The Rudolf Steiner Archive

You will have noticed in these lectures that we are approaching our goal step by step, but that with each step we are trying to penetrate more deeply into our subject. In the last lecture we spoke of the nature of pain, which may be connected with an illness; we also pointed out how in other cases an illness may run its course—at least in a certain sense—without being accompanied by pain.

We must now consider the nature of pain in somewhat more detail. We must keep before us the fact that pain may become apparent side by side with illness. At our last discussion we already concluded that we may not look upon disease and pain as inseparable. We must be aware that if pain is connected with an illness, there must be something more at stake than mere illness. We have pointed out that the process taking place during the transition from one incarnation to another, whereby events of earlier incarnations are transformed into causes of illness, is influenced on the one side by the luciferic principle, and on the other by the ahrimanic principle.

How do we lay the foundation of illnesses? Why do we acquire a predisposition for illness? What induces us between death and rebirth to prepare forces which will manifest as illness in our next life? We are impelled to this when we see our own weakness in the face of the temptations of Lucifer on the one hand and those of Ahriman on the other. All our greed, egotism, ambition, pride, vanity, all qualities connected with this inflation of our Ego, this desire to be in the limelight, all this is the result of luciferic temptations. In other words, if we fall victims to the forces active within our astral body so that they find expression in our egotistical greeds and passions, we are in that incarnation performing actions to which we are tempted by Lucifer. And during the period between death and rebirth, we see the results of such deeds inspired by Lucifer. We then contract the tendency to incarnate ourselves in conditions where we shall have to suffer an illness which, if it is overcome, will free us still further from the clutches of these luciferic powers. If the luciferic power did not exist, we should not fall into those temptations that lead us to seek for renewed powers.

If there were nothing else in life but the egotistical impulses and passions born of Lucifer, we should never be able to free ourselves from them, not even in successive incarnations, for we should ever again succumb to them. Suppose for instance we had been left to our own devices during Earth Evolution, but still subject to the luciferic influence. We should have the temptations of the luciferic powers in one incarnation and then after death perceive where they had led us. This would bring about an illness, but if nothing else co-operated, the illness would lead to no great improvement during the life in which it is experienced. It leads to an improvement only because other powers, adversaries of Lucifer, add something to the whole process.

When we fall into the power of Lucifer, there immediately intervenes a counteraction by powers antagonistic to the luciferic powers. These exercise an opposing force, whereby the luciferic influence may be actually driven out of us. And it is these forces, opponents of the luciferic powers, which add pain to the process resulting from Lucifer's influence. Thus, if the luciferic powers are evil, we must regard pain as something which is given us by benevolent forces, because through pain we escape from the clutches of these evil powers, and do not succumb to them again. If there were no pain connected with illnesses which result from yielding to the luciferic powers, we should feel that it was not so bad after all to succumb to these powers. And there would be nothing impelling us to escape from the luciferic forces. Pain, which is the consciousness of the astral body in a wrong waking state, is also that which prevents us from ever again falling prey to the luciferic powers in that realm where we have already succumbed. Thus pain becomes our schoolmaster in regard to the temptations of the luciferic powers.

But how can pain become our schoolmaster, if we only feel the pain and are in no way aware of its beneficent force. If this is the case it is the result of our Ego-consciousness. In that consciousness that we have described as lying beneath our Ego-consciousness, and which is not perceived in the normal state, a process is already taking place whereby we realise that we are experiencing pain, and that this is brought about by the beneficial forces to counteract our transgressions. This is a force in our subconscious mind acting truly as karmic fulfilment—as an impulse to fall no more into those deeds, inclinations, and greeds that brought about the illness.

Thus we see how karma acts, how we fall a prey to the luciferic powers, how these powers effect an illness in the following incarnation, and how the beneficent forces add pain to the organic trouble, so that through pain we may educate the subconscious. We may therefore say that in every case where pain makes itself felt, we are dealing with an illness provoked by the luciferic forces. Pain is a sign that the luciferic power lies at its roots. People who go in for classification will now be longing to distinguish these illnesses that are due to purely luciferic influence from those which can be traced to purely ahrimanic influence. For in all theorising it is most convenient to classify—to make formulae—and people delude themselves into believing that they have comprehended much in this way. In reality, however, things do not arrange themselves in such a way that they can be grasped in this convenient manner. In reality they continually intercross and interpenetrate. And it will be easy to understand that during the course of an illness there are phenomena which may be traced in part to Lucifer's influence—to the activities of our astral body—and others which are traced to the ahrimanic influence. Thus no one must believe that if we feel pain, it is traceable only to luciferic influences. Pain reveals that part of our illness is traceable to luciferic influence. But this will become clearer if we ask whence the ahrimanic influence comes.

We should not have fallen a prey to ahrimanic influence if we had not first succumbed to that of Lucifer. Through the luciferic influence there came about the relation of the four elements constituting man—the physical body, etheric body, astral body and the Ego—a relation which would not have existed if only the forces opposed to Lucifer had operated. In that case we should have developed quite differently. Thus the luciferic principle caused disorder in the inner being of man, and the position of man in relation to the external world depends upon what he is himself. Just as we cannot see the world when we have imperfect eyes, so through luciferic influence we are prevented from seeing the external world as it really is. And because of man's incapacity to see the external world as it really is, the ahrimanic influence has been able to insinuate itself into this inaccurate picture. So it is the luciferic influence on man which has made Ahriman's approach possible. Subjected to the ahrimanic influence we can fall a prey not only to egotistical passions, urges, greeds, vanity and pride, and so forth, but now egotism can affect the human organism to such an extent as to develop organs through which we can see the external world distorted and inaccurate. Ahriman has insinuated himself into this inaccurate picture, and under his influence we succumb not only to inner temptations, but also to error. We fall into untruth in our judgement of the external world and our assertions concerning it. Thus Ahriman acts from outside; but we have made it possible for him to reach us.

The ahrimanic and luciferic influences are thus never separated. They always react upon one another, and in a certain sense keep a balance. Lucifer manifests outwards from within, Ahriman acts from without, and our picture of the world is formed between the two. If in one incarnation the inner man gains in strength, if the man is more exposed to the inner influences, then he will succumb more easily to Lucifer, when his pride, his vanity, etc., will come into play. In an incarnation in which man is not through his general karma predisposed to yield to inner influences, he will be more inclined to fall a prey to error and the temptations of Ahriman. This is what actually happens. So that in daily life we at one moment fall a prey more to the temptations of Lucifer, and at another to those of Ahriman. And we oscillate between these two influences which lead us—the one to inner conceit, and the other to illusions about the external world.

Since it is a matter of singular importance, it might here be mentioned that the temptations from both sides must be especially resisted by anyone who is called to a spiritual development, and who wishes to penetrate into the spiritual world, whether by penetrating into that external spirituality which lies behind the phenomena of the external world, or whether by descending mystically into his own inner being. When we penetrate the world which lies behind the physical world, we always find those deceptive images which Ahriman conjures up. When a man tries to descend mystically into his own soul, he is exposed to the temptations of Lucifer in a special degree. When he tries to descend without having previously taken precautions against pride, vanity, and so forth; when he succeeds in living as a Mystic without having given heed to a special moral culture, he is the more liable to fall victim to the temptations of Lucifer, who acts upon the soul from within. If a Mystic has not given careful heed to his moral culture, he will be in great danger when penetrating his inner being, of calling forth even more strongly than before the reactionary forces of Lucifer, and of becoming even more vain and proud than he was formerly. For this reason it is essential first to ensure that through the forming of our character we are able to resist the temptations of vanity, conceit, and pride to which we in any case shall be exposed. We can never do enough towards the acquisition of such qualities as lead to modesty and humility. This is essential for that aspect of our development which we call ‘Mystic.’ On the other hand it is necessary to defend ourselves against the delusions of Ahriman when we attempt to reach the spiritual origin of things, by following the path which leads behind the phenomena of the external world. If we do not form a strong and steadfast character which enables us to fortify ourselves, to acquire a strong inner life, it may well happen that just at the moment when we are succeeding in going out into the spiritual world, we fall into the clutches of Ahriman, who will beguile us by illusion upon illusion, hallucination upon hallucination.

We must understand that these things must be accepted in the spirit and not in the letter. Because the fact is so often emphasised that a higher development desirous of comprehending phenomena of the external world must be accompanied by full consciousness, it happens that again and again somnambulists assure us that they perceive the spiritual world, and do so when fully conscious. The only thing that can be done is to assure them that it would be far better for them, and far wiser if they did not have this full consciousness. For people are mistaken as to the nature of this consciousness, which is merely an image or astral consciousness. If these people were not conscious in a lower degree they would not perceive anything, and what matters is that we should on entering the spiritual world maintain the integrity of our Ego-consciousness. With the Ego-consciousness however is linked our power of judgement and our faculty for acute discrimination. This is what is lacking regarding the forms which they see in the spiritual world. That they should have some consciousness is in no way remarkable, but the consciousness they should have is that which is linked to the culture of our Ego. That is why during our development towards the perception of the higher worlds we are not so keen on reaching these higher worlds as speedily as possible, on seeing a world filled with images and all kinds of forms, of hearing perhaps all kinds of voices. Rather do we emphasise the fact that entrance to the spiritual world can only bring happiness or be of advantage when our consciousness, our faculty of discrimination and discernment, and our power of judgement have been so sharpened that in the higher worlds we shall be subject to no delusion. This can best be achieved through a study of Anthroposophical truths. For this reason we insist that the study of Anthroposophy is the best safeguard against these alleged visions, which by their nature are not capable of being brought to the test of a sound judgement. One schooled in Spiritual Science will not accept everything that comes his way, but will be able to distinguish between reality and mirage. He will also know that any auditory perceptions must be treated with the greatest circumspection, for no such perceptions can correspond to reality unless the hearer has previously passed through the sphere of absolute silence. He who has not first experienced the absolute silence and calm of the spiritual world may be certain that what he perceives are delusions, even though what they convey to him seems most portentous. Only he who has taken the pains to fortify his judgement by trying to comprehend the truths of the spiritual worlds, only he can defend himself against such delusions. The means which external science offers are insufficient. External science does not provide us with the power of judgement sure enough and strong enough for true discernment in the spiritual world. That is why we say that if information concerning the higher worlds is given us by people who have not carefully fortified the power of judgement—and this can be done through the study of Anthroposophy—such information is always questionable, and must in any case first be checked by the methods attained through genuine training. From this we see that Lucifer and Ahriman do not suspend their temptations when we strive for a higher development.

There is but one power before which Lucifer retreats, and that is morality which burns him like the most dreadful of fires. And there is no means by which to oppose Ahriman other than a power of judgement and discernment schooled by Spiritual Science. For Ahriman flees in terror from the wholesome power of judgement acquired upon Earth. In the main there is nothing to which he has a greater aversion than the qualities we gain from a healthy education of our Ego-consciousness. For we shall see that Ahriman belongs to a very different region far removed from that force of sound judgement which we develop in ourselves. The moment Ahriman encounters this, he receives a terrible shock, for this is something completely unknown to him, and he fears it. The more we apply ourselves in our life to develop this wholesome judgement, the more do we work in opposition to Ahriman. This appears particularly in numbers of cases of people brought before one, who recount from dawn to sunset all they have seen in the spiritual worlds. And if one attempts to give to these people some explanation, and to develop their judgement and discernment, Ahriman generally has them so completely in his power, that they can hardly enter into the discussion. It is even more difficult to get them to listen to reason when Ahriman's temptations come to them from the auditory side. There are many more ways of dealing with delusions which appear as images than with those which come acoustically—in voices heard and so forth. Such people have a great aversion to any serious study that would contribute to the development of their Ego-consciousness between birth and death. But it is not they themselves who do not like it; it is the ahrimanic forces that drag them away from it. If one leads those people so far as to develop a wholesome discernment, and they begin to accept instruction, it soon becomes evident that the visions, voices, and hallucinations cease. They were merely ahrimanic chimera, and Ahriman is possessed by fear as soon as he feels that from out of this man there comes forth a wholesome power of judgement.

In fact, the best remedy against the particularly harmful diseases which result in visions and delusory voices induced by Ahriman is to make all efforts to induce the person to acquire a wholesome and rational judgement. In many such cases it is extraordinarily difficult to do this, for the other powers make things very easy for the deluded ones and guide them on. He who attempts to expel this power cannot make things so comfortable, and in consequence finds his task a difficult one; for they maintain that they are being deprived of that which before had led them into the spiritual world. The truth of the matter is that they are being healed and safeguarded against further encroachment by these evil powers.

We now know what the luciferic and ahrimanic forces abhor. Lucifer has an aversion for humility and modesty in man and is repulsed if we have only such an opinion of ourselves as a wholesome judgement entitles us to hold. On the other hand, he is present, like the flies in the dirty room, whenever the qualities of vanity and ambition arise. All this and the illusions which we engender about ourselves, prepare us to receive Ahriman as well. Nothing can defend us against Ahriman unless we really make an effort to think wholesomely, as life between birth and death teaches us to do. And especially we, who stand on the rock of Spiritual Science, have every reason to emphasise again and again and as intensively as possible, the fact that it is not meet for us as earth-beings to disregard that which is to be given us through life upon earth. People who disdain the acquisition of a wholesome judgement and a rational discernment, and who aspire to a spiritual world without making this effort, are really trying to shun earth life. They, being of the opinion that it is really far too trivial an occupation for them to concern themselves with matters that may lead to comprehension of this life, aspire to soar above it. They consider themselves superior and it is just this frame of mind which constitutes a fresh cause of pride. For this reason we see constantly that such people who incline towards sentimental fanaticism—‘Schwärmerei’—towards a shrinking from being touched by the things of this earth and earth life, refusing to learn because they already have the inner knowledge, have nothing in common with a movement such as ours. Such people say ‘Humanity must enter the Spiritual World.’

Certainly—but there is only one healthy path by which we can enter, and that is the morality that must be acquired upon earth, a morality in the highest sense of the word, which will keep us from over-estimation of ourselves, and will make us less subservient to our impulses, greeds and passions, but which on the other hand will be an active, wholesome co-operation with the conditions of earth life, and not a desire to soar above such conditions.

Here we have again drawn from out of the depths of karma something connected with the depths of spiritual life. This may be of great value, but nothing from the spiritual world is of value to the development of man and of his individuality unless it be brought forth from the spiritual world for a wholesome reason, and with morality.

When considering all the discussions of our last lecture and those of to-day we shall ask: Why should not the luciferic influence, just for the very reason that it worked earlier and has been transformed into illness, and then equalised through the pain, why should it not call forth in man, draw after it, as it were, the ahrimanic influence? And why should not that which causes us pain and announces the luciferic influence of a disease, why should not the ahrimanic influence take part in this as a consequence of the luciferic influence? But how does the ahrimanic influence work? How are the temptations of Ahriman turned into causes of illness? How do they manifest in later incarnations?

Whatever is to be traced to ahrimanic influence is indirectly attributable to Lucifer; when, however, the luciferic influence has been so strong as immediately to call forth the ahrimanic influence, then this influence is the more malicious. It anchors itself not only in the transgressions of the astral body, but in those of the etheric body. It manifests itself in a consciousness lying deeper than our pain consciousness, causing damage not necessarily accompanied by pain, damage that renders useless the organ which it attacks.

Let us suppose that in one incarnation an ahrimanic influence had been exercised on a being bringing with it certain consequences. Now the man passes through the period between death and a new birth, and reappears in a new incarnation. Then it will become manifest that some organ has been attacked by Ahriman; in other words, the etheric body has entered this organ more deeply than it should—more deeply than normal. In such a case, precisely because of this defective organ, the man is even more open to temptations of error which are the work of Ahriman upon earth. By means of the organ which owes its defect to ahrimanic influence, and into which the etheric body has too deeply penetrated, the man would, if he were to experience the whole of this process, become even more enmeshed in what Ahriman can effect, namely, ‘Maya.’ Since nothing however produced by the material world as Maya can be carried into the spiritual world, the spiritual world withdraws further from him. For in that world there is to be found only truth and no illusion. The more he becomes entangled in the illusions effected by Ahriman, the more are we impelled to enter even further into the external world of the senses, into the illusions of the physical senses, much further than would be the case without the defective organ.

A counteracting effect comes into play, however, just as we have the effect of pain counteracting the luciferic influence. This counteracting effect will operate in such a way that the moment there is any danger of our being linked too closely with the physical world of the senses, and of our losing the forces which lead us up into the spiritual world, in that moment the organ is destroyed; it will either be paralysed or else rendered too weak to be effective. A process of destruction takes place. Thus if we see an organ approaching destruction, we must realise that we owe this to beneficial forces; the organ is taken from us so that we may find our way back into the spiritual world. When there is no alternative of escape, certain forces do in fact destroy our organs or weaken them so that we may not become too greatly entangled in Maya or illusion and may find our way back into the spiritual world.

Let us take the case of a person who has a disease of the liver, but such as is not accompanied by pain. We are here dealing with the effect of a preceding ahrimanic influence which has resulted in this disorder in the liver. If this organ had not been taken from him, the forces connected with a deeper penetration by the etheric body would have led him too far into Maya.

Sagas and myths have always known of the deepest wisdom, and have expressed it. Of this the liver is a very good example. It is an organ which can most easily be exposed to the danger of driving man into the physical illusory world, and at the same time the liver is the organ which binds us to the earth. This truth is connected with the fact that precisely that being who, according to the legend, gave to man the force which leads him into earthly life and which makes him very active there—namely, Prometheus—should have his liver gnawed by a vulture. A vulture gnaws at his liver, not because this would cause Prometheus any severe pain, for in that case the legend would not correspond with physiological facts! The vulture gnaws at the liver because it does not hurt. By this it is indicated that Prometheus brought about something which could entangle men more deeply in the ahrimanic illusion, if a counteracting effect could not be produced. Occult records are always in accord with the truths which we make known in Spiritual Science.

I have shown you to-day by a simple analysis of facts that it is the beneficial powers which bring pain to us to react against the influence of Lucifer. Let us compare this with the records of the Old Testament. After Lucifer's influence had made itself felt, as is symbolised by the serpent's temptation of Eve, Lucifer's adversaries had to inflict pain to hinder what Lucifer was trying to achieve in men. The powers which opposed Lucifer had then to appear and disclose that thenceforth humanity should know pain. This was done by Jehovah, or Jahveh, when He said: ‘In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children.’

Usually we do not fully appreciate these sayings of the biblical records until we possess the explanations of Spiritual Science. Later we realise how profound these records are. Before we can speak about the passage: ‘In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children,’ we must study karma, for only when the time comes shall we be able to give an explanation. For this reason it is of little use to ask for an explanation of this or that passage from occult records before having attained the required state in one's occult development. It is then not good to ask what is the meaning of this or that. We must be patient and wait until we have reached the required stage. For with explanations alone we shall arrive at nothing.

Thus we see our life affected by the luciferic powers on the one side, and on the other by the powers opposed to Lucifer. Then the ahrimanic powers intrude into our lives, and we must realise that those powers which incapacitate our organs when we fall a prey to ahrimanic influences are to be counted among the beneficent powers, whose adversary is no other than Ahriman. If we set out from all that has been said here, we shall be able to get an insight into the complicated structure of human nature, and we shall arrive at the following conclusion; the luciferic powers are those that have remained behind during the ancient Moon period, and to-day during our Earth evolution they influence human life by means of forces which are really Moon forces, and which can only operate in that cosmic plan which is working in accordance with those forces which oppose Lucifer. These forces are not within our Earth evolution. Thus does Lucifer influence the plans of another being.

We can now go back to an earlier epoch. If on the one side we perceive that on the Moon, beings remained behind in their development, so as to intervene in human life upon Earth, it may seem feasible that also upon the ancient Sun there remained behind beings who played a part upon the Moon analogous to that played by the luciferic powers upon Earth at present. In the present human being we observe what may be described as a conflict—the conflict between the luciferic powers which penetrate into our astral body, and those benevolent powers which can affect us only through our Ego and through our earth achievement. For the powers opposed to Lucifer can only act upon us through our Ego. If we acquire a clear insight into, and a true valuation of ourselves, we do so only with the help of those powers which affect our Ego. For this we must make use of our Ego. Therefore we may say that while our Ego struggles with the luciferic powers, Jahveh, or Jehovah, is fighting within us against Lucifer. That which watches over the ordered cosmic design is fighting against that which rebels against this design and against its exclusiveness. Our innermost being stands in the midst of this strife, between Lucifer and other beings. We ourselves are the battlefield of this struggle, and the fact that we are the battlefield in this fight draws us into karma, but only indirectly, through the fact that this battle is fought against Lucifer. If on the contrary we turn our gaze outward, we are attracted by the influence of the ahrimanic powers. Something is enacted that comes from outside, and here Ahriman enters within us.

We know that upon the ancient Moon dwelt beings who passed that time through their human stage, as we are now passing through it in the course of Earth evolution. In the Akashic Records* and in Occult Science these beings are referred to as Angels, Angeloi and Dhyanis—the name does not matter. Within these beings took place a battle similar to the luciferic battle within our own souls—a battle provoked by those beings who had remained behind upon the Sun. This battle upon the Moon is in no way concerned with our inner Ego for on the Moon we did not yet possess our Ego. It is not concerned with anything in which our Ego takes part. Upon the Moon it took place "within the bosom of the Angels." And so these beings developed in a way which was possible only through the influence of the other beings who had stayed behind during the Sun evolution. These beings who played the same part with regard to the Angeloi that to-day the luciferic beings play with regard to ourselves were the ahrimanic beings which, during the whole of the Sun evolution, remained behind as did the luciferic beings during the Moon evolution. That is why we can only indirectly encounter these beings. It was Ahriman who, as it were, acted as tempter within the breast of the Angeloi, and he was active within them. Because of him the Angeloi had become what they then became, and they have carried over with them what they acquired through Ahriman, as well as the good they then acquired.

The good we have attained through Lucifer is the possibility of discrimination between good and evil, the free faculty of discrimination, and our free will. All this we may attain only through Lucifer. The Angels, however, have carried over into the Earth the fruits of their struggle with the ahrimanic powers, and this has fitted them for their present task as spiritual beings which surround us. Our inner Ego is not concerned with and takes no part in what these beings then experienced, nor in the effects of their experiences. We shall see, however, that we receive indirectly such experiences ourselves, because the ahrimanic influence acts upon us. Through Ahriman, therefore, these beings have attained certain results caused during their Moon existence and these results are introduced into our Earth existence. Let us try to trace in our Earth existence the effect of the ahrimanic battle of that time.

If that ahrimanic battle had not taken place on the ancient Moon, these beings could not have brought into our Earth existence that which once formed part of the ancient Moon existence. For that would have ceased to exist after the ancient Moon had perished. Through the ahrimanic influence, the Angels became entangled in the Moon existence, just as we, through the luciferic influence, become entangled in Earth existence. They received in their innermost nature something of the Moon element and transported it into our Earth existence. Because of this they are in a position to raise up the forces which will prevent our Earth from succumbing entirely to the luciferic influence. In its totality our Earth would have succumbed to Lucifer's influence if the results of the Angels' battle against Ahriman upon the Moon had not been brought into our Earth existence.

What then are the proceedings in the existence of the Earth which we describe as the normal? When our present solar system organised itself in accordance with the goal of our Earth, that which we see as the regular movements of the Earth and of the planets began, and that brought it about that the seasons of the year succeed each other in regular succession, that we have sunshine and rain, that our fruits ripen in the fields, and so on. Those are conditions which repeat themselves over and over again according to the rhythm of the Cosmos which shaped itself for the present existence after the Moon existence descended into the twilight. But within the Earth existence works Lucifer; and we shall see that he works a good deal more than merely in the domain into which we axe able to follow him in man himself, which he nevertheless has made his most important domain. Even if Lucifer were to be found only in the Earth existence, man would nevertheless, through all the conditions which are determined by the regular course of the planets round the Sun, through the changes of summer and winter, rain and sunshine and so on, have fallen into what we may call luciferic temptation. If man were to receive all that could come to him from a well-ordered Cosmos, and everything which the regular rhythmic movements of the solar system could produce, if only those laws prevailed which are adapted to our present Cosmos, man would still fall under the luciferic influence, and would prefer his comfortable life to a life of striving after his cosmic welfare, preferring the regular course to that which he ought to achieve for himself.

Therefore opposing forces had to be created. Forces were necessary which would intervene in the normal cosmic phenomena and bring about events which, on the old Moon, were highly beneficial and normal, but which, when they work on the Earth existence to-day, are abnormal and endanger its regular course. These influences appear in such a way that they correct that which would occur if the rhythm alone existed, giving the tendency to comfortable living, to comfort, to ease and luxury; and we see such forces, for instance, manifesting themselves in violent hailstorms. So when that which otherwise would be produced by the regular forces of the Earth is destroyed, a correction is in these cases brought about which on the whole works beneficially—even although man cannot at first see it—because there is a higher reason at work than can be perceived by man. When the hail drives down into the fields, we may then say: Upon the old Moon these forces which work in the hail were the regular ones, just as to-day are those which bring blessings in the rain and the sunshine; but they rush in, in order to correct that which otherwise would be produced by the luciferic influence. And when the regular course is again re-established, they rush in again to effect further correction. Everything that leads to further progressive evolution belongs to the forces of the earth itself. When the volcano throws out its lava, forces are working in it which are retarded forces brought over from the old Moon in order that they should bring about the correction in the Earth life. We shall find that much that comes from outside finds its justification in the general march of evolution. We shall see later how this is connected with the human Ego-consciousness.

But one point on which we must be clear is that these matters represent only one side of human existence, of Earth existence, and of the cosmic existence in general. If on the one hand we see in the destruction of an organ the beneficent activity of spiritual powers, and if we have found to-day that the whole course of Earth evolution must be rectified by forces springing from the ancient Moon existence, we must now ask how it is that we as Earth men on the other hand must try to rectify the harmful influences of the ancient Moon forces. We already feel that as Earth men we have not the right to wish for volcanic eruptions and earth—quakes, nor may we ourselves destroy organs in order to assist the beneficent effect of the ancient Moon forces. But we can also admit, and justifiably, that should an epidemic break out, it will lead man to seek for the balancing of some imperfection within himself, and we may surmise that man is driven into certain conditions in order to suffer some injury, the conquest of which will draw him nearer to perfection.

What then of hygienic and sanitary measures? Might not someone say: "If epidemics may prove beneficial, is it then not wrong to take measures conducive to health and preventive of disease?" One might arrive at the conclusion that nothing should be done to obviate natural catastrophes and that this conclusion is entirely supported by our lectures of yesterday and today.

We shall see that this is not the case, yet again only on certain conditions. For only now are we rightly prepared to understand in our next discussion how on the one hand beneficial forces may cause injury to an organ, so that we may escape the effect of Maya, and yet, on the other hand, to become conscious of the effect we produce by the use of sanitary and hygienic measures against disease.

We shall see that we have here arrived at a case which so often arises where there is an apparent contradiction, and where we are impelled by the entire force of this contradiction. In such a case we are nearer to the point at which the ahrimanic powers may exert the greatest influence upon us. At no time is the danger of illusion greater than when we have reached such a deadlock. For we now say that the forces which render an organ useless are beneficent forces because they work in opposition to Ahriman; therefore those who take steps against disease are working against humanity, for hygienic measures would limit this beneficial reaction.

We have reached a deadlock, and it is well that we have been led into this contradiction so that we may reflect upon the fact that such are possible, and may even constitute good discipline for our mind. For when we have seen how we can draw ourselves by our own initiative out of this seeming contradiction, then we shall have arrived at a result by which we may fortify ourselves against the illusions of Ahriman.

I tried yesterday to describe to you something of how European conditions are bound to develop in the near future, and we saw that the course of European development, of modern civilisation generally, will inevitably be bound up with the disappearance of what, in many areas of our modern times, is still considered by people to be the easiest way and of value. From the way in which I had to speak yesterday it will be clear to you that, for many who would rather go through the coming times in a comfortable sleep, with a sleeping soul, there is a very disagreeable awakening in store. I do not say—I mentioned this yesterday already—that the prophecies of those who see the most central matter of the near future as lying in such external things as the differences between Japan and America must be absolutely correct. But what must be regarded as imminent is what I characterized for you in a few brush-strokes as the great spiritual battle between East and West, in which the true culture of Middle Europe, as we have come to know it in recent weeks, will be wedged.

Strange as this may sound it is out of the modern world-conception, based on science, that the most intense need will have to arise for what I have called the Christ-experience soon to come.

We learnt yesterday how little experience of the Christ there really is at the present time. The course of human evolution has brought it about that ever since the Mystery of Golgotha, and particularly in recent centuries, all that can properly be called experience of the Christ has fallen into complete decadence. We saw, too, that because of the impossibility of adhering to the old prohibition against reading the Gospels—which, in theory, is indeed still maintained by the Catholic Church against humanity's demand to be able to receive and read the Gospels—an experience of Christ has not been able to develop. And we have already pointed out how the particular constitution of soul that is becoming prevalent in modern civilization will again lead to experience of the Christ, just as remnants of the old instinctive clairvoyance could lead to it at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. But one has to be clear that just as other crucial, incisive events in human evolution came about in ways other than is expected among philistine circles; so, too, what one must call the Christ-experience of the first half of the twentieth century will come in an unexpected way. And this experience will have a clearly definable connection with the modern outlook on life based on science.

Consider the following. Since the middle of the fifteenth century the constitution of people's souls has become quite different from what it was before that time. History does not take this into account because external history ever and again remains at the surface of things. But especially during the period between the middle of the nineteenth century and our own time, the soul-constitution of humanity as a whole has undergone a fundamental change. This also has been taken into account far too little because people habitually stick to what was once instilled into them. At most, one can notice a breaking out from this clinging by force of habit to what has been inculcated when one observes with a wakeful soul the outlook on life of today's younger generation, and compares this with the outlook of their eiders when they were in their youth. The difference between older people and the youth of today has been depicted again and again, particularly by poets; and if people did not encapsulate themselves in their habitual ideas so that nothing can penetrate which conflicts with their usual habits of thought they would soon see what an immense gulf there really is between those who are old today and those who are young.

On the other hand there is a terribly reactionary, conservative element in human evolution today. It is the belief in the authority of popular science. And this is connected with the fact that popular science has totally captivated the general consciousness. People underestimate this today. Just think how rapidly, especially in the last decades, ideas which have become familiar through nineteenth-century scientific development have taken universal hold, right down to the least educated classes. Certainly there are many who still cling to a certain piety, a piety that wants to know nothing of what is laying hold of humanity through modern scientific thought. But for the most part there is a terrible dishonesty rooted in this piety; a refusal to face what is spreading here and which one can only define as the materialism of modern humanity evoked by natural science.

The spread of this materialism will not be checked in the near future as some deluded scientists seem to think. On the contrary, it will increase with furious speed and we shall see how, out of the chaos of modern civilization, this materialistic mood will become stronger and stronger. And if sufficient preparation has been made, if the aims of spiritual science are fulfilled—so that children at school are given a stimulus for the right kind of development—then out of this materialistic mood, out of this chaos, individual souls can emerge who will have a very strong sense of something which I should now like to describe, although I have done so in different ways and at different times before.

When someone acquainted with the modern scientific outlook on the world, observes it with awakened eyes of the soul, he cannot fail to realize that one of its most distinguishing features is that it is incapable of comprehending the human being. The human being, as such, is actually entirely excluded from the conception of the world based on modern science. We had occasion here recently to consider the scope of the various branches of scientific learning when we held our course for scientists and we saw that none of these has anything to say about the real nature of man.

We need only give one characteristic example: take the usual theory of evolution expounded under the influence of Darwin or Weismann¹ or others. It demonstrates the evolution of the living creature from the simplest to the most perfect and lays down the view that man also derives his origin from this line of evolution. But actually it takes into consideration only that element of man that is animal. It considers man only so far as to be able to say that any organ, any structure in man, derives from the corresponding organ or structure in the animal line. Science ignores the extent to which the animal-element in man appears in a modified form, the extent to which the animal-nature in man differs from that of the animal world. The ability to keep man himself in view has been completely lost by science; man is left out.

Science has developed scrupulous methods. It has established a certain discipline that is necessary if one means to enter into discussions on world-views. But this science has not been capable of raising man's power of understanding to the point where man himself becomes comprehensible. There is no place for the human being in the scientific thought of today and thus he presents an ever-greater riddle to himself. Only a very few people are aware of this today and these few can certainly be clear about it theoretically. But there is, as yet, no unified feeling for it. Such a feeling will arise with vigour from properly conducted elementary education. The children will come out of properly conducted elementary school in such a way that they will already have the feeling: 'We have a science which is born out of modern intellectuality, but the further we enter into this science, the more we learn of nature, the less we understand of ourselves, the less we understand of the human being.'

This intellect, which was the principal soul-force developing in recent centuries—and is so still today—this intellect creates a complete void in man, so to speak, as regards his perception of self. And yet, on the other hand, we hear the demand that man should stand solely on the basis of his own being. This comes forward as, I should say, a fundamental social demand. Side by side with the inability of the science of recent times to account for the human being, we have, on the other side, claims of all kinds coming not from any scientific impulse but from the depths of human instinct—demands that man be able to raise himself to an existence worthy of the human being: that he should be able to feel what his real nature is. While on the one hand we have more and more demands of a practical kind, on the other we have the increasing inability of science to say anything about the human being's own nature. Such a discrepancy in human experience would have been quite impossible in earlier times of human world-view development.

If we turn once more to the ancient oriental outlook we must Say, from what we have been able to indicate of this, that the human being knew then that he descended from spiritual heights; that he lived, before he entered into physical existence through conception and birth, in a spiritual world. He knew that he brought with him from the spiritual world something that was still in him, something that came out in childhood as disposition, as aspiration, and remained with him through the whole of his life on earth. In ancient times every oriental knew that what worked its way out of his soul during childhood, in youth, was a dowry from the spiritual worlds which he had experienced before entering into physical existence. To be aware theoretically that one has passed through a spiritual life of this kind before one's life on earth has no very great value, but a lively feeling for it is worth a great deal; it is something of the greatest value to feel that what has been growing and developing in one's soul since childhood comes from the spiritual world.

Today, however, this feeling has given way to another. It has given way, both in the individual and more especially in the social life, to another feeling entirely. And there is something important here which must be looked at. More and more there weighs down upon the human being, half unconsciously, the feeling of his inherited characteristics. Anyone who is able to view this impartially sees how the human being-today actually feels that he is what he is through his parents, his grandparents and so on. Unlike the human being in ancient times he no longer feels that what flames up in him from childhood onwards, comes from those depths in which is rooted that which he received from his spiritual experiences before. his life on earth. On the contrary he feels in himself the characteristics inherited from parents, grandparents and so on. The first thing people ask about a child nowadays is from whom it has got this or that characteristic. And the reply, however, is seldom that the child has it as a result of this or that particular experience in the spiritual world. People look instead to see whether it comes from the grandmother or grandfather, and soon.

The more this emerges in individual people—not merely as a theory but as a feeling, a feeling of dependence on purely earthly inherited characteristics—the more oppressive and dreadful will it gradually become. And this feeling will increase in strength very rapidly. In the decades ahead it will intensify to the Point of becoming unbearable, for it is connected with another feeling, a certain feeling of the worthlessness of human existence. This will arise more and more: that the human being will feel his existence to be worthless if he cannot feel it to be anything other than the sum total of what has been implanted in his blood and in his other organs by physically-inherited characteristics. Today what is emerging here is still, to a certain extent, mere theory, although there are poets who have already expressed it as experience. But it will emerge as a feeling, as a sense, and it will then become an oppressive characteristic in the feeling-life of civilized humanity. This experiencing of oneself in the purely inherited characteristics will lie like a weight on the soul. It is here that the inability of natural science to give man an understanding of himself shows itself in all its poverty; the human being no longer feels himself to be a child of the spiritual world but merely a child of characteristics inherited in the course of earthly physical existence.

All this is very forcibly manifest in social life. You have only to think of the demands that have arisen as the outcome of a gigantic piece of political stupidity which has spread through the world in recent years! This folly slowly gathered strength during recent centuries and then came to a climax in our own day. The great crisis of the second decade of the twentieth century was ushered in when those who were supposed to be leading the several nations—who at any rate held positions which imply leadership and yet understood nothing of the situation mankind is in - when these people began talking about organizing mankind according to the will of its individual nations. It was indeed in our recent times that national chauvinism was aroused in its very worst sense. And it is national chauvinism that is ringing through the whole civilized world today.

This is merely the social counterpart of the utterly rsactionary world-view that tries to trace everything back to inherited characteristics. When one no longer strives to fathom one's nature as a human being and to fashion the social structure in such a way that this human nature can be at home in it; and when one strives, instead, to bring it about that the social structure corresponds only with what men are as Czechs, Slovaks, Magyars, Frenchmen, Englishmen, Poles and so on, then one forgets all spirituality. Then all spirituality is excluded and people try to order the world solely in accordance with characteristics inherited through the blood because they have come more and more to the point of having no content at all in their concepts. This had to happen because this twentieth century had to give us a taste of the fact that there can be a man, marvelled at by vast numbers as a world-leader, even though there are no concepts in his words whatsoever—that there can be a man like Woodrow Wilson² who utters words which no longer contain any concepts.

It is for this reason that people have had to fall back upon something entirely devoid of spirit—on blood relationship, on the blood-related characteristics of the nations. All that has resulted from this is that peace treaties have been made in which people who know absolutely nothing about the conditions of life in the modern civilized world have determined the shape of the maps of the countries of that world. Nothing, perhaps, shows more clearly the materialism of modern times, its denial of everything spiritual, than the emergence of the principle of nationalism.

This, of course, is a truth which for many people today is highly unpleasant. And this is why so many lies have to be harboured in the deeper regions of the soul. For if one does not face honestly the fact that by establishing an order of the world based only on blood-relationship one is denying the spirit, then one is lying. And one is also lying when in such circumstances one then claims to be inclined towards some kind of spiritual conception of the world.

And now let us look at the way the evolution of the world is going today. Everything that is welling up out of the chaotic instincts of humanity denies the spirit utterly. I put you through a trial yesterday. In order to spare your delicate nerves, which I noticed yesterday to some extent, I will not add any more trials, although they could easily be added. Thus we see on all sides how man has lost insight into the true nature of his being. And let us now consider from a spiritual-scientific standpoint the counter-image of what I had to describe as a feeling that is surging up.

You know that spiritual science shows how our earth-planet, upon which the human being has to experience his present destiny, is the re-embodiment of three preceding conditions and how we have to look forward to three subsequent embodiments so that our earth, schematically, is in a midway state.

Now we know from what is described in my Occult Science³ that what the human being bears today as his physical body is essentially an inheritance from the first, second, third and fourth conditions. What he bears as his etheric body is a result of the second, third and fourth conditions. What we call his astral body is the result of the third and fourth conditions. And now, in our present earth-evolution, the 'I' is appearing. And there will appear in the future, when the earth enters its next stages, what today is indicated in the human being only in germ—spirit-self, life-spirit and actual spirit-man. These will have to be elaborated in the human being, just as physical body, etheric body and astral body have been elaborated, and just as the 'I' is being worked on at the present time.

But you will know, if you reflect on how much of this cosmic-earthly evolution can be brought to you, that during earth-evolution only the germs of spirit-self, life-spirit and spirit-man will be able to evolve; for we shall have to wait for the transformation of the earth into its three following conditions for them to appear fully. And from the descriptions I have given in my Occult Science you will see that, essentially, spirit-self is the transformation of the astral body into a higher stage, that life-spirit is the transformation of the etheric body to a higher stage and spirit-man is the transformation of the physical body to a higher stage. This transformation of the physical body, however, will not take place until the seventh condition—nor, correspondingly, the transformation of the other members.

Today, however, the human being can already understand that this has to happen. He can already embrace the thought that it must happen. Indeed, the human being can grasp still more today if, without prejudice, he gets beyond the limitations of natural science and directs his soul's gaze upon its own nature. He will have to say to himself: 'It is true that, during earth-existence, I cannot attain spirit-self in my astral body, nor life-spirit in my etheric body nor spirit-man in my physical body, but what I have to do is to prepare, to prefigure, them in my soul. And by developing the consciousness-soul now I am preparing myself to take spirit-self into it in the next, the sixth, culture-epoch. I know that I cannot yet bring spirit-self into my entire astral body, but I have to bring it into my consciousness-soul. As a human being, I must learn to live inwardly in the way that I shall one day live when the earth has passed over, through a certain cosmic development, into its next stage of evolution. And I must prepare for these future conditions, at least inwardly, while still in earthly existence. I must prepare myself, in germ, inwardly so that in the future I shall be able to shape my outer form in the way which it is my task, even now, to understand.'

Now try and sense clearly what is really involved here. The human being is already growing into spirit-self, as I have often explained. The human being is growing into states of consciousness of which he must say that they are really of such a nature that, during the period of earth-existence, they cannot emerge fully. These states of consciousness try to transform him even as regards his external sheaths—his astral body, etheric body and physical body—but, as earthly man, he cannot achieve this. He has to say to himself: 'I must pass through the rest of earth-evolution continually feeling that I am preparing myself inwardly for conditions of being I cannot yet develop'. In future it will have to be the normal thing for a human being to say: 'I see the being of man as something which, in its inner nature, grows beyond what I can be as earthly man. As earthly man I am forced, in a sense, to feel myself as a dwarf compared with what the human being really is.' And out of this dissatisfaction, which properly educated children will begin to have in the very near future, this feeling will arise: The children will feel that, despite all our intellectual culture, people are still not able to solve the riddle of man. Man is missing from what can be known intellectually; he has no place in the social structure.

Everything that will develop out of the foolish Wilsonian formulas, and out of any other form of chauvinism that spreads over the world, will be quite unworkable. Through all such things modern civilization is heading towards impossible situations. However many more national states you set up you will provide only so many more seeds of destruction; and it is just out of everything that is loaded onto human souls as a result of modern civilization that the feeling I have just described from another point of view will proceed. The human being will say to himself: The being of man that lights up inwardly for me is something much higher than anything I can realize externally. I must bring something quite different to the world. I must bring something quite different into the social structure, something that is recognized as coming from spiritual heights. I cannot entrust myself to the social science derived from natural science.'

But the human being must sense the inner schism between his dwarf-like existence on earth and the experience that lights up within him of himself as a cosmic being. Out of all that modern culture—this much-praised, idolized culture of today—can give the human being, a twofold feeling will develop. On the one hand he will feel himself as belonging to the earth; on the other he will say: 'But the human being is more than an earthly being. The earth cannot fulfill the human being at all; if it a to fulfill him it will have first to transform itself into other conditions.'

In reality the human being is not an earth-being. In reality the human being is a cosmic being, a being belonging to the whole universe. On the one side the human being will feel himself bound to the earth; on the other he will feel himself to be a cosmic being. This feeling will weigh down on him. And when this is no longer mere theory but is experienced by individual human beings whose karma enables them to grow beyond the trivial feelings of today - when humanity comes to feel disgust at the thought of purely inherited characteristics and at the emotions engendered by chauvinism and turns against all this—only then will a kind of reverse begin. The human being will feel himself to be a cosmic being. As though with outstretched arms he will ask for the solution to the riddle of his cosmic being. This is what will come in the next decades: as though with outstretched arms—I mean this, of course, symbolically—the human being will ask: 'Who can decipher for me my nature as a cosmic being? Everything that I can establish on earth, all that the earth can give me, all that I can get from the natural science that is so highly valued today, accounts for me only as an earth-being and leaves the true being of man as an unsolved riddle. I know that I am a cosmic, a super-earthly being. Who can unravel for me the riddle of this super-earthly being?'

This will live in the human soul as a question rising up from a fundamental experience. In the decades to come, even before we reach the middle of this century, this question will be more important than anything else or any other feelings people may have. And the expectation, the longing, that there has to be a solution to this human riddle—the riddle that the human beings are, after all, cosmic beings. This feeling towards the cosmos -that one day it must reveal what cannot come from the earth—all this will create a mood to which the cosmos responds. Just as the physical Christ appeared at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha so the spiritual Christ will appear to humanity. He alone can give the answer because He is not in some indefinite place but must be recognized as a Being from beyond the earth who has united Himself with earthly humanity. People will have to understand that the question of cosmic man can be answered only if He who unites Himself with the earth from out of the cosmos comes to their aid. This will be the solution of the most significant disharmony that has ever arisen in earth-existence; the disharmony between the human being's feeling as an earthly being and his knowledge that he is a super-earthly being, a cosmic being. The fulfilment of this longing (Drang) will prepare man to recognize how, out of grey spiritual depths, the Christ-Being will reveal Himself to him and will speak to him spiritually, just as, at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, He spoke to him physically.

The Christ will not come in the spirit if human beings are not prepared for Him. But they can be prepared only in the way I have just characterized, by sensing the discrepancy I described, by the schism weighing terribly heavily upon them from which they feel: 'I must regard myself as an earth-being. The intellectual development of recent centuries has created the conditions which make me appear as an earth-being. Yet I am no earth-being. I cannot but feel myself united with a being who is not of this earth; a being who, not with theological mendacity but in very truth can say: "My kingdom is not of this world".'⁴ For man will have to say to himself: 'My kingdom is not of this world.' And this is why he will have to be united with a being who is not of this world.

It is directly out of the sciences which, as I have said, will take possession of the popular consciousness with tremendous speed that something must be developed which will direct mankind towards the new manifestation of the Christ in the first half of the twentieth century.

This, of course, could not have happened in the constitution of soul in which the civilized world was before 1914 when all talk of ideals, all talk of spirituality, was fundamentally a lie. Deep need will have to make human beings' search for spirituality a true one. And the Christ will appear only to those who renounce everything that spreads falsehood over earthly life. And no social question will be solved that is not thought out in connection with this spiritual-scientific endeavour that enables the human being to appear in truth once again as a super-earthly being. The solutions to our social problems will be found to the degree in which human beings are able to feel the Christ-impulse in their souls. All other solutions will lead only to destruction, to chaos. For all other solutions are based on the conception of man as an earthly being. But precisely in our own day the human being is outgrowing the constitution of soul which permits him to think of himself as a purely earthly, physical being. The new experience of the Christ will arise out of the attunement (Gestimmtheit) of human souls and out of their need.

But awareness must all the more be directed towards everything that hinders the approach of this new Christ-experience.

We had to refer directly to attacks on our own affairs and have seen that here also people take up an attitude towards the emerging spiritual science such that they fight against it out of an inner untruthfulness.

One experiences something in this area today which must be kept in view completely impartially. Almost every day at the moment spiritual science is, as it were, killed off at least once. The most recent of these death-blows was the one dealt by a theology professor, Karl Goetz, in agreement with another Doctor of Divinity, a certain Heinzelmann.⁵ I will disregard the fact that this Doctor of Divinity, Karl Goetz, has made an attack on spiritual science, or 'so-called spiritual science' as he terms it, for example in his newspaper article—we are having to get used to these things more and more here in Dornach. But one can also look from another point of view at everything that has been perpetrated by this Doctor of Divinity, Goetz. One can look at it from the point of view of how lacking in knowledge is this official 'erudition which has the education of contemporary youth in its care. One can deduce from this that there is an attack here on spiritual science. But one can look at the following, and I will highlight a few characteristic points—although only from the newspaper article—which, according to this attack, are supposed to occur. The methods of knowledge in spiritual science are referred to here by a man whose profession it is to speak about Christology, who gains his daily bread by educating youth in Christology. This man says, about the methods used to gain knowledge in anthroposophical science, that the Imaginations sought are the result of when the mental activity of forming ideas is artificially inhibited and suppressed. He says that the nervous energy saved in this way is then used to produce the mental images which anthroposophists call Imagination and Intuition.

So, just take a look at what this man says: Artificially constrained and repressed mental-picturing activity and, in the process, saved neural energy! One can disregard the fact that this man can of course only speak of saved neural energy as a vague hypothesis—for no one in science today can picture anything under the term of 'saved neural energy'. But he nevertheless talks of artificially constrained and repressed mental-picturing activity. Has this man in his 'scientific conscientiousness'—I choose the words carefully in this case and thus say in inverted commas, in his 'scientific conscientiousness'—ever really occupied himself with what, for example, is applied here as the methods of knowledge for coming to Imagination? Is it possible to speak here about constrained or repressed mental-picturing activity? Now, if he decided to look at some anthroposophical literature this man would be able to answer this. Those mental pictures which he considers to be his normal ones are indeed not repressed. Had he only tried a little to find out whether distorted mental pictures ruled the day while our School of Spiritual Science course was being held he would not speak about mental-picturing activity being suppressed here. There is still plenty of unsuppressed mental-picturing life here which, at least with regard to many a specialized science, is well able to understand what this man can understand. One simply cannot speak about suppressed mental-picturing activity [in this connection]. And if he had ever acquainted himself in his 'scientific conscientiousness' with what is described as the path into the spiritual worlds, he would have seen that nothing is artificially suppressed here but that things are freed. The case here is that this man has not understood a single word of what is contained in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds—How is it Achieved?. And he knows nothing of the methods of spiritual science other than what, in accordance with his constitution of soul, he can gather from the meditation successes of a bunch of old cronies. This is what is working under the name of 'scientific conscientiousness' in official science.

He goes on to say that through holding back these constrained mental pictures—people are supposed to imagine something here like mental pictures being dammed up like water—that, through this holding back, Imaginations come to life and appear like perceptions of the senses. Well, I would like to count up the pages where, again and again in my books, I have said that Imaginations have no similarity with pictures from the senses, with sense-perceptions. This is dealt with quite extensively. So what is ruling in this 'scientific conscientiousness'? The lie—which, albeit may arise from impotency, from inability. But this lie is spreading with tremendous speed in theology, philosophy, history, jurisprudence and similar branches of teaching. Modern humanity should take note of this fact. For it is in this fact—not in speeches that Woodrow-Wilsonism fabricates out of words empty of content—that the causes lie for steering us into chaos.

Then comes another good bit—as I said, I can only discuss this from the newspaper article. It says then that because these Imaginations, which have come to life through suppressing the mental-picturing element, arise involuntarily they are therefore described as being experiences free of the body. Again, in his 'scientific conscientiousness', he has never directed his mind to the fact that, as has been shown, nothing arises involuntarily but that in the spiritual-scientific act of knowing the voluntary mental picture is enhanced. Perhaps this man has got his information from a spiritistic or mediumistic nursery. If so, he should stay with his spiritism and mediums and keep away from things he does not understand and does not wish to understand.

And he says further that what personifies Imagination is that which is evoked through the split in consciousness. This is a lack of conscience and a twisting of everything that is portrayed in my books as the methods of knowledge of spiritual science! This man thereby prepares the ground in order to say, in his own way, that spiritual science may not be hostile towards Christianity, but is culturally valueless. And then comes the really good bit: spiritual science, he says, is culturally valueless for telepathy will never replace the telegraph, thought-reading will never replace the telephone nor magnetic healing-power replace medicine!

Thus, although during our course here at the—Goetheanum we spoke about medicine and truly excluded all dilletantism about magnetic healing-powers, and although in truth we referred to medicine very seriously, a doctor of theology nevertheless gives a talk in our immediate neighbourhood after the course has ended about how the whole endeavour of spiritual science consists in trying to substitute medicine with magnetic healing-forces. And with this sort of talk a present-day doctor of theology enjoys success with the present-day public! And he enjoys success when a Heinzelmann-hobgoblin^T1 then jumps to his aid—a modern hobgoblin—and adds that one cannot find Christ through spiritual science but only through the Gospels. Now someone should just ask this hobgoblin: Which Gospel? One should ask him: What have you done to the Gospels with your theology? You have brought it about that the whole of Christology has vanished from modern development. And now that this mess has been created, we hear people from that corner saying: For Christianity we don't need what comes from spiritual science, we only need the simplicity of the Gospels. Is this not a most fundamental falsehood? It is a lie, knowing what modern criticism of the Gospels has come up with, to stand there and say: Our salvation for eternity must come from the Gospels without a science of the spirit.

What is it then that is coming from this corner? It is a denial of the Christ. And the most vigorous deniers of Christ today are the theologians. Those who want to prevent a true concept of the Christ from arising today are the theologians! And as long as it is not realized that this new experience of the Christ in the twentieth century will have to arise in such a way that the theology of all denominations denies him, the Christ will not come. He will appear again to human beings when those who are counted as his followers—the modern Scribes and Pharisees—have denied him completely.

It is not easy to see through these things with full strength, for one always also sees then how little the people of today are inclined to reckon with insights of this kind. The opponents are ready at their posts. They are developing all the intensity of battle. Our battle—what we are capable of—is weak, very weak and our comprehension of Anthroposophy is in many respects very sleepy. This is the great pain which weighs down these days upon someone who sees through things. One feels it so often when one says something in answer to the problems of our times—something for a social healing of our times—and people receive it as though it were barely anything other than a magazine article that was spoken rather than written. One would like to call upon people to awaken, to carry what can come from spiritual science into the way they shape all aspects of life. But, instead, one sees how people just let life run its course; how they look at those who direct life out of falsehood, and listen, greedy for entertainment, to what they receive from spiritual science as though it were nothing but a magazine article that was spoken rather than written. What must still arise is this: a deep, holy seriousness in receiving spiritual science and the disaccustoming of oneself from what induces people to receive spiritual science like any other literary product, albeit one in which one can amuse oneself all the better because it is a guarantee for one's longing for life after death. There is today a terrible gap between what is necessary in receiving spiritual science and what is actually there. You see, one can disregard an attack on Anthroposophy like that of Goetz or Heinzelmann. One has only to look at their abilities to ask: How was it that the pick of humanity was such that it brought these people to positions of this kind? Until one puts this question most intensely to oneself, until one is prepared to look where things are lacking, we will not make progress. All declaiming about social ideals or the like is useless if one is not prepared to look at this element that is living as a fundamental principle in our present time. For the damage of our time has its source in our perverted spiritual life which has gradually gone very deep into untruth but is completely unaware of how deeply in untruth it lives. How great is the contrast between what is necessary and the way in which what is spoken here is taken up! It is not intended to be a magazine article; it is meant as a force for life and people will have gradually to accustom themselves to understanding it as such.

This is what, in both a positive and negative sense, I wanted to say to you today concerning—to use a trivial word—the spirit of the age. This spirit of our age should be a spirit of expectation; the spirit which, out of expectation, develops an understanding for the great experience of the twentieth century that is born of deep need. But without also looking, in truth, at everything that is blocking this experience, people will not be able to meet it. If people today want, out of complacency, out of inner pleasure-seeking, to bow down to tradition—and if people do not want to be aware that, bowing down like this, they burden the day with a deep untruth—then people will not make themselves mature and ready for the Christ-event of the twentieth century. But everything depends on this maturity. Everything depends on our overcoming theological talk about Christ so that, in all reality, we can move forward to an understanding of Him.

• 1 . August Weismann (1834–1914), German zoologist.
• 2 . Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924), President of the United States 1913–1921.
• 3 . Occult Science, (GA 13), published by Rudolf Steiner Press.
• 4 . 'My kingdom is not of this world' John: 18,36.
• 5 . Karl Goetz and Gerhard Heinzelmann &mdsh; both theology professors at that time in Basel. Translator's note: In German 'Heinzebnannchen'
• T1. means goblin, brownie or imp. Steiner plays on this here in connection with the name of Professor Heinzelmann.

For his present life on Earth man is beholden partly to the external world, including in the wider sense not only the several kingdoms of Nature immediately around him but also the influences coming from the stars and the cosmic expanse. But this is only one part of the world to which he is beholden for his present earthly life. He is beholden above all to his previous lives on Earth, the results and effects of which he brings with him inwardly. As you know from anthroposophical literature, man is a fourfold being. Every time he goes to sleep his astral body and ‘I’ separate from his physical and etheric bodies. Of these members only the physical and etheric bodies owe their character and composition to the external world lying visibly—or also, as etheric world, invisibly—around man. On the other hand, everything that he bears within him in his astral body and Ego in his present earthly existence, he owes entirely to what he experienced in the past, in earlier lives on Earth.

In the outer physical world there are two portals, two gates, through which the life of man, taken in its entirety, reaches out beyond this world. We will begin to-day by considering this cosmic aspect and conclude with a study very directly concerned with human life. For inhabitants of the Earth, these two gates are the Moon and the Sun.

The fact is that modern science knows very little indeed about the heavenly bodies—actually only what can be determined by calculation or observed by means of instruments. Just think what an inhabitant of Mars would know about the Earth if, from Mars or from some other star, he were to acquire his knowledge by employing the same methods as those employed by the inhabitants of the Earth! He would know no more than that the Earth is a luminous body radiating into cosmic space the light it reflects from the Sun. He might form all kinds of hypotheses, just as men do about Mars—as to whether beings do or do not exist on the Earth. But an inhabitant of the Earth knows that beings of his own rank and beings of other kingdoms share his dwelling-place; and those whose knowledge is derived from the inner, spiritual destinies of earthly humanity, will be able to reach a deeper understanding of the significance of the other heavenly bodies, for example, of the Sun and the Moon.

Let us think about what may be said of this physical, psychic and spiritual aspect of Moon existence. I must here remind you of many things to be found in the book Occult Science—an Outline, and in several of the printed lecture-courses. From this literature you know that the Moon was once united with the Earth. It is accepted by orthodox modern science, at any rate by its most important representatives, that the physical Moon once separated from the Earth and, if I may put it so, chose its own position in cosmic space.

But Spiritual Science discloses that not only did the physical Moon separate from the Earth but that certain Beings went with it, Beings who had once inhabited the Earth together with men. They were of a much higher spiritual rank than man in his physical embodiment; but they were in close intercourse with men, although this intercourse was altogether different from the relationships between human beings to-day.

Anyone who devotes even cursory study to the early history of the Earth and its spiritual achievements will feel deep reverence for the different civilisations. Certainly, our forefathers—that is to say, we ourselves in earlier incarnations—were not as ‘clever’ in the modern sense as we imagine ourselves to be to-day, but in point of fact they knew a great deal more. Knowledge, after all, is not acquired through cleverness only. Cleverness comes from intellect, and intellect is only one of the human faculties, although nowadays it is prized, especially by science, more highly than all the others. Yet when we see how the world has developed in a moral and social respect in this enlightened twentieth century, there is really no cause to be so very proud of our intellectual culture—which has come into being only in the course of time. Even if with no other aid than external history we go back and consider, for example, what originates from the ancient East, we cannot but feel great reverence. The same may apply even to certain achievements of so-called ‘uncivilised’ peoples, but we will think now only of ancient India and Persia, of the wonderful wisdom contained in the Vedas, in Vedanta or Yoga philosophy. If we let these things work upon us, not superficially but with all their deep intensity we shall feel an ever-increasing reverence for what past ages created—not through cleverness as we know it, but in a quite different way.

Spiritual Science makes it clear that what has been preserved in documentary records is only the residue of a wonderful, primeval wisdom of mankind. It was expressed in a much more poetic, artistic language than is used for our modern knowledge, but it was nevertheless wonderful wisdom, imparted to men by Beings at a stage of evolution far higher than that of humanity on Earth. Intellectual thinking takes place, after all, through the instrumentality of the physical body, and these Beings had no physical body. This accounts for the fact that they conveyed their primordial wisdom to mankind in an essentially poetic, artistic form.

These Beings did not remain with the Earth; the majority of them to-day actually inhabit the Moon in the heavens. What modern science can discover has to do only with the external properties of the Moon. The Moon is in truth the home of lofty spiritual Beings whose task once was to inspire earthly humanity with the primeval wisdom. They then withdrew to establish this Moon colony in the Cosmos. It is clear from what I have said about these Beings who now inhabit the Moon that our own human past is connected with them. In earlier lives we were their terrestrial companions. And our connection with them is immediately evident if we look beyond what external knowledge and external life can give to man. When we contemplate all the factors by which our existence is determined, which are not, however, dependent upon our intellect but transcend the intellect and are related to our deeper nature, we realise that these Moon Beings, although they no longer have their habitation on the Earth, are still deeply and inwardly connected with our very existence. For before descending to the Earth and receiving a physical body from our forefathers, we were in the spiritual world, in pre-earthly life; and there, even to-day, we are in close contact with these Beings who were our companions in Earth existence long ages ago. When we come down from the spiritual worlds into earthly existence, we pass through the Moon sphere, through the Moon existence. Once upon a time, when these Moon Beings were on the Earth, they had a profound effect upon mankind, and it is still so to-day, inasmuch as they impress into the descending Ego and astral body what is then carried over into the physical body on Earth.

Nobody can himself decide to be a man of talent, or a genius, or even a good man. Yet there are men of talent and genius and some who are innately good. These are qualities which the intellect cannot produce; they are connected with man's inmost nature, a great part of which comes with him when he passes from pre-earthly existence through birth into earthly life. To impress into his Ego and astral body what then makes its way into his nerves and blood as genius or talent or the will to do good or evil—this is the task of the Moon Beings during the time when in a man's pre-earthly existence he is passing through the Moon sphere. It is not only when, in poetic mood, lovers go walking in the moonlight that the Moon has an effect upon what is living and weaving in the deeper part of man's nature below the level of consciousness; this Moon influence is active in everything that rises from a level below that of the conscious intellect and makes man what he really is in earthly life. And so to-day these Moon Beings are still connected with our past, inasmuch as it is they who after our earlier incarnations give us in pre-earthly existence the stamp of individuality.

If we look back over our life to the point where it runs out beyond the earthly realm into the spiritual, whence our particular faculties, our temperament, our inmost, essential character, are derived, we find in the Moon the one gate which leads from the physical into the spiritual world. It is the gate through which the past makes its way into our life and gives us individuality.

The other gate is the Sun. We do not owe our individuality to the Sun. The Sun shines alike on the good and on the evil, on men of genius and on fools. As far as earthly life is concerned the Sun has no direct connection with our individuality. In one instance only has the Sun established connection with earthly individuality and this was possible because at a certain point of time in the Earth's evolution, a sublime Sun Being, the Christ, did not remain on the Sun but came down from the Sun to the Earth and became a Being of the Earth in the body of a man, thus uniting His own cosmic destiny with the destiny of earthly humanity. The other Sun Beings who remained in the Sun sphere have no access to the single human individuality but only to what is common to all mankind. Something of this remained in the Christ and is an infinite blessing for earthly humanity: what had remained in Him was and is that His power knows no differentiation among men. Christ is not the Christ of this or that nation, of this or that rank or class. He is the Christ for all men, without distinction of class, race or nation. Nor is He the Christ of particular individualities, inasmuch as His help is available alike to the genius and the fool. The Christ Impulse has access to the individuality of man, but to become effective it must take effect in the inmost depths of human nature. It is not the forces of the intellect but the deepest forces of the heart and soul which can receive the Christ Impulse; but once received this Impulse works not for the benefit of the individual-human but of the universal-human. This is because Christ is a Sun Being.

Looking back into the past we feel ourselves connected with the Moon existence and realise that we bear within us something not derived from the present but from the cosmic past—not merely from the earthly past. In our present Earth existence we unite this fragment of the past with the present. We do not, in the ordinary way, pay much attention to what is contained in this fragment of the past; but in point of fact we should not be of much account as human beings if it were not there within us. What we acquire at the time of descending from pre-earthly into earthly existence has something automatic about it—the automatic element in our physical and etheric bodies. What makes us into particular human individuals is inwardly connected with our past and thus with the Moon existence. But just as we are connected with the past through our Moon existence, so are we connected with our future through the Sun existence. We were ready for the Moon forces, especially in relation to the Beings who have withdrawn to the Moon, even in earlier times; for the Sun which works to-day as an impulse in the sphere of the universal-human only, we shall not be ready until a very distant future, when evolution has reached a much more advanced stage. The Sun to-day can reach only to our external being; not until distant future ages will it be able to reach our individuality, the inmost core of our being. When the Earth is no longer Earth, when it has passed into quite another metamorphosis, then and then only shall we be ready for the Sun existence. Man is so proud of his intellect—but the intellect in present humanity is purely a product of the Earth, since it is tied to the brain, and the brain—despite current belief—is the most physical structure in the human organism.

The Sun is perpetually wresting us away from this bondage to the earthly, for the Sun does not in reality work upon our brain ... if it did, we should produce much cleverer thoughts! From the physical aspect the Sun's influence is exerted on the heart, and what streams out from the heart is Sun-activity. Through the brain men are essentially egotistic, through the heart they become free from egoism and rise to the level of the universal-human. Thus through the Sun we are more than we should be if we were left to our own resources in our present Earth existence. Let me put it like this: if we can really find our way to the Christ, He enables us, because He is a Sun Being, to be more than we could otherwise be.

The Sun stands in the heavens personifying the future, whereas the Moon personifies the past. The Sun is the other gate into the spiritual world, the gate leading to the future. Just as we are impelled into earthly existence by the Moon Beings and Moon forces, so, through death, we are impelled out of it by the Sun forces. These Sun forces are connected with that part of our nature of which we are not yet master, which the gods have given us so that we may not wilt in earthly life but reach out beyond our own limitations. And so Moon and Sun are in truth the two gates in the universe into the spiritual life. The Moon is inhabited by Beings with whom we were once connected in the way I have indicated. The Sun is inhabited by Beings with whom—with the exception of the Christ—we shall be united only in our future cosmic existence. The Christ will lead us to those who were once His companions on the Sun. But this, as far as man is concerned, belongs to the future.

We have said that the influences of the Moon work upon us from the spiritual world; the same is true of the influences working from the Sun upon our physical and etheric bodies. Think, for example, of the temperaments. There are forces in the temperaments which play into the physical body, but more particularly into the etheric body. This is regulated by the interplay of Sun and Moon. A man with a strong vein of melancholy in his temperament is strongly influenced by the Moon. Similarly, a man with a markedly sanguine vein in his temperament is strongly influenced by the Sun. A man in whom the quality of Sun and Moon are in balance and neutralised, will be a phlegmatic type. When the physical element as such plays into a man and comes to expression in the life of soul, as in the temperaments, the Sun and Moon forces are in play in the whole of his being. But to begin with, man is aware of these forces only when they confront him in their external, physical manifestation, when the Moon—and similarly the Sun—announces its presence through the orb that is outwardly visible. Yet forces far transcending the physical are taking effect; we must always speak of the Sun and Moon as spiritual realities. And that is easy enough to realise.

Think of a human body. This body to-day no longer has within it the same substances as it had ten years ago. You are perpetually casting off these physical substances and replacing them by new. What endures is the spiritual form of man, the configuration of inner forces. Suppose you had been sitting in this room ten years ago; you do not bring with you now the flesh and blood that were within you then as material substance. The physical is involved in a perpetual stream from within outwards; it is being cast off all the time. Although this is a known fact it is not always remembered. It is a fact in the Cosmos too. People think that the Moon which shines down upon the Earth to-day is the same Moon which shone upon Caesar or Alcibiades or Buddha. Spiritually, yes, it is the same Moon, but not in respect of physical substance. As for the Sun, the physicists and astrophysicists calculate how long it will be before it disintegrates in cosmic space. They know that it will disintegrate but they reckon in terms of millions of years. The same kind of results would be obtained if such calculations were applied to the human being. The calculations are absolutely correct and cannot be faulted—only they are not true! They are dead correct, but just think of this—if you examined a human heart today, then five days later and then again after a further five days, you could calculate from the minute changes what it was like three hundred years ago and what it will be like three hundred years hence. In the same way geology can calculate what the Earth looked like twenty million years ago and what it will look like twenty million years hence. The calculations may be perfectly correct, but the Earth was not in existence twenty million years ago and will not be in existence twenty million years from now. The calculations themselves are correct but they are not true! Not even for the shortest periods does the Cosmos differ from man in this respect. Although mineral substances last essentially longer in that form than the configuration of substance in living bodies, yet even the purely physical part of mineral substances is transient. As I have said, the Moon in the sky to-day is in its physical composition no longer the same Moon which shone upon Caesar or Alcibiades or the Emperor Augustus, for its substance has changed, just as the substance of a man's physical body has changed. What endures out there in the Cosmos is the spiritual element, just as in the case of a human being what endures from birth to death is the spiritual entity, not the physical substance.

We shall therefore only be viewing the world rightly when we say of man that what endures between birth and death is his soul; what endures out yonder in the celestial bodies is a multiplicity of Beings. And when speaking of Moon and Sun we ought to be conscious that if we are to speak truly we must speak of Beings of the Moon and Beings of the Sun. The Beings of the Moon are connected with our past; the Beings of the Sun will be connected with our future, but even now they work into our present existence.

A sound basis for the study of human karma and destiny can be established only when man is given his real place within the Cosmos.

Try as we will, we can never alter the past. For this reason, in the Moon forces as they work into and lay hold of our human nature there is an element of immutable necessity. Everything that comes to us from the Moon has this character. In whatever comes from the Sun and points to the future, there is something in which our will, our freedom, can be a factor. So that we can say: when man again apprehends the Divine in the Cosmos, and instead of vague, sentimental generalisations is able to speak with precision and definition about the Divine as revealed in the several heavenly bodies, a special kind of language will take shape within him when he contemplates the heavenly bodies with heart-knowledge and true human understanding.

Now suppose a human being were standing in front of us and looking at his hands or his arms, his head, his chest, his legs, his feet, we were to ask in each case, ‘what is that?,’ and were told in reply, ‘that is something human.’ When no distinctions are made but everything is labelled with the generalisation ‘human,’ we are without bearings or direction. The same is true if we gaze out into the Cosmos, contemplate the Sun and Moon and the stars and speak of the Divine as a generalisation. We must acquire a definite, concretely real view of the Divine. And this we do when we recognise, for example, the deep connection of the Moon with our own past, indeed with the past of the whole Earth. Then, when we look at the Moon in the heavens, we can say: “Thou cosmic offspring of Necessity, when I contemplate that within me over which my will has no sway, I feel inwardly united with thee.” Our knowledge of the Moon then becomes feeling, for we realise that every experience arising perceptibly out of inner necessity is connected with the Moon.

If in the same way we contemplate the inmost nature of the Sun, not merely making calculations or observing it through instruments, we shall feel its kinship with everything that lives in us as freedom, with everything that we ourselves can achieve for the benefit of the future.

Such experiences would enable us to find a link with the instinctive wisdom of primeval humanity. For we cannot rightly understand what radiates with such poetic beauty from ancient civilisations unless we can still feel, when we gaze at the Moon, that there we are glimpsing the past with its element of necessity and when we gaze at the Sun that there we are glimpsing the freedom belonging to the future.

Necessity and freedom interweave in our destiny. In terms of the terrestrial and human we speak of Necessity and Freedom; in terms of the heavenly and cosmic we speak of Moon existence and Sun existence.

Now let us try to discover how the forces of the Sun and Moon work in the web of our destiny. We meet some human being. As a rule the fact that we have met him is enough in itself; we accept life as it comes without being very observant or giving it much thought. But deeper scrutiny of individual human life reveals that when two persons meet, their paths have been guided in a remarkable way. Think of two individuals, one aged twenty-five and the other aged twenty, who meet; they can look back over the course of their lives hitherto and it will be evident to each of them that every single happening in the life of the one, say the twenty-year-old, had impelled him from quite a different part of the world to this meeting, at this particular place, with the other. The same will be true of the twenty-five-year-old. In the forming of destiny very much depends upon the fact that human beings, starting from different parts of the world, meet as though guided by an iron necessity directly to the meeting-point. No thought is given to the wonders that can be revealed by studies of this kind but human life is infinitely enriched by insight into such situations and impoverished without it. If we begin to think about our relationship to some human being whom we seem to have met quite by accident, we shall have to say to ourselves that we had been looking for him, seeking for him, ever since we were born into this earthly existence ... and as a matter of fact, even before then. But I do not want to go into that at the moment. We need only remind ourselves that we should not have come across this individual if at some earlier point in earthly life we had taken only a slightly different direction to the left or to the right and had not gone the way we did. As I said, people do not give any thought to these matters. But it is sheer arrogance to believe that something to which one pays no attention is non-existent. It is a fact and will eventually reveal itself to observation. There is, however, a significant difference between what takes place before the actual meeting of two individuals and what takes place from that moment onwards. Before they met in earthly life, they had influenced each other without having any knowledge of the other's existence. After the meeting the mutual influence continues, but now they know each other. And this again is the beginning of something extremely significant.

Naturally, we also meet many individuals in life for whom we have not been seeking. I will not say that we meet a great many people of whom we might think that it would have been better not to have done so! I am not suggesting any such thing ... but at all events we do meet many individuals of whom we cannot say that we have deliberately set out to find them.

If what I have now been saying is viewed in the light of Spiritual Science, it becomes clear that what has been in operation between two human beings before they actually meet in earthly life is determined by the Moon, whereas everything that takes place between them after their meeting is determined by the Sun. Hence what occurs between two human beings before they become acquainted can only be regarded as the outcome of iron necessity and what happens afterwards as the expression of freedom, of mutually free relationship and behaviour. It is indeed true that when we get to know a human being our soul subconsciously looks back and forward: back to the spiritual Moon, forward to the spiritual Sun. And with this is connected the weaving of our karma, our destiny.

Very few people today have faculties for perceiving these things. But it is precisely because these faculties are beginning to develop that so much in our age is in a state of ferment. The faculties are already present in numbers of human beings, only they are unaware of it and ascribe the effects to all kinds of other causes. In reality these faculties of perception are striving to function so that when human beings become acquainted with one another they may realise how much is due to iron necessity, to the forces of the Moon, and how their relationship will go forward in the light of the Sun, in the light of freedom. To experience destiny in this way is itself part of the cosmic destiny of humanity today and on into the future. When we meet a human being in the world we can distinguish quite clearly between two kinds of relationship. In the case of one individual the relationship proceeds from the will, in the case of another, it proceeds more or less from the intellect, or even from the aesthetic sense.

Think of the subtle differences in the relationships between human beings even in childhood or youth. We may love an individual or perhaps we hate him. If our feelings do not reach this intensity, we shall feel sympathy or antipathy; our feelings in this case do not go very deep—we just pass him by or let him pass us by. It cannot be denied that this was how we felt about most of our teachers at school; and we should count ourselves fortunate if it was not so.

But a quite different kind of relationship is possible, even in childhood. It is when we are so inwardly affected by what we see a person do, that we say: we must do it too! The relationship between us makes us choose him as a hero, as one we must follow on the path to Olympus. In short, some human beings have an effect upon our intellect, or at best upon our aesthetic sympathy or antipathy; and others have a direct effect upon our will.

Or think of the other side of life. External circumstances may bring us into very close contact with certain individuals—yet we simply cannot dream about them. We may meet others only once, yet we never seem to be free of them, we are always dreaming about them. If a more intimate association is not vouchsafed to us in this present earthly life, this will have to be reserved for other incarnations. However that may be, our relationship to a human being is deeper if, as soon as we meet him, we begin to dream about him.

There is also a sort of waking dreaming, which in the case of most people to-day lacks clear definition. But as you know, there are also initiated human beings who experience life very differently. If we meet an individual who makes an impression upon our will, he will also have an effect upon our ‘inner speech:’ he will not only speak when he is face to face with us; he will also speak out of us. If we are initiated into the secret of cosmic existence we shall know that there is a double relationship between individuals when they meet: we may meet one person to whom we shall listen, and then go on our way; we need never listen to him any more. Others we may meet to whom we shall listen, but when we go away from them they still seem to be speaking—but out of our own inner being: they are there and they really do seem to speak in this way.

What happens in the case of an Initiate is as I have just described: he actually carries within him, in the very quality of his voice, those who have made this impression on him. In those who are not initiated this also takes place, but only in the realm of feeling; it is there all the same, but subconsciously. Let us suppose that we meet an individual and then come across other people who know him as well and will remark what a splendid fellow he is. This means that they have thought about the man and have formed a judgement based on the intellect. But we do not call everyone we meet a splendid fellow or a cad, as the case may be; there are individuals who have an effect upon our will—which as I have said, leads a kind of sleeping existence within us during our waking life. The effect is that we feel we simply must follow or oppose them. In one who is not initiated, these individuals, even if they do not speak within him, live in his will. What then exactly is the difference between these two kinds of relationship?

When we meet other human beings who have no effect upon our will, but of whom we do no more than form a judgement, then there is no strong karmic connection between us; we have had little to do with them in earlier earthly lives. Individuals who affect our very will, so that they seem to be always with us, whose form is so strongly impressed upon us that they are always in our thoughts, so that we dream of them even in our waking life—these are the individuals with whom we have had a great deal to do in our past earthly lives, with whom we are as it were cosmically connected through the gate of the Moon; whereas in our present life we are connected through the Sun with everything that lives in us without any element of the necessity belonging to Moon existence.

Thus is destiny woven. On the one side man has his isolated ‘head-existence’ which has considerable independence. Even physically this head-existence raises itself all the time above the general conditions of man's cosmic existence, and in the following way—the brain weighs on average 1,500 grammes, and with this weight it would crush all the underlying blood vessels. Just think of it—a weight of 1,500 grammes pressing on those delicate blood vessels! But this does not happen. Why not? Simply because the brain is embedded in the cerebral fluid. If you have learnt any physics, you will know that a body in water loses as much of its weight as the weight of the volume of water it displaces—this is the so-called principle of Archimedes. The actual weight of the brain is therefore about 20 grammes, because the brain floats in the cerebral fluid. Hence the brain in the body presses with a weight of only 20 grammes—certainly not with its actual weight of 1,500 grammes. The brain is isolated and has its own existence.

As we go about the world, the brain is like a man sitting in his motor-car. The man himself does not move; the car moves and he sits still. And our brain as the bearer of intellect has an isolated existence. That is why the intellect is so independent of our individuality. If each of us had our own separate and distinct intellect this would augur badly for any mutual understanding! We are able to understand one another only because we all possess the same principle of intellect, although naturally there are differences of degree. But intellect is a universal principle. Human beings can understand one another through the intellect which is independent of their individual qualities. Whatever appears in human destiny as something belonging to the immediate Present—such as the meeting of two people—works upon the intellect and impulses of feeling associated with the intellect. In these cases we speak of someone as a ‘splendid fellow’ in whom we have no further interest than that he has had an effect upon our intellect. Everything that is not part of our karma has an effect upon the intellect; everything that is part of our karma and links us with other human beings as a result of experiences once shared with the individuals we now meet—all this works through those depths of human nature which lie in the will. And so it is true that the will is working even before we actually meet a human being with whom we are karmically connected. The will is not always illumined by the intellect. Just think how much in the working of the will is shrouded in darkness! The karma which leads two human beings together is shrouded in the deepest obscurity of all; they become dimly aware that karma is working from the way in which their wills are involved. The moment they come face to face the intellect begins to work; and what is then woven by the intellect can become the basis for future karma. But in essentials—not wholly, but in essentials—it would be true to say that for two human beings who are karmically connected, their karma has worked itself out when the meeting has taken place. Only what they may do after that as a continuation of what lives in the unconscious—that and that alone becomes part of the stream of future karma. But a great deal is then woven into their destiny which has an effect only on the intellect and its sympathies and antipathies. Past and Future, Moon existence and Sun existence are here intermingled. The thread of karma that reaches into the past is interwoven with the thread that reaches into the future.

We can actually gaze into cosmic existence. For if we watch the Sun rising in the morning and look at the Moon at night, we can glimpse in their mutual relationships a picture of how Necessity and Freedom are interwoven in our own destiny. And if, with a concrete idea of the mingling of Necessity and Freedom in human destiny, we again contemplate the Sun and the Moon, they will begin to unveil their spirituality to us. Then we shall not speak like the unwitting physicists who when they look at the Moon merely say that it reflects the light of the Sun ... but when we see this light of the Moon which is the same as the light of the Sun, we shall rather speak of the weaving of cosmic destiny.

Thus contemplation of our own human destiny leads to a conception of cosmic destiny. Then and only then are we able in the real sense to knit our human existence with cosmic existence. Man must learn to feel himself a living member of the Cosmos. Just as a finger is a finger only while it is actually part of a human body—if it is amputated it is no longer really a finger—so man himself has real being only inasmuch as he is part of the Cosmos. But man is arrogant, and the finger would probably be humbler if it had the same kind of consciousness. ... Yet perhaps it would no longer be humble if it could at any moment tear itself free and move around the body... although it would have to remain in the sphere of a human being in order to remain a finger at all! And man, as earthly man, must remain in the Earth-sphere if he is to be man. He is a quite different being, he is a being of eternity when he is outside the Earth-sphere, either in pre-earthly or post-earthly existence. But again, we can gain knowledge of these spheres of existence only when we recognise that we ourselves are members of the Universe. This recognition will never be achieved by fanciful speculation about our connection with the Universe, but only when, as we have tried to do to-day, we learn gradually to feel its concrete reality. Then we feel that our destiny is in very truth an image of the world of stars, of the Sun-nature and the Moon-nature. We learn to look out into the Universe and read the scroll of our human life from the life of the great Universe. Again, we learn to look into our own soul and to understand the world through it. For nobody understands the Moon who does not understand the element of Necessity in human destiny; nobody understands the Sun who does not understand the element of Freedom in human nature. Such are the interconnections of Necessity and Freedom.

At the Christmas Foundation Meeting at the Goetheanum we tried to give the impulses which would help us to make these facts of true esoteric perception still more effective in the years to come. And I hope that our Members will become more and more conscious of what took place at Christmas. I would like particularly to draw your attention to the fact that every Member can now receive the News Sheet. Through this News Sheet and many other developments in the Anthroposophical Society, the whole Society should in future be able to share in that quickening life which can flow from Anthroposophy. The isolation which has hitherto existed between the Groups must as far as possible come to an end. The Anthroposophical Society can become a real whole only when those who are members of a Group in New Zealand know what is going on in a Group in Berne, and members of a Berne Group know what is going on in New Zealand or New York or Vienna. This should now be possible. And one of the many things we are doing, or at least that we want to do in connection with the Christmas Meeting is to make this News Sheet a medium for all anthroposophical work in the world. It will be necessary to pay some attention to the News Sheet, and then everyone will realise what he can do to promote its aims.

While I am speaking here the third number of the News Sheet is being issued in Dornach; in it I have shown how every Member can co-operate in making it a genuine reflection of anthroposophical achievements. Only because I believe that to this end it is necessary for Anthroposophy to be cultivated more intensively within the Society—I do not mean in the sense of more content, but with greater intensity, greater enthusiasm, greater love—only for these reasons, although in the ordinary way I should have every right at my age, to retire, I have decided, after having given up the personal leadership of the Society in 1912, to begin again and to imagine that I have regained my youth and am capable of the work. I want this to be understood as a desire to stimulate interest for a more active life in the Anthroposophical Society. My hope—and anyone who was not at Dornach can read about it in the Goetheanum Weekly and the News Sheet—is that whatever of spiritual value was achieved at the Christmas Meeting shall in some way reach every individual Member. Thereby the aim of bringing true esoteric life into the Society will be achieved. The High School for Spiritual Science was founded at Christmas with the aim that esoteric life shall again flow into the Anthroposophical Society.

I hope that the words I have spoken to you to-day will have expressed the desire that this esoteric life may again unfold among us in the way that will be made clearer and clearer to you. This aim can become reality through what can go out in future from Dornach as the centre where the General Anthroposophical Society was founded at Christmas. May the Members of this Berne Group be able to contribute effectively to what we should like to achieve in Dornach for the whole Movement, to the extent that our forces permit.

Good morning, gentlemen! Perhaps you have thought of something during the slightly longer time - a special question?

Question about the nature of the various hierarchies and their influence on humanity.

Dr. Steiner: I think this is a subject that will be somewhat difficult and incomprehensible for those gentlemen who are here for the first time today, because one should know something of what has already been presented in the lectures that have been given. But I will still address the matter and try to make it as understandable as possible.

You see, when you look at a person standing and walking on the earth, that person actually has all the kingdoms of nature within them. Man has, first of all, the animal kingdom within him; in a certain sense, he is also organized like an animal. You can see this from the fact that man has, let us say, for example, thighbones and humerus, which are also found in a similar way in higher animals; but if you can see the matter clearly, you will also find that it is related to the lower animals, or at least shaped similarly. And if you look at fish, you can see roughly what corresponds to a human bone in fish. The same thing that can be said for the bone system can also be said for the muscle system and for the internal organs. We find a stomach in humans – and in a corresponding way, we also find a stomach in animals. In short, we find what is in the animal kingdom in the human body as well.

This has led to the materialistic view that humans are nothing more than highly developed animals. But that is not the case; rather, humans develop three things that animals cannot develop from their own organism. One is that humans learn to walk upright. Just look at the animals that learn to walk more or less upright, and you will see the considerable difference between them and humans. In the case of animals that walk upright, for example the kangaroo, you will see how the front limbs, which it does not use for walking, remain atrophied. The front limbs of the kangaroo are not designed for free use. And as for the ape, we certainly cannot say that it is human-like in this respect; because when it climbs a tree, it is not walking, but climbing. It actually has four hands, not two feet and two hands. Its feet are hand-like; it climbs. So the upright walk is the first thing that distinguishes humans from animals.

The second thing that distinguishes humans from animals is the ability to speak. And the ability to speak is connected with the upright posture. Therefore you will find that where an animal has something similar to the ability to speak – the dog, which is relatively a very intelligent animal, does not have it, but the parrot, which is somewhat upright, has it – you will find that the animal is then upright. Speech is entirely connected with this upright posture.

And the third is free will, which the animal also cannot acquire, but the animal is dependent on its inner processes. These are things that make up the whole inner organization of the human being and shape it humanely.

But the human being still carries animality within him. He has this animal realm within him.

The second thing that man carries within him is the plant kingdom. What can man do because he carries the animal kingdom within him? You see, the animal feels - so does man; the plant does not feel. On the other hand, a strange science of the present day - I have mentioned this here before - has the view that a plant can also feel because there is a plant, the so-called Venus flytrap, for example: When an insect comes near, as soon as the insect has flown up, this Venus flytrap closes its leaves and devours the insect. This is a very interesting phenomenon. But if someone says: This plant, the Venus flytrap, must sense the insect, that is, perceive it when it comes near – that is just as much nonsense as if someone were to say: A little thing that I make so that it snaps shut when a mouse comes near – a mousetrap would also have a sensation that the mouse is coming in! So such scientific opinions are not very far-reaching; they are just plain nonsense. Plants do not feel. Nor do plants move freely.

So what is common to humans and animals is the sensation and movement; in this, he bears animality within him. Only when he can think rationally - which the animal cannot - is he human as a result. Furthermore, the human being bears the plant kingdom, the whole plant kingdom, within him. The plants do not move, but they grow. The plants do not feel, but they feed themselves. The human being also grows and feeds himself. The plant kingdom does this in him. Man also bears this plant power within him. He also bears it within him when he sleeps. He sheds his animality when he sleeps, because he does not feel or move unless he is a night walker, and that is based on abnormal development; then he does not completely lose his movement, then he is ill. But in a normal state, a person does not walk around in his sleep and is not aware of anything. If he is supposed to be aware, he wakes up. He cannot be aware while sleeping. During sleep, the human being also carries the plant essence within himself.

And the mineral essence, gentlemen, we also carry that within us; it is contained, for example, in our bones. They are somewhat alive, but they contain the inanimate carbonic lime. We carry the mineral kingdom within us. We even have brain sand in our brains. That is mineral. We also carry the mineral kingdom within us. So we carry the animal kingdom, we carry the plant kingdom, we carry the mineral kingdom within us.

But that is not all for the human being. If the human being were merely a mineral, plant and animal, he would be like an animal, he would walk like an animal, because the animal also carries mineral, plant and animal within itself. Of course, the human being is not only related to these three kingdoms of nature that are visible, but he is also related to other kingdoms.

Now I will sketch this out for you schematically. Imagine that this is the human being (see drawing); now he is related to the mineral kingdom, to the plant kingdom, to the animal kingdom. But he is a human being. You can say: Well, animals can be tamed. That's all right; but have you ever seen an ox being tamed by an ox? Or a horse by a horse? Animals, even if they can be tamed, thus acquiring certain abilities that can be remotely compared to human abilities, must be tamed by humans! Right, a dog school, where the dogs teach themselves and make tame dogs out of wild dogs, does not exist; humans have to intervene. And even if one thought one could admit to the materialists everything they wanted, one would just have to follow their own train of thought – one can admit everything to them, for my part one can say: man, as he is now, was originally an animal and was tamed – but the animal he originally was could not have tamed itself! That is not possible, because otherwise a dog could also tame a dog. So there must have been original beings - they may be elsewhere now - but nevertheless there must have been original beings who brought man to his present height. And these beings cannot belong to the three realms of nature. Because if you now imagine that you would ever be tamed by a giraffe, made into a human being, when you are still like a small animal in childhood, just as little as this would be possible, you could just as little be tamed by an oak tree. At most, the German-nationalists believe this, who assume that the oak, the sacred oak, has tamed people. And, you see, the minerals even less so; rock crystal is beautiful, but it certainly cannot tame people. There must have been other beings, other realms.

Now, everything in man is really called up into the higher. The animal has the possibility of having ideas, but it does not think. The ideas form in the animals. But the animal does not have this activity of thinking. Man has this activity of thinking. And so man can indeed have his blood circulation from the animal kingdom, but he cannot have his organ of thinking from the animal kingdom. So that one can say: Man thinks, feels and wills. All these things are done freely. And all this is changed by the fact that man is an upright and articulate creature.

Imagine how you would have to want differently, how all wanting would be different, if you were always crawling around on all fours like you were in your first year; after all, all human wanting would really be different. And you would not even have time to think. And just as the things we carry in our physical body connect us with the three realms of nature, so do our thinking, feeling and willing connect us with three other realms, with supersensible, invisible realms. We have to have names for everything. Just as we call the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms the kingdoms of nature, so we call the kingdoms that effect thinking, feeling and willing in the human being, so that they are free, precisely hierarchies. So here we have: natural kingdoms, through which man reaches into nature; and here we have: hierarchies. You see, just as the human being reaches into three natural kingdoms, he also reaches into three spiritual kingdoms. With his thinking, he reaches into the hierarchy - well, you see, there is no name for it yet. Because materialism takes no account of this, there is no name for it; so we have to call it by the old name: Angeloi, angels. But you are immediately branded as superstitious. Of course, we no longer have the ability to find names in language because people have lost the ability to feel with sounds; but languages could only be formed as long as people still felt something with sounds. Today everyone speaks of ball, of fall, of strength; there is an A in everything, an A in each of these words. But what is an A? An “A” is the expression of feeling! Imagine if you suddenly saw someone opening the window from the outside and looking in. You would be amazed because that is not supposed to happen; a large part of you would probably express your amazement with an “Ah!” if you were not embarrassed to do so. A is always the expression of astonishment. So with each letter there is some expression of something. And when I say “ball,” I need the A because I am amazed when I throw the ball, how it behaves strangely; or if it means a dance ball, I am also amazed at how it swirls around! It just so happened that people gradually got used to it, so that they are no longer amazed; you could also call it a bull or a bill, but certainly no longer a ball. - Let's take “fall.” When someone plops down somewhere, you can also say: Ah! - And the other thing that is significant is precisely in the F inside. “Force": when someone applies a force that pushes him; Ah: wherever astonishment occurs, the A is there.

And consider: you are of the opinion that thinking sits in your head. But if you were to suddenly realize that spiritual beings are just as much a part of your thinking as animals must be on earth for your sensing and feeling, so that you can have animality within you, then you would also be amazed, and so, if you express this amazement, you would have to have a word that contains the A. So you would be able to name these thinking beings, who were once called angels, with an A, and you would name the fact that you have the power of thought with the letter that expresses power in a certain way: L; and the power that works you might perhaps call B. The word 'alb', which has already been used for something spiritual, could just as well be used for these beings that have to do with thinking, if it were not used only for nightmare, which is pathological. So the hierarchies are realms that man reaches into, that he carries within himself, just as he carries the realms of nature within himself; and these beings, which have been called demons or angels, are the ones that have to do with thinking.

On the other hand, animal beings are involved in the feeling in man. What, animal beings? Now, you see, if you are a little attentive, if you don't go wild from the outset when it comes to the spiritual, but if you just allow yourself to be open to the fact that it can be about the spiritual, then you will come across many things – even if you cannot yet proceed with spiritual research, as is the case with anthroposophy. Just imagine that if you want to feel, you have to have a certain warmth within you! The frog feels much less vividly than man because it does not have such warm blood; you really have to have warmth within you if you feel. But the warmth that you have within you comes from the sun! And so you can say: Feeling is also connected with the sun - only spiritually. Physical warmth is connected with the physical sun, and feeling, which is connected with physical warmth, is connected with the spiritual sun. This second hierarchy, which has to do with feeling, thus dwells in the sun. Anyone who is not completely brain-dead, as so many are today - especially scientists - can come up with it: the second hierarchy is the solar beings. And because the sun reveals itself only outwardly in light and warmth (no one knows the interior of the sun, for if physicists really came up with the sun, they would be extremely astonished to find that the sun does not look at all as they usually think it does! They think to themselves, the sun is a glowing ball of gas. That is not what it is at all; it actually consists of nothing but sucking forces; it is hollow, not even empty, but sucking. We can say that outwardly it reveals itself as light, as warmth; the beings that are within were called in Greek “beings of revelation”. Where there was still some knowledge of these things – for the old instinctive science was much more intelligent than today's – these beings, which reveal themselves from the sun, were called exusiai; we can also say: sun beings. We only need to know that when we speak of feeling, we enter the realm of the sun beings. Just as when I say: Man has in himself forces of growth and nutrition, thus the plant kingdom in himself, so I must say: Man has in himself the forces of feeling, thus forces of the spiritual sun kingdom, the second hierarchy. And the third is the first hierarchy, which has to do with the human will, where man becomes most powerful, where he does not merely move, where he expresses his deeds. This is connected with those beings who are spiritually out in the whole world and who are actually the highest spiritual beings we can get to know. We call them again by Greek or Hebrew names, because we do not yet have German ones, or we do not yet have the expressions in language at all: Thrones, Cherubim, Seraphim. That is the highest realm.

So there are three spiritual realms, just as there are three natural realms. Just as humans deal with the three natural realms, they also deal with the three spiritual realms.

Now you will say: Yes, but I can believe that or not, because these three realms are not visible, not perceptible. Yes, but, gentlemen, I have met people who were supposed to be made to understand that there is air! He didn't believe that there was air. When I say to him: There is a board - he believes that, because when he goes there, he bumps into the board, or when he looks with his eyes, he sees the board, but he does not bump into the air. He looks and says: There is nothing there. Nevertheless, today everyone admits the air. It is just there. And so it will also come about that people will admit the spiritual. Today people still say: Well, the spiritual is just not there – as the farmers used to say: The air is not there. – In my homeland, the farmers still said: The air is not there at all – only the bigwigs in the city say that, who want to be so clever; you can walk through it, there is nothing there to walk through! But that was a long time ago. Today, even the farmers know that there is air. Today, however, the cleverest people do not yet know that spiritual beings are everywhere! But in time they will admit this, because there are certain things they cannot explain otherwise, and these things also need to be explained.

If someone were to say today: In all that exists as nature, there is no spirit in it; for everything that science knows about nature is in it, nothing else is in nature – yes, anyone who says that says that, gentlemen, he is just as if a dead person were lying there, a corpse, and I come and say: You rotten guy, why don't you get up and go! I try to make him understand that he shouldn't be so lazy and get up. Yes, I am foolish because I believe that the living person is inside. And so it is: everything that the natural scientist can find in there, he does not find in the living, he finds in the dead. He also finds the dead everywhere outside in nature, but he does not find that which is alive. He does not find that which is spiritual in this way, but that is why it is there.

That is what I wanted to say in response to this question, which was asked in connection with the hierarchies.

Mr. Burle: In earlier lectures, Dr. Steiner spoke about the knowledge of spiritual science of ancient peoples. Today, this has been lost to humanity. Could Dr. Steiner explain to us why this has happened? Was materialism solely to blame?

Dr. Steiner: Why the old knowledge has been lost? Yes, you see, gentlemen, that is a very strange fact. Not in the way we have knowledge today, but in an artistic, poetic form, in a poetic form, the ancients, our ancestors, had great knowledge in primeval times, and this knowledge, as Mr. Burle quite rightly says, has been lost to humanity. Now we can ask ourselves how this knowledge was lost. Of course we cannot say that materialism alone is to blame for this, because if all people still had the old knowledge, materialism would not have come into being. It is precisely because the old knowledge was lost and people became spiritually crippled that they invented materialism. So materialism comes from the loss of ancient knowledge – not that one can say that the loss of ancient knowledge comes because materialism has spread. So what does the loss of ancient knowledge really come from?

Yes, gentlemen, it comes from the fact that humanity is undergoing a development. Of course, you can dissect the human being who is here now; when he dies, you can dissect him. In this way you can gain knowledge about the way in which man is put together in the present. From ancient times, the only things that are available are, well, the mummies in Egypt, which we talked about the other day; but they are embalmed through and through, so you can't really dissect them anymore. So how man looked in earlier times, especially in the time when he was built finer, of that people now can't get any scientific idea through mere external research; one must also penetrate with spiritual research. And then one comes to the conclusion that man in ancient times was not at all as he is today.

There was a time on earth when people did not have such firm bones as we have today; then people had bones like those of today's rachitic children, who have weak bones that cause bowlegs or knock-knees and are weak in general. You can see that such weak bones can exist because they are still present in cartilaginous fish today. Their bones are as soft as cartilage. Human beings once had such bones, because the human skeleton was once soft. Now you will say: But then people must all have walked around with knock-knees or bowlegs, and everything would have been crooked if the bones were soft!

Of course, that would have been the case if the air on our earth had always been the same as it is today. But it wasn't; the air was much thicker in the old days. It has become much thinner. And the air contained much more water in the old days than it does today. The air also contained much more carbon dioxide. All the air was thicker. Now you must realize that people in those days were also able to live with their soft bones; because we have our present-day bones only because the air no longer supports us. A thicker air supports people. Walking in those ancient times was much more like swimming than it is today. Today's walking is something terribly mechanical: we put one leg on - that has to stand properly like a pillar - we put the second leg on. People in prehistoric times did not walk like that, but they felt, just as one lets oneself be carried in the water, the watery air; that's where they could have their soft bones. But when the air became thinner there – and this can be known with external science, that the air became thinner there – only then did the hard bones make sense; only then did the hard bones arise. Of course, in the past the carbonic acid was outside, the air contained it; today we carry the carbonate of lime within us; that is how the bones became hard. That is how things are connected.

But when the bones become hard, the other things in the human being also become hard, so that the human being, who had softer bones, also had a significantly softer brain matter. In general, the skull, the human head, was also shaped quite differently in ancient times. You see, it was shaped more like the shape of hydrocephalic skulls today; that was beautiful back then, but is no longer beautiful today. And so, like the very small child still has in the womb, he retained his head because he had a soft brain mass, and the soft brain discharges into the front skull. Everything was softer in humans.

Now, gentlemen, if man was softer, then his mental abilities were also different. With a soft brain, one can think much more spiritually than with a hard brain. The ancients still felt this; they called a person who can only ever think the same thing and accepts little and therefore stubbornly always remains with the one idea, a mule. This feeling already implies that one can actually think better and have better ideas if one has a hard brain. Prehistoric men had such a hard brain.

But these primitive people had something else. We can really say: when a child is born, its skull with its soft brain and even the soft bones are still similar - the bones are no longer so strong, but the brain is very similar to that of primitive people. But put a small child down: it cannot move from the spot, cannot feed itself and the like, it cannot do anything! For this, higher beings had to take care of them when humans still had this soft brain. And the consequence of this was that people in those days had no freedom, had no free will. These people had great wisdom, but no free will at all. But in human evolution, free will gradually emerges. For this, the bones and the brain must harden. But with this hardening, the old knowledge takes its downfall. We would not have become free human beings if we had not become stubborn, hard-skulled, and had skulls with hard brains. But we owe our freedom to that. And so the downfall of the old knowledge comes with freedom. That's it. Is it understandable? (Answer: Yes) It comes with freedom!

But now, while humans have gained freedom on the one hand, they have lost the old knowledge and fallen prey to materialism. But materialism is not the truth. Therefore, we must come to spiritual knowledge again, even though we have a denser brain today than primitive people did. We can only do this through anthroposophical spiritual science, which comes to knowledge that is independent of the body, that is recognized by the soul alone. The ancient people had their knowledge because their brain was softer, that is, more similar to the soul; and we have our materialism because our brain has become hard and no longer absorbs the soul. Now we have to gain spiritual knowledge with the soul alone, which is not absorbed by the brain. This is what spiritual science does. One comes back to spiritual knowledge. But we are now living in the age in which humanity has bought its freedom through materialism. Therefore, one cannot say that materialism, even if it is untrue, is something bad. Materialism, if it is not exaggerated, is not bad, but through materialism, humanity has come to know a great deal that it did not know before. That is it.

Now, one question has already been asked in writing:

I read the sentence in your “Philosophy of Freedom”: “Only when we have made the content of the world our own thought content, only then do we rediscover the context from which we have detached ourselves.”

So that is what the gentleman read in the Philosophy of Freedom. He now poses the question: What belongs to this world content, since everything we see is only there to the extent that it is thought? And then he says: Kan explains that the mind is incapable of grasping that which the appearing world of causes is prior to the world of experience.

Well, you see, gentlemen, it is like this: when we are born and are still small children, we have eyes and ears, we see and hear, that is, we perceive the things that are outside of us. The chair that is standing there is not yet thought by the child, but it is perceived. It looks the same to the child as it does to an adult, only the child does not yet think the chair. Let us assume that, through some artificial means, the very young child, who has no thoughts yet, could already talk; then the child would be inclined to criticize everything, which is something we are accustomed to today, where even the thoughtless people criticize the most. I am even convinced that if very young children, who cannot yet think, could already talk a lot, they would become the strongest critics. Not true, even in ancient India, only those who were already sixty years old were allowed to criticize and judge; the others were not allowed to judge because it was said that they had no experience of the world. Well, I don't want to defend that, nor criticize it myself, but I just want to tell you that it was like that. Today, of course, anyone who has turned twenty would be laughed at if you wanted to tell him that he should wait to be judged until he was sixty! Today's young people don't do that; they don't wait at all, but as soon as they can hold a pen, they start writing for newspapers and judging everything. In this respect, we have come a long way today. But I am convinced that if very young children could speak, they would be strict critics! A two-year-old, my goodness, would criticize so many of our actions if he could be made to speak!

Kant – I mentioned him the other day – made the biggest mistake by believing that what the child does not yet perceive and what one only perceives later, namely the content of thought, is something that the human being first puts into things. So Kant actually says: When the chair is there – the chair has colors, the chair rattles. But when I say the chair is heavy, that is not a property of the chair, but I give it to it by thinking it heavy. The chair has firmness, but it does not have that in itself, I give it to it by thinking it firm. Yes, gentlemen, this is considered a great science, this Kantian doctrine, as I told you some time ago; but in reality it is a great nonsense. It is just that, due to the peculiar development of humanity, a great nonsense is regarded as a great science, as the highest philosophy, and Kant is always called the all-devourer, the all-destroyer. I have always seen in him only a destroyer; even as a very small boy I studied Kant over and over again. But otherwise I have not noticed that the one who destroys the soup plates establishes the greatest and that he is greater than the one who makes them. It always seemed to me that the one who makes them is greater! Kant always destroyed everything in reality. So these objections of Kant's should not trouble us at all. But the thing is that when we are born, we are detached from things because we have no connection with them at all. We only grow into things again by forming concepts. Therefore, the question that is asked here must be answered as follows: What belongs to the content of the world? I say in my Philosophy of Freedom: Only when we have made the content of the world our own content of thought do we rediscover the connection from which we detached ourselves as a child. As a child, we do not have the content of the world; we only have the sensual part of the content of the world. But the content of thought is really contained in the content of the world. So that as a child we only have half the content of the world, and only later, when we grow up to our thoughts, do we not only have the content of thought within us, but we know that it is within things, we also treat our thoughts in such a way that we know that they are within things, and there we restore the connection with things.

You see, it was very difficult in the 1980s, when everything had been Kantianized, when everyone spoke in such a way that Kantian philosophy was regarded as the highest and no one yet dared to say anything against it – it was very difficult when I appeared on the scene back then and declared that Kantian philosophy is actually nonsense. But I had to explain that from the very beginning. Because of course, when someone like Kant thinks that we actually have to add the content of thought to things, then he can no longer come to the simple content, then in the soul there are just thoughts about external things, and it is quite definitely materialism. Kant is largely to blame for the fact that people have not come out of materialism. Kant is to blame for a great deal in general. I told you about this at the time, when I was asked about Kant from a different angle. The others, because they could not think otherwise, made materialism. But Kant said: We cannot know anything about the spiritual world, we can only believe. - With this he actually said: We can only know something about the sensual world, because we can only drag thoughts into the sensual world.

And now people who wanted to become materialistic felt more and more justified in referring to Kant. But humanity must also get rid of this prejudice - that is, part of humanity, very few people know about Kant - they must get rid of always referring to Kant, and then referring to Kant when they want to say: you can't really know anything about the spiritual world. So: the content of the world is the content of the senses and the content of the spirit. But one only comes to the spiritual content in the course of life, when one develops thoughts. Then one re-establishes the connection between nature and spirit, whereas at the beginning, as a child, one only has nature before one, and the spirit only gradually develops out of one's own nature.

Does anyone have a very small question?

Mr. Burle asks about human hair and says: Today, so many girls have their hair cut. Can the doctor say whether this is beneficial to health? My little daughter also wanted to cut her hair, but I didn't allow it. I want to know if it would be harmful or not.

Dr. Steiner: No, the thing is this: hair growth is so little connected to the whole organism that it does not matter so much whether you let your hair grow long or cut it. The damage is not so great as to be noticeable. But there is a difference between men and women in this respect. It used to be the case for a while – but it's no longer true – that you would often see anthroposophists together, men and women: the man would not cut his hair, he would just have long curls, and the women would cut their hair short! Of course, people also said: This anthroposophy brings the world upside down; among anthroposophists, the ladies cut their hair off and the men let it grow. - Now that is no longer the case, at least not so noticeable. But one can also ask how it is with the difference between the sexes when cutting hair.

In general, however, it is the case that for men, abundant hair growth is somewhat superfluous; for women, it is somewhat necessary. The hair always contains sulfur, iron, silica and a few other substances. These substances are also needed by the organism. For example, silicic acid is very much needed by men because, by becoming male in the womb, they lose the ability to produce silicic acid themselves. Through the cut hair – whenever the hair is freshly cut, it absorbs the silicic acid that is in the air – the man absorbs silicic acid from the air. So cutting your hair is not a problem. It is only bad when they run out, because then they cannot absorb anything. Therefore, going bald early, which is somewhat connected to a person's lifestyle, is not exactly a good thing for a man.

Now, for women, cutting their hair is not entirely good, because women have the ability to produce more silicic acid in their organism, and so they should not cut their hair too short too often; because then the hair absorbs the silicic acid that the woman already has in her from the air and drives it back into the organism. The woman becomes hairy and prickly on the inside; she then gets “hair on her teeth”. This is not so noticeable; one must be a little sensitive to notice it, but it is there. The whole manner also becomes prickly, she becomes hairy and prickly inside; and cutting it off, especially if it happens in adolescence, also has an influence.

But it could also be the other way around, gentlemen. It could be that today's young people are coming into an environment – after all, children today are all different from how we were in our youth – where their inner silica is no longer enough for them, because they want to be prickly. They want to be a little prickly, scratchy. So they get the instinct to cut their hair. This then becomes fashionable: one person imitates another, and here the story is reversed, with children wanting to become prickly and getting their hair cut. If you can manage to get this fashion to be combated a little, then it can't be all that bad if you have exaggerated this fashion a little. After all, it comes down to this, doesn't it: one likes a soft one, the other a spiky one; that's where it can change a bit in the judgment of taste. But it can't have that much of an influence. Only if someone has a daughter who, precisely because of the circumstances, wants to or should choose a man who loves a spiky one, should she have her hair cut. Of course, she won't get a man who is sensitive to mildness; that might happen. - So the story reaches more into the fringes of life.

[ 1 ] A few questions were put to me last time. I will now answer them, but in a somewhat different order than they were asked. The questions are:

[ 2 ] What is the relationship between coming to see the secrets of the universe and one's conception of the world and of life?

[ 3 ] How far must one go before one finds higher worlds on the path of natural science?

[ 4 ] Do the forces from the cosmos influence the whole of humanity?

[ 5 ] What connection do plants have with the human being and the human body?

[ 6 ] These are, of course, very complicated questions and so I would like to organize my remarks in such a way that the answers emerge gradually. One cannot do otherwise with such complicated questions because if you ask, How can I come to see the secrets of the universe?—this means, How can I arrive at a true spiritual science? Now, you must not imagine that this is something easy to do nowadays. Most people, when they hear that something like Anthroposophy or spiritual science exists, think to themselves: Very well, if that is so, I too will acquire for myself the capacity to see the spirit. I will manage it within a week then I will be able to know everything for myself.

[ 7 ] Needless to say, it is not as simple as that. One has to realize that a great deal is required to master even ordinary science. In order to undertake the simplest observations, one must first learn how to use the instruments. Of course it is comparatively easy to use a microscope, but if one wants to investigate something with the help of a microscope one cannot simply say: I will now put a piece of muscle or the like under the microscope and look into it; then I will know what goes on in the muscle. If you were to proceed like that, you would see nothing. To see something under a microscope, one must first prepare the slides. A piece of muscle is no use by itself: one must make very thin slices with a fine razor, and sometimes a little must be removed and another cut made so that finally one has a very thin film. And very often even then the microscope does not help. For if you have such a sliver of muscle or cell under the microscope, you will probably still see nothing. What one must do is ask oneself: How can I make visible what is under the microscope? Then, often, what one must next do is color what one wants to see with certain dyes to make it visible. But then one must realize one has changed something. One has to know how it would be if one had not changed it. But these things are still really quite simple.

If one wants to observe the stars with a telescope one must first learn how to handle a telescope, although this is much simpler than a microscope. You know there are people who set up telescopes in the streets for people to look through. By itself, this does not help much. For this again requires lenses and a clock, which in turn one must then also learn to handle, etc. These are only examples to show you how complicated it is to investigate the simplest things in the physical world.

[ 8 ] Now, to investigate the spiritual world is really much more difficult, for more preparation is necessary. People imagine they can learn to do it in a week. But this is not so. Above all, one must realize that one has to activate something one has within oneself. What ordinarily is not active must be made active.

[ 9 ] To make things clear for you I must explain that in all investigation of the spiritual world, as in normal science, one must frequently start with some knowledge of what is not normal. You can only learn how things really are if you know how they are when they are not normal. I once gave you a particular example of this. We have to consider this because people in the outside world call people mad who investigate the spiritual world, however normal they may be. We must therefore set about our investigations in such a way that in the end we arrive at the truth. Of course one must not think one can achieve anything by concerning oneself overmuch with what is diseased and abnormal, but one can learn much from it.

[ 10 ] For instance, there are people who are not normal because they are, as is said, mentally deranged. What does this mean? There is no worse word in the world than "mentally deranged" (geistesgestört) for the spirit can never be deranged. Consider the following case for instance: If somebody is deranged for twenty years—this happens—and afterward recovers, what has occurred? Perhaps for twenty years this person says that he is being persecuted by others—that he suffers, as one says, from paranoia—or he says that he sees all kinds of specters and apparitions which are not there, etc. This can continue for twenty years. Now somebody who has been deranged for twenty years can become normal again. But in these cases you will always notice one thing. If someone was deranged for three, five or twenty years and recovers, he will not be quite the same as he was before. Above all you will notice that he will tell you, after he has recovered, that throughout the time he was ill he was able to look into the spiritual world. He will tell you all sorts of things that he saw in the spiritual world. If one then pursues the matter with the knowledge one has gained of the spiritual world as a completely healthy person, one finds that some of what he says is rubbish but. that also much of it is correct. This is what is so strange, someone can be deranged for twenty years, recover, and then tell you that he has been in the spiritual world and has experienced these things. And if one knows the spiritual world as a healthy, normal person, one must admit that he is right in many instances. [ 11 ] If you speak to him during his mental ill-ness, he will never be able to tell you anything sensible. He will tell you the nonsense he experiences. People who are mentally disturbed over a long period do not actually experience the spiritual world during their illness. They have not experienced anything of the spiritual world. But after they have recovered they can, in a certain way, look back to the time they were ill, and what they have not experienced appears to them like glimpses into the spiritual world. This conviction that they have seen much of the spiritual world only appears when they have recovered.

[ 12 ] One can learn much from this. One can learn that the human being contains something that is not used at all during the time he or she is insane. But it was there, it was alive. And where was it? It was not in the outer world for the person told you that the sky was red and the clouds green—all kinds of things. The sick one saw nothing properly in the outer world, But the inner being, which the person cannot use in the deranged state, is in the spiritual world. When he or she can use the brain again and can look back on what the spiritual being lived through, then spiritual experiences come.

[ 13 ] From this we see that a human being who is mentally ill lives spiritually in the spiritual world. The spirit in the person is perfectly healthy. What, then, is ill in a mentally ill patient? It is, in fact, the body: the body cannot use the soul and spirit. When a person is called mentally ill, there is always something ill in the body, and obviously when the brain is ill one cannot think properly. In the same way, when the liver is ill, one cannot feel properly.

[ 14 ] This is why "mentally ill" (geisteskrank) is the most incorrect expression that one can use, for "mentally ill" does not mean that the spirit (geist) is ill. It means the body is so ill that it cannot use the spirit which is always healthy. Above all you must be quite clear that the spirit is always healthy. Only the body can become ill, with the result that it cannot use the spirit in the right way. When someone has a diseased brain it is like having a hammer that breaks with every blow. If I say to someone who does not have a hammer, You are a lazy fellow, you are not even able to strike a blow—then this is, of course, nonsense. He could well strike a blow but he does not have a hammer. It is therefore nonsense to say someone is mentally ill. The spirit is perfectly healthy, only it lacks the body through which to act.

[ 15 ] A good example of what one can learn in this way comes from considering how our thinking works. From what I have told you, you will see that, though one has the spirit, one needs a tool for thinking, and this is the brain. In the physical world one needs the brain. It is not particularly clever of materialism to say one needs a brain. Obviously one needs a brain. But this postulate explains nothing about the spirit. We can also learn that the spirit can completely withdraw itself. In the case of mental illness the spirit does withdraw completely. And it is important to know this, because this shows that people today—and now I am going to tell you something that will really surprise you—cannot think at all. They delude themselves that they can think, but they cannot. I will show you why people cannot think.

[ 16 ] You will object: But people go to school; nowadays one already learns to think quite well even in grade school. So it seems, at least. Nevertheless, people today cannot think at all. It only appears as if they could. In grade school we have grade school teachers. These have also learned something; ostensibly they have also learned to think. Those from whom they have learned have, as one says in Stuttgart, "swollen heads." These are very clever people according to present ideas. They have been to a university. Before they went to university they went to high school. There they learned Latin. If you think back a bit you might say: But my teacher did not know Latin. Perhaps not, but he learned from teachers who did. And what they learned was entirely under the influence of the Latin language. Everything one learns today is under the influence of the Latin language. You can see this from the fact that when someone gives you a prescription, he writes it in Latin, It stems from the time when everything was written in Latin. It is not so long ago, only thirty to forty years, that if one went to university one was obliged to write one's thesis in Latin. [ 17 ] Everything one learns today is under the influence of Latin. This is because in the Middle Ages, up to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries—this is not so long ago—all teaching was in Latin. For instance the first person to lecture in German was a certain Thomasius¹ in Leipzig. This was not long ago, it was in the seventeenth century. Everywhere lectures were given in Latin. Everybody who learned anything had to go through the Latin language and in the Middle Ages everything one could learn was in Latin. If one wanted to learn anything new one had to learn Latin first. You may protest: But surely not in the grade schools. But there were no grade schools before the sixteenth century. Only gradually, as the vernacular was adopted by science, did grade schools come into existence. So, you see, Latin influences our whole thinking. All of you think like people who have learned to think under the influence of Latin. And if you were to say that the Americans, for instance, could not have learned Latin so long ago—well, today's Americans emigrated from Europe! They too depended on the Latin language.

[ 18 ] Latin has a certain peculiarity. It was developed in ancient Rome in such a way that it thinks by itself. It is interesting how Latin is taught in high schools. One learns Latin; and then one learns thinking, correct thinking according to Latin syntax. So one's whole way of thinking does not depend on anything one does, but on what the Latin language does. You understand, don't you, that this is something quite significant. Anybody today who has learned something does not think for himself: the Latin language thinks in him, even if he has not learned Latin. Strange as it is, one meets independent thinking today only in the few people who have not been to school very much.

[ 19 ] I am not suggesting that we return to illiteracy. We cannot do this. In no realm do I advocate going backward, but one must understand how things have become as they are. Therefore it is important to be able to go back to what the simple person knows, though he has not had much schooling. He is not very forthcoming because he is used to being laughed at. In spite of everything, it is important to know that contemporary human beings do not think for themselves, but that the Latin language thinks in them.

[ 20 ] You see, as long as one cannot think for oneself, one can in no way enter the spiritual world. This is the reason why modern science is opposed to all spiritual knowledge; because through Latin education people can no longer think for themselves. This is the first thing to learn—independent thinking. People are quite right when they say: the brain thinks. Why does the brain think? Because Latin syntax goes into the brain and the brain thinks quite automatically in modern humanity. What we see running round the world are automatons of the Latin language who do not think for themselves.

[ 21 ] In recent years something remarkable has happened. I hinted at it last time, but you may not have noticed it, because it is not easy to see. Something remarkable has happened in recent years. Now, as you know, besides the physical body, we have the etheric body. (I will not speak for the moment of the rest.) The brain belongs to the physical body. The etheric body is also in the brain and one can only think independently with the etheric body. One cannot think independently with the physical body. One can think with the physical hotly only when—as with Latin—the brain is used like an automaton. But as long as one only thinks with the brain, one cannot think anything spiritual. To think something spiritual one must start to think with the etheric body—with the etheric body which, in the case of the mentally ill, is often not used for years. It has to be awakened to an inner activity.

[ 22 ] This is the first thing one has to learn: to think independently. Without independent thinking, one cannot enter the spiritual world. But it is, of course, necessary first of all to find out that one has not learned to think for oneself in one's youth! One has only learned to think what has been thought for centuries through the use of the Latin language. And if one really grasps this then one knows that the first condition for entry into the spiritual world is this: Learn to think independently!

[ 23 ] Now we come to what I wanted to point out when I said that in recent times something remarkable has happened. The people who, more than anyone else, thought along Latin lines were the people of learning—those who, for instance, created physics. They worked it out with thoughts derived from Latin and with the physical brain. When we were small, when I was about as old as young E. here, we learned physics which was worked out with a Latin brain. We only learned what was thought out with a Latin brain. Since then a lot has happened. When I was small the telephone was just being invented. Until then it did not exist. After this followed all the other great inventions that everyone now takes for granted as if they had always been there. They only appeared in the last decades. This caused more and more people to become involved in science who were not Latin trained. This is rather a strange thing. When one looks into the scientific life of the last decades one finds more and more technicians of this kind involved in science. These people had not had much to do with Latin and so their thinking did not become so automatic. And this non-automatic thinking was then picked up by others. This is why today physics is full of concepts and ideas that fall apart. They are most interesting. There is, for instance, Professor Gruner² in Bern who two years ago spoke about the new direction in physics. He said that all the concepts have changed in the last years.

[ 24 ] The reason that one does not notice this is because if you listen to lectures on popular science people tell you what was thought twenty years ago. They cannot tell you what is thought today because they themselves cannot think yet. If you take the thoughts of thirty years ago as valid, it is just like taking a piece of ice and melting it; the ideas melt away. They are no longer there if one wants to follow them exactly. We must see this. If someone learned physics thirty years ago, and sees what has become of it today, he wants to tear his hair out, because he has to confess: I cannot handle all this with the concepts I have learned. This is how it is. And why? Because in recent years, through the development of humanity, the human being has reached the point when the etheric body is supposed to begin to think, and human beings do not want this to happen. They want to go on thinking with the physical body. The concepts fall apart in the physical body, and yet human beings do not want to learn to think with the etheric body. They do not want to think independently.

[ 25 ] Now you see why, in the year 1893, it became necessary for me to write the book The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity,³ It is not the contents of this book that are so important, though obviously at that time one wished to tell the world what is said in it, but the most important thing is that independent thinking appeared in this book for the first time. No one can possibly understand this book who does not think independently. From the beginning, page by page, a reader must become accustomed to using his etheric body if he would think the thoughts in this book at all. Hence this book is a means of education—a very important means—and must be taken up as such.

[ 26 ] When this book appeared in the nineties people did not know at all what to make of it. It was as if someone in Europe wrote Chinese and no one could understand it. It was of course written in German, but people were completely unaccustomed to the thoughts expressed in it, because all connection with Latin was purposely cast off. For the very first time, quite consciously, it was intended that there should be no thoughts in it that are influenced by Latin, but only independent thoughts. Only the physical brain is a Latin scholar. The etheric body is no Latin scholar. And therefore one has to try to express such thoughts in a language one can only have in the etheric body.

[ 27 ] I will tell you something else. People have noticed, of course, that concepts have changed in the last decades. When I was young the professor filled the whole blackboard with writing. You had to learn it all and then you did well in your exams. But recently, people have begun to notice what Gruner said in his inaugural lecture: none of our concepts would remain valid if there were no solid bodies, only fluids. If the whole world were liquid, as Gruner imagined in his lecture, then our concepts would be invalid and we would have to think quite differently.

[ 28 ] Yes, of course one would have to think differently if there were no solid bodies. In that case you, as you sit here, could do nothing with the concepts you learned in school. If you, say, as a fish, suddenly became clever and had the idea that, as a fish, you wanted to attend a human university, then you would learn something that does not exist for a fish, because it lives in water. A fish only has a boundary sensation of a solid body; the moment it touches the body, it is immediately repulsed. So, if a fish began to think, it would have to have thoughts quite different from those a human being has. But a human being likewise needs such different thoughts, because other thoughts escape him, so that he has to say to himself: If everything were liquid I would have to have quite different thoughts. [ 29 ] Well, have I not told you about the condition of the earth when there were no solid bodies and when everything was fluid, even the animals? I have told you of this condition. Can you not then understand that present day thinking cannot reach back to these conditions? It cannot think them. So present day thinking cannot make anything of the beginning of the world. Naturally, then, a human being today begins to say to himself: Good heavens! If the world were fluid we would have to have quite different concepts. But in the spiritual world there are no solid bodies. So, with all the concepts with which Latin has gradually schooled us, we are unable to enter the spiritual world. We must wean ourselves of these concepts.

[ 30 ] Here is another hidden truth. In Greek times, which preceded the Latin era (the Latin era only began in the fifth or sixth century B.C. but the Greek period is much older), in Grecian times there was still a knowledge of the spirit, One could still see into the spiritual world. When Rome emerged with the Latin language, this was gradually extinguished. Now I must again say something you will find curious, but you will understand it. Who has used Latin, only Latin, throughout the centuries? More than anyone, the Church. It is precisely the Church that claims to teach humanity about the spirit that has contributed the most to drive out the spirit. In the Middle Ages all universities were ecclesiastical. Of course one must be grateful to the Church for founding the universities in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, but it founded them in Latin, and Latin thought has no possibility of attaining the spirit. And so it gradually came about that human beings only have concepts relating to solid bodies. Just look at the Romans, they only introduced dry, prosaic and unspiritual concepts into the world. And this was the reason that all ideas became so material. How would the Greeks have described the sacrament of the Eucharist? They would certainly not have described it as if the elements were actually blood and flesh. This stems from materialism. So even the concept of the Eucharist has become materialistic and this is connected with the Latin language.

[ 31 ] Latin is entirely logical. I have worked with many people who were Latin in their whole attitude to life, although they spoke German. If one wanted to make something clear one quickly translated it into Latin, because since the time of Christ only in Latin does one think logically. But this logical thinking only applies to solid bodies. If one wants to enter the spiritual world one needs fluid concepts.

[ 32 ] There is for instance the Theosophical Society. It also wanted to reach the spiritual world. The Theosophical Society says that man has a physical body, an etheric body, etc. But these people are materialistic because they think the physical body is dense, the etheric body is a little thinner and the astral body thinner still. But all these are still bodies, they never become spirit. If one wants to reach the spirit one has to find concepts which are constantly changing.

Even when I draw something on the blackboard you will notice that I take this into consideration. When I draw the physical body I try to portray physical man as he is. But if I try to draw the etheric body, I would never dream of representing it in the same way. I would do it like this. The human being has an etheric body which expands.

But you must know that this is not so much the etheric body, but the picture of one instant. In the next moment it is different. So if I wish to draw the etheric body, I would have to draw, quickly wipe it off, draw differently, again wipe it off, draw again and wipe it off. It is in constant movement. With the concepts we have today, we cannot catch up with these movements. This is what you have to keep in mind, concepts must become mobile. People must get into the habit of it, This is why it is necessary that thinking become completely independent.

[ 33 ] But this is not enough. I will tell you something more. As you know a human being develops, but one does not usually notice it. However, when a person is quite young, one does notice it. One knows that a child who is only four years old can neither write nor read nor do sums. An eight year old child can perhaps do these things. Here one can see development. But in later life when we have made our way, we are so terribly superior that we don't admit that we can still develop. But we do, throughout our lives, and it is remarkable how we develop. Our development goes like this: Imagine this is man:

I will draw him diagrammatically. When the child is quite young its development proceeds from the head. After the change of teeth, the development proceeds from the chest. Therefore one must watch how a child between seven and fourteen breathes—that it breathes adequately, etc. So this is a picture of the older child. (Nowadays one would have to say it differently. Children do not like to be called children any more. From fourteen onward one must call them "young ladies" and "young gentlemen.") Only at puberty does the development proceed from the limbs and from the whole human being. So one can say that only when one has reached puberty is one developing from the whole being. And this goes on throughout our twenties and thirties. But when one becomes older—some of you can already see it in yourselves—there is a certain retrogression. This need not be the case if one has adopted a spiritual mode of life, but in normal life there is a certain retrogression as one gets older. It is just the task of Anthroposophy to see to it that in the future one does not regress as one gets older. Slowly and gradually this must happen.

[ 34 ] Now there are people whose mental capacities diminish alarmingly. But the mind, the spirit, cannot diminish. It is again only the body. It is interesting that often it is the most brilliant people who regress very much in old age. You may have heard that Kant was reckoned to be one of the wisest men, but in old age he became feeble-minded. His body regressed so much that he could not express his wise mind any more. And so it often is. Especially the very intelligent become feeble-minded in old age. It is an exaggerated form of what happens to everybody. Eventually in old age there comes a point when one can no longer use the physical body. The reason for this is mainly be-cause the arteries harden with excessive deposits of calcium, And the more this happens, the less one can make use of the physical body. As, up to the fortieth year, development proceeds from the head into the whole body, so, in the same degree, the process reverses. As one proceeds from the forties to the fifties one comes back to using the chest more, and in old age one goes back to using the head. So if one becomes really old, one again has to use one's head much more. But now one would have to use the finer head—the etheric head. But this is not learned in Latin education. And it is just those who, in the last decades, had a materialistic Latin education who were most strongly affected by senility.

[ 35 ] In old age one must go back to childhood. There are people in whom this is very noticeable. They become mentally weaker and weaker. The mind, the spirit, however, remains completely intact. Only the body becomes weaker and weaker. In the end such people can no longer do the things they first learned to do in life. Such things happen. Let us say somebody gets old. He can no longer do the work he used to do. He can only do what he did as an older child. Finally he cannot even do this. He can only play and can only understand ideas he learned when playing. There are even very old people who can only understand what their parents or their nurse told them in the very first years of their lives. The saying about returning to second childhood is well founded. One really does return to childhood.

[ 36 ] Actually it is not a misfortune, that is, if one has developed a spiritual life. In fact it is rather fortunate, for as long as one is a child, one can use one's etheric body. If a child tears around and shouts and does all kinds of things, this is not done by the physical body—except if it has a stomachache, but even then the stomachache has to be transferred to the etheric and astral bodies so that the child throws itself about as a result. What tears around is not the physical body. Now one grows old and returns to childhood. Gradually one has learned not to tear around any more, but one no longer uses the etheric body like a child, but for something more sensible. So it can be fortunate that one returns to childhood.

[ 37 ] This is the second point. The first was that in order to enter the spiritual world one has to learn to think in the right way. We shall have to speak further about how one achieves this. The matter is very complicated. Today we have to concentrate on the question why there has to be independent thinking. One must break away from much in modern education, for what one learns in modern education is not independent thinking, it is Latin thinking. Do not imagine that the thinking emerging from socialist theories being developed today is free thinking! It has all been learned from what originally came from Latin, but people do not know it. The worker may have this or that intention in his will, but when he begins to think he thinks in bourgeois concepts and these originate in Latin thinking. So the first thing one has to learn is independent thinking. [ 38 ] The second thing is that one must learn not only to live in the present moment, but to be able to turn back into the life one led in childhood. If you want to penetrate into the spiritual world you must continually remember to ask yourself how it was when you were twelve years old. What did you do? One must not do this superficially, but imagine it in great detail. Nothing is better than to begin to try to picture: Oh yes, there I was twelve years old—I can see it quite clearly—there was a pile of stones by the roadside and I climbed up on it. Once I fell off it. There was a hazel bush and I took out my pocket knife and cut off some branches and cut my finger. It is important really to visualize what one did so many years ago; in this way one gets away from just living in the present. If you think the way one learns to think today, you think with your present physical body. But if you turn back to when you were twelve, you cannot think with your physical body as it then was, for it is no longer there (I told you the physical body is renewed every seven years) so you have to think with your etheric body. If you think back to something that happened twelve or fourteen years ago, you call on your etheric body. This is the way to call up inner activity.

[ 39 ] Above all, one should get accustomed to think in a new way, different from one's usual thinking. How do you think? You know we met here at nine o'clock. I began by reading to you the questions on the slips of paper. Then I proceeded with various observations and we have now arrived at saying: We have to think back into the life we lived when we were twelve or fourteen years old. Now when you get home, you can, if you find it really interesting, think through these thoughts again. One can do this. Most people do it. They go through it once again. But you can do something different. You can ask yourself: What did he say last? The last thing he said was that one should think back to one's early life, to the age of twelve or fourteen years. Before that he said one has to have independent thinking. Earlier still he described how Latin gradually took over. Before that, how a person who was mentally ill for a time and then looks back on it, says he has experienced extraordinary things. It was further explained to us how the inner being cannot be mentally ill—only the body can be ill. Now you have run backward through the whole lecture.

[ 40 ] But in the world things do not run backward. I could possibly have given you the lecture backward in the first place, but then you would not have understood it. One has to begin at the beginning and then look at the whole as it gradually unfolds, but once one has understood it, one can think it backward. But things do not run backward. So I tear myself free from things. I say: Just to be contrary, I will think things exactly not the way they go in the outer world, but I will think them backward. This requires a certain strength. When I think backward I have to make myself inwardly active. A person who wants to look through a telescope has to learn how to handle it. In the same way a person who wants to see into the spiritual world must learn how to handle it. He must think backward many times. One day the moment will come when he knows: Ah, now I am entering the spiritual world.

[ 41 ] You see, throughout your whole life you have accustomed your physical body to thinking forward, not backward. When you begin to think backward your physical body does not take part in it. Something strange happens. This is the first advice to those who ask: How can I reach the spiritual world? You can also read this in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment.⁴ What is said there repeatedly is: At least learn to go backward through the course of the day; then other things, People have, of course, only learned to think with their physical body. They notice this and have to make a great effort to think backward, but they have only learned to think with the physical body, not with the etheric body. Now there is an all-out strike by the etheric body; yes, a real "general strike." And if people would not fall asleep so easily, they would know that, if they began to think backward, they would arrive at the spiritual world. But the moment the vision begins, they fall asleep. People fall asleep, because the effort is too great. So one must exert one's entire will and all one's strength not to fall asleep. In addition, one must have patience. Sometimes it takes years, but one must have patience.

[ 42 ] If somebody could tell you what you experienced unconsciously when you went to sleep after thinking backward, you would see that it was something very wise. The most stupid people begin to have extraordinarily wise thoughts in their sleep, but they do not know anything about it.

[ 43 ] So today I have drawn your attention to the fact that one must first learn to think independently. Well, one can do this. I do not want to say—for I am not a conceited fool—that only my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity serves this purpose, but it was quite consciously written in a way that would lead to independent thinking. Independent thinking; thinking backward accurately over things that happened when you were ten or twelve years old, or over other things one has experienced—with these we have at least begun to describe how one tears oneself free from the physical body and how one finds one's way into the spiritual world.

We will pursue this further and eventually deal with all four questions.

• 1. Christian Thomasius (1655-1728), philosopher and jurist, delivered the first lectures in the German language at Leipzig University in 1687.
• 2. Dr. P. Gruner, Professor of Theoretical Physics, gave the Presidential Address, entitled New Guidelines for Physics (1922)," at the eighty-seventh Founder's Day celebration of the University of Bern on the 26 November, 1921.
• 3. The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity (also called The Philosophy of Freedom). First published in German in 1894 and in English in 1916, this basic work of Rudolf Steiner exists at present in two English editions: Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, New York, 1986 (translated by William Lindemann) and Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1988 (translated by Rita Stebbing).
• 4. Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment. First published in book form in German in 1909. English editions appeared in 1909 and 1910. Two versions are currently available in English: Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, New York, 1983 (translated by Henry B. and Lisa D. Monges); and Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1985 (translations by Max Gysi (1909) and Clifford Bax (1910) revised by D.S. Osmond and C. Davy).

Today our lecture will again be preceded by the recitation of a poem intended to illustrate various matters that I shall discuss today and tomorrow. This time we are dealing with a poem by one whom we may call a non-poet because, as compared with his other spiritual activity, this poem appears as a by-product, written for an occasion. It is, therefore, a soul manifestation that in a sense did not proceed from the innermost impulses of the soul. Precisely this fact will bring clearly to light a number of points connected with our subject. The poem is by the philosopher, Hegel, and concerns certain phases of mankind's initiation.

Eleusis

To Hölderlin

Peace, all around me and within! The tireless cares
Slumber, of busy men. They give to me
Leisure and liberty. Oh night, I thank thee, thou
That set'st me free! With shimmering haze of white
The uncertain confines of the distant hills
Are shrouded by the moon; and, from between,
With kindly twinkle glitters one bright strip
Of yonder lake.
The tedious clatter of the day recedes,
As memory had laid long years between.
Thy image, now, beloved, rises up
With joys of bygone days. Yet soon these yield
To sweeter hopes of new and speedy meeting:
I paint the scene already—the eager step,
The warm embrace: and that, more intimate,
When each probes each with questions, to espy
What new things time has wrought within his friend
Of feeling, view and utt'rance; the glad certitude
That the old covenant maintains its faith,
Even truer, firmer, riper than before;
That covenant, not sealed by any oath:

To live unto free truth alone;
And never, never to make truce
With that convention which would regulate
The feelings and opinions.
Now must the thought, that bore me once o'er streams and mountain heights
To you on wings, confer with dull reality.
Yet soon a sigh betrays their quarreling, and with it flees
Away the dream of sweet imaginings.

My eyes are lifted to the vault of the eternal heavens,
To ye, ye radiant, starry host of height;
And, every hope and every wish effacing,
Forgetfulness rains down from your eternity.

My mind doth lose itself in gazing:
Gone is what I called mine:
I yield myself to the immeasurable;
I am in him, am All, am nothing else.

Returning thought, in fearsome alienation,
Recoils before the infinite, and fails, astounded,
To fathom such a vision's depths.
But fancy to the mind draws down the eternal,
And marries it to form. All hail to you!
Exalted spirits! Lofty shadows!
From whose clear brows fulfillment radiates.
Be not afraid!
This dazzling brightness that enwraps you round;
I feel I too have here my home.

Ha! Did the gates start of thy sanctuary,
Ceres? Oh, thou who in Eleusis throned'st!
Enthused, intoxicate, I feel
Thy awesome presence near
Would comprehend thy revelations.

Would read the symbols' lofty purport, and o'erhear
The festal choirs of the gods,
The dooms they utter from their council-seats!

But silenced are thy halls today, oh Goddess!
Fled is the conclave of the gods to high Olympus,
Far from their profanated altar-places;
Spurning the grave of desecrate mankind,
Fled is that genius of innocency

Whose spell once lured them: mute the wisdom of thy priests.
No single note of all the sacred rite
Escaped to reach us; and in vain the searchers delve,
Moved more by curiosity than love
For wisdom. Her they possess indeed! Disdaining thee.
In hopes to master her, they burrow after words
To find the imprint of thy lofty mind.
Tis vain! They grasp but a handful of dust and ashes,
To which they nevermore shall conjure back thy life!
Yet in the rotting, soulless mould they take their pleasure,
Aye dead themselves, and with the dead content!

Of thy high banquets there remains no token;
Of all the pictured forms not any fleeting trace.
Too holy for the children of thy mysteries
The depths of that unutterable feeling,
The rich contents of that exalted lore,
To be entrusted to a barren symbol.
Even thought itself can compass not the soul,
Who, beyond time and space, aspectant of infinity,
Rapt, self-oblivious, back to consciousness once more
Awakes. And, would he tell to others what he knows,
Though spoke with angels' tongues, the words were all too poor.
And horror seizes him, that holiest thing,
Even in thought belittled, by his words
To make so little, that the very speech seems sin.
And shuddering, he closes up his lips.
This vow, the initiate laid upon himself, wise law
Laid upon meaner spirits: never to make known
What, on a holy night, they saw and felt and heard.
Lest even the nobler sort should find their barking folly
Trouble his devotion, and their wordy trash
Stir him to wroth even with the holiest,—lest it should be
So trampled in the mire,—so mere a thing of rote
That it became the plaything of the sophists
A ware word-mongers hawk about and chaffer,
Dispensing penny-wise;

A cloak for clever-tongued hypocrisy,—a birch, perchance,
To school the merry child,—and at the end, so void,
So utterly empty, that its sole life's root
Is in its echo upon alien tongues.
Thy sons, oh goddess, did not vainly flaunt
Thy honor in the streets and market-place, but bore it
Locked in their bosom's inmost shrine.
Therefore thou livest not within their mouths:
Thee with their lives they worshipped; in their deeds thou livest still.

This night, too, holy one! I have beheld thee,—
Thee, whom in thy sons' lives I oft times found revealed,
And felt unseen, as soul of all their deeds.
Thou art that lofty purpose, that firm faith
Of Godhead, which—though all the world should fall—nor swerves nor shakes.

In the last two lectures it was stated that in studying the soul life we find it filled out up to its boundaries principally by reasoning and the experiences of love and hate, the latter, as we showed, being connected with desire. Now, it might seem as though this statement ignored the most important factor, the very element through which the soul experiences itself most profoundly in its inner depths, that is, feeling. It might seem as though the soul life had been characterized precisely by what is not peculiar to it, and as though no account had been taken of what surges back and forth, up and down in the soul life, investing it with its character of the moment, the life of feeling.

We shall see, however, that we can best understand the dramatic phases of the soul life if we approach the subject of feeling by starting from the two elements mentioned. Again we must begin with simple facts of the soul life, and these are the sense experiences that enter through the portals of our senses, penetrating the soul life, and there carrying on their existence. On the one hand, the waves of the soul life surge to the portals of the senses and thence take back into it the results of the sense perceptions, which then live on independently in the soul. Compare this fact with the other one: that everything comprised in the experiences of love and hate, deriving from desire, also arise in the inner soul life itself, as it were. Desires seem to arise in the center of the soul life, and even to a superficial observer they appear to lead to love and hate.

Desires themselves, however, are not originally to be found in the soul. They arise at the portals of the senses. Consider that first of all. Think of the everyday life of the soul. In observing yourself thus you will notice how the expressions of desire arise in you through contact with the outer world. So we can say that by far the greatest portion of the soul life is achieved at the boundary of the sense world, at the portals of the senses.

This must be thoroughly understood, and we will best be able to grasp it by representing in a sort of diagram what we recognize as fact. We will be able to characterize the intimacies of the soul life by imagining it as filling out a circle.

Let us imagine, then, that the content of the soul life is represented by what the circle encloses, and further imagine our sense organs as a sort of portals, as openings leading to the outer world, in the manner set forth in the lectures on Anthroposophy. If we now consider what is to be observed only within the soul, we should have to represent it graphically by showing the flood surging from the center in all directions and expressing itself in the phenomena of love and hate. Thus the soul is entirely filled by desires, and we find this flood surging right up to the portals of the senses.

The question now arises as to what it is that we experience when a sense experience occurs. What takes place when we experience a tone through the ear, a smell through the nose? Let us for the moment disregard the content of the outer world. Call to mind once more, on the one hand, the actual moment of sense perception, that is, the intercommunication with the outer world. Relive vividly the moment during which the soul experiences itself within, so to speak, while having a color or tone experience of the outer world through the portals of the senses. On the other hand, remember that the soul lives on in time, retaining as recollected visualizations what it acquired through the sense experience in question. Here we must sharply differentiate between what the soul continues to carry along as permanent experience of the recollected visualizations and the experience of the activity of the sense perception, otherwise we should stray into thought processes like Schopenhauer's.

Now we ask, “What happened in that moment when the soul was exposed to the outer world through the portals of the senses?” When you consider that the soul, as experience directly reveals, is really filled with the flood of desires, and you ask what it actually is that flows to the portals of the senses when the soul lets its own inner being surge there, you find it to be the desires themselves. This desire knocks at the gate; at this moment it actually comes in contact with the outer world, and while doing so it receives a seal imprint, as it were, from the other side. When I press a seal with a crest into wax, what remains of the seal in the wax? Nothing but the crest. You could not maintain that what remains does not tally with what had acted from without. That would not be unprejudiced observation, but Kantianism. Unless you are discussing external matter you cannot say that the seal itself does not enter the wax, but rather, you must consider the point at issue: the crest is in the wax. The important thing is what opposes the crest in the seal and into which the crest has stamped itself. Just as the seal yields nothing out of itself but the crest, so the outer world furnishes nothing but the imprint. But something must oppose the seal if an imprint is to come about. You must therefore think of it so that in what opposes the sense experience an imprint has formed from without, and this we carry with us, this imprint come into being in our own soul life. That is what we take along, not the color or the tone itself, but what we have had in the way of experiences of love and hate, of desires.

Is that altogether correct? Could there be something directly connected with a sense experience, something like a desire that must press outward? Well, if nothing of the sort existed you would not carry the sense experience with you in your subsequent soul life; no memory visualization would form. There is, indeed, a psychic phenomenon that offers direct proof that desire always makes contacts outward from the soul through the portals of the senses, whether the perceptions be those of color, smell, or hearing; that is the phenomenon of attention. A comparison between a sense impression during which we merely stare unseeing and one to which we give our attention shows us that in the former case the impression cannot be carried on in the soul life. You must respond from within through the power of attention, and the greater the attention, the more readily the soul retains the memory visualization in the further course of life.

Thus the soul, through the senses, comes in touch with the outer world by causing its essential substance to penetrate the outermost bounds, and this manifests itself in the phenomenon of attention.

In the case of direct sense experience the other element pertaining to the soul life, reasoning, is eliminated. That is exactly what characterizes a sense impression; the capacity for reasoning as such is eliminated. Desire alone prevails, for the sense impression of red is not the same as the sense perception of red. A tone, a perception of color or a smell to which you are exposed, comprises only a desire, recorded through attention; judgment is suppressed in this case. Only one must have clearly in mind the necessity of drawing a sharp boundary line between sense perception and what follows it in the soul.

If you stop at the impression of a color you are dealing with just that—a color impression without judgment. Sense impressions are characterized by an operation of the attention that rules out a verdict as such, desire alone holding sway. When you are exposed to a color or a tone, nothing remains in this condition of being exposed but desire; judgment is suppressed. The sense impression of red is not the same as the sense perception of red. In a tone, in the impression of a color, in a smell to which you expose yourself, only desire is present, recorded by attention. Attention, then, manifests itself as a special form of desire. But at the moment when you say “red is ...” you have already judged: reasoning has come into play. One must always remember to make that distinction between sense perception and sense sensation. Only when you stop at the impression (say, of a color) are you dealing with a mere correspondence between the desire of the soul and the outer world.

What takes place at this meeting of desire in the soul and the outer world? In distinguishing between sense perceptions and sense sensations we designated the former as experiences encountered at the moment of being exposed to them, the latter, as what remains. Now, what do we find a sense sensation to consist of? A modification of desire. Along with the sense sensation we carry what swirls and surges as a modification of desire, the objects of desire.

We have seen that sense sensation arises at the boundary between the soul life and the outer world, at the portals of the senses. We say of a sense experience that the force of desire penetrates to the surface. But let us suppose that the force of desire did not reach the boundary of the outer world but remained within the soul, that it wore off within the soul life itself, as it were, that it remained an inner condition, not penetrating to a sense portal. What would happen in that case? When the force of desire advances and is then compelled to withdraw into itself, inner sensation,¹ or feeling arises. Sense sensation, or outer sensation, comes about only when the withdrawal is effected from without through a counterthrust at the moment of contact with the sense world. Inner sensation (feeling) arises when desire is not pushed back by a direct contact with the outer world but when it is turned back into itself somewhere within the soul before reaching the boundary. That is the way inner sensation, feeling, arises. Feelings are, in a way, introverted desires, desires pushed back into themselves. Thus inner sensation, feeling, consists of halted desires that have not surged to the soul's boundary but live within the soul life, and in feeling, too, the soul substance consists essentially of desire. So feelings as such are not an additional element of the soul life, but substantial, actual processes of desire taking place in the soul life. Let us keep that in mind.

Now we will describe a certain aspect of the two elements of the soul life, reasoning, and the experiences of love and hate originating in desire. It can be stated that everything in the soul arising from the activity of reasoning ends at a certain moment, but also, all that appears as desire comes to an end at a certain moment as well. When does the activity of reasoning cease? When the decision is reached, when the verdict is concluded in the series of visualizations that we then continue to carry with us as a truth. And the end of desire? Satisfaction. As a matter of fact, every desire seeks satisfaction, every reasoning activity, a decision. Because the soul life consists of these two elements—love and hate, and reasoning, imbued with a longing for satisfaction and decision respectively—we can deduce the most important fact connected with the soul life, that it streams toward decisions and satisfaction.

Could we observe man's soul life in its fullness we should find these two currents striving for decisions and satisfaction. By studying his life of feeling we find the origins of many feelings in a great variety of satisfactions and decisions. Observe, for example, those phenomena within the life of feeling that come under the head of concepts like impatience, hope, longing, doubt, even despair, and you have points of contact between these terms and something spiritually tangible. You perceive that the origins of soul processes like impatience, hope, longing, and so forth, are nothing but different expressions of the constantly flowing current in its striving for satisfaction of the forces of desire and for decisions through the forces of visualization. Try to grasp the essence of the feeling of impatience. You will sense vividly that it contains a striving for satisfaction. Impatience is a desire flowing along with the current of the soul, and it does not cease till it terminates in satisfaction. Reasoning powers hardly come into play there.

Or take hope. In hope you will readily recognize the continuous current of desires, but of desires that, unlike those of impatience, are permeated by the other element of the soul life, that is, a tendency of the reasoning powers toward a decision. Because these two elements precisely balance in this feeling, like equal weights on a scale, the feeling of hope is complete in itself. The desire for satisfaction and the prospect of a favorable decision are present in exactly equal measure.

A different feeling would arise were a desire, striving for satisfaction, to combine with a reasoning activity incapable of bringing about a decision. That would be a feeling of doubt.

Similarly, we could always find a curious interplay of reasoning and desire in the wide realm of the feelings, and if there remain feelings in which you don't find these two elements, seek further till you do find them. Taking reasoning capacity as one side of the soul life, we find that it ends with the visualization, but the value a visualization has for life consists in its being a truth. The soul of itself cannot judge truth; the basis of truth is inherent. Everyone must feel this if he compares the characteristics of the soul life with what is to be acquired through truth.

What we are wont to call reasoning capacity in connection with the soul life could also be designated reflection; yet by reflecting we do not necessarily arrive at the right decision. The verdict becomes correct through our being lifted out of our soul, for truth lies without, and the decision is the union with truth. For this reason decisions are an element foreign to the soul.

Turning to the other element, surging in as from unknown sources toward the center of the soul life and spreading in all directions, we find the origin of desire again to lie primarily outside the soul life. Both desires and judgments enter the soul life from without.

Within the soul life, then, satisfaction and the struggle for truth up to the moment of decision run their course, so it can be said that in relation to reasoning we are fighters within the soul life, in relation to desires, enjoyers. Decisions take us out of our soul life, but regarding our desires we are enjoyers, and the end of desires, satisfaction, lies within. In the matter of judgment we are independent, but the reverse is true of desires. In the latter case the inception does not occur in the soul, but satisfaction does. For this reason feeling, as an end, as satisfaction of desire, can fill the whole soul.

Let us examine more closely what it is that enters the soul as satisfaction. We have explained that sensation is fundamentally a surging of desire right up to the boundary of the soul life, while feeling remains farther within, where desire wears off. What do we find at the end of desire, there where the soul life achieves satisfaction within itself? We find feeling. So when desire achieves its end in satisfaction within the soul life, feeling comes into being. That represents only one category of feelings, however. Another arises in a different manner, namely, through the fact that actually interrelationships exist in the depths of the soul life between the inner soul life and the outer world.

Considered by itself, the character of our desires expresses itself in the fact that these are directed toward external things, but unlike sense perceptions they do not achieve contact with them. Desire, however, can be directed toward its objective in such a way as to act from a distance, as a magnetic needle points to the pole without reaching it. In this sense, then, the outer world enjoys a certain relationship to the soul life and exercises an influence within it, though not actually reaching it. Feelings can therefore also arise when desire for an unattainable object continues. The soul approaches an object that induces desire; the object is not able to satisfy it; desire remains; no satisfaction results.

Let us compare this condition with a desire that achieves satisfaction; there is a great difference. A desire that has ended in satisfaction, that has been neutralized, has a health-giving influence on the soul life, but an unsatisfied desire remains imprisoned in itself and has a deleterious effect on the health of the soul. The consequence of an unsatisfied desire is that the soul lives in this unsatisfied desire, which is carried on because it was not fulfilled and because in the absence of its object a living relationship is maintained between the soul and what we may call a void. Hence, the soul lives in unsatisfied longing, in inner contexts not founded on reality, and this suffices to produce a baneful influence upon the health of the physical and spiritual life with which the soul is bound up. Desires that remain should be sharply distinguished from those that are satisfied. When such phenomena appear in obvious forms they are readily distinguished, but there are cases in which these facts are not at all easy to recognize.

Referring now only to those desires that are wholly encompassed by the soul life, let us suppose a man faces an object; then he goes away and says the object had satisfied him, that he liked it; or else, it had not satisfied him and he disliked it. Connected with the satisfaction is a form of desire, no matter how thoroughly hidden, which was satisfied in a certain way, and in the case of the dislike the desire itself has remained. This leads us into the realm of aesthetic judgment.

There is but one variety of feelings, and this is significantly characteristic of the soul life, that appears different from the others. You will readily understand that feelings, either satisfied or unsatisfied desires, can link not only with external objects but with inner soul experiences. A feeling of the kind we designated “satisfied desire” may connect with something reaching far into the past. Within ourselves as well we find the inceptions of satisfied or unsatisfied desires. Distinguish, for a moment, between desires provoked by external objects and those stimulated by our own soul lives. By means of outer experiences we can have desires that remain with us, and in the soul as well we find causes of satisfied or unsatisfied desires. But there are other tiny inner experiences in which we have an unfulfilled longing. Let us assume that in a case where our desires face an outer object our reasoning powers prove too weak to reach a decision; you might have to renounce a decision. There you have an experience of distress brought about by your feeling of dissatisfaction.

There is one case, however, in which our reasoning does not reach a decision, nor does desire end in satisfaction, and yet no feeling of distress arises. Remember that when we do not reason in facing the objects of daily life through ordinary sense experiences we halt at the sense phenomena, but in reasoning we transcend the sense experience. When we carry both reasoning and desire to the boundary of the soul life, where the sense impression from the outer world surges up to the soul, and we then develop a desire, permeated by the power of reasoning that stops exactly at the boundary, then a most curiously constituted feeling arises.

Let this line represent the eye as the portal of sight. Now we let our desire (horizontal lines) stream to the portal of sense experiences, the eye, in the direction outward from the soul. Now let our reasoning powers (vertical lines) flow there as well. This would give us a symbol of the feeling just mentioned, a feeling of unique composition.

Remember that ordinarily when reasoning power is developed the fulfillment of psychic activity lies not within but outside the soul. Then you will appreciate the difference between the two currents that flow as far as the outer impression. If our reasoning power is to decide something that is to proceed as far as the boundary of the soul, the latter must take into itself something concerning which it can make no decisions of its own initiative, and that is truth. Desire cannot flow out; truth overwhelms desire. Desire must capitulate to truth. It is necessary, then, to take something into our soul that is foreign to the soul as such: truth.

The lines representing reasoning (cf. diagram) normally proceed out of the soul life to meet something external, but desire cannot pass the boundary where either it is hurled back or it remains confined within itself. In the present example, however, we are assuming that both reasoning and desire proceed only to the boundary, and that as far as the sense impression is concerned they coincide completely. In this case our desire surges as far as the outer world and from there brings us back the verdict.

From the point where it turns back, desire brings back the verdict. What sort of a verdict does it bring back? Under these conditions only aesthetic verdicts are possible, that is, judgments in some way linked with art and beauty. Only in connection with artistic considerations can it happen that desire flows to the boundary and is satisfied, that reasoning power stops at the frontier and yet the final verdict is brought back.

When you look at a work of art, can you say that it provokes your desire? Yes, it does, but not through its own agency. When that is the case, which is possible, of course, the arrival at an aesthetic decision does not depend upon a certain development of the soul. It is quite conceivable that certain souls might not respond in any way to a work of art. Naturally, this can happen in connection with other objects as well, but then we find complete indifference, and in that case the same process would take place when looking at a work of art as when confronting any other object. When you are not indifferent, however, when your soul life responds appropriately to the work of art, you will notice a difference. You let reasoning and desire flow to the boundary of the soul life, and then something returns, namely, a desire expressing itself in the verdict. That is beautiful. To the one, nothing returns, to the other, desire returns, but not desire for the work of art, but the desire that has been satisfied by the verdict. The power of desire and the power of reasoning come to terms in the soul, and in such a case where the outer world is the provoker only of your own inner soul activity, the outer world itself can satisfy you. Exactly as much returns to you as had streamed forth from you.

Note that the actual presence of the work of art is indispensable, because the soul substance of desire must certainly flow to the frontier of the senses. Any recollection of the work really yields something different from the aesthetic judgment in its presence.

Truth, then, is something to which desires capitulate as to a sort of exterior of the soul life. Beauty is something in which desire exactly corresponds to reasoning. The verdict is brought about by the voluntary termination of desire at the soul's boundary, the desire returning as the verdict. That is why the experience of beauty is a satisfaction that diffuses so much warmth. The closest balance of the soul forces is achieved when the soul life flows to its boundary as desire and returns as judgment. No other activity so completely fulfills the conditions of a healthy soul life as devotion to beauty.

When a longing of the soul surges in great waves to the frontier of the senses and returns with the verdict, we can see that one condition of ordinary life can better be met through devotion to beauty than in any other way. In seeking the fruits of thought we are working in the soul with a medium to which the power of desire must constantly surrender. Naturally, the power of desire will always surrender to the majesty of truth, but when it is forced to do so, the inevitable consequence is an impairment of the soul life's health. Continual striving in the realm of thought, during which desires must constantly capitulate, would eventually bring about aridity of the human soul, but reasoning that brings satisfied desire and judgment in equal measure provides the soul with something quite different.

Naturally this is not a recommendation that we should incessantly wallow in beauty and maintain that truth is unhealthy. That would be setting up the axiom that the search for truth is unhealthy: let us eschew it; wallowing in beauty is healthy: let us indulge in it. But the implication of what has been said is that in view of our search for truth, which is a duty, a necessity, we are compelled to fight against the life of desires, to turn it back into itself. Indeed, in seeking truth we must do this as a matter of course.

More than anything else, therefore, this search inculcates humility and forces back our egotism in the right way. The search for truth renders us ever more humble. Yet if man were merely to live along in this way, becoming more and more humble, he would eventually arrive at his own dissolution; the sentience of his own inner being, essential to the fulfillment of his soul life, would be lacking. He must not forfeit his individuality through the constant necessity surrendering to truth; this is where the life of aesthetic judgment steps in. The life of aesthetic judgment is so constituted that man brings back again what he has carried to the boundary of the soul life.

In that life it is permissible to do what is demanded in the light of truth. What is demanded by truth is that the decision be reached independently of our arbitrary choice. In seeking truth we must surrender ourselves completely, and in return we are vouchsafed truth. In coming to an aesthetic decision, in seeking the experience of beauty, we also surrender ourselves completely; we let our souls surge to their boundaries, almost as in the case of a sense sensation. But then we ourselves return and this cannot be decided, cannot be determined from without. We surrender ourselves and are given back to ourselves. Truth brings back only a verdict, but an aesthetic judgment, in addition, brings back our self as a gift. That is the peculiarity of the aesthetic life. It comprises truth, that is, selflessness, but at the same time the assertion of self-supremacy in the soul life, returning us to ourselves as a spontaneous gift.

In these lectures, as you see, I must present matters ill adapted to definitions. We are merely endeavoring to describe them as they are by delimiting the soul life and studying it.

In the lectures on Anthroposophy given last year we learned that in the downward direction corporeality borders on the soul life. At this border we endeavored to grasp the human being and thereby the human body, together with all that is connected with its constitution. The ultimate aim of these lectures is to provide rules of life, life wisdom, hence a broad foundation is indispensable.

Today, we gained an insight into the nature of desires as they surge in the depths of the soul life. Now, in the previous lectures we learned that certain experiences allied to feeling, like boredom, depend upon the presence of visualizations out of the past, like bubbles that lead their own lives in the soul. At a given moment of our existence much depends upon the nature of the lives they lead. Our frame of mind, our happiness or distress, depends upon the manner in which our visualizations act as independent beings in the soul, upon the significance of boredom, and so forth. In short, upon these beings that live in our souls depends the happiness of our present lives.

Against certain visualizations that we have allowed to enter our present soul lives, we are powerless; facing others, we are strong according to our ability to recall visualizations at will. Here the question arises as to which visualizations are readily recaptured and which not. That is a matter that can be of immense importance in life. Furthermore, can anything be done at the inception of visualizations to render them more or less readily available? Yes, we can contribute something. Many would find it profitable and could lighten the burden of their lives enormously if they knew how to recapture their conceptions easily. You must give them something to take along, but what? Well, since the soul life is made up of desire and reasoning, we must find it within these two elements.

Of our desire we can give nothing but desire itself. At the moment when we have the conception, the moment when it flows into us, we must give as much of our desire as possible, and that can only be done by permeating the conception with love. To give part of our desire to the conception will provide a safe-conduct for our further soul life. The more lovingly we receive a visualization, the more interest we devote to it, the more we forget ourselves and our attributes in meeting it, the better it is permanently preserved for us. He who cannot forget himself in the face of a conception will quickly forget the conception. It is possible to encompass a conception, as it were, with love.

We still have to learn, however, how our reasoning can act upon conceptions. A conception is more readily recalled by our memory when received through the reasoning force of our soul than when it has simply been added to the soul life. When you reason about a visualization entering the web of your soul, when you surround it with reasoning, you are again providing it with something that facilitates the memory of it. You see, you can invest a conception with something like an atmosphere, and it depends upon ourselves whether a conception reappears in our memory easily or not. It is important for the health of the soul life to surround our visualizations with an atmosphere of reasoning and love.

In this connection we must also give due consideration to the ego conception. Our entire continuous soul life bears a constant relationship to our central visualization, the ego conception. If we follow the path indicated today, we shall in the next lecture discover how to correlate the directions of memory and ego experience.

At bottom, the main tendency of the soul is desire. This being the case, anyone knowing that through esoteric development the soul's aims must be raised may be surprised to learn that in a certain sense desire must be overcome. “Overcoming desire in the soul,” however, is not an accurate way of putting it. Desire arises in the soul from unknown depths, yes, but what surges in with it? Of what is it the expression? If we would fathom these depths, we must temporarily interpret them in an abstract way as something that corresponds on a higher plane to desire, something proceeding from our own being as will. When, for the purpose of higher development, we combat desire, we are not combatting will but merely certain modifications, certain objects of desire. Then pure will holds sway. Will coupled with an object, with the content of desire, is covetousness. Through reasoning, however, we can arrive at the conception of wanting to rid ourselves of desire, so that a will of that sort, disencumbered of objects, is in a certain way one of our highest attributes. Don't confuse this with concepts like “the will to live.” That is a will directed at an object. Will is pure and free only when not modified into a definite desire; in other words, only when it leads in the opposite direction.

When the life of the will surges into our feelings, we have an excellent opportunity to study the relation of will to feeling. Fantastic explanations of will are possible. One could maintain that will must necessarily lead to a certain object. Such definitions are wholly unjustifiable, and people who propound them would often do better to devote themselves to the genius of language. Language, for example, offers an inspired word for that inner experience in which will is directly converted into feeling. If we could observe within ourselves a craving of the will in the process of wearing off, we could perceive, in facing an object or a being, a surging of the will up to a certain point, where it then holds back. That produces a profoundly unsatisfied feeling toward that being. This sort of will certainly does not lead to action, and language offers the inspired term Widerwille.² That is a feeling, however, and therefore the will, when recognizing itself in the feeling, is in fact a desire that leads back to itself, and language actually has a word that directly characterizes the will as a feeling.

This shows us the fallacy of a definition implying that the will is only the point of departure of an act. Within the soul life we find on all sides a surging differentiated will: desire; therein are seen the various expressions of the soul.

• 1. Empfindung, in addition to meaning “sensation” (as here translated) can also be synonymous with Gefühl (“feeling”), as is here the case. In order to avoid confusion, the word “inner” is added; indeed, in all subsequent recurrences it appears in the German text as well (innere Empfindung).
• 2. Literally, anti-will, or counter-will. Widerwille is a commonly used word meaning distaste, antipathy, disgust. The English language, unfortunately, lacks this particular “inspired term.”

Yesterday I tried to explain the seriousness of the times in which we actually live, in a reflection or through a reflection that was linked to Oswald Spengler's book “The Decline of the West”. I remarked that anyone who knows how to take such things seriously today must be overcome by a great cultural concern, the same cultural concern that can be characterized in a very specific way, namely, the concern that arises from the fact that our civilization cannot continue to develop without a crash landing that, from the point of view of the science of initiation, will become the world. It is therefore necessary that all human activity and all human will be fertilized by that which can be spiritually perceived today. Then, when the threshold that exists between the physical and the superphysical world is crossed, out of that knowledge, which cannot derive anything from the physical world, but which has a thoroughly enlightening effect on this physical world, the impulses for social life in the present and in the near future must also come from this knowledge. And today, man is actually led to consider everything that emerges from the traditional cultural stream as antiquated; he is led to place all questions that can arise today in the perspective that is given by this science of initiation. The cultural concern arises when one sees how, on all sides, there is a storming against that which wants to assert itself as such initiation wisdom, and how all external forces of civilization in the present day are actually directed towards not allowing such initiation science to become a real factor in our civilization. Necessity and rejection stand in the most extreme contrast to each other in almost all areas of our lives today, and one would like to appeal again and again to those who can at least take it seriously in their hearts with the demand for a new construction of our cultural and civilizational life. Instead of this, we see that, owing to the lethargy of the most advanced sections of present-day humanity, those personalities and groups who carry over from the past into the present like shadows very definite spiritual impulses and who, in spite of everything, know exactly what they want, always gain the upper hand. So while those who call themselves progressive today are splitting up over individual issues, splitting up over this or that program, barely seeing further than the end of their noses, we see the old spiritual currents, which have already sufficiently demonstrated how they were bound to lead modern civilization into a catastrophe, at work everywhere, and we see them, I would say, “happy” at work. This is something that cannot be sufficiently considered from all sides, and to which we should always return again and again.

I have often made a comment to you on various occasions. I have said: If one becomes acquainted today with what can arise out of today's initiation, what one can know today, out of the developmental conditions of humanity, about the spiritual world and its connection with the physical world, then one actually only begins to be truly amazed at what has been handed down as the original wisdom of humanity. This original wisdom of humanity in its actual form has been lost, and only its later traces have been preserved in the most diverse documents, monuments and so on. The most important thing was forcefully destroyed by the church when it spread in the West, from Africa and the Near East, out of calculation. But what has been preserved is collected by scholars today and can be read in all kinds of writings, although it is difficult to read because the present-day philological scholarship makes the things it has to communicate to the world unreadable, if possible, by commenting on them, by the way they are handed over to the world. But the things are communicated. One can, however, say that they cannot be read, because the most important things can only be read if one rediscovers the lost reading key. And one cannot discover it through historical research in the way of our erudition. Basically, one can only bring up the words. Today, the actual deeper meaning can no longer be found other than by independently rediscovering the truths and facts from the spiritual world itself, and then, from today's fully conscious science of initiation, gaining insight into what was contained in the ancient atavistic original wisdom handed down from the gods. One can only approach the ancient wisdom and read the external records with that which is being investigated today through the powers of spiritual research, and only with that can one really read the external records.

Thus, for example, it is also handed down from learning that in the ancient mysteries there was a kind of sun cult, and that in these ancient mysteries that which today's science calls the word “sun”, or for which it has, better said, only the word “sun”, was worshipped as a kind of supreme deity. But one does not get a concept of what was actually meant in the ancient mysteries by the sun, by which, after all, one basically means what one imagines to be the central heavenly body of our planetary system, what one originally wanted to express with the word “sun”. In those ancient mysteries, the sun, the physical sun that the physical eye sees, was regarded only as a kind of reflection of what the spiritual sun is. This spiritual sun was not bound to a place. It was something beyond space. It was that which the initiate absorbed within himself, which the initiate absorbed as the central spirituality of the world and made it his own. And only when one really gains an understanding of what was worshipped and experienced as the sun being in today's knowledge of initiation, when the mysteries of this sun being are taught in rituals, only then does one also get a correct idea of what these ancient people said to themselves: If you, as an inhabitant of the Earth, want to rise to the level of what the origin of your own being truly is, then you must not remain on this Earth. You see minerals, plants, animals on this earth, and you also see your physical fellow human beings. All of this is earthly. But something lives in you that is not earthly, and even if you know everything that can be known about minerals, plants, animals and physical people, you are still a long way from knowing what leads you to an understanding of the essence of human being, because this essence of the human being can never be known through knowledge that relates to earthly things, because this essence of the human being is not related at all to the earthly, but is related to the supermundane, which first takes place in the light of the sun.

Thus the mystery servants of ancient times were called upon to recognize their own nature, to fulfill the “know thyself” within themselves, to turn their spiritual gaze up to the sun, to the sun in the spiritual sense, because nothing could be found on earth that constituted the human being, that made up the human essence. Only when one has penetrated to the full significance of these central conceptions of the ancient mysteries, which in a certain period were to be found in Western Asia as well as on the island of Ireland; only when one has grasped this mysterious connection between the human soul and the being of the sun, and can say: The people of ancient times had to go beyond the earth to find their own nature – only then do you get a correct idea of the full significance of the mystery of Golgotha for life on earth, because only then can you see that a great cosmic event took place that had a fundamental, central significance for the earth. Only through this could one understand that the being to whom the sun-worshipers looked up, those who turned their faces, their spiritual faces, towards the sun in order to experience the nature of man, that when they experienced the current of the times in the right sense, they said to themselves: That being who was sought in the old mysteries outside of the earth, has now descended and has connected himself with the earthly evolution. How, then, can we hope to gain any conception of the nature of the Christ, of the whole process of the Mystery of Golgotha, except by seeing how the Being that was not on earth before, that could only be sought in extra-terrestrial regions, how this Being of the Mystery of Golgotha can be found in the world of men, if it is sought in the right way in the world of men.

Thus, only when we measure what we have to say about the Mystery of Golgotha from the anthroposophical point of view against what was thought by the ancient mystery servants, when we know what sun worship and sun wisdom was in these ancient mysteries, only then do we get the right shade of what we are saying. Only then will we know how to appreciate what it means to speak of Christ, the Spirit of the Sun, in the present day. In my lectures, which are reproduced in the book 'Christianity as Mystical Fact', I have tried to show how all pre-Christian life was an ascent to the Mystery of Golgotha, and how the Mystery of Golgotha calls out on the world-historical plane as a mystery for all humanity, which in the individual mysteries, in the rituals of the old mysteries, took place only symbolically and allegorically, if we may speak in such terms, but in a condensed form, now became reality as the Mystery of Golgotha for all humanity. Thus, right from the very beginning — for these lectures were among the very first that I gave in the course of our anthroposophical movement — the tone has been sounded within our anthroposophically oriented spiritual science from the very beginning, which above all looks to the Mystery of Golgotha being placed in the right way in the evolution of the earth. In a corresponding way, attempts have always been made to characterize that peculiar progress which, from the pre-Christian to the Christian, must be understood in its true sense only in our time.

Now it is important to understand correctly how those currents that bring a certain spirituality from ancient times into the present actually relate to these things. Today I would like to point out the following, and tomorrow I will expand on it. If you familiarize yourself with what has been preserved in the Christian creeds as rituals – in the Protestant faith this has been greatly reduced, but you can still find a lot in Catholic rituals, although some of it has also been incorporated into Protestant prayers – you take all this, you will find little that you can actually associate with a very serious view, unless you start from spiritual science and permeate what has been handed down as empty words with these spiritual-scientific insights.

If you take, for example, the ritual of the Mass or some other ritual of the Catholic Church, you will find words, many words. But if you look at these things honestly, you will find that you can take these words, or rather that the faithful can take these words, but only if you approach the matter with complete sincerity and attach real meaning to these words. It is no different in Protestantism. Where does this come from? You see, if you really investigate something like the Catholic mass ritual, and it is similar for other rituals, with the tools of spiritual science, then you come to the conclusion that these things are far older than the founding of Christianity. If you take the mass ritual, then you will have to go back to the very old forms of the ancient mysteries to understand its content. In a certain similar way, the rituals of the ancient mysteries proceeded as the Mass ritual proceeds. And the thing is this: when the Mystery of Golgotha occurred in the evolution of the Earth, the wise men, the truly wise men of all mystery schools, who are represented in the Bible by the “Three Wise Men from the Orient,” so to speak, offered their ritual, their view and their knowledge as a sacrifice to honor and comprehend the Mystery of Golgotha. In a sense, what was offered to the old gods was transferred to the new God, who passed through the mystery of Golgotha. So that if one now wants to imbue the formulas of today's church with spiritual juice, one can only come to such spiritual juice by looking back at the meaning that was connected with these things in the mysteries. Otherwise they remain empty, without content. If they remain empty, without content, then one can indeed lull and lull congregations to sleep with them, but one cannot awaken them, one cannot bring them to a real connection with the spiritual world, one can only ensure that the congregation sleeps gently in its members.

We live today in a time when the spirits must actually be awakened. You can see that from a reflection like the one we had yesterday. But for many centuries the spirits have been lulled to sleep by bringing up as tradition that which actually comes from the ancient mysteries and for which the meaning has been lost. In such matters, which are borrowed from the wording of the ancient mysteries, in which one had not only the wording but the inner meaning, in such matters the religious denominations have a powerful, one might say magical, means of putting wide sections of the community to sleep, for the empty words retain a certain effect. And the denominations would like to preserve this effect, would not like to lose this possibility of effect. Therefore, if a spiritual movement arises today that, based on original knowledge, points to the content of these things, then, of course, no one is more opposed to it than those who would only like to preserve the empty verbiage. It is easy to say: the churches preserve these empty verbiage. But the modern mind, that modern mind which is asserting itself today in all kinds of movements, of the most modern kind, does not care about these creeds. Above all, one can boast and declare from the point of view of modern science that one has gone beyond these empty words, that one is enlightened. But one is not enlightened if, for example, one establishes a world view in the sense of modern natural science, as the modern monistic world views are, as the world views are that modern social institutions would like to bring about. One is not enlightened because this modern science is nothing more than the continuation of those empty words. Without knowing it, it is. You are studying natural science today, and the moment you ascend to the laws of nature, you have only the distillates of medieval empty phrases, in which even in the Middle Ages there was much more of the old meaning than there is today in science. No wonder we live in a time of decline!

But on the other hand, you can see from this how much the bearers of such knowledge must want to prevent their origin from being revealed. A large part of the latest efforts of the various denominations that have ridden the West into disaster is to fight with all possible means everything that points to the origin of what is contained in the word formulas of the individual Christian confessions. The official representatives of the Christian denominations are most concerned not to let arise anything that points to the origin of their formulas, because they would thereby be unable to keep the souls of their congregations asleep. For the moment that real spirit is poured into these word formulas, the moment that people find themselves ready to receive such spirit, in that moment one sees how the sleeping of souls no longer continues. The souls can certainly close themselves, continue to sleep, but then they do not find the necessary rest in this sleep; at least they begin to dream of all kinds of things. In any case, only those who say to themselves: these confessions contain the words for great secrets of the world, but the bearers of these words today strive to deny this origin and persecute those who point to this origin.

Take a specific example. Whether it be on the part of the Protestant professors or pastors, whether on the part of the Catholics, whether on the part of the university “pastors” of natural history, physiology, mathematics or the like, astronomy, in short, on the part of the clergy of any direction, atheistic or theistic, you will find today that people make fun of it, and you don't know how much you are following the saying: They mock themselves and know not how! For where do all these denominations get the teachings they give to the sleeping souls of their faithful from their various religious books? From the Akasha Chronicle! Only the trail is to be covered up. It is to be covered up that in ancient atavistic clairvoyance, what is in all religious documents, including the Bible, has been drawn from the Akasha Chronicle. Therefore, if someone comes along today and points to this Akasha Chronicle and says, “This is nonsense!” — then, of course, he is saying that what he himself teaches is nonsense, because it has the same source. This same source is thereby denied; it is lied about this source, only it is official that it is lied about this source. This is the corrupting factor of our time, for it lulls the souls. It leads people to the most confused judgments in their daily lives. The result is that even today you can be a follower of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science and still not have come so far that you see the things that are happening with open eyes, that you do not want to look at certain connections at all. And if you look, you usually interpret them the opposite way.

I would like to draw your attention to a modern phenomenon, which I can already see will take on many different colors because those who benefit from it will continue to struggle for a long time. But today this phenomenon already points to deeper connections. Perhaps you have noticed that the world is saying everywhere today: The Entente is giving in, it is moving away from the terrible provisions of the Treaty of Versailles. One points out such things with a certain satisfaction from Central Europe; one discusses such things in neutral countries. But one does not connect it with the phenomenon with which it is connected. Even if the powers will continue to struggle and the connection will be obscured again, today it is in the context. Fehrenbach is German Chancellor; he belongs to the Center. The Roman clericalism is making tremendous conquests in the world, and now that the chances of Rome are better than they were weeks ago, people think differently about the revision of the Treaty of Versailles than they did. It does not matter that those in former Germany who are always the clever politicians have said: The Entente will not be particularly pleased with Fehrenbach, the reactionary!

If you want to see through these things, then you have to consider quite different things in order to judge a little what actually lies in the currents of the development of civilization. You may know that almost every twelfth sermon, to put it mildly, rages against Freemasonry somewhere in the Catholic Church. It is, of course, a well-known phenomenon to you. Now, this opposition to Freemasonry, it may interest people today in the face of certain currents that know what they are doing and that, for example, emanate from the Western Center. For we are dealing, on the one hand, with the Roman Church current; I am not saying with Christianity, but with the Roman Church current, because there are few Christians and many followers of the Roman Church. On the other hand, we are dealing with a whole series of secret societies that are in the English-speaking countries, and I have indeed pointed out the tendencies and goals of such secret societies during the war. There are such secret societies of the most diverse colors. Those who are in the so-called lower grades of such secret societies usually know very little of what the top leaders actually intend; but even within the top leadership there are the most diverse currents. I would like to talk about one such current today, which in turn is part of a whole that we do not want to consider today – we want to limit ourselves to one such current. You see, there are such currents that are based on Freemasonry. Freemasonry initially had three degrees for its members, which today have basically become empty words, ritual shells, ritual formulas, from which the meaning can only be found if one shines a light into these things with modern spiritual knowledge, modern spiritual insight. But at least in all such societies, the three lowest degrees are formed in such a way that, if one has enough spirit to follow the ritual correctly, one can see how this ritual is based on ancient ceremonies, mystery ceremonies. And in a certain sense – admittedly not if one merely lets this ritual take effect on oneself, but if one illuminates it with spiritual-scientific knowledge – one can get a sense of what the connection is between what took place in the mysteries before the mystery of Golgotha and between what the task of humanity is after the mystery of Golgotha. But now, in many such masonic currents, a whole series of higher degrees has been superimposed on these three. I am now speaking, and I wish to remark this once more, not in general of the high degrees, but of certain high degrees of certain Masonic orders and other occult societies, the Odd Fellows order and so on, again not of all, because in this area the genuine is always extremely difficult to distinguish from the inauthentic; but I am speaking of certain very widespread currents in this area. There is a structure based on the three lowest degrees, in which people are initiated into humanity, into the “know thyself,” into the mystery of death and its connection with the course of the cosmos. Many of these orders have ninety-five degrees. You can imagine how proud one can be when one has been initiated into ninety-five degrees. You just can't imagine how meager these initiations are, because one usually imagines something extraordinarily profound and significant behind those empty words, but they are there. I would like to say, however, that certain tendrils of all these things, of the empty words, have their content. There is something in these empty words, and it is always reckoned by those who give such empty words that there are some people who then reflect, who remember that there should also be something inside,

Now something very peculiar happens. When people actually come who reflect on what is contained in these high degrees, which have been conferred on them or into which they have been initiated – there are people who then begin to think – then a very specific result occurs. If these people have also thought about the three lower degrees and have at least somehow sensed something in them, then what they sensed in the three lower degrees is completely destroyed by what is implanted in them in the high degrees. A terrible fog is poured out over what can be sensed in the three lower degrees. And without their usually having any awareness of it, people become befogged in these high degrees. Where does this come from? It comes from the fact that in certain periods, from the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century, but continuing into our times, certain people have crept into those Masonic orders, were inside and introduced these high degrees , developed these high degrees within Freemasonry, so that in a number of these high-degree Masonic orders these foreign bodies are inside; high degrees, developed by foreign personalities who have crept in. People are gullible, even when they are initiated into things. And those who have crept in are the members of the “Society of Jesus,” the Jesuits. At a certain point in time, from the end of the 18th century onwards, the Masonic orders were teeming with Jesuits, and they were doing the high degrees for certain orders. So you don't just find Jesuitism where Freemasonry is criticized or preached against, but you find a great deal of pure Jesuitism in the high degrees. It does not matter at all, in the opinion of Jesuitism, that one attacks what one has set up oneself, because in this field that is part of politics, of the correct guidance of people. If one wants to lead people to a certain goal, a clear goal that is clear to the people, not just a goal that is clear to the leaders, then it is good to approach them from just one side and show them a way to this goal. But if you want to keep them as dull and sleepy as possible, show them two paths or maybe even more, but two will suffice for the time being. One goes like this, and one goes like this (see drawing). You are a Jesuit by officially belonging to the Society of Jesus and take this path, or you are a Jesuit by belonging to some high-grade Masonic order and take this path. Then people look. It will be very difficult for him to find his way around. It is very easy to confuse him.

Our public life is permeated in the most diverse ways by such confusing currents. People today would have every reason to wake up and take a look at things, because there is no need to fall for them. But most people today fall for these things. One need only look at a somewhat longer life to know how people with whom one was young and who are still alive, instead of turning to some spiritual-scientific direction, have completely returned to the fold of the Catholic Church. I know of many such examples. They only point to some of the things that are happening in our time, and it is not right not to draw attention to these things, not to point them out. At the present time, in particular, it is of the utmost urgency that our anthroposophical friends are made aware of such things, even if it may only be the case for a very small part that it can somehow lead to the really necessary seriousness. Because it is precisely this seriousness that is lacking at the present time, this seriousness that one would so much like to see. You must realize that we are dealing with an important turning-point in the field of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. Of course, this spiritual movement had to begin first. I will explain these things in more detail tomorrow. Today I will only sketch out a few threads and tomorrow I will go into some things in more detail, especially in this area. Now we are faced with the necessity, the absolute necessity, to put these spiritual truths into practice. This turn of events should be given our earnest and serious consideration. As long as the Anthroposophical Movement was merely a spiritual-scientific movement, a movement of teaching, of the dissemination of ideas, it was something that carried away, as it were, a spiritual current like in a river bed. There might be cliques, a lot of trifling, playing around, nebulous mysticism among the followers, but the spirit always makes its way and it goes beyond cliques, beyond prejudices, beyond selfishness. At the moment when anthroposophically oriented spiritual science wants to intervene in social life, when it wants to become practical, as it has been doing for more than a year, that is no longer acceptable. We are really faced with new soul tasks, and these new soul tasks must be taken seriously. It must be understood that the cliquishness, the trifling, the trifling, the playing, the false mysticism, which have crept into our ranks, cannot continue, because they would have a destructive effect. We must face the fact that things are becoming more serious in view of the events of the present time. And in the face of this I have often said: One would like to be able to put something quite different into one's words than one can usually put, in order to evoke a response in souls to what one actually has to say about the affairs of the present. What is said finds so little echo; forgive me for saying it so bluntly, but it finds little echo. Again and again it is pointed out that things cannot be seen through immediately, that one first wants to make progress for a while, and so on. But if we were not deceived by prejudices, if we did not even love prejudices, we would be much more likely to be seized by the actual impulse that lies in this spiritual-scientific life. The opponents are well aware of this and I would like to say: the opponents show that you really don't need to be a genius to find effective means.

Before I left, I gave a public lecture here: “The Truth about Anthroposophy and How to Defend It Against Falsehood.” In that lecture, I said, of course only as a figure of speech, that I could not attribute the attacks that appeared in the so-called “Spectator” to an educated person, because an educated person could not possibly say anything as reported there; nor could I assume that it had been said by anyone who had had any kind of education, a grammar school or academic education, because the style and attitude pointed to a thoroughly uneducated person. — As I said, it was just a figure of speech, and so I was taken by surprise by the title page of the essays, which have now been published as a brochure. The brochure is called “The Mystery of the Temple of Dornach. Part One”, so there will be a second part: “History of Theosophy and its Offshoots”, by Max Kully, pastor of Arlesheim. So it seems that if Arlesheim does not have a pastor who has not studied at a gymnasium or theology, it seems that he is an educated person who has written these things.

Well, the rest will follow – I promise you the second part of this brochure, which I have already started: it will report in great detail on these matters. It will provide an explanation of the Steiner method, occult schools and doctrinal structures. Steiner in the judgment of former “theologians.” Steiner as a financier and in his very latest role as a sociologist. – So you see, there are many more things to come!

And after all, there are some interesting things in this little brochure that was given to me today with a pack of attacks that have come recently. You see, it's a nice package! I just skimmed through it, but still, the way this “educated man” writes is interesting. I don't need to remind you of what I said here about this man's knowledge of the Akasha Chronicle. He wrote about it as if it were a book that you have in the library and copy from. Now he says in a postscript to his article: “Steiner came in his lecture” - it is the lecture on “The Truth about Anthroposophy...” - “to also talk about the Akasha Chronicle. He denied and ridiculed what the ‘Katholisches Sonntagsblatt’ published about this matter.

So this “educated man” has taken something about the Akasha Chronicle from the lectures in Stuttgart and Düsseldorf that were handed down to him and from the explanation of the Lord's Prayer, and, because it was necessary to say that the “drip” is not capable of understanding something like this, but because he believes that the infallibility of the Church naturally also works in him, he cannot be fallible, so he finds it necessary to say that I denied my own writings, he says this, although only what the pastor of Arlesheim says had to be denied!

You see, things go a little too far with regard to what has been sufficiently characterized here in that lecture before I left. But now, what comes next is somewhat striking; not to me, because I will not shrink back from saying what I consider necessary in the spirit of today's world, even if such things should not be lies. But I do ask you to listen to the following sentences with some attention: 'Since then we have been initiated on this point by an authoritative side. By Akasha Chronicle the theosophist understands something that supposedly exists in the spiritual world' and so on. It would be quite useful if you would listen to it and, above all, pay a little attention with your eyes, so that it can be said from this side: “Since then” - that is, since June 5, 1920 - “we have been initiated in this matter by an authoritative source.” That is, if it is not a lie, then someone who listens to the lectures here has told this pastor what he has to understand by the cycles according to the Akasha Chronicle. I would like to draw your attention to this fact, as I said, if it is not a lie; because it could be that there are people among us who simply carelessly read over such a sentence. After all, all kinds of things happen. In the package, for example, I also find a nice article written by a Protestant clergyman. The whole thing from the Catholic camp is now continuing in the Protestant camp, and we are already dealing with a continuation of an article in the “Evangelisches Schulblatt,” which, by the way, has very strange peculiarities. That “Schweizerisches Evangelisches Schulblatt”, the organ of the Protestant School Association of Switzerland, a weekly journal for Christian education in home and school, has announced “pamphlets” in its “book table”, including “The Struggle for the New Art” by the Jesuit priest Kreitmaier! Just by the way. But you see, people do come together in strange ways!

But I would like to read you a little of the critique contained in this “Evangelical School Journal”. It talks about all sorts of things, but we want to read especially the critique that concerns the threefold order, the “key points”, and I ask you to pay a little attention now:

"We are left wondering what Steiner actually wants. Above all, we need to learn to read Steiner. Perhaps then we will get on the right track. In these factories with educational cooperatives, specialist libraries, baths, home decoration courses and so on, the fund - to be paid for by the factory owner, of course - has not been forgotten. Not only does it pay for all this, but - watch out! at the same time, through sufficient means, the possibility of attracting the best representatives of intellectual life to lecture courses. There is indeed a fly in the ointment (there is something to be gained), and it is not necessary to add “thus helping both sides”. Mr. Steiner correctly suspects that these factory worker education cooperatives are liquidating funds that he would like to “earn”. He calls this classically “allowing the necessary means for further development to flow to science.” These intentions are so transparent and everything is so clumsy when we just poke our nose a little between the lines.

"Should we really offer our hand to the everywhere insolently emerging leveling tendencies (this includes, above all, the exclusion of any religious education from schools) by smearing the educational porridge itself on the countryside and in the factories? The whole of life should teach us that it is utter nonsense to want to bring all people to the same level of education. Generation after generation fails because of this unnatural problem, but nowhere do we want to learn from it, not even from the most obvious: nature! We only need to take a look at the animal or even the plant world to see the most enormous differences in its creatures everywhere. The human race will never make an exception. The whole of the past teaches us the fact that a small minority is opposed to a large majority, that only individual capable people stand out. Would it not be possible to find a little sense of quality for these differences (especially in questions of race and nationality) in a school program? We would soon see where the people are sick! Certainly not in the countryside.

"But enough! I have already exceeded the intended length of my response. It could easily be doubled or tripled if I wanted to examine the whole complex of unworldliness and lack of sense of reality that comes through in the article. (If desired, I can provide comprehensive information on this in further articles and will not miss the opportunity to put the whole Steinerei in its proper light!) But there is one more thing I would like to ask: where does Pastor Ernst get the bold assertion that “we are striving in the germ for what Steiner wants on a large scale?”

Well, I read that and I wondered; where does this tendency to “bring urban culture to the countryside, to manure and chicken dung to the land”, and so on, actually come from? I wondered: where is it in the “key points” or in our literature on threefolding when this is being attacked? At last I realized that I had not only been given two numbers of this “beautiful” paper, but a third one as well. These “beautiful” attacks with the title “A False Prophet” – which I read out – are in numbers 26 and 27, and in number 23 there is an article: “The Relationship of school and state according to Dr. Steiner”, and this article contains all the things that are mentioned and attacked in numbers 26 and 27 as outgrowths, as necessary in the sense of threefolding. This article was written by Pastor Ernst in Salez and is written extremely benevolently, but it is written in such a way that threefolding is supposed to ‘bring urban culture to the countryside’ and so on. So you see, you are not only harmed when you are attacked by priests, but even more so when you are defended by them! There is no need to be overjoyed when you have supporters on this side, because basically the supporters make it even worse than the opponents.

Well, some of our friends could also learn something from that; because with such things I have to remind myself again and again how often I heard: There and there I was in a church again, and someone preached quite anthroposophically or theosophically. I have often pointed out how one should not fall for such things and how things actually stand. But today I was at least able to surprise you with the interesting fact that one now already has such followers, who then provoke refutations that one is no longer familiar with at all!

Tomorrow we want to continue the conversation in a somewhat more serious way about the notes that have been struck today.

The following question has been asked: “According to the law of reincarnation, we are required to think that the human individuality possesses its talents, capacities, and so forth, as an effect of its previous lives. Is this not contradicted by the fact that such talents and capacities, for instance moral courage, musical gifts, and so forth, are directly inherited by the children from their parents?”

Answer: If we rightly conceive of the laws of reincarnation and karma, we cannot find a contradiction in what is stated above. Only those qualities of the human being which belong to his physical and ether body can be directly passed on by heredity. The ether body is the bearer of all life phenomena (the forces of growth and reproduction). Everything connected with this can be directly passed on by heredity. What is bound to the so-called soul-body can be passed on by heredity to a much lesser degree. This constitutes a certain disposition in the sensations. Whether we possess a vivid sense of sight, a well-developed sense of hearing, and so forth, may depend upon whether our ancestors have acquired such faculties and have passed them on to us by heredity. But nobody can pass on to his offsprings what is connected with the actual spiritual being of man, that is, for instance, the acuteness and accuracy of his life of thought, the reliability of his memory, the moral sense, the acquired capacities of knowledge and art.

These are qualities which remain enclosed within his individuality and which appear in his next incarnation as capacities, talents, character, and so forth.—The environment, however, into which the reincarnating human being enters is not accidental, but it is necessarily connected with his karma. Let us assume a human being has acquired in his previous life the capacity for a morally strong character. It is his karma that this capacity should unfold in his next incarnation. This would not be possible if he did not incarnate in a body which possesses a quite definite constitution. This bodily constitution, however, must be inherited from the forebears. The incarnating individuality strives, through a power of attraction inherent in it, toward those parents who are capable of giving it the suitable body. This is caused by the fact that, already before reincarnating, this individuality connects itself with the forces of the astral world which strive toward definite physical conditions. Thus the human being is born into that family which is able to transmit to him by heredity the bodily conditions which correspond to his karmic potentialities. It then looks, if we go back to the example of moral courage, as if the latter itself had been inherited from the parents. The truth is that man, through his individual being, has searched out that family which makes the unfoldment of moral courage possible for him. In addition to this it may be possible that the individualities of the children and the parents have already been connected in previous lives and for that very reason have found one another again. The karmic laws are so complicated that we may never base a judgment upon outer appearances. Only a person to whose spiritual sense-organs the higher worlds are at least partially manifest may attempt to form such a judgment. Whoever is able to observe the soul organism and the spirit, in addition to the physical body, is in a position to discriminate between what has been passed on to the human being by his forebears and what is his own possession, acquired in previous lives. For ordinary vision these things are not clearly distinguishable, and it may easily appear as if something were merely inherited which in reality is karmicly determined.—It is a thoroughly wise expression which states that children are “given” to their parents. In respect of the spirit this is absolutely the case. And children with certain spiritual qualities are given to them for the very reason that they, the parents, are capable of giving the children the opportunity to unfold these spiritual qualities.

Question: “Does Anthroposophy attribute no significance to ‘chance’? I cannot imagine that it can be predestined by the karma of each individual person when five hundred persons are killed at the same time in a theater fire.”

Answer: The laws of karma are so complicated that we should not be surprised when to the human intellect some fact appears at first as being contradictory to the general validity of this law. We must realize that this intellect is schooled by our physical world, and that, in general, it is accustomed to admit only what it has learned in this world. The laws of karma, however, belong to higher worlds. Therefore, if we try to understand an event which meets the human being as being brought about by karma in the same way in which justice is applied in the purely earthly-physical life, then we must of necessity run up against contradictions. We must realize that a common experience which several people undergo in the physical world may, in the higher world, mean something completely different for each individual person among them. Naturally, the opposite may also be true: common interrelations may become effective in common earthly experiences. Only one gifted with clear vision in the higher worlds can give information about particular cases. If the karmic interrelations of five hundred people become effective in the common death of these people in a theater fire, the following instances may be possible:

First: Not a single one of the five hundred people need be karmicly linked to the other victims. The common disaster is related in the same way to the karmas of each single person as the shadow-image of fifty people on a wall is related to the worlds of thought and feeling of these persons. These people had nothing in common an hour ago; nor will they have anything in common an hour hence. What they experienced when they met at the same place will have a special effect for each one of them. Their association is expressed in the above-mentioned common shadow-image. Whoever were to attempt to conclude from this shadow-image that a common bond united these people would be decidedly in error.

Second: It is possible that the common experience of the five hundred people has nothing whatsoever to do with their karmic past, but that, just through this common experience, something is prepared which will unite them karmicly in the future. Perhaps these five hundred people will, in future ages, carry out a common undertaking, and through the disaster have been united for the sake of higher worlds. The experienced spiritual-scientist is thoroughly acquainted with the fact that many societies, formed today, owe their origin to the circumstance of a common disaster experienced in a more distant past by the people who join together today.

Third: The case in question may actually be the effect of former common guilt of the persons concerned. There are, however, still countless other possibilities. For instance, a combination of all three possibilities described might occur.

It is not unjustifiable to speak of “chance” in the physical world. And however true it is to say: there is no “chance” if we take into consideration all the worlds, yet it would be unjustifiable to eradicate the word “chance” if we are merely speaking of the interlinking of things in the physical world. Chance in the physical world is brought about through the fact that things take place in this world within sensible space. They must, in as far as they occur within this space, also obey the laws of this space. Within this space, things may outwardly meet which have inwardly nothing to do with each other. The causes which let a brick fall from a roof, injuring me as I pass by, do not necessarily have anything to do with my karma which stems from my past. Many people commit here the error of imagining karmic relations in too simple a fashion. They presume, for instance, that if a brick has injured a person, he must have deserved this injury karmicly. But this is not necessarily so. In the life of every human being events constantly take place which have nothing at all to do with his merits or his guilt in the past. Such events find their karmic adjustment in the future. If something happens to me today without being my fault, I shall be compensated for it in the future. One thing is certain: nothing remains without karmic adjustment. However, whether an experience of the human being is the effect of his karmic past or the cause of his karmic future will have to be determined in every individual instance. And this cannot be decided by the intellect accustomed to dealing with the physical world, but solely by occult experience and observation.

Question: “Is it possible to understand, according to the law of reincarnation and karma, how a highly developed human soul can be reborn in a helpless, undeveloped child? To many a person the thought that we have to begin over and over again at the childhood stage is unbearable and illogical.”

Answer: How the human being can act in the physical world depends entirely upon the physical instrumentality of his body. Higher ideas, for instance, can come to expression in this world only if there is a fully developed brain. Just as the pianist must wait until the piano builder has made a piano on which he can express his musical ideas, so does the soul have to wait with its faculties acquired in the previous life until the forces of the physical world have built up the bodily organs to the point where they can express these faculties. The nature forces have to go their way, the soul, also, has to go its way. To be sure, from the very beginning of human life a cooperation exists between soul and body forces. The soul works in the flexible and supple body of the child until it is made ready to become a bearer of the forces acquired in former life periods. For it is absolutely necessary that the reborn human being adjust himself to the new life conditions.

Were he simply to appear in a new life with all he has acquired previously, he would not fit into the surrounding world. For he has acquired his faculties and forces under quite different circumstances in completely different surroundings. Were he simply to enter the world in his former state he would be a stranger in it. The period of childhood is gone through in order to bring about harmony between the old and the new conditions. How would one of the cleverest ancient Romans appear in our present world, were he simply born into our world with his acquired powers? A power can only be employed when it is in harmony with the surrounding world. For instance, if a genius is born, the power of genius lies in the innermost being of this man which may be called the causal-body. The lower spirit-body and the body of feeling and sensation are adaptable, and in a certain sense not completely determined. These two parts of the human being are now elaborated. In this work the causal-body acts from within and the surroundings from without. With the completion of this work, these two parts may become the instruments of the acquired forces.—The thought that we have to be born as a child is, therefore, neither illogical nor unbearable. On the contrary, it would be unbearable were we born as a fully developed man into a world in which we are a stranger.

Question: “Are two successive incarnations of a human being similar to one another? Will an architect, for instance, become again an architect, a musician again a musician?”

Answer: This might be the case, but not necessarily so. Such similarities occur, but are by no means the rule. It is easy in this field to arrive at false conceptions because we form thoughts concerning the laws of reincarnation which cling too much to externalities. Someone loves the south, for instance, and therefore believes he must have been a southerner in a former incarnation. Such inclinations, however, do not reach up to the causal-body. They have a direct significance only for the one life. Whatever sends its effects over from one incarnation into another must be deeply seated in the central being of man. Let us assume, for instance, that someone is a musician in his present life. The spiritual harmonies and rhythms which express themselves in tones reach into the causal-body. The tones themselves belong to the outer physical life. They sit in the parts of the human being which come into existence and pass away. The lower ego or spirit-body, which is, at one time, the proper vehicle for tones may, in a subsequent life, be the vehicle for the perception of number and space relations. And the musician may now become a mathematician. Just through this fact the human being develops, in the course of his incarnations, into an all-comprehensive being by passing through the most manifold life activities. As has been stated, there are exceptions to this rule. And these are explicable by the great laws of the spiritual world.

Question: “What are the karmic facts in the case of a human being who is condemned to idiocy because of a defective brain?”

Answer: A case like this ought not to be dealt with by speculation and hypotheses, but only by means of spiritual-scientific experience. Therefore, the question here will be answered by quoting an example which has really occurred.

In a previous life a certain person had been doomed to an existence of mental torpor because of an undeveloped brain. During the time between his death and a new birth he was able to work over in himself all the depressing experiences of such a life, such as his having been pushed around, subjected to the unkindness of people, and he was reborn as a veritable genius of benevolence. Such a case shows clearly how wrong we can be if we refer everything in life karmicly back to the past. We cannot say in every instance: this destiny is the result of this or that guilt in the past. It is very well possible that an event has no relation whatsoever to the past but is only the cause for a karmic compensation in the future. An idiot need not have deserved his destiny through his deeds in the past. But the karmic consequence of his destiny for the future will not fail to appear. Just as a businessman's balance account is determined by the figures of his ledger, while he is free to have new receipts and expenses, so new deeds and blows of destiny may enter the life of a human being in spite of his book of life showing a definite balance at every given moment. Therefore, karma must not be conceived of as an immutable fate: it is absolutely compatible with the freedom, the will of man. Karma does not demand surrender to an unalterable fate; on the contrary, it affords us the certainty that no deed, no experience of the human being remains without effect or runs its course outside of the laws of the world. It affords us the certainty that every deed or experience is joined to just and compensating law. Moreover, if there were no karma, arbitrariness would rule in the world. As it is, I may know that every one of my actions, every one of my experiences is inserted in a lawful interrelationship. My deed is free; its effect follows definite laws. It is the free deed of a businessman when he makes a good deal; its result, however, shows up in the balance sheet of his ledger in accordance with definite laws.

Dr. Steiner: School begins on the thirteenth. Now that we have more teachers, we need to discuss the classes again. Do you have a plan here? We could go according to that.

A final decision is made about who will be the main teacher for each class.

Dr. Steiner: The first thing we need to talk about is the remedial class. We definitely need it, but the question is, who can do it? I would be happy if Dr. Schubert could take over the remedial class. Don’t you think you would just die if you could no longer have your old class?

Dr. Schubert: Did I do poorly?

Dr. Steiner: No, the children are quite lively. I think that Dr. Kolisko should step in for Dr. Schubert in history for the upper three grades.

I would also like to see if Dr. Schwebsch could give a kind of aesthetics class, a class in art for the upper three grades, eighth, ninth, and tenth. Thus, we would add Dr. Schwebsch to the three main lesson teachers for the upper classes, and he would teach aesthetics. We already spoke of that to an extent. That would not continue indefinitely, but would merge into other teaching in a few weeks. The four of you would then rotate.

A teacher: That would mean that one of us would be free for a period of time.

Dr. Steiner: That does not matter since the upper grades need that. We need to speak about the foreign languages.

They discuss how to divide the modern languages.

Dr. Steiner: Dr. Schubert should take over the younger children for Latin and Greek, and I would ask Dr. Röschl to take over the remaining Latin and Greek classes. I will say something more about that later.

A teacher: Isn’t it better to place the students in Latin and Greek by class?

Dr. Steiner: With the confusion we now have, we can do that only slowly. Our goal could be to achieve some balance by the age of sixteen or seventeen. I would like to talk about that tomorrow at 2 o’clock. The teachers who are no longer responsible for Latin could help in the teachers’ library.

Today there was some talk about hiring a librarian, something I consider pure nonsense. If you work at it, you could finish the entire library. I think it would be silly. I could keep the whole thing in order with three hours a week. We need to consider how we can save some time. I think it would be a good idea if the faculty took that up. We can’t create a library and then hire a librarian who will need at least a palace. That talk is pure fantasy. Someone like Dr. R. would cost 30,000 Marks, money we could save if you would spend some of your free time in the library. I think that would be best and most efficient.

The theology course will take place in Dornach from September 26 until October 10. Hahn, Uehli, Ruhtenberg, and Mirbach will attend, and thus the independent religious instruction will not take place. We will have to teach something else in their place. It would be interesting if, for example, Dr. Schwebsch is free during that period, and if he could do something appropriate for the children concerning history or art history. It could also be something else.

I would now like to hear what else has been happening.

A teacher: What should we read in the seventh grade?

Dr. Steiner: We cannot hold the whole class back simply because there are a few new children. Those who are less advanced will not be able to read A Christmas Carol.

A new teacher: I think Dickens is much too difficult for this grade. Could we obtain a textbook for teaching language?

Dr. Steiner: I have nothing against using a textbook, but all of them are bad. The class does not have one book that unites them. Look for a textbook, and show it to me when I come back.

With regard to Dickens, I do not agree. The seventh grade can certainly read him. You could also choose some other prose, that was only given as an example. There are a number of good students’ editions. Of course, you’ll have to use something appropriate to the students’ age.

A teacher: In other schools, we began Dickens in the tenth grade.

Dr. Steiner: Find some texts you feel you can work with.

A teacher: I would be grateful if you would say something about rhythm and verse.

Dr. Steiner: It is difficult to hold a course about individual topics in teaching. Why can’t you find anything reasonable?

A teacher: I cannot say precisely.

Dr. Steiner: The children need to learn the poetic meter and rhyme that you know. They should understand the relationship of the individual meters to the pulse and breathing rhythms. That is the goal. I can hardly believe you cannot find anything. We cannot say that all books are bad. You can make them good by using them.

A teacher: I would like to ask a question about algebra. I think it would be good if we gave the children homework. It is certainly clear in this case that the children should do some problems at home.

Dr. Steiner: We need to emphasize what results from a good pedagogy. One basic principle is that we know the children do the homework, and that we never find that they do not do it. You should never give children homework unless you know they will bring the solved problems back, and that they have done them with zeal. A liveliness needs to come into the work, and we need to encourage the children so that their inner attitude is not paralyzed. For example, you should do it so that when you have covered some material, and you want to assign them some work in connection with it, you say, “Tomorrow I will do the following arithmetic operations.” Then wait and see if the children prepare the work at home. Some will be interested enough to do it and then others will become interested. You should bring it about that the children want to do what they need to do in school. What you need to do from day to day should come from what the children want to do.

A teacher: Can we also give homework such as multiplication problems and so forth?

Dr. Steiner: Only in that way. It’s the same story in the other subjects, and together we would then have a great deal of homework.

A teacher: I also wanted to ask what we could do following mathematics.

Dr. Steiner: Afterward, when the children are tired, you could go on to something simpler. You could do something like what you had originally thought of as homework.

A teacher: I have not had the impression that even the most strenuous things in mathematics tire the children.

Dr. Steiner: In spite of that, we should not keep the children under the same stress for two hours.

You could help the children or give them a hint that they should do this or that at home. But do not demand it.

A teacher: Could you give me some help in teaching aesthetics?

Dr. Steiner: These are fourteen- to sixteen-year-old children. Through examples, I would try use art itself to give them the concept of beauty. Look at the metamorphosis of beauty through the various style periods: Greek beauty, Renaissance beauty, and so forth. It is particularly important for children at that age that you bring a certain concrete form to what is otherwise abstract. If you study the aesthetics of people like Vischer and Carrière, all that is simply chaff in regard to concepts. On the other hand, you ennoble the children regarding ideals if you can give them an understanding of what is beautiful or what is great. What is comedy and how does music or poetry achieve it? The child’s soul cannot take in generalized concepts in this period. For that reason, at that age you must include such things as what it means to declaim and recite.

At the time when I was lecturing about declamation and recitation, I discovered that most people do not even know there is a difference. If you take the way you should speak Greek verses, then you have the archetype of reciting, because what is important is the meter, how things are extended or contracted. When the important point is the highs and lows, and that is what you need to emphasize, for instance, in The Song of the Niebelungs, then you have declamation. I showed that through an example, that there is a radical difference between the first form of Goethe’s Iphigenia, that he later reworked into a Roman form. The German Iphigenia should be declaimed and the Roman, recited.

A teacher: If we are to integrate our work with that of Dr. Schwebsch, I would like to ask approximately how much time we should allow for teaching aesthetics?

Dr. Steiner: It would be good to allow equal times. In that way, the German class would be less work.

We need to have somewhat different concepts. Think about the Austrian college preparatory schools. They have eight periods of Latin in the fifth grade. That is the result of terribly inefficient teaching. We, of course, must limit that. The Austrian schools have only very few periods of mathematics. Three in the 4th, 5th, and sixth grades and two in the seventh and eighth. If you work in these periods so that you correctly distribute the material you have to cover during the time available, the children will get the most from your instruction. These are children of fifteen or sixteen years of age.

Thus, in geometry, if you can see that the children have the basic concepts, including the law of duality and perspective geometry, so that the children are perplexed and amazed and have some interest in what you say about some of the figures, then you will have achieved everything that you can.

Have you begun with descriptive geometry yet?

A teacher: I have done the constructions with a point and a line, Cavalieri’s perspective and shadow construction, so that the children have an idea of them. Now we are only doing shadow construction. Then, we will do technical drawing. We have done relatively little of that.

Dr. Steiner: Then, you should do mechanical drawing including trajectory, simple machines, and trigonometry. Trajectory is better if you treat it with equations. Do the children understand parabolic equations? If you develop concrete examples, then you do not need to go into detail there. From a pedagogical perspective, the whole treatment of a trajectory is only so that the children learn parabolic equations and understand parabolas. The coinciding of reality with mathematical equations is the goal you need to strive for.

“Philosophy begins with awe,” is partially incorrect. In teaching, awe must come at the end of a block, whereas in philosophy, it is at the beginning. You need to direct the children toward having awe. They need something that will completely occupy them. They need to understand that it is something that, in the presence of its greatness, even Novalis would fall to his knees.

I would particularly like to remind all of you who are involved with drawing to study Baravalle’s dissertation thoroughly. I have attempted to mention it several times. Copies were available at the conference. Baravalle’s dissertation is extremely important for aesthetics. You should all study it. Baravalle’s dissertation could have a very deep effect, particularly in the handwork class. There is certainly a great deal in it that would help in understanding how a collar or a belt should be shaped.

Things like this from Baravalle—now don’t let this go to your head—things like this dissertation have a fundamental importance for Waldorf teachers, since they show how to pictorially present mathematical ideas and thus make them easier. That is something we could extend. What he has done for forms could be done in a similar way for colors or even tone. You could find a number of helpful ideas about Goethe’s thoughts about the world of tone in my last volume of the Kürschner edition. The table contained there is very informative. Certainly the theory of color could be treated in the same way.

A teacher: It may be possible to create a parallel in the moral and perceptible side of tones. Color perception follows the order of the spectrum. Everything in the blue range corresponds to sharps, and the remainder, to flats.

Dr. Steiner: That would be an interesting topic.

A teacher: In looking at both spectra, there is a certain parallel between them.

Dr. Steiner: The thought is nearly correct, but we must avoid simple analogies.

I would like to say something more that will hopefully strike an anthroposophical chord with you. I said that it would be a good idea to study Baravalle’s dissertation. I would like to mention that there is an occult significance in enlivening instruction when a lively interest exists for the work done by members of the faculty.

This is extremely important. The entire faculty is enlivened when you take an interest in some original work by a colleague. That is also a basic thought of many of the various school programs, but it has been corrupted. Each year discussion of the program should be published, but the whole faculty should be concerned with it. The fact is that the spiritual forces within the faculty carry the faculty through a communal inner experience. We should not try to do things individually, the whole should participate. Of course, here, through lively presentation, there is a significant general interest. However, there is an assumption that many others are also hiding their work. I would like to remind you to make that work fruitful for others as well.

A teacher: Sometime ago we spoke about a gymnastics teacher.

Dr. Steiner: Mr. Baumann told me we could no longer consider the business regarding a gymnastics teacher because we have no rooms. When we have room, then Englert will be here.

A teacher: He wrote that he could not do that. He is now in Norway.

Dr. Steiner: We haven’t the slightest need in the next half-year. He will need to wait until something else occurs. We will need to make an effort that the boys get better. We cannot say anything about gymnastics since Baumann is not here.

Dr. Steiner: The conference was such a success that it far exceeded our expectations. It was really quite a success. Only the members’ meeting on Sunday, September 4, was poor. It was the worst thing imaginable. The meeting of the local threefold groups was still worse. I had thought that just those people would bring new life into Anthroposophy. We should have been able to see that on Sunday. You can be certain that a great deal was wanted. People were sitting in all the corners having small meetings, but the whole was lost. It would have been better had it all been visible at the surface. Hopefully, further development will be better.

From lectures given on 4th August, 1922 (Dornach) 26th August, 1923 (Penmaenmawr).

We have recently made the attempt here at Domach, to produce figures representing the movements of Eurythmy. And at the performances given at Oxford¹ we showed how an understanding of eurythmy may be helped by means of such figures, and how they may serve to clear up our ideas with regard to the nature of this art. From what I am now going to say in this connection you will see that in these figures I have at least attempted to further the understanding of eurythmy from more than one point of view.

In these figures I have been able to reproduce just those three elements of eurythmy of which I have previously spoken. It is possible by this means to increase the appreciation of the onlookers; and at the same time the eurythmists themselves may learn infinitely much from looking at these figures, because they represent those elements of eurythmy which are absolutely essential. As I am showing you these representations, I must ask you first of all to notice that they should not in any way be copied or imitated: Reproduction strictly prohibited. That is the first point. And the second is that, if I now show them to you, you will not all push forward and thus cause confusion.

We have, in the first place, tried to represent the letters of the alphabet in the way I have just described. Thus you see here, in these figures, representations of the human being from which everything not belonging to the sphere of eurythmy has been omitted. You must not expect either pictorial or plastic representations of the human form; for here the human being has been depicted entirely from the point of view of eurythmy. It is, then, only the eurythmic aspect of the human being which has been taken into account; but every sound has been represented with the utmost completeness and detail. For this reason the eurythmy figures have no faces, or, to be more correct, their faces are used to express the character of the movement, the form of the movement, and so on.

Thus, taking these figures in their order, you have: A. E. I. O. U. D. B. F. G. H. That part of the figure which would usually represent the face is here formed in such a way as to represent the movement. This can, of course, only be indicated; but it is quite a good eurythmic exercise to picture oneself in fancy as really appearing like the figure in question. Proceeding, then, we have the letters: T. S. R. P. N. M. and L.

Let us, for example, take this eurythmy figure, which represents the experience lying behind the sound H. Now one might ask: In which direction is the face looking? Is it looking upwards or straight ahead?—This is really a matter of no consequence; we are concerned with something quite different. In the first place this figure, taken as a whole, represents the eurythmic movement, that is to say, the movement of the arms and of the legs. In the second place the figure shows how in the forms of the veil, in the way in which the veil is held, drawn closer, thrown into the air, allowed to fall or to undulate, the actual movement, that is to say, the more intellectual expression of the soul life in eurythmy, can be made more deeply expressive.

The significance of the different colours is always indicated on the backs of the figures. Then, in certain places, as for instance here on the head, we have the indication as to where the eurythmist, in carrying out the movement, should exert a certain tension of the muscles. Let us now examine this eurythmy figure and we shall see how the effect of the movement is made more complete by means of the treatment of the face. Observe how here, where blue is painted on the forehead, there is a tension of the muscles, as also here at the nape of the neck, while here (indicating the figure) the muscles are left more relaxed. In eurythmy one can differentiate quite exactly between the experience of moving the arm with the muscles relaxed and the experience of moving the arm with muscles that are stretched and tense, or with an exertion of the muscles in the fingers for instance. Thus, when taking up a bending posture, the feeling is quite different when the muscles involved are consciously exerted, from what it is when these muscles are allowed to relax and the back simply bends of itself. By means of this muscular tension, which must be inwardly experienced by the eurythmist, character is brought into the movement.

Thus it may be said: In the way in which the movement is formed there lies,—or rather the movement itself actually manifests,—all that the soul wishes to express by means of this visible speech. In the same way, however, as words have their timbre, their own special tone, brought about by the feeling lying within them, so too the movement,—by means of the way in which it is coloured by fear, for instance, when this is expressed in a sentence, or by joy, or delight,—so too must the movement be permeated by feeling. And this can be done by the use of the veil, by the way in which the veil is made to undulate, to float in the air, to sink down, and so on. Thus, movement accompanied by the veil is movement permeated by feeling. And movement accompanied by this inner tension of the muscles, is movement which carries with it the element of character. When a eurythmist experiences this tension or relaxation of the muscles in the right way, it can also be perceived by the onlookers. There is no necessity to explain and interpret all this, for the audience will actually feel everything that can be brought into the language of eurythmy by means of character, feeling and movement.

The figures arose through the initiative of Miss Maryon;² they have, however, been further worked out according to my indications.

Looking at the way in which these figures are carried out, both as regards the carving and the colouring, we find that the essential thing is to separate all those elements in the human being which do not belong to the realm of eurythmy from those elements which are in themselves eurythmic. If a eurythmist were to use charm of face in order to please, this would in no way belong to eurythmy; the eurythmist must understand how to make use of the face by means of the muscular tension of which I have spoken. For this reason anyone possessing a truly artistic perception will in no way prefer a beautiful eurythmist to one who is less beautiful. In all these matters no attention need be paid to what a human being looks like, simply as a human being, apart from the movements of eurythmy; such a thing must be left entirely out of account.

Thus in the formation of these figures, we have represented only that part of the human being which may be expressed through the movements of eurythmy.

It would indeed be a very good thing if this principle were more generally applied in the development of art as a whole; for it really is necessary, in the case of any art, to separate those things which do not come within its sphere from those things which should be expressed by means of its own special medium. And in the case of eurythmy, in the case of a manifestation of the life of the human body, soul and spirit which is so direct and so true, one must be specially careful to ensure the putting aside of all those elements in the human being which do not definitely belong to the art of which we are speaking.

Thus I have always said, when asked at what age a person can do eurythmy, that there are no age limits; beginning at three until the age of ninety, the personality can fully find its place in eurythmy, for every period of life can—as in other ways also—reveal its beauties in eurythmy.

All that I have been saying is related to eurythmy in its artistic aspect, to eurythmy purely as an art. And it was indeed as an art that eurythmy first came into being. At that time, in 1912, there was as yet no thought of anything else; the aim was to bring eurythmy before the world as an art.

Then, when the Waldorf School was founded, it was discovered that eurythmy could also be an important means of education, and we have since been able to prove that eurythmy is completely justifiable from this aspect also. In the Waldorf School eurythmy has been made a compulsory subject from the lowest to the highest class, both for boys and girls; and experience has proved that this visible speech or visible song, which is learned by the children, is acquired by them in a way which is just as natural as that in which they acquired ordinary speech and song in their earliest childhood. Children accept eurythmy as something quite self-understood. And we have also noticed that all other forms of gymnastics, when compared with eurythmy, prove themselves somewhat one-sided. For these other forms of gymnastics bear within them, as it were, the materialistic ideas of our age, and are based mainly upon the laws of the physical body. The physical body is of course also taken into account in eurythmy, but here we have a working together of body, soul and spirit; so that eurythmy may be said to be a form of gymnastics which is permeated through and through with soul and spirit. The child feels this. He feels, with every movement that he makes, that he is not forming the movements merely out of physical necessity. He feels how his life of soul and spirit flows into the movements of the arms, into the movements of the whole body. The child comprehends eurythmy in the inner depths of his soul. And now that we have a certain number of years of experience in the Waldorf School behind us, we are able to see what eurythmy is expecially able to develop. It is initiative of will, that quality so much needed by modern man, which is specially cultivated by eurythmy as a means of education. One must, however, be quite clear that, if eurythmy were only to be introduced into schools and not given its full value as an art, a complete misunderstanding would arise. Eurythmy must primarily take its place in the world as an art, just as the other arts also have their places in the world. We are taught the other arts at school when they have an independent artistic existence; and eurythmy also can be taught in the schools when, as an art, it is acknowledged and appreciated, thus becoming part of our modern civilization.

Later on a considerable number of doctors found their way into the anthroposophical movement, and through their activities the art of medicine began to be cultivated from the point of view of Anthroposophy. At this time the need made itself felt to apply the movements of eurythmy,—movements which are drawn out from the healthy human organism and in which the human being can be revealed and manifested in a way which is in truth suited to his organism,—to apply these movements in the realm of healing. Looked at from this aspect eurythmy may be said to be that part of the human being which demands free outlet. Anyone understanding the nature of a hand will know that a hand in the true sense is simply non-existent when it is regarded as something motionless. The fingers are quite without meaning when they are regarded as something motionless; their meaning first becomes apparent when they grasp at something and take hold of it, when movement arises out of the quiescent form. One can see the inherent movement in the fingers and hand. It is the same with the human being as a whole; and that which has come into being as eurythmy really is the healthy outpouring of the human organism into movement. Thus, when eurythmy is applied as curative eurythmy in the realm of therapeutics, the movements, although similar in nature, differ from those of artistic eurythmy; for they must, when used curatively, work back with a healing influence upon some particular part of the organism.

In this case, again, we have had considerable success in our treatment of the children in the Waldorf School. Natur-ally a real insight into child-nature is essential. Let us suppose that we are dealing with a child who is weak and ailing. He is made to do those movements which could help to bring about recovery. Results have proved, this can be said in all modesty,—that we have here had the most brilliant success. But all these things, and everything arising out of them, can only be successful if eurythmy as an art is really brought to complete development.

A statement must here be made: we are at the beginning. We have, however, certainly progressed some little way with eurythmy, and we are seeking to develop it ever further. At first, for instance, there were no silent forms at the beginning of a poem, which represents what can be expressed as introduction and again what can be expressed as the drawing to a conclusion. At first, too, there were not the changes of lighting, which must also be so conceived that the point is not that each separate situation should be followed by one or another lighting effect; but a light eurythmy has itself come about. The essential matter is not how a certain light effect is suited to what is happening at a particular moment on the stage, but the whole eurythmy of light, the play of one lighting effect into another, which itself produced a light eurythmy,—this bears within itself the same character, the same kind of experience, which otherwise comes to expression on the stage in the movements of a single human being or a group. Thus in the development of the stage picture, in the further perfecting of eurythmy, much will have to be added to what we are now able to see.

The wooden eurythmy figures are carried out in a special way. You must not look for anything in the nature of a plastic reproduction of the human form. This belongs to the sphere of sculpture or of painting. Here, in these eurythmy figures, it is only that part of the human being that is truly eurythmic which should be represented. Thus there is no question of a beautiful plastic reproduction of the motionless human form; the point here is to reproduce that aspect of the human being which is able to express itself in movements subject to form and themselves formative.

By means of these figures, certain details of the eurythmic movements, postures and gestures can be brought out and emphasized. These figures are only intended to reproduce such eurythmic impulses as can actually be led over into movement. In each figure there is embodied a three-fold eurythmic impulse; the movement as such, the feeling lying in the movement, and the character which wells up from the soul and pours itself into the movement.

• 1. These figures which are carved out of wood and coloured, are made at the Goetheanum at Dornach, where they may be bought. They were shown for the first time at Oxford, during a Conference at which Rudolf gave a course of lectures on the Art of Education.
• 2. Edith Maryou, sculptress at the Goetheauum (died 1924)