The Rudolf Steiner Archive

In the last lecture we found that moral impulses are fundamental in human nature. From the facts adduced, we tried to prove that a foundation of morality and goodness lies at the bottom of the human soul, and that really it has only been in the course of evolution, in man's passage from incarnation to incarnation, that he has diverged from the original instinctive good foundation and that thereby what is evil, wrong and immoral has come into humanity. But if this is so, we must really wonder that evil is possible, or that it ever originated, and the question as to how evil became possible in the course of evolution requires an answer. We can only obtain a satisfactory reply by examining the elementary moral instruction given to man in ancient times.

The pupils of the Mysteries whose highest ideal was gradually to penetrate to full spiritual knowledge and truths were always obliged to work from a moral foundation. In those places where they worked in the right way according to the Mysteries, the peculiarity of man's moral-nature was shown in a special way to the pupils. Briefly, we may say: The pupils of the Mysteries were shown that freewill can only be developed if a person is in a position to go wrong in one of two directions; further, that life can only run its course truly and favourably when these two lines of opposition are considered as being like the two sides of a balance, of which first one side and then the other goes up and down. True balance only exists when the crossbeam is horizontal. They were shown that it is impossible to express man's right procedure by saying: this is right and that is wrong. It is only possible to gain the true idea when the human being, standing in the centre of the balance, can be swayed each moment of his life, now to one side, now to the other, but he himself holds the correct mean between the two.

Let us take the virtues of which we have spoken: first—valour, bravery. In this respect human nature may diverge on one side to foolhardiness—that is, unbridled activity in the world and the straining of the forces at one's disposal to the utmost limit. Foolhardiness is one side; the opposite is cowardice. A person may tip the scale in either of these directions. In the Mysteries the pupils were shown that when a man degenerates into foolhardiness he loses himself and lays aside his own individuality and is crushed by the wheels of life. Life tears him in pieces if he errs in this direction, but if, on the other hand, he errs on the side of cowardice, he hardens himself and tears himself away from his connection with beings and objects. He then becomes a being shut up within himself, who, as he cannot bring his deeds into harmony with the whole, loses his connection with things. This was shown to the pupils in respect to all that a man may do. He may degenerate in such a way that he is torn in pieces, and losing his own individuality is crushed by the objective world; on the other hand, he may degenerate not merely in courage, but also in every other respect in such a way that he hardens within himself. Thus at the head of the moral code in all the Mysteries there were written the significant words: “Thou must find the mean,” so that through thy deeds thou must not lose thyself in the world, and that the world also does not lose thee.

Those are the two possible extremes into which man may fall. Either he may be lost to the world, the world lays hold on him, and crushes him, as is the case in foolhardiness; or the world may be lost to him, because he hardens himself in his egoism, as is the case in cowardice. In the Mysteries, the pupils were told that goodness cannot merely be striven for as goodness obtained once for all; rather does goodness come only through man being continually able to strike out in two directions like a pendulum and by his own inner power able to find the balance, the mean between the two.

You have in this all that will enable you to understand the freedom of the will and the significance of reason and wisdom in human action. If it were fitting for man always to observe the eternal moral principles he need only acquire these moral principles and then he could go through life on a definite line of march, as it were, but life is never like this. Freedom in life consists rather in man's being always able to err in one direction or another. But in this way the possibility of evil arises. For what is evil? It is that which originates when the human being is either lost to the world, or the world is lost to him. Goodness consists in avoiding both these extremes. In the course of evolution evil became not only a possibility but an actuality; for as man journeyed from incarnation to incarnation, by his turning now to one side and now to the other, he could not always find the balance at once, and it was necessary for the compensation to be karmically made at a future time. What man cannot attain in one life, because he does not always find the mean at once, he will attain gradually in the course of evolution in as much as man diverts his course to one side, and is then obliged, perhaps in the next life, to strike out again in the opposite direction, and thus bring about the balance. What I have just told you was a golden rule in the ancient Mysteries. We often find among the ancient philosophers echoes of the principles taught in these Mysteries. Aristotle makes a statement, when, speaking of virtue, which we cannot understand unless we know that what has just been said was an old principle in the Mysteries which had been received by Aristotle as tradition and embodied in his philosophy. He says: Virtue is a human capacity or skill guided by reason and insight, which, as regards man, holds the balance between the too-much and the too-little. Aristotle here gives a definition of virtue, the like of which no subsequent philosophy has attained. But as Aristotle had the tradition from the Mysteries, it was possible for him to give the precise truth.

That is, then, the mean, which must be found and followed if a man is really to be virtuous, if moral power is to pulsate through the world. We can now answer the question as to why morals should exist at all. For what happens when there is no morality, when evil is done, and when the too-much or the too-little takes place, when man is lost to the world by being crushed, or when the world loses him? In each of these cases something is always destroyed. Every evil or immoral act is a process of destruction, and the moment man sees that when he has done wrong he cannot do otherwise than destroy something, take something from the world, in that moment a mighty influence for good has awakened within him. It is especially the task of Spiritual Science—which is really only just beginning its work in the world—to show that all evil brings about a destructive process, that it takes away from the world something which is necessary. When in accordance with our anthroposophical standpoint, we hold this principle, then what we know about the nature of man leads us to a particular interpretation of good and evil.

We know that the sentient-soul was chiefly developed in the old Chaldean or Egyptian epoch the third post-Atlantean age. The people of the present day have but little notion what this epoch of development was like prior to that time, for in external history one can reach little further back than to the Egyptian age. We know that the intellectual, or mind-soul, developed in the fourth or Graeco-Latin age, and that now in our age we are developing the consciousness-or spiritual-soul. The spirit-self will only come into prominence in the sixth age of post-Atlantean development.

Let us now ask: How can the sentient-soul turn to one side or the other, away from what is right? The sentient-soul is that quality in man which enables him to perceive the objective world, to take it into himself, to take part in it, not to pass through the world ignorant of all the diversified objects it contains, but to go through the world in such a way that he forms a relationship with them. All this is brought about by the sentient-soul. We find one side to which man can deviate with the sentient-soul when we enquire: What makes it possible for man to enter into relationship with the objective world? It is what may be called interest in the different things, and by this word “interest” something is expressed which in a moral sense is extremely important. It is much more important that one should bear in mind the moral significance of interest, than that one should devote oneself to thousands of beautiful moral axioms which may be only paltry and hypocritical. Let it be clearly understood, that our moral impulses are in fact never better guided than when we take a proper interest in objects and beings. In our last lecture we spoke in a deeper sense of love as an impulse and in such a way that we cannot now be misunderstood if we say that the usual, oft-repeated declamation, “love, love, and again love” cannot replace the moral impulse contained in what may be described by the word ‘interest.’

Let us suppose that we have a child before us. What is the condition primary to our devotion to this child? What is the first condition to our educating the child? It is that we take an interest in it. There is something unhealthy or abnormal in the human soul if a person withdraws himself from something in which he takes an interest. It will more and more be recognised that the impulse of interest is a quite specially golden impulse in the moral sense the further we advance to the actual foundations of morality and do not stop at the mere preaching of morals. Our inner powers are also called forth as regards mankind when we extend our interests, when we are able to transpose ourselves with understanding into beings and objects.

Even sympathy is awakened in the right manner if we take an interest in a being; and if, as anthroposophists, we set ourselves the task of extending our interests more and more and of widening our mental horizon, this will promote the universal brotherhood of mankind. Progress is not gained by the mere preaching of universal love, but by the extension of our interests further and further, so that we come to interest ourselves increasingly in souls with widely different characters, racial and national peculiarities, with widely different temperaments, and holding widely differing religious and philosophical views, and approach them with understanding. Right interest, right understanding, calls forth from the soul the right moral action.

Here also we must hold the balance between two extremes. One extreme is apathy which passes everything by and occasions immense moral mischief in the world. An apathetic person only lives in himself; obstinately, insisting on his own principles, and saying: This is my standpoint. In a moral sense this insistence upon a standpoint is always bad. The essential thing is for us to have an open mind and be alive to all that surrounds us. Apathy separates us from the world, while interest unites us with it. The world loses us through our apathy: in this direction we become immoral. Thus we see that apathy and lack of interest in the world are morally evil in the highest degree.

Anthroposophy is something which makes the mind ever more active, helps us to think with greater readiness of what is spiritual and to take it into ourselves. Just as it is true that warmth comes from the fire when we light a stove so it is true that interest in humanity and the world comes when we study spiritual science. Wisdom is the fuel for interest and we may say, although this may perhaps not be evident without further explanation, that Anthroposophy arouses this interest in us when we study those more remote subjects, the teachings concerning the evolutionary stages through Saturn, Sun and Moon, and the meaning of Karma and so on. It really comes about that interest is produced as the result of anthroposophical knowledge while from materialistic knowledge comes something which in a radical manner must be described as apathy and which, if it alone were to hold sway in the world, would, of necessity, do untold harm.

See how many people go through the world and meet this or that person, but really do not get to know him, for they are quite shut up in themselves. How often do we find that two people have been friends for a long time and then suddenly there comes a rupture. This is because the friendship had a materialistic foundation and only after the lapse of time did they discover that they were mutually unsympathetic. At the present time very few people have the “hearing” ear for that which speaks from man to man; but Anthroposophy should bring about an expansion of our perceptions, so that we shall gain a “seeing” eye and an open mind for all that is human around us and so we shall not go through the world. apathetically, but with true interest.

We also avoid the other extreme by distinguishing between true and false interests, and thus observe the happy mean. Immediately to throw oneself, as it were, into the arms of each person we meet is to lose oneself passionately in the person; that is not true interest. If we do this, we lose ourselves to the world. Through apathy the world loses us; through uncontrolled passion we lose ourselves to the world. But through healthy, devoted interest we stand morally firm in the centre, in the state of balance.

In the third post-Atlantean age of civilisation, that is, in the Chaldaic-Egyptian age, there still existed in a large part of humanity on earth a certain power to hold the balance between apathy and the passionate intoxicating devotion to the world; and it is this, which in ancient times, and also by Plato and Aristotle, was called wisdom. But people looked upon this wisdom as the gift of superhuman beings, for up to that time the ancient impulses of wisdom were active. Therefore, from this point of view, especially relating to moral impulses, we may call the third post-Atlantean age, the age of instinctive wisdom. You will perceive the truth of what was said last year, though with a different intention, in the Copenhagen lectures on The Spiritual Guidance of Man and Mankind. In those lectures we showed how, in the third post-Atlantean age, mankind still stood nearer to the divine spiritual powers. And that which drew mankind closer to the divine spiritual powers, was instinctive wisdom.

Thus, it was a gift of the gods to find at that time the happy mean in action, between apathy and sensuous passionate devotion. This balance, this equilibrium was at that time still maintained through external institutions. The complete intermingling of humanity which came about in the fourth age of post-Atlantean development through the migrations of various peoples, did not yet exist. Mankind was still divided into smaller peoples and tribes. Their interests were wisely regulated by nature, and were so far active that the right moral impulses could penetrate; and on the other hand, through the existence of blood kinsmanship in the tribe, an obstacle was placed in the way of sensual passion. Even to-day one cannot fail to observe that it is easiest to show interest within blood-relationship and common descent, but in this there is not what is called sensuous passion. As people were gathered together in relatively small tracts of country in the Egypto-Chaldaic age, the wise and happy mean was easily found.

But the idea of the progressive development of humanity is that, which originally was instinctive, which was only spiritual, shall gradually disappear and that man shall become independent of the divine spiritual powers. Hence we see that even in the fourth post-Atlantean age, the Graeco-Latin age, not only the philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, but also public opinion in Greece, considered wisdom as something which must be gained as something which is no longer the gift of the gods, but after which man must strive. According to Plato, the first virtue is wisdom, and according to him, he who does not strive after wisdom is immoral.

We are now in the fifth post-Atlantean age. We are still far from the time when the wisdom instinctively implanted in humanity as a divine impulse, will be raised into consciousness. Hence in our age people are specially liable to err in both the directions we have mentioned, and it is therefore particularly necessary that the great dangers to be found at this point should be counteracted by a spiritual conception of the World, so that what man once possessed as instinctive wisdom may now become conscious wisdom. The Anthroposophical Movement is to contribute to this end.

The gods once gave wisdom to the unconscious human soul, so that it possessed this wisdom instinctively, whereas now we have first to learn the truths about the cosmos and about human evolution. The ancient customs were also fashioned after the thoughts of the gods.

We have the right view of Anthroposophy when we look upon it as the investigations of the thoughts of the gods. In former times these flowed instinctively into man, but now we have to investigate them, to make the knowledge of them our own. In this sense Anthroposophy must be sacred to us; we must be able to consider reverently that the ideas imparted to us are really something divine, and something which we human beings are allowed to think and reflect upon as the divine thoughts according to which the world has been ordered. When Anthroposophy stands in this aspect to us, we can then consider the knowledge it imparts in such a way that we understand that it has been given us so as to enable us to fulfil our mission. Mighty truths are made known to us, when we study what has been imparted concerning the evolutions of Saturn, Sun and Moon, concerning reincarnation, and the development of the various races, etc. But we only assume the right attitude towards it when we say: The thoughts we seek are the thoughts wherewith the gods have guided evolution. We think the evolution of the gods. If we understand this correctly we are overwhelmed by something that is deeply moral. This is inevitable. Then we say: In ancient times man had instinctive wisdom from the gods, who gave him the wisdom according to which they fashioned the world, and morality thus became possible. But through Anthroposophy we now acquire this wisdom consciously. Therefore we may also trust that in us it shall be transformed into moral impulses, so that we do not merely receive anthroposophical wisdom, but a moral stimulus as well.

Now into what sort of moral impulses will the wisdom acquired through Anthroposophy be transformed? We must here touch upon a point whose development the anthroposophist can foresee, the profound moral significance and moral weight of which he even ought to foresee, a point of development which is far removed from what is customary at the present time, which is what Plato called the “ideal of wisdom.” He named it with a word which was in common use when man still possessed the ancient wisdom, and it would be well to replace this by the word truth, for as we have now become more individual, we have withdrawn ourselves from the divine, and must therefore strive back to it. We must learn to feel the full weight and meaning of the word ‘truth,’ and this in a moral sense will be a result of an anthroposophical world conception and conviction. Anthroposophists must understand how important it is to be filled with the moral element of truth in an age when materialism has advanced so far that one may indeed still speak of truth, but when the general life and understanding is far removed from perceiving what is right in this direction. Nor can this be otherwise at the present time; as owing to a certain quality acquired by modern life, truth is something which must, to a great extent, be lacking in the understanding of the day, I ask what does a man feel to-day when in the newspapers or some other printed matter he finds

certain information, and afterwards it transpires that it is simply untrue? I seriously ask you to ponder over this. One cannot say that it happens in every case, but one must assert that it probably happens in every fourth case. Untruthfulness has everywhere become a quality of the age; it is impossible to describe truth as a characteristic of our times.

For instance, take a man whom you know to have written or said something false, and place the facts before him. As a rule, you will find that he does not fear such a thing to be wrong. He will immediately make the excuse: “But I said it in good faith.” Anthroposophists must not consider it moral when a person says it is merely incorrect what he has said in good faith. People will learn to understand more and more, that they must first ascertain that what they assert really happened. No man should make a statement, or impart anything to another until he has exhausted every means to ascertain the truth of his assertions; and it is only when he recognises this obligation that he can perceive truth as moral impulse. And then when someone has either written or said something that is incorrect, he will no longer say: “I thought it was so, said it in good faith,” for he will learn that it is his duty to express not merely what he thinks is right, but it is also his duty to say only what is true, and correct. To this end, a radical change must gradually come about in our cultural life. The speed of travel, the lust of sensation on the part of man, everything that comes with a materialistic age, is opposed to truth. In the sphere of morality, Anthroposophy will be an educator of humanity to the duty of truth.

My business today is not to say how far truth has been already realised in the Anthroposophical Society, but to show that what I have said must be a principle, a lofty anthroposophical ideal. The moral evolution within the movement will have enough to do if the moral ideal of truth is thought, felt and perceived in all directions, for this ideal must be what produces the virtue of the sentient-soul of man in the right way.

The second part of the soul of which we have to speak in Anthroposophy is what we usually call the mind-soul, or intellectual-soul Gemütsseele. You know that it developed especially in the fourth post-Atlantean, or Graeco-Latin age. The virtue which is the particular emblem for this part of the soul is bravery, valour and courage; we have already dwelt on this many times, and also on the fact that foolhardiness and cowardice are its extremes. Courage, bravery, valour is the mean between foolhardiness and cowardice. The German word gemüt expresses in the sound of the word that it is related to this. The word gemüt indicates the mid-part of the human soul, the part that is mutvoll, full of mut, courage, strength and force.

This was the second, the middle virtue of Plato and Aristotle. It is that virtue which in the fourth post-Atlantean age still existed in man as a divine gift, while wisdom was really only instinctive in the third. Instinctive valour and bravery existed as a gift of the gods (you may gather this from the first lecture) among the people who, in the fourth age, met the expansion of Christianity to the north. They showed that among them valour was still a gift of the gods. Among the Chaldeans wisdom, the wise penetration into the secrets of the starry world, existed as a divine gift, as something inspired. Among the people of the fourth post-Atlantean age, there existed valour and bravery, especially among the Greeks and Romans, but it existed also among the peoples whose work it became to spread Christianity. This instinctive valour was lost later than instinctive wisdom.

If we look round us now in the fifth post-Atlantean age, we see that, as regards valour and bravery, we are in the same position in respect of the Greeks as the Greeks were to the Chaldeans and Egyptians in regard to wisdom. We look back to what was a divine gift in the age immediately preceding ours, and in a certain way we can strive for it again. However, the two previous lectures have shown us, that in connection with this effort a certain transformation must take place. We have seen the transformation in Francis of Assisi of that divine gift which manifested itself as bravery and valour. We saw that the transformation came about as the result of an inner moral force which in our last lecture we found to be the force of the Christ-impulse; the transformation of valour and bravery into true love. But this true love must be guided by another virtue, by the interest in the being to whom we turn our love. In his Timon of Athens Shakespeare shows how love, or warmth of heart, causes harm, when it is passionately manifested; when it appears merely as a quality of human nature without being guided by wisdom and truth. A man is described who gave freely of his possessions, who squandered his living in all directions. Liberality is a virtue, but Shakespeare also shows us that nothing but parasites are produced by what is squandered.

Just as ancient valour and bravery were guided from the Mysteries by the European Brahmins—those wise leaders who kept themselves hidden in the background—so also in human nature this virtue must accord with and be guided by interest. Interest, which connects us with the external world in the right way, must lead and guide us when, with our love, we turn to the world. Fundamentally this may be seen from the characteristic and striking example of Francis of Assisi. The sympathy he expressed was not obtrusive or offensive. Those who overwhelm others with their sympathy are by no means always actuated by the right moral impulses. And how many there are who will not receive anything that is given out of pity. But to approach another with, understanding is not offensive. Under some circumstances a person must needs refuse to be sympathised with; but the attempt to understand his nature is something to which no reasonable person can object. Hence also the attitude of another person cannot be blamed or condemned if his actions are determined by this principle.

It is understanding which can guide us with respect to this second virtue: Love. It is that which, through the Christ-impulse, has become the special virtue of the mind-soul or intellectual-soul; it is the virtue which may be described as human love accompanied by human understanding. Sympathy in grief and joy is the virtue which in the future must produce the most beautiful and glorious fruits in human social life, and, in one who rightly understands the Christ-impulse, this sympathy and this love will originate quite naturally, it will develop into feeling. It is precisely through the anthroposophical understanding of the Christ-impulse that it will become feeling.

Through the Mystery of Golgotha Christ descended into earthly evolution; His impulses, His activities are here now, they are everywhere. Why did He descend to this earth? In order that through what He has to give to the world, evolution may go forward in the right way. Now that the Christ-impulse is in the world, if through what is immoral, if through lack of interest in our fellow-men, we destroy something, then we take away a portion of the world into which the Christ-impulse has flowed. Thus because the Christ-impulse is now here, we directly destroy something of it. But if we give to the world what can be given to it through virtue, which is creative, we build. We build through self-surrender. It is not without reason that it has often been said, that Christ was first crucified on Golgotha, but that He is crucified again and again through the deeds, of man. Since Christ has entered into the Earth development through the deed upon Golgotha, we, by our immoral deeds, by our unkindness and lack of interest, add to the sorrow and pain inflicted upon Him. Therefore it has been said, again and again: Christ is crucified anew as long as immorality, unkindness and lack of interest exist. Since the Christ-impulse has permeated the world, it is this which is made to suffer.

Just as it is true that through evil, which is destructive, we withdraw something from the Christ-impulse and continue the crucifixion upon Golgotha, it is also true that when we act out of love, in all cases where we use love, we add to the Christ-impulse, we help to bring it to life. “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me” (Matthew 25, 40), this is the most significant statement of love and this statement must become the most profound moral impulse if it is once anthroposophically understood. We do this when with understanding we confront our fellow-men and offer them something in our actions, our virtue, our conduct towards them which is conditioned by our understanding of their nature. Our attitude towards our fellow-men is our attitude towards the Christ-impulse itself.

It is a powerful moral impulse, something which is a real foundation for morals, when we feel: ‘The Mystery of Golgotha was accomplished for all men, and an impulse has thence spread abroad throughout the whole world. When you are dealing with your fellow-men, try to understand them in their special, characteristics of race, colour, nationality, religious faith, philosophy, etc. If you meet them and do this or that to them, you do it to Christ. Whatever you do to men, in the present condition of the earth's evolution, you do to Christ.’ This statement: “What ye have done to one of My brothers, ye have done unto Me,” will at the same time become a mighty moral impulse to the man who understands the fundamental significance of the Mystery of Golgotha. So that we may say: Whereas the gods of pre-Christian times gave instinctive wisdom to man, instinctive valour and bravery, so now love streams down from the symbol of the cross, the love which is based upon the mutual interest of man in man.

Thereby the Christ-impulse will work powerfully in the world. On the day when it comes about that the Brahmin not only loves and understands the Brahmin, the Pariah the Pariah, the Jew the Jew, and the Christian the Christian; but when the Jew is able to understand the Christian, the Pariah the Brahmin, the American the Asiatic, as man, and put himself in his place, then one will know how deeply it is felt in a Christian way when we say: “All men must feel themselves to be brothers, no matter what their religious creed may be.” We ought to consider what otherwise binds us as being of little value. Father, mother, brother, sister, even one's own life one ought to value less than that which speaks from one human soul to the other. He who, in this sense does not regard as base all that impairs the connection with the Christ-impulse cannot be Christ's disciple. The Christ-impulse balances and compensates human differences. Christ's disciple is one who regards mere human distinctions as being of little account, and clings to the impulse of love streaming forth from the Mystery of Golgotha, which in this respect we perceive as a renewal of what was given to mankind as original virtue.

We have now but to consider what may be spoken of as the virtue of the Consciousness- or Spiritual- Soul. When we consider the fourth post-Atlantean age, we find that Temperance or Moderation was still instinctive. Plato and Aristotle called it the chief virtue of the Spiritual-Soul. Again they comprehended it as a state of balance, as the mean of what exists in the Spiritual-soul. The Spiritual-Soul consists in man's becoming conscious of the external world through his bodily nature. The sense body is primarily the instrument of the Spiritual-Soul, and it is also the sense body through which man arrives at self-consciousness.

Therefore the sense-body of man must be preserved. If it were not preserved for the mission of the earth, then that mission could not be fulfilled. But here also there is a limit. If a man only used all the forces he possessed in order to enjoy himself, he would shut himself up in himself, and the world would lose him. The man who merely enjoys himself, who uses all his forces merely to give himself pleasure, cuts himself off from the world—so thought Plato and Aristotle—the world loses him. And he, who denies himself everything renders himself weaker and weaker, and is finally laid hold of by the external world-process, and is crushed by the outer world. For he who goes beyond the forces appropriate to him as man, he who goes to excess is laid hold of by the world-process and is lost in it.

Thus what man has developed, for the building up of the Spiritual-soul can be dissolved, so that he comes into the position of losing the world. Temperance, or Moderation, is the virtue which enables man to avoid these extremes. Temperance implies neither asceticism nor gluttony, but the happy mean between these two; and this is the virtue of the Spiritual-Soul. Regarding this virtue we have not yet progressed beyond the instinctive standpoint. A little reflection will teach you that, on the whole, people are very much given to sampling the two extremes. They swing to and fro between them. Leaving out of account the few who at the present day endeavour to gain clear views on this subject, you will find that the majority of people live very much after a particular pattern. In Central Europe this is often described by saying: There are people in Berlin who eat and drink to excess the entire winter, and then in summer they go to Carlsbad in order to remove the ill-effects produced by months of intemperance, thus going from one extreme to the other. Here you have the tipping of the scale, first to one side and then to the other. This is only a radical case. It is very evident that though the foregoing is extreme, and not universal to any great extent, still the oscillation between enjoyment and deprivation exists everywhere. People themselves ensure that there is excess on one side, and then they get the physicians to prescribe a so-called lowering system of cure, that is, the other extreme, in order that the ill effects may be repaired.

From this, it will be seen that in this respect people are still in an instinctive condition, that there is still an instinctive feeling, which is a kind of divine gift, not to go too far in one direction or another. But just as the other instinctive qualities of man were lost, these, too, will be lost with the transition from the fifth to the sixth post-Atlantean age. This quality which is still possessed as a natural tendency will be lost; and now you will be able to judge how much the anthroposophical world conception and conviction will have to contribute in order gradually to develop consciousness in this field.

At the present time there are very few, even developed anthroposophists, who see clearly that Anthroposophy provides the means to gain the right consciousness in this field also. When Anthroposophy is able to bring more weight to bear in this direction, then will appear what I can only describe in the following way: people will gradually long more and more for great spiritual truths. Although Anthroposophy is still scorned to-day, it will not always be so. It will spread, and overcome all its external opponents, and everything else still opposing it, and anthroposophists will not be satisfied by merely preaching universal love. It will be understood that one cannot acquire Anthroposophy in one day, any more than a person can take sufficient nourishment in one day to last the whole of his life. Anthroposophy has to be acquired to an ever increasing extent. It will come to pass that in the Anthroposophical Movement it will not be so often stated that these are our principles, and if we have these principles then we are anthroposophists; for the feeling and experience of standing in a community of the living element in anthroposophy will extend more and more.

Moreover, let us consider what happens by people mentally working upon the particular thoughts, the particular feelings and impulses which come from anthroposophical wisdom. We all know that anthroposophists can never have a materialistic view of the world, they have exactly the opposite, But he who says the following is a materialistic thinker: “When one thinks, a movement of the molecules or atoms of the brain takes place, and it is because of this movement that one has thought. Thought proceeds from the brain somewhat like a thin smoke, or it is something like the flame from a candle.” Such, is the materialistic view. The anthroposophical view is the opposite. In the latter it is the thought, the experience in the soul which sets the brain and nervous system in motion. The way in which our brain moves depends upon what thoughts we think. This is exactly the opposite of what is said by the materialist. If you wish to know how the brain of a person is constituted, you must inquire into what thoughts he has, for just as the printed characters of a book are nothing else than the consequence of thoughts, so the movements of the brain are nothing else than the consequence of thoughts.

Must we not then say that the brain will be differently affected when it is filled with anthroposophical thoughts than it will be in a society which plays cards? Different processes are at work in your minds when you follow anthroposophical thoughts from when you are in a company of card players, or see the pictures in a movie theatre. In the human organism nothing is isolated or stands alone. Everything is connected; one part acts and reacts on another. Thoughts act upon the brain and nervous system, and the latter is connected with the whole organism, and although many people may not yet be aware of it, when the hereditary characteristics still hidden in the body are conquered, the following will come about. The thoughts will be communicated from the brain to the stomach, and the result will be that things that are pleasant to people's taste to-day will no longer taste good to those who have received anthroposophica1 thoughts. The thoughts which anthroposophists have received are divine thoughts. They act upon the whole organism in such a manner that it will prefer to taste what is good for it. Man will smell and perceive as unsympathetic what does not suit him—a pecu1iar perspective, one which may perhaps be called materialistic, but is exactly the reverse.

This kind of appetite will come as a consequence of anthroposophical work; you will like one thing and prefer it at meals, dislike another and not wish to eat it. You may judge for yourselves when you notice that perhaps you now have an aversion to things, which before your anthroposophical days you did not possess. This will become more and more general when man works selflessly at his higher development, so that the world may receive what is right from him. One must not, however, play fast-and-lose with the words “selflessness” and “egoism.” These words may very easily be misused. It is not altogether selfless when someone says: “I shall only be active in the world and for the world; what does it matter about my own spiritual development? I shall only work, not strive egoistically!” It is not egoism when a person undergoes a higher development, because he thus fits himself more fully to bear an active part in the furtherance of the world development. If a person neglects his own further deve1opment, he renders himself useless to the world, he withdraws his force from it. We must do the right thing in this respect as well, in order to develop in ourselves what the Deity had in view for us.

Thus, through Anthroposophy a human race, or rather, a nucleus of humanity will be developed, which perceives temperance as a guiding ideal not merely instinctively, but which has a conscious sympathy for what makes man in_a worthy way into a useful part of the divine world-order, and a conscious disinclination for all that mars man as a part in the universal order.

Thus we see that also in that which is produced in man himself, there are moral impulses, and we find what we may call life-wisdom or practica1 wisdom as transformed temperance. The ideal of practical wisdom which is to be taken into consideration for the next, the sixth post-Atlantean age, will be the ideal virtue which Plato calls “justice.” That is: the harmonious accord of these virtues. As in humanity the virtues have altered to some extent, so what was looked upon as justice in pre-Christian times has also changed. A single virtue such as this, which harmonises the others did not exist at that time. The harmony of the virtues stood before the mental vision of humanity as an ideal of the most distant future. We have seen that the moral impulse of bravery has been changed to love. We have also seen that wisdom has become truth. To begin with, truth is a virtue which places man in a just and worthy manner in external life. But if we wish to arrive at truthfulness regarding spiritual things, how then can we arrange it in relation to those things? We acquire truthfulness, we gain the virtue of the Sentient-Soul through a right and appropriate interest, through right understanding. Now what is this interest with regard to the spiritual world? If we wish to bring the physical world and especially man before us, we must open ourselves towards him, we must have a seeing eye for his nature. How do we obtain this seeing-eye with reference to the spiritual world? We gain it by developing a particular kind of feeling, that which appeared at a time when the old instinctive wisdom had sunk into the depths of the soul's life. This type of feeling was often described by the Greeks in the words: “All philosophical thought begins with wonder.” Something essentially moral is said when we say that our relationship to the supersensible world begins with wonder. The savage, uncultivated human being, is but little affected by the great phenomena of the world. It is through mental development that man comes to find riddles in the phenomena of everyday life, and to perceive that there is something spiritual at the back of them. It is wonder that directs our souls up to the spiritual sphere in order that we may penetrate to the knowledge of that world; and we can only arrive at this knowledge when our soul is attracted by the phenomena which it is possible to investigate. It is this attraction which give rise to wonder, astonishment and faith. It is always wonder and amazement which direct us to what is supersensible, and at the same time, it is what one usually describes as faith. Faith, wonder and amazement are the three forces of the soul which lead us beyond the ordinary world.

When we contemplate man with wonder and amazement, we try to understand him; by understanding his nature we attain to the virtue of brotherhood, and we shall best realise this by approaching the human being with reverence. We shall then see that reverence is something with which we must approach every human being and if we have this attitude, we shall become more and more truthful. Truth will become something by which we shall be bound by duty. Once we have an inkling of it, the supersensible world becomes something towards which we incline, and through knowledge we shall attain to the supersensible wisdom which has already sunk into the subconscious depths of the soul. Only after supersensible wisdom had disappeared do we find the statement that “philosophy begins with wonder and amazement.” This statement will make it clear that wonder only appeared in evolution in the age when the Christ-impulse had come into the world.

It has already been stated that the second virtue is love. Let us now consider what we have described as instinctive temperance for the present time, and as practical wisdom of life for the future. Man confronts himself in these virtues. Through the deeds he performs in the world, he acts in such a way that he guards himself, as it were; it is therefore necessary for him to gain an objective standard of value.

We now see something appear which develops more and more, and which I have often spoken of in other connections, something which first appeared in the fourth post-Atlantean age, namely the Greek. It can be shown that in the old Greek dramas, for instance in Aeschylus, the Furies play a role which in Euripides is transformed into conscience. From this we see that in ancient times what we call conscience did not exist at all. Conscience is something that exists as a standard for our own actions when we go too far in our demands, when we seek our own advantage too much. It acts as a standard placed between our sympathies and antipathies.

With this we attain to something which is more objective, which, compared with the virtues of truth, love and practical wisdom, acts in a much more objective, or outward manner. Love here stands in the middle, and acts as something which has to fill and regulate all life, also all social life. In the same way it acts as the regulator of all that man has developed as inner impulse. But that which he has developed as truth will manifest itself as the belief in supersensible knowledge. Life-wisdom, that which originates in ourselves, we must feel as a divine spiritual regulator which, like conscience, leads securely along the true middle course. If we had time it would be very easy to answer the various objections which might be raised at this point. But we shall only consider one, for example, the objection to the assertion that conscience and wonder are qualities which have only gradually developed in humanity, whereas they are really eternal. But this they are not. He who says that they are eternal qualities in human nature only shows that he does not know the conditions attached to them.

As time goes on it will be found more and more that in ancient times man had not as yet descended so far to the physical plane, but was still more closely connected with divine impulses, and that he was in a condition which he will again consciously strive to reach when
he is ruled more by truth, love and the art of life in regard to the physical plane, and when in regard to spiritual knowledge he is actuated by faith in the supersensible world. It is not necessarily the case that faith will directly lead into that world, but it will at length be transformed into supersensible knowledge. Conscience is that which will enter as a regulator in the Consciousness- or Spiritual-Soul. Faith, love, conscience; these three forces will become the three stars of the moral forces which shall enter into human souls particularly through Anthroposophy. The moral perspective of the future can only be disclosed to those who think of these three virtues being ever more increased Anthroposophy will place moral life in the light of these virtues, and they will be the constructive forces of the future.

Before closing our observations, there is one point which must be considered. I shall only touch upon the subject, for it would be impossible to analyse without giving many lectures. The Christ-impulse entered human evolution through the Mystery of Golgotha. We know that at that time a human organism consisting of physical, etheric, and astral bodies received the Ego-impulse or “I” from above, as the Christ-impulse. It was this Christ-impulse which was received by the earth and which flowed into earthly evolution. It was now in it as the ego of Christ. We know further that the physical body, etheric body and astral body remained with Jesus of Nazareth; the Christ-impulse was within as the ego. At Golgotha, Jesus of Nazareth separated from the Christ-impulse, which then flowed into the earth development. The evolution of this impulse signifies the evolution of the earth itself.

Earnestly consider certain things which are very often repeated in order that they may be more easily understood. As we have often heard, the world is maya or illusion, but man must gradually penetrate to the truth, the reality of this external world. The earth evolution fundamentally consists in the fact that all the external things which have been formed in the first half of the earth's development are dissolved in the second half, in which we now are, so that all that we see externally, physically, shall separate from human development just as the physical body of a human being falls away. One might ask: What will then be left? And the answer is: The forces which are embodied in man as real forces through the process of the development of humanity on the earth. And the most real impulse in this development is that which has come into earth evolution through the Christ-impulse. But this Christ-impulse at first finds nothing with which it can clothe itself. Therefore it has to obtain a covering through the further development of the earth; and when this is concluded, the fully developed Christ shall be the final man—as Adam was the first—around whom humanity in its multiplicity has grouped itself.

In the words: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me,” is contained a significant hint for us. What has been done for Christ? The actions performed in accordance with the Christ-impulse under the influence of conscience, under the influence of faith and according to knowledge, are developed out on the earth-life up to the present time, and as, through his actions and his moral attitude a person gives something to his brethren, he gives at the same time to Christ. This should be taken as a precept: All the forces we develop, all acts of faith and trust, all acts performed as the result of wonder, are—because we give it at the same time to the Christ-Ego—something which closes like a covering round the Christ and may be compared with the astral body of man.

We form the astral body for the Christ-Ego-impulse by all the moral activities of wonder, trust, reverence and faith, in short, all that paves the way to supersensible knowledge. Through all these activities we foster love. This is quite in accordance with the statement we quoted: “What ye have done to one, of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me.”

We form the etheric body for Christ through our deeds of love, and through our actions in the world which we do through the impulses of conscience we form for the Christ-impulse that which corresponds to the physical body of man. When the earth has one day reached its goal, when man understands the right moral impulses through which all that is good is done, then shall be perfected that which came as an Ego or “I” into human development through the Mystery of Golgotha as the Christ-impulse. It shall then be enveloped by an astral body which is formed through faith, through all the deeds of wonder and amazement on the part of man. It shall be enveloped by something which is like an etheric body which is formed through deeds of love; and by something which envelops it like a physical body, formed through the deeds of conscience.

Thus the future evolution of humanity shall be accomplished through the co-operation of the moral impulses of man with the Christ-impulse. We see humanity in perspective before us, like a great organic structure. When people understand how to member their actions into this great organism, and through their own deeds form their impulses around it like a covering, they shall then lay the foundations, in the course of earthly evolution, for a great community, which can be permeated and pervaded through and through by the Christ-impulse.

Thus we see that morals need not be preached, but they can indeed be founded by showing facts that have really happened and do still happen, confirming what is felt by persons with special mental endowments. It should make a noteworthy impression upon us if we bear in mind how, at the time when Goethe lost his friend, Duke Charles Augustus, he wrote many things in a long letter at Weimar, and then on the same day—it was in the year 1828, just three-and-a-half years before his own death, and almost at the end of his life—he wrote a very remarkable sentence in his diary: “The whole reasonable world may be considered as a great immortal individual which uninterruptedly brings about what is necessary and thereby makes itself master even over chance.” How could such a thought become more concrete than by our imagining this individual active among us, and by thinking of ourselves as, being united with him in his work? Through the Mystery of Golgotha the greatest Individual entered into human development, and, when people intentionally direct their lives in the way we have just described, they shall build up a covering round the Christ-impulse, so that around this Being there shall be formed something which is like a covering around a kernel.

Much more could be said about virtue from the standpoint of Anthroposophy. In particular long and important considerations could be entered into concerning truth and its connection with karma, for through Anthroposophy the idea of karma will have to enter into human evolution more and more. Man will also have to learn gradually so to consider and order his life that his virtues correspond with karma. Through the idea of karma man must also learn to recognise that he may not disown his former deeds by his later ones. A certain feeling of responsibility in life, a readiness to take upon ourselves the results of what we have done, has yet to show itself as a result of human evolution. How far removed man still is from this ideal we see when we consider him more c1osely. That man develops by the acts he has committed is a well-known fact. When the consequences of an action seem to have come to an end, then what could only be done if the first act had not taken place, can still be done. The fact that a person feels responsible for what he has done, the fact that he consciously accepts the idea of karma, is something which might also be a subject for study. But you will still find much for yourselves by following the lines suggested in these three lectures; you will find how fruitful these ideas can be if you work them out further. As man will live for the remainder of the earth development in repeated incarnations, it is his task to rectify all the mistakes made respecting the virtues described, by inclining to one side or the other, to change them by shaping them of his own free will, so that the balance, the mean, may come and thus the goal be gradually attained which has been described as the formation of the coverings for the Christ-impulse.

Thus we see before us not merely an abstract ideal of universal brotherhood, which indeed may also receive a strong impulse if we lay Anthroposophy at the foundation, but we see that there is something real in our earthly evolution, we see that there is in it an Impulse which came into the world through the Mystery of Golgotha. And we also feel ourselves under the necessity so to work upon the Sentient-Soul, the Intellectual-Soul and the Spiritual-Soul, that this ideal Being shall be actualised, and that we shall be united with Him as with a great immortal Individual. The thought that the only possibility of further evolution, the power to fulfil the earth mission, lies in man's forming one whole with this great Individual, is realised in the second moral principle: What you do as if it were born from you alone, pushes you away and separates you from the great Individual, you thereby destroy something; but what you do to build up this great immortal Individual in the way above described, that you do towards the further development, the progressive life of the whole organism of the world.

We only require to place these two thoughts before us in order to see that their effect is not only to preach morals, but to give them a basis. For the thought: “Through your actions you are destroying what you ought to build up,” is terrible and fearful, keeping down all opposing desires. But the thought: “You are building up this immortal Individual; you are making yourself into a member of this immortal Individual,” fires one to good deeds, to strong moral impulses. In this way morals are not only preached, but we are led to thoughts which themselves may be moral impulses, to thoughts which are able to found morals.

The more the truth is cultivated, the more rapidly will the anthroposophical world conception and feeling develop ethics such as these. And it has been my task to express this in these lectures. Naturally, many things have only been lightly touched upon, but you will develop further in your own minds many ideas which have been broached. In this way we shall be drawn more closely together all over the earth. When we meet together—as we have done on this occasion as anthroposophists of Northern and Central Europe—to consider these subjects, and when we allow the thoughts roused in us at gatherings such as this to echo and re-echo through us, we shall in this way best make it true that Anthroposophy is to provide the foundation—even at the present time—for real spiritual life. And when we have to part again we know that it is in our anthroposophical thoughts that we are most at one, and this knowledge is at the same time a moral stimulus. To know that we are united by the same ideals with people who, as a rule, are widely separated from one another in space, but with whom we may meet on special occasions, is a stronger moral stimulus than being always together.

That we should think in this way of our gathering, that we should thus understand our studies together, fills my soul, especially at the close of these lectures, as something by which I should like to express my farewell greeting to you, and concerning which I am convinced that, when it is understood in the true light, the anthroposophical life which is developing will also be spiritually well founded. With this thought and these feelings let us close our studies today.

The meeting today is an occasion that demands an introduction to our studies. It is the day known in the Theosophical Movement¹ as White Lotus Day, commemorating the yearly anniversary of the day on which Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, the founder of the present Theosophical Movement, left the physical plane. It will need very little effort to touch a chord in every soul present here today in order to evoke feelings of admiration, veneration and gratitude towards the individuality who came to the Earth in Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, and inspired men to turn their minds again to the ancient, holy Mysteries whence all the forces and impulses needed for man's spiritual development have proceeded. By devoting herself to what she clearly realised to be the task of the modern age, H. P. Blavatsky was able to present in a popular form what was accessible to her of the Mystery wisdom, a form which differed from that in which Mystery wisdom has, through secret channels, influenced men's activities and endeavours. The significance of the modern age lies in the fact, that what was formerly accessible only to the few, must be given in a form comprehensible to wider circles. And to have acted, as she did at first, in accordance with this trend in the modern age—this was the mission of Madame Blavatsky. Thus, she turned the minds of men to something which has, in truth, always been held sacred by those who had knowledge of it. To indicate that this is so we will begin with the recitation of a poem by a thinker known to the so-called educated public—or rather known only as a dry, abstract thinker and as an architect of systems of remote philosophical ideas. But that what this thinker seems to give only in the form of crystalline ideas were the product of intense warmth of feeling, and that ideas alone were not the only expressions of the dictates of his heart—this he shows us in a poem addressed to the holy Mysteries.

Hegel—one can call him ‘the thinker of Europe’—who has become so ‘well known’ to modern scholars that in the libraries one can still find many uncut volumes of his—has left us a poem written from the very fibres of his heart. I mean the poem ‘Eleusis’, dedicated to Hölderlin, which will now be recited by Fräulein von Sivers. With the recitation of this poem we will pay our tribute to the genii of H. P. Blavatsky.

ELEUSIS

To Hölderlin

Rest all about me and within me rest,
The ever-grinding cares of busied men
Asleep at last! To me they proffer
Repose and liberty. My thanks to thee,
Dear freedom-bringer, Night! Now the moon veils
The uncertain outline of the distant hills
With gauzes of white mist. The clear line of the lake
Looks kindly on me.
The long-drawn-out loud noises of the day
Seem years and years away.
Thy image steals, beloved Friend, upon me
With joys from byegone days, with longings
That soon give way to sweeter hopes
Of future meeting. Fancy paints
The ardent, the long-hungered-for embrace,
The questions asked and answered;
Intimate probings whether time has changed
His mien, his look, his feelings—then the joy
Of certainty, finding the pact maintained
Firmer and riper now than then,
That ancient pact no oath had bound us to
To live for freedom and for truth alone,
Never and never to make peace
With the laws that rule sensations and beliefs!
Now the mood that bore me lightly over hills and dales to thee
Compounds with dull reality.
Ah, but a tell-tale sigh betrays their discord,
And with it flies away my fancy's happy dream
I look up to the eternal vault of heaven,
To thee, thou gleaming star of night!
Oblivion of all wishes and all hopes
Comes streaming down from thine eternity.
Reflection dies away in contemplation.
All that I labelled ‘mine’ is here no more.
I yield myself up to the Infinite,
I am within it, am naught else, am All.
Thought, soon returning, feels estranged,
Trembles before the Limitless; amazed, it cannot grasp
Such depths of contemplation.
Imagination links eternity
To sense. Ye lofty Shades, Spirits sublime,
Welcome! Ye from whose brows Perfection shines,
Ye fright me not. I feel: This also is my home,
This radiance austere that wraps you round.
Ha! Might the portals of thy Temple part,
O Ceres, erstwhile in Eleusis throned!
Drunken with ardour, now I feel
The terror of thy coming,
Even as thy Revelations dawn on me—
Then would I tell the sense sublime
Of figured images, would hear and understand
The hymns sung at a banquet of the Gods. Alas, thy halls are silent, Holy One!
Fled is the choir of Gods into Olympus,
Bare their polluted altars;
Fled from the grave of unenlightened Man
The genius of spotless magic that was here.
The wisdom of thy priests is dumb, no echo from their hallowed rites
Hath been preserved to us. In vain it quests,
The scholar's prying itch, without the love
Of wisdom. So possessed, they still despise thee.
Somewhat they hope to gain by grubbing after words,
Words that thy giant Meanings once informed -
In vain! They only turn up dust and ashes
And never never find therein thy life renewed.
What if in that disanimated trash
They found some pleasure? The complacent ghouls
Mistook: no vestige, not a trace remained
Of sacraments and images once thine.
Sons of initiation felt that high
Doctrine ineffable too full, too deep
To be bestowed in shrivelled vocables.
The soul touched by Eternity,
Immersed beyond the bounds of space and time,
By thought now unconfined forgets itself,
Then back to consciousness once more
Awakes. Who seeks to speak of this at all
To others feels, had he the tongues of angels,
The poverty of words—is horrified
To find the Sacred dwarfed by thoughts as small
As words will hold. His lips are sealed
Fearful before the sin of utterance.
What the adept forbade himself, wise laws
Enjoined on weaker minds: not to divulge
Aught that they saw, heard, felt throughout that holy night,
Lest the devotion of some better spirit
Be mischiefed by its noise; their pack of words
Might foster wrath with the Divine itself,
Were that so trodden in the mire
As even to be memorised, become
A toy, a Sophist's article on sale
For any shopper's obol,
Clothes for a fluent phraseman, even a task
Imposed on careless schoolboys—till at last
'Twere left an empty thing, its living root
Only an echo heard through foreign tongues.
Oh never, Goddess, did thy sons with greed
Bandy thy Honour in the market place,
Rather were fain to guard it well
Within the arcane sanctum of the breast.
Therefore, not on their lips, but in their lives
Thou lived'st. In their deeds thou livest yet.
This night I too discerned thee, Holy One.
Often thy children by their life reveal thee.
I scent thee as the Soul within their deeds!
Thou art the exalted mind, the constant faith
Which, still, though ruin reign, betrays not the Divine.

I feel in full accord with the individuality of H. P. Blavatsky if, especially on this day, a few words of plain truth are spoken about here. It was characteristic of her that when she was fully herself, she desired, above everything else, to be true. Therefore we can best honour her when we direct our grateful thoughts to her and speak a few words of unvarnished truth.

In her being as a whole, in her individuality, H. P. Blavatsky revealed what inner strength, what a powerful impulse was inherent in the spiritual Movement we call the Theosophical Movement. To substantiate this, I need refer only to the first of H. P. Blavatsky's more important works, Isis Unveiled. This book must give to an ordinary reader the impression of a veritably chaotic, bewildering hotchpotch. A reader who is aware of the existence of an age-old wisdom, guarded through the ages in the Mysteries and protected from profane eyes, and who knows that this wisdom has not been acquired by any external human effort but has been harboured in secret societies, such a reader too finds in the book much that is chaotic—but he finds something else as well. He finds a work that, for the first time, presents to the secular world, courageously and daringly, certain secrets of the Mysteries. One who understands these things finds what an infinite amount has been corectly interpreted—an achievement that would have been possible only by Initiates. Nevertheless, the impression of chaos remains and can be explained by the following reasoned consideration. The outer personality of H. P. Blavatsky, to the extent to which she was incarnated in her physical body, with her intellect, also with her personal characteristics, her sympathies and antipathies, shows us by the very way in which Isis Unveiled is written, that she could not possibly have produced out of her own personality, out of her own soul, what she had to give to the world. She communicates things that she herself was quite incapable of understanding, and if one follows this line of thought further it proves clearly that higher, spiritual Individualities used the body and personality of H. P. Blavatsky in order to communicate what, in accordance with the need of the times, had to be inculcated into humanity. Indeed, the impossibility of attributing to her what she has given is in itself living proof of the fact that those Individualities who are connected with the Theosophical Movement, the ‘Masters of Wisdom and Harmony of Feelings,’ found an instrument in H. P. Blavatsky. Those who see clearly in such matters know that the knowledge did not originate in her but that it flowed through her from lofty spiritual Individualities. Naturally, today is not the appropriate time to speak about these matters in detail.

Now the question might arise—and it often does—why did those lofty Individualities choose Madame Blavatsky as their instrument? They did so because in spite of everything she was the most suitable. Why did the choice not fall upon one of the learned specialists dealing with the science of Comparative Religion? We need think only of the greatest, most highly respected authority on oriental religions, the renowned Max Müller, and his own pronouncements will tell us why he could not have proclaimed what had to be communicated through the human instrument of Madame Blavatsky. When the religious systems of the East and the expositions of them through Madame Blavatsky became known, Müller said: ‘If, somewhere in the street, a pig is seen and is grunting, that is not considered very remarkable, but if a human being walks along the street grunting like a pig, that is considered remarkable indeed.’—The implication is that one who is not prepared to distort the religious systems of the East in the style of Max Müller is like a man who grunts like a pig. In any case the comparison does not seem to me very logical, for why should one be astonished when a pig grunts; but if a human being grunts, that would be a feat of which by no means everyone is capable. The comparison is rather lame, but that it could be made at all shows clearly enough that Max Müller was not the right personality.

So, the choice had to fall upon a person of no particular intellectual eminence—a situation which naturally had many disadvantages. Thus, Madame Blavatsky brought all the sympathy and antipathy of her extremely passionate nature into the great message. She had a strong antipathy to the world. conception which springs from the Old and the New Testaments, a strong antipathy to Judaism and Christianity. But to apprehend the ancient wisdom of humanity in its pure, primal form one condition is indispensable, namely to face the revelations from the higher worlds in a state of perfect mental and emotional balance. Antipathy and sympathy form a kind of fog before the inner eye. Thus, it came about that Madame Blavatsky's perception became more and more enveloped in a kind of fog, and her mind remained clear only for so-called purely Aryan traditions. Here she looked into spiritual depths with great clarity but became one-sided as a result and so it came about that in her second great work The Secret Doctrine, the early Aryan religion was presented in a biased form. To look for anything about the mystery of Sinai or of Golgotha in Blavatsky's writings would, because of this antipathy, be useless. Hence, she was led to Powers who with great forcefulness and clarity, could impart all non-Christian wisdom. This is revealed in the wonderful ‘Stanzas of Dzyan’ which Madame Blavatsky has quoted in The Secret Doctrine. But this diverted her from the path of Initiation in the physical world that was indicated, although only in a fragmentary way, in Isis Unveiled. But bound as she was by a one-sided Initiation, Madame Blavatsky could present in The Secret Doctrine only the aspect of spiritual knowledge that was inspired by the non-Christian world-conception. Thus, The Secret Doctrine is a book containing the greatest revelations of this order which humanity was able to receive at the time. It contains themes which can also be found in other writings, namely the so-called letters of the ‘Masters of Wisdom and Harmony of Feelings.’² There again some of the greatest wisdom given to mankind is to be found. But there are other sections of The Secret Doctrine, for instance those dealing in great detail with the Quantum theory. Anyone who, out of true understanding, includes the stanzas of Dzyan and the Letters of the Masters among the highest revelations vouchsafed to humanity, gains the impression from the extensive sections dealing with the Quantum theory that they were the work of a person suffering from a mania for writing down whatever came into his head and being incapable of laying down his pen. Then there are other sections where a deeply rooted passionate nature discourses on scientific topics without reliable knowledge of the subject. Thus, The Secret Doctrine is a weird mixture of themes, some of which should be eliminated, while others contain the highest wisdom. This becomes comprehensible when we consider what was said by one of H. P. Blavatsky's friends who had deep insight into her character. He said: Madame Blavatsky was really a threefold phenomenon. Firstly, she was a dumpy, plain woman with an illogical mind and a passionate nature, always losing her temper; to be sure, she was good-natured, affectionate and compassionate but she was certainly not what one calls a gifted woman. Secondly, when the great truths became articulate through her, she was the pupil of the great Masters: then her facial expression and her gestures changed, she became a different person and the spiritual worlds spoke through her. Finally, there was a third, a regal figure, awe-inspiring, supreme, in those rare moments when the Masters themselves spoke through her.

Lovers of truth will always carefully distinguish in Madame Blavatsky's works what is essential and what is not. To her who is in our thoughts today, no greater service could be rendered than to look at her in the light of truth; no greater service could be done to her than to lead the Theosophical Movement in the light of truth.

Naturally, the Theosophical Movement had at first to follow an individual course; but it has become a matter of great importance that another stream should flow into the Movement. It has become necessary to add to the Theosophical Movement the stream which since the thirteenth century has been flowing from occult sources—sources to which Madame Blavatsky had no access.

So today we are doing full justice to the aims of the Theosophical Movement not only by recognising the religious creeds and world-conceptions of the East, but by adding to them those that came to expression in the revelations of Sinai and in the Mystery of Golgotha. And perhaps today it may be permissible to ask whether the scope of the Theosophical Movement as a whole calls for the addition of what in the nature of things could not be given at the beginning, or whether specialisation of an extremely questionable kind should by means of doctrine or dogma be given out as truth? I for my part say unreservedly that I know how great a wrong we should be doing to the spirit of H. P. Blavatsky now in the spiritual world, if the latter course were taken. I know that it is not opposing but acting in harmony with that spirit if we do what it wants today, namely, to add to the Theosophical Movement what that spirit was unable to give while in the earthly body. And I know that not only am I not speaking against Madame Blavatsky but in complete harmony with her when I say to you: the one thing I wish for is that our Western conception of the world shall come to its own in this Theosophical Movement. In recent years knowledge and truths of many different kinds have become available. Now let us assume that in fifty years' time everything would have to be corrected, that of our spiritual edifice, as we picture it today, not one stone is left upon another, that in fifty years' time occult investigation would have to rectify everything fundamentally, then my comment would have to be this: May be! But one thing will remain of our aims here, and that it should remain is the object of the main endeavour of our Western Theosophical Movement. It is that it may truly be said that there was once a Theosophical Movement whose one ideal in the field of occultism was to establish only that which springs from the purest, utterly unsullied sense of truth. Our aim is that one day this may be said of us. Things still in doubt are better left unsaid than to deviate in any way from a course for which a pure sense of truth can take full responsibility before all the spiritual Powers.

From this, however, something else follows. Someone might feel called upon to ask: Why do you reject this or that? Our answer is: although others may have a different idea of tolerance, our conception of it is that we feel obliged to protect mankind from what could not hold its own before the forum of pure truth. Although our work may be misrepresented, we shall stand firm and try to fulfil our task by rejecting whatever must be rejected if we are to serve our purpose. Therefore, when anything conflicts with our sense of truth, we reject it, but only then. We obey no other reasons or sentiments. Nor will we indulge in trite phrases about equal rights of opinion, brotherhood, and so on, knowing that the love of men for one another can bear fruit only if it is sincere and true. It is fitting, particularly on this day of commemoration, that this will to be inspired by the purest sense of truth should be expressed.

Since new knowledge has been gained in the way I have indicated, much that can help to explain mysteries of the universe has come to light. Nothing is ever said to discriminate between the great cultures or religious movements of the human race. Has it not been said many times when considering the first post-Atlantean epoch with the spiritual culture inspired by the holy Rishis, that there we have something that is spiritually more sublime than anything that has followed it. Neither should we ever think of belittling Buddhism; on the contrary, we emphasise its merits, knowing that it has given humanity benefits such as Christianity will be able to achieve only in the future. What is of immense importance, however, is that again and again we point to the difference that distinguishes Oriental culture from Western culture.

Oriental culture speaks only of individualities who in the course of evolution have passed through several incarnations. For instance, it speaks of the Bodhisattvas and describes them as individualities who pass through their human development more quickly than is usual. Thus, Oriental culture is concerned only with what, as individuality, passes from incarnation to incarnation until in a certain incarnation such a Bodhisattva becomes a Buddha. When a Bodhisattva has become a Buddha—which he can do only on Earth—he has advanced so far that he need not descend again into a body of flesh. And so, the further back we go, the more do we find interest focused primarily on the individuality and less on the single incarnation. What is really in mind when speaking of the Buddha is not so much the historical Buddha, the Suddhodana Prince, but rather a degree of attainment, a rank which other Bodhisattvas also attain in the course of their successive lives.

In the West, however, it is different. We have lived through an epoch of culture which has nothing to say about the individuality who passes from life to life, but values only the single personality. We speak of Socrates, Plato, Caesar, Goethe, Spinoza, Fichte, Raphael, Michelangelo, and think of them only in the one incarnation. We do not speak of the individuality who goes from incarnation to incarnation, but we speak of the personality. We speak of one Socrates, one Plato, one Goethe and so on, we speak only of a single life in which the individuality has found expression. Western culture was destined to stress the importance of the single personality, to bring it to vigorous, characteristic maturity, and to disregard the individuality passing from life to life. But the time has come when we must again learn gradually to recognise how the eternal individuality passes through the several single personalities. Now we find that mankind is striving to apprehend what it is that lives on from personality to personality. That will fire the imagination and illumine the souls of men with a new light of understanding. This can be illustrated by a particular example.

We turn our eyes to a figure such as the Prophet Elijah. First of all, we think of the Prophet himself. But the essential significance of this Prophet is the fact that in a certain way he prepared for the Mystery of Golgotha; He indicated that the Jahve impulse is something that can be understood and grasped only in the ego. He was not able to reveal the full significance of the human ‘I’ for as regards ego-consciousness he represents a half-way stage between the Moses-idea of Jehovah and the Christian Christ-idea. Thus, the prophet Elijah is revealed to us as a mighty herald, an advance messenger of the Christ-Impulse, of what came to pass through the Mystery of Golgotha. We see him as a great and mighty figure.

Now let us turn to another. The West is accustomed to think of him as a single personality. I refer to John the Baptist. The West sees him confined within his personality. But we ourselves learn to know him as the herald of Christ Himself; we follow his life as the forerunner of Christ, as the man who first uttered the words: ‘Change the disposition of your souls for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ He indicated the impulse that was to come through Golgotha; that divinity can be found within the human ego, that the Christ-Ego is to enter more and more deeply into the human ego, and that this impulse is near at hand. Now, through Spiritual Science, we learn the truth that is also indicated in the Bible, namely that the same Individuality who had lived in the prophet Elijah, lived in John the Baptist. He who as Elijah heralded the Christ was reincarnated as John the Baptist, again heralding the Christ in the way appropriate for his time. For us these two figures are now united. Eastern culture proceeds in a different way, concentrating on individualities and neglecting the single personality.

Passing on now to the Middle Ages we find that extraordinary figure who was born—as if to give an outward indication of his special connection with the spiritual world—on Good Friday in the year 1483 and died in early manhood at the age of thirty-seven, a phenomenal influence through his gifts to humanity. I am speaking of Raphael. He was born on a Good Friday as if to show that he is connected with the event commemorated on Good Friday. What, in the light of Spiritual Science, can the West experience through the figure of Raphael? If we study this figure in the light of Spiritual Science, we shall discover that Raphael accomplished more for the spreading of Christianity, for the penetration of an interconfessional Christianity into the hearts of men than all the theological interpreters, than all the cardinals and popes of his time. Before the eyes of Raphael's soul there may have risen a picture of the scene described in the Acts of the Apostles.³ One stands up before the Athenians and says: Ye men of Athens worship the gods ignorantly, with external signs. But there is that God whom one can learn to know, the God who lives and weaves in everything that has life. That God is the Christ who suffered death and has arisen, thereby giving man the impulse leading to resurrection. Some did not listen, others thought it strange. In Raphael's soul this event came to expression in the painting now hanging in the Vatican, incorrectly named ‘The School of Athens.’ In reality it depicts the figure of Paul teaching the Athenians the fundamental principles of Christianity. In this picture Raphael has given something that seems like a heralding of the Christianity that transcends denominations. The profound meaning of this picture has not yet dawned upon men.

Of the other pictures of Raphael, it must be said that whereas nothing has remained of what cardinals and popes did for humanly at that time, Raphael's work is only today becoming a vital force. How little Raphael was understood in recent times is shown by the fact that Goethe, when visiting Dresden, did not admire the Sistine Madonna, having heard from the official at the Museum—and he was only expressing the general opinion of the day—that there was something commonplace about the facial expression of the Child Jesus, that the two Angels at the bottom of the picture could only have been added by some dauber, that the Madonna herself could not be the work of Raphael, but must have been painted over. If we look through the whole of eighteenth-century literature, we shall find hardly anything about Raphael; even Voltaire does not mention him.

And today? Today, whether Protestants or Catholics or anything else, people are inwardly moved by Raphael's pictures. It can be seen how in the Sistine Madonna a great cosmic mystery reveals itself to human hearts and will carry its impulse through them into the future, when mankind will have been led to an interconfessional, broad and all-embracing Christianity, as we already have it in Spiritual Science. And that impulse will continue to work as a result of the fact that a wonderful mystery has inspired human souls through the Sistine Madonna. I have often said that when someone looks into a child's eyes, he can know that what is gazing out of those eyes is something that has not come into existence through birth, something that reveals the depths of the human soul. One who studies the children in Raphael's Madonna pictures can see that divinity itself, an occult and superhuman reality, looks out of those eyes—something that is still present in the child in the earliest period after birth. This can be perceived in all Raphael's paintings of children, with one exception. The portrayal of one child is different—it is that of the Jesus Child in the Sistine Madonna painting. Whoever looks into the eyes of that Child knows that they already reveal more than can be embodied in a human being. Raphael has made this distinction to show that in this one Child, the Child of the Sistine Madonna, there lives something that is already experiencing, in advance, a reality of pure spirit, a Christ-like reality.

Thus, Raphael is a harbinger of the spiritual Christ who is revealed again by Spiritual Science. Through Spiritual Science too we learn that in Raphael there lived the same individuality who had lived in Elijah and in John the Baptist. And we can understand that the world in which he lived as John the Baptist reappears in Raphael when we observe how his relation to the historic Christ-Event is indicated by the fact that he was born on a Good Friday.

Here, then, we have the third harbinger after Elijah and John the Baptist. Now we understand many of the questions inevitably raised by those possessed of wider powers of perception. John the Baptist dies the death of a martyr before the event of Golgotha is drawing near. He lives through the dawn leading to the Mystery of Golgotha, through the time of prophecies and predictions, through the days of rejoicing, but not through the period of lamentation and sorrow. When this same mood becomes manifest again in the personality of Raphael, do we not find it comprehensible that with such deep devotion he paints pictures of the Madonna and of children, and is it not obvious why he does not paint the betrayal by Judas, the bearing of the Cross, Golgotha, the Mount of Olives? Any existing pictures of these subjects must have been commissioned, for the essential being of Raphael finds no expression in them. Why are such pictures alien to Raphael? Because as John the Baptist he did not live to experience the Mystery of Golgotha.

And then, as we think of the figure of Raphael, how he has lived through the centuries and is still living today, and then think of what remains of his work and what has already been destroyed, and when we reflect that all material things must eventually perish, then we know well that the living essence of these pictures will have been taken into the souls of men before the pictures themselves have perished. For centuries yet, reproductions will of course be available; but that which alone can give a true idea of Raphael's personality, of what he was, what his own hands accomplished—that will crumble into dust, his works will have perished. And nothing on our Earth can preserve them.

But through Spiritual Science it is clear to us that the individuality in Raphael bears with it what has been achieved in one incarnation, into the next. And when we learn that this same individuality appears again in the poet Novalis, and we take his first proclamation which, like a radiant sunrise, reveals a new and living concept of Christ, then we say to ourselves that long before Raphael's works disappear from the outer world, the individuality in that personality has come again, in order to bequeath his gifts in a new form to mankind. How good it is that for a time Western culture has paid attention only to the actual personality, that we have learnt to love a personality simply from the fruits of a single life! And how immeasurably enriched must our souls feel when we learn that the eternal part of man passes from personality to personality. And however different these personalities may seem to us to be, the concrete facts which spiritual knowledge can tell us about reincarnation and karma will somehow bring us understanding. Humanity will not profit as greatly from general concepts and doctrines, as from details that can throw light upon individual cases. Then much that is attainable only through intuitive vision and occult investigation can be brought to bear on these matters and at last we are able to turn our gaze to the Mystery of Golgotha itself and remind ourselves that in the thirtieth year of the life of Jesus of Nazareth the Christ Being entered into him and lived through the Mystery of Golgotha

When it is maintained nowadays that the Christ Being cannot incarnate in a physical body, it must be said that that has really never been asserted. For the physical body into which the spiritual Christ Being entered at that time was the sheath of Jesus of Nazareth. In that case it was not as it is with other individualities who build up their body themselves, but into the body which had been prepared by Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ Being descended only at a later point of time. True, there was then union, but we cannot really speak of a physical incarnation of Christ. These matters are self-evident to one who has knowledge.

But now we know that through this Christ-Impulse, as it streams into the different civilisations of mankind, something has come to the Earth, has flowed into humanity, for the benefit of all mankind. Thus, that which went through death is like a seed of corn which multiplies, can make its way into individual human souls and spring to life. As we know that the body of Jesus of Nazareth had received the Christ Being who, by passing through death, united Himself with the Earth, let us now ask: what will be the outcome of this when the Earth has reached its goal and comes to its end? Christ who united Himself with the Earth, will be the one reality on Earth when it has reached its goal. Christ will be the Spirit of the Earth. This in fact He is already, only then the souls of men will be permeated by Him, and men will form a totality together with Him.

And now another question arises. We have learnt that man in his form on Earth is to be regarded as ‘Maya.’ The form disintegrates after death; what appears outwardly as the human body is an illusion.

The external form of the physical body will no more remain than the physical bodies of the plants, animals and minerals will remain. Physical bodies will become cosmic dust. What is now the visible physical Earth will have completely vanished, will exist no longer. And what of the etheric bodies? They have meaning and purpose only as long as they have to renew the life of physical bodies, and they too will cease to exist. When the Earth has reached its goal, what will remain of all that man beholds? Nothing at all will be there, nothing of himself, nothing of the beings of the other kingdoms of nature. When the Spiritual is set free nothing will be left of matter but formless dust, for the Spirit alone is real. But something will then have become a reality, something that in times gone by had not been united with The Earth at all and with which human souls will now unite—namely, the Christ Spirit. The Christ Spirit will be the one and only reality that can remain of the Earth.

But how does this Christ Spirit acquire His spiritual sheaths? In the Mystery of Golgotha, He descended into the sphere of Earth as an Impulse, as the soul of the Earth.

It does not happen in the same way as in human beings, but the Christ Being too must form for Himself something that can be called His sheaths. Christ will eventually have a kind of spiritualised physical body, a kind of etheric body and a kind of astral body. Of what will these bodies consist?

These are questions which for the time being can only be hinted at. When the Christ Being descended to the Earth He had to provide Himself with something similar to the sheaths of a human being: a physical body, an etheric body and an astral body. Gradually, in the course of the epochs, something that corresponds to an astral, an etheric and a physical body formed around the originally purely spiritual Christ Impulse which descended at the Baptism by John. All these sheaths are formed from forces which have to be developed by humanity on Earth. What kind of forces are they?

The forces of external science cannot produce a body for Christ because they are concerned only with things that will have disappeared in the future, that will no longer exist. But there is something that precedes knowledge and is infinitely more valuable for the soul than knowledge itself. It is what the Greek philosophers regarded as the beginning of all philosophy: wonder or astonishment. Once we have the knowledge, the experience which is of value to the soul has really already passed. People in whom the great revelations and truths of the spiritual world can evoke wonder, nourish this feeling of wonder, and in the course of time this creates a force which has a power of attraction for the Christ Impulse, which attracts the Christ Spirit: the Christ Impulse unites with the individual human soul when the soul can feel wonder for the mysteries of the world. Christ draws His astral body in earthly evolution from all those feelings which have lived in single human souls as wonder.

The second quality that must be developed by human souls to attract the Christ Impulse is a power of compassion. Whenever the soul is moved to share in the suffering or joy of others, this is a force which attracts the Christ Impulse; Christ unites Himself with the human soul through compassion and love. Compassion and love are the forces from which Christ forms His etheric body until the end of earthly evolution. With regard to compassion and love one could, to put it crudely, speak of a programme which Spiritual Science must carry out in the future. In this connection, materialism has evolved a pernicious science, such as has never previously existed on Earth. The very worst offence committed today is to correlate love and sexuality. This is the worst possible expression of materialism, the most devilish symptom of our time. Sexuality and love have nothing whatever to do with each other. Sexuality is something quite different from and has no connection at all with pure, original love. Science has brought things to a shameful point by means of an extensive literature devoted to connecting these two things which are simply not connected.

A third force which flows into the human soul as if from a higher world, to which man submits, to which he attributes a higher significance than that of his own individual moral instincts, is conscience.

With man's conscience Christ is most intimately united. From the impulses which spring from the conscience of individual human souls Christ draws his physical body.

The reality of an utterance in the Bible becomes very clear when we know that the etheric body of Christ is formed from men's feelings of compassion and love: ‘What ye have done unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me’—for to the end of the Earth's evolution Christ forms His etheric body out of men's compassion and love. As He forms His astral body out of wonder and astonishment, His physical body out of conscience, so does He form His etheric body out of men's feelings of compassion and love.

Why do we speak of these things at the present time? Because one day a great problem will have to be solved for humanity: namely, how to present the figure of Christ in its relation to the various domains of life. This will be possible only if account is taken of many things that Spiritual Science has to say. When after long contemplation of the Christ-idea as conceived by Spiritual Science, an attempt is made to present the figure of Christ, the countenance will be found to contain something that can, and indeed will, baffle all the arts. The countenance will give expression to the victory of the forces that are contained only in the face over all other forces in the human form. When men are able to fashion eyes that radiate only compassion, a mouth not adapted for eating but only for uttering those words of truth which are the words of conscience, when a brow can be shaped whose beauty lies in the moulding of the arch spanning the position of what we call the lotus-flower between the eyes ... when it becomes possible to accomplish all this, it will be understood why the Prophet says: ‘He hath no form nor comeliness.’ (Isaiah, 53, 2.) What is meant is that it is not beauty that counts, but the power that will gain the victory over decay: the figure of Christ in which all is compassion, all love, all devotion to conscience.

And so Spiritual Science passes over as a seed into human feeling, human perception. The teachings that spiritual investigation can impart do not remain mere teachings; they are transformed into life itself in the human soul. And the fruits of Spiritual Science will gradually mature into conditions of life which will appear like an external embodiment of spiritual knowledge itself, of the soul of future humanity.

With thoughts such as these I would like to have spoken to you in the way that one likes to speak to those who are striving for spiritual knowledge, not in dry words, but in words conveying ideas and stimulating feelings which can live and be effective in the outer world. When such feelings are alive in men's hearts, they will become a source of warmth streaming into all mankind. And those who believe this will also believe in the effectiveness of their own good feelings; they will also believe that this can apply to every soul—even though karma may not enable it to be outwardly manifest. Invisible effects can thus be engendered whereby all that ought to come into the world through Spiritual Science can actually be brought there.

That is the feeling I should like to have awakened in you on the occasion of my present visit to Cologne.

• 1. Most readers of the Quarterly will be aware that shortly after this lecture was given, the Charter of the German Section of the Theosophical Society was cancelled by Mrs. Besant and the Anthroposophical Society was then founded as a separate body. The separation had become inevitable after the announcement in the Theosophical Society that the Christ would shortly incarnate in the physical body of a Hindu boy, a protégé of Mrs. Besant and Mr. Leadbeater. Such a development could not be countenanced by the members of the German Section who ever since the beginning of the century had been receiving the teachings of Western esotericism given by Dr. Steiner. In spite of this difference, however, the German Section had been an integral part of the Theosophical Society although always working quite independently and as Dr. Steiner constantly emphasises (e.g. in the lecture-course entitled Occult History, p. 55) in harmony with much that was originally transmitted through that ‘extraordinarily useful instrument, H. P. Blavatsky.’
• 2. The ‘Masters of Wisdom and Harmony of Feelings’ are individuals who have developed to stages of Initiation-knowledge beyond those attained by average human beings. The ‘letters’ to which Dr. Steiner is here referring are ‘communications’ in which much of the ancient Eastern wisdom, and also certain Rosicrucian wisdom, presented in Madame Blavatsky's works Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine was contained. The whole subject of these ‘communications’ is full of pitfalls and study of the many Theosophical publications dealing with the matter would be an arduous task. The best known publication on the subject is probably the collection entitled The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett, compiled and with an introduction by A. T. Barker. (T. Fisher Unwin, London, 1923). But the contents of the letters—it must be remembered that they dated from the eighties of last century—vary considerably in value and it is questionable whether all of them emanated from genuine Initiates with no selfish or nationalistic aims and desiring only the good of humanity as a whole. Anthroposophist's will find the subject dealt with exhaustively in the lecture-course given by Dr. Steiner in 1915, entitled The Occult Movement in the Nineteenth Century. Publications dealing specifically with H. P. Blavatsky and the earliest occult ‘communications’ received and transmitted by her, are as follows: Letters from the Masters of Wisdom, a series published at Adyar, Madras; The Early Teachings of the Masters, edited by C. Jinarajadasa and published at Adyar; Reminiscences of H. P. Blavatsky, by Countess Constance Wachtmeister; vol. 5 of the Collected Writings of H. P. Blavatsky, edited by Boris de Zirkoff, published in 1950.
• 3. See, Acts of the Apostles, ch. XVII, verses 22-31.

In the last lecture we found that moral impulses are fundamental in human nature. From the facts adduced, we tried to prove that a foundation of morality and goodness lies at the bottom of the human soul, and that really it has only been in the course of evolution, in man's passage from incarnation to incarnation, that he has diverged from the original instinctive good foundation and that thereby what is evil, wrong and unmoral has come into humanity. But if this is so, we must really wonder that evil is possible, or that it ever originated, and the question as to how evil became possible in the course of evolution requires an answer. We can only obtain a satisfactory reply by examining the elementary moral instruction given to man in ancient times.

The pupils of the Mysteries whose highest ideal was gradually to penetrate to full spiritual knowledge and truths were always obliged to work from a moral foundation. In those places where they worked in the right way according to the Mysteries, the peculiarity of man's moral-nature was shown in a special way to the pupils. Briefly, we may say: The pupils of the Mysteries were shown that freewill can only be developed if a person is in a position to go wrong in one of two directions; further, that life can only run its course truly and favourably when these two lines of opposition are considered as being like the two sides of a balance, of which first one side and then the other goes up and down. True balance only exists when the crossbeam is horizontal. They were shown that it is impossible to express man's right procedure by saying: this is right and that is wrong. It is only possible to gain the true idea when the human being, standing in the centre of the balance, can be swayed each moment of his life, now to one side, now to the other, but he himself holds the correct mean between the two.

Let us take the virtues of which we have spoken: first—valour, bravery. In this respect human nature may diverge on one side to foolhardiness—that is, unbridled activity in the world and the straining of the forces at one's disposal to the utmost limit. Foolhardiness is one side; the opposite is cowardice. A person may turn the scale in either of these directions. In the Mysteries the pupils were shown that when a man degenerates into foolhardiness he loses himself and lays aside his own individuality and is crushed by the wheels of life. Life tears him in pieces if he errs in this direction, but if, on the other hand, he errs on the side of cowardice, he hardens himself and tears himself away from his connection with beings and objects. He then becomes a being shut up within himself, who, as he cannot bring his deeds into harmony with the whole, loses his connection with things. This was shown to the pupils in respect to all that a man may do. He may degenerate in such a way that he is torn in pieces, and losing his own individuality is crushed by the objective world; on the other hand, he may degenerate not merely in courage, but also in every other respect in such a way that he hardens within himself. Thus at the head of the moral code in all the Mysteries there were written the significant words: “Thou must find the mean,” so that through thy deeds thou must not lose thyself in the world, and that the world also does not lose thee.

Those are the two possible extremes into which man may fall. Either he may be lost to the world, the world lays hold on him, and crushes him, as is the case in foolhardiness; or the world may be lost to him, because he hardens himself in his egoism, as is the case in cowardice. In the Mysteries, the pupils were told that goodness cannot merely be striven for as goodness obtained once for all; rather does goodness come only through man being continually able to strike out in two directions like a pendulum and by his own inner power able to find the balance, the mean between the two.

You have in this all that will enable you to understand the freedom of the will and the significance of reason and wisdom in human action. If it were fitting for man to observe eternal moral principles he need only acquire these moral principles and then he could go through life on a definite line of march, as it were, but life is never like this. Freedom in life consists rather in man's being always able to err in one direction or another. But in this way the possibility of evil arises. For what is evil? It is that which originates when the human being is either lost to the world, or the world is lost to him. Goodness consists in avoiding both these extremes.. In the course of evolution evil became not only a possibility but an actuality; for as man journeyed from incarnation to incarnation, by his turning now to one side and now to the other, he could not always find the balance at once, and it was necessary for the compensation to be karmically made at a future time. What man cannot attain in one life, because he does not always find the mean at once, he will attain gradually in the course of evolution in as much as man diverts his course to one side, and is then obliged, perhaps in the next life, to strike out again in the opposite direction, and thus bring about the balance.

What I have just told you was a golden rule in the ancient Mysteries. We often find among the ancient philosophers echoes of the principles taught in these Mysteries. Aristotle makes a statement, when, speaking of virtue, which we cannot understand unless we know that what has just been said was an old principle in the Mysteries which had been received by Aristotle as tradition and embodied in his philosophy. He says: Virtue is a human capacity or skill guided by reason and insight, which, as regards man, holds the balance between the too much and the too-little. Aristotle here gives a definition of virtue, such as no subsequent philosophy has attained. But as Aristotle had little tradition from the Mysteries, it was possible for him to give the precise truth.

That is, then, the mean, which must be found and followed if a man is really to be virtuous, if moral power is to pulsate through the world. We can now answer the question as to why morals should exist at all. For what happens when there is no morality, when evil is done, and when the too-much or the too-little takes place, when man is lost to the world by being crushed, or when the world loses him? In each of these cases something is always destroyed. Every evil or unmoral act is a process of destruction, and the moment man sees that when he has done wrong he cannot do otherwise than destroy something, take something from the world, in that moment a mighty influence for good has awakened within him. It is especially the task of Spiritual Science—which is really only just beginning its work in the world—to show that all evil brings about a destructive process, that it takes away from the world something which is necessary. When in accordance with our anthroposophical standpoint, we hold this principle, then what we know about the nature of man leads us to a particular interpretation of good and evil.

We know that the sentient-soul was chiefly developed in the old Chaldean or Egyptian epoch the third post-Atlantean age. The people of the present day have but little notion what this epoch of development was like at that time, for in external history one can reach little further back than to the Egyptian age. We know that the intellectual, or mind-soul, developed in the fourth or Graeco-Latin age, and that now in our age we are developing the consciousness-or spiritual-soul. The spirit-self will only come into prominence in the sixth age of post-Atlantean development.

Let us now ask: How can the sentient-soul turn to one side or the other, away from what is right? The sentient-soul is that quality in man which enables him to perceive the objective world, to take it into himself, to take part in it, not to pass through the world ignorant of all the diversified objects it contains, but to go through the world in such a way that he forms a relationship with them. All this is brought about by the sentient-soul. We find one side to which man can deviate with the sentient-soul when we enquire: What makes it possible for man to enter into relationship with the objective world? It is what may be called interest in the different things, and by this word “interest” something is expressed which in a moral sense is extremely important. It is much more important that one should bear in mind the moral significance of interest, than that one should devote oneself to thousands of beautiful moral axioms which may be only paltry and hypocritical. Let it be clearly understood, that our moral impulses are in fact never better guided than when we take a proper interest in objects and beings. In our last lecture we spoke in a deeper sense of love as an impulse and in such a way that we cannot now be misunderstood if we say that the usual, oft-repeated declamation, “love, love, and again love” cannot replace the moral impulse contained in what may be described by the word interest.

Let us suppose that we have a child before us. What is the condition primary to our devotion to this child? What is the first condition to our educating the child? It is that we take an interest in it. There is something unhealthy or abnormal in the human soul if a person withdraws himself from something in which he takes an interest. It will more and more be recognised that the impulse of interest is a quite specially golden impulse in the moral sense the further we advance to the actual foundations of morality and do not stop at the mere preaching of morals. Our inner powers are also called forth as regards mankind when we extend our interests, when we are able to transpose ourselves with understanding into beings and objects.

Even sympathy is awakened in the right manner if we take an interest in a being; and if, as anthroposophists, we set ourselves the task of extending our interests more and more and of widening our mental horizon, this will promote the universal brotherhood of mankind. Progress is not gained by the mere preaching of universal love, but by the extension of our interests further and further, so that we come to interest ourselves increasingly in souls with widely different characters, racial and national peculiarities, with widely different temperaments, and holding widely differing religious and philosophical views, and approach them with understanding. Right interest, right understanding, calls forth from the soul the right moral action.

Here also we must hold the balance between two extremes. One extreme is apathy which passes everything by and occasions immense moral mischief in the world. An apathetic person only lives in himself; obstinately, insisting on his own principles, and saying: This is my standpoint. In a moral sense this insistence upon a standpoint is always bad. The essential thing is for us to have an open mind for all that surrounds us. Apathy separates us from the world, while interest unites us with it. The world loses us through our apathy: in this direction we become unmoral. Thus we see that apathy and lack of interest in the world are morally evil in the highest degree.

Anthroposophy is something which makes the mind ever more active, helps us to think with greater readiness of what is spiritual and to take it into ourselves. Just as it is true that warmth comes from the fire when we light a stove so it is true that interest in humanity and the world comes when we study spiritual science. Wisdom is the fuel for interest and we may say, although this may perhaps not be evident without further explanation, that Anthroposophy arouses this interest in us when we study those more remote subjects, the teachings concerning the evolutionary stages through Saturn, Sun and Moon, and the meaning of Karma and so on. It really comes about that interest is produced as the result of anthroposophical knowledge while from materialistic knowledge comes something which in a radical manner must be described as apathy and which, if it alone were to hold sway in the world, would, of necessity, do untold harm.

See how many people go through the world and meet this or that person, but really do not get to know him, for they are quite shut up in themselves. How often do we find that two people have been friends for a long time and then suddenly there comes a rupture. This is because the friendship had a materialistic foundation and only after the lapse of time did they discover that they were mutually unsympathetic. At the present time very few people have the “hearing” ear for that which speaks from man to man; but Anthroposophy should bring about an expansion of our perceptions, so that we shall gain a “seeing” eye and an open mind for all that is human around us and so we shall not go through the world. apathetically, but with true interest.

We also avoid the other extreme by distinguishing between true and false interests, and thus observe the happy mean. Immediately to throw oneself, as it were, into the arms of each person we meet is to lose oneself passionately in the person; that is not true interest. If we do this, we lose ourselves to the world. Through apathy the world loses us; through uncontrolled passion we lose ourselves to the world. But through healthy, devoted interest we stand morally firm in the centre, in the state of balance.

In the third post-Atlantean age of civilisation, that is, in the Chaldaic-Egyptian age, there still existed in a large part of humanity on earth a certain power to hold the balance between apathy and the passionate intoxicating devotion to the world; and it is this, which in ancient times, and also by Plato and Aristotle, was called wisdom. But people looked upon this wisdom as the gift of superhuman beings, for up to that time the ancient impulses of wisdom were active. Therefore, from this point of view, especially relating to moral impulses, we may call the third post-Atlantean age, the age of instinctive wisdom. You will perceive the truth of what was said last year, though with a different intention, in the Copenhagen lectures on The Spiritual Guidance of Man and Mankind. In those lectures we showed how, in the third post-Atlantean age, mankind still stood nearer to the divine spiritual powers. And that which drew mankind closer to the divine spiritual powers, was instinctive wisdom.

Thus, it was a gift of the gods to find at that time the happy mean in action, between apathy and sensuous passionate devotion. This balance, this equilibrium was at that time still maintained through external institutions. The complete intermingling of humanity which came about in the fourth age of post-Atlantean development through the migrations of various peoples, did not yet exist. Mankind was still divided into smaller peoples and tribes. Their interests were wisely regulated by nature, and were so far active that the right moral impulses could penetrate; and on the other hand, through the existence of blood kinsmanship in the tribe, an obstacle was placed in the way of passion. Even to-day one cannot fail to observe that it is easiest to show interest within blood-relationship and common descent, but in this there is not what is called sensuous passion. As people were gathered together in relatively small tracts of country in the Egypto-Chaldaic age, the wise and happy mean was easily found.

But the idea of the progressive development of humanity is that that, which originally was instinctive, which was only spiritual, shall gradually disappear and that man shall become independent of the divine spiritual powers. Hence we see that even in the fourth post-Atlantean age, the Graeco-Latin age, not only the philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, but also public opinion in Greece, considered wisdom as something which must be gained as something which is no longer the gift of the gods, but after which man must strive. According to Plato, the first virtue is wisdom, and according to him, he who does not strive after wisdom is unmoral.

We are now in the fifth post-Atlantean age. We are still far from the time when the wisdom instinctively implanted in humanity as a divine impulse, will be raised into consciousness. Hence in our age people are specially liable to err in both the directions we have mentioned, and it is therefore particularly necessary that the great dangers to be found at this point should be counteracted by a spiritual conception of the World, so that what man once possessed as instinctive wisdom may now become conscious wisdom. The Anthroposophical Movement is to contribute to this end.

The gods once gave wisdom to the unconscious human soul, so that it possessed this wisdom instinctively, whereas now we have first to learn the truths about the cosmos and about human evolution. The ancient customs were also fashioned after the thoughts of the gods.

We have the right view of Anthroposophy when we look upon it as the investigations of the thoughts of the gods. In former times these flowed instinctively into man, but now we have to investigate them, to make the knowledge of them our own. In this sense Anthroposophy must be sacred to us; we must be able to consider reverently that the ideas imparted to us are really something divine, and something which we human beings are allowed to think and reflect upon as the divine thoughts according to which the world has been ordered. When Anthroposophy stands in this aspect to us, we can then consider the knowledge it imparts in such a way that we understand that it has been given us so as to enable us to fulfil our mission. Mighty truths are made known to us, when we study what has been imparted concerning the evolutions of Saturn, Sun and Moon, concerning reincarnation, and the development of the various races, etc. But we only assume the right attitude towards it when we say: The thoughts we seek are the thoughts wherewith the gods have guided evolution. We think the evolution of the gods. If we understand this correctly we are overwhelmed by something that is deeply moral. This is inevitable. Then we say: In ancient times man had instinctive wisdom from the gods, who gave him the wisdom according to which they fashioned the world, and morality thus became possible. But through Anthroposophy we now acquire this wisdom consciously. Therefore we may also trust that in us it shall be transformed into moral impulses, so that we do not merely receive anthroposophical wisdom, but a moral stimulus as well.

Now into what sort of moral impulses will the wisdom acquired through Anthroposophy be transformed? We must here touch upon a point whose development the anthroposophist can foresee, the profound moral significance and moral weight of which he even ought to foresee, a point of development which is far removed from what is customary at the present time, which is what Plato called the “ideal of wisdom.” He named it with a word which was in common use when man still possessed the ancient wisdom, and it would be well to replace this by the word veracity, for as we have now become more individual, we have withdrawn ourselves from the divine, and must therefore strive back to it. We must learn to feel the full weight and meaning of the word ‘veracity’, and this in a moral sense will be a result of an anthroposophical world conception and conviction. Anthroposophists must understand how important it is to be filled with the moral element of truth in an age when materialism has advanced so far that one may indeed still speak of truth, but when the general life and understanding is far removed from perceiving what is right in this direction. Nor can this be otherwise at the present time; as owing to a certain quality acquired by modern life, truth is something which must, to a great extent, be lacking in the understanding of the day, I ask what does a man feel to-day when in the newspapers or some other printed matter he finds certain information, and afterwards it transpires that it is simply untrue? I seriously ask you to ponder over this. One cannot say that it happens in every case, but one must assert that it probably happens in every fourth case. Untruthfulness has everywhere become a quality of the age; it is impossible to describe truth as a characteristic of our times.

For instance, take a man whom you know to have written or said something false, and place the facts before him. As a rule, you will find that he does not fear such a thing to be wrong. He will immediately make the excuse: “But I said it in good faith.” Anthroposophists must not consider it moral when a person says it is merely incorrect what he has said in good faith. People will learn to understand more and more, that they must first ascertain that what they assert really happened. No man should make a statement, or impart anything to another until he has exhausted every means to ascertain the truth of his assertions; and it is only when he recognises this obligation that he can perceive veracity as moral impulse. And then when someone has either written or said something that is incorrect, he will no longer say: “I thought it was so, said it in good faith,” for he will learn that it is his duty to express not merely what he thinks is right, but it is also his duty to say only what is true, and correct. To this end, a radical change must gradually come about in our cultural life. The speed of travel, the lust of sensation on the part of man, everything that comes with a materialistic age, is opposed to truth. In the sphere of morality, Anthroposophy will be an educator of humanity to the duty of truth.

My business today is not to say how far truth has been already realised in the Anthroposophical Society, but to show that what I have said must be a principle, a lofty anthroposophical ideal. The moral evolution within the movement will have enough to do if the moral ideal of truth is thought, felt and perceived in all directions, for this ideal must be what produces the virtue of the sentient-soul of man in the right way.

The second part of the soul of which we have to speak in Anthroposophy is what we usually call the mind-soul, or intellectual-soul (German—Gemütsseele). You know that it developed especially in the fourth post-Atlantean, or Graeco-Latin age. The virtue which is the particular emblem for this part of the soul is bravery, valour and courage; we have already dwelt on this many times, and also on the fact that foolhardiness and cowardice are its extremes. Courage, bravery, valour is the mean between foolhardiness and cowardice. The German word “gemüt” expresses in the sound of the word that it is related to this. The word “gemüt” indicates the mid-part of the human soul, the part that is “mutvoll,” full of “mut,” courage, strength and force.

This was the second, the middle virtue of Plato and Aristotle. It is that virtue which in the fourth post-Atlantean age still existed in man as a divine gift, while wisdom was really only instinctive in the third. Instinctive valour and bravery existed as a gift of the gods (you may gather this from the first lecture) among the people who, in the fourth age, met the expansion of Christianity to the north. They showed that among them valour was still a gift of the gods. Among the Chaldeans wisdom, the wise penetration into the secrets of the starry world, existed as a divine gift, as something inspired. Among the people of the fourth post-Atlantean age, there existed valour and bravery, especially among the Greeks and Romans, but it existed also among the peoples whose work it became to spread Christianity. This instinctive valour was lost later than instinctive wisdom.

If we look round us now in the fifth post-Atlantean age, we see that, as regards valour and bravery, we are in the same position in respect of the Greeks as the Greeks were to the Chaldeans and Egyptians in regard to wisdom. We look back to what was a divine gift in the age immediately preceding ours, and in a certain way we can strive for it again. However, the two previous lectures have shown us, that in connection with this effort a certain transformation must take place. We have seen the transformation in Francis of Assisi of that divine gift which manifested itself as bravery and valour. We saw that the transformation came about as the result of an inner moral force which in our last lecture we found to be the force of the Christ-impulse; the transformation of valour and bravery into true love. But this true love must be guided by another virtue, by the interest in the being to whom we turn our love. In his Timon of Athens Shakespeare shows how love, or warmth of heart, causes harm, when it is passionately manifested; when it appears merely as a quality of human nature without being guided by wisdom and truth. A man is described who gave freely of his possessions, who squandered his living in all directions. Liberality is a virtue, but Shakespeare also shows us that nothing but parasites are produced by what is squandered.

Just as ancient valour and bravery were guided from the Mysteries by the European Brahmins—those wise leaders who kept themselves hidden in the background—so also in human nature this virtue must accord with and be guided by interest. Interest, which connects us with the external world in the right way, must lead and guide us when, with our love, we turn to the world. Fundamentally this may be seen from the characteristic and striking example of Francis of Assisi. The sympathy he expressed was not obtrusive or offensive. Those who overwhelm others with their sympathy are by no means always actuated by the right moral impulses. And how many there are who will not receive anything that is given out of pity. But to approach another with, understanding is not offensive. Under some circumstances a person must needs refuse to be sympathised with; but the attempt to understand his nature is something to which no reasonable person can object. Hence also the attitude of another person cannot be blamed or condemned if his actions are determined by this principle.

It is understanding which can guide us with respect to this second virtue: Love. It is that which, through the Christ-impulse, has become the special virtue of the mind-soul or intellectual-soul; it is the virtue which may be described as human love accompanied by human understanding. Sympathy in grief and joy is the virtue which in the future must produce the most beautiful and glorious fruits in human social life, and, in one who rightly understands the Christ-impulse, this sympathy and this love will originate quite naturally, it will develop into feeling. It is precisely through the anthroposophical understanding of the Christ-impulse that it will become feeling.

Through the Mystery of Golgotha Christ descended into earthly evolution; His impulses, His activities are here now, they are everywhere. Why did He descend to this earth? In order that through what He has to give to the world, evolution may go forward in the right way. Now that the Christ-impulse is in the world, if through what is unmoral, if through lack of interest in our fellow-men, we destroy something, then we take away a portion of the world into which the Christ-impulse has flowed. Thus because the Christ-impulse is now here, we directly destroy something of it. But if we give to the world what can be given to it through virtue, which is creative, we build. We build through self-surrender. It is not without reason that it has often been said, that Christ was first crucified on Golgotha, but that He is crucified again and again through the deeds, of man. Since Christ has entered into the Earth development through the deed upon Golgotha, we, by our unmoral deeds, by our unkindness and lack of interest, add to the sorrow and pain inflicted upon Him. Therefore it has been said, again and again: Christ is crucified anew as long as unmorality, unkindness and lack of interest exist. Since the Christ-impulse has permeated the world, it is this which is made to suffer.

Just as it is true that through evil, which is destructive, we withdraw something from the Christ-impulse and continue the crucifixion upon Golgotha, it is also true that when we act out of love, in all cases where we use love, we add to the Christ-impulse, we help to bring it to life. “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me” (Matthew 25, 40), this is the most significant statement of love and this statement must become the most profound moral impulse if it is once anthroposophically understood. We do this when with understanding we confront our fellow-men and offer them something in our actions, our virtue, our conduct towards them which is conditioned by our understanding of their nature. Our attitude towards our fellow-men is our attitude towards the Christ-impulse itself.

It is a powerful moral impulse, something which is a real foundation for morals, when we feel: “The Mystery of Golgotha was accomplished for all men, and an impulse has thence spread abroad throughout the whole world. When you are dealing with your fellow-men, try to understand them in their special, characteristics of race, colour, nationality, religious faith, philosophy, etc. If you meet them and do this or that to them, you do it to Christ. Whatever you do to men, in the present condition of the earth's evolution, you do to Christ.” This statement: “What ye have done to one of My brothers, ye have done unto Me,” will at the same time become a mighty moral impulse to the man who understands the fundamental significance of the Mystery of Golgotha. So that we may say: Whereas the gods of pre-Christian times gave instinctive wisdom to man, instinctive valour and bravery, so love streams down from the symbol of the cross, the love which is based upon the mutual interest of man in man.

Thereby the Christ-impulse will work powerfully in the world. On the day when it comes about that the Brahmin not only loves and understands the Brahmin, the Pariah the Pariah, the Jew the Jew, and the Christian the Christian; but when the Jew is able to understand the Christian, the Pariah the Brahmin, the American the Asiatic, as man, and put himself in his place, then one will know how deeply it is felt in a Christian way when we say: “All men must feel themselves to be brothers, no matter what their religious creed may be.” We ought to consider what otherwise binds us as being of little value. Father, mother, brother, sister, even one's own life one ought to esteem less than that which speaks from one human soul to the other. He who, in this sense does not regard as base all that impairs the connection with the Christ-impulse cannot be Christ's disciple. The Christ-impulse balances and compensates human differences. Christ's disciple is one who regards mere human distinctions as being of little account, and clings to the impulse of love streaming forth from the Mystery of Golgotha, which in this respect we perceive as a renewal of what was given to mankind as original virtue.

We have now but to consider what may be spoken of as the virtue of the Consciousness- or Spiritual- Soul. When we consider the fourth post-Atlantean age, we find that Temperance or Moderation was still instinctive. Plato and Aristotle called it the chief virtue of the Spiritual-Soul. Again they comprehended it as a state of balance, as the mean of what exists in the Spiritual-soul. The Spiritual-Soul consists in man's becoming conscious of the external world through his bodily nature. The sense body is primarily the instrument of the Spiritual-Soul, and it is also the sense body through which man arrives at self-consciousness.

Therefore the sense-body of man must be preserved. If it were not preserved for the mission of the earth, then that mission could not be fulfilled. But here also there is a limit. If a man only used all the forces he possessed in order to enjoy himself, he would shut himself up in himself, and the world would lose him. The man who merely enjoys himself, who uses all his forces merely to give himself pleasure, cuts himself off from the world—so thought Plato and Aristotle—the world loses him. And he, who denies himself everything renders himself weaker and weaker, and is finally laid hold of by the external world-process, and is crushed by the outer world. For he who goes beyond the forces appropriate to him as man, he who goes to excess is laid hold of by the world-process and is lost in it.

Thus what man has developed for the building up of the Spiritual-soul can be dissolved, so that he comes into the position of losing the world. Temperance or Moderation is the virtue which enables man to avoid these extremes. Temperance implies neither asceticism nor gluttony, but the happy mean between these two; and this is the virtue of the Spiritual-Soul. Regarding this virtue we have not yet progressed beyond the instinctive standpoint. A little reflection will teach you that, on the whole, people are very much given to sampling the two extremes. They swing to and fro between them. Leaving out of account the few who at the present day endeavour to gain clear views on this subject, you will find that the majority of people live very much after a particular pattern. In Central Europe this is often described by saying: There are people in Berlin who eat and drink to excess the entire winter, and then in summer they go to Carlsbad in order to remove the ill-effects produced by months of intemperance, thus going from one extreme to the other. Here you have the weighing of the scale, first to one side and then to the other. This is only a radical case. It is very evident that though the foregoing is extreme, and not universal to any great extent, still the oscillation between enjoyment and deprivation exists everywhere. People themselves ensure that there is excess on one side, and then they get the physicians to prescribe a so-called lowering system of cure, that is, the other extreme, in order that the ill effects may be repaired.

From this, it will be seen that in this respect people are still in an instinctive condition, that there is still an instinctive feeling, which is a kind of divine gift, not to go too far in one direction or another. But just as the other instinctive qualities of man were lost, these, too, will be lost with the transition from the fifth to the sixth post-Atlantean age. This quality which is still possessed as a natural tendency will be lost; and now you will be able to judge how much the anthroposophical world conception and conviction will have to contribute in order gradually to develop consciousness in this field.

At the present time there are very few, even developed anthroposophists, who see clearly that Anthroposophy provides the means to gain the right consciousness in this field also. When Anthroposophy is able to bring more weight to bear in this direction, then will appear what I can only describe in the following way; people will gradually long more and more for great spiritual truths. Although Anthroposophy is still scorned to-day, it will not always be so. It will spread, and overcome all its external opponents, and everything else still opposing it, and anthroposophists will not be satisfied by merely preaching universal love. It will be understood that one cannot acquire Anthroposophy in one day, any more than a person can take sufficient nourishment in one day to last the whole of his life. Anthroposophy has to be acquired to an ever increasing extent. It will come to pass that in the Anthroposophical Movement it will not be so often stated that these are our principles, and if we have these principles then we are anthroposophists; for the feeling and experience of standing in a community of the living element in anthroposophy will extend more and more.

Moreover, let us consider what happens by people mentally working upon the particular thoughts, the particular feelings and impulses which come from anthroposophical wisdom. We all know that anthroposophists can never have a materialistic view of the world, they have exactly the opposite, But he who says the following is a materialistic thinker: “When one thinks, a movement of the molecules or atoms of the brain takes place, and it is because of this movement that one has thought. Thought proceeds from the brain somewhat like a thin smoke, or it is something like the flame from a candle.” Such, is the materialistic view. The anthroposophical view is the opposite. In the latter it is the thought, the experience in the soul which sets the brain and nervous system in motion. The way in which our brain moves depends upon what thoughts we think. This is exactly the opposite of what is said by the materialist. If you wish to know how the brain of a person is constituted, you must inquire into what thoughts he has, for just as the printed characters of a book are nothing else than the consequence of thoughts, so the movements of the brain are nothing else than the consequence of thoughts.

Must we not then say that the brain will be differently affected when it is filled with anthroposophical thoughts than it will be in a society which plays cards? Different processes are at work in your minds when you follow anthroposophical thoughts from when you are in a company of card players, or see the pictures in a movie theatre. In the human organism nothing is isolated or stands alone. Everything is connected; one part acts and reacts on another. Thoughts act upon the brain and nervous system, and the latter is connected with the whole organism, and although many people may not yet be aware of it, when the hereditary characteristics still hidden in the body are conquered, the following will come about. The thoughts will be communicated from the brain to the stomach, and the result will be that things that are pleasant to people's taste to-day will no longer taste good to those who have received anthroposophical thoughts. The thoughts which anthroposophists have received are divine thoughts. They act upon the whole organism in such a manner that it will prefer to taste what is good for it. Man will smell and perceive as unsympathetic what does not suit him—a peculiar perspective, one which may perhaps be called materialistic, but is exactly the reverse.

This kind of appetite will come as a consequence of anthroposophical work; you will like one thing and prefer it at meals, dislike another and not wish to eat it. You may judge for yourselves when you notice that perhaps you now have an aversion to things, which before your anthroposophical days you did not possess. This will become more and more general when man works selflessly at his higher development, so that the world may receive what is right from him. One must not, however, play fast-and-lose with the words “selflessness” and “egoism.” These words may very easily be misused. It is not altogether selfless when someone says: “I shall only be active in the world and for the world; what does it matter about my own spiritual development? I shall only work, not strive egoistically!” It is not egoism when a person undergoes a higher development, because he thus fits himself more fully to bear an active part in the furtherance of the world development. If a person neglects his own further development, he renders himself useless to the world, he withdraws his force from it. We must do the right thing in this respect as well, in order to develop in ourselves what the Deity had in view for us.

Thus, through Anthroposophy a human race, or rather, a nucleus of humanity will be developed, which perceives temperance as a guiding ideal not merely instinctively, but which has a conscious sympathy for what makes man in a worthy way into a useful part of the divine world-order, and a conscious disinclination for all that mars man as a part in the universal order.

Thus we see that also in that which is produced in man himself, there are moral impulses, and we find what we may call life-wisdom or practical wisdom as transformed temperance. The ideal of practical wisdom which is to be taken into consideration for the next, the sixth post-Atlantean age, will be the ideal virtue which Plato calls “justice.” That is: the harmonious accord of these virtues. As in humanity the virtues have altered to some extent, so what was looked upon as justice in pre-Christian times has also changed. A single virtue such as this, which harmonises the others did not exist at that time. The harmony of the virtues stood before the mental vision of humanity as an ideal of the most distant future. We have seen that the moral impulse of bravery has been changed to love. We have also seen that wisdom has become truth. To begin with, truth is a virtue which places man in a just and worthy manner in external life. But if we wish to arrive at truthfulness regarding spiritual things, how then can we arrange it in relation to those things? We acquire truthfulness, we gain the virtue of the Sentient-Soul through a right and appropriate interest, through right understanding. Now what is this interest with regard to the spiritual world? If we wish to bring the physical world and especially man before us, we must open ourselves towards him, we must have a seeing eye for his nature. How do we obtain this seeing-eye with reference to the spiritual world? We gain it by developing a particular kind of feeling, that which appeared at a time when the old instinctive wisdom had sunk into the depths of the soul's life. This type of feeling was often described by the Greeks in the words: “All philosophical thought begins with wonder.” Something essentially moral is said when we say that our relationship to the super-sensible world begins with wonder. The savage, uncultivated human being, is but little affected by the great phenomena of the world. It is through mental development that man comes to find riddles in the phenomena of everyday life, and to perceive that there is something spiritual at the back of them. It is wonder that directs our souls up to the spiritual sphere in order that we may penetrate to the knowledge of that world; and we can only arrive at this knowledge when our soul is attracted by the phenomena which it is possible to investigate. It is this attraction which give rise to wonder, astonishment and faith. It is always wonder and amazement which direct us to what is super-sensible, and at the same time, it is what one usually describes as faith. Faith, wonder and amazement are the three forces of the soul which lead us beyond the ordinary world.

When we contemplate man with wonder and amazement, we try to understand him; by understanding his nature we attain to the virtue of brotherhood, and we shall best realise this by approaching the human being with reverence. We shall then see that reverence becomes something with which we must approach every human being and if we have this attitude, we shall become more and more truthful. Truth will become something by which we shall be bound by duty. Once we have an inkling of it, the super-sensible world becomes something towards which we incline, and through knowledge we shall attain to the super-sensible wisdom which has already sunk into the subconscious depths of the soul. Only after super-sensible wisdom had disappeared do we find the statement that “philosophy begins with wonder and amazement.” This statement will make it clear that wonder only appeared in evolution in the age when the Christ-impulse had come into the world.

It has already been stated that the second virtue is love. Let us now consider what we have described as instinctive temperance for the present time, and as practical wisdom of life for the future. Man confronts himself in these virtues. Through the deeds he performs in the world, he acts in such a way that he guards himself, as it were; it is therefore necessary for him to gain an objective standard of value.

We now see something appear which develops more and more, and which I have often spoken of in other connections, something which first appeared in the fourth post-Atlantean age, namely the Greek. It can be shown that in the old Greek dramas, for instance in Aeschylus, the Furies play a role which in Euripides is transformed into conscience. From this we see that in earlier times what we call conscience did not exist at all. Conscience is something that exists as a standard for our own actions when we go too far in our demands, when we seek our own advantage too-much. It acts as a standard placed between our sympathies and antipathies.

With this we attain to something which is more objective, which, compared with the virtues of truth, love and practical wisdom, acts in a much more objective, or outward manner. Love here stands in the middle, and acts as something which has to fill and regulate all life, also all social life. In the same way it acts as the regulator of all that man has developed as inner impulse. But that which he has developed as truth will manifest itself as the belief in super-sensible knowledge. Life-wisdom, that which originates in ourselves, we must feel as a divine spiritual regulator which, like conscience, leads securely along the true middle course. If we had time it would be very easy to answer the various objections which might be raised at this point. But we shall only consider one, for example, the objection to the assertion that conscience and wonder are qualities which have only gradually developed in humanity, whereas they are really eternal. But this they are not. He who says that they are eternal qualities in human nature only shows that he does not know the conditions attached to them.

As time goes on it will be found more and more that in ancient times man had not as yet descended so far to the physical plane, but was still more closely connected with divine impulses, and that he was in a condition which he will again consciously strive to reach when he is ruled more by truth, love and the art of life in regard to the physical plane, and when in regard to spiritual knowledge he is actuated by faith in the super-sensible world. It is not necessarily the case that faith will directly lead into that world, but it will at length be transformed into super-sensible knowledge. Conscience is that which will enter as a regulator in the Consciousness- or Spiritual-Soul. Faith, love, conscience; these three forces will become the three stars of the moral forces which shall enter into human souls particularly through Anthroposophy. The moral perspective of the future can only be disclosed to those who think of these three virtues being ever more increased Anthroposophy will place moral life in the light of these virtues, and they will be the constructive forces of the future.

Before closing our observations, there is one point which must be considered. I shall only touch upon the subject, for it would be impossible to analyse without giving many lectures. The Christ-impulse entered human evolution through the Mystery of Golgotha. We know that at that time a human organism consisting of physical, etheric, and astral bodies received the Ego-impulse or “I” from above, as the Christ-impulse. It was this Christ-impulse which was received by the earth and which flowed into earthly evolution. It was now in it as the ego of Christ. We know further that the physical body, etheric body and astral body remained with Jesus of Nazareth; the Christ-impulse was within as the ego. At Golgotha, Jesus of Nazareth separated from the Christ-impulse, which then flowed into the earth development. The evolution of this impulse signifies the evolution of the earth itself.

Earnestly consider certain things which are very often repeated in order that they may be more easily understood. As we have often heard, the world is maya or illusion, but man must gradually penetrate to the truth, the reality of this external world. The earth evolution fundamentally consists in the fact that all the external things which have been formed in the first half of the earth's development are dissolved in the second half, in which we now are, so that all that we see externally, physically, shall separate from human development just as the physical body of a human being falls away. One might ask: What will then be left? And the answer is: The forces which are embodied in man as real forces through the process of the development of humanity on the earth. And the most real impulse in this development is that which has come into earth evolution through the Christ-impulse. But this Christ-impulse at first finds nothing with which it can clothe itself. Therefore it has to obtain a covering through the further development of the earth; and when this is concluded, the fully developed Christ shall be the final man—as Adam was the first—around whom humanity in its multiplicity has grouped itself.

In the words: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me,” is contained a significant hint for us. What has been done for Christ? The actions performed in accordance with the Christ-impulse under the influence of conscience, under the influence of faith and according to knowledge, are developed out on the earth-life up to the present time, and as, through his actions and his moral attitude a person gives something to his brethren, he gives at the same time to Christ. This should be taken as a precept: All the forces we develop, all acts of faith and trust, all acts performed as the result of wonder, are—because we give it at the same time to the Christ-Ego—something which closes like a covering round the Christ and may be compared with the astral body of man.

We form the astral body for the Christ-Ego-impulse by all the moral activities of wonder, trust, reverence and faith, in short, all that paves the way to super-sensible knowledge. Through all these activities we foster love. This is quite in accordance with the statement we quoted: “What ye have done to one, of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me.”

We form the etheric body for Christ through our deeds of love, and through our actions in the world which we do through the impulses of conscience we form for the Christ-impulse that which corresponds to the physical body of man. When the earth has one day reached its goal, when man understands the right moral impulses through which all that is good is done, then shall be present that which came as an Ego or “I” into human development through the Mystery of Golgotha as the Christ-impulse shall then be enveloped by an astral body which is formed through faith, through all the deeds of wonder and amazement on the part of man. It shall be enveloped by something which is like an etheric body which is formed through deeds of love; and by something which envelops it like a physical body, formed through the deeds of conscience.

Thus the future evolution of humanity shall be accomplished through the co-operation of the moral impulses of man with the Christ-impulse. We see humanity in perspective before us, like a great organic structure. When people understand how to member their actions into this great organism, and through their own deeds form their impulses around it like a covering, they shall then lay the foundations, in the course of earthly evolution, for a great community, which can be permeated and made Christian through and through by the Christ-impulse.

Thus we see that morals need not be preached, but they can indeed be founded by showing facts that have really happened and do still happen, confirming what is felt by persons with special mental endowments. It should make a noteworthy impression upon us if we bear in mind how, at the time when he lost his friend, Duke Charles Augustus, Goethe wrote many things in a long letter at Weimar, and then on the same day—it was in the year 1828, three-and-a-half years before his own death, and almost at the end of his life—he wrote a very remarkable sentence in his diary: “The whole reasonable world may be considered as a great immortal individual which uninterruptedly brings about what is necessary and thereby makes itself master even over chance.” How could such a thought become more concrete than by our imagining this Individual active among us, and by thinking of ourselves as, being united with him in his work? Through the Mystery of Golgotha the greatest Individual entered into human development, and, when people intentionally direct their lives in the way we have just described, they will range themselves round the Christ-impulse, so that around this Being there shall be formed something which is like a covering around a kernel.

Much more could be said about virtue from the standpoint of Anthroposophy. In particular long and important considerations could be entered into concerning truth and its connection with karma, for through Anthroposophy the idea of karma will have to enter into human evolution more and more. Man will also have to learn gradually so to consider and order his life that his virtues correspond with karma. Through the idea of karma man must also learn to recognise that he may not disown his former deeds by his later ones. A certain feeling of responsibility in life, a readiness to take upon ourselves the results of what we have done, has yet to show itself as a result of human evolution. How far removed man still is from this ideal we see when we consider him more closely. That man develops by the acts he has committed is a well-known fact. When the consequences of an action seem to have come to an end, then what could only be done if the first act had not taken place, can still be done. The fact that a person feels responsible for what he has done, the fact that he consciously accepts the idea of karma, is something which might also be a subject for study. But you will still find much for yourselves by following the lines suggested in these three lectures; you will find how fruitful these ideas can be if you work them out further. As man will live for the remainder of the earth development in repeated incarnations, it is his task to rectify all the mistakes made respecting the virtues described, by inclining to one side or the other, to change them by shaping them of his own free will, so that the balance, the mean, may come and thus the goal be gradually attained which has been described as the formation of the coverings for the Christ-impulse.

Thus we see before us not merely an abstract ideal of universal brotherhood, which indeed may also receive a strong impulse if we lay Anthroposophy at the foundation, but we see that there is something real in our earthly evolution, we see that there is in it an Impulse which came into the world through the Mystery of Golgotha. And we also feel ourselves under the necessity so to work upon the Sentient-Soul, the Intellectual-Soul and the Spiritual-Soul, that this ideal Being shall be actualised, and that we shall be united with Him as with a great immortal Individual. The thought that the only possibility of further evolution, the power to fulfil the earth mission, lies in man's forming one whole with this great Individual, is realised in the second moral principle: What you do as if it were born from you alone, pushes you away and separates you from the great Individual, you thereby destroy something; but what you do to build up this great immortal Individual in the way above described, that you do towards the further development, the progressive life of the whole organism of the world.

We only require to place these two thoughts before us in order to see that their effect is not only to preach morals, but to give them a basis. For the thought: “Through your actions you are destroying what you ought to build up,” is terrible and fearful, keeping down all opposing desires. But the thought: “You are building up this immortal Individual; you are making yourself into a member of this immortal Individual,” fires one to good deeds, to strong moral impulses. In this way morals are not only preached, but we are led to thoughts which themselves may be moral impulses, to thoughts which are able to found morals.

The more the truth is cultivated, the more rapidly will the anthroposophical world conception and feeling develop ethics such as these. And it has been my task to express this in these lectures. Naturally, many things have only been lightly touched upon, but you will develop further in your own minds many ideas which have been broached. In this way we shall be drawn more closely together all over the earth. When we meet together—as we have done on this occasion as anthroposophists of Northern and Central Europe—to consider these subjects, and when we allow the thoughts roused in us at gatherings such as this to echo and re-echo through us, we shall in this way best make it true that Anthroposophy is to provide the foundation—even at the present time—for real spiritual life. And when we have to part again we know that it is in our anthroposophical thoughts that we are most at one, and this knowledge is at the same time a moral stimulus. To know that we are united by the same ideals with people who, as a rule, are widely separated from one another in space, but with whom we may meet on special occasions, is a stronger moral stimulus than being always together.

That we should think in this way of our gathering, that we should thus understand our studies together, fills my soul, especially at the close of these lectures, as something by which I should like to express my farewell greeting to you, and concerning which I am convinced that, when it is understood in the true light, the anthroposophical life which is developing will also be spiritually well founded. With this thought and these feelings let us close our studies today.

IT is necessary that we speak somewhat further this evening concerning the nature of Christ Jesus. This necessity arises from the fact that at the present time there is much discussion of this subject, especially in Theosophical circles, and on that account the need confronts us in a very real sense to come to complete clarity upon many a point in this domain.

Today we shall have to discuss an aspect of the question which to many may perhaps appear somewhat strange, but it is very important nevertheless. We shall start with the evolution of man. We know, of course, that this has progressed in such a way that the whole of humanity within our Earth evolution passes through certain cyclic epochs. And we have often spoken of the fact that we can distinguish five cultural periods, up to and including our time, since that great catastrophe which we call the Atlantean catastrophe, through which life on the old Atlantean continent was transformed into life on the new continents—that is, our life. We speak of the first, the ancient Indian cultural epoch; of the second, the great ancient Persian epoch; of the third, the Egypto-Chaldaic-Babylonian; and of the fourth, the Greco-Latin, which, for a more comprehensive world view, only receded, let us say, between the eighth and the twelfth Christian century; and then we speak of our own, the present, the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, since 1413.

Now, human souls—hence the souls of all of you sitting here—have gone through various incarnations in these successive cultural epochs up to the present time, one soul in many embodiments, another in a relatively smaller number. These souls, according to the characteristics of the epochs, appropriated this or that from their experiences, brought it with them from the earlier into the later incarnations, and then appeared as souls at a stage of development dependent upon what they had previously experienced in the different cultural epochs.

But now we can also speak of the fact that, of the various members of man's nature, generally one or another, but usually a definite member, was formed and developed in each cultural epoch—but note well that this was only generally the case. Thus, we can say that if human beings permit to work upon them all that our epoch of civilization can give, they are especially called in our time to develop what in our spiritual scientific movement we call the consciousness soul; whereas, during the Greco-Latin epoch the intellectual or rational soul was preeminently developed; during the Egypto-Chaldean-Babylonian epoch, the sentient soul; during the ancient Persian, the sentient or astral body; and in the old Indian, what we call the etheric or life body. These various members of man's nature have come to their corresponding development in connection with individual souls passing through these cultural epochs, in one or, in most cases, in several incarnations. And in that epoch which will follow our own as the sixth post-Atlantean epoch, that member will be especially developed which we characterize as Spirit-Self, and which in theosophical literature has been designated Manas; and in the last, the seventh post-Atlantean epoch, that which we characterize as Life-Spirit, and which in Theosophical literature is called Budhi; while Spirit-Man, or Atma, is to be evolved only in a far distant future, after another catastrophe.

And so in the present and the near future, we are in the midst of the development through our environment, through the normal conditions of our civilization, of what is called the Consciousness Soul.

But now we know that this entire development of the human being, this evolution of the individual soul members as we differentiate them, is essentially bound up with something else—is essentially bound up with the gradual incorporation of the human ego. For this incorporation of the human ego into the nature of man is the whole mission of the Earth evolution. So we have, as it were, two intermingling evolutionary streams, in that we must go through the Earth evolution, following that of Saturn, Sun and Moon, and that as earth humanity we bring to development especially this fourth member, the Ego, and join this Ego to the other principal members of human nature, upon which preparatory work was done earlier: namely, the physical body, the etheric body, and the astral body. You must now distinguish this great, most important evolutionary stream, which is connected with the great embodiments of our earth planet itself, from the smaller evolutionary stream, which I have previously characterized as playing its part within so short a time as the post-Atlantean period.

No one who has understood the matter up to this point should ask the question: Then how does it happen that man had already developed the etheric or life body, on the old Sun, and that now a special development of the same body should take place during the ancient Indian epoch? Anyone who has understood really should not ask this question; for the facts are these: To be sure, preliminary work was done upon the etheric or life-body during the old Sun; man came upon the earth already in possession of an etheric body. But this body can now be more finely formed; it can be worked upon by the later members which man has developed. So that naturally man's etheric body is at a relatively high stage when he is incarnated in an ancient Indian body, but in this post-Atlantean period he works upon his etheric body with the ego which he has acquired—with all that the human being has meanwhile gained for himself, he works upon it and refines it. And it is essentially a refining of the various members of man's nature which takes place in our post-Atlantean period.

If you now take the entire evolution and consider what has just been said, the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, the Greco-Latin, will appear to you quite especially important; for what we call the Rational or Intellectual Soul had then to be worked upon and brought to a more refined form within the human being. But by that time the Ego, which belongs to the greater evolutionary stream, had already undergone a particularly high development. So we can say that up to the fourth post-Atlantean period, the Greco-Latin time, this ego of man had evolved to a certain stage, and it was incumbent upon it then to work upon the Rational or Intellectual Soul; and in our time upon the Consciousness Soul.

You see in a certain sense there now exists an intimate relationship between the human ego and the three members of man's soul nature: the sentient soul, the rational or intellectual soul, and the consciousness soul. Chiefly within these three members the human ego lives its inner life; and in our fifth post-Atlantean epoch it lives in the consciousness soul, and will live most deeply in it, because in the consciousness soul the pure ego can come to expression quite unhindered, so to speak, by the other members. Indeed we live in our time in an epoch in which this ego has the great and special mission of developing itself, of building upon itself.

If we take a sort of prophetic glance into the future, at what is to come, if we say that man will develop the Spirit-Self, or Manas, in the next, the sixth post-Atlantean epoch, then we recognize that Spirit-Self, or Manas, really lies above the sphere of the ego. As matter of fact, man could not in this future develop the Spirit-Self out of his own forces; but if he is to develop his Spirit-Self, he must be helped in a certain way by that which flows to the earth through the forces of higher Beings. Man has come to that stage in the evolution of his ego where, out of his own forces, he really can develop only up to the consciousness soul; but this development would not be complete if he should not anticipate in a certain sense that which will reach its true, complete, self-impelled human evolution only upon Jupiter, the next embodiment of our planet. Up to the end of the Earth evolution man should develop his ego; and he will have had opportunity to accomplish this development within the sentient, intellectual, and consciousness souls. But the actual Spirit-Self is to become the human possession only upon Jupiter; only there will it become the fitting human endowment. On Jupiter man will have about the same relation to the Spirit-Self that he has to the ego on earth. If then the human being develops the Spirit-Self during the earth-period, he cannot relate himself to it as to the ego. Of our ego we say: We ourself are that; it is ourself in reality. When in the next epoch, the sixth post-Atlantean, the Spirit-Self shall have come to expression, then we shall not be able to address this Spirit-Self as ourself; but we shall say: Our ego has developed to a certain stage, so that our Spirit-Self can shine into it, as from higher worlds, as a kind of Angel Being, which we ourselves are not, but which shines into us and takes possession of us. Thus will our Spirit-Self appear to us; and only upon Jupiter will it appear as our own being, as our ego now is. Human evolution moves forward in this way.

Hence, in the next, the sixth post-Atlantean epoch, we shall feel as if drawn upward to something which shines into us. We shall not say: Thou Spirit-Self within me ... but we shall say: I, partaker in a Being who shines into me from upper worlds, who directs and leads me, who, through the grace of higher beings, has become my guide! ... That which will come to us only upon Jupiter as our very own, we shall feel in the sixth epoch as a kind of guide shining upon us from the higher worlds ... And thus it will be later with the Life-Spirit, or Budhi, with the Spirit-Man, and so on ... So a time will come when man will speak of himself otherwise than he does now. How does one speak of himself now when he speaks in the sense of spiritual science? He says: I have three sheaths, my physical body, my etheric body, and my astral body. Within these I have my ego, the essential earth possession, which is evolving within these three sheaths. These sheaths are, as it were, my lower nature; I have grown beyond it, I look down to this, my lower nature; and I see in what my ego has become a preparatory stage of my own being, which will grow and evolve further and further ... In the future man will have to speak otherwise; then he will say: I have not only my lower nature and my ego, but I have a higher nature, to which I look up as to something which is a part of me in the same way as my sheaths, which I have from earlier stages ... So in the future the human being will feel that he is placed midway, so to speak, between his lower and his higher nature. The lower nature he already knows now; the higher will in the future appear as if standing above him, just as now the lower is below him. So we may say that man grows from his fourth to his fifth, sixth and seventh principles during the Earth evolution, but his fifth, sixth and seventh principles will not be his direct possession during the actual Earth evolution, but something to which he will gradually attain. The matter must actually be conceived in this way.

We shall have to experience a time when we shall say: Certainly it was our earth mission to develop our ego. But with prophetic anticipation we see something which is to come to development in us on Jupiter. What we are now experiencing during our Earth evolution: namely, that we permeate ourselves, so to speak, with a human ego nature; and that during the past earth-time up to the present we have developed a finer fashioning of our lower principles; and that we shall perfect the higher principles in the future—all that we as human beings experience on earth, more advanced beings whom we designate as Angels, or Angeloi, experienced upon earlier planetary embodiments. But also the higher members of the Hierarchy, the Archangels, or Archangeloi, and the Archai, have had this experience upon the earlier embodiments of our earth planet, upon Moon, Sun and Saturn. For them also there was at that time a kind of fourth member which they developed; and then in the second half of the corresponding planetary embodiments, they anticipated that which actually is to come to full development in them upon the earth, as with us the Spirit-Self will come to development on Jupiter. They had not at that time fully embodied it within themselves as their possession, but they looked up to it.

If in the first place we look back to the old Moon evolution, we must speak of beings who during that time should have reached their seventh principle, in exactly the same way that we human beings during the Earth evolution come to the seventh principle—that is, not to embody it completely, but to look up to it. When we speak of Luciferic beings, we refer to those who during the old Moon evolution remained in the condition in which a man would be who, during the Earth evolution, had not brought to full development his fifth, sixth and seventh principles, but had turned aside from such development; who perhaps had stopped with the fourth or with the fifth. That is, those beings who were at the very diverse stages of Luciferic beings were not fully evolved. So we can say that human beings came over from the old Moon evolution to Earth evolution. They came over in such a way that those who completed the Moon evolution brought with them a normal development: their physical body, etheric or life body, and astral body; and on the earth, quite properly, they should develop the ego, into which they should then take up the other principles. Other beings who stand higher than man should already have developed on the Moon what for them corresponds to the human ego. But they could have brought this Moon ego to full development only if they had anticipated what for them would be fifth, sixth and seventh principles, of which they should have fully developed the fifth on earth. They should have reached their seventh principle; but these Luciferic beings did not do so. They barely evolved the fifth or sixth; and thus did not stop with the fourth, but they did not bring the fourth to full development, because they did not anticipate the fifth, sixth and seventh principles, but stopped with the fifth or sixth.

We distinguish then two classes of these Moon beings: First, those who had developed only their fifth principle, so that they were as we human beings would be if we should develop the Spirit-Self in the sixth post-Atlantean epoch, and then stop, and not develop the sixth and seventh principles. Let us keep in mind this one class, who as Luciferic beings had developed their fifth principle; and then note another class of Moon beings of the Luciferic sort who had developed their sixth principle but not their seventh. There were such at the beginning of the Earth evolution, when man began the development of his ego. So we can ask: What was the situation as regards these beings at the beginning of the Earth evolution? There were beings there who eagerly expected to develop their sixth principle during the Earth evolution, beings of a Luciferic kind, who upon the Moon had evolved only as far as their fifth principle and wished to develop their sixth upon the earth. And there were beings of the second class, who had already developed their sixth principle on the Moon, and who wished to develop their seventh on the earth. They expected that of the Earth evolution. Then there was man, who came over with three principles, to develop his fourth.

So we can distinguish human beings waiting for opportunity to develop their ego, Luciferic beings expecting to evolve their sixth principle, and the Luciferic beings who would evolve their seventh. We shall disregard those who were ready to develop their fifth, but there were such.

Now you see we have distinguished three classes, so to speak, of microcosmic earth beings, three classes of beings who arrived upon the scene of Earth evolution. Of the three classes, however, only one could win a physical body for itself on the earth; for the conditions which the earth presents for the development of a physical fleshly body can be furnished only in conformity with its entire earthly relationship to a fourth human principle. Only that being could acquire a physical body for himself who wished to develop his fourth principle as ego. The other beings, who wished to develop a sixth and a seventh principle, could not get physical bodies for themselves. For there is no possibility on the earth for the direct acquisition of physical human bodies for beings who come into this Earth evolution so unadapted to it. The possibility does not exist for the direct acquisition of such a physical body. What did these beings have to do? They had to say to themselves: Of course we cannot have direct access to a human physical body consisting of flesh and bones, for such bodies are for human beings who wish to develop their ego. Hence we must take refuge in a kind of substitute physical body; we must search for human beings who belong to the most highly developed, that is, those who have evolved, let us say, their fourth principle. We must creep into these human beings, and in them our nature must work in such a way that they will be enabled to form their sixth or seventh principle ... The consequence of this was that among the ordinary human beings of ancient times some appeared who could be possessed by higher Luciferic beings. These naturally stood higher than man, since they were to form their sixth or seventh principle, and man only his fourth. Such higher beings of a Luciferic kind went about on the earth in earthly human bodies. They were the leaders of earth humanity; they knew and understood much more, and could do much more than other men. We are given accounts of these beings in ancient tales and legends, and it is told of them that here and there they were founders of great cities, were great leaders of peoples, and so on. They were not merely normal men upon earth, but they were men who were possessed by such higher beings of a Luciferic sort—possessed in the best sense of the word. We can only understand human earth evolution when we take account of such things.

But especially the less highly evolved of these beings, because they cannot get human bodies for themselves, are always trying to continue their evolution in the bodies of human beings. And that is just what we have been able to characterize. Luciferic beings always had the longing to continue their evolution in the way described, by possessing human beings; and they are still doing that today. Lucifer and his hosts work in the human soul; we are the stage for the Luciferic evolution. While we human beings simply take the human earthly body in order to develop ourselves, these Luciferic beings take us and develop themselves in us. And that is the temptation of human beings, that the Luciferic spirits work in them.

But meanwhile these Luciferic spirits have advanced, just as human beings have advanced; so that very many of them who, let us say, when man entered upon the Atlantean time, stood on the threshold ready to evolve their sixth principle, are now already forming their seventh, although of course this evolution on the earth is abnormal. Such a spirit accomplishes this in the following way: He takes possession of a man, perhaps for only a few years, in order to make use of the experiences of this man, who on his part is thus furthering his own evolution. This is nothing evil in human nature; for since we can bring the consciousness soul to expression in our time, we can be possessed by Luciferic spirits who are evolving their seventh principle. What does a person become when he is possessed by such a lofty Luciferic spirit? A genius! But because as man he is possessed, and the real human nature is irradiated by this higher being, he is impractical for ordinary accomplishments, but works in some one realm as a pioneer and a leader.

One may not speak of the Luciferic spirit as if he were something altogether hateful; but because he develops himself as a parasite by entering the human being, he causes the man possessed by him and under his influence to work as a man of genius, as if inspired. So the Luciferic spirits are absolutely necessary, and the gifted men of earth are they in whom the Luciferic spirit is working diligently—generally only for a couple of years. If that were not the case, Eduard Schuré would not have been able to describe Lucifer sympathetically (see Note 1); for Lucifer is actually assigned a share in the great cultural progress of the earth, and it is narrow-mindedness in traditional Christianity to see in the Luciferic being only the wicked devil—this signifies nothing less than gross Philistinism ... “Nature is sin, Spirit is devil; they cherish between them Doubt, their deformed bastard child,” we read in Faust. Certainly it is fitting for the narrow, traditionally-formed Christianity to call Lucifer the devil, and to hate him; but he who has an understanding of human evolution knows that the Luciferic principle works in the genius. It is fitting for the spiritual scientist to look these things straight in the face. And we should have no inducement whatever to rise to our fifth and sixth principles, if these spirits did not push us forward. It is the Luciferic spirits to whom we really owe the forward thrust, given because they seek thereby their own evolution, and through which we ourselves are enabled to grow out beyond our ego. It is said trivially that poets and geniuses and artists grow above the narrowly confined human ego.

So we look up to the Luciferic spirits in a certain way as to leaders of men. We must free ourselves from narrowness, from all orthodox Christianity which calls Lucifer only a devil worthy of hatred. We must recognize the liberating character of the Luciferic principle, which has also been ordained by the good gods; for it drives us out beyond ourselves during the Earth evolution, so that we prophetically anticipate what will come to us as our own possession only during Jupiter, and so on. Thus there actually exists upon earth a reciprocal influence of microcosmic beings, who were present at the beginning of the Earth evolution—such a reciprocal influence that human beings are led forward, while they are developing their own ego, by beings related to them in such a way that it must be admitted that they are higher than man, for they have evolved their fifth principle and are developing their sixth, or are already evolving their seventh, while man is working only upon his fourth. So in these Luciferic beings we see superhuman beings—microcosmic superhuman beings.

And now we will turn aside from these spiritual beings whom we regard as Luciferic, and consider the nature of Christ.

The Christ is quite radically different from other beings who share in the Earth evolution. He is a Being of quite another order; He is a Being who remained behind, not only during the Moon evolution, as the Luciferic spirits did, but who, foreseeing the Moon evolution, actually remained behind still earlier, namely, during the old Sun evolution; and it was from a certain assured wisdom far above the human that He remained behind during the old Sun evolution. We cannot regard this Being as microcosmic in the sense which applies to the other beings we have been considering; for we have to regard as microcosmic beings those who were connected with this Earth evolution from its beginning. The Christ was not directly connected with the Earth evolution, but with the Sun evolution. He was a macrocosmic Being from the beginning of the Earth evolution on, a Being who was exposed to entirely different conditions of evolution from those of the microcosmic beings. And His evolutionary conditions were of a special sort; they were such that this macrocosmic Christ Being evolved the macrocosmic ego outside earthly conditions. For this Christ evolution it was normal to bring to ego-perfection, outside the earth, an ego of a macrocosmic sort, and then to descend to earth. And so for the evolution of the Christ Being it was normal, when He descended from the macrocosm to our earth, to bring into it the great impulse of the macrocosmic ego, in order that the microcosmic ego, the human ego, might take up this impulse, and be able to go forward in its evolution. It was normal for the Christ to have the macrocosmic ego-impulse—not the microcosmic ego-impulse—just as much evolved as man upon the earth had developed the microcosmic. Thus the Christ Being is a Being Who in a certain sense is like the human being, only that man is microcosmic and has brought his four principles to expression microcosmically, and hence has his ego also microcosmically as earth-ego—but the Christ as Cosmic Ego. His evolution was such that He was great and significant because of the perfect development of this ego, which He brought down to earth. And He had not the fifth macrocosmic principle, and not the sixth, for He will evolve these on Jupiter and on Venus, in order that He may give them to man.

The Christ, then, is a four-membered Being, including His macrocosmic ego, just as man himself is microcosmically a four-membered being. And as man during the earth time has as his mission the development of his ego, in order to be able to receive, so the Christ had to develop His Ego, in order to be able to give. When He descended to earth His whole being was employed in bringing His fourth principle to expression in the most perfect possible form. Now each macrocosmic principle has an inner relationship to the corresponding microcosmic principle; the fourth macrocosmic principle in the Christ corresponds to the fourth microcosmic principle in man, and the fifth in the Christ will correspond to the Spirit-Self in man.

Thus the Christ entered upon His earthly course in that He brought down to man out of the macrocosm what man was to evolve microcosmically—only the Christ brought it as a macrocosmic principle. He entered the earth evolution in such a way that during its course He would not have a fifth, sixth and seventh principle as His personal possession, just as man in his way does not possess them.

The Christ is a Being Who had evolved macrocosmically up to the fourth principle, and the evolution of His fourth principle during the earth course consists in His bestowing upon man everything which will enable him to evolve his ego.

If we take a complete survey, we have at the beginning of Earth evolution three classes of beings: human beings who were to bring their fourth principle to full development on earth; a class of Luciferic beings who were to evolve their sixth principle; and a class of Luciferic beings who were to develop their seventh principle—beings who, because they were ready to develop their sixth and seventh principles, stood higher than man,—in fact, ranged far above man in this respect. But they also ranged above Christ in this regard; for the Christ was to bring His fourth principle to expression on the earth, in devotion to humanity. It will not be the Christ, let us say, that will quicken man in the future to bring to expression something other than the true ego, the innermost human being—to reach ever higher and higher stages. It will be the Luciferic spirits who will lead man out beyond himself in a certain sense.

Anyone who looks at the matter superficially can say: “Of course then the Christ stands lower than, for example, the Luciferic spirits.” ... because the Christ came to earth with something which is fully related to man's fourth principle. For that reason He is not at all fitted to lead man above himself, but only more deeply into his own soul being; He is fitted to lead the individual soul-being of man more and more to itself. The Luciferic beings have evolved the fourth, fifth and sixth principles, and hence in a certain way stand higher than the Christ. Practically, that will work out in the future so that through the admission of the Christ principle into human nature, this human nature will become more and more deepened, will take up more and more light and love into its own being; so that the human being will have to feel Light and Love as belonging to his very self. The immeasurable deepening of the human soul—that will be the gift of the Christ Impulse, which will work on and on forever. And when the Christ shall come, as that coming has been represented in many lectures, then He will work only upon the deepening of human souls. The other spirits who have higher principles than the Christ, though only microcosmic principles, will in a certain sense lead man out beyond himself. The Christ will deepen the inner life of man, but also make him humble; the Luciferic spirits will lead man out beyond himself, and make him wise, clever, talented, but also in a certain sense haughty; will teach him that he might become something superhuman even during the Earth evolution. Everything, therefore, which in the future shall lead man to rise above himself, as it were, which will make him proud of his own human nature even here upon earth—that will be a Luciferic impulse; but what makes a man more deeply sincere, what brings his inner life to such depths as can come only through the complete development of the fourth principle—that comes from the Christ.

People who look at the matter superficially will say that Christ really stands lower than the Luciferic beings, for He has developed only the fourth principle, and the others, higher principles. Only the difference is that these other beings bring the higher principles as something parasitic, grafted upon human nature; but the Christ brings the fourth principle in such a way that it penetrates human nature, takes root within it, and fills it with power. As the fleshly body of Jesus of Nazareth was once permeated and empowered by the fourth macrocosmic principle, so will the bodies of those who take the Christ into themselves be permeated by the fourth macrocosmic principle. Just as the fourth macrocosmic principle is the gift of Christ, so will the sixth and the seventh principles be the gifts of the Luciferic spirits. So that in the future—and such time is now being prepared for—we may experience that people lacking in understanding will say: If we examine the Gospels, or otherwise allow to work upon us what Christ gave to humanity, we see that in regard to His teaching He does not at all rank as high as perhaps do other spiritual beings who are connected with humanity ... They are higher than man in a certain way. They cannot penetrate the entire man, but they take root in his intellect, they make him a genius! And one who observes only outwardly says that these beings stand higher than the Christ ... And the time will come when the most powerful, the most significant of these Luciferic spirits, who will wish to lead the people out beyond themselves, so to speak, will be extolled, and looked upon as a great human leader; and it will be said that what the Christ was able to furnish was really only a bridge. Now already there are people who say: What do the teachings of the Gospels amount to! We have outgrown them.—As has been said, men will point to a lofty, versatile spirit, a spirit of genius, who will take possession of a human fleshly nature, which he will permeate with his genius. It will be said that he surpasses even the Christ! For the Christ was one who gave opportunity to develop the fourth principle; but this one gives opportunity during the Earth evolution to attain to the seventh principle.

Thus will the Christ Spirit and the spirit of this being face one another—the Christ Spirit, from whom humanity may hope to receive the mighty macrocosmic impulse of its fourth principle, and the Luciferic Spirit, who will wish in a certain way to lead humanity beyond this.

If people would agree that we must acquire from the Luciferic spirits only that to which we can look up in the same way that we look down to our lower nature ... then they would be doing right. But if people should come to say: You see the Christ gives only the fourth principle, while these spirits give the sixth and seventh ... people who think thus concerning Christ will worship and extol ... the Antichrist.

Thus will the position of the Antichrist towards the Christ make itself felt in the future. And with the outer intellect, with the outer wisdom, one will not be able to challenge such things; for it will be possible to produce much which from the point of view of the intellect and talent will be more clever in the Antichrist than that which will more and more flow into the soul from the Christ, as the highest human principle. Because Christ brings to man the fourth macrocosmic principle—since it is macrocosmic, it is infinitely more important than all microcosmic principles; it is stronger than they, even though it is related to the human ego, stronger than all others which can be gained during Earth evolution—still, because it is only the fourth principle, it will be thought of as lower than the fifth, sixth and seventh, which come from the Luciferic spirits; and especially lower than that which comes from Antichrist.

It is important that, upon the basis of spiritual science, it should be perceived that this is so. In regard to the Copernican theory, which has set the earth in motion, as it were, has snatched it from the repose in which it had earlier been placed, and has led it around the sun; which has shown how the earth is a grain of dust in the universe—in regard to this theory it is asked: How can the Christian idea exist alongside this! A contradiction is constructed between the Christian thought and this natural science, because it is said that in olden times men could look up to the cross on Golgotha and to Christ; for the earth seemed to them as the place chosen out of all the universe, and the other cosmic bodies seemed small to them, and really existing for the sake of the earth. The earth then appeared to man—so it could be said—worthy to bear the cross of Golgotha! But when the Copernican theory laid hold upon the spirits of men, they began to scoff and to say: The other cosmic bodies must have at least an equal significance with the earth, so the Christ must have passed from one cosmic body to another; but since the other world bodies are much larger than the earth, it would really be strange that the God-man should accomplish His work of redemption on the little earth! A Scandinavian scholar actually said this. He was of the opinion that, with the Christ drama, it was just as if a powerful drama were presented on a little stage in a suburb, or in a village theater, instead of being presented on a great stage in a capital city. He said: “It is absurd that the greatest drama in the world should not be performed upon a great cosmic body. It is exactly as if a great production should not be given in a splendid theater, but in a miserable village theater!”

Such a speech is, of course, very peculiar, but we can reply that the Christian legend has taken care that nothing so foolish could be said; for it has not even laid the scene of this drama in a splendid place on earth, but only in a poor stable. That fact already shows that no such objection should be made as that of the Scandinavian scholar. People do not consider how inconsequential they are with their peculiarly wise thoughts. The idea has no effect in the presence of the great simple truth which is given in the Christian legend. And if this Christian legend lays the scene of the birth of Jesus, not in a splendid, important capital city of the earth, but in a poor stable, then it does not seem absurd that, in contrast to the greatest cosmic bodies, the earth should have been chosen as the place to bear the cross. In general the method by which the Christian teaching in its way sets forth what the Christ had to bring to humanity, is an indication of that great teaching which spiritual science is to give to us again today. If we allow the Gospels to work upon us—we can search there for the deepest truths of spiritual science, as we have often seen—but how are these great truths contained in the Gospels? Well, I might say that if those people who have not a spark of the Christ Impulse in them are to rise to an understanding of what is in the Gospels, they must absolutely rack their brains—there must even be a certain genius developed! From the fact that so few people understand the spiritual scientific interpretation of the Gospels, even in the smallest degree, it can be gathered that the normal human consciousness is not capable of it. Through Luciferic forces, with the development of genius, the Gospels can be understood in a purely superficial way; but as they are presented, how do these truths confront us? They come to us as if they gushed forth—the most perfect and highest good—directly from the Being of Christ—without effort or exertion of any kind—and speaking in such a way to hearts which allow themselves to be permeated by the Christ Impulse, that souls are illuminated and warmed through and through. The way in which the greatest truths are there presented to man is the opposite of the clever method. The method in the Gospels takes account of the fact that in the direct, original, elemental way in which these truths gush forth, perfect, from the fourth macrocosmic principle in Christ Jesus, they pass over immediately to the people. Indeed care has even been taken that the cleverness of man, the sagacity of all the Luciferic in human evolution, shall give much sophistical explanation of these words of Christ, and that we shall only gradually be able to win through to their simplicity and grandeur, to their fundamental character. And as with the words of Christ, so also with the facts concerning Christ.

If we present such a fact, let us say, as the Resurrection, by means which spiritual science provides, what strange fact do we there confront? A very important German Theosophist said, even in the third decade of the 19th century, that it can be seen how the human intellect is being more and more permeated by the Luciferic principle. This was Troxler. He said that the human intellect was utterly Luciferic in all that it comprises. It is generally difficult to make direct reference to the deeper theosophical truths; but those of you who attended my course of lectures in Prague (see Note 2) will recall that I referred to Troxler at that time, in order to show how he already knew what can now be taught concerning the human ether body; he said that the human intellect is permeated by the Luciferic forces. If we today, disregarding the Luciferic forces, will to comprehend the resurrection with good theosophical forces, then we must point to the fact that at the baptism by John in the Jordan something significant occurred: that then the three bodies of the Luke Jesus boy were permeated by the macrocosmic Christ Being, Who then lived for three years on earth, and then these bodies passed through the Mystery of Golgotha with this Christ Being. The development of Christ Jesus during the three years was naturally different from that of other men. We must inquire concerning this development, so that, going into fundamental facts, and with the principles of spiritual science, we may comprehend what the resurrection actually was.

Jesus of Nazareth stood by the Jordan. His ego separated from the physical body, the etheric body and the astral body, and the macrocosmic Christ Being came down, took possession of these three bodies, and then lived until the 3rd of April of the year 33—as we have been able to determine. But it was a different kind of life; for, beginning from the baptism, this life of Christ in the body of Jesus of Nazareth was a slow process of dying. With each advancing period of time during these three years, something of the sheaths of Jesus of Nazareth died away, so to speak. Slowly these sheaths died, so that after three years the entire body of Jesus of Nazareth was already close to the condition of a corpse, and was only held together by the power of the macrocosmic Christ Being. You must not suppose that this body in which the Christ dwelt was like any other body—let us say a year and a half after the John baptism in the Jordan (see Note 2); it was in such a state that an ordinary human soul would have felt at once that it was falling away from him—because it could only be held together by the powerful macrocosmic Christ Being. It was a constant, slow dying, which continued through three years. And this body had reached the verge of dissolution when the Mystery of Golgotha took place. Then it was only necessary that those people mentioned in the narrative should come to the body with their strange preparation of spices and bring about a chemical union between these special substances and the body of Jesus of Nazareth, in which the macrocosmic Christ Being had dwelt for three years, and then that they should place it in the grave. Very little was needed then to cause this body to become dust; and the Christ Spirit clothed Himself with an etheric body condensed, one might say, to physical visibility. So the risen Christ was enveloped in an etheric body condensed to physical visibility; and thus He went about and appeared to those to whom He could appear. He was not visible to everyone, because it was actually only a condensed etheric body which the Christ bore after the resurrection; but that which had been placed in the grave disintegrated and became dust. And according to the latest occult investigations, it is confirmed that there was an earthquake. It was astonishing to me to discover, after I had found from occult investigation that an earthquake had taken place, that this is indicated in the Matthew Gospel. The earth divided and the dust of the corpse fell in, and became united with the entire substance of the earth. In consequence of the violent shaking of the earth, the clothes were placed as they were said to have been found, according to the description in the John Gospel. It is wonderfully described in the Gospel of St. John.

In this way we must understand the Resurrection occultly, and we need not at all come into contradiction with the Gospels. I have often called attention to the fact that Mary Magdalene did not recognize the Christ when He met her. How could one possibly fail to recognize again some one whom he had seen only a few days before, especially if he were such an important personality as Christ Jesus was? If it is said that Mary Magdalene did not know Him, then He must have appeared to her in another form. She recognized Him only when she heard Him speak. Then she became aware of Him.

And all the details of the Gospels are entirely comprehensible occultly.

But some one might say that Thomas was challenged by the risen Christ, when He appeared to the disciples, to feel the scars with his hands ... then it must be supposed that the scars were still there—that Christ had come to the disciples with the same body which had been resolved to dust. No! Imagine that some one has a wound: then the etheric body contracts in a special way and forms a kind of scar. And in the specially contracted ether body, from which were drawn the constituents of the new ether body with which the Christ clothed Himself, these wound-marks were made visible—were peculiarly thickened spots ... so that even Thomas could feel that he was dealing with a reality.

This is a remarkable passage in the occult sense. It does not in any way contradict the fact that we have to do with an etheric body, condensed to visibility by the Christ force; and that then also the Emmaus scene could occur. We find it described in the Gospel, not as an ordinary receiving of nourishment, but a dissolution of the food directly by the etheric body, through the Christ forces, without the cooperation of the physical body.

All these things can be understood today through occult principles, on the basis of spiritual science. Apart from the poorly translated passages, the Gospels can be understood literally in a certain way. Everything becomes clear in a wonderful way, and any one who has grasped this will say to himself, when he notices a contradiction: “I am too stupid for this.” He does not feel that he is so clever as the modern theologians, who say: “We are not able to comprehend the Resurrection as it is described in the Gospels!” ... But we can comprehend it exactly thus, when we understand the principles.

How does all that has now been said work upon the human reason? Well, it affects people in such a way that they say: “If I am to believe the Resurrection, then I shall have to set at naught all that I have gained up till now through my reason. That I cannot do. Therefore the Resurrection must be effaced.”—The reason which speaks thus is so permeated by Lucifer that it cannot comprehend these things. Such a reason will come to reject more and more the great, effective, elementary language and facts of earlier times, and those connected with the Mystery of Golgotha. But spiritual science will be called upon to comprehend these things, even to the smallest details. It will not reject that which, as fifth, sixth, and seventh principles, can transcend the fourth macrocosmic principle. Nevertheless, it will see in the fourth macrocosmic principle the greatest impulse which has been given to the Earth evolution.

But from this you see that in a certain way it is not exactly easy to understand the Christ evolution within the earth, because in a sense the objection is justified that particular spirits, Luciferic spirits, lead up to other principles—but only to microcosmic principles. I expressed that earlier when I said: The Christ is a sort of focal point, in which the Being works through His deed, the Being works through that which He is. Round about the Christ sit the twelve Bodhisattvas of the world, upon whom streams what flows from the Christ, and who elevate it, in the sense of increased wisdom, to higher principles. But it all flows from the fourth principle—even upon the higher principles—in so far as these are evolved on the earth. On this account there is much error with regard to the uniqueness of the Christ, because there is not a clear understanding that in the Christ we have, to be sure, to do with the fourth principle, but with the fourth macrocosmic principle, and even though higher principles can be developed, these are only the microcosmic principles of beings who have not come to full development on the Moon, but who in their way transcend the human. Because they came to unfoldment during the Moon evolution, they developed on their part upon the Moon what human beings must evolve only upon the earth.

We must rise to an understanding of such things if we would comprehend the true place of the Christ principle within our Earth evolution, if we would clearly see why the Antichrist will in the future be regarded more highly in many respects than the Christ Himself. The Antichrist will perhaps be found to be more clever, possessed of more genius than the Christ; he will win a powerful following; but spiritual scientists should be prepared in advance, so as not to be deceived by what has now been characterized. More than all else it will be necessary to be firmly established in the good principles of spiritual science, in order not to he deceived in this realm. It was the foremost mission of that esotericism which has been developed in the Occident since the 12th century, and about which much has been said, to work out clearly what is to be said about the nature of the Christ in this regard. So that he who is firmly established in this esotericism will recognize more and more clearly that it is a focal position which the Christ occupies in the Earth evolution. And concerning all so-called reincarnations of the Christ on our earth, one can bring forward this quite simple comparison: Just as a balance must be supported at only one point, and not at two or several, so must the Earth evolution have one basic impulse. And anyone who admits several incarnations of the Christ makes the same mistake as he who supposes that scales to function properly must be supported in two places. When this is done, they are no longer scales. And anyone who went about on earth in several incarnations, would no longer be Christ. That is a fact which each well-instructed occultist will urge concerning the nature of Christ. Thus by a simple comparison we may always point to the uniqueness of the Christ nature; and here the Gospels and Spiritual Science are in complete accord.

Note 1:

Drama of Eduard Schuré: Die Kinder des Luzifer. Presented in German by members of the Anthroposophical Society, in the presence of the poet, Munich, 1909 and 1910.

Note 2:

Occult Physiology, 1911.

Translated by Marie Steiner for the thirty-seventh Anniversary and Convention of the T.S., 1912

To the President, TS: - The undersigned has the honour to present herewith the annual report of the Theosophical Society in Germany.

This year also our work has gone along the same lines and in the same manner, as since the foundation of the German Section. In the various Lodges, to which 3 new ones have been added, the work was done in such a way that knowledge, as well as the deepening and ennobling of life, have been aspired to. And one can distinctly see how the public lectures, as well as the other activities emanating from our Society, find an ever-growing wider comprehension in broader circles of the population. New Lodges have been founded in Augsburg, Erfurt and Hamburg. One Lodge dissolved. The total number of Lodges is now 55, and there are besides 4 (or 3) Centres. 293 members entered during the year; 14 died, 90 have resigned or dropped; 29 have gone over to other Sections; the net increase being thus 160.

The lecture-work of Dr. Rudolf Steiner went on this year as in former years. Lecture-series were held by him in Hannover, Helsingfors, Norrköping, Stockholm, Christiania, Munich and Bâle. Single lectures were given by him in most of the Lodges of our Section and were also held abroad. Dr. Carl Unger’s work for the building up of a philosophical foundation of the Theosophical work has been vigorously continued. His efforts too were directed in the same direction as before. Herr Adolf Arenson and Fräulein Toni Völker work with devotion in Stuttgart and its environment. So do Fräulein Stinde and Baroness Gumppenberg in Munich, Michael Bauer in Nürnberg, Frau Wolfram in Leipzig, Frl. Scholl in Cöln, Frau Wandrey in Hamburg. All these unwearingly affective members try to serve in the most intense manner the ideal of strengthening Theosophical knowledge and Theosophical life. At present the number of members that have entered into the ranks of those that have put their work into the Service of our cause by lectures, effective service of humanity and other different ways, is very large, and it is not possible even to name each single one in this report. Dr. Peiper’s activity as healer and lecturer in Munich, Frl. Stinde and Countess Kalckreuth’s unwearying activity for the spreading of spiritual life in the lower classes of the population, the activity in word and deed of Herr Walther, Frau v. Reden, Frl. Vreede, Herr v. Rainer, Frau ReifBusse and many others, have helped in the most different directions to deepen our thoughts, and to implant them in an effective way into the life of the soul and also into practical life.

The fertility of our work on the line of mystery-representations in Munich showed itself this year not only through the ever-increasing number of visitors, but also in that we were allowed to offer besides the repetition of the mysteries already performed, «The Holy Drama of Eleusis» by Eduard Schur&, «The Portals of Initiation» and «The Probation of the Soul» by Rudolf Steiner, a fourth performance of a similar kind, «The Guardian of the Threshold». Of those that are active in this work and have already been named formerly in his report, of Frl. v. Sivers, Frl. Waller, Herr Doser, Herr Seiling, Dr. Peipers and many others, of Baroness Eckhardstein as artistic moulder of the scenic pictures, of our painters Herr Hass, Herr Linde, Herr Volkert, as shapers of the decorative work, of them all I will only say, that with the increase of work, their devotion and self-surrender have increased.

On the whole it may be said, that our work progresses in the line designated by the fact, that within our field of activity a great number of persons have found in Theosophy the inmost impulse of their life.

We send our best greetings to the President and to the brothers in India.

Dr. Rudolf Steiner,
General Secretary.

Dear Colleagues,

With regard to the letter sent under “Confidential” by Mrs. Besant, President of the TS, to the members of the esteemed General Council (undated), the undersigned takes the liberty of submitting the following to these members as a basis for their assessment of the situation.

I would just like to say in advance that writing the following is not a sympathetic task for me, as I completely lack any sympathy for what the allure of opposition entails. I would certainly refrain from doing so if the challenge posed by the letter of the P[resident of the] TS were not so apt to convey completely erroneous opinions to the members of the Theosophical Society regarding the matters concerning the German section and myself. Some criticize that I have remained silent about many things so far. Well, I can also tolerate unjustified criticism, and would continue to tolerate it if I did not do a disservice to the truth by continuing to do so. The following statements may show anyone who is willing to evaluate facts that I have not adopted any position that is incompatible with theosophical principles, but that one day I was confronted with such a position from another quarter and now, as the letter mentioned testifies, I am confronted with it to an ever greater extent. My only aspiration is to achieve peace for a calm possibility of communicating spiritual knowledge.

1. The case of Dr. Vollrath, cited by the President of the TS on p. 3 of the aforementioned letter, has nothing to do with what the President of the T.S. describes on p. 2 of the letter as a “restriction on the opinions of a person”. The case is as follows: in 1908, the board of the German section decided by one vote to one (the undersigned did not vote personally) that Dr. Vollrath could no longer be considered a member. The reasons for this were Dr. Vollrath's general behavior within the Society, which made working with him seem impossible, and not at all his opinions. After some time, Dr. Vollrath sent a letter to Mrs. Besant, the President of the TS, with a whole series of unjustified accusations about me. Mrs. Besant sent me this letter at the time. I answered this letter confidentially and in detail – all this happened in 1909 – and Mrs. Besant was thus fully informed about Dr. Vollrath's behavior from that time on. Since then she knew what unjustified accusations Dr. Vollrath was making. It was therefore not important that Dr. Vollrath repeated these accusations in 1911, adding others, in a printed pamphlet. For me, the “Dr. Vollrath case” came to an end in 1909. I myself did not reply to Dr. Vollrath's pamphlet of 1911 and I did not object in the slightest when Dr. Vollrath was appointed as a representative of the “Star of the East” in [1911]. I have now stated my position in the whole matter in March 1912 in a detailed letter to Mrs. Besant, President of the TS, with the following words:) ¹

"Now to the point Dr. Vollrath. This is the thing through which you have made it simply impossible for me to represent you in the proper way in Germany. Dr. Vollrath has been carrying on a violent personal antagonism against me for a long time, he is writing a pamphlet, the falsity of which, dear Mrs. Besant, must be known to you, because I informed you in 1909 in a detailed manner about the real state of things. In Germany it is known that you made Dr. Vollrath the representative of the Order of the Star at exactly the same moment when, in the form of a pamphlet full of objective untruths, he made a new attack on me and some of my colleagues. You thus put me into the really undesired necessity, either to be silent, and thus admit that something in the attacks of Dr. Vollrath must be true, as he is the representative of Mrs. Besant in Germany, aye, as he is appealing to it; or, if I am not doing this, to turn myself against it, and thus against you. It seems that scarcely anything could be comparable to this enormity: The President of the Theosophical Society herself makes it impossible for the representative of a section to stand for the president. The objection that the representation has been taken from Dr. Vollrath could only have had a value if I had not reported to you in 1909 the whole state of affairs concerning Dr. Vollrath. I would like to make it clear once again that I personally take the matter with absolute indifference; as for myself, things worse than these can be undertaken against me; I read these things as if they did not concern me. I have only compassion for Dr. Vollrath, not the slightest rancour. For you, dear Mrs. Besant, I would like to be able to feel affection as I do always. But as little as the matter comes into consideration for me, as much it comes into consideration for the German Section, which, if it would not think too soundly about the things, could lose its faith in everything. For you, dear Mrs. Besant, have expressed, as President, by nominating Dr. Vollrath, a full vote of no confidence in the General Secretary of the German Section. I am only stating this as a fact because I do not, of course, discuss in the least your right to nominate any person you feel pleased with, with whom I do not want to have anything to do. [These words have nothing to do] with the personality of Dr. Vollrath, but only with the fact that [to] the eyes of the members of the German Section you have given a full vote of mistrust to its General Secretary. Herewith I have simply characterized with dry words, that may sound harsh, a state of things, but I have reflected for a long time if I [could] use other words.

It may well be pointed out that Mrs. Besant's objection to the matter, which she had already raised, cannot be accepted, that she had recommended Dr. Vollrath not in her capacity as President of the TS, but as protector of the Order of the “Star in the East.” For the German section, just as I myself, has never denied Mrs. Besant the right to make this recommendation; she merely stated that if Mrs. Besant, who after all is one person in both capacities, recommends Dr. Vollrath as her representative in an important public matter, despite the fact that Dr. Steiner had already informed her in 1909 about Dr. Vollrath's behavior, then Mrs. Besant does not trust Dr. Steiner's words. So it was not that the German Section wanted to interfere with Mrs. Besant's actions, but only to make it clear that Dr. Steiner's words meant nothing to Mrs. Besant when she publicly performed important acts. This was expressed at the General Assembly of the German Section in 1911; and I merely explained this in detail in the above-mentioned letter.

What has Mrs. Besant done? She wrote the letter to me printed on S. 12 of her present letter to the members of the General Council, in which she does not mention that she was fully informed about everything concerning Dr. Vollrath not only through his pamphlet of 1911, but already through my letter of 1909, and declares that she did not know the pamphlet of 1911 when she recommended Dr. Vollrath. But in doing so, she only confirms that she was completely indifferent to what my letter of 1909 already contained, that what the German section was accusing her of, my communications meant nothing to her.

One more example of Mrs. Besant's recent actions against me is worth mentioning. At the last general assembly of the German section, I was forced – because I had been asked – to discuss the objective facts of the cancellation of the congress in Genoa. I said that after the cancellation, I contacted the Secretary General of the Italian section to find out the reasons for the cancellation. He replied, “I was acting on strict orders from President Mrs. Besant and Secretary Mr. Wallace. Please contact them.” This was the strictly objective fact as I presented it. Mrs. Besant is now spreading the rumor that I have misrepresented the matter, because she would never have canceled the congress, but only reported to Genoa that she would not be coming there. I would like to point out that I only told the facts, and Mrs. Besant is twisting the matter so that the reader must conclude from her words that I have presented the matter incorrectly. Moreover, Mr. Wallace later gave a version of the matter in a letter to me that was entirely consistent with the telegram from the General Secretary of the Italian Section.

The fact that this letter, which Mrs. Besant $12 prints, has not yet appeared in the “Mitteilungen der deutschen Section” is simply because no further issue of these messages has appeared since that time. It will be published when one appears.

But for me, this letter can only mean that Mrs. Besant finds everything I have communicated to be meaningless, because she does not answer the question that is at the heart of my letter, but rather something that I have explicitly stated is not important.

Since Mrs. Besant's various printed statements are likely to create the belief that I have violated the principle of general tolerance of opinions in the Theosophical Society, it is necessary to also reproduce the statements that I also made to Mrs. Besant in my letter of March 1912:

“And here I come to another point, one of principle. You, dear Mrs. Besant, said in your last address at the Adyar Convention that here in Germany Theosophy is brought forth upon lines that are particularly adopted to German circumstances and which other nations could not accept. Nothing of this is in reality the case. There are actually two points that have to be considered. The first concerns my occult position, which differs in some points from yours and Mr. Leadbeater's, and which seems to culminate in the Christ-question. I say “seems” on purpose. This point concerns not only the German members of the Theosophical Society, but also many members of other sections. As for the first point: it is at least strange that an agitation is being stirred up over it, and that things are being distorted so as to suggest aggressive action on our part or even on mine. In the principal lines I have already stated my point of view concerning the Christ-problem in my book 'Christianity as a Mystical Fact', which appeared in 1903. That this point of view differs from yours and Mr. Leadbeaters has been remarked immediately by Mr. Keightley and has been expressed by him in the article which he wrote about it for the 'Theosophical Review'. All that which since then has been added to the statements put forth in this book, are details of occult investigation, which I had to bring forth in the course of years, because I, who had to work essentially in Christian countries, was obliged to give an objective interpretation of the gospels. Thus, in the whole trend of my work since I entered the Theosophical Society nothing has been changed, except that in the course of time, in many territories, more and more people have got attentive to my point of view. I could think the more, dear Mrs. Besant, to have your approval in all I did, as this way of action was a natural consequence of the conversations I had with you in Munich in 1907 and in Budapest in 1909. As for other deviations from yours and Mr. Leadbeater's point of view, I had no reason to think about your contradiction, as you yourself had written a warm preface to the English edition of my book “Initiation” and had recommended the translation. From my part nothing has happened, but that I could not endorse your views about the “coming Christ which you brought to expression only after the fixation of my point of view. In the beginning I did everything to equalize the gap, in order to give members the opportunity to remain neutral. When then the opinion got stronger and stronger that my point of view could not be brought into line with the opinions you brought forth only since 1909, I could not do more than rely upon the fact that the Theosophical Society could give expression in her midst to the most varied points of view. I do not think that with all that happened, I have done, even in the slightest measure, something which is in contradiction with this principle of the Theosophical Society. It was quite self-evident that on the basis of all I have just explained, I could not have anything to do with the “Star of the East” and with anything concerning Krishnamurti. I have done that in the way that I simply did not speak about these things. I will continue to do so, and will [not put anything into the way] of those that are working for these things in Germany. For this is the good right of any one, just as I cannot do else, but ignore these things. Despite my absolute silence about the ‹Star of the East› Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden, as your representative in Germany, made violent opposition to me in this matter. Why must this be, as I shall not put anything into his way in doing what he wants, if he will respect [the fact] that no one can compel me to act otherwise, when my conviction forces me simply to pass by a thing and be silent about it. This question too has nothing to do with any national point of view, so that the characteristic you give about it, saying that my conception of Christ is adapted to German circumstances, gives an unright conception of it. What I am saying about Christ has as little to do with anything national as a mathematical assertion has to do with it. To my insight there is no other possibility of turning against me than to say quite distinctly: in the Theosophical Society nothing else is permitted to be brought than that which is brought by Mrs. Besant and Mr. Leadbeater. Only when one is proclaiming this principle can one turn against that which comes from me. I will not complain if one is opposing me, but I cannot consider it right when one is spreading about: this or that is done because of national reasons, and there are not such ones, or when aggressiveness is reproached to us, and we do nothing but expose our point of view».

It might appear that these different standpoints have nothing to do with the questions that are being considered and that have been put to the General Council by the President of the TS. And it is absolutely true: in theory they have nothing to do with it. But the reality of Mrs. Besant's statement forces us to start from this point. For I may well ask anyone who wants to look objectively at facts, and not at the words that people say about these facts, to ask themselves, in view of everything that has happened on the part of the President, the question: Can such an unprejudiced judge believe for a moment that I would have been treated by the President in the well-known manner if, from the time about three years ago when Mrs. Besant began to expound her teachings of the “Coming Christ,” I had also begun to expound these teachings at her behest, and if I had joined the “Star of the East”? No matter how you look at it, the fact is that I and a number of other members of the TG did not follow the teachings of the “coming Christ” and the “Star of the East”. In reality, everything else followed from this. Just look at the most superficial points. Mrs. Besant repeatedly expressed her approval of the election of certain members of the board of the German Section for life, in print, in letters, and also orally – on the occasion of a conversation at the Budapest Congress in 1909 –; now she turns on p. 4 of her letter to the General Council what she previously approved, as a weapon against the German Section and me.

It can be substantiated at any time upon request that within my sphere of influence nothing has been done that could be described as an attack on the teachings of Mrs. Besant and Leadbeater, but that as soon as Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden took over Mrs. Besant's representation of the “Star of the East” in Germany, the latter immediately turned against me and the German section in an aggressive manner. It is even true, which hardly anyone will find credible, that Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden wrote to me suggesting that I teach in such a way that my teachings could not be understood by my audience as contradicting Mrs. Besant's teachings.

While those who attack us always emphasize that all opinions must be tolerated in the Theosophical Society, the only thing that all accusations are based on is the fact that a number of members of the Theosophical Society do not blindly follow Mrs. Besant's and Leadbeater's teachings with me. In reality, those who do not agree that the entire Theosophical Society must follow the dogmatism of Mrs. Besant and Leadbeater are being accused of dogmatism. Look around you, among the members of the Theosophical Society who have become my audience, and see if any dogma has ever been imposed on them, if they have ever been asked to rely on anything other than their own free consent to what is said and on the inner truth of what is presented. Just try to imagine how carefully we try to avoid any possibility of dogmatism.

And then compare this to Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden's description, in a letter about an “Undogmatic Association” he founded, of the German section as an organization that is led by a pope and in which individual branches are treated dogmatically as if by bishops. Compare this with the opinions deviating from mine that were expressed within the German section, for example at our last general assembly.

Anyone who really considers all this with an evaluation of the facts will perhaps understand when I dare to say the following – sincerely and honestly: For years now, the only reason I have not resigned from my position as Secretary General of the German Section is the trust that a large number of members place in me, which imposes on me the ironclad duty not to leave the post where a work has been begun that I must not leave. Because of the behavior of Mrs. Besant and some of her supporters, the office of General Secretary of the German Section is nothing but a source of bitterness. I do not say martyrdom, just to avoid being accused of sentimentality. I would bear all this myself, perhaps even without a word of protest; but I must speak for the members who have placed their trust in me.

And I would truly have a lot to say in this regard. But for the time being, I am optimistic that what has been said in support of my words is enough. And perhaps it will not be necessary to add to the list of evidence given. I will only say that Mrs. Besant's only response to the above account of the true facts was the very matter-of-fact words: “As regards difference of opinion on the Christ question or on any other, such difference is legitimate within the Society. I have often said, both publicly and privately, that you [and I] and others have an equal right to form and to express our opinions; I think differences of opinion are useful, not harmful, and I have often urged people to read your books.

These few self-evident lines I received in reply to a detailed account of the matter from the same Mrs. Besant, who in her letter to the members of the General Council complains that I leave her letters unanswered. But what do these words mean in fact? Since there is no other reason for all the accusations against the German Section and me than the difference of opinion, these lines mean: One may accuse someone if they do not unconditionally follow the teachings one wants to have oneself, and one is justified for this act if one only says: I find different opinions useful and not harmful.

As Mrs. Besant reports to the General Council, the following case may serve to illustrate: Mrs. Besant writes (p. 7): “Dr. Steiner wrote - ignoring my suggestion to form a German-Swiss National Society -...” I now ask you to compare this “ignoring” with the objective fact that I wrote the following to Mrs. Besant in March 1912 regarding this matter: “In my last letter I tried to describe to you the position of those lodges in Switzerland that formerly belonged to the German Section, according to the real state of things. In my presentation I have stated that I have no personal desires in this matter; I have only given an expression to the desires and opinions of the said lodges. In consequence of the way in which you, dear Mrs. Besant, received this presentation of mine, and owing to the statements made in the 'Adyar bulletin report', the whole matter has been removed from its ground, so that there will be now the greatest difficulty to set it aright. What the above-mentioned lodges in Switzerland want has nothing to do with national sentiment. And if the matter is presented as being based on national animosity, our Swiss lodges are being deeply wronged. The matter is – I have emphasized this in my last letter – that the way in which the Geneva section was founded was felt by our lodges, and could not be felt otherwise, as a wrong done to them, an action through which violence has been done to them, and because they find the spirit of the Geneva foundation untheosophical, these lodges want to form a separate section, or, if for some reason the consent from Adyar should not be given to it, to leave the Theosophical Society. In my last letter already I accentuated, that one could easily call such an action from their part untheosophical, but it really ought not be possible to turn things round in such a way, that in the Theosophical Society first something untheosophical is done, and then, when another resists, that he should be called untheosophical. Our Swiss lodges do not feel in any way aggressive, but absolutely in the defensive. What I myself am thinking about the matter is of no concern, only this, that all the lodges formerly belonging to the German Section, have expressed their will to remain united, not excluding Lugano and Neuchâtel but with these together. The national point of view is not the one in question; therefore these united lodges do not want to be separated by national points of view. Therefore I really can but repeat today what I expressed in my last letter concerning this point."

I now ask the objective judge, firstly, how this fact of my detailed letter agrees with the other fact that Mrs. Besant says on p. 7 of her letter: ‘Dr. Steiner wrote - ignoring my suggestions to form a German-Swiss-National Society’.

Unfortunately, I was again in the position of having to do the same this time as I had to do in the case of the alleged attack on Mrs. Besant at our 1911 general assembly. At the time, I said nothing other than the objective facts that had occurred. Mrs. Besant called this account of facts that she herself had brought about an attack on her person. Now, is it not the case that I have not said anything against Mrs. Besant, but that it is enough to tell the facts that happened through Mrs. Besant, and Mrs. Besant finds a sharp attack on herself in these facts brought about by her.

I have in fact written to Mrs. Besant about everything concerning the Swiss lodges and other matters; and I had no reason to write the same things again because Mrs. Besant formally answered my letters, but her letters contained nothing on the points that mattered. It is quite easy to answer letters when these letters do not touch on the important points. Whether it is justified in such a case to say of the other person that he is remaining silent, I ask the esteemed colleagues to judge.

On pp. 14 ff. of the letter to the members of the General Council, Mrs. Besant shares a letter written by Mr. Bernhard Hubo, a member of the German section and chairman of a Hamburg branch, in response to a letter from Mr. Cordes. The content of this letter, written out of honest conviction and probably also indignation, can easily be misunderstood if one does not know Mr. Cordes' letter, to which Mr. Hubo's letter is the answer. Mr. Cordes' letter reads verbatim: “Dear Mr. Hubo: I had sent you all kinds of catalogs and lessons to Hohenfelde, all of which came back. But through the ‘Theosophist’ I found your present address, so you did come to Munich after all! Our esteemed President, Mrs. Besant, has appointed me National Representative for Germany for the International Council meeting in Adyar. I have already written to Mr. Westphal, whose acquaintance I owe to your kindness. I know only what I have heard from you, because since 1900 I have only been to Hamburg once, and that was those four weeks in June 1911. Mrs. Besant asked me to contact Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden, you and Leipzig. Can you help me to get short, concise notes for the public and as much private and intimate news as possible? I don't know anyone in Leipzig, but if I have your valuable help – Munich, Mr. Westphal – Hamburg, Mr. Koethin – Hanover and Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden in Göttingen, things will go well. Dr. Huebbe-Schleiden has just sent me his book 'Diene dem Ewigen' (Serve the Eternal) with the following dedication: 'To his spiritual brother Cordes, in devotion, steadfastness and gentleness'. I will write to him today. If you honor me with private messages, I will of course maintain the strictest discretion. Otherwise a postcard with brief notes intended for the public will suffice. The important thing is to maintain this connection with Germany, and once you have agreed to correspond with me, once a month will help. You are not the man to let it drop. Because if you ever want to have workers in the German field, you must not be deterred from taking the trouble to train apprentices. In friendship, J.H. Cordes.

Although I should be allowed to have my thoughts about someone who, in league with Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden, “serves the eternal” by “wanting to get as much private and intimate news as possible” in order to publish them in “devotion, steadfastness and gentleness”, or, if necessary, to maintain “strict discretion”, the fact is that I have never worried about Mr. Cordes in truth, and I have never even in the slightest way hindered his steps. Mr. Hubo wrote his letter to Mr. Cordes quite freely and of his own accord, as is the custom in our section, and without the slightest influence from me. And I could only say afterwards that I found Mr. Hubo's words understandable, since he had been expected to become the mediator of “private and intimate news”.

What does Mrs. Besant do? Without the slightest reason, she writes on page 19 of her letter to the General Council: “Dr. Steiner evidently regards him - Mr. Cordes - as an enemy, for he was refused, by Fräulein von Sivers, an invitation to the Congress lately held in Munich.

The only thing in the letter that Mrs. Besant wrote to the members of the General Council that could even give the appearance of justifying any kind of accusation concerns the case of Leonhardi, which is mentioned on p. 19 f. But so that it can be seen that here, too, only the appearance of a violation of the statutes having occurred is being created, the case should be reported here, although I am extremely reluctant to touch on the matter, for reasons that will become apparent from the narrative itself. Mrs. and Miss Leonardi applied for admission to our Leipzig Lodge. I must now confess that I have a certain sense of responsibility when I put my name to an admission diploma of the Theosophical Society. When the application for admission of the two ladies mentioned was submitted to me, this fact had been preceded by several others. In the preceding months I had received several letters from one of the ladies. These letters were for the most part pure hymns of praise to me. The address was “To the Master of German Theosophy” and the letter contained many intensifications of this designation of my person on the outer address. From the content of these letters, I formed the conviction that the two ladies, whom I otherwise hold in high esteem as a result of a previous fleeting encounter after one of my lectures in Berlin, had not yet been convinced of how we work within the Theosophical Society and that, in my opinion, the emphasis on one person – in this case mine – over the objective truth must be overcome above all else. In short, after all the praise for me, I couldn't bring myself to put my name all too quickly on the relevant admission diplomas. This is how the rumor arose: Mrs. Wolfram rejected the ladies because they were connected to Dr. Vollrath and corresponded with Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden. As soon as I heard that this was being said, I immediately asked Frau Wolfram, the president of our Leipzig lodge, whether this was the case. I myself had not even known that the ladies were corresponding with Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden. Frau Wolfram categorically denied having said anything of the sort to the ladies. But I assure the esteemed members of the General Council that there was no other reason for not signing the admission diplomas of the two ladies than that which arose from the content of the letters mentioned. Call it weakness on my part, but I am convinced that someone who writes me letters of such praise is not yet fully aware of the nature of the Theosophical movement and would do better to wait a little while before accepting until he can properly distinguish the personal from the objective.

What Mrs. Besant says on page 4 about certain additions to our statutes of the German Section is completely unfounded for the reason that the added points (lifelong membership, signature of the chairman of a lodge for someone who wants to be admitted to one of our lodges) have never violated the general statutes of the Theosophical Society in any way. No one has been rejected by us after the addition of these points who would not have been rejected before the addition of these points.

Of notable rejections in our organization, only the following comes into consideration. I was unable to issue the diploma for some of the admissions recommended by Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden because I knew that Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden did not even know the applicants. I could not, on my own responsibility, authorize the founding within the German Section of a branch that Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden wanted to found under the name “Freedom Branch,” because Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden has been behaving in the most unbrotherly way against the German Section for a long time, publicly defaming it and spreading demonstrably untrue characterizations. As I have indicated to Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden, I will submit the request of the “Freedom Branch” to the next board meeting. A branch in Leipzig wanted to be established. I could not approve it as a branch of the German Section because Mrs. Besant had already indicated to me that this same branch had already been established as a branch directly affiliated with Adyar. But a branch that is already connected to Adyar cannot at the same time be a branch of a section.

It seems to me that I have sufficiently characterized the accusations that Mrs. Besant directed against the German Section and against me in the aforementioned letter. I wanted to give the esteemed members of the General Council at least some material for their judgment. It was difficult enough for me to write these pages. Anyone who wants to know what it is about will find that I have done nothing but present the positive results of my spiritual research in all peace, and that a number of members are among my audience for inner reasons. After this increase in the size of my audience, I was suddenly confronted with attacks from Mrs. Besant and a number of her supporters, among whom Dr. Huebbe-Schleiden is working in the manner described above. I want nothing at all but the recognition of the fact, not by words, but by facts, that the Theosophical Society may still be a place for the representation of what has been recognized as true and that it is not in reality developing into a Leadbeater-Besant sect, which, instead of confessing that it only wants to be that, speaks of freedom of opinion and accuses those who take the matter seriously of things that in reality do not even exist. Those who have followed my work know that the opinion that one likes to spread – that we are pursuing a particular “Christian-German” view – is only suitable for creating the misconception that other religions are not viewed as objectively as Christianity.

My dear colleagues! I have presented you with facts; judge them. I am optimistic enough to believe that the facts will be enough for you. I do not want to accuse anyone; and if these pages do contain an accusation, it is only the facts that accuse. Only one thing needs to be emphasized: if Mrs. Besant, about whom I have to write this with great regret, wants to accuse me, then she should openly admit that within the Theosophical Society no opinion should exist other than hers and Mr. Leadbeater's. For I have nothing to accuse myself of other than not being able and not being allowed to blindly follow Mr. Leadbeater and Mrs. Besant. Objectively speaking, everything else is only the consequence of this cardinal transgression of mine.

With brotherly love, Dr. Rudolf Steiner
General Secretary of the German Theosophical Society.

• 1. I must make an insertion here. The detailed letters that I wrote to Mrs. Besant regarding the matters touched upon in these pages were written by me in German and then translated into English by Miss v. Sivers so as not to inconvenience Mrs. Besant by making her read a German letter. Now, Miss v. Sivers feels that she translated absolutely accurately, but not in good English. Of course, the letters must be printed here as they were sent to Mrs. Besant at the time. However, I would ask you to excuse the translation, which Miss von Sivers did not seem to have mastered entirely, with the following: Due to being overburdened with theosophical work, I was unable to write the decisive letter to Mrs. Besant at any other time than at night, immediately before a journey to be undertaken the next morning. Miss v. Sivers, indisposed, had to complete the translation in a few hours of the night. So that a comparison with my German text is possible, I am including the same here.

The undersigned are obliged to inform you that the Executive Council, in extraordinary session on December 8, 1912, has passed the resolution set out below. This decision has not been taken because of any existing differences of opinion or divergent standpoints, which may of course be represented in the Theosophical Society, but solely because the way in which the leadership of the “Star of the East” has related to the German Section appears to the latter to be completely incompatible with the first paragraph of the Constitution of the Theosophical Society. If it were to be said, for example, that the German Section excludes certain opinions and points of view, this must be dismissed from the outset as incorrect.

The above-mentioned decision reads: The Executive Board of the German Section of the Theosophical Society regards affiliation with the Order of the Star of the East as incompatible with membership of the Theosophical Society and requests members of the Star of the East to resign from the Theosophical Society.

The executive committee of the German section will be forced to expel members who do not comply with this request from the German section.

On behalf of the executive committee of the German section of [the] TG.

The General Secretary.
The Secretary.

As the result of an impulse which I have lately had, let us consider one of the most important subjects in Anthroposophy. Anthroposophists are often reproached for their inclination towards the study of far-distant cosmic developments; and it is said that they lift themselves into spiritual worlds, too frequently only considering the far-distant events of the past and the far-reaching perspective of the future, disregarding a sphere which is of more immediate interest—the sphere of human morals and human ethics.

It is true that this, the realm of human morals, must be looked upon as the most essential of all. But what must be said in answer to the reproach that we are less concerned with this important field of man's soul-life and social life than with more distant spheres, is that when we realise the significance and range of anthroposophical life and feeling we are only able to approach this subject with the deepest reverence, for it concerns man very closely indeed; and we realise that, if it is to be considered in the right way, it requires the most earnest and serious preparation. The above reproach might perhaps be stated in the following words: What is the use of making deep studies of the universe? Why talk about numerous reincarnations, or the complicated conditions of karma, when surely the most important thing in life is what a certain wise man after he had attained the summit of this life, and when after a life of rich wisdom he had grown so weak and ill that he had to be carried about, repeated again and again to his followers: “Children, love one another!”

These words were uttered by John the Evangelist when he was an old man, and it has often been said that in these four words, “Children, love one another!” is contained the extract of the deepest and most practical moral wisdom. Hence many might say: “What more is wanted, provided these good, sublime and moral ideals can be so simply fulfilled as in the sense of the words of the Evangelist John?”

When to the above statement one adds that it is sufficient for people to know that they ought to love one another, one thing is lost sight of, namely, the circumstance that he who uttered these words did so at the close of a long life of wisdom, a life which included the writing of the most profound and important of the Gospels. A man is only justified in saying anything so simple at the end of a rich life of wisdom. But one who is not in that position must first, by going deeply into the foundations of the secrets of the world, earn the right to utter the highest moral truths in such a simple manner.

Trivial as is the oft-repeated assertion, “If the same thing is said by two persons it never is the same,” it is especially applicable to the words we have quoted. When someone who simply declines to know or understand anything about the mysteries of the Cosmos says: “It is quite a simple matter to describe the highest moral life,” and uses the words: “Children, love one another,” it is quite different from when the evangelist John utters these words, at the close of such a rich life of wisdom. For this reason, he who understands these words of St. John ought to draw from them quite a different conclusion from that usually drawn. The conclusion should be that one has first of all to be silent about such profoundly significant words, and that they may only be uttered when one has gone through the necessary preparation and reached the necessary maturity.

Now after we have made this statement—which it is quite certain many will take earnestly to heart—something quite different, which is of the deepest importance will come to our mind. Someone might say: ‘It may be the case that the deep significance of moral principles can only be understood when the goal of all wisdom is reached, man uses them, nevertheless, all the time. How could some moral community or social work be carried on if one had to wait for a knowledge of the highest moral principles till the end of a life of striving for wisdom? Morals are most necessary for human social life; and now it is asserted that moral principles can only be obtained at the end of long striving after wisdom.’ A person might therefore reasonably say that he would doubt the wise arrangement of the world if this were so; if that which is most necessary could only be gained after the goal of human effort had been attained.

Life itself gives us, the true answer to what has just been said. You need only compare two facts which, in one form or another, are no doubt well known to you and you will at once perceive that the one can be right as well as the other; firstly, that we attain to the, highest moral principles and their understanding only at the conclusion of the effort after wisdom, and secondly, that moral and social communities and activities cannot exist without ethics or morals. You see this at once if you bear in mind two facts with which you are most certainly acquainted in one form or another. You may have known a man who was highly developed intellectually, he may have possessed not only a clear intellectual grasp of natural science, but he may also have understood many occult and spiritual truths both theoretically and practically and yet you may have known that such a person was not particularly moral. Who has not seen people clever and highly intellectual, going morally astray? And who has not also experienced the other fact, from which much may be learned! You, doubtless have known someone with a very restricted outlook, with limited intellect and knowing but little, who being in service brought up not her own but other people's children. From their earliest days she has probably assisted with their education and development and perhaps to the day of her death sacrificed to these children all she had in a selfless loving way and with the utmost devotion; yet if one had brought to her the moral principles that one had gained from the highest sources of wisdom, she would not, in all probability, have been particularly interested; she would probably have found them useless and incomprehensible. On the other hand her moral actions had accomplished more than mere recognition of moral principles. In such cases we feel that we must bow in reverence before that which streams out of the heart into life and creates an infinite amount of good.

Facts of such a nature often answer the riddles of life far more clearly than theoretical explanations, for we say to ourselves that a wise Providence, in order to impart to the world moral actions, moral activities, has not waited until people have discovered moral principles. There is in fact, to begin with—if we disregard immoral actions, the basis of which we shall get to know in these lectures—something contained in the human soul as a divine heritage, something given to us as original morality which may be called “instinctive morality” and it is this which makes it possible for humanity to wait until it can fathom moral principles.

But perhaps it is quite unnecessary to trouble much about investigating moral principles! Might it not be said that it is best if people trust to their original moral instincts and do not perplex themselves with theoretical explanations about morals? These lectures are to show that this is not the case. They are to show that, at least in the present epoch of humanity, we must seek for anthroposophical morals and that these morals must be exercised as a duty which comes as the fruit of all our anthroposophical science and practice.

The philosopher, Schopenhauer, in spite of much that is entirely erroneous in his philosophy, made this very true statement regarding the principles of morality. “To preach morals is easy, but to give them a foundation is difficult.” This statement is very true, for there is scarcely anything easier than to pronounce in a manner appealing to the commonest principles of human feeling and perception, what a person ought to do or leave undone in order that he may be a good man. Many people no doubt are offended when it is asserted that this is easy, but it is easy, and one who knows life, and knows the world, will not doubt that scarcely anything has been spoken about so much as the right principles of ethical action, and the man who speaks upon general ethical principles meets with almost universal approval. One might say it pleases listening minds, for they feel they can agree in an unqualified manner with what the speaker says when he discourses on the very commonest principles of human morality.

Notwithstanding this, morals are certainly not established by ethical teachings or moral sermons. Truly not. If morals could thus be founded there would be no immorality at the present day, for one might say that the whole of humanity would be overflowing with moral activities. For undoubtedly everyone has the opportunity of hearing the finest moral principles, since people are so fond of preaching them. But to know what one ought to do and what is morally right is of least importance compared with the fact that there should be within us impulses which, through their inward strength, their inward power, are themselves converted into moral actions, and thus express themselves externally. It is well known that ethical sermons do not produce this result. A moral foundation is laid when a man is guided to the source whence he must draw the impulses which shall supply him with forces leading to ethical activity.

How difficult these forces are to find, is shown by the simple fact that innumerable attempts have been made, for example, from the philosophic side, to found a system of ethics, a code of morals. How many different answers exist in the world to the questions: “What is goodness?” -- “What is virtue?” Put together what the philosophers have said, beginning with Plato and Aristotle, and passing on through the Epicureans, the Stoics, the NeoPlatonists, the whole series down to modern philosophical opinions; put together all that has been said from Plato to Herbert Spencer upon the nature of Goodness and Virtue and you will see how many different attempts have been made to penetrate to the sources of moral life and impulse.

I hope in these lectures to show that it is only by delving into the occult secrets of life that it becomes possible, to penetrate not only to moral teachings, but to moral impulses, to the moral sources of life itself.

A single glance will show us that this moral principle in the world is by no means such a simple matter as might be supposed from a certain convenient standpoint. Let us for the moment take no notice of what is usually spoken of as “moral,” but consider certain spheres of human life from which we may perhaps be able to obtain a great deal towards a moral conception of life.

Not the least among the many things learned from spiritual science is the knowledge that most manifold conceptions and impulses have held good among various peoples in different parts of the earth. In comparing two sections of humanity which at first seem separated, one can consider the sacred life of ancient India, and observe how it has gradually developed up to the present day. One knows that what was characteristic of the India of primeval times is still true at the present day. The feelings, the thoughts and conceptions have been maintained that we find in this region in ancient times. It is remarkable that in these civilisations there has been preserved an image of primeval times, and when we consider what has been maintained up to our own day we are looking, so to say, at the same time into the remote past.

Now we do not progress very far in our understanding of the different peoples on earth if we begin by only applying our own moral standards. For this reason let us for the moment exclude what might be said about the moral things of those times and only inquire: What has developed from these characteristics of venerable ancient Indian civilisation?

We find, to begin with, that what was most highly honoured and held sacred may be described as “devotion to the spiritual”. This devotion to the spiritual was the more highly valued and counted sacred, the more the human being was able to sink into himself, to live quietly within himself, and, apart from all that man can attain on the physical plane—to direct the best in him to the spiritual worlds. We find this cultivation, this dedication of the soul to the foundations of existence as the highest duty of those who belonged or belong to the highest caste of Indian life, the Brahmins.

Nothing impresses the moral feelings of the Indian people more than this turning to the Divine-Spiritual with a devotion which forgets everything physical; an intensely deep introspection and renunciation of self. The moral life of this people is permeated by a devotion which controls every thought and action. This is apparent from the fact that those who belonged to other castes looked upon it as natural, especially in ancient times, that the caste of religious life and devotion and the life of ritual should be considered as something apart and worthy of reverence. That which underlies this cannot be understood by means of the common principles of morality laid down by philosophy, for at the period when these feelings and impulses developed in ancient India they were impossible among other peoples. In order that these tendencies could develop with such intensity both the temperament and fundamental character of the Indian people were required. As civilisation proceeded, emanating from India they spread abroad over the rest of the earth. If we wish to understand what is meant by the Divine-Spiritual we must go to this original source.

Let us now turn our attention away from this people and direct it towards Europe. Let us consider the peoples of Europe before Christianity had affected European culture very much, when it had only begun to spread in the West. You all know that Christianity spreading into Europe from the East and South was confronted by the peoples of Europe, who possessed certain tendencies, a definite inner worth and definite forces. One who studies with spiritual means the history of the introduction of Christianity into Central Europe and also here in the North, knows at what cost the balance was struck between this or that Christian impulse and what was brought to meet it from Northern and Central Europe.

And now let us inquire—as we have already done in the case of the Indian people—“What were the most characteristic moral forces brought to Christianity as a moral possession, a moral heritage, by the peoples whose successors form the present European population, especially the population of the North, Central Europe and England?” We need only mention a single one of the principal virtues, and we know at once that we are expressing something which is truly characteristic of these Northern and Mid-European peoples.—With the word “valour,” or “bravery,” we have named the chief virtue brought by the Europeans to Christianity; and the whole of the personal human force was exercised in order to actualise in the physical world what the human being intends from his innermost impulse. Intrinsically the further we go back to ancient times the more we find this to be the case—the other virtues are consequent upon this.

If we examine real valour in its fundamental quality, we find that it consists of an inner fullness of life which is practically inexhaustible, and this fullness of life was the most salient characteristic among the ancient peoples of Europe. Ancient Europeans possessed within them more valour than they could use for themselves. Quite instinctively, they followed the impulse to spend that of which they had a superabundance. One might even say that they were wasteful in pouring out their moral wealth, their fitness, and ability into the physical world. It was really as if among the ancient people of Northern Europe each one had brought with him a superfluity of force which was more than he needed for his own personal use; this he was therefore able to pour forth in an excess of prodigality and to use it for his warlike deeds. Modern ideas now consider these self-same warlike deeds, which were the outcome of ancient virtue, to be a relic of the past, and in fact they are classed as vices; but the man of ancient Europe used them in a chivalrous, magnanimous manner. Generous actions were characteristic of the peoples of ancient Europe, just as actions springing from devotion were characteristic of the people of ancient India.

Principles, theoretical moral axioms, would have been useless to the peoples of ancient Europe, for they would have evinced little understanding for them. Preaching moral sermons to a man of ancient Europe would have been like giving one who does not like reckoning, the advice that he ought to write down his receipts and expenditures with great accuracy. If he does not like this, the simple fact remains that he need not keep accounts, for he possesses enough for his expenditure, and can do without careful book-keeping if he has an inexhaustible supply. This circumstance is not unimportant. Theoretically it holds good with regard to what the human being considers of value in life, regarding personal energy and ability, and it also applies to the moral feelings of the inhabitants of ancient Europe. Each one had brought with him a divine legacy, as it were; he felt himself to be full of it, and spent it in the service of his family, his clan or his people. That was their mode of active trading and working.

We have now characterised two great sections of humanity which, were quite different from one another, for the feeling of contemplation natural to the Indians did not exist among Europeans. For, this reason it was difficult for Christianity to bring a feeling of devotion to the latter people, for their character and predispositions were entirely different. And now after considering these things—putting aside all the objections which might be raised from the standpoint of a moral concept—let us enquire into the moral effect. It does not require much reflection to know that this moral effect was extremely great when these two ways of looking at the world, these two trends of feeling met in their purest form. The world has gained infinitely much by that which could only be obtained through the existence of a people like the ancient Indians, among whom all feeling was directed to devotion to the Highest. Infinitely much it has also gained from the valiant deeds, of the European peoples of early pre-Christian times. Both these qualities had to co-operate, and together they yielded a certain moral effect. We shall see how the effect of the ancient Indian virtue as well as that of the ancient Germanic peoples can still be found to-day; how it has benefited not only a part but the whole of humanity, and we shall see how it still exists in all that men look up to as the highest.

So without further discussion, we may assert that something which produces this moral effect for humanity is good. Doubtless, in both streams of civilisation it must be so. But if, we were to ask: what is “goodness”? we are confronted once more by a puzzling question. What is the “good” which has been active in each of these cases? I do not wish to give you moral sermons, for this I do not consider my task. It is much more my task to bring before you the facts which lead us to an anthroposophical morality. For this reason I have thus far brought before you two systems of known facts, concerning which I ask nothing except that you should note that the fact of devotion and the fact of bravery produce definite moral effects in the evolution of humanity.

Let us now turn our attention to other ages. If you look at the life of the present day with its moral impulses you will naturally say: “We cannot practise to-day—at least not in Europe—what the purest ideal of India demands, for European civilisation cannot be carried on with Indian devotionalism”; but just as 1ittle would it be possible to attain to our present civilisation, with the ancient praiseworthy valour of the people of Europe. It at once becomes evident that deep in the innermost part of the ethical, feelings of the European peoples there is something else. We must therefore search out that something more in order to be able to answer the question: What is goodness? What is virtue?

I have often pointed out that we have to distinguish between the period we call the Graeco-Latin or fourth post-Atlantean age of civilisation and the one we call the fifth, in which we live at the present time. What I have now to say regarding the nature of morality is really intended to characterise the origin of the fifth post-Atlantean age. Let us begin with something which, as it is taken from poetry and legend you may consider open to dispute; but still it is significant of the way in which fresh moral impulses became active and how they flowed into mankind when the development of the fifth age gradually set in.

There was a poet who lived at the end of the 12th century and beginning of 13th century. He died in the year 1213, and was called Hartmann von Aue. He wrote his most important poem, entitled “Poor Henry,” in accordance with the way of thinking and feeling prevalent in his day. This poem particularly addresses what was thought about certain moral impulses among certain peoples in certain circles. Its substance is as follows:—Poor Henry once lived as a rich knight—for originally he was not poor Henry but a duly installed knight—who did not take into account that the things of the physical world decay and are temporary; he lived only for the day and thereby rapidly produced bad karma. He was thus stricken with a form of leprosy; he went to the most celebrated physicians in the world but none of them could help him, so considering his life at an end he sold all his worldly possessions; His disease preventing intercourse with his fellows he lived apart on a solitary farm, well taken care of by an old devoted servant and daughter. One day the daughter and the whole household heard that one thing alone could help the knight who had this destiny. No physician, no medicines could help him, only when a pure virgin out of pure love sacrificed her life for him would his health be restored. In spite of all the exhortations of her parents and of the knight Henry himself, something came over the daughter which made her feel that it was imperative she should sacrifice herself. She went with the knight to Salerno, the most celebrated school of medicine of the day. She did not fear what the physicians required of her; she was ready to sacrifice her life. But at the last moment the knight refused to allow it, he prevented it and returned home with her. The poem then tells us that when the knight returned home, he actually began. to recover and that he lived for a long time and spent a happy old age with the one who had determined to save him.

Well, to begin with, you may say that this is a poem, and we need not take literally the things here spoken of. But the matter becomes different when we compare what Hartmann von Aue, the poet of the Middle Ages, wrote at that time in his Poor Henry" with something that really happened, as is well known. We may compare what Hartmann wrote with the life of Francis of Assisi, who was born in the year 1182 and lived in Italy.

In order to describe, the moral nature contained in the personality of Francis of Assisi, let us consider the matter as it appears to the spiritual investigator or occultist, even though we may be looked upon as foolish and superstitious. These things must be taken seriously, because at that period of transition they were producing such momentous effects.

We know that Francis of Assisi was the son of the Italian merchant Bernardone, and his wife. Bernardone travelled a great deal in France, where he carried on his business. We also know that the father of Francis of Assisi was a man who set great store on outer appearances. His mother was a woman possessing the virtue of piety, having fine qualities of heart, and living devoutly according to her religious feelings. Now the things recounted in the form of legends about the birth and life of Francis of Assisi are entirely in agreement with occult facts. Although occult facts are frequently hidden by history in pictures and legends, these legends still correspond with them. Thus it is quite true that before the birth of Francis of Assisi quite a number of persons knew through revelation that an important personality was about to be born. Historical records show that one of the many people who dreamt—that is, who saw in prophetic vision—that an important personality was about to be born, was Saint Hildegarde. At this point I must emphasise once more the truth of these facts, which can be corroborated by investigations into the Akashic Record. She dreamt that there appeared to her a woman whose face was smeared and covered with blood, and this woman said to her: “The birds have their nests here upon earth, the foxes too have their holes, but at the present time I have nothing, not even a stick upon which I can lean.” When Hildegarde awakened from this dream, she knew this personality represented the true form of Christianity. And many other persons dreamt in a similar manner. From the knowledge at their disposal they saw that the outer order and institution of the church was unfitted to be a receptacle, a covering, for the true Christianity.

One day, while Francis of Assisi's father was on business in France—this, again, is a fact—a pilgrim went to Pica's house, to the mother of Francis of Assisi, and said to her: “The child you are expecting must not be brought into the world in this house, where there is abundance; you must bring him to birth in the stable, for he must lie upon straw and so follow after his Master!” This was actually said to the mother of Francis of Assisi; and it is not legend but truth that as the father was in France on business the mother was able to carry this out, so that the birth of Francis of Assisi actually took place in a stable and upon straw.

Another thing is also true: Some time after the child was born a remarkable man came into the little town, a man who had never been seen in that neighbourhood before and was never seen there again. He went through the streets again and again saying “An important person has been born in this town.” And those whose visionary life was still active also heard the ringing of bells at the time of the birth of Francis of Assisi.

Besides these few details a whole series of phenomena might be adduced, but we shall content ourselves with the above, which are only mentioned in order to show how significantly everything was concentrated from the spiritual world, regarding the advent of a single personality in that age.

All this becomes especially interesting when in addition we consider something else. The mother had the peculiar impression that the child ought to be called “John” and he was therefore given this name. However, when the father returned from France where he had done good business, he changed it and gave his son the name of Francis, as he wished to commemorate his successful journey. But originally the child was called John.

Now we need only draw attention to a few details from the life of this, remarkable man, especially from his youth. What sort of a person was Francis of Assisi as a youth? He was one who conducted himself like a descendant of the old Germanic knights, and this need not appear remarkable when we consider how peoples had intermingled after the immigrations from the North. Brave, warlike, filled with the ideal of winning honour and fame with the weapons of war; it was this which existed as a heritage, as a racial characteristic in the personality of Francis of Assisi.

There appeared in him more externally, one might say, the qualities which existed more as an inward quality of soul in the ancient Germans, for Francis of Assisi was a “spendthrift.” He squandered the possessions of his father, who was at that time a rich man. He gave freely to all his comrades and playfellows. No wonder that on all the childish warlike expeditions he was chosen as leader by his comrades, and that he was looked upon as a truly warlike boy, for he was known as such throughout the whole town. Now there were all sorts of quarrels between the youths of the towns of Assisi and Perugia; he also took part in these and it came about that on one occasion he and his comrades were taken prisoners. He not only bore his captivity patiently and in a knightly way, but he encouraged all the others to do the same until a year later they were able to return home.

Afterwards, when in the service of chivalry, a necessary expedition was going to be undertaken against Naples, he had a vision in a dream. He saw a great palace and everywhere weapons and shields. Up to the time of his dream he had only seen all kinds of cloth in his father's house and place of business. So he said to himself, this is a summons for me to become a soldier, and he thereupon decided to join the expedition. On the way there and still more distinctly after he had joined the expedition, he had spiritual impressions. He heard something like a voice which said “Go no further, you have wrongly interpreted the dream picture which is very important to you. Go back to Assisi and you shall there hear the right interpretation!”

He obeyed these words, went back to Assisi, and behold, he had something like an inner dialogue with a being who spoke to him spiritually and said, “Not in external service have you to seek your knighthood. You are destined to transform all the forces at your disposal into powers of the soul, into weapons forged for your use. All the weapons you saw in the palace signify the spiritual weapons of mercy, compassion and love. The shields signify the reasoning powers which you have to exercise to stand firmly in the trials of a life spent in deeds of mercy, compassion and love.” Then followed a short though dangerous illness, from which, however, he recovered. After that he passed through something like a retrospection of the whole of his life and in this he lived, for several days. The young knight who in his boldest dreams had only longed to become a great warrior was transformed into a man who now most earnestly sought all the impulses of mercy, compassion and love. All the forces he had thought of using in the service of the physical world were transformed into moral impulses of the inner life.

Here we see how a moral impulse evolves in a single personality. It is important that we should study a great moral impulse, for though the individual cannot always raise himself to the greatest ethical heights, yet he can only learn of them where he sees them most radically expressed and acting with the greatest forcefulness. It is precisely by turning our attention to the greatest and most characteristic manifestations of moral impulses, and then by considering the lesser ones in their light that we can attain to a correct view of moral impulses active in life.

But what happened next to Francis of Assisi? It is not necessary to describe the disputes with his father when he became prodigal in an entirely different manner. His father's home was well known for its lavish hospitality and wastefulness—for that reason his father could understand his son's extravagance, but he could not understand him after the radical change he had undergone, when he laid aside his best clothes and even his necessities and gave them to those in need. Nor could he understand his son's frame of mind, when he said, “How remarkable it is that those through whom in the West Christianity has received so much are so little respected,” and then Francis of Assisi made a pilgrimage to Rome and laid a large sum of money on the graves of the Apostles Peter and Paul. These things his father did not understand. I need not describe the discussions which then took place; I need only point out that in them were concentrated all the moral impulses of Francis of Assisi. These concentrated impulses had then transformed his bravery into soul-forces, they had developed in such a manner that in his meditations they produced a special conception, and appeared to him as the Cross and upon it the Saviour. Under these conditions he felt an inner personal relationship to the Cross and the Christ, and from this there came to him the forces through which he could immeasurably increase the moral impulses which now flowed through him.

He found a remarkable use for that which now developed in him. At that time the horrors of leprosy had invaded many parts of Europe. The church had discovered a strange cure for these lepers who were then so numerous. The priests would call the lepers and say to them: “ You are stricken with this disease in this life, but inasmuch as you are lost to this life, you have been won for God, you are dedicated to God.” And the lepers were then sent away to places far removed from mankind, where, lonely and shunned, they had to spend the remainder of their lives.

I do not blame this kind of cure. They knew no better. But Francis of Assisi knew a better one. I mention this, because from actual experience it will lead us to moral sources. You will see in our next lectures why we are now mentioning these things. These moral impulses led Francis of Assisi to search out lepers everywhere, and not to be afraid of going about among them. And actually the leprosy which none of the remedial agents at that time could cure, which made it necessary that these people should be thrust out of human society, this leprosy was healed in numberless cases by Francis of Assisi, because he went to these people with the power which he possessed through moral impulses, which made him fear nothing; it rather gave him courage not only carefully to cleanse their wounds, but to live with the lepers, to nurse them conscientiously, yea, to kiss them and permeate them with his love.

The healing of Poor Henry by the daughter of his faithful servant, is not merely a poetic story, it expresses what actually occurred in a great number of cases at that time through the historically well-known personality of Francis of Assisi. Observe what really took place. In a human being, in Francis of Assisi, there was a tremendous store of psychic life, in the shape of something which we have found in the ancient peoples of Europe as bravery and valour, which had been transformed into soul and spirit, and afterwards acted psychically and spiritually. Just as in ancient times that which had expressed itself as courage and valour led to personal expenditure of force, and manifested itself in Francis of Assisi in his younger days as extravagance, so it now led him to become prodigal of moral forces. He was full to overflowing with moral force, and this actually passed over to those to whom he turned his love.

Now try to realise that this moral force is a reality, just as much a reality as the air we breathe and without which we cannot live. It is a reality which flooded the whole being of Francis of Assisi, and streamed from him into all hearts to which he dedicated himself, for Francis of Assisi was prodigal of abundance of force which streamed forth from him, and this is something which has streamed into and intermingled with the whole of the mature life of Europe, which has changed into a soul force, and thus worked, as it were, in the world of external reality.

Try to reflect upon these facts which at first may apparently have nothing to do with the actual question of morality; try to grasp what is contained in the devotion of the Indian and the valour of the Norseman; reflect upon the healing effect of such moral forces as were exercised by Francis of Assisi and then in our next lecture we shall be able to speak about real, moral impulses and we shall see that it is not merely words which give rise to morality, but realities working in the soul.

I thank you from my heart for the kind words of the General Secretary of the Swedish section, Colonel Kinell, and in reply I wish to say that it is deeply satisfying, on my journey from Helsingfors, to be able for a few days to discuss again with you in Stockholm those things and truths which touch us all so closely. I offer you a hearty greeting, as warmly felt as the kind words of the General Secretary.

On these two more intimate evenings we shall have to speak of a question, an affair of mankind, which in a double connection penetrates extraordinarily deeply into our souls. First, because the Christ question is such that, for two thousand years now, not only has it occupied countless souls on earth, but from it have flowed for countless earth-souls spiritual life-blood, strength of soul, consolation and hope in suffering, strength and sureness in action. And not only that, but when we consider all that surrounds us as external exoteric culture, created through many centuries, then through deeper knowledge we see that all this would have been impossible had not the Christ impulse taken hold of a large part of humanity. This is one consideration which shows us what strong interest the Christ question must offer if we approach it with anthroposophical knowledge. This is only one side of the interest which we bring to this problem; the other side of our interest comes out of the particular soul and spiritual conditions of our present time, our epoch. We need only look about us in the world and try to understand the yearnings, the seeking of the human soul, and we shall be able to say to ourselves: “Ever more do human souls seek after something which, through the centuries, has been connected in men's souls with the name of Christ, and ever more do they come to the conviction that a renewing of the ways, a renewing of interest, a deepening of knowledge, is necessary if the needs of human souls (which will steadily increase with regard to Christ) are to be satisfied.” If we find on the one side a thirsting for enlightenment about Christ, we find on the other side, among numerous souls of the present day, doubt and insecurity as to the means used up to this time. And therefore, because of the yearning for an answer and because of the doubt that the truth can be learned, this is one of the most burning questions of the present time.

It is thus obvious that a spiritual movement which penetrates more deeply into spiritual foundations has the task of throwing light on this question. Things are like this today, my dear friends, but in a relatively short time, truly in a very short time, they will be entirely different. If we somewhat unegotistically examine what, in relation to Christ, will be needed by those men who follow after our time, then we must say to ourselves that, although many men of the present can satisfy themselves with what there is, souls will feel themselves increasingly unsure and will thirst increasingly for enlightenment. Thus in speaking of Christ today we speak of something which we foresee as necessary for the human beings of a very near future. Anthroposophy would not fulfil its task if it did not put itself in a position to create clarity on these points by means of its knowledge, as far as this is possible today.

As my point of departure I shall indicate the three paths along which the soul, in accordance with human evolution, can attain to Christ. If we mention three paths we must briefly describe the first path, which today is no longer a path, though it once was; which today need not be an esoteric path, as just in our time the anthroposophic path is, but which was a path for millions of souls through the centuries. This is the path through the so-called Christian documents, through the Gospels. For millions and millions of people this path was, and for many it still is, the only possible one. The second path along which the human soul may seek the Christ is that which can be called the path through inner experience, which especially in the present and in the near future numerous souls, out of their particular constitution and qualities, must pursue. The third path is that which, through the anthroposophical movement, one can at least begin to understand in our time, the path through initiation. Thus there are three paths to Christ: First, the path through the Gospels; second, the path through inner experience; and third, the path through initiation.

The first path, the path through the Gospels, need be only briefly characterized here. We all know that, in the course of the centuries, the Gospels became nourishment for the hearts and souls of innumerable people. We know also that the most enlightened, the most critical natures (and these are not the irreligious), begin to have no further relation to this Christ, because it is maintained today that external knowledge cannot know what historical facts really stand behind that which the Gospels relate. Had the Gospels been read by men of past centuries as today they are read by a scholar, by a man who has gone through the current scientific education, they would never have been able to exercise the powerful influence, the life-influence, which has flowed out of them. Now, if the Gospels were not read in past centuries as the educated man of today reads them, how were they read?

To ponder a priori on what may have taken place in Palestine at the beginning of our era, this would never have occurred to the Gospel-readers of earlier centuries, and still does not occur to many Gospel-readers of today. Those who begin to test, in the Gospels, what may have taken place before the eyes of the inhabitants of Palestine at the beginning of our era lose confidence in the historical character of the events of Palestine. The men of earlier times did not read in this way. They read in such a way that they allowed a picture to work on their souls; for instance, the picture of the Samaritan woman at the well, or of Christ imparting the Sermon on the Mount to his disciples. The question of external physical reality never occurred to them. How their hearts warmed, how their feelings swelled in the presence of these great and powerful pictures—this was to them the main thing. What formed itself in their hearts, what force, what life-meaning they gained through these pictures—this was the main thing. They felt that spiritual lifeblood and strength flowed to them from these pictures. When they let these pictures work on their souls, they felt strong; they felt that, without these pictures, they would be weak. And then they felt living, personal connections with what is recounted in the Gospels, and the question of historical reality occurred to them no further. The Gospels were themselves reality, they were present as force, and one did not need to ask whence they came; one knew that men had written them not with earthly means, but with impulses from the spiritual worlds. I do not assert that one must feel in this way today (what one must do depends on the development of mankind), but I assert that men felt in this way through centuries.

How could it be so? On this point spiritual science is now first able to instruct us. When we begin to understand the Gospels in the light of spiritual science, and try to penetrate into what flows down from spiritual worlds and is contained in the Gospels, then we stand before the Gospels in such a way that we say: “We know from spiritual science, quite apart from the Gospels, all that has taken place in human evolution in connection with the Christ-impulse, and then we find what is contained in the Gospels, quite independently of them.”

How, then, do we conceive the Gospels from the spiritual-scientific point of view? If I may use a simple comparison, let us assume that a man has attained enlightenment on some subject. With this enlightenment, he meets a second man and begins to talk with him. At first he will not suppose that the other knows anything of the subject which is so clear to him, but from the conversation he perceives that the other knows it quite as well as he. What must reasonably be assumed? The reasonable thing to assume is that the other has enlightened himself through the same or similar sources. So is it also with the Gospels. We can do this, no matter from what standpoint we approach the Gospels. A society could be formed of people who read the Gospels in the above described way; then there could also be people in this society who were determined opponents of the Gospels, and who would say that, when the Gospels were tested by the methods of science, it would be found that they were written much later than the events in Palestine could have occurred, and that their accounts contradict each other—in short, that these Gospels cannot be regarded as historical documents. Such people might be in such a society, and one could say: “Well, let us at first leave the Gospels in peace, but let us do some research in the spiritual worlds.”

Then, if we did some genuine spiritual research, if we gained genuine super-sensible knowledge, we would find that in the course of human evolution there had once entered a strong impulse, which broke into human evolution as an impulse from the spiritual worlds, from which mighty things have proceeded for humanity; and we would see that at the beginning of our era, this impulse had taken hold of a man who was especially suited thereto. All this, and many other facts which fit into this knowledge and which can be won only through super-sensible research, all this we would have; and those who wished to know nothing of the Gospels would have this as well as others. Then one could approach the Gospels and say: “Well now, at first we did not trouble ourselves at all about these Gospels; yet it is remarkable that, when we read them carefully, we see that they contain what we found in spiritual fields independently of them. Now we recognize their value from an entirely different side.”

Then we are clear that it could not be otherwise, that those who wrote the Gospels must have received their knowledge from the same source which is now opening itself to humanity through the spiritual movement. This is just what now confronts us, what will come more and more, what will make a valid basis for the valuation of the Gospel documents. If this is so, we must say that men will be able to find along other ways what can be known through these documents. And so this knowledge begins to be more and more sacred to us through the spiritual cognition of the present day. It already worked through the force of the Gospels. Because the Gospels are suffused with the holiest knowledge, with the spiritual impulses of humanity, they had an influence even where they were taken in naively. Spiritual knowledge works not only abstractly, not only in theory, but works as a life-force, as life-blood of the soul. And ever more and more will men recognize how consolation and strength flow from this knowledge.

But when we speak of the inner way to Christ, we encounter more and more things which can be understood and felt at the present time only when approached with the right spiritual-scientific understanding. We shall try to speak of the inner Christ-experience in such a way that it may be seen how, independently of all tradition, this may appear in every man. To this end we must, of course, regard the human being with the knowledge which we have found through spiritual science. If we steep ourselves in spiritual science, then we find even the most elementary knowledge becoming fruitful when we apply it to life. We find that we get away from the abstract charts of the seven members of man when we contemplate the growing and becoming of man. The physical body has its especial development in the first seven years of life. We perceive further that in the second seven years of life, from the change of teeth until sexual maturity, the forces of the etheric body play in man. Then the forces of the astral body begin to play, and only later, about the 20th or 21st year, (depending on his whole organization and on the nature of the forces in him) begins what appears in man as the Ego, as the bearer of the Ego, with that force which it really has because of its organization for the whole life of man as the bearer of the Ego.

That the bearer of the Ego first becomes really capable of living in the 20th or 21st year is not often observed in our present time, because we are not yet inclined to pay attention to these things. What does it mean that the bearer of the Ego first becomes really active in the 20th or 21st year of life? Here we must observe, by occult means, the growing man and view the deeper forces of his organization. These forces continually change: from birth until the seventh year, from the seventh year until sexual maturity, from sexual maturity until the unfolding of the Ego. But they change in such a way that they cannot be tested by the methods of ordinary anatomy or physiology. By occult means, one can say that only around the 20th year does man develop his forces in such a way that a self-sufficing Ego-bearer now exists. Earlier this Ego-bearer is not yet formed; earlier the human corporeality, even the super-sensible, is not yet a proper Ego-bearer. So if we consider the members of man in the light of the great world-principle, we must say that, through the peculiarities of his organization, man is really ripe to develop an Ego out of himself only in his 20th or 21st year, not earlier.

With this fact another may be contrasted, namely that in the first years of life, in normal consciousness, we really dream ourselves, sleep ourselves into life, and that only after a certain point of time does life take such a course that our own memory begins. Of what happened before this time we may be told by our parents or elder brothers; after this point the man says “I am who I am.” From the time when he says “I have done this; I have thought that,” the man dates his own Ego; what came before that loses itself in the twilight of the soul. Our memory reaches only to the point of time so described.

What do we have when we put these two facts together; that the real bearer of the human Ego is born in the 20th or 21st year, and that in our souls we describe ourselves as an Ego from the third or fourth year on? This means that in the present cycle of man's development he has an opinion, a feeling, about himself which does not correspond to his inner organization, as this has developed; for the consciousness of the Ego appears in the third or fourth year, but the organization for the Ego first appears in the 20th or 21st year. This fact is of fundamental importance for the understanding of man. When this fact is stated abstractly as an item of spiritual-scientific knowledge, no one gets particularly excited about it; but, because this fact is true, there are numerous experiences available which we all know well, but which we do not observe in the light of this fact. All that man can experience of cleavage between external organization and inner experience, of sorrow and pain in life because (by reason of his organization) certain things are impossible for him, of disharmony between what he wishes and what he can perform; the fact that he may have ideals which lead far beyond his organization: all this leads back to the fact that the consciousness of our Ego goes an entirely different way from that followed by the bearer of our Ego. In this respect we are two men; An external man who is organized to develop his egohood in the 20th or 21st year, and an inner soul-man who already in his fourth or fifth year, as to his soul-life, emancipates himself from his outer organization. Emancipation of the Ego-consciousness from the outer organization takes place in childhood. We go through something in our soul which proceeds independently of our outer organization and which can even come into sharp contradiction with our outer organization. We are inclined, in regard to the inner consciousness of the Ego, to pay no attention to our organization, to what is below in our bodies. In our souls we develop in an entirely different way from that in which our bodies develop.

Thus the course of inner development of mankind is twofold. The development of our organization goes from the first to the seventh year, then from the seventh to the fourteenth, from the fourteenth to the twenty-first, in the above described way; but our inner development is such that we are entirely independent of the above, such that the consciousness of our Ego emancipates itself in tenderest childhood and makes its own way through life. But what is the consequence of this curious fact of human development? Only the occultist can tell us this.

If we survey all that the occultist can teach, we come to a curious fact. We come to see that sickness, frailty of the human organization, all that makes possible illness, age, and death, comes from our being really a duality. We die because we are organized in a certain way and in our organization pay no attention to our Ego-development. That with our Ego we go an independent path, not troubling ourselves about our organization, this is brought home to us when this organization, in sickness and death, places a hindrance before our Ego-development; we are reminded that our Ego-development proceeds quite separately from our organization. Whence comes really this curious fact of duality in human nature?

When we examine man in connection with reality, we see that, if at a certain time in the Earth evolution, namely in the Lemurian time, only progressive forces had intervened in human development, the youthful development of man would today proceed quite otherwise—namely so that it would keep even step with the Ego-development. At all times the soul-development would coincide exactly with the body-development. It would have been impossible for man to develop himself otherwise than in the way now set up as an ideal, for example, in my pamphlet The Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy. (Anthroposophic Press, New York City) Had only progressive forces been active at that time, the singular result would have been that, in the first twenty years of life, man would have been much less self-reliant than he is now. This lack of self-reliance is not meant in a bad sense, but in such a way that each of you would approve of it completely. For example, human nature in the first seven years of life is completely disposed to imitation. Since grown people, if only progressive forces had been active in the Lemurian time, would do nothing shameful, children between one and seven would be able to imitate nothing bad. In the second seven years of life the principle of authority would reign, whereas now it has come to be a curse of the land, a curse of the world, that persons between seven and fourteen want to be independent and are even educated to form independent opinions. The grown persons would have been the natural authorities for the children. From fourteen to twenty-one, man would have looked much less into himself, upon his own self; he would have turned more toward the outside. The force of ideals, the power of living himself into his life-dreams would have become immensely significant for him. Life-dreams would have sprung from his heart, and then full Ego-consciousness would have appeared in his 20th and 21st years.

Thus there would be in the first seven years a period of imitation, then in the second seven years a looking up to authority, then in the third seven years a springing forth of ideals, which would bring man to his full Ego-consciousness. The sum of those forces also working in evolution which are called the Luciferic forces have brought about a deviation from this path of development in the course of human evolution. Since the Lemurian time they have torn the Ego-consciousness away from the foundation of the organization. The fact that we already have the Ego-consciousness in tenderest childhood is to be traced to the Luciferic forces.

How did the Luciferic forces intervene? The Luciferic powers are beings who remained behind on the Moon, and who therefore have no understanding of the mission of the Earth, for that which should develop for the first time on the Earth for the Ego after the 21st year. They took man as he was on coming over from the Moon, and laid in him the germ of self-reliant soul-development. So that in the hastening of Ego-consciousness, in this peculiar cleavage in human nature, lie the Luciferic forces. Knowledge of such a fact is given for the first time by anthroposophy. It can be sensed by every man of sound feeling, for every man can sense that there is something in him which separates him from his full humanity. All that we call unjustified egoism in our nature, all withdrawing from the activities of men, all this stems from the Ego's not going along on the right path of the organization. Thus do we see man before us, if he can feel. If he says to himself: “I could be other than I am; I have something in me which is not in harmony with myself”—then he feels the strife within him of the progressive powers with the Luciferic powers. This fact had to occur in the course of human evolution; it was necessary because man would never have become really free without the Luciferic beings; he would have been always bound to his organization. What on the one hand brings man into conflict with his organization, gives him on the other hand the first possibility of being free. One thing, however, remains out of this duality of the organization for the ordinary human life; this shows itself in our feeling that the Ego has become incapable, out of its own powers, of transforming the organization.

When we survey the broad circumference of what has constituted and created man, we find the two forces described above; there are the organic forces of our human nature, which are intended to develop in seven-year periods, and there are the Luciferic forces. If there were nothing else in nature or in the spiritual life in the course of human development, it would follow that man could never, through his emancipated Ego, come into full harmony with his nature. Were there nothing else in the field of earth-existence, man could only become ever more estranged from his organization; his organization would become ever more infirm, more dried up; the cleavage would necessarily become always greater. If man only once reaches the point of intensely feeling this as spiritual-scientific knowledge, then he comes to a great moment in his life, when he can say: “Here I stand with my human organization which is given me by the progressive forces that work from seven years to seven years (he need not express this in precise words, he need only feel it dimly). But, because this organization has an opposing force, which develops itself independently, it becomes sick and infirm and finally dies.” In the depths of his soul man feels this. Without knowing anything of anthroposophy, he need only have this feeling of a discrepancy between the inner Ego and the outer organization, and, if he steeps himself in this feeling, then—he knows not whence—there comes into his soul something of which he feels: “I myself, with the Ego which I can trace back, can do nothing against my organization, for which I am no match. But there comes something which I can take into my Ego as force, which I can take into my consciousness as conviction; directly from spiritual worlds comes something which does not reside in me, but which permeates my soul. From unknown worlds something can flow into my soul; if I take it up in my heart, if I suffuse my Ego with it, then it helps me directly from spiritual worlds.”—This which comes from spiritual worlds may be called whatever we like; that is not important; only the feeling is important.

Let us assume that a man is today at odds with life and says to himself: “I must seek through the whole world to see if somewhere a force will spring up which will give me something through which I can come out of the conflict, something which will help me out.”—In the nature of things this man could never find his way with the means of the old religious confessions; in the ancient ecclesiastical ideas he could never find anything which would give him this force that he seeks. But, in order to have a concrete example, let us assume that such a man went to one of the ancient holy religions, that he went, for example, to Buddhism and steeped himself in the extraordinary teachings of Buddhism. If the man felt, however, naturally and in its full strength the cleavage described above, he would feel—I do not say this would come out of a theory, but out of a dim feeling—he would feel that in the personality, in the individuality of Gautama Buddha, something had lived which could appear in the world only on the basis of a long development. This individuality went through many incarnations, achieved higher and higher grades of evolution, and finally came so far that in the 29th year of his life as Gautama Buddha, he was able to rise from Bodhisatva to Buddha, was able to rise in such a way that he need never more return to a physical body. How did that which flows out from this individuality come into being? Every unprejudiced mind can feel what speaks out of the Buddha, can feel all that first came about and developed through the Bodhisatva in earth evolution after developing through many incarnations. In the most beautiful and comprehensive sense all this contains the forces which are found in the periphery of the earth, in the interplay of the forces of the organization and the Luciferic forces. Therefore, because it has gone from incarnation to incarnation, because it stems from the same forces from which the human forces stem, therefore that which flows from the Bodhisatva to the Buddha has such an effect that the unprejudiced mind does not feel anything that can call forth a full harmony between the Ego of man and his organization. The soul feels that there must be something which does not go from incarnation to incarnation, but which can stream into every human soul directly from the spiritual worlds.—When the soul feels that it must have a relation to what streams down from the heavens, then it is beginning to have an inner experience of the Christ. Then the soul can understand that in Christ Jesus something had to appear which was different from everything previously existing. This is the radical, fundamental difference, the difference in principle between the life of the Christ and that of the Buddha.

Buddha rose from a Bodhisatva to a Buddha with the forces which cause man to mount from incarnation to incarnation, as is the case with other great founders of religions. Into the life of Jesus of Nazareth something entered, something worked into the individuality of Jesus of Nazareth, over a period of three years, which streamed down directly out of the spiritual worlds, which had nothing to do with human evolution, which previously was not connected with a human life. We must keep this difference clearly in mind if we wish to understand why, in what the fourth post-Atlantean epoch called the Christ, there was something which was different from all other religious impulses, and why the other religions have always pointed mankind toward this Christ.

If we, in the post-Atlantean time, look back into the ancient sacred Indian culture, we see the seven holy Rishis, in whose souls there lived something of an immediate perception of the spiritual worlds. Had one of the seven holy Rishis been asked about the fundamental mood of his soul, he would have said: “We look up to the spiritual powers from whom all human development has proceeded. This reveals itself to us in seven rays, but above this is something else, something which lies above our sphere.” Vishvakarman, this was the name later given to what the seven holy Rishis thus felt. The seven holy Rishis spoke of a power which had not developed with the earth.

Then came the Zarathustra culture. Zarathustra spoke, when he directed his gaze to the spirits of the sun, of something which should flow into human evolution directly through a streaming out of the spiritual worlds. “What we can give to men,” so spake Zarathustra, “is not that which will one day, from the sun-distances, stream directly out of the spiritual worlds into mankind.” What is spiritual in the sun, this is what the later Persian culture called Ahura-Mazdao.

In the Egyptian mysteries the Christ question was felt with a particularly tragic force. It was felt in the deepest way, if by deep we mean a form of human feeling in which there was an especially strong consciousness that humanity stems from what is spiritual. The Egyptian initiate said to himself: “Wherever we turn our gaze, we feel in what surrounds us the decline from the original spiritual. Nowhere in the outer world is the spiritual to be found in its immediacy and purity. Only when man steps through the gate of death does he descry that from which he springs. Man must first die (in relation to inner experience, not in relation to initiation); then he becomes united with the Osiris-principle (so did the ancient Egyptian name the Christ principle); in life this cannot be done, that is the discrepancy. All that is in the periphery of the earth, this does not lead to Osiris; the soul must first have passed the portal of death to be united with Osiris. Then, in death, the soul becomes a piece of Osiris, it becomes itself a sort of Osiris. The world outside has become such that it dismembers Osiris through his enemy; that is, through all that belongs to the external world.”

And the initiate of the Egyptian mysteries said: “Mankind, as it now is in our culture, is a sort of reminiscence of the old Moon-time. As the culture of the seven holy Rishis is a sort of reminiscence of the old Saturn-time, as the Zarathustra culture is a reminiscence of the old Sun-time, so is the Osiris-culture a reminiscence of the old Moon-time when the Moon and its beings first separated from the sun, on which, however, remained the beings from whom man took his origin. At that time there took place the separation of man from the good forces of his organization, from the source of his life-forces. But, through the yearning and privation for the spiritual which will endure, the time will come for men when Osiris will descend and show himself as something which must come as a new impetus which was not before on earth, because already in the old Moon-time it had separated itself from the earth.”

All that to which the seven holy Rishis and Zarathustra pointed, and of which the Egyptians said that in their time men could not attain it during life, this was the force, the impulse, which for three years revealed itself in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. All great religions spoke of it; it revealed itself in Jesus of Nazareth, to whom all religions pointed. Thus not only Christians have spoken of Christ, but also the members of all ancient religions. Thus something entered into the course of human development which man needs and which is accessible to inner experience.

Let us assume that a man grows up on a lonely island. Those who have charge of his education tell him nothing of that happens in the world in regard to the name of Christ and to the Gospels; they give him only such culture as does not make use of the Gospels or the name of Christ, culture which may have come to birth under the influence of Christ, but divested of the name of Christ. What would happen in this case? In such a man the following mood would be bound to appear. He would say to himself one day: “Something lives in me which is in accord with my universal human organization; this I cannot at once grasp. For that in which my Ego-consciousness lives presents itself to me in such a way that I need something which cannot come to me through human culture, I need an impulse from the spiritual worlds, in order to make the Ego stronger again in its organization, from which it has emancipated itself.” If such a person can only feel strongly what man needs, then something can come over him from which he will recognize that, directly from spiritual worlds, something must stream out which penetrates directly into his Ego. He does not know that this is called Christ; but he does know that in his consciousness he can suffuse himself with it, that in his Ego he can foster this which comes to him from the spiritual worlds. Then something will come to him of which he may say: “Granted, I can be ill, I can be weak, I can die; but from my own Ego I can make myself stronger, I can send into my organization something which gives me strength and force directly out of the spiritual worlds.” It is indifferent what he calls this; if the man comes to this feeling, he is gripped by the Christ-impulse. That man is not gripped by the Christ-impulse who says he can have something from a teacher who has passed from incarnation to incarnation, but he who feels that directly from the spiritual world there can come impulses of force, of strength. Men can have this inner experience; without it men cannot live, without it men will not be able to live in the future. They can have this experience, because once, for three years, there lived objectively in Jesus of Nazareth this impulse which came directly out of the spiritual worlds. As it is true that a man can lay a seed in the earth, and that many other seeds can come from this one, so it is true that the Christ-impulse was once implanted into humanity, and that since that time there is something in humanity which was not there earlier.

This is why the Egyptian life was so tragic. Men felt that in their lives they could not come to Osiris; that they must first pass through the gate of death, to be united with him in inner experience. Of initiation we have still to speak. But since the time of the Mystery of Golgotha that is possible which earlier was not possible: that of his own motion, out of his single incarnation, man seeks his connection with the spiritual world. And this is because the impulse which was given through the Mystery of Golgotha can flash up in every soul, and can enter, since that time, into every man through inner experience. Not the Christ Who was on earth—the soul does not trouble itself about Him—but the Christ Who is attainable through inner experience. Since the Mystery of Golgotha it is possible, in the single incarnations, to win a connection with the spiritual. And because this is so, there happened in the one fact of Golgotha something which can shine out into humanity, which is not given through the achievements of the successive incarnations. Therefore it is impossible that Christ should show himself in a way which is a consequence of many incarnations, as happened to Buddha from his incarnations as Bodhisatva.

Tomorrow we shall see how the path to the Christ in human evolution can be found for the future.

We saw yesterday how a part of the life shared by Jesus and His chosen disciples is missing in the Mark Gospel, and indeed also in the others. Just those most closely connected with Him did not take any part in the events beginning with the period following His arrest, that is, the trial, condemnation and crucifixion of Christ Jesus. This again is a feature of the Gospel that is intentionally emphasized. To some extent the intention was to show how a path can be prepared to enable human beings to come to an understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha, how after the Mystery of Golgotha had been accomplished it would be possible to come to an understanding of the Mystery. For it is true that this understanding has to be acquired in a totally different way than is needed for the understanding of any other historical fact of human evolution. From what has happened just in our own times we can grasp this point most clearly.

Since the eighteenth century modern consciousness has been seeking, as we might say, a support for a belief in the Mystery of Golgotha; and this attempt has been made from various viewpoints and the search has gone through various phases. Until the eighteenth century actually very few questions were asked about how the historical documents, historical in the usual sense, were compiled and if they are capable of confirming a belief in the existence of Christ Jesus. Too much still lived in human souls that had radiated down from the working of the Mystery of Golgotha. People had been able to perceive for themselves, so to speak, only too clearly the influence proceeding from the name of Christ Jesus through the centuries for them to think it necessary to ask whether any document was extant capable of proving the existence of Christ Jesus. To those who professed Him in any way His existence was entirely self-evident; and more than is generally believed today it was just as self-evident that they ought to hold firmly to the belief in His being as both human and superhuman, and at the same time spiritual and divine.

However, as time went on materialism came into being, and with it something entered mankind's evolution that necessarily belongs to the materialistic point of view. The materialistic world conception cannot tolerate the idea that something like a higher individuality lives in man. It cannot accept the notion that one can penetrate behind the outer personality to something spiritual in man. If you look at human beings materialistically, and this happens most radically in our time, then from a materialistic viewpoint all human beings will appear to you to be much the same. They all walk on two legs, all have a head, and a nose situated at a particular point on the face, all have two eyes and a part of the head covered with hair, and so on. From this materialistic viewpoint all human beings look much the same. So why should this age look for anything behind the outer man? This idea seriously offends someone who cannot bring himself to admit that in his present incarnation there is within him something that is equally important also in other human beings. Materialism will not admit that. So the possibility was lost of understanding that the Christ could have lived within the man Jesus of Nazareth; and the more the eighteenth century wore on the more any idea at all of the Christ was lost. Attention was directed more and more toward Jesus of Nazareth, who must have been born in Nazareth or somewhere else, who lived like a man, doing nothing but proclaim fine principles and in some way or another may have died the death of a martyr. More and more the man Jesus replaced the Christ Jesus of earlier centuries. This, from the point of view of materialism, was a self-evident fact.

It was also entirely natural that in the course of the nineteenth century there should have developed what may be called “research into the life of Jesus.” Enlightened theology also carries out research into the life of Jesus, that is to say, it tries to establish the facts about Jesus of Nazareth in just the same way as facts are established about Charlemagne, Otto the Great and similar personalities. However, it is very difficult to establish the facts about Jesus of Nazareth. In the first place all the principal documents that must come under consideration are the Gospels and the Pauline letters. But it is obvious that documents such as the Gospels cannot be counted as historical. There are four Gospels and from the external materialistic point of view they all contradict each other. All kinds of ways out of this dilemma have been sought in the course of “research into the life of Jesus.” A certain phase of this research can first of all be disregarded. Because this research fell into the materialistic period there was no longer any desire to believe in miracles. As a result some of the miracles are explained in the most peculiar way, as for example the kind of interpretation that tried to explain the appearance of Christ Jesus on the lake by suggesting that He did not walk on the lake with physical feet—we have dealt with this story earlier—but the disciples were simply unaware of the physical laws of the world. One far-fetched explanation from this Jesus research suggested that the apostles went by ship while Christ Jesus was accompanying them on the shore and that the people on the opposite shore could easily have been mistaken and believed that Jesus was walking on the water! To say nothing of other peculiarities thought up by rationalists, for example that when water was transformed into wine something like a wine-essence was smuggled into the water! Someone actually tried to explain the baptism by John in the Jordan by saying that just at that moment a dove happened to fly by! All this does exist. You would scarcely believe what has been put forward on the basis of strict objective science. But we may entirely disregard these aberrations, and look instead at the kind of research which tried to look at the super-sensible from a materialistic viewpoint, not being able to handle the super-sensible. This research regarded the super-sensible elements as simply ornamentation. It decided that if anyone cannot believe in Christ Jesus, nor that someone was born as a carpenter's son in Nazareth, was in the temple at the age of twelve and so on, nevertheless if everything super-sensible is removed and if everything that harmonizes or does not harmonize in the various Gospels is combined, then it is possible to produce something like a biography of Jesus of Nazareth. The effort was made to do this in the most varied ways, but it was really inevitable that each biography was different when so many different people tried to write a biography of this kind. But we cannot enter here into such details. There was also a period when during this “research into the life of Jesus” it was supposed that Jesus of Nazareth was a superior human being, something not unlike a higher Socrates, higher in the sense attributed to that word by materialists.

Such was the kind of research into the life of Jesus of Nazareth whose principal aim was to create a biography of Jesus. However, such an effort was bound to give rise to criticism, especially on two counts, in the first place because of the documents themselves; for the Gospels are not documents at all in the sense that one speaks of historical documents, as they are evaluated by historians. This is primarily due to the many contradictions to be found in them and the way in which they have been preserved. Secondly, in recent years something new was added to this “research into the life of Jesus” because those who went deeply into certain passages in the Gospels discovered certain constantly recurring remarks, which, as you know, refer to super-sensible facts. But these men, in spite of being in the clutches of materialism, when they found these things could not simply disregard them, as was done by the researchers into the life of Jesus. So they moved on to something different, to the “Christ research,” which in recent years has come into prominence, by contrast with the “research into the life of Jesus,” which culminated in the term coined by a present day professor: the “plain man from Nazareth.” This was found very agreeable by many people; it was flattering to them not to have to recognize anything higher in the Gospels. It suited them better to speak of the “plain man from Nazareth” rather than to ascend to the “God-Man.”

Then the God-Man was really found, and there followed “research into Christ.” This was a most peculiar phenomenon, appearing in an especially grotesque form in the work Ecce Deus of Benjamin Smith,¹ and in other works by the same author. The attempt was made to prove that Jesus of Nazareth never really existed; he is only a legend. Nevertheless, the Gospels give an account of Jesus Christ. What is this Jesus Christ? Well, he is a fictional God, an ideal image. From this point of view it is certainly not unreasonable to deny the real Jesus of Nazareth, for the Gospels speak of Christ and they attribute to Him qualities that, according to materialistic interpretations, do not exist. Then evidence follows that He cannot have existed historically, so He must be fictional, a fiction that originated in the period assigned to the Mystery of Golgotha. So there has been a kind of return from Jesus to Christ in recent years. But Christ is in no sense real; He lives only in human thoughts. So we may say that everything in this realm today rests without solid foundations.

Naturally the general public does not know much about the things that are happening in this realm. Everything connected with the Mystery of Golgotha has been totally undermined on scientific grounds; there is no longer any firm foundation. The “research into the life of Jesus” has collapsed because it can prove nothing, and the “Christ research” is not worth even discussing. The crucial point is the tremendous effect that emanates from that being with whom the Mystery of Golgotha is linked. If the whole thing is a fiction, then this materialistic age should agree to cease to look at it as soon as possible, for a materialistic age cannot believe in a “fiction” that is supposed nevertheless to have fulfilled the most important mission of all time! Yes, our enlightened age has surely been successful in accumulating contradictions, and is scarcely aware how much it is in need, just in the scientific field, of the saying, “Lord, forgive them for they know not what they do.” This indeed is equally applicable to all current research regarding Jesus and Christ which has no wish to place itself in a serious and dignified way on a spiritual base.

The Gospel itself clearly points to what has appeared in our time in the manner just described. Those people who wish to remain materialists and to believe in nothing whatever beyond what can be attained by materialistic consciousness based on sense perception can find no path leading to Christ Jesus. For this path has been closed because those who stood closest to Christ left Him just at the time the Mystery of Golgotha was taking place. It was only later that they met Him again, thus failing to participate in what happened in Palestine on the physical plane. And everyone knows for certain that no credible documents have been furnished by the other side of the threshold. Yet in the Mark Gospel and in the other Gospels descriptions of this very Mystery of Golgotha have been given.

How then did these descriptions come into being? It is of the utmost importance for us to picture this to ourselves. Let us consider the descriptions given in one instance, in the Gospel of St. Mark. Even though the description is short and concise, it is in fact indicated to us quite adequately how after the scene of the Resurrection the youth in the white garment, that is to say, the cosmic Christ, again showed Himself to the disciples after the Mystery had been accomplished, and gave certain impulses to them. As a consequence the apostles, among whom we should include Peter, could be enkindled to clairvoyant vision, so that afterward they could see clairvoyantly what they had been unable to see with their physical eyes because they fled. The eyes of Peter, and of others who were permitted to be their pupils after the Resurrection of Christ Jesus, were opened clairvoyantly so that they could through clairvoyance behold the Mystery of Golgotha.

Although the Mystery of Golgotha took place on the physical plane, the only path to it is that of clairvoyance; and we must keep this firmly in our minds. The Gospel points this out quite clearly when it tells us how those who had been summoned fled at the decisive moment, so that it was only after it had received the impulse of the Risen One that in such a soul as that of Peter the memory flashed up of what had happened after the flight. In ordinary life man remembers only what he has experienced in sense existence. The kind of clairvoyance that now appeared in the disciples differs from ordinary memory in that they were able to remember physical material events, just as if these events had been in their memories, although they were not present. Just imagine how memory shone forth in the soul of a man like Peter, when he remembered events at which he had not been directly present. And so Peter, for example, taught those who wished to hear him about the Mystery of Golgotha, from memory, taught them what he remembered, even though he had not been present.

It was in this way that the teachings, the revelations about the Mystery of Golgotha came into being. But the impulse that emanated from the Christ to such disciples as Peter could also be communicated to those who were pupils of these disciples. The man who originally compiled, even though in an oral form, the Gospel called the Gospel of St. Mark, was just such a pupil of Peter. So the impulse that had manifested itself in Peter himself passed into the soul of Mark, with the result that within Mark's own soul there flashed up what had been accomplished in Jerusalem as the Mystery of Golgotha. Mark remained a pupil of Peter for some time. Then he came to an area where he truly had the external milieu, so to speak, the outer environment which enabled him to give the particular coloring needed for this Gospel.

Through all that we have presented to you—and perhaps in the future it will be possible to say more on the subject—one thing has been shown in particular: that the Mark Gospel allows us to feel most clearly the whole cosmic greatness and significance of Christ. It was possible for the original author of this Gospel to be stimulated to give his description of the cosmic greatness of Christ precisely because of the place to which he had moved after he had been Peter's pupil. He moved to Alexandria in Egypt and lived there at a period when in a certain way Jewish-philosophical-theosophical learning in Alexandria had reached a certain culmination. He could take up in Alexandria what at that time were the best aspects of pagan gnosis. He could absorb views that were also in existence there about how the human being has come forth from the spiritual, and how he came into contact with Lucifer and Ahriman, and how luciferic and ahrimanic forces are taken up into the human soul. From the pagan gnosis he could accept everything that was told him about the origin of man out of the cosmos when our planet came into being. But Mark could also see, especially when he was living in an Egyptian locality, how strong the contrast was between what had originally been destined for man, and what he had by this time become.

This was shown most strikingly in Egyptian culture, which had originated from the loftiest revelations that had then become manifest in Egyptian architecture, especially in the pyramids and palaces, in the culture of the Sphinx, which, however was falling ever more into corruption and decadence. Thus it was particularly the greatest works of Egyptian culture that sank down, still during the third cultural epoch, into the worst aberrations of black magic, and the worst depravities of spiritual corruption. If one had the spiritual eyes for it, it was possible in a certain way to see in what was practised in Egypt the most profound secrets because this culture emanated from the pure original Hermes wisdom. But only a soul that looked at the foundation, and not at the existing corruption, could see this. Already by the time of Moses corruption was far advanced, and he had to extract from Egyptian culture the good which was scarcely visible even to such a noble soul as Moses. It could then be passed on indirectly to posterity through the soul of Moses. Thereafter the corruption in Egypt continued unabated.

Mark's soul was alive to the possibility that mankind could sink down and become engulfed in materialism, especially in regard to its view of the world. And he experienced in particular one thing that men can again today experience in a different, though in some respects similar, form—though only by men who possess the necessary feeling and perception. For we are really today experiencing the reemergence of Egyptian culture. I have often emphasized the peculiar nature of these linkages between cultures in human evolution, and I have explained how among the seven successive cultural epochs of the post-Atlantean era the fourth cultural epoch that contains Hellenism and the Mystery of Golgotha stands by itself. However, the third cultural epoch, that of the Egypto-Chaldean culture, emerges once more, though in an unspiritual manner, in the culture, especially the science of today. Within our materialistic culture, even in its outer manifestations, we have in this fifth age a certain reawakening of the culture of the third epoch. In a certain way the second will also reappear in the sixth and the first in the seventh. So do these spans of time encircle and include each other, as we have often emphasized. Today we are experiencing something that a spirit like Mark could experience in a most intensive way.

If we consider the culture of today, we should not describe it in this way to the outside world because it could not bear it; even if we overlook the most radical forms of corruption we can still say that everything is mechanized. And within our materialistic culture it is only mechanism that is worshipped, even if we do not call it prayer or devotion. It is true that our soul forces that in former times were directed toward spiritual beings are now directed only toward machines, toward mechanisms. One can truly say that they receive the attention that once was given to the gods. This is especially the case in the realm of science, this science which is totally unaware of how little it is concerned with truth, with real truth, and at the same time how little it is concerned with true logic. If we look at it from a higher point of view we can certainly say that there is today a deeply serious and intense striving, an intense longing. I spoke already in Munich (in August, 1912, Ed.) in a lecture about the longing in our time, and especially how this longing has taken root in individual souls. But in present day “official” science such a longing is missing, and instead one might say that there is a certain satisfied contentment. Yet this contentment has something strange about it, since it is a contentment with what is unreal and illogical. Nowhere is this science capable of recognizing how deeply it is entrenched in what is opposed to all logic. All this can easily be seen and experienced, and it is indeed true that in human evolution one pole must be enkindled by the other. It is the very inadequacy of external science and its unreality and illogicality, the way it prides itself on its knowledge and its total unawareness of its deficiencies, that will and must gradually give rise to the noblest reaction within human souls: the longing for the spiritual that is manifesting itself in our time.

For a long time still to come people who remain attached to this unreality and lack of logic may well make fun of spiritual science, will scoff at it, or label it dangerous in all sorts of ways. Nevertheless through the inner power of the facts themselves the other pole will be enkindled, entirely of its own accord. And if those who understand something of it would only refrain from relapsing into the sickness of compromises and were to see clearly, then the time might well come much more quickly than seems likely now. For again and again it is our experience that if a learned man turns up and says something that someone else thinks is “quite anthroposophical,” then a great fuss is immediately made of it. More so still if someone or other preaches from a pulpit something that is thought to be “quite anthroposophical.” What is important is not that such compromises are made, but that we should place ourselves clearly and sincerely in the spiritual life, and allow it to affect us through its own impulses. The more clearly we are aware that the inner vitality of spiritual life must be enkindled, and the more we become convinced that we have no right to accept from the materialistic thinking of our time anything that is not well grounded in fact, the better it will be. This is a very different thing from demonstrating that truly progressive science is in harmony with spiritual research.

It can be shown how at every step science commits logical blunders on every page of its literary works, of the kind often referred to by one of our friends in a humorous manner. A certain Professor Schlaucherl (“clever fellow”) a character in the comic paper Fliegender Blätter wished to prove just how a frog hears. To this end the Professor causes the frog to jump on a table, then he hits the top of the table. The frog jumps away, thus proving he heard the tap. Then he proceeds to tear off the frog's legs, and again hits the table. But this time the frog does not jump away, proving clearly that the frog hears with his legs. For when he still had legs he jumped away, but when he had lost his legs he no longer jumped. Learned men do indeed make all kinds of experiments with frogs. But in other domains their logical inferences are just like this example, as, for instance, in their much lauded brain research. Attention is drawn to the fact that words can be remembered and certain thoughts may be produced if this or that part of the brain is present. But if this part of the brain is missing then words can no longer be remembered nor is it possible to have thoughts—exactly the same logic as in the case of the frog who hears through his legs. Indeed there are no better grounds for saying that a man can think with one part of his brain or cannot think if this part of the brain is missing, than there are for saying that the frog can no longer hear when his legs have been torn off. The two cases are entirely parallel, only people do not notice that the whole inference rests on nothing but faulty reasoning. We could continue to point out faulty reasoning piled on more faulty reasoning in all the results of what science believes to be firmly established. And the more mistakes that are made the more proud people are of science, and the more they scoff at spiritual science.

This will have the result of generating the noblest of reactions, a longing for spiritual science. Such a reaction that belongs to our era is the same as what must have been experienced by Mark in his own age when he was able to perceive how mankind had descended from its former spiritual height and had become enmeshed in materialism. Through this experience he gained a profound understanding of how the greatest impulse lives in the super-sensible, and this understanding was further strengthened by his teacher. What Peter had given him regarding the Mystery of Golgotha was not something that could have been based on sense perception and then handed down by tradition, as if someone had seen with his own eyes what had happened at Jerusalem. The events described were investigated later through clairvoyance; and it is in this way that all information about Christ Jesus and the Mystery of Golgotha was gained.

The Mystery of Golgotha is an event that occurred on the physical plane, but it could be seen afterward only through clairvoyance. I want you to bear in mind most particularly that the Mystery of Golgotha is a physical-material event, but the path leading toward understanding it must nevertheless be looked for in a superphysical, super-sensible way and in spite of the documents that have come down to us. People who do not understand this may argue about the merits of this or that Gospel. But for one who is aware of the true state of affairs, such questions do not exist. Such a one knows how necessary it is for us to look beyond the often imperfect traditions represented by the various Gospels, and reach what clairvoyant investigation alone can tell us today. And if we investigate the truth of what actually happened by reconstructing it with the aid of the Akasha Chronicle, then we shall see how we must interpret the Gospels and what we have to read in individual passages. We shall see how we must read about what was then placed before humanity as man's true dignity, his true being, at a time when mankind had descended most deeply from its former heights.

The divine spiritual powers have given to man his outer image, his outer form. But since the old Lemurian epoch what lived in this outer form stood always under the influence of the luciferic forces, and then, during the later phases of evolution also under the ahrimanic forces. It was under these influences that what men have called science, knowledge and understanding have come into being. It is no wonder that just exactly at that time the true super-sensible being of man appeared before mankind, and men were least able to recognize it, and were least able to know what mankind had become. Man's knowledge and understanding had become ever more deeply enmeshed in sense existence, and gradually became ever less capable of penetrating close to the true being of man.

This is the important point we must take into consideration when we turn again to the forsaken Son of Man, to the form of the man who stands before us at the moment when, according to the Mark Gospel, the cosmic Christ was only loosely connected with the Son of Man. There, before all humanity, stood the man, the man in the form originally given to man by divine spiritual powers. There He stood, but ennobled and spiritualized by the three-year sojourn of the Christ within the body of Jesus of Nazareth. Here He stood before His fellow-men. But man's understanding had reached only as far as was possible through the thousands of years during which Lucifer and Ahriman had penetrated his understanding and knowing. Yet here stood the man who in those three years had driven out of Himself the influences of Lucifer and Ahriman. Here in front of other men stood restored what man had been before the coming of Lucifer and Ahriman. Only through the impulse of the cosmic Christ was man once again what he had been when he left the spiritual world and was brought down into the physical world. Here stood the spirit of mankind, the Son of Man, in the presence of men who at that time were the judges and executioners in Jerusalem. He stood there in the form that man can become if all that has debased him were to be driven out from his nature. Here stood the man at the moment when the Mystery of Golgotha was being accomplished, in the image of His fellowmen. Before such a man His fellowmen should have stood and worshipped, saying, “Here am I in my true nature, here is my highest ideal. Here am I, in the form to which I can attain only through my most ardent striving, a striving that can come only from the depths of my soul. Here I stand before that in myself which is alone worthy of reverence and worship, the divine in me.” And the apostles, if they had been able to practice self-knowledge, would have been compelled to say, “In the whole expanse of space there is nothing in existence that can be compared in greatness with what is before us in the Son of Man!”

At that moment in history mankind ought to have possessed that self-knowledge. But what did this mankind do? It spat upon the Son of Man, it scourged Him, and led Him forth to the place of execution. That was the dramatic turning point between what ought to have been, the recognition that something was there with which nothing in the world is comparable, and what was described as actually happening. Instead of recognizing himself, man is described as having crushed himself under foot, as having killed himself because he did not recognize himself. Yet through this lesson, this cosmic lesson he is able to receive the impulse to attain gradually for himself his true being within the wider perspective of earth evolution!

This therefore was the world-historical moment, and this is the way we must characterize it if we want to do so in the right way entirely in accord with the powerful, striking sentences of the Gospel of St. Mark. It not only needs to be understood, it needs to be felt, sensed. Out of this crushing under foot of man's own nature there came forth what was described in my lecture cycle From Jesus to Christ² in Karlsruhe as the “phantom.” Because man crushed his own being under foot, that which was the outer image of the divine was transformed into the phantom which multiplies, and multiplying during the further development of mankind is able to penetrate into the souls of men, as was described in the Karlsruhe cycle.

If we look at things in this way, then the great difference becomes visible between what the Mark Gospel really wishes to describe, and what is so often made of it today. Anyone who understands a Gospel, and particularly the Mark Gospel, in such a way that he can sense and feel what is described in accordance with its artistic composition and its deep content, will have the experience that this feeling will become a true inner fact, the kind of inner fact that must be present if we wish to attain to a relationship with Christ Jesus. The soul must really dedicate itself, at least in some small measure, to the kind of reflection filled with feeling and emotion that can arise from a reading of the Mark Gospel and that may be characterized somewhat as follows, “How greatly deluded were my fellowmen who stood around the Son of Man, when in truth they should have perceived there the highest ideal of themselves!”

A typical man of this materialistic age may write down or let slip such a remark as can often be heard or read today, especially from superstitious monists, I mean enlightened monists, “Why is existence as it is? Why do we suffer pain? These questions no one has ever been able to answer. Buddha, Christ, Socrates, Giordano Bruno, none of them have been able to lift a corner of this veil.” People who write in this way do not realize that in so doing they are placing themselves much higher than Buddha, Christ, Socrates and the rest, nor that they in working on this assumption understand everything. How could it be otherwise in an age when any beginning university lecturer possesses an unrivalled understanding of everything that has happened in history, and is obliged for the sake of his career to write books on the subject?

It might be thought that this is said out of a desire to criticize our age. This is not the reason. But such things ought to be visible to our souls because only if we allow them to be perceived by our souls do we keep a true perspective on the overpowering greatness of the Gospels, as, for instance, the Gospel of St. Mark. These things are constantly misunderstood for no other reason than that people can approach such a height only slowly, and usually only caricatures are presented to them. In every detail the Gospels are great, and in essence every detail teaches us something extraordinary.

We can therefore learn something also from the last chapter of the Mark Gospel. Of course if I were to point out all the great thoughts in this Gospel I should have to go on speaking for a long time yet. But one such detail immediately at the beginning of the sixteenth chapter shows us how deeply the evangelist has penetrated into the secrets of existence. So the author of the Mark Gospel knew, as we have described, how humanity had declined, sinking from the spiritual heights into materialism. He knew how little human beings were truly able to grasp the nature of the being of man, and how little people at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha were capable of understanding what happened then.

At this point I should like to remind you of something I have often pointed out with regard to the difference between male and female, pointing out the fact that to some extent the female element—not the single individual woman but rather “womanhood”—has not entirely descended to the physical plane, whereas the man—again not a single individuality, not man in a particular incarnation but “manhood”—has crossed the line and descended lower. As a result true humanity lies between man and woman; and it is for this reason that a human being also changes sex in different incarnations. But it is already the case that the woman, as such, because of the different formation of her brain and the different way in which she can use it, is able to grasp spiritual ideas with greater facility. By contrast the man because of his external physical corporeality is much better adapted to think himself into materialism, because, if we wish to express the matter crudely, his brain is harder. The female brain is softer, not so stubborn, that is to say in general—I am not referring to individual personalities. In the case of individual personalities there is no need to flatter oneself, for many truly obstinate heads sit on many a female body—to say nothing of the reverse! But on the whole it is true that it is easier to make use of a female brain if one is to understand something exceptional, as long as the will to do so is also present. It is for this reason that the evangelist after the Mystery of Golgotha allows women to appear first.

And now, as the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, brought spices, so that they could go and anoint him. (Mark 16:1.)

And it was to them that the youth, that is, the cosmic Christ, first appeared; and only afterward to the male disciples. True occultism, true spiritual science is interwoven into the composition and details of the contents of the Gospels, and especially of the concise Mark Gospel.

Only if we feel what speaks to us from the Gospels and allow ourselves to be stirred by what we feel and sense can we find the way to the Mystery of Golgotha. And then there will be no longer any question as to whether these Gospels are genuine or false from the external historical point of view. Those who understand nothing of the matter can be left to their investigations. But those who ascend by means of spiritual science to a feeling for and understanding of the Gospels will gradually realize that they are not in the first place intended to be historical documents but rather documents that flow into our souls. And when they pour out their impulses into our souls, then our souls, without the aid of any documents, are taken hold of by what they feel and experience when they turn their gaze to the Mystery of Golgotha, and recognize how human understanding, knowledge and cognition when directed to the being of man have fallen short—how men spat on and crucified this being of man that they should have revered in the wisdom of self-knowledge as their highest ideal. And from this recognition the soul will win for itself the supreme strength needed to rise upward to the ideal that radiates across from Golgotha and shines upon all who are willing to feel and perceive it. For only then will men truly grasp the reality that the earth is linked with the spiritual worlds, when they understand how the spiritual reality, the Christ, lived as a cosmic being in the body of Jesus of Nazareth; and when they understand that all the leaders of humanity that the world has ever known were sent out by the Christ as His forerunners with the task of preparing the way for Him so that He could be recognized and understood. All this preparation turned out to be virtually useless when the Mystery of Golgotha took place, for at the decisive moment everything failed. But ever more and more in the future the time will come when people will understand not only the Mystery of Golgotha itself but all the other events that accompanied it, by means of which the Mystery will be ever more fully understood.

For the time being the peoples of Europe can easily perhaps be misjudged because they do not act like many other peoples who recognize as the true religion only those religious creeds that have sprung from their own nation and race, as for example, in India in particular, where only that is considered valuable that has sprung from their own blood. How often in theosophical circles one talks about how the equality of all religions ought to be recognized, whereas in reality one wishes only to promote one's own religion and looks upon that as the only real wisdom-religion. The Europeans are totally unable to do this because not a single people of Europe has retained any national deity, any deity growing out of its own soil of the kind that the peoples of Asia possess. Christ Jesus belongs to Asia, and the peoples of Europe have adopted Him, and allowed Him to influence them. In the acceptance of Christ Jesus there is no egoism; and it would be a complete distortion if someone were to wish to compare the way a European speaks about Christ Jesus with the way other peoples speak about their national deities, for example the way a Chinese speaks about Confucious or the way an Indian speaks about Krishna or the Buddha.

And we can speak of Christ Jesus from a purely objective historical standpoint. This objective history is concerned with nothing else but the great appeal to man's self-knowledge, a self-knowledge that was so completely distorted into its opposite while the Mystery of Golgotha was taking place. Yet through this Mystery the possibility was given to man to receive the impulse to find his own true being, whereas, as far as knowledge, external knowledge, was concerned, humanity totally failed to grasp the meaning of the Mystery of Golgotha, as we have seen. And so all the world's religions will one day rightly understand each other and work together to understand what the Mystery of Golgotha contains, and to make its impulse accessible to men.

If it is once realized that when Christ Jesus is spoken of this has nothing to do with any egoistic creed, but with something that, as a historical fact in human evolution, can belong to every religious creed, then, and then only, will the kernel of wisdom and truth in all religions be grasped. And to the extent to which we still do not accept spiritual science in its true sense, it is to the same extent that we refuse to accept the true understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. And to the extent that we understand spiritual science, it is to that extent that a human being can understand the Mystery of Golgotha. So a Christian who accepts spiritual science can really come to an understanding with all the peoples of the world. And if representatives of other religions with a somewhat excessive, though understandable and even justifiable pride were to say, “You Christians have only one single incarnation of God, but we can offer several, and thus are richer than you,” no Christian should try to rival him by claiming something similar for Christ Jesus, since this would show his lack of understanding for the Mystery of Golgotha. The correct thing would be for a Christian to say in reply to someone who is able to show that the founder of his own religion had many incarnations, “Yes, of course, but all those who had many incarnations could not have fulfilled the Mystery of Golgotha. Look where you will, in no other religion will you ever find it in the way it is presented in Christianity.”

On other occasions in the past I have already shown how, if we follow the life of the Buddha we shall reach the point described in the Mark Gospel as the scene of the Transfiguration of Christ. At this point the Buddha's life has come to its final end, and he dissolves into light, as it is described, and this description in truth corresponds to the occult fact. In the case of Christ, as you will find it stated in Christianity as Mystical Fact,³ He does indeed reach the scene of the Transfiguration. But He was not transfigured alone, by Himself; He converses with Moses and Elijah on the mountain, where cosmic events occur. Only after the scene of the Transfiguration does the Mystery of Golgotha begin. This emerges so clearly from the documents themselves that it is fundamentally impossible to deny the fact, once one has recognized it from a comparison between the lives of Christ and the Buddha. And in essence all that I was able to tell you today about the feelings that arise in us when we think of the great misunderstanding of the Son of Man by human beings is only a consequence of what you will find already pointed out in Christianity as Mystical Fact.

And now, at the conclusion of our studies on the Mark Gospel I may in a certain respect say that the program laid down at the beginning of the anthroposophical movement in Central Europe insofar as it related to Christianity has in all essentials been completed in every detail. When we started, our main task was to show how in the course of time religions have developed, culminating in the problem of Christ. We have considered the individual Gospels and various cosmic revelations; we have tried to penetrate ever more deeply into the depths of occult life in order to carry out what we indicated we should do at the beginning. We have tried to work consistently, but in essence all we have done is complete in detail what we said we would do when we started. Was this not the most natural development with respect to the Christ problem within the theosophical movement of Central Europe? In view of all this that has happened, other people who became converts to an impossible conception of Christ within the framework of Christianity can scarcely demand that we who have done this consistent work for years should be converts to their conception of Christ devised three years ago! It has often been emphasized of recent years that the Theosophical Society ought to be hospitable to all opinions. Of course it should be. But the matter appears in a quite different light if it is to be hospitable to the successive different opinions of the same personality, if that personality now maintains something different from what it did four years ago, and now demands that the Theosophical Society should provide a home for this latest opinion. Such a thing may be possible, but there is no need for us to go along with it. Nor should one be considered a heretic if one doesn't take part in such things. In Central Europe people go further still, going so far as to call white black and black white!

This is indeed a solemn moment when we are bringing to an end the latest and final phase of the work we have been carrying on for the last ten years according to plan. So we are determined to stand firm in this work and neither become discouraged nor yet lacking in understanding for others. But we must see very clearly what we have to do, and we must stand firm on our own ground and not allow ourselves to be discouraged by anything, even if white is called black and black white. Even if our anthroposophical Central European movement—in which everyone strives to do his best according to his ability, and everyone is called upon to give his best without submitting to any authority—is said to be full of fanatics and dogmatizers, we should still not be discouraged, not even if those who have their own dogma that is scarcely three years old try to organize an opposition to the dreadful dogma of Central Europe. It is painful to witness the kind of mischievous tricks that are played today in the name of Christ. We are justified in using words like these, and regard them as nothing more than a technical term, used objectively. We are doing nothing more than stating the actual fact, without emotion and without criticism. If we are obliged to put it this way it is the fault of the objective fact itself.

But these facts, when they are set against what can flow to us from a real understanding of the Gospel of St. Mark, can also lead to no other course than to continue to work in the way we have recognized as the right one. This has proved itself in our general program based on positive facts, and continues to prove itself again every day as long as we apply it to individual problems and individual facts. And as we make our way step by step through the details of the things we have to investigate, what was said at the beginning is invariably confirmed. So even when we are studying the loftiest things we can harbor no other feeling than a true and genuine feeling for truth. Such things as the contemplation of the Mystery of Golgotha have within them already the necessary healing power that dispels error if we approach them in the spirit. Then we are led to recognize how in essence it is only an insufficient will to pursue the truth that prevents us from truly pursuing the path that opens out from the earthly into the cosmic, when the cosmic Christ within Jesus of Nazareth is investigated. But He appears to us so clearly if we understand a work like the Mark Gospel.

For this reason such works, after they have been opened up to the understanding of men by means of spiritual scientific studies, will gradually also reach out to the rest of mankind, and will be ever more clearly understood. And attention will be focused ever more on the words of the Gospels rediscovered without the aid of sense perception through clairvoyant vision of the Mystery of Golgotha. Those who wrote the Gospels from clairvoyant observation described the physical events afterward. This must be understood, as also the necessity for it. Those people who lived at the same time as the events in Palestine were incapable of understanding what happened at that time because it was only through the impulse given by this event that it could be understood! Before the event had taken place no one was alive who could have understood it. It had first to take effect, so it could be understood only after the event. The key to the understanding of this Mystery of Golgotha is the Mystery of Golgotha itself! Christ had first to do all that He had to do up to the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, and only through the effects of what He did could the understanding of Himself come forth. Then through what He was, the Word could be enkindled which is at the same time the expression of His true being.

And so through what Christ was, the primal Word is enkindled which is communicated to us and can be recognized again in clairvoyant vision, this Word which also proclaims the true being of the Mystery of Golgotha. We may also think of this Word when we speak of Christ's own words, not only those that He spoke Himself but those which He also kindled in the souls of those able to understand Him, so that they could both understand and describe His being from within their human souls.

As long as the earth endures men will take up into themselves the impulses from the Mystery of Golgotha. Then there will come an interval between “Earth” and “Jupiter.” Such an interval is always linked to the fact that not only the individual planet, but all its surroundings change, pass into chaos, undergo a “pralaya.” And not only the earth itself will be different in pralaya, but also the heavens belonging to the earth. But what has been given to the earth through the Word that Christ spoke, which He kindled also in those who recognize Him, is the true essence of earth existence. And a right understanding allows us to recognize the truth of that saying that tells us of the development of the cosmos, how the earth and heaven as seen from the earth will be different after the earth has reached its goal, and heaven and earth pass away. But such a Word as could be spoken by Christ about heaven and earth will remain. If one rightly understands the Gospels, and feels their innermost impulse, then one feels not only the truth but also the power of the Word which as power passes over into us, enabling us to gaze out beyond the wide world as we take up into ourselves with full understanding the Word, “Heaven and Earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.” (Matt. 24:35.)

The words of Christ will never pass away, even if heaven and earth pass away. This may be said in accordance with occult knowledge, for the truths of the Mystery of Golgotha that have been spoken will still remain. The Mark Gospel kindles in our souls the knowledge of the truth that heaven and earth pass away, while what we can know about the Mystery of Golgotha will accompany us into the ages that are to come, even if heaven and earth will have passed away!

• 1. Benjamin Smith (1850–1912). His book Ecce Deus, which appeared in German in 1912 bore the subtitle, “The Early Christian Doctrine of the Purely-Divine Jesus.”
• 2. The cycle From Jesus to Christ was given in Karlsruhe in October, 1911. The lectures especially concerned with the phantom are six, seven and eight.
• 3. Christianity as Mystical Fact consists of a series of lectures given in Berlin in 1902 and revised by Steiner for publication in the same year and again in 1910. The chapter entitled “Egyptian Mystery Wisdom” contains the statement about the Transfiguration to which he refers here. Available in English in three different translations.