Graeco-Roman civilisation of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. The construction of concepts and representations necessary for spiritual science, and peculiar to it, does not qualify us to become experts in any particular sphere, but it gives us the power of judging. And the reason for this will become more and more plain to see. There are mysterious forces in the human soul, and these forces, these mystery forces, will link the human soul with the spiritual world, and through our participation in spiritual science this link will enable us to use our judgment when we stand in the presence of authority. We shall not have expert knowledge but when in certain cases the expert acts on the strength of what he knows, we shall be able to form our own judgment about it.

Emphasis must be laid upon the fact that spiritual science not only teaches us but in this connection develops our faculty of judgment—that is to say, it makes possible and fosters the freedom and independence of our thinking. Spiritual science may not qualify us to enter the medical profession, but if we can penetrate to its reality it makes us capable of forming a right judgment upon the results of medicine in public life. If what I mean by this could once be fully understood, there would be understanding as well for the many, many life-giving forces of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. For very much is contained in what I mean by saying that spiritual science will, as it were, remodel the human Intellect in such a way that man's critical faculty may be able to unfold itself, and in releasing his intellectual life from the life of his soul he may be able to develop true liberty of thought.

I should like now, if you will allow me, to put these thoughts before you in a more pictorial, imaginative way» We are told in spiritual science of a concrete spiritual world; of elemental beings surrounding us; of the Hierarchies, Angels, Archangels and so forth. The world becomes peopled for us with real spiritual content, spiritual forces and spiritual beings. That we should know nothing about these spiritual beings is no longer a matter of indifference to them as to some extent it still was in the fourth post-Atlantean period. But if in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch men on earth know nothing about them it is as though, a part of their spiritual nourishment was being withheld. The spiritual world is in close communication with our present physical world of earth. You will understand this better when I tell you something which may seem strange now, but is quite simply true; and although at present it is still not possible to say very much, yet certain truths must be given out because humanity should no longer be without them.

From the point of view of humanity on earth we are perfectly justified in saying: With the Mystery of Golgotha Christ entered earth-life, and He has remained in earth-life since then; and from this point of view we can feel it as good fortune for earth-life that Christ should have entered it. But now let us consider this from the standpoint of the Angels—which is no invention of mine, but follows as a reality from occult investigation—let us transfer ourselves to the standpoint of the Angels. Their experience in the spiritual sphere was quite different, it was the reverse of ours. Christ left the sphere of the Angels to come to mankind; He forsook their world. Speaking for themselves they could say: Christ left our world to go through the Mystery of Golgotha. And they would have as much reason to sorrow over this as we have to rejoice that Christ in His healing power should have come to us in as far as we live on earth in our physical bodies. This is a real train of thought, and anyone with actual knowledge of the spiritual world knows that there is only one way for the Angels to find solace, and I described it rightly when I said that men on earth in their physical bodies should live with the Christ-thought in such a way that it can shine upwards as a light to the Angels—since the Mystery of Golgotha—shine up to the Angels as a light. Men say: Christ has entered into us, and we can develop in such a way that He will be able to dwell in us—“not I, but Christ in me.” The Angels say: Christ has gone from the sphere of our inner life, and He shines up to us now like so many stars in the Christ-thought of individual men; He shines up to us since the Mystery of Golgotha, and there we find Him again. There is a real connection between the spiritual world and the human world. And this is also shown by the fact that the spiritual beings who apart from ourselves inhabit the spiritual world look with satisfaction and approval upon our thoughts about their world. They can help us only if we think about them; and although we may not have attained to clairvoyant vision into the spiritual world, if we know about these spiritual beings they can help us. In return for our study of spiritual science help comes to us from the spiritual world. It is not merely the things we learn, the knowledge we acquire, it is the beings of the higher Hierarchies themselves who help us when we know about them. And if in future, as the fifth post-Atlantean epoch proceeds, we face the authority of the expert, it will be good to have behind us not only our own human understanding but also what the spiritual beings are able to weave into it through our knowing about them. They qualify us to confront authority with sound judgment. The spiritual world helps us. We have need of it, we must know about it, and unite ourselves with it through conscious understanding. This is the third thing which must come to pass in the fifth post-Atlantean period.

1. RECIPROCAL UNDERSTANDING IN SOCIAL LIFE.
2. THE ACQUIRING OF FREEDOM OF THOUGHT.
3. LIVING KNOWLEDGE OF THE SPIRITUAL WORLDS THROUGH SPIRITUAL SCIENCE.

These three things must be the great true ideals of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. We must have reciprocal understanding in the social sphere, liberty of thought in religion and in the other branches of community life; and in the sphere of knowledge we must have knowledge of the spiritual worlds.

SOCIAL UNDERSTANDING, LIBERTY OF THOUGHT, KNOWLEDGE OF THE SPIRITUAL WORLDS. These are the three great aims and impulses of the fifth post-Atlantean period. In the light of these impulses we must develop, for they are the true lights of our time. Many people feel strongly that some change is necessary, particularly in the social sphere where a quite different way of living must be adopted, and that we must have different concepts. But out of ignorance or unwillingness they evade the ultimate conclusions. This can be seen from the attitude of so many towards the aspirations of spiritual science. And here we need not confine ourselves to deliberately malicious calumny of it or of Theosophy. We need only consider the sincere will that abounds among men today, sincere will that aims at the creation of impulses tending in the direction post-Atlantean humanity should take.

Only think how many reformers there are in every sphere, pastors and preachers on social matters; preachers too who do not belong to theological or religious circles. How they all take the floor! And often prompted by the best will possible. How is that to lead humanity in the direction towards which modern life is striving today? Good intentions are to be found everywhere, so let us for the moment consider what comes, not from bad intentions, but from good. And yet these good intentions do not help so long as they consist only in vague talk, however warm the feelings which underlie it; because the three great true ideals of human understanding, liberty of thought and knowledge of the spiritual worlds cannot reach fulfilment unless the knowledge which comes only from spiritual science is quickened into life. At present, however, except for the little company rallied round the spiritual-scientific conception of the world, understanding for such things has not yet reached even its initial stage.

But we come nowadays upon fine and lofty theories tending in this direction. And, as an example, I should like to tell you of something which happened—“by chance”, as we say—to myself. Actually it came about through karma that looking one day into a shop window my eye was caught by the title of a little book which I bought. The subject of it is modern man, what he is in search of, under what impressions he grows up; it describes the many advantages of modern times which make life easy and comfortable—the convenience of steam and electricity, and so on—all set forth in detail. Emphasis is laid upon the jostle and rush of modern life, but also upon its increased possibilities; allusion is made to the outstanding discoveries and inventions of our time in comparison with the duller, poorer, more instinctive way of living in former times—all this is described with a kind of fervour and delight. But then follows a description of the difficulties of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, which I have pointed out today, only without any indication that these things proceed from the peculiarities of the age itself and its demand that the consciousness soul should be developed. What stands out is a complete lack of clear vision, in spite of an open compassionate heart. I will quote: “It is strange that a description of our modern civilisation, which begins on a high note of joy in existence, must end upon the deep note of inner destitution of soul. What we experience here in a small way” (he means by ‘a small way’ the place where he lives) “is in a far greater sense the experience of our age. An abundance of culture beyond compare, a display of beauty and power in life scarcely to be equaled in history, and side by side with it all a spiritual destitution mounting upwards to lay hold on every class.”

And now, having given evidence of so much perspicacity, the author goes on to review various possibilities whereby the true impulse in modern humanity may find its right outlet. And among these possibilities, Theosophy, as he sees it, comes into consideration. Here, among its many enemies, we find a well-wisher of Theosophy, someone who with all good-will takes the trouble to interest himself in it and for this reason claims our attention. Indeed it is not without good reason that I bring these things to your notice; it is essential that we should concern ourselves with what are the positive connections of spiritual science with the outside world.

After passing “pseudo mysticism” in review as a means of deepening life and as a remedy for destitution of soul, the writer goes on to say; “Theosophy is a near neighbour to mysticism. Many people see it only as a substitute for more trustworthy forces, or as a tendency to syncretism or to eclecticism”—that is to say a hotch-potch [hodge-podge, again—e.Ed] of religious confessions and world-conceptions, just as people who do not wish to go into spiritual science call it warmed-up gnosticism and so on. But the author of this book goes a step further, for he says; “Those who see it only as a tendency to syncretism and eclecticism, equivalent to individual inclinations, confuse it with still more doubtful symptoms of modern life such as superstition, spiritualism, apparitions, symbolism and similar trifling with the mystery-loving element in human nature. But this is not the case. We do this Movement an injustice by refusing to acknowledge its deep inner connections and values,”—Thus we stand indeed in the presence of a well-wisher.—He continues: “Where Steiner's circle at least is concerned, we must try to understand it as a contemporary religious Movement, although perhaps more syncretic than original, but going to the roots of all life.” Let us hope that as this man shows so much goodwill, he may yet find his way to the “originality” of our Movement. “We may look upon it as a Movement dedicated to the satisfying of man's super-sensible interests, and therefore as having outgrown the realism attached to the senses. Above all we may recognise it as a Movement which exhorts men to consider their moral problems, to work for inner re-birth through scrupulous concentration upon self-education.” As I have already said; I am not reading this to you out of silly sentimentality, but considering the many things said from other points of view about Anthroposophy, it seems not irrelevant that we should make ourselves acquainted with a criticism such as this:—“One has only to read Steiner’s book on Theosophy to be struck by the earnestness with which he enjoins upon his readers the necessity for purification and self-improvement. The speculations contained in it upon the super-sensible are in themselves a reaction to materialism; of course”—and now comes something to which I must beg that you will pay particular attention—“here the book loses touch with reality, and soars into the realms of hypothesis and clairvoyant fantasy, into a world of dreams in which there is no place for the realities of individual and social life. Nevertheless theosophy must be registered as a corrective phenomenon in the cultural progress of our time.”

And so there is just one thing to which the author of this book takes exception, and that is the ascent, to knowledge of the spirit, to concrete knowledge of the spirit; which means that he would be glad of the impulse towards man's moral improvement which, by his own showing, springs from Theosophy, but he does not yet understand that for the fifth post-Atlantean epoch moral improvement can only come about through concrete spiritual knowledge. He cannot perceive the roots, and he wants the fruits without them. His range of vision cannot embrace the whole connection. And he is so extraordinarily interesting for just this reason: that, as we see, he has given deep thought to the study of my book “Theosophy” and yet cannot understand that the one is impossible without the other. He would like to cut off the book's head and keep its body because the latter he feels to be important.

This bears out what I have been sayings that such people acknowledge the need for social understanding and liberty of thought—this they understand; but that the third, namely, knowledge of the spirit, must form the basis of our fifth post-Atlantean epoch they are not willing to admit; it is something they cannot rise to. And one of the most important tasks in the world-conception of spiritual science is to arouse understanding for this. People often say that rising to the spiritual worlds is a fantastic illusion. They do not see that it is the loss of this knowledge which has brought materialism upon us, with the incapacity for social understanding to which it is allied, with the materialistic way of living, and attitude towards life. And it is by studying our well-wishers that we can realise how difficult it is for people to admit the existence of concrete spiritual worlds. Because of this we must try the harder to gain understanding for such impulses as those I have brought forward today in my lecture.

The title of the little book I mentioned is “Die Gedankenwelt des Gebildeten, Probleme and Aufgaben” by Prof. Dr. Friedrich Mahling, published in Hamburg in 1914, and it is the reprint of a lecture given by Dr. Mahling at Hamburg on the 23rd September 1913, during the 37th Congress for the Inner Mission. I am only surprised that no one in our circle has ever mentioned the book, for since its publication in 1914 it might easily have come under the notice of any one of us. And although it is important to concern ourselves with the various crossing and re-crossing threads between different spheres of thought at this present time, and with the various shades of abuse and mockery by which our Movement is attacked, we ought also to interest ourselves when, for once in a way as in this case, we are met by an honest effort to understand, and when we could learn from it something about the difficulties such an effort encounters.

The purpose of this lecture has been to point out what should be the three great concrete Ideals of our fifth post-Atlantean epoch; reciprocal understanding in social life, liberty of thought, knowledge of the Spirit. In the future it will be for these three great ideals to direct the sciences. It will be for them to refine and purify life, to inspire morality with fresh impulses, to direct, penetrate and further the life of modern humanity to the greatest extent possible. But the first two demands, social understanding and liberty of thought, cannot be satisfied unless the third, knowledge of the Spirit, is added to them, because the consciousness soul should be developed. And the highest stage of the consciousness soul is the spirit-self, the natural predisposition for which will appear in the sixth post-Atlantean epoch. But it cannot develop without the preparatory stage of inner self-dependence, only to be attained by man through the unfolding of the consciousness soul. And we must remind ourselves as part of our endeavour in spiritual science that what may seem to us abstract truths have in them magic power which has only to be released for clear light to pour over the whole of life. And wherever we are placed, as scientists or practical workers in whatever sphere, however small our part, if we know how to quicken into life, for whatever that sphere may be, the abstract truths we take in during our meetings, we shall be fellow-workers at the greatest tasks of our time. And our souls will then be filled with a gladness which is not superficial good cheer, but has its part in the life-giving seriousness that increases our strength; and instead of allowing life to degenerate into a mere excuse for enjoyment makes of us true workers in life.

In this sense the three great concrete social ideals and ideals of cognition will enable the consciousness soul in the fifth post-Atlantean period to understand the Mystery of Golgotha, and to receive Christ in a new way. For we forge a real link with the spiritual worlds by learning to know how these worlds also stand to the central impulse of earth evolution, to the Christ impulse. The Christ impulse will become our real link with the spiritual worlds under the influence of the thoughts which stream from them earthwards, and which we offer up again in our thinking about Christ; because in earth existence since the Mystery of Golgotha the thoughts of human souls shine upwards consolingly like bright stars, as I have described, even to the world of the angels who lost Christ from their sphere in order that they might find Him again shining up to them from the sphere of human thinking.

No, knowledge of the Spirit may not be described as fantastic. It is knowledge of the Spirit which first, of all endeavours to find a way of influencing the actual conditions under which destitution of soul, necessarily bound up with the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, arises. It is of these things that I wished to speak to you today. Let us hope that we may meet again here at a not too distant date, and that until then we may be united in thought and continue to work in the spirit of our Movement.

This is the 5th of 8 lectures given by Rudolf Steiner at various cities, from February through December of 1916. The title these lectures were published under is: The Relation between the Living and the Dead.

What spiritual science has to say about life and the configuration of the spiritual worlds, is gained through knowledge, through a knowledge of the objective facts to which we are led through faculties enabling us to have an insight into these things. We already know this. In cases where we have to justify spiritual science as such, or to defend it against the environing world, we shall, therefore, have to base our justifications only upon the development of certain faculties to which we must draw attention and which enable us to attain to an insight into the spiritual worlds; and we shall then proceed by explaining that these faculties enable us to know the corresponding configuration of the conditions of life pertaining to the spiritual worlds. The facts which come to light in this way—many things are almost self-evident, nevertheless it is good to draw attention to them—the facts which thus come to light, as well as those of the physical world which can be observed through the senses, should never be met with objections arising from human desires, human wishes. Although this is so obvious, we nevertheless frequently hear objections raised against certain statements of spiritual science, objections based upon human desires and human wishes, for instance, objections of the following kind: If spiritual science gives this or that explanation concerning the spiritual worlds, I do not wish to make closer acquaintance with spiritual science; for, if the things in the spiritual world really correspond with these descriptions, I shall never adapt myself to such a configuration of the spiritual world. This objection is very frequent, in spite of its absurdity. It is not only advanced in this absurd and easily detectable form, but also under the mask of all kinds of negative attitudes toward spiritual science. Although, on the one hand, the knowledge gained through spiritual science could never be based upon the argument that the world has a meaning only if the things pertaining to the spiritual world present a certain definite aspect (it is, after all, possible to know the real aspect of these things), and although this hypothesis, namely, that the world only has a meaning if it presents a certain definite aspect, can never enable us to say anything concerning the configuration of the spiritual worlds, (for this can only be done upon the foundation of real knowledge,) it is, on the other hand, possible to point out the significance of spiritual science for the whole life of man, seeing that spiritual science and its results actually exist.

A fortnight ago, I have explained to you from a particular aspect the significance of a spiritual-scientific mentality for the evolution of present-day humanity, and particularly its significance in the face of the demands and requirements of our time. To-day I wish to draw attention to a few other things, which will lead us more deeply into the real significance of spiritual science for humanity, and in particular for modern man. And in order to present the other side as well, I shall also point out the objections against spiritual science, arising from our modern civilization, and what kind of opposition we must encounter. The spiritual faculties which enable the spiritual investigator to have an insight into the facts of the spiritual world develop gradually, as I have frequently described to you. They develop in such a way that, at first, we learn to know the chief facts of spiritual life, the principal things connected with the evolution of earthly life, with the repeated lives on earth, with the life between death and a new birth, and so forth. But it is quite possible to speak, not only of these great general aspects, of these general truths, but also of certain particular truths. If we grow more and more acquainted with special aspects of truth, spiritual science itself will also acquire greater value for the individual and concrete life of a human being. Seen from outside, human life is, to begin with, a riddle, for if it were not so, we would not have to pass through a course of development rendering us more and more capable. For our capabilities and faculties—this applies particularly to the soul—must be the result of victories; our strength grows if we overcome difficulties. In the spiritual sphere, too, our strength increases through the fact that the world has, to begin with, an enigmatic aspect, for the effort which we must make in order to solve these riddles gives us strength, gradually makes us more perfect also as regards the whole course of human evolution. We need not be afraid that life becomes less interesting through the fact that the riddles presented by the physical world are partly solved by gaining an insight into the spiritual world. In every sphere of life there are riddles, and when we enter the spiritual world we shall discover new riddles. But the experience which we have gained in trying to solve, from out the spiritual world, riddles of life and of man connected with the physical world, makes us, as it were, confident that also the deeper riddles of man and of the world, which only appear in the spiritual world itself, will be solved.

A special riddle is everything that we experience in the form of destiny, between birth and death—everything we experience in the form of destiny. This word contains many, many things. In our public lecture¹ we have already explained that a certain amount of light can be thrown upon the question of destiny if we consider the repeated lives on earth. But these are more general points of view. It is also possible to draw attention to more concrete connections. Let us assume, for instance, that a person has lost a dear relative. This relative was comparatively young when he died, so that the one who remained behind had to pass through a considerably long stretch of life upon the earth without him. We can see immediately that if we face a similar thought, something rises up before our spiritual eye which must constitute a problem of destiny for many people. We must now bear in mind the fact that spiritual science is really in a position to throw light upon such problems of destiny. Undoubtedly, every case has its individual aspect. But just the spiritual-scientific study of individual cases can give us a certain insight into the mysterious processes of human life.

We can, for instance, make the following experience: Someone has died in his young years, he has been torn away from his relatives. I have already explained to you that through the fact that human beings enter into relationship with one another through their physical bodies, other connections arise, which are far more encompassing than those which are dependent upon our existence within a physical body. A far greater sphere of connections arises if we live ten, twenty, thirty, or forty years with another person, a far greater sphere of forces develops than those which arise between these two human beings in the physical world. If we turn the clairvoyant gaze upon these connections, we shall discover in many cases that the other relationships which thus arise are of such a kind that through their own inner nature they necessarily demand the continuation resulting from the loss, both as regards the person who has remained behind in the physical world, and the one who has passed through the portal of death into the other world, the spiritual world. The one who has remained behind must bear the loss. In an abstract way, we might say that he has lost a beloved human being, who has vanished from his sight at a time when he never thought of losing him. Perhaps this loss may have rent asunder hopes of a future life in common, here, in the physical world; plans and hopes for the future may have been destroyed. These experiences form part of life; but they also form part of all the experiences in common which we are able to have within the physical body. The fact that grief and sorrow are added to the experiences which we have shared with a departed friend changes the relationships which could only be developed through the fact that we have both lived in a physical body. Just as our daily experiences, the experiences we have when we face one another in our physical bodies, flow into the stream of karma, into the progressive stream of evolution, so the feelings arising from our impressions of grief and sorrow are added to what we have experienced day by day. All the impressions and feelings which we experience in this way are added to the experiences which we have made during our life in a physical body. This is seen from the standpoint of the one who remains behind, in the physical world.

One who has passed over into the spiritual world, has a somewhat different standpoint. His association with those whom he has left behind will not diminish through the fact that he has gone into the spiritual world. Indeed, those who are really able to investigate the spiritual worlds in connection with such concrete cases will realize that the one who is on the other side has a more intensive connection with the souls who have remained behind, a more intimate connection than was the case during the life in a physical body. Frequently we see that this more intimate connection arises in order to complete in the right way the circle of reciprocal connections which has been formed here, in the physical world. If we investigate things in a really positive way we shall often make the following discovery: We shall see how human beings come together here, in the physical world; below the threshold of consciousness this gives rise to a certain sphere of interests connected with their reciprocal relationships. Had these people remained together in the physical world for a longer time, the connection arising from the karma-foundation of their preceding lives could not have been deepened with sufficient intensity. In many cases, the person who has passed through the portal of death brings about this deepening required by karma. He brings it about while the souls who are intimately connected with him still dwell upon the earth, and through the fact that he is united with them in thoughts, that he penetrates into them and streams through them, he can now bring about this deepening required by karma, which could not have been brought about by the life-conditions which would have arisen had he not passed through the portal of death. A true fulfilment of karma is often connected with the fact that, on the one hand, grief and sorrow must be borne on earth, while, on the other hand, more intensive connections are established with the thoughts of those who have remained behind.

If we now trace the path of the person who has remained behind, if we see him passing through the portal of death some time afterwards and if we follow his relationship with the one who has died before him, we shall discover another thing. We shall see that many things change in accordance with the difference of time between the two departed ones. When we enter the spiritual world it is not an indifferent matter to discover there, for instance, a person who has died contemporaneously with us (let us take this extreme case), or, let us say, fifteen years sooner. The fact that he has spent a certain period of time in the spiritual world and that the experiences through which he has passed are now contained in the soul we encounter, will bring about another influence, it will influence us differently and tie the karmic link in a corresponding way. Had the circumstances been different, the karmic link would have been tied in a different way. Thus, everything we experience with the souls who are closely related with us must be looked upon altogether as experiences which are based upon our karmic connection with them. And even though grief and sorrow cannot diminish through the knowledge of these facts and of the way in which they interpenetrate and interweave (I have often mentioned this), we must, nevertheless say that, seen from a certain standpoint, human life viewed in this way begins to acquire a true significance. For we must bear in mind that during our life between death and a new birth every situation into which we are placed unfolds in such a way that justice is done not only to this one life, but also to everything which we must contribute to the evolution of the earth during our succeeding lives on earth. What has begun with the sorrow we have felt in losing a relative, a friend, or some other person closely connected with us, continues, and this continuation appears in the next life on earth. In a certain respect, every result or effect is already contained in the first cause. There is no loss in human life which does not place us in a corresponding way into the stream of the successive lives on earth. This may perhaps not soothe our pain in single cases, but if we view things from this angle we shall be able to draw knowledge out of life.

Another concrete case which I should like to mention (particularly these concrete cases can teach us many things if we are able to discuss these questions in a continuous way) is that of a man whose life has ended suddenly through some accident. From the very beginning we feel that there must be a great difference between a man who loses his life through an accident, by being run over by a train, or through some other cause coming from outside, through some other form of violent death, and a man who attains a great age before he dies, or one whose life reaches its close through illness. We also surmise that there must be a difference between a life which ends very soon through illness, and a life which terminates after having attained a great age.

Of course, the details differ for every individual case, but on the whole we may observe certain important points which throw light on these things. Let us ask, above everything, what is violent death? This question can only be answered if we do not contemplate death from the standpoint of our physical life upon the earth, but from the other side, from the standpoint of one who has already passed through the portal of death. In my lectures (some of these have already been published²), I have mentioned the fact, that death viewed from the other side, from the world which the dead person enters when passing through the threshold of death, is the most significant event of all, the event which continually reveals to the deceased man, who is deprived of his body, that life's victories never cease. The direct contemplation of death from the other side, this lofty, great and uninterrupted sight, also brings with it a firm Ego-consciousness during our existence between death and a new birth. Just as our memory supplies us with an Ego-consciousness in this life by leading us back to a certain definite moment of our physical life, so the contemplation of death from the other side, from the spiritual side, gives us our Ego-consciousness between death and a new birth.

How do matters stand if the contemplation of death is brought about by the circumstance that a violent and sudden end of life has caused death? Seen from the other side, a sudden and violent death is a far-reaching experience, a far-reaching perception, and, although this may sound strange, an investigation of these facts reveals the following: When we enter the spiritual worlds through the portal of death the conditions of time have a different influence upon our soul-experiences than here upon the earth, although there are many conditions here which can remind us of what takes place in a far more encompassing way between death and a new birth. When trying to explain the chief things which should be borne in mind in this connection, I shall make use of a comparison which is evident, however, only if we know the corresponding facts pertaining to the spiritual world.

Perhaps you know that in our physical life we can often make experiences in the course of a few days or hours, experiences which mean to us far more than those we otherwise make in the course of months and even of years. Many people can remember some important event of their life which they have experienced here in the physical world in a very short time, yet this event may have given them a greater amount of inner experience, greater results of inner experience, than the events of whole months or years. People often express this by saying: “I shall never forget what I have experienced in that particular case.” These plain words often contain what I have just characterized. Now it is a fact that the impression which the human being receives owing to the circumstance that an external world, a world which does not belong to him, robs him of his physical body, that the perception which he obtains through this event in a comparatively brief time—it may even be a moment—comprises, during the life between death and a new birth, a whole wealth of experiences which are otherwise gained during the slow course of an earthly life, experiences through which we would perhaps have passed during the course of many years and decades. I do not mean that it comprises everything we have experienced during an earthly life; but in the case of certain forces which we need during our life between death and a new birth it is indeed so that things which may otherwise be spread over a longer period of time are concentrated, drawn together, we may even say in the space of a single moment.

It is an entirely different experience to see, in our subconsciousness, death approaching in such a way that inner forces come to the fore which bring about death from within the human organism, or in such a way that forces which are in no way connected with the human organism have an influence upon it. This kind of death can only be explained in a true and genuine way if we consider it in connection with the whole course of human life through the repeated lives on earth. In fact, my explanations in connection with Ego-consciousness after death and the contemplation of death may easily show you that the perception of death itself has a great significance for the strength and intensity of our Ego-consciousness between death and a new birth.

Circumstances which seen from the angle of physical life appear as a coincidence are not at all a coincidence, but they form part of a world of necessary happenings. From the earthly standpoint it may seem a coincidence that someone has been run over by a train; seen from the other side, the spiritual side, this does not appear as a coincidence. If from the other side, from the spiritual side, we ask the following question (let me use this expression, which is of course only a comparison), “What is the aspect of such a violent death when viewed within the whole complex of man's lives upon the earth?”—we shall find in every case that in past epochs of the repeated lives on earth and of the intermediate lives between death and a new birth the person who has suffered a violent death has developed up to the moment of his accident in regard to the spiritual world an Ego-consciousness which needed a strengthening, an intensification. And the required strengthening is produced because this man's physical life is not brought to a close from within, but from without.

We must reckon with the fact that the connexions with the environing world which are produced in the soul through thought forces are not the only ones, for as a rule, we are only aware in very exceptional cases of the way in which our subconsciousness thinks. You have often heard me say that our thinking activity does not end with the threshold of consciousness, for the human being has an incessant thought activity in his subconsciousness, or we might also say, in his super-consciousness. But the human being cannot in any way realise what this more encompassing form of consciousness really means to him. We could ask each person: “Why have you not met with this or with that accident this morning?” For it would have been possible in the case of every person to have met with some accident. Sometimes we realise to a certain extent how matters stand, but we are very seldom able to see the whole connexion. Sometimes we may feel an aversion to do a certain thing; we may leave home, for instance, half an hour later, and afterwards we may discover that in the meantime an accident has occurred along the way, an accident we would have met with had we left half an hour sooner. In this case our subconsciousness has been active, our subconsciousness has made us loiter. These subconscious influences are always there, but generally we cannot perceive them.

Those who can observe the conditions of the world from the spiritual standpoint are fully aware that a man who is about to meet with an accident and whose good genius, I might say, does not guard him against this accident, that this man who meets with an accident is driven to it by the necessity of his karma. Had this accident not taken place, something else, too, would not have taken place, namely, what I have characterized as the required strengthening of his Ego-consciousness, which must be brought about in the described manner. During a particular life upon the earth the human being enters through birth the particular conditions into which he is placed. He enters these conditions, but during his last existence between death and a new birth he has observed that his Ego is in a certain way weak, that it lacks strength. He is filled with the impulse to strengthen his Ego, and this leads him into the circumstances which bring about his accident. This is how we must view things. And if we consider it from the standpoint of a spiritual-scientific knowledge we shall see the true connexions of life.

I have often emphasized that men do not consider sufficiently the changes which have recently taken place in the development of the human soul. Most people, particularly those who are infested with modern learning, think that many centuries ago human soul-life was exactly the same as now. This is quite wrong. The more intimate side of soul-life has undergone a change, its character and attitude have changed completely. What spiritual science must again bring to the surface from certain sources for the sake of a better understanding of life, as already explained, shows us that not so very long ago the souls of men possessed a more atavistic and clairvoyant character. The human beings were able to feel, as it were, the connexions of life. But humanity progresses and similar feelings die out. Seeing that during the course of evolution man has in part lost his former relationship with the spiritual world and that he is losing it more, and more, it will become an ever growing necessity for him to regain a knowledge of his connexion with the spiritual world through direct spiritual investigation. This is also connected with the fact that spiritual science arises just at the present time. In earlier times it was not needed, because the human soul had not reached its present stage of development. For the reasons explained above, spiritual science will be needed from now onward, and in future it will become more and more necessary.

Let us corroborate this statement with certain concrete facts. To-day there is only a small number of men who accept spiritual science during their life between birth and death. I do not say, spiritual research, but spiritual science—thoughts and ideas supplied by spiritual science. Thus they learn something about the spiritual world during their life between birth and death. This is not without a significance for the life which we enter after passing through the portal of death.

The fact which I shall explain to you now has also arisen in our present time. When we revert to earlier times we find that man still possessed an old inheritance in regard to his connexion with the spiritual world. Man passed through the portal of death and because he had a certain relationship with the spiritual world through his feelings, through an atavistic clairvoyance and similar experiences, his life in a physical body had something in common with the life which he entered through the portal of death. Because man knew something about the spiritual world (although this was only an instinctive knowledge) he possessed more than a mere sum of thoughts reminding him of his life on earth after having passed through the portal of death. From now onwards it will be characteristic of human souls to pass through the portal of death in such a way that they will be connected with the earth only through their memories. They remember as it were, their earthly life, and they are still connected with it because after death this earthly life lives in their memory. This is strictly and radically speaking the case of a modern man who cannot take up ideas concerning the spiritual world from spiritual science. If he takes up these ideas, they will form something after death enabling him, not only to remember his earthly life, but also to have an insight into it. The spiritual ideas we take up before death change into faculties after death. After death windows open, as it were, from the spiritual world into the physical world, and they reveal what exists in the physical world because here upon the earth we have acquired thoughts connected with the spiritual world. Spiritual science, therefore, enables us to take with us certain definite results when we cross [the] threshold of death.

What we acquire through spiritual science is not merely a lifeless store of knowledge, but a real treasure of life, something which continues to live when we pass through the portal of death. Indeed, spiritual science is a great life-treasure, also in the meaning which I have explained to you on various occasions and because the dead person lives in our thoughts consciously and of his own accord, we are able to do something for the dead owing to the fact that we have taken up spiritual science. This is also connected with the explanations which I have frequently given in regard to reading to the dead. The dead friend lives in our thoughts; he looks upon our thoughts. If these thoughts are of the kind resulting from a spiritual-scientific train of thoughts, or if we tell him something we know or think in connection with the spiritual worlds, the dead unites himself with the thoughts which we send out to him from the earth through spiritual science. This focusing of our thoughts upon him forms the link between here and beyond and constitutes the force of attraction. Because spiritual science is filled with life, a living force can, as it were, be sent upwards, and this is nourishment for the dead person who is connected with us.

We see, therefore, that spiritual science really overcomes death in this soul-manner and that it penetrates into life. A community of living and dead, which otherwise cannot exist at the present time in such an intensive form, is established because here upon earth we are filled with thoughts taken from spiritual science, and because we offer these thoughts, as it were, to the dead and turn toward them.

Spiritual science has, in every way, a living influence upon life, whereas the knowledge which is acquired throughout the physical world in the form of ordinary science consists of thoughts which have a real significance only during the time between birth and death. During the life after death they only have the value of memories and do not possess a living influence. This difference should be borne in mind clearly.

Something else should also be considered when reflecting on the significance of spiritual science for the present and for the future spiritual evolution of man. Not only what we acquire here as spiritual science and transmit to the dead, not only that which passes from the physical into the spiritual world, but also what we bring with us through the portal of death in the form of acquirements gained through spiritual knowledge reacts from the spiritual world on the earthly sphere The earthly sphere—we should not lose sight of this fact—is gradually impoverished through the forces coming from the earth itself, forces which men develop as they pass through their life between birth and death. Earthly life would grow poor if no other forces were to stream down upon the earth from the spiritual world except those which have so far descended upon it.

At the present time it is disheartening to see how thoughtlessly people live, without noticing the gradual impoverishment of earthly existence. This is a phenomenon which can be observed not only in regard to man's spiritual life, not only in regard to culture, but also in regard to the densest aspect of physical life upon the earth. In Eduard Suess's excellent book, The Countenance of the Earth, you can read that once upon a time the earth presented a different aspect: its physical surface was different. The earth has undergone, as it were, a slow death-process as far as its surface is concerned, for this surface of the earth, the ordinary, physical surface of the earth, no longer contains the same forces as in ages long past.

What takes place in physical life also takes place in spiritual life. As already stated, it is often disheartening to see how people confront this without being aware of it. As far as spiritual life is concerned it is so that when we describe the path which is trodden by humanity we must say: In spite of the pride pervading our present time it appears that man's thoughts grow more and more lifeless, more and more dead, and even more and more disconnected. Modern men are naturally very proud of their thinking ... indeed, many a teacher of Greek thinks that he is far greater than Plato when he explains Plato to his pupils! Hebbel, the profound poet, wrote in his notebook (but he did not carry out his plan) that he intended to write a drama, with the reincarnated Plato as chief character, and that this Plato is severely punished by his teacher because he cannot understand Plato during a Greek lesson! Man would, in a certain way, lose the continuity of his thought-system if this thought-system were not refreshed by thoughts born out of spiritual-scientific knowledge. It may sound strange to-day, nevertheless it is true: the intensive force which man needs in order to grasp his thoughts in the right way, so that they acquire reality, this force grows powerless because man must become independent, he must acquire forces of his own. For this reason (I can express it in this way), the gods and the spiritual beings who have once inspired man's thoughts, his connected train of thoughts, withdraw, and man must now independently bring into his thoughts a living element. He will do this only if he is not too proud to take up within him that life which flows out of spiritual science.

With our feelings and with the impulses of our will it is the same as with our thoughts. These human impulses of volition will, for instance, grow more and more obstinate and self-willed (we may really use this expression), they will gradually separate themselves from the common element of humanity unless the soul is inoculated with the great, encompassing impulses which can only arise out of a contemplation of the spiritual connexion of physical things. I have now expressed truths which have a great weight in the evolution of man's future, but these truths should become united with the souls of those who occupy themselves with spiritual science. For spiritual science should not only be a lifeless store of knowledge satisfying our curiosity, but spiritual science should be something which seeks to penetrate into the connexion of the things which man must face in the future. In order to attain to this it will be necessary to have an insight enabling us to see the systems of forces which are gradually becoming paralysed and those which should be substituted by others. I have said that man's earthly forces would become paralysed if no help comes from the spiritual worlds. What we acquire through a spiritual-scientific knowledge and bear with us through the portal of death, gives us, between death and a new birth, not only the power to mould our life during the time between death and a new birth, but also the power allowing spiritual forces to descend upon the earth. This will have to take place in a growing measure, so that the human beings who live upon the earth may receive the forces descending from the souls who are penetrated with the spirit, souls who have passed through the portal of death and who send back what they have taken with them from the earth, but in a changed form, according to what has taken place through the fact that their life-experiences have entered the spiritual worlds.

One way of sending influences from the physical into the spiritual world is to work for the dead by reading to them, by sending them thoughts connected with spiritual science. Similarly there is also a way of contributing something toward the physical enrichment of the earth's evolution by sending down from the Spiritual world what we have acquired during our abode in the physical world and have carried into the spiritual world by passing through the portal of death. A peculiarity to be borne in mind is that the physical world can again receive things which have acquired a changed aspect through the fact that they constitute a spiritual wealth which we have gained during our physical life and which we have carried through the portal of death. In the spiritual world it has undergone a metamorphosis and then it streams down again in this changed form.

As far as we ourselves are concerned, we always work upon our karma so that it fulfils itself between birth and death. But we also work upon the karma of mankind as a whole, and this karma consists of the life-stream flowing off from the earth and of the life-stream flowing in from the spiritual world. We also work upon this entire world-karma with the aid of forces which we develop between death and a new birth over and above our own requirement. We can therefore see how necessary spiritual science really is, how necessary it is that spiritual science should be taken up and digested by human souls, not only for the welfare of individual human souls, but also for the welfare of the entire progress of humanity here upon the earth. In my public lecture I have already explained how we work from the spiritual world upon our future life on earth. The way in which we gradually enter before birth into hereditary conditions through the stream of the generations, and how we participate not only in that which concerns us individually during a future life on earth, but also in that which concerns humanity as a whole—these thoughts which I now utter, these particularly are thoughts which should penetrate into us and live in us, thoughts which should—I might say—be meditated. For they place us into a living spirit and soul-connexion with the environing world.

As a counterpart, I wish to show you the attitude which is still being adopted by the world in regard to the things which are revealed particularly to spiritual science, and how the world adopts a standpoint which would necessarily bring about what I have characterized as a drying-out of thoughts, as a lack of continuity, a lack of connexion in human thoughts. And corresponding things would appear in other spheres. Particularly those who are now the leaders in this or in that sphere contribute in a direct way, through their arrogant rejection of every connexion with the spiritual world as transmitted by spiritual science, to the realization of this grievous situation, the approach of which can already be seen to-day, particularly in regard to the world of thoughts.

• 1. Man's Soul and Body from the Standpoint of Spiritual Science”, delivered on the 23rd of October, 1916
• 2. See “Man's Inner Being and His Life Between Death and a New Birth,” Lectures delivered in Vienna, Easter, 1914.

This lecture is also known as: Luciferic and Ahrimanic Influences. It is lecture 8 of 8 from the lecture series: The Relation between the Living and the Dead.

From yesterday's lecture you will have seen how the spiritual world, in which we are between death and a new birth, and the physical world interpenetrate. Not only so; the spiritual world and the physical interpenetrate even in our so-called physical life between birth and death. We ourselves give the directions, as it were, for the way we are born with such and such characteristics. For we are connected between death and a new birth with what is taking place here in the physical world, and, among other things, with the stream of inheritance which eventually leads to our own birth.

We may now consider in a more inward way the whole line of evolution which we studied yesterday more externally. We will try to bring before our souls the connection of man with the spiritual world from a certain special aspect. Between birth and death we are living here in the physical world, and the physical world is known to us through our sense perceptions. It is a trite saying and we need scarcely repeat it: If we did not have our sense organs, we could know nothing of our connection with this physical world. All that gives us this connection through the sense organs with the physical world, falls away from us when we pass through the gate of death. Hence we may even say: It is our specific task between birth and death to make acquaintance with the physical world. We are incorporated in this physical body in order to make ourselves acquainted through it with the physical world.

Now we are not only members of the physical world, but equally of the spiritual worlds. The next spiritual world, as it were adjoining this physical, is the world which we have grown accustomed to call the ethereal or elemental. Whether or not the expression is really fitting is a matter of less consequence. To begin with, this elemental world is an unknown world for the human being as he now lives in the physical. It is, in fact, the first of the super-sensible worlds but it is no less fraught with significance for man than this physical world of the senses. For as soon as our sense is awakened for the elemental world—which happens when we are able to perceive Imaginatively—we realise that this world is peopled by many beings, no less abundantly than is the physical. Man himself, inasmuch as he has an etheric body, belongs to the elemental world. As an ether-being, man too is a citizen of the elemental world; only the conditions in the elemental world are somewhat different from the conditions in the physical.

To begin with, I must say something on this one point: the power of perception for the elemental world cannot begin in man till he is able entirely to free himself from that which makes him earthly man. In general it is not even difficult for him to do this. True, it is more difficult for the man of today than for the man of primeval times. We have all heard of the primeval atavistic clairvoyance. For the most part it consisted in this very fact: man was able to free himself from that which makes him earthly man. As earthly men, as you all know, we are formed of solid matter only to a very small extent. To a large extent we consist of liquid; and the moment we can emancipate ourselves from what is solid in us, the moment we feel ourselves only in our liquid part, Imaginative experiences can emerge. It is only our existence in the solid element which prevents our knowing by Imaginative perception all that surrounds us as the elemental world. Imaginative perception will surely return to mankind even as it has been lost. Only the old Imaginative clairvoyance which is lost was in a way unconscious and dream-like, while that which will gradually arise in our Fifth post-Atlantean epoch will be a fully conscious Imaginative seership. By a perfectly normal and natural process of evolution it will enter into human nature.

Let us now return to what I said before. Our relation to the elemental world is different from our relation to the ordinary, physical world. To begin with, I will give one example to confirm this. In the physical world—apparently at any rate—we determine our relationships with other beings by our own free human choice. We form our friendships for ourselves, likewise our other relations to the beings that surround us. In the elemental world, in which we are through our etheric body, this is no longer the case in the same direct way. Through our whole life in the elemental world we are in a more or less close relationship to certain other elemental beings. As an independent elemental being—for such we are by virtue of our etheric body—we are related to a number of other elemental beings, who accompany us throughout our life, and we may compare this relationship to the relation of the Sun to the encircling planets. Our own etheric body is a kind of Sun elemental being, and is actually accompanied by a number of elemental beings belonging to it, like the planets to the Sun. These elemental beings, together with it, constitute a kind of sevenfold entity, as do the planets and the Sun according to the older conception.

During our whole physical life between birth and death, there is a constant interplay between these our elemental satellites and ourselves. Not only does our feeling, our condition, depend on the way in which our elemental or etheric body is related to its ‘planets’; our relation to the outer world, to certain outer beings, and notably to other human beings, is regulated by the mutual relations between these ‘planets’ and our own etheric body. In future time there will be a kind of medicine which will reckon especially with what I have now said; there will be a medical, physiological conception which will ascertain how the one or the other satellite is related to the etheric body; and according to this, it will be possible to diagnose the sick or healthy condition of the patient. For what is called illness today is in truth only the outer physical picture of what is there in reality. In reality there is some kind of irregularity in what I have here compared to a planetary system, and the illness is but an image of this irregularity.

Of course, one might say forthwith: ‘Well, let the people who know this establish a new pathology. Hic Rhodus, hic salta, now let occultism show its art!’ Well, it will do so the moment its legs are freed! A man cannot dance whose legs are tied, and by the fettering of the legs in this case I mean the presence of modern materialism which has simply confiscated the science of medicine. This state of affairs cannot be improved by one individual or another doing this or that it can only be improved by the common will of a larger number of people, strong enough to bring about a system of medical practice which will make the penetration of medicine with spiritual principles a practical possibility.

One thing it is important to perceive. St. Paul did not speak in vain words of untold importance which have, however, never been rightly understood. For people keep on imagining that they are Christian while in reality they are not. St. Paul said that sin came into the world through the law, i.e. sin is there through the law. In a wider sense, that which mars the order of things is there through the law. Even today these truths can only be hinted at. For as a rule, if anything is not in order, our materialistic age will always cry aloud for a law—quite unaware that whatever is not in order comes from the very laws that are made. But, as I said, such a thing can only be hinted at. A very great deal will yet be necessary towards an understanding of these things. I said, people only imagine that they are Christians. For such a passage as this one by St. Paul, though it is read by countless people, is very little understood.

Through the fact that we are etheric beings, we belong to an elemental world, and there is a certain system which stands in a near relation to ourselves. This system consists of the elemental beings or ether-beings who accompany us. Their forces are ordered or arranged in a certain way; and when we pass through the gate of death, it is they, by their forces, who draw our etheric body out of our physical body, and place it—that is to say, place the human being himself to begin with—into the elemental world. The elemental world, as I have indicated, is clearly to be perceived by Imaginative cognition. In it are a multitude of beings whom we may call nature-spirits, but not only these. In it are also all those human beings who have just passed physically through the gate of death. They are only there, however, for a short time, as you know, for a few days. Then what we call the etheric body is given over to the elemental world; a second corpse is laid aside. But we must not imagine that this, the second body which we lay aside, is at all rapidly disintegrated in that world. That is not so. True, in a certain sense, it does become dissolved in the elemental world. It dissolves, it becomes ever more tenuous. But it does not become imperceptible to those beings who by their very nature can perceive Imaginatively.

The elemental or etheric body is always perceptible, for instance, to the human being himself, who has passed through the gate of death. True, he has laid aside this elemental body and he now lives on through the time between death and a new birth. But he remains constantly related to the elemental body which he has laid aside. It is not as with the physical body, to which man loses his relationship when he has cast it off. With the elemental body the opposite is the case; man preserves his relationship to it. Moreover, this relationship of man to his elemental or etheric body can work right down into the physical world.

When a human being here in the physical world has made his soul receptive, when he has acquired the elemental or Imaginative power of perception, then, too, he can consciously converse in his life of thought with the dead. Only, of course, these thoughts are far more refined and delicate than those of ordinary life. Thus he is consciously connected with the dead. Now the connection of which man thus becomes conscious is always there in the subconscious, whenever there was a relation during earthly life between the one who has remained behind in the physical, and the one who has risen into the spiritual world. Let us assume that we lost a beloved friend through death. One who has attained Imaginative perception will be aware of it but, whether we know it or not, the dead human being works upon us. He works—if I may so describe it—as though he were pouring his will into the etheric body which he has laid aside, as into a mirror, and the mirror, in its turn, were sending on the rays to us. Via the elemental or etheric body, the dead react upon the living. This, as it were, is the mediate influence of the dead upon the living.

To describe where this mediate influence comes to expression, I may say, it is expressed in our ordinary conceptions and ideas which we carry with us through the world. As a rule, the human being—especially in our materialistic age—is aware only of the conceptions and ideas which portray to him the outer physical reality. But among the conceptions which we thus carry through the world, some are perpetually living which are so fine and delicate that they are not directly perceptible; we simply do not pay attention to them. If we were wont to observe our soul's life more intimately, we should soon recognise their presence. But we constantly let this finer, more delicate life of the soul be overwhelmed and drowned by the coarser ideas which flow into us from the surrounding physical world. If it were not so, we should soon perceive that finer, more intimate thoughts are constantly there in us. These are due to those who were connected with us and have passed before us through the gate of death; and who, especially in the first period after their passage through the gate of death, are able to communicate their deeds to us.

Through the fact that as ether-beings we belong to the elemental world, we thus bear the being of the dead with us in our own conceptions, in our own life of ideas, for a certain length of time. If we would speak of ‘Monism’ on any basis of reality, we should chiefly speak of the Monism which I have just described—the Monism that is formed by the working together of the living and the dead. In truth, those who have passed through the gate of death are by no means far away from us; they are far nearer to us than we believe.

Now man develops more and more as he lives through the time between death and a new birth, and so he becomes able to work upon the world down here not only indirectly but directly. From a certain time onward we can perceive this influence upon us of the departed; their rays of force begin to penetrate into our soul's life. But this immediate influence cannot work its way directly into our thoughts, into our conceptual life. It works its way rather into our habits, into our whole way of life and conduct; into all this there streams an influence working downward from spiritual worlds, coming to us from those who have passed before us through the gate of death.

We must however realise that this working together of the dead and the living depends on many different conditions. The dead man is in an environment wherein there are beings of his own kind, that is, beings of soul, and all the beings who belong to the higher Hierarchies, down to man himself. And inasmuch as the etheric body which he has laid aside is his mediator, he can also have perceptions of the human beings down here, who are, as it were, veiled from him through the physical body. With the help of his etheric body, he can penetrate the veil. He who has passed through the gate of death is of course subject to the conditions under which man must live in the world of soul and Spirit; he must submit to them. I need only mention one main point, and you will understand what I mean in this connection. We know that throughout the world in which we live Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces are working in the most manifold ways. If these Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces did not entice us, all that comes to expression in man as wrong and evil actions would not be there in the world. The Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces must work upon man, and must give him the opportunity to follow and obey them. Once this fact is brought home to us strongly enough, we shall recognise that man, after all, is a very different being from what we often make him out to be with our hostile criticisms. If we had the faculty, already in the physical world, always to see how the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic work in man, we should judge our fellow men quite differently.

I do not say that we should generally be less critical; for when we divert our adverse judgement from man—though we should no longer be fighting against man himself—we must still be fighting Lucifer and Ahriman. But against man as man, we should be infinitely more tolerant. Now he who lives in the soul life in the time between death and a new birth, practises this tolerance both in relation to the beings who are with him in the spiritual world and in relation to those who are still incarnated as men here in the physical life. It is part of the very character of man, when he has passed through the gate of death, that he acquires this tolerance. He always sees through the fact that Lucifer and Ahriman are playing such and such a part in a human being. He does not say, ‘That is a bad man, following evil desires’, but he sees through the fact that Lucifer is playing such and such a part in him. He does not say, ‘That is an envious fellow’ but he says, ‘Ahriman is playing such and such a part in him’.

He who lives above, between death and birth, judges in this way, it belongs to his very being to do so, just as it belongs to our being to have good eyesight (if we are sound and healthy). Moreover, since this belongs to his very being, it hurts the dead man infinitely when, maintaining his connection with us in the physical life (the connection which was begun during his own life on Earth), he comes up against an altogether different spirit in ourselves. Assume, for instance, that out of our personal antipathy we meet with peculiar hate another human being, who was also connected with the dead man. This hate will signify infinite pain for the dead who tries to approach us—as he must do, since he is still connected with us. This hatred must first be overcome by him; it is like a sword, a jagged sword, a spear that is shivered constantly against him.

And so the way in which the dead man tries to work into us—his own experience as he does so—depends very, very much on the attunement of our soul. Into our ordinary thoughts and ideas borrowed from the surrounding world, into our feelings and sentiments, into our temperament and habits, these influences of the dead are working as I have now described. And there is a constant mutual interaction between what goes on in the realm of those who have passed through the gate of death, and our own souls.

If you bear all this in mind, you will say to yourself: Complicated workings are contained in that which we bear within us as our soul; and much is necessary fully to perceive all the mysterious forces that pulsate in the human soul. The soul has very little in its own consciousness of all that is pulsating in it. But the mood and attunement of the soul, and its ability or inability in one direction or another, depend on all these things. For on a large scale all this is determined once more through our karma. The fact that we are brought together here with this man or that, and that they in turn work down upon us in the way I have described, is, of course, connected with our karma in the widest sense.

In bringing all this before us, we must realise, of course, that our age has a real longing for what Spiritual Science brings to men; and the real longings are frequently satisfied today by quite erroneous methods. Thus there are many people today who have decidedly got beyond the prejudice which people had in the middle of the 19th century, and even in the last third of the 19th century—the prejudice that all things of the soul can still be explained from physical and physiological effects. Frequently, however, half- or quarter-truths have far worse effects than complete errors. Thus it is a half- or quarter-truth which underlies what is so frequently described today as analytical psychology or psychoanalysis. People are truly seeking but they are groping in the dark; they divine that many things are hidden in the foundations of the soul, but they cannot resolve to take the real steps into the spiritual world, so as to find what is hidden there, in the depths of the soul.

What do the psychoanalysts say? They say: Observe a human being as he meets us just in ordinary life. His feeling and condition as a whole depends very largely, not only on what is there in his consciousness, but on a variety of factors which lie in the unconscious, beneath the threshold of consciousness. There comes a man, feeling in a depressed mood; an irregularity in his whole nervous apparatus is apparent. In such a case—the psychoanalyst opines—we must look and see what he may have experienced perhaps many years ago; experiences which he may not altogether have assimilated, but which he pressed down into the subconscious.

The psychoanalyst divines quite well that that which has been removed from consciousness has not therefore been removed from reality; it is still there, down in the subconscious. But his idea is this: If we can only entice it forth into the consciousness by a kind of catechising process, then we shall perceive what is consuming and gnawing at him down below. (I cannot, of course, explain psychoanalysis here in all its ramifications; I will only show you a few features of it.)

Starting from this point, the psychoanalyst looks for many things in the foundations of the soul. Years ago, the human being had perhaps this or that ideal of life, this or that hope or plan. He did not carry it out; he was not able to do so. It is no longer in his consciousness, for he is living in his present life. But it is not eliminated from the reality of his soul; there it goes on gnawing away and consuming him. And his whole mood and condition depends on what is there beneath in his subconsciousness. Perhaps he had an unhappy love affair—that is what the psychoanalysts generally find, for they are on the lookout for it. It is an isolated province in his subconsciousness; he has fought against it, but it goes on working. Notably it will go on working—so believe the psychoanalysts—if feelings of love were there, while the beloved being was removed; that is to say, if the love remained unsatisfied.

In addition to these disappointed spring time hopes of life—in addition to what I have just indicated—the psychoanalyst seeks in the depths of the soul for what we might call the ‘animal morass’ at the very basis of human life—the ‘animal morass’ or slime of life working constantly upward to the surface—connected, as they conceive it, with all that man possesses as an animal being, playing upward into his soul's life. Some psychoanalysts will go still further: if we get further and further down, we find at length what plays upward into the soul out of racial and national connections and the like, playing into the soul's life in more or less unconscious ways. And at last, at the very bottom, there is something demonic—the most undefined of all—lying even beneath the ‘animal morass’, at the very ground of life. Such people, who are among the special followers of the modern psychoanalysts, will sometimes gently hint that in these demonic depths beneath are to be found the impulses that lead people to such subjects as Gnosis, Theosophy and Anthroposophy. Although it is hinted at in a rather veiled way, still the hint is there. Read one of the last numbers of the periodical Wissen und Leben—I think it is called—and you will find such hints at one place and another, albeit they are rather hidden between the lines.

I said half- or quarter-truths often have a far worse effect than complete mistakes. Analytical psychology in its search for the sub-conscious foundations of the soul contains half and quarter-truths. Compare it with what we have pointed out today. The realities that live in the foundations of the soul work in towards us from the realm of the dead. Here we are led to quite a different way of thinking; we shall not seek for the ‘animal morass’ of the soul; we shall not try to interpret this or that mood of the soul from the aspect of disappointed love affairs. On the contrary, we shall often have to seek the underlying cause of an unhappy mood of soul in this or that departed one, for whom we are making difficulties through our own conduct—which difficulties find expression in dissatisfactions of one kind or another, surging up into our consciousness.

In short, we shall do well to bring home to ourselves with true reverence this actual connection with the spiritual world. It is the connection of our world, not with an abstract, vaguely pantheistic spiritual world, but with the real spiritual world wherein those who have passed through the gate of death are living as real beings. They are with us even now, as they were with us in life. But what they do with us now touches our soul far more nearly than what they did in life, when we were always separated from them by our body and theirs, which stood between us like a barrier.

Then comes a later time, when man has become utterly free from the astral body—when he has laid aside the astral. Not long after this, man is able to work down from the spiritual world into the physical in a more inward way. In former times, the outer life was frequently arranged instinctively according to these truths. Customs that arose in outer life might often be referred, it is true, to ordinary outer reasons, but an inner reason underlay the outer, though it was often only known by instinct. I said: the dead, soon after passing through the gate of death, are in direct connection with the human beings whom they have left behind, especially with those to whom they are lovingly united, and the connection is such that they work upon our habits. For this reason, in the times when such things were still felt instinctively, care was taken that a son should remain as far as possible in the whole circle with which his parents were connected. Learning the same business, spending his life in the same profession, he should remain where access was easier for them. All in all, this conservative way of holding on to the same stream of life was an instinctive expression of the desire to make it easier for those who had passed through the gate of death to work in upon those whom they had left behind. For if the latter were in similar circumstances to those in which the dead themselves had lived, it made it easier for the dead to find the way to them. In time to come historians will well observe such intimate impulses and underlying reasons in the historic evolution of mankind.

Now, as we know, when man has been still longer dead, he will have completely laid aside the astral body. But this only happens after decades, for we experience things much slower in the spiritual world than in the physical. One year of the spiritual world corresponds to 30 years of the physical. Man has a way of hastening here in the physical world whereas in the spiritual world, so to speak, he always has to revolve in far larger circles. So, as one spiritual year is equal to 30 earthly years, in one year of the spiritual he experiences approximately the same piece of the world as in 30 years of the physical. He thereby experiences it more intensively, more inwardly.

All in all, what man lives through on Earth is multiply connected with the great universe, the macrocosm. Therefore, what is experienced in the microcosm, in man himself, always finds expression even in the numerical relations to the macrocosm. I will only draw your attention to one point: Reckon up the number of days in an average human life; you get the same number of years—purely as a number—which the Sun requires to process through the complete Platonic year, the cosmic year. Man's life is numbered by as many days as the Sun requires years to advance through the whole cosmic circle in its precession from one sign of the zodiac to another. The Sun requires about 25,900 and a few more years to process through all the signs of the zodiac. Man lives for about as many days—though, of course, it is not always equal—in his individual life between birth and death.

Another interesting connection is this one: man has as many breaths in one day as the number of days he lives, or as the number of years it takes for the Sun to process through the whole zodiac. You see, therefore, in the very deepest sense the world is ordered according to measure and number. One should imagine that this delicate incorporation of man into the universe—this correspondence of the harmonies—would lead the crude materialists of our time beyond their limited outlook which sees nothing more in the whole universe than a great mechanism. Truly it is a strange mechanism which contains all its individual beings organically within itself, in wondrously harmonious numerical relation to the whole.

It is indeed a strange thing. When we consider the world spiritually, we can actually say: In the evolution which takes its course between death and a new birth, man advances more slowly in order that he may do things more thoroughly. Not only so; he advances as many times more slowly in the spiritual world as Saturn courses around the sun more slowly than the Earth. Saturn runs its course around the Sun as many times more slowly than the Earth, as man in the spiritual world moves more slowly than he moves on the physical Earth. For this reason, and not because they knew less than the astronomers of today, the ancients reckoned Saturn as the outermost planet of the solar system. Even astronomically speaking, they were right, for the other planets which are now included—Uranus and Neptune—joined the system at a later time; moreover, they circle around in quite a different order, even in a different rotation than the planets belonging to the solar system proper.

Now at least one such spirit-year—that is, 30 earthly years—must have elapsed before the soul (assuming, needless to say, that a normal age of 70 or 80 was attained) can enter not merely into the habits, but into the whole thought and outlook, into the spiritual life of those whom they have left behind or who join on of their own free will. Nevertheless, in this way too the dead work into our life on a very large scale. It is so indeed. In the whole spirit, in the whole way of thought in which we live, we bear within us the impulses of men who died long ago and who work into us. Altogether, the connection of the future with the past is brought about precisely in this way, through this actual connection of the dead with the living.

The mediate manifestation of the dead, through the etheric body which they have laid aside, works upon our Imaginative cognition. That influence which enters, as above described, into our habits, works upon our Inspirational cognition. And the influence to which I now refer, which can only work when man has passed through a whole spirit-year, works—if we are conscious of it—into our Intuitive cognition. But in any event these influences are working all the time; nor can we truly understand the sense of evolution unless we bear these things in mind.

Forgive my inserting at this point a personal remark—you know I am not fond of doing so, and I do so seldom. Anyone who looks at what I wrote when I first began my work, decades ago, will see that at that time I disregarded what I had to bring forward as my own opinion. I did not write my opinion about Goethe, but tried to express the thoughts that came forth from Goethe. I did not write my own Theory of Knowledge, but a Theory of Knowledge implicit in Goethe's Conception of the World. In this way it is possible quite consciously to connect oneself with men long dead and work out of their spirit. Indeed this is what gives one, as it were, a true, legitimate certificate to influence the living. It is a bad certificate which people of our time are so very keen upon: namely, that every individual, scarcely has he conceived an opinion, should wish to communicate it forthwith to as many followers as possible.

He who is aware of the conditions of existence, the fundamental laws that work from the spiritual world, knows that in truth a man cannot rightly work into the depths of the souls of his fellowmen until he is dead—strange as it may sound. Even then he cannot, till he has passed through a spirit-year, that is to say, 30 earthly years. Infinitely much would be achieved if once this selflessness gained ground a little in the world, so that those who lived later would connect their own work with the dead, and consciously try to maintain the continuity in evolution. Whether it be a pure elective affinity, or some other relationship brought about by karma, to attach ourselves to those who are trying so hard to send the pure rays of their influence out of the spiritual world is of infinite significance, and it is so most of all if we do it consciously.

I have tried to call forth in you a feeling for the way in which the so-called dead and the so-called living work together. Now we must realise that the conditions are very different in the spiritual world and here. You will find a great deal about the conditions of experience in the spiritual world in the lectures Life Between Death and a New Birth which I gave a few years ago in Vienna. But of course one can only select a few points especially important from one aspect or another. Now here it must be said that there is in the spiritual world something very similar, and again dissimilar, to our physical experience.

Before we enter the physical world in the full sense, we undergo the embryo period of existence. There the conditions of life are very different from what they become the moment we enter fully into the physical world as breathers of the outer air. Now in a certain sense and style, the time we go through after death in the first spirit year, which is so often called the period of Kamaloca, is very like the embryo period of existence. Just as the human being calls to his aid, as it were, another human being by whom he lets himself be borne into the physical world through the 10 lunar months, so likewise, through all the wishes and cravings which hold him to the physical and which he slowly casts aside, he lets himself be borne into the spiritual world. Moreover, his consciousness in this first year of the spirit still to some extent resembles his consciousness in the physical world, although the faculties which are only to be acquired in the physical world can only be transmitted mediately through the etheric body. But after this first spirit-year a far higher consciousness ensues than anything which we can have here in the physical body.

If you remember many things that were said in the above-mentioned lectures, you will see how very different is this consciousness in the spiritual world. You need only remember how much our consciousness depends on what can enter into us. When we go about as ordinary men in the physical world, the phenomena of the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms of nature, and of the physical human kingdom, come into us along with other experiences of soul—experiences of civilisation and the like. But after death, what becomes of the major part of that which enters our soul life through the faculties we possess here in the physical world? The mineral world as such—this we no longer perceive at all, as you are well aware; and of the plant world we only see the all-pervading life. You can read in my Theosophy how these things are, as we ascend within the spiritual world.

Experience in the spiritual world is in fact quite different in kind. Indeed, for these things, there are no words which you can understand. Our language after all is created for the physical; hence it is always difficult to describe these things correctly, and one can easily be misunderstood. Above all, we can only express ourselves by comparisons. Consider the following: here in the physical world you stand as it were, in a single point of the whole world structure, and look out with your eyes in all directions of the surrounding sphere. In the spiritual world it is not so; there you look in from the circumference as it were, towards the interior of a hollow sphere. But this is only a comparison; in reality it is not a hollow sphere, for time plays a greater part in it than space. Nevertheless, it is from the circumference that you observe all things. Hence the conditions of ideation are quite different; even within your thinking the conditions are quite different.

I will describe it somewhat crudely: suppose a man had passed through the gate of death 60, 70 or 80 years ago, or even earlier. He feels distinctly a certain inner experience. When you feel hunger in the physical life, you do not say ‘the hunger is here’ or ‘the hunger is there’ but ‘the hunger is in you’. Or again, take the case when you feel pain in this or that part of your body. So it is when you look inward from the whole surrounding sphere; you feel that at a certain place there is something. You know there is something that wishes to have something to do with you, and now you must begin making great efforts to getrid of it.Think what this means: to get rid of that which has manifested itself. And only when you have got rid of it, only then does there emerge the true being that is trying to reveal itself. Thus we may say: as spiritual beings we have an idea within us, but the idea tells us nothing whatever as yet; we must first get rid of it. Then, when we have got rid of it, then do we find within us—strange as it may sound, it is so—an angel or archangel who is revealing himself to us. His presence is first announced to us in the idea; yet we ourselves must first achieve the actual presence. Perception in the spiritual world is thus bound up with real labour, with a strong exertion of our forces. And only the souls who have remained here in the physical body can to some extent manifest themselves upward to the dead without their undergoing this exertion. This is what happens when you concentrate your thoughts on the dead man, or bring something before him by reading to him or the like. In all that I have been saying, I only wished to make it clear to you how altogether different are the conditions of life and experience in the spiritual world. This being so, you will no longer find it surprising that one year of spirit time represents 30 years of physical time. For in the spirit we are in the circumference and look in towards the centre; it is very important to remember this.

I made it my chief task today to describe to some extent how the souls who have passed through the gate of death work down into the world in which the others have remained behind, with whom they were connected while in the physical body. Thus you have seen once more, from another aspect, how the world is an interconnected whole. Truly it is only for outer physical perception that the dead are dead. In reality, the moment they pass through the gate of death they have a new way of access to our souls. That is the difference. They now work into us from within, whereas they formerly worked into us from without. For us, these things should more and more become no mere external theories; they should live their way into our consciousness, till they are no longer a merely theoretic ‘world conception’, but world perception, or even world feeling. Then will Spiritual Science bear the fruits which it is meant to bear, and which it truly can.

One more remark in conclusion. Think what it means that at a certain period between death and a new birth man must have the inner Feeling that he carries the Hierarchies within him as his own inner experience. It is really so. This might well lead the human being to the most appalling arrogance, which would live as a dim feeling in his soul when he is reborn. In ancient times there was a natural limit to such arrogance, in this way: human beings passing through the gate of death and entering into the spiritual world were somehow aware that it was not they themselves who were beholding, but that the highest beings of the Hierarchies were living in them and communicating the vision to them. But man has lost this connection in the spiritual world, just as in the physical world he has lost the old atavistic clairvoyance. Instead there must now come into us what St. Paul expressed in the words ‘Not I, but Christ in me’, which words are endowed with real spiritual feeling when we say ‘Out of God we are born; into Christ we die’.

If we learn this in all its depths, through the feeling which can come to us in Spiritual Science, that Christ is for the Earth, then we shall rightly place ourselves into the vision from the surrounding sphere. Then, having lived through the gate of death with the right feeling: ‘Into Christ we die’, and gazing in from the surrounding sphere, among all the beings whom we behold—beings of the Hierarchies, elemental beings, beings such as the human souls, incarnate or discarnate—among all these, we shall also find our own Ego-being; and we shall behold from outside the relation of this our own Ego to all the other beings. To be able to have this feeling after we have passed through the gate of death is of infinite importance. Only if we can have this feeling towards our own Ego, only then can we find our true way again into physical incarnation. And there is no other way of having this feeling; we can only owe it to the right passage through the gate of death—the passing through the gate of death with the inner feeling: ‘we have died into Christ’. This union with Christ gives us the possibility to behold, as it were with the eye of the soul of Christ Himself, our relation within the spiritual world, to behold ourselves as Ego being among the other beings.

This, my dear friends, is what I would always like to attain. When, as a result of such studies as we have made today, we take with us once more a new piece of knowledge, the knowledge should also be transformed into inner feeling. Even if all the ideas developed in this lecture should have passed by us like a dream; if the one fundamental feeling remains, which I have sought to gather up in these concluding words, then we shall carry with us into our further life the real fruits of such a line of thought. For I have tried to show how the death in Christ can place us rightly into the spiritual world—so rightly, so abundantly, that we can carry it with us through the physical world in our next earthly incarnation

We remain together in such feelings, recognising that they have power to unite us more intensely. So there will by and by arise in the world the true, invisible community of those who are devoted to Anthroposophy, holding together through such inner feelings born out of the clear ideas of Spiritual Science. The world has need of this indivisible community of souls, able to carry into it the inner force of such communion as I have just described. In this sense we will be together spiritually for the future, though for a time we may not be together physically. So indeed it should always be among us; our communion in the spirit should sustain our coming together in the physical.

In addressing a public audience today on the most important question of our time, it makes a great difference if one speaks from a knowledge of the deeper forces of world-historical evolution, that is, from initiation-science, or if one speaks without such knowledge. It is relatively easy to speak about modern questions if one relies upon data of external knowledge which are considered scientific, practical, and so on. It is, however, extraordinarily difficult to speak about these questions from the standpoint of initiation-science—from which indeed everything is derived with which we have to deal at such gatherings as ours today. For he who speaks from that standpoint about problems of the time knows that he is opposed not only by the casual, subjective opinions of those to whom he speaks. He knows too that a great part of mankind today is already under the control, from one side or another, of Ahrimanic forces of a cosmic nature which are growing stronger and stronger. To explain what I mean by this, I must give you a kind of historical survey of a fairly long period of human history.

From various statements which have been made here and which you will also find in some of my lecture-courses, you know that we have to place the beginning of our modern age in the middle of the fifteenth century. We have always called this period—of which we are really only at the beginning—the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch. It has replaced the Greco-Latin Epoch, which we reckon from the middle of the eighth century B.C. to the middle of the fifteenth century; and further back still, we have the Egyptian-Chaldean epoch. I have merely indicated this so that you may remember where, in human evolution as a whole, we place the epoch in which we feel ourselves standing as modern men.

Now you know that at the close of the first third of the Greco-Latin Epoch, the Mystery of Golgotha took place. And from many different aspects we have characterized what really came about for human evolution through the Mystery of Golgotha, in fact for the whole evolution of the earth. Today, into this broad historical survey, we will place various things concerning mankind which are connected with this Mystery.

With this in view, let us glance back into far earlier times, let us say, into the ages about the beginning of the third millennium B.C. You are aware how little is said in external historical tradition about this early evolution of the human race on earth. You know, too, how external documents point over to Asia, to the Orient. From many anthroposophical sources, you will know that the further we go back in mankind's evolution, the more we find a different constitution of the human soul, and something like an ancient, original wisdom underlying the whole evolution of humanity. You know, further, that certain traditions of an ancient wisdom of mankind were preserved in close, secret circles, right into the nineteenth century. They have even been preserved into our own time—but not, for the most part, at all faithfully.

When a man of today learns to know something of this original wisdom, he is astounded at the depths of the realities to which it points. Yet in the course of the studies we have been pursuing for many years, it has been shown that this widespread wisdom-teaching of ancient times must always be contrasted with the understanding of life and the world that was possessed by the old Hebrew people and bore a completely different character. With a certain justice the widespread original wisdom is described as the heathen, pagan element, and to this is opposed the Hebrew, Jewish element. From external traditions and literature you are aware how the Christian element then arose out of the Jewish.

You can already gather from these external facts something that I beg you to bear in mind, namely, that it was essential in humanity's evolution to confront the ancient heathen element and its wisdom with the Jewish element out of which Christianity evolved partially, at all events. The primeval heathen or pagan wisdom in its totality was not destined to have the sole influence on the further evolution of mankind. And now the question must arise: Why had the ancient pagan wisdom, which is in many respects so wonderful, to experience a new form, a transformation, through Judaism and Christianity? This question inevitably arises.

The answer is supplied for Initiation-wisdom only through a very, very weighty fact, through an event which took place far over in Asia at the beginning of the third millennium of the pre-Christian era. Clairvoyant vision finds in looking back that an incarnation of a super-sensible Being in a human being had taken place there, just as in the Event of Golgotha an incarnation of the super-sensible Christ Being had taken place in the man Jesus of Nazareth. The incarnation that took place at the beginning of the third millennium B.C. is extraordinarily difficult to follow up, even with the science of seership, of initiation. It gave humanity something of immense brilliance, having an incisive effect. What it gave to humanity, in fact, was the primeval wisdom.

Viewed externally, one can say that it was a wisdom penetrating deep into reality; cold, based purely on ideas, permeated little by feeling. The actual inner nature of this wisdom can be judged only by going back to that incarnation which took place over in Asia at the beginning of the third pre-Christian millennium. It is revealed to the retrospective clairvoyant gaze that this was an actual human incarnation of the Luciferic Power.

And this incarnation of Lucifer in humanity, which in a certain way has been achieved, was the origin of the widely extended ancient wisdom based on the Third Post-Atlantean civilization.

There was still an after-effect, even in Grecian times, of the widespread cultural impulse that was derived from this Asiatic, Luciferic human being. Luciferic wisdom was of the utmost benefit to man in that epoch of evolution—brilliant in a certain way, graduated according to the different peoples and races among which it was spread. It was plainly recognizable throughout the whole of Asia, then in the Egyptian civilization, the Babylonian civilization and even in the culture of Greece.

All that was possible to the humanity of that time in thought, in the realm of poetry, in deeds, was in a certain way determined through the entry of this Luciferic impulse into human civilization.

It would, of course, be extraordinarily philistine to wish to say: That was an incarnation of Lucifer, hence we must flee from it! Such philistinism could make one also flee from the beauty and greatness that has come to mankind from this Luciferic stream, for the fruits of Greek culture with all their beauty, proceeded, as already said, from this stream of evolution. The whole of Gnostic thought existing at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, an impressive wisdom shedding light deep into cosmic realities—this whole Gnostic knowledge was inspired by the impulse coming from Luciferic forces. One must not say that Gnostic thought is therefore false; one is merely characterizing it by saying that it is permeated by Luciferic forces.

Then, considerably more than two thousand years after the Luciferic incarnation, came the Mystery of Golgotha. It may be said that the men among whom the impulse of this Mystery spread were still fully imbued in their thinking and feeling with what had come from the impulse of Lucifer. And now there entered into the evolution of civilized humanity an entirely different impulse, the impulse proceeding from the Christ. We have often spoken of what this Christ Impulse signifies within civilized humanity. The Christ-Impulse—I will only touch on this today—was taken up by the hearts and minds that I have just characterized. One might say that it shone into all the best that came to man from Lucifer. And in the first Christian centuries, men understood the Christ through what they had received from Lucifer. These things must be faced without prejudice; otherwise it is not really possible to understand the particular way in which the Christ Impulse was received in the first centuries of our era.

As the Luciferic impulse began to fade more and more, men were also increasingly unable to absorb the Christ Impulse in the right way. Consider how much has become materialistic in the course of modern times. But if you ask yourself what in particular has become materialistic, you must receive the answer: a great part of modern Christian theology. For it is simply the starkest materialism to which a great part of modern Christian theology succumbs when it no longer sees the Christ in the man Jesus of Nazareth. It sees only the human being, the ‘simple man of Nazareth,’ the man whom one can understand if one will only raise one's self a little to some sort of higher understanding. The more the man Jesus of Nazareth could be regarded as an ordinary human being, one belonging to the ranks of other noted human personalities, the better it pleased a certain materialistic trend of modern theology. Of the super-sensible element of the Event of Golgotha, modern theology is willing to recognize little, very little.

The impulses entering humanity from a Luciferic source sank down gradually into the soul. On the other hand, however, another impulse, which we call the Ahrimanic, is growing stronger and stronger in modern times. It will become increasingly strong in the near future and on into future ages. The Ahrimanic impulse proceeds from a super-sensible Being different from the Being of Christ or of Lucifer. Equally with ‘super-sensible’ one can say ‘subsensible’—but that is not the point here. The influence of this Being becomes especially powerful in the Fifth Post-Atlantean Epoch. If we look at the confused conditions of recent years we shall find that men have been brought to such chaotic conditions mainly through the Ahrimanic powers.

Just as there was an incarnation of Lucifer at the beginning of the third pre-Christian millennium, as there was the Christ Incarnation at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, so there will be a Western incarnation of the Ahriman being some little time after our present earthly existence, in fact, in the third post-Christian millennium. To form a right conception of the historical evolution of mankind during approximately 6000 years, one must grasp that at the one pole stands a Luciferic incarnation, in the center, the incarnation of Christ, and at the other pole the Ahrimanic incarnation. Lucifer is the power that stirs up in man all fanatical, all falsely mystical forces, all that physiologically tends to bring the blood into disorder and so lift man above and outside himself. Ahriman is the power that makes man dry, prosaic, philistine—that ossifies him and brings him to the superstition of materialism. And the true nature and being of man is essentially the effort to hold the balance between the powers of Lucifer and Ahriman; the Christ Impulse helps present humanity to establish this equilibrium.

Thus these two poles—the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic—are continuously present in man. Viewed historically, we find that the Luciferic preponderated in certain currents of cultural development of the pre-Christian age and continued into the first centuries of our era. On the other hand the Ahrimanic influence has been at work since the middle of the fifteenth century and will increase in strength until an actual incarnation of Ahriman takes place among Western humanity.

Now it is characteristic of such things that they are prepared long in advance. Ahrimanic powers prepare the evolution of mankind in such a way that it can fall a prey to Ahriman when he appears in human form within Western civilization—hardly then to be called ‘civilization’ in our sense—as once Lucifer appeared in human form in China, as once Christ appeared in human form in Asia Minor. It is of no avail to give oneself illusions today about these things. Ahriman will appear in human form and the only question is, how he will find humanity prepared. Will his preparations have secured for him as followers the whole of mankind that today calls itself civilized, or will he find a humanity that can offer resistance. It does not help at all to give oneself up to illusions. People nowadays flee the truth, and one cannot give it to them in an unvarnished form because they would ridicule it and scoff and jeer. But if one gives it to them through the “Threefold Social Organism” as one now tries to do, then they will not have it either—not the majority, at any rate. The fact that people reject these things is just one of the means which the Ahrimanic powers can use and which will give Ahriman the greatest possible following when he appears in human form on earth. This disregard of the weightiest truths is precisely what will build Ahriman the best bridge to the success of his incarnation. And nothing will help us to find the right position in regard to the part played by Ahriman in human evolution except an unprejudiced study of the forces through which Ahriman's influence works, as well as learning to know the forces through which mankind can arm itself against being tempted and led astray. For this reason we will cast a brief glance today at various things which would foster support of Ahriman and which Ahrimanic powers, working out of super-sensible worlds through human minds down here, will particularly employ in order to make his following as numerous as possible.

One of the means is this—that it is not realized what is the actual significance for man of certain kinds of thought and conception which predominate in modern times. You know, indeed, what a great difference there is between the way a man felt himself to be within the whole cosmos in the Egyptian age, let us say, and even in the time of Greece, and how he feels since the beginning of the modern age, since the close of the Middle Ages. Picture to yourselves a well-instructed ancient Egyptian. He knew that his body was constituted not merely of the ingredients which exist here on earth and are embodied in the animal kingdom, plant kingdom, mineral kingdom. He knew that the forces which he saw in the stars above, worked into his being as man; he felt himself a member of the whole cosmos. He felt the whole cosmos not only quick with life, but ensouled and imbued with spirit; in his consciousness there lived something of the spiritual beings of the cosmos, of the soul-nature of the cosmos and its life. All this has been lost in the course of later human history. Today man gazes from his earth up to the star-world and to him it is filled with fixed stars, suns, planets, comets, and so on. But with what means does he examine all that looks down to him out of cosmic space? He examines it with mathematics, with the science of mechanics. What lies around the earth is robbed of spirit, robbed of soul, even of life. It is a great mechanism, in fact, only to be grasped by the aid of mathematical, mechanistic laws. With the help of these mathematical, mechanistic laws we grasp it magnificently! A student of spiritual science is undoubtedly just the one to value the achievements of a Galileo, a Kepler, and others, but what penetrates human understanding and consciousness through the tenets of these great spirits in human evolution merely shows the universe as a great mechanism.

What this means is only revealed to one who is able to grasp man in his whole nature. It is all very well for astronomers and astro-physicists to present the universe as a mechanism which can be understood and calculated by mathematical formulae. This indeed is what a man will believe in the time from waking in the morning till going to sleep again at night. But in those unconscious depths which he does not reach with his waking consciousness but which yet belong to his existence and in which he lives between going to sleep and waking, something quite different concerning the universe flows into his soul. There lives in the human soul a knowledge which, although unknown to the waking consciousness, is yet present in the depths and moulds the soul—a knowledge of the spirit, of the life of the soul, of the life of the cosmos. And although in his waking consciousness man knows nothing of what goes on there in communion with the spirit, soul and life of the universe while he sleeps—in the soul the things are there; they live within it. And much of the great discord felt by modern man is derived from the disharmony between what the soul experiences and what the waking consciousness acknowledges as its world-conception.

And what does the whole spirit and purport of anthroposophical spiritual science say about such things? It says: What the ideas of Galileo, Copernicus, have brought to mankind is grand and mighty, but not an absolute truth, by no means an absolute truth. It is one aspect of the universe, one side from a certain standpoint. It is only through the arrogance of modern man that people say today: “Ptolemaic world-system—childishness; that is what men had when they were still children. We have made such great strides—right ‘to the stars’ and that is what we now take as the absolute.” It is just as little an absolute as the Ptolemaic system was an absolute, it is one aspect. The only right view—according to spiritual science—is to realize that all that is accepted by way of mere world-mathematics, mere world-schematism of a mechanical order, does not furnish man with absolute truth about the universe, but with illusions. The illusions are necessary because mankind goes through varied forms of education in its different stages of evolution. For modern education we need these illusions of a mathematical nature about the universe, we must acquire them, but we must know that they are illusions. And most of all they are illusions when we transpose them into our daily environment, when, in accordance with the atomic or molecular theories, we even endeavour to create a kind of astronomy for the substances of the earth. A right attitude in regard to the whole of modern science, insofar as it thinks along these lines, will recognize that its knowledge is illusion.

Now, in order that his incarnation may take the most profitable form, it is of the utmost interest to Ahriman that people should perfect themselves in all our illusory modern science, but without knowing that it is illusion. Ahriman has the greatest possible interest in instructing men in mathematics, but not in instructing them that mathematical-mechanistic concepts of the universe are merely illusions. He is intensely interested in bringing men chemistry, physics, biology and so on, as they are presented today in all their remarkable effects, but he is interested in making men believe that these are absolute truths, not that they are only points of view, like photographs from one side. If you photograph a tree from one side, it can be a correct photograph, yet it does not give a picture of the whole tree. If you photograph it from four sides, you can in any case get an idea of it. To conceal from mankind that in modern intellectual, rationalistic science with its supplement of a superstitious empiricism, one is dealing with a great illusion, a deception—that men should not recognize this is of the greatest possible interest to Ahriman. It would be a triumphant experience for him if the scientific superstition which grips all circles today and by which men even want to organize their social science, should prevail into the third millennium. He would have the greatest success if he could then come as a human being into Western civilization and find the scientific superstition.

But I ask you not to draw false conclusions from what I have just said. It would be a false conclusion to avoid the science of the day; that is the very falsest conclusion which could be drawn. We must get to know science; we should get an exact knowledge of all that comes from this direction—but with the full consciousness that we are receiving an illusory aspect, an illusion necessary for our education as men. We do not safeguard ourselves against Ahriman by avoiding modern science, but by learning to know its character. For modern science gives us an external illusion of the universe, and we need this illusion. Do not imagine that we do not need it. We must only fill it in from quite another side with actual reality gained through spiritual research, we must rise from the illusory character to the true reality. You will find reference in many of my lecture-courses to what I am telling you today, and you will see how everywhere it has been sought to enter fully into the science of our time, but to lift it all to the sphere where one can see its real value. You cannot wish to get rid of the rainbow because you know it to be an illusion of light and color! You will not understand it if you do not realize its illusory character. But it is just the same with all that modern science gives you for your imagination of the universe, it gives only illusions and that must be recognized. It is by educating oneself through these illusions that one arrives at the reality.

This, then, represents one of the means used by Ahriman to make his incarnation as effective as possible—this keeping of man back in scientific superstition.

The second means that he employs is to stir up all the emotions that split men up into small groups—groups that mutually attack one another. You need only look at all the conflicting parties that exist today, and if you are unprejudiced you will recognize that the explanation is not to be found merely in human nature. If men honestly try to explain this so-called World War through human dis-harmonies, they will realize that with what they find in physical humanity they cannot explain it. It is precisely here that “super-sensible” powers, Ahrimanic powers, have been at work.

These Ahrimanic powers are working, in fact, wherever dis-harmonies arise between groups of men. Now the question arises on what foundation is most of what we are considering based?

Let us proceed from a very characteristic example.—The modern proletariat has had its Karl Marx. Observe closely how the doctrines of Karl Marx have been spread among the proletariat, with Marxist literature reaching practically immeasurable proportions. You will find all the methods of our present-day science used in the books; everything is strictly proved, so strictly proved that many people, of whom one would never have supposed it, have fallen victim to Marxism. What was the actual destiny of Marxism? It spread at first, as you know, among the proletariat and was firmly rejected by university science. Today there are already a number of university scientists who have veered round to acknowledging Marxist logic. They adhere to it because its literature has proved that its conclusions are in excellent accord, that from the standpoint of modern science Marxism can be quite neatly proved. Middle-class circles have unfortunately had no Karl Marx who could have proved the opposite for them; for just as one can prove the ideological character of right, morality, and so forth, the theory of surplus value and materialistic historical research from the Marxist standpoint, so is it possible to prove their exact opposite. A middle-class, bourgeois-Marx would be fully able to prove the exact opposite by the same strict method. There is no sort of swindle or humbug about it; the proof would work out right.

Whence does this come? It comes from the fact that present human thinking, the present intellect, lies in a stratum of being where it does not reach down to realities. One can therefore prove something quite strictly, and also prove its opposite. It is possible today to prove spiritualism on the one hand and materialism on the other. And people may fight against each other from equally good standpoints because present-day intellectualism is in an upper layer of reality and does not go down into the depths of being. And it is the same with party opinions. A man who does not look deeper but simply lets himself be accepted into a certain party-circle—by reason of his education, heredity, circumstances of life and State—quite honestly believes—or so he thinks—in the possibility of proving the tenets of the party into which he has slipped, as he says. And then—then he fights against someone else who has slipped into another party! And the one is just as right as the other. This calls forth chaos and confusion over mankind that will gradually become greater and greater unless men see through it. Ahriman makes use of this confusion in order to prepare the triumph of his incarnation and to drive men with increasing force into what they find so difficult to realize—namely, that by intellectual or modern scientific reasoning today, one can prove anything and equally well prove its opposite. The point is for us to recognize that everything can be proved and for that reason to examine the proofs put forward in science today. It is only in natural science that reality is shown by the facts; in no other field can one consider intellectual proofs valid. The only way to escape the danger that threatens if one accepts the lures of Ahriman and his desire to drive men deeper and deeper into these things, is to realize through anthroposophical spiritual science that human knowledge must be sought for in a stratum deeper than that in which the validity of our proofs arises. And so, in order to create dissensions, Ahriman also makes use of what develops from the old conditions of heredity which man has really outgrown in the Fifth Post-Atlantean Epoch. The Ahrimanic powers use all that is derived from old circumstances of heredity in order to set men against each other in conflicting groups. All that comes from old differences of family, race, tribe, peoples, is used by Ahriman to create confusion. “Freedom for every nation, even the smallest ...” These were fine-sounding words. But the powers hostile to man always use fine words in order to bring confusion and in order to attain the things that Ahriman wishes to attain for his incarnation.

If we inquire: Who stirs up nations against each other? Who raises the questions that are directing humanity today?—the answer is: the Ahrimanic deception which plays into human life. And in this field men very easily let themselves be deceived. They are not willing to descend to the lower strata where reality is to be found. For, you see, Ahriman skillfully prepares his goal beforehand; ever since the Reformation and the Renaissance, the economist has been emerging in modern civilization as the representative governing type. That is an actual historical fact. If you go back to ancient times, even to those that I have characterized today as the Luciferic—who were the governing types then? Initiates. The Egyptian Pharaohs, the Babylonian rulers, the Asiatic rulers—they were initiates. Then the priest-type emerged as ruler and the priest-type was really the ruler right up to the Reformation and the Renaissance. Since that time the economist has been in command. Rulers are in fact merely the handymen, the understrappers of the economists. One must not imagine that the rulers of modern times are anything but the understrappers of the economists. And all that has resulted by way of law and justice—one should only study it carefully—is simply a consequence of what economically oriented men have thought. In the nineteenth century the “economical” man is replaced for the first time by the man thinking in terms of banking, and in the nineteenth century there is created for the first time the organization of finance which swamps every other relationship. One must only be able to look into these things and follow them up empirically and practically.

All that I stated in the second public lecture here (The Social Future, October 25, 1919) is profoundly true. One could only wish that it were followed up in all details; it would then be seen how fundamentally true these things are. But just because this rulership of the mere ‘symbol for solid goods’ (that is to say, money—quotation from the lecture) has arisen, Ahriman has been given another essential medium for the deception of mankind. If men do not realize that the rights-state and the organism of the Spirit must be set against the economic order called up through the economists and the banks, then again, through this lack of awareness, Ahriman will find an important instrument for preparing his incarnation. His incarnation is undoubtedly coming, and this lack of insight will enable him to prepare it triumphantly.

Such means can be used by Ahriman for a certain type of man. But there is another type—indeed the two are often mixed in one personality—and this also, from a different direction, provides Ahriman with an easy way to success.

Now it is a fact that in real life, total errors are not so harmful as half- or quarter-truths. Total errors are soon seen through, whereas half- and quarter-truths mislead people. They live with them, these partial truths become a pan of life and cause the most horrible devastation.

There are people today who do not realize the one-sidedness of the Galileo-Copernican world-conception, or who at least do not see its illusory character, or are too easygoing to examine it. We have just shown how wrong that is. But there are also people today, numberless people who acknowledge a certain half-truth, a very significant half-truth, and who do not go into the question of the purely hypothetical justification of it. Strange as it may appear to many people, it is just as one-sided to view the world solely through the Gospel and reject any other search into true reality, as it is to view the world from the standpoint of Galileo and Copernicus, or of university materialistic science in general.

The Gospel was given to those who lived in the first centuries of Christianity, and to believe that today the Gospel can give the whole of Christianity is simply a half-truth. It is therefore also a half-error which befogs people and thus furnishes Ahriman with the best means of attaining the goal and the triumph of his incarnation.

How numerous are those who think they are speaking out of Christian humility, but in reality out of dreadful arrogance, when they say: “Oh, we need no spiritual science! The homeliness, the simplicity of the Gospels leads us to what men need of the eternal!” A frightful arrogance is expressed, for the most part, in this apparent humility, which can very well be used by Ahriman in the sense I have indicated. For do not forget what I explained at the beginning of today's lecture, how in the time in which the Gospel falls, men were still permeated by the Luciferic impulse in their thought, feeling and general views, and that they could understand the Gospel by a certain Luciferic Gnosis. But the grasp of the Gospel in this old sense is not possible today. No real understanding of the Christ can be gained if one relies merely on the Gospel, especially in the form in which it has been handed down. There exists nowhere today a less true understanding of Christ than in the various faiths and confessions.

The Gospel must be deepened by spiritual science if we wish to gain an actual grasp of the Christ. It is then interesting to examine the separate Gospels and arrive at their real content. To accept the Gospel as it is and as numberless people accept it today, and particularly as it is taught today, is not a path to Christ; it is a path away from Christ. Hence the confessions are moving further and further away from Christ. To what sort of Christ-conception does a man come who will accept the Gospel and only the Gospel, without the depth given by spiritual science? He comes ultimately to a Christ—but that is the utmost that he can reach through the Gospel alone. It is not a reality of the Christ, for today only spiritual science can lead to that. What the Gospel leads to is an hallucination of the Christ, a real inner picture or vision, yet only a picture. The Gospel today provides the way to come to a vision of the Christ, but not to the reality of Christ. That is just the reason why modern theology has become so materialistic. Theological commentators and expounders of the Gospel have asked themselves: What is to be made of the Gospel? They decide at length that in their view the result is similar to what one gets when one examines the case of Paul before Damascus. And then these theologians, who are supposed to confirm Christianity, but who really undermine it, say: Paul was simply ill, suffering from nerves and he had a vision before Damascus.

The point is that through the Gospel itself one can come only to hallucinations, to visions, but not to realities; the Gospel does not give us the real Christ, but only an hallucination of the Christ. The real Christ must be sought today through all that can be gained from a spiritual knowledge of the world.

These very people who swear by the Gospel alone and reject every kind of real spiritual knowledge, form the beginning of a flock for Ahriman when he appears in human shape in modern civilization. From these circles, from these members of confessions and sects who repulse the concrete knowledge brought by spiritual endeavor, whole hosts will develop as adherents of Ahriman. Now this is all beginning to come into existence. It is there, it is at work in present humanity and one who speaks to men today with the knowledge of spiritual science speaks into it, no matter whether he is speaking on social or other questions. He knows where the hostile powers lie, that they live supersensibly and that men are their poor misguided victims. This is the call to humanity: “Free yourselves from all these things that form such a great temptation to contribute to Ahriman's triumph!”

Many people have felt something of this sort. But there is not yet courage everywhere to come to an understanding with the historical impulses of the Christ, Lucifer and Ahriman in the urgent way that is necessary and that is emphasized by Anthroposophy. Even those who have an idea of what is necessary will not go far enough. For instance, look at examples where there arises some knowledge that the secular materialistic science with this Ahrimanic character must be permeated with the Christ Impulse, and how, on the other hand, the Gospel must be illuminated through the explanations of spiritual science. Consider how many people struggle to the point of really shedding light in either of these directions by means of spiritual-scientific knowledge! Yet humanity will only acquire the right attitude to the earthly incarnation of Ahriman if it sees through these things and has the courage, will and energy to illumine both secular science and the Gospel by the Spirit. Otherwise the result is always superficialities. Think, for example, of how Cardinal Newman—who, after all, was an enlightened man, one who followed modern religious development—at the time of his investiture as Cardinal in Rome stated openly in his address that if the Christian Catholic teaching was to survive, a new revelation was necessary. We have no need, however, of a new revelation; the time of revelations in the old sense is over. We need a new science, one that is illumined by the Spirit. But men must have the courage for such a new science.

Think of a literary phenomenon like the Lux Mundi movement that originated with certain eminent theologians, members of the English High Church, at the end of the eighties and beginning of the nineties of the last century. It consisted of a series of studies, imbued throughout with the endeavor to build a bridge from secular science to the contents of dogma. One might call it a floundering hither and thither, never a bold grasping of secular science, never an illumination of it with the spirit. There was no unprejudiced examination of the Gospel with the knowledge that the Gospel of itself is not enough today, that it must be elucidated and illumined. But mankind must be courageous in both directions and say: secular science by itself leads to illusion, the Gospel by itself leads to hallucination. The middle way between illusion and hallucination is found only by grasping reality through the Spirit. That is the point.

We must see through such things as these today. Purely mundane science would make men entirely subject to illusion; in fact ultimately they would commit only follies. Quite enough folly is perpetuated today already, for surely the World War catastrophe was a great folly! Yet many people were involved in it who were thoroughly saturated with the official secular science of our time. And if you notice what remarkable psychological phenomena at once crop up when some sect or other places one of the four Gospels in the foreground, then you will more easily understand what I have been saying about the Gospels today. See how strongly inclined to all sorts of hallucinations are sects that pay heed solely to the Gospel of St. John, or solely the Gospel of St. Luke! Fortunately there are four Gospels, which outwardly contradict one another, and this has so far prevented the great harm which such one-sidedness would cause. By being faced with four Gospels people do not go too far in the direction of the one, but have the others beside it. One Gospel is read aloud on one Sunday and another on another Sunday and so the illusory power of the one is counterbalanced by that of another. A great wisdom lies in the fact that these four Gospels have come down to the civilized world. In this way man is protected from being caught up by some one stream, which will take possession of him—as in the case of so many members of sects—if he is influenced by one Gospel alone. When solely one Gospel works upon him it is particularly clear how this leads at last to hallucination.

In fact, it is essential today to give up much of one's subjective inclination, much of what one is attached to and thinks pious or clever. Mankind must above all seek universality and the courage to look at things from all sides.

I wished to say this to you today so that you may realize that what one tries now to bring about within humanity has truly deeper grounds than just some sort of subjective prejudice. In fact one can say that it is read from the signs of the times and that it must be brought about.

Just now, when I am giving public lectures on the social question here in Zürich, it is perhaps appropriate that in our study-group we should occupy ourselves with the inner aspect of the social problem, so exceptionally important at the present time.

We know that in every human being whom we encounter in the outer world, who stands before our bodily faculties of perception, we must recognise beneath the surface the real inner man. We first become aware of this inner man when we appreciate that fundamentally he is connected with everything relevant to human life and knowledge that weaves and surges through the world.

Just think, my dear friends, how different, with regard particularly to the human being, our anthroposophical conception of the world is from the ordinary conception! Remember my attempt to give an outline of the anthroposophical view; recall all you have read in my Occult Science, and you will realise the following: the evolution of the Earth is not only bound up with man, but is conceived as having emerged from the earlier incarnations, so to speak, of our Earth planet. Our present Earth-evolution emerged from the Old Moon evolution, this from the Old Sun, the Old Sun from Old Saturn. Then consider everything which had to be brought together to carry this planetary evolution forward to the Earth stage, and you will say: throughout the whole cosmic process man is never absent. He is involved in all of it. All the forces and happenings of the cosmos are focused on man—that is how we must conceive it.

In a conversation between Capesius and the Initiate, in one of my Mystery Plays, I have specially tried to show what an impression it must make on anyone if he realises that all the generations of the gods, all the power of the universe, are summoned to the task of placing man in the centre of their creative activity.

I have pointed out, in connection particularly with this entirely valid conception, how essential it is to emphasise the need for human modesty—how essential it is to say again and again: “Yes, if we could consciously experience our whole being in its relation to the cosmos, and bring our whole being truly to expression, it would be revealed as a microcosmos! But in fact, how much can we know or experience or bring to expression of all that we are as man, in the highest sense?” Whenever we bring clearly before us what we are, we waver always between pride and modesty. We must certainly not give way to pride, but neither must we surrender to modesty. It would be a surrender if, after taking account of our place in the world from a cosmic standpoint, we were to fail to reckon our human task in the highest possible terms. We can never think highly enough of what we ought to be. We can never take seriously enough the deep sense of cosmic responsibility which must overcome man if he holds in view the relationship of the whole universe to his human existence.

In the light of Spiritual Science this should certainly remain no mere idea, no mere fact of knowledge: it should become an experience—an experience of holy awe in the face of what man ought to be and yet only in the rarest cases can be. Whenever, too, we encounter another person, we should be impelled by this experience to feel: “Standing there, you bring a great deal to expression in this present incarnation. But you journey from life to life, from incarnation to incarnation: the succession of your lives bears the imprint of eternity.” And in many other directions also we can widen and deepen this experience. From this experience we are led through Spiritual Science to a true appraisal of human worth, to an appreciation of human dignity in the context of the world. This experience can permeate the soul through and through; it can, if it inspires the entire inner life, bring us into the right mood for regulating our relationships with other human beings.

All this, which I have just explained, we can regard as a primary gift of modern Spiritual Science: we learn to appraise rightly all that is human in the world. That is one point.

Something else will arise in us out of a deeply-felt and not merely theoretical Spiritual Science. It is this. If we take into account all the happenings of the world, all the elemental life in earth, water and air—if we take account also of all that shines down to us from the stars and breathes from the wind, all that speaks to us from the several kingdoms of Nature—if we contemplate all this in the light of Spiritual Science, then we find it connected through and through with man! Everything will have value for us because we are able to bring it into connection with the human. Supersensible perception makes us feel, in very truth, that man is related to everything in the universe. Christian Morgenstern, the poet, has crystalised in beautiful verses (which I have often spoken of to our friends in connection with a certain chapter in St. John's Gospel) the experience which comes over us when we allow the ranking of the kingdoms of Nature to work on our minds. Then we can say: “The plant gazes on the lifeless realm of the minerals. ... Certainly it must feel itself to stand higher in the order of Nature than the mere lifeless minerals.” But then the plant, gazing on the mineral which prepares the ground for it, will be impelled also to say: “I certainly stand higher than you in the ranks of beings, but it is to you, since I grow out of you, that I am indebted for my existence. In thankfulness I bow before the ground which lies beneath me.” And so, again, must we conceive the experience of the animals in relation to the plants, and again in the human realm, where man in the course of his evolution is raised to a higher level. He must gaze down with awe and reverence at that which in a certain sense stands beneath him—not merely formulating all this intellectually, but so that the weaving pulse of life in all things becomes for him a real cosmic soul-experience. [Christian Morgenstern: We Found a Path. The Washing of the Feet.] This is how a genuine Spiritual Science should lead us on. Thus it enables us to establish a living relationship between humanity and all other existences.

Now a third point. Spiritual Science does not talk endlessly, in a pantheistic way, about “spirit” underlying everything. No, Spiritual Science does not only talk about spiritual reality; its aim is to let the reality of the spirit flow directly into all it says. It strives to speak in such a way that everyone for whom Spiritual Science is a living experience knows that, whenever his thinking touches the spirit, the spirit itself lives and weaves in his thought. Whoever is breathed upon by the impulse of Spiritual Science—if I may put it so—will not merely think about the spirit: he will allow the spirit itself to speak through his thoughts. The immediate presence of the spirit, the active power of the spirit—these are what Spiritual Science leads us to seek.

And now take the feelings which Spiritual Science calls to life in the depth of the human soul and compare them with the social demand of which I spoke yesterday—the social demand which in a certain sense lives in the proletarian consciousness of the present time. Consider: all that lives to-day in the consciousness of the workers, as the foundation of their knowledge, is an ideology, nothing but a web of abstract thoughts! Yes, this is said to be the essential characteristic of spiritual experience, that it is merely an ideology: economic happenings are the only reality. From these happenings, as they run their course, the conflicts of human life derive; everything that man thinks and learns and creates artistically arises from them like a smoke, a mist. Everything that he regards as custom, morality, law and so on—all merely an ideological shadow-show! And now compare this shadow-show with the spiritual life which penetrates the soul from the impulse of Spiritual Science. The aim of our Anthroposophical Spiritual Science is to carry spirit out as living reality into the world through the soul of man. This living spirit is banished from that contemporary outlook which originated with the middle class, and which the workers, to their misfortune, have taken over. Banished ... and that which ought to live in men's consciousness, the “spirit in me”—that exists now merely as ideology.

Consider, again: how much can be understood about humanity, in this earthly life, through the ordinary senses! Why, in order to gain a comprehensive view of humanity we have to bring in not only the evolution of the Earth, but the Moon, Sun, and Saturn evolutions! How lacking from the modern outlook is that fine feeling for human dignity which enables us, once we have acquired it from Spiritual Science, to establish a right relationship when as human beings we encounter other human beings! Can you suppose for a moment that in the chaos of social life to-day will be found that right relationship between man and man which is essential to any real solution of the social problem? How can such a right relationship possibly emerge unless it rests on that evaluation of mankind in cosmic terms which springs only from spiritual knowledge and spiritual experience?

A third point. No true relation to the realm of law and human rights can be found to-day through the abstract conceptions loved by economists and political theorists. The only way is to seek for direct personal contact with the facts and events of the surrounding world. This third point recalls what I have already indicated: through Spiritual Science, taken into the soul-life, we must experience our relationship to all the beings that stand above and below us in the hierarchical order of the divine and natural worlds.

Now consider this contrast. On the one hand, take that which fills the consciousness of the proletariat—think how far removed it is from any experience of the living reality of the spirit in man, how it has reduced everything spiritual to an ideology! Think how far removed a truly spirit-permeated valuation of man is from the way of thinking which the proletarian of to-day applies to man and embodies in his general outlook! Think, finally, how far removed the almost universal standards of judgment to-day—the reckoning of everything in economic terms—are from that appreciation of extra-human phenomena to which we come when we learn to experience all that may be drawn from Spiritual Science as to the relationship of men to these other realms of existence.

Consider a further contrast. Think what mankind has come to as a result of the intensive invasion of human souls by the materialism of the past century. On the other hand, think of the hopes that can be kindled by the knowledge that true Spiritual Science is now able to find its way into the hearts of men. Put these two facts side by side and ask yourselves whether a true apprehension of the social problem will not depend on the grasping by human souls of all that Spiritual Science has to give.

If you experience rightly these two prospects, the hopeless and the hopeful, then, my dear friends, anthroposophical activity will become for you what indeed it should be to-day for all men: a necessity of life—a necessity which should penetrate all other preoccupations.

You may say to yourselves: Nothing seems clearer to me in the whole context of man's recent development than that the social problem has come to a head; but nothing, also, seems clearer than that men stand tragically at a loss in face of this social problem. For in this epoch, when the social problem thrusts itself so forcibly on to the scene, men are going through one of their hardest ordeals—the ordeal of having to find their way to the spirit through their own inner strength. Today we can look for no revelations unless we seek them freely; for since the middle of the fifteenth century we have been living in the age of the Consciousness Soul—the age in which everything is destined to be brought into the light of consciousness. Let us not be led to complain vainly: “A fearful catastrophe has fallen on mankind ... why have the gods thrust mankind into such an appalling disaster! Why did the gods not lead men clear of it, for it is surely piteous that men should have been brought to such a pass?” Let us not forget that we are living in the age when the free spiritual activity of man is due to reach expression—when the gods, in accordance with their primary purpose, may not reveal themselves unless the human being, by free resolve, opens the innermost sanctuary of his soul to receive them.

With regard to the most important aspects of human evolution, and with regard particularly to Christianity, we stand at a turning-point. Certainly many people, who are active in social affairs, have indicated a willingness to accept Christianity—but only as much of Christianity as serves to remind us of our own social ideals. But this most important of all impulses, which alone gives earthly existence its true meaning and purpose, cannot be dealt with in that way. We must be clear about this: all that has been generally understood about Christianity, so far, is only a beginning. It amounts to little more than an acknowledgment of the fact that the Christ was once present in the man Jesus and passed through the Mystery of Golgotha. All that Christianity has been able to teach men in nearly 2,000 years is the simple fact that the Christ descended to Earth and established a connection with the Earth. Human understanding was not ripe for more. Only now, in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, the epoch of the Consciousness Soul, is humanity becoming ripe to understand, not merely the fact that the Christ passed through the Mystery of Golgotha, but the real significance of this event. Mankind will be able to understand the content of the Mystery of Golgotha only out of the spiritual foundations which can be built in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch.

In this study-group I have often remarked how extraordinarily banal it is to say: “We live in a time of transition.” All times are times of transition! The point is not to call this or that period a time of transition; the point is to see what is involved in a particular change or transition. That is the essential thing: to perceive what is changing!

I have also remarked here, from many points of view, on the particular changes which human consciousness and human soul-development, in the broadest sense, are undergoing in our time. To-day I should like to draw attention once more to a particular aspect of man's earthly evolution.

I said just now: Through Spiritual Science we seek not merely to entertain thoughts about the Spiritual, but to let the living reality of the spirit reveal itself in our thinking. Similarly, we can recall the words of Christ Jesus: “I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.” The right way to grasp Spiritual Science is not to believe that the entire substance of Christianity is contained once for all in the Gospels, but to recognise that the Christ is in truth present at all times, even unto the end of the world. And present not as a dead force, calling merely for belief, but as a living power which increasingly reveals itself. And in our epoch what is this revelation? The content of modern anthroposophical Spiritual Science. Spiritual Science is concerned not merely to talk about the Christ, but to utter what the Christ wishes to say to men in our time, through the medium of human thoughts.

So we can say: In those ancient times, when the life of men was still largely instinctive, when in their souls something of the old, atavistic clairvoyance survived, then the Spiritual found utterance in the human soul. It was active still in human thoughts and in the human will. Truly, the gods dwelt in men. To-day, however, they dwell in human beings after a different fashion. One might put it in the following way. In ancient times the gods had a certain task with regard to the Earth's evolution: they had set its fulfilment before themselves as a goal. They accomplished their purpose by inspiring men with their own powers, and breathing imaginations into the human soul. But—strange as it may seem—these primal aims for the Earth's development are now fulfilled. They were fulfilled, fundamentally, by the end of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. Since then the spiritual Beings of the higher Hierarchies (whom in our sense we may call the gods) stand in a different relationship to human souls.

Once, the gods came in search of men in order to realize their purpose for the Earth with men's help. To-day it is men who must seek out the gods; by their own inner activity they must raise themselves to the gods. The human being must reach such a relationship to the gods as to achieve his aims, his consciously conceived aims, with the help of divine powers. That is the right thing in the epoch of the Consciousness Soul. In earlier times the aims of men were unconscious, instinctive, just because the conscious purpose of the gods was working in them. Human aims must now become ever more conscious: then they will be infused with powers capable of raising them into the sphere of the gods, so that human aims may be inspired with divine energies.

My dear friends, give thorough thought to these words. Much lies in them. They point to the necessity which from our time onwards should draw forth an elemental striving from the depths of human nature. We can cultivate this in various realms of the soul. Above all we must seek to deepen social life by bringing Spiritual Science to bear on human relationships. Because in earlier times the gods were directly concerned with the evolution of mankind, and sought through men to realize their aims—for this very reason men were much more closely related to one another than they are to-day. It had to be so. To-day human beings are in a certain sense driven apart, and they have to seek quite a different relationship to one another. But first they have to learn about this. From a purely external point of view you can see everywhere that one human being knows very little about another. Spiritual Science is only beginning to show how human nature and human worth stand in their cosmic setting. In daily life one man knows little about another; he does not penetrate into the depths of his fellow man's soul. That is the general rule. Through a deepening of social life a new understanding of man must be found, and must permeate human development.

Instead of having eyes only for the man of flesh, apprehending him in a naturalistic way, devoid of the spirit, we must reach the stage of a spirit-filled social organism, wherein the activity of the gods in other men can be recognised.

But we shall not attain to this unless we do something about it. One thing we can do is to strive to deepen our own life of soul. There are many paths to that. I will mention only one, a meditative path. From various points of view, and with various aims, we can cast a backward glance over our own lives. We can ask ourselves: How has this life of mine unfolded since childhood? But we can do this also in a special way. Instead of bringing before our gaze what we ourselves have enjoyed or experienced, we can turn out attention to the persons who have figured in our lives as parents, brothers and sisters, friends, teachers and so on, and we can summon before our soul the inner nature of each of these persons, in place of our own. After a time we shall find ourselves reflecting how little we really owe to ourselves, and how much to all that has flowed into us from others. If we honestly build up this kind of self-scrutiny into an inner picture, we shall arrive at quite a new relationship to the outer world. From such a backward survey we retain certain feelings and impressions. And these are like fertile seeds planted in us—seeds for the growth of a true knowledge of man. Whoever undertakes again and again this inward contemplation, so that he recognises the contribution which other persons, perhaps long dead or far distant, have made to his own life, then when he meets another man, and establishes a personal relationship with him, an imagination of the other man's true being will rise before him.

This is something which must emerge as an inward and truly heartfelt social demand, bound up with this present time and necessary to the future development of mankind. So must Spiritual Science reveal its practical power to kindle and enrich human life.

This subject has a further aspect. In earlier times all self-knowledge, all introspection, was a much simpler affair, for a deeply inward social impulse is now emerging—and not only because of the enhanced awareness of some people concerning property or poverty. This impulse shows itself, for example, in the following way. Nowadays we pay very little attention to the fact that throughout life a constant process of ripening goes on. Inwardly honest men, such as Goethe, feel this. Even in his latest years Goethe was still eager to learn. His inward growth continued; he felt he had not finished with the task of becoming a man. And in looking back on his youth and prime he saw in all that had come to him then a preparation for the experiences brought by old age. Nowadays people very seldom think in that way—least of all when taking account of man as a social being. Everyone, as soon as he is twenty, wants to belong to some corporate body and—in the favourite phrase—to exercise his democratic judgment! It never occurs to anyone that there are things in life worth waiting for, because increasing ripeness comes with the years. Men to-day have no idea of that!

That is one thing we must learn, my dear friends—that all stages of life—and not only the first two or three decades of youth—bring gifts to man.

And there is something else we must learn. We are not concerned only with ourselves, but with people at other stages of life; and particularly with children, as they are born and grow up. A consequence of human evolution is that much which used to unfold of itself in the soul now has to be attained by extraordinary exertion—by a striving for super-sensible knowledge, or at least for a real knowledge of life. It is the same with the child as with people in general—a great deal in his own being remains hidden from him. And this applies not only to the experiences that will come in later life. A great deal that was formerly revealed through atavistic clairvoyance now remains hidden from a person who pays attention only to himself, who seeks for knowledge only within himself. It remains hidden from the cradle to the grave. This is also a consequence of the state of consciousness belonging to our age. We can strive for clear insight, yet much remains hidden—and precisely in the realm where we need to see clearly. This is a special characteristic of our time: we enter the world as children, bearing some quality which is important for the world, for the social life of humanity, for the understanding of history. But we cannot reach a knowledge of this, not in childhood, or in maturity, or in old age, if we remain shut up in ourselves. Knowledge of it, however, can be reached in a different way. We can reach it if we look at the child with finely-tuned spiritual perception, and realise that in the child is revealed something which the child does not and cannot ever know, but which can be understood by the soul of another person who in old age gazes on the child. It is something revealed through the child—not to the child himself and not to the man or woman whom the child becomes—but to the other person who from a later age looks with real love on his youngest contemporaries.

I draw special attention to this, my dear friends, so that from this characteristic of our age you may see how a social impulse, in the broadest sense, weaves and surges through our time. Is there not something profoundly social in this necessity: the necessity which ordains that life becomes fruitful only when age seeks its highest goal through fellowship with youth—the fellowship not merely of this or that man with another, but of the old with the very young?

This social fellowship is called for by the innermost spirit and sense of our time. And in this way Spiritual Science, by speaking to people who are already prepared to some extent through acquaintance with its other branches, can lead to a deeper grasp of the social problem. As persons marked out by knowledge of Spiritual Science, you have before you all a great social task if you take the force of feeling which social questions stir in you and make it a means of working for mankind to-day. Carry your enthusiasm into the social and socialistic discussions of the present time, kindle and deepen in yourselves the social feeling and understanding which should prevail between man and man—then you will be discharging a truly anthroposophical task in the social realm.

We will speak further of this next week, when we shall again have a group lecture in between the two public lectures.

A week ago I was saying that we here, as anthroposophists, are able to grasp in a much deeper sense all that is necessary for reaching a judgment on the burning questions of the present day. We can do much more in this way than is possible in wider circles. In a sense we can look on ourselves as a kind of leaven—if I may use the biblical word—so that everyone in his own situation may try to contribute something, out of a strong warmth of impulse, towards the needs of the time.

If we recall what has been said as the keynote of the public lectures, we shall appreciate that the immediate essential is to strive towards a certain differentiation—a certain “membering”—of the social organism. I say always “strive towards”—there is no question of wanting to effect a revolutionary change overnight. We must strive towards a differentiation of a great deal which under modern influences has become centralised. What we must work for—instead of the so-called unitary State—is that a certain realm of society, embracing all that has to do with spiritual life, should unfold freely and independently alongside the other realms. This realm will include the upbringing of children, education, art, literature, and also (as I have remarked already and shall mention in the public lecture tomorrow) everything concerned with the administration of civil and criminal law.

As a second “limb” of the social organism we should recognise, but in a restricted sense, that which has been known as the “State.” It is precisely on the shoulders of this “State” that men nowadays want to pile as much as possible—State schools, State child-care, and so on. That has been the great tendency of the last four hundred years. And to-day, under the influence of social ideas and socialistic thinking, people want to weld economic life into a single whole with political life. These two realms must be separated once more. The political State must stand on its own independent ground, as the second sphere of society; and the same relative independence must distinguish the realm of domestic economy, where commodities circulate—that is, economic life.

Now, my dear friends, we will look at this question from a point of view not easily reached by anyone outside our movement. And we will carry the matter to a certain culmination, so that out of this culmination a deeper understanding of the human situation to-day may spring forth.

Let us look first at what is called, in an earthly sense, spiritual life. Spiritual life in this earthly sense embraces everything which in one way or another lifts us out of our solitary egoism and draws us into community with other human beings. Let us take, as the most important manifestation of earthly spiritual life for most people still, that aspect of it which should bring us into relation with super-earthly spiritual life—I mean the practice of religion, as this takes its course in the various congregations.

In the human soul are needs which cause people to seek each other out; people are united by experiencing similar needs. The upbringing of a child means that one soul is caring for another. Anyone who reads a book is drawn out of the egoistic circle of his individual life, for it is not he alone who absorbs the author's thoughts; even when he is only half-way through a book he is already sharing these thoughts with a great company of other readers. And so, through this kinship of soul-experience, a certain human community is formed. This is an important characteristic of spiritual life: it has its springs in freedom, in the individual initiative of the single human being, and yet it draws men together, and forms communities out of what they have in common.

Here, for anyone who seeks deeper understanding, is a fact to be kept in mind—a fact which brings every kind of human fellowship into relation with the central event of earth-evolution—the Mystery of Golgotha. For since the Mystery of Golgotha everything concerned with human fellowship belongs in a sense to the Christ Impulse. That is the essential thing—the Christ Impulse belongs not to single men but to the fellowship of men. In truth, according to the mind of Christ Himself, it is a great mistake to suppose that the solitary individual can establish a direct relation with Christ. The essential thing is that Christ lived and died, and rose from the dead, for humanity as a whole. Since the Mystery of Golgotha, therefore, the Christ Event is immediately relevant (we shall return to this point) wherever human fellowship unfolds. And accordingly, for anyone who really understands the world, the earthly spiritual life which springs from the most individual source, from personal circumstances and gifts, leads to the Christ Event.

Let us now first consider this earthly spiritual life—religion, education, art and so forth—on its own account. We gain through it a certain connection with other human beings. Here we must distinguish between the connections we form through our individual destiny and karma, and those which in this narrow sense are not dependent on our karma. Some of the connections we establish in the course of life are the direct outcome of relationships formed in earlier lives; some will bear karmic fruit in future lives. Human beings form connections with one another in manifold ways. The connections formed directly through our karma must be distinguished from the wider connections that arise when we meet people through joining a society, or a religious body or a fellowship of belief, and also from those that come through reading the same book or through common enjoyment of a work of art, and so on. The people we encounter in these ways on earth are not always related to us karmically from an earlier life. Certainly, there are communities which point to a common destiny in earlier lives; but with the wider groupings of which I have just spoken it is generally not so. This brings us to a further point.

Towards the end of our time in the super-sensible world, between death and a new birth, when we reach the period just before our next incarnation, we enter into relations—as far as we are ripe for them—with Angels, Archangels and Archai, and with the higher Hierarchies as well. But also we come near to other human souls, due to be incarnated later than ourselves—souls which have to wait longer, one may say, for their incarnations. During this period we have a whole range of super-sensible experiences to go through, according to our individual stage of development, before we are plunged again into earthly life. And the forces we thus receive place us on earth in the situation which will enable us to find our way into those experiences of earthly spiritual life of which I have just spoken.

The essential point to grasp is that our spiritual life on earth—all that we experience through religion, or through upbringing and education, through artistic impressions and so on—is not determined solely by earthly circumstances. Our earthly spiritual life takes its character from the experiences we have had in super-sensible realms before birth. Just as an image in a mirror indicates what is being reflected, so does earthly spiritual life point to what the human being has experienced before entering his physical body.

Nothing on earth stands towards the super-sensible world in so intimate, real and living a relationship as this earthly spiritual life—which indeed shows aberrations, many aberrations ... but these very aberrations have a relation full of meaning to all that we experience—certainly, in a quite different way—in the super-sensible. This connection with pre-earthly life places spiritual life on earth in a quite special situation. Nothing else in earthly life is so closely bound up with our life before birth!

This is a fact to which the spiritual investigator is bound to draw particular attention. He distinguishes spiritual life from man's other earthly activities, because super-sensible observation shows him that spiritual life on earth has its roots and impulse in the life before birth. So for the spiritual investigator this earthly spiritual life marks itself off from other human experiences.

It is different with what can be called, in a strict sense, political life, the life of civic rights, which brings administrative order into human affairs. You see, however hard one may try to discover, with the most exact methods of spiritual science, the deeper connections of political life ... one can find no relation between this political life and the super-sensible. Political life is entirely of the earth! We must clearly understand what this signifies.

For example, what shall we take as a preeminently earthly type of legal relationship? The relation to property, to ownership. If I own a plot of land, then it is solely by political means that I am given an exclusive right and tenure of the land. It is this which enables me to exclude all others from using the land, building on it, etc. So it is with everything that has to do with public law. The sum total of public law, together with the means taken to protect a society from external interference—all that makes up political life in the strict sense.

This is the genuine earth-life—the life connected solely with impulses which take their course between birth and death. However much the State may imagine itself to be God-given ... the truth to which all religious creeds, in their deeper meaning, bear witness is as follows. The first truth was conveyed by Christ Jesus when in the old phraseology he said: “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.” Faced with the pretensions of the Roman Empire, He wished above all to separate everything to do with political life from all that bears the imprint of the super-sensible. But when the purely earthly State seeks to make itself the bearer of a super-earthly impulse—when, for example, the State seeks to assume responsibility for religious life, or for education (this last responsibility, unfortunately, is taken for granted in our day)—then we have the situation characterised by the deeper teachings of religion, when they said: Wherever an attempt is made to mix the spiritual-super-sensible with the earthly-political, there rules the usurping Prince of this world.

What is the meaning of the “usurping Prince of this world?” You know, perhaps, my dear friends, that people have thought a great deal about this, without getting anywhere. Only through spiritual science can one reach the meaning. The usurping Prince of this world rules whenever an authority which should be concerned only with the ordering of earthly affairs arrogates to itself the spiritual—and seeks also, as we shall see later, to assimilate economic life. The rightful Prince of this world is he for whom the political realm includes only those things which belong wholly to the life between birth and death.

So we have come to an understanding of the second “limb” of the social organism, in the sense of spiritual science. It is the realm orientated towards those impulses which run their course between birth and death.

Now we come to the third, the economic realm. Just think, my dear friends, how economic life draws us into a particular relation with the world. You will readily understand what this relation is if you compel yourselves to imagine that it were possible for us to be entirely absorbed in economic life. If that could happen, what should we be like? We should be thinking animals, nothing else. We are not thinking animals for the reason that besides economic life we have a life of rights—a political life—and a knowledge of the spirit, an earthly spiritual life. Through economic life we are thus plunged, more or less, into the midst of human relationships. And because of this interests are kindled—precisely in this field of human relations we are able to develop interests which in the true sense of the word are fraternal. In no other realm than that of economic life are fraternal relationships so easily and obviously developed among human beings.

In the spiritual life ... what is the ruling impulse in earthly spiritual life? Fundamentally, it is personal interest—an interest arising out of the soul-nature, certainly, but none the less egoistic. Of religion, people demand that it shall make them holy. Of education, that is shall develop their talents. Of any kind of artistic representation, that it shall bring pleasure into their lives, and perhaps also stimulate their inner energies. As a general rule, it is egoism, whether of a grosser or more refined sort, which leads a person—quite understandably—to seek in spiritual life whatever satisfies himself.

In the political life of rights, on the other hand, we have to do with something which makes us all equal before the law. We are concerned with the relation of man to man. We have to ask, what our right should be. No question of rights exists among animals. In this respect, also, we are raised above the animals, even in our earthly affairs. But if we are connected with a religious community, or with a group of teachers, then—just as much as in civic relationships—we come up against personal claims, personal wishes. In the economic sphere, it is through the overcoming of self that something valuable, not derived from personal desires, comes to expression—brotherhood, responsibility for others, a way of living so that the other man gains experience through us.

In the spiritual life we receive according to our desires. In the sphere of rights we make a claim to something we need in order to make sure of a satisfactory human life as an equal among equals. And in the economic sphere is born that which unites men in terms of feeling: that is, brotherhood. The more this brotherhood is cultivated, the more fruitful economic life becomes. And the impulse towards brotherhood arises when we establish a certain connection between our property and another's, between our need and another's, between something we have and something another has, and so on.

This fraternity, this brotherly relation between men which must radiate through economic life if health is to prevail there, may be thought of as a kind of emanation rising from the economic sphere—and in such a way that if we absorb it into ourselves we are able to take it with us through the gate of death and carry it into the super-sensible life after death.

On earth, economic life looks like the lowest of the three social spheres, yet precisely from this sphere arises an impulse which works on into super-earthly realms after death. That is how the third member of the social organism presents itself in the light of spiritual science. Its character is such that in a certain sense it drives us into regions below the human level; yet in fact this is a blessing, since from the fraternity of economic life we carry through the gate of death something which remains with us when we enter the super-sensible world. Just as earthly spiritual life points backward, like a mirrored image, to super-sensible spiritual life before birth, so does economic life, with all that arises from its influence on men—social interests, feeling for human fellowship, brotherhood—so does economic life point forward to super-sensible life after death.

Thus we have distinguished the three social spheres, in the light of spiritual science: spiritual life, pointing back to super-sensible life before birth; political life, bound up with the impulses which take their course between birth and death; and economic life pointing forward to the experiences we shall encounter when we have passed through the gate of death.

Now, just as it is true that the being of man belongs not only to earthly but to super-earthly realms—that he bears in himself the fruits of his pre-natal life in the super-sensible, and develops in himself the seeds (if I may use this image) of the experiences that will be his in the life after death—just as it is true that in this connection human life is threefold, unfolding on earth between these two reflections of the super-earthly, so in truth must the social organism be itself “three-membered,” if it is to serve as foundation for human soul-life as a whole.

For those, accordingly, who through spiritual science understand man's place in the cosmos, there are much deeper reasons for recognising that the social organism must have a threefold structure, and that if everything is centralised, if everything is piled on to a chaotically jumbled social life, then man is bound to degenerate ... as indeed in modern life he has, in some respects, which has led on to the frightful catastrophe of the last four years.

You see: to grasp human life in such a way as to realise that every human fellowship is inwardly related to the whole of humanity and to the wider world—this is what ought more and more to come home to men from the deepening of spiritual-scientific knowledge. This is also the true Christ-Knowledge for our time and the immediate future. That is what we shall learn if we are willing, today, to listen to the Christ. He Himself said—I have often quoted it: “I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.” This means: Christ did not speak only during His time on earth; His utterance continues, and we must continue to listen for it. We should not wish merely to read the Gospels (though certainly they ought to be read over and over again); we should listen to the living revelation that springs from His continued presence among us. In this epoch He declares to us: “Make new your ways of thinking” (as His forerunner, John the Baptist, said: “Change your thinking”), “so that they may reveal to you man's threefold nature which demands also that your social environment on earth shall have a threefold membering.”

You see, it is absolutely true to say: The Christ died and rose again for the whole of mankind; the Mystery of Golgotha is an event which concerns the whole of humanity. At the present time it is particularly necessary to be aware of that—at this time when nation has risen against nation in savage struggle, and when even now, after events have led on to a crisis, we find no thoughtfulness, no consciousness of the community of mankind, but on manifold sides a delirium of victory! Make no mistake: all that we have lived through in the last four years, all that we are experiencing now and have still to experience—to anyone who looks below the surface all this shows that mankind has reached a kind of crisis with regard to knowledge of the Christ. And the reason for this is that the true spirit of fellowship, the true relationship between men, has been lost. And it is very necessary that men should ask themselves: How can we find our way again to the Christ Impulse?

A simple fact will show that the way is not always found. Before the Christ Impulse entered into earth-evolution through the Mystery of Golgotha, the people from whom Christ Jesus was born looked on themselves as the chosen people, and they believed that happiness would come to the world only if all other peoples were to die away, and their own stock to spread over the entire face of the earth. In a certain sense that was a well-founded belief, for Jehovah, the God of this people, had chosen it as his people, and Jehovah was regarded as the one and only God. In the time before the Mystery of Golgotha this was a justified perception for the old Hebrew people, since out of this old Hebrew people Christ Jesus was to emerge. But with the enactment of the Mystery of Golgotha this way of thinking should have come to an end. After that, it was out of date: in place of the recognition of Jehovah should have come the recognition of Christ—the recognition which compels one to speak always of humanity, just as, for those who looked up to Jehovah, one people only was in question. Not to have understood that is the tragic fate of the Jewish people. To-day, however, we are coming up against all sorts of reversions. What is it but a reversion when every nation—though it may suppose itself to be doing something quite different and may use other names—wants to worship a sort of Jehovah, a special national goal of its own!

Certainly, the old religious formulae are no longer used, but the outcome of present-day mentality is that every nation wants to set up its own national god and so confine itself within a strictly national existence. And the inevitable result is that nation rages against nation! We are experiencing a reversion to the old Jehovah-religion—with the difference that the Jehovah-religion is breaking up into a multitude of Jehovah-religions. To-day we are really confronted with an atavistic reversion to the Old Testament. Humanity is bent on dividing itself up into separate sections all over the earth—quite contrary to the spirit of Christ Jesus, who lived and stood for the whole of humanity. Humanity is trying to organise itself under the sign of national deities, Jehovah-fashion. Before the Mystery of Golgotha that was quite proper; now it is a reversion. This must be clearly understood: the way of nationalism is a reversion to the Old Testament.

This reversion is preparing heavy ordeals for mankind, and against it only one remedy will suffice: to draw near once more to the Christ by the path of the spirit.

Those concerned with spiritual science are therefore bound essentially to ask the question: How, out of the depths of our own hearts and souls, under the conditions of the present time, shall we find Christ Jesus?

This is a very serious question (I have often spoken of it before from other points of view in this group), as you can see from the fact that many official exponents of Christianity have lost the Christ! There are plenty of well-known parsons, pastors, etc., who talk about the Christ. The burden of their discourse is that men can reach the Christ through a certain deepening of the inner life, a certain inner experience. But if one comes close to what these people mean by the Christ, one finds that no distinction is made between this Christ and God in general—the Father-God, in the sense of the Gospels.

You will agree that Harnack, for example, is a celebrated theologian. He is emulated by many here in Switzerland. Harnack has published a small book, The Nature of Christianity; in it he speaks a great deal about the Christ. But what he says concerning Christ ... why should it apply to Christ? It could apply just as well to the Jehovah-God. For this reason the whole book, The Nature of Christianity, is inwardly untruthful. It would become truthful only if it were hebraicised—if it were so translated that wherever the word ‘Christ’ stands, ‘Jehovah’ were written instead.

This is a truth of which people to-day have scarcely any inkling. From countless pulpits all over the world Christ is spoken of, and people believe, simply because they hear the word ‘Christ,’ that the preacher is really speaking about the Christ. They never come to the point of thinking: “Strike out the word ‘Christ’ from what the pastor says and substitute ‘Jehovah’—that and nothing less will make it right!” You see, a definite untruth lies at the root of the deepest ailments of our time.

Do not think that in saying this I want to accuse or criticise any individual. That is not so. My wish is simply to bring out the facts. For those persons who often fall into the deepest inner untruth—one could even say, into an inner lie—have thoroughly good intentions, in their own way. It is hard to-day for humanity to reach the truth, since what I have called an inner untruth has an exceptionally strong backing of tradition. And this inner untruth, which has come to prevail in immeasurably wide circles, gives rise to another, so that in the most diverse realms of life the question is asked: Is anything still true? Where is any genuine truth left?

For this reason, those who are striving along the path of spiritual science are specially moved to ask earnestly: How shall I find the true way to the Christ—to that unique Divine Being Who may rightly be called the Christ?

Indeed, if here on earth our soul-life follows customary lines of development from birth to death, then we have no inducement to come to the Christ. We may be as spiritual as we like: we have no inducement to come to the Christ!

If, without doing a certain thing—which I will indicate in a moment—we simply pass on from birth to death, as most people do to-day, we remain far from the Christ. How, then, do we come to the Christ?

The impulse to take the way to the Christ—even though it be oft-times an impulse rising from the subconscious or from an obscure realm of feeling—must come from ourselves. Any person who is normally healthy can come to the God whom we have identified with the Jehovah-principle. Not to find the Jehovah-God is nothing else than a sort of illness in mankind. To deny God, to be an atheist, means that you are in some way ill. Anyone who has developed normally and healthily cannot be a denier of God, for it is merely laughable to believe that the healthy human organism can have other than a divine origin. The Ex Deo Nascimur is something which declares itself to a healthily developed man in the course of human life. For if he does not recognise—I am born out of the Divine—then he must have some defect, which expresses itself in the fact that he becomes an atheist. But to come to that generalised conception of the Divine, which out of inner falsehood is called Christ by modern pastors—that is not to come to the Christ.

We come to the Christ only—and here I am speaking with special reference to the immediate present—if we go beyond customary conditions of health, given by nature. For we know that the Mystery of Golgotha was enacted on earth because mankind would not have been able to maintain a worthy human status without the Mystery of Golgotha—that is, without finding its way to the Christ Impulse. And so we must not merely discover our human nature between birth and death: we must rediscover it, if we are to be Christians in the true sense, able to draw near to the Christ. And this rediscovery of our human nature must take place in the following way. We must strive for the inner honesty—we must nerve ourselves to the inner honesty—to say: “Since the Mystery of Golgotha we have not been born free from prejudice with regard to our world of thought—we are all born with certain prejudices.” Directly we regard the human being as perfect, after the manner of Rousseau or in any other way, we can by no means find the Christ. This is possible only if we know that the human being living since the Mystery of Golgotha has a certain defect, for which he must compensate through his own activity during his life here on earth. I am born a prejudiced person, and freedom from prejudice in my thinking is something I have to achieve during life.

And how can I achieve it? The one and only way is this: instead of taking an interest merely in my own way of thinking, and in what I consider right, I must develop a selfless interest in every opinion I encounter, however strongly I may hold it to be mistaken. The more a man prides himself on his own dogmatic opinions and is interested only in them, the further he removes himself, at this moment of world-evolution, from the Christ. The more he develops a social interest in the opinions of other men, even though he considers them erroneous—the more light he receives into his own thinking from the opinions of others—the more he does to fulfil in his inmost soul a saying of Christ, which to-day must be interpreted in the sense of the new Christ-language.

Christ said: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” The Christ never ceases to reveal Himself anew to men—even unto the end of earthly time. And thus He speaks to-day to those willing to listen: “In whatever the least of your brethren thinks, you must recognise that I am thinking in him; and that I enter into your feeling, whenever you bring another's thought into relation with your own, and whenever you feel a fraternal interest for what is passing in another's soul. Whatever opinion, whatever outlook on life, you discover in the least of your brethren, therein you are seeking Myself.”

So does the Christ speak to our life of thought—the Christ Who desires to reveal Himself in a new way—the time for it is drawing near—to the men of the twentieth century. Not in such a way that people should speak in Harnack's style of the God who may equally well be the Jehovah-God, and is in fact nothing else, but so that it may be known: Christ is the God for all men. We shall not find Him if we remain egotistically bound up with our own thoughts, but only if we relate our own thoughts to those of other men, if we expand our interest to embrace, with inner tolerance, everything human, and say to ourselves: “Through the fact of my birth I am a prejudiced person; only through being reborn into an all-embracing feeling of fellowship for the thoughts of all men shall I find in myself the impulse which is, in truth, the Christ Impulse. If I do not look on myself alone as the source of everything I think, but recognise myself, right down into the depths of my soul, as a member of the human community”—then, my dear friends, one way to the Christ lies open. This is the way which must to-day be characterised as the way to the Christ through thinking. Earnest self-training so that we gain a true perception for estimating the thoughts of others, and for correcting bias in ourselves—this we must take as one of life's serious tasks. For unless this task finds place among men, they will lose the way to the Christ. This to-day is the way through thinking.

The other way is through the will. Here, too, people are much addicted to a false way, which leads not to the Christ but away from Him. And in this other realm we must find again the way to the Christ. Youth still keeps some idealism, but for the most part humanity to-day is dry and matter-of-fact. And men are proud of what is often called practical technique, though the expression is used in a narrow sense. Humanity to-day has no use for ideals which are drawn from the fountain of the spirit. Youth still has these ideals. Never was the life of older people so sharply severed from the life of the young as it is to-day. Lack of understanding among human beings is indeed the great mark of our time.

Yesterday I spoke of the deep gulf which exists between the proletariat and the middle-class. Age and youth, too—how little they understand each other to-day! This is something we ought to take most seriously into account. We may try to reach an understanding with youth on the ground of its idealism ... yes, that is all very well, but to-day efforts are made to drive the idealism out of young people. The aim is to do this by depriving youth of the imaginative education which is given by fairy-tales and legends, by all that leads away from dry external perceptions. All the same—it will not be too easy to drive all the youthful, natural, primitive idealism out of young people! But what is this youthful idealism? It is a beautiful thing, a great thing—but it ought not to be all-sufficient for human beings, for this youthful idealism is in fact bound up with the Ex Deo Nascimur, with that aspect of the Divine which is identical with the Jahve aspect. And that is just what must not remain sufficient, now that the Mystery of Golgotha has been enacted on earth. Something further is required—idealism must spring from inner development, from self-education. Besides the innate idealism of youth, we must see to it that in human society something else is achieved—precisely an achieved idealism: not merely the idealism that springs from the instincts and enthusiasm of youth, but one that is nurtured, gained by one's own initiative, and will not fade away with the passing of youth. This is something which opens the way to the Christ, because—once more—it is something acquired during the life between birth and death.

Feel the great difference between instinctive idealism and achieved idealism! Feel the great difference between youthful enthusiasm and the enthusiasm which springs from taking hold of the life of the spirit and can be ever and again kindled anew, because we have made it part of our soul, independently of the course of our bodily existence—then you will grasp this second idealism, which is not merely the idealism implanted in us by nature. This is the way to the Christ through willing, as distinct from the way through thinking.

Do not ask to-day for abstract ways to the Christ; ask for these concrete ways. Seek to understand the way through thinking, which consists in becoming inwardly tolerant towards the opinions of mankind at large, and developing social interest for the thoughts of other men. Seek also for the way through willing—there you will find nothing abstract, but an inescapable need to cultivate idealism in yourselves. And if you cultivate this idealism, or if you introduce it into the education of young people—which is particularly necessary—then you will have something which inspires men not to do only what the outer world impels them to do. For from this idealism arises the resolve to do more than the sense-world suggests—to act out of the spirit. When our actions spring from this achieved idealism we are acting in accordance with the intentions of the Christ, Who did not descend from worlds above the earth in order to achieve merely earthly ends, but came down to the earth from higher realms in order to fulfil a super-earthly purpose. We shall grow towards Him only if we cultivate idealism in ourselves, so that Christ, Who represents the super-earthly within the realm of earth, can work through us. Only in achieved idealism can there be realised the intention of the Pauline saying about Christ: “Not I, but Christ in me.”

Anyone who refuses to develop this second idealism through a rebirth of his moral nature can say only: “Not I, but Jehovah in me.” But whoever cultivates this second idealism, which must essentially be cultivated, he can say: “Not I, but Christ in me.”

These are the two ways through which we can find the Christ. If we pursue them, we shall no longer speak in such a way that our speech is an inward lie. Then we shall speak of Christ as the Divine Power active in our rebirth—while Jehovah is the Divine Power active in our birth.

People to-day must learn to appreciate this distinction, for it is this which leads also to genuine social feeling, a genuine interest in our fellow-men. Whoever develops an achieved idealism in himself, he will have love for human-kind. You may preach as much as you like from pulpits, telling men they ought to love one another: it is like preaching to a stove. The most excellent exhortations will not persuade the stove to heat the room. It will heat the room all right if you stoke it with coal—there is no need to preach to it that its ovenly duty is to heat the room. In just the same way you can keep on preaching to men—love, love, love ... that is mere sermonising, mere words. Strive rather that men should experience a rebirth of idealism, that besides instinctive idealism they should achieve in their souls an idealism which persists throughout life, then ... then you will kindle a warmth of soul in the love of man for man. For as much as you nurture an idealism in yourselves, by so much will you be led in your soul life away out of egoism towards a concern for other men.

And if you follow this twofold way, the way through thinking and the way through willing, which I have shown you with regard to the renewal of Christianity, there is one thing you will certainly experience and discover. Out of a thinking which is inwardly tolerant and interested in the thoughts of others, and out of a willing reborn through the achievement of idealism, something unfolds. And this can be described only as a heightened feeling of responsibility for every action one performs.

Anyone with an inclination to examine the unfolding of his soul will feel in himself, if he follows the two ways—it is a feeling different from anything encountered in the course of an ordinary life which does not follow the two ways—this heightened and refined sense of responsibility towards everything one thinks and does. This heightened feeling of responsibility will impel one to say: Can I justify this that I am doing or thinking, not merely with reference to the immediate circumstances of my life and environment, but in the light of my responsibility towards the super-sensible spiritual world? Can I justify it in the light of my knowledge that everything I do here on earth will be inscribed in an akashic record of everlasting significance, wherein its influence will work on and on? Oh, it comes powerfully home to one, this super-sensible responsibility towards all things! It strikes one like a solemn warning, when one seeks the two-fold way to Christ—as though a Being stood behind one, looking over one's shoulder and saying repeatedly: “Thou art not responsible only to the world around thee but also to the Divine-Spiritual, for all thy thoughts and all thy actions.”

But this Being who looks over our shoulder, who heightens and refines our sense of responsibility and sets us on a new path—he is the one who first directs us truly to the Christ, Who went through the Mystery of Golgotha. It is of this Christ-Way, how it may be found and how it reveals itself through the Being I have just described, that I wanted to speak to you to-day. For this Christ-Way is most intimately connected with the deepest social impulses and tasks of our time.

There is truly great significance in how certain men feel impelled to-day to speak about the present situation of mankind—men who at least try, with the aid of their feelings and perceptions, to see into the heart of social affairs. In this connection I would like to read you a few sentences from the address which Kurt Eisner gave to a gathering of students in Basle, shortly before his death. Perhaps some of you already know these sentences, but they are extraordinarily important for anyone who wants to grasp the symptomatic meaning of certain things to-day.

“Do I not hear and see clearly” (he says, referring to his earlier remarks), “that in our life this very longing strives to find expression—and yet accompanying it is the conviction that our life, as we are compelled to lead it to-day, is plainly the invention of an evil spirit! Imagine a great thinker, knowing nothing of our time and living perhaps two thousand years ago, who might dream of how the world would look after two thousand years—not with the most exuberant imagination would he be able to conceive such a world as that in which we are condemned to live. In truth, existing conditions are the one great mirage in the world, while the substance of our desires and the longings of our spirit are the deepest and final truth—and everything outside them is horrible. We have simply interchanged dreaming and waking. Our task is to shake off this ancient illusion about the reality of our present social existence. One glance at the war: can you imagine a human reason which could devise anything like it? If this war was not what men call reality, then perhaps we were dreaming, and now have woken up.”

Just think of it—in his efforts to understand the present time, this man was driven to make use of the concept of a dream, and to ask himself the question: Is not the reality which surrounds us to-day much better called a bad dream, than true reality?

So we have the remarkable case—and consider how typical it is—of a thoroughly modern man, a man who has felt himself to be a herald of a new epoch, who regards outwardly perceptible reality as nothing else than maya—rather as Indian philosophy does—as in fact a dream; and this man feels impelled by the singular events of the present to raise the question (no matter in what sense but still to raise it) whether this reality is not indeed a dream!

Yes, the whole tenor of Eisner's speech shows that he was using more than a mere phrase when he said that this present reality could be naught else than something inflicted on mankind by an evil spirit.

Now let us recall some of the many things that have passed through our souls in the course of our anthroposophical endeavours, and above all the fact that in general we try not to look on outwardly perceptible reality as the whole of reality, and that over against the perceptible we set the super-sensible, which alone prevents the perceptible from ranking as the true, complete reality. This outlook, however, is no more than a tiny spark in the currents of contemporary thought, for these are widely permeated by materialistic ideas—and yet we see that such a man as Kurt Eisner, who is certainly untouched by this spark (at any rate in his physical life), finds himself driven by the facts of the present day to make this surprising comparison: he compares outward reality, at least in its current manifestation, to a dream! Faced with present-day reality, he is driven to a confession which he can express only by calling to witness the general truth of the unreality, the maya-character, of the reality that is outwardly perceived.

Let us now go rather more deeply into many of the things which our consideration of the social problem has brought before our souls in the last few weeks. Let us observe how the trend of events in the past century has more and more brought men to the point of denying the reality of the spiritual or super-sensible world, so that this denial is, one might say, established in the widest circles. Certainly, in some quarters—you may object—a great deal is said about the spiritual world; churches are still numerous, if not always full, and words which purport to tell of the spirit echo through them. Moreover—to-day and also yesterday evening—you can listen almost all the time to bells, which again should be an expression of something recognised in the world as spiritual life. But in this connection we experience something else, too. If to-day an attempt is made to hear what the Christ is saying for our present age, then it is precisely from the adherents of the old religious communities that the most vehement attacks come. Real spiritual life, one that relies not merely on faith or on an old tradition, but on the immediate spiritual findings of the present—that is something which very, very few people want to-day.

On the other hand, is it not as though modern humanity were being impelled—not perhaps by an evil world-spirit, but by a good world-spirit—to think again of the spiritual side of existence—as witness the fact that people are surrounded by a sense-perceptible reality of such a kind that a man of modern outlook has to say: It is like a dream... even a great thinker of two thousand years ago could not have conceived the shape which outer reality would wear to-day?

In any case, here is a modern man led by such a recognition to form conceptions which are not customary to-day. I know that the conceptions of reality, which to-day I have pointed to as important, are found rather difficult by many of our anthroposophical friends. But, my dear friends, you cannot cope with life to-day unless you have the will to take account of these difficult conceptions. How do people usually form their thoughts in a certain realm to-day? They hold a crystal in their hands: that is a real object. They take a rose, plucked from its stem, and in just the same way they say: that is a real object. They call them both real objects in the same sense.

Natural scientists, in their chancelleries of learning and in every laboratory and clinic, talk about reality in such a way as to grant it only to things which have the same kind of reality as the crystal and the plucked rose. But is there not an obvious and important difference in the fact that for long ages the crystal retains, quite of itself, its existing form? The rose, plucked from its stem, loses its form in a very much shorter time; it dies. It has not the same degree of reality as the crystal. And the rose-stem itself, if we tear it from the earth, has no longer the same degree of reality that it had while it was planted in the earth. This leads us to look at objects in a way quite different from the superficial observation of the present day. We may not speak of a rose or a rose-stem as real objects; in order to speak of reality in the fullest sense we must take the whole earth into account—and then speak of the rose-stem, and its roses, as a kind of hair sprouting out of this reality!

So you see—sense-perceptible reality includes objects which cease to be real, in the true sense of the word, if they are separated from their foundation. It is here, in this great illusion, that we have to search among the appearances of outer reality for what truly is reality. Mistakes of the kind I have mentioned are common in looking at nature to-day. But anyone who makes them, and has got used to them as the result of centuries of habit, will find it extraordinarily hard to think about social questions in a way that corresponds to reality. For this is the great difference between human life and nature: anything in nature which no longer has full reality, such as the plucked rose, is allowed to die. Now something can have an appearance of reality which is not reality: the appearance is a lie. And we can quite well incorporate as a reality in social life something which is in fact not a reality. Only then it need not immediately fade away; it will turn into a source of pain and torment for mankind. Indeed, nothing can bring forth healing for mankind which is not first experienced and thought out in terms of complete reality, and then planted in the social organism. It is not merely a sin against the social order, but a sin against the truth, if—for example—daily work proceeds on the assumption that human labour-power (I have often said this here) is a commodity. It can be made to seem so, indeed: but this seeming results in pain and suffering for human society, and sets the stage for convulsions and revolutions in economic life.

In short, what needs to become a familiar thought for people to-day is this: not everything which is revealed in the outer appearance of reality—revealed within certain limits—is bound to be a true reality; it may be a living lie. And this distinction between living truths and living lies is something which should be deeply engraved in human minds to-day. For the more people there are in whom it is deeply engraved, in so many more will the feeling awake: we must seek for those things which are not lies, but living truths ... and the sooner will the social organism be restored to health. What must be added to this?

Something further is necessary for discerning the true or merely apparent reality of an external object. Imagine a being who comes from a planet with a different organisation from ours, so that this being has never encountered the distinction between a rose, growing on its stem, and a crystal—he might well believe, if a crystal and a rose were placed before him, that their reality was of the same kind. And he would no doubt be surprised to find the rose soon withering, while the crystal remained unchanged. Here on earth we know where we are in face of the realities, because we have followed the course of things through long periods.

But it is not always possible to distinguish true reality in the way one can with the rose. In life we encounter objects which require us to create a foundation for our judgment if we are to lay hold of the true reality in them. What sort of foundation is this—with respect particularly to social life?

Now, in the two preceding lectures I spoke about this foundation; to-day I will add something more. You know from my writings the descriptions I have given of the spiritual world—the world which man lives through between death and rebirth. You are aware that in referring to this life in the super-sensible, spiritual world one must be clear as to the relationships which prevail between soul and soul. For there the human being is free from his body: he is not subject to the physical laws of the world we live through between birth and death. So one speaks of the force or forces which play from soul to soul. You can read in my Theosophy how one must speak in this connection of the forces of sympathy and antipathy, playing between soul and soul in the soul-world. In a quite inward way these forces play from soul to soul. Antipathy sets soul against soul; through sympathy, souls are made gentler towards each other. Harmonies and disharmonies arise from the inmost experiences of souls. And this inward experience by one soul of the inmost experience of another is what determines the true relationship of the super-sensible to the sense-perceptible world. It is only a reflection—a sort of lingering remnant—of this super-sensible experience, the experience which establishes a true connection with the sense-world, that can be experienced here in the physical world during life.

This reflection, however, must be seen in its true significance. We can ask: How, from a social point of view, is our life here between birth and death related to our super-sensible life? From here we are at once led—as we often have been in studying the necessary threefolding of the social organism—to the middle member, frequently described: in fact to the political State. People who in our epoch have reflected on the political State, have always been concerned to understand exactly what it is. Moreover, the various class-interests of modern times have led to everything being jumbled up together in the State, so that without further knowledge it is pretty well impossible to tell whether the State is a reality, or a living lie.

It is a far remove from the outlook of the German philosopher, Hegel, to the very different outlook which Fritz Mauthner, the author of a philosophical dictionary, has lately proclaimed. Hegel regards the State more or less as the realisation of God on earth. Fritz Mauthner says: the State is a necessary evil. He regards the State as an evil, but one men cannot do without—as something required by social life. So are the findings of two modern spirits radically opposed.

Owing to the fact that a great deal which was formerly instinctive is now rising into the light of consciousness, the most variously-minded people have tried to form conceptions of how the State should be constituted and what sort of entity it ought to be. And these conceptions have taken the most manifold forms. On the one hand we have the pious sheep who refuse to grasp what the State really is, but want to portray it in such a way that there is not much to say about it, but a great deal to bewail. And there are the others, who want to change the State radically, so that men may derive from the State itself a satisfying form of existence. Hence the question arises: How can we gain a perception of what the State really is?

If one observes impartially what can be woven between man and man within the context of the State, and compares it with what can be woven between soul and soul in the life after death (as I described it just now), then and only then can one gain a perception of the reality of the State—of its potential reality. For, just as every relationship which arises from the fundamental forces of sympathy and antipathy in the human soul after death lives in the inmost depths of the soul, so everything built between man and man through political State-life is a pure externality, based on law, on the wholly external ways in which men confront one another.

And if you follow this thought right through, you come to see that the State represents the exact opposite of super-sensible life. And it is the more complete in its own way, this State, the more fully it fills this opposite role: the less it claims to incorporate in its own structure anything that belongs to super-sensible life, the more it merely embodies purely external relationships between man and man—those wherein all men are equal in the sight of the law. More and more deeply is one penetrated by this truth: that the fulfilment of the State consists precisely in it’s seeking to comprise only what belongs to our life between birth and death, only what belongs to our most external relationships.

But then we must ask: If the State reflects super-sensible life only by standing for its opposite, how does the super-sensible find its way into all the rest of our sense-life? In the last lecture I spoke of this from another point of view. To-day I must add that the antipathies which unfold in the super-sensible world between death and birth leave certain remnants, and we bring these with us into physical existence. Working against them in physical life is everything which lives in so-called spiritual life, in spiritual culture. This is what draws men together in religious communities, and in other spiritual societies, so that they may create a counterpart of the antipathies which have lingered on from the life before birth.

All our spiritual culture should be justified on its own ground, for it reflects our pre-earthly life and in a certain sense equips mankind for life in the sense-world, and at the same time it should be a kind of remedy for the antipathies which remain over from the super-sensible world. That is why it is so dreadful when people bring about schisms in spiritual life, instead of working for unity—in spiritual life above all. The remaining antipathies are surging in the depths of the human soul and prevent the achievement of what should be the essential aim: true spiritual harmony, true spiritual collaboration. Just where this should prevail, we find sects springing up. These schisms and sectarianisms are in fact the reflections on earth of the antipathies which are bound up with the origins of all spiritual life, and for which spiritual life should really come to serve as a remedy.

We must recognise this spiritual life as something which has an inner connection with our life before birth—indeed, a certain kinship with it. We should therefore never try to organise spiritual-cultural life except as a free life, outside the realm of politics, which in this sense is not a reflection but a counter-image of super-sensible life. And we shall gain a conception of what is real in the State, and in spiritual-cultural life, only if we take super-sensible life into account, as well as the life of the senses. Both together make up true reality, while the life of senses alone is nothing more than a dream.

Economic life has a quite different character. In economic life the single man works for others. He works for others because he, just as much as the others, finds it to his advantage to do so. Economic life springs from needs, and consists in all kinds of work which go to satisfy the ordinary natural needs of human beings on the physical plane—including the finer but more instinctive needs of the soul. And within economic life there is an unconscious unfolding of something whose influence continues on the far side of death.

Men work for one another out of the egoistic needs of economic life, and from the depths of this work come the seeds of certain sympathies which are destined to flower in our souls during the life after death. And so, just as spiritual-cultural life is a kind of remedy for the remains of antipathies which we bring into earthly existence from the life before birth, so are the depths of economic life a seed-ground for sympathies which will develop after death.

Here is a further aspect of the way in which we learn from the super-sensible world to recognise the necessity of a threefold ordering of the social organism. Most certainly, no one can reach this point of view unless he strives to become familiar with the spiritual-scientific foundation of world-knowledge. But for anyone who does this it will become more and more obvious that a healthy social organism must be membered into these three realms, for the three realms are related in quite distinctive ways to the super-sensible world, which—as I have said—is the complement of the sense-world and together with it makes up true reality.

But now observe—in recent centuries no one has spoken any longer of these interconnections of outward physical existence, as it manifests in cultural life, political life, and economic life. People have gone on spinning out the old traditions, but with no understanding for them. They have lost the practice of taking a direct way, through an active soul-life, into the world of the spirit, in order there to seek for the light that is able to illuminate physical reality, so that this reality comes then to be rightly known for the first time. The leading circles of mankind have set the tone of this unspiritual life. And in this way a deep gulf has arisen between the social classes—a gulf which lies at the root of our life to-day and is not to be drowsily ignored.

Perhaps I may again recall how, before the time of July and August, 1914, drew on, people who belonged to the leading classes—the former leading classes—were accustomed to praise the stage which our civilisation, as they called it, had at last reached. They spoke of how thought could be carried like an arrow over great distances by the telegraph and telephone, and of the other fabulous achievements of modern technique which culture and civilisation had carried to such an advanced stage. But this culture, this civilisation, was already rushing towards the abyss, out of which have come the frightful catastrophes of to-day. Before July and August, 1914, the statesmen of Europe, especially those of Central Europe—this can be established from the documents—declared times without number: Under present conditions, peace in Europe is assured for a long time. That is literally what was said, by the statesmen of Central Europe especially, in their party speeches. I could show you speeches made as late as May, 1914, when it was said: Through our diplomacy, the relationships between countries have been brought to a point which permits us to believe in enduring peace. That, in May, 1914! But anyone who at that time saw through those relationships, had to speak in a different vein. In lectures I gave then in Vienna, (See: The Inner Nature of Man and Life Between Death and Rebirth.) I repeated, before the war, what I have often said in the course of recent years: We are living in the midst of something which can be called only a cancerous social disease, a carcinoma of the social organism. This carcinoma, this ulcer, duly broke out, and became what people call the World War.

At that time, of course, the statement—we live in a carcinoma, a social ulcer—was for most people a mere way of talking, a phrase, for the World War was still in the future. People had no notion that they were dancing on a volcano! For many it is just the same to-day, if attention is now called to the other volcano—and it certainly is one—which lies in all that is now coming to expression out of the social question, as it has long been called. Because people are so fond of sleeping in face of reality, they fail to recognise in this reality the forces which alone turn it into true reality.

You see, that is why it is so hard to bring home to people to-day what is so necessary—to bring home the point of the threefold ordering of a healthy social organism, and the necessity of working towards this threefold ordering! What is it, then, that distinguishes this way of thinking, which comes to expression in the demand for a threefold social order, from other ways of thinking? You see, these other ways spring from trying to work out what would be the best social order for the world, and what must be done in order to reach it. Now observe how different is the way of thinking which is founded on a threefold ordering of the social organism! There is no question here of asking: What is the best way of arranging the social organism? We start from reality by asking: How must human beings themselves be interrelated, so that they will be free members of the social organism and be able to work together for what is right and just?

This way of thinking makes its appeal, not to theories or social dogmas, but to human beings. It says: Let people find themselves in the environment of a threefold social order, and they will themselves say how it should be organised. This way of thinking makes its appeal to actual human beings, not to abstract theories or social dogmas.

Anyone who lived entirely alone would never develop human speech—human speech arises only in a social community. In the same way, anyone who lives alone cannot arrive at a social way of thinking; he will have no social perceptions and no social instincts. Only in a rightly formed community is it possible to build up social life in face of the happenings of the present time.

But a great deal stands in contradiction to that. Because of the rise of materialism in recent centuries, men have moved away from the true reality. They have become estranged from it, and lonely in their inner lives. And most lonely of all are those who have been torn out of the context of their lives and are connected with nothing but the dreary machine—on the one hand, the factory; on the other, soulless capitalism. The human soul has indeed become a desert. But out of the desert there struggles up whatever can proceed from the single individual. And this consists of inner thoughts, inner visions of the super-sensible world, and also visions which throw light on external nature.

Now it is just when we are quite alone, when we are thrown back entirely on ourselves, that we are best disposed in soul for all the knowledge that can be gained by the single individual concerning his relationships with the worlds of nature and of spirit. In contradistinction to that, we have everything that should flow from social thinking. Only if we reflect on this can we form a right judgment of the momentous hour of history in which we are now living. It was necessary, once in the course of world evolution, that men should have this experience of loneliness, in order that out of their loneliness of soul they should develop a life of the spirit. And the loneliest of all were the great thinkers, who to all appearance lived in abstract heights, and sought from there the way to the super-sensible world.

But of course men must not seek only the way to the super-sensible world and to the world of nature; they must also find a way that unites their thinking with social life. Social life, however, cannot be developed in loneliness, but only through genuine living together with other men; and so the lonely individual who emerged in our modern epoch was not well fitted for social thinking. Just when he rightly wanted to make something worth while out of his inner life, the fruits of his inner life turned out to be anti-social, not social thinking at all! The present-day inclinations and cravings of mankind are the outcome of spiritual forces which are bound up with loneliness, and are given a false direction by the overwhelming influence of Ahrimanic materialism.

The importance of this fact comes out clearly if one asks about something which many people find terrible. Suppose one asks: What do you mean by “bolshevistic”? Most people will say: “Lenin, Trotsky.” Now, I can tell you of a Bolshevist who is no longer alive to-day, and he is none other than the German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte. You will have heard and learnt a great deal about Fichte's idealistic, spiritual way of thinking. But you will not know much about the sort of man Fichte was unless you are familiar with the outlook he expressed in his Geschlossenen Handelstaat (A Closed National Economy), which can be bought very cheaply in the Reclam Library. Read how Fichte conceives the social ordering of the masses of mankind, and compare it with the writings of Lenin and Trotsky—you will find a remarkable agreement. Then you will become critical of merely external representations and judgments, and you will be impelled to ask: What really lies at the bottom of all this? And if you try to enter into it more closely and to get clear about its foundations, you will come to the following.

Suppose you try to make out the particular spiritual orientation of the most radical men of the present day, and endeavour perhaps to penetrate into the souls of the Trotsky’s and Lenin’s, their ways of thinking and forms of thought, and then you ask: How are we to think of such men? And you get this answer: One can imagine them first in a different social setting, and then again in our own social order, in this social order of ours which has developed in the light—or, more truly, in the darkness, the gloom—of the materialism of recent centuries. Now consider, if Lenin and Trotsky had lived in a different social order—what might they have become, with their spiritual forces unfolding in a quite different way? Deep mystics! For in a religious atmosphere the content of such souls might have developed into the deepest mysticism. In the atmosphere of modern materialism it has become what you know it to be.

Take Johann Gottlieb Fichte's Geschlossenen Handelstaat: we have here the social ideal of a man who in truth sought most earnestly to tread the highest path of knowledge who put forth a way of thinking which was constantly inclined towards the super-sensible world. When he conceived the wish to work out for himself a social ideal also, this was indeed a pure impulse of the heart, the human heart. But the very thing which fits us to pursue inwardly the highest ideals of knowledge is a handicap if we want to apply it to social life; it unfits us for developing a social way of thinking. Along the spiritual path taken by Fichte, a man has to make his way alone. Social thinking has to be developed in the community of other human beings. And then the social thinker's task is above all to consider how the social order must be laid out if men are to work together rightly at the task of founding social life on the direct experience of social fellowship. Therefore I never say to people: this is how you should organise private property as a means of production, or public property as a means of production. I am bound to say, rather: Try to work towards a threefold ordering of the social organism; then the operations of capital will be regulated from the spiritual realm, and infused with human rights from the political realm. Then spiritual life and the life of rights will flow together with economic life in an orderly way. And then will come in that socialisation which, in accordance with certain concepts of justice, will see to it that whatever a man acquires, beyond his own needs as a consumer, shall continually pass over into the spiritual realm. It returns once more to the spiritual realm.

At the present time this arrangement applies only to spiritual property, where it shocks nobody. A man cannot preserve his spiritual property for his descendants for more than a certain period—thirty years after his death at most. Then it becomes public property. We have only to take this as a possible model for the return flow of everything that is produced by individual effort, and indeed of everything embraced by the capitalist system—a model for the leading back of all this into the social organism. The question then is simply—how is it all to be divided up? In such parts as will do justice to the immediate spiritual and individual abilities, and also the former individual abilities, of the human beings concerned: it will be a question for the spiritual realm. Men will arrange it like that, if they are rightly situated within the social order. That is what this way of thinking assumes.

In every century, I daresay, these things would be done differently; in such matters no arrangements are valid for all time. But our epoch is accustomed to judging everything from a materialistic standpoint, and so nothing is seen any longer in the right light. I have often pointed out how in modern times labour-power has become a commodity. Ordinary wage contracts are based on that; they derive from the assumption that labour-power is a commodity, and they are determined by the amount of labour which the workman renders to the employer. A healthy relationship will arise only under the following conditions: the contract must by no means be settled in terms of so much labour; the labour must be treated as a rights-question, to be fixed by the political State; and the contract must be based on a division of the goods produced between the manual workers and the spiritual workers. Such a contract can be based only on the goods produced, not on the relationship between workmen and employer. That is the only way to put the thing on a healthy footing.

People ask: whence come the social evils which are associated with capitalism? They say, these evils come from the capitalist economic system. But no evils can arise from an economic system: they arise first of all because we have no real labour laws to protect labour; and further because we fail to notice that the way in which the worker is denied his due share amounts to a living lie. But what does this denial depend on? Not on the organisation of economic life, but on the fact that the social order permits the individual capacities of the employer to be unjustly rewarded, at the worker's expense. The division of proceeds ought to be made in terms of goods, for these are the joint products of the spiritual and the manual workers. But if you use your individual capacities to take from someone something which ought not to be taken, what are you doing? You are cheating him, taking advantage of him! One need only look these circumstances straight in the face to realise that the trouble does not he in capitalism, but in the misuse of spiritual capacities.

There you have the connection with the spiritual world. First make the realm of society healthy, so that spiritual capacities are no longer enabled to take advantage of the workers: then you will bring health into the social organism as a whole. It all turns on perceiving everywhere what is right and just.

In order to perceive this, one needs a principle of justice. To-day we have reached a stage when principles of justice can be derived only from the spiritual world. And again and again it must be pointed out that nowadays it is not enough to keep on and on declaring: People must recover belief in the spirit. Oh, there are plenty of prophets ready to speak of the necessity of belief in the spirit! But it gets nowhere for people merely to say: “In order to bring healing into the unhealthy conditions of our time, men must turn from materialism to the spirit.” ... No, mere belief in the spirit brings no healing to-day! Any number of celebrated prophets may go round the country saying over and over again: “People must turn inwardly” ... or, “The Christ used to be the concern of a man's personal life only; now He must be brought into social life”... with such phrases absolutely nothing is accomplished! For what matters to-day is not merely to believe in the spirit, but to be so filled with the spirit that through us the spirit is carried directly into material existence. It is useless to-day to say. Believe in the spirit ... what is necessary is to speak of a spirit which is in truth able to master external reality, and can truly declare how the membering of the social organism is to be accomplished. For the cause of the unspiritual character of the present day is not that men do not believe in the spirit, but that they cannot reach such a relationship with the spirit as would enable the spirit to seize hold of matter in real life.

How many men there are to-day who think it extraordinarily fine to say: “Oh, there is nothing spiritual in mere material existence—one ought to withdraw from it: our duty is to turn away from material existence to the set-apart life of the spirit.” Here is material reality: you clip your coupons ... and then you sit down in the room reserved for meditation, and off you go to the spiritual world. Two beautifully distinct ways of living, kept gracefully apart! That leads nowhere to-day. What is wanted to-day is that the spirit should wax so strong in human souls that it does not merely find expression in talk about how men are to be blessed or redeemed, but penetrates right into what we have to do in material existence—so that we enable the spirit to flow into and penetrate external reality. To talk habitually about the spirit comes very easily to human beings. And in this connection many people slip into strange contradictions. The character in Anzengruber's play, who denies God, illustrates this; it is specially emphasised that he denies God by saying: “As truly as there is a God in heaven, so am I an atheist.” This type of self-contradicting person, even though it may not take so crass a form as in Anzengruber's play, is far from rare to-day. For it is very common to talk in this style: As truly as there is a God in heaven, so am I an atheist!

All this gives us further warning not to think merely of belief in the spirit, but to try above all to make such an encounter with the spirit that it gives us strength to see through the reality of the material, external world. Then indeed people will stop using the word spirit, spirit, spirit... in every sentence. Then a man will prove by the way he looks at things, that he is seeing them in the light of the spirit. This is what matters to-day: that people should see things in the light of the spirit, and not merely keep on talking about the spirit.

This is what needs to be grasped, so that anthroposophical spiritual science may not be constantly confused with all the talking about the spirit which is so popular nowadays. Again and again, when some Sunday afternoon preacher of the worldly sort has merely spoken in a better style than usual, one hears that someone has said: “He speaks quite in the spirit of Anthroposophy!” Usually, in such cases, he is doing the very opposite! This is the point that needs attention; this is what counts.

Whoever recognises this is not far from perceiving that such a well-intentioned remark—I might say, a remark spoken from a presentiment of tragic death—as the one I quoted from Kurt Eisner, is particularly valuable, because it strikes one like the confession of a man who might say: “To be honest, I don't believe seriously in the super-sensible—at least I have no wish to give it any active attention. Those who speak about the super-sensible have certainly always said: the reality we perceive here with our senses is only a half-reality; it is like a dream! But I am bound to scrutinise the form which this sense-perceptible reality has assumed in the social life of the present—and then it does look to me very like a dream! The effect is that one is forced to say: this reality is clearly the invention of some kind of evil spirit ...”

Certainly a noteworthy confession! But might it not be otherwise? This tragic, terrible guise in which present-day reality presents itself to humanity, could it not be the educative work of a good spirit, urging us to seek in what looks like an evil nightmare for the true reality, which is compounded of the sense-perceptible and the super-sensible? We must not take an exclusively pessimistic view of the present; we can also draw from it the strength to achieve a kind of vindication of contemporary existence.

Then we shall never again allow ourselves to stop at the sense-perceptible: we shall feel impelled to find the way out of it to the super-sensible. Anyone who refuses to seek for this way will indeed be unable to think far without saying: this reality is the invention of an evil spirit! But whoever develops the resolve to rise from this reality to a spiritual reality, will be able to speak also of education by a good spirit. And in spite of everything we see around us to-day, we should remain convinced that humanity will find a way out of the tragic destiny of the present. But, of course, we must attend to the clear injunction that bids us work together for social healing.

This I wished to add to what I have said recently.