The Rudolf Steiner Archive

If I were asked to map out a course of medical study to cover a certain period of time, I should begin—after the necessary scientific knowledge had been acquired—by distinguishing the various functions in the organism of man. I should feel bound to advise a study, both in the anatomical and physiological sense, of the transformation of the foodstuffs from the stage where they are worked upon by the ptyalin and pepsin to the point where they are taken up into the blood. Then, after considering the whole alimentary canal concerned with digestion in the narrower sense, I should pass on to the system of heart and lungs and all that is connected with it. This would be followed by a study of the kidneys and, later on, their relation to the system of nerves and senses—a relation not properly recognised by orthodox science to-day. Then I should lead on to the system of liver, gall and spleen, and this cycle of study would gradually open up a vista of the human organism, leading to the knowledge which it is the task of Spiritual Science to develop. Then, with the illumination which would have been shed upon the results of empirical research, one would be able to pass on to therapy.

In the few days at our disposal, it is of course possible for me to give only a few hints about this wide and all-embracing domain. A great deal, therefore, of what I have to say will be based upon an unusual conception of empirical facts, but I think it will be quite comprehensible to anyone who possesses the requisite physiological and therapeutic knowledge. I shall have to use somewhat unfamiliar terms, but there will really be nothing that cannot in some way be brought into harmony with the data of modern empirical knowledge—if these data are studied in all their connections. Everything I say will be aphoristic, merely hinting at ultimate conclusions. Our starting point, however, must be the objective and empirical investigations of modern times, and the intermediate stages will have to be mastered by the work of our doctors. This intermediate path is exceedingly long but it is absolutely essential, for the reason that, as things are to-day, nothing of what I shall bring before you will be whole-heartedly accepted if these intermediate steps are not taken—at all events in regard to certain outstanding phenomena. I do not believe that this will prove to be as difficult as it appears at present, if people will only condescend to bring the preliminary work that has already been done into line with the general conceptions I am trying to indicate here. This preliminary work is excellent in many respects, but its goal still lies ahead.

In the last lecture I tried to show you how a widening out of ordinary knowledge can give us insight into the being of man. And now, bearing in mind what I have just said, let me add the following. It may, to begin with, be a stumbling-block to hear it said in Anthroposophy that man, as he stands before us in the physical world, consists of a physical organisation, an etheric organisation, an astral organisation and an Ego-organisation. These expressions need not be an obstacle. They are used merely because some kind of terminology is necessary. By virtue of this Ego-organisation, the point where his inner experiences are focused and unified, man is able to unfold that inner cohesion of soul-life which is not present in the animal. The Ego is really the focus whence the whole organic activity of man proceeds, in waking consciousness at all events. A further expression of the Ego is the fact that during earthly life the relation of man to sexual development is not the same as that of the animal. Essentially—though of course exceptions are always possible—the constitution of the animal is such that sexual maturity represents a certain point of culmination. After this, deterioration sets in. This organic deterioration may not begin in a very radical sense after the first occurrence of sexual activity, but to a certain extent it is there. On the other hand, the physical development of the human being receives a certain stimulus at puberty. So that even in the outer empirical sense—if we take all the factors into account—there is already a difference here between the human being and the animal.

You may say that it is really an abstraction to speak of physical, etheric, astral and Ego organisations. The objection has in fact often been made, especially from the side of philosophy, that this is an abstract classification, that we take the functions of the organism, distinguish between them, and—since distinctions do not necessarily point back to any objective causes—people think that it is all an abstraction. Now that is not so. In the course of these lectures we shall see what really lies behind this classification and division, but I assure you they are not merely the outcome of a desire to divide things into categories.

When we speak of the physical organisation of man, this includes everything in the organism that can be dealt with by the same methods that we adopt when we are making experiments and investigations in the laboratory. All this is included when we think or speak of the physical organisation of man. In regard to the etheric organisation that is woven into the physical, however, our mode of thought can no longer confine itself to the ideas and laws obtaining when we are making experiments and observations in the laboratory. Whatever we may think of the etheric organisation of man as revealed by super-sensible knowledge, and without having to enter into mechanistic or vitalistic theory in any way, it is apparent to direct perception (and this is a question which would be the subject of lengthy study in my suggested curriculum) that the etheric organisation as a whole is involved—functionally—in everything of a fluid, watery nature in the human organism. The purely physical mode of thought, therefore, must confine itself to what is solid in the organism, to the solid structures and aggregations of matter. We understand the organism of man aright only when we conceive of its fluids as being permeated through and through with life, as living fluids—not merely as the fluids of outer Nature. This is the sense in which we say that man has an etheric body. It is not necessary to enter into hypotheses about the nature of life, but merely to understand what is implied by saying that the cell is permeated with life. Whatever views we may hold—mechanistic, idealistic, animistic or the like—when we say, as the crass empiricist also says, that the cell has life, this direct perception to which I am referring shows that the fluid nature of man is likewise permeated with life. But this is the same as saying: Man has an etheric body. We must think of everything solid as being embedded in the fluid nature. And here already we have a contrast, in that we apply the ideas and laws obtaining in the inorganic world to the solid parts of man's being, whereas we think not only of the cells—the smallest organisms present in man—as living, but of the fluid nature in its totality as permeated with life.

Further, when we come to the airy nature of man, it appears that the gases in his being are in a state of perpetual permutation. In the course of these lectures we shall have to show that this is neither an inorganic permutation nor merely a process of permutation negotiated by the solid organs, but that an individual complex of law controls the inner permutation of the gases in man. Just as there is an inner law in the solid substances, expressing itself, among other things, in the relationship between the kidneys and the heart, so we must postulate the existence of a law within the airy or gaseous organism—a law that is not confined to the physical, solid organs. Anthroposophy describes this complex of law, which underlies the gaseous organism, as astral law, as the astral organisation. These astral laws would not be there in man if his airy organisation had not permeated the solid and the fluid organisations. The astral organisation does not penetrate directly into the solids and the fluids. It does, however, directly penetrate the airy organisation. This airy organisation penetrates the solids and the fluids, but only because the presence of an organised astral nature gives it definite, though fluctuating, inner form. A study of the aggregate conditions thus brings us to the following conclusions: In the case of the solid substances in man we need assume nothing more than a physical organisation; in the case of the living fluidity which permeates the solid, physical organisation, we must assume the existence of something that is not exhausted in the forces of physical law, and here we come to the etheric organism—a system that is self-contained and complete in itself. In the same sense I give the name of astral organisation to that which does not directly penetrate into the solids and fluids but first of all into the airy organisation. I prefer to call this the astral organism because it again is a self-contained system.

And now we come to the Ego-organisation, which penetrates directly only into the differentiations of warmth in the human organism. We can therefore speak of a warmth organism, a warmth ‘being.’ The Ego-organisation penetrates directly into this warmth being. The Ego-organisation is a super-sensible principle and brings about the various differentiations of the warmth. In these differentiations of warmth the Ego-organisation has its immediate life. It also has an indirect life in so far as the warmth works upon the airy fluid and solid organisations.

In this way we gradually gain insight into the human organism. Now all that I have been describing expresses itself in physical man as he lives on the earth. The most intangible organisation of all—the Ego-warmth-organisation—works down indirectly upon the gaseous, fluid and solid organisations; and the same is true of the others. So that the way in which this whole configuration penetrates the constitution of man, as known to empirical observation, will find expression in any solid system of organs, verifiable by anatomy. Hence, taking the various organ-systems, we find that only the physical

—I mean the physically solid system—is directly related to its corresponding (physical) system of laws; the fluid is less directly related, the gaseous still less directly, and the element of warmth least directly of all, although even here there is still a certain relation.

Now all these things—and I can indicate them here only in the form of ultimate conclusions—can be confirmed by an extended empiricism merely from the phenomena themselves. As I say, on account of the short time at our disposal I can only give you certain ultimate conclusions.

In the anatomy and physiology of the human organism we can observe, to begin with, the course taken by the foodstuff. It reaches the intestines and the other intricate organs in that region, and is absorbed into the lymph and blood. We can follow the process of digestion or nourishment in the widest sense, up to that point. If we limit ourselves to this, we can get on quite well with the mode of observation (and it is not entirely mechanistic) that is adopted by natural science to-day. An entirely mechanistic mode of observation will not lead to the final goal in this domain, because the complex of laws observed externally in the laboratory, and characterised by natural science as inorganic law, is here functioning in the digestive tract: that is to say, already within the living organism. From the outset, the whole process is involved in life, even at the stage of the ptyalin-process.

If we merely pay heed to the fact that the complex of outer, inorganic law is involved in the life of the digestive tract, we can get on well quite, so far as this limited sphere is concerned, by confining ourselves merely to what can be observed within the physical organisation of man. But then we must realise that something of the digestive activity still remains, that the process of nourishment is still not quite complete when the intestinal tract has been passed, and that the subsequent processes must be studied from a different point of view. So far as the limited sphere is concerned, we can get on quite well if, to begin with, we study all the transformations of substance by means of analogies, just as we study things in the outer world. But then we find something that modern science cannot readily acknowledge but which is none the less a truth, following indeed from science itself. It will be the task of our doctors to investigate these matters scientifically and then to show from the empirical facts themselves that as a result of the action of the ptyalin and pepsin on the food-stuff, the latter is divested of every trace of its former condition in the outer world.

We take in foodstuff—you may demur at the expression ‘foodstuff’ but I think we understand each other—we take in foodstuff from the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms. It belongs originally to these three realms. The substance most nearly akin to the human realm is, of course, the mother's milk; the babe receives the milk immediately it has left the womb. The process enacted within the human organism during the process of nourishment is this: When the foodstuff is received into the realm of the various glandular secretions, every trace of its origin is eliminated. It is really true to say that the human organisation itself conduces to the purely scientific, inorganic mode of observation. In effect, the product of the assimilation of foodstuffs in man comes nearest of all to the outer physical processes in the moment when it is passing as chyle from the intestines into the lymph and blood-streams. The human being finally obliterates the external properties which the foodstuff, until this moment, still possessed. He wants to have it as like as possible to the inorganic state. He needs it thus, and this again distinguishes him from the animal kingdom.

The anatomy and physiology of the animal kingdom reveal that the animal does not eliminate the nature of the substances introduced to its body to the same extent, although we cannot say quite the same of the products of excretion. The substances that pass into the body of the animal retain a greater resemblance to their constitution in the outer world than is the case with man. They retain more of the vegetable and animal nature and proceed on into the blood-stream still in their external form and with their own inner laws. The human organisation has advanced so far that when the chyle passes through the intestinal wall, it has become practically inorganic. The purely physical nature comes to expression in the region where the chyle passes from the intestines into the sphere of the activity of heart and lungs.

It is really only at this point that our way of looking at things becomes heretical as regards orthodox science. The system connected with the heart and the lungs—the vascular system—is the means whereby the foodstuffs (which have now entered the inorganic realm) are led over into the realm of life. The human organisation could not exist if it did not provide its own life. In a wider sense, what happens here resembles the process occurring when the inorganic particles of albumen, let us say, are transformed into organic, living albumen, when dead albumen becomes living albumen. Here again we need not enter into the question of the inner being of man, but only into what is continually being said in physiology. On account of the shortness of time we cannot speak of the scientific theories as to how the plant produces living albumen, but in the human being it is the system of heart and lungs, with all that belongs to it, which is responsible for the transformation of the albumen into living substance after the chyle has become almost inorganic.

We can therefore say: The system of heart and lungs is there in order that the physical system may be drawn up into the etheric organisation. The system of heart and lungs brings about a vitalising process whereby inorganic substance is raised to the organic stage, is drawn into the sphere of life. (In the animal it is not quite the same, the process being less definite.) Now it would be absolutely impossible for this process to take place in the physical world if certain conditions were not fulfilled in the human organism. The raising and transformation of the chyle into an etheric organisation could not take place within the sphere of earthly law unless other factors were present. The process is possible in the physical world only because the whole etheric system pours down, as it were, into the physical, is membered into the physical. This comes to pass as a result of the absorption of oxygen in the breath. And so man is a being who can walk physically upon the Earth because his etheric nature is made physical by the absorption of oxygen. The etheric organisation is projected into the physical world as a physical system; in effect, that which otherwise could only be super-sensible expresses itself as a physical system, as the system of heart and lungs. And so we begin to realise that just as carbon is the basis of the organisms of animal, plant and man (only in the latter case in a less solid form) and ‘fixes’ the physical organisation as such, so is oxygen related to the etheric organisation when this expresses itself in the physical domain.

Here we have the two substances of which living albumen is essentially composed. But this mode of observation can be applied equally well to the albuminous cell, the cell itself. Only we widen out the kind of observation that is usually applied to the cell by substituting a macroscopic perception for the microscopic perception of the cell in the human being. We observe the processes which constitute the connection between the digestive tract and the system of heart and lungs. We observe them in an inner sense, seeing the relation between them, perceiving how an etheric organisation comes into play and is ‘fixed’ into the physical as the result of the absorption of oxygen.

But you see, if this were all, we should have a being in the physical world possessed merely of a digestive system and a system of heart and lungs. Such a being would not be possessed of an inner life of soul; the element of soul could have its life in only the super-sensible; and it is still our task to show how that which makes man a sentient being inserts itself into his solid and fluid constitution, permeating the solids and fluids and making him a sentient being, a being of soul. The etheric organisation in the physical world, remember, is bound up with the oxygen.

Now the organisation of soul cannot come into action unless there is a point d'appui, as it were, for the airy being, with a possibility of access to the physical organisation. Here we have something that lies very far indeed from modern habits of thought. I have told you that oxygen passes into the etheric organisation through the system of heart and lungs; the astral nature makes its way into the organisation of man through another system of organs. This astral nature, too, needs a physical system of organs. I am referring here to something that does not take its start from the physical organs but from the airy nature (not only the fluid nature) that is connected with these particular organs—that is to say from the airy organisation that is bound up with the solid substance. The astral-organic forces radiate out from this gaseous organisation into the human organism. Indeed, the corresponding physical organ itself is first formed by this very radiation, on its backward course. To begin with, the gaseous organisation radiates out, makes man into an organism permeated with soul, permeates all his organs with soul and then streams back again by an indirect path, so that a physical organ comes into being and plays its part in the physical organisation. This is the kidney system, which is regarded in the main as an organ of excretion. The excretory functions, however, are secondary. I will return to this later on, for I have yet to speak of the relation between the excretions and the higher function of the kidneys. As physical organs the kidneys are excretory organs (they too, of course, have entered the sphere of vitality), but besides this, in their underlying airy nature, they radiate the astral forces which now permeate the airy nature and from thence work directly into the fluids and the solids.

The kidney system, therefore, is that which from an organic basis imbues man with sentient faculties, with qualities of soul and the like—in short with an astral organism. Empirical science has a great deal to say about the functions of the kidneys, but if you will apply a certain instinctive inner perception to these functions, you will be able to discover the relations between inner sentient experience and the functions of the kidneys—remembering always that the excretions are only secondary indications of that from which they have been excreted. In so far as the functions of the kidneys underlie the sentient faculties, this is expressed even in the nature of the excretions.

If you want to extend scientific knowledge in this field, I recommend you to make investigations with a man of the more sensitive type and try to find out the essential change that takes place in the renal excretions when he is thinking in a cold or in a hot room. Even purely empirical tests like this, suitably varied in the usual scientific way, will show you what happens. If you make absolutely systematic investigations, you will discover what difference there is in the renal excretions when a man is thinking either in a cold or a warm room. You can also make the experiment by asking someone to think concentratedly and putting a warm cloth round his head. (The conditions for the experiment must of course be carefully prepared.) Then examine the renal excretions, and examine them again when he is thinking about the same thing and cold compresses have been put on his feet.

The reason why there is so little concern with such inquiries to-day is because people are averse from entering into these matters. In embryological research into cell-fission, science does not study the allantois and the amnion. True, the discarded organs have been investigated, but to understand the whole process of embryonic development the accessory organs must be studied much more exactly even than the processes which arise from the division of the germ-cell. Our task here, therefore, is to establish starting-points for true investigation. This is of the greatest significance, for only so shall we find the way, as we must do, towards seeing man, not as a visible but as an invisible “giant” cell.

To-day, science does not speak of the cell as it speaks of the human being, because microscopy does not lead so far. The curious thing is that if one studies the realm of the microscopic with the methods I am here describing, wonderful things come to light—as for instance the results achieved by the Hertwig school. The cell can be investigated up to a certain point in the microscope, but then there is no possibility of, further research into the more complicated life-processes. Ordinary empiricism comes to a standstill here, but with Spiritual Science we can follow the facts further. We now look at man in his totality, and the tiny point represented by the cell grows out, as it were, into the whole being of man.

From this we can proceed to learn how the purely physical organisation is connected with the structure of carbon, just as the transition to the etheric organisation is connected with the structure of oxygen. If, next, we make exact investigations into the kidney system, we find a similar connection with nitrogen. Thus we have carbon, oxygen, nitrogen; and in order to trace the part played by nitrogen in the astral permeation of the organism, you need only follow, through a series of accurate experiments, the metamorphoses of uric acid and urea. Careful study of the secondary excretions of uric acid and urea will give definite evidence that the astral permeation of man proceeds from the kidney system. This will also be shown by other things connected with the activity of the kidneys, even to the point where pathological conditions are present—when, let us say, we find blood corpuscles in the urine. In short, the kidney system radiates the astral organisation into the human organism. Here we must not think of the physical organisation, but of the airy organisation that is bound up with it. If nitrogen were not present, the whole process would remain in the domain of the super-sensible, just as man would be merely an etheric being if oxygen were not to play its part. The outcome of the nitrogen process is that man can live on earth as an earthly being. Nitrogen is the third element that comes into play.

There is thus a continual need to widen the methods adopted in anatomy and physiology by applying the principles of Spiritual Science. It is not in any sense a matter of fantasy. We ask you to study the kidney system, to make your investigations as accurately as you possibly can, to examine the urea and the excretions of uric acid under different astral conditions, and step by step you will find confirmation of what I have said. Only in this way will the mysteries of the human organism reveal themselves to you.

All that enters into man through the absorption of foodstuff is carried into the astral organism by the kidney system. There still remains the Ego-organisation. The products of digestion are received into the Ego-organisation primarily as a result of the working of liver and gall. The warmth and the warmth-organisation in the system of liver and gall radiate out in such a way that man is permeated with the Ego-organisation, and this is bound up with the differentiations of warmth in the organism as a whole.

Now it is quite possible to make absolutely exact investigations into this. Take certain lower animals where there is no trace at all of an Ego-organisation in the psychological sense, and you will find no developed liver, and still less any bile. These develop in the phylogeny of the animal kingdom only when the animal begins to show traces of an Ego-organisation. The development of liver and gall runs absolutely parallel with the degree to which the Ego-organisation unfolds in a living being. Here, too, you have an indication for a series of physiological investigations in connection with the human being, only of course they must cover the different periods of his life. You will gradually discover the relation of the Ego-organisation to the functions of the liver.

In certain diseases of children you will find, for instance, that a number of psychical phenomena, tending not towards the life of feeling but towards the Ego-activities, are connected with the secretion of gall. This might form the basis for an exceedingly fruitful series of investigations. The Ego-organisation is connected with hydrogen, just as the physical organisation is connected with carbon, the etheric organisation with oxygen and the astral organisation with nitrogen. It is, moreover, possible to relate all the differentiations of warmth—I can only hint at this—to the specific function carried out in the human organism by hydrogen in combination with other substances. And so, as we ascend from the material to the super-sensible and make the super-sensible a concrete experience by recognising its physical expressions, we come to the point of being able to conceive the whole being of man as a highly complicated cell, a cell that is permeated with soul and Spirit.

It is really only a matter of taking the trouble to examine and develop the marvelous results achieved by natural science and not simply leaving them where they are. My understanding and practical experience of life convince me that if you will set yourselves to an exhaustive study of the results of the most orthodox empirical science, if you will relate the most obvious with the most remote, and really study the connections between them, you will constantly be led to what I am telling you here. I am also convinced that the so-called ‘occultists’ whom you may consult—especially ‘occultists’ of the modern type—will not help you in the least. What will be of far more help is a genuine examination of the empirical data offered by orthodox science. Science itself leads you to recognise truths which can be actually perceived only in the super-sensible world, but which indicate, nevertheless, that the empirical data must be followed up in this or that direction. You can certainly discover the methods on your own account; they will be imposed by the facts before you. There is no need to complain that such guiding principles create prejudice or that they influence by suggestion. The conclusions arise out of the things themselves, but the facts and conditions prove to be highly complicated, and if further progress is to be made, all that has been learned in this way about the human being must now be investigated in connection with the outer world.

I want you now to follow me in a brief line of thought. I give it merely by way of example, but it will show you the path that must be followed. Take the annual plant which grows out of the earth in spring and passes through its yearly cycle. And now relate the phenomena which you observe in the annual plant with other things—above all with the custom of peasants who, when they want to keep their potatoes through the winter, dig pits of a certain depth and put the potatoes into them so that they may keep for the following year. If the potatoes were kept in an ordinary open cellar, they would not be fit to eat. Investigations have proved that the forces originating from the interplay between the sunshine and the earth are contained within the earth during the subsequent winter months. The dynamic forces of warmth and the forces of the light are at work under the surface of the earth during the winter, so that in winter the after-effects of summer are contained within the earth. The summer itself is around us, above the surface of the Earth. In winter, the after-effects of summer work under the earth's surface. And the consequence is that the plant, growing out of the earth in its yearly cycle, is impelled to grow, first and foremost, by the forces that have been poured into the earth by the sun of the previous year. The plant derives its dynamic force from the soil. This dynamic force that is drawn out of the soil can be traced up into the ovary and on into the developing seed. So you see, we arrive at a botany which really corresponds to the whole physiological process, only if we do not confine ourselves to a study of the dynamic forces of warmth and light during the year when the plant grows. We must take our start from the root, and so from the dynamic forces of light and warmth of at least the year before. These forces can be traced right up into the ovary, so that in the ovary we have something that really is brought into being by the forces of the previous year.

Now examine the leaves of a plant, and, still more, the petals. You will find that in the leaves there is a compromise between the dynamic forces of the previous year and those of the present year. The leaves contain the elements that are thrust out from the earth and those which work in from the environment. It is in the petals that the forces of the present year are represented in their purest form. The colouring and so forth of the petals represents nothing that is old—it all comes from the present year.

You cannot follow the processes in an annual plant if you take only the immediate conditions into consideration. Examine the structural formations which follow one another in two consecutive years—all that the sun imparts to the earth, however, has a much longer life. Make a series of experiments into the way in which the plants continue to be relished by creatures such as the grub of the cockchafer, and you will realise that what you first thought to be an element belonging to the present year must be related to the sun-forces of the previous year.—You know what a prolonged larval stage the cockchafer passes through, devouring the plant with relish all the time.

These matters must be the subject of exact research; only the guiding principles can be given from the spiritual world. Research will show that the nature of the substances in the petals and leaves, for instance, is essentially different from that of the substances in the root or even the seed. There is a great difference between a decoct ion prepared from the petals or leaves of plants and an extract of substances found in roots or seeds. The effect of a decoction prepared from petals or leaves upon the digestive system is quite different from that of an extract prepared from roots or seeds. In this way you relate the organisation of man to the surrounding world, and all that you discover can be verified in a purely material sense. You will find, for instance, that disturbances in the process of the transition of the chyle into the etheric organisation, which is brought about by the system of heart and lungs, will be influenced by a preparation decocted from the petals of plants. An extract of roots or seeds influences the wider activity that works on into the vascular system and even into the nervous system. Along these lines we shall discover the rational connection between what is going on within the human organism and the substances from which our store of remedies may be derived.

In the next lecture I shall have to continue this subject, showing that there is an inner connection between the different structures of the plants and the systems of nerves and senses and digestion in man.

Rudolf Steiner: Several questions have been handed in and I will try to answer as many as possible in the short time available.

First Question: This question has to do with the relationship between sensory and motor nerves and is, primarily, a matter of interpretation. When considered only from a physical point of view, one’s conclusion will not differ from the usual interpretation, which deals with the central organ. Let me take a simple case of nerve conduction. Sensation would be transmitted from the periphery to the central organ, from which the motor impulse would pass to the appropriate organ. As I said, as long as we consider only the physical, we might be perfectly satisfied with this explanation. And I do not believe that any other interpretation would be acceptable, unless we are willing to consider the result of suprasensory observations, that is, all-inclusive, real observation.

As I mentioned in my discussions of this matter over the past few days, the difference between the sensory and motor nerves, anatomically and physiologically, is not very significant. I never said that there is no difference at all, but that the difference was not very noticeable. Anatomical differences do not contradict my interpretation. Let me say this again: we are dealing here with only one type of nerves. What people call the “sensory” nerves and “motor” nerves are really the same, and so it really doesn’t matter whether we use sensory or motor for our terms. Such distinctions are irrelevant, since these nerves are (metaphorically) the physical tools of undifferentiated soul experiences. A will process lives in every thought process, and, vice versa, there is an element of thought, or a residue of sensory perception, in every will process, although such processes remain mostly unconscious.

Now, every will impulse, whether direct or the result of a thought, always begins in the upper members of the human constitution, in the interplay between the I-being and the astral body. If we now follow a will impulse and all its processes, we are not led to the nerves at all, since every will impulse intervenes directly in the human metabolism. The difference between an interpretation based on anthroposophic research and that of conventional science lies in science’s claim that a will impulse is transmitted to the nerves before the relevant organs are stimulated to move.

In reality, this is not the case. A soul impulse initiates metabolic processes directly in the organism. For example, let’s look at a sensation as revealed by a physical sense, say in the human eye. Here, the whole process would have to be drawn in greater detail. First a process would occur in the eye, then it would be transmitted to the optic nerve, which is classified as a sensory nerve by ordinary science. The optic nerve is the physical mediator for seeing.

If we really want to get to the truth of the matter, I will have to correct what I just said. It was with some hesitation that I said that the nerves are the physical instruments of human soul experiences, because such a comparison does not accurately convey the real meaning of physical organs and organic systems in a human being. Think of it like this: imagine soft ground and a path, and that a cart is being driven over this soft earth. It would leave tracks, from which I could tell exactly where the wheels had been. Now imagine that someone comes along and explains these tracks by saying, “Here, in these places, the earth must have developed various forces that it.” Such an interpretation would be a complete illusion, since it was not the earth that was active; rather, something was done to the earth. The cartwheels were driven over it, and the tracks had nothing to do with an activity of the earth itself.

Something similar happens in the brain’s nervous system. Soul and spiritual processes are active there. As with the cart, what is left behind are the tracks, or imprints. These we can find. But the perception in the brain and everything retained anatomically and physiologically have nothing to do with the brain as such. This was impressed, or molded, by the activities of soul and spirit. Thus, it is not surprising that what we find in the brain corresponds to events in the sphere of soul and spirit. In fact, however, this is completely unrelated to the brain itself. So the metaphor of physical tools is not accurate. Rather, we should see the whole process as similar to the way I might see myself walking. Walking is in no way initiated by the ground I walk on; the earth is not my tool. But without it, I could not walk. That’s how it is. My thinking as such—that is, the life of my soul and spirit—has nothing to do with my brain. But the brain is the ground on which this soul substance is retained. Through this process of retention, we become conscious of our soul life.

So you see, the truth is quite different from what people usually imagine. There has to be this resistance wherever there is a sensation. In the same way that a process occurs (say in the eye) that can be perceived with the help of a so-called sensory nerve, in the will impulses (in one’s leg, for example), a process occurs, and it is this process that is perceived with the help of the nerve. The so-called sensory nerves are organs of perception that spread out into the senses.

The so-called motor nerves spread inward and convey perceptions of will force activities, making us aware of what the will is doing as it works directly through the metabolism. Both sensory and motor nerves transmit sensations; sensory nerves spread outward and motor nerves work inward. There is no significant difference between these two kinds of nerves. The function of the first is to make us aware, in the form of thought processes, of processes in the sensory organs, while the other “motor” nerves communicate processes within the physical body, also in form of thought processes.

If we perform the well-known and common experiment of cutting into the spinal fluid in a case of tabes dorsalis, or if one interprets this disorder realistically, without the usual bias of materialistic physiology, this illness can be explained with particular clarity. In the case of tabes dorsalis, the appropriate nerve (I will call it a sensory nerve) would, under normal circumstances, make a movement sense-perceptible, but it is not functioning, and consequently the movement cannot be performed, because movement can take place only when such a process is perceived consciously. It works like this: imagine a piece of chalk with which I want to do something. Unless I can perceive it with my senses, I cannot do what I want. Similarly, in a case of tabes dorsalis, the mediating nerve cannot function, because it has been injured and thus there is no transmission of sensation. The patient loses the possibility of using it. Likewise, I would be unable to use a piece of chalk if it were lying somewhere in a dark room where I could not find it. Tabes dorsalis is the result of a patient’s inability to find the appropriate organs with the help of the sensory nerves that enter the spinal fluid.

This is a rather rough description, and it could certainly be explained in greater detail. Any time we look at nerves in the right way, severing them proves this interpretation. This particular interpretation is the result of anthroposophic research. In other words, it is based on direct observation. What matters is that we can use outer phenomena to substantiate our interpretation. To give another example, a so-called motor nerve may be cut or damaged. If we join it to a sensory nerve and allow it to heal, it will function again. In other words, it is possible to join the appropriate ends of a “sensory” nerve to a “motor” nerve, and, after healing, the result will be a uniform functioning. If these two kinds of nerves were radically different, such a process would be impossible.

There is yet another possibility. Let us take it in its simplest form. Here a “sensory” nerve goes to the spinal cord, and a “motor” nerve leaves the spinal cord, itself a sensory nerve (see drawing). This would be a case of uniform conduction. In fact, all this represents a uniform conduction. And if we take, for example, a simple reflex movement, a uniform process takes place. Imagine a simple reflex motion; a fly settles on my eyelid, and I flick it away through a reflex motion. The whole process is uniform. What happens is merely an interpretation. We could compare it to an electric switch, with one wire leading into it and another leading away from it. The process is really uniform, but it is interrupted here, similar to an electric current that, when interrupted, flashes across as an electric spark. When the switch is closed, there is no spark. When it is open, there is a spark that indicates a break in the circuit. Such uniform conductions are also present in the brain and act as links, similar to an electric spark when an electric current is interrupted. If I see a spark, I know there is a break in the nerve’s current. It’s as though the nerve fluid were jumping across like an electric spark, to use a coarse expression. And this makes it possible for the soul to experience this process consciously. If it were a uniform nerve current passing through without a break in the circuit, it would simply pass through the body, and the soul would be unable to experience anything.

This is all I can say about this for the moment. Such theories are generally accepted everywhere in the world, and when I am asked where one might be able to find more details, I may even mention Huxley’s book on physiology as a standard work on this subject.

There is one more point I wish to make. This whole question is really very subtle, and the usual interpretations certainly appear convincing. To prove them correct, the so-called sensory parts of a nerve are cut, and then the motor parts of a nerve are cut, with the goal of demonstrating that the sensations we interpret as movement are no longer possible. If you take what I have said as a whole, however, especially with regard to the interrupt switch, you will be able to understand all the various experiments that involve cutting nerves.

Question: How can educators best respond to requests, coming from children between five and a half and seven, for various activities?

Rudolf Steiner: At this age, a feeling for authority has begun to make itself felt, as I tried to indicate in the lectures here. Yet a longing for imitation predominates, and this gives us a clue about what to do with these children. The movable picture books that I mentioned are particularly suitable, because they stimulate their awakening powers of fantasy.

If they ask to do something—and as soon as we have the opportunity of opening a kindergarten in Stuttgart, we shall try to put this into practice—if the children want to be engaged in some activity, we will paint or model with them in the simplest way, first by doing it ourselves while they watch. If children have already lost their first teeth, we do not paint for them first, but encourage them to paint their own pictures. Teachers will appeal to the children’s powers of imitation only when they want to lead them into writing through drawing or painting. But in general, in a kindergarten for children between five and a half and seven, we would first do the various activities in front of them, and then let the children repeat them in their own way. Thus we gradually lead them from the principle of imitation to that of authority.

Naturally, this can be done in various ways. It is quite possible to get children to work on their own. For instance, one could first do something with them, such as modeling or drawing, which they are then asked to repeat on their own. One has to invent various possibilities of letting them supplement and complete what the teacher has started. One can show them that such a piece of work is complete only when a child has made five or ten more such parts, which together must form a whole. In this way, we combine the principle of imitation with that of authority. It will become a truly stimulating task for us to develop such ideas in practice once we have a kindergarten in the Waldorf school. Of course, it would be perfectly all right for you to develop these ideas yourself, since it would take too much of our time to go into greater detail now.

Question: Will it be possible to have this course of lectures published in English?

Rudolf Steiner: Of course, these things always take time, but I would like to have the shorthand version of this course written out in long hand as soon as it can possibly be done. And when this is accomplished, we can do what is necessary to have it published in English as well.

Question: Should children be taught to play musical instruments, and if so, which ones?

Rudolf Steiner: In our Waldorf school, I have advocated the principle that, apart from being introduced to music in a general way (at least those who show some special gifts), children should also learn to play musical instruments technically. Instruments should not be chosen ahead of time but in consultation with the music teacher. A truly good music teacher will soon discover whether a child entering school shows specific gifts, which may reveal a tendency toward one instrument or another. Here one should definitely approach each child individually. Naturally, in the Waldorf school, these things are still in the beginning stage, but despite this, we have managed to gather very acceptable small orchestras and quartets.

Question: Do you think that composing in the Greek modes, as discovered by Miss Schlesinger, means a real advance for the future of music? Would it be advisable to have instruments, such as the piano, tuned in such modes? Would it be a good thing for us to get accustomed to these modes?

Rudolf Steiner: For several reasons, it is my opinion that music will progress if what I call “intensive melody” gradually plays a more significant role. Intensive melody means getting used to the sound of even one note as a kind of melody. One becomes accustomed to a greater tone complexity of each sound. This will eventually happen. When this stage is reached, it leads to a certain modification of our scales, simply because the intervals become “filled” in a way that is different from what we are used to. They are filled more concretely, and this in itself leads to a greater appreciation of certain elements in what I like to call “archetypal music” (elements also inherent in Miss Schlesinger’s discoveries), and here important and meaningful features can be recognized. I believe that these will open a way to enriching our experience of music by overcoming limitations imposed by our more or less fortuitous scales and all that came with them. So I agree that by fostering this particular discovery we can advance the possibilities of progress in music.

Question: Is it also possible to give eurythmy to physically handicapped children, or perhaps curative eurythmy to fit each child?

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, absolutely. We simply have to find ways to use eurythmy in each situation. First we look at the existing forms of eurythmy in general, then we consider whether a handicapped child can perform those movements. If not, we may have to modify them, which we can do anyway. One good method is to use artistic eurythmy as it exists for such children, and this especially helps the young children—even the very small ones. Ordinary eurythmy may lead to very surprising results in the healing processes of these children.

Curative eurythmy was worked out systematically—initially by me during a supplementary course here in Dornach in 1921, right after the last course to medical doctors. It was meant to assist various healing processes. Curative eurythmy is also appropriate for children suffering from physical handicaps. For less severe cases, existing forms of curative eurythmy will be enough. In more severe cases, these forms may have to be intensified or modified. However, any such modifications must be made with great caution.

Artistic eurythmy will not harm anyone; it is always beneficial. Harmful consequences arise only through excessive or exaggerated eurythmy practice, as would happen with any type of movement. Naturally, excessive eurythmy practice leads to all sorts of exhaustion and general asthenia, in the same way that we would harm ourselves by excessive efforts in mountain climbing or, for example, by working our arms too much. Eurythmy itself is not to blame, however, only its wrong application. Any wholesome activity may lead to illness when taken too far.

With ordinary eurythmy, one cannot imagine that it would harm anyone. But with curative eurythmy, we must heed a general rule I gave during the curative eurythmy course. Curative eurythmy exercises should be planned only with the guidance and supervision of a doctor, by the doctor and curative eurythmist together, and only after a proper medical diagnosis.

If curative exercises must be intensified, it is absolutely essential to proceed on a strict medical basis, and only a specialist in pathology can decide the necessary measures to be taken. It would be irresponsible to let just anyone meddle with curative eurythmy, just as it would be irresponsible to allow unqualified people to dispense dangerous drugs or poisons. If injury were to result from such bungling methods, it would not be the fault of curative eurythmy.

Question: In yesterday’s lecture we heard about the abnormal consequences of shifting what was right for one period of life into later periods and the subsequent emergence of exaggerated phlegmatic and sanguine temperaments. First, how does a pronounced choleric temperament come about? Second, how can we tell when a young child is inclined too much toward melancholic or any other temperament? And third, is it possible to counteract such imbalances before the change of teeth?

Rudolf Steiner: The choleric temperament arises primarily because a person’s I-being works with particular force during one of the nodal points of life, around the second year and again during the ninth and tenth years. There are other nodal points later in life, but we are interested in the first two here. It is not that one’s I-being begins to exist only in the twenty-first year, or is freed at a certain age. It is always present in every human being from the moment of birth—or, more specifically, from the third week after conception. The I can become too intense and work with particular strength during these times. So, what is the meaning and nature of such nodal points?

Between the ninth and tenth years, the I works with great intensity, manifesting as children learn to differentiate between self and the environment. To maintain normal conditions, a stable equilibrium is needed, especially at this stage. It’s possible for this state of equilibrium to shift outwardly, and this becomes one of many causes of a sanguine temperament. When I spoke about the temperaments yesterday, I made a special point in saying that various contributing factors work together, and that I would single out those that are more important from a certain point of view.

It is also possible for the center of gravity to shift inward. This can happen even while children are learning to speak or when they first begin to pull themselves up and learn to stand upright. At such moments, there is always an opportunity for the I to work too forcefully. We have to pay attention to this and try not to make mistakes at this point in life—for example, by forcing a child to stand upright and unsupported too soon. Children should do this only after they have developed the faculty needed to imitate the adult’s vertical position.

You can appreciate the importance of this if you notice the real meaning of the human upright position. In general, animals are constituted so that the spine is more or less parallel to the earth’s surface. There are exceptions, of course, but they may be explained just on the basis of their difference. Human beings, on the other hand, are constituted so that, in a normal position, the spine extends along the earth’s radius. This is the radical difference between human beings and animals. And in this radical difference we find a response to strict Darwinian materialists (not Darwinians, but Darwinian materialists), who deny the existence of a defining difference between the human skeleton and that of the higher animals, saying that both have the same number of bones and so on. Of course, this is correct. But the skeleton of an animal has a horizontal spine, and a human spine is vertical. This vertical position of the human spine reveals a relationship to the entire cosmos, and this relationship means that human beings bear an I-being. When we talk about animals, we speak of only three members—the physical body, the ether body (or body of formative forces), and the astral body. I-being incarnates only when a being is organized vertically.

I once spoke of this in a lecture, and afterward someone came to me and said, “But what about when a human being sleeps? The spine is certainly horizontal then.” People often fail to grasp the point of what I say. The point is not simply that the human spine is constituted only for a vertical position while standing. We must also look at the entire makeup of the human being—the mutual relationships and positions of the bones that result in walking with a vertical spinal column, whereas, in animals, the spine remains horizontal. The point is this: the vertical position of the human spine distinguishes human beings as bearers of I-being.

Now observe how the physiognomic character of a person is expressed with particular force through the vertical. You may have noticed (if the correct means of observation were used) that there are people who show certain anomalies in physical growth. For instance, according to their organic nature, they were meant to grow to a certain height, but because another organic system worked in the opposite direction, the human form became compressed. It is absolutely possible that, because of certain antecedents, the physical structure of a person meant to be larger was compressed by an organic system working in the opposite direction. This was the case with Fichte, for example. I could cite numerous others—Napoleon, to mention only one. In keeping with certain parts of his organic systems, Fichte’s stature could have become taller, yet he was stunted in his physical growth. This meant that his I had to put up with existing in his compressed body, and a choleric temperament is a direct expression of the I. A choleric temperament can certainly be caused by such abnormal growth.

Returning to our question—How can we tell when a young child is inclined too much toward melancholic or another temperament?—I think that hardly anyone who spends much time with children needs special suggestions, since the symptoms practically force themselves on us. Even with very naive and unskilled observation, we can discriminate between choleric and melancholic children, just as we can clearly distinguish between a child who “just sits” and seems morose and miserable and one who wildly romps around. In the classroom, it is very easy to spot a child who, after having paid attention for a moment to something on the blackboard, suddenly turns to a neighbor for stimulation before looking out the window again. This is what a sanguine child is like. These things can easily be observed, even on a very naive level.

Imagine a child who easily flies into a fit of temper. If, at the right age, an adult simulates such tantrums, it may cause the child to tire of that behavior. We can be quite successful this way. Now, if one asks whether we can work to balance these traits before the change of teeth, we must say yes, using essentially the same methods we would apply at a later age, which have already been described. But at such an early age, these methods need to be clothed in terms of imitation.

Before the change of teeth, however, it is not really necessary to counteract these temperamental inclinations, because most of the time it works better to just let these things die off naturally. Of course, this can be uncomfortable for the adult, but this is something that requires us to think in a different way. I would like to clarify this by comparison. You probably know something of lay healers, who may not have a thorough knowledge of the human organism but can nevertheless assess abnormalities and symptoms of illnesses to a certain degree. It may happen that such a healer recognizes an anomaly in the movements of a patient’s heart. When asked what should be done, a possible answer is, “Leave the heart alone, because if we brought it back to normal activity, the patient would be unable to bear it. The patient needs this heart irregularity.” Similarly, it is often necessary to know how long we should leave a certain condition alone, and in the case of choleric children, how much time we must give them to get over their tantrums simply through exhaustion. This is what we need to keep in mind.

Question: How can a student of anthroposophy avoid losing the capacity for love and memory when crossing the boundary of sense-perceptible knowing?

Rudolf Steiner: This question seems to be based on an assumption that, during one’s ordinary state of consciousness, love and the memory are both needed for life. In ordinary life, one could not exist without the faculty of remembering. Without this spring of memory, leading back to a certain point in early childhood, the continuity of one’s ego could not exist. Plenty of cases are known in which this continuity has been destroyed, and definite gaps appear in the memory. This is a pathological condition. Likewise, ordinary life cannot develop without love.

But now it needs to be said that, when a state of higher consciousness is reached, the substance of this higher consciousness is different from that of ordinary life. This question seems to imply that, in going beyond the limits of ordinary knowledge, love and memory do not manifest past the boundaries of knowledge. This is quite correct. At the same time, however, it has always been emphasized that the right kind of training consists of retaining qualities that we have already developed in ordinary consciousness; they stay alive along with these new qualities. It is even necessary (as you can find in my book How to Know Higher Worlds) to enhance and strengthen qualities developed in ordinary life when entering a state of higher consciousness. This means that nothing is taken away regarding the inner faculties we developed in ordinary consciousness, but that something more is required for higher consciousness, something not attained previously. To clarify this, I would like to use a somewhat trivial comparison, even if it does not completely fit the situation.

As you know, if I want to move by walking on the ground, I must keep my sense of balance. Other things are also needed to walk properly, without swaying or falling. Well, when learning to walk on a tightrope, one loses none of the faculties that serve for walking on the ground. In learning to walk on a tightrope, one meets completely different conditions, and yet it would be irrelevant to ask whether tightrope walking prevents one from being able to walk properly on an ordinary surface. Similarly, the attainment of a different consciousness does not make one lose the faculties of ordinary consciousness—and I do not mean to imply at all that the attainment of higher consciousness is a kind of spiritual tightrope walking. Yet it’s true that the faculties and qualities gained in ordinary consciousness are fully preserved when rising to a state of enhanced consciousness.

And now, because it is getting late, I would like to deal with the remaining questions as quickly as possible, so I can end our meeting by telling you a little story.

Question: What should our attitude be toward the ever-increasing use of documentary films in schools, and how can we best explain to those who defend them that their harmful effects are not balanced by their potential educational value?

Rudolf Steiner: I have tried to get behind the mysteries of film, and whether or not my findings make people angry is irrelevant, since I am just giving you the facts. I have to admit that the films have an extremely harmful effect on what I have been calling the ether, or life, body. And this especially true in terms of the human sensory system. It is a fact that, by watching film productions, the entire human soul-spiritual constitution becomes mechanized. Films are external means for turning people into materialists. I tested these effects, especially during the war years when film propaganda was made for all sorts of things. One could see how audiences avidly absorbed whatever was shown. I was not especially interested in watching films, but I did want to observe their effects on audiences. One could see how the film is simply an intrinsic part of the plan to materialize humankind, even by means of weaving materialism into the perceptual habits of those who are watching. Naturally, this could be taken much further, but because of the late hour there is only time for these brief suggestions.

Question: How should we treat a child who, according to the parents, sings in tune at the age of three, and who, by the age of seven, sings very much out of tune?

Rudolf Steiner: First we would have to look at whether some event has caused the child’s musical ear to become masked for the time being. But if it is true that the child actually did sing well at three, we should be able to help the child to sing in tune again with the appropriate pedagogical treatment. This could be done by studying the child’s previous habits, when there was the ability to sing well. One must discover how the child was occupied—the sort of activities the child enjoyed and so on. Then, obviously, with the necessary changes according to age, place the child again into the whole setting of those early years, and approach the child with singing again. Try very methodically to again evoke the entire situation of the child’s early life. It is possible that some other faculty may have become submerged, one that might be recovered more easily.

Question: What is attitude of spiritual science toward the Montessori system of education and what would the consequences of this system be?

Rudolf Steiner: I really do not like to answer questions about contemporary methods, which are generally backed by a certain amount of fanaticism. Not that I dislike answering questions, but I have to admit that I do not like answering questions such as, What is the attitude of anthroposophy toward this or that contemporary movement? There is no need for this, because I consider it my task to represent to the world only what can be gained from anthroposophic research. I do not think it is my task to illuminate other matters from an anthroposophic point of view. Therefore, all I wish to say is that when aims and aspirations tend toward a certain artificiality—such as bringing to very young children something that is not part of their natural surroundings but has been artificially contrived and turned into a system—such goals cannot really benefit the healthy development of children. Many of these new methods are invented today, but none of them are based on a real and thorough knowledge of the human being. Of course we can find a great deal of what is right in such a system, but in each instance it is necessary to reduce also the positive aspects to what accords with a real knowledge of the human being.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, with the time left after the translation of this last part, I would like to drop a hint. I do not want to be so discourteous as to say, in short, that every hour must come to an end. But since I see that so many of our honored guests here feel as I do, I will be polite enough to meet their wishes and tell a little story—a very short story. There once lived a Hungarian couple who always had guests in the evening (in Hungary, people were very hospitable before everything went upside down). And when the clock struck ten, the husband used to say to his wife, “Woman, we must be polite to our guests. We must retire now because surely our guests will want to go home.”

Yesterday I spoke to you of the scene from Part II of Goethe's Faust that had just been performed, and I should like to run over again the main thoughts then under consideration. For in this scene we are dealing with one of the most significant of Goethe's creation, with a scene he added to his Faust after having wrestled with the problem of Faust for about sixty years. Moreover, we have to do here with a scene through which we can look deep into Goethe's soul, in so far as it was dominated by the urge for knowledge—dominated above all by the great seriousness of this urge. While grasping all the knowledge in this poem of Faust we must never forget, however, that everything revealed in it with such lofty wisdom in no way prejudices—as is frequently the case with lesser poets who attempt anything of the same kind—in no way prejudices the purely artistic force of its construction. I have drawn your attention before to what Goethe stressed to Eckermann, namely, that there is much concealed in his Faust, many riddles of man to be recognised by Initiates, but that he had taken trouble to put it all into a form that, regarded merely from the theatrical standpoint, can with its pictorial quality impress even the simplest natured minds. Now let us bring again before our souls just the main points of what was said yesterday about all that is thus concealed, and afterwards go on to what we could not then touch upon. I mean, the conclusion of the scene.

I said yesterday that this scene shows clearly how Goethe was following up the problem of man's self-knowledge, man's comprehension of himself. For Goethe, knowledge was never something merely abstract and theoretical; to grasp the truth was for him a scientific urge. Also, for him—as it will increasingly be for future human evolution—what he sought in his soul as knowledge was something that has to be an impulse to experience life in all its fullness, to experience all that life can bring to man in the way of fortune and misfortune, of joy and sorrow, of blows of fate and opportunities of development. But, in addition to this, the urge for knowledge must be related to all the claims life makes on a man, as regards his behaviour towards society as a whole, as regards what he does and creates. Faust is not meant to be represented merely as a man striving after the highest knowledge, but as one bound up in his innermost being with all that life demands and brings. To this end, Goethe seeks knowledge for his Faust, that is, knowledge of man, comprehension of the self, comprehension of the forces at present latent in mankind. But Goethe sees clearly that ordinary knowledge, dependent on the senses and conditioned by the understanding, cannot lead to this self-knowledge. For this reason he introduces into the Classical Walpurgis-Night Homunculus, the product that was supposed to be, for mediaeval research, the copy of a human being that, within external nature, the physical understanding was able to put together out of natural forces and natural laws. All this comes into the idea of Homunculus. Yesterday I went more deeply into what Goethe meant to convey in his Homunculus, apart from any superstition connected with him; but now let us consider his more obvious meaning. In his Homunculus-idea he wished to represent what a man, here in the physical world, can recognise in himself. Whoever makes use only of the knowledge offered him by science, or by the study of physical life, can never gain knowledge and comprehension of man in accordance with Goethe's conception. He will never know Homo, the human being; he will be able to picture in his soul only Homunculus, an elemental spirit who has come to a standstill on the path to becoming man. Goethe wrestles with this as with a problem of knowledge: How can the idea of Homo grow out of the idea of Homunculus?

The whole mood and tenor, the whole artistic structure of the Classical Walpurgis-Night shows how clearly Goethe saw that the problem of human nature con only be solved by a knowledge based on investigation pursued, outside the body, by man's soul and spirit.What he wishes to ray forth from his Faust is his conviction that information concerning man can be given only by those who admit the validity of knowledge acquired outside the instrument of the physical body. Hence, true Spiritual Science, true Anthroposophy, alone can lead to the knowledge of man, of Homo; while all the other knowledge dealing with the physical world, can only lead to the idea of Homunculus. As far as possible, during the whole of his life, Goethe was ceaselessly occupied in striving towards this supersensible knowledge. He sought it on various paths, and those paths that opened out to him he endeavoured to portray artistically in his Faust. Faust was to represent for him a man who at last arrives at a real knowledge and comprehension of mankind.

Now, in Goethe's time Anthroposophy was not yet, and could not have been, in existence. Hence Goethe tried to associate himself with his contemporary culture, in which thee were still echoes of atavistic spiritual vision. And after showing all that is in the Romantic Walpurgis-Night of the first part of Faust to be inadequate for knowledge of man, his great desire was then to take refute in the Imaginations of the Grecian myths. We have so often spoken of Goethe that we can easily see what lay beneath this idea of his.—Goethe felt and experienced that man is not to be grasped through the concepts of physical understanding. But he had no wish, as yet, to supersede these by his own Imaginations; therefore he sought to give a new form to those of ancient Greece. Thus, if we wish to give a more exact description of the scene just presented, we may say: Goethe wanted to show how a man, Faust, has been approached (from outside, but that is of no importance) by the idea of Homunculus, the only idea to be obtained in this respect in the physical world. He wanted to show how such a man, by his state of consciousness undergoing a change through his leaving the body, will then behave differently. He will behave like a man who, asleep at night outside his body, becomes able to perceive what is around him, all that surrounds him of a soul and spirit nature. Then, if he goes to sleep consciously, as it were, retaining his consciousness in sleep, if, sleeping on, he can take with him into his sleep-knowledge the idea of Homunculus acquired in his physical life, he can so transform it that it seizes hold of human reality. This is what Goethe wished to represent; and to help in the task, he took the pictures of the Grecian myths. He shows often in this scent how far in his feeling he was removed at least form the superstition of the pedant, who sees nothing more in such myths than poetic fiction and creations of fantasy. And I have often told you that, as a result of this superstition, it is claimed that legends, traditions, myths, persisting among simple peoples, are conceptions of nature transformed by fantasy. These superstitious pedants have really no idea how small a part fantasy plays in the creations of simple minds, not how prevalent among them is a certain atavistic power of beholding reality in dreams.

Now in the myths developed by the Greek spirit, there is not merely poetry, there is a true vision of reality. And the element Goethe first presented was the one in which all ancient peoples have seen the impulse in the soul that brings about its separation from the body. Connection with the outside world was much closer for the men of old than for the present-day abstract rationalistic man. In olden days when men climbed a mountain, for instance, they did not merely experience a physical, barely perceptible difference in the breathing, a densification of the atmosphere, or a change to the eye in perspective; for them it was a passing from one condition of the soul to another. For a man of those days the ascent of a mountain was a far more living experience than for modern man who has become so abstract. They felt with special vividness, what some sea-farers still experience today in a primitive, less delicate way, that, to a certain degree, soul and spirit actually free themselves from their instrument, the body. The more sensitive sea-faring folk still have this experience. But the men of old felt as a matter of course: “When I sail out on the open sea, and am no longer connected with the solid earth and its definite forms, then my soul frees itself from the body, and I see more of the supersensible than when I am surrounded by earth's rigid outlines.”—This is why, when Homunculus is to be changed into Homo, Goethe introduces a gay festival of the sea, and it is Thales, the man of natural philosophy, who conducts Homunculus thither.

And we see the Sirens. I spoke of this yesterday so today I shall not dwell upon the dramatic an pictorial way in which everything here is put into external form. I will, however, point out that the deeper mystery that Goethe would also have us see, the mystery of the Sirens' song, lies in these demonic beings belonging on the one side to the sea, but being able to become living, as demonic beings of the sea, only when the moon shines upon it. The moonlit sea lures forth the Sirens who, in their turn, lure forth man's soul from within him. The state of consciousness in which the supersensible world can be perceived in Imaginations, in pictures, is therefore brought about by the Sirens. Above all they practise their wiles on the Nereids and Tritons, who are on their way to Samothrace, to the sacred Mysteries of the Kabiri.

Precisely why does Goethe introduce the Kabiri? This is because his Homunculus is to become Homo, to become man, and because the Initiates of the holy Mysteries of the Kabiri in Samothrace were above all destined to learn the secret of man's becoming. It was this secret that was represented in the Kabiri. Here in the physical world is accomplished physical becoming, but this has its counterpart in the sphere of spirit and soul, a counterpart only to be seen outside the body in Imaginations. Unless the abstract idea of Homunculus is brought into connection with what can be seen here, Homunculus can never become Homo. Thus Goethe believes in all that the Greek felt when thinking of his Kabiri in Samothrace; he believed something was to be found there over and above the abstract idea of Homunculus, through which it might grow to the idea of Homo.

Let us without prejudice speak of what this really involves. In what man can experience of himself through ordinary knowledge, that amounts only to what he is as Homunculus, Goethe saw something to be compared with the unfertilised human germ-cell. Considering the unfertilised germ-cell in the human mother, we recognise it as something from which no physical human being can arise. It must first be fertilised; only then can there be a physical human being. And when we think with physical understanding alone, in these thoughts the inner being of man can never be lit up, for this is only what can be produced one-sidedly, and may be compared with what can be produced by the woman one-sidedly. All it is possible to grasp with out physical understanding, must be fertilised by knowledge gained outside the physical body. Half the riddle on man is hidden from the mere physical power of understanding. The atavistic clairvoyance adapted to ancient times wished to point, in the Mystery of the Kabiri, to what, in the spiritual connection of nature, is the other half of man's becoming which in its turn points to the immortal in man. That is why Goethe thought that possible through the impulse of the Kabiri the developing of Homunculus into Homo might be represented.

But Goethe, as one who sought knowledge, was not only to a high degree a serious seeker, but, at the same time, something which, my dear friends, is very much rarer in the sphere of knowledge than one might think—a deeply honest soul. He wished to test how far he would get by breathing new life into such a mystery as that of the Kabiri. Those who seek knowledge with less honesty make a few antiquarian studies, perhaps adding a few fantasies founded upon these, and then consider they know something of what is expressed in the Kabiri Mystery. Yes, my dear friends, the honest seeker after knowledge never knows as much as the seeker who is less honest, for he always considers himself more stupid than those who light-heartedly piece together information from here and there, which, easily acquired, is then said to be absolutely complete. Goethe was not one of those who took knowledge thus light-heartedly. He knew that, even if he had striven for it from the year 1749 to the year 1829, in which he wrote this scene just witnessed (a scene written in the most difficult circumstances about two years before his death) even if he has grown old in this striving and has never relaxed, nevertheless, for the honest searcher after knowledge there is always a remaining sting. Perhaps in some direction one ought to have done better.—This is what worked so intensively out of Goethe's very nature—this absolute honesty. This made him recognise, where the riddle of the Kabiri is concerned: As a modern man who can no longer call upon clairvoyance, I cannot know what the Greeks thought about the Kabiri—I cannot know this for certain!—But perhaps that is not of most importance, for Goethe had the feeling that there was a kind of knowledge of the Kabiri Mystery within him, which, however, he could not wholly grasp. It was like a dream that not only immediately fades, but of which one knows that, although it passes away so quickly, it contains something most profound; it hovers so lightly that the understanding, the intellect, does not suffice, the soul-forces do not suffice to give it clear and definite outline. It is precisely in this intimate inner development that there lies the significance of this scene. We do not understand it at all if we wish to explain every detail. For Goethe has called up pictures for the very purpose of showing—“Here I am close to my goal yet cannot reach it.”

Thus, he introduces the Kabiri to show how, perhaps not he but someone who fully grasps the Kabiri Mystery, may find the bridge for Homunculus, with the help of that Mystery, to come to Homo. He himself cannot yet succeed in this, and has therefore chosen other paths in the imaginative world. That is why he makes the philosopher Thales conduct Homunculus into the presence of Nereus. Now Goethe thought very highly of Thales, though not to the point of giving him credit for being able to show Homunculus how to become Homo. This Nereus has a great gift of human understanding and knows how to transform the divine into the demonic, thus foreseeing the future, so that it may be supposed he knows something about changing Homunculus into Homo. But here again Goethe wishes to show that this is not the path. For on this path we come to a one-sided development, raising the human critical understanding to a demonic height that not only runs to dull criticism but to actual prophetic criticism holding in mind the good side of human criticism. Nereus, however, a kind of priest among the demons, is not in a position, either, to approach the Homunculus-problem. He does not even want to do so. Goethe has the feeling that, should human understanding be developed to the demonic, should the critical faculty of investigation possessed by man be—shall we say—demonised, he would then lose all interest in this most profound human problem of raising Homunculus to man. Thus nothing is to be gained from Nereus. But he does at least draw attention to the imminent approach of his daughters, the Dorides, sisters of the Nereids, and among them, the most outstanding of them all, Galatea. Yesterday I tried to indicate what is represented in this picture of Galatea.

You see, my dear friends, the modern man of research sees everything telescoped into a single moment of life. In the Greek world-conception—by no means confined to what is generally known as classical Philology—what live in the human being was still closely connected with all that lives in the whole of external nature. All that contributes to the becoming of man exists in another form, weaving and pulsing through every process of nature. But we have to be able to discover it. Our present capacity for knowledge is not sensitive enough to penetrate into the regions through which we participate in external nature, in the experiences of the great universe. These experiences are, indeed, concealed in man, in his development from the human germ-cell, from conception, fertilisation, to birth and his appearing as a human being. The same processes that then take place, in concealment within the human being, are going on continuously all around us. It was precisely this which, in the Kabiri Mystery was disclosed to the candidate for initiation—how in nature conception and birth are living. We see the moon rise and set, we see the sun rise and set, feel the warmth the sun sheds around, receive the light it radiates; we see the clouds moving, look upon their changing forms. Within all this weaving and pulsing through the world lies the impulse of becoming. But modern man no longer perceives this; he will perceive it, however, if he develops himself further through Spiritual Science. And formerly he perceived it with an atavistic sense of cognition, with the atavistic perception and conception of olden times.

Here we must have recourse to that finer capacity for perception still existing in days of yore. It might be said that what happens when, instead of direct sunlight, moonlight is on the sea, moonlight is reflected on the waves, is experienced half consciously as dreamy presentiment, as the foreshadowing of a dream. Man today looks at the way moonlight is reflected on the waves; and all the physicist can say is that moonlight is polarised light. That is an abstraction that says very little; and the physicist experiences nothing of what is actually happening. We experience it today if someone burns us with red-hot tongs; our capacity for sensitive feeling takes us that far. But in the Greek world-conception it was recognised that something of soul and spirit lives in the rays of the sun, something similar, yet distinct, is living in the rays of the moon, and that something actually happens when the moonlight—that borrowed sunlight—is wedded to the waves of the sea. It knew what was surging there when the pulse of the moonlight throbbed in tune with the waves of the sea. When the moon was thus wedded to the waves, the Greeks perceived in this light-enchanted weaving the impulse surging, pulsing, through the external world which, from conception the birth, pulses and surges in man. Outside in nature the Greek perceived in another form what is present in man when, in the physical sense, the mystery of human becoming is being accomplished.

Goethe, by putting into new and artistic form what intimately and delicately the Greeks might have felt, shows clearly how it echoed in his own feeling. He expresses all this by making Thales point to the retinue of the moon approaching on little clouds, accompanying Galatea's shell-chariot. This shell-chariot is the generating force in external nature pulsing through the sea. Goethe associates it with Luna, the Moon-force, the Moon-impulse. Thus, once again he evokes a significant Imagination from the Greek world-conception, in order to draw nearer the process by which, in man's conception, the abstract Homunculus-idea can become that of the Homo. Only when we can with feeling experience the intimate details weaving and surging in Goethe's wonderful pictures, do we really enter into what in this scene was living in Goethe's soul. We shall never go deep into all this scene contains if we try to grasp it with our bald, abstract concepts, and without arousing in ourselves an intimate sympathy with what Goethe was able to experience.

Thus, if I may express myself in dull, theoretical fashion, we shall come nearer the solution of the Homunculus-Homo problem if this idea, seen from outside the physical body, is planted into the generative impulse weaving, throbbing, through nature. Even before he brought Homunculus into contact with this generative impulse, Goethe had called in Proteus, the demonic being whose inner bent of soul Goethe regarded as most closely allied to his theory of metamorphosis. He has endeavored in this theory of metamorphosis, to follow up the changes in the living form, from the lowest order of beings up to man, hoping in this way to come nearer the riddle of man's becoming, the riddle of Homunculus-Homo. We know that Goethe had far to go before being able to arrive at the solution. He thought to recognise that the foliage leaf changes into the petal of the flower that, in its turn, becomes the stamen and pistil of the flower. He also believed that the bones of the spinal column are transformed into the skull bones. There he stopped, for he could not press on to the crown of this metamorphosis-idea, that appears for us when we know that a metamorphosis takes place in the forces which, from one incarnation, from one earth-life to another, permeate the human body. What today is my head has its form through the metamorphosis of the rest of the body of the previous incarnation; and what is my present body will be, with the exception of the head, transformed till, in the next incarnation, it becomes my next head. This is the crown of Metamorphosis. But Goethe could only give us the elementary stages of the idea of metamorphosis which flows on into Spiritual Science. He came nearer its further stages when trying to grasp and put into poetic form the problem of Homunculus-Homo.

And he set forth with honest doubt all that could be reached through Proteus as the representative of the metamorphosis-idea. Proteus appears in his various forms that exist, however, side by side. Everything that can lead to the birth, the supersensible birth, of the Homunculus-idea is here brought in by Goethe. Now he again comes to a standstill. Then fresh light flashes in. In contrast to all that is demonic, the elemental beings of a spiritual nature, Nereids, Tritons, Dorides, Nereus, Proteus, and so forth, in contrast to all these, there appear the Telchines. These, the oldest artists, as it were, of the earthly world during the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, remind us that Goethe was trying to approach the riddle of man, not only by the path of physical science, but also by another path of the senses—the path of art. As man, Goethe was neither one-sidedly a scientist, nor one-sidedly an artist; in him scientist and artist were consciously combined. Hence, as he stood before works of art in Italy, he said that he saw something there suggesting that the Greeks, in creating their works of art, worked in accordance with the laws nature applied, the same laws that he himself was tracking down. And if you let Goethe's book on Winckelmann work upon you, you will see how Goethe sought to come nearer knowledge of the riddle of man by way of art, how he sought to follow the course of natural phenomena to the point where, as he so beautifully expresses it in this book, nature becomes conscious of herself in man. What can be done here by the artistic conception of nature—seen from the other side, from the standpoint of supersensible knowledge—is made evident to us with the appearance of the Telchines, those ancient artists who first depicted Gods in human form.

Goethe intimates that, whereas he generally leads the human consciousness away from the physical to the superphysical, here he is making one look back from the superphysical to the physical; the Telchines are in the superphysical, but what they mean, what they stand for, passes over into the physical. They are portrayed as being in contrast with all the other figures—those dedicated wholly to Luna, to the Moon, and referred to by the Sirens as follows:

“Helios' initiated
Ye to bright day consecrated
Greet us in this stirring hour,
When we worship Luna's power.”

Thus they actually belong to the Sun. On the island of Rhodes they erected statue after statue to Apollo. The attempt has been made to solve the Homunculus-Homo problem by looking across to the supersensible world; but that too has been unsuccessful. And Proteus himself energetically denies that anything is to be gained from the Telchines for the transformation of Homunculus into Homo.

And what happens next? There now appear the Psylli and the Marsi, kinds of snake-demons, who bring with them the previously described shell-chariots of Galatea. The Psylli and Marsi are demonic snakes, who draw into the spiritual the souls of human beings; at the same time they are servants in the world man inters on leaving his physical body. In that world there is no separation between the purely animal and the purely human, the animal from passes over, merges, into the human.

Now after being shown by means of the sailor boys, and the Dorides who represent that world, how difficult it is to put before man the relation of the spiritual world to the world of the senses, we then see the shattering of Homunculus against the shell-chariot of Galatea. There is deep meaning in the Dorides thus ushering in the sailor lads in this scene. The Dorides are demonic beings of the sea, the sailors, human beings. Goethe is wishing to show how man is abel to approach spiritual beings from the other side of existence, and how destiny (we are distinctly told the sailor lads have been saved by the Dorides) brings man into connection with the Gods. But here in physical life this relation is immediately broken down; there is no continuous connection when the superphysical and physical wish to unite—the Gods will not suffer it.

Then at the end of this scene we ar confronted by this wonderful picture. After everything ha been tried through majestic Imaginations to turn Homunculus into Homo, there follows, as the highest, nearest, most significant approach to the solution of the riddle of man, the actual plunging of Homunculus into the generative force of nature in so far as it shows itself through the moonlit, moon-enchanted ocean waves. Into these waves Homunculus now plunges. And what do we see at the end of the scene? A flashing-up, a flaming forth, a manifestation of all the elements—earth, water, fire, air, all these elements overpower what is here taking place. And it almost seems to us that sunk with our cognition into sleep, we ourselves learn to know the Imaginations which, in the other side of existence, can alone interpret the riddle of humanity—it seems then, that through the rolling on of the generative forces we are called back into the life we must live out in the body. I told you yesterday that the force underlying impregnation, conception, pregnancy, embryonic life and birth, is only a more extended, more intensive form of the same force as that which lures us back from our nightly sleep, or from the sleep of cognition, to physical waking existence. These forces are identical. Every morning when we wake, the force that wakes us is, though different in intensity, the same as that by which a human being is conceived, carried as embryo, and born. One only of these is seen here on earth, and that merely in its external, not in its deeply mysterious, inner aspect. The other passes over us unperceived. The holy mystery of waking is unperceived in its passing. We sink down into a spiritual world, we are submerged in a spiritual world; we wake up, take possession of our body, and are in the physical world of the senses.

There are, nevertheless, even among those who are not clairvoyant, some men who when they are asleep know quite well what is actually living above, and through their sleep dreamily experience the spiritual world in its reality. Then they wake through the same force as the one living in Galatea's shell-chariot—the generative force of nature with which Homo-Homunculus unites himself on his way to becoming man. Some men know this even when not clairvoyant. There is, however, in clairvoyance, a knowledge that is perfectly clear concerning this waking. It may be understood in imagination only as a diving out of the spiritual world, down into the physical world of the senses, the world that lives in the elements of fire, water, earth, air. And on returning to this reality, all we think to have gained above in the other world, towards making a Homo of Homunculus, is dashed to pieces.

Faust is to plunge into the reality of ancient Greece; he is to meet Helen in person. And when you turn the page from the mighty finale of this scene where it runs:

“Hail the ocean! Hail the surge!
Girt with holy fire its verge,
Hail the water! Hail the fire!
Hail the chance that all admire!
Hail the breeze that softly swelleth!
Hail the grot where mystery dwelleth!
All we festally adore
Hail ye elements, all four!”

When you turn the page, you come to the third act:

“Admired much and much reviled Helena,
Leaving the shore where we but now did land, I come
Still drunken with the unrestful hallows' tumultuous
Commotion, that from Phrygian lowlands ...” and so on,

Faust is to enter Greek reality, he is to be wakened out of spiritual perception, highest spiritual perception, of the Homunculus-Homo problem, wakened into the Greek world. He is to wake there consciously, as Goethe wished to do; the moment of waking has to be brought about so as to show that what has been perceived in the spiritual world, in the supersensible, concerning the riddle of man, is shattered when the descent is made again into the external, physical reality of the body. That is an external process in nature, when the moon disappears and dawn breaks. But man today experiences this relation at best as something allegorical, symbolic or poetic. The reality underlying it is little recognised. We meet it here in something that is at the same time an embodiment of the problem of knowledge and also of true poetry. Goethe has indeed succeeded in leading Faust into the supersensible world in a noble way, and in making him wake to life in Greek reality.

We might remind ourselves here that it was during the eighties of the eighteenth century that Goethe took flight to Italy—for it was indeed a flight. Having studied nature in the north, he then wished to discover, for the benefit of his conception of the riddle of the world, what he believed that art of the south alone could give him. He gained much for we know what Goethe had become by the nineties of the eighteenth century. By then he had grown older, and that means younger in soul, for as a man outwardly ages, in his soul he grows young—youngest of all when he comes to dying. The life of the soul runs backward.—And so we come to about the year 1829. We may trace and experience what Goethe may then have felt: If, when I had the opportunity of really penetrating the art of the south, of making the spirit of Greece alive before my soul, if at that time I had only been able to take the plunge into the spiritual world that I now merely divine, how much richer, more intensive, all my experience would have been.—The characteristic mood of this second part of Goethe's Faust depends on our recognising in it an artistic representation of what has been experienced in life by a soul grown young again, a soul who in thus growing young has been enriched to a very high degree. That is why no philistine will be able to make much of this second part of Faust. And I can perfectly understand it when Schwaben-Vischer, the so-called V-Vischer, in many ways so spiritually minded, and who has said so much that is good about Goethe's Faust, has found that this kind of thing is tedious—the cobbled together patchwork of an old man. But philistinism, my dear friends, however learned and intelligent, can never penetrate into all the poetry, the lofty poetry, of the second part of Faust. No one can enter into this who does not allow his poetic sense to be warmed through, fired, by what spiritual vision gives.

Tomorrow, after the performance, we will say more about this scene, in connection with Goethe shown there concerning his own impulses.

[ 1 ] As a sort of episode inserted between the lectures now being given, I should like to-day to bring forwards a few things about our building, so that our friends may find in what will be said, a sort of foundation for their own work. We shall have, in the near future, to take strong measures in different directions for the benefit of the cause, so that the Dornach Building, the “Goetheanum”, should be made the centre of the movement for Spiritual Science from the point of view of Anthroposophy for which we intend to work. It would be of great importance if the Goetheanum could also be made known to the outer world, so that those who have not at present an opportunity of seeing it, may become acquainted with it. The very way in which this building is put before the spiritual culture of the present time may, if brought to the consciousness of our contemporaries in the right manner, work in the direction, which we consider is the needful direction for the age. So to-day, when I have said, I wish to provide a foundation for that which others will carry forth into the world, I will once more give you a little of what I have already expounded here in other connections, so that from what is contained in these episodic lectures, a complete conception of the whole may be formed.

[ 2 ] To begin with, it must be stated that the Dornach Building has grown out of the Anthroposophical conception of the world. The Building was able to grow forth from this for the very reason that when this conception is rightly understood, it will itself possess the inner force with which to create its own artistic forms and figures. Once again, I should like to repeat what I have said before in other connections, that if any of the spiritual tendencies of the present, which with their various programmes come before the world to-day, had at any time required a building of their own, some architect or other, and some artist or other would have been approached, who would have built a house in such and such a style, in which the movement it was built for could have been carried on. There would have been an external relation between what went on within it and the building itself, which might be either of the Renaissance period, or of ancient Gothic style.

[ 3 ] There must not be any such merely external relation between the conception of the world which is to be given forth at Dornach and that which encloses its activities. The relation between them is to be an inner one. Every detail connected with the housing of our activities, every detail of form and figure had to proceed from the impulses of this world-conception itself. If you bear this in mind, you will see, that this is connected with the position Spiritual Science or Anthroposophy claims in the whole development of mankind. The life of modern humanity has become simply intellectual; it has become so because for centuries modern humanity has hardly received any other education than that of thought. When forms have to be created, people turn to those already existing to some one or other of the old styles of architecture; just as when they wish to make anything artistic or such-like, they do not turn their minds to the conception of the world, but to something which has been substituted in its place. What actually brought this state of things about? [ 4 ] You see, in everything of note in human culture there have always been two streams flowing together. The presence of those two streams can be traced far back in the historical development of mankind. One of these, which has achieved its greatest intellectual development in the last few centuries, can be traced back to what we may call the Old Testament outlook on the world. We must never lose sight of the fact that one of the essential tenets connected with this was the command: “Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven image of the Lord, thy God”. The pictorial representation of that which is of a spiritual nature, was lacking in the one stream of human development. And this still holds good up to the present day in the modern development of this stream.

[ 5 ] Many schools of thought and of philosophy, many different sciences and popular conceptions of the world have been built up, but none of these have, of themselves, succeeded in creating artistic forms. All that has been achieved is the establishment relationship with the inartistic element of the present day conception of the world. Our modern age is not concerned with creating new forms, or with giving shape to what is capable of representation.

[ 6 ] But really there are two entrances into the world of the spirit; it may be entered in the intellectual way in which it is penetrated by the monotheistic religions, in which case the thought element, the intellectual, is principally developed. By this means great progress can be made along the lines followed in our most recent times. Or, on the other hand, the element which is to be found in the imaginative may be cultivated, the element of vision, of life in course of formation. modern humanity has not much living relation with this latter element. It revives bygone styles, old methods of artistic representation, but never identifies itself with them. Indeed, things have gone so far that, on the one hand those who wished to create artistically had an actual fear of every kind of philosophy, for it is quite reasonable to stand in some sort of fear of the modern world-conception, which is imaginative an intellectual. Put on the other side this has been a great disadvantage in another sense to the development of modern humanity. This disadvantage itself is the sign of decadence of recent times.

Some time ago in this very place, I drew attention to the fact that in all the present struggles of humanity there is something of the Jehovah-striving of the Old Testament, that in a sense an endeavor was being made to make each individual people what the Old Helm wanted to make of themselves and that Christianity, as such, has not fully entered the hearts of modern humanity. And so a certain intellectual thinking, an intellectual feeling concerning humanity as a whole, has in a one-sided way grown up round our social life. But man as man, 0r man as a community, can never be understood from a purely intellectual standpoint.

[ 7 ] What man is, that in him which enables him to take his place in social life, can only be understood if we rise to imaginative conception. Anyone who is acquainted with the law to which such things are subject, is aware that even the Fairy Tales, the legends and various mythologies contain more wisdom concerning the real nature of man than does modern science, which does not even possess the means of giving man an explanation as to himself. People are afraid of the inpouring of the spiritual, which can only manifest in our human civilisation in the form of pictures; they dread it. But our civilised life will never be raised until men's hearts are once again filled with a conception of the world not only capable of forming from itself thoughts, but of creating forms and permeating the whole of life. We want to make a beginning, yet in its own way it is intended to show all that can be accomplished by a really creative conception of the world at the present time and more especially what it must do in the future. In a sense you see before you, in a picture, all that is characteristic of the conception of the world which is studied here, when you are confronted with that which is meant to be representative of it, when you see the Goetheanum on its hill, at Dornach.

[ 8 ] If we wish to describe in a few words the special characteristic of this conception of the world, it is this: The realisation that in this age a new spiritual life must be revealed to man. And as we approach the building which is to stand for the spreading of this new spiritual life, we cannot but feel that a new revelation is to he made. Anyone who draws near to it cannot help feeling that something will reveal itself here, something new in the development of humanity. The very shape of the building impresses you with the sense of something new making its way into the development of man. Two cylinders of circular shape, in neither of which is the circle complete, covered with hemispheres equally incomplete, expresses the duality of that which is revealed and of that which comes to meet it. The very predominance of the two domes conveys an impression to the observer, as he draws near, that something is enclosed herein, something enclosed but which intends to make itself known.

[ 9 ] Do not take what I an now saying in a symbolical sense; take it in an artistic sense and you will then develop the right understanding for it. I shall have to speak further about these things, but this evening we will begin by making a survey of the different effects produced by the contours of the building, seen from without. Let us begin by supposing that someone approaches if from the North-East from any point around the hill on which the Goetheanum is erected. He would then see a Building (Picture 1) which could be in no other form. This is the feeling which ought to be experienced, when directly confronting that which stands as the representative of a new world-conception.

[ 10 ] It is first of all necessary to study the different forms. It was in 1908 that the thought first occurred to me to erect a building with twin domes. But much of the original plan had to be altered, for it had originally been intended to put it in a city, in Munich, where it would have been surrounded by houses, where the outer architecture would not have had to be so much considered. When the building had to be remodelled to stand upon its present hill, it became of course necessary to so plant the outer architecture that it might produce the right effect from the different points of view in the neighbourhood. Here let us begin by noticing that the building stands on a sort of platform, not absolutely on the ground.

[ 11 ] We now draw rather nearer to the Building and this is a picture of the principal entrance. Kindly observe you begin by entering the substructure and that, as we shall see, the staircase by which we ascend to the auditorium belongs to the substructure of the Building. Having ascended that, we then enter by the main door into the real Inner Hall. The Building stands rather above the level of the actual surface of the ground. It will be apparent to anyone who approaches the Building, especially when he finds himself opposite the main door, that an attempt has here been made to depart from the usual purely mathematical-geometrical-mechanical structure forms, and to discover organic ones. Of course those people who are quite accustomed to the old conception and who believe that the geometrical-dynamic can alone rightly hold a place in the art of building and in architecture will have many objections to bring against this introducing the forms of architecture into organic forms. All these objections are known. But here we have actually dared to make the attempt. [ 12 ] Then, however, we had to think the whole thought of the Building as of a living organism. No one will understand what I mean by this, unless he himself really makes the endeavour—which very few people will do as yet—to turn his feelings away from all that is symbolical and intellectual, from everything merely mechanical and mathematical, and allows himself to be carried into a really organic-artistic, a feeling way of thinking. This does not imply that the form of an organic being is symbolically expressed in the structural forms, it means that in order to understand an organic being we must realise that a quite special sort of intuitive thought-form is necessary. We shall have to become accustomed to these intuitive forms of thought. And we then ought to be able to find these architectural forms even coming of themselves quite originally and elementally, out of the intuitive thinking.

[ 13 ] I should like to draw your attention to something of which most people in the present day have no suspicion. It may be said that in nature there are organic forms. Structural forms are made, more or less modelled on some such organic forms in nature, structural forms which in a sense are a symbolical expression of the organic forms of nature. But nothing of that kind has been done. There is no direct prototype in nature of structural forms here. And if a man seeks for such in nature, it only shows that he has failed to understand the whole basic thought of what is in question here.

[ 14 ] To be capable of understanding an organism is a very different thing. For when a man really understands a natural organism, he then possesses a kind of thinking which is able to find organic structural forms quite independently of nature. But such forms as these must be discerned in complete independence, they must be created from out of their own form-essence. They will then, if they result from a real living structural thought, bear the nature of the organic. What then is the nature of the organic? Well, take as an example the most complicated organism, man, and then take merely the lobe of his ear; if you have the right intuitive thinking and feeling, you will say that the lobe of the ear, situated where it, is, could be no other than it is; in its place it must be just as it is. It is the right width, the right height, and is properly rounded off, and so on. And this must be so in every single form in this organically conceived Building. Each detail, in that it represents a part of the whole, must make evident in its own form that it is indispensable. The very smallest appendage in the different parts of the Building must be as manifestly indispensable as the lobe of the ear, or an arm or a hand is to the human organism.

[ 15 ] Nothing here has been copied from nature. And if these forms remind anyone of this, that or the other, it only shows that he is not judging of the Building from the standpoint of Art, but that his opinions are inartistic. If the forms in the Building remind one of anything—and what is there that people have not been reminded of—human eyebrows and eyes and so on—that only proves that he is judging of each thing on its own merit, especially; whereas each detail in the Building only has a significance in its connection with the whole and must be so understood.

The next picture shows the same, a little nearer.

[ 16 ] Below we see the entrance; facing us are the cloakrooms; and to the right and left, where the substructure extends in a circular direction, is the well of the staircase. We then go up the stairs and through the main door, by which we enter the inner building. The motive which we encounter in the main entrance is one if those organic motives to which we have been referring. If you take the various motives that are to be found on the different sides of the Building you will find that they are always formed in accordance with the organic principles of metamorphosis, so that the one always grows forth as a development of the other. For instance, look at the motive here, above the principal entrance. If you can feel it in its forms, you will feel the same form again in the motives of the window of the side-terrace, which you can distinctly see here to the South. (Figure 14) The motives of the windows are apparently quite different. But in studying them you will see that they develop out of that one over the principal Entrance in the same way as, according to Goethe's principle of Metamorphosis, the different organs of the blossom develop from the leaf. It is again a metamorphosis of the same motive. We can only develop a living thought of the Building, if we really inwardly and intuitively grasp the principle of metamorphosis.

[ 17 ] In what is attached right and left of the Principal Entrance you can see that the attempt has been made, just as it is in nature itself, to cause one motive to proceed out of another; although there has been no copying of what is organic. In every line and surface you can see that they all proceed from the same principle—like that same principle which causes the cheek to be carried from the temple of the forehead in a human face. The evolving of the cheek from the temple of the forehead might really be taken as a subject of inner study. Only while doing so we must be free from the purely intellectual ideas of the world. We must be able to view the world in forms, without beginning to symbolise. We then shall be able to see how one surface, one form, proceeds out of the other in such a way that they might really have grown forth; and besides that, they really belong to the place where they are. [ 18 ] Now in the whole of this building there is not a single thing that is mere symbol. At the time when our movement still had many people in it who were full of sectarianism and false mysticism—which tendencies indeed I had to fight over and over again—but when there were these tendencies in the different persons who came into our movement from co many different quarters, persons of artistic natures who happened to come among us were often horrified at this tendency to symbolise. These members valued a Rose-Cross, a cross with seven roses, far higher than a really artistic motive. Now in this building we may say that this has been definitely overcome and that what is really creative in a conception of the world has been expressed in forms without any transition though the symbolical.

[ 19 ] I want you to notice that in the forms, (though of course all this is only a beginning) an attempt has been made so to shape the surfaces that they lean towards the corresponding centres of support. (Kräfte-Lagen). For instance, if you go in at the principal entrance of the substructure, you will see the arches. If you study the forms of these arches you will find them so constructed that their lines follow the distribution of weight of the building. Towards the door, where the weight is less, the arch is wider; where the arch curves towards the building it bends inwards, the curve is arrested. Thus the forms of the arches correspond to the distribution of weight. If you can feel the forms in this way, you have grasped a structural thought.

[ 20 ] We now obtain a view of the North side. In the part between the principal entrance and the one wing, you can see the motive of the principal entrance in metamorphosis. There you can study the metamorphosis of the separate forms, which allows for the motive of the side-wall which is to follow. When you go in at the principal entrance the motive meets you, whereas here you pass it by. An organic structural thought should express whether a motive is one that is to meet the eye, or is to he passed by. It is the same motive, in different states of metamorphosis. Similarly that which finishes it above, which overhangs the motive—is only a metamorphosis of that which is the motive of the main portal. it is differently formed, but has only become different in the course of its metamorphosis; it is the motive of the principal entrance.

[ 21 ] Here you have the side-view of the side-terrace. In the motive of these windows, you can study how organic shapes are formed. The motive completing the windows above is precisely the same as that you have just seen over the windows and the motive over the principal entrance, only in an organic growth it is the case that metamorphosis comes about through that which in the one structure is wider and more forceful, becoming contracted and condensed in the other; what in its earlier state as in a more primitive form, extends to more ramifications. It is just in this that metamorphosis consists, and here you can see it carried out. [ 22 ] And I should like to draw attention here to the fact that in the whole building the endeavour has been made to develop structural truth, architectural truth. That is actually very little understood in the world to-day. You can here see the overcoming of the mere Renaissance idea. The setting of windows is not merely decorative, but as you see it arises from below. In the whole building there is not anything to be
found which does not convey its actual purpose.

Nothing in this building lies, whereas in the present-day conception of architecture there is an enormous amount of untruth and deception. In our civilisation there is so much untruth in our forms that it can hardly be wondered at that so much of what men say is untrue too. Here the endeavour has been made that everything shall absolutely and truthfully express what it actually is. This can never be the case in symbolism, which always contains something arbitrary. I want you to take note of this.

[ 23 ] Here we have the facade of the side terrace. You see in metamorphoses that which is above the principal entrance. Of course, you must bear in mind that whatever you see here is nothing but a new beginning. I always say over and over again, to all who will listen, that if I had to construct the building over again, it would be very different. This is just an attempt. But in its different parts you can see what we really intended, how the organic structural thought has been carried out, and how, for instance, the merely mathematical-geometrical-dynamic column formation has been developed into the organic, so that nowhere is the principle, merely of support or of burden in evidence, but everywhere the principle of growth can be seen, the coming forth of one from another. And as we shall see tomorrow, there is a marked effort to carry out this idea in the architecture of the interior.

This is the juncture seen from the side, seen from the corner.

[ 24 ] The model of the building. Here you have the picture of my original model. I wanted first of all to give you a conception of the idea one receives in approaching the building. I wanted to show you the effect it ought to produce when you walk round it. now show you the inner part, in my original model, carried out in wood and wax. This model was the basis of the whole building. You see it here cut in two through the centre. You can thus see under the great cupola.the seven columns which, in succession, encircle and enclose the auditorium. Here in the middle is the place of the Drop-Scene, and here beneath the smaller cupola you see 6 of the 12 columns which encircle that space. As here seen, the building is divided from West to East. In the East will stand the principal Group: the Representative of Humanity, in the midst of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic elements. Concerning the principle by which these columns with their capitals and architraves were constructed, I shall steak tomorrow.

[ 25 ] Here we have the ground-plan of the building, the principal entrance with the staircase on either side, the auditorium, and the space beneath the small cupola, the place in which the Mystery-plays and the Eurythmic-representations and so on, will be given. These two spaces will be divided by the curtain. On the line dividing the two will be the speaking-desk, on both sides of this dividing line are the two side-alleys, for the use of those engaged in the representations, and their dressing-rooms and so on.

[ 26 ] This ground-plan will show you that certain things were indispensable to the building. Whenever I refer to this ground-plan I am always anxious lest the actual structural thought should be misunderstood. I once gave a lecture in Dornach on this ground-plan and its form, drawing a comparison between it and the human form. Some of my listeners jumped to the conclusion that the building was a symbolical image of the human form. That is absolutely not the case; but if a man is able really to understand the human form and how on the one hand it is an instrument for thinking and on the other hand for willing and that both these are held together by the power of feeling; if he understands the whole human structure, the formation of the head, and limbs and the trunk, with the heart system as the centre, he then would also be able to construct other organic forms. And this is one of these other organic forms. On this account when one sees this and the organic form of man together, it is possible to find a certain relation between them. But there is absolutely no question of the one being modelled on the other, for the Building here is in its organic architectural form constructed from out of that which is organically creative in nature and from cosmic activity itself.

You will be able to see the same in the transverse section that I will now show you.

[ 27 ] The small cupola, as connected with the great cupola. This cut through the centre from East to West. The whole Building has but one axis of symmetry and everything is arranged in accordance with that. That necessitates the structural thought being a living one, for the more highly evolved organism develops along a certain axis. Certain lower organic forms alone evolve from the centre; and we may take it, that as a result of the attempt that has been made here, certain more perfect forms of building than the centrally constructed (Zentralbauten) ones, will be developed, because a first beginning has been made to follow the principle of organic growth along an axis.

[ 28 ] Here you have the vestibule into which one enters through the door of the substructure; and this is the stairway by which one ascends to the terrace. You see that, forming part of and attached to the balustrade of the stairs is a remarkable structure. What this actually is can perhaps only be completely grasped by one who is able to look away from everything merely intellectual, in order to see only the artistic. When this form was about to be made, I said to myself: anyone going up these stairs must have some sort of halting-place, to bring about in him the right frame of mind. Now just look at these three directions of space. But it will not suffice to look at them, you must notice how they droop over and bulge out, how weighty they are, bending over with their own weight. If you take the whole form into your feeling, they will be to you,the expression of the mood which it would be desirable for you to have when you ascend these stairs. Anyone who goes up them will have a premonition that here, in this Goetheanum Building, he will find something which will give firmness, security and strength to his life, which will give him something to his balance. One ought to have that feeling here, for simply from that feeling did the form arise. I might say that besides this, one should feel that the form must be what it is, for although it is not slavishly copied from them, it does resemble the three semi-circular canals which form the small auditory bone of the human ear. If this organ of the human ear is injured a man falls, he loses his balance. It is an organ of balance in the human organism, a diminutive organ of balance.

[ 29 ] Now one cannot help feeling that there must be something here to help us to enter the Hall in a properly balanced frame of mind. This is no puzzled-out idea, it has been really felt. If one takes it as a thought-out thing, it will be his own fault, for it shows he has begun by reflecting and digging down and speculating. There should be no question of speculating or puzzling out, but of feeling the heavy pressure of the overhanging weight of feeling the form and in so doing, of arousing the mood that may come over one while mounting these stairs.

[ 30 ] Here is one of those vaulted arches which can only be understood by organic structural thinking. If you stand here in the Building and feel the Building, that is, feel how you come in or out there, and how you go up the stairs, meeting all the weighty pressure of the whole Building, you will then feel this curve is expressed exactly as it should be: while at the same time you will feel what the whole structure means. The attempt has here been made to give over to the organic the work that is generally done by columns or pillars. There is nothing in this but the feeling for form that comes when one intuitively feels the supporting strength, which this particular form must convey. If anyone is reminded of an elephant or a horse's hoof he may be so but, that only shows that he does not consider it from an artistic point of view, but merely an imitative one. What is important here is the being able to feel that weight has to be supported, while that which is to bear it grows into this form, develops into it, and that this arch could curve in any other direction but this. It is not a question of copying anything, but of trying to feel the weight-carrying, weight-bearing forces, and of moulding such forces as are able to bear weight.

[ 31 ] In the ordinary-structural-conception the geometrical-mechanical-dynamic weight-bearing and carrying, is the only feeling one has. But here in every surface and line should he expressed in the structures, the beginning of the feeling for life. If the things I have mentioned do away with all that is merely speculation, you will have understood the subject in the right way.

[ 32 ] To-morrow we will continue and pass from the outer to the inner architecture. I believe that when all that underlies the conception of our Building is made known to the world, and it is shown that here something really new in the way of artistic forms is growing out of the Anthroposophical conception, we shall be able to arouse a feeling for all that is being done not only in this line, but also in regard to the social question.

Rudolf Steiner: Good morning, gentlemen! A number of questions have been handed in, which lead up in quite an interesting way to what we want to discuss today. Someone has asked:

“How did man's cultural development come about?” I will consider this in connection with a second question:

“Why did primitive man have such a strong belief in the spirit?”

It is certainly interesting to investigate how human beings lived in earlier times. As you know, even from a superficial view there are two opposing opinions about this. One is that man was originally at a high level of perfection, from which he has fallen to his present imperfect state. We don't need to take exception to this, or to be concerned with the way different peoples have interpreted this perfection—some talking of paradise, some of other things. But until a short time ago the belief existed that man was originally perfect and gradually degenerated to his present state of imperfection. The other view is the one you've probably come to know as supposedly the only true one, namely, that man was originally imperfect, like some kind of higher animal, and that he gradually evolved to greater and greater perfection. You know how people point to the primitive conditions prevailing among the savage peoples—the so-called savage peoples—in trying to form an idea of what man could have been like when he still resembled an animal. People say: We Europeans and the Americans are highly civilized, while in Africa, Australia, and so on, there still live uncivilized races at their original stage, or at least at a stage very near the original. From these one can study what humanity was like originally.

But, gentlemen, this is making far too simple a picture of human evolution. First of all, it is not true that all civilized peoples imagine man to have been a physically perfect being originally. The people of India are certainly not much in agreement with opinions of our modern materialists, and yet, even so, their conception is that the physical man who went about on the earth in primitive times looked like an animal. Indeed, when the Indians, the wise men of India, speak of man in his original state on earth, they speak of the ape-like Hanuman. So you see, it is not true that even people with a spiritual world view picture primeval man similarly to the way we imagine him in paradise. And in fact, it is not so.

We must rather have a clear knowledge that man is a being who bears within him body, soul, and spirit, with each of these three parts undergoing its own particular evolution. Naturally, if people have no thought of spirit, they can't speak of the evolution of spirit. But once we acknowledge that a human being consists of body, soul, and spirit, we can go on to ask how the body evolves, how the soul evolves, and how the spirit evolves. When we speak of the human body we will have to say: Man's body has gradually been perfected from lower stages. We must also say that the evidence we have for this provides us with living proof. As I have already pointed out, we find original man in the strata of the earth, exhibiting a very animal-like body—not indeed like any present animal but nevertheless animal-like, and this must have developed gradually to its present state of perfection. There is no question, therefore, of spiritual science as pursued here at the Goetheanum coming to loggerheads with natural science, for it simply accepts the truths of natural science.

On the other hand, gentlemen, we must be able to recognize that in the period of time of only three or four thousand years ago, views prevailed from which we can learn a great deal and which we also can't help but admire. When we are guided by genuine knowledge in seriously studying and understanding the writings that appeared in India, Asia, Egypt, and even Greece, we find that the people of those times were far ahead of us. What they knew, however, was acquired in quite a different way from the way we acquire knowledge today.

Today there are many things we know very little about. For instance, from what I have told you in connection with nutrition you will have seen how necessary it is for spiritual science to come to people's aid in the simplest nutritional matters. Natural science is unable to do so. But we have only to read what physicians of old had to say, and rightly understand it, to become aware that actually people up to the time of, for instance, Hippocrates¹² in Greece knew far more than is known by our modern materialistic physicians. We come to respect, deeply respect, the knowledge once possessed. The only thing is, gentlemen, that knowledge was not then imparted in the same form as it is today. Today we express our knowledge in concepts. This was not so with ancient peoples; they clothed their knowledge in poetical imaginations, so that what remained of it is now just taken figuratively as poetry. It was not poetry to those men of old; that was their way of expressing what they knew. Thus we find when we are able to test and thoroughly study the documents still existing, that there can no longer be any question of original humanity being undeveloped spiritually. They may once have gone about in animal-like bodies, but in spirit they were infinitely wiser than we are!

But there is something else to remember. You see, when man went about in primeval times, he acquired great wisdom spiritually. His face was more or less what we would certainly call animal-like, whereas today in man's face his spirit finds expression; now his spirit is, as it were, embodied in the physical substance of his face. This, gentlemen, is a necessity if man is to be free, if he is to be a free being. These clever men of ancient times were very wise; but they possessed wisdom in the way the animal today possesses instinct. They lived in a dazed condition, as if in a cloud. They wrote without guiding their own hand. They spoke with the feeling that it was not they who were speaking but the spirit speaking through them. In those primeval times, therefore, there was no question of man being free.

This is something in the history of culture that constitutes a real step forward for the human race: that man acquired consciousness, that he is a free being. He no longer feels the spirit driving him as instinct drives the animal. He feels the spirit actually within him, and this distinguishes him from the man of former times.

When from this point of view we consider the savages of today, it must strike us that the men of primeval times—called in the question here primitive men—were not like the modern savages, but that the latter have, of course, descended from the former, from the primeval men. You will get a better idea of this evolution if I tell you the following.

In certain regions there are people who have the idea that if they bury some small thing belonging to a sick person—for instance, bury a shirttail of his in the cemetery—that this can have the magical effect of healing him. I have even known such people personally. I knew one person who, at the time the Emperor Frederick¹³ was ill (when he was still Crown Prince—you know all about that), wrote to the Empress (as she was later), asking for the shirttails belonging to her husband. He would bury them in the cemetery and the Emperor would then be cured. You can imagine how this request was received. But the man had simply done what he thought would lead to the Emperor's recovery. He himself told me about it, adding that it would have been much less foolish to let him have that shirttail than to send for the English Doctor Mackenzie, and so on; that had been absurd—they should have given him the shirttail.

Now when this kind of thing comes to the notice of a materialist he says: That's a superstition which has sprung up somewhere. At some time or other someone got it into his head that burying the shirttails of a sick man in the cemetery and saying a little prayer over it would cure the man.

Gentlemen, nothing has ever arisen in that way. No superstition arises by being thought out. It comes about in an entirely different way. There was once a time when people had great reverence for their dead and said to themselves: So long as a man is going about on earth he is a sinful being; beside doing good things he does many bad things. But, they thought, the dead man lives on as soul and spirit, and death makes up for all deficiencies. Thus when they thought of the dead, they thought of what was good, and by thinking of the dead they tried to make themselves better.

Now it is characteristic of human beings to forget easily. Just think how quickly those who have left us—the dead—are forgotten today! In earlier times there were persons who would give their fellowman various signs to make them think of the dead and thus to improve them. Someone in a village would think that if a man was ill, the other villagers should look after him. It was certainly not the custom to collect sick pay; that kind of thing is a modern invention. In those days the villagers all helped one another out of kindness; everyone had to think of those who were ill. The leading man in the village might say: People are egoists, so they have no thought of the sick unless they are encouraged to get out of themselves and have thoughts, for instance, of the dead. So he would tell them they should take—well, perhaps the shirttail of the sick man by which to remember him, and they should bury this in the earth, then they would surely remember him. By thinking of the dead they would remember to take care of someone living. This outer deed was contrived simply to help people's memory.

Later, people forgot the reason for this and it was put down to magic, superstition. This happens with very much that lives on as superstition; it has arisen from something perfectly reasonable. What is perfect never arises from what is imperfect. The assertion that something perfect can come from what is not perfect appears to anyone with insight as if it were said: You're to make a table, but you must make it as clumsy and unfinished as you can to begin with, so that it may in time become a perfect table. But things don't happen that way. We never get a well-made table from one that is ill-made. The table begins by being a good one and becomes battered in the course of time. And that's the way it happens outside in nature too, anywhere in the world. You first have things in a perfect state, then out of them comes the imperfect. It is the same with the human being: his spirit in the beginning, though lacking freedom, was in a certain state of perfection. But his body—it is true—was imperfect. And yet precisely in this lay the body's perfection: it was soft and therefore capable of being formed by the spirit so that cultural progress could be made.

So you see, gentlemen, we are not justified in thinking that human beings were originally like the savages of today. The savages have developed into what they now are—with their superstitions, their magical practices and their unclean appearance-from states originally more perfect. The only superiority we have over them is that, while starting from the same conditions, we did not degenerate as they did. I might therefore say: The evolution of man has taken two paths. It is not true that the savages of today represent the original condition of mankind. Mankind, though to begin with it looked more animal-like, was highly civilized.

Now perhaps you will ask: But were those original animal-like men the descendants of apes or of other animals? That is a natural question. You look at the apes as they are today and say: We are descended from those apes. Ah! but when human beings had their animal form, there were no such animals as our present apes! Men have not descended, therefore, from the apes. On the contrary! Just as the present savages have fallen from the level of the human beings of primeval times, so the apes are beings who have fallen still lower.

On going back further in the evolution of the earth, we find human beings formed in the way I described here recently, out of a soft element-not out of our present animals. Human beings can never evolve out of the apes of today. On the other hand it could easily be possible that if conditions prevailing on earth today continue, conditions in which everything is based on violence and power, and wisdom counts for nothing—well, it could indeed happen that the men who want to found everything on power would gradually take on animal-like bodies again, and that two races would then appear. One race would be those who stand for peace, for the spirit, and for wisdom, while the other would be those who revert to an animal form. It might indeed be said that those who care nothing today for the progress of mankind, for spiritual realities, may be running the risk of degenerating into an ape species.

You see, all manner of strange things are experienced today. Of course, what newspapers report is largely untrue, but sometimes it shows the trend of people's thinking in a remarkable way. During our recent trip to Holland we bought an illustrated paper, and on the last page there was a curious picture: a child, a small child, really a baby—and as its nurse, taking care of it, bringing it up, an ape, an orangutan. There it was, holding the baby quite properly, and it was to be engaged, the paper said,—somewhere in America, of course—as a nursemaid.

Now it is possible that this may not yet be actual fact, but it shows what some people are fancying: they would like to use apes today as nursemaids. And if apes become nursemaids, gentlemen, what an outlook for mankind! Once it is discovered that apes can be employed to look after children—it is, of course, possible to train them to do many things; the child will have to suffer for it, but the ape could be so trained: in certain circumstances it could be trained to look after the physical needs of children—well, then people will carry the idea further and the social question will be on a new level. You will see far-reaching proposals for breeding apes and putting them to work in factories. Apes will be found to be cheaper than men, hence this will be looked upon as the solution of the social problem. If people really succeed in having apes look after their children—well, we'll be deluged by pamphlets on how to solve the social question by breeding apes!

It is indeed conceivable that this might easily happen. Only think: other animals beside apes can be trained to do many things. Dogs, for instance, are very teachable. But the question is whether this will be for the advance or the decline of civilization. Civilization will most definitely decline. It will deteriorate. The children brought up by ape-nurses will quite certainly become ape-like. Then indeed we shall have perfection changing into imperfection. We must realize clearly that it is indeed possible for certain human beings to have an ape-like nature in the future, but that the human race in the past was never such that mankind evolved from the ape. For when man still had an animal form—quite different indeed from that of the ape—the present apes were not yet in existence. The apes themselves are degenerate beings; they have fallen from a higher stage.

When we consider those primitive peoples who may be said to have been rich in spirit but animal-like in body, we find they were still undeveloped in reason, in intelligence—the faculty of which we are so proud. Those men of ancient times were not capable of thinking. Hence, when anyone today who prides himself particularly on his thinking comes across ancient documents, he looks for them to be based on thought—and looks in vain. He says, therefore: This is all very beautiful, but it's simply poetry. But, gentlemen, we can't judge everything by our own standards alone, for then we go astray. That ancient humanity had, above all, great powers of imagination, an imagination that worked like an instinct. When we today use our imagination we often pull ourselves up and think: Imagination has no place in what is real. This is quite right for us today, but the men of primeval times, primitive men, would never have been able to carry on without imagination.

Now it will seem strange to you how this lively imagination possessed by primitive men could have been applied to anything real. But here too we have wrong conceptions. In your history books at school you will have read about the tremendous importance for human evolution that is accorded to the invention of paper. The paper we write on—made of rags—has been in existence for only a few centuries. Before that, people had to write on parchment, which has a different origin. Only at the end of the Middle Ages did someone discover the possibility of making paper from the fibers of plants, fibers worn threadbare after having first been used for clothes. Human beings were late in acquiring the intellect that was needed for making this paper.

But the same thing (except that it is not as white as we like it for our black ink) was discovered long ago. The same stuff as is used for our present paper was discovered not just two or three thousand years ago but many, many thousands of years before our day. By whom, then? Not by human beings at all, but by wasps! Just look at any wasp's nest you find hanging in a tree. Look at the material it consists of—paper! Not white paper, not the kind you write on, for the wasps are not yet in the habit of writing, otherwise they would have made white paper, but such paper as you might use for a package. We do have a drab-colored paper for packages that is just what the wasps use for making their nests. The wasps found out how to make paper thousands and thousands of years ago, long before human beings arrived at it through their intellect.

The difference is that instinct works in animals while in the man of primeval times it was imagination; they would have been incapable of making anything if imagination had not enabled them to do so, for they lacked intelligence. We must therefore conclude that in outward appearance these primeval men were more like animals than are the men of today, but to a certain extent they were possessed by the spirit, the spirit worked in them. It was not they who possessed the spirit through their own powers, they were possessed by it and their souls had great power of imagination. With imagination they made their tools; imagination helped them in all they did, and enabled them to make everything they needed.

We, gentlemen, are terribly proud of all our inventions, but we should consider whether we really have cause to be so; for much of what constitutes the greatness of our culture has actually developed from quite simple ideas. Listen to this, for instance: When you read about the Trojan War, do you realize when it took place?—about 1200 years before the founding of Christianity. Now when we hear about wars like that—which didn't take place in Greece, but far away, over there in Asia—well, hearing the outcome the next day in Greece by telegram, as we would now do: that, gentlemen, didn't happen in those days! Today if we receive a telegram, the Post Office dispatches it to us. Naturally this didn't happen at that time in Greece, for the Greeks had no telegraph. What then could they do? Well, now look, the war was over here in one place; then there was the sea and an island, a mountain and again sea; over there another island, a mountain and then sea; and so on, till you came to Greece—here Asia, sea, and here in the midst, Greece. It was agreed that when the war was ended three fires would be kindled on the mountains. Whoever was posted on the nearest mountain was to give the first signal by running up and lighting three fires. The watch on the next mountain, upon seeing the three fires, lit three fires in his turn; the next watchman again three fires; and in this way the message arrived in Greece in quite a short time. This was their method of sending a telegram. It was done like that. It's a simple way of telegraphing. It worked fast—and before the days of the telegram people had to make do with this.

And how is it today? When you telephone—not telegraph but telephone—I will show you in the simplest possible way what happens. We have a kind of magnet which, it is true, is produced by electricity; and we have something called an armature. When the circuit is closed, this is pulled close; when the circuit is open, the armature is released, and thus it oscillates back and forth. It is connected by a wire with a plate, which vibrates with it and transmits what is generated by the armature—in just the same way as in those olden times the three fires conveyed messages to men. This is rather more complicated, and, of course, electricity has been used in applying it, but it is still the same idea.

When we hear such things we must surely respect what the human beings of those ancient times devised and organized out of their imaginative faculty. And when we read the old documents with this feeling we must surely say: Those men accomplished great things on a purely spiritual level and all out of imagination. To come to a thorough realization of this you need only to consider what people believe today. They believe they know something about the old Germanic gods—Wotan, Loki, for instance. You find pictures of them in human form in books: Wotan with a flowing beard; Loki looking like a devil, with red hair, and so on. It is thought that the men of old, the ancient Germans, had the same ideas about Wotan and Loki. But that is not true. The men of old had rather the following conception: When the wind blows, there is something spiritual in it—which is indeed true—and that is Wotan blowing in the wind. They never imagined that when they went into the woods, they would meet Wotan there in the guise of an ordinary man. To describe a meeting with Wotan they would have spoken of the wind blowing through the woods. This can still be felt in the very word Wotan by anyone who is sensitive to these things. And Loki—they had no image of Loki sitting quietly in a corner staring stupidly; Loki lived in the fire!

Indeed, in various ways the people were always talking about Wotan and Loki. Someone would say, for instance: When you go over the mountain, you may meet Wotan. He will make you either strong or weak, whichever you deserve. That is how people felt, how they understood these things. Today one says that's just superstition. But in those times they didn't understand it to be so. They knew: When you go up there to that corner so difficult to reach, you don't meet a man in a body like any ordinary man. But the very shape of the mountain gives rise to a special whirlwind in that place, and a special kind of air is wafted up to that corner from an abyss. If you withstand this and keep to your path, you may become well or you may become ill. In what way you become well or ill, the people were ready to tell; they were in harmony with nature and would speak not in an intellectual way but out of their imagination. Your modern doctor would try to express himself intellectually: If you have a tendency to tuberculosis, go up to a certain height on the mountain and sit there every day. Continue to do this for some time, for it will be most beneficial. That is the intellectual way of talking. But if you speak imaginatively you say: Wotan is always to be found in that high corner; if you visit him at a certain time every day for a couple of weeks, he will help you.

This is the way people coped with life out of their imagination. They worked in this way, too. Surely at some time or other you have all been far out in the country where threshing is not done by machine but is still being done by hand. You can hear the people threshing in perfect rhythm. They know that when they have to thresh for days at a time, if they go at their work without any order, just each one on his own, they will very soon be overcome by exhaustion. Threshing can't be done that way. If, however, they work rhythmically, all keeping time together, exhaustion is avoided—because their rhythm is then in harmony with the rhythm of their breathing and circulation. It even makes a difference whether they strike their flail on the out-breathing or the in-breathing or whether they do it as they are changing over from one to the other. Now why is this? You can see that it has nothing to do with intellect, for today this old way of threshing is almost unheard of. Everything of that kind is being wiped out. But in the past, all work was done rhythmically and out of imagination. The beginnings of human culture developed out of rhythm.

Now I don't suppose you really think that if you take a chunk of wood and some bits of string and fool about with them in some amateurish fashion, you'll suddenly have a violin. A violin comes about when mind, when spirit, is exerted, when the wood is carefully shaped in a particular way, when the string is put through a special process, and so forth. We have to say then: These primeval people, who were not yet thinking for themselves, could attribute the way machines were originally made only to the spirit that possessed them, that worked in them. Therefore, these people, working not out of the intellect, but out of their imagination, naturally tended to speak of the spirit everywhere.

When today someone constructs a machine by the work of his intellect, he does not say that the spirit helped him—and rightly so. But when a man of those early times who knew nothing about thinking, who had no capacity for, thinking, when that man constructed something, he felt immediately: the spirit is helping me.

It happened therefore that when the Europeans, those “superior” humans, first arrived in America and also later, in the nineteenth century, when they came to the regions where Indians such as belonged to ancient times were still living, these Indians spoke of (it was possible to find out what they were saying) the “Great Spirit” ruling everywhere. These primitive men have always continued to speak in this way of the Being ruling in everything. It was this “Great Spirit” that was venerated particularly by the human beings living in Atlantean times when there was still land between Europe and America; the Indians retained this veneration, and knew nothing as yet of intellect. They then came gradually to know the “superior” men before being exterminated by them. They came to know the Europeans' printed paper on which there were little signs which they took to be small devils. They abhorred the paper and the little signs, for these were intellectual in origin, and a man whose activities arise out of imagination abominates what comes from the intellect.

Now the European with his materialistic civilization knows how to construct a locomotive. The intellectual method by which he constructs his engine could never have been the way the ancient Greeks would have set about it, for the Greeks still lacked intellect. Intellect first came to man in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The Greeks would have carried out their construction with the help of their imagination. Since the Greeks ascribed all natural forms to good spirits and all that is not nature, all that is artificially produced, to bad spirits, they would have said: An evil spirit lives in the locomotive. They would certainly have contrived their construction from imagination; nothing else would ever have occurred to them than that they were being aided by the spirit.

Therefore, gentlemen, you see that we have actually to ascribe a lofty spirit to the original, primitive human being; for imagination is of a far more spiritual nature in the human soul than the mere intellect that is prized so highly today.

Former conditions, however, can never come back. We have to go forward—but not with the idea that what exists today in the animal as pure instinct could ever have developed into spirit. We ought not, therefore, to picture primitive men as having been possessed of mere instinct. They knew that it was the spirit working in them. That is why they had, as we say nowadays, such a strong belief in the spirit.

Perhaps this contributes a little to our understanding of how human culture has evolved. Also, we must concede that the people are right who contend that human beings have arisen from animal forms, for so indeed they have—but not from such forms as the present animals, for these forms only came into being later when humanity was already in existence. The early animal-like forms of man which gradually developed in the course of human evolution into his present form, together with the faculties which he already had at that time, came about because man's spiritual entity was originally more perfect than it is today—not in terms of intellect but of imagination. We have to remember always that this original perfection was due to the fact that man was not free; man was, as it were, possessed by the spirit. Only intellect enables man to become free. By means of his intellect man can become free.

You see, anyone who works with his intellect can say: now at a certain hour I'm going to think out such and such a thing. This can't be done by a poet, for even today a poet still works out of his imagination. Goethe was a great poet. Sometimes when someone asked him to write a poem or when he himself felt inclined to do so, he sat himself down to write one at a certain time—and, well, the result was pitiful! That people are not aware of this today comes simply from their inability to distinguish good poetry from bad. Among Goethe's poems there are many bad ones. Imaginative work can be done only when the mood for it is there, and when the mood has seized a poet, he must write the poem down at once. And that's how it was in the case of primeval humans. They were never able to do things out of free will. Free will developed gradually-but not wisdom. Wisdom was originally greater than free will and it must now regain its greatness. That means, we have to come back to the spirit by way of the intellect.

And that, you see, is the task of anthroposophy. It has no wish to do what would please many people, that is, to bring primitive conditions back to humanity-ancient Indian wisdom, for example. It is nonsense when people harp on that. Anthroposophy, on the other hand, sets value on a return to the spirit, but a return to the spirit precisely in full possession of the intellect, with the intellect fully alive. It is important, gentlemen, and must be borne strictly in mind, that we have nothing at all against the intellect; rather, the point is that we have to go forward with it. Originally human beings had spirit without intellect; then the spirit gradually fell away and the intellect increased. Now, by means of the intellect, we have to regain the spirit. Culture is obliged to take this course.

If it does not do so—well, gentlemen, people are always saying that the World War was unlike anything ever experienced before, and it is indeed a fact that men have never before so viciously torn one another to pieces. But if men refuse to take the course of returning to the spirit and bringing their intellect with them, then still greater wars will come upon us, wars that will become more and more savage. Men will really destroy one another as the two rats did that, shut up together in a cage, gnawed at each other till there was nothing left of them but two tails. That is putting it rather brutally, but in fact mankind is on the way to total extermination. It is very important to know this.

• 12. Hippocrates of Cos, 460–377 BC. Greek physician, founder of ancient medicine.
• 13. Emperor Frederick III, 1831–1888. Suffered from a disease of the larynx. It is not known who wrote the request.

A number of questions have been handed in, which can lead in a quite interesting way to what we are going to discuss today. Someone has asked: “What has man's cultural development arisen from?” I am going to consider this in connection with this second question: “Why did primitive man have such a strong belief in the spirit?”

It is certainly interesting to ask how men of former times have lived, and about this, as you know, even looking superficially at the matter, there are two opinions. One opinion is that originally man was at a high level of perfection from which he has fallen to his present imperfect state. We need not have any particular objection to this nor concern ourselves about the various ways the different peoples have interpreted this perfection—some talking of Paradise, others of other things. But until a short time ago the opinion held good that man was originally perfect, degenerating to his present state of imperfection gradually. The other view you have probably come to think of as the only true one, namely that man was originally imperfect, like some kind of higher animal, and evolved gradually to greater perfection. You know how people try to draw upon the primitive condition prevailing among savage peoples—or so-called savage peoples'—in order to get some idea of what man could have been when he still resembled an animal. It is said: We in Europe and the people of America are highly civilized, whereas in Africa, Australia, and so on, there live still uncivilized races at their original stage, or at least at a stage very near the original. From these it is possible to make a study of what people were to begin with.

But, curiously, in this way people are making far too simple a picture of man's evolution. To begin with, it is not at all true that, for example, all civilized peoples imagined that man as a physical being was originally perfect. The Indians are certainly not of the opinion held by modern materialists, but, even so, their conception is that the physical man who used to go about on earth in primitive times looked like an animal. When the Indians, the wise men of India, speak of man in his original earthly state, they talk of the ape-like Hanuman. So you see it is not at all true that people with a spiritual world-conception always imagine that originally men were in some way as people today imagine them to have been, that is, of a paradisian nature, for indeed it is not so. We have, rather, to be clear that man is a being who bears within him body, soul, and spirit, each member going through its own particular evolution. Naturally, when people do not speak of spirit, they cannot speak of the evolution of spirit. But once we admit that man consists of body, soul, and spirit, we can go on to ask in what way the body develops, in what way the soul and in what way the spirit evolve. If we are to speak of man's body then we shall say: Man's body has gradually been perfected from lower stages. We must also say that the evidence we have provides us with actual proof of this. As I have already pointed out, in the strata of the earth we find the original man exhibiting a very animal-like body—not indeed like any animal we have today, but animal-like, and this must have developed gradually to its present state of perfection. There is no question, therefore, of spiritual science as pursued here at the Goetheanum coming to loggerheads with natural science, for the truths of natural science are accepted by it.

On the other hand, we must come once more to recognize that in those times—which may be said to be only about three or four thousand years ago—views we re current from which today we not only can learn a great deal but which we are obliged to admire. When today we have a certain amount of relevant knowledge and study with real understanding the documents that have appeared in India, Asia, Egypt, or even in Greece, we find the people in those times far in advance of us. What they knew, however, was acquired in a quite different way from how we acquire knowledge today.

Today there are many things we know very little about. For example, from what I have shown you in connection with nutrition, you will have seen how necessary it is for spiritual science to come to our aid in the simplest nutritional matters. Physical science is unable to do so. But we have only to read what physicians of old had to say, and rightly understand it, to become aware that in reality people up to the time of Hippocrates in Greece knew far more than is known by our modern materialistic physicians. We grow to respect, deeply respect, the knowledge once possessed. The only thing is that knowledge was not imparted in the same form as it is today. Today we clothe our knowledge in concepts. This was not so in the case of ancient peoples; they clothed their knowledge in poetical imaginations, so that anything of it remaining to us is now just taken figuratively—as poetry. It was not poetry to those men of old, however; it was their way of expressing what they knew. Thus we find that when we are able to test and thoroughly to study the documents still existing, there can no longer be any question of men originally having been undeveloped spiritually. In spirit they are infinitely wiser than we are!

But there is another thing that has to be remembered. When men of primeval times went about he acquired great wisdom spiritually. His face was more or less what we should certainly call animal-like, whereas today in man's face his spirit finds expression, his spirit is as it were incorporated in the physical substance of his face. This, is a necessity if man is to be free, if he is to be a free being. These clever men of yore, the clever men of primeval times, were very wise but they possessed wisdom in the way the animal today possesses instinct. They lived in a dazed condition, as if in a cloud. They wrote without guiding their own hand; they spoke with the feeling that it was not they who were speaking but the spirit speaking through them. In those primeval times, therefore, there was no question of man being free.

This is something in the history of culture which constitutes a real step forward for the human race—this consciousness man has of his freedom. With it he no longer feels the spirit driving him as instinct drives the animal; he feels the spirit actually within him, and this distinguishes him from the man of former times.

When we consider from this point of view the savages of today, it must strike us that the men of primeval times—called in our question here primitive men—were not like the modern savages, but that these have descended from the primeval men. You will get a better idea of this if I tell you the following.

In certain districts there are people who harbour the notion that when they bury in the earth some little thing belonging to a sick person—for example, a corner of his shirt—that this can have the magical effect of healing him. I have even personally known such people. I knew one who, at the time the Emperor Frederick was ill, wrote to the Empress asking for a piece of shirt belonging to her husband. It would be buried in the cemetery and the Emperor Frederick would then be cured! You can imagine how this request was received. But the man had simply done what he thought would lead to the Emperor's recovery. He himself told me about it, adding that it would have been much less foolish to have let him have the piece of shirt than to have sent for the English doctor Mackenzie, and so on. That had been absurd—they should have sent him the piece of shirt.

When this kind of thing comes to the notice of a materialistic thinker, he says: This is a superstition that has arisen somewhere. At one time or other, a man or several men got the notion that burying part of a sick man's shirt and saying a little prayer over it would cure the man.

But nothing has ever arisen in this way. No superstition arises by being thought out; it comes about in quite a different way. There was once a time when people had great reverence for their dead and said to themselves: So long as a man is going about on earth he is a sinful being; besides doing good things, he does many that are bad. But—so they thought—the dead man goes on living in his soul and spirit and in death makes up for all deficiencies. Thus when they thought of the dead they thought of what was good, and by thinking of the dead they tried to make themselves better.

Now it is characteristic of human beings to forget easily. Just think how quickly the dead, those who have left us, are forgotten today. At that time, there were those who wanted to give their fellowman various signs to make them think of the dead, and thus to benefit their own health. Let us say someone in some village had the idea that if a man was ill, the other villagers should look after him. It was not the custom in villages to collect money for the sick, there were no poor-boxes, that kind of thing is a modern invention. At that time the villagers all had to help one another out of kindness; everyone had to think of those who were ill. The leading man in the village said: Because people are egoists they have no thought of the sick if they are not spurred on to get out of themselves and have thoughts, for instance, of the dead. So he told them they should take, perhaps, a corner of the sick man's shirt by which to remember him, and this was to be buried in the earth; through this they would remember the sick man. By thinking of the dead, they would remember to take care of someone. This outward deed was contrived simply to help man's memory. Later, people forgot the reason for all this and it was put down to magic, superstition. This is o in the case of a great deal that lives on as superstition; it has arisen from something perfectly reasonable. What is perfect never arises from what is imperfect. The assertion that something perfect can come from what is not so appears to anyone with insight as if it were said: You are to make a table, but you must make it as clumsy and unfinished as you can to begin with, so that it may in time become a perfect table. But it is not like that; we never get a well-made table from one that is ill-made. The table begins by being a good one and becomes battered in course of time. It is like that, too, outside in nature, anywhere in the world. You must first have things in a perfect state, out of which comes the imperfect. It is the same in the case of the human being whose spirit to begin with, though still lacking freedom, was in a certain state of perfection, but whose body, it is true, was imperfect. On the other hand the perfection of the body lay in its being soft and capable of being so moulded by the spirit that cultural progress could ensue.

So you see we are not justified in thinking that human beings were originally like the savages of today. Savages have developed into what they now are—with their superstitions, their magical practices, and their unclean appearance—from states originally more perfect. The only advantage we have over the savages is that, starting from the same conditions, we have not degenerated as they have. I might therefore say: The evolution of man has taken two different paths. It is not true that the savages of today represent the original condition of mankind. The men who, to begin with, looked more animal-like were highly civilised.

Now when you ask: But are these original, animal-like men the descendants of apes or of other animals? it is a quite natural question. You look at the apes as they are today and say: From these apes, men are descended. That is all very well but when human beings had this animal form, there were no such animals as our present apes! From apes as they are today, therefore, men have not descended. On the contrary, just as our present savages have fallen from the level of the human beings of primeval times, so the apes are beings who have fallen still lower. On going back further in the evolution of the earth we find human beings formed in the way I described here a short while ago, from a soft element and not from any animals as we have them. Human beings have never arisen from the kind of apes we now have. On the other hand, it might easily be possible that if conditions prevailing on earth today, conditions in which everything is based on authority and power—and wisdom counts for nothing—it might indeed happen that the men who thus want to found everything on power gradually take on animal-like bodies again, and that two great races may arise. One race would consist of those who stand for peace, for the spirit and for wisdom, whereas the other would be made up of those who re-assume animal forms. It might indeed be said that those who care nothing today for the progress of mankind may be running the risk of degenerating into apes.

You see, all manner of strange things are experienced today. What newspapers say is, of course, largely untrue, but sometimes in a quite remarkable way it shows the trend of man's thinking. During our recent travels in Holland, we bought an illustrated paper. On the last page of this paper there was a curious picture—a small child, quite a baby and its nurse, looking after it, an ape, an orang-utan. It was holding the child quite properly, and it was said to be installed somewhere in America as children's nurse.

It is possible that this may not be actual fact—as yet, but it shows what many people are hoping for: apes installed as nursemaids. And if apes are employed in this capacity, what an outlook for man! Once it has been discovered that apes can be employed to look after children, that in certain circumstances an ape can be trained to look after the physical needs of children—then people will develop this strange desire and the social question will be on a new level. For you will soon see what far-reaching proposals will be made for teaching apes in this way; they will be sent to work in the factories. Apes will be found to be cheaper than men, hence this will be looked upon as the solution of the social problem. If people really succeed in making apes look after children, we shall be inundated by pamphlets on how to solve the social question by training apes.

It is indeed conceivable that this might happen. Think—other animals besides apes can be trained to do many things; dogs, for instance, are very teachable. But the question is whether this will be for the advance or decline of civilization. Civilization will most definitely decline; it will deteriorate. The children brought up by ape-nurses will quite certainly become apelike. Then indeed we shall have the perfect changing into the imperfect. Thus we must be clear that it is possible for certain human beings to become of an ape-like nature in the future, but that the human race in the past was never such that men developed from the ape-like. For when man still had an animal-form (quite different indeed from that of the ape) the present ape was not yet in existence. They themselves have deteriorated; they have fallen from a higher stage.

When we turn to those primitive peoples who may be said to have been rich in spirit but animal-like in body, we find they were still undeveloped as far as understanding, intelligence, goes. Those men of ancient times were not capable of thinking. Hence, when anyone today who prides himself particularly on his thinking comes across ancient documents, he looks for them to be based on thought and looks in vain. He therefore says: This is all very beautiful but simply poetry. But indeed we cannot judge everything by our own standards alone, for then we go astray. Those men of yore had above all great powers of imagination, imagination that worked like instinct. When today we use our imagination we often pull ourselves up, saying: Imagination has no place in what is real. This is quite right for us today, but the men of primeval times, primitive men, would never have been able to carry on without imagination.

It will seem strange to you how this lively imagination possessed by primitive men could have been applied to anything real. However, here too we have wrong conceptions. In your school history books you will have read about the tremendous importance for man's evolution attached to the invention of a paper made from rag. The paper we use for writing—which is made of rag—has been in existence for only a few centuries. Before that, people had to write on parchment which has a different origin. Only at the end of the Middle Ages did men discover the possibility of making paper from fibre coming from plants—worn threadbare after having first been used for clothes. Human beings were late in acquiring intellect which was needed for making this paper. But the same thing—except that it is not white as we want it for our black ink—was discovered long before. The same stuff that is used now for our paper was discovered not just two or three thousand years ago but very many thousands of years before our day. By whom then? Not by human beings at all, but by wasps! Look at any wasps' nest you find hanging on a tree. Look at the material it consists of—paper! Not, however, white paper, not the kind you write on, for the wasps have not learned to write, otherwise they would have made white paper, but such paper as you might use for a parcel. We have indeed a drab-coloured paper for parcels which is just what the wasps use for making nests. The wasps found out how to make paper thousands of years ago, long before human beings arrived at it by means of their intellect. The difference is that instinct works in animals whereas in the man of primeval times it was imagination; they would have been incapable of making anything had not imagination enabled them to do so, for they lacked intelligence. We must therefore conclude that in outward appearance these primeval men were more like animals than are the men of today, but to a certain extent they were possessed by the spirit, the spirit was working in them. It was not they who possessed it through their own powers, they were possessed by it and their souls had great powers of imagination. With imagination they made their tools; imagination helped them in all they did, enabled them to make everything they needed.

We are terribly proud of all our inventions, but we should consider whether we really have cause to be so; for much of what constitutes the greatness of our culture has actually arisen from quite simple ideas. For example: when you read about the Trojan War—do you realize when the Trojan War took place? About 1200 years before the founding of Christianity. Now when we hear about wars like this which didn't take place in Greece, but far away in Asia, it did not happen in those days that the result was known in Greece the next day by telegram S Naturally at that time this did not happen for the Greeks had no electric telegraph. What then did they do? Look, (drawing) the war was over here, this was sea, here was an island, there a mountain, and there again sea, over here an island, a mountain and then sea, and so on till you came to Greece. It was agreed that when the war was over, three fires should be kindled on the mountain. Whoever was posted on the nearest mountain was first to give the signal by running up and lighting the three fires. On seeing the three fires, the one on the next mountain lit three fires in his turn, and in this way the signal arrived in quite a short time at Greece. This was their method of sending a telegram. The process was a quick one and before the day of the telegram, it had to suffice.

How is it then today? When you telephone, not telegraph, but telephone—I will show you in the simplest way what happens.¹ We have a kind of magnet which, it is true, is produced by electricity; and at this place (drawing) we have something called an armature. When the current is off, this falls in place; when the current is switched on, the plate is released and swings to and fro. It is connected by a wire with the next one which oscillates with it and transmits what is generated by the plate in just the same way as in those olden times the three fires conveyed messages to men. It is rather more complicated but still the same idea, though electricity has been used in applying it.

When we have actual knowledge of it we come to respect what the human beings of those ancient times devised and organized out of their imaginative faculty. When we read the old documents with this respect, we say: These men have accomplished great things purely spiritually and all out of imagination. To come to a thorough realization of this you need turn only to what men believe today. They believe they know something about the old Germanic gods—Wotan, Loki, for example. Pictures of them in human forms have appeared in certain books, Wotan with a flowing beard, Loki looking like a devil, with red hair, and so on. It is thought that the men of old, like the old Germans, had these ideas about Wotan and Loki. But that is not true, those men of old had, rather, the following conception: When the wind blows there is in it something spiritual—which is indeed true—Wotan is blowing in the wind. When they went into a wood, they never imagined they would meet Wotan there in the guise of an ordinary man. Describing a meeting with Wotan, they would have spoken of the wind blowing through the wood. This can still be felt in the very word Wotan by anyone who is sensitive to these things. And Loki—this did not call up a picture of someone sitting quietly in a corner; Loki's life was in the fire!

Indeed in various way, the people were always talking of Wotan and Loki. Suppose someone to be speaking about Wotan, for example: When you go over the mountain you may meet Wotan. Wotan will then make you either strong or weak according to your deserts. You see this is how people felt, hew they understood these matters. Today people say: That is superstition, a superstitious notion. But in those times they did not understand it so. They knew: When you go up there, to that corner so difficult to access, you do not meet a man in a body like any ordinary man. But the very shape of the mountain gives rise to a whirlwind which is met with especially in that place and a special kind of air is wafted up from an abyss. If you withstand this and keep to your path, you may become well or you may become sick. In what way you become well or ill, the people were willing to tell; they were in harmony with nature and would speak—not in an intellectual way but out of imagination. Our modern doctor would try to express himself intellectually—thus: If you have a tendency to tuberculosis, go up and sit at a certain height on a mountain every day, then come down. Go on doing this for some time; it will be most beneficial. This is the intellectual way of talking, but what one says when speaking imaginatively is this: Wotan is always to be found at that corner; it will help you if for a couple of weeks you visit him at a certain time each day.

This is the way in which people came to grips with life out of their imagination, and in this way too they worked. You will all at some time or other have been in a country district where the threshing was not done by machine but by hand—in time, in rhythm. The people know that if they have to thresh for days together and go to work without any rule, just at their own sweet will, they will soon be overcome by exhaustion. Threshing cannot be done in that way. If, however, they thresh in rhythm, if they keep in time together, exhaustion will be avoided, because this rhythm will be in harmony with the rhythm of their breathing and of the circulating blood. It makes a difference whether they beat with their flail on the out-breath or the in-breath, or whether they do it. as the breath is changing over from one to the other. Why is this? It is easy to see that it is nothing to do with the intellect, for today it no longer happens; everything of the kind is being wiped out. But work that was done by the people—for instance, the contrivances they had to tread or anything else in which time had to be kept—all this was done rhythmically.

Now, I don't fancy you can really think that if you take a piece of wood, a few strings and so on, and deal with them in a haphazard fashion, the result will be a violin. A violin results when mind, spirit, is exerted, when the wood is fashioned in a particular way, when the strings are put through a special process, and so on and so forth. This then is what we must say—particularly because people at that time did not yet think for themselves—the way in which machines were originally made could only be ascribed to possession by the spirit, that is to say, the people having the spirit working in them. For this reason, primitive men who did not work with intellect but with imagination were naturally inclined to talk of the spirit. When today someone constructs a machine by means of intellect, he does not say—and rightly does not say—that the spirit has been helping him. But when a man of those early times who was not conscious of thinking, had no capacity for thinking—when he constructed anything, he immediately felt: The spirit was helping me.

When the Europeans, the “superior” men, first arrived in American, and when even later, in the 19th century, they came to the regions where Indians such as belonged to more ancient times were still living, these Indians spoke of the “great Spirit” ruling everywhere. These primitive men in general have gone on speaking in this way of the Being ruling in everything. It was this “great Spirit” who was venerated particularly by the human beings living in Atlantean times when there was still land between Europe and America; the Indians still had this veneration, and knew nothing as yet of intellect. The. Indians then gradually came to know the “superior” men before being exterminated by them. Paper on which there were little signs, printed paper, was held in abhorrence by Indians; they took the little signs to be small devils and abominated them, for these signs were intellectual in origin. The man whose activities arise out of imagination abominates what comes from the intellect.

Now the European with his materialistic civilization knows how an engine is constructed. The intellectual way in which a European constructs his engine could never have been the way the ancient Greeks would have set about it, for the Greeks still lacked intellect. Intellect first came to man in the 15th or 16th century. The Greeks would have done their constructing with the help of their imagination. Since the Greeks ascribed to good spirits all natural forms and to bad spirits all that has no part in nature and is artificially produced, they would have spoken thus: In the engine there lives an evil spirit. They would certainly have done their constructing out of imagination and it would never ha/e occurred to them that in this they were not aided by the spirit.

You see therefore that ultimately we have to ascribe more spirit to the original primitive man; for imagination is of a more spiritual nature in the human soul than the mere intellect so highly prized today.

Old conditions, however, can never come back. Hence we have certainly to go forward, but not with the idea that what today exists in the animal as pure instinct can ever be developed into spirit. We ought not therefore to picture primitive men as having been possessed of mere instinct, for they realized: What is working in us is the spirit. This is why they had such belief in the spirit.

All this contributes a little to our understanding of how human evolution originated. So we must allow right on both sides—on the side of those who imagine human beings to have arisen from animal forms; well, so indeed they have, but not from such animal-forms as we have now, for these came into being later, when human beings were already in existence. But those animal-forms which in the course of human evolution have gradually grown into man's present form, together with the faculties existing at that time, have arisen because the spiritual—not intellectually, it is true, but imaginatively—was more perfect than it is today. At the same time we have always to remember: This original perfection depended upon man, though lacking freedom, being, as it were, possessed by the spirit. Intellect enables man to become free; by means of intellect, he can be freed.

Just consider this. Anyone who works with his intellect may say: At a certain time I am going to think out such and such a thing. This cannot be done by a poet for he still works today with imagination. Now Goethe was a great poet. When, because someone wanted him to write a poem, or he himself felt inclined to do so, he set himself down to write—well, the result was execrable! That people are not aware of this today comes simply from their inability to distinguish good poetry from bad. Among Goethe's poems there are many bad ones. Imaginative work can be done only when the mood is on the poet, and when the mood is on him he must write down the poem at once. You see, that is how it was in the case of primitive men. They were never able to do things out of free will at all. Free will is something that developed gradually, but not wisdom. Wisdom was originally greater than intellect and must re-acquire its greatness. That means our having to come back to the spirit by way of the intellect.

That, you see, is the task of anthroposophy; it has no wish to do what many people would like, that is, to bring back primitive conditions among men—old Indian wisdom, for example. It is nonsense when people harp on that; anthroposophy sets value on a return to the spirit precisely in full possession of the intellect, with intellect fully alive. It must be strictly borne in mind that we have nothing at all against the intellect; we have to go forward with it. To begin with, human beings had spirit without intellect; then the spirit fell away whereas the intellect increased» Now, by means of the intellect, we have to return to the spirit. Culture is obliged to take this course, for if it does not do so—well, people are always saying that the world war was unlike anything seen before and it is a fact that men have never before so torn each other to pieces—but if mankind refuses to take the course of bringing their intellect with them on their return to the spirit, then still greater wars will come upon up, wars that go on becoming more and more savage. Men will exterminate each other like two rats that, shut up together in a cage, gnaw each other till there is nothing left but two tails. That is putting it brutally, but in actual fact men are on the way to mutual extermination, and it is very important to know whither they are going.

• 1. This greatly simplified explanation of a very complicated process was given to the workmen in order to save time.

Gentlemen, the things we have discussed in the last few reflections are so important for understanding what I will say next that I want to at least briefly summarize these important things again.

We have seen that the human brain essentially consists of small star-shaped formations. But the rays of the stars are very wide. The extensions of these small entities intertwine and interweave, so that the brain is a kind of tissue, formed in the way I have told you.

Such little creatures, as they are in the brain, are also in the blood, with the only difference that the brain cells – as these little creatures are called – cannot live, only during the night, when sleeping, can they live a little. They cannot carry out this life. They cannot move because they are crammed together like sardines. But the blood corpuscles, the white blood corpuscles in the red blood there inside, they can move. They swim around in the whole blood, move their offshoots and only get something out of this life, die a little when the person sleeps. So sleep and wakefulness are connected with this activity or inactivity of the brain cells, and in fact of all the nerve cells and the cells that swim around as white blood cells in the blood, moving around in it.

Now I have also told you that it is precisely in an organ like the liver that one can observe how the human body changes in the course of a lifetime. Last time I told you that if, for example, the liver of an infant does not function properly – it is a kind of cognitive activity, the liver perceives and organizes digestion – so if the liver is disturbed in its perception, so that it actually perceives an incorrect digestion during infancy, this often only shows up in later life, I told you, in forty-five or fifty-year-old people. The human organism can withstand a lot. So even if the liver is already disturbed during infancy, it will endure until the age of forty-five or fifty. Then it shows internal hardening and liver diseases develop, which sometimes occur so late in humans and which are then a consequence of what was spoiled during infancy.

It is therefore best for the infant to be nourished with its mother's milk. Isn't it true that the child comes from the mother's body? So it can be understood that its entire organism, its entire body, is related to the mother. It therefore thrives best when it does not receive anything other than what comes from the mother's body, with which it is related.

However, it does happen that breast milk is not suitable due to its composition. Some human milk is bitter, some too salty. In such cases, it is best to switch to a different diet, provided by a different person.

Now the question may arise: Can't the child be fed on cow's milk right from the start? Well, it must be said that cow's milk is not very good as a food in the very earliest stages of infancy. But one need not think that a terrible sin is being committed against the human organism when one feeds the child with cow's milk that has been diluted in the appropriate way and so on. Because, of course, the milk of different creatures is different, but not so much so that one could not also introduce cow's milk instead of human milk for nutrition.

But if this nutrition is going on, it is going on in such a way that, if the child only drinks milk, nothing needs to be chewed. As a result, certain organs in the body are more active than they will be later when solid food has to be prepared. The milk is essentially so that, I might almost say, it is still alive when the child receives it. It is almost liquid life that the child absorbs.

Now you know that a very important thing for the human organism takes place in the intestines, an extraordinarily important thing. This extraordinarily important thing is that everything that enters the intestines through the stomach must be killed, and when it then enters the lymph vessels and blood through the intestinal walls, it must be revived. That is the most important thing to understand: that a person must first kill the food they take in and then revive it. The external life, taken up directly by the human being, is not usable in the human body. Man must kill everything he takes in through his own activity and then revive it. You just have to know that. Ordinary science does not know this, and therefore it does not know that man has the power of life within him. Just as he has muscles and bones and nerves within him, so he has an invigorating power, a life body within him.

The liver observes the entire digestive process, in which things are killed and then revived, in which what has been killed rises up inwardly in the new life and enters the blood, just as the eye observes external things. And just as in later life the eye can be affected by cataracts, that is, what used to be transparent becomes opaque, and hardens, so can the liver harden. And liver hardening is actually the same in the liver as cataracts are in the eye. Cataracts can also form in the liver. Then, at the end of life, a liver disease develops. At forty-five, fifty years of age, even later, liver disease develops. That is, the liver no longer looks at the inside of the person. It is really like this: with the eye you look at the outside world, with the ear you hear what sounds in the outside world, and with the liver you first look at your own digestion and what follows digestion. The liver is an inner sense organ. And only he who recognizes the liver as an inner sense organ understands what is going on inside a person. So you can compare the liver with the eye. In a sense, a person has a head inside his stomach. Only the head does not look outwards, but inwards. And that is why it is that a person works inside with an activity that he does not bring to consciousness.

But the child feels this activity. In the child it is quite different. The child still looks little to the outside world, and when it looks to the outside world, it does not know its way around. But all the more it looks inwardly in feeling. The child feels very precisely when there is something in the milk that does not belong there, that must be thrown out into the intestines so that it is discharged. And if something is wrong with the milk, the liver takes on the disease for the whole of later life.

Now, you can imagine that the eye, when it looks outwards, belongs to the brain. Simply looking at the outside world would not serve us as humans. We would stare at the outside world, stare all around, but we would not be able to think about the outside world. It would be just like a panorama, and we would sit in front of it with an empty head. We think with our brain, and think about what is outside in the world with our brain.

Yes, but, gentlemen, if the liver is a kind of inner eye that scans all the intestinal activity, then the liver must also have a kind of brain, just as the eye has the brain at its disposal. You see, the liver can indeed see everything that is going on in the stomach, how the entire chyme is mixed with pepsin in the stomach. When the chyme enters the intestine through the so-called pylorus of the stomach, the liver can then see how the chyme moves forward in the intestine, how it secretes more and more usable parts through the walls of the intestine, how the usable parts then pass into the lymph vessels and from these vessels then into the blood. But from there on, the liver can do nothing more. Just as little as the eye can think, so little can the liver do the further activity. There must come to the liver another organ, as to the eye the brain must come.

And just as you have the liver within you, which is constantly observing your digestive activity, so you also have a thinking activity within you, of which you are completely unaware in your ordinary life. This thinking activity – that is, you are not aware of the thinking activity, but you already know about the organ – this thinking activity is added to the liver's perception and comprehension activity just as the brain adds thinking to the eye's perception, and you have it, as strange as it may seem to you, through the kidneys, the renal system.

The kidney system, which otherwise only secretes urine for ordinary consciousness, is not at all such a base organ as one always looks at it, but the kidney, which otherwise just secretes the water, is the organ that belongs to the liver and performs an inner activity, an inner thinking. The kidneys are also connected with the other thinking in the brain, so that if the brain activity is not in order, the activity of the kidneys is also not in order. Let us suppose that we begin to cause the brain to work improperly in childhood. It does not work properly if, for example, we cause the child to study too much - I already hinted at this last time - to let it work with mere memory too much, if we make it learn too much by heart. The child needs to learn things by heart in order to develop a flexible brain, but if we make it learn too much by heart, then the brain has to exert itself so much that it carries out too much activity, which causes hardening in the brain. This causes brain hardening if we make the child learn too much by heart. But if hardening occurs in the brain, it is possible that the brain will not work properly throughout the whole life. It is just too hard.

But the brain is connected to the kidneys. And because the brain is connected to the kidneys, the kidneys no longer work properly either. A person can endure a lot; it only shows up later: the whole body no longer works properly, the kidneys no longer work properly either, and you find sugar in the urine that should actually be processed. But the body has become too weak to use the sugar because the brain is not working properly. It leaves the sugar in the urine. The body is not in order, the person suffers from diabetes.

You see, I want to make this very clear to you, that something depends on the mental activity, for example, on how much learning by heart there is, and that is how the person turns out later. Have you not heard that diabetes is particularly common among rich people? They can take extraordinary care of their children, materially and physically, but they do not know that they should also take care of a proper school teacher who does not make the child learn so much by rote. They think: Well, the state takes care of that, everything is fine, there is no need to worry about it. The child learns too much by rote, and later becomes a diabetic! You cannot make a person healthy through material education alone, through what you teach a person through food. You have to take into account what is in the soul. And you see, you gradually begin to feel that the soul is something important, that the body is not the only thing about a person, because the body can be ruined by the soul. No matter how well we eat as children and no matter how strong we are after eating the food that chemists study in the laboratory, if the soul is not in order, if the soul is not taken into account, the human organism will still break down. Through a true science, not today's purely material science, we gradually learn to tune into what is already present in a person before conception and what continues to be present after death, because we get to know what our soul is. Especially in such matters, we must take this into account.

But now think, where does it come from that people today do not want to know anything about what I have told you? Well, you can approach people with a so-called education today; it is “uneducated” to talk about the liver or even about the kidneys. It is something uneducated. Where does it come from that it is something “uneducated”?

You see, the ancient Jews in Hebrew antiquity – and after all, our Old Testament comes from the Jews – the ancient Jews did not yet regard speaking of the kidney as something so terribly uneducated. For example, the Jews did not say that when a person had tormenting dreams at night – you can read that in the Old Testament; today's Jews are educated enough not to repeat what is in the Old Testament when they are in decent company, but it is in the Old Testament – they did not say that when a person had evil dreams at night: My soul is tormented. Yes, gentlemen, it is easy to say that if you have no conception of the soul; then “soul” is just a word – it means nothing. But the Old Testament, speaking from the wisdom that humanity once had, said when someone had bad dreams at night: “Your kidneys are troubling you.” What was already known in the Old Testament is now being rediscovered through more recent anthroposophical research: kidney activity is not working properly if you have bad dreams.

Then came the Middle Ages, and in the Middle Ages, little by little, what is still valid today gradually emerged. For in the Middle Ages there was a tendency to praise everything that cannot be perceived, that is somehow outside the world. After all, the head is left free in the human being; everything else is covered up. One may only speak of that which is free. Of course, some ladies, especially in the educated world, walk around today leaving so much exposed that one is far from allowed to talk about what is exposed. But anyway, what is then inside the person has become something that, for a certain kind of Christianity in the Middle Ages — in England it was later called Puritanism — one is not allowed to talk about. One is not allowed to talk about it in terms of mere material sensuality. It is not spiritual, one must not speak of it. And so, little by little, they lost their whole spirit. Of course, if one speaks only of the spirit where the head is, one cannot grasp it so easily. But if one grasps it where it is seated in the whole human body, one can grasp it well.

And you see, the kidneys are then what thinks in addition to the perceptive activity of the liver. The liver observes, the kidneys think; and they can think the activity of the heart and can think everything that the liver has not observed. The liver can still observe the entire digestive activity and how the digestive juices enter the blood. But then, when it begins to circulate in the blood, thought is needed. And that is done by the kidneys. So that man actually has something like a second man within him.

Now, gentlemen, you cannot possibly believe that the kidneys you cut out of dead bodies and then place on the dissecting table – or, if they are beef kidneys, you even eat it; you can easily look at it before you eat or cook it – but you will not believe that the piece of meat with all the properties that the anatomist is talking about, that piece of meat thinks! Of course it does not think, but what is inside the kidney of the soul thinks. That is why it is as I told you last time: The material that is in the kidney, for example, let's say in childhood, is completely replaced after seven or eight years. There is a different substance in it. Just as your fingernails are no longer the same after seven or eight years, but you have always cut off the front part, so everything that was in the kidney and liver has been replaced by you.

Yes, you have to ask: if the substance that was in the liver seven years ago is no longer there, and yet the liver can still become ill after decades due to what was neglected in it as an infant, then there is an activity that cannot be seen, because the substance does not reproduce. Life continues from infancy to the age of forty-five. It is not the material that can become diseased – it is excreted – but the invisible activity that is there and that goes on throughout a person's entire life is what continues. There you see how the human body is actually a complicated, an extremely complicated being.

Now I would like to tell you something else. I said: the ancient Jews still knew something about how kidney activity is involved in such dull, dark thinking, as dreams are at night. But at night it is the case that our ideas have gone; then one perceives what the kidneys are thinking. During the day, our heads are full of thoughts that come from outside. Just as when there is a strong light and a weak candlelight, you see the strong light, and the weak candlelight disappears next to it. It is the same with a person when he is awake: his head is full of ideas that come from the outside world, and what is going on down there in the kidneys is just the small light; he does not perceive it. When the head stops thinking, then it still perceives as dreams what the kidneys think and what the liver looks at internally. That is why dreams look the way you sometimes see them.

Imagine there is something wrong with the intestines; the liver sees that. During the day you don't pay attention to it because there are stronger ideas. But at night when falling asleep or waking up, you notice how the liver perceives the intestinal disorder. But the liver is not as smart and neither are the kidneys as smart as the human mind. Because they are not so clever, they cannot immediately say: “These are the intestines that I see.” They create an image out of it, and the person dreams instead of seeing reality. If the liver saw reality, it would see the intestines burning. But it does not see reality, it creates an image out of it. It sees flickering snakes. When a person dreams of flickering snakes, which he does very often, then the liver is looking at the intestines, and that is why they appear to it as snakes. Sometimes the head is just like the liver and the kidneys. If a person sees something, for example, a bent piece of wood nearby and in an area where snakes could be, the head can even mistake this bent piece of wood for a snake when it is five steps away. Thus, the inner vision and thinking of the liver and kidneys considers the winding intestines to be snakes.

Sometimes you dream of a stove that is heated up. You wake up and have heart palpitations. What happened? Yes, the kidney thinks about the stronger heart palpitations, but it imagines it as if it were a stove that is heated up, and you dream of a boiling stove. That is what the kidney thinks about your heart activity.

So there inside the human stomach – although it is again 'not formed', to speak of it – sits a soul being. The soul is a little mouse that slips into the human body somewhere and sits inside. Isn't it true that people used to do that? They thought: where is the seat of the soul? But you don't know anything about the soul if you ask where the soul is located. It is just as much in the 'ear lobe' as in the big toe, only the soul needs organs through which it thinks, imagines and creates images. And in such an activity, which you know very well, it does it through the head, and in the way I have described to you, where the inner being is looked at, it does it through the liver and kidneys. You can see the soul at work in the human body everywhere. And you have to see that.

This, however, requires a science that does not simply cut open dead human bodies, lay them on the dissecting table, cut out organs and look at them materially; it requires that one really makes one's whole inner soul life visible in thinking and in everything a little more active than the people who just look. Of course it is more comfortable to cut open human bodies, to cut out the liver and then write down what you find there. There is no need to exert much mental effort. That's what the eyes are for, and it only takes a little thought to cut the liver in all directions, make small pieces, put them under the microscope, and so on. It's an easy science. But almost all science today is an easy science. We have to activate our inner thinking much more, and above all we must not believe that from the moment we put the person on the dissecting table, cut out his organs and describe them, we can get to know the human being. Because we are just cutting out the liver of a fifty-year-old woman or man and, when we look at it, we don't know what has already happened in the infant. We need a whole science. That is precisely what a real science must strive for. That is the endeavor of anthroposophy, to have a real science. And this real science does not just lead to the physical, but, as I have shown you, to the soul and to the spiritual.

I told you last time that the blue blood vessels, that is, the veins in which the blood flows not as red blood but as blue blood, that is, blood containing carbon dioxide, enter the liver. This is not the case in any of the other organs. In this respect, the liver is a quite extraordinary organ. It takes up blue blood vessels and almost makes the blue blood disappear into itself (see illustration $. 70).

This is something extraordinarily significant and important. So when we imagine the liver, the usual red veins also go into the liver. The blue veins go out of the liver. But in addition, a special blue vein, the portal vein, which contains a lot of carbon dioxide, goes into the liver (see drawing on plate 4). Now, the liver absorbs this and does not let it out again, which then enters the liver as carbonic acid through this special blue blood.

Yes, that's right. When conventional science has cut out the liver, it sees this so-called portal vein, but doesn't think much more about it. But anyone who has been able to arrive at a real science does make comparisons.

Now there are still organs in the human body that have something very similar, and that is the eyes. With the eyes, something is very small, only gently hinted at, but nevertheless, it is also the case with the eye that not all blood, all blue blood, that goes into the eye, goes back again. Veins go in, red veins go in, blue ones go out. But not all the blue blood that enters the eye goes back again, but is distributed just as it is in the liver. Only, in the liver it is strong, in the eye it is very weak.

Isn't that proof that I can compare the liver with the eye? Of course, one can point out everything that is in the human organism. That is how one comes to the conclusion that the liver is an inner eye.

But the eye is directed outwards. It peers outwards and consumes the blue blood it receives in order to look outwards. The liver consumes it inwards. Therefore, it makes the blue blood disappear inside and uses it for something else. Only sometimes, you see, the eye also gets into the habit of using its blue veins a little. That is when a person becomes sad, when he cries; then the bitter-tasting tear fluid wells up in the eyes, in the lacrimal glands. This comes from the little bit of blue blood that remains in the eye. When this is particularly stimulated by sadness, the tears come out as a secretion.

But in the liver, this story is always present! The liver is always sad because the human organism, as it is in life on earth, can make you sad when you look at it from the inside, because it is predisposed to the highest, but it just doesn't look that great. The liver is always sad. That is why it always secretes a bitter substance, bile. What the eye does with tears, the liver does for the whole organism in the secretion of bile. Only – the tear flows outwards and the tears are gone as soon as they are out of the eye; but the bile throughout the human organism does not disappear, because the liver does not look outwards but inwards. Here, the function of looking back is reduced, and the secretion, which can be compared to the secretion of tears, comes to the fore.

Yes, but, gentlemen, if what I am telling you is really true, then it must show up even more clearly in another area. It must be shown that those beings on earth who live more in their inner life, who live more in their inner thinking activity, that the animals do not think less than man, that the animals think more - thus less in their heads than man, they have an imperfect brain. But then they must observe more the liver life and the kidney life, must look more inward with the liver and think more inwardly with the kidneys. This is also the case with animals. There is external proof of this. Our human eyes are so constructed that the blue blood that enters them is actually very little, so little that today's science does not even talk about it. It used to talk about it. But in the case of animals, which live more in their inner being, the eyes do not just look, but the eyes think as well.

If one could say that the eyes are a kind of liver, one could now say that in animals the eye is much more liver than in humans. In humans, the eye has become more perfect and less liver-like. This can be seen in the eye. In the animal, it can be clearly demonstrated that there is not only what is found in humans: a glassy, watery body, then the lens of the eye, again a glassy, watery body – but in certain animals, the blood vessels go into the eye and form such a body in the eye (see drawing). The blood vessels go right into this vitreous humor, forming a body inside it called the fan, the eye fan. In these animals, it is... (gap in the transcript). Why? Because in these animals, the eye is even more liver. And just as the portal vein goes into the liver, so this fan goes into the eye. That is why it is so in animals: When the animal looks at something, the eye is already thinking; in humans, it only looks, and it thinks with the brain. In animals, the brain is small and imperfect. It does not think so much with the brain, but thinks in the eye, and it can think in the eye because it has this sickle-shaped projection, so that it can use the used blood, the carbonic acid blood, in the eye.

I can tell you something that will not really surprise you. You will not assume that the vulture, high up in the air with its damn small brain, would succeed in making the very clever decision to fall down right where the lamb is sitting! If the vulture's brain were important, it could starve to death. But the vulture has a thinking process in his eye that is only a continuation of his kidney thinking, and so he makes his decision and shoots down and catches the lamb. The vulture does not do it by saying to himself: There is a lamb down there, now I have to get into position; now I will fall down just right in that line, I will come across the lamb. — A brain would make this consideration. If there were a man up there, he would think about it; he would just not be able to carry it out. But with the vulture, even the eye thinks. The soul is already in the eye. He is not even aware of this, but he still thinks.

You see, I told you, the old Jew, who understood his Old Testament, knew what it means: God has plagued you by your kidneys in the night. - With that he wanted to express the reality of what appears to the soul as mere dreams. God has tormented you through your kidneys in the night - so he said, because he knew: There is not only a person who looks out through his eyes into the outer world, but there is a person who thinks through his kidneys and looks through his liver into the inner self.

And the ancient Romans knew that too. They knew that there are actually two people: the one who looks out through his eyes, and then the other, who has his liver in his stomach and looks into his own interior. Now it is the case that, with the liver – you can see this from the distribution of the blue veins – if you want to use the expression, you have to say that it actually looks backwards. This is why a person is so unaware of their insides; just as you are unaware of what is behind you, the liver is not consciously aware of what it is actually looking at. The ancient Romans knew this. They just expressed it in such a way that it is not immediately obvious. They imagined: a person has a head at the front, and in the lower body he has another head; but this is only an indistinct head that looks backwards. And then they took the two heads and put them together, forming something like this (see drawing): a head with two faces, one looking backwards and the other forwards. You can still find such statues today if you go to Italy. They are called Janus heads.

You see, the travelers who have the money go through Italy with their Baedeker, also look at these Janus heads, look in the Baedeker – but there is nothing sensible in it. Because, isn't it true, you have to ask yourself: how did these old Roman guys come to develop such a head? They weren't actually so stupid as to believe that if you travel across the sea somewhere, you'll find people with two heads on the ground. But the traveler, who is not educated by his eyes, must imagine something like that when he sees that the Romans have developed a head with two faces, one facing backwards and one facing forwards.

Yes, well, the Romans knew something through a certain natural thinking that all of later humanity did not know, and we will come to that now, come to it independently. So that we can now know again that the Romans were not stupid, but were clever! Janus-head means January. Why did they set it at the beginning of the year? That is also a special secret.

Yes, gentlemen, once you have come so far as to realize that the soul works not only in the head but also in the liver and kidneys, then you can also observe how it differs throughout the year. In summer, the warm season, the liver works very little. The liver and kidneys enter into a kind of sleep-like state of soul, performing only their external bodily functions, because the human being is more dependent on the warmth of the outside world. It begins to be more inactive within. The entire digestive system is quieter in midsummer than in winter; but in winter, this digestive system begins to be very mental and emotional. And when the Christmas season comes, the New Year season, when January comes and begins, the liver and kidneys are most active in the soul.

The Romans knew this too. That is why they called the people with the two faces the January people. When you independently come back to what is actually there, you no longer need to stare at things, but can understand them again. Today, people only stare at them because today's science is no longer there. You see, anthroposophy is really not impractical. It can explain not only everything that is human, but even everything that is historical; for example, it can explain why the Romans made these Janus faces! Actually, I am not saying this out of vanity. In fact, if people are to understand the world, they need to consult an anthroposophist in the guidebook, otherwise they will actually go through the world half asleep, just gawking at everything and unable to reflect.

Yes, gentlemen, as you can see, we are really serious when we say that we have to start with the physical in order to reach the soul. Well, I will continue speaking about the soul next Saturday. Then you can also think about what questions you want to ask. But you will have seen that it is really no laughing matter how one wants to get from the physical to the soul, but that it is a very serious science.

Continuing the study of man's various illnesses and health that we made a week ago, in the course of this winter we will take up in more and more detail those things with which they are connected. Our studies will then culminate in a generally more exact recognition of human nature than has previously been possible through anthroposophy. Today, because we will need it later, we will have to include a discussion of the nature and meaning of the Ten Commandments of Moses. Then we will have to say something about the deep significance of such concepts as original sin, redemption and so on, and we will see how these concepts gain new meaning in the light of our latest achievements, including those of science. To that end we must first examine more closely the fundamental nature of this remarkable document, which, projecting from out [of] the prehistory of the Israelites, appears to us as one of the most important stones in the building of the temple that was erected as a kind of anteroom of Christianity.

It can become increasingly evident in such a document as the Ten Commandments how little the form in which men know the Bible today corresponds to this document itself. From the details given in the last two lectures on “The Bible and Wisdom,” you will have felt how wrong it would be to say that we are simply finding fault with details in the translation and that there is no need to be so exact. It would be superficial to treat these things in such a way. Recall that we pointed out how the correct translation of the fourth verse of the second chapter of Genesis should actually read, “The following will recount the generations, or what proceeds from heaven and earth,” and that in Genesis the same word is used for “the descendants of heaven and earth” as later on where it reads, “This is the book of the generations—or descendants—of Adam.” The same word is used in both instances. It is of great significance that in the description of man's proceeding out of heaven and earth the same word is used as later where the descendants of Adam are spoken of. Such things are not merely pedantic quibbling that would put right the translation, but rather they touch the nerve not only of the translation but of the understanding of this early document of man as well. We actually speak out of the living sources of our anthroposophic world view when we say that to restore the Bible to man in a true form is one of the most important tasks of this world view, indeed, of anthroposophy itself. Above all, we are here interested in what is generally said regarding the Ten Commandments.

The Ten Commandments are interpreted by the great majority of men today as if they were legal ordinances, that is, like the laws of any modern state. It is conceded, of course, that the laws of the Ten Commandments are more extensive and general, and have a validity independent of their time and place. They are thus held to be more universal, but men are still conscious of them as having the same effect or objective as any modern legislation. So seen, however, they do not contain the actual vital nerve that lives in them. This is borne out by the fact that all translations presently available have unconsciously incorporated an essentially superficial explanation that is not at all in the spirit of their original meaning. When we enter into this spirit, you will see how the interpretation of them forms part of the studies we have just begun, even though it may appear that in discussing them we are creating an inappropriate diversion.

By way of introduction, let us make at least an approximate attempt to render the Ten Commandments into our language, and then try to approach the subject more closely. It will be found that many things in this translation—if we want to call it such—will have to be elaborated, but as we shall soon see, we want above all to touch the vital nerve, the real sense, of them in the idiom of our language. If one translates according to the sense of the text without referring to the dictionary word for word—in such a translation only the worst can result, naturally, for it is the word and soul value that the whole thing had in its own time that is important—if the sense is captured, then these Ten Commandments would run as follows.

First Commandment. I am the eternal divine Whom you experience in yourself. I led you out of the land of Egypt where you could not follow Me in you. Henceforth, you shall not put other gods above Me. You shall not recognize as higher gods those who show you an image of anything that appears above in the heavens, nor that works out of the earth, nor between heaven and earth. You shall not worship anything that is below the divine in yourself, for I am the eternal in you that works into your body and hence affects the coming generations. I am of divine nature working forth. If you do not recognize Me in you, I shall pass away as your divine nature in your children, grandchildren and great grandchildren, and their bodies will become waste. If you recognize Me in you, I shall live on as you to the thousandth generation, and the bodies of your people will prosper.

Second Commandment. You shall not speak in error of Me in you, for everything false about the “I” in you will corrupt your body.

Third Commandment. You shall distinguish work day from Sabbath in order that your existence may become an image of My existence. For what lives in you as “I” created the world in six days and lived within Himself on the seventh day. Thus shall your doing and your son's doing and your daughter's doing and your servants' doing and your beasts' doing and the doing of whatever else is with you be turned for only six days toward the outer; on the seventh day, however, shall your gaze seek Me in you.

Fourth Commandment. Continue to work in the ways of your Father and mother so that the possessions they have earned by the power I have developed in them will remain with you as your property.

Fifth Commandment. Do not slay.

Sixth Commandment. Do not commit adultery.

Seventh Commandment. Do not steal.

Eighth Commandment. Do not disparage the worth of your fellowman by speaking false of him.

Ninth Commandment. Do not look begrudgingly upon what your fellowman holds as possessions.

Tenth Commandment. Do not look begrudgingly upon the wife of your fellowman, nor upon his servants, nor upon the other creatures by which he prospers.

Now let us ask ourselves what these Ten Commandments really show us and we shall see that, not only in the first part but in a seemingly hidden way also in the last part, they show us that the Jewish people were told through Moses that the force that had proclaimed itself in the burning bush to Moses, using the words, “I am the I AM!”—Ehjeh asher Ehjeh—as its name, was to be henceforth with the Jewish people. What is referred to is the fact that the other peoples in the evolution of our earth were not able to recognize the “I am,” the actual original ground of the fourth part of man's being, so intensively and dearly as the Jewish people. The God Who poured a drop of His Being into man so that his fourth member became the bearer of this drop—the ego bearer—this God became known to His people for the first time through Moses.

Therefore we can interpret the Ten Commandments as follows. The Jehovah God had indeed worked in mankind's evolution until that time, but the effect of the work of spiritual beings can only become manifest after it has taken place. Though there was much that was working into the ancient peoples, it was through Moses that it came into being as concept, as idea, and as actual soul force. It was essential that he should make clear to his people how their egohood was going to effect their lives. With these people Jehovah is to be seen as a kind of transition being who pours the drop into the individuality of man but who is at the same time a national God. The individual Jew still felt with a part of himself a connection with the ego of Abraham's incarnation that streamed through the entire Jewish race. This was to change only with the advent of Christianity. But what was to occur on earth through Christ was foretold in the Old Testament—especially through what Moses had to say to his people.

So we see the full power of ego recognition slowly permeating the Jewish people in the account of the Old Testament. The Jewish people were to be made fully conscious of the effect it would have upon man, to feel the ego within himself, to experience God's Name, “I am the I AM!” and its effect upon his innermost soul.

These things are experienced abstractly today. The ego and what is connected with it are spoken of and they remain just words. But when the ego was first given to the Jewish people in the form of the old Jehovah God it was experienced as a new force that entered man and completely changed the structure of his astral, etheric and physical bodies. His people had to be told that the conditions of their lives, of health and sickness, were different before they had an ego that they were aware of than they would be henceforth. That is why it became necessary to tell them that they were no longer to look up merely to heaven or down merely to the earth when they spoke of the gods, but into their own souls. Looking into one's soul with devotion to the truth brings right living—right down into one's health. This consciousness is at the basis of the Ten Commandments—whereas a wrong conception of what entered the human soul as ego causes man to wither in body and soul, destroys him. One need only be objective to observe how these Ten Commandments are not meant to be merely external laws, how they are actually meant to be just what has been discussed, that is, something that is of utmost significance for the health and well-being of the astral, etheric and physical bodies. But where does one read books correctly and accurately these days? One needs only turn a few more pages to find, in a further discussion of the Ten Commandments, what the Jewish people are told about their effect upon the whole person. There it says, “I remove every sickness from out your midst; there will be no miscarriage nor barrenness in your land, and I will let the number of your days become full.”

That means that when the ego has become permeated with the essence of the Ten Commandments, one of the results will be that you cannot die in the prime of life, but rather, through the properly understood ego, something can stream into the three bodies, the astral, etheric and physical, that will cause the number of your days to become full, that allows you to live in good health until old age. This is clearly stated. But it is necessary to penetrate quite deeply into these things, and modern theologians cannot, of course, do this so easily. A popular little book, of a most irritating sort, especially because it can be had for a few pennies, includes in its remarks about the Ten Commandments the sentence, “One can readily see that in the Ten Commandments the basic laws for humanity are laid down. The one half is the Commandments that have to do with God and the other half the Commandments in regard to people.” Not wanting to be too far off the mark, the author adds that the fourth Commandment must still be included with the first half, which concerns God. How he manages to attribute four to one half, and six to the other half is just a small example of how people go about their work these days. Everything else in this book is commensurate with the interesting equation: four equals six.

We are concerning ourselves here with the explanation given to the Jewish people of how the ego must properly indwell the three bodies of man. It is important, above all, that it be said—and we encounter this in the very first Commandment: When you become aware of this ego as a spark of the divine, then you must feel that within your ego there is a spark, an emission of the highest, the most exhalted divinity who is involved with the creation of the earth!

Let us recall what we have been able to say about the history of man's evolution. His physical body was developed on ancient Saturn; gods then worked upon it. Then his ether body was joined with it on the sun. How both bodies were developed further is again the work of divine spiritual beings. Then on the moon the astral body was incorporated—all the work of divine spiritual beings. What made man into man as we now know him was the incorporation on earth of his ego. The highest divinity took part in this. As long as man was unable to be fully conscious of this fourth member of his being, he could have no notion of the highest divinity who helped create him and lives within him. Man must say to himself, “Divine beings have worked upon my physical body, but they are less exhalted than the Divinity who has now bestowed my ego upon me.” The same is true of the etheric and the astral bodies. Thus, the Jewish people, to whom the ego was first prophesied, had to be told, “Make yourselves aware that all about you are peoples who worship gods who, in their present stage of development, can be effective in their astral, etheric and physical bodies, but they cannot function in the ego. This God who works in the ego was indeed always there. He proclaimed his presence through his working and creating, but his name he proclaims to you now.”

Through his acceptance of the other gods man is not a free being, but rather a being that worships the gods of his lower members. When, however, he consciously recognizes the god, a part of whom he carries within his ego, then he is a free being—one who confronts his fellowmen as a free being. Today, man does not stand in the same relation to his astral, etheric and physical bodies as he does to his ego. He is within his ego. He is immediately connected with it. He will only experience his astral body in this way when he has changed it into manas, and his ether body when he has transformed it to buddhi, when by means of his ego, he has evolved it to a divine being. Though the ego was the last to emerge, it is still that within which man lives. When he has a conscious awareness of his egohood, he is aware of that in which he is directly confronted with the divine, whereas the form of his astral, etheric and physical bodies that he currently possesses, were created by gods who came before.

The nations surrounding the Israelites worshiped those divinities who worked upon the lower members of man's being. When they made an image of those lower divinities, it had the form of something that was on the earth, in heaven or between heaven and earth, because everything that man has within himself is to be found in all the rest of nature. If he makes images out of the mineral kingdom, they can only represent for him the gods who worked on the physical body. If he makes images from the plant kingdom, they can represent only the divinities that worked on his ether body because man has his ether body in common with the plant world. Images from the animal world can symbolize for him only those divinities who worked on his astral body. But man is made the crown of earth's creation by what he perceives in his ego. No external image can express it. So it had to be clearly and strongly emphasized to the Jewish nation, “You bear within you what flows into you from the now highest of Gods. It cannot be symbolized with an image from the mineral, plant or animal kingdom, were it ever so sublime; all gods who are served by this means are lower gods than the God who lives in your ego. If you would worship this God in you the others must withdraw; then you have the true, healthy strength of your ego within you.” Thus what we are told right at the start, in the first of the Ten Commandments, is connected with the deepest mysteries of the development of man, “I am the eternal divine Whom you experience in yourself. The power that I put into your ego became the impulse, the force that enabled you to flee from the land of Egypt where you could not follow Me in you.”

Moses, on the instruction of Jehovah, led his people out of Egypt. In order to make this quite clear to us it is especially indicated that Jehovah wanted to make his people a nation of priests. The peoples of the other nations had the free priest-wisemen among them who were apart from themselves. They were the free ones who knew about the great mystery of the ego, who also knew the ego-god of whom there was no image. Thus there were in these lands the few ego conscious priest-wisemen on the one side, and on the other, the great unfree masses who could only listen to what they, under the strictest authority, let flow to them from the mysteries. It was not the single individual who had this direct relationship, but the priest-wiseman, who mediated for him. Therefore, the health and prosperity of the people depended upon these priest-wisemen; their health and prosperity depended on how they organized things and established institutions.

I would have to tell you a great deal to portray for you the deeper meaning of the Egyptian temple sleep and how it affected the health of the people, if I were to describe what emanated from such a cult—the Apis cult, for example—in the way of popular medicines for their general well-being. The direction and guidance of the people depended upon the initiates in these cult centers to provide the elixirs of health. But now that was to change. The Jews were to become a nation of priests. Everyone should feel a spark of the Jehovah God within himself, should have a direct relationship to Him. No longer was the priest to be the sole mediator. That is why the people had to be so instructed. They had to be made aware that the false images, the lowlier images of the highest god are also destructive to health.

Now we arrive at something that will not come easily to the consciousness of present-day man. Quite terrible wrongs are being committed in this connection. Only those who can penetrate into spiritual science know the subtle ways in which health and sickness develop. If you go through the streets of a big city and take into your soul the ugly things that are on display in windows and signs, it has a devastating effect. Materialistic science has no conception of the extent to which the seeds of illness lie in this kind of hideousness. They seek the causes of illness in bacilli, and do not realize in what a round about way illness has its origin in the soul. Only people familiar with spiritual science will know what it means to take various images into himself.

Above all, the first Commandment says that man must henceforth be able to imagine that beyond all that can be spiritually expressed by means of an image there can be an impulse that cannot be made into an image; this connects the ego to the super-sensible.

“Feel this ego strongly within yourself, feel it so that through this ego there weaves and flows a divine essence that is more exhalted than anything that you can portray through an image. Then you will have in such feeling a healthy force that will make your physical body, your ether body and your astral body healthy.”

A strong ego impulse that creates good health was to be given the Jewish nation. If this ego was properly recognized, the astral, etheric and physical bodies would be well-formed and would produce a strong life force in each individual, and this, in turn, would permeate the entire folk.

Since a folk was reckoned as having a thousand generations, the Jehovah God spoke the word saying, “Through a proper inculcating of the ego, man will of himself become a source of radiating health, so that the whole nation will become a healthy people ‘unto the thousandth generation’.” If, however, the ego is not understood in the right way, the body withers, becomes weak and sickly. If the father does not place the ego into his soul in the right way, his body becomes weak and sickly, the ego slowly withdraws itself, the son becomes sicklier, the grandson more sickly and finally there is nothing more than a shell from which the Jehovah God has retreated. That which does not permit the ego to thrive causes the body to gradually wither right up to its fourth member.

So we see that it is the proper functioning of the ego that is set before the people of Moses in the first of the Commandments.

“I am the eternal divine Whom you experience in yourself. I led you out of the land of Egypt where you could not experience Me in you. Henceforth, you shall not put other gods above Me. You shall not recognize as higher gods those who present to you an image of anything that appears above in the heavens, or that works out of the earth, or between heaven and earth. You shall not worship anything that is below the divine in yourself, for I am the eternal in you that works into your body and thus affects the coming generations. I am of divine nature working forth—not ‘I am a zealous God!’; that says nothing here. If you do not recognize Me as your God, I shall pass away as your ego in your children, grandchildren and great grandchildren, and their bodies will become waste. If you recognize Me in you, I shall live on as you unto the thousandth generation, and the bodies of your people will prosper.”

We see that what is meant is not merely an abstraction, but something living and vital that is to work into the very health of the people. The external character of health is traced back to the spiritual, which is at its source, and which is made known to the people, step by step. This is particularly expressed in the second Commandment that says, “You shall not create any false impressions of my name, of what lives in you as ego, for a true impression makes you healthy and strong, whereby you will prosper, whereas a false impression will cause your body to become wasted!” Thus it was inculcated into every member of the Mosaic nation that whenever he uttered the name of God he should let it be as a warning to himself: “I shall acknowledge the name of what has entered into me, as it lives in me, in that it fosters good health.”

“You shall not speak in error of Me in you, for everything false about the ‘I’ in you will corrupt your body.”

Then in the third Commandment there is the strong and specific reference to how man, when he is a working and creating ego, is a true microcosm, just as the Jehovah God created for six days and rested on the seventh, and man in his creating should follow. In the third Commandment it is expressly indicated: “You, man, in that you are a true ego, shall also be an image of your highest God, and in your deeds work as would your God.” It is an admonition to become more and more like the God who revealed himself to Moses in the burning bush.

“You shall distinguish work day from Sabbath in order that your existence may become an image of My existence. For what lives in you as ‘I’ created the world in six days and lived within Himself on the seventh day. Thus shall your doing and your son's doing and your daughters doing and your servants' doing and your beasts' doing and the doing of whatever else is with you be turned for only six days toward the outer; on the seventh day, however, shall your gaze seek Me in you.”

Now the Ten Commandments go more and more into detail. But always in the background is the thought that the evolutionary force is at work as Jehovah. In the fourth Commandment man is led from the super-sensible to the outwardly sensible. Something important is referred to in the fourth Commandment that must be understood. When man emerges as one conscious of his ego, he requires certain outer means to foster his existence. He develops what we refer to as personal property and possessions. If we were to go back to ancient Egypt, we would not yet find this individual property among the masses. We would find that those who presided over property were also the priest-initiates. But now as each individual ego develops, it becomes necessary for man to take hold of what is outside and around him, and provide a proper setting for himself. For that reason it is stated in the fourth Commandment that he who lets the individual ego work in himself acquires possessions, that these possessions remain bound to the power of the ego that lives in the Jewish nation from father to son to grandson, and that the father's property would not have the security of the strong ego power if the son did not continue his father's work with the strength received from his father. It is therefore said: “Let the ego become so strong in you that it continues on, and that the son can inherit, along with his father's property, the means with which to become integrated into the external environment.” That is how consciously the spirit of the conservation of property was inculcated into Moses's people, and it is strongly emphasized in all the following laws that occult powers stand behind everything that happens in the world. While the right of inheritance is received today externally and abstractly, those who have understood the fourth Commandment have been aware that spiritual forces extend themselves through property from generation to generation, live from one generation to the next, that they heighten the ego power, and that the ego force of the single individual thereby derives something that is brought to it from the ego force of the father.

The fourth Commandment is usually translated in the most grotesque possible manner, but its true meaning is as follows. “The strong ego force is to be developed in you that lives beyond you, and this shall be passed on to your son so that what will live on in him through the property of his ancestors will accrue to his ego force.

“Continue to work in the ways of your father and mother so that the possessions they have earned by the power I have developed in them will remain with you as your property.” In addition, it lies at the basis of all the other laws that man's ego power is heightened by the proper application of the ego impulse but that it is destroyed by its improper use.

The fifth Commandment says something that is to be understood in its correct sense only by means of spiritual science. Everything connected with killing, with the extermination of another's life, weakens the self-conscious ego power in man. One can heighten thereby the powers of black magic in man but it is then only the astral forces that are heightened while the ego power is by-passed. What is divine in man is annihilated through every killing. Therefore, this law alludes not only to something abstract, but also to something by which occult power streams to man's ego impulse when he fosters life, making it flourish when he does not destroy life. This is presented as an ideal for the strengthening of the individual ego power.

The same is given in the sixth and seventh Commandments, with somewhat less emphasis, regarding other aspects of life. Through marriage a center for ego strength is created. Whoever destroys marriage thus weakens the strength that should flow into his ego. Likewise does he, who takes something away from another's ego, thereby seeking to increase his own possessions by stealing, etc., weaken his own ego power. Here, too, the guiding thought throughout is that the ego shall not be weakened.

Now it is even indicated in the last three Commandments how man weakens his ego through the false direction of his desires. The life of desire has great significance for ego power. Love heightens the power of the ego; envy and hate cause it to wither. If a man hates his fellowman, if he disparages his worth by speaking falsely of him, he weakens thereby his ego power; he diminishes all that surrounds him of health and vitality. The same is true when he envies another's possessions. The desire for someone else's goods makes his ego power weak. It is the same in the tenth Commandment should a man look with envy at the manner in which another tries to increase his fortune rather than striving after love for the other, whereby he can expand his soul and allow his ego strength to flourish. Only when we have understood the special power of the Jehovah God and hold before us the manner of His revelation to Moses will we comprehend the special nature of the consciousness that should flow into the people. Underlying everything is the fact that it is not abstract laws but healthy and, in the widest sense, healing precepts for body, soul and spirit that are given. He who holds to these Commandments not in an abstract, but in a living way, affects the overall welfare and the entire progress of life. It was not possible at that time to present this without including regulations as to how the Commandments were to be followed. Since the other nations lived in an entirely different way from the Jewish people they did not require such laws with their special significance.

When our scholars today take the Ten Commandments, translate them by dictionary and compare them with the other laws, with the law of Hammurabi, for instance, it signifies that they have no comprehension of the impulse behind the Commandments. It is not the “Do not steal” or “Keep holy this or that holiday” that is important. What is important is the spirit that is streaming through these Ten Commandments and the way in which this spirit is connected with the spirit of this nation out of which Christianity was created. Thus, if one is to understand the Ten Commandments, one would have to feel and experience along with each individual in this nation what he felt as he attained independence. Today is hardly the time in which to feel so concretely what the people of that nation were able to experience. That is why everything in the dictionary is currently being used in translations of them except what the spirit calls for. One can, of course, always read that the people of Moses came from a Bedouin race, and that consequently they could not be given the same laws as a people engaged in agriculture. That is why—so conclude the scholars—the Ten Commandments had to be given later and were then antedated. If the Ten Commandments were what these gentlemen conclude them to be they would be right, but they happen not to understand them. Certainly, the Jews were a kind of Bedouin people, but these Commandments were given them so that they should become capable with their ego strength of moving toward a whole new age. That nations are built out of the spirit is best proved by this. There is hardly a stronger prejudice than that expressed by saying that during Moses's time the Jewish people were still a wandering Bedouin people, but what sense would it have made to give them the Ten Commandments? It made sense to give the Jewish people these laws so that the ego impulse could be impressed into them with the greatest might. They received them because by means of these Commandments their external life was to take on an entirely new form, because an entirely new life was being created, originating in the spirit.

The Ten Commandments have continued to have this effect, and those who understood them in early Christian times spoke of the Laws of Moses in this way. Therefore they came to know that through the Mystery of Golgotha the ego impulse became something different from what it was during the time of Moses. They told themselves that the ego impulse had become infused with the Ten Commandments, and that people became strong by following the Ten Commandments. Now something else is there. Now the form is there that is at the basis of the Mystery of Golgotha. Now the ego can gaze upon what lay hidden through the ages. It can see the greatest that it is capable of attaining—that that makes it powerful and strong through the example of Him who suffered at Golgotha, Who is the greatest archetype of developing man in the future. In this way the Christ took the place, for those who truly understood Christianity, of the impulses that served as a preparation in the Old Testament.

Thus we see that there is, in fact, a deeper interpretation of the Ten Commandments.

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

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

SCENE TWO

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

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

Johannes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Johannes

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

Maria

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

Johannes

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

Maria

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

Johannes

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

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

SCENE NINE

The same placed as in Scene Two

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

Johannes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maria, you are here?

Maria

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

Johannes

I can unfold that power from within me.

Maria

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

Johannes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I sought to flee from you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Philia (Sentient soul)

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

Astrid (Intellectual soul)

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

Luna (Consciousness soul)

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

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

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

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

Dass du, geliebte Schwester ...

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

Der suchenden Menschenseele
(within the seeking soul)

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

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

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

with the rather different ones of Astrid:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

O you must find me once again ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You have also heard the devastating words:

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

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

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

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

Johannes Thomasius

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dr. Steiner: The negotiations on the current affairs have been going on for so long, and it is so urgent to deal with other matters, that it would almost be a catastrophe under any circumstances if the negotiations this evening were to be as inconsequential as those of last Monday. I have asked that these negotiations not be conducted before such a large body as before, because that only serves to make things go without result and to prevent us from emerging from the current crisis. I myself will say as little as possible; I want to hear what intentions there are for the future of the Anthroposophical Society.

I just want to say this so that there is no misunderstanding about the significance of our deliberations. Such deliberations, as we are now accustomed to, would not have been possible up to a certain, not very distant period. They have become possible and are now taken for granted because most of the people gathered here today have been able to gradually take on the affairs of the Anthroposophical Society in a leading position over the past four years or so. So the earlier situation in which many of those gathered here today found themselves, namely that they had joined the existing Anthroposophical Society and, so to speak, did not have the full measure of responsibility, no longer exists today.

They must be aware that a large number of personalities have, so to speak, taken the lead in anthroposophical affairs with their own full initiative. Therefore, it has become necessary today that the responsibility for a large part of anthroposophical affairs falls back on these personalities. And these personalities should be aware that the changes that have taken place cannot be erased.

After these changes occurred in the membership, it was therefore quite natural that I was obliged to turn to the leading personalities regarding the question that arose for me from the circumstances, before appealing to the individual members to possibly restore the former situation. These changes imposed duties on me that have withdrawn me from my previous duties. It is therefore natural that before I try to restore the previous conditions, I once again turn to the leading personalities – which of course has been done in vain – to get them to see what they want to do before I turn to the individual members. I do not want to participate materially in today's negotiations. Today I will first of all just listen to what comes out of the bosom of this meeting today, to see afterwards how we can move forward. So it depends on whether you conduct the negotiations in a fruitful way. Otherwise I will have to assume that you have no interest in it if the Anthroposophical Society is led into a catastrophe in the very near future.

I ask you, so that we do not part without result, to at least approach the matter with the utmost seriousness and a sense of responsibility today. I ask you to consider this as an introduction to today's negotiations. Much will depend on what you do today.

Dr. Stein and Dr. Kolisko speak. Dr. Unger: We have to look for ways to overcome the “Stuttgart system”. Dr. Maier, Dr. Palmer, Miss Toni Völker, Paul Baumann speak.

The question of an intended medical vade mecum is addressed.

Dr. Steiner: We should have learned to rethink the clinical pictures in general. We must not obstruct, that goes without saying. One can construct a building, although the difficulties are infinitely great; but they are not considered at all. Just as little as the method of deliberation was considered when the Waldorf School was founded. The question is what could have been done two years ago today. These omissions are the issue. If we beat about the bush and make excuses, then it is self-evident that the excuses are not suitable for writing a vade mecum. The description of heart disease must be thought of in a different way, quite apart from whether the individual remedies can already be used. We must think differently about heart disease. Presented in a different way, it will be able to appear before the world more plausibly than in the previous manuals. What is needed is the good will to rethink in the field of medicine, based on the principles of spiritual science. But because all the discussions are being led down dead tracks, I have to speak. I cannot imagine what should happen, but I can imagine that medicine can be rethought if the will to do so exists. Perhaps there is a much greater need to work from physiology and to rethink the disease patterns physiologically. This does not depend on whether or not the disease remedies have been tried out. This is something that applies “in itself”. However much we may not underestimate the difficulties, we must not beat about the bush about them, as has been done, otherwise we will get nowhere. It is not a matter of presenting the pathology in its entirety. The manuals are always being corrected. It is not about merely recommending remedies to the world. I consider the “remedies list” to be the most harmful thing that could have come about. The point is to advocate the method. I consider everything else to be something that has only harmed us. We do not have to wait for people to accept something like this today; then we can wait until the next incarnation. The point is that we advocate the matter before the world, just as others have advocated their methods; they throw no small amount of abuse at each other. It is not a matter of painting the thing into the mouth of every single professor of medicine, but of presenting it as it could have been presented six months after the inauguration of the matter. That is to say, we present the matter as natural healing methods were once presented. It is a question of medical thinking. The discussion should not be led down dead tracks. We should talk about what is at issue, not about what is self-evident. (Note from Dr. Heyer: “Before this vote, Dr. Steiner had already spoken twice during the negotiations. One time, in response to the description of the specific difficulties given by Dr. Noll, he said that one would end up in a ‘regressus ad infinitum’ if one made ‘methods’ out of the difficulties. The other time he said: When would we ever have been able to found the Waldorf School?"

Dr. Unger: I wanted to talk about active trust.

Dr. Steiner: I have described the methods in detail and in detail. The doctors have not been born out of a heavenly realm in which the task has been set for them. Generally speaking, it seems either plausible or implausible.

The doctors Dr. Husemann, Dr. Noll, Dr. Palmer, and also Eugen Benkendberfer speak to the matter.

Graf Polzer: Who will write the Vademecum?

Dr. Noll: It will definitely be written.

Emil Leinhas, Dr. Palmer, Dr. Kolisko speak to this.

Dr. Steiner: It would have a certain value if there were a discussion about why the Vademecum has not yet been created, and if it could then be seen that it can come about out of an understanding of the true reasons. If the reasons are really discussed, then one can count on it being produced in the future – I am convinced that one man can produce it in six months – but there are reasons that are not objective and that would have to be uncovered. Then one could see whether it will be produced in the future.

If we continue to conduct the further discussion as we have done so far, it will not be possible to see whether society can be led beyond this crisis! The crisis has been brought about by the fact that since 1919 a movement has come into being that has led to all kinds of foundations. The point is that personalities must feel responsible and that they take on this responsibility. That should become clear if we want a guarantee for the continued existence of society. Perhaps then it would be discussed what difficulties there are in bringing about a physical examination. We would learn something about why a lecture is announced to the public but then does not take place.¹ There are quite different difficulties behind that. We urgently need to discuss the things that are already related to anthroposophical life. If the discussion is not to be led into a fruitful field at all, by doing passive resistance, then I would like to draw attention to individual things that show that these are very central anthroposophical matters.

It was before the Vienna Congress [June 1-12, 1922]. Dr. Kolisko had intended to go to Vienna and give a lecture. I was not very pleased that he had the migraine topic in mind. But in the end it is not my business. For me, it was a matter of starting the conversation about it. During this conversation, the following words were uttered: “When I go to the Clinical-Therapeutic Institute, they refuse to give me the material.” — The thing is that such a word can be uttered! If it is really true that the migraine material has been refused for lectures, then we come to the conclusion that this is not an anthroposophical attitude in this matter. If we were to behave in an anthroposophical way, things would come about that are meant to come about. The external developments since 1919 have run into difficulties precisely because of the non-anthroposophical behavior of the individual personalities living in Stuttgart. When there is talk of inhibitions, the real inhibitions should be mentioned. It seems that people want to avoid these things.

I only wanted to point out this characteristic, but I would still like to bring the discussion back to a more fruitful track than the one we have been led to. If these attacks do not cease, then those who are supposed to work together anthroposophically will not work together, but will mutually prevent each other from writing the Vademecum. I have been confronted with this many times: it has been said that individuals prevent each other from writing it. These are the things that would have to be understood, and if they are understood, if the wounds are really pointed out, then there would be a guarantee that the things could be stopped in the future. From what has been said so far, there is no such guarantee. There is no other guarantee than that it is said why there is no cooperation between Gmünd and the Clinical-Therapeutic Institute [in Stuttgart]. Things are then related when asked why there is no collaboration! There is a kind of obstruction going on. This is what I ask you to consider. If there is no serious talk today, it will lead to a catastrophe for the Anthroposophical Society. We cannot continue to work on mere promises.

Dr. Kolisko: Regarding the migraine question, the material was sent to me later. It was not quite what I needed. Personal differences between the gentlemen prevent “the book” [Vademecum] from being written.

Dr. Steiner: In any case, the situation was such that it could be said: Those at the top do not publish their work. If I compare this case with the attitude of the [Clinical Therapeutic] Institute towards the work on the spleen,² I have to say that these things are not very promising.

Some members are speaking.

Dr. Steiner: It would have been better if two individuals had spoken. Again, I don't see where the method lies through which we will make progress.

Emil Leinhas: We must talk openly about things and their reasons.

Dr. Steiner: What has been said is the following: From the very beginning, when medical activities were to take place here, I said that it was not a matter of offering individual remedies, but of offering a medical method. I will only mention that once the method of homeopathy was taught, another time another method. It is important to advocate a medical methodology. In Landhausstrasse, quite a long time before this little book saw the light of day, I suggested to Dr. Noll that we sit down and write a vade mecum. I said that I did not expect much from a “college”; it had to be written by a single person. I made this comparison very early on, to show how homeopathy and naturopathy were represented. This comparison was made to show that agitating for a single remedy cannot be the right thing to help the world in this case, but that it is a matter of telling the world: Here is a certain medical way of thinking. This, what I from the beginning said to Dr. Peipers as a conviction before the doctors, what I from the beginning said to Dr. Noll, this then led once again to my saying in summary: This methodical approach can best be made clear to the world by a vade mecum.

When I say something like that in front of laymen, it is immediately understood that all of these things can only discredit us. The fact that van Leer has come forward is due to the fact that at the meeting that was held recently, it was necessary to discuss what the basis for the effectiveness of our remedies is, and that it was necessary to say again that the methodology must be disseminated first, just as the homeopathic methodology was disseminated at one point. The layman van Leer understood this and drew the conclusion from it; the layman understands this immediately. But our medical college has drawn the conclusion from it that a pedantic-methodological treatise must be written.

These are things that one would think one would only have to mention for people who are familiar with them in their practice of life to understand. One could cite a hundred examples to support this. Again, without judging their value or lack of it, I will cite this.

Schlegel of Tübingen once invited a circle of physicians. He spoke to this circle of physicians and took a stenographer with him. Apart from the value or worthlessness of the method, an extraordinarily stimulating little book was created. A kind of vade mecum was created. They had a case of how something like this arises in practice when you wall. This booklet has helped Schlegel a lot. Imagine, homeopathy is being discussed all over the world. If they had come up with something like this that would have meant something to people, they would have really had something. It is a medical methodology, like homeopathy or allopathy. That is what it is about.

Miss Rascher speaks.

Dr. Steiner: This depends only on the will. I would like to make the assertion that the vade mecum you are asking for should be in the mind of every doctor. Something that you naturally have in mind must be written down. I would like to know where we would be today if we had something like this vade mecum! I would like to know where we could be today! We are not getting far enough with the list of therapeutic products.

I just wanted to point out that the vade mecum could be written in a relatively short time and that the objections that have been raised today are not the ones we need to talk about. As long as we lack the will to speak the truth, we will not get the Anthroposophical Society back on its feet. Do you think that if we were to start talking at the teachers' conference as if there were uncertainty about the method!

Emil Leinhas: Unreserved discussion is necessary, otherwise things become chronic. The expression 'pigsty' has been used.

Dr. Palmer says he does not believe that Dr. Noll can write the thing.

Dr. Steiner: Are you convinced that Dr. Peipers or Dr. Husemann can do it? We must be clear about the fact that completion through joint work would at best turn out to be an acceleration, but that it is something that each of us can do alone.

Dr. Palmer: There is so much material in the lectures. But it is terribly difficult to rework it.

Dr. Steiner: That would only justify you making the claim that you cannot do it on your own. I did not make the unreasonable demand on you personally. I assumed it from others and was clear about the fact that I could assume it there; just as I was equally clear about the fact that I could not assume it with you. The case can be resolved. I was clearly aware from the antecedents what it would be about: namely, that the other gentlemen do the scientific work while you do the practical work — and then the scientific work failed. The only person I cannot reproach is you; that can be said just as sincerely as the other: whether it might not have been possible after all to advance the matter, as one says in popular language.

Dr. Palmer says there was an inhibition.

Dr. Steiner: What was this inhibition? You did not say what the inhibition was.

Dr. Palmer: One might have thought that there was a lack of goodwill and enthusiasm.

Dr. Steiner: I always maintained that goodwill was lacking. It is very important to me that you admit this today.

Dr. Peipers: We are hearing for the first time today that Dr. Noll had this assignment.

Dr. Noll: I did not take on the task as if I alone were capable of doing something like that.

Dr. Palmer: Just admit that the matter is up to you.

Dr. Kolisko: It had become clear to me that Dr. Noll cannot make up his mind about anything.

Dr. Steiner: I don't think we will be able to come to a decision on this question. It will be a matter of seeing how the other things stand in relation to this question. Whether or not we face a catastrophe depends on many individual things. So, first of all, we want to put Dr. Palmer's promise on record.

Then I would ask you to continue discussing the things that you also believe need to be discussed. It would be important to get information about such things. The question goes far beyond the scope of what concerns Stuttgart. It just radiates out from Stuttgart. Certain difficulties that we encounter in Dornach when the affairs of the local laboratory are discussed always lead to the fact that it cannot be done here with Gmünd. This relationship has also been discussed in my presence. I have always been convinced that more could be done in terms of cooperation than is being done in our circles. Because it is true that people are such that they also put obstacles and difficulties in your way! You have to deal with the difficulties. Now some of the difficulties may lie with Dr. Knauer. But they won't change him. I could never understand the situation regarding the relationship between the Clinical Therapeutic Institute and Dr. Knauer.

Emil Leinhas: It is Dr. Knauer's character.

Dr. Steiner: It is necessary in our movement, once a step has been taken, not to break off the commitment to the first step without further ado. I had no objection to the doctors bringing Dr. Knauer in. If he had not been drawn into the intimate details, it would have been possible to deal with him later. But now that he has been drawn into it, we must say B to A. That means: We must also deal with him further. These things must be taken into account. Not taking such things into account causes the greatest damage to our society. Something is always started in a certain careless way. I am only pointing out how careless we were with Sigismund von Gleich! This is how our anthroposophical troubles arise, from not having the will to say B after saying A. This is one of the things that must change for us.

Dr. Palmer and Emil Leinhas comment on this.

Dr. Steiner: It always seemed to me that the more intelligent person gives in. Dr. Knauer cannot be considered an authority. If he had only impressed the medical council, then it would have been fine. You gambled away the chance with him. We cannot have the principle that you first bring someone in and then throw them out when they are no longer convenient. You can see that a large part of what is inflicted on us from the outside [in the way of opposition] is based on a few expulsions that were carried out by the Anthroposophical Society against my will.

The discussion moves on to a different topic. (Note from Dr. Heyer: “At this point it was 1 a.m.”)

Dr. Kolisko speaks about the Research Institute and about Dr. Theberath.

Dr. Theberath speaks about his failure. Dr. Schmiedel put his name on the program without asking him.

Dr. Steiner: Don't you feel obliged to do something for the public interest of the Anthroposophical Society?

Dr. Theberath: I felt obliged to carry out the experiments. A delay in the experiments occurred because what was previously a minor matter became a major one.

Dr. Steiner: In this way we will never get anything out of our research institutes.

Dr. Kolisko: I should have rejected Dr. Theberath's article. There is an error in the editing.

Dr. Steiner: If we start from the principle that the one to whom something is reproached simply justifies himself, then I am convinced that everything that is discussed will end in a justification. If we think in this direction, we will not make any progress. You must remember that the ideas of these foundations have arisen from the bosom of society. Now you cannot necessarily assume that society will go bankrupt because nothing is achieved in this research institute. It is self-evident that a series of experiments can be made more precise and more precise, but it is necessary to show something to the world. The only valid objection to the spleen experiments is that the series of experiments could have been extended. Of course, scientifically it could be justified that a series of experiments never comes to a complete conclusion. I do think, however, that the question should be asked as to how the [research] institute can be made fruitful through work. If we take every question only personally — and Dr. Theberath's view of this question is a prime example of this, then one can only say that the Anthroposophical Society is proving incapable of continuing along the paths of 1919. Then the matter must be abandoned and it must be pushed back to the state it was in in 1918. If you absolutely do not want to deal with the question in such a way that the matter bears fruit and that the leading personalities reflect on it: How do we present the matter to the world so that it bears fruit? Then we will not make any progress.

Liberation in these four different directions – then I will be finished. And please make an effort not to come to every meeting unprepared, but to come prepared once in a while.

• 1. See note on page 68 and the program on page 851.
• 2. See note on page 70.
• 3. M. Steiner made the following comment in her edition: “They wanted to exclude Dr. Unger.”
• 4. There are no minutes available for this meeting of the Stiebener Circle.
• 5. Dr. Kolisko took the place of Ernst Uehli.
• 6. A member of the youth group. The meeting in question was the extended meeting of the 30s on January 22, 1923. What Miss Ruben said has not been recorded.
• 7. With the Circle of Seven, see page 221.
• 8. Bock's remarks must also have been made at the extended meeting of the Thirties on January 22 and rejected by Rudolf Steiner at the meeting on January 29, for which, however, there are no minutes.
• 9. Here, in Karl Schubert's transcription, it is noted: “gap”.