The Rudolf Steiner Archive

In the last lecture I tried to point out how by means of the kind of knowledge cultivated by Anthroposophy, man may be seen in his whole nature—consisting of body, soul and Spirit. I tried to show also how an inner knowledge of the conditions of health and disease can only be arrived at when the entire nature of man can be perceived in this way; and how in learning to know the true connections between the things which take place within man and the external processes and conditions of substances in Nature, we also succeed in establishing a connecting link between pathology and therapy.

Our next task will be to explain in detail what was only given in general outline in the first lecture. And for this it will above all be necessary to observe how disintegration is proceeding in the human organism and how, on the other hand, there is a constant process of integration. Man has, to begin with, an external physical organisation which is perceptible by means of the outer senses, and whose manifestations can be comprehended by the reason. Besides this physical body there is also the first super-sensible body of the human being: the etheric, or life-body. These two principles of the constitution of man serve to build up (integrate) the human organisation.

The physical body is continually renewed as it casts off its substance. The etheric body—which contains the forces of growth and of assimilation—is, in the entirety of its constitution, something of which we can gain a conception when we behold the growing and blossoming plant-kingdom in the spring; for the plants, as well as human beings, have an etheric or life-body. In these two members of the human organisation we have a progressive, constructive evolution.

In so far as man is a sentient being, he bears within himself the next member, the astral body. (We need not feel that such terms are objectionable; we should perceive what they reveal to us.) The astral body is essentially the mediator of sensation, the bearer of the inner life of feeling. The astral body contains not only the upbuilding forces but also the forces of destruction. Just as the etheric body makes the being of man bud and sprout, as it were, so all these processes of budding are continually being disintegrated again by the astral body; and just because of this, just because the physical and etheric bodies are continually being disintegrated, there exists in the human organisation an activity of soul and Spirit.

It would be quite a mistake to suppose that the soul and Spirit in man's nature inhere in the upbuilding process and that this process at last reaches a certain point—let us say in the nervous system—where it can become the bearer of soul and Spirit. That is not the case. When eventually (and everything points to this being soon), our very admirable modern scientific research has made further progress, it will become apparent that an anabolic, a constructive process in the nervous system is not the essential thing; it is present in the nervous organisation merely in order that the nerves may, in fact, exist. But the nerve-process is in a continual, though slow state of dissolution; and because it is so, because the physical is always being dissolved, a place is set free for the Spirit and soul.

In a still higher degree is this the case as regards the actual Ego-organisation, by means of which man is raised above all the other beings of Nature surrounding him on the Earth. The Ego-organisation is essentially bound up with katabolism; it is of greatest moment in those parts of the human being that are in a state of disintegration.

So when we look into this wonderful form of the human organism, we see that in every single organ there is construction, integration (whereby the organ ministers to growth and progressive development), and also destruction, whereby it ministers to retrogressive physical development, and by so doing gives foothold for the soul and Spirit. I said in the last lecture that the state of balance between integration and disintegration which is present in a particular way in every human organ, can be disturbed. The upbuilding process can become rampant; in that case we have to do with an unhealthy condition. When we look in this way into the nature of the human being (to begin with I can only state these things rather abstractly; they will be expressed more concretely presently), when we proceed conscientiously, with a sense of scientific responsibility and do not talk in generalisations about the presence of integration and disintegration, but really study each individual organ as conscientiously as we have learnt to do in scientific observations to-day—then we shall be able to penetrate into this condition of balance that is necessary for the single organs and so find it possible to obtain a conception of the human being in health. If in either direction, either with respect to constructive or with respect to destructive processes, the balance of an organ is upset, then we have to do with something that is unhealthy in the human organism.

Now, however, we must discover how this human organism stands in relation to the three kingdoms of Nature in the outer world—the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms—from which we have of course to extract our remedies. When we have studied this inner state of balance in the manner described, we shall see how everything that is present in the three kingdoms of Nature outside man is, in every direction, being overcome within the human organism.

Let us take the simplest example:—the condition of warmth in man. Nothing of the outer conditions of warmth must be carried on unchanged when it is once within the human organism. When we investigate the manifestations of warmth outside in Nature, we know that warmth raises the temperature of things in the outer world. We say that warmth penetrates into things. If we, in our organisation, were to be penetrated in the same way by warmth we should be made ill by it. It is only when, through the forces and quality of our organisation we are able to receive this warmth-process which is being exercised upon us, into our organism and immediately transform it into an inner process, that our organisation is in a state of health. We are harmed by either heat or cold directly we are not in a position to receive it into our organisation and transform it.

In respect of warmth or cold everyone can see this quite easily for himself. Moreover the same holds good for all other Nature processes. Only careful study, sharpened by spiritual perception, can lead to the recognition that every process taking place in Nature is transformed, metamorphosed, when it occurs within the human organism. We are indeed incessantly overcoming what lives in our earthly environment.

If we now consider the whole internal organisation of man we must say that if the inner force of the human being which inwardly transforms the external events and processes that are always working in upon him—for example, when he is taking nourishment—if this force were removed, then all that enters man from outside would work as a foreign process, and in a sense—if I were to express it crudely or trivially—man would be filled with foreign bodies or foreign processes. On the other hand, if the higher members of man's being, the astral body and the Ego-organisation develop excessive strength, then he does not only so transform the outer processes of his environment that enter into him as they should be transformed, but he does so more rampantly. Then there is a speeding-up of the processes which penetrate him. External Nature is driven out beyond the human—becomes in a certain sense, over-spiritualised; and we are faced with a disturbance of the health.

What we have thus indicated as an abstract principle is realty present in every human organ and must be studied individually in the case of them all. Moreover the human being is related in a highly complicated manner, to all the different ways in which he transforms the external processes.

He who strives to get beyond the undisputed testimony of up-to-date anatomy and physiology, who tries to develop his understanding so that he can transform the conception of the human organism yielded by a study of the corpse or pathological conditions, observing them not merely in regard to their “dead” structures but according to their living nature, will find himself faced with endless enigmas of the human organism. For the more exact and the more living our knowledge becomes, the more complicated does it appear. There are, however, certain guiding lines which enable us to find our way through the labyrinth. And if I may be allowed to make a personal observation here, it is that the discovery of such guiding lines was a matter with which I occupied myself for thirty years before I began to speak about it openly—which was about the year 1917. As a comparatively young man, in the early twenties, I asked myself whether there was any possibility of research into this complicated human organisation. Were there certain fundamental principles which would enable one to arrive at a comprehensive understanding? And this led me—(I have just said that the study took me thirty years)—to the fact that one can regard the human organisation from three different aspects: the system of nerves and senses, the rhythmic system, and the metabolic and limb system.

What we can call the organisation of nerves and senses predominates over all the others. It is, moreover, the bearer of all that can be described as the life of concepts. On the other hand, what we describe as the rhythmic organisation is, in a certain respect, self-contained. There is the rhythm of the breath, the rhythm of the circulation, the rhythm manifested in sleeping and waking, and countless other rhythmic processes. It was by making a practical and accurate distinction between the rhythmic organisation and the nerves-and-senses organisation that I first discovered how one could distinguish between the different constituent parts of the human being. I was compelled to ask myself the question—it is now nearly forty years ago, and to-day human hearts are more than ever burdened with baffling physiological problems—I was compelled to ask myself whether on this basis it is really possible to say that the whole inner life of thinking, feeling and willing is bound up with the system of nerves and senses. At the same time I felt that there was a contradiction: how can thinking, feeling and willing be bound up with the nerves and senses? Naturally I cannot go into all this detail to-day, I can only indicate it; but when we come to consider the domain of therapeutics much will be explained. For instance if from the physiological standpoint we carefully and accurately study the effect of music upon the human organisation, if we know the intimate connection that exists between our experience of music and the rhythmic processes within us, if we understand the quality of soul in music itself, and study the measure of our feelings with regard to melody and harmony, we say to ourselves at first that the feeling-life of man is not altogether directly connected with the nervous system; on the contrary, it is experienced in the rhythmic system. It is only when we rise to a higher conception of what we feel at first to be directly connected in musical experience with the rhythmic system that we find that the conception of it is actually carried by the nervous system. Thus we come to the conclusion that the nervous system and the rhythmic system are really inwardly organised as two entirely separate things.

Take modern physiology with all that it has to offer, especially all that it can tell you with regard to the experiences you can have in connection with music. If you study, for instance, such a thing as the human ear as it perceives the different sounds and tones, you will certainly say that audible phenomena (i.e. one particular class of sense-perception), are first of all incorporated into the rhythmic system of man, rise rhythmically to the sense-organisation, rhythmically approach the nervous system and then become a concept created by means of the nervous-system. The rhythmic system is in immediate connection with the nervous system, which is the bearer of thought—but it is the bearer of feeling only in so far as we become aware of our feelings through thoughts and these thoughts are carried by the nervous system. We can proceed in the same way if we apply physiology to the metabolic-limb-system. It may seem strange to connect metabolism and limbs together; but you need only consider how everything that has to do with movement and which belongs to the limb-system, reacts upon the metabolism. The metabolism and the limbs taken together are certainly a uniform whole.

When we investigate these things accurately and not in a confused way, it becomes evident once more that the system of metabolism and limbs is the direct bearer of all manifestations of the human will. Once more, then, it is as follows:—When that which is taking place in the metabolic-limb-system as the bearer of the manifestations of will, works upwards, sends its force up into the rhythmic system, then it passes into the realm of feeling. We unfold our feelings in our will and our will is directly inherent in our metabolic processes—absolutely directly. We experience the will as ‘feeling’ in the rhythmic system, indirectly. And we make thoughts for ourselves about our volitional acts because the metabolic system and rhythmic system drive their forces up into the nervous system.

Thus we have guiding lines for penetrating into the human organisation. For if we first of all perceive what has been given in regard to the nervous system—(to begin with we will leave the rhythmic system lying between the two others)—then we shall find a polar antithesis in every direction: the nervous system and the metabolic system are polarically opposite. As the metabolic-limb-system builds up, so the system of nerves and senses destroys and vice versa. This and many other things demonstrate the polarity. Everything that constitutes the Ego-organisation is intimately bound up with the system of nerves and senses; everything that constitutes the etheric body is intimately bound up with the metabolic and limb system; everything that constitutes the astral body is bound up with the rhythmic system; the physical body permeates the whole, but is continually overcome by the three other members of the human organisation. Only when we observe the human organism in this way can we leam to penetrate into the so-called normal or abnormal processes.

Let us take first the organisation of nerves and senses. But first, so that I may not be misunderstood, I would like to make a short digression. A very sceptical naturalist who had heard in quite a superficial way about these members which I posit as the basis of man's nature, said that I had attempted to distinguish between “head-organisation,” “chest-organisation,” and “abdominal organisation:” thus that I had in a sense located the system of nerves and senses only in the head, the rhythmic organisation in the chest, and the metabolic-limb system in the abdomen. But that is a very unjust statement. For without separating the systems spatially, the nerves and senses may be said to be organised principally in the head, but they are also to be found in the other two systems. The rhythmic system is principally located in the middle organisation; but it again is spread over the whole man; similarly the metabolic organisation. It is not a question of making a spatial separation between the organs, but of understanding their qualitative aspect and what is living in and permeating the single organs.

When we study the system of nerves and senses from this standpoint, we find that it spreads throughout the whole organism. The eye or the ear, for example, are organised in such a way that they pre-eminently contain the nerves and senses, in a lesser degree the rhythmic, and in a still less degree the metabolic system. An organ like the kidney, for instance, does not contain so much of the nerves and senses system as of the rhythmic or metabolic organisation, yet it contains something of all three. We do not understand the human being if we say: here are sense-organs, or there are digestive organs. In reality it is quite different. A sense-organ is only principally sense-organ; every sense-organ is also in a certain way a digestive and a rhythmic organ. The kidneys or the liver are to be understood as being principally assimilatory or excretory organs. In a lesser degree they are organs of nerves and senses. If, then, we study the whole organisation of man with its single organs from the point of view of the system of nerves and senses (in its reality, and not according to the fantastic concepts often formed by physiology), we find that man ‘perceives’ by means of his separate senses—sight, hearing and so on; but we also find that he is entirely permeated by the sense-organisation. The kidney, for instance, is a sense-organ which has a delicate perception of what is taking place in the digestive and excretory processes. The liver too, is—under certain conditions—a sense-organ. The heart is in a high degree an inner sense-organ and can only be understood if it is conceived of as such.

Do not imagine that I have any intention of criticising the science of to-day; I know its worth and my desire is that our view of these things shall be firmly grounded upon it. But we must nevertheless be clear that our science is, at present, not able to penetrate fully and precisely into the being of man. If it could, it would not relate the animal organisation so closely to the human in the way it does in our time. In respect of the life of sense, the animal stands at a lower level than the human organisation. The human nerves and senses organisation is yoked to the Ego-organisation; in the animal it is yoked to the astral body. The sense-life of man is entirely different from that of the animal. When the animal perceives something with its eyes—and this can be shown by a closer study of the structure of the eye—something takes place in the animal which, so to say, goes through the whole of its body. It does not happen like that in man. In man, sense-perception remains far more at the periphery, is concentrated far more on the surface. You can understand from this that there are delicate organisations present in animals which, in the case of the higher species, are only to be found in etheric form. But in certain of the lower animals you find, for instance, the xiphoid process which is also present in higher animals but in their case it is etheric; or you may find the pecten or choroid process in the eye. The way in which these organs are permeated by the blood, shows that the eye shares in the whole organisation of the animal and is the mediator to it of a life in the circumference of its environment. Man, on the other hand, is connected with his system of nerves and senses quite differently and therefore lives, in a far higher sense than the animal, in his outer world, whereas the animal lives more within itself. But everything which is communicated through the higher spiritual members of the human being, which lives itself out through the Ego-organisation by way of the nerves and senses, requires—just because it is present within the domain of the physical body—to receive its material influences from out of the physical world.

Now if we closely study the system of nerves and senses at a time when it is functioning perfectly healthily, we find that its working depends on a certain substance, and on the processes that take place in that substance. Matter is something which is never at rest; it merely represents what is, actually, a ‘process.’ (A crystal of quartz, for instance, is only a self-contained, definitely shaped thing to us because we never perceive that it is a ‘process,’ though indeed it is one which is taking place extremely slowly.) We must penetrate further and further into the human organism and learn to understand its transformative activity. That which enters into the organism as external physical substance has to be taken up by it and overcome, in the way described in the introductory lecture.

Now it is especially interesting that when the system of nerves and senses is in a normal, i.e. a healthy state (which must of course be understood relatively), it is dependent upon a delicate process which takes place under the influence of the silicic acid which enters the organism. Silicic acid, which in the outer realm of Nature forms itself into beautiful quartz-crystals, has this peculiarity: when it penetrates into the human organism it is taken up by the processes of the nerves and senses; so that if we look at the system of nerves and senses with spiritual sight, we see a wonderfully delicate process going on in which silicic acid is active. But if we look at the other side of the question—as when I said that man has senses everywhere—then we shall notice that it is only in the periphery, that is, where the senses are especially concentrated, that the silicic acid process is intensified; when we turn to the more inner parts of the organism, to the lungs, liver or kidneys, it is far less strong, it is ‘thinner’; while in the bones it is again stronger. In this way we discover that man has a remarkable constitution.

We have, so to say, a periphery and a circumference where the senses are concentrated; then we have that which fills out the limbs and which carries the skeleton; between these we have the muscles, the glands and so on.

In that which I have described as the “circumference” and the “centralised,” we have the strongest silicic acid processes; we can follow them into the organs that lie between these two, and there we find that they have their own specific silicic acid processes but weaker than those in the circumference. Thus in respect of the outer parts, where man extends in an outgoing direction from the nerves into the senses, he needs more and more silicic acid; in the centre of his system he requires comparatively little; but where his skeleton lies, at the basis of the motor system, there again he requires more silicic acid. Directly we perceive this fact we recognize the inexactitude of many assertions of modern physiology. (And again let me emphasise that I do not wish to criticise them, but merely to make certain statements.) For instance, if we study the life of the human being according to modern physiology, we are directed to the breathing-process. In certain respects this is a complex process, but—speaking generally—it consists in taking in oxygen out of the air, and breathing out carbonic acid. That is the rhythmical process which is essentially the basis of organic life. We say that oxygen is breathed in, that it goes through certain processes described by physiology, within the organism; that it combines with carbon in the blood, and is then ejected on the breath as carbonic acid. This is perfectly correct according to a purely external method of observation. This process is, however, connected with another. We do not merely breathe in oxygen and combine it with carbon. Primarily, that is done with that portion of the oxygen which is spread over the lower part of the body; that is what we unite with the carbon and breathe out as carbonic acid.

There is another and a more delicate process behind this rhythmical occurrence. That portion of the oxygen which, in the human organisation, rises towards the head and therefore (in the particular sense which was mentioned previously) to the system of nerves and senses, unites itself with the substance we call silica, and forms silicic acid. And whereas in man the important thing for the metabolic system is the production of carbonic acid, so the important thing for the nerves and senses system is the production of silicic acid. The latter is a finer process which we are not able to verify with the coarse instruments at our disposal, though all the means are there by which it can be verified. Thus we have the coarser process on the one hand, and on the other the finer process where the oxygen combines with the silica to form silicic acid, and as such, is secreted inwardly in the human organisation.

Through this secretion of silicic acid the whole organism becomes a sense-organ—more so in the periphery, less so in the separate organs.

If we look at it this way, we can perceive the more delicate intimate structure of the human organism, and see how every organ contains, of necessity, processes related to substances each in its own distinct degree.

If we are now to grasp what health and illness really are, we must understand how these processes take place in any one organ. Suppose we take the kidney, for sake of example. Through some particular condition or other—some symptomatic complication, let us say—our diagnosis leads us to assume that the cause of an illness lies in the kidneys. If we call Spiritual Science to the aid of our diagnosis, we find that the kidney is acting too little as a sense-organ for the surrounding digestive and excretory processes; it is acting too strongly as an organ of metabolism; hence the balance is upset.

In such a case we have above all to ask: how are we to restore to it in a greater degree the character of sense-organ? We can say that because the kidney proves to be an insufficient sense-organ for the digestive and excretory processes, then we must see that it receives the necessary supply of silicic acid.

Now in the anthroposophical sense, there are three ways of administering substances that are required by a healthy human organism. The first is to give the patient a remedy by mouth. But in that case we must be guided by whether the whole digestive organism is so constituted that it can transmit the substances exactly to that spot where they are to be effective. We must know how a substance works—whether on the heart, or the lungs, and so forth, when we administer it by mouth and it passes into the digestive tract. The second way is by injections. By this means we introduce a substance directly into the rhythmic system. There, it works more as a ‘process;’ there, that which in the metabolism is a substantial organisation, is transformed at once into a rhythmic activity and we directly affect the rhythmic system. Or again, we try the third way: we prepare a substance as an ointment to be applied at the right place, or administer it in a bath; in short we apply our remedy in an external form. There are, of course, a great many different methods of doing this.

We have these three ways of applying remedies. But now let us observe the kidneys which our diagnosis reveals as having a diminished capacity as a sense-organ. We have to administer the right kind of silicic acid process. Therefore we have to be attentive, because, in the breathing process as described just now, where the oxygen combines with silica and then disperses silicic acid throughout the body, and because during that process too little silicic acid has reached the kidneys, we must do something which will attract a stronger silicic acid process to them. So we must know how to come to the assistance of the organism which has failed to do this for itself; and for this we must discover what there is externally which is the result of a process such as is wanting in the kidneys. We must search for it. How can we find ways and means to introduce just this silicic acid process into the kidneys?

And now we find that the function of the kidneys, especially as it is a sense-function, is dependent upon the astral body. The astral body is at the basis of the excretory processes and of this particular form of them. Therefore we must stimulate the astral body and moreover in such a way that it will somehow carry the silicic acid process which is administered from outside, to an organ such as the kidney. We need a remedy that, firstly, will stimulate the silicic-acid process, and, secondly, which will stimulate it precisely in the kidneys. If we seek for it in the surrounding plant world, we come upon the plant equisetum arvensæ, the ordinary field “horse-tail.” The peculiar feature of this plant is that it contains a great deal of silicic acid. If we were to give silicic acid alone it would, however, not reach the kidneys. Equisetum also contains sulphurous acid salts. Sulphurous acid salts alone work on the rhythmic system, on the excretory organs and on the kidneys in particular. When they are intimately combined as they are in Equisetum Arvensæ (we can administer it by mouth, or if that is not suitable, in either of the other ways)—then the sulphurous acid salts enable the silicic acid to find its way to the kidneys.

Here we have touched upon a single instance—a pathological condition of the kidneys. We have approached it quite methodically; we have discerned what can supply what is lacking in the kidneys; and we have erected a bridge that can be followed step by step, from pathology to therapy.

Now let us take another case. Suppose we have to do with some disturbance of the digestive system—such as we usually include under the word ‘dyspepsia.’ If we again proceed according to Spiritual Science, we shall discover that here we have to do principally with a faulty and inadequate working of the Ego-organisation. Why is the Ego-organisation not acting strongly enough? That is the question. And we must search somewhere in the functional regions of the human organism for what it is that is causing this weakness of the Ego-organisation. In certain cases we find that the fault lies in the gallbladder secretions. If that is so, then we must come to the assistance of the Ego-organisation (just as we came to the assistance of the kidneys with the equisetum) by administering something which, if it reaches the required spot by being prepared in a certain way, will there strengthen the inadequate working of the Ego-organisation. Thus, even as we find that the silicic acid process (which lies at the root of the nerves-and-senses system) when introduced in the right way to the kidneys enhances their sense-faculty, so we now find that such a process as the gall-bladder secretions (which corresponds primarily with the Ego-organisation) is really connected in quite a special manner (also in relation to other things) with the action of carbon. Now a remarkable thing to be observed is that if we wish to introduce carbon into the organism in the correct way for treating dyspepsia, we find that carbon—(though it is contained in every plant)—is contained in chichorium intybus (chicory) in a form that directly affects the gall-bladder. When we know how to make the correct preparation from chicorium intybus, we can lead it over into the functions of this organ as a certain form of carbon-process, in the same way as is done with regard to the silicic-acid process and the kidneys.

With these simple examples—which are applicable either to slight or in certain circumstances to very severe cases of illness—I have tried to indicate how, by a spiritual-scientific observation of the human organism on the one hand, and on the other of the different natural creations and their respective interchanges with each other, there can be brought about firstly an understanding of the processes of illness, and secondly an understanding of what is required in order to reverse the direction of those processes. Healing becomes thereby a penetrating Art. This is what can be achieved for the art of medicine, the art of Healing, by the kind of scientific research that is called Anthroposophy. There is nothing of the nature of fantasy about it. It is that which will bring research to the point of extreme exactitude with regard to the observation of the whole human being, both physically, psychically and spiritually. The condition of illness in man depends upon the respective activity of the physical, the psychic and the spiritual. And because man's constitution consists of nerves and senses system, rhythmic system, metabolic and limb system, we are enabled also to penetrate into the different processes and their degrees of activity. We learn to know how a sense-function is present in the kidneys as soon as we direct our attention to the essential nature of sense-functions; otherwise, we only seek to discover sense-functions under their cruder aspect as they appear in the senses themselves. Now however, we become able to comprehend illness as such.

I have already said that in the metabolic and limb system processes take place which are the opposite of those that take place in the system of nerves and senses. But it can happen that processes which primarily are also nerves and senses processes, and are, for instance, proper to the nerves of the head where they are ‘normal’—it can happen that these processes can in a certain sense become dislodged by the metabolic and limb system; that through an abnormality of the astral body and Ego-organisation in the metabolic-limb-system something can happen which would be ‘ correct’ or ‘normal’ only if taking place in the system of nerves and senses. That is to say, what is right for one system can be in another system productive of metamorphosis or disease. So that a process which properly belongs, for instance, to the system of nerves and senses makes its appearance in another system, and is then a process of disease. An example of this is found in typhoid fever. Typhoid represents a process which belongs properly to the nervous system. While it should play its part there in the physical organisation, it plays its part as a matter of fact in the region of the metabolic system within the etheric organisation—within the etheric body—works over into the physical body and appears there as typhoid. Here we see into the nature of the onset of illness. Or it can also happen that the dynamic force, or those forces which are active in a sense-organ—(and must be active there in a certain degree in order that a sense-organ as such may arise)—become active somewhere where they should not. That which works in a sense-organ can be in some way or another transformed in its activity elsewhere. Let us take the activity of the ear. Instead of remaining in the system of nerves and senses, it obtrudes itself (and this under circumstances which can also be described) in another place—for example in the metabolic system where this is connected with the rhythmic system. Then there arises, in the wrong place, an abnormal tendency to produce a sense-organ; and this manifests itself as carcinoma—as a cancerous growth. It is only when we can look in this way into the human organism that we can perceive that carcinoma represents a certain tendency, displaced in respect of the systems, to the formation of a sense organ.

When we speak of the fertilisation of medicine through Anthroposophy, it is a question of learning how abnormal conditions in the human organism arise from the fact that what is normal to one system transplants itself into another. And only by perceiving the matter thus is one in a position really to understand the human organism in its healthy and diseased states, and so to make the bridge from pathology to therapy, from observation of the patient to healing the patient.

When these things are represented as a connected whole, it will be seen how nothing that is said from this standpoint can in any way contradict modern medicine. As a first step in this direction I hope that very soon now the book [Fundamentals of Therapy, by Dr. Rudolf Steiner and Dr. Ita Wegman. (Anthroposophical Publishing Co.) Price 7/6.] will be published that has been written by me in collaboration with Dr. Wegman, the Director of the Clinical and Therapeutic Institute at Arlesheim. This book will present what can be given from the spiritual-scientific standpoint, not as a contradiction of modern medicine but as an extension of it. People will then be able to convince themselves that it has nothing to do with the kind of superficiality which is so prevalent to-day. This book will show, in a way that will be justified by modern science, the fruitfulness that can enter into the art of healing by means of spiritual scientific investigation. Precisely when these things can be followed up more and more in detail and with scientific conscientiousness, will those efforts be acknowledged which are being made by such an Institution as the International laboratories of Arlesheim, where a whole range of new remedies is being prepared in accordance with the principles here set forth.

In the third lecture it will be my endeavour to consolidate still further (in so far as that can be done here in a popular manner), what has already been indicated as a rational therapy, by citing certain special cases of illness and the way in which they can be cured. Anyone who can really perceive what is meant will certainly not have any fear that the things stated cannot be subjected to serious test. We know that it will be the same in this as in all other domains of Anthroposophy; to begin with, there will be rebuffs, abuse and criticism by those who do not know it in detail. But those who do learn to know it in detail will stop their abuse. Therefore, in my third lecture I will go more into the particulars which will show that we are not evading modern science but are in full agreement with it, and that we proceed from the desire to enlarge the boundaries of science by spiritual knowledge in the sphere of anthroposophical medicine.

Only when this is understood will the art of healing stand upon its true foundations. For the art of healing concerns man. Man is a being of body, soul and Spirit. A real medicine can therefore only exist when it penetrates into a knowledge which embraces man in respect of all three—in respect of body, soul and Spirit.

I pointed out yesterday how the child's development undergoes a radical change with the loss of his first teeth. For in truth, what we call heredity or inherited characteristics are only directly active during the first epoch of life. It is however the case that during the first seven years a second life organism is gradually built up in the physical body, which is fashioned after the model of the inherited organism. This second organism is, we may say, completed at the changing of the teeth. If the individual who comes down out of the spiritual pre-earthly world is weak, then this second life organism is similar to the inherited one. If the individual is strong, then we see how in the period between the change of teeth and puberty, from seven years till about fourteen, a kind of victory is gradually accomplished over the inherited characteristics. Children become quite different and they even change in their outward bodily form.

It is specially interesting to follow the qualities of soul which now reveal themselves in this second life epoch. In the first epoch, before the change of teeth, we may describe the child as being wholly “sense-organ.” You must take this quite literally: wholly sense-organ.

Take for example the human eye or ear. What is the characteristic of such a sense-organ? The characteristic thing is that the sense-organ is acutely sensitive to the impressions of the outer world. And if you observe the eye you can certainly see what kind of process takes place. The child during the first seven years is really completely and wholly an eye. Now consider only this thought: in the eye a picture is formed, an inverted picture, of every external object. This is what ordinary Physics teaches everyone. That which is outside in the world is to be found within the eye as a picture. Physics stops here, but this picture-forming process is really only the beginning of what one should know concerning the eye; it is the most external physical fact.

But if the physicist would look upon this picture with a finer sense of observation, then he would see that it determines the course of the circulation of the blood in the choroid. The whole choroid is conditioned in its blood circulation by the nature of this picture within the eye. The whole eye adjusts itself according to these things. These are the finer processes that are not taken into consideration by our ordinary Physics. But the child during the first seven years is really an eye. If something takes place in the child's environment, let us say, to take an extreme example, a fit of temper when someone becomes furiously angry, then the whole child will have a picture within him of this outburst of rage. The etheric body makes a picture of it. From it something passes over into the entire circulation of the blood and the metabolic system, something which is related to this outburst of anger.

This is so in the first seven years, and according to this the organism adjusts itself. Naturally these are not crude happenings, they are delicate processes. But if a child grows up in the proximity of an angry father or a hot-tempered teacher, then the vascular system, the blood vessels, will follow the line of the anger. The results of this implanted tendency in the early years will then remain through the whole of the rest of life.

These are the things that matter most for the young child. What you say to him, what you teach him, does not yet make any impression, except in so far as he imitates what you say in his own speech. But it is what you are that matters; if you are good this goodness will appear in your gestures, and if you are evil or bad-tempered this also will appear in your gestures—in short, everything that you do yourself passes over into the child and pursues its way within him. This is the essential point. The child is wholly sense-organ, and reacts to all the impressions aroused in him by the people around him. Therefore the essential thing is not to imagine that the child can learn what is good or bad, that he can learn this or that, but to know that everything that is done in his presence is transformed in his childish organism into spirit, soul and body. Health for the whole of life depends on how one conducts oneself in the presence of the child. The inclinations which he develops depend on how one behaves in his presence.

But all the things that we are usually advised to do with Kindergarten children are quite worthless. The things which are introduced as Kindergarten education are usually extraordinarily “clever.” One is, I might say, quite fascinated by the cleverness of what has been thought out for Kindergartens in the course of the nineteenth century. The children certainly learn a great deal there, they almost learn to read. They are supplied with letters of the alphabet which they have to fit into cut out letters and such like. It all looks very clever and one can easily be tempted io believe that it really is something suitable for children, but it is of no use at all. It really has no value whatsoever, and the whole soul of the child is spoilt by it. Even down into the body, right down into physical health, the child is ruined. Through such Kindergarten methods weaklings in body and soul are bred for later life.¹

On the other hand, if we were simply to have the children there in the Kindergarten and so conduct ourselves that they could imitate us, if we were to do all kinds of things that the children could copy out of their own inner impulse of soul, as they have been accustomed to do in the pre-earthly existence, then indeed the children would become like ourselves, but it is for us to see that we are worthy of this imitation. This is what you must pay attention to during the first seven years of life and not what you express outwardly in words as a moral idea.

If you make a surly face so that the child gets the impression you are a grumpy person, this harms him for the rest of his life. This is why it is so important, especially for little children, that as a teacher one should enter very thoroughly into the observation of a human being and human life. What kind of school plan you make is neither here nor there; what matters is what sort of a person you are. In our day it is easy enough to think out a curriculum, because everyone in our age is now so clever. I am not saying this ironically; in our day people really are clever. Whenever a few people get together and decide that this or that must be done in education, something clever always comes out of it. I have never known a stupid educational programme; they are always very clever. But it is not a question of having programmes of this kind. What matters is that we should have people in the school who can work in the way I have indicated. We must develop this way of thinking, for an immense amount depends upon it, especially for that age or life epoch of the child in which he is really entirely sense-organ.

Now when the change of teeth is complete the child is no longer a sense-organ in the same degree as previously. This already diminishes between the third and fourth year, but before then the child has quite special peculiarities of which one generally knows nothing whatever. When you eat something sweet or sour you perceive it on the tongue and palate, but when the child drinks milk he feels the taste of milk through his whole body for he is also an organ of sense with regard to taste. He tastes with his whole body; there are many remarkable instances of this.

Children take their cue from the grown-ups and therefore at fifteen, sixteen or twenty they are, nowadays, already blasé and have lost their freshness, but there are still children to be found who in their early years are wholly sense-organ, though life is not easy for such. I knew for example a small boy who on being given something to eat that he knew he would enjoy, approached the delectable object not only with those organs with which one generally approaches food, but he steered towards it with his hands and feet; he was in fact wholly an organ of taste. The remarkable thing is that in his ninth or tenth year he became a splendid Eurythmist and developed a great understanding for Eurythmy. So what he began by “paddling” up to his food as a little child was developed further in his will organs at a later age.

I do not say these things jokingly but in order to give you examples of how to observe. You very rarely hear people relating such things as these, but they are happening every moment. People fail to perceive these characteristic phenomena of life and only think out how to educate the young instead of observing life itself.

Life is interesting in every detail, from morning till evening; the smallest things are interesting. Notice, for instance, how two people take a pear from a fruit bowl. No two people take the pear in the same way; it is always different. The whole character of a person is expressed in the way he takes the pear from the fruit dish and puts it on his plate, or straight into his mouth as the case may be.

If people would only cultivate more power of observation of this kind, the terrible things would not develop in schools which one unfortunately so often sees today. One scarcely sees a child now who holds his pen or pencil correctly. Most children hold them wrongly, and this is because we do not know how to observe properly. This is a very difficult thing to do, and it is not easy in the Waldorf School either. One frequently enters a class where drastic changes are needed in the way the children hold their pencils or pens. You must never forget that the human being is a whole, and as such he must acquire dexterity in all directions. Therefore what the teacher needs is observation of life down to the minutest details.

And if you are specially desirous of having formulated axioms, then take this as the first principle of a real art of education. You must be able to observe life in all its manifestations.

One can never learn enough in this direction. Look at the children from behind, for instance. Some walk by planting the whole foot on the ground, others trip along on their toes, and there can be every kind of differentiation between these two extremes. Yes indeed, to educate a child one must know quite precisely how he walks. For the child who treads on his heels shows in this one small characteristic of his physical body that he was very firmly planted in life in his former incarnation, that he was interested in everything in his former earth life. In such a case you must draw as much as possible out of the child himself, for there are many things hidden away in such children who walk strongly on their heels. On the other hand the children who trip along, who scarcely use their heels in walking, have gone through their former earth life in a superficial way. You will not be able to get much out of these children, but when you are with them you must make a point of doing a great many things yourself that they can copy.

In this kind of way you should experience the changing of the teeth through careful observation. The fact that the child was previously wholly sense-organ now enables him to develop above all the gift of fantasy and symbolism. And one muss reckon with this even in play. Our materialistic age sins terribly against it. Take for example the so-called beautiful dolls that are so often given to children nowadays. They have such beautifully formed faces, wonderfully painted cheeks, and even eyes with which they can go to sleep when laid down, real hair and goodness knows what all! But with this the fantasy of the child is killed, for it leaves nothing to his imagination and the child can take no great pleasure in it. But if you make a doll out of a serviette or a handkerchief with two ink spots for eyes, a dab of ink for a mouth, and some sort of arms, then the child can add a great deal to it with his imagination.

It is particularly good for a child when he can add as much as possible to his playthings with his own fantasy, when he can develop a symbolising activity. Children should have as few things as possible that are well finished and complete and what people call “beautiful.” For the beauty of such a doll that I have described above with real hair and so on, is only a conventional beauty. In truth it is horribly ugly because it is so inartistic.

Never forget that in the period round about the change of teeth the child passes over into the age of imagination and fantasy. It is not the intellect but fantasy which fills his life at this age. You as teachers must also be able to develop this life of fantasy, for those who bear a true knowledge of the human being in their souls are able to do this. It is indeed so that a true knowledge of man loosens and releases the inner life of soul and brings a smile to the face. Sour and grumpy faces come only from lack of knowledge. Certainly one can have a diseased organ which leaves traces of illness on the face; this does not matter, for the child takes no account of these things, but if the inner nature of a person is filled with a living knowledge of what man is, this will be expressed in his face, and this it is that can make him a really good teacher.

And so between the change of teeth and puberty you must educate out of the very essence of imagination. For the quality that makes a child under seven so wholly into a sense-organ now becomes more inward; it enters the soul life. The sense-organs do not think; they perceive pictures, or rather they form pictures from the external objects. And even when the child's sense experiences have already a quality of soul, it is not a thought that emerges but an image, albeit a soul image, an imaginative picture. Therefore in your teaching you must work in pictures, in images.

Now we can work least of all in pictures if we are teaching the child something that is really quite foreign to him. For example, the calligraphy of today is quite foreign to the child whether in the written or printed letters. He has no relation whatever to this thing which is called an “A.” Why should he have a relation to an “A”? Why should he be interested in an “L”? These are quite foreign to him, this “A,” this “L.” Nevertheless when the child comes to school we take him into the classroom and start to teach him these things. The result is that he feels no contact with what he has to do. And if we teach him this before the change of teeth and set him to stick letters into cut-out holes, for example, then we are giving him things that lie right outside his nature and to which he has not the slightest relationship.

But what he does possess is an artistic sense, a faculty for creating imaginative pictures. It is to this that we must appeal, to this we must turn. We should avoid a direct approach to the conventional letters of the alphabet which are used in the writing and printing of civilised man. Rather should we lead the children, in a vivid and imaginative way, through the various stages which man himself has passed through in the history of civilisation.

In former times there was picture writing; that is to say, people painted something on the page which reminded them of the object. We do not need to study the history of civilisation, but we can show the child the meaning and spirit of what man wanted to express in picture writing. Then he will feel at home in his lessons.

For example: Let us take the word “Mund”—English “mouth.” Get the child to draw a mouth, or rather paint it. Let him put on dabs of red colour and then tell him to pronounce the word; you can say to him: don't pronounce the whole word but begin only with M; and now we can form the M out of the upper lip (see drawing). If you follow this

process you can get your M out of the mouth which we first painted.

This is how writing really originated, only today it is difficult to recognise from the words themselves that the letters were once pictures, because the words have all been subject to change in the course of the evolution of speech. Originally each sound had its own image and each picture could have but one meaning.

You do not need to go back to these original characters, but you can invent ways and means of your own. The teacher must be inventive, he must create out of the spirit of the thing. Let us take the word “fish.” Let the child draw or paint some kind of fish. Let him say the beginning of the word: “F,” and you can gradually get the F out of the picture (see drawing).

And thus, if you are inventive, you can find in point of fact, pictures for all the consonants. They can be worked out from a kind of painting-drawing, or drawing-painting. This is more awkward to deal with than the methods of today. For it is of course essential that after the children have been doing

this painting for an hour or two you have to clear it all away. But this just has to be so, there is nothing else to be done.

From this you can see how the letters can be developed out of pictures and the pictures again directly out of life. This is the way you must do it. On no account should you teach reading first, but proceeding from your drawing-painting and painting-drawing, you allow the letters to arise out of these, and then you can pass over to reading.

If you look around you will find plenty of objects which you can use to develop the consonants in this way. All the consonants can be developed from the initial letters of the words describing these objects.

It is not so easy for the vowels. But perhaps for the vowels the following is possible. Suppose you say to the child: “Look at the beautiful sun! You must really admire it; stand like this so that you can look up and admire the glorious sun.” The child stands, looks up and then expresses its wonder thus: Ah! Then you paint this gesture and you actually have the Hebrew A, the sound Ah, the sound of wonder. Now you only need to make it smaller and gradually turn it into the letter A (see drawing).

And so if you bring before the child something of an inner soul quality and above all what is expressed in Eurythmy, letting him take up this position or that, then you can develop the vowels also in the way I have mentioned. Eurythmy will

be of very great help to you because the sounds are already formed in the Eurythmy gestures and movements. Think for instance of an O. One embraces something lovingly. Out of this one can obtain the 0 (see drawing). You can really get the vowels from the gesture, the movement.

Thus you must work out of observation and imagination, and the children will then come to know the sounds and the letters from the things themselves. You must start from the picture. The letter, as we know it today in its finished form, has a history behind it. It is something that has been simplified from a picture, but the kind of magical signs of the printed letters of the present day no longer tell us what the picture was like.

When the Europeans, these “better men,” went to America at the time when the “savages,” the Indians, were still there,—even in the middle of the nineteenth century such things happened—they showed these savages printed writing and the Indians ran away from it because they thought the letters were little devils. And they said: The Pale-faces, as the Indians called the Europeans, communicate with each other by means of little devils, little demons.

But this is just what letters are for children. They mean nothing to them. The child feels something demonic in the letters, and rightly so. They have already become a means of magic because they are merely signs.

You must begin with the picture. That is not a magic sign but something real and you must work from this.

People will object that the children then learn to read and write too late. This is only said because it is not known today how harmful it is when the children learn to read and write too soon. It is a very bad thing to be able to write early. Reading and Writing as we have them today are really not suited to the human being till a later age, in the eleventh or twelfth year, and the more one is blessed with not being able to read and write well before this age, the better it is for the later years of life. A child who cannot write properly at thirteen or fourteen (I can speak out of my own experience because I could not do it at that age) is not so hindered for later spiritual development as one who early, at seven or eight years, can already read and write perfectly. These are things which the teacher must notice.

Naturally one will not be able to proceed as one really should today because the children have to pass from your Independent School into public life. But a very great deal can be done nevertheless when one knows these things. It is a question of knowledge. And your knowledge must show you, above all, that it is quite wrong to teach reading before writing, for in writing, especially if it is developed from the painting-drawing, drawing-painting, that I have spoken of, the whole human being is active. The fingers take part, the position of the body, the whole man is engaged. In reading only the head is occupied and anything which only occupies a part of the organism and leaves the remaining parts impassive should be taught as late as possible. The most important thing is first to bring the whole being into movement, and later on the single parts.

Naturally if you want to work in this way you cannot expect to be given instructions for all the little details, but only an indication of the path to be followed. Therefore just in this method of education which arises out of Anthroposophy you can build on nothing else but absolute freedom, though this freedom must include the free creative fancy of the teacher and educator.

In the Waldorf School we have been blessed with what I might call a very questionable success. We began with one hundred and thirty to one hundred and forty pupils; but these pupils came from the industrial works of Emil Molt, so they were at that time to a certain extent “compulsory” children though we had some children from anthroposophical families besides.² In the short time of its existence the Waldorf School has grown so big that we have now more than eight hundred children and between forty and fifty teachers. This is a doubtful success because gradually it becomes impossible to keep a clear view of the whole. From the arrangements of the Waldorf School which I shall describe to you, you will soon see how difficult it is to survey the whole; though I shall later indicate certain ways of making this possible. We have had to form parallel classes; in the case of the fifth and sixth there are three parallel classes: A, B and C. These classes are still overfull and have more children than the other classes in the school.

There is therefore a teacher in Class A, another in Class B. Just imagine how this would work out in a “proper” educational establishment of today. You come into Class I A, where you find a particular educational drill going on which is considered the best. Now you go into Class I B. It could equally well be called ‘A,’ only that different children are sitting there, for in both classes exactly the same thing goes on, because the “right method” is used. This is of course all most cleverly thought out: what is intellectual has but one meaning and it cannot be otherwise.

With us in the Waldorf School you find no such thing. You go into the first Class A. There you see a teacher, man or woman, who is teaching writing. The teacher lets the children make all kinds of forms, let us say with string. They then go on to painting the forms and gradually letters arise. A second teacher likes to do it differently. If you go into Class B you find that this teacher is letting the children “dance” the forms round the room, in order that they may experience the forms of the letters in their own bodies. Then she carries over these forms also into the letters themselves. You would never find uniformity of teaching in Classes A, B and C. The same things are taught but in completely different ways, for a free creative fancy holds sway in the class. There are no prescribed rules for teaching in the Waldorf School, but only one unifying spirit that pervades the whole. It is very important that you should realise this. The teacher is autonomous. Within this one unifying spirit he can do entirely what he thinks right. You will say: Yes, but if everyone can do as he likes, then the whole school will fall into a chaotic condition. For in Class V A, there could be goodness knows what kind of hocus-pocus going on, and in V B, you might find them playing chess. But that is exactly what does not happen in the Waldorf School, for though there is freedom everywhere you will find in each class the spirit which is in accordance with the age of the children.

If you read the Seminar Course, you will see that you are allowed the greatest liberty, and yet the teaching in each class is what is right for that age³ The strange thing is that no teacher has ever opposed this. They all quite voluntarily accept this principle of a unifying spirit in the work. No one opposes it or wants to have any special arrangements made for himself. On the contrary, the wish is often expressed by the teachers to have as many discussions as possible in their meetings about what should be done in the various classes.

Why does no teacher object to the curriculum? The school has been going for several years. Why do you think that all the teachers approve of the curriculum? They do not find it at all unreasonable. They find it in its very freedom excellent because it is bound up with real true human knowledge.

And just in such things as creating one's teaching matter out of fantasy it can be seen that freedom must prevail in the school. Indeed it does. Each of our teachers has the feeling that it is not only a question of what he himself thinks out and discovers out of his own fantasy, but when I sit with my Waldorf teachers in their meetings, or when I go into the classes, I get more and more the impression that when once the teachers are in their classrooms they actually forget that a plan of teaching has previously been drawn up. In the moment of teaching every teacher imagines that he himself is creating the plan of work. This is the feeling I have when I go into the classes.

Such is the result when real human knowledge lies at the basis of the work. I have to tell you these details even though you might think they were said out of vanity; indeed they are not said out of vanity but that you may know how it is and then go and do likewise; this will show you how what grows out of a true knowledge of man can really enter into the child.

It is on fantasy then, on imagination, that our teaching and education is to be built. You must be quite clear that before the ninth or tenth year the child does not know how to differentiate himself as an ego from his surroundings. Out of a certain instinct the child has long been accustomed to speak of himself as “P,” but in truth he really feels himself within the whole world. He feels that the whole world is connected with himself. But people have the most fantastic ideas about this. They say of primitive races that their feeling for the world is “animism,” that is, they treat lifeless objects as though they were “ensouled,” and that to understand a child you must imagine that he does the same as these primitive peoples. When he knocks against a hard object he hits it because he endows it with a quality of soul.

But that is not at all true. In reality, the child does not “ensoul” the object, but he does not yet distinguish between the living and the lifeless. He considers everything as a unity, and himself also as making up a unity with his surroundings. Not until the age of nine or ten does the child really learn to distinguish himself from his environment. This is something you must take into consideration in the strictest sense if you wish to give your teaching a proper basis.

Therefore it is important to speak of everything that is around the child, plants, animals and even stones, in such a way that all these things talk to each other, that they act among themselves like human beings, that they tell each other things, that they love and hate each other. You must learn to use anthropomorphism in the most inventive ways and speak of all the plants and animals as though they were human. You must not “ensoul” them out of a kind of theory but simply treat them in the way which a child can grasp when he is not yet able to distinguish between the lifeless and the living. For as yet the child has no reason to think that the stone has no soul, whereas the dog has a soul. The first difference he notices is that the dog moves. But he does not ascribe the movement to the fact that he has a soul. One can indeed treat all things that feel and live as if they were people, thinking, feeling and speaking to one another, as if they were persons with sympathy and antipathy for each other. Therefore everything that one brings to a child at this age must be given in the form of fairy tales, legends and stories in which everything is endowed with feeling. The child receives the very best foundation for his soul life when in this way we nourish his instinctive soul qualities of fancy. This must be borne in mind.

If you fill the child with all kinds of intellectual teaching during this age (and this will be the case if we do not transform into pictures everything that we teach him) then later he will have to suffer the effects in his blood vessels and in his circulation. We must consider the child in body, soul and spirit as an absolute unity. This must be said over and over again.

For this task the teacher must have an artistic feeling in his soul, he must be of an artistic disposition. For what works from teacher to child is not only what one thinks out or what one can convey in ideas, but, if I may express myself so, it is the imponderable quality in life. A very great deal passes over from teacher to child unconsciously. The teacher must be aware of this, above all when he is telling fairy tales, stories or legends full of feeling. It very often happens in our materialistic times that we notice how the teacher looks upon what he is telling as childish. He is telling something which he himself does not believe. And here Anthroposophy finds its rightful place if it is to be the guide and leader of the true knowledge of man. We become aware through Anthroposophy that we can express a thing infinitely more fully and more richly if we clothe it in pictures than if we put it into abstract ideas. A child who is naturally healthy feels the necessity to express everything in pictures and to receive everything also in picture form.

Remember how Goethe learnt to play the piano as a boy. He was shown how he had to use the first finger, the second finger, and so on; but he did not like this method, and this dry pedantic teacher of his was repugnant to him. For Father Goethe was an old Philistine, one of the old pedants of Frankfurt who naturally also engaged Philistine teachers for preference, because they are the good ones, as everyone knows. This kind of teaching was repugnant to the boy Goethe, it was too abstract. So he invented for himself the “ Deuterling” (“the little fellow who points”), not “Index finger,” that is too abstract, but “ Deuterling.”⁴

The child wants an image and he wants to think of him- self as an image too. It is just in these things that we see how the teacher needs to use his fantasy, to be artistic, for then he will meet the child with a truly “living” quality of soul. And this living quality works upon the child in an imponderable way—imponderable in the best sense.

Through Anthroposophy we ourselves learn once more to believe in the legends, fairy tales and myths, for they express a higher truth in imaginative pictures. And then our handling of these fairy tales, legends and mythical stories will once more be filled with a quality of soul. Then when we speak to the child, our very words, permeated as they will be by our own belief in the tales, will flow over to him and carry truth with them; truth will then flow from teacher to child, whereas it is so often untruth that passes between them. Untruth at once holds sway if the teacher says: the child is stupid, I am clever, the child believes in fairy tales so I have to tell them to him. It's the proper thing for him to hear them. When a teacher speaks like this then an intellectual element immediately enters into the relating of the stories.

But the child, especially in the age between the change of teeth and puberty, has a most sensitive feeling for whether the teacher is governed by his fantasy or his intellect. The intellect has a destructive and crippling effect on the child, but fantasy gives it life and impulse.

It is vital that we should make these fundamental thoughts our own. We will speak of them in greater detail during the next few days, but there is one more thing I should like to put before you in conclusion.

Something of very special importance happens to the child between his ninth and tenth year. Speaking in an abstract way we can say that he then learns to differentiate himself from his environment; he feels himself as an “I,” and the environment as something external which does not belong to this “I” of his. But this is an abstract way of expressing it. The reality is this, speaking of course in a general sense: the child of this age approaches his much-loved teacher, be he man or woman, with some problem or difficulty. In most cases he will not actually speak of what is burdening his soul, but will say something different. All the same one has to know that this really comes from the innermost depths of his soul, and the teacher must then find the right approach, the right answer. An enormous amount depends on this for the whole future life of the child concerned. For you cannot work with children of this age, as their teacher, unless you are yourself the unquestioned authority, unless, that is, the child has the feeling: this is true because you hold it to be true, this is beautiful because you find it beautiful, and therefore point it out to him, and this is good because you think it good. You must be for the child the representative of the good, the true and the beautiful. He must be drawn to truth, goodness and beauty simply because he is drawn to you yourself.

And then between the ninth and tenth year this feeling arises instinctively in his subconsciousness: I get everything from my teacher, but where does he get it from? What is behind him? The teacher need not enlarge on this because if you go into definitions and explanations it can only do harm. The important thing is to find a loving word, a word filled with warmth of heart—or rather many words, for these difficulties can go on for weeks and months—so that we can avert this danger and preserve the feeling for authority in the child. For he has now come to a crisis as regards the principle of authority. If you are equal to the situation, and can preserve your authority by the warmth of feeling with which you deal with these particular difficulties, and by meeting the child with inner warmth, sincerity and truth, then much will be gained. The child will retain his belief in the teacher's authority, and that is a good thing for his further education, but it is also essential that just at this age of life between nine and ten the child's belief in a good person should not waver. Were this to happen then the inner security which should be his guide through life will totter and sway.

This is of very great significance and must constantly be borne in mind. In the handbooks on education we find all kinds of intricate details laid down for the guidance of teachers, but it is of far greater importance to know what happens at a certain point in the child's life and how we must act with regard to it, so that through our action we may radiate light on to his whole life.

• 1. In Germany the children remain in the “Kindergarten” until their seventh year so that the above remarks apply to all school life up to this time, (including, for instance, the “Infants” Departments of State Schools in England).
• 2. In 1919 the first Rudolf Steiner School was founded by Emil Molt, Director of the Waldorf Astoria Cigarette Factory, Stuttgart. The first pupils were all children of the factory workers.
• 3. Just before the opening of the Waldorf School, in 1919, Dr. Steiner gave three simultaneous courses of lectures to the teachers two of which have been published in English under the titles ofStudy of Man and Practical Advice to Teachers.
• 4. Compare the old country names for the fingers referred to by Walter de la Mare inCome Hither p. 515, e.g. Tom Thumbkin, Bess Bumpkin, Long Linkin, Bill Wilkin and Little Dick.

The explanations which I gave you yesterday on the path which the human intellect will take in future, are based upon quite definite facts, which come to light through spiritual-scientific knowledge. Let me indicate some of these facts today. You should realize that practically when the human being stands before you, he is that being described in Anthroposophy. That is to say, we first have before us (you know this from my THEOSOPHY) a fourfold being. We have before us the Ego, the so-called astral body, the etheric body and the physical body. The fact that whenever we face a human being we always have before us these four members, implies that the ordinary way of looking at the world today does not really enable us to know the true essence of the person who stands before us. We really do not know it. We think that the person we see before us fills out space with his physical body and that we see his physical body. Yet we could not see this physical part as we generally see it with our ordinary power of vision, if it only stood before us as a physical body. We see the physical body with our ordinary eyes, as it generally appears to us, only because it is permeated by the etheric body, by the astral body and by the Ego. It may sound strange to you if I tell you that our physical body is a corpse, even during the existence between birth and death. When we see a human corpse, we really have before us man's physical body. The corpse is the physical body which is not permeated by the etheric body, by the astral body and by the Ego. It is abandoned by these bodies and then reveals, as it were, its true being. You do not have a true conception of yourself if you think that you are carrying through space what you imagine to be your physical body. You would have a far better conception of yourself, if you were to think of yourself as a corpse, carried through space by your Ego, your astral body and your etheric body.

If we go back as far as the 8th Century, B.C., which is as you know, the beginning of the 4th post-Atlantean Epoch, we come, as you also know, to the Egyptian-Chaldean epoch of the earth's development. There, human bodies had a different constitution from that of today. The human bodies of olden times, the mummies which you can now see in museums, were not constituted, in their finer essence, as human bodies are now constituted. They were filled to a far greater extent with vegetative life, they were not so lifeless, not so corpse-like as the human bodies of today. These physical bodies were, so to speak, far more similar to the plant nature, whereas the physical body of modern man—and this is already the case from the Graeco-Latin epoch onward—has a greater resemblance with the mineral world. If through some cosmic miracle we would now be endowed with the bodies of the Egyptian-Chaldean peoples, we would all be ill. They would bring us illness. We would bear within our body tissues which tend towards an over-exuberant growth. Many an illness simply consists in the fact that the human body in part goes back to conditions which were normal in the Egyptian-Chaldean epoch. In the present time we find ulcerous growths in the human body, which are simply due to the fact that in the one or in the other person a piece of the body tends to become something resembling the whole body among the Egyptian-Chaldean population.

What I told you now, essentially depends on the development of humanity. We modern people therefore carry about with us a corpse. This was not the case with the Egyptian: his knowledge was different from ours, his intelligence worked differently from our intelligence.

Now consider carefully the following question: What does the human being recognize with the aid of that knowledge which he designates as modern science and in which he takes so great a pride? Only lifeless things! Science constantly emphasizes that the ordinary intelligence cannot grasp life. To be sure, some investigators believe that if they continue experimenting, they will one day be able to understand the alternating play of life through complicated combinations of atoms, molecules and their alternating forces. This will never arise. Along the chemical-physical path, they will only be able to understand the mineral, lifeless substance; that is to say, they will only be able to grasp that part of living matter which is now a corpse.

But that part in man which is intelligent and exercises cognizant forces, is nevertheless the physical body; that is, the corpse. What is really done by the corpse which we carry about with us? It goes furthest of all along the path of mathematical-geometrical knowledge. There, everything is transparent; but the further away we go from the mathematical-geometrical sphere, the less transparent things become. This is because the human corpse is, today, the true instrument of cognition, and because a lifeless instrument can only be used to recognize lifeless things. The etheric body, the astral body and the Ego in man are not instruments of cognition, but they remain, as it were, standing in the dark. If the etheric body were able to cognize, in the same way in which the physical body recognizes lifeless things, it would first of all recognize the living essence of the vegetable world.

With their living, plant-like body, the Egyptians perceived the plant world quite differently from the way in which we perceive it now. Many an instinctive knowledge concerning the plant world can be traced back to Egyptian insight, to what became embodied with the Egyptian culture through an instinctive form of cognition. Even certain botanical facts in the medical sphere are, in many respects, based on the traditions of ancient Egyptian wisdom. Indeed, to the lay judgment it may often appear amateurish to draw in Egyptian sources, when certain truths are transmitted which do not seem to be of great value. You know that many so-called lodges, which have not a right foundation, call themselves “Egyptian Lodges.” This is only because in these circles there still exist traditions of the wisdom which could be obtained through an Egyptian body.

We can say that with the gradual transition from the Egyptian into the Graeco-Latin epoch, man's living plant-like body died; already in ancient Greece this living, plant-like body had more or less died, or was at least dying off slowly. Now we already have a physical body which is dead to a high degree, and this lifeless condition particularly applies to the human head. I already explained to you that an initiated spiritual scientist can perceive the human head as something lifeless, as something which is constantly dying. Humanity will grow more and more conscious of the fact that it is the corpse which we use as an instrument of cognition, and that this corpse can only grasp lifeless things.

The more we advance into the future, the more intensive will be the longing to recognize only that which is living. But the ordinary intelligence, which is bound up with the lifeless body, cannot perceive what is alive. Many things will be needed in order that man, who has lost the possibility to penetrate into the world in a living way, may once more attain to this. We should bear I mind all that we have lost.

When the human being passed over from the Atlantean to the post-Atlantean age, he was as yet unable to do many of the things which he does now. You see, each one of you, from a certain time of your childhood upward, can say “I” when referring to yourself. You pronounce this word “I” very carelessly. But in the course of human development this word was not always uttered so carelessly. There were older times in the evolution of humanity—though even in ancient Egypt these olden times had to a great extent already waned—there were older times in which the Ego was designated by a name, and if this name was uttered, it dazed people. One therefore avoided pronouncing it. If the name applicable to the Ego, which was only known to the initiates, had been pronounced in the presence of people in the times immediately following the Atlantean catastrophe, the sound of this name would have dazed the whole congregation; all the people would have fallen to the ground, so strong would have been the effect of the name applicable to the Ego.

An echo of this may still be found among the ancient Hebrews, where one spoke of the unutterable name of God in the soul, a name which could only be pronounced by the initiates, or shown to the congregation in eurhythmic gestures. The origin of God's unutterable name may therefore be seen in the facts explained to you just now.

But little by little this name was lost. And with it was lost the deep effect which radiates from such things.

During the first post-Atlantean epoch we have a deep influence proceeding from the Ego; during the second post-Atlantean epoch, a deep influence proceeding form the astral body; during the third post-Atlantean epoch, a deep influence going out from the etheric body, but one which people could bear, for, as I explained to you yesterday, it brought them in connection with the universe, made them feel their relationship with the universe. In the present time, we may pronounce the word “I,” we may pronounce all manner of things, but they do not make any effect upon us, because we now grasp the world through our lifeless body. That is to say, we only take hold of the lifeless, mineral essence of the world. But we must again ascend and return to the regions enabling us to grasp life. Whereas from the Graeco-Latin epoch, beginning in the 8th Century, B.C., up to the middle of the 15th Century A.D., the greatest value was attributed to an ever larger acquisition of knowledge through the lifeless body, our intelligence now follows the path described to you yesterday. But we must resist mere intelligence. We must add something to our intelligence.

A characteristic which we should bear in mind is that we must now retrace the path in a right way; in the present time, in the 5th post-Atlantean epoch, we must in a certain way learn to know the vegetable world; during the 6th epoch we must learn to know the animal kingdom, and only during the 7th epoch the real kingdom of man. Thus it is one of the tasks of humanity to transcend the mere knowledge of the mineral world and ascend to the knowledge of the vegetable world.

Now that you are able to understand this upon a deeper foundation, consider who is the person whose chief characteristic is this search for a knowledge of the plant world. This man is Goethe. By approaching life from the basis of lifeless things and by reaching, in opposition to the science of his days, the law of metamorphosis, the living process of plants, Goethe appears to us as the representative of the 5th post-Atlantean age, in its first beginnings. Read Goethe's small pamphlet, written in 1790, entitled: “An ATTEMPT to explain the metamorphosis of plants,” and you will find in it that Goethe incessantly tried to grasp the plant in its process of growth, not as something dead and finished, but as something in a constant process of growth, passing from leaf to leaf. Here you may find the beginning of the knowledge which should be sought in the 5th post-Atlantean age.

Goetheanism therefore strikes the fundamental note for what we should seek during the 5th post-Atlantean epoch. Science should, as it were, wake up to the meaning of Goethe and proceed from the study of lifeless things to that of living things. This is what I mean when I continually emphasize that we should acquire the capacity to abandon dead, abstract concepts and to penetrate into living, concrete concepts. The explanations which I gave you yesterday and the day before yesterday really constitute the path leading into these living, concrete regions of thought.

But it will not be possible to penetrate into such thoughts and concepts unless we take the trouble to unite the elements which form our world conception and our views on life. Through the special configuration of modern civilization, the different currents of our world conception are allowed, as it were, to run inorganically side by side. Consider how inorganic and disunited are in many cases a person's religious and natural-scientific views! Many people have both religious and scientific concepts, yet they do not throw a bridge from the one to the other. Indeed, they have a certain reluctance, a certain fear in doing this. Yet we should clearly realize that things cannot remain as they are.

During my present visit, I pointed out to you how selfishly modern people develop their world conception. I drew attention to the fact that today people are chiefly interested in the soul's life after death. Out of pure egoism they take an interest in the life of the soul after death. I have also told you that it is now necessary to take an interest in the life of the soul from birth onwards insofar as this life is a continuation of the life before birth or conception. Our world conception would become far less selfish than it is today, if we were to observe a child's development, the way in which it grows as a continuation of its pre-natal, soul-spiritual existence, with the same longing and the same interest with which we think of the life after death.

This egoistic character of our modern world conception depends on many other things besides. Now I come to a point which clearly shows that modern people must become more and more conscious of the real facts lying at the foundation of these things. During the epoch leading up to the present time, the egoistic element chiefly developed in man; the Ego has permeated our world conception and the Ego has also permeated the human will. Let us not fall a prey to any illusion in regard to this.

Most egoistic of all have become religions, religious creeds. Even superficial facts can show you that religious beliefs have become egoistic. Consider how much a modern priest must reckon with people's egoism. The more he takes into account human egoism, the more promises he makes for the soul's life after death, the more easily he reaches his aims. Among modern people we do not really find much interest for any other thing, for they do not care much for that weaving spiritual life of the soul which manifests itself so wonderfully after birth; i.e., after conception.

One result of this egoistic interest in the life after death is the way in which modern people think about God in the different religions. To think of God as the highest Being, does not imply anything special. In this connection it is necessary to eliminate every delusion. What do most people imply when they speak of “God”? I have already mentioned this before. What kind of Being do they mean, when they speak of God? It is an Angel, an Angelos—their own Angel whom they call God! It is nothing else, my dear friends! People still have some inkling of the fact that a guiding spirit accompanies them in life; to this guiding spirit they look up, and it is this Angel-being whom they call God. Though they do not speak of it as an Angel, though they name it “God,” they nevertheless only mean their Angel. The selfish note of religious faiths is that their idea of God does not go beyond the Angel. As a consequence, human interests have grown narrower, a trait which may be clearly seen today in public life.

What are the questions which people ask today? Do they inquire after the general destinies of humanity? Oh, in a certain sense it is very painful today to speak to people of general human destinies! People also have no idea how many changes have taken place in this connection, even in a comparatively short space of time. You see, today we may tell people that the war which has been waged on earth during the past four or five years will be followed by the mightiest spiritual battle ever waged, a battle which will spread over the whole world, which never existed before in this form, a battle which is a consequence of the fact that the Occident designates as a Maya or as an ideology what the Orient designates as reality, and that the Orient designates the ideology of the Occident as a reality. Today we may draw attention to this important, weighty fact, yet people do not even realize that if this same thing had been said only a hundred years ago, it would have stirred the souls so much that they would have had no peace!

The most striking fact of all is this change in humanity, this indifference in regard to the great destinies of human existence. Today nothing penetrates into the human souls, but rebounds, as it were. The most encompassing, the most important and intensive facts are now taken as sensational facts. They do not shake the human souls enough. This is only dependent on the fact that the constantly increasing, intelligent egoism restricts human interests.

People may now have democracies or parliaments—they may come together in parliaments, but the destinies of humanity do not breathe through these parliaments, for the men who are elected into parliament are not filled with the breath of mankind's destinies. They are filled with the breath of egoistic interests. Each person has his own egoistic interest. External schematic similarities in these interests, often due to a common profession, induce people to form groups. And if these groups are sufficiently large, they become majorities. In that case it is not human destinies which pass through parliament, or through these representative groups of people, but only human egoism, multiplied by so and so many persons.

Even religious faiths have been transferred to the sphere of egoism, because the human souls are only filled by interests which appeal to their egoism. Religious faiths will pass through the renewal which they need, when human interests have grown wider, when they have acquired a form which transcends the purely personal destiny and ascends to the destiny of mankind as such, when people will once more be stirred, deeply stirred on hearing that in the West there is a civilization which differs from that of the East, and that in the Centre there is a civilization differing from that of the two poles of East and West; a religious renewal will come when human souls will be stirred to hear that in the West the great goals of humanity are sought (if they are sought at all!) by turning to mediumistic people, who in a trance condition are, as it were, consciously brought into a sub-earthly connection with the spiritual worlds so that they reveal, mediumistically, something about the great historical aims.

In Europe, one could so frequently explain, though people will not believe it, that there really exist societies in Anglo-American countries where people with mediumistic faculties are brought into a kind of trance, in order to discover from them, by cleverly formulated questions, something about the great destiny-goals of humanity.

People also do not believe that the Orientals, too, obtain information concerning the great destiny aims of humanity, not mediumistically, but mystically. This is almost palpably evident today, for one can everywhere buy Rabindranath Tagore's beautiful speeches, revealing on a large scale how an Oriental thinks about the goals of humanity. People read his poems, as if they were the feuilletons of some cheap writer, for today they do not distinguish cheap writers from men endowed with great spirituality such as Rabindranath Tagore. They do not realize that today the most varied racial substances live, as it were, side by side. I already explained to you, in many lectures, the standpoints which should be applied to Central Europe, but these explanations were not taken as they should have been taken.

With these words, my dear friends, I only wish to prove that it is possible to grow conscious of something which transcends egoistic human destinies, something which is connected with the destiny of whole groups of man, so that differentiations can be made throughout the world. If we raise our soul's eye with understanding to these destinies of mankind in the whole world, if we take a deep interest in this element transcending the personal destinies, we attune our soul for the comprehension of something higher and more real than the Angel; namely, the Archangel. Thoughts revealing the true nature of the Archangel cannot come to us if we only move in spheres pertaining to purely egoistic, personal human interests. If preachers only move in the regions of human egoism, their sermons may be full of words dealing with the Divine, yet they will only preach of the Angel. The fact that they give it another name constitutes an untruth, and does not change it. Only if we begin to take an interest in human destiny extending over wide spaces do we attune our soul for the comprehension of the Archangel.

Let us now pass over to something else. Let us try to develop a feeling of the successive impulses in the evolution of humanity, indicated in recent lectures. Consider the fact that a great number of our leading men are given a classical education during the years in which the human soul can still be shaped and molded; they are taught in schools which are not the product of modern civilization, but of a past culture, of the Graeco-Latin epoch. You see, if the Greeks and Romans had done the same thing which we are doing now, they would have established Egyptian-Chaldean schools. But they avoided this. They took their subject of instruction from life itself. We take it from the preceding epoch and train the human beings accordingly. This has a great significance in human life, but we have not recognized it. Had we recognized the importance of this fact, the feminist movement would have struck a different note, voicing the following truth; Men who are to learn how to use their intellectual powers are now being trained in antiquated schools. This hardens their brain. Women fortunately were not admitted to these schools (the “gymnasiums” of the Continent). Let us therefore develop our intellectual powers more originally; let us show how they can unfold in the present time, if they are not dulled in youthful years by a Graeco-Latin schooling.

But the feminist movement did not strike this note. On the contrary, it often advanced the following claim: Men have crept under the Graeco-Latin schooling, let us women also creep into it. Let us also have a gymnasium training.

You can therefore see, my dear friends, how the understanding of the things which were really needed, did not exist. We should know that in the present time we are not being educated in keeping with modern requirements, but in accordance with standards pertaining to the Graeco-Latin culture. Consequently this Graeco-Latin culture fills modern life. We should be aware of this. We should feel the Graeco-Latin ingredients of culture in the leading personalities of our days, in the so-called intelligentsia, among the intellectuals; this is one stratum which exists in the present time. Our whole spiritual culture is permeated by it. We do not read any newspaper which does not contain traces of Graeco-Latin culture, for we write in a Graeco-Latin style, even though we write in our own language.

As already explained to you, our juridical views are steeped in Roman thought—which is again something obsolete and antiquated. Roman life fills modern law. Sometimes the old native law comes into conflict with Roman law, but it cannot assert itself. This, too, should be felt: That what we call justice or injustice in public life is steeped in the impulses of a past epoch.

In the economic sphere alone we really live in the present. It is a significant fact that we only live in the present in the economic sphere. Some things will therefore have to be modified. Let me say in parenthesis that many women collect modern concepts only in regard to cooking; i.e., in domestic economy, so that there they are truly modern; but everything else is antiquated; it is something which we graft into the present. I do not say that this is a specially desirable thing—in any case, the other thing is not at all desirable; namely, that in the present time even the souls of women turn back to antiquated cultures.

When we survey our cultural environment, we do not find in it only that which is active in space, but also the impulses which come from very remote times. And if we acquire a feeling for such things, we discover not only the influence of the past, but also that of the future. In fact, it is our task to introduce into the present these impulses of the future. For, my dear friends, if a kind of rebel against the past would not live in each one of us, opposing the Greek character of our culture and the Roman character of modern legislation, if the future were not to shed its light into these spheres, our fate would be a sorry one.

In regard to modern culture, we should therefore consider, in addition to space, also time; that which penetrates into the present, into the history of our times, from a remote past and from the future. As modern people we should realize that in the same way in which America, England, Asia, China and India exist in the present time, so the past and the present exist in the human soul and send their influences into it, insofar as we are Europeans, for past and present represent the two poles of East and West. We thus have within us ancient Greece and ancient Rome and the future. And if we take the trouble to envisage this fact, if we realize that past and future, or things to come, live in our soul, we are filled by a new feeling, which can transcend egoism in human destiny; it is a feeling which differs from that of a mere spatial contemplation of life.

Only if we develop this mood in our soul, will we acquire the possibility to develop thoughts concerning the sphere of the Spirits of Time, or the Archai. That is to say, we come to the third Divine element in the hierarchic order. It is good to envisage these three Hierarchies in thoughts and concepts, with the aid of the means just explained. For the Spirits of Form, which come after the Archai, are far more difficult to understand. But for modern people it suffices to make the attempt to transcend egoism and to penetrate into the unegoistic sphere; they should repeat this attempt again and again and occupy their minds with the things just characterized!

This should particularly be the case with teachers (let me emphasize this). What I explained to you just now should be borne in mind particularly in the training of teachers. Teachers should not have the right to educate and train children unless they acquire a concept of that egoism which only reaches up to the nearest Divinity; i.e., the Angel, and unless they acquire a concept of the unegoistic powers which determine destiny and which exist spatially side by side here on earth; i.e., the Archangels. And they should also acquire a concept of the influences of past and future in modern culture—the Roman character of law, the Greek spiritual substance—and of the undefined rebel of the future in man, who can rescue him.

At the present time, however, people are not much inclined to penetrate into such things. A short time ago, I emphasized again and again in my lectures that one of the social tasks of the present time is to extract our educational substance for the years which young people now pass in schools, from the present, to do the same thing which the ancient Greeks also did: to extract our educational substance from the present.

At the same place where I repeatedly spoke of this matter as one of the most important social problems, there appeared a short time after my lectures—I do not wish to construct a casual connection; this is indifferent, but it is symptomatic!—a large number of advertisements in all the local newspapers making propaganda for the local “gymnasium.” I gave lectures in which I characterized, as I have now done, the classical gymnasium education and at the same time advertisements appeared in praise of a gymnasium education, stating all that the youth of Germany owes to its gymnasiums for the “strengthening of national consciousness” of “national strength”, etc., etc. And this, a few weeks before the Peace of Versailles! These advertisements were signed by the local school celebrities, etc. What one has to say today from a truly objective foundation of human evolution always rebounds, flies back again. People reject it—it does not touch the depths of their souls.

This explains the difficulty of acting in regard to the social question. For the superficial attitude with which people approach the social question will never be of any use. The social question is a deeply significant one; it is a problem which cannot be solved unless one is willing to look into the depths of man's being and of the universe. This very fact should be able to show us how necessary it is to set up certain truths contained in the threefold structure of the social organism.

But we must acquire an organ capable of grasping what our present time really needs. It will be difficult to acquire this organ in the spiritual sphere, for the spiritual substance in education, which has gradually been assimilated by the ruling body, the state, drew out of the human being every active force, every true striving, thus transforming him into a “resigned” member within the structure of the state. I have already spoken to you here, I think, of the question: How does the great majority of the people really live? (Exceptions are, of course, always borne in mind). Up to the sixth year of his life a human being is allowed to live unhampered, for he is still too grubby for the state! The state would not like to take over the tasks entailed by the care of young children; the state therefore leaves the human being in the care of powers outside its own sphere. But then it lays claim on the human being, the state then trains him so that he may fit into the state economy, into the stereotyped model; he ceases to be a real human being and becomes something which bears the imprint of the state. In that case he can be “of use” to the state. He strives after this, for it is inculcated into him; in that case, the state does not only look after him while he is working, but also when he ceases to work, by according him a pension until he dies. To many people a position entailing the right of a pension is a great “ideal”! And the religions speak of a kind of pension for the time after death! The soul obtains a pension; without any effort on its own part it obtains eternal life through the church itself. The church sees to this! It is uncomfortable to hear that salvation can only be attained by a free spiritual striving, independently of the state, and that the state should limit itself to the juridical sphere. The right of having a pension will NOT exist in a juridical state! This alone is for many people one reason ... for rejecting it! One can see this again and again.

And in regard to the most intimate life of the spirit, we must say that religious life will, to be sure, require a world conception valid for the future; it must demand from man that he should work for his immortality, that he should be active in his soul, so that he may take up the divine impulse, the Christ Impulse, through his own activity.

During my life I received innumerable letters from church people stating that Anthroposophy is a fine thing, but that it contradicts the “simple”, “plain Christian faith” of the soul's salvation through Christ, of eternal life attained through Christ, without having to do anything for it. “Faith in the salvation through Christ” is something which they cannot abandon. When people write or say such things, they think that they are especially pious. But they are simply selfish, thoroughly selfish and egoistic, for they do not wish to make any effort in their soul, they wish to leave everything to God, who will carry their soul safely through the portal of death and pension it off.

Matters will not be so comfortable in the world conception which will in future create the religious substance. We will have to grasp that the divine essence within us must be developed within the soul. It will then no longer be possible to submit passively to churches who promise to carry the human souls safely through death ... one objectionable custom at least has now ceased; namely, to do this in exchange FOR MONEY, but secretly this still plays a certain role, even in regard to the attainment of eternal life. This transition to a stage of inner activity, so that we look up to a world to which we belong, is an urgent requirement, yet it does not attract mankind greatly.

In order to acquire a feeling for the requirements in this sphere, we must envisage the facts explained today—the metamorphosis of humanity since the times of ancient Egypt, where even the body had a more plant-like character. But if it were now to fall back into this plant-like condition, it would grow ill—ulcerous growths, etc. would appear—and then the fact that we really carry a corpse about with us, which is the true instrument of cognition. These truths enable us to gain a feeling for the requirements of humanity, showing us how to progress in the right direction, how progress can now be made in regard to the social question. We should no longer be content to regard an important matter such as the social question in as simple a way as possible.

You see, this is the extraordinary difficulty of the present time, and you should bear in mind the fact that modern people like to hear explanations on the most important facts of life in a few abstract sentences. When a book like the “Fundamental Points of the Social Question” contains more than a few abstract sentences, when such a book contains the results of an observation of life itself, then people say that they cannot understand it, and that it seems confused to them. But it is the misfortune of the present time that people do not like to penetrate into the very things into which they should penetrate. For abstract sentences which are quite transparent, only deal with lifeless things; but the social sphere is a living sphere. Here we must apply elastic conceptions, elastic sentences, elastic forms. It is therefore necessary, as I frequently explained to you, to consider not only the transformation of single things, but we must also learn to think differently in regard to the innermost structure of our thoughts and reflections.

On taking leave from you again for a couple of weeks, my dear friends, I wished to speak of these things, for now we must feel that we are standing under the sign of cooperation in our anthroposophical or social movement. I would like you to be filled more and more with the understanding that if anything is to be attained in the social sphere, the spiritual science of Anthroposophy must flow into human souls. Let me recommend one thing to you, although I repeated it again and again—it really is essential that the anthroposophical truths which we are able to gain for ourselves should be recognized as the true rule of conduct for our activities and for our striving in the present time; we should have the courage and the will to push through with anthroposophical truths. The worst thing of all is that modern people lack the courage to push through with something which is really needed. They allow the best forces of their will to be broken; they are not willing to carry them through, although this is so sorely needed.

You see, my dear friends, learn to stand courageously by the fact that the people who take an interest in the representative edifice of our spiritual efforts, in the Goetheanum, are well accepted by you; be glad for each person who shows but a grain of understanding, and go towards him, but do not set store on the fact that people bring bad will, or what is more frequent today, lack of understanding towards Anthroposophy—limit yourselves to reject this in a corresponding way. The essential thing is the courage to push through with these things. Let us consider ourselves as that small group of men whose destiny it is to know and to communicate to the world the very things which it needs most of all. Let the people mock at us, let them say that it is conceit to think this; it is nevertheless true. To say to ourselves that “it is nevertheless true,” to say this earnestly, so that our whole soul is filled by it, calls for an inner courage which we must have. Let this courage fill our soul with anthroposophical substance. This will enable us to do what must be done by each one in the place where he is standing. This is what I wish to tell you today.

We can really say that we are welcoming each day which brings us nearer to the goal (which now encounters the greatest obstacles) of working in the world through our Building. For this Building is, after all, the only thing which takes into account even in its architectural forms, the great destinies of humanity. And it is good that people already begin to take notice of the Goetheanum. But another thing is needed for a progressive activity in regard to the social question; namely, that through a means such as the Goetheanum, with its forms which are stronger than any other architectonic forms of the present, an influence should be exercised on the spiritual improvement of the human forces; people should once more become accessible to truths which must be known, so that they may rise up not only to the sphere of the Angel world, but also to the sphere of the Archangel world and that of the Time Spirit.

Good morning, gentlemen! Now we want to add to what we have looked at. I told you at the end of the last lesson that people mainly object: It may all be true about life before we enter an earthly body, and also about previous earthly lives, but why can't we remember it? And now I will first answer this question in detail today, why we cannot remember, and what this memory is like.

Now we must first consider something about the human body, because it is really a matter of expressing ourselves scientifically.

You see, in this respect, when it comes to the question of repeated lives on earth, people today are downright strange even when it comes to judging people who knew or know something about these repeated lives on earth. There was a very great spirit within German civilization, Lessing, who lived in the 18th century. This Lessing has achieved an extraordinary amount spiritually. He is still generally recognized today. And when the professors of German literary history lecture at the universities, they often lecture on Lessing for months. They also know that one of Lessing's researchers, as they say, a book can also be found in the Social Democratic literature, by Franz Mehring, “The Lessing Legend”. There Lessing is presented from a different point of view. You can't say that what is presented there is correct; but in any case, there is even a very thick book about Lessing within the Social Democratic literature by Franz Mehring. In short, Lessing is cited as a very great man. But this Lessing, whose plays are still performed everywhere in theaters today and are highly esteemed, wrote a shorter work when he was already very old: “The Education of the Human Race.” And at the end it says that one actually cannot come to terms with the contemplation of the soul at all, that one cannot really know anything correct about the soul life without the assumption of repeated earth lives, and that one comes there, when one continues to think, actually to those views which primitive people already had. They all believed in repeated earth lives. That is something that people only abandoned later, when they became “modern.” And Lessing said: Why should something be stupid just because the oldest, the earliest people believed it? — In short, Lessing himself said that he can only come to terms with the soul life of man if he adheres to this ancient belief in repeated lives on earth.

Now, as you can imagine, this is a terrible embarrassment for our so-called researchers today. Because these researchers say: Lessing was one of the greatest men of all times. But the repeated lives on earth, that's nonsense. — Yes, how do you get around that? — Well, Lessing was already old then. He became weak-minded. We don't accept repeated lives on Earth! You see, that's how people are. As long as something suits them, they accept it and label the person in question a great man. But if he has just said something that does not suit them, then he has become weak-minded for the time.

But sometimes very strange things happen. For example, there is a great naturalist, William Crookes. Now, I don't agree with everything he says, but in any case he is considered one of the greatest naturalists. He lived in our time, at the end of the 19th century. Now, he always dealt with natural science in the morning. He had to go to his laboratory, and he made great discoveries there. We would not have had all of this, Röntgen and so on, if he, Crookes, had not done the preliminary work. But in the afternoons, he always occupied himself with soul-searching. As I said, I don't agree with everything, but at least he occupied himself with it. People had to say, didn't they: Yes, he must have been clever in the morning and stupid in the afternoon, stupid and clever at the same time! That's the way things are.

Now there is something else. You will hear everywhere – I have already dealt with this when I was talking about colors – that natural scientists consider Newton to be the greatest natural scientist of all time. He is not, but they consider him to be so. Now there is another embarrassment. This Newton, whom people consider the greatest naturalist, has now also written a book about what usually forms the end of the Bible, about the Apocalypse. So again an embarrassment!

In short, those people who reject any possibility of soul-searching are in for a terrible embarrassment when faced with the greatest naturalists and the greatest historians, because if someone really takes science seriously, they have no choice but to extend this science to the soul. And for that you find opportunity everywhere. I have told you: you just have to observe. Now you cannot always foresee everything in everyday life, especially if you have not learned it first. But nature and sometimes humanity also do experiments for us that you should not artificially induce, but once they are made, you can study them. You can follow them, at least be inspired by them. Now there is an experiment that is actually important, characteristic, if one wants to accept something about the soul life of man. Everyone accepts the physical body, because otherwise they would all have to deny the human being. One does not argue about that. Everyone has one. Today, natural science says: the physical body is the only one, we have to explain everything according to the physical body.

Now there is something that, when we observe it correctly, suddenly shows us that the human being also has the other three bodies: the invisible etheric body, the astral body and the ego. There is one thing that can be observed quite scientifically – there are many things, but one in particular, that can be observed quite scientifically and that then shows how a person can actually get into states where it shows us that an etheric body is present and an astral body and an ego.

You see, there are people in Europe who feel the need to numb themselves. Now, of course, many other means are used. I have told you that now, for example, cocaine is used to numb the senses; but in Europe, opium has always been used to numb the senses. There have always been people who, when they were not satisfied with life or when they had too many worries, didn't know what to do, and so they got high on opium. They took a little opium, always just a small amount of opium. What happened then? First of all, when someone takes a small amount of opium, they enter a state of inner experience; they no longer think, they begin to dream in wild images. They like this very much, it does them a lot of good. These dreams become more and more intoxicating. For some, it is the case that they get the gray misery, that they begin to behave like a sinner; another begins to rage, to race, that he even gets murderous. And then people fall asleep. So this consumption of opium actually consists of people being brought violently, by means of an external poison, into a state that consists of slowly drifting off to sleep.

When we look at everything that actually happens to a person, we can see that the person first has very excited dreams, then begins to fantasize, and then falls asleep. So something has gone from him. What has gone from him is what makes him a rational human being, what lives in him so that he is a rational human being. That is gone. But before it goes away, and even after it has gone, he lives in the most desolate, agitated dreams. After some time he wakes up and he is restored to a certain extent until he starts taking opium again. So he makes himself, only stormy, into a sleeping person.

Now we can see that when a person falls asleep from the effects of opium, it is not the faculty that makes him rational that is at work in him, but rather the faculty that gives him life; otherwise he would not be able to wake up again, otherwise he would have to die. It is the faculty that gives him momentary life that is at work in him. And one can see how there is also a certain struggle in the body during the night, so that one can wake up again. So there is something at work in man where reason is not present; that which in turn animates the body. Through the poison, the body surbs something. That drives out reason. But the vitalizing principle is still in him, otherwise he could not wake up again. So what has been affected by a small amount of opium? The vitalizing principle. With a small amount of opium, the etheric body is affected.

Now imagine someone takes too much or deliberately poisons themselves with opium. The same thing does not happen, but – and this is quite remarkable – what happens last with a small amount of opium happens first with a large amount. The person falls asleep immediately. So it does not slowly draw away the rational, but the rational comes out quickly, very quickly. But now something remains in him that was not in him at all when he took a small amount of opium. You can see that again.

Physical body Aetheric body: weak opium use Astral body: strong opium use I: habitual opium use

Let us assume that someone takes so much opium that he is actually poisoned. First of all, he falls asleep. But then the body begins to become restless and unruly, he snores, snorts; then cramps set in. And you notice something very peculiar: the face turns completely red and the lips turn completely blue.

Now remember everything I told you last time. I told you that all breathing disturbances occur during exhalation. Now, what does snoring, for example, consist of, first rattling, then snoring – what does it consist of? You see, snoring is something people do who cannot exhale properly. When a person breathes out properly, when it is out of the mouth, then the air goes in, then after a while it goes out again; then the uvula, which you can see when you look into the mouth, is inserted into the air passage. And then at the top there is something that rises and falls, the soft palate; it moves. The uvula and soft palate are constantly moving as a result of inhaling and exhaling when it is normal and correct. But if the inhalation is incorrect and the exhalation is incorrect, if there is belching, then the soft palate and uvula start to tremble, which causes the rattling and then the snoring.

So you can see that it has something to do with breathing, because someone who merely gets high on a little opium enters the other states that I have described to you: a kind of opium delirium, a frenzy. He falls asleep slowly. But if he now falls asleep quickly through the intense enjoyment of opium, he comes to snoring, to convulsions; the face turns red, the lips blue. If you remember all that I have told you, you will ascribe great significance to the fact that the face turns red and the lips blue. For I have told you: Man has red blood because oxygen is inhaled. When the blood mixes with oxygen, it turns red; when the blood mixes with carbon, it turns blue. When it is exhaled, it is blue. So when you see someone with a red face and blue lips, what does that mean? Yes, there is too much inhaled air in the face, too much red blood, which comes from the inhalation. And the lips are blue, what does that mean? There is too much of the blood that is supposed to come out. It stops there. This could continue to the point in the lungs where the carbon dioxide is released, where the carbon dioxide can be exhaled. — So you have a person poisoned by opium, and their breathing is labored throughout. And this is shown on the one hand by the red blood in the face, and on the other hand by the blue blood in the lips.

This is extremely interesting, gentlemen. What are the lips? You see, the lips are very peculiar organs on the face. If you have a face, you actually have to draw it like this, with the skin turned outwards all over. But on the lips, it is actually a piece of inner skin. The inside comes outwards. There is a piece of inner skin. A person opens up their insides by having lips. If your lips are blue instead of red, it means that all your insides are too full of blue blood. —So you see: when someone is poisoned with opium, the body works in such a way that it sends all unused blood outwards – it pushes to the surface – and sends all blue blood inwards.

These things were also known once by primitive people, the story of blue blood going inward. If someone has too much blue blood inside, they said: the person who has too much blue blood inside is first of all someone who has little of the soul, from whom the soul has gone out. That is why “blue-blooded” became a term of abuse. And when the people called the aristocrats “blue-blooded”, they meant: their soul has gone. —- It is very strange how in folk wisdom these things live in a wonderful way. It is very interesting. You can learn an enormous amount from language.

Now you can see: there is something that works in humans that does not work in plants, for example. Because if you introduce a toxin to a plant, the toxin stays somewhere at the top and does not spread. For example, you can find a very poisonous plant in the so-called belladonna, in the deadly nightshade. Yes, the deadly nightshade leaves its poison at the very top; it does not allow it to spread throughout the plant. When a person takes such a poison, it takes hold of the body in such a way that it drives the red blood outwards and the blue blood inwards. Yes, the plants are alive too. Those plants have their etheric body within them, have within them what is left blue, what comes from the weak consumption of opium, not the strong. That is only caused by the sensation in humans. If the plant had blood, it would also have such a sensation, like humans and animals. Humans and animals have it without the use of opium, when the etheric body fights with the physical one; the blood is immediately pushed outwards, and something remains in the body, and that causes this disorder in the body. And that is the astral body. So that one can say: the astral body is influenced by heavy opium use.

Now there is still a third kind of opium consumption. This opium consumption is even very widespread in the world, although not in Europe, more for example among a certain type of Turks and namely in Asia and Hinterindien, with the Malay peoples. There these people take only such strong quantities of opium that they can just still tolerate it, that they wake up properly again, and do not die from it. In this way they experience everything that the opium eater experiences in a strange and interesting way. Only they gradually get used to it, and so they experience the story more consciously. The Turks then say: Yes, when I enjoyed opium, I was in paradise. — That is already the case in these fantastic interpretations. And the Malays in the Far East also want to see all that. So they get used to taking opium because they want to see all that too. This can be done for a relatively long time, and then you end up saying to yourself, “Well, there is something else.”

But now one must say: if these people, who always habitually eat the opium – they eat it habitually – if these fantasists would only see that, then after a while they would get the story. But, you see, it is very strange. These people are descended from the first people on earth who still knew something about the eternal soul, about the soul that passes through the various earthly lives. They knew something about it. Now that has been lost to people. These people, who have not gone through European civilization, put themselves into a state through the consumption of opium in order to feel something of the eternity of the soul. It is indeed terrible, but they repeatedly introduce an illness into themselves. Because the healthy body in the present, if it does not exert itself spiritually, cannot know anything at all about the immortality of the soul, these people gradually ruin their body, so that gradually the soul is pushed out.

Now one can observe something very peculiar when looking at such people who habitually take opium in this way and can therefore endure it for a period of time: after some time they become quite pale. Even if they used to have a good skin color, now they become pale.

1 This means something quite different for the Malay than for the European. The Malay really does look like a ghost when he turns pale, because he is yellowish-brown. Then, after a while, the people become as if they were hollow around the eyes. Then they begin to lose weight, after they have already started to lose their ability to walk properly; they just limp along. Then they begin to lose their will to think, become very forgetful. And last of all, they get the stroke.

These are the symptoms. It is very interesting to observe them. Before the limbs become stiff, so that they can no longer walk properly, they develop severe constipation; in other words, the bowels no longer function. From the way I have described this, you can see that the whole body is gradually undermined.

Now there is something very peculiar. Not much experience has been gathered in this respect, because people do not pay attention to it; but this experience could be gained very easily. We know how these people become habitual opium eaters, it has been described many times. But now people should just try it out – they do this very often in another respect today: if they give the same dose of opium that a person has for habitual consumption to an animal, then the animal will either become somewhat lively, thus entering the first stage, where the etheric body is disturbed, or it will enter the second stage if it gets enough, and die. The animal does not have what the opium eater, the habitual opium eater has, as I described to you last. The animal does not have that.

What does this show, gentlemen? Yes, this shows that when the opium, as strong as it is there, enters the astral body and causes an improper relationship between blue and red blood, then in the animal blue and red blood shoots in a horizontal direction in a confused manner. In the upright man, in the one who has learned to walk, the blue and red blood does not shoot in quite that direction (it is shown), but more so, because he is erect, into each other; no longer horizontally, but from top to bottom, from bottom to top. This causes that man can also become a habitual opium eater.

But now I have told you: It is because man is upright that he has an ego. The animals have no ego because they have a horizontal back. So what is it that is influenced by this habitual opium eating? The ego. So we can say: I - habitual opium eating. And now, through opium, we have discovered all three bodies of man, which are supersensible: for weak opium consumption, the etheric body; for strong consumption, the astral body; and for habitual opium consumption, the I. You can, if you can only observe correctly, develop this wonderfully in a scientific way.

But now you can also see: a Malay with his habitual opium consumption comes to something huge. He comes to the I. And what does he get? What does this Malay or this Turk look forward to when he habitually consumes opium? What does he look forward to? Yes, he looks forward to it because then his memory awakens in a wonderful way. He quickly reviews his entire life on earth and much more. On the one hand, it is terrible because he achieves it by making his body sick; on the other hand, however, the desire to get to know the self is so strong in him that he cannot resist. He is already pleased when this vast memory is established.

But let me explain: if a person does something too much, it ruins him. If a person works too much, it ruins him; if a person thinks too much, it ruins him. And if a person continually evokes a memory that is too strong, it ruins his body. All the symptoms I have described to you are simply the result of the memory being too strong. That is there at first. And later on – as I have described to you – the person becomes careless about how he walks. He no longer remembers inwardly how to put one foot in front of the other. That is unconscious memory, of course. And then he becomes forgetful. So the very thing he achieves ruins him. But one can see, become aware, recognize that the ego is present when the habitual consumption of opium is there.

What does today's natural science do? Well, if you open a book, you will also find a description of what I have told you; you will find a description that with a small amount of opium the person goes into delirium and so on, that with a large amount of opium the person first falls asleep and then his body is immediately destroyed. He dies after his face has turned red and his lips blue. And with habitual opium consumption, all these things also occur. But what do these people describe? They only describe the physical body, what happens there; they describe that the opium eater rattles, has convulsions, snores. They describe how the habitual opium eater loses weight, can no longer walk, becomes forgetful, and finally suffers a stroke because the memory destroys his brain; we have to look at it that way. All this is described, but it is all attributed to the physical body.

But that is nonsense; otherwise, everything physical would have to be attributed only to the physical body. We also see all the phenomena that occur in plants. But we cannot say that a human being is merely a plant. For when opium is taken in large quantities, the effect is seen in the astral body, and only in the human being does that which is present in habitual opium use become apparent. If animals would benefit from habitual opium consumption, if they did not immediately perish from it, then you would see that there are many animals that would simply enjoy the opium found in plants. Why would they enjoy it? Yes, because the animals distinguish between what they want to eat and what they don't want to eat by habit. So if the animals would benefit from it, they would eat the opium that is found in the plants. If they don't do it, it's only because they don't benefit from it.

All this can be recognized through natural science. But now the question is: can all this, the memory that the Malay produces through illness, be achieved through healthy means? We must remember that the original inhabitants of the earth knew that people live on earth again and again. And Lessing, as I told you earlier, said: Why should it be stupid just because the original people believed in it? These original people, they didn't have abstract thoughts like we do. They didn't have any natural science. They looked at everything mythologically. When they looked at a plant, they didn't study: there are such and such forces in it, but they said: there is such and such spirituality in it. They saw everything in images. They lived more in the spiritual in general. ... (Gap in the shorthand.) The fact is that with progress, man can develop in such a way that he lives more in the physical. Only through this could he become a free man, otherwise he would always have been influenced. People in prehistoric times were not free; but they still saw spiritual things. Now we, gentlemen, as we are now, we really have the abstract thoughts that we are drilled in since school. You see, we can even say that the most important activities that humanity is so proud of today are actually something abstract.

Yesterday I said to the teachers here: Yes, when the child turns about seven years old, it should learn something. It should learn, after having learned all its life so far, that the person standing in front of it, whom it knows, is the father – it should now learn that this here (it is written) means “father”. The child should learn this all of a sudden. It has nothing at all to do with this “father.” These are very strange signs that have nothing to do with the father! The child is suddenly supposed to learn this. It resists it. Because the father is this and that man who has hair like this, a nose like this; it has always seen it. The child resists the fact that what is written should now mean “father.”

The child has learned to say “Ah!” when it is amazed. Now it is suddenly supposed to understand that this is an A. It is just very abstract, has no relation to what the child has known so far. You first have to create a bridge for the child to come up with something like this. I'll tell you how to create the bridge.

For example, you say to the child: Look, what is that? - (See drawing.) If you draw this for the child and ask him: What is this? - What will the child say? - A fish! That's a fish! He will not say: I don't recognize that. He cannot say: I recognize the father in that (in the written word “father”). But he recognizes the fish in it (in the drawn fish).

Now I say: Pronounce the “F” for me just once, now omit the i and the later one, just say the F with which the fish begins. Now, I will draw this for you: F. I have singled out the F from the fish. The child first draws the fish and then the F. It is important to avoid abstraction and to remain within the image. The child naturally enjoys learning in this way. This can be done with every letter. It is just a matter of gradually acquiring the skill.

At our Waldorf School, one of the teachers once explained very beautifully how the Roman numerals gradually came into being. Suddenly, it was not possible with V. How can a V be made? Now, see what is there here? (Dr. Steiner holds up his hand.) Of course, you say: a hand is still a hand. But is there not something in it? 1, II, III, III, V fingers. Now I draw this hand on the blackboard (see drawing) in such a way that I have stretched out the two things (the thumb and the four other fingers next to it). Now I have a hand in which the V is included; five is the pronounced number. Now I make it a little simpler, and you have recognized the Roman numeral V from the hand that has five fingers.

So you see, gentlemen, it is important that we are suddenly placed in a completely abstract world today. We learn to write, we learn to read; this has nothing to do with life. But as a result, we have forgotten what people had who could not yet read and write.

But now you must not say, as the other people outside of our opponents' kind do: Steiner told us in his hour that people were cleverer when they did not yet have writing and reading; then they immediately say: yes, he wants people to no longer learn to write and read! I do not want that. People should always keep pace with civilization, and certainly learn to write and read. But one should also not lose what one can necessarily lose by writing and reading. One must first come to understand through spiritual means what human life is.

And now I want to tell you something very simple about two people. One of them takes off his clothes in the evening and takes off his shirt collar, which has two little buttons, one in the front and one in the back. I use an example that is close to me because I wear a shirt collar like that. One person, he does it quite thoughtlessly, unfastens his first button, his second. Now he goes to bed. In the morning, yes, he walks around the room looking for and asking: Where are my shirt buttons? — He doesn't find them. He doesn't remember. Why? Because he did it thoughtlessly.

Now another. He has not exactly got into the habit of always putting his shirt buttons in the same place - you can do that, but that would mean making yourself lazy - but he says to himself: When I take off my shirt, I put one of the buttons next to my candlestick and the other one over there. So he turns his thoughts to it, doesn't just put them down thoughtlessly, but turns his thoughts to it. Yes, he gets up in the morning, goes straight to where he put them, doesn't need to search the whole room: where are my shirt buttons, where did I put my shirt buttons? What's the difference? The whole difference is that one person has thought about the matter and remembers it, while the other has not thought about it and does not remember it. Yes, but you can only remember it in the morning. It is of no use to lie down at night wanting to remember, you can only remember it in the morning if you thought about it in the evening.

Now it is said: Yes, but one cannot remember it; and if a person does not have a memory of previous earthly lives, then he cannot have had any previous earthly lives. — But in this way one can also say: A person cannot calculate, one can prove that a person cannot calculate – and now someone introduces a small child of four years as proof and shows that it cannot calculate at all. He is a human being and yet cannot calculate! One will say: He will certainly learn to calculate. If one knows human nature, one knows that he will learn to calculate. — If someone today points out a person who cannot remember his earlier lives on earth, one must say: Yes, but nothing has been done in the past to help people remember. On the contrary, there are still so many stragglers from earlier times today who want to keep people ignorant, so that they know nothing of the spiritual, so that they do not know at all what they are supposed to remember in the next life on earth, so that they become quite confused, like the man with the shirt button. First, man must learn to think in life, so that he can remember later.

So anthroposophy is there to make people aware of what they should remember later. And those who want to prevent anthroposophy want to keep people stupid so that they do not remember anything. And that is the important thing, gentlemen, to realize that man must first learn to apply thoughts correctly. Today people demand that thoughts be defined and that books contain correct definitions. Yes, gentlemen, even in ancient Greece people knew this. One man in particular wanted to teach people how to define. Today, in school, they say: You have to learn: What is light? I once had a classmate; we went to elementary school together, then I went to a different school and he trained as a teacher at the teacher's seminary. I met him again when I was seventeen; by then he was already a fully-fledged teacher. I asked him: What did you learn about light? He said: Light is the cause of the seeing of bodies. There is nothing to be said against that. You might just as well say: What is poverty? Poverty comes from pauvret@! That is about the same as someone defining it that way. But you have to learn a lot of such stuff.

Now, in ancient Greece, someone once ridiculed such clever learning. The children learned at school: What is a human being? A human being is a living creature that has two legs and no feathers. Now a particularly clever boy thought about it, took a rooster, plucked it and the next day he brought it to the teacher in its plucked state and said: “Teacher, is this a human being? It has no feathers and two legs!” That was the strength of the definition. So the things that are still in our books today are more or less in line with the definitions.

In all books, even in the social books that are written, the conditions of life are described in much the same way as the definition is given: A human being is a living creature that has two legs and no feathers. Then we draw further conclusions. Of course, if you start with a book that gives a definition, you can logically conclude all sorts of things from it; but it will never apply to humans, but may apply to a rooster that has just been plucked. Such are our definitions! The important thing is to see things as they really are.

In reality, the matter is such that one must say, as here for example (Schema page 183): physical body; etheric body, which is affected by weak opium consumption; astral body with strong opium consumption; I with habitual opium consumption. And when one now practices spiritual science, when one really learns to know the human being in such a way that one does not merely describe as in a dream: Such conditions arise —, but that one is familiar with them. The astral body is at work, the etheric body is at work, the I is at work - then one has right thoughts, not just definitions. And then, if one has absorbed right thoughts today, in the present life on earth, one remembers aright in the present life on earth. Just as one now only gradually remembers earlier earth lives with difficulty, as I have described it, so one will later remember them well if one does not make oneself ill, as through the consumption of opium, if one does not influence the body, but rather brings the soul through spiritual exercises to really get to know the spiritual.

So you see how truly a spiritual science arises in anthroposophy. You just have to bear in mind that anthroposophy is not about practising superstition. So, for example, when people find something extraordinary reported somewhere about spiritual things, they start saying: That's how it is when a spiritual world betrays itself. - But the spiritual world betrays itself in people! When people sit around a table and make it knock, they say: There must be a ghost in it. But when four people sit around, there are four ghosts! You just have to get to know them! But on the contrary, you'd rather knock people unconscious; there must be a medium among them. Look at the newspaper clipping you gave me a few weeks ago. For example, it describes how somewhere in England people were very much alarmed because during the night things fell off the racks, window panes were smashed, and so on. “Spiritual demons must be at work,” said the people. - What struck me most about the story - even though one can only say more precisely when one has seen it - but what struck me most about the story was that it was also mentioned that the people had a whole army of cats! Now, if you have a whole army of cats, and two or three of them get rabies, you should see how these “ghostly apparitions” all go! But as I said, you would have to know the details first; only then can you go into it.

You see, I was once very much urged to attend a spiritualistic seance. Well, I said I would do this because you can only judge such things when you have seen them. There was now a medium, he was actually terribly famous, a very famous medium, and after the people had sat down, had first been slightly numbed by some music that had been played – they all sat there numbed – the medium began, just as the people wanted, to make flowers fly down from the air all the time! Now every medium has a so-called impresario, if he is a real medium. Well, the people paid their mite after they had had their enjoyment. The main thing for those who had organized it was that the mite was left behind. And I said – people are terribly fanatical then, they start to scuffle with you when you want to enlighten them, they are the worst – but I said to some sensible people, they should investigate once, but not at the end, but at the beginning; there they will find the flowers in the impresario's hump inside! – So you will find things everywhere.

One must rise above superstition, gentlemen, if one wants to speak of the spiritual world. One must not fall for anything anywhere, neither for rabid cats nor for a hunchbacked impresario, but one can only access the spiritual world by no longer falling for anything superstitious and by proceeding with real science everywhere.

Such warm words have just been spoken that it must sound rather prosaic when I now say that it gives me great and profound satisfaction to be able to spend time with you again after a few years. You know how closely we have come together here in Prague on anthroposophical ground, and since we know that spiritual work in the context of the world is real work, we can say that we have really worked together spiritually here. The very kind words that have been spoken here also contained a kind of value judgment about my work. Now, my dear friends, you may believe that I am extremely grateful, but that I naturally cannot judge what has been said as a judgment of my work in such a way myself, but that it must lie in the hearts and minds of our dear anthroposophical friends, how this work is judged. But that does not make me any less grateful. I am grateful because everything that has been said was imbued with warm love, and this warm love truly belongs to us. What would we anthroposophists be without this love?

We were also reminded of that painful event on New Year's Eve last year. It is not yet my responsibility to assess this painful event in its entirety. But the opposition that has arisen in the wake of that painful event may be described with the words that Professor Hauffen used here. For our friend, the Swiss poet Albert Steffen, was overcome when he perceived the lowest kind of accusations being thrown at our endeavor to speak a few words, not even too harshly, against the opposition: he was accused of all sorts of things. He recalled that among his literary works there was one that characterized coarseness; what he had presented was not presented against a world view but against coarseness. I do not want to talk to you today about the coarseness that has often increased to the point of becoming grotesque, since we have come together for something better. But I do want to share two things with you. One newspaper, which is particularly scathing about the things that were cultivated in Dornach, wrote: “Well, we know all the things that were done at the ‘Grutluanum’.” — Not even the name was known! Another newspaper wrote: “The absurdity went so far that the anthroposophists prayed in droves during the fire that the fire might stop.”

It is difficult to do anything against opponents who are as well organized as ours. As an example of this, I would like to mention the following incident, which occurred after a lecture I gave in a Swiss town. After the lecture, I spoke with a person who had never before approached us. But two days later, this person received the most defamatory brochures, which probably indicates the thorough organization of the opposition, for whom no means are too base. I will not cite any other examples.

On the other hand, there was a display of cooperation borne of rare devotion, and in this disaster in particular, love and devotion were shown in the most beautiful way – indeed, there was no other way to put it – in the attempt to quell the flames. This could not succeed; the fire was of such a nature that it could not be thought of being suppressed. And what has been built over the course of ten years, really by forces belonging to the most diverse nations, has become a victim of the flames this night. And it is true that the terrible light of the flames that burned there must prevail in all those connected with our cause. And you can believe that since then it has been impossible to talk about anthroposophy without being confronted with this loss.

What is physical can be consumed by flames. But the flames that I like to see in those who are enthusiastic are different flames; they do not destroy, but they blaze on – through them, what we strive for through our work will prove indestructible.

At the autumn event of the anthroposophical movement in Austria in Vienna from September 26 to October 2, 1923

[No minutes of the meeting are available. In the “Mitteilungen des Vorstandes in Deutschland” (No. 8 of October 1923), Dr. Carl Unger's report on the founding of the Austrian national society is as follows:]

“The founding of the Anthroposophical Society in Austria presents the Friends there with major tasks and the necessity of overcoming many difficulties. But the first step has been taken, which should lead to a significant representation of Anthroposophy in the most important place. The leadership of the Anthroposophical Society in Austria has been taken over by an executive board consisting of the following personalities: Julius Breitenstein, Dr. Norbert Glas, Dr. Franz Halla, Dr. Hans Erhard Lauer, Graf Polzer-Hoditz, Alfred Zeißig. A circle of trusted individuals, which also includes the cities of Graz, Klagenfurt, Linz and Salzburg, is at the side of the board. The meeting concluded with a declaration of support for the rally for Dr. Steiner, which was heard standing.”

The wording of the resolution adopted at the time:

In the face of the increasingly brutal and concentrated attacks on Dr. Steiner's person, the executive council of the Anthroposophical Society in Germany recently made a public statement. In the wake of this, we, at the founding of the Austrian Anthroposophical Society, feel it as our primary duty to also profess to the world our undying gratitude to Dr. Steiner for the tremendous wealth of spiritual insights that he has given to humanity.

We recognize in him the purest embodiment of true humanity and the strongest moral will, and look to him as the appointed leader who, as the bearer of truth, is alone capable of leading humanity out of the chaos of the present time and into a new epoch of human spiritual development. Under his leadership, we anthroposophists have learned through his word and his way of life how thinking can lead to wisdom, feeling to beauty and willing to moral strength.

We have learned to understand how these new spiritual and moral sources can be tapped into by humanity. We know that the Anthroposophical Society in Austria can only fulfill the tasks set for it under his spiritual guidance, and we ask him to take on this leadership without us giving it an external name.

The Anthroposophical Society in Austria will endeavor to prove itself worthy of this leadership.

Today, however, it recognizes it as its special duty to protect Dr. Rudolf Steiner from slanderous attacks and to make it clear to the outside world that this protection is the duty of all truth-seeking and decent people, whether they are within or outside the Anthroposophical Society.

Ludwig Polzer-Hoditz reports in his “Memories of Rudolf Steiner”, first published in 1937:

These lectures are volume two of the Cosmosophy lecture course and the 8th volume in a series of lecture courses Rudolf Steiner gave under the general title “Man and his relationship to the cosmos” for members of the Anthroposophical Society in 1920 and 1921, published in nine volumes in GA (German Gesamtausgabe or collected works) 201-209.

The first 11 lectures (Cosmosophy vol. 1, GA 207) have been translated by A. Wulsin and M. Kirkcaldy and published by Anthroposophic Press, New York 1985.

This volume will easily stand on its own, but readers will need to have some knowledge of Rudolf Steiner’s science of the spirit and are advised to read the basic works first, e.g. Occult Science and Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. The Cosmosophy lectures are not easy, with very close reasoning at times, and would be hard to understand without such basic knowledge.

Over the years these lectures have come to be very dear to my heart. They really demand us to become active and mobile in both heart and mind, which is something Rudolf Steiner often asked of the members of the Society. The first lecture immediately turns one inside out and upside down, as it were. I have sometimes found it useful to enter almost physically into the movements described, something that may also be helpful on other occasions when studying the works of Rudolf Steiner.

The drawings in the text have been taken from the German edition, with only the labelling put into English. They were produced for that edition by Assia Turgenieff and Hedwig Frey.

I have numbered them through, as this makes it easier to refer to them. Readers may find it helpful, if they do not have a copy of the original drawings, to remember that the images would have remained on the board for the rest of the lecture. In some text passages one gets an indication that Rudolf Steiner would point again to a drawing made earlier. It may be a good idea to make copies if one does not want to keep turning back the pages. If one did them oneself, perhaps also colouring them up, this may also contribute to better understanding. It has to be remembered that these were blackboard drawings, with white chalk also used.

The original blackboard drawings of the figures in this volume are now available in volume VIII of Rudolf Steiner, Wandtafelzeichnungen zum Vortragswerk, published by Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach, Switzerland. They are in colour and add something to one’s reading, though not essential. Study groups may be able to buy them together or borrow them from a library.

These lectures were given 76 years ago and readers may find it helpful to have a little background information. Rudolf Steiner always spoke out of the situation that existed at the time.

In 1921, three years after World War I, with democracy and social ideals trying to win through in the Weimar Republic, and financial collapse just round the corner, Rudolf Steiner mainly concentrated his efforts on cultural renewal in Europe, especially in economics, education, medicine, theology, the sciences and the arts. Two publications that continue to this day first appeared in 1921, the monthly journal Die Drei in February, and the weekly paper Das Goetheanum in August. Two clinics opened that year, the Institute of Clinical Medicine in Arlesheim and another in Stuttgart. Within the Society, local groups had often slid into comfortable complacency, and Rudolf Steiner sought to shake them out of this. With anthroposophy gaining a higher profile with all this activity, opposition also grew stronger and more organized, not only in Germany but also in other countries. Apart from Germany and Switzerland, Rudolf Steiner also lectured in Amsterdam and The Hague that year, and in November and December in Oslo. More than 380 of the lectures he gave that year have been published from shorthand records in German. He would often give two, sometimes three, and occasionally even four lectures a day!

Anna R. Meuss
Surbiton, July 1997

The Anthroposophical Society is dedicated to the cultivation of spiritual scientific research. The basis of this research is the realization that it is possible and necessary for our time to experience a similar change of views regarding the spiritual as human views experienced a similar change 4-5 centuries ago through Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Giordano Bruno and others regarding the natural sciences. This spiritual science is based on a real exploration of the spiritual world. In this respect, it is strictly opposed to all materialistic - or, as it is often called today, monistic - dogmatism. It seeks to apply the real methods of spiritual research and is of the opinion that materialistic world views and mere natural science simply do not know these methods - or have no inclination to deal with them - and therefore reject them. It takes the view that this rejection is currently arising from the same blinkered mentality as that which once opposed the Copernican worldview. The view of repeated lives on Earth is not a dogma of faith for spiritual researchers, but a result of their research. It seems just as incredible to people today as the assertion that the earth moves and does not rest once seemed to them. Thus, the Anthroposophical Society is to be regarded as a scientific society, not as a religious community or sect. The insights of spiritual research that are already possible today can be found in the writings of Dr. Rudolf Steiner. The building in Dornach near Basel, which is currently under construction, also serves to cultivate this knowledge. The artistic expression flowing from the insights of the spiritual world is also expressed in this building.

Since the spiritual-scientific results concern the important facts of the human soul life, it is natural that people's minds should also be interested in these results, that these results can become the innermost personal convictions, valuable to each one, which support and sustain him in his ethical, in his whole spiritual and also outer life. At the same time, it remains true that there can be no question of the Anthroposophical Society founding a religion or anything similar. The Society is far from even touching on any religious worldview. It can have the adherents of any religious confession in its midst. It cultivates spiritual scientific research and has nothing to do with any creed. It presents what can be investigated by spiritual science, just as natural science presents what can be investigated by natural science. Just as true natural science can never interfere with religion, given a proper understanding of the relationship between the two, so spiritual science cannot do so either. At present, anthroposophy no longer has any community with the so-called theosophical societies. It stands completely independently of any other society on the basis of the spiritual research characterized above. It is understandable that it faces opposition from religions and also from materialistic science, since its research results are currently still misunderstood, misinterpreted and the like. She will have to struggle not to appear like a sect, but like the bearers of such knowledge, which at the time of its appearance seems like fantasies, but which then become the basic pillars in the progression of the human worldview.

However, anyone who believes that there can be no other view of the spiritual world than the traditional one, or that such a view must be preserved for “belief”, will inevitably misunderstand the whole nature of spiritual research. But one should recognize that this currently reveals the same attitude as that which rejected Copernicus because it was believed that the Christian canon was contrary to the Bible.

Those who are familiar with spiritual science are of the opinion that the establishment of the fundamentals of human life in the broadest sense can lead to an elevation of the moral and of all life in general, and that with the spread of spiritual science, many an ideal will be realized, for which the best and most honest minds yearn; or in whose realization many despair because they see no possibility of realization in the materialistic present. Perhaps he will no longer do so when he penetrates into the real meaning of spiritual research. The Anthroposophical Society would like to serve knowledge and life in a calm way, based on genuine science. But it is based on a science that does not stop short of exploring real spiritual realms. —

Jah-veh is the impulse of heredity; he lives in the process that transmits the earth consciousness through heredity. Through this, man has the abstraction that reveals itself in him. Evil now comes when the abstractive power that is transmitted in material existence comes into existence. The will then enters the sphere of spirits that distract. Yahweh directs consciousness out of sleep, but he does not direct in consciousness. The cosmos revealing itself to waking consciousness - the spatial cosmos - is not God-revealing. No divine can be recognized through the wisdom of Yahweh. It appears only in the process of love under the validity of this wisdom, insofar as this is bound to the blood. At the time when the impulses of revelation through the blood cease, something else must step forward to complement this revelation, something that understands the human being as soul and as spirit. The human being is understood as a soul through a science of freedom and as a spirit through an anthroposophy. Modern science has simply revealed what was contained in the Jah-veh revelation; but the time has come when this revelation is in danger of falling prey to its opponents. The spirits of space want to destroy the spirit that works in space but is not present in space. They will not be able to do so if the spirit, of which man knows himself to be part in space, turns to the extra-spatial spiritual.

In the West, a consciousness directed only towards the spatial threatens to turn people into mere spatial beings, imitating a crusade; in the East, the spatial impulses want to prevent the incoming spiritual impulses from uniting with the human consciousness. In the West, people would like to make the soul forget that it has an existence outside of space; in the East, people would like to make them forget the conditions of the spatial existence itself.

The West is leading itself through its legal system into a dead end - from which it will only turn back at the “Threshold” when it perceives this legal system as a ghost; in the East, the soul, which does not want to fit into space, leads to an insoluble wavering between spirit and matter, - from which an attachment will only occur at the “threshold”, when the sensations hostile to space are felt as an nightmare. The West must not expel the Father; it is on the way to doing so – it can only come to the right way if it realizes that its present path leads to a spectre; the East must not seek the Son on the wrong path; it can only come to the right way if it perceives the confused intellect as an nightmare. The way out must be found in the spirit. The West must place the human being in the place of abstraction – by perceiving its human being as a ghost; the East must perceive its human being as a nightmare, so that it comes to understand it as a spatial being. The East must come away from its fight against the Father, the West from its fight against the Son; the West needs a spiritualization of science; the East a scientific penetration of its religious consciousness.

In the cosmos, the West must find the inner essence of nature – its inspiration; the East must find the revelation of inner spirituality through nature.

To the West it must be said: What appears to you as a human being is a spectre; you do not see the spectre because you avoid the abilities for this seeing; to the East it must be said: what appears to you as a human being, the seer feels as a nightmare; you do not feel the nightmare because you keep away from the associated sentience. To the west: You destroy the future by leading humanity into a dead end; to the east: You destroy the future by taking the light for the following path of humanity and wanting to walk it in darkness. To the west: You cut off the way; and make humanity a prisoner of the earth; to the east: You make it impossible to walk the way because you do not want to fan the light that illuminates the way. To the West: You make humanity unfree by not leading them into the sphere of freedom; to the East: You make humanity unfree by depriving them of the ability to use their own will in the sphere of freedom. To the West: You paralyze people; to the East: You blind people. —