The Rudolf Steiner Archive

I have already expressed my gratitude to the committee, to Miss Beverley, and to all of you who have devoted the past two weeks to studying our subject. Rest assured that a warm sense of gratitude will remain with me as a pleasant memory of this lecture course. Now, I just want to add a few words to the perspectives expressed in the lectures. Most of you are familiar with the relationship between Waldorf educational principles and spiritual science as it exists in the anthroposophic movement, and perhaps as we close this conference you will allow me to say a few words on this subject.

People today still have an erroneous view of the anthroposophic movement, perhaps because one of my wishes—however impractical—cannot be fulfilled. It is true that the Waldorf movement grew out of the anthroposophic movement, but it is equally true that I would truly prefer to give a different name to that movement every week. I realize that it would be terribly confusing, but I would very much like to do this, because names actually do a great deal of harm today. The confusion this would create in people’s minds is obvious—if letterheads were changed each week, and people were to receive a letter printed with the previous week’s name, “since superseded.” Nevertheless, it would be very good for the anthroposophic movement if it had no permanent name, because most people today are concerned only with names and never get to the subject itself.

People can turn to a Greek lexicon and, in their own language, invent words to express anthroposophy, and thus invent an idea of what spiritual science is and judge us accordingly. People form an opinion about us according to their idea of the name, thus avoiding the trouble of looking into the substance of spiritual science.

The book table at the door of this hall has disappeared, but I assure you that I shuddered every day as I arrived and saw the mass of literature there. I would be happy if there were less of it, but people must study spiritual science, of course—there is that. One cannot look only a name, and this is why it would be such a good thing if we were spared the need to have one. Obviously, that would not work, but in a lecture course about applying spiritual science to life, I think it shows how far we are from any sectarianism or any desire to fill people’s heads with dogma. The only goal of spiritual science is to acquire knowledge of the essence of cosmic truths. And if there is any wish to participate constructively in evolution, it is essential to truly understand the world’s events.

It is sad that there is so little inclination to look into the course of world events today, but this is in fact the purpose of spiritual science. This, too, is why we can speak of special areas such as education without beginning with a scheduled program or the like. In establishing the Waldorf school, we saw that it is not a matter of introducing the rigid dogma that spiritual science is believed to represent; rather, we never introduce anything of spiritual science as it is intended for adults. We realized that spiritual science must live within us as a power that leads to a fresh understanding of human nature and an unbiased observation of the world, which in turn leads to free activity.

Not long ago, I read an extraordinary criticism; it was very antagonistic. There are many such criticisms, and I have no wish to discuss them in detail. This particular critic said that I seem to make efforts to be unbiased—but the words implied a serious criticism. I would have thought it was a common duty today—especially in spiritual matters—to work toward open-minded knowledge, but apparently it can be a matter for severe reproach. Nevertheless, I think that the subject of education in particular can lead to ready understanding between the Continent and England, and when I see what your attitude has been toward these lectures, I consider it as a very good sign. When trying to describe our time, people like to use the abstract phrase, “We are living in an age of transition.” Of course, every age is an age of transition—always from one period to the next. The point is, however, what is it that is in transition? At the present time, all kinds of signs indicate that we are indeed caught up in the process of a grand transition.

Perhaps the best way to explain this is to lead your thoughts back to the stage of spiritual evolution reached in England during the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries. At the beginning of the fourteenth century, those who claimed to be cultured spoke French. English consisted of dialects that did not enter the general culture of the people, and the language of science was Latin. If, for example, we want to study the general nature of education in England during the fourteenth century, around 1364, we can do so from Higden’s Polychronycon, which was published at the time. Written in Latin, the book makes it clear that the medium of culture was Latin. When that book was written, the language of culture was Latin, but schools were being established in which the national language was finding its way into education (and this was also true of other countries in Europe). Schools were established in Winchester and Oxford, in which the national tongue was already in use. In the late fourteenth century, we find the important transition from Latin—an international language—to the national tongue.

Similar transitions occurred earlier or later in other regions of the civilized world, and this phenomenon has great significance. Insofar as England is concerned, we can place it in the late fourteenth century. When Higden wrote his book in 1364, he was able to tell us that the Latin tongue was still the universal medium for education. When a certain Trevisa translated it into English in 1385, we are told that English had been introduced into schools. Thus, we see the transition from the international language of Latin, which cultured people all over the world used to discuss matters of education, to the age when national language rises above the level of dialect to become, for various peoples, the medium for education. This is a significant transition.

According to the anthroposophic view, we can describe it as a transition from the age of the intellectual soul, in which people felt more connected to the universe, to that of the spiritual soul, in which human beings are to become aware of their free inner power of resolve and action. This transition is the essence of modern civilization; this alone could institute the great cosmic process in which we are still immersed today.

The effects of this emerging national language did not enter human souls and hearts immediately. Initially, in England, too, the Renaissance movement, or “Humanist” movement, began to flow north from the south. In its early days, the Humanist movement indeed aspired to the qualities of the spiritual soul, but never reached the point of real understanding. Thus, it was established that, to be truly human, one must absorb the humanist, classical culture. This struggle for human freedom and the exercise of inner, spiritual activity has continued for centuries, right up to our own day. But increasingly, the needs of civilized humanity become obvious.

In the age before this urge toward spiritual soul, language itself gave rise to the element of internationalism, making it possible for the cultured people of every country to work with one another. Language was the international element. We can place the actual transition in the second half of the fourteenth century, when this language could no longer serve as a medium for international understanding. There was an urge within human beings to develop spiritual activity from depths of their own being, and they resorted to national language, which made it increasingly necessary to understand at a level higher than that of language or speech.

We need spirituality that no longer arises from mere language, but issues more directly from the soul. A true realization of spiritual science that connects history with the present time shows that its purpose is to find, throughout the world, an international medium of understanding, through which people can find their way to one another—one that transcends the level of language.

All interaction between human beings is incorporated by the faculty of speech into sounds communicated through the air. In speech, our being is truly active in the material world. If we understand one another at a level beyond speech by means of deeper elements in the soul—through thoughts carried by feeling and warmed by the heart—then we have an international medium of understanding, but we need heart for it to come into being. We must find the path to human spirit at a level beyond speech. The search for a language of thought—and everything related to philosophy, education, religion, and art—is the purpose of the anthroposophic movement during the present period of history.

Ordinary speech lives and moves through the medium of air and exists in the material world. The language that spiritual science looks for will move through the pure element of light passing from soul to soul and heart to heart—and this is not just a figure of speech. Modern civilization will need such a medium of understanding, not just for the matters of high culture, but also for everyday life. Before this can be realized, of course, many different kinds of conferences will be held, but during recent times, the fruitfulness of such congresses for healing human beings has not been very apparent. The anthroposophic movement would like to intercede for a true healing of humankind, which can arise only through mutual understanding. Because of this, we try to understand our own age within the context of history, so that we can become human in the true sense—human beings with a fully aware soul, as was true of another stage of evolution, when Latin was the medium of international understanding. The function once served by Latin must now be taken up by universal human ideas, through which we can find our way to other people all over the earth.

Anything that lives in the world requires soul and spirit as well as a physical body. In the very truest sense, spiritual science would be the soul and spirit of the “body” as it has entered our global civilization as the world economy and the other worldly activities. Spiritual science does not disdain or avoid the most practical areas of life; it would gladly infuse them with the only element that can lead to real progress in human evolution.

I am so infinitely grateful that you wish to understand how, in this sense, our educational attempts are based on the anthroposophic movement as a true expression of the present stage of evolution. I am grateful, too, for your interest in the illuminations and shades of meaning I have tried to introduce, in addition to speaking of the historical significance of the aims of this art of education. And I especially thank you for your cordial feelings toward a course of lectures given with the object of describing the goals of Waldorf education toward the progress of civilization as it confronts today’s needs.

I have tried to describe how Waldorf education points to the deepest needs of humankind in the present age, and, as I say, your sympathetic understanding will indeed remain in my heart and soul as a very good memory of this course.

[ 1 ] Philosophy did not arise in the same way in which it is continued in modern times. In these days it is a connection of ideas which are not experienced in one's inner being, in the soul, in such a manner that a man, conscious of self, feels himself in these ideas as in a reality. Therefore we seek after all possible theoretical means to prove that the philosophic content does refer to a reality. But this way leads only to different philosophic systems, and of these one can say they are right to a certain extent; for mostly the grounds on which they are refuted are of as much value as those on which it is sought to prove them.

[ 2 ] Now with Anthroposophy it is a question not of attaining the reality of the philosophic content by theoretic thought, but by the cultivation of a method which on the one hand is similar to that by which in ancient times Philosophy was won, and on the other, is as consciously exact as the mathematical and natural scientific method of more recent times.

[ 3 ] The ancient method was semi-conscious. Compared with the condition of full consciousness of the modern scientific thinker it had something almost dreamy. It existed not in such dreams as concealed indirectly by their very nature their real content, but in waking dreams, which pointed to reality precisely by means of this content. Nor had such a soul-content the abstract character of the modern presentation, but rather that of picture-making.

[ 4 ] Such a soul-content must be regained, but in full consciousness, according to the modern stage of human evolution; exactly in the same sense of consciousness as we find in scientific thought. Anthroposophical research seeks to attain this in a first stage of supersensible knowledge in the condition of ‘imaginative consciousness’. It is reached through a process of meditation in the soul. This leads the entire force of the soul-life to presentations which are easily visualized and held fast in a state of rest. By this means we finally realize, if such a process is constantly repeated over a sufficient period of time, how the soul in its experience becomes free from the body. We see clearly that the thought of ordinary consciousness is a reflection of a spiritual activity which remains unconscious as such, after having become so by the incorporation of the human physical organism in its course.

All ordinary thinking is dependent on the supersensible spiritual activity which is reproduced in the physical organism. But at the same time we are conscious only of what the physical organism allows us to be conscious of. [ 5 ] The spiritual activity can be separated from the physical organism by meditation, and the soul then experiences the supersensible in a super-sensible way; no longer the physical but the etheric organism is the background of the soul's experience. We have a presentation before our soul's consciousness with the character of a picture. [ 6 ] We have before us in this kind of presentation pictures of the powers which, coming from the supersensible are the basis of the organism as its powers of growth, and also as the very powers which function in the regulation of the processes of nourishment. We gain in these pictures a real vision of the life-forces. This is the stage of ‘imaginative cognition’. This is life in the etheric human organism, and with our own etheric organism we live in the etheric Cosmos. There is between the etheric organism and the etheric Cosmos no such sharp distinction relating to subjective and objective as there is in physical thought about the things of the world.

[ 7 ] This ‘imaginative knowledge’ is the means whereby we can recall the very substantial reality of ancient Philosophy, but we can also conceive a new Philosophy, and a real conception of Philosophy can only come into being by means of this imaginative knowledge. And when this Philosophy is once there it can be grasped and understood by the ordinary consciousness; for it speaks out of ‘imaginative’ experience in a form which springs from spiritual (etheric) reality, and whose reality-content can, through the ordinary consciousness, be recalled in experience.

[ 8 ] A higher activity of knowledge which is forthcoming when meditation is extended, is required for Cosmology. Not only is intensive quietness cultivated on a soul-content or subject matter but also a fully conscious stationary condition of the quiet, content-less soul. This is after the meditative soul-content or subject matter has been banished from the consciousness. The stage ‘is reached where the spiritual content of the Cosmos flows into the empty soul—the stage of ‘inspired cognition’. We have in part of us a spiritual Cosmos, just as we have a physical Cosmos before the senses. We succeed in seeing, in the powers of the spiritual Cosmos, what takes place spiritually between man and the Cosmos in the process of breathing. In this and the other rhythmic processes of man we find the physical reproduction of what exists in the spiritual sphere in human astral organization. We attain to the vision of how this astral organism has its place in the spiritual Cosmos outside the life on earth, and how it takes on the cloak of the physical organism through embryonic life and birth, to lay it down again in death. By means of this knowledge we can distinguish between heredity, which is an earthly phenomenon, and that which man brings with him from the spiritual world.

[ 9 ] In this way, through ‘inspired knowledge’, we attain to a Cosmology which can embrace man in respect of his psychic and spiritual existence. Inspired knowledge is cultivated in the astral organism because we experience an existence outside our bodies in the Cosmos of the Spirit. But the same thing happens in the etheric organism; and we can translate this knowledge into human speech in the images which present themselves in this sphere, and we can harmonize it with the content of Philosophy. So we get a Cosmic Philosophy.

[ 10 ] For Religious Cognition a third thing is necessary. We must dive down into those existences which reveal themselves in picture form as the content of ‘inspired knowledge’; and this is attained when we add ‘Soul-exercises of the Will’ to the kind of meditation which we have till now been describing. For instance, we attempt to present to ourselves events which in the physical world have a definite course, but in reverse order, from the end to the beginning. Doing this we separate the soul-life, through a process of will which is not used in ordinary consciousness from the cosmic externals, and let the soul sink into those Beings which manifest themselves by inspiration. We attain true intuition, a union with beings of a spiritual world. These experiences of intuition are reflected in etheric and also in physical man, and produce in this reflection the subject matter of religious consciousness.

[ 11 ] Through this ‘intuitive cognition’ we gain a vision of the true nature of the Ego, which in reality is sunk into the spiritual world. The Ego which we know in ordinary consciousness is only a quite faint reflection of its true proportions. Intuition provides the possibility of feeling the connection of this faint reflection with the divine primal universe, to which in its true shape it belongs. Moreover, we are enabled to see how spiritual man,, the true Ego, has his place in the spiritual world, when he is sunk in sleep. In this condition the physical and etheric organisms require the rhythmic processes for their own regeneration. In a waking condition the Ego lives in this rhythm and in the metabolic processes that are a part of it; in the condition of sleep, the rhythm and the metabolic processes of man have a life of their own as physical and etheric organisms; and the astral organisms and the Ego then take their place in the spirit world. The translation of man into this world by inspired and intuitive knowledge is conscious; he lives in a spiritual Cosmos, just as by his senses he lives in a physical Cosmos. He can speak of the content of the religious consciousness from knowledge, and he can do this because what he experiences in the spiritual sphere is reflected in the physical and etheric man. Moreover, the reflected pictures can be expressed in speech, and in this form have a meaning which throws religious light on the human disposition of ordinary consciousness.

[ 12 ] Thus we reach the heart of Philosophy by imaginative cognition, of Cosmology by inspiration, and of the religious life through intuition. Besides that already described, the following soul-exercise helps towards attaining intuition. One tries so to grasp the life, which otherwise unconsciously unfolds itself from one human age to another, that one consciously contracts habits which one did not have before, or consciously changes such as one had. The greater the effort that such a change necessitates, the better it is for gaining intuitive knowledge; for these changes bring about a loosening of the will-power from the physical and etheric organism. We bind the will to the astral organism and to the true form of the Ego and consciously immerse both of them into the spirit world.

[ 13 ] What we may call ‘abstract thought’ has been perfected only in the modern spiritual development of mankind. In earlier periods of evolution this kind of thought was unknown to man, though it is necessary to the development of human spiritual activity, because it frees the power of thought from the picture-form. We achieve the possibility of thinking through the physical organism, though such thinking is not rooted in a real world; only in an apparent world where the processes of Nature can be copied without man himself contributing anything to these pictures. We attain a copy of Nature, which, qua copy, can be genuine, because the life in the thought-copy is not in itself reality, but only apparent reality. But the moral impulses can also be taken up into this pseudo-thought, so that they exercise no compulsion on man. The moral impulses are themselves real because they come from the spirit world; the manner in which man experiences them in his apparent world enables him to adapt himself in accordance with them, or not. They themselves exercise no compulsion on him either through his body or his soul.

[ 14 ] So man strides on; thought which was in ancient times completely bound to the unconsciously imagined, inspired and intuitive knowledge, thought in which the subject matter was laid as open as Imagination and Inspiration and Intuition themselves, becomes abstract thought conducted through the physical organism. In this thought, which has a pseudo-life, because it is spirit substance translated into the physical world, man has the possibility of developing an objective nature-knowledge and his own moral freedom.

More details on this subject you will find in my Philosophy of Spirit Activity, my Knowledge of Higher Worlds and how to attain it, Theosophy, Occult Science, etc. What is necessary in order to return to a Philosophy, a Cosmology and a Religion that embrace all man, is to enter upon the province of an exact clairvoyance in Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition; and this consciously—that is in contradistinction to the old dreamlike clairvoyance. Man attains to his full consciousness in the province of a life of abstract presentations. It remains to him, in the further advance of humanity, to bring this full consciousness of the spiritual world to bear on his daily life.

[ 1 ] In the state of sleep, sense-experience ceases for the ordinary consciousness as does also the psychic activity of thinking, feeling and willing. Thus man loses what he terms as ‘himself’.

[ 2 ] Through the psychic exercises of the soul which have been described in the previous studies, thinking is the first to be seized by the higher consciousness. Without being lost first however, thinking cannot be thus seized. In successful meditation one experiences this loss of thinking. One does actually feel oneself as an independent inner being; there is actually some kind of an inner experience. But one cannot at once experience one's own entity so strongly as to comprehend it through active thought. This only becomes possible by degrees. The inner activity grows and the power of thinking is kindled from a quarter other than ordinary consciousness. In this ordinary consciousness can one only experience oneself in a momentary glimpse. But by the rekindling of thought through the psychic exercises, after passing through not-thinking and arriving at imagining, one experiences the content of the whole cycle of life from birth to the present moment as one's own proper Ego.

The memories of ordinary consciousness are also experiences of the moment, images realized in the present which point to the past only through their content.

[ 3] Such memories are at first lost when image-making begins. The past is then seen as if it was something present. As in sense-perception the senses are led to the things which are side by side in space, so the kindled activity of the soul is led to the different events of one's own life in image-making. The course of events in time is presented as happening at the same time. A process of growth becomes something present at the moment.

[ 4 ] But in higher consciousness there is something else than just the memories of the ordinary consciousness. There you have the activity of the etheric organism previously unknown to this consciousness. The memories of the ordinary consciousness are only images of man's experience through his physical organism of the outer world, whereas the ‘imaginative’ consciousness knows the activity which the etheric organism has effected in the physical organism.

[ 5 ] The rising-up of this experience happens in such a way that one has the feeling of something rising from the depths of the soul which before had indeed lain hidden in one's own nature, but had not surged up into the consciousness. All this must be experienced in full consciousness; and that is the case if the ordinary consciousness continues to be kept side by side with the ‘imaginative’.

The experiences gained in the active exchange between etheric and physical organism must always be capable of being brought into relationship with the corresponding memory-life of the ordinary consciousness. Whoever is not able to do this is not dealing with imagination but with an experience of a visionary kind.

[ 6 ] In visionary experience consciousness is not adding a new content to the old, as in imagination, but it is changed; the old content cannot be recalled at the same time as the new. The man who has ‘imagination’ has his ordinary self next to him, as it were; the visionary has been turned into quite a different being.

[ 7 ] Anybody criticizing Anthroposophy from the outside should take note of this. Imaginative knowledge has often been considered as leading to something visionary. This view has to be strictly rejected by the true researcher into the spirit. He does by no means replace the ordinary consciousness by a visionary one, but he incorporates an imaginative one into it. Ordinary thinking fully controls imaginative experience at every moment. The visionary picturing is a stronger entering of the ego into the physical organism than is the case in the ordinary consciousness. Imagining on the other hand is an actual ‘stepping-out’ from the physical organism, and the ordinary constitution of the soul remains by its side consciously held in the physical organism.

We grow conscious in a part of the soul which before was unconscious, but that part which before was conscious in the physical organism remains in the same psychic condition. The interchange between the experience of imagination and that of ordinary consciousness is just as real a happening to the soul as is the guiding to and fro of soul-activity from one thought to another in the course of ordinary consciousness. If this is kept in mind one cannot mistake imaginative knowledge for something of a visionary nature. It tends, on the contrary, to drive out all inclination to what is visionary. But he who uses ‘imaginative cognition’ is also in a position to realize that visions are not independent of the body but dependent on it in a far higher degree than sense-experiences. For he can compare the character of visions with that of imagination which is really independent of the body. The Visionary is more deeply immersed in his physical functions than the man who perceives the outer world by means of his senses in the ordinary way.

[ 8 ] When Imagination takes place ordinary thinking is recognized as something having no substantial content. Only what is introduced into consciousness by imagination is found to be the substantial content of this ordinary thinking. Ordinary thinking may indeed be compared to a mirrored picture. But while the mirrored picture rises in the ordinary consciousness the imagined picture is alive unconsciously.

We imagine also in our ordinary psychic life, but unconsciously. If we did not imagine we should not think. The conscious thoughts of ordinary psychic life are the reflections of unconscious imagining mirrored by the physical organism. And the substantial part of this imagining is the etheric organism which is manifest in the development of man's earthly life.

[ 9 ] A new element enters the consciousness with inspiration. In order to attain inspiration the individual human life must be abstracted, as has been described in the previous studies. But the power of activity which the soul has won for itself by imagining still remains. Possessing this power the soul can attain pictures of that which in the universe underlies the etheric organism just as this underlies the physical.

[ 10 ] And thus the soul is faced with its own eternal nature. In the ordinary consciousness it happens that the soul can only give its activity a conceptual form by grasping the physical organism. It dives into it and there finds the pictured reflections of that which it experiences with its etheric organism. This latter, however, the soul does not experience in its activity. This etheric organism is itself experienced in imaginative consciousness. But this happens through the soul having gone further back with its experience to the astral organism. As long as the soul merely ‘imagines’ it lives unconsciously in the astral organism, and both the physical and etheric organisms are contemplated; as soon as the soul attains ‘inspired’ knowledge the astral organism is also brought into contemplation; for the soul now lives in the eternal centre of its being, and can contemplate this by means of the continuation of ‘intuitive’ cognition. Through this it lives in the spiritual world, as in ordinary existence it lives in its physical organism.

[ 11 ] The soul learns in this way how the physical, etheric and astral organisms grow out of the spiritual world. But it can also observe the continued activity of the spiritual in the organization of the earthly being—man. It sees how the spiritual centre of man's nature sinks into the physical, etheric and astral organism. This sinking is not really a merging of something spiritual into something physical, so that the former dwells in the latter. But it is a transformation of part of the human soul into the physical and etheric organization. This part of the soul disappears during earthly life by being transformed into the physical and etheric organism. It is this part of the soul which is experienced through thought by the ordinary consciousness in its reflection. But the soul emerges again elsewhere.

This is the case with that part of it which in earthly existence is experienced as volition, which has a different character from thought. Volition even during wakefulness contains a section which is asleep. The soul receives a thought clearly. Actually man when he thinks is fully awake, which is not the case with volition. The will is stimulated by thought. Consciousness extends as far as thought. But then the act of volition sinks into the human organism. If I deliberately raise my hand I have the causal thought in my ordinary consciousness to start with, and the sight of my raised hand with all the accompanying sensations is the result of my act of will. What is between remains unconscious. What happens in the depths of the organism when a man puts his will into action escapes the ordinary consciousness just as do the events of sleep. Man has always a part of himself asleep even when he is awake.

[ 12 ] This is the part in which continues to live during earthly existence as much of the Spirit-Soul as had not been transformed into the physical organism. One perceives this when true intuition has been achieved by the exercises of the will previously described. Then we recognize behind the will the eternal part of the human soul, which is transformed into the head-organization; and disappears in its form-life during earthly existence, rises again on the other side to pass through death and to become ready once more to help in a future physical body and earthly life.

This brings this study to the event of death which is to be further touched upon in the next. For by the views I have put before you to-day we are led only to the continuity of the Will and to a knowledge of that part of the soul from the past, which is transformed into human head-organization. We have not reached the destiny of the ego-consciousness, which can only be treated in conjunction with the Christ-problem. Therefore that study will again lead us back to a consideration of the mysteries of Christianity.

[ 13 ] The customary Philosophy of Ideas consists of thoughts; but they have no life, no substance. The substance comes by leaving behind the physical organism in ‘Imagination’. As I have shown, formerly the ideas of Philosophy were only mirrored pictures. If these are built up into a Philosophy, and if one studies them without prejudice, one must feel their unreality. One feels vaguely the moment here described as the one in which all remembered thought entirely disappears.

Augustine and Descartes have felt this, but have inefficiently explained it to themselves as ‘doubt’. But Philosophy acquires life when the unity of life is substantiated in the soul.

Bergson perceived this, and has expressed it in his idea of ‘Duration’. But he did not proceed beyond this point.

Starting with this as a basis, we shall proceed to consider its bearing upon Cosmology and Religious cognition.

[ 1 ] The Cosmos reveals itself to man, first of all, from the aspect of the Earth and from the aspect of what is outside the Earth, viz. the world of the stars.

[ 2 ] Man feels himself related to the Earth and its forces. Life gives him very clear instruction regarding this relationship.

[ 3 ] In the present age he does not feel himself related in the same way to the stars that are around him. But this lasts only so long as he is not conscious of his etheric body. To grasp the etheric body in Imaginations means to develop a feeling that we belong to the world of the stars, just as we have this feeling regarding the Earth through the consciousness of the physical body.

[ 4 ] The forces which place the etheric body in the world come from the Cosmos around the Earth; those for the physical body radiate from the centre of the Earth.

[ 5 ] But together with the etheric forces which stream to the Earth from the sphere of the Cosmos there come also the World-impulses which work in the astral body of man.

[ 6 ] The ether is like an ocean in which the astral forces swim from all directions of the Cosmos and approach the Earth.

[ 7 ] But in the present cosmic age only the mineral and plant kingdoms come into a direct relation to the astral, which streams down to the Earth on the waves of the ether; not the animal kingdom and not the human kingdom.

[ 8 ] Spiritual vision shows that in the animal embryo there lives, not the astral that is now streaming to the Earth, but that which streamed in during the Old Moon period.

[ 9 ] In the case of the plant kingdom we see how its manifold and wonderful forms are developed through the astral loosening itself from the ether and working over to the world of plants.

[ 10 ] In the animal kingdom we see how, from out of the Spiritual, the astral which was active in very ancient times—during the Moon evolution—has been preserved, and works as something stored up and preserved, remaining on at the present time in the spirit-world, and not coming forth into the etheric world.

[ 11 ] The activity of this astral is, moreover, mediated by the Moon-forces, which have likewise remained in the same condition, from the previous stage of the Earth.

[ 12 ] In the animal kingdom we have, therefore, the result of impulses which manifested themselves externally in Nature in a previous stage of Earth-existence, whereas in the present cosmic age they have withdrawn into the Spirit-world which actively penetrates the Earth.

[ 13 ] Now it is manifest to spiritual vision that within the animal kingdom only the astral forces which have been preserved in the present Earth from the former period are important for the permeation of the physical and etheric bodies with the astral body. But when the animal is once in possession of its astral body, the Sun-impulses appear actively in this astral body. The Sun-forces cannot give the animal anything astral; but when this is once in the animal, they must set to work and foster growth, nutrition, etc.

[ 14 ] It is different for the human kingdom. This, too, receives its astrality to begin with from the Moon-forces that have been preserved. But the Sun-forces contain astral impulses which while they remain inactive for the animal kingdom, in the human astral continue to act in the same way in which Moon-forces worked when man was first permeated with astrality.

[ 15 ] In the animal astral body we see the world of the Moon; in the human, the harmonious accord of the worlds of the Sun and Moon.

[ 16 ] The fact that man is able to receive, for the development of self-consciousness, the Spiritual which rays forth in what belongs to the Earth, depends upon this which belongs to the Sun in the human astral body. The astral streams in from the sphere of the Universe. It acts either as astrality which pours in at the present time or as astrality which streamed in, in ancient times and has been preserved. But everything that is connected with the shaping of the Ego as the vehicle of self-consciousness must radiate from the centre of a star. The astral works from the circumference; that which belongs to the Ego works from a centre. From its centre the Earth as a star gives the impulse to the human Ego. Every star radiates from its centre forces which mould or shape the Ego of some being.

[ 17 ] This shows the polarity existing between the centre of a star and the sphere of the Cosmos.

[ 18 ] From the above it may also be seen how the animal kingdom still stands there today as the result of former evolutionary forces of the Earth's being, how it uses up the astral forces which have been preserved, and how it must disappear when these have been consumed. Man, however, acquires new astral forces from that which belongs to the Sun. These enable him to carry on his evolution into the future.

[ 19 ] From all this it may be seen that the nature of man cannot be understood unless we are just as conscious of his connection with the stars as of his connection with the Earth.

[ 20 ] And that which man receives from the Earth for the unfolding of his self-consciousness depends also upon the Spirit world active within all that belongs to the Earth. The circumstance that the Sun gives to man what he needs for his astral depends upon the activities which took place during the Old Sun period. At that time the Earth received the capacity to unfold the Ego-impulses of humanity. It is the Spiritual from that period which the Earth has preserved for itself from the Sun nature; and it is preserved from dying out through the present activity of the Sun.

[ 21 ] The Earth was itself Sun at one time. Then it was spiritualised. In the present cosmic age, what belongs to the Sun works from outside. This continually rejuvenates the Spiritual which originated in ancient times and is now growing old. At the same time this which belongs to the Sun and acts in the present, preserves that which belongs to a former period from falling into what is Luciferic. For that which continues to work, without being received into the forces of the present, succumbs to Luciferic influences.

[ 23 ] We may say that man's feeling of belonging to the Cosmos beyond the Earth is in this cosmic epoch so dim that he does not notice it within his consciousness. And it is not only dim, it is drowned by his feeling of belonging to the Earth. As man is obliged to find his self-consciousness in the elements of the Earth, he so grows together with them during the early part of the age of the Spiritual Soul, that they act upon him much more strongly than is compatible with the true course of his soul-life. Man is to a certain extent stupefied by the impressions of the world of the senses, and during this condition, thought which is free and has life in itself cannot rise within man.

[ 24 ] The whole of the period since the middle of the nineteenth century has been a period of stupefaction through the impressions received by the senses. It is the great illusion of this age that the over-powerful life of the senses has been considered to be the right one—that life of the senses whose aim was to obliterate completely the life in the Cosmos beyond the Earth.

[ 25 ] In this stupefaction the Ahrimanic Powers were able to unfold their being. Lucifer was repulsed by the Sun-forces more than Ahriman, who was able to evoke, especially in scientific people, the dangerous feeling that ideas are applicable only to the impressions of the senses. Thus it is exactly in these circles that one can find so little understanding for Anthroposophy. They stand face to face with the results of spiritual knowledge and try to understand them with their ideas. But these ideas do not grasp the Spiritual because the experience of the ideas is drowned by the Ahrimanic knowledge of the senses. And so they begin to fear that if they have anything to do with the results of spiritual investigation, they may fall into a blind belief in authority.

[ 26 ] In the second half of the nineteenth century the Cosmos beyond the Earth became darker and darker for human consciousness.

[ 27 ] When man becomes able to experience ideas within himself once more, then, even when he does not support his ideas on the world of the senses, light will again meet his gaze from the Cosmos beyond the Earth. But this signifies that he will become acquainted with Michael in his own kingdom.

[ 28 ] When once the Festival of Michael in autumn becomes true and inward, then this thought will arise in all sincerity in the mind of him who celebrates the festival, and it will live in his consciousness: Filled with ideas, the soul experiences Spirit Light, when sense-appearance only echoes in man like a memory.

[ 29 ] If man is able to feel this he will also be able, after his festive mood, to plunge again in the right way into the world of the senses. And Ahriman will not be able to injure him.

(March, 1925)

Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society (in connection with the foregoing study: Man in his macrocosmic Nature)

[ 30 ] 168. In the beginning of the age of the Spiritual Soul, man's sense of community with the Cosmos beyond the Earth grew dim. On the other hand—and this was so especially in men of science—his sense of belonging to the earthly realm grew so intense in the experience of sense-impressions, as to amount to a stupefaction.

[ 31 ] 169. While he is thus stupefied, the Ahrimanic powers work upon man most dangerously. For he lives in the illusion that the over-intense, stupefying experience of sense-impressions is the right thing and represents the true progress in evolution.

[ 32 ] 170. Man must find the strength to fill his world of Ideas with light and to experience it so, even when unsupported by the stupefying world of sense. In this experience of the world of Ideas—independent and in their independence filled with light—his sense of community with the Cosmos beyond the Earth will re-awaken. Hence will arise the true foundation for festivals of Michael.

We will concern ourselves today with something that will show us how significant it is, based on research that can be done in the higher worlds, to experience what the future holds in store for humanity. The mission of the spiritual scientific movement is connected with the important events of the transition period in which we live. From this we can be certain that much still lies before us in the future, and we therefore seek in spiritual science for guidance in taking the appropriate measures in the present. We must know, therefore, what is of special significance in thinking, feeling, and willing in our time.

There is a great distinction between the spiritual stream that came from Buddha and the one that arose from the Christ impulse. This is not meant to place these streams in opposition to one another; it is rather necessary to understand in what regard each of these streams can be fruitful. Both streams must unite in the future, and Christianity must be fructified by spiritual science. For a time, Christianity had to set aside the teaching of reincarnation. It was included in the esoteric teaching but could not be received in exoteric Christianity for certain universal pedagogical reasons. In contrast, reincarnation was a fundamental principle of Buddhism. There it was bound up with the teaching of suffering, which is exactly what Christianity is intended to overcome. Once we have recognized the purposes and missions of both streams, we will also be able to distinguish clearly between them. The main distinction can be seen most strongly when one examines the two individualities, Buddha and Paul.

Gautama Buddha came to knowledge through his enlightenment under the Bodhi tree; he then taught that this world is maya. It cannot be considered real, because therein lies maya, the great illusion, that one believes it to be real. Man must strive to be released from the realm of the elements; then he comes into a realm, Nirvana, where neither names nor things exist. Only then is man freed from illusion. The realm of maya is suffering. Birth, death, sickness, and age are suffering. It is the thirst for existence that brings man into this realm. Once he has freed himself from this thirst, he no longer needs to incarnate. One can ask oneself why the great Buddha preached this doctrine. The answer can follow only from a consideration of the evolutionary course of humanity.

Man was not always the way he is today. In earlier times, man not only had his physical body at his disposal for achieving knowledge, but there was also a kind of clairvoyant knowledge diffused among human beings. Man knew that there were spiritual hierarchies in the same way that we know that there are plants. He had no power of judgment but could see the creative beings themselves. This wisdom gradually disappeared, but a memory of it remained. In ancient India, Persia, even in Egypt, there was still a memory of previous earthly lives. The human soul at that time was such that one knew: I was descended from divine beings, but my incarnations have gradually penetrated the physical so strongly that my spiritual gaze has been darkened.

Man experienced the progress in this time as a degeneration, as a step backward. This was felt especially by all those who could still, even in much later times, leave their physical bodies at particular moments. The everyday world appeared to them in these moments as a world of illusion, as maya, the great deception. Buddha only spoke out of what lived in the human soul. The physical, sensible world was experienced as that which had pulled man down; he wished to leave this world and ascend again. The world of the senses bore the guilt for the descent of humanity.

Let us compare this conception with the Christ impulse and the teachings of Paul. Paul did not call the sensible world an illusion, although he knew as well as Buddha that man had descended from the spiritual worlds and that it was his urge for existence that had brought him into this world. One speaks in a Christian sense, however, when one asks if this urge for existence is always something bad. Is the physical, sensible world only deception? According to Paul's conception, it is not the urge for existence in itself that is evil; this urge was originally good but became harmful through the fall of man, under the influence of Luciferic beings. This urge was not always harmful, but it has become so and has brought sickness, lies, suffering, and so on. What was a cosmic event in Buddha's conception became a human event for Paul.

Had the Luciferic influence not interfered, man would have seen the truth in the physical world rather than illusion. It is not the world of the senses that is wrong but human knowledge that has been dulled through the Luciferic influence. The differences in these conceptions bring different conclusions with them. Buddha sought redemption in a world in which nothing of this world of the senses remained. Paul said that man should purify his forces, his thirst for existence, because he himself had corrupted them. Man should tear away the veil that covers the truth and, through purifying himself, see again the truth he himself had covered. In place of the veil that conceals the plant world, for example, he will see the divine-spiritual forces that work on and behind the plants. Rend the veil, and the world of the senses becomes transparent; we finally see the realm of the spirit. We believed we saw the animal, the plant, and the mineral kingdoms; that was our error. In reality, we saw the hierarchies streaming toward us.

That is why Paul said, “Kill not the pleasure of existence; rather purify it, because it was originally good.” This can occur when man takes the power of Christ into himself. When this power has permeated the soul, it drives away the soul's darkness. The gods did not place man on the earth for no purpose. It is man's duty to overcome what hinders him from seeing this world spiritually. Buddha's conclusion that one must shun incarnation points to an archetypal wisdom for humanity. Paul, in contrast, said, “Go through incarnation, but imbue yourselves with Christ, and in a distant future all that man has cast up as illusion will vanish.”

This teaching, which put the blame not on the physical, sensible world but on man himself, had of necessity to become a historic doctrine. Exactly for this reason, however, it could not be given in its entirety at the beginning. Only the initial impulse could be given, which must be penetrated. This impulse would then gradually enter all spheres of life. Although almost two thousand years have passed since the Mystery of Golgotha, the Christ impulse is only beginning today to be received. Whole spheres of life, such as philosophy and science, have yet to be imbued with it. Buddha was more able to give his teaching all at once, because he referred to an ancient wisdom that was still experienced in his time. The Christ impulse, however, must prevail gradually. A theory of knowledge based on these facts contrasts sharply with that of Kant, who did not know that it is our knowledge itself that must be purified.

Paul had to instruct human beings that the work in each individual incarnation is actually of great importance. In contrast to the relatively recent doctrine of the Buddha that the individual incarnation is worthless, he almost had to overstate this teaching. One must learn to declare, “Not I, but Christ in me!” This is the purified I. Through Paul, the spiritual life became dependent upon this one incarnation for all the future. Now that such an education of the soul has, been completed and a sufficient number of human beings have gone through it in the past two thousand years, the time has come again to teach reincarnation and karma. We must seek to restore our I to the condition in which it was before incarnations began.

It is always said that Christ is constantly in our midst. “I am with you every day until the end of the earth.” Now, however, man must learn to behold Christ and to believe that what he sees is real. This will happen in the near future, already in this century, and in the following two thousand years more and more people will experience it. How will this actually occur? We might ask, for example, how we now see our planet. The earth is described mechanically, chemically, and physically by science, according to the Kant-Laplace theory and the like. Yet we are now approaching a reversal in these fields. A conception will arise that will see the earth not in terms of purely mineral forces but in terms of plant, or what could be called etheric, forces. The plant directs its root toward the earth's center, and its upper part stands in relation to the sun. These are the forces that make the earth what it is; gravity is only secondary. The plants preceded minerals just as coal was once plant life; this will soon be discovered. Plants give the planet its form, and they then give off the substance from which its mineral foundation originates. The beginnings of this idea were given through Goethe in his plant morphology, but he was not understood. One will gradually begin to see the etheric, because it is that which is characteristic of the plant realm. When man is able to receive the growth forces of the plant kingdom, he will be released from the forces that now hinder him from beholding the Christ. Spiritual science should be an aid to this, but this will be impossible as long as man believes that the ascent of the physical into the etheric has nothing to do with his inner being. It is of no matter in the laboratory whether a man has a strong or weak moral character. This is not the case, however, when one is concerned with etheric forces. Then one's moral constitution affects one's results. For this reason, it is impossible for modern man to develop this ability if he remains as he is. The laboratory table must first become an altar, just as it was for Goethe who, as a child, kindled his small altar to nature with the rays of the rising sun.

This will happen before long. Those who are able to say, “Not I, but Christ in me,” will be able to work with the plant forces in the same way that mineral forces are now understood. Man's inner being and his outer surroundings work into one another reciprocally; what is outside transforms itself for us, depending on whether our vision is clear or clouded. Even in this century, and increasingly throughout the next 2,500 years, human beings will become able to behold Christ in His etheric form. They will behold the etheric earth from which the plant world springs up. They will also be able to see, however, that inner goodness works differently on the environment from evil. He who possesses this science in the highest degree is the Maitreya Buddha, who will come in approximately 3,000 years. “Maitreya Buddha” means the “Buddha of right-mindedness.” He is the one who will make clear for human beings the significance of right-mindedness. This will all lead human beings to know in which direction they must go. You must undertake to transform abstract ideals into concrete ideals in order to contribute to an evolution that moves forward. If we do not succeed in this, the earth will sink into materialism, and humanity will have to begin again, either on the earth, after a great catastrophe, or on the next planet. The earth needs anthroposophy! Whoever realizes this is an anthroposophist.

It is now my task to explain, episodically in a sense, something that is related directly to the practical and general outward life of humanity, in order to cast light on the direct relation to life that is essential to spiritual science in our time. I hope we shall still come to the parts of our lectures that have more to do with the inner life. As a whole, the central concern of our present considerations is to attain a spiritual scientific understanding of the position of the individual human being in practical, even vocational, life. On The Karma of Vocation is the title I should like to give these lectures I have been giving for some time. Thus, it is necessary to gain a broader basis, and so I must explain in a more comprehensive sense much that is related to the questions we are discussing.

We have made it clear that what the human being achieves for the world in any vocation is by no means something to be set aside as being prosaic, but that, as we have seen, it is most intimately related with his remote cosmic future. Each person integrates himself in a way into the social order of life. Because of his karma he or she is impelled to a certain vocation, none of which is to be considered more prosaic or poetic than the other, and we know that what a person accomplished within the social order is the first germ of something destined not only to have significance for our earth, but to evolve as the earth passes through the states of Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan. What may be called an understanding of vocation, a knowledge of the significance of the immediate life, may truly dawn upon us through such reflections. It is precisely the mission of our spiritual scientific endeavors not merely to communicate pleasant sounding theories. Rather, we must let our souls be touched by what is suitable to place us correctly in life so that each person is in his or her own place in accordance with the spirit of our age, with the arché⁸⁰ of our time. Thus, our truths bear a character that is always strong enough to constitute the basis for a real judgment of life. We will not revel in comforting conceptions, but will take in those that will carry us through life.

When we recall something I have frequently emphasized, we shall see that even our scientific endeavors have the tendency to touch our souls with what is really meaningful for life. I have often called your attention to a significant fact that may, in a relatively short time, perhaps play a most important scientific role if only those whose mission is to cultivate learning are not too obtuse. A great deal of emphasis is placed today on the role heredity plays in human life, and teachers who talk about the vocations a person is destined to have also mention inherited characteristics when they wish to pass judgment on those things related to the future vocation of a person just entering life. Of course, they are just parroting what constitutes the current scientific view of the world. But those discussing the problem of heredity today mean that children inherit certain characteristics from their parents and ancestry strictly in a physical sense. External science cannot yet open its mind to a recognition of repeated earth lives and the carrying over of human characteristics from previous incarnations. People talk about heredity, but a correct opinion of it will be attained only when we introduce something that can be understood when we grasp the content of my little book, The Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy.⁸¹ There we see that human life first passes through a period of seven years, approximately to the change of teeth; a second period to the fourteenth year; a third to the twenty-first, and so on all the way to the twenty-eighth year. Something more thorough on this subject may be found also in a small brochure that contains the substance of my lecture delivered a short time ago in Liestal,⁸² in which I wished to call attention again, from another point of view, to these truths of the division of human development between birth and death into seven-year periods. We know that, in essence, the physical body develops inwardly between birth and the change of teeth, that the etheric body develops up to puberty, and that the astral body then passes through its development.

Let us direct our attention today to the time between the fourteenth and sixteenth years, accepting that it differs according to climate, nationality, etc. At that time, humans become mature, as we know, and are able to beget children. Now, it will be recognized that the consideration of this particular time is of the greatest importance to the scientific theory of heredity because the human being must by this time have developed all those characteristics that enable him to impart traits to his descendants. He cannot develop these capacities later, so this makes this an important period of life. To be sure, traits of secondary importance that are developed later may be passed over to descendants, but human beings are so constructed from the scientific point of view that they become fully mature between the fourteenth and sixteenth years with respect to transmitting traits to their descendants. It cannot be said, therefore, that what is essential in human development after this point has significance for the question of heredity. Science must find the reasons why humans cease at this point to develop the bases for the transmission of hereditary characteristics. It is entirely different in animals because they make no essential further progress in life beyond this time. It is this that we must carefully consider.

Now, without discussing many related things here, I wish to point out from the spiritual scientific view what really lies at the bottom of the matter. When we fix our attention back beyond the time of birth, a longer period of time stretches out before us that the human being lives through in the spiritual world between the last death and this birth. Within this stretch of time lie those processes I have often described in mere outline. All that takes place then between death and a new birth naturally has an influence on a human being and includes especially many things that are related to what he works out in his physical life between birth and the fourteenth or sixteenth years. The very thing a person is elaborating here mainly in the unconscious, he or she elaborates between death and the new birth from a higher consciousness. Let us be clear about this matter. Here upon the earth the human being perceives through his eyes and other senses the mineral, vegetable, animal world, etc. But while he is in the spiritual world together with Angels, Archangels, Archai, Exusiai, and also with those humans who have passed through the portal of death and are able to be in some close relationship with him, his attention is then directed, when he looks below, primarily upon what is connected with life in this period of time. It is from there, as I have explained even in exoteric lectures, that everything underlying heredity is determined. From a reflection I have already set before you,⁸³ we know that, as a residue of the processes between death and a new birth, all that results from a previous vocational life manifests itself in the physiognomy, gestures, and in the entire hereditary tendency. Thus, it is really possible to see in the human being during this period of time, in the way he walks, in the movements of his hands, in his general bearing, the result of his vocational life during his previous incarnation.

But then the period from the fourteenth until the twenty-first year begins, which stands in opposition, in a sense, to the preceding period. As you have heard, the hereditary impulses cannot continue to work in the same fashion during this time; the time is past during which these hereditary impulses develop. Science as yet pays no attention whatever to such matters, but, if it is not to be completely divorced from all reality, it will be compelled to do so. This is the period, however, in which the human being is guided toward his new vocation through the vague and unconscious working of certain impulses into which the processes that occur between death and a new birth play in lesser degree. During this period the impulses of the preceding incarnation are effective in far greater measure. While circumstances are thus developing, he believes along with others that he would be impelled to enter this or that vocation even if only these external circumstances were effective. But they are really unconsciously connected with something living within his soul that comes directly from the preceding incarnation. Note the difference. During the preceding period from the seventh to the fourteenth year, the previous incarnation, fructified by what has happened between death and a new birth, passes into our bodily organization, thereby making us a copy of our preceding vocation. In the following period, however, the impulses no longer work into us, no longer impress gestures on us, but guide us on the way to a new vocation.

You will see what infinitely fruitful thought for future education will result from these reflections if only external world culture can decide to reckon with repeated earthly lives, rather than taking fantastic ideas as truths—fantastic because they only consider a fragment of reality, one that encompasses only the present life between birth and death. Here we must gain a perspective of the immeasurable importance of the entrance of spiritual science into those circles connected with the education and development of the human being, and also with the influence on human life of the external social order. Naturally, we are here looking out over wide perspectives, but they are connected through and through with reality; what governs the evolution of the world is not chaos but order—or even disorder, but nevertheless something that is to be explained only on the basis of spiritual life. So a person who knows the laws that are connected with repeated earthly lives can face the world in counsel and deed in an entirely different manner; he can utter things, or even set things in motion, that have to do with the course of human life.

Bear in mind that, after all, everything in the world runs in cycles in a sense. We know, of course, the vast cycles of the post-Atlantean age: the Indian, ancient Persian, Chaldaic-Egyptian, Greco-Latin, our own and what will follow. Human souls are born many times in all these cycles—some of them only once. But it is not only here that we can see how life on earth runs in cycles: it takes its cyclic course in such a way that certain conditions can be determined when one knows how to properly judge previous conditions. If, for instance, we are able to judge in the right way what was spiritually at work in the first centuries of the Christian development—let us say from the third to the seventh centuries—so that we know the spiritual impulses of that time, we can judge, in turn, what social needs may be effective today.

Cyclic evolutions do take place. We bring unhappiness to a person who is destined to be placed in a certain fashion in the cyclic evolution when we advise him or her to assume a different relationship to life. Since, however, human beings must become increasingly conscious in life during our fifth post-Atlantean epoch, a knowledge of the corresponding laws must gradually come to light. It must become possible for a person to consider himself or herself in a connection with what is taking place and playing its role in their environment. This does not consist merely in learning how to direct children to the right vocation, but also in developing the right thoughts—for we know that thoughts are realities—about the relationship one has to the world. No matter what our station in life is, what we may think of all that is occurring in the world due to the development of the spirit of the time will become increasingly important, and the human soul will have to become increasingly more conscious of this.

Now you will recall how I have undertaken to characterize the currents that have arisen with the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. I have shown you⁸⁴ how a current has arisen over the western regions that tends especially to make people bourgeois—a comprehensive, approximate expression, but nevertheless the bourgeoisie has arisen in Western Europe and America. We have contrasted this ideal with the pilgrim, the Eastern goal, which is still only a goal since it has come less clearly to expression than that of the comparatively more advanced Western culture. These two ideals, the bourgeois and the pilgrim, face each other and, unless we realize the significance of this for life, we cannot possibly develop the understanding that is growing within us. In earlier ages men could face life without understanding since they were guided by divine spiritual powers; today, however, as we develop toward the future, we must have understanding.

You see, such things as I have explained to you in the form of the two currents, one having its source in heredity and the other in redemption, must be fully considered if we wish to judge life today because they force themselves upon us more and more. That these things press upon us is not a mere assertion of mine but something that may be said from present reality—something felt and to a certain extent known for a long time past by people who were not dull and indolent, but who confronted life with full participation. Indeed, I have already called your attention to the peculiarity of our times. Many people today have a thorough feeling for the things that are coming to pass in life, but they do not possess the ability—remember what I told you about Jaurés⁸⁵—to ascend to an understanding of repeated earthly lives and karma, either of the individual or of the world; they cannot, therefore, comprehend the very thing they perceive. But at numerous points within modern evolution we find those whose eyes are open to what is happening, in spite of the fact that they never developed the ability to explain matters from the standpoint of repeated earthly lives. Because of their failure to accept repeated earthly lives, they contributed much toward bringing about the very conditions they severely criticized. This is exactly the peculiarity of people today, even those of clearest vision; they criticize what exists and yet labor toward bringing about the very things they criticize while judging them correctly. That is how unconscious impulses play into human life.

Let us take, for example, a man who really saw a good deal in an extraordinarily clear manner, especially in the life of his environment. Such was John Stuart Mill,⁸⁶ who was born in 1806 and died in 1873, a famous English philosopher, looked upon by many as actually the one who renewed logic and developed it further. He also developed social insights in the most comprehensive way, directing his attention especially to the social evolution of the world as he knew and encountered it in his environment. He wanted to answer the question that assumed for him a tragic character: In what direction does the present age advance? Where does what has forced itself as a social character upon the life of the nineteenth century lead? He said that the bourgeois was the human type that had developed in the nineteenth century and asked how the bourgeois differs from earlier human types. He answered by saying that in earlier times the individual was more significant; that more individuality spoke through the earlier human being. I will couch this more in our concepts, but Mill expressed fundamentally the same thing in his. According to him, the soul had in a certain way elevated itself up above the immediate external physical reality. On the other hand, the bourgeois type works toward levelling and rendering all men equal in the social order. But what, asked Mill, is the result of this process of becoming equal? Not the result of becoming equal in the greatness of the human soul, but of becoming equal in its nothingness. He thus indicates a future for humanity during this fifth post-Atlantean epoch in which men in their social life would become ever more the “pressed caviar” of bourgeois nothingness, and he felt this to be a tragic knowledge.

People sense such things in different ways, however, depending on whether they are born in the Western or Eastern culture. The Russian thinker, Herzen,⁸⁷ acquainted himself thoroughly with these assertions, with these items of knowledge presented by Mill. In his soul, however, all this worked differently. The Western thinker describes this perspective of bourgeois life with a certain nonchalance, one might say, but the Eastern thinker suffers terribly under the thought then maintained by Mill and Herzen that Europe was on the way toward taking on the nature of China. As you can deduce from the writing of Herzen of 1864, both Mill and Herzen—the one with an Eastern and the other with a Western coloring—consider what has come about earlier in China as the goal toward which Europe is aiming as a later stage; that is, toward a new Chinese entity in which men will become the “pressed caviar” of bourgeois nullities. A constriction of the intellect will come, says Mill, a constriction of the intellect and of the energies of life, a polishing away of the personality, everything that leads to a levelling down. Constant flattening out of life, as he expresses it, constant exclusion of general human interests from life—so does Mill express the matter, and Herzen confirms it, but from a mood of tragic sensitivity; it is a reduction to the interests of mercantile offices and bourgeois prosperity. So did Mill and Herzen express themselves even in the sixties of the last century! Mill, who speaks first of his own country, said that England was on the way toward becoming a modern China, and Herzen said that not only England but all of Europe was on the way to becoming a modern China. It may be deduced from Herzen's book of 1864 that he and Mill more or less agreed that unless an unexpected upswing should take place in Europe, which might lead to a rebirth of human personality giving it the force needed to overcome the bourgeois, Europe, in spite of its noble forefathers and its Christianity, would become another China. These words were spoken in 1864!

Herzen, however, had no opportunity to take karma and repeated earthly lives into account. He could admit such knowledge as we have mentioned with only the deepest feeling of tragedy, which he expressed by saying that we are not the physicians, but rather the sufferings, of our time because what now approached—perhaps the thought can be better expressed with the English term used by Herzen and Mill than with the German—is “conglomerated mediocrity.” Herzen expressed this from a feeling of tragedy, saying that a time will come in Europe when the realism of the modern scientific view will have been carried so far that no one will any longer believe in anything belonging to another, a super-sensible, world. It will be said that outward physical realities are the only goal to be striven for, and human beings will be sacrificed for the sake of physical realities without any one realizing that they are something more than simply the connecting link for those who are to follow. The individual will be sacrificed to the future common colony. Such were the words uttered by Herzen who thought the one barrier to preventing Europe from rapidly becoming another China was Christianity, which is not so easily overcome. Yet, he saw no way of escape. He felt that Christianity had also become shallow, flattened out by revolution, which, as he said, was also growing shallow and had deteriorated to the bourgeois liberalism of the nineteenth century, to a conglomerated mediocrity. Referring to what Mill had stated and having in mind the downfall of ancient Rome, Herzen said, “I see the inevitable collapse of old Europe; at the portal of the old world (he meant Europe), there stands no Catiline, but death.”

With a certain justification and as one who sees much that is around him in the contemporary world yet is utterly unable to admit the sustaining concepts and ideas of spiritual science, the contemporary Russian writer, Merezhkovsky,⁸⁸ who has learned a good deal from these two thinkers, Mill and Herzen, remarks that today the yardstick has taken the place of the scepter of earlier times, the account book has usurped the place of the Bible and the sales counter replaces the altar. His mistake lies in not going beyond the mere criticism of these things. The yardstick, the account book, and the counter do have a place in our fifth post-Atlantean epoch. We know that it must be so and that it is in accord with irrevocable world karma. What is needed is not merely to condemn these things, but to pour into this world of the yardstick, the account book, and the counter the spirit that alone is the equal of them; this is the attitude of spiritual science.

These are serious matters, and I wish to make it clear, as I always endeavor to do on such occasions, that I am not merely setting forth what I myself believe, but that what I have expressed is in agreement with those who have viewed life with open and wakeful eyes. Many people may hold views and opinions, but the important question is how these views are related to their time, whether they have roots in the soil of the time and whether these people can prove the things they assert. It is a significant fact that the age is taking on a certain character which can be seen by people who are willing to do so. It is not a question of attributing a certain character to the age in whatever way we please, but that we must really see how the spiritual evolution of humanity advances from cycle to cycle.

I have called your attention to the fact that there are occult brotherhoods that possess a knowledge of these things based on traditions handed down from ancient times and derived from atavistic occult teaching. As you know from previous discussions, these brotherhoods—especially in the West but men of the East have also become their adherents—have taken on a dubious character. This does not prevent them from preserving certain secrets of existence even though they do so in a way unsuitable for the present. The person who listens to the spiritual message for our time and communicates that portion of spiritual science that can be given publicly according to the intention of the spirit of the time, frequently meets with marked opposition that comes from dark sources. But this opposition is directed and guided everywhere by spiritual powers, which must always be taken into consideration. It will readily be understood, therefore, that today opposition is easily raised against the spiritual science that is to live within our movement, by the constantly repeated suggestion that such a spiritual science should not be created for large groups of people. All sorts of accepted powers are summoned in order to render this spiritual science innocuous. University professors travel from one country to another to declare that they are forced to oppose especially my spiritual science because people today, as they say, must look at reality—the kind of reality that they alone see—and not at such things that draw men away from it. Often there is method in such attacks because anyone who is not blind sees how these people seek out the places that are politically right for them to work most effectively through the respect felt for them as university professors, for example; these are the places where they believe they can most effectually discredit an opponent. They believe they can accomplish most when they choose the right places and use the right words; that is, words that speak to current passions.

All these things are contained within a larger relationship, however, and what causes the greatest fear of all, we might even say what horrifies these people, is the thought that a number of individuals might come to understand a little of the characteristic life of our day. The utmost desire is felt, especially by those who belong to the occult brotherhoods I have described, to prevent human beings from attaining clarity in everything connected with the real laws of life, since it is among the uninformed that the interested individual can best work. He can no longer exert an influence when people begin to know how they really stand in the contemporary world. This is dangerous for those who want to fish in troubled waters, who desire to keep their esoteric knowledge to themselves, applying it so as to shape human social relationships as they wish them to be. There are members of occult brotherhoods who, within their own ranks, are fully convinced that spiritual powers are at work everywhere in our environment and that there is a bond between the living and the dead. In fact, within their occult brotherhoods they do not talk about anything except the laws of the spiritual world. Our spiritual science, too, possesses a certain part of this knowledge, but it is soon to be made public. They talk about this truth that they have taken over from ancient atavistic tradition and then publish articles in the newspapers in which they oppose the very same things, branding them as medieval superstitions. These are often the very same persons who, in their secret association, nurture spiritual science as a traditional teaching and then come out in opposition to it in the public press, designating it as a medieval superstition, a traditional mysticism, and so forth. They consider it to be entirely proper that they should not know by what principles they are being guided. Of course, there are also all kinds of strange members of occult brotherhoods who know only as much about the world as they can touch with their noses. They too talk about the present impossibility of imparting publicly the content of mystery teachings to human beings.

Now, there are various ways of keeping human beings in a fog of ignorance as I have indicated in my Liestal lecture⁸⁹ and in other public lectures. Just as true spiritual science will impart to us certain ideas and concepts that are like a key giving us access to the spiritual world, so also can certain concepts be found through which it is possible to delude that part of the population that has not arrived at the flattening out of the understanding through a scientific view of the world of which Mill and Herzen speak. Indeed, it is possible to form concepts in more than one way. If it were known how concepts are really formed publicly today in order to manipulate the souls of men in the “right” way, many a person would gradually sense an impulse to come to true spiritual science, which speaks of these things in an honest, upright way. I shall not deal today with all the lofty concepts communicated to persons as ideals, which are not intended, however, to produce what lies within these ideals but rather have an entirely different purpose, but I wish to make clear to you by means of a simple example how those who are craving satisfaction of certain mystical longings are easily deluded.

I will give a most stupid example. It might be said, for instance, that even the ancient Pythagoreans looked upon numbers as containing the laws governing the world. Much is concealed within numerical relationships. Let us take, for example, two numerical relationships:

Nicholas II of Russia:
Born in the year ........................... 1868
Ascended the throne in ................ 1894
Reigned for ................................. 22 years
His age was ................................. 48 years
Total ..... 3832

Dividing this total by 2, we get 1916, the most important year of the war. This is stated on the basis of a “most secret” numerical relationship. Let us take:

George V of England:

Half of this is 1916.

The destinies of these two individuals are intimately connected. Here you see how the Pythagorean laws of number play a role in the world! But, to provide a surfeit, let us take also:

Poincaré:
Born in the year .......................... 1860
Has ruled since ............................ 1913
That amounts to .......................... 3 years
His age is ......................................56 years
Total ...... 3832

Half of this is 1916.

You see how the numbers agree among these three Allies!

It is, of course, one of the dumbest examples imaginable. If I now went down into the audience and asked one of the ladies—as I shall naturally not do—when she was born, how long she has been a member of the Anthroposophical Society, how old she is—which, as I have said, I shall not ask—when she became a member of the Society, and then added these numbers and took half of the total, I would arrive at precisely the same figure. It is an ideal example and so that it may include present reality, let us select, then, any lady or gentlemen; it may just as well be a gentlemen:

XY was born in the year .......................... 1870
He entered the Anthroposophical Society.... 1912
So he was in the Society .......................... 4 years
And he is .................................................. 46 years old
Total ................... 3832

Half of this is 1916.

It is a really absurd example. I can assure you, however, that all sorts of things that have to do with searching out the secrets of numbers rest on nothing more; the problems are simply a little more concealed than those I have given. Moreover, concepts taken from other fields can just as well be shaped in the right manner and used for throwing dust into the eyes of people; by using proper methods people are hindered from seeing what is concealed behind these things and many have been taken in even by the example I have given. It is profoundly significant that destiny chooses 1916. Had we calculated for 1914, it would have been connected with the beginning of the war! Just as these numbers have been put together for these three Allies, any kind of numbers can, after all, be put together. Many things have been similarly fabricated from different concepts but they are not at all more significant or intelligent. They are less easily observed when somewhat more concealed. Then, when all sorts of numerical relationships are produced along with such expressions as “unfathomable,” and “deep as the world,” anyone can find innumerable adherents and also give the impression that he is speaking from profound depths of human knowledge. But there is really something to the methods used by certain individuals who wish to throw dust in the eyes of the people. In one place or another this or that concept is made public and other things are added, and those pronouncements go back to some occult connection which calls for the attainment of certain purposes. Then one must only become acquainted with the course these people will adopt.

If such things are to become impossible in the future, it is necessary that a number of people shall not have that constricted understanding and energy of life to which Mill refers; rather, they must have the sustaining understanding and supporting life energy that come from spiritual science. These are to work in a fructifying way upon the intellect and life energy of men so that their approach to life shall be such that no one can delude them. These things are connected with the feeling of fear and even horror which the strange news—travelling from eastern Europe to the West—aroused that an individual such as Mme. Blavatsky⁹⁰ had made her appearance as if coming from nowhere. I have often pointed out⁹¹ that this was decidedly significant for the course of the nineteenth century. She appeared at the very time when the struggle was most bitter between the so-called esotericists and the so-called progressive occultists. That is, the reactionaries called themselves the esotericists. They used the word thus because they wished to keep the occult secrets to themselves. The life of Blavatsky fell into this period. There was the danger, through the special construction of this life in which truly far-reaching forces were at work from the subconscious, that spiritual secrets might be revealed through her and people might learn something in the right way. This danger really existed and people were living under it from the 1840's on—in a sense, ever since her birth or childhood. From then on, there was a constant endeavor so to arrange things that Blavatsky might be brought into the service of the Western occult brotherhoods. She would then have been able to bring to light only what they considered suitable for their own ends.

The whole affair took a strange turn, however. I have told you how the effort was made at first by the “Grand Orient” to lure Blavatsky, and how this failed because she set conditions that could not be fulfilled. She then caused mischief in an American brotherhood because her temperament always rebelled against what others wanted to do with her. I have told you how she was then expelled, and how there was no way left to deal with her other than by imposing upon her a kind of occult imprisonment, and by bringing her into the Indian occult brotherhood, whose practice of occultism was considered harmless to the so-called Western brotherhoods because it resembled that of Blavatsky. They thought, “Oh well, even if all sorts of things come to light from Indian sources, they are by no means able to disturb our circles much.” Most of the occultists who were working with serious occultism said, “Now, how can anything much result since we have surrounded Blavatsky with all those pictures that shut her out from a real knowledge of the spiritual world. She will take in only such things as the old ladies, male and female, discuss among themselves at afternoon teas (I am quoting here!) and this will not seriously disturb our circles.”

The affair became uncomfortable only after our movement appeared, which took things in a serious way and opened an access to the fountainhead of a real spiritual world. But you also see that the bases of the conflicts that then resulted lie most deep. The truth is that something of the impulses that had to come from the Eastern world actually was in Blavatsky, and there was really a certain necessity for a synthesis to take place with the Western World. But the important fact was that it had gradually come about that certain purposes and goals were striven for which, as I have already indicated, do not have truth as their objective but are really seeking quite different goals. Think about it, when it is known how human cycles take their course and what the character of the present world must be in relation to its Archai after this or that has happened in earlier evolution, it is then possible to be active in accordance with this truth. If a person possesses, on the one hand, traditional occult knowledge and, on the other, comes out in the press and public life against this occult knowledge as a medieval superstition, he can work in the dark and achieve the important things he is actually striving for. Things are interrelated in the world, but it is not always necessary that people should understand what the interrelationships are, because for many these connections can play their role in the subconscious. As I have indicated yesterday, what is important is that one knows how to direct one's perception to the right places. There something often appears to be quite insignificant, but when seen in the right connection, it explains much more than is explained by what one considers to be significant. Here the same thing may be said regarding many other things in the world, as Hamlet asserted concerning good and evil: Nothing is good or evil in itself, but man makes it so in his thoughts. So it is also with many other matters. The significance of one thing or another is not to be found in what it represents for outer maya, for the great illusion, but the significance of things must be recognized by associating the right concepts with them. I will mention an example taken from the most recent times in Europe, without thereby intending to enter any sort of partisan or political current.

There may be men here in Europe who, since they all like to think short-sightedly nowadays, look upon the outbreak of the present war as being connected with the murder of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand,⁹² Heir Apparent to the Throne. I do not say that this is untrue or that there is no truth in it, but on the basis of this event they can explain certain occurrences that they trace back to this murder of July 1914. But there may also be other persons who stress that, in a Western newspaper of January 1913, the statement appeared that the Archduke Franz Ferdinand was to be murdered in the near future for the well-being of European humanity. What I mean to say is that we may go back as far as the actual murder, but we may also go back to the notice of it that appeared in a Western newspaper in January 1913.⁹³ It is also possible to go back to the murder of Jaures on the last evening before the war began—probably never entirely explained, as I recently suggested. But it is equally possible to go back to the same newspaper to which I just referred, which carried the statement in 1913 saying that if conditions in Europe should lead to war, Jaures would be the first to meet his death—You may consult a certain occult almanac⁹⁴ that was sold for forty francs and find in the issue for 1913, which was printed, of course, in 1912, the statement that he who was expected to be the ruler in Austria would not be the ruler, but rather a younger man, whom people wouldn't even now consider as the successor to the old Emperor Franz Josef.⁹⁵ That was printed in a so-called occult almanac for 1913; printed, therefore, in the autumn of 1912. Moreover, in the same almanac for 1914, printed in 1913, the same remark was repeated⁹⁶ because obviously the attempt on Emperor Franz Josef's life had miscarried in 1913. When these things are seen more clearly, the connection will someday be discovered that exists between what actually happens externally and what is cooked up by hidden, dark sources. Many will recognize the threads that lead from public life into this or that brotherhood, and how stupid it is for other brotherhoods continually to declare that silence should be maintained regarding certain mystery truths. Such people may be as innocent as children, in spite of the fact that they may be old members of this or that brotherhood of Freemasons which lay claim to secret sources. Nevertheless, they further intensify the obscurity and darkness that is already present among human beings.

I recently gave an example in St. Gallen and Zurich of an especially enlightened pastor and professor,⁹⁷ who belongs to an occult brotherhood, and pointed out the discontinuity in his thinking. He is one of those people who make their presence felt through their own denseness which they acquire in their occult brotherhoods. It is the mission of many leaders in those brotherhoods to keep members like this professor in the dark, and by this a rather unfavorable influence is exerted. People must open their eyes, but these eyes must first learn how to see. The direction of one's perception is determined by the enlightenment one has received regarding the spiritual world. Judgments are continually made that seldom take human relationships into account. Thus, as I have once indicated, I, too, was at one time to be made tractable through being “appointed” to some post in the Theosophical Society at the time Alcyone (Krishnamurti)⁹⁸ was “appointed.” Everything that pulses through our movement might have been neatly swept away if I had fallen in with what was suggested to me; that is, to become the “reincarnated John!” Certain sources would then have announced that Alcyone is one thing and he is the reincarnated John. Then the entire movement need not have experienced what later occurred.

Vanity also belongs among the various things that stupefy people. Much can be achieved by getting hold of it in the right way, especially if the methods are known by which certain concepts are to be formed. I have already pointed out that the Theosophical Society simply worked too amateurishly. The others do these things more cleverly and practically, but it is naturally not possible to do much that is clever when it is necessary to reckon with a personality under whom those near her have groaned a good deal; when it is necessary, for example, to reckon with such a personality as Annie Besant,⁹⁹ who is full of violent emotion. Those in her company have sighed for years because of the state into which they declared she would bring them because she also, of course, had come within the aura of a particular Indian occultism. Moreover, she also possessed curious characteristics that came from strange depths and were rather inappropriate for a number of people even in the Theosophical Society. A number of individuals, mostly men—excuse me, but no allusion is intended—groaned because they were forever trying to get Annie Besant a little more on the track so things might proceed. But there were women also who sighed, and they always gave in to her again since they always tried, above all, to practice theosophy—to be sure, in the sense in which it was there practiced, but in such a way that it should become something like a theosophical sort of conglomerated mediocrity. There was a desire to introduce into the practice of spiritual science what John Stuart Mill called conglomerated mediocrity.

I myself observed how a representative of the Theosophical Society worked in a city belonging to the section of which I was at that time the general secretary.¹⁰⁰ I went to this city to deliver some lectures, having been called there by a lady representative. But she said to me, “We shall gradually give up the lectures because they do not have the right objective. We must arrange afternoon teas and invite people to become mutually acquainted.” Her idea was that this is done best along with sandwiches. “But the lectures (and she said this with a certain disparaging expression) will have a less and less important role.” It may be said that this personality was also enveloped in the right sheaths from a particular direction. There are, indeed, many individuals working as representatives who do not know at times where the wires that pull them originate. Wires are frequently not needed. Small twine will work, even packaging cord. Indeed, it is lamentable to see how humanity behaves at times even when the holiest and most serious things of mankind are at stake.

In particular, the greatest fear was that Blavatsky, provided she continued to be healthy and brought up to the surface what was in the subconscious parts of her nature, would be politically dangerous simply because of her special gifts and exceptional connection with her own Russian people. Many special efforts were made to prevent this from happening. Indeed, beginning in the sixties and seventies, if what then lived in Blavatsky could have become effective, many things of which such individuals as Mill and Herzen had a perfectly clear view would then have taken an entirely different course. But certain ahrimanic powers succeeded in eliminating a great deal. Well, we will see how things will go with our spiritual science under the present distressing conditions. Right thinking about it will be possible only for those who are capable of perceiving its significance in reference to the mission of our fifth post-Atlantean epoch. You have already been able to discover to what extent our spiritual science really takes into account only what is purely human, and I think it is also possible to perceive a distinction between these things. We have often discussed Goethe's Faust and even produced it on the stage. It does not require a national background to present Faust in all its occult depths. But I leave it up to you to decide whether it is necessary to harbor nationalistic feelings or perhaps even a peculiar nationalistic fervor, in order to call Goethe, Schiller, and Lessing spirits of mediocre rank, as Maeterlinck¹⁰¹ has most recently done, and to write long articles about the mediocrity of Goethe, Schiller, and Lessing that the important newspapers of the world are persuaded to publish. You may decide there are even deeper reasons behind this.

Just put two things together. In the course of these reflections I have pointed out to you that Ku Hung Ming,¹⁰² the Chinese, has written a truly ingenious book claiming that the only salvation for the Europeans is to apply themselves to what is the essence of China. Thus, they would be enabled, so Ku¹⁰³ with a Magna Carta of loyalty, which can come only from what is essentially Chinese. Ku Hung Ming is a discerning spirit who, from a profound knowledge of the Chinese nature, confirms what Mill and Herzen already had sensed. He is a spirit, moreover, who is not a philologist or schoolmaster, but one who came from a practical profession like Max Eyth, whom I have already mentioned; that is, he is neither a theologian, schoolmaster nor philologist, but one who originally was a merchant, has had many occupations and knows life. Ku Hung Ming represents the Chinese nature, the life of China. From Ku Hung Ming's remarkably vivid descriptions, it is possible today to gain a conception that gives us the impression that Mill and Herzen—read Herzen's book of 1864—were entirely right when they called the teaching of Confucius and Laotze¹⁰⁴ the final consequence that must follow if Europe should be seized by the so-called positivistic realism, supported by conglomerated mediocrity, by bourgeois nothingness. The Chinese way of thinking is the final consequence of what is promulgated in the universities today and is spreading to the masses as the contemporary world view. It came from an earlier culture six hundred years before our era. Ku Hung Ming describes it clearly. Mill and Herzen described the way that will be taken by a European culture based solely upon external positivistic realism. From one side Europe will take hold of the Chinese entity; from the other, the only salvation for Europe lies in the Chinese way of thinking.

Perhaps there may be a third side and I hope you will permit me to raise this very question at the conclusion of today's considerations. How would it be if there were also a side to which it would be entirely agreeable if a Chinese should advise the Europeans to choose their only existing salvation? How would it be if it were not mere chance that this teaching of Ku Hung Ming is being introduced into Europe today? It is brilliant from the standpoint of the Chinese nature, but is it not also capable of confusing those people who do not receive it with a clear mind, with senses awakened by spiritual science and possibly designed to maneuver the people to a point where they embrace the ways of China? This is precisely what is intended, just as Mill and Herzen have already correctly seen that certain occult brotherhoods have set their sails in the direction of acquiring the essence of China, since in a Chinafied Europe it would be easiest to include what they want. Why, then, should it not be in keeping with the will of a brotherhood that a Chinese should advise the Europeans to pay heed to the beauties that might come from this Chinese way of thinking? Why may we not expect that the so-called most enlightened should be captivated by the advice of a Chinese since Europeans no longer know what to do?

Since I have said how significant that Chinese book is, I also feel obligated from the representative standpoint of spiritual science to call attention to the following: Such phenomena as the book of Ku Hung Ming—or really, the books, since two have appeared—should certainly be examined but we also must know that, under certain circumstances, far-reaching objectives are concealed behind them. It is entirely wrong not to become acquainted with them, but it is also wrong to be taken in by them. It is also most important to examine carefully everything that appears today, often from the most dubious sources, in the form of mysticism or occultism. Those of you who take into account what I have so frequently presented will endeavor also to see these things correctly. The modern world stands in the midst of all sorts of other currents, raising the question as to whether or not individuals possess the will power to see clearly and distinctly. We must, for example, be able to estimate thoroughly the difference between this current and one that still possesses more power today than is ordinarily opposed, and that proceeds from certain Roman Catholic sources. Initiation principles frequently stand behind them, though naturally those who bring them into the world are blind to what guides them. Let us now contrast certain things with others. On the one side, there is the Roman Church and, on the other, those occult brotherhoods. The Roman Church, which works in the way well-known to you, and those brotherhoods that, of course, wage a deadly war with the Church but also certainly possess and use occult knowledge; yet, before the public, they brand this as medieval superstition so that they may keep people in the right current and use them for their own purposes. Contrast this with the Roman Church. Just take the encyclical of December 8, 1864, Freedom of Conscience and of Worship,¹⁰⁵ that was proclaimed ex cathedra. Those principles in which men believe are mentioned there and they are then condemned: “It is stated by some people that freedom of conscience and or worship is the right of every human being. This is madness. This is an absurdity.” In the view of the Roman See, it is an absurdity, a madness, for the orthodox Catholic to lay claim to freedom of conscience and worship. This is one of the currents; the other finds that it is better not to say such things but rather to do things whereby the freedom of conscience, the freedom of one's own conviction, most of all, and the introduction of one's own conviction in human life, shall be abolished. Here you have two contrasting movements that are most significant for today; much depends on this.

The reason for my concluding today's lecture with these reflections was to admonish those who stand within our spiritual scientific movement to grasp the inner impulse of the soul and not belong among the somnolent, but among those who determine to strive for a vision of life as it is. To receive items of spiritual scientific knowledge and to believe them does not make one a spiritual scientist. Only that person is a spiritual scientist in the true sense whom the spiritual scientific truths have made into a clear-sighted human being, but also into one who possesses the will really to look in the right way at what is in his other environment, and at the right points, so as to be able to judge the situation in which one is placed in the world. If we wish to speak in a fruitful way about the karma of vocation, then this also belongs to the discussion.

We shall soon continue these reflections. The necessary light will then be cast upon what belongs more in the immediate, everyday life, the immediate karma of vocation.

• 80. The archai are the spirits of the time. “Arché“ is the singular of “archai.“
• 81. Printed in: Luzifer-Gnosis 1903–1908, Bibl.-No. 34, CE (1960) and as a separate edition.
• 82. The lecture was given on October 16, 1916, and was entitled “Das menschliche Leben vom Gesichtspunkte der Geisteswissenschaft (Anthroposophie)“ [Human Life from the Point of View of Spiritual Science (Anthroposophy)]. It is printed in: Philosophie und Anthroposophie. Gesammelte Aufsätze 1904–1918 [Philosophy and Anthroposophy. Collected Essays 1904–1918], Bibl.-No. 35, CE (Dornach, 1965).
• 83. Cf. Lecture V of November 13, 1916.
• 84. The reference is to lectures on October 7 and October 14, 1916, published in Innere Entwicklungsimpulse der Menschheit [Inner Developmental Impulses of Mankind], Bibl.-No. 171, CE (Dornach, 1964).
• 85. Lecture of October 29, 1916, “Innere Entwicklungsimpulse der Menschheit“ [Inner Developmental Impulses of Mankind], Bibl.- No. 171, CE (Dornach, 1964).
• 86. John Stuart Mill (1806–73), British philosopher and economist, espoused a modified humanitarian utilitarianism but is also regarded by some as one of the founders of positivism.
• 87. Alexander Ivanovich Herzen (1812–70) was a Russian writer and revolutionary. Steiner refers to Herzen's work Last Things and First Things (1864) and quotes from Dimitri S. Merezhkovsky's book Der Anmarsch des Pöbels [The Advance of the Mob] (Munich, 1907).
• 88. Dimitry Sergeyevich Merezhkovsky (1865–1941) was a renowned Russian critic and novelist who spent nearly half of his life in exile in Paris.
• 89. See footnote 82.
• 90. Helena Petrowna Blavatsky (1831–91). Together with Colonel Henry Steel Olcott she founded the Theosophical Society in the year 1875 in New York.
• 91. Steiner did this in detail in the lectures he gave in the fall of 1915. Cf. “Die okkulte Bewegung im 19. Jahrhundert und ihre Beziehung zur Weltkultur,“ Bibl.-No. 257, CE (Dornach, 1969). The Occult Movement in the Nineteenth Century, (London, Rudolf Steiner Press, 1973).
• 92. Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria-Este (1863–1914) was assassinated in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914.
• 93. The newspaper referred to was Paris-Midi. Cf. the speeches by Jean Jaures published by Victor Schiff (Berlin, 1919).
• 94. Almanach de Mme de Thèbes [pseudonym of an alleged Mme Anne Victoire de Savigny, died in 1917), “Conseils pour etre heureux“ (Paris, 103 ff.).
• 95. Cf. “L'assassin,“ in Almanach de Mme de Thebes 1913 (Paris, 1912): “The one who is supposed to rule Austria (Franz Ferdinand) is not going to rule but rather a young man who at this time is not intended to be the ruler (Karl I).“
• 96. See “Més predications de l'an passé,“ Almanach de Mme de Thebes 1914 (Paris, 1913): “The tragic event that I predicted for the Austrian imperial family has not yet occurred, but it will definitely take place before the first half of the year has elapsed.“
• 97. The reference is to Dr. Friedrich Mahling, Hamburg. In his lecture on October 26, 1916, in St. Gallen, Rudolf Steiner quotes from Mahling's booklet Die Gedankenwelt der Gebildeten [The World of Thought of the Educated]. Cf. Die Verbindung zwischen den Lebenden und den Toten [The Connection between the Living and the Dead], Bibl.-No. 168, CE (Dornach, 1976).
• 98. Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) was proclaimed by the Theosophical Society in 1909 as an incarnation of Maitreya, the messianic Buddha. After a two-year tour of America and England with Annie Besant, Krishnamurti renounced these claims in 1929.
• 99. Annie Besant (1847–1933) was elected President of the Theosophical Society in May, 1907.
• 100. Rudolf Steiner had been secretary of the German branch of the Theosophical Society since its founding on October 20, 1902.
• 101. Maurice Maeterlinck (1862–1949) was a Belgian writer.
• 102. Ku Hung-Ming, Der Geist des chinesischen Volkes und der Ausweg aus dem Krieg [The Spirit of the Chinese People and the Way out of the War] (1916).
• 103. pp. 168–169 in Ku Hung-Ming's book (cf. footnote 102): “Therefore, the first task must be to find some way to give the generals and politicians power, the power to make peace. The nations now waging war in Europe can achieve this only by tearing up their present Magna Cartas of Freedom and by replacing them with a new Magna Carta of Loyalty, such as we Chinese have it in our religion of the good citizen.“
• 104. Confucius, Chinese Kung Fu-tse (551–579? B.C.), a Chinese philosopher. Lao-tze (born approximately 604 B.C.) was also a Chinese philosopher and the co-founder of Taoism. He was called “the old master.“
• 105. This encyclical has become known as the so-called “Syllabus Pius' IX.“

Many of you know that recently in Munich we repeated last year's performance of Schuré's drama, The Children of Lucifer. We also put our efforts into the production of a Rosicrucian Mystery in which we tried in a variety of ways to bring to expression what is living in our movement. For one thing, it was meant to show how the life of anthroposophy and its impulses can flow into art, into artistic form. Besides that, we should be aware that this Rosicrucian Mystery contains many of our spiritual scientific teachings that perhaps only in future years will be discerned. Please do not misunderstand me when I say that if people would exert themselves to some degree to read what is in it—not between the lines but right in the words themselves, though certainly in a spiritual sense—if people would exert themselves during the next few years to try to work with the drama, I would not have to give any more lectures for a long time. Much could be discovered in it that otherwise I would have to put forth as one or another theme in lectures. It is much more practical, however, to do this together as a group rather than as single individuals. It is fortunate in one sense that everything that lives in spiritual science also exists in such a form.

In relation to the Rosicrucian Mystery I should today like to speak about certain peculiarities of human self- knowledge. For this we will have to remind ourselves how the individuality living in the body of Johannes Thomasius brings about a characterization of himself. Therefore, I wish to start my lecture with a recitation of the scenes from the Rosicrucian Mystery that portray the self-knowledge of Johannes.

SCENE TWO

A place in the open; rocks and springs. The whole surroundings are to be thought of as within the soul of Johannes Thomasius. What follows is the content of his meditation.

(From the springs and rocks resounds:)
O man, know thou thyself.

Johannes:

For many years these words
of weighty meaning I have heard.
They sound to me from air and water;
they echo up from depths of earth.
And just as in the acorn secretly
the structure of the mighty oak is pressed,
within the power of these words
there is contained
all that my thought can comprehend
about the nature of the elements,
of souls as well as spirits,
of time and of eternity.
The world and my own nature
are living in the words:
O man, know thou thyself!

(From the springs and rocks resounds:)
O man, know thou thyself.

And now!—within me
it is becoming terribly alive.
Around me darkness weaves,
within me blackness yawns;
out of the world of darkness it resounds,
out of soul-blackness it rings forth:—
O man, know thou thyself!

(There sounds from springs and rocks:)
O man, know thou thyself.

And now it robs me of myself.
I change with every hour of the day.
I melt into the night.
The earth I follow in her cosmic course.
I rumble in the thunder,
I flash within the lightning,
I am.—But oh, I feel
already separated from my being.
I see my body's shell.
It is an alien being outside myself;
it is remote from me.
There hovers nearer now another body
and with its mouth I have to speak:
'He brought me bitter sorrow;
I gave him all my trust.
He left me in my grief alone.
He robbed me of the warmth of life
and thrust me deep into cold earth.'
She, whom I left, unhappy one,
I was now she herself,
and I must suffer her despair.
Self-knowledge lent me strength
to pour myself into another self.
O cruel words!
Your light is quenched by its own power.
O man, know thou thyself!

(There sounds from springs and rocks:)
O man, know thou thyself.

You guide me back again
into the spheres of my own being.
Yet how do I behold myself!
My human form is lost;
as raging dragon I must see myself,
begot of lust and greed.
I clearly sense
how an illusion's cloud
has hid from me till now
my own appalling form.
The fierceness of my being will devour me.
And running like consuming fire
through all my veins I feel those words,
which hitherto with elemental power
revealed to me the truth of suns and earths.
They live within my pulse,
they beat within my heart,
and even in my thought itself I feel
those unfamiliar worlds flare up as wild desires.
This is the fruitage of the words:
O man, know thou thyself.

(There sounds from springs and rocks:)
O man, know thou thyself.

There from the dark abyss,
what being gloats on me?
I feel the chains
that hold me fettered fast to you.
Prometheus was not chained so fast
upon the cliffs of Caucasus
as I am chained to you.
Who are you, horrifying being?

(There sounds from springs and rocks:)
O man, know thou thyself.

Oh, now I recognize you.
It is myself.
So knowledge chains to you, pernicious monster,

(Maria Enters, but is not noticed
By Johannes for the time being)

me, myself, pernicious monster.
I sought to flee from you.
The worlds wherein my folly fled,
in order to be free from my own self,
have dazzled and have blinded me.
And blind I am once more within the blinded soul.
O man, know thou thyself!

(There sounds from springs and rocks:)
O man, know thou thyself.

Johannes

(as if coming to himself, sees Maria. The meditation passes over into inner reality.)
Maria, you are here!

Maria

I've looked for you, my friend,
although I know
how dear to you is solitude,
now that so many people's views
have flooded through your soul.
And I know, too, that at this time
my presence cannot help my friend.
An urge that is obscure
is driving me to you this very moment
when words of Benedictus have called up, instead of light, such bitter grief
out of your spirit depths.

Johannes

How dear to me is solitude!
How often have I sought it out,
to find in it myself,
whenever pain and joy of men have driven me
into the labyrinths of thought.
Maria, that is past.
What Benedictus' words at first
drew forth out of my soul,
and what I then lived through
from everything those people said,
seems little to me now
if I compare it to the storm
which solitude has brought
into my heavy brooding.
O this solitude!
It drove me into cosmic spaces;
it tore me from myself.
Within that being to whom I brought such grief
I rose again but as another,
and had to bear the pain
which I myself had caused.
The fierce, dark solitude
then gave me back myself
but only to appall me
at the abyss of my own being.
-----------------------
For me, man's final refuge,
for me, my solitude is lost.

Maria

I must repeat my words to you:
no one but Benedictus can now help you.
The firm support we lack,
we both must have from him.
For know, I also can no longer bear
the riddle of my life,
unless some sign from him
can make the answer clear to me.
The lofty wisdom, pointing out
that only semblance and illusion
are spread out over all our life
as long as human thinking grasps alone its surface,
I've often held it up before my mind.
And every time it says:
you must be clear that an illusion
is shrouding you, though often it may seem the truth:
that evil fruit could come from your desire
to wake that light in others
which lives in you yourself.
My soul's best part can see
that heavy feelings of oppression
in you, my friend,
from living at my side
are too a portion of the thorny path
that leads you to the light of truth.
You must live through each terror
to which illusion can give birth
before the truth reveals itself to you:
thus speaks your star.
Yet through this starry word is also clear to me
that we must wander on the spirit paths together.
But when I seek these paths,
there spreads itself before my gaze dark night.
And blacker still becomes this night
through much which I must meet
as fruit of my own being.
We both must look for clarity in that light,
which for the eye can vanish
but never be extinguished.

Johannes

Maria, are you then aware
through what my soul has fought its way?
A heavy load indeed
has fallen upon you, dear friend.
Yet foreign to your being is that power
which has so wholly shattered me.
You can ascend to brightest heights of truth;
you can direct your steady gaze
at men's confusion.
In light, in darkness,
you will affirm yourself.
But every moment can
deprive me of myself.
I had to plunge into those people
who through their words revealed themselves just now.
I followed one into the cloister's loneliness,
I heard within the other's soul
Felicia's tales.
I was each one,
but for myself I died.
I'd have to have the faith
that beings spring from nothingness,
if I should cherish any hope
that from the nothingness in me
a human being ever could be born.
They force me out of fear into the darkness,
and hunt me through the darkness into fear,
these words imbued with wisdom:
O man, know thou thyself!

(From the springs and rocks resounds:)
O man, know thou thyself.

SCENE NINE

The same placed as in Scene Two

(From the springs and rocks resounds:)
O man, unfold your being..

Johannes

O man, unfold your being!
For three years now I've sought
for power of soul, with wings of courage,
to give these words their truth.
Through them a man who frees himself can conquer,
and conquering himself, can find his freedom.
O man, unfold your being!

(From the springs and rocks resounds:)
O man, unfold your being..

This power of soul is rising from within me
but only gently touching spirit hearing.
It harbours in itself the hope
that, growing, it will lead the human spirit
from narrowness far out to distant worlds,
just as the tiny acorn
mysteriously can expand
into the giant body of the noble oak.
The spirit in itself can bring to life
what weaves in air and water,
what has condensed to earth beneath.
For man can grasp
what has been taking hold of life
within the elements, in souls and spirits,
in time and in eternity.
The whole world-being lives within my soul,
when in the spirit there has taken root
the power that gives these words their truth:
O man, unfold your being!

(From the springs and rocks resounds:)
O man, unfold your being..

I feel them sounding in my soul,
rousing themselves to give me strength.
There lives in me the light,
there speaks around me brightness,
there germinates in me the light of soul,
there works in me world-radiance.
O man, unfold your being!

(From the springs and rocks resounds:)
O man, unfold your being.

I find myself secure on every side,
wherever these words' power follows me.
It will illuminate for me the senses' darkness
and will uphold me in the spirit heights.
It will enfill me with soul-substance
throughout all course of time.
The essence of the world I feel in me
and I must find myself in every world.
I see the being of my soul enlivened
through power that is my own.
I rest within myself.
I gaze on rocks and springs;
they speak the very language of my soul.
I find myself again within that being
to whom I brought such bitter grief,
and out of her I call out to myself:
'Oh, you must find me once again
and ease my suffering.'
The spirit's light will give me strength
to live the other self within myself.
O words of hope,
you stream forth power to me from all the worlds:
O man, unfold your being.

(From the springs and rocks resounds:)
O man, unfold your being.

You let me feel my weakness
and place me close to lofty aims of gods,
and blissfully I feel
such lofty aims' creative might
within my frail earth form.
Out of myself shall be revealed the purpose
for which the seed lies hidden in me.
And to the world I'll give myself
by living out my very being.
I want to feel these words' full power,
although they sound so gently.
They shall become for me a quickening fire
in my soul forces
and on my spirit paths.
I feel now how my thinking penetrates
deep hidden grounds of worlds
and how its radiant light illumines them.
Such is the germinating power of these words:
O man, unfold your being.

(From the springs and rocks resounds:)
O man, unfold your being.

From light-filled heights a Being shines on me,
and wings I feel
that lift me up to him.
I too will free myself, as every being does
who overcomes himself.

(From the springs and rocks resounds:)
O man, unfold your being.

I see that Being.
I shall become like him in future times.
The spirit will then free itself in me
through you, exalted goal of man.
I will now follow you.

(Maria enters)
My eye of soul has been awakened
by spirit beings who have welcomed me.
And as I gaze into the worlds of spirit,
I feel within myself that power:
O man, unfold your being.

(From the springs and rocks resounds:)
O man, unfold your being.

Maria, you are here?

Maria

My soul has led me here.
I could behold your star:
it shines in its full power.

Johannes

I can unfold that power from within me.

Maria

So closely are we linked
that your soul's life
lets its light shine into my soul.

Johannes

Maria, you are then aware
of what has just revealed itself?
For me, man's core of confidence,
for me, the certainty of being has been won.
I feel indeed the power of the words
which everywhere can guide me:
O man, unfold your being!

(From the springs and rocks resounds:)
O man, know thou thyself.

In these scenes two levels of development, two steps in the unfolding of our souls, are shown.

Now please do not find it strange when I say that I do not mind interpreting this Rosicrucian Mystery just as I have interpreted other pieces of literature in our group. What I have often said about other poetry can also be brought before our souls in a lively, spontaneous way by this drama. In fact, I have never failed to point out that a flower knows little, indeed, of what someone who is looking at it will find in it; yet, whatever he finds is contained in it. And in speaking about Faust, I explained that the poet did not necessarily know or feel everything in the words he was writing down that later would be discovered in them. I can assure you that nothing of what afterward I could say about the Rosicrucian Mystery, and that I know now is in it, was in my conscious mind as I wrote down the various scenes. The scene-pictures grew one by one, just like the leaves of a plant. One cannot bring forth a character by first having an idea and then turning this into a concrete figure. It was continually interesting to me how each scene grew out of the others preceding it. Friends who knew the earlier parts said that it was remarkable how everything came about quite differently from what one could have imagined.

This Mystery Drama exists now as a picture of human evolution in the development of a single person. I want to emphasize that true feeling makes it impossible to throw a cloak of abstractions around oneself in order to present anthroposophy; every human soul is different from every other and, at its core, must be different, because each one undergoes the experience of his own development. For this reason, instruction to the many can provide only general directions. One can give the complete truth only by applying it to a single human soul, to a soul that reveals its human individuality in all its uniqueness. If, therefore, anyone should consider the figure of Johannes Thomasius in such a way as to transfer the specific description of that figure to general theories of human development, it would be absolutely incorrect. If he believed that he would experience exactly what Johannes Thomasius experienced, he would be quite mistaken. For while in the widest sense what Johannes Thomasius had to undergo is valid for everyone, in order to have the same specific experiences one would have to be Johannes Thomasius. Each person is a “Johannes Thomasius” in his own fashion.

Everything in the drama is presented, therefore, in a completely individual way. Through this, the truth portrayed by the particular figures brings out as clearly as possible the development of the soul of a human being. At the beginning, Thomasius is shown in the physical world, but certain soul-happenings are hinted at that provide a wide basis for such development, particularly an experience at a somewhat earlier time when he deserted a girl who had been lovingly devoted to him. Such things do take place, but this individual happening has a different effect on a man who has resolved to undertake his own development. There is one deep truth necessary for him who wants to undergo development: self-knowledge cannot be achieved by brooding within oneself but only through diving into the being of others. Through self- knowledge we must learn that we have emerged from the cosmos. Only when we give ourselves up can we change into another Self. First of all, we are transformed into whatever was close to us in life.

When at first Johannes sinks more deeply into himself and then plunges in self-knowledge into another person, into the one to whom he has brought bitter pain, we see this as an example of the experience of oneself within another, a descent into self-knowledge. Theoretically, one can say that if we wish to know the blossom, we must plunge into the blossom, and the best method of acquiring self-knowledge is to plunge again, but in a different way, into happenings we once took part in. As long as we remain in ourselves, we experience only superficially whatever takes place. In contrast to true self-knowledge, what we think of other persons is then mere abstraction.

For Thomasius at first, what other people have lived through becomes a part of him. One of them, Capesius, describes some of his experiences; we can observe that they are rooted in real life. But Thomasius takes in more. He is listening. His listening is singular; later, in SceneEight, we will be able to characterize it. It is really as if Thomasius' ordinary Self were not present. Another deeper force appears, as though Thomasius were creeping into the soul of Capesius and were taking part in what is happening from there. That is why it is so absolutely important for Thomasius to be estranged from himself. Tearing the Self out of oneself and entering into another is part and parcel of self-knowledge. It is noteworthy, therefore, that what he has listened to in Scene One, Thomasius says, reveals:

... A mirrored image of the whole of life,
that showed me clearly to myself.
What is revealed to us out of the spirit
has led me to perceive how many men,
who think themselves a whole, in fact
hear in themselves one single facet only.
In order to unite within myself
all these divergent sides,
I started boldly on the path taught here—
and it has made of me a nothing.

Why has it made a “nothing” of him? Because through self-knowledge he has plunged into these other persons. Brooding in your own inner self makes you proud, conceited. True self-knowledge leads, first of all, by having to plunge into a strange Self, into suffering. In Scene One Johannes follows each person so strongly that when he listens to Capesius he becomes aware of the words of Felicia within the other soul. He follows Strader into the loneliness of the cloister, but at first this has the character of something theoretical. He cannot reach as far as he is later led, in Scene Two, through pain. Self-knowledge is deepened by the meditation within his inner Self. What was shown in Scene One is shown changed in Scene Two through self-knowledge intensified from abstraction to a concrete imagination. Those well-known words, which we have heard through the centuries as the motif of the Delphic Oracle, bring about a new life for this man Johannes, though at first it is a life of estrangement from himself.

Johannes enters, as a knower-of-himself, into all the outer phenomena. He finds his life in the air and water, in the rocks and springs, but not in himself. All the words that we can let sound on stage only from outside are actually the words of his meditation. As soon as the curtain rises, we have to confront these words, which would sound louder to anyone through self-knowledge than we can dare to produce on the stage. Thereafter, he who is learning to know himself dives into the other beings and elements and thus learns to know them. Then in a terrible form the same experience he has had earlier appears to him.

It is a deep truth that self-knowledge, when it progresses in the way we have characterized, leads us to see ourselves quite differently from the way we ever saw ourselves before. It teaches us to perceive our “I” as a strange being.

Man believes his own outer physical sheath to be the closest thing to himself. Nowadays, when he cuts a finger, he is much more connected with the painful finger than when, for instance, a friend hurts him with an unjust opinion. How much more does it hurt a modern person to cut his finger than to hear an unjust opinion! Yet he is only cutting into his bodily sheath. To feel our body as a tool, however, will come about only through self- knowledge.

Whenever a person grasps an object, he can feel his hand to some degree as a tool. This, too, he can learn to feel with one or another part of his brain. The inward feeling of his brain as instrument comes about at a certain level of self-knowledge. Specific places within the brain are localized. If we hammer a nail, we know we are doing it with a tool. We know that we are also using as tool one or another part of the brain. Through the fact that these things are objective and can become separate and strange to us, we come to know our brain as something quite separate from us. Self-knowledge requires this sort of objectivity as regards our body; gradually our outer sheath becomes as objective to us as the ordinary tools we use. Then, as soon as we have made a start at feeling our bodily sheath as separate object, we truly begin to live in the outside world.

Because a person feels only his body, he is not clear about the boundary between the air outside and the air in his lungs. All the same, he will say that it is the same air, outside and inside. So it is with everything, with the blood, with everything that belongs to the body. But what belongs to the body cannot be outside and inside—that is mere illusion. It is only through the fact that we allow the internal bodily nature to become outward that in truth it finds a further life out in the rest of the world and the cosmos.

In the first scene recited today there was an effort to express the pain of feeling estranged from oneself—the pain of feeling estranged because of being outside and within all the other things. Johannes Thomasius' own bodily sheath seems like a person outside himself. But just because of that—that he feels his own body outside—he can see the approach of another body, that of the young girl he once deserted. It comes toward him; he has learned how to speak with the very words of the other being. She says to him, whose Self has widened out to her:

He brought me bitter sorrow;
I gave him all my trust.
He left me in my grief alone.
He robbed me of the warmth of life
and thrust me deep into cold earth.

Then guilt, very much alive, rises up in the soul when, plunging our own Self into another and attaching ourselves to the pain of this other being, the pain is spoken out. This is a deepening, an intensifying. Johannes is truly within the pain, because he has caused it. He feels himself dissolving into it and then waking up again. What is he actually experiencing?

When we try to put all this together, we will find that the ordinary, normal human being undergoes something similar only in the condition we call kamaloka. The initiate, however, has to experience in this world what the normal person experiences in the spiritual world. Within the physical body he must go through what ordinarily is experienced outside the physical body. All the elements of kamaloka have to be undergone as the elements of initiation. Just as Johannes dives into the soul to whom he has brought such grief, so must the normal human being in kamaloka dive into the souls to which he has brought pain. It is just as if a slap in the face has to come back to him; he has to feel the same pain. The only difference is that the initiate experiences this in the physical body, and other people after death. The one who goes through this here will afterward live otherwise in kamaloka. But even all that one undergoes in kamaloka can be so experienced that one does not become entirely free. It is a most difficult task to become completely free. A man feels as if he were chained to his physical conditions.

In our time one of the most important elements for our development—not yet so much in the Greco-Roman epoch but especially important nowadays—is that the human being must experience how infinitely difficult it is to become free of himself. Therefore, a notable initiation experience is described by Johannes as feeling chained to his own lower nature; his own being seems to be a creature to which he is firmly fettered:

I feel the chains
that hold me fettered fast to you.
Prometheus was not chained so fast
upon the cliffs of Caucasus
as I am chained to you.

This belongs to self-knowledge; it is a secret of self- knowledge. We should try to understand it correctly.

A question about this secret could be phrased like this: have we in some way become better human beings by becoming earth dwellers, by entering into our physical sheaths, or would we be better by remaining in our inner natures and throwing off those sheaths? Superficial people, taking a look at life in the spirit, may well ask: why ever do we have to plunge down into a physical body? It would be much easier to stay up there and not get into the whole miserable business of earthly existence.

For what reason have the wise powers of destiny thrust us down here? Perhaps it helps our feelings a little to say that for millions and millions of years the divine, spiritual powers have worked on the physical body. Because of this, we should make more out of ourselves than we have the strength to do. Our inner forces are not enough. We cannot yet be what the gods have intended for us if we wish to be only what is in our inner nature, if our outer sheaths do not work some corrections in us. Life shows us that here on earth man is put into his physical sheaths and that these have been prepared for him by the beings of three world epochs. Man has now to develop his inner nature. Between birth and death, he is bad; in Devachan he is a better creature, taken up by divine, spiritual beings who shower him with their own forces. Later on, in the Vulcan epoch, he will be a perfect being. Now on the earth he is a being who gives way to this or that desire. Our hearts, for one thing, are created with such wisdom that they can hold out for decades against the excesses we indulge in, such as drinking coffee. What man can be today through his own will is the way he travels through kamaloka. There he has to learn what he can be through his own will, and that is certainly nothing very good. Whenever man is asked to describe himself, he cannot use the adjective “beautiful.” He has to describe himself as Johannes does in Scene Two:

Yet how do I behold myself!
My human form is lost;
as raging dragon I must see myself,
begot of lust and greed.
I clearly sense
how an illusion's cloud
has hid from me till now
my own appalling form.

Our inner nature stretches flexibly within our bodily sheaths and is hidden from us. When we approach initiation, we learn really to see ourselves as a kind of raging dragon. Therefore, these words are drawn up out of the deepest perception; they are words of self-knowledge, not of self-brooding:

It is myself.
So knowledge chains to you, pernicious monster,
me myself, pernicious monster.

At bottom, they are both the same, one the subject, the other the object.

I sought to flee from you.

This flight, however, merely leads the human being directly to himself.

But then the crowd turns up, the crowd we find ourselves in when we really look into ourselves. We find ourselves to be a collection of lusts and passions we had not noticed earlier, because each time we wanted to look into ourselves our eyes were distracted to the world outside. Indeed, compared to what we would have seen inside, the world outside is wonderfully beautiful. Out there, in the illusion, in the maya of life, we stop looking at ourselves inwardly. When people around us, however, begin to talk all kinds of stupidity and we cannot stand it, we escape to where we can be alone. This is quite important at some levels of development. We can and should collect ourselves; it is a good means of self-knowledge. But it can happen that, coming into a crowd of people, we can no longer be alone; those others appear, either within us or outside us, no matter; they do not allow us to be alone. Then comes the experience we must have: solitude actually brings forth the worst kind of fellowship.

For me, man's final refuge,
for me, my solitude is lost.

Those are genuine experiences. Do not let the strength, the intensity, of the happenings trouble you. You do not have to believe that such strength and intensity as described must necessarily lead to anxiety or fear. It should not prevent anyone from also plunging into these waters. No one will experience all this as swiftly or with such vehemence as Johannes does; it had to come about for him in this way for a definite purpose, even prematurely, too. A normal self-development proceeds differently. Therefore, what occurs in Johannes so tumultuously must be understood as an individual happening. Because he is this particular individual, who has suffered a kind of shipwreck, everything he undergoes takes place much more tempestuously than it otherwise would. He is confronted by the laws of self-development in such a way that they throw him completely off balance. As for us, one thing should be awakened by this description of Johannes, that is, the perception that true self-knowledge has nothing to do with trite phrases, that true self- knowledge inevitably leads us into pain and sorrow.

Things that once were a source of delight can assume a different face when they appear in the realm of self- knowledge. We can long for solitude, no doubt, when we have already found self-knowledge. But in certain moments of self-development it is solitude we have lost when we look for it as we did earlier, in moments when we flow out into the objective world, when in loneliness we have to suffer the sharpest pain.

Learning to perceive in the right way this outpouring of the Self into other beings will help us feel what has been put into the Mystery Drama: a certain artistic element has been created in which everything is spiritually realistic. One who thinks realistically—a genuine, artistic, sensitive realist—undergoes at unrealistic performances a certain amount of suffering. Even what at a certain level can provide great satisfaction is at another level a source of pain. This is due to the path of self- development. A play by Shakespeare, for instance, an immense achievement in the physical world, can be an occasion for artistic pleasure. But a certain moment of development can arrive when we are no longer satisfied by Shakespeare because we seem inwardly torn to pieces. We go from one scene to the next but no longer see the necessity that has ordered one scene to follow another. We begin to find it unnatural that a scene follows the one preceding it. Why unnatural? Because nothing holds two scenes together except the dramatist Shakespeare and his audience. His scenes follow the abstract principle of cause and effect but not a concrete reality. It is characteristic of Shakespeare's drama that nothing of underlying karma is hinted at; this would tie the scenes together more closely.

The Rosicrucian drama grew into a realistic, spiritually realistic one. It makes huge demands on Johannes Thomasius, who is constantly on stage without taking part actively or showing a single important dramatic characteristic. He is the one in whose soul everything takes place, and what is described is the development of that soul, the real experience of the soul's development.

Johannes' soul spins one scene realistically out of the one before it. Through this we see that realistic and spiritual do not contradict each other. Materialistic and spiritual things do not need each other, and they can contradict each other. But realistic and spiritual are not opposites; it is quite possible for spiritual realism to be admired even by a materialistic person. In regard to artistic principles, the plays of Shakespeare can be thought of as realistic. You will understand, however, how far the art that goes hand in hand with a science of the spirit must finally lead. For the one who finds his Self out in the cosmos, the whole cosmos becomes an ego being. We cannot bear then anything coming toward us that is not related to the ego being. Art will gradually learn something in this direction; it will come to the ego principle, because the Christ has brought us our ego for the first time. In the most various realms will this ego be alive.

In still another way can the specific human entity be shown within the soul and also divided into its various components outside. If someone asked which person represents Atma, which one Buddhi, which one Manas? ... if someone in the audience could exclaim, “O yes, that figure on the stage is the personification of Manas!” ... it would be a horrible kind of art, a dreadful kind of art. It is a bad theosophical habit to try to explain everything like this. One would like to say, “Poor thing!” of a work of art that has to be “explained.” If it were to be attempted with Shakespeare's plays, it would indeed be absurd and downright wrong.

These habits are the childhood diseases of the theosophical movement. They will gradually be cured. But for once at least, it is necessary to point them out. It might even happen that someone tries to look for the nine members of the human organization in the Ninth Symphony of Beethoven!

On the other hand, it is correct to some extent to say that the united elements of human nature can be assigned to different characters. One person has this soul coloring, a second person another; we can see characters on the stage who present different sides of the whole unified human being. The people we encounter in the world usually present one or another particular trait. As we develop from incarnation to incarnation, we gradually become a whole. To show this underlying fact on the stage, our whole life has somehow to be separated into parts.

In this Rosicrucian Mystery, we will find that everything that Maria is supposed to be is dispersed among the other figures who are around her as companions. They form with her what might be called an “egoity.” We find special characteristics of the sentient soul in Philia, of the intellectual soul in Astrid, of the consciousness soul in Luna. It was for this reason that their names were chosen. The names of all the characters and beings were given according to their natures. In Devachan, Scene Seven, particularly, where everything is spirit, not only the words but also the placing of the words is meant to characterize the three figures of Philia, Astrid, and Luna in their exact relationships. The speeches at the beginning of Scene Seven are a better description of sentient soul, intellectual soul, and consciousness soul than any number of words otherwise could achieve. Here one can really demonstrate what each soul is. One can show in an artistic form the relationship of the three souls by means of the levels at which the figures stand. In the human being they flow into one another. Separated from each other, they show themselves clearly: Philia as she places herself in the cosmos; Astrid as she relates herself to the elements; Luna as she directs herself into free deed and self-knowledge. Because they show themselves so clearly in the Devachan scene, everything in it is alchemy in the purest sense of the word; all of alchemy is there, if one can gradually discover it.

Not only as abstract content is alchemy in the scene but in the weaving essence of the words. Therefore, you should listen not merely to what is said, nor indeed only to what each single character speaks, but particularly to how the soul forces speak in relation to one another. The sentient soul pushes itself into the astral body; we can perceive weaving astrality there. The intellectual soul slips itself into the etheric body; there we perceive weaving ether being. We can observe how the consciousness soul pours itself with inner firmness into the physical body. Soul endeavor that has an effect like light is contained in Philia's words. In Astrid is contained what brings about the etheric-objective ability to confront the very truth of things. Inner resolve connected at first with the firmness of the physical body is given in Luna. We must begin to be sensitive to all this. Let us listen to the soul forces in Scene Seven:

Philia (Sentient soul)

I will imbue myself
with clearest essence of the light
from worldwide spaces.
I will breathe in sound-substance,
life-bestowing,
from far ethereal regions,
that you, beloved sister, with your work
may reach your goal.

Astrid (Intellectual soul)

And I will weave
into the radiant light
the clouding darkness.
I will condense
the life of sound,
that glistening it may ring
and ringing it may glisten,
that you, beloved sister,
may guide the rays of soul.

Luna (Consciousness soul)

I will enwarm soul-substance
and will make firm life-ether.
They shall condense themselves,
they shall perceive themselves,
and in themselves residing
guard their creative forces,
that you, beloved sister,
within the seeking soul
may quicken certainty of knowledge.

I would like to draw your attention to the words of Philia,

Dass dir, geliebte Schwester,
Das Werk gelingen kann.
(that you, beloved sister, with your work may reach your goal.)

and to those of Astrid that carry the connotation of something heavier, more compact,

Dass du, geliebte Schwester ...

“Dass dir,” “Dass du,” and then we have the “Du” again in Luna's speech woven together with the still heavier, weighty

Der suchenden Menschenseele
(within the seeking soul)

There the “u” is woven into its neighboring consonants, so that it can take on a still firmer compactness.¹

These are the things that one can actually characterize. Please remember, it all depends on the “How.” Let us compare the words Philia speaks next:

I will entreat the spirits of the worlds
that they, with light of being,
enchant soul feeling,
that they, with tone of words,
charm spirit hearing,

with the rather different ones of Astrid:

I will guide streams of love
that fill the world with warmth,
into the heart
of him, the consecrated one.

Just here, where these words are spoken, the inner weaving essence of the world of Devachan has been achieved.

I am mentioning all this, because the scenes should make it clear that when self-knowledge begins to unfold into the outer cosmic weaving and being, we have to give up everything that is one-sided. We have to learn, too, to be aware—as we otherwise do only in a quite superficial, pedestrian way—of what is at hand at every point of existence. We become inflexible creatures, we human beings, when we stay rooted to only one spot in space, believing that our words can express the truth. But words, limited as they are to physical sound, are not what best will communicate truth. I would like to put it like this: we have to become sensitive to the voice itself. Anything as important as Johannes Thomasius' path to self-knowledge can be rightfully experienced—it depends on this—only when he struggles courageously for that self-knowledge and holds on to it.

When self-knowledge has crushed us, the next stage is to begin to draw into ourselves, to harbor inwardly what was our outer experience, learning how closely the cosmos is related to ourselves (for this comes to us after we understand the nature of the beings around us); now we must attempt courageously to live with our understanding. It is only one half of the matter to dive down like Johannes into a being to whom we have brought sorrow and have thrust into cold earth. For now, we have begun to feel differently. We summon up our courage to make amends for the pain we have caused. Now we can dive into this new life and speak out of our own nature differently. This is what confronts us in Scene Nine. In Scene Two the young girl cried out to Johannes:

He brought me bitter sorrow;
I gave him all my trust.
He left me in my grief alone.
He robbed me of the warmth of life
and thrust me deep into cold earth.

In Scene Nine, however, after Johannes has undergone what every path to self-knowledge demands, the same being calls to him:

O you must find me once again
and ease my suffering.

This is the other side of the coin: first the devastation and despair, and now the return to equilibrium. The being calls to him:

O you must find me once again ...

It could not have been described otherwise, this lifting into perception of the world, this replenishing of himself with life experience. True self-knowledge through perception of the cosmos could only have been described with the words Johannes uses when he comes to himself. It has begun, of course, in Scene Two:

For many years these words
of weighty meaning I have heard.

Then—after he has dived down into deep earth, after he has united himself with it—the power is born in his soul to let the words arise that express the essence of Scene Nine:

For three years now I've sought
for power of soul, with wings of courage,
to give these words their truth.
Through them a man who frees himself can conquer
and, conquering himself, can find his freedom.

The words, “O man, unfold your being!” are in direct contrast to the words of Scene Two, “O man, know thou thyself!” There appears to us once and again the very same scene. It leads the first time downward to:

The world and my own nature
are living in the words:
O man, know thou thyself!

Then afterward it is the opposite; it has changed. The scene characterizes soul development.

You have also heard the devastating words:

Maria, are you then aware
through what my soul has fought its way?
-------------------
For me, man's final refuge,
for me, my solitude is lost.

But Scene Nine shows how the being of the girl attains first hope and then security. That is the turning point. It cannot be constructed haphazardly; it is actual experience. Through it we can sense how self-knowledge in a soul like Johannes Thomasius can ascend into a self- unfolding. We should perceive, too, how his experience is distributed among many single persons in whom one characteristic has been formed in each incarnation.

At the end of the drama a whole community stands there in the Sun Temple, like a tableau, and the many together are a single person. The various characteristics of a human being are distributed among them all; essentially there is one person there. A pedant might like to object. “Are there not too many different members of the whole? Surely nine or twelve would be the correct number!” But reality does not always work in such a way as to be in complete agreement with theory. This way it corresponds more nearly with the truth than if we had all the single constituents of man's being marching up in military rank and file.

Let us now put ourselves into the Sun Temple. There are various persons standing in the places they belong to karmically, just as their karmas have brought them together in life. But when we think of Johannes here in the middle and think, too, that all the other characters are mirrored in his soul, each character as one of his soul qualities—what is happening there if we can accept it as reality?

Johannes Thomasius

Karma has actually brought these persons together as in a focal point. Nothing is without intention, plan, or reason; what the single individualities have done not only has meaning for each one himself, but each is also a soul experience for Johannes Thomasius. Everything is happening twice: once in the macrocosm, a second time in the microcosm, in the soul of Johannes. This is his initiation. Just as Maria, for example, has a special connection with him, so, too, there is an important part of his soul with a similar connection to another part of his soul. Those are absolute correspondences, embodied in the drama uncompromisingly. What one sees as outer stage- happening is, in Johannes, an inner happening in his development. There has to come about what the Hierophant has described in Scene Three:

There forms itself within this circle
a knot out of the threads
which karma spins in world becoming.

It has already formed itself, and this truly entangled knot shows what everything is leading toward. There is absolute reality as to how karma spins its threads; it is not an aimless spinning. We experience the knot as the initiation event in Johannes' soul, and the whole scene shows us a certain individuality actually standing above the others, that is, the Hierophant, who is directing, who is guiding the threads. We need only think of the Hierophant's relationship to Maria.

But it is just there that we can realize how self- knowledge can illuminate what happens to Maria in Scene Three. It is not at all pleasant, this emerging out of the Self. It is a thoroughly real experience, a forsaking of the human sheaths by our inner power; the sheaths left behind become then a battleground for inferior powers. When Maria sends down a ray of love to the Hierophant, it can only be portrayed in this way: down below, the physical body, taken over by the power of the adversary, speaks out the antithesis of what is happening above. From above a ray of love streams down, and below arises a curse. Those are the contrasting scenes: Scene Seven inDevachan, where Maria describes what she has actually brought about, and Scene Three, where, from the deserted body, the curses of the demonic forces are directed toward the Hierophant. Those are the two corresponding scenes. They complete each other. If they had had to be “constructed” theoretically from the beginning, the end result would have been incredibly poor.

I therefore have based today's lecture on one aspect of this Mystery Drama, and I should like to extend this to include certain special characteristics that underlie initiation.

Although it has been necessary to bring out rather sharply what has just been shown as the actual events of initiation, it should not let you lose courage or resolve in your own striving toward the spiritual world. The description of dangers was aimed at strengthening a person against powerful forces. The dangers are there; pain and sorrow are the prospect. It would be a poor sort of effort if we proposed to rise into higher worlds in the most convenient way. Striving to reach the spiritual worlds cannot yet be as convenient as rolling over the miles in a modern train, one of those many conveniences our materialistic culture has put into our everyday lives. What has been described should not make us timid; to a certain extent the very encounter with the dangers of initiation should steel our courage.

Johannes Thomasius' disposition made him unable to continue painting; this grew into pain, and the pain grew into perception. So, it is that everything that arouses pain and sorrow will transform itself into perception. But we have to search earnestly for this path, and our search will be possible only when we realize that the truths of spiritual science are not at all simple. They are such profound truths for our whole life that no one will ever understand them perfectly. It is just the single example in actual life that helps us to understand the world. One can speak about the conditions of a spiritual development much more exactly when one describes the development of Johannes, rather than when one describes the development of human beings in general. In the book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment,² the development that every human being can undertake is described, simply the concrete possibility as such. When we portray Johannes Thomasius, we look at a single individuality. But therewith we lose the opportunity of describing such development in a general way.

I hope you will be induced to say that I have not yet spoken out the essential truth of the matter. For we have described two extremes and must find the various gradations between them. I can give only a few suggestive ideas, which should then begin to live in your hearts and souls.

When I gave you some indications about the Gospel of St. Matthew,³ I asked you not to try to remember the very words but to try—when you go out into life—to look into your heart and soul to discover what the words have become. Read not only the printed lectures, but read also in a truly earnest way your own soul.

For this to happen, however, something must have been given from outside, something has first to enter into us; otherwise, there could be self-deception of the soul. If you can begin to read in your soul, you will notice that what comes to you from outside re-echoes quite differently within. A true anthroposophical effort would be first of all to understand what is said in as many different ways as there are listeners.

No one speaking about spiritual science could wish to be understood in only one sense. He would like to be understood in as many ways as there are souls present to understand him. Anthroposophy can tolerate this. One thing is needed, however, and this is not an incidental remark; one thing is needed: every single kind of understanding should be correct and true. Each one may be individual, but it must be true. Sometimes it seems that the uniqueness of the interpretation lies in being just the opposite of what has been said.

When then we speak of self-knowledge, we should realize how much more useful it is to come to it by looking for mistakes within ourselves and for the truth outside.

It shall not be said, “Search within yourself for the truth!” Indeed, truth is to be found outside ourselves. We will find it poured out over the world. Through self- knowledge we must become free of ourselves and undergo those various gradations of soul experience. Loneliness can become a horrid companion.

We can also perceive our terrible weakness when we sense with our feelings the greatness of the cosmos out of which we have been born. But then through this we take courage. And we can make ourselves courageous enough to experience what we perceive.

Then we will finally discover that, after the loss of all the certainty we had in life, there will blossom for us the first and last certainty of life, the confidence that finding ourselves in the cosmos allows us to conquer and find ourselves anew.

O man, experience the world within yourself!
For then—in striding forth beyond your self—
You will find yourself at last
Within you own true Self.

Let us feel these words as genuine experience. They will gradually become for us steps in our development.

• 1. In the English translation of The Portal of Initiation these three sound distinctions could not be kept, except in the word “soul” at the end of Luna's speech, in which the (spoken) diphthong possesses a nuance of “u.”
• 2. Rudolf Steiner, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, Anthroposophic Press, Inc., Spring Valley, NY, reprinted 1983.
• 3. Rudolf Steiner, The Gospel of St. Matthew, Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1965.

In the lectures given here during the course on history¹ several things were mentioned which, particularly at the present time, it is especially important to consider. With regard to the historical course of humanity's development, the much-debated question mentioned to begin with was whether the outstanding and leading individual personalities are the principal driving forces in this development or whether the most important things are brought about by the masses. In many circles this has always been a point of contention and the conclusions have been drawn, more from sympathy and antipathy than from real knowledge. This is one fact which, in a certain sense, I should like to mention as being very important.

Another fact which, from a look at history, I should like to mention for its importance is the following. At the beginning of the nineteenth century Wilhelm von Humboldt² appeared with a definite declaration, stipulating that history should be treated in such a way that one would not only consider the individual facts which can be outwardly observed in the physical world but, out of an encompassing, synthesizing force, would see what is at work in the unfolding of history—which can only be found by someone who knows how to get a total view of the facts in what in a sense is a poetic way, but in fact produces a true picture. Attention was also drawn to how in the course of the nineteenth century it was precisely the opposite historical mode of thought and approach which was then particularly developed, and that it was not the ideas in history that were pursued but only a sense that was developed for the external world of facts. Attention was also drawn to the fact that, with regard to this last question, one can only come to clarity through spiritual science, because spiritual science alone can uncover the real driving forces of the historical evolution of humanity.

A spiritual science of this kind was not yet accessible to Humboldt. He spoke of ideas, but ideas indeed have no driving force [of their own]. Ideas as such are abstractions, as I mentioned here yesterday³ And anyone who might wish to find ideas as the driving forces of history would never be able to prove that ideas really do anything because they are nothing of real substantiality, and only something of substantiality can do something. Spiritual science points to real spiritual forces that are behind the sensible-physical facts, and it is in real spiritual forces such as these that the propelling forces of history lie, even though these spiritual forces will have to be expressed for human beings through ideas.

But we come to clarity concerning these things only when, from a spiritual-scientific standpoint, we look more deeply into the historical development of humanity and we will do so today in such a way that, through our considerations, certain facts come to us which, precisely for a discerning judgement of the situation of modern humanity, will prove to be of importance.

I have often mentioned⁴ that spiritual science, if it looks at history, would actually have to pursue a symptomatology; a symptomatology constituted from the fact that one is aware that behind what takes it course as the stream of physical-sensible facts lie the driving spiritual forces. But everywhere in historical development there are times when what has real being and essence (das eigentlich Wesenhafte) comes as a symptom to the surface and can be judged discerningly from the phenomena only if one has the possibility to penetrate more deeply from one's awareness of these phenomena into the depths of historical development.

I would like to clarify this by a simple diagram. Let us suppose that this is a flow of historical facts (see diagram). The driving forces lie, for ordinary observation, below the flow of these facts. And if the eye of the soul observes the flow in this way, then the real activity of the driving forces would lie beneath it (red). But there are significant points in this flow of facts. And these significant points are distinguished by the fact that what is otherwise hidden comes here to the surface. Thus we can say: Here, in a particular phenomenon, which must only be properly evaluated, it was possible to become aware of something which otherwise is at work everywhere, but which does not show itself in such a significant manifestation.

Let us assume that this (see diagram) took place in some year of world history, let us say around 800 A.D. What was significant for Europe, let us say for Western Europe, was of course at work before this and worked on afterwards, but it did not manifest itself in such a significant way in the time before and after as it did here. If one points to a way of looking at history like this, a way which looks to significant moments, such a method would be in complete accord with Goetheanism. For Goethe wished in general that all perception of the world should be directed to significant points and then, from what could be seen from such points, the remaining content of world events be recognized. Goethe says of this⁵ that, within the abundance of facts, the important thing is to find a significant point from which the neighbouring areas can be viewed and from which much can be deciphered.

So let us take this year 800 A.D. We can point here to a fact in the history of Western European humanity which, from the point of view of the usual approach to history, might seem insignificant—which one would perhaps not find worthy of attention for what is usually called history—but which, nevertheless, for a deeper view of humanity's development, is indeed significant. Around this year there was a kind of learned theological argument between the man who was a sort of court philosopher of the Frankish realm, Alcuin,⁶ and a Greek also living at that time in the kingdom of the Franks. The Greek, who was naturally at home in the particular soul-constitution of the Greek peoples which he had inherited, had wanted to reach a discerning judgement of the principles of Christianity and had come to the concept of redemption. He put the question: To whom, in the redemption through Christ Jesus, was the ransom actually paid? He, the Greek thinker, came to the solution that the ransom had been paid to Death. Thus, in a certain sense, it was a sort of redemption theory that this Greek developed from his thoroughly Greek mode of thinking, which was now just becoming acquainted with Christianity. The ransom was paid to Death by the cosmic powers.

Alcuin, who stood at that time in that theological stream which then became the determining one for the development of the Roman Catholic Church of the West, debated in the following way about what the Greek had argued. He said: Ransom can only be paid to a being who really exists. But death has no reality, death is only the outer limit of reality, death itself is not real and, therefore, the ransom money could not have been paid to Death.

Now criticism of Alcuin's way of thinking is not what matters here. For to someone who, to a certain extent, can see through the interrelations of the facts, the view that death is not something real resembles the view which says: Cold is not something real, it is just a decrease in warmth, it is only a lesser warmth. Because the cold isn't real I won't wear a winter coat in winter because I'm not going to protect myself against something that isn't real. But we will leave that aside. We want rather to take the argument between Alcuin and the Greek purely positively and will ask what was really happening there. For it is indeed quite noticeable that it is not the concept of redemption itself that is discussed. It is not discussed in such a way that in a certain sense both personalities, the Greek and the Roman Catholic theologian, accept the same point of view, but in such a way that the Roman Catholic theologian shifts the standpoint entirely before he takes it up at all. He does not go on speaking in the way he had just done, but moves the whole problem into a completely different direction. He asks: Is death something real or not?—and objects that, indeed, death is not real.

This directs us at the outset to the fact that two views are clashing here which arise out of completely different constitutions of soul. And, indeed, this is the case. The Greek continued, as it were, the direction which, in the Greek culture, had basically faded away between Plato and Aristotle. In Plato there was still something alive of the ancient wisdom of humanity; that wisdom which takes us across to the ancient Orient where, indeed, in ancient times a primal wisdom had lived but which had then fallen more and more into decadence. In Plato, if we are able to understand him properly, we find the last offshoots, if I can so call them, of this primal oriental wisdom. And then, like a rapidly developing metamorphosis, Aristotelianism sets in which, fundamentally, presents a completely different constitution of soul from the Platonic one. Aristotelianism represents a completely different element in the development of humanity from Platonism. And, if we follow Aristotelianism further, it, too, takes on different forms, different metamorphoses, but all of which have a recognizable similarity. Thus we see how Platonism lives on like an ancient heritage in this Greek who has to contend against Alcuin, and how in Alcuin, on the other hand, Aristotelianism is already present. And we are directed, by looking at these two individuals, to that fluctuation which took place on European soil between two—one cannot really say world-views—but two human constitutions of soul, one of which has its origin in ancient times in the Orient, and another, which we do not find in the Orient but which, entering in later, arose in the central regions of civilization and was first grasped by Aristotle. In Aristotle, however, this only sounds a first quiet note, for much of Greek culture was still alive in him. It develops then with particular vehemence in the Roman culture within which it had been prepared long before Aristotle, and, indeed, before Plato. So that we see how, since the eighth century BC on the Italian peninsula a particular culture, or the first hints of it, was being prepared alongside that which lived on the Greek peninsula as a sort of last offshoot of the oriental constitution of soul. And when we go into the differences between these two modes of human thought we find important historical impulses. For what is expressed in these ways of thinking went over later into the feeling life of human beings; into the configuration of human actions and so on.

Now we can ask ourselves: So what was living in that which developed in ancient times as a world-view in the Orient, and which then, like a latecomer, found its [last] offshoots in Platonism—and, indeed, still in Neoplatonism? It was a highly spiritual culture which arose from an inner perception living pre-eminently in pictures, in imaginations; but pictures not permeated by full consciousness, not yet permeated by the full I-consciousness of human beings. In the spiritual life of the ancient Orient, of which the Veda and Vedanta are the last echoes, stupendous pictures opened up of what lives in the human being as the spiritual. But it existed in a—I beg you not to misunderstand the word and not to confuse it with usual dreaming—it existed in a dreamlike, dim way, so that this soul-life was not permeated (durchwellt) and irradiated (durchstrahlt) by what lives in the human being when he becomes clearly conscious of his 'I' and his own being. The oriental was well aware that his being existed before birth, that it returns through death to the spiritual world in which it existed before birth or conception. The oriental gazed on that which passed through births and deaths. But he did not see as such that inner feeling which lives in the `I am'. It was as if it were dull and hazy, as though poured out in a broad perception of the soul (Gesamtseelenanschauung) which did not concentrate to such a point as that of the I-experience. Into what, then, did the oriental actually gaze when he possessed his instinctive perception?

One can still feel how this oriental soul-constitution was completely different from that of later humanity when, for an understanding of this and perhaps prepared through spiritual science, one sinks meditatively into those remarkable writings which are ascribed to Dionysius the Areopagite.⁷ I will not go into the question of the authorship now, I have already spoken about it on a number of occasions. 'Nothingness' (das Nichts) is still spoken of there as a reality, and the existence of the external world, in the way one views it in ordinary consciousness, is simply contrasted against this [nothingness] as a different reality. This talk of nothingness then continues. In Scotus Erigena,⁸ who lived at the court of Charles the Bald, one still finds echoes of it, and we find the last echo then in the fifteenth century in Nicolas of Cusa⁹ But what was meant by the nothingness one finds in Dionysius the Areopagite and of that which the oriental spoke of as something self-evident to him? This fades then completely. What was this nothingness for the oriental? It was something real for him. He turned his gaze to the world of the senses around him, and said: This sense-world is spread out in space, flows in time, and in ordinary life world, is spread out in space, one says that what is extended in space and flows in time is something.

But what the oriental saw—that which was a reality for him, which passes through births and deaths—was not contained in the space in which the minerals are to be found, in which the plants unfold, the animals move and the human being as a physical being moves and acts. And it was also not contained in that time in which our thoughts, feelings and will-impulses occur. The oriental was fully aware that one must go beyond this space in which physical things are extended and move, and beyond this time in which our soul-forces of ordinary life are active. One must enter a completely different world; that world which, for the external existence of time and space, is a nothing but which, nevertheless, is something real. The oriental sensed something in contrast to the phenomena of the world which the European still senses at most in the realm of real numbers.

When a European has fifty francs he has something. If he spends twenty-five francs of this he still has twenty-five francs; if he then spends fifteen francs he still has ten; if he spends this he has nothing. If now he continues to spend he has five, ten, fifteen, twenty-five francs in debts. He still has nothing; but, indeed, he has something very real when, instead of simply an empty wallet, he has twenty-five or fifty francs in debts. In the real world it also signifies something very real if one has debts. There is a great difference in one's whole situation in life between having nothing and having fifty francs' worth of debts. These debts of fifty francs are forces just as influential on one's situation in life as, on the other side and in an opposite sense, are fifty francs of credit. In this area the European will probably admit to the reality of debts for, in the real world, there always has to be something there when one has debts. The debts that one has oneself may still seem a very negative amount, but for the person to whom they are owed they are a very positive amount!

So, when it is not just a matter of the individual but of the world, the opposite side of zero from the credit side is truly something very real. The oriental felt—not because he somehow speculated about it but because his perception necessitated it he felt: Here, on the one side, I experience that which cannot be observed in space or in time; something which, for the things and events of space and time, is nothing but which, nevertheless, is a reality—but a different reality.

It was only through misunderstanding that there then arose what occidental civilization gave itself up to under the leadership of Rome—the creation of the world out of nothing with `nothing' seen as absolute `zero'. In the Orient, where these things were originally conceived, the world does not arise out of nothing but out of the reality I have just indicated. And an echo of what vibrates through all the oriental way of thinking right down to Plato—the impulse of eternity of an ancient world-view—lived in the Greek who, at the court of Charlemagne, had to debate with Alcuin. And in this theologian Alcuin there lived a rejection of the spiritual life for which, in the Orient, this `nothing' was the outer form. And thus, when the Greek spoke of death, whose causes lie in the spiritual world, as something real, Alcuin could only answer: But death is nothing and therefore cannot receive ransom.

You see, the whole polarity between the ancient oriental way of thinking, reaching to Plato, and what followed later is expressed in this [one] significant moment when Alcuin debated at the court of Charlemagne with the Greek. For, what was it that had meanwhile entered in to European civilization since Plato, particularly through the spread of Romanism? There had entered that way of thinking which one has to comprehend through the fact that it is directed primarily to what the human being experiences between birth and death. And the constitution of soul which occupies itself primarily with the human being's experiences between birth and death is the logical, legal one—the logical-dialectical-legal one. The Orient had nothing of a logical, dialectical nature and, least of all, a legal one. The Occident brought logical, legal thinking so strongly into the oriental way of thinking that we ourselves find religious feeling permeated with a legalistic element. In the Sistine Chapel in Rome, painted by the master-hand of Michelangelo, we see looming towards us, Christ as judge giving judgment on the good and the evil.

A legal, dialectical element has entered into the thoughts concerning the course of the world. This was completely alien to the oriental way of thinking. There was nothing there like guilt and atonement or redemptinn. For [in this oriental way of thinking] was precisely that view of the metamorphosis through which the eternal element [in the human being] transforms itself through births and deaths. There was that which lives in the concept of karma. Later, however, everything was fixed into a way of looking at things which is actually only valid for, and can only encompass, life between birth and death. But this life between birth and death was just what had evaded the oriental. He looked far more to the core of man's being. He had little understanding for what took place between birth and death. And now, within this occidental culture, the way of thinking which comprehends primarily what takes place within the span between birth and death increased [and did so] through those forces possessed by the human being by virtue of having clothed his soul-and-spirit nature with a physical and etheric body. In this constitution, in the inner experience of the soul-and-spirit element and in the nature of this experience, which arises through the fact that one is submerged with one's soul-and-spirit nature in a physical body, comes the inner comprehension of the 'I'. This is why it happens in the Occident that the human being feels an inner urge to lay hold of his 'I' as something divine. We see this urge, to comprehend the 'I' as something divine, arise in the medieval mystics; in Eckhart, in Tauler and in others. The comprehension of the 'I' crystallizes out with full force in the Middle (or Central) culture. Thus we can distinguish between the Eastern culture—the time in which the 'I' is first experienced, but dimly—and the Middle (or Central) culture—primarily that in which the 'I' is experienced. And we see how this 'I' is experienced in the most manifold metamorphoses. First of all in that dim, dawning way in which it arises in Eckhart, Tauler and other mystics, and then more and more distinctly during the development of all that can originate out of this I-culture.

We then see how, within the I-culture of the Centre, another aspect arises. At the end of the eighteenth century something comes to the fore in Kant¹⁰ which, fundamentally, cannot be explained out of the onward flow of this I-culture. For what is it that arises through Kant? Kant looks at our perception, our apprehension (Erkennen), of nature and cannot come to terms with it. Knowledge of nature, for him, breaks down into subjective views ( Subjektivitäten); he does not penetrate as far as the 'I' despite the fact that he continually speaks of it and even, in some categories, in his perceptions of time and space, would like to encompass all nature through the 'I'. Yet he does not push through to a true experience of the 'I'. He also constructs a practical philosophy with the categorical imperative which is supposed to manifest itself out of unfathomable regions of the human soul. Here again the 'I' does not appear.

In Kant's philosophy it is strange. The full weight of dialectics, of logical-dialectical-legal thinking is there, in which everything is tending towards the 'I', but he cannot reach the point of really understanding the 'I' philosophically. There must be something preventing him here. Then comes Fichte, a pupil of Kant's, who with full force wishes his whole philosophy to well up out of the 'I' and who, through its simplicity, presents as the highest tenet of his philosophy the sentence: `I am'. And everything that is truly scientific must follow from this `I am'. One should be able, as it were, to deduce, to read from this 'I am' an entire picture of the world. Kant cannot reach the 'I am'. Fichte immediately afterwards, while still a pupil of Kant's, hurls the `I am' at him. And everyone is amazed—this is a pupil of Kant's speaking like this! And Fichte says:¹¹ As far as he can understand it, Kant, if he could really think to the end, would have to think the same as me. It is so inexplicable to Fichte that Kant thinks differently from him, that he says: If Kant would only take things to their full conclusion, he would have to think [as I do]; he too, would have to come to the 'I am'. And Fichte expresses this even more clearly by saying: I would rather take the whole of Kant's critique for a random game of ideas haphazardly thrown together than to consider it the work of a human mind, if my philosophy did not logically follow from Kant's. Kant, of course, rejects this. He wants nothing to do with the conclusions drawn by Fichte.

We now see how there follows on from Fichte what then flowered as German idealistic philosophy in Schelling and Hegel, and which provoked all the battles of which I spoke, in part, in my lectures on the limits to a knowledge of nature.¹² But we find something curious. We see how Hegel lives in a crystal-clear [mental] framework of the logical-dialectical-legal element and draws from it a world-view—but a world-view that is interested only in what occurs between birth and death. You can go through the whole of Hegel's philosophy and you will find nothing that goes beyond birth and death. It confines everything in world history, religion, art and science solely to experiences occurring between birth and death.

What then is the strange thing that happened here? Now, what came out in Fichte, Schelling and Hegel—this strongest development of the Central culture in which the 'I' came to full consciousness, to an inner experience—was still only a reaction, a last reaction to something else. For one can understand Kant only when one bears the following properly in mind. (I am coming now to yet another significant point to which a great deal can be traced). You see, Kant was still—this is clearly evident from his earlier writings—a pupil of the rationalism of the eighteenth century, which lived with genius in Leibnitz and pedantically in Wolff. One can see that for this rationalism the important thing was not to come truly to a spiritual reality. Kant therefore rejected it—this `thing in itself' as he called it—but the important thing for him was to prove. Sure proof! Kant's writings are remarkable also in this respect. He wrote his Critique of Pure Reason in which he is actually asking: `How must the world be so that things can be proved in it?' Not 'What are the realities in it?' But he actually asks: 'How must I imagine the world so that logically, dialectically, I can give proofs in it?' This is the only point he is concerned with and thus he tries in his Prologomena to give every future metaphysics which has a claim to being truly scientific, a metaphysics for what in his way of thinking can be proven: `Away with everything else! The devil take the reality of the world—just let me have the art of proving! What's it to me what reality is; if I can't prove it I shan't trouble myself over it!'

Those individuals did not, of course, think in this way who wrote books like, for example, Christian Wolff's¹³ Vernünftige Gedanken von Gott, der Welt und der Seele des Menschen, auch allen Dingen überhaupt (Reasoned Thoughts an God, the World, and the Soul of Man, and All Things Generally). What mattered for them was to have a clean, self-contained system of proof, in the way that they see proof. Kant lived in this sphere, but there was still something there which, although an excrescence squeezed out of the world-view of the Centre, nevertheless fitted into it. But Kant had something else which makes it inexplicable how he could become Fichte's teacher. And yet he gives Fichte a stimulus, and Fichte comes back at him with the strong emphasis of the 'I am'; comes back, indeed, not with proofs—one would not look for these in Fichte—but with a fully developed inner life of soul. In Fichte there emerges, with all the force of the inner life of soul, that which, in the Wolffians and Leibnitzites, can seem insipid. Fichte constructs his philosophy, in a wealth of pure concepts, out of the 'I am'; but in him they are filled with life. So, too, are they in Schelling and in Hegel. So what then had happened with Kant who was the bridge? Now, one comes to the significant point when one traces how Kant developed. Something else became of this pupil of Wolff by virtue of the fact that the English philosopher, David Hume,¹⁴ awoke him, as Kant himself says, out of his dull dogmatic slumber. What is it that entered Kant here, which Fichte could no longer understand? There entered into Kant here—it fitted badly in his case because he was too involved with the culture of Central Europe—that which is now the culture of the West. This came to meet him in the person of David Hume and it was here that the culture of the West entered Kant. And in what does the peculiarity [of this culture] lie? In the oriental culture we find that the 'I' still lives below, dimly, in a dream-like state in the soul-experiences which express themselves, spread out, in imaginative pictures. In the Western culture we find that, in a certain sense, the 'I' is smothered (erdrückt) by the purely external phenomena (Tatsachen). The 'I' is indeed present, and is present not dimly, but bores itself into the phenomena. And here, for example, people develop a strange psychology. They do not talk here about the soul-life in the way Fichte did, who wanted to work out everything from the one point of the 'I', but they talk about thoughts which come together by association. People talk about feelings, mental pictures and sensations, and say these associate—and also will-impulses associate. One talks about the inner soul-life in terms of thoughts which associate.

Fichte speaks of the 'I'; this radiates out thoughts. In the West the 'I' is completely omitted because it is absorbed—soaked up by the thoughts and feelings which one treats as though they were independent of it, associating and separating again. And one follows the life of the soul as though mental pictures linked up and separated. Read Spencer,¹⁵ read John Stuart Mill¹⁶ read the American philosophers. When they come to talk of psychology there is this curious view that does not exclude the 'I' as in the Orient, because it is developed dimly there, but which makes full demand of the 'I'; letting it, however, sink down into the thinking, feeling and willing life of the soul. One could say: In the oriental the 'I' is still above thinking, feeling and willing; it has not yet descended to the level of thinking, feeling and willing. In the human being of the Western culture the 'I' is already below this sphere. It is below the surface of thinking, feeling and willing so that it is no longer noticed, and thinking, feeling and willing are then spoken of as independent forces.

This is what came to Kant in the form of the philosophy of David Hume. Then the Central region of the earth's culture still set itself against this with all force in Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. After them the culture of the West overwhelms everything that is there, with Darwinism and Spencerism.

One will only be able to come to an understanding of what is living in humanity's development if one investigates these deeper forces. One then finds that something developed in a natural way in the Orient which actually was purely a spiritual life. In the Central areas something developed which was dialectical-legal, which actually brought forth the idea of the State, because it is to this that it can be applied. It is such thinkers as Fichte, Schelling and Hegel who, with enormous sympathy, construct a unified image (Gebilde) of the State. But then a culture emerges in the West which proceeds from a constitution of soul in which the 'I' is absorbed, takes its course below the level of thinking, feeling and willing; and where, in the mental and feeling life, people speak of associations. If only one would apply this thinking to the economic life! That is its proper place. People went completely amiss when they started applying [this thinking] to something other than the economic life. There it is great, is of genius. And had Spencer, John Stuart Mill and David Hume applied to the institutions of the economic life what they wasted on philosophy it would have been magnificent. If the human beings living in Central Europe had limited to the State what is given them as their natural endowment, and if they had not, at the same time, also wanted thereby to include the spiritual life and the economic life, something magnificent could have come out of it. For, with what Hegel was able to think, with what Fichte was able to think, one would have been able—had one remained within the legal-political configuration which, in the threefold organism, we wish to separate out as the structure of the State¹⁷—to attain something truly great. But, because there hovered before these minds the idea that they had to create a structure for the State which included the economic life and the spiritual life, there arose only caricatures in the place of a true form for the State. And the spiritual life was anyway only a heritage of the ancient Orient. It was just that people did not know that they were still living from this heritage of the ancient East. The useful statements, for example, of Christian theology—indeed, the useful statements still within our materialistic sciences—are either the heritage of the ancient East, or a changeling of dialectical-legal thinking, or are already adopted, as was done by Spencer and Mill, from the Western culture which is particularly suited for the economic life.

Thus the spiritual thinking of the ancient Orient had been distributed over the earth, but in an instinctive way that is no longer of any use today. Because today it is decadent, it is dialectical-political thinking which was rendered obsolete by the world catastrophe [World War I]. For there was no one less suited to thinking economically than the pupils of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. When they began to create a State which, above all, was to become great through its economy, they had of necessity (selbstverständlich) to fail, for this was not what, by nature, was, endowed to them. In accordance with the historical development of humanity, spiritual thinking, political thinking and economic thinking were apportioned to the East, the Centre, and the West respectively. But we have arrived at a point of humanity's development when understanding, a common understanding, must spread equally over all humanity. How can this come about?

This can only happen out of the initiation-culture, out of the new spiritual science, which does not develop one-sidedly, but considers everything that appears in all areas as a three-foldness that has evolved of its own accord. This science must really consider the threefold aspect also in social life; in this case (as a three-foldness) encompassing the whole earth. Spiritual science, however, cannot be extended through natural abilities; it can only be spread by people accepting those who see into these things, who can really experience the spiritual sphere, the political sphere and the economic sphere as three separate areas. The unity of human beings all over the earth is due to the fact that they combine in themselves what was divided between three spheres. They themselves organize it in the social organism in such a way that it can exist in harmony before their eyes. This, however, can only follow from spiritual-scientific training. And we stand here at a point where we must say: In ancient times we see individual personalities, we see them expressing in their words what was the spirit of the time. But when we examine it closely—in the oriental culture, for example—we find that, fundamentally, there lives instinctively in the masses a constitution of soul which in a remarkable; quite natural way was in accord with what these individuals spoke.

This correspondence, however, became less and less. In our times we see the development of the opposite extreme. We see instincts arising in the masses which are the opposite of what is beneficial for humanity. We see things arising that absolutely call for the qualities that may arise in individuals who are able to penetrate the depths of spiritual science. No good will come from instincts, but only from the understanding (that Dr. Unger also spoke of here)¹⁸ which, as is often stressed, every human being can bring towards the spiritual investigator if he really opens himself to healthy human reason. Thus there will come a culture in which the single individual, with his ever-deeper penetration into the depths of the spiritual world, will be of particular importance, and in which die one who penetrates in this way will be valued, just as someone who works in some craft is valued. One does not go to the tailor to have boots made or to the shoemaker to be shaved, so why should people go to someone else for what one needs as a world-view other than to the person who is initiated into it? And it is, indeed, just this that, particularly today and in the most intense sense, is necessary for the good of human beings even though there is a reaction against it, which shows how humanity still resists what is beneficial for it. This is the terrible battle—the grave situation—in which we find ourselves.

At no other time has there been a greater need to listen carefully to what individuals know concerning one thing or another. Nor has there been a greater need for people with knowledge of specific subject areas to be active in social life—not from a belief in authority but out of common sense and out of agreement based on common sense. But, to begin with, the instincts oppose this and people believe that some sort of good can be achieved from levelling everything. This is the serious battle in which we stand. Sympathy and antipathy are of no help here, nor is living in slogans. Only a clear observation of the facts can help. For today great questions are being decided—the questions as to whether the individual or the masses have significance. In other times this was not important because the masses and the individual were in accord with one another; individuals were, in a certain sense, simply speaking for the masses. We are approaching more and more that time when the individual must find completely within himself the source of what he has to find and which he has then to put into the social life; and [what we are now seeing] is only the last resistance against this validity of the individual and an ever larger and larger number of individuals. One can see plainly how that which spiritual science shows is also proved everywhere in these significant points. We talk of associations which are necessary in the economic life, and use a particular thinking for this. This has developed in the culture of the West from letting thoughts associate. If one could take what John Stuart Mill does with logic, if one could remove those thoughts from that sphere and apply them to the economic life, they would fit there. The associations which would then come in there would be exactly those which do not fit into psychology. Even in what appears in the area of human development, spiritual science follows reality.

Thus spiritual science, if fully aware of the seriousness of the present world situation, knows what a great battle is taking place between the threefold social impulse that can come from spiritual science and that which throws itself against this threefoldness as the wave of Bolshevism, which would lead to great harm (Unheil) amongst humanity. And there is no third element other than these two. The battle has to take place between these two. People must see this! Everything else is already decadent. Whoever looks with an open mind at the conditions in which we are placed, must conclude that it is essential today to gather all our forces together so that this whole terrible Ahrimanic affair can be repulsed.

This building stands here,¹⁹ incomplete though it is for the time being. Today we cannot get from the Central countries that which for the most part, and in addition to what has come to us from the neutral states, has brought this building to this stage. We must have contributions from the countries of the former Entente. Understanding must be developed here for what is to become a unified culture containing spirit, politics and economics. For people must get away from a one:sided tendency and must follow those who also understand something of politics and economics, who do not work only in dialectics, but, also being engaged with economic impulses, have insight into the spiritual, and do not want to create states in which the State itself can run the economy. The Western peoples will have to realize that something else must evolve in addition to the special gift they will have in the future with regard to forming economic associations. The skill in forming associations has so far been applied at the wrong end, i.e. in the field of Psychology. What must evolve is understanding of the political-state element, which has other sources than the economic life, and also of the spiritual element. But at present the Central countries lie powerless, so people in the Western regions—one could not expect this of the Orient—will have to see what the Purpose of this building is! It is necessary for us to consider What must be done so that real provision is made for a new culture that should be presented everywhere in the university education of the future—here we have to show the way. In the foundation of the Waldorf Schools the culture has proved to be capable of bringing light into primary education. But for this we need the understanding support of the widest circles.

Above all we need the means. For everything which, in a higher or lower sense, is called a school, we need the frame of mind I have already tried to awaken at the opening of the Waldorf School in Stuttgart.²⁰ I said in my opening speech there: `This is one Waldorf school. It is well and good that we have it, but for itself it is nothing; it is only something if, in the next quarter of a year, we build ten such Waldorf schools and then others'. The world did not understand this, it had no money for such a thing. For it rests on the standpoint: Oh, the ideals are too lofty, too pure for us to bring dirty money to them; better to keep it in our pockets; that's the proper place for dirty money. The ideals, oh, they're too pure, one can't contaminate them with money! Of course, with purity of this kind the embodiment of ideals cannot be attained, if dirty money is not brought to them. And thus we have to consider that, up to now, we have stopped at one Waldorf school which cannot progress properly because in the autumn we found ourselves in great money difficulties. These have been obviated for the time being, but at Easter we shall be faced with them again. And then, after a comparatively short time, we will ask: Should we give up? And we shall have to give up if, before then, an understanding is not forthcoming which dips vigorously into its pockets.

It is thus a matter of awakening understanding in this respect. I don't believe that much understanding would arise if we were to say that we wanted something for the building in Dornach, or some such thing—as has been shown already. But—and one still finds understanding for this today—if one wants to create sanatoria or the like, one gets money, and as much as one wants! This is not exactly what we want—we don't want to build a host of sanatoria—we agree fully with creating them as far as they are necessary; but here it is a matter, above all, of nurturing that spiritual culture whose necessity will indeed prove itself through what this course²¹ I has attempted to accomplish. This is what I tried to suggest, to give a stimulus to what I expressed here a few days ago, in the words 'World Fellowship of Schools' (Weltschulverein).²²

Our German friends have departed but it is not a question of depending on them for this 'World Fellowship'. It depends on those who, as friends, have come here, for the most part from all possible regions of the non-German world—and who are still sitting here now—that they understand these words 'World Fellowship of Schools' because it is vital that we found school upon school in all areas of the world out of the pedagogical spirit which rules in the Waldorf School. We have to be able to extend this school until we are able to move into higher education of the kind we are hoping for here. For this, however, we have to be in a position to complete this building and everything that belongs to it, and be constantly able to support that which is necessary in order to work here; to be productive, to work on the further extension of all the separate sciences in the spirit of spiritual science.

People ask one how much money one needs for all this. One cannot say how much, because there never is an uppermost limit. And, of course, we will not be able to found a World Fellowship of Schools simply by creating a committee of twelve or fifteen or thirty people who work out nice statutes as to how a World Fellowship of Schools of this kind should work. That is all pointless. I attach no value to programmes or to statutes but only to the work of active people who work with understanding. It will be possible to establish this World Fellowship—well, we shall not be able to go to London for some time—in the Hague or some such place, if a basis can be created, and by other means if the friends who are about to go to Norway or Sweden or Holland, or any other country—England, France, America and so on—awaken in every human being whom they can reach the well-founded conviction that there has to be a World Fellowship of Schools. It ought to go through the world like wildfire that a World Fellowship must arise to provide the material means for the spiritual culture that is intended here.

If one is able in other matters, as a single individual, to convince possibly hundreds and hundreds of people, why should one not be able in a short time—for the decline is happening so quickly that we only have a short time—to have an effect on many people as a single individual, so that if one came to the Hague a few weeks later one would see how widespread was the thought that: 'The creation of a World Fellowship of Schools is necessary, it is just that there are no means for it.' What we are trying to do from Dornach is an historical necessity. One will only be able to talk of the inauguration of this World Fellowship of Schools when the idea of it already exists. It is simply utopian to set up committees and found a World Fellowship—this is pointless! But to work from person to person, and to spread quickly the realization, the well-founded realization, that it is so necessary—this is what must precede the founding. Spiritual science lives in realities. This is why it does not get involved with proposals of schemes for a founding but points to what has to happen in reality—and human beings are indeed realities—so that such a thing has some prospects.

So what is important here is that we finally learn from spiritual science how to stand in real life. I would never get involved with a simply utopian founding of the World Fellowship of Schools, but would always be of the opinion that this World Fellowship can only come about when a sufficiently large number of people are convinced of its necessity. It must be created so that what is necessary for humanity—it has already proved to be so from our course here—can happen. This World Fellowship of Schools must be created.

Please see what is meant by this Fellowship in all international life, in the right sense! I would like, in this request, to round off today what, in a very different way in our course, has spoken to humanity through those who were here and of whom we have the hope and the wish that they carry it out into the world. The World Fellowship of Schools can be the answer of the world to what was put before it like a question; a question taken from the real forces of human evolution, that is, human history. So let what can happen for the World Fellowship of Schools, in accordance with the conviction you have been able to gain here, happen! In this there rings out what I wanted to say today.

• 1 . These were the lectures given by Dr Karl Heyer on 14, 15 and 16 October 1920, during the first course of the School of Anthroposophy at the Goetheanum with the theme: 'The Science of History and History from the Viewpoint of Anthroposophy' ('Anthroposophische Betrachtungen Ober die Geschichtswissenschaft und aus der Geschichte'). These are printed in Kultur und Erziehung (the third volume of the Courses of the School of Anthroposophy), Stuttgart, 1921.
• 2 . See Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835): Über die Aufgabe des Geschiclztsschreibens (The Task of the Historian) in Volume IV of Humboldt's Works published by Leitzman, Berlin 1905 (see pages 35-56). Some relevant passages taken from these are as follows:
  
  "The business of the historian, in the last but simplest analysis, is to portray the striving of an idea to attain existence in reality. For it is not always that it succeeds in this at the first attempt; and it is not so rare that the idea degenerates because it is unable to master in a pure way the matter counteracting it."
  
  "The truth of everything that happens lies in the addition of the above-mentioned invisible part of every fact, and thus the history writer must add this to the events. Seen from this angle he is self-acting and even creative—not, indeed, by producing what does not already exist, but by forming out of his own inner strength that which, as it is in reality, he could not perceive through mere receptivity. In different ways, but just like the poet, he must in himself transform the scattered fragments into a whole."
  
  "It may seem dubious to allow the realm of the history writer and that of the poet to meet, even at only one point. But the activity of both is undeniably related. For if the historian, like the poet, can achieve truth in his presentation of past events only by completing and linking the incomplete and disjointed elements of direct observation, then he does so, like the poet, only through imagination. Because, however, he places imagination subordinate to experience and the fathoming of reality, there is a difference here which cancels out all danger. Imagination does not work, at this lower position, as pure imagination, and is therefore more properly called an intuitive faculty and a talent for finding links."
  
  "Of necessity, therefore, the historian too, must strive; not, like the poet, to give his material over to the dominion of the form of necessity but to hold steadily in consciousness the ideas which are its laws, because, permeated only by, these, he can then find their trace in the pure research of the real in its reality."
  
  "The historian encompasses all the threads of earthly activity and all varieties of supersensible ideas; the sum-total of existence, more or less, is the object of his work and he must therefore also follow all avenues of the mind and spirit. Speculation, experience and poetry, however, are not separate, opposed and mutually-limiting activities of the mind, but different planes of its radiance."
  
  "Apart from the fact that history, like every scientific activity, serves many subsidiary purposes, work on history is no less a free art, complete in itself, than philosophy and poetry."
  
  "Just as philosophy strives for the first foundation of things, and art for the ideal of beauty, so history strives for a picture of human destiny in faithful truth, living abundance and pure clarity that are perceived by the warm inner-being [of the historian] in such a way that his personal views, feelings and demands are lost and dissolved away. It is the final purpose of the history-writer to awaken and nourish this mood, which, however, he only attains when he pursues for his fellow human beings the simple presentation of past events with conscientious faithfulness."
• 3 . See the final words of Rudolf Steiner, on 16 October 1920, after the close of the first course of the Anthroposophical School, in Die Kunst der Rezitation and Deklamation (First Edition) Dornach, 1928, page 118.
• 4 . See i>Geschictliche Symptomatologie (GA 185), nine lectures given in Dornach in 1918, only two of which are translated in From Symptom to Reality in Modern History.
• 5 . See Bedeutende Fordnis durch ein einziges geistreiches Wort in Goethes Naturwissenschaftliche Schriften, edited and with a commentary by Rudolf Steiner in Kürschner's Deutsche National-Literatur, Volume II, page 34 (GA lb). Goethe says here:
  
  "I do not rest until I find a significant point from which a great deal can be deduced or, rather, which of its own will brings forth a great deal and presents this to me, and which I then, with attention and receptivity, work on further faithfully and carefully. If, in my experience, I find some phenomenon which I cannot deduce, I simply let it lie as a problem; and I have found, in my long life, this way of doing things to be very beneficial. For when I was not able for a long time to unravel the origin or connection of some phenomenon but had to put it to one side, I found that, years later, it all suddenly became clear in the most beautiful way."
• 6 . Alcuin (also Alhuin or Alchwin, i.e. 'Friend of the Temple') was rector of the monastery school at York around 735 to 804. In 782 he followed the summons of Charlemagne and took on the headship of the court school. He encouraged the sciences in the monasteries and raised to the central seat of the sciences the monastery school of St Martin at Tours, which he founded and whose Abbot he became in 796.
  
  The debate with the Greek is described in Karl Werner's book Alcuin and sein Jahrhundert (Alcuin and His Century) Vienna 1881, Chapter 11. page 166, as follows:
  
  Thus Charlemagne once wanted to know from Alcuin what should be made of the view of a Greek scholar, who presumably was a member of a Byzantine legation at Charlemagne's court, who had expressed the opinion to the emperor that Christ had paid the expiation for our sins to death. Alcuin found this manner of expression and the idea behind it to be inadmissible, for Christ was not—death's debtor and could not become so—the price of our redemption was paid by Christ to our divine Father, to whom, in dying, He commended His soul. Death [so Alcuin argued] is in no way a reality of being and substance but, to his way of thinking, was something purely negative, the mere absence or 'Carence' (Church Latin: the interval before benefits become available) of life; it is nothing existing in itself, and thus cannot receive anything, no payment can be paid to it. On the contrary, in the person of Christ, death itself, which God did not create, became the ransom for our debt and won life for us thereby, which He Himself gives us in His saviour power.'
• 7 . Rudolf Steiner drew attention at different times to the fact that the content of the writings of 533 A.D., attributed to Dionysius the Areopagite, do indeed stem from the person of this name mentioned in The Acts of the Apostles 17, 34. See the lectures on 17 and 25 March 1907 in Christianity Began as a Religion and Festivals of the Seasons respectively.
• 8 . Johannes Scotus Erigena (c. 810–877) translator of the writings of Dionysius the Areopagite into Latin (see note 7).
• 9 . Nicolaus of Cusa (or Kures) (1401–1464), cardinal.
• 10. Immanuel Kant (1724–1804): Critique of Pure Reason, 1781; Prolegemena, 1783.
• 11. Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) Erste und zweite Einleitung in die Wissenschaftslehre und Verstwh einer neuen Darstellung der Wiyenschaftslehre (First and Second Introduction into the Doctrine of Knowledge and an Attempt at a New Presentation of the doctrine of Knowledge).
• 12. Grenzen der Naturerkenntnis (Limits to a Knowledge of Nature (GA 322)—eight lectures given during the first course (Hochschulkurs) of the School of Spiritual Science in Dornach, 27 September to 3 October 1920 (GA 322).
• 13. Baron Christian von Wolff, philosopher and mathematician, Vernünftige Gedanken von Gott, der Welt und der Seele des Menschen, auch allen Dingen überhaupt, 1719.
• 14. David Hume (1711–1776), philosopher.
• 15. Herbert Spencer (1820–1903), philosopher.
• 16. John Stuart Mill (1806–1873), philosopher.
• 17. Towards Social Renewal, 1919, (GA 23).
• 18. In the third week of the first course (of the School of Spiritual Science), Dr Carl Unger (1822–1929) gave lectures under the title of 'Rudolf Steiner's Works'. These six lectures, edited by Unger, can be found in Volume I of Carl Unger's Writings, Stuttgart, 1964.
• 19. The first Goetheanum building, begun in 1913, was already put into use in 1920, although still under construction supervised by Rudolf Steiner and with the interior not yet finished. On New Year's Eve 1922–3 it was destroyed by fire.
• 20. The Free Waldorf School was founded in Stuttgart in the spring of 1919 by Dr Emil Molt for the children, to begin with, of the employees of the Waldorf-Astoria cigarette factory. The school was under the supervision of Rudolf Steiner who appointed the teachers and gave the preparatory seminar courses.
• 21. The first anthroposophical course of the Free School for Spiritual Science took place at the Goetheanum from 26 September to 16 October 1920. See also notes 1,3,12, and 18.
• 22. i.e., a form of international support body for Waldorf Schools. Rudolf Steiner suggested the founding of a World Fellowship of Schools during an assembly of teachers on 16 October 1920. There is no available transcript of this talk.

Translator Unknown

Today, first of all, I have the urge in my soul to say something to you with regard to what wills, out of the impulses and need of our time, to be spoken to mankind in general through my booklet about the Social Question which will be appearing in the near future. It will be called The Key Points of the Social Question in the Vital Necessities of the Present and the Future (GA 23). It will have become evident to you from the lectures which we have held here for many weeks that what I now have to say just with regard to the Social Question is, perhaps, not only a sort of secondary stream by the side of what is pulsing in our whole spiritual-scientific striving, but that, in fact, matters must be so considered that this spiritual-scientific striving develops, in a way peculiar to itself, understanding for the needs and demands of our time and of the near future. The basic character of our time can really only be radically helped as a result of spiritual impulses. Everything else could at best be a substitute. Even the external activity which has to take place will have to be of such a kind that—I will not say a particular form of Spiritual Science, but that a spiritual life, penetrating to the real Spirit, becomes possible within the Social Order.

This is necessary for the reason that, as a result of human development, the man of the present day is in a quite definite position, which I have described to you from the most diverse sides. Today I shall only refer once more to the fact that, basically speaking, all considerations have led us to realise how the man of the present day is, as a result of his organisation, in a certain state of disunion at the present point of time. You see, one can easily be inclined to look on man as a unity in his whole being. But he is not a unity. We know that he is a three-membered being. And these three members of the human entity stand in different relationships to the physical-, soul- and spiritual outer world, and to his own inner part, in the various epochs of the post-Atlantean period.

We can now consider the three-membered man in two different ways. (We will make this schematic and simply place the three members of man one above the other—see diagram). Whether we now give names to these three members according to their physical aspect and say: nerves-senses system, rhythmic or breathing-and-heart system, and metabolic system, or whether we give them names according to their spiritual aspect and say the Intuitive-spiritual, the Inspirational-psychic and the Imaginative-bodily, or whether we proceed with other words as I have represented in my book Theosophy regarding this three-membered man from the spiritual aspect, or whether we fix our attention on the physical projection of the three-membered man, to which I have drawn attention in my last book, Riddles of the Soul, from every point of view it appears to us that man is a three-membered being. But this three-membered being, man, is, if I may say so, on the other hand not at all so "simply three-membered". We can say: Man is, in a certain sense, a double being, a twofold being, and the boundary really goes midway through the rhythmic system, right through the breathing-and-heart system.

In our present phase of development, the inner part of man really only lives in the metabolic system and the lower part of the heart-lungs system, of the rhythmic system. There, man is inward in reality in today's age. On the other had, with regard to the upper part of the heart-breathing system and similarly with regard to the nerves-senses system, man is to a great extent external today. You will at once understand what I mean. Man perceives the external world through the senses: he then works it up by means of his understandings. He also breathes in the outer world by means of his lungs. From outside, man takes what comes from perceptions, from the working of his understanding, from breathing-in. But man is, as it were, a sort of dwelling-house with respect to what comes to him from outside (see diagram). The whole of external nature is really contained in this upper part of man: colours, tones, stars, clouds, the air even as far as the breathing process—and you yourselves are really only the dwelling-house for this external matter. In olden times, men have found something else which was related to this upper part: elementary spirits and also divine-spiritual beings of the higher Hierarchies. They have spoken of these nature-beings in their mythologies, which were wiser than the natural-scientific knowledge of today. Now they have fallen out of human perceptions.

Today, Man only perceives the sensible and works it up. Here, he is really carrying only the external world into himself. We are hardly sufficiently aware of how little of ourselves there really is in what we carry into ourselves as perceptions of the outer world, or even as what the memory retains of the outer world. If you go up this hill in the morning or at midday and see the Goetheanum, then go down and carry in yourself the picture of the Goetheanum and all that has happened, you apparently have something in you, but yet something which is only a mirror-image in you, for the Goetheanum is standing here on this hill. You are only its dwelling-place—with the upper part of Man which I have separated off (see diagram). And Man is so poor in spirit today because he no longer finds the Spirit in the external world.

Yes, my dear friends, there were times in the development of the Earth in which, after people had gone down again, what had been seen would have worked in those who had come up the hill here and thus had seen something such as the Goetheanum, not only as a fantasy, as an inner mystery but as a world of facts. From what they had seen people would have received—just as they carry down colours and forms now—those spiritual beings which had slipped out of every corner and which had taken part in what man did here. But this is over for men, just as though the elementary and spiritual beings had fled out of external nature. External nature is emptied of Spirit, and as a result so is this part of the human interior. And all that really is left for what is inward is the lower part of the chest, and the metabolic system with the limbs.

For the externalised man of today, this is what he calls his "inner part" if he does not really begin to interest himself in true spirituality. Man has arrived at the point where he speaks, it is true, of his "inner part", but, basically speaking, he means nothing beyond his metabolic system and, at most, the connection which the breathing and the rhythm of the heart enter into with the metabolic system. We should not be deceived about it, and should be clear with ourselves: when men declare that they are out of order in their "inner part", that they have inner difficulties, this is only a verbal expression for some lack of regularity in the metabolic system.

One man is cheerful, another ill-tempered owing to his "inner part", one is passionate, another full of humour. Basically speaking, all this is a result of the metabolic system and at most the reaction of the breathing and heart-circulation on the metabolic system. When one says that the soul is out of order in this or that person, it is, in reality, his stomach and intestines which are out of order. All that people call "soul-life" is, basically speaking, only a verbal expression for events in the metabolic system. Naturally, no one wants to confess, in accordance with reality: my stomach, my intestines, spleen or liver or such things are not in order within me, but we say: my soul has this or that difficulty. This sounds better, more elegant, to many people; they consider it to be less materialistic. To anyone who looks at things according to reality, it is merely more untruthful. For we stand today in that phase of development in which human nature already separates itself into these two members.

You may ask: by what means can this be corrected? There is only one help for the man of today, namely to get loose from himself, by means of an interest in the affairs of mankind, through real interest in what concerns all men today, and to turn the attention as little as possible to these irregularities of the metabolic system in the wider sense, which are, nevertheless, almost universally present today. If men could get loose from themselves through a far-reaching interest, which is to be reached only by taking Spiritual Science seriously—then alone can health pour itself out over the human race today.

Today, you see, one has really characteristic experiences. I was recently at the League of Nations Congress at Berne¹, where they spoke about all the things about which it is unnecessary to speak today, because they just lead to nothing, and where they did not speak about all that is most necessary today. But I do not at all wish to mention this as the main point. I should like to mention, as the main point, something about the manor of speaking which cropped up in what almost all the speakers said. In at least every third sentence uttered by these speakers is found the little word "I". "I am of the opinion", "I think", "It seems to me that this or that is necessary", "I am in favour of this or that"—you can hear this in almost every sentence. And the men were quite angry if one did not join in in the same strain! If one speaks more from an objective standpoint, if one puts one's sentences in such a way that one gives priority to the inner, objective contents of the matter, without personal opinion, they say that one is speaking authoritatively, that one is speaking arrogantly. But surely the highest arrogance is when one brings the word "I" into one's mouth every third sentence.

But people have certainly forgotten, today, to feel this arrogance. They find it more sensible if someone is always talking of himself, and they find it in the highest degree immodest and arrogant if someone tries to speak from an objective standpoint, for, you see, they have this dim feeling: he is asserting that he knows something beyond what is his personal opinion. And it is a great sin today if anyone asserts that he does know something beyond what is his personal opinion. And as to those personal opinions—!

To those who are versed in Spiritual Science I should frequently like to describe this kind of conference more accurately, just from its spiritual-scientific standpoint! One hears a speaker of the kind who utters the little word "I" with every third sentence—"I think", " I am of the opinion", "this is sympathetic to me", "I ask you to enter into this": when this speaker is speaking about the super-State, the super-parliament, the spiritual scientist says to himself: the man surely has something wrong with his liver, something is out of order in his liver and the metabolic system is speaking out of the man. A second speaker gets up and talks in a similar way. As he goes away, the spiritual scientist says to himself: probably he has a gall stone. The third is inclined to stomach trouble.

These things are important only in an age in which materialism is pulsating, where the free soul, independent of what is material, does not speak, where, in fact, it is the body which speaks. And very often indeed, today, it is the body which speaks. Really, people are only accustomed to make use of old words of their bodily indispositions. To one who looks into things in a spiritual-scientific way it would be preferable if, instead of talking about the Superman (naturally, I do not mean Nietzsche, but the others who have spoken about the "Superman" after Nietzsche's time) were to talk about the "sub-stomach". For in this way they would better catch the likeness of the reality which is, in fact, speaking out of them.

This is not pessimism, my dear friends: it is quite simply the world of present day facts. And in the present time men are impelled to become untruthful for the simple reason that they are ashamed to call the facts by the right name. There is even a longing in them to give themselves up to that "man" which is, in fact, only the physical man. In our time it is certainly the case that perhaps the only reason why we have no Molière to write a new Malade imaginaire is that we should need too many Molières, for today there is a genuine enthusiasm for being ill in people who have time to be ill. Such people as have no time for it do not, for the most part, turn their attention to those conditions which are sufficient causes for making others, who have time to be ill, feel that they are ill.

One must look for the destructive workings of materialism not only where people talk of materialism or where they talk materialistically: these working show themselves in numerous other examples as well. And sometimes even talk about the Spirit today as nothing else than the purest materialism, for this talk about the Spirit is, for very many people, nothing else than an anaesthetic for their otherwise cosy materiality. The will to activity is lacking in men today, the will to real inner activity. This is the reason why the bourgeoisie has remained in a state of ineffectiveness in face of the Social Question which has been rising up for 70 years. It is a monstrous materialism which has taken hold of men in the most diverse forms—and especially the circles on whom, in recent times, was set the task of turning to the Spiritual.

One must know this about the basic impulses of our time, about what is living in our time. Not to know it implies that one is giving oneself up to illusions. Spiritual Science is of such great importance for present day men because it takes them away from themselves, but it must be truly comprehended in this sense. An illusion can easily arise regarding Spiritual Science: a quality can assert itself, which is so thoroughly propagated at the present time just as a result of materialism—namely, superficiality. If people grasp in a superficial way what Spiritual Science wishes to arouse in the way of interests, they can be all the more hardened in themselves, can be all the more pressed into themselves. Then nothing else at all is of assistance than to return again and again to what does not in any way concern us personally, but what represents the content of our Spiritual Science and the things which are found in its content, to take them as objectively as possible and, when one speaks about the most subjective things, not to take them in a subjective way! Only think how important it is to resist, in this point, temptations which lie near.

When I recently depicted how Man is really capable of development from outside only up to the 28th year today, and how development comes to an end at that point of time when he is standing just before the mind-soul and the Ego but does not come to them, and thereby goes to meet a certain inner emptiness—this, then, is an important truth for the present time. It is important to know this: it is important to receive it into oneself as an inner experience. But it would be dangerous to think afterwards: am I, perhaps, one of those who have not developed to the mind-soul in the right way from the 28th year forward? Just the most subjective things, which refer to what is most important of all, should be taken up objectively: we should not look into whether we are among those in whom something can happen in this way: we should just be able to look away from ourselves in the most important human truths, and look at the age, at humanity, and not always think of ourselves in an egotistical way.

It is this which is characteristic of the time, which is coming forth from the deep impulses of our time and which makes it so difficult today to propagate ideas which refer to the very most important impulses of the development of the time. Man can develop no interest from this basic disposition which I have described. Their ideas remain sensations for them, do not sufficiently take hold of them, do not sufficiently spur them on to activity.

This must now be said at a time when a kind of transition has occurred for all people who are genuinely interesting themselves in our Spiritual Science. Until now you have had a spiritual-scientific literature which refers to the inner development of man and to knowledge about the Spiritual World, and which spoke to a man in such a way that he could take hold of the world, his relationship with the world, his relationship with other men, so far as it is soul-spiritual, from the most varied points of view. Now this Spiritual Science is running, with a branch—it is proceeding as the main body of Spiritual Science, for just this main body of Spiritual Science is the most necessary thing of all for really making all relationships healthy—into a stream which speaks of the Social Question, of the making healthy of the Social Organism, and which may no longer be taken inactively, no longer just passively, because otherwise it would miss its goal. And just now it will appear how many of us have made themselves ripe, during the many preceding years in which they were taking Spiritual Science into themselves, for a clear grasp of what is now to be understood as the Social Question. For what matters is a clear, unprejudiced, unsentimental grasp of what is to be uttered particularly in my forthcoming book The Basic Issues of the Social Question—it will be something on account of which we shall now have to undergo a certain trial.

Up to now, one could certainly be a good spiritual scientist if one studied Spiritual Science without troubling oneself about what was going on in life outside. And we have, you see, just two phenomena within out anthroposophical movement about which we really should reflect. We have the one phenomena that we have quite good anthroposophists who, though they know a great deal about cosmic development, the membering of Man, reincarnation, destiny and karma, nonetheless have no inkling of the reality of life, but who have sought something just in Anthroposophy, which has enabled them to hold themselves aloof from this reality of life. Those whom what I have just said specially concerns do not realise at all that it does concern them. For every one of them considers himself in naive fashion to be a practical man with regard to his life. This is the one phenomena which we have among us.

The other phenomena is sectarianism in some form or other. There is a deep inclination present, you see, to produce sectarianism just in movements which have to do with the Spiritual. It does not depend on whether this sectarianism is now developing from little cliques which appear with a sectarian character, even in very minor matters, or whether direct sectarianism is produced. For the main point is to realise that objectivity, an impersonal point of view, must permeate this anthroposophically-oriented spiritual-scientific movement which is here referred to.

This, you see, was always the difficult thing about our movement, that the personal was interchanged with what is objectively-factual, mostly without our being aware of it. When people gather into a clique which is larger of smaller, they are in full belief that they have a quite factual interest. Certainly they fully believe this, for they do not notice at all that they in reality they are generally doing what they wish for, just because this person stands near them spiritual-scientifically, because he is connected with them is such and such a way, because they wish to have just this or that relationship with him, or the like.

People are not aware of this. They live in the full belief that they are being objective. But just this sectarianism, this gathering in cliques, has brought forth the dreadful consequence that the promulgation of Spiritual Science, in whatever sphere it may be, is not judged today according to what it is but according to what a society, the Anthroposophical Society, is making and has made out of it. While I point to the most mischievous shortcomings and the most horrible "marsh-plants", of the type of an S------, it may not at all be overlooked, if one goes to the root of the matter, that this kind of "marsh-plant" has been coaxed on, raised up and cultivated by the cliquishness and sectarianism which have developed widely in the last 17 or 18 years in the anthroposophical movement. But what is going on in this anthroposophical movement very often projects itself into Anthroposophy because, you see, sins are committed by very many members against what is the most significant impulse of the time today, against individualism in the spiritual sphere. How frequently do we hear: we Anthroposophists, we Theosophists, want this or that! It is dreadful that we have as many as three basic principles!—We need no basic principles at all, for it is not these which matter: we need truths, not summarising-principles, and these truths are only for single human beings, for the individual. The Society—how often I have said it—should be something outward, but the thing itself does not concern the Society.

We must now be able to take this in a really and truly serious way. If what is now to flow into the world as a result of efforts with regard to the Social Question is to be borne along by sectarianism or clique-spirit or the various narrow-mindednesses which I have described today, quite terrible injury will be done to the matter! Here we must really develop to a more broad-minded way of thinking: we must seek for access into real, practical life. This is the main point.

Do take what I am saying about these things only in a friendly spirit. Do not take it as though I should like to say anything derogatory on the one side or the other. But now I really am compelled to utter a fundamental warning before this social side of our activities becomes the concern of all members, as it is to become—a warning not to mix into this social thinking any sectarianism, any pettiness, anything which has no wide horizon, which does not arise from clear thinking. But try, to an ever greater extent, to think from the experience and reality of life! I was, indeed, highly astonished when, a short time ago, the slogan (Devise) reached by ears, which I suppose must be uttered here from the one side or the other: one should carry practically into life the things which I am now putting forward as social ideas. What was meant was the carrying over of those practical ideas into the most unpractical measures that could be! We ought not to let that arise which has just led into the most terrible chaos and mischief in our time, the confusing of real with illusory practicality in life. What has been expressed there is so unpractical, has been thought out in so sectarian a way that I do not want to go into it further: it has to so small an extent the will really to step into practical life that I beg you before everything to look on what is going on in real life today, to know how to learn from what the various statements which I make have arisen.

For do you believe that it is a light-hearted theory when one says that labour-power has the character of a commodity? This may only be said if one has got to know it to an ever-greater extent as the most characteristic thing in life. Thus I should like, for example, to say the following—without anger, for these things are not to be taken in a personal way: I have been asked whether the three-membering—economic life, rights-life, spiritual life, could not be realised within our Society.

Certainly, one can utter something in this way with words, if one stands very well within our movement, if one feels for it quite honestly and deeply. But yet, if one say this, it is as though one had not at all grasped the basic nature of our movement. One has understood nothing at all about what I have said about the Social Question if one thinks that we can split our Society here into three, like a sect! For what are the three branches of the healthy Social Organism? First, take economic life. Do you, perhaps, wish to carry on some sort of communal economy in this Society—I do not know at all how it is to be externally realised—within the rest of the economic sphere outside? Do you wish, then, not to understand at all that one cannot cut oneself off in an egotistical way—even if it be in a group-egotistical way—and leave everything else out of consideration? You carry on economic life, in fact, together with the rest of the economy of the surrounding territory. You take, in fact, milk, cheese, vegetables, all that you need, from an economic body from which you cannot isolate yourselves. You cannot, in fact, reform the times by cutting yourselves adrift from the times. If someone wants to make a Society like this into an economic corporation, it appears to me just as though someone has a large family and says: I shall now begin threefolding in my family!

These ideas are too serious, too comprehensive. They ought not to be dragged into the petty-bourgeois field of various sectarianism which has always been there. They must be thought of in connection with the whole of mankind. They would, you see, cut themselves completely off from practical thinking about the economic circulation of the world if they wished to set up a group-economy for a sect. So much for economic life.

And rights-life! Just found the Rights-state within our Society! If you steal something, it will be entirely without importance if three people come together and pass judgement about this theft. The external court will certainly take you in charge and pass judgement. You just cannot draw yourself out of the external organisation with regard to the Rights-state.

Finally, consider spiritual life. Since there has been an Anthroposophical Society or since, with its anthroposophical content, it has belonged to the Theosophical Society, where has there been anything carried on here within this spiritual community which is dependent in even the smallest degree on any state- or political organisation? From the first day of this Society forward, our ideal has been fulfilled with regard to spiritual life, which, above all, is our task! Do you believe that it is only today that this is be achieved in this Anthroposophical Society? Is not everything fulfilled, just in this Anthroposophical Society, which is to be desired from the external spiritual organisation? Is it not the most practical ideal just with regard to this? Do you wish, now, to reform the Anthroposophical Society according to this aim? To be sure, you must have entirely failed to grasp what sort of a society you have been for so many years if it is only now that you wish to realise the Spiritual Third in this society!

Therefore, look upon just what we have been able to preserve by the skin of our teeth—freedom of spiritual investigation and teaching, at least in those people who long for no state-appointment for what they teach here—as a kind of starting-point for the rest. Just see what really is so, and do not let your thinking miss it. In my book about the Social Question it is stated again and again to be an inherited evil of the present age that the so-called practical people of today have let their thinking and speaking miss the things which matter. Is this evil also to establish itself in us, so that we no longer speak about the things which matter? It cannot be our task to carry free spiritual life into this place, but to carry out into the world what has always existed here as free spiritual life, to make it clear to men that all spiritual life must be of this kind.

What matters is, at least in the first place, to see the nearest reality. In this direction, what I have brought forward about the Social Question must, in the first place, be understood by Anthroposophists. Within the Anthroposophical Society at least, one should avoid propagating odd ideas with expressed intention of making practical what is represented here. Take seriously what has been gone through as a principal feature of the lectures of the last weeks—perhaps, indeed, of the last months: before everything, regard it quite seriously that the present time makes necessary a new adjustment of Man with regard to life, that it is not enough that we only take in now thoughts but that we should find the possibility to adjust ourselves in a new way in face of life, and that we should avoid everything which tends to isolation and to shutting ourselves off. Regard it seriously, before everything, that mankind has come to a real cul-de-sac in all three spheres with their so-called culture. How can this cul-de-sac show itself more clearly than in its chaotic, destructive effects in East- and Middle-Europe? The conditions in Russia do not arise only from the war. The war is only the culmination. What men have thought, perceived and felt for a long, long time, and what one was compelled to describe as a kind of social cancer² has brought this chaos to a head in East- and Middle-Europe.

But what is most lacking at the present time? Judgement is lacking most of all! In the present time, social enlightenment is most of all lacking! It is this which the bourgeoisie has neglected most of all—the right kind of social enlightenment. There is, you see, no social sense in men. Every man knows only himself! This is why judgement is so short-sighted. If one speaks like this today, that economic life is to be brought into the Anthroposophical Society, then this is how I should be able to represent something real to myself—if we were to buy a cow, take care of it and milk it, and thereby produce something and deal in the right way with what had been produced. Then this would not be any sectarianism within our Society, for an ordered economic life what matters before everything is to take measures to raise productivity, taking account of necessary needs.

Here a beginning was actually made, which only, in the first place, partly failed because of the personage by whom it was made. Remember, we made a beginning with our bread through Herr von R., producing bread not according to the principle of production but according to that of consumption, which can be the only really sound principle. We wished, first of all, to provide consumers, which should gave been possible through a Society. Then production would have been put in hand according to the number of these. This was a real, practical beginning. It has only failed because Herr von R. was or is a quite unpractical man. Thus this was a practical idea, but one which only had to do with the Anthroposophical Society so far as the Society represented, in the first place, a body of consumers. What matters is to turn one's glance to the thing, not to the Anthroposophical Society, certainly no to make this into an isolated sect.

With referenced to these external things which lie at the basis of production, and to many another thing, you will not come far if you do not grasp on a large scale the ideas which are in my book about the Social Question. For, in the last resort, economic practical experience is necessary for the reform of economic life; one must even know how to milk cows, and it is more important to understand the milking of cows than to put in hand some economic understanding in a little sect and then, nevertheless, to obtain milk from outside.

In our case, what matters would be to realize in just what the impulse of the present time must lie, what is the most important thing at the present time. You can engage in all the undertakings that you wish today. Go, if you can, to Russia, Germany, Austria, Hungary, etc. Put in hand there the best, most idealistic things; do what you wish! At the latest, all these undertakings will be bankrupt within ten years—that is how things are today. With the thoughts which men have today, you can put in hand the most idealistic undertakings; in ten years they will be bankrupt—of that you can be quite sure. It will not always be as quick as it was just now in Munich, where one workers' and soldiers' council was set aside by another, and this again by another yet more radical, and so on but everything which you put in hand today in the way of such undertakings, which appear very good and sound to you, will in their turn be overthrown so long as the same ideas remain in people's heads as have been there for centuries and are still wandering about there like ghosts.

Nothing more is to be done with these ideas! One must therefore certainly accustom oneself to think and learn the other way round, and to take in new ideas as a constituent part of the inner being of one's soul. You cannot at once, from one day to another, apply new ideas to undertakings, but you can work out in detail the ideas which are in my book, down to the most extreme specialization, because they are practical. You can try to put this or that in hand. But you will also need people, you see, for everything which you put in hand. And, so long as the old thoughts are haunting the heads of those people, your undertakings will soon become bankrupt or else will take on the earlier forms, so that everything will remain in the old manner. Therefore it is not the most important thing today to put this or that in hand. Naturally, you can put good things in hand for yourselves. I do not at all want to tempt you to put bad things in hand. But I am only drawing your attention to the fact that even if you put the best things in hand you will not change the times by doing so. In order really to work in any sphere in the new style, one can undertake something in the manner which I previously indicated to you with regard to bread, or one can do it in some such way as we are doing in the sphere of our literature.

How did we start? In the first place, I spoke to a very small circle in Berlin. Then the circles became ever larger. While they were becoming larger the need arose to have in books what was spoken. The readers were there before the books were printed. Follow up the theories about social ideas today; one of the fundamental evils of our social order consists of the continual crises and the danger of crises which arise as a result of sporadic overproduction, when people produce things without deliberation. It is worst of all in the book-trade. If you only knew what is produced in the book-trade in the way of books, editions of which are often produced of 500 copies, sometimes still more, of which not fifty copies are sold! You have employed the setter-up, you have employed the printer, you have used up paper, all for nothing! All this is thrown to the winds; a misuse of human labor-power has taken place! In the moment when you produce things without deliberation, you must be aware that you are using up human labor-power without the consumption being there to justify this using up of human labor-power, for this using-up of human labor-power is only justified by the existing need. Not the content, but the demand must be there. The spending of human labor power is only justified when one can foresee that the product of human labor is for the benefit of human beings.

Thus, in the single sphere into which we could step in a certain way as reformers, we have done so. We have even had to take refuge in under-production, not over-production. The world could by no means think otherwise than that the magazine Lucifer-Gnosis came to an end for want of readers, as other magazines have done. Just when it had to come to an end because other demands came upon me, the moment had to come when it would first have had half as many readers again as it had before, then twice as many, then three times as many. We have even had to resolve on underproduction, not overproduction. But thus crises were avoided in a sound way.

The book-trade lives in a continual crisis. If one makes statistics of books which are not bought, one sees that books are produced which are not bought today because care cannot be taken to see that they are bought. Many people have a certain insight into these things. I once spoke with Eduard von Hartmann in the eighties about the literature of the Theory of Knowledge. It was at the time when I wrote my booklet Truth and Science which is now out of print, of which no copy was printed uselessly, no copy went for waste-paper with a resulting waste of human labor-power. Eduard von Hartmann said to me: people have all their works on the Theory of Knowledge printed in editions of 500; we know that we have at the most sixty readers in Germany; in this case one should have them hectographed and send the books to the small number of readers who are really interested. It is known that works on Theory of Knowledge have had no more readers at that time.

Do not find fault with the fact that I have just spoken here about this purely economic question of anthroposophical literature. These things have nothing to do with the content of the books, you see, nothing to do with spiritual value. They can, however, illustrate what is really meant and what really matters at the present time—that first of all a sound association of consumers should be created and that production should not take place "into the blue". Not even Truth, my dear friends, should be produced from mere human predilection!

It is to this that the answer refers which I once gave to two Catholic priests in Colmar after a lecture on "The Bible and Knowledge", and which I recently touched on again. After the lecture, the two priests came to me and said: as regards to the content of the lecture they really had nothing special to object to, but they had a lot against the manner of speaking, for the way in which they spoke down from the pulpit was suitable for all men. The way in which I spoke was not suitable for all men, but only for educated people. I could only reply to them what matters in not what opinions you hold, and I hold, about the way in which one should speak to all men; no doubt we can have all sorts of interesting ideas about that, but what matters is not how one should speak but what the facts demand. And now I ask you do all the people go to you in the church? You cannot assert this. Thus I am speaking for those who remain outside and who yet also have a right to hear of Christ, and there area quite enough of them today.

These are facts which cannot be denied. But the old bourgeois education, which is wholly shut up in itself, does still deny it. It imagines something is right if done in this way: it must be so; it must be done like this. But, for life, it is not at all necessary that it be done in this way! What matters, for life, is that one observes: this is there and that is there, that one lets the facts which are there demand of one what one has to do. There are only apparently trivialities, for life today is continually sinning against these trivialities.

What is thus necessary before everything is another adjustment, and also the insight that we must see how this culture, which has been so praised, has carried death in itself, has dissolved itself. You must not believe that culture has been ruined as a result of the Radical-socialist movements of today. It has ruined itself. What the upper classes had in the way of culture has led itself into negation, is perishing by its own qualities. This upper class has simply not taken care that the lower, proletarian classes who are coming after them know anything rational about social arrangements, and thus it is astonished when they come to the fore in their social ignorance and bring really nothing about except chaos.

The position is quite serious, and it is out of this realization of the serious situation of the whole world today that the ideas flow which I have had to utter in my book about the Social Question. People will only understand this book aright if they grasp that one can put the best arrangements in hand today but that just nothing is to be done with the men who have the ideas of our time in their heads. Before everything, their heads must be filled with other ideas. What, then is the true, the real, the truly practical task? To spread enlightenment, my dear friends, before everything, to spread enlightenment and teach people to think differently! This is the task which is laid on every one of you, to bring enlightenment into people's heads, not to think of sundry reformations in details, but to give enlightenment about what is necessary in the most universal way. For, before everything, men must become different today; that is to say, the thoughts, the feelings in men's souls must become different. It is a question of carrying these ideas out there wherever one can. That is the practical thing, to put these ideas into practice. Something is achieved with every quarter of a man—pardon my speaking in such a way—when you win for these ideas. And it is achieved in the greatest degree if you win over people who have practical standing. In the matter of the signatures under the Manifesto, I recently said: it is really quite a cause for joy that there are writers' signatures under the Manifesto, but one bank director who really understands the Manifesto and works in its sense is of more value than ten writers who set their names under it.

Today, what matters is to take hold of life where it is to be taken hold of. And today this cannot be done except while one is spreading enlightenment before all else, is working in an enlightening way. For what people need as the most necessary thing of all is knowledge of the conditions for the life of the healthy Social Organism. If they do not learn to know the conditions for the life of the healthy Social Organism, they will continue to destroy the old Social Organism so long as destruction is possible. It is natural, you see, only up to a certain point. Everything which is done just now without these ideas is an exhaustion of the forces of the old order, a pulling down of the old order. This has begun in Russia and will go on further from there. What matters is to build up. But you can only build up today if people understand how the building-up must be done. For we are living in the age of the development of the consciousness-soul, that is to say in the age of conscious individualities, in the age when people must know what they are doing.

My book is written out of this spirit, and I should like it understood in this spirit. I should like you to lay it in your hearts in this spirit. It will simply serve the time; it will utter what must be uttered out of the spirit of the time. Cliques, sectarian trends within the body of our own Society, have taken care enough that, basically speaking, people presume all sorts of ghost-hunting and the like when there is talk about Anthroposophy. But one does not seek the Spirit here by always merely talking about the Spirit—one can leave that to other gentlemen—but the important thing is that the Spirit shall be in the position really to plunge down into practical life, to understand how practical life must be handled. Anyone has a poor kind of belief in the Spirit who wishes to grasp it only in a shadowy form which is floating above life. Therefore, to an ever greater extent, you must really avoid turning away from life, must to an ever greater extent seek really to understand life, to look into life; otherwise the same phenomena of which I have spoken will happen again and again. Examples can be given by hundreds and thousands. A lady came to me and said: a man has come to me to ask me to lend him money, but he is a brewer who brews beer for this money. I really cannot support this—a brewery! Now, you see, this is quite nice; in this narrow circle, the lady did not wish to support the brewery because she was an abstainer and not only wished to be an abstainer on her own account but wished also to make propaganda for temperance. I had to reply to her: "I suppose you have money in the bank, by which you live. Have you an inkling how many breweries the bank helps with your money? Have you an inkling of all that is done there? Do you believe that all this is in the sense of the idea which you have just followed with regard to the sum which you were asked to lend to the brewer? But are you not doing the same thing when your money, which you have deposited in the bank, is carried over into economic life?" For do you really believe that it means that you are turning yourself towards life if you do no more than judge this life in the narrowest circles, if you do not at all set about fixing your attention on the broad aspect of life?

But the important thing is this: our Anthroposophical Society is no field for experimenting, but it is to be the germ for everything good which is to come over mankind. With regard to the Social Question, what matters is above all that a wider stream of enlightenment about social necessities shall stream out from it. For you are certainly behaving practically, conforming with life, if you spread these things, but you must also really take trouble to spread them conformably with life, and not remain in a narrow interpretation. I hope that not one of you comes to the strange idea that we are dealing in the old national-economic ideas, by which people learn National-economy. For God's sake don't bring in anything pertaining to "export national-economics" here today, for this, you see, consists of ideas from the oldest lumber-room of all! Do not believe that you are learning to think in a national-economic way if, today, you take practicable concepts into yourselves in a scholastic way, as they are perhaps taught at universities. Do not make any programs which appear to put into practice what I have given in lectures but which, rather, mean nothing more than the terribly-grinning old bourgeois masks! Let us set ourselves on the solid ground of the great demands of our time; let us consider social life before everything in these demands of our time!

I could not but say this before you just now, when we are about to make a journey to Germany and many a task will come to meet me; and though we hope that our absence will this time be much less long than on other occasions, we are yet living in a time when one should really never make plans and projects covering a long time. One can only say people who have found one another as the members of the Anthroposophical Society have done remain together wherever they are, stand in the matter with steadfast courage and inner boldness and stick to their course, whatever the terrible billows of the present time may bring. For the most part, they will not bring anything easy. We shall most likely experience many a thing which will raise the question in us: how should things go further just among us? Stick to your course even when this happens; do what is your part in order to carry something further in the world, and you will be doing what is right.

I could only remain here at this time until this book was completed, for this book is to be of service to the time. Our friends will undertake it here, will take care of its distribution in Switzerland, and I hope for many a reason that I can be here again quite soon to take part in this work. Partly for a reason which is very much misunderstood just here in Switzerland. One can certainly hear from someone on the other side: "but what does the foreigner want just here in Switzerland? He should leave us in peace. Our democracy has lasted for 600 years; it is healthy, it is proof against what is going on outside among the crazy eastern and middle-European peoples."

I have now the conviction that the best could be done today where it could still be brought about from free-will. If such social ideas as are recorded in my book were to blossom in Russia today, this would come to pass because the most external need compelled it, and if the most external need compels it—the same in Middle-Europe, the same in Germany—then the right impulse is no longer there. The right impulse just for these ideas, which will bring social healing to mankind, would be present if they would come to pass out of freedom on a ground of which one can say the Bolshevists have not come to us, we still have something of the old conditions. Oh, if understanding for it were developed to bring forth these ideas from free-will, just on the ground here, before the water runs into the mouths of the people here as well, then Switzerland could be the blossoming land of Europe, for it is equipped for this by its geographical position! It is equipped with a gigantic mission in spite of its small size. But it will only be able to fulfill this mission if it brings to completion, from free-will, what neither the eastern nor the middle states can bring to fulfillment from free-will today—they would have had to take it in hand before now—and what the western states will not do because they have not sufficient disposition to do so. Here there are dispositions, the geographical presuppositions; everything is present here. All that is needed here is good-will towards free human resolve. To this belongs just activity of thinking. To this belongs thought-will.

Thought-will is what the mankind of today most lack. Thought-will develops very well, even geographically, among those men whom souls come because they wish to go into the mountains. (I drew your attention to this yesterday: souls no longer set very much value on race, they go to a geographical situation). Thought-will does not develop in regions such as that in which The Three Gypsies (poem by Lenau) was composed. This is a very beautiful poem, but it is composed in the plain. Man does not need a plain-disposition today; he certainly needs a mountain-disposition. Therefore, much could come out of the Swiss mountains; therefore one would like to have certain foundations here also, a point from which something could proceed. And therefore it seems important to me not to be silent just here but to speak as long as possible of the great needs of the time. And I call especially to our friends here in Switzerland to understand the demand for enlightenment, to take care that the demands of the time pass over into the consciousness just of those who live in this place. The more Swiss heads and Swiss hearts are won just for these social ideas, the better it will be for Europe and for the world. I say this quite particularly to the Swiss. You can, you see, my dear Swiss who are among us, make the foreign thing into a Swiss thing—then it is a Swiss thing! All these distinctions, really have only a passing value.

I could not but say this to you today, and I hope that you have understood me quite aright with regard to these things. I hope that the spirit which should fill and envelop this building may be further maintained as a result of the disposition of our members, and that we may at some time find ourselves together again here, held together by this spirit which, from the beginning forward, was such that it could now live itself out and which cannot be any different, for from the beginning forward it has willed to realize itself in what lies in the demands of our time.

With this I should like to take leave of you for the present. But this place here should have such a spiritual importance that if it should at any time be necessary and if the only way for me to come to work here would be to ride here on a wasted, half-dead nag, I should not shrink from even this. But tasks can come in other places which may delay my return. But in spite of everything, good-bye in our spirit, particularly in the spirit which I have slightly depicted in this last gathering and presented to your hearts.

• 1. 7-13 March 1919: see also The Real Foundation of a League of Nations. Troxler Press, Berne
• 2. see Inner Being of Man and Life Between Death and a New Birth, cycle 32, Lecture 6, p.12

A point has been reached in mankind's evolution when the riddle of existence becomes ever more significant for the human soul. Some are aware of the riddle but there is little inclination anywhere to seek ways and means of solving it.

Today I would like to point to an aspect of the riddle which many people come up against in everyday life. There are those who ask: Why is it that all over the world there is a discrepancy between man's intellectual and moral development? At present man's intellectual development expresses itself mainly in what could also be called, with more or less justification, scientific development. Most people's view of life is based on natural science. And what things has man not produced thanks to his intellect! I need not enumerate all the external products which make up our materialistic culture. When one thinks of all the ingenious means it has so far produced for destroying human life, for enabling men to slaughter one another, then, leaving aside all moral considerations, one must concede that the intellect has reached a certain high plateau in its development. Just think of all the scientific ingenuity necessary to produce all those instruments of death with which men mangle each other, causing untold suffering.

One can think of much that is negative and also of much that is positive in what has come about as a result of man's highly developed intellect. It has certainly progressed with unprecedented speed especially in the last centuries. Occasionally one comes across remarks made by the few who have noticed the glaring contrast between intellect and morality. Already years ago in his famous work The Riddle of the Universe, Ernst Haeckel³⁵ pointed out how man has progressed intellectually but in regard to morality he has in many respects remained at a primitive stage. There are also others who have remarked on this discord which tends to be noticed by persons who are awake and sensitive to what goes on in the world. However, due to modern man's lethargy and love of ease, people fail to become aware that only spiritual knowledge can throw light on these profound problems with their far-reaching consequences for the human soul. If one is to find one's way through the complexities of present-day life no other possibility exists than to attempt to understand them in the light of spiritual science. Anyone with a feeling for reality finds it painful to witness the unease, the unwillingness that exists all over the globe to face openly and courageously the things that are happening both above and below the surface of events. Today people are apt to deplore immoral measures taken in the past. This seems strange in view of the fact that they fail to judge what goes on at present all over the world which is far worse than anything that has happened before in human evolution. Let us for once look at the relationship between man's intellectual and moral development in the light of spiritual knowledge.

Our first enquiry must concern what exactly takes place in the human being when he is engaged in intellectual pursuits. What aspects of our being is active when we formulate scientific thoughts; i.e., when we investigate external phenomena? We reflect on the laws of nature to enable us, through understanding them, to form appropriate mental pictures. This activity engages parts of man's being which are the most mature. When we look at what is today the foundation, the tool of the intellect then we are looking at those aspects of man which were developed and incorporated into his being in the course of the ancient Saturn, Sun, Moon and the present Earth evolutions. When on the other hand we seek to understand the foundation of man's moral development we cannot refer to such mature constituents of his being. In regard to his moral evolution we are dealing with comparatively much younger members of human nature. In actual fact only man's 'I' can be said to be moral in the true sense. But, as I have often said: man's 'I' is the baby among the members of his being. Even in regard to the astral body, incorporated into man's being during the ancient Moon evolution, one can speak of moral impulses only insofar as the astral body, being intimately connected with the 'I' during life, may receive moral impulses from the latter. It must also be borne in mind that the 'I' and astral body have a comparatively independent existence; every night when we fall asleep they free themselves from the physical and etheric bodies. They are then in a state of complete unconsciousness and therefore cannot receive moral impulses.

The following is of great importance but somewhat difficult for modern man to understand: Every time we awake from sleep we enter, with our ‘I’ and astral body, into our physical and etheric bodies; i.e., into the oldest members of our being. These members, having evolved through the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions have attained a certain degree of perfection which makes them pre-eminently suitable tools for the intellect. Their degree of perfection is something that is inborn in them and manifests as intellectual proficiency. If the 'I' and astral body were not added to our physical and etheric bodies we would in a certain sense be thinking machines; we would be scientific automatons. In accordance with their nature our physical and etheric bodies do in fact act automatically in certain ways. It is only because the ‘I’ dwells in them that they are capable of further development on earth. But the ‘I’ could do little towards perfecting the physical and etheric bodies, even in regard to their intellectual ability, if it were not transported every night into sleep. We attain our best forces, also in regard to intellectual development, during sleep. It is because the physical and etheric bodies are perfectly developed tools that the already existing intellectuality can become further developed by what the 'I' has received from the spiritual world during sleep and bestows upon them on waking. During waking life we have in addition our consciousness which we attain by virtue of the physical and etheric bodies. We have at present no comparable consciousness as far as the ‘I’ and astral body are concerned. This should be kept well in mind. Man believes he knows his ‘I,’ but in what sense does he know it? If you have, say, a red surface and cut a hole in it through which you look into darkness; i.e., into nothingness, you will then see the red surface and the hole as a black circle. You look into nothingness. In your inner life you see your ‘I’ the way you see the black circle in the surrounding red. What man believes to be perception of his 'I' is in fact a gap in his soul life. Though nothing is there, or very little, man believes he perceives his ‘I.’ In actual fact all he sees is what his brain reveals to him through his etheric and physical bodies. In the present phase of evolution man has not come very far in perceiving his own ‘I’ while in a physical body between birth and death.

We are unconscious during sleep, but during the day, while awake, we are still unconscious as far as our ‘I’ is concerned. Yet morality must be implanted into the ‘I.’ So you see, as far as morality is concerned—compared with his intellectuality—man is very much a baby. That is the deeper reason why it is so difficult for man, during earth evolution, to advance morally, while intellectually he progresses with comparative ease.

In a periodical founded during the war entitled The Bell an article recently appeared discussing the discrepancy between intellectual and moral development. Despite its name, The Bell seldom rings out much sense; according to its opinion on this matter, the discrepancy can be traced to the fact that intellectual development has come about under capitalism, in other words during a time when rulership was in the hands of the few, whereas moral development will come about only when socialism has been established. Well, idealists insist that the earth will become paradise when idealism gains the upper hand. Materialists make the same claim for materialism while, according to liberals, paradise comes about when liberalism is generally accepted. So naturally socialists see paradise as the realization of socialism. These views are all incredibly naive. They are in fact so many trite illusions all of which demonstrate that, while modern man is beset by problems, he still will not rouse his thinking—and on thinking it at first depends—to the irksome task of penetrating into the realm of spiritual experience. Anyone who will really think can penetrate to spiritual reality. Our age that prides itself in its thinking knows thinking the least.

The discrepancy between intellectual and moral development can only be explained when seen in the greater contexts just outlined. But the article in The Bell comes to the conclusion that as long as there are individuals who are intellectual, intellectuality will continue to develop, whereas moral life will reach a comparable development only when all people are merged within a socialist order. Thus capitalism is supposed to be favourable for intellectuals who are scientifically inclined, while socialism will be favourable for moral development. The reality however, is very different, for interest in the spiritual world must take hold of man if morality is to develop to the same extent as intellectuality has done. Men must become able actually to behold the spiritual forces and impulses that surge and pulsate through the world. There are many reasons why this is highly uncomfortable for modern man. For example, when someone embarks upon developing his thinking, in ways I have often described, his thinking becomes capable of functioning in the spiritual world. This means that in his thinking he experiences the spiritual world as a reality. This leads him of necessity to develop something else which has declined during our materialistic age, namely, an inner feeling of responsibility.

People whose view of life is based solely on their natural-scientific knowledge and observations are determined, in the way they think, by external events. Their thinking is as it were attached to the leading strands of the external phenomena and guided by them. The concepts they acquire enable them, up to a point, to understand external events. However, this kind of thinking in no way suffices to recognize moral and social issues in their reality; let alone find solutions to moral and social problems. In order to achieve this one must be in contact with spiritual reality, which however creates in the soul a strong feeling of responsibility for one's thoughts. One will not permit every arbitrary train of thought to go through the soul but only such which are, as it were, fit to be seen by the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies. Proclaiming freedom for nations is not a concept fit to present to spiritual worlds; it illustrates the kind of mistaken concept, generally held today, concerning the individual's relation to his folk. We know from spiritual science that freedom is a concept which is applicable only to human beings as individuals; quite different concepts apply to nations with their group souls. Yet around the world today freedom of nations and the like is being proclaimed, giving voice to Woodrow Wilson's immature ideas. They are even taken seriously! In fact they are also taken seriously within Europe; though we, with centuries of experience should at least be able to produce a few enlightened ideas, ideas that could, in the sense of spiritual science, throw some light on the issues.

It is possible to feel responsibility, not only towards people, but towards concepts and ideas; if they are moral ideas they exist entirely in the spiritual world, for they arise in our T or possibly in the astral body. However, one does not have this feeling of responsibility if one lives exclusively in materialistic concepts and ideas; i.e., ideas that relate solely to external phenomena as often happens without awareness. One hears phrases such as: God sent us this war because of our sins and shortcomings. Uttering such phrases does not indicate moral or spiritual ideas; it indicates rather no advance beyond materialism. Such an advance only comes about when one is able to form mental pictures of spiritual reality. Plenty of phrases are coined these days which have no foundation in reality; it happens especially when it comes to discussing this or that political issue. On such occasions one often hears talk of a "new spirit" which does not mean in the least that the person concerned has the slightest inkling of the spirit.

If we are to extricate ourselves from the present devastating conditions, the spirit must not remain abstract; it must be grasped in its reality. As already mentioned it is possible to understand this or that external phenomenon with the kind of concepts engendered by simply following the leading strings of physical perception. They do not, however, have the power to influence the intricacies of human life; the latter require concepts and ideas derived from spiritual insight. You may ask how it then comes about that human life is after all influenced occasionally. It is because human beings still rely on old, even ancient ideas though they no longer fit the changed conditions. Our age demands new concepts, new mental pictures, derived from spiritual knowledge. Naturally, these ideas are new only in the sense that they are new to mankind.

However, these new ideas are at times found to be unpalatable especially when they relate to human morality seen in the light of spiritual knowledge. It is easy enough to say that good will is a virtue and should be cultivated, or that justice is moral and ought to be established. It is also easy enough to make laws and arrangements accordingly. One can even elect parliaments in which clever people come together to make all kinds of decisions based on good will and justice. But if things are handled the way they have been so far they will result in something similar to the situation we see spread all over the world today, if only people would have the courage to recognize that there is a direct connection between the terrible events taking place at present and the kind of concepts and ideas which preceded them.

Good will is certainly a virtue and one can even get a sensuous feeling of pleasure from practicing it. A kind of cathechism of virtues could be devised: Thou shalt have good will, thou shalt be just and so on; one would then possess a list of virtues and no understanding of any of them. It would in fact be comparable to knowing that when a pendulum is at its highest point the law of gravity will bring it down to the lowest, but not knowing that in coming down the pendulum gathers a force that makes it swing equally far up the other side. In regard to physical phenomena these things are easy to recognize because the external phenomena themselves enforce one's thinking to be consistent, but in the sphere of morality there are no such leading strings.

If a person develops good will it is certainly an excellent thing. However, just as the pendulum in its downward swing gathers the force that will make it swing upwards, so there develops with the force of good will a tendency to its opposite, a tendency to prejudice, biassed views and the like. No virtue can be cultivated without developing also a disposition towards the opposite vice. These truths are not comfortable but truths they are. In the individual they are less noticeable, but in public life they result in the kind of thing I have indicated. If people in one age one-sidedly cultivate some virtue and pride themselves over much in the fact, then people in the following age, although the connection is not recognized, will exhibit the corresponding vice. Seen in their true light these things point to a deep truth uttered by Christ Jesus but one which people will not acknowledge.

At the present time a strange current flows like a current through the world taking hold of souls like an epidemic. It is hard to believe that such views can be held, but they are. It appears that people have come to the conclusion that this war must be continued until an everlasting peace can be won. The war must go on till the impact of the war itself provides an absolute guarantee that there never will be another. Obviously the best way to achieve everlasting peace is to let the war go on forever. Simply by striving, as is done at present, for the ideal of everlasting peace will ensure that the war never ends! We live in a physical body, on the physical plane and the physical plane is not and cannot be perfect. If at one time or another the most perfect conditions possible were established it would only be a matter of a few centuries and they would be imperfect; because evolution progresses in oscillations, not in a straight ascending line. As the pendulum swings up and down, so does evolution move in lines of ascent and descent. If one epoch has developed something perfect, it need only wait and people will come who know of things still more perfect.

What matters is not the perfection with which things are arranged on the physical plane, which in any case is an impossibility, an illusion. What matters is man's freedom. Liberalism, socialism, conservatism all want to create paradise on earth; i.e., they want to realize something perfect on the physical plane. Christ said: “The kingdom of God is within you.” To want to make the physical world into a perfect paradise is to want something impossible, for in the physical world there is perpetual oscillation. The Christ Principle is understood rightly only when one strives to permeate the physical world with spirituality and recognizes that man is a participant of the realm of the Gods, the realm of the spirit. Those who want to turn the physical world into a paradise, whether in the socialistic or some other sense, know nothing about reality. If the present unreal ideas are to be replaced with ideas based on reality things must be seen in their wider spiritual context. This can be done only through spiritual science. Today people are apt to be scornful of the vistas opening up through knowledge of the evolutions of Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth, Jupiter, etc. People are apt to ask why all that is necessary? Yet this knowledge is needed in order to understand even the tiniest aspect of life, for man is truly a microcosm. He bears within him the Saturn, Sun, and Moon evolutions, and if he does not want to know about them he places himself in a situation comparable to denying someone the use of his hands for life by tying them behind his back in early childhood. Similarly man does not make use of his capabilities if he refuses to turn his gaze towards spiritual reality. By this refusal he fails grievously in a sphere where he need not fail.

I would like to give you an example which may seem strange to some but which perhaps conveys more exactly what I mean by many of the things which I have only touched on today. I have recently spoken with various people about what is necessary to get mankind out of the present calamities and blind alleys. What must be done can be expressed in a number of practical ideas with which thinking must be quickened when it comes to questions such as—I cannot go into details now—answering the Papal note. Although these ideas are nothing but practical answers to immediate problems, they can neither be attained nor understood unless an impulse towards spiritual knowledge is present. They deal with the kind of thinking, the ways and means, necessary if man is to find a solution to the present confusion concerning how the various peoples and countries are to coexist. They concern arrangements to be made between peoples and countries and how to avoid resorting to illusory, abstract notions which only result in unrealistic declarations about people's freedom, peaceful cooperation between smaller nations and the like.

It is indeed possible to work out eminently practical ideas which can lead to salvation from the present miseries. But what kind of thing happens instead? Perhaps you have read in the papers about the new principal of Berlin University being installed. The new principal, Councillor Penck³⁶ has been lecturing on political frontiers based on geological factors. It is impossible to convey the heaviness of heart such occurrences cause one. And why? Because at what should be the most enlightened places for present-day cultural life, the most unenlightened, elementary ideas are presented. If minds had been occupied instead with spiritual knowledge, then comprehensive ideas of truly practical use for life would have emerged. Just think of the present situation: we have on the one hand spiritual science which can work out ideas with practical application for the present problems, ideas of a comprehensive nature which would reveal connections of a higher order between the issues. On the other hand we have the recognized official enquiries, still groping tentatively in the most basic aspect of the problems with no prospect of getting any further. Those to whom people today look up and regard as highest authorities are far removed from any understanding of what is so desperately needed and attainable through spiritual science. That is what makes it difficult to explain what is necessary, especially in relation to the present situation. Official science is concerned with rudiments of a scientific investigation yet that in itself could lead to spiritual science if those concerned did not regard it as so much fantasy which they refuse to consider.

One is reminded, without presumption or lack of humility, of how the first Christians in early Roman times had to perform their religious worship down in the catacombs; while up above the old social order continued as before. But a few centuries later what had become of that old order whose treatment of early Christianity we learn from Roman history? Within a few centuries it had dissolved, and what had once existed down in the catacombs was now above and had spread far and wide. If only a sufficient number of people could understand that something similar must come about today even if not of the same magnitude as Christianity itself. What today dominates the world as the customary outlook based on official science cannot endure. It has the same relationship to the needs of the present as ancient Rome to Christianity evolving below in the catacombs.

This world issue, this world antithesis must be inwardly experienced. One must enter into it with thoughts and feelings in order to become fully aware of the shallowness, when at present there are declamations about a "new spirit." One must become aware of how futile are the unintelligible ideas about guarantees to be provided by international organizations and courts of arbitration, despite the fact that no one knows who would be able to arbitrate. The time has come when concepts and ideas connected with the great world issues must be related to those of everyday life. Mankind cannot simply say that such concepts and ideas are all very well when it is a question of grasping world events but they do not apply to everyday issues. Either they are so applied or these very issues become meaningless and lose all significance for practical life, not that of a decade hence but for today and tomorrow.

When difference of opinion is expressed usually a degree of objectivity is exercised, but not when the object of contention is spiritual science or Anthroposophy. When someone like Max Dessoir, a professor at Berlin University, attacks spiritual science, he regales his readers with misrepresentations and falsifications, as I have shown in my book that will be published shortly. What should be an honest objective discussion becomes a personal attack, personal vilification when the issue is spiritual science. And why? Not because people are able to refute spiritual science, but because they do not want it. The reason they do not is because modern man shuns the irksome task of seeking within himself for his true humanity. People like for example, to rejoice and take pride in their moral concepts, but this is no longer possible when one knows that virtues will of themselves turn into their corresponding vices unless a strict watch is kept over one's life of soul.

I have often drawn attention to the question of selflessness. Once in a public lecture I gave as a hypothetical example a society founded for the purpose of cultivating selflessness. The members soon formed the habit of turning to those who managed the society saying: I would like such and such but not for myself; it is for someone else; then the “someone else” would also ask for something not for himself but for the one who first asked. Neither wanted anything for himself! The essential thing is not whether one wants something for oneself or for someone else but whether the request itself is a selfless one. The truth is that when people try to become selfless then after a time the power inherent in selflessness makes them egoistic. The very striving for selflessness makes for egotism. One has to take care when "the pendulum swings down" not to rejoice in one's own selflessness.

Luther was very aware of these things, that is why we find in his writing many instances when he seemingly shows little respect for such virtues as selflessness and the like. He knew that selflessness is usually a mask behind which hides a hypocrite. Luther could often be blunt about such matters. For example, he advises Melanchthon not to try to be so frightfully selfless but rather do the bad he felt like doing. For it is better to do the bad when so inclined than be an insincere pharisee who ostensibly does the good while inwardly wanting to do the bad. Luther had a great deal of insight into this polarity in human nature because of his particular kind of spiritual experiences. For example he was in Rome in the year 1510; at that time it was considered virtuous to climb a very high flight of stairs—I do not know the technical Catholic term for so doing. For every stage climbed a certain number of days in purgatory were remitted, if the whole flight of steps were climbed on one's knees without getting up many days of purgatory were remitted. Luther took part in this, for at that period of his life he had the view that by such means one could further one's salvation. However as he was climbing he had an Imagination which conveyed to him: Seek righteousness in faith! It was this kind of experience that made Luther the man he was. He inwardly sensed the contrasting forces that were engendered in his soul by what he was doing.

What is needed at the present time above all else is a deeper insight into human life. This means among other things to have the ability to recognize that the repetition of a word does not necessarily mean one has the reality to which it points. Many utter the word “spirit” but it is possible to talk a great deal about spirit and not come anywhere near it. This is not generally noticed. For example there is a man who has written what amounts to a whole library; I should not like to have to count how many times the word spirit appears in his library. People actually believe that this man, Rudolf Eucken,³⁷ is talking about real spirit. In this realm it is essential to differentiate between reality and mere appearance. To do this causes disquiet, it creates fear of spiritual life, even fear of thinking itself. The man of today wants to flee from thinking, he wants to find his own salvation as well as solutions to social and political problems by any means other than thinking.

The time is too serious, too grave not to take these things in deep earnestness. It will be a day of blessing when a greater number of people recognize the truth and reality of what I have indicated again today, unfortunately no more than indicated. To go into these things in greater detail would mean speaking about things which cannot be spoken of today. That is why it would be a good thing if you, especially after these lectures, would apply to them some real thinking that is as yet not censored. I said in the last lecture that today people would tear to pieces anyone who spoke openly about the immediate events as seen with supersensible vision. Certain things cannot be mentioned let alone done. Thus many opportunities are lost when one could illustrate how essential it is for present-day man to deepen and strengthen his inner life. Just imagine what would have become of the Lutheran movement had Luther not possessed far greater, stronger and more effective forces than those possessed by most leading figures today.

One may ask why people today show so little interest in spiritual knowledge. The real reason is, what I have often referred to, that man finds it disquieting, uncomfortable. The natural-scientific view of the world is based on concepts and ideas which are easier to digest. They are certainly to be admired but all one must do to acquire them is to look at the phenomena and allow the external facts to lead one along. One is not required to rouse oneself inwardly, one does not have to delve into the deepest recesses of one's soul in order to take the next step. Spiritual knowledge does indeed make such demands and one is bound to say that unless a human being is willing to make such efforts he is not man in the true sense. That is also a truth which is not pleasant to hear, especially by someone who, thanks to prevailing conditions, is in a position of authority. That a professor or a privy councilor is not supposed to be a human being in the fullest sense is naturally difficult to understand. However, it is the kind of thing that must be understood if we are to emerge from the miseries we are in at present.

In the year 1613 Johann Valentin Andrae³⁸ wrote The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz; the book appeared in 1616. During the years from 1614 to 1617 Valentin Andrae wrote other works in which he expresses the thoughts and feelings of his time. One of his books has as its subtitle: "To the Princes and Heads of States." Andrae wanted to show that what man believes himself to be and what he believes others to be is maya, is a great illusion. He wanted man to have the opportunity to learn to know his true self and that of others. He had in mind a great spiritual movement and had given much thought and preparation to its realization. Two outstanding events were in preparation at that time: the movement Valentin Andrae wanted, and the Thirty Years' War, lasting from 1618 to 1648. The events that led to the Thirty Years' War made impossible the movement which Johann Valentin Andrae wanted to bring about. Much would have to be said if one were to describe the various causes for this failure. Attempts are often made which fail but which later succeed. There was at that time a possibility that it may have succeeded but it did not. Today we again find ourselves within two streams, two possibilities, which must of necessity affect one another. On the one hand there is Anthroposophy with the impulse to further human evolution; on the other hand there is all that which has brought about events, similar in nature to those that caused the Thirty Years' War. It depends upon mankind whether once again what ought to happen is prevented from happening. Lethargy, love of ease might well paralyze the present attempt. Whether things would then take their course as they did when the attempt made by Valentin Andrae was paralyzed is another matter.

One should not ask a question such as: Why do the spiritual powers not intervene in the affairs on the physical plane and bring order about? That ought not to be asked because what human beings do is often in direct revolt against the spiritual powers. Very often those in revolt are the very people who are forever talking about spirit, spirit, spirit. I recently read on the cover of a magazine an advertisement of some kind in which the word spirit was repeated ad nauseam. These days spirit dominates everything, it is enough to make one despair! Spirit is supposed to manufacture the germs and gas masks and what not. Everything is called spirit. The question is: do people realize what spirit this is? As you know we distinguish between the spirit of normal evolution and the luciferic and ahrimanic spirit. I drew your attention to Ricarda Huch and how, in her book on Luther she expresses a positive longing for the devil, she means of course for recognition of the devil. Concerning all the proclamations about spirit one could say that people never notice the devil even when they have him on the covers of magazines.

There are many things which today I could only hint at, and many I could refer to only in a veiled manner. They will become clear to you if you reflect on what has been said today. One thing you will have noticed: that I have spoken in deep earnest, in bitter earnest which is also the way I must, for the time being, bring these lectures to a close.

• 35. Ernst Haeckel 1834–1919 German Biologist
• 36. Albrecht Penck 1858–1945 German Geographer
• 37. Rudolf Euchen 1846–1926 Philosopher
• 38. Johann Valentin Andreae 1586–1654 Theologian