The Rudolf Steiner Archive

In connection with what I said yesterday about our Appeal, I should like to emphasise again that in man's present conditions of life everything depends upon arousing, in as many people as possible, a right social understanding. You must not forget that the way the relations in life have recently developed has brought a great part of the civilised world into a state of chaos such as is only occasioned by what arises out of human souls. As the situation is at present, external means cannot greatly help mankind, whether this is in the form of laws or in the form of outward administration of the economic life. In individual States it is possible, of course, that for a time things may go on, but it would be a mistake to think conditions in these individual States can permanently remain as they are in the midst of the developing social upheavals encompassing all mankind. Help can come only when an understanding of the social relations is cultivated in men's souls.

What I have put in rather a complicated form can also be said more simply. We may say that what is now a striving for disorder will first take an orderly direction when men show themselves capable of producing order. They will be so only when they arrive at a real social understanding from which man today—of whatever party—stands very far removed. It is the most imperative task to spread this understanding. It is a fact of the utmost importance that what is agitating the souls of many millions of the proletariat is something very different from what lives in the souls of their leaders. The leaders have for the greater part inherited the bourgeois attitude to life, which they try to apply to the conditions of proletarian life adorned with a few flourishes of the agitator. This is an essential fact with which we act in accordance only when deciding to work above all for social understanding. Even when external conditions of life have to be recognised as being in still greater confusion and error than formerly, nevertheless the assumption that something can be attained by muddling through would be false. What modern man lacks is social understanding. And this lack is due to the whole of human thinking, feeling and willing having developed in recent times without being applied to this understanding. It is remarkably limited even in the many people today whose social impulses are strong.

Do not think that this social understanding needs some specially comprehensive and far-reaching knowledge for its development. That is not of any consequence; the point is that in contemporary mankind there is lacking even the elementary basis for such an understanding. People's thoughts are very different from those needed for grasping the most primitive social questions.—It is quite right today that attention should be given above all to finding a way to avoid the abstract sentimental concepts at present pacifying so many. It is widely believed that it is possible today to deal with the social problem from some kind of ethical or religious standpoint. This possibility does not exist. Today one cannot just preach religion or ethics, however excellent. This may just warm the feelings and, in an egoistic sense, have some effect. Concepts, however, must be made capable of gripping hold of the everyday affairs of human beings.

Infinitely much depends today on acquiring this understanding. I have said that men today in whom social impulses are flashing up have very often only primitive concepts. Many in leading circles as well as among the proletariat imagine that a simple reassortment of social levels can bring about real change;—for example, if those who were at the top, ministers and secretaries of State were to fall and those who were formerly proletarians were to rise, in effect, if there were a re-levelling. It would be quite a mistake to fancy that things could be changed thus. Many have this idea however much they may protest. Befogged by the outlook of some party or another they are unconscious of holding these views. It is a question, however, of coming quite simply to a clear understanding of the threefold social organism, often dealt with here and also in many public lectures. It is a question of every detail in social measures being so developed that they comply with the necessity inherent in the threefold order. Whether measures have to be taken to build a railway, either under a private company or the State, or a decision is to be made about the ways and means for paying an undertaking on some occasion (I am not speaking of labour-power but of undertakings) it is always a matter of carrying out the measures in the threefold direction, in accordance with the independence of the spiritual life, of the political life of rights and of the economic life. You can of course ask how this or the other should happen. But at the stage where the matter now stands those are for the most part the wrong kind of questions. The spirit living in the threefold order can perhaps be described like this, to take an example: What is the best system of taxation? Now today the important thing is not to think out a system of taxation but to work towards the threefold order. When this threefold membering of the social organism becomes more and more an actuality the best system of taxation will arise through this threefold activity. It is a matter of establishing the conditions under which the best social organisation can originate. Someone or other ruminating over what would be best is not of importance and is not in accordance with reality. But imagine that one of you were a genius, such a genius as has never before been seen in human evolution, and were therefore in a position to think out the best possible system of taxation. But what if you were to stand alone with your magnificently thought-out system and the others refused it, wanting perhaps something less good but anyhow not yours? You see it is not a matter of thinking out the best, but of finding what men as a whole would accept as a basis on which to do their best.

It is true that you may say here: One must begin somewhere. The threefold State must be set up even though men appear unwilling to accept it. That is something different, for there it is not a matter of what men can wish for or not, such as a system of taxation, but of what fundamentally all men would want were they to understand it. If you find the right way you can make it intelligible to them, for subconsciously men want it to be realised during the coming decades throughout the civilised world. That is not merely thought-out, but seen to be what men are wanting. And it is not because they lack the desire that countless men reject it, but because being still full of prejudices, they work in opposition to this matter, which in future will be fully realised. The essential thing is to pay heed to what is primary. The primary is that for which, in a longer or shorter period, understanding can be awakened when once the hindrances to this understanding have been removed. Naturally there are always leading personalities who stand in the way. These personalities are not to be convinced; they must first break their heads against the obstacles they meet. And there will be many such obstacles. On this account if at first the affair does not go as one had imagined, it need not be labeled a failure. Things of this sort must be prepared for. Something must be there when what is now brought about in a mistaken way will have led to an absurd situation, when much that now appears in the world is no longer there—just as the German princes are no longer there, who in 1913 never dreamed they would have disappeared by 1919—when what so many people now applaud is gone, then something on which they can fall back must at least be there in people is heads and hearts. Preparation must be made, the ground must be ready. When once you have penetrated long and deeply enough into this threefold membering of the spiritual life, the economic life and the political life, then the need will arise in you to have a more fundamental understanding of all this. This understanding is absolutely essential, otherwise even when spoken with all possible goodwill what is said will have no connection with reality. The social organism is subject to definite laws in the same way as the natural human organism. You gain nothing by acting against these laws even on grounds of principle. You can at best lead men into a blind alley.

Now do not say: Where is human freedom when man finds himself in a social organism with fixed laws? You might as well ask whether a man can be free when daily he has to eat. It does not make him free to refrain from eating. Things subject to certain laws—even men themselves—have nothing at all to do with the problem of freedom, just as little as our not being able to grasp the moon has to do with our freedom.

To gain a social understanding it is advisable for us to be in the position to go back to fundamentals, to primaries, rather than let our understanding remain bogged in secondaries or tertiaries, which are subsequent phenomena. We may give this example from a certain condition of life—a man needs a definite minimum, let us say in money—since we have converted our values into money—in order to support life. This subsistence minimum can be spoken of as referring to some special condition of life. But we can so speak of it that we say something apparently extremely obvious on the one hand, on the other, what is complete nonsense. I will try to make this clear to you by an example. Taking given conditions of life in any part of the world you may perhaps say with feeling that a manual worker needs so and so much as a subsistence minimum, otherwise he would be unable to live in the particular community. This can seem quite an obvious idea. But how is it then, in accordance with what has been assumed here, when this is not realisable within a certain social organism? The question that must first of all be answered is: What then if the realisation of this is impossible?

To reflect upon the matter thus is not the primary thinking I have represented. Thought out in the abstract, the subsistence minimum demanded does not lead us to fundamentals but ties us down to what is secondary, what appears as a mere consequence. To attain social understanding we have to be in a position to enter into fundamental things. It is fundamental to cultivate a practical view as to how there can be a subsistence minimum in accordance with conditions of life in the social organism. In this case I mean by ‘practical’ such a view that would result in humanly possible social conditions and social community life. This is the primary.

And now one comes to certain conceptions very unpopular with a great part of present-day mankind, because the basic teaching that should work towards such things, and really guide them in this direction, has been neglected. Men need to realise that even to be half-educated one should not merely know that three times nine is twenty-seven; one should also know, for example, what it is that we call ground-rent. I ask you, how many people today have any clear idea of what ground-rent is? But without considering the social organism in connection with such things, no human progress can be made.

The wrong-headed conceptions men hold today are due to confusion in this sphere. Ground-rent, which can be reckoned according to the productivity of a piece of land in a certain district, yields a certain sum for a State-bounded area. The land tapes its value according to its productivity, that is, in accordance with the way or the degree in which it is put to rational use in relation to the whole economy. It is very difficult today for anyone to gain a clear concept of this simple land value, since in the modern capitalistic economic life interest on capital, or capital in any form, has confused the whole picture of ground-rent, and the true concept of its economic value for the people has been blurred by phantoms in the form of mortgage law and the system of stocks and shares. Strictly speaking, everything has been forced into conceptions that are impossible and false. Naturally a true conception of ground-rent cannot be acquired in the twinkling of an eye. But think of it simply as the economic value of the land in some territory, with regard to its productivity. Now there exists a necessary relation between this ground-rent and subsistence what I have referred to as a subsistence minimum. There are many social reformers and social revolutionaries today who dream of the wholesale abolition of ground-rent, who believe, for example, that ground-rent will be done away with by all land being nationalised or communalised. Essentials, however, are never changed by a mere change of form. Whether a whole community owns the land or it is owned by a number of individuals makes no difference to the existence of ground-rent. It is simply obscured and takes on other forms. Ground-rent as I have defined it is always there. Take the ground-rent of a certain district and divide it up among the individual inhabitants, then you will get as quotient the only possible subsistence minimum. This is a law as definite and unalterable as a law of Physics. It is a primary fact, something fundamental, that in a social organism in reality no one deserves more than is yielded by the ground-rent being divided among the total population. What can be earned further arises through coalitions and associations in which conditions are established where one individual can acquire more value than another. But not a whit more can pass into the movable property of an individual man than what I have here indicated. From this minimum, which really exists everywhere even though the real conditions are obscured, arises all economic life in so for as it applies to an individual's movable property. It must have arisen from this basic fact. Hence it is that one starts not from something secondary but from this primary fact. This primary fact may be compared to any other, for example to a primary fact also valid for the economic life, that on a certain territory there is only a certain amount of raw product. Naturally you may think it desirable to have more of this raw product and to be able just to reckon how much more might be had from this land. But the raw product does not allow of any arbitrary increase; that is a primary fact. And it is a primary fact in the same way that, in a social organism, in reality nothing more can be earned through work—however hard this work may be—than can be yielded by the quotient I mentioned. As I said, all surplus is acquired through human coalition.

The social and political administration can be in contradiction to these facts. Therefore it is necessary to bring all organising thought into the direction that facts take. Man can find satisfaction only when these things are thoroughly understood. Then the organising factor, the thinking that has taken on reality, is brought into line with what the nature of the social organism demands, and other thinking adjusts itself to it, so that it cannot happen that one thinking considers itself prejudiced by the other. That is what lies as a law at the basis of the true life of the social organism. Right thinking, realistic concepts on such matters can be gained—as I showed by the example of the relation of a subsistence minimum to ground-rent—only when you make your start on the basic principles of the threefold order. For only under its influence is it possible for men to create measures by which human life in common on any given territory can be developed really productively. Life will develop most productively when it goes in a direction that accords with law and not in the opposite direction. Thus it is a matter of living in time with the social organism.

It is necessary to be quite clear about this—that you will never gain insight into the fundamentals of the Threefold Order by observing life externally, any more than observation of any number of right-angled triangles will give you the Pythagorean theorem. But once known it can be applied to any real right-angled triangle. It is the same with these fundamental laws. Once grasped correctly in accordance with reality, they can be of universal application. And in addition you have from the basis of Spiritual Science the opportunity to grasp the necessity of the Threefold Order. Consider what can be given through it—the life of earthly spirituality, if I may so call it, art, science, religion and also, as already mentioned, civil and criminal law; that is one sphere. The second is the political association of men and is concerned with man's relation to his fellows. And the third is the economic life, concerned with man's relation to the lower man, what man needs in order to raise himself to his true manhood. The Threefold Order has to do with these three spheres. Man should be established in the social organism in accordance with these three members; he must be so established. For the three members have each a quite distinct origin in regard to the human being as such. All life of the spirit on earth—and what I now say counts for our own age—is a kind of echo of what man lived through in the life before his descent through birth into physical existence. In that life the human being lived as a spiritual individual in a spiritual relation to the higher hierarchies, with those disembodied souls who were in the spiritual world and not at the time incarnated on earth. What man develops here as spiritual life, be it in devotion to religious practice or life in a religious community, be it in activity in the arts, or as a judge passing sentence on those of his fellowmen found guilty, everything lived out in this spiritual life has its origin in the forces acquired by man when, before he entered physical existence through birth, he lived with the higher hierarchies in the spiritual worlds. Here you must distinguish between life lived in common with other men in accordance with individual destiny, and that lived with others in accordance with what I have just described. In earthly existence we come into individual relations with one or other of our fellow-men. These relations depend upon our individual karma, and either trace back to earlier lives on earth or point to those coming later. But among these individual relations between human beings you must distinguish those, for example, that arise from belonging to a certain religious community. For in a religious community you think or feel as a number of other men do. Or suppose a book is published. Men read the book, take up thoughts from the book, and thus enter into a community. Spiritual life on earth, whether having to do with the bringing-up of children, education, or anything else of the kind, consists in our coming into relation with people and developing a life in common with them, in order thereby oneself to make spiritual progress. All that, however, is experiencing relationships in which, before descending into spiritual life on earth, we were in a quite different form. It has nothing to do with individual karma but with what was prepared during life in the spiritual world in the time lived through between death and a new birth. Thus, one has to seek the source of what I have called the spiritual sphere, in the life passed through by man before he prepared to descend. through birth into earthly existence.

Then there comes what is experienced simply by living on earth between birth and death. We grow into this life by degrees. When as an infant we enter into this existence through birth, we still bear—if I may make a foolish comparison—much of the egg-shell of the spiritual world around us, though it is not hard. The child is very spiritual in spite of its main task being the development of its physical body. In its aura there is much of the spiritual; what it brings with it is very nearly akin to the spiritual life on earth. Gradually, however, it enters more and more deeply into the life that belongs entirely to the time between birth and death.

Now the sources of the life of the political state are found in this life not chiefly concerned with the spiritual. The political state has to do only with what man experiences between birth and death. Therefore nothing should be involved in it save what concerns us as beings between birth and death in our mutual relations as man to man. If the state involved itself in anything other than what concerns the public life of rights between birth and death, if it spread its wings over Church and School, for example, well—in the places where there were people with a faculty for judging such things it used to be said: “There the Prince of this world holds his unjust sway!” Nothing belongs to all that is the object of state-organisation except what has to do with the life between birth and death.

The third member is the economic. This economic life, which we are obliged to lead because we eat and drink, clothe ourselves and so on, forces us as human beings to descend into the subhuman. It chains us to something beneath the level of our full humanity. By having to concern ourselves with life economically, by having to dive down into economic life, we experience something which, when observed socially, has more in it than is usually thought. In so far as we stand in the economic life we cannot live in the spiritual nor in the life of rights, but must plunge below the human level. But just by this plunging into the subhuman we take into ourselves something that thus has an opportunity to develop. Whereas in the economic life we are active and higher thoughts must be silent and even the human mutual relations play in only from another sphere, there is worked in our subconscious then what we then carry with us into the spiritual world through the gate of death. Whereas in the spiritual life on earth we experience the echo of what we lived through before our descent to earth, and in the life of rights of the political state experience only what lies between birth and death, in the economic life, into which we cannot enter with our higher self, something is being prepared that is also spiritual and carried by us through the gate of death. People would like the economic life to exist only for the earth. But this is not so. Just through our plunging down into the economic life something is prepared for us as human beings that is again connected with the supersensible world. Therefore no one should think of holding the economic life too lightly. However strange and paradoxical it may seem, this external materialistic life has a certain connection with the life after death. So that in actual fact, for anyone who knows man, the three spheres fall asunder—the purely spiritual sphere points to life before birth; the political sphere of the State points to life between birth and death; the economic life points to life after death. It is not in vain that we cultivate fraternity in the economic life. In all that we develop as brotherliness in the economic sphere lie the foundations and preliminary conditions of life after death. I am giving you only a first brief indication of how the threefold membering of the nature of the human being gives the spiritual scientist in these three distinct spheres the differentiation necessary for social life.

It is a particular characteristic of Spiritual Science that, when we come to deal with it, we find it directly practical. It sheds light on the life around us, and at the present time men have no other possibility of getting light on the real relationships of life than by in some way accepting spiritual knowledge. Thus it is desirable that those who are interested in the Anthroposophical Movement should let the light of their understanding ray out to others; for the Anthroposophist it is relatively easier to penetrate these things with insight. He knows something of life both before and after birth, for example, from the standpoint of Spiritual Science, and this shows him the necessity for the threefoldness in life from this point of view. This necessity can indeed be seen today. But we shall gain a deeper, more comprehensive insight if we have the anthroposophical basis of which I have been speaking here.

In the course of the last centuries how much has been spoken in a sentimental way, when men have held forth, for instance, about universal moral teaching and the like, and religion has been kept as far as possible apart from external daily life. We are now at a point of time when we have to develop concepts that can penetrate right into daily life and do not just extend to the promise of salvation or to the demand “Children love one another”. They do not do it in any case when they do not have to or when other business is on hand. The concepts we develop must have sufficient driving force to enable us really to understand our present-day complicated economic life. Thus, simply through knowledge of the nature of man we are shown the necessity for the sound social organism to be threefold.

It must become clear to as many people as possible today that this is the very foundation-stone of a new structure. just to prate about the spirit is, as I was saying yesterday, perhaps more harmful just now than the materialism which, beginning in the middle of the nineteenth century, has up to now continued to spread. For mere talk of the spirit, mere sighing after the spirit, mere worship of the spirit, no longer meet the needs of our epoch. In our epoch it is fitting that we realise the spirit, that we give the spirit the possibility of living in our midst. Today it does not suffice just to believe in the Christ; it is essential that men should now manifest the Christ in their deeds, in their work. This is the important thing. If man develops sound thinking and perceiving in this sphere, these sound thoughts and perceptions will flow into another sphere as well. Consider how a great many of the present official representatives of one or other of the Christian faiths speak today of Christ. But if asked: Why is He whom you call Christ, the Christ? they can give only a fictitious answer, what is indeed an inner lie. Many modern theologians talk of Christ, but were you to ask them: How does your concept of the Christ-being differ from your concept of the Jahve-God, the one God, weaving and creating throughout the universe? they would have no answer to give.

The great theologian Harnack, in Berlin, has written a book on The Being of Christianity. What he describes as the Being of Christianity is the Jehovah of the Old Testament, with all Jehovah's characteristics. It is inwardly a lie to describe Jehovah as Christ, And it is thus with hundreds, nay thousands, of those preaching Christianity today; they are simply preaching God in general, the God of Whom we can say ex Deo nascimur. Christ is discovered only when one has experienced a kind of new birth. We need only be healthy human beings to have to recognise the God of Whom we say ex Deo nascimur; for to be an atheist is in reality to be ill. But one can speak of the Christ only when in the life of soul one has experienced a kind of re-birth, in the way this happens in the present cycle of human evolution. For this, it is not enough that man is simply born as a human being.

Man as he is born today is necessarily full of prejudices; that is the nature of present-day man. And if we remain as we are born we carry these prejudices with us through life; we live in one-sidedness. We can save ourselves only by having inner tolerance, by being able to enter into the opinions of others even when we think them wrong. If we can bring a deep understanding for the opinions of other souls even when considering them mistaken, if we can take what the other thinks and feels in the same way as we take what we think and feel ourself, if we adopt this faculty of inner tolerance, we may overcome these prejudices due to the human cycle in which we were born. We then learn to say: What you have understood in this the least of my brethren, you have understood of me. For Christ did not speak to men in this way only at the time when Christianity began, but has made good His word “Lo, I am with you always even unto the end of earthly time”. He still continues to reveal Himself. Once Be said: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren ye have done it unto Me”. Today He tells men: What you understand with inward tolerance in the least of your brothers, even when he is mistaken, you have understood of Me, and I will let you overcome your prejudices when you convert those prejudices into tolerant reception of what others think and feel.—That is one thing; that, in regard to thinking, is the way to come to Christ. Then Christ can so permeate us that we not only have thoughts about Him but Christ can live in our thoughts. This, however, is only achieved in the way I have just described.

And secondly, in regard to the will. In youth the human being is sometimes idealistic. This is an inherent idealism and we have it simply by being born as human beings. Today, in this era, this idealism belonging to mankind is not enough. We now need a quite different kind—an idealism to which we educate ourselves; we do not have it simply by becoming human beings but by making an effort. It is this kind of idealism we need. We need the idealism we have ourselves acquired. It then becomes the idealism that will not vanish with youth, it will keep us young and idealistic throughout our life. If through training we make an idealism our own, then, on the basis not of logical law but of the law of reality, we bring to bear the driving force to place ourselves actively into the social organism in accordance with the very purport of this organism, instead of acting egoistically as an individual man. No one today who does not train himself to this self-acquired idealism will gain a true social understanding. The ex Deo nascimur is innate. The way to Christ is found on the one hand through supersensible thought, on the other hand through the will. It comes through the thought by our being convinced beforehand that nowadays we are born as men full of prejudice and must overcame our prejudice by tolerantly listening to the opinions of others, thus gaining right judgment. Where the way of the will is concerned, this will only be fired socially in the right way today when we have this self-acquired idealism, the idealism we drive into ourselves through our own activity. That is re-birth. And what we have found when we as men have gained it for ourselves leads us to the Christ. Not the God of Whom we say Ex Deo nascimur may we describe as Christ, for that is inwardly untrue. That God was known in the Old Testament. When we as men shall have transformed ourselves in life in the two directions mentioned, we shall clearly see the distinction between the God Who is pure Father and the God Who will then speak to us. For this God is the Christ.

Modern Theology actually speaks very little about this Christ. This Christ must eater men as a social impulse. What many people say today of Christ is intrinsically untrue. Now such things are not to be looked into as people today subtly present them, taking them logically, point by point. As I once told you recently, there is an understanding in accordance with reality different from one that is merely external and logical. But when man has developed in himself what I have called a re-birth, then human thinking will be brought near Christ, and we shall learn to think and feel as we must think and feel if, for the benefit and salvation of man, we are to place ourselves into human society. We shall also learn to think and feel rightly in other matters by thinking and feeling rightly on these fundamental things. From this, however, the spiritual life of modern mankind has travelled terribly far. And the reason is that this spiritual life has been absorbed by the political State. Man's spiritual life must be freed from the political State to become fruitful and full of impulse for human evolution. Otherwise all thinking will be dislocated and from this dislocation false realities will be created.

I have already referred to Wilson's definition of freedom. For anyone who has some understanding of philosophy it is not very important how a statesman of the day defines freedom. It is important, however, as symptom of what lives in a men when he has thoughts about freedom. Now Wilson says: We call free what adapts itself to certain conditions so that it can still move freely. Thus we say when in a machine the piston can move freely, when it does not knock against anything but can move without impediment—we say the piston runs free. Or a ship moves forward freely which is so built that it runs before the wind. If it run against the wind it is hampered and not free. So man is free when he fits in with the conditions of the social mechanism. There, then one can only speak of the social mechanism.

It is not very important that thoughts such as these live in a head and are realised; the importance lies in what is realised being experienced in such thoughts. Then one knows whether this is sound or the opposite of sound. The thinking is quite dislocated; and why? Now you need only reflect on the following with the experience you have gained from Spiritual Science: when you fit into the external conditions of your life, when your life is running according to this adapting oneself to conditions without impediment, then you are free, free as a ship is free when running with the wind. But man does not stand thus in the whole world: For if indeed the ship running before the wind does run freely, it must, however, sometimes also be able to stop. And that is just what is very important for man—that he can sometimes turn round and take his stand against the wind, so that he not only fits in with circumstances but can also adapt himself to what is within him. One cannot think of anything more foolish, more absurd, than Wilson's definition of freedom, for it is opposed to human nature and the very reverse of what lies at the basis of true freedom. If we compare a man with a ship running freely before the wind, we must also compare him with a ship that having run in a certain direction and not needing to go further, can turn to face the wind. For if a man has to proceed only in accordance with external conditions, he is naturally free in them but not in himself. We have completely lost sight of the human being today in our observation of the world and of life. He has dropped out of our considerations concerning life and the world. But he must once more be given a place in the world. [ Note 01 ]

This has its exceedingly serious side; here it is seen only as a symptom but it has a most serious side. For today the human being is placed into the social organism in such a way that really he is only running with the wind, and the capitalist ordering of economy has particularly destined the proletariat only to run with the wind, never to be able, as a rest, to stop and face the wind. In a public lecture in Basle I said that within the capitalist. economic system the capitalist uses only the labour of the workers; in a healthy social organism the capitalist must use the workers' leisure also. Abstract capitalistic capital needs only labour-power. Capital that, under the threefold order, will give back to men their purely human driving force will also use the leisure of the workers, the leisure indeed of all mankind. For that, capital must be placed into the social organism, it will know how it is to be sustained by the social organism and how it must in return sustain the organism.

It is a question of the proletariat being able to save their labour-power so as to be capable of taking part in the spiritual life; and it is a question of the will being there to allow the worker sufficient leisure, to leave him sufficient labour-power, that of himself he can join in this spiritual life. The bourgeois economic order has allowed a deep cleft gradually to arise. What it produces spiritually is valid only for this bourgeois order and is out of touch with proletarian life.

Capitalism has brought things to the point where only labour-power is considered and not the leisure of the proletariat. Today these matters still seem abstract. It should be so no longer, for upon understanding these things rightly depends the sound human evolution both of the present and the future.

Now I have once again given a few indications as to the relation to social life of some of the fundamental tenets of Anthroposophy. It would be very desirable if such a spiritual movement as ours should, as a little social organism in itself, cease this unhealthy separation—developed to man's hurt by appalling bourgeois concepts—of the economic life from the spiritual, and should seek health by permeating the concepts of practical life with the concepts of Spiritual Science. The social organism must so organise its different members that there will no longer be men who cut off coupons and in this coupon-cutting become nothing less than slave-drivers, since for the coupons they cut off, a number of people, with whom they have no connection, have to perform hard work. Afterwards the coupon-cutters go to Church and pray God to be saved, or they go to a meeting and talk theoretically about all sorts of beautiful things; but they have no conception of the foolishness of living such an abstract spiritual life that they can seek, on the one hand, a connection with a God, and on the other hand share in slave ownership and the exploitation of labour by this coupon-cutting. They separate these things in a way that is not salutary by not attempting to discover the salutary. This is what is in question, what has been neglected and what must be changed: this separation between the religion and ethics that float in a cloud-cuckoo-land, and the external life thoughtlessly pursued in the form given it today by an unsound social organism. Above all it must be recognised that the misfortunes of the present-day have come about through this separation by the bourgeoisie of the abstract from the concrete. If efforts are made to drive out all that shows itself in an unsound and sectarian form, it is in just such a movement as ours that there can be a first setting-up of a kind of small social organism that is sound. In our Anthroposophical Movement there is nothing from which we have had to suffer more than the repeated appearance of a tendency towards sectarianism. Without noticing it people strive towards some kind of separation. But Anthroposophy must be the reverse of sectarian. It will then meet the subconscious and unconscious contemporary demands which truly do not run to creating sects, but cultivate something that develops out of the whole man for all men and out of all men for the whole man.

Just consider how you, in your own souls, can get away from sectarianism. In countless souls today sectarianism lives like something atavistic, an unhealthy inheritance, because the will does not exist to carry the true life of the spirit into the conditions of external life. Only through such sectarian sentimentality could it happen that the Appeal of which I spoke yesterday should meet with the reproach that it was just from this direction that mention of the spiritual had been expected! But I have never been able to refer to the spiritual in the sense of these enthusiasts. When, in the beginning of the nineties, there spread in America the Adler-Unold Ethical Movement, I opposed it with all my might, because a movement for ethical culture was to be founded based on nothing, and connected with nothing in life, but a desire to give out ethical maxims. The understanding of life, life in its fundamentals, is what contemporary men need, not the fashioning of phrases as to how things should be done. In regard to the social organism, the threefold order is above all something to be studied fundamentally, investigated and given consideration, something to be taken deeply to heart, so that it may be mastered in the same way as the multiplication table is mastered.

Notes:

1. See lecture 13.1.23 (Anthr.Qtly VI.1.)

This evening I want to speak to you about the cultural life of our present time; and especially about the basis of the work we are doing here (Waldorf School, etc.) and of our aims. I shall possibly have nothing specially new to say to you to-day, but I am going to give you a kind of comprehensive survey; that is the sort of thing that ie necessary at the present time.

The keynote from which I want to speak to-day is to indicate that a really genuine spiritual deepening is necessary for mankind at the present time—a spiritual deepening brought about by means of those new methods of obtaining spiritual knowledge which are accessible to men of the present age,and which I have often described.

We have said again and again that men will not be able to make any further progress in matters social, if understanding of the facts in social life does not arise as the result of a spiritual deepening induced by the new methods of acquiring spiritual knowledge which are essential to it. It has already been indicated with what earnestness this spiritual deepening should be sought with the help of these new methods of acquiring knowledge—and that only those have a true understanding for the needs and demands of the present time, who are able to take seriously to heart all that the call towards spiritual deepening entails, and who, moreover, have come to the absolutely firm conviction that in the very nature of things there can be no possible kind of compromise with any older methods of entering the spiritual worlds. Endeavour to compromise here only leads to side tracks. Do you think it could truthfully be said that in our time men who presume to be leaders in this or that sphere of life, really know what a serious striving after the Spirit is? Such men must not have a feeling merely for theories about the Spirit, but for the real living power inherent in the Spirit; but when one speaks of this living spiritual power to-day it is to many people absolutely and utterly incomprehensible.

I will just illustrate what I mean by an example, Not very long ago I got a letter from a man who takes an active interest in spiritual things. I am only going to quote the contents as an illustration and so shall give no name. It says that this man had got hold of my “Appeal to the Cultural World” and that he entirely agreed with the idea of the “Threefold Commonwealth.” The writer goes en to say that he had got certain useful information from my book on the “Threefold Commonwealth” and that he had repeated them in public. But then he saye that the Committee of the Threefold Commonwealth League had sent him a copy of the lecture which I gave to the workers at the Daimler Company, and although he says that he does not venture to criticise the essential details cf the lecture, on the next page he finds a great deal to grumble at because the tone of the lecture should, in his opinion, have been different—he feels aggrieved that middle class culture, as it has existed up to now, ie spoken of in rather a derogatory way—and so on. I need not go into details. Very well, now,what is the cause of thie? Let us consider the thing as it really is. Here is a man—and it after all a good thing that such men exiets—who theoretically agrees with what is to be found in the “Appeal to the Cultural World” and has absorbed something of what is contained in the book on the “Threefold Commonwealth;” who, moreover,agreee with what I said in the lecture to the Daimler workers, but who criticies the “tone”—considers it “demagogic” and so on. Theoretically, the man agrees with much of the lecture; but it is no use at all to-day to agree with a thing theoretically. This man really hast no perception of the true state of the case; he has no discernment in reference to the manipulation or application of the thing. If I sit in Dornach and write an “Appeal to the Cultural World” I have before my minds eye such men of the present day who can respond to such an appeal I do not write down any theoriee I may have evolved—I write in living, vital relationship with those who can,and who would be able to understand and grasp it. It is an understanding which comes as the result of a vital connection, a relationship wherein there is ever present in the mind, the Spirit which rules at the present time. And again in the “Threefold Commonwealth” I do not write in order that the words may stand there in little printed letters on paper, eventually to be criticised by theorists. I write for humanity as it is to-day, in a way that is in acccrdance with reality. Suppose, now,I go into a hall where the workers of the Daimler Company are sitting. I know perfectly well how I ought to speak to these people; I know how to put things to them because I speak from out of the living Spirit! Anyone who does his work from out of the Spirit gives no sort of academic lecture! In academic lectures people have “thought thinge out,” and give their personal opinions to their hearere. But a man who stands within the Living Spirit, speaks out from hie heart—not up to the stars!

It may well be said that men who themselves are able to follow a thing theoretically have as a rule no idea that anyone who wishes, to be active in the Spirit must work outwards from within that same Spirit in which he actually lives at that moment. External criticism there may be—but I assure jou that the lecture which I gave to the Daimler Company, was understood by those who were present. If I had spoken as my correspondent would have had me speak, those men wculd certainly have laughed me out of the hall. To-day it ie no longer a matter of preserving these ancient (for they are ancient now) theoretical customs in order to be able personally to agree or disagree with something; it is rather a matter of having a living, vital conception cf the working, of the nature and essence of the Spirit which exists there in actuality. And so again I have to repeat that the question of outward similerity in the words and sentences is not the point. What is of importance is this: from which realm of the Spirit comes that which is spoken? Men of the present day have still very very much to learn about these things. For there is a general belief among men to-day that when they have got hold of the content of anything, they have also absorbed the thing itself, whereas, as a matter of fact, to absorb the content of anything many only mean that one has got hold of the text and it is possible still to be far, far away from the Spirit of it.

It is very specially necessary to know just what Spiritual Science teaches with reference to social matters, shall flow into our present day materialism. Otherwise the connection of Anthroposophy with social life will not be understood. To-day we are living, to a greater extent than we realise, within a stream of materialistic culture in every department of life, and when as often to-day, we hear it said that here and there this materialistic culture is being overcome, that is an error. In words here and there, there may be a fight against materialism, but from out of the Spirit, no—there is no fight. Some idealistic academic manifesto may be issued—or a book written—but both may very likely themselves be the product of the spirit of materialism. Above all things it is necessary to-day to realise what has brought about present materialism, for if we do not realise how we have fallen into it, we shall never be able to raise ourselves out of it!

Well, now, wherein consists the real corruption of the materialistic impulse of our time? It consists in this, that things soon burst into flame when some spiritual truth is emphasised or brought forward as the result of living experience of spiritual reality. For example, suppose someone, as a result of practical knowledge, made certain statements about the animal kingdom; suppose be wished to make comprehensible the fact that in the animal kingdom and its evolution, spiritual forces are working. It is quite possible that through his knowledge of the spiritual forces which work in the animal kingdom, he might nave to speak in such a way which would immediately make some group of Evangelical or Catholic Theologians- blaze up and criticise him root and branch without once really examining what he said, just because he had ventured as a result of his knowledge of the animal kingdom, to speak of the Spirit! Or again, one might speak. of the necessity for bringing spiritual forces into the social life of humanity, because only by first recognising them and then incorporating them into the social order can any true reconstruction come about. At once the desire for attack, for aggression, which is characteristic of the followers of Karl Marx and other Socialistic is revived—just as in the other case the particular peculiarities of the Protestant or Catholic Priests. And the tone of the things said by both sides is not very different! It should be noticed however, that one attitude has been cultivated in a sentimental-theological religious atmosphere (I say that quite kindly) and the ether in a more tempestuous, uncultured atmosphere! I do not say, remember, that the last is worse than the first but that fundamentally the attitude proceeds from the same thing in both cases.

Whence comes the materialistic spirit of the present day? What has bred and cultivated it? Religious Creeds and avowals. And the fundamental reason why this materialism pulsates through the social world conceptions to-day is that they have been apt pupils of what has proceeded from religious creeds through the centuries. It was very much more significant than is usually recognised—that in the year 869, at the Council of Constantinople the Catholic Church cut out the Spirit from the Creed. Since that lime it has not been legitimate for catholic erudition to state that man has a spirit within him, but only that he has a body and a soul. This was so, through all the Middle Ages, and there was nothing which learned Catholics of the Middle Ages dreaded more than pronouncement about the Threefold nature of man, of man as body, soul and spirit; for the Council of Constantinople had laid down that man consists of body and soul, and although in the soul there may be certain spiritual, qualities and forces, it is not permissible to speak of an individual spirit. Then the scientists and philosophers came to believe as a result of this, that when they divided man up, into body and soul this was purely scientific without any kind of bias—whereas it was the influence of that Church Dogma laid down in the 9th century which led them to do so. Such professors as William Wundt are, as Psychologists, simply the pupils of Catholic Dogmatism—but as a rule nobody sees the real connection that exists.

Why is it that in discussions of universal science one may not speak of the Spirit? This has come about again as a result of this Church dogma. Neither may one mention “soul”—at least not what is truly “soul” because religious creeds have claimed for themselves the sole right to speak of the soul, and also of the spirit to the degree to which it is permitted by this dogma. It is a monopoly of theirs! And a man is not within his rights when he speaks of soul and spirit because such matters are a monopoly of those who speak to humanity from the standpoint of the religious beliefs and creeds. So there is nothing left to science per se, to Zoology, Physiology, Chemistry, Physics, to speak about except “materiel processes.” When something lights up and they speak of spirit—they are said to be interfering in what is a concern of religion! And so there was left to this unfortunate science nothing except matter, and it grew into materialism just because religious creeds deprived it of the possibility of concerning itself with the spiritual.

In this there is something of very vital significance. It is very important to recognise that the powers which have brought about materialism are the Ecclesiastical powers of the West. We owe our materialism to the Churches. And unless the Churches lose their power as directors of the religious life of man, materialism is bound to grow stronger and stronger. It is not possible to indulge in any illusion in this connection if the question of culture is to be taken really seriously; and to-day these things simply must be taken seriously. To-day men must not want to come to compromise after compromise in their lives, just because of their human frailties. If in external life we are compelled to make some compromise, we must be fully aware of it. We must never imagine that what we are doing perhaps under the pressure of external force is right: and deliberate compromises should not be made.

It is above all things essential to create a foundation, a basis for knowledge which is trustworthy. To-day things must be sharply and concisely defined. We live at a time when knowledge of the spiritual world simply must be taken seriously. The scientific knowledge of the 5th Post Atlantean period, beginning with Galileo, Giordano Bruno, Kepler, Copernicus and having in the 19th century one of its most significant representatives in Julius Robert Mayer, follows the methods of natural science and sets to work from a scientific point of view, both are quite different from the methods and convictions of the creeds and religious avowals which have come over from ancient times. Between them there is, moreover, no possibility of union. A spiritual science which has really arisen out of modern culture must, however, be founded upon the same basic principles of knowledge as natural science. What is said in my book “The Mystics of the Renaissance” must be taken seriously. And if we do not see the spirit in ail that we observe in the world, then we are not taking that book seriously. Matter is nowhere present merely as matter. Concrete matter and concrete spirit are together, everywhere. And to-day when man says that below him in the world are the three kingdoms, animal, vegetable, mineral—he is stating a half truth only, if he does not recognise that just as from his body downwards exist the animal, vegetable and mineral Kingdoms, so upwards are to be found the three kingdoms of the spiritual hierarchies of the Angels, Archangels and Archai. It is not correct to speak of the animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms as lower degrees towards the physical if it is not realised that up towards the spiritual exist the three other spiritual kingdoms. For man as he exists in the physical world is connected, through his body, with the animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms, and through his spiritual and psychic being he is connected with these three higher kingdoms, which, for perfected human perception, are just as much spiritual realities as the three lower kingdoms are real for the physical senses. As long as man will not recognise that it is through a perception of external reality itself (unhindered as he must be by any religious avowal) that he comes to a realisation of the spiritual—he cannot understand that which must work as impulse at the present time. A statement for instance like this—that whales exist, does not prevent us from affirming at the same time something about the spiritual world. These are the things which must be deeply thought about to-day.

The fact of the matter is that we have entered upon an epoch of human evolution wherein man has become a different being from what he was in earlier periods of the Earth evolution. Of course Man, at some stage of development, was always to be found in the Earth. When the great Atlantean flood had subsided and the first Post Atlantean civilisation developed out of a much older civilisation, man's body was still evolving strongly upwards and forwards, this was still the case in the ancient Persian epoch, the ancient Egyptian-Chaldean period, and to a certain extent in the Graeco-Latin period, which lasted until about the middle of the 15th century. But since that time the progressive evolution, the forward evolution of the bodily part of man has been gradually ceasing. The purely corporeal evolution of humanity is finished. We cannot now say that in future the bodily evolution of man will proceed and progress as it did during the first, second and third and fourth evolutionary epoch, for that it will not do. For the rest of the Earth-evolution there will be no further evolution of the human body. It has passed the highest point of forward evolution and as a body, filled with the forces which build up corporeality, is facing not a progressive, but a retrogressive evolution. If by the methods used by spiritual science, we try to find out why this is so, we have to come to the conclusion that just as man to-day has entered upon a relationship to the animal world different from that which formerly was the case (man had for instance during the Egyptian-Chaldean epoch much more of the animal nature in him than he has to-day, he was more instinctive in an animal sense)—so he is developing another relationship to the three higher kingdoms of Angels, Archangels and Archai. Up to the time of our epoch, these three higher kingdoms had a special interest in concerning themselves with man. Humanity of the present must begin to realise that these things are realities. The .Angels, Archangels and Archai, were in the past vitally interested in man, but in our epoch this interest is ceasing—it began to cease in the middle of the 15th century at the beginning of the fifth Post Atlantean period. It was the ideal of these higher hierarchies to obtain a perfect human figure and this was not possible until our epoch, because man had not yet reached the summit of his bodily perfection. They had to wait. Humanity to-day with its confused ideas of Divinity which so easily make men into Atheists, cannot understand that these spiritual beings standing higher than man, had to wait until they had brought him to a point where a figure or image of his perfection was placed before their spiritual eyes. For this reason instinctive knowledge, perceptions, impulses of will, arose in men in earlier times as the result of the work of these Beings. Man could not of his own free will induce these things in himself—it was a more instinctive process—and it was the work of these Beings. And these Beings were vitally interested in the forward development of man because only when they had succeeded in bringing him up to the point at which he has been since the middle of the 15th century, had they the image or figure before them which was necessary for the sake of their own evolution. At the present time they have brought man far enough, and they are no longer interested in him from this particular point of view. It is for this reason that at the present time man is so bereft of the Spirit; the spirits have lost a certain interest in him which they formerly had. For this reason too he so easily becomes an opponent of all spiritual knowledge, because the spirits are no longer working on him. The spiritual beings of the Hierarchies immediately above us have lost their interest in this connection, and man must now, out of his own free-will, waken this interest again. As in earlier times through his body and his instincts he was instigated as it were to develop towards the spirit, now, and in future, he must develop towards the spirit out of his own free knowledge. He must, in a certain way develop out of himself new “substance” for the higher beings to use, by seeking for concepts which are their concepts, but which transcend that which is instinctive in man. Hence it must become possible for us to confront the spiritual world in a completely new way. This is a matter which must naturally be put before humanity it general in a more guarded form, and yesterday, at the Opening speech at the foundation of the Waldorf School, I tried to do this. But just because on the one side there must be discretion and caution, so on the other side these things must, be sharply, clearly and definitely pointed out. For if, there were nobody able to hear the truth about these matters to-day, it would augur very badly for the spiritual culture of modern times.

Now what, for instance, has ceased in reference to the nature of evolving humanity? In earlier times it was quite correct when it was said of a man that he was “gifted” that he had “natural tendencies to genius” and to seek for the primary conditions in his corporeal or bodily nature. It was right in educating a man to apply oneself merely to his bodily nature and by developing this in the right way, the man's genius proceeded from it. His natural qualities came out, but as we have seen, corporeal or bodily evolution has ceased and nothing will come by merely developing the body according to some kind of physical education. To-day it is to the soul that one must apply oneself. To-day one must take into account something which does net proceed from mere physical hereditary evolution, for nothing more comes out of that now; one must take into account that which a man has within him because this Earth life is the repetition of earlier incarnations. To-day we must face other men with the living consciousness that we have a soul before us. The “gifts” of the body per se, have, as it were ceased, and it would be nonsense to speak of them in regard to future humanity. In future it will not be possible to say that a man through his body has a talent for this or the other, but that through his soul he is gifted in one direction cr another. Now this is a point of tremendous significance in the life of present day humanity, for much of what was said in earlier times about man is false if it is repeated to-day. To-day when we read about methods of education which are not yet penetrated by spiritual science, we may knew that they have been built up out of old beliefs which in their time were justifiable—beliefs which had reference to the physiological “gifts” of men. But to-day these a are of no account and there is no sense in speaking of anything but gifts, or the soul.

Very well, then, we must begin to educate in a new way, for this is what the evolution of humanity demands at the present time. When we speak with old conceptions, we do not speak of anything which is applicable to modern times. Of course it sounds well to tell people to-day that it is right to regard Christ in the same way in which Luther regarded Him! But men of the present day cannot do this, simply because the Lutheran view of Christ has no reality nowadays and becomes falsehood when it is urged upon men. If man of the present day is to find Christ, he must find Him by direct perception. Just as through external perception we discover Nature, so through inner perception, we find the Christ. It is quite possible for that which spiritual science has maintained for many years to found an understanding of a social impulse at that point of time when it is necessary for civilised humanity.

Things must be considered in their relation to the whole. The superficiality of life is sufficient to show that it is necessary to-day to remind men that the most primitive impulses of their own religious faiths should be taken seriously. The Christians have a precept that the name of God must not be lightly uttered. But when someone comes and speaks of social matters, people say: he makes no mention of the Christ, therefore what he says is not Christian! But I assure you that a man is not necessarily Christian just because he utters the name of Christ in every third line he speaks! We should speak in such a way that men are permeated by what is said in a sense that is according to Christ's Will at the present time. But when one endeavours to speak in this way, from out of the Spirit of the time, people say: Oh, that man does not speak about the Christ. He ought to speak in a more inner way; and then this so-called “inner” element is brought forward in the most exoteric way possible! The opposition which we were faced with once, which suggested that after every five words or so there ought to have been some mention of this so-called “inner” element, was really the outcome of a kind of priggishness, an “old-maidish” outlook. I would, naturally, rather not bother any more about it; but it is necessary at the present time, to allude to it, because this kind of attitude does much harm to what has to be brought about. I should like to ask whether this priggishness really tries to get to the heart of that which must be proclaimed as spiritual truth at the present time. We must own that all we do individually, and all we teach individually, must be with the knowledge that humanity has within it evolutionary impulses which are different from what they were a comparatively short time ago; that, as a matter of fact, the guiding Spirits of the super-sensible world until a short time ago, were specially interested in bringing men to a certain point of perfection. But the image of man is completed, and out of his own inner being man must seek for the union with what is spiritual, in order that what he produces over and above his body and his corporeal “gifts” or “talents” may make him of interest to the spirits standing above him. If this is not done, then our civilisation and culture will stagnate and choke and rot. Anything which tries to revivify what is old cannot save us from that. The only thing that can save us from that is the courage to take hold of the spiritual with the same kind of attitude which men had at the beginning of the 15th century, when, in the face of the old beliefs, they began to build up natural science. The point I want to make is this; that we only set up a right relationship to the spiritual beings above us when we recognise that with the end of the 19th century man's former relationship with them ceased and that since the last third of the 19th century, it has become necessary for humanity to enter into a new relationship to the spiritual world. Let us be sure about this point. It is not necessary to be inhuman when we are sure of something, but we must be sure. As far as external life is concerned, it is not possible for man directly to participate in the collective metamorphosis of humanity. Men have been brought up to this through that which has remained over from old impulses, so it is with those men who from pulpits to-day preach the old creeds. Now of course we can look quite kindly in this kind of thing ,but oh! for goodness sake, do not let us take it seriously, as being truth in these present times! Our attitude should be; “Oh well, let them go on talking” We should not imagine that it is necessary to give any weight to discussions from such quarters except of course in a purely external way in answering their attacks and so on. [Translator's Note. The German of this paragraph is very obscure and colloquial and is very difficult to render in English.]

Now it would, as I have said, be more agreeable to leave such things unsaid, but this is impossible, because we are approaching such terribly difficult times. There is far too much tendency not to take these things seriously. Of course anyone can say that he cannot shake himself free from this state of things because of his position, or something, but, that is no justification, it is rather an acknowledgment that he is making a compromise. The important thing to-day is to champion the Truth even if one only believes this to be necessary from a consideration of external events. When one considers how it is that modern humanity has come to be immersed in such a fearful catastrophe as that of these last years , the cause is found to lie in nothing else than the fact that men are so far away from looking at the relationship between facts and words. There is a tendency to-day just to consider words and then to believe that one really knows something about the facts. There is a tendency to repeat phrases unendingly at the present time, and as a consequence of this, it is not realised that the facts are not necessarily there at all—even if the words are.

During these last weeks we have been working at the course of instruction for the teachers of the Waldorf School. There we are trying to transform dead pedagogic systems into a living art of education. And a truth which is often overlooked simply because people treat words as words and do not penetrate the reality, came vividly before our eyes. There came before us fat volumes of papers, printed stuff, marked “Official” on the outside. One volume is marked “Curriculum,” that is, a plan of instruction. And inside we are not only told that in such and such a class, of such and such a school, such and such things are to be taught, or (which would still leave an element of mobility) such and such a subject must be learned up to such and such a standard—but—one would hardly believe it—we are actually told how the instruction is to be given—how the material is to be treated. Such is to-day the content of official orders of Government!

What does this mean—if we look at it in its reality? Well, if you put it in this way that the official paper gives well-meaning instruction, in all good-will, how children should be taught, if you put it in this way, and do not think about it, it is easily to be got over. But if we think about it—which is a very uncomfortable job for most people of the present day—then we must realise that to-day pedagogy—didactics—are not taught in the training colleges so as to be grasped and understood, but they are set forth in laws—in State instructions; just as the Law orders people not to steal, so by official papers and instructions, people are ordered how to teach! And people do not realise what that involves. But as a matter of fact it is only by feeling what that means that we may find a starting point for an improvement of matters on healthy lines. It is really only in modern times that these things have come to such a pitch. But assuredly fifty people placed in positions where words are listened to as are the words of the members of the National Congress at Weimar—fifty people who felt what such a thing means—would do far more for the healthy improvement of the world's affairs than all the stale talk which has been going on at that place during the last few weeks.

There must, I say, be feeling for these things, and such feeling arises through the inflowing of the living forces of spiritual knowledge into human hearts and souls. Mere theory that only makes us agree with something in an abstract way and does not teach us how to take the Spirit really seriously, will not do. And to take the Spirit in earnest, means that when anyone enters a lecture hall he is one with the spirits and souls of those who are there. Confessions of faith, or creeds which are theoretically grasped are to-day of no account whatever. The one and only thing which matters for the healing of humanity, is the feeling and perceiving of one's own Self in the Spirit.

The object of beginning our social work here was to work from out of the Living Spirit. Up to now men have only got to the point of saying: Oh yes, I am in agreement with what the words say. Men are clever enough to-day to be able quickly to come to agreement with words and sentences; and anyone whose inner spiritual knowledge enables him to assert that those spiritual beings who up to now have been working in evolution, have got men to a point where he represents their ideal of perfection, would be the last to deny this cleverness. That men are clever, that they have critical faculties, that intellectually they have got very far, that in a certain sense they are even a perfect earthly creation—that is not denied, but just because they are all these things, they must liberate a new source of knowledge in themselves, a source that is entirely new. Of course one who knows spiritual life considers men to-day as being in a sense perfect beings. But just because they are perfect in a sense, and because their perfection has come about through beings other than themselves, they must begin now to do something of themselves.

It was this that caused me over ten years ago, to put moral science on a different basis, and in my “Philosophy of Freedom” to speak about Moral Fantasies—that is, about what has been created by man in the domain of the moral—because what has been, I knew that that which man develops instinctively out of himself, calling it “Ethic” has nofuture in front of it.

At the end of my address I have often said how pleased I should be, if, even in spite of the very imperfect way in which such matter must inevitably be put, I succeeded in getting some real response from the hearts of friends present. For it has never been a point with me to make this or that theoretically plausible, or clear to you, but to indicate what must be inculcated into humanity at the present time.

It is upon these principles that anthroposophical science, as I try to teach it, is based. If there were a question of anything else, it would be better to leave off working for anthroposophy, because of the simple fact that any single person who teaches spiritual science at the present time, is pelted with every possible kind of abuse. That is quite obvious, and it cannot be otherwise, because things are like this in the present transitionary epoch. The only thing to d do is to proclaim spiritual science, to give it out, just because one realises the urgent necessity of bringing to humanity what lives within it. We should not speak now merely of a “successive evolution” but of a sudden change or transformation in evolution. The development of a plant is by successive stages, but the transition of the leaf into the coloured flower petal is an abrupt one. In this sense there has been a successive evolution of humanity, but the transition from the time when the evolution of man was directed by divine spiritual Beings, who brought humanity to the point where he now stands, to the time when must bestir themselves into activity, is an abrupt one, and it simply must come about. And without the recognition of the abrupt transition there is no crossing the Rubicon of the miseries of modern culture. Whoever wishes for the sake of convenience to carry over anything from old channels, can never really enter the region out of which the impulses of the culture of the future can develop.

What has to be undertaken to-day is not the kind of thing that various people here and there think about, not at least if they are to have any prospect of success; they are rather the kind of thing that we are doing, for example, in our Waldorf School. In the Waldorf School something has been undertaken of which one cannot say otherwise than that to anyone who takes it really seriously, it becomes his deepest concern.

I, for example, acknowledge it quite frankly, that when I look at the spiritual constitution of the present, day, and see the necessity for collaborating with the establishment of such a school, there is something in my heart which I could describe by saying that, this Waldorf School belongs to that category of things which concerns me most of ail—and in my life I have concerned myself with many things! It was a thing which simply had to be undertaken. And I felt that I had to concern myself with it not merely because I had any idea that it might somehow prove not to be successful. It will succeed—but because of that we must take care that the right elements work towards its success. It would be quite foolish not to acknowledge that anxieties exist. But perhaps we have done something for this special task in that we have had the courage to be absolutely and unceasingly true and sincere. And in order that things should not be taken in a one-sided way, I wished to-day to speak as I nave done. Naturally, in the public address yesterday I could not strike the same note as to you to-day. I could not speak to the people who were gathered together in the public meeting, of the interest which the higher Hierarchies had in completing a perfect image of man, and that something new must now come about, etc. But if a tree is photographed from one side, in order to obtain a complete picture, it must also be photographed from its other sides, and so I had to add that which I have said to you to-day. In our day the Truth must be expressed in a way that is True. We must learn that we nave not only to advocate the Truth, but the Truth in a true way. We have come to a time in human evolution when it is possible for man to advocate untruly! In many places to-day truths are as cheap as blackberries—one has only to read them here and there. And in this connection human culture is, as it were, complete. But only these perform what is necessary for the future. who do not only do that which is easy. It is quite an easy matter to form a conception of even a new world concept, but those who do this and nothing more, accomplish nothing at all that works on into the future Truth must be expressed from out of the soul. To-day it is not merely a question of the verbal text, but of the spiritual “fluids” and currents which penetrate through the words. Men have to acquire a feeling for this nowadays, and they have none at the present time; they will read pages and pages without realising at all that the author of them is a liar. Oh, humanity must acquire the faculty for feeling what the source of Truth is, and not alone perceive the logic of the thing. Much more “inner” than those men think who to-day believe that they are speaking about inner things, is that which can make humanity really able to work and to act for the future.

For this reason it has been necessary for years that facts which have been described should have been put from as many different points of view as possible—because only so is it possible to understand them completely and vitally. We must equip ourselves with an inner longing to approach world mysteries and feel them inwardly in a true and vital way. My sole purpose to-day in what I have said, has been that you should learn to feel in yourselves the necessity for such a longing and also to make you feel what a sway Untruth holds in the world to-day among men of our age. It is Truth, TRUTH, which humanity must champion, with all the intensity of which hearts and souls are capable. There is very, very much to be learnt, from such an example as I gave you at the beginning of this lecture—one may fully agree with the verbal text of a thing, but not really get hold of it in any true sense, because it comes from out of the spirit. Try to understand the teaching in this way and you will be serving the task which the present time sets you. You will find out many other things as well, which you have not yet discovered and a great deal still rests in the bosom of the present which must be discovered for the healing of humanity. A great deal too has already been said and has not been discovered by humanity. Look deeply into these things, and you will find that this is so; if you try to understand these things aright, then you cannot fail to help in the spreading [of] the Truth among men—not merely in an externally logical form—but Truth in its essence. And then you will be members of that Order which humanity so sorely needs, whose motto is “Truly to advocate Truth” (Die Wahrheit wahr zu vertreten). It is possible to spread Truth in a false way and thereby often to do more damage than occurs through the spread of a lie. It is very well worth while to ponder on what this means, to cause harm through the proclaiming and assertion of Truth in a false way.

Recently, I have presented a number of important facts about the human being that can be investigated by spiritual science. I attach less importance to the details of these facts being grasped – for I have often spoken about the nature of these facts – than to a certain impression being awakened by them: the impression of the nature of what may be called the deception of the physical physical world, so that you get a sense of what is actually meant when one speaks of the outer world as we see it around us - I say see, not have - is deception at first, and behind it lies the true, the real world. And I wanted to evoke a more thorough sense of what is meant when one speaks of the real world on the basis of spiritual science. So it is more about these general feelings. And with that, I have arrived at the point where we have, so to speak, another opportunity to tie our spiritual-scientific observations to important and significant interests in the spiritual life of the present, whereby I am thinking, of course, of a broader present, not just of today, but of the centuries in which we live.

Our intellectual life is caught in a conflict, a conflict that can be characterized in a variety of ways, that can be defined in many ways. But all these definitions must ultimately converge into a kind of feeling for two currents that we must form for ourselves as currents of ideas from the intellectual culture of the present, and that, to a certain extent, cannot be properly united. Two currents of ideas are present. One of them, we may call it in the broadest sense the scientific current, by which I do not mean merely what is thought and asserted in the circles of natural scientists, but that scientific current which today lives more or less in the perception of all mankind. This scientific current has gradually become a popular, widespread view. It produces concepts that have become deeply, deeply rooted in the soul life of people today. One can best see how this scientific world view has taken root when one considers that it is most deeply rooted where one believes one is penetrating to spiritual life. After all, what is commonly called spiritualism and what is advocated by very many as a theosophical theory is nothing more than an emanation of a materialistic worldview. What is generally known about the etheric body and the astral body, what is produced experimentally in spiritualistic séances, is entirely captured in concepts borrowed from the scientific world view, which is best demonstrated by people like du Prel, who believes he is addressing the spiritual world. But everything he says about the spiritual world, he thinks in scientific terms, that is, in terms in which one should think only about nature, not about the spirit. Similarly, it is downright laughable how materialistic the theories of most Theosophists are, how they positively endeavor to attach conceptions such as etheric body or even astral body to the scientific concepts that should only be applied to nature. The etheric body is very often imagined as something quite material, as a fine haze or the like. Now, I have often spoken about these things.

This is the one conceptual mass, I would say, that we have: the concepts of natural science. And, to avoid being misunderstood, I would like to emphasize once more that it is not so important that these scientific concepts be found in the natural sciences themselves, where they are largely justified. Rather, the important thing is that they creep into the general world and that they are used to understand spiritual matters, so that some people are even under the delusion that they are saying something special when they emphasize the similarity between the concepts they have in spiritual matters and the concepts of natural science.

The significant fact that we have to consider is that these scientific concepts can only capture a certain sphere of our world, a certain sphere of the world in which we live, in our understanding, that another world must remain beyond our understanding if we only apply scientific concepts. These scientific concepts thus form one current.

The other current is formed by certain concepts that we form about the ideal or the ideal, and probably also today, for a long time, about the moral. Take a scientific concept such as the concept of inheritance or the concept of development. You think scientifically when you think these concepts purely and cleanly; you think in terms when you extend these concepts of inheritance and development, as they are commonly used in science, to spiritual matters. Take certain concepts that are needed in life, for example, the concept of the inner freedom of our soul, the concept of goodwill, the concept of moral perfection, or higher concepts, the concept of love and the like, and you again have a stream of ideas, of concepts, that are also justified because they are needed for life. But only by indulging in self-deception can one build a bridge from the way of scientific thinking today to the way of thinking in terms of ideals, ideas or morals today. If someone thinks purely scientifically, that is, if they seek a scientific world view, as is the ideal of many people today, then within a world that corresponds to this world view there is no place for anything that is understood by terms such as goodwill, or, for that matter, happiness, love, inner freedom, and so on. A certain ideal of scientific thinking is to bring everything, as they say, under the concept of causality, to think of everything in terms of cause and effect. And a very popular generalization is – I have already mentioned this here – the law of the conservation of energy and of matter. If you form a worldview using only the concepts of cause and effect in the scientific sense, or of the conservation of energy and matter, then you can only either be ideologically dishonest or you have to say: Within such an order of the world, in in which only the law of causality, only the law of cause, applies, or in which the law of the conservation of matter and force applies, in such a world everything that is an ideal, that is an idea, that is a moral concept, is basically just nonsense. For a worldview that universally conceives of the law of the conservation of energy and matter, nothing else makes sense except to say: our world order develops according to this law of the conservation of energy and matter. Out of certain causes, the human race has also emerged within this world order. This human race dreams of goodwill, of love, of inner freedom, but all these are concepts that people make up, and when the time comes that such a state of affairs must occur in our world system according to scientific conceptions, then there is actually a general grave for all such ideas of goodwill, inner freedom, of love and so on. These are dreams that people dream while they are completing their existence within the evolution of the earth in accordance with the pure natural-law order, and there is no point in speaking of anything else in terms of the validity of ideals and ideas other than that they are dreams of people, because within such a natural-scientific world view, ideas and ideals have no power to realize themselves. What then should become of ideas and ideals if the world really corresponds to the scientific world view, once the state has been reached that one must necessarily think if one thinks only in scientific terms? They are buried, the ideas and ideals! But today people think in such a way — even if they do not admit it — that they have no inner power to realize themselves. They are mere thoughts that are realized when people attach their feelings to them, when people behave towards each other in a way that corresponds to the ideas. But they have no inner power to realize themselves, as magnetism, electricity or heat have – they have inner power to realize themselves! Ideas as such – so always think of moral ideas for my sake – do not have such inner power to realize themselves within our world view if we think only scientifically.

Of course, very few people are aware of the dichotomy that exists between these two currents of our present time, but it is there, and the fact that it is at work in the subconscious of people is much more important than being aware of it in theory. Only one class of people is theoretically aware of what I have just said, and it is this one class of people that we should keep an eye on in the present day. Clearly stated, the fact of the matter is that the whole world is only scientifically ordered and that ideas and ideals only have a meaning because people feel that they must follow them in their mutual behavior, this view can only be found within the socialist theory of the present. Contemporary socialist theory therefore rejects all spiritual science, even regards the traces of old spiritual science that can still be found in jurisprudence, morality and theology as prejudices that belong to the infancy of human development, and it wants everything that could be called spiritual science to be understood as social science: it wants to form socialist social science as merely valid for the mutual behavior of people. The world is organized by natural science, and apart from the natural scientific explanation of the world, there is only one social science left. This is the fundamental conviction of every self-aware socialist.

If you want to get to the bottom of such things, you cannot indulge in confused concepts. Of course I know that one can come and say: Yes, but that is not how socialists think! But that is not the point. As I explained in the first few days of my return here, it is not the content of ideas that is important, but how ideas are put into practice, how they penetrate and take root. And the socialist idea takes root by rejecting any talk of any spiritual world content, by claiming that the world content is only scientifically organized and that spiritual science is to be replaced by mere social science.

Now man feels that mere ideas and ideals, if they are thought as they are thought in the present, really have no more power than to find their way into the human emotional life and thereby to realize themselves, to realize themselves as a dream that humanity dreams within the evolution of the earth. No idea, however beautiful or ideal, has the power to bring anything into being, to generate warmth anywhere, to move a magnet or the like. Thus it is already condemned to be a mere dream, because — as long as one thinks of the world order only as the sum of electrical, magnetic forces, of light forces, heat forces and so on — it cannot intervene in the structure of these forces, especially if one postulates the law of the conservation of force and matter, according to which force and matter are supposed to have eternal validity. Because then they are always there, and then ideas can't intervene anywhere, because force and matter then have their own eternal laws.

With this law - I say only in parentheses - of the conservation of force and matter, a lot of nonsense is done. As one finds spoken of in the literature today of the law of conservation of force and matter, namely of force and energy, it is also often attributed to Jz / ius Robert Mayer. Anyone who is really familiar with Julius Robert Mayer's writings knows that it is just as foolish to attribute the law of the conservation of energy and matter to Julius Robert Mayer, as is done in the literature today, as it would be to attribute the invention of the printing press to Gutenberg in the case of pulp fiction. For what is presented in textbooks and popular manuals as the law of conservation of energy and matter has nothing to do with the law of Julius Robert Mayer, who was locked up in an insane asylum for his work.

Now, for anyone who takes spiritual science seriously, the question arises from all that I have presented: what is the relationship, what is the connection between what can never be united within the present world view: moral idealism and naturalistic observation of the world? This question cannot be answered theoretically without further ado. In many cases, the present age craves theoretical answers, and even those who turn to theosophy or anthroposophy sometimes crave theoretical and dogmatic answers more than anything. But the answers that are to be given on the basis of spiritual science must be answers based on direct perception. In this respect, it is not acceptable to carry the present age's preference for dogmatism into spiritual science. Spiritual science demands something else. Of course, in many cases scholars demand that other dogmas be established, but spiritual science cannot agree at all with the view that other dogmas should be established than those that already exist. Rather, it demands that thought be approached differently and viewed differently, that certain things be thought of from completely different points of view. What is often practiced today as spiritual science, especially as theosophy, can often give the impression of a somewhat modified scholasticism of the Middle Ages. I do not want to speak out against scholasticism, because scholasticism has things in it that are much more significant than what is produced philosophically in the present. But the tendency of many people today is to have only other dogmas, about God and immortality and heaven and hell, and to think differently about these things, but only to think, not to arrive at views that are based on quite a different ground than earlier ideas. If one is truly grounded in spiritual science, one says to oneself: During the scholastic period, there was enough speculation about the Trinity, about the nature of man, about his immortality, about the Christ problem, if I do not use the term now with any kind of unpleasant connotation. For the real value of this scholasticism does not lie in the dogmas it has established, but in the technique of thinking, as I once described it in my writing 'Philosophy and Anthroposophy', which is now being republished in a new edition that has been significantly expanded; it lies in the way of thinking about things. But nowadays it is actually better to learn this thinking by going to the scholastics than by turning to the often confused ideas that have been called theological or philosophical in recent times. There has been enough theorizing about these things in the Middle Ages. For example, the Christ-problem was wrestled with in such a theoretical way. Those who know the nature of this struggle cannot derive much benefit from a somewhat modified scholasticism, as it has been practiced in theosophy, for example, where, instead of having, in the past, trinity, immortality or other things, one now has again physical body, etheric body, astral body. It is a different kind of theotizing, but basically it is qualitatively the same thing. Those who are well informed about this school of the Middle Ages know that it is a moot point to want to penetrate, let us say, to the Mystery of Golgotha. Today it is much more important, for example, to penetrate to the figure of Christ Jesus, which is being attempted by us here in the center of the structure, where we are trying to really find the figure of Christ Jesus again. Those who are really interested in earlier dogmas will be much more interested today in bringing the figure of Christ out of spiritual life, because today is the time to do so. The Middle Ages were the time for keen reflection and the spinning out of scholastic concepts; today — as I have already characterized many times — is such a point in the fifth post-Atlantic period, where man's view must be directed towards spiritual forms. What was previously sought as the form of Christ are, after all, fantastic forms. I have often spoken here about the development of the figure of Christ. The form of the Christ will be found again through spiritual vision. Each time has its special task. It is not important that something is fixed, but that humanity seeks in its development and thereby reaches ever further and further stages of its development.

What is important, then, is to find a kind of bridge where the modern world view cannot find a bridge, but where, if it understands itself correctly, it must necessarily come to socialism, that is, to socialist theory – not to socialism in its justification; I have spoken about this before. But this bridge can only be found if one has the honest will to penetrate into what happens between birth and death, and also into what happens between death and a new birth, if one does not just have the will to analyze the world here, so to speak, but if one has the will to really engage with the spiritual. One speaks of man and says: Man consists of a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body, the I and so on. That is certainly justified; but it is justified for the human being who lives here between birth and death. However, what I explained last time and the time before that can already point out to you that one can now speak in a similar way about the human being after death, about the human being between death and a new birth. If you want to ask: What does the human being consist of? you cannot merely ask: What does the human being consist of here on earth? And answer: He consists of a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body and an ego. Rather, we must now also raise the question: What does the human being consist of when he is not on earth, but in a spiritual world between death and a new birth? How can one speak of the members of human nature there? One must be able to speak of the members of human nature in just as real a way there. And if one is completely honest with oneself in such a matter, one must realize that each age has its special task.

People do not really realize that the way they think, imagine, even feel, yes, even look at the outside world – just remember certain statements I made in my “Riddles of Philosophy” about the relatively short period of six hundred years before our era to us – is only like this now. We cannot go back over the eighth century before the Mystery of Golgotha with the thinking and the feeling and the looking that we have now. I have given you the exact year: 747 BC before the Mystery of Golgotha is the true founding date of the city of Rome. If we go back beyond this 8th century BC, then the whole way of human life is different from the one we now know as the life of the soul. All ways of looking at the world become different. There is, however, one boundary that can be observed better than the others, which can actually be observed well, but not yet for the present-day human being: the boundary that lies in the 15th century. The 15th century is too close for present-day people; they cannot really put themselves in the place of the great change that occurred there. On the whole, people imagine: they have always thought and felt the same way as they do now, even if they go further and further back; but how little they go back! Well, the thing is that as soon as you go back beyond the 8th century BC, you have a completely different way of thinking. And now we can ask the question: why did they have a different way of thinking back then? Nowadays, when people imagine things, they come up with rather foolish ideas, one might say. When people of the present day hear how, let us say, in the Egyptian mysteries — which were the most sought-after in those days — it was taught, when they hear how the truths were discussed there, they think: Well, that corresponds to the fantastic times of yore, when people were not as clever as they are now, when they still had childish ideas; now we have the right thing! It is particularly easy for a modern person to think this way, because they cannot imagine anything different, since they have sunk so terribly into this way of thinking in the present. Let us assume that a Greek, Pythagoras for example, came to Egypt and studied there, just as someone today goes to a famous university to learn. But what did he learn? I will tell you something that Pythagoras really could have learned there: He learned that in primeval times Mercury once played chess with the moon, and in this chess game Mercury won. He won twenty minutes from the moon for each day, and these twenty minutes were then added up by the initiates. How much do these twenty minutes amount to in three hundred and sixty “days”? They amount to exactly five days. Therefore, the year was not counted as three hundred and sixty days, but rather as three hundred and sixty-five days. These five days are what Mercury won from the moon in the game and what he then gave to the other planets and to the whole human race, in addition to the three hundred and sixty days in a year.

Now, if you say that Pythagoras could have learned something like this from the wise Egyptians, then every person in the present will laugh, quite naturally. Nevertheless, it is only another clothing for a deep spiritual truth - we will speak of it again in these days - that the present has not yet rediscovered at all, but it is a truth.

You may ask: Why was it calculated quite differently in the past? Compare the lecture of such an Egyptian sage, who lectures the clever fox Pythagoras: Mercury has won twenty minutes from the moon for each day in the game of chess – with a lecture on modern astronomy, which is held in a lecture hall, you will better notice the difference. But if you ask yourself why there is such a difference, then you have to delve a little deeper into the whole nature of human development. For if we go back to the 8th century BC – Pythagoras does not belong to this early time, but in Egypt the remnants of a wisdom have been preserved that was founded well before the 8th century BC, when it could still be imprinted – if it was taught in this ancient time, there is a profound reason for it. The whole relationship of man to the world had been viewed differently, and had to be viewed differently in those days.

I would like to point out that various remnants of old views have been renewed again and again atavistically, whereby I do not mean or understand the word “atavistically” to mean anything derogatory. Anyone who, for example, reads a work like Jakob Böhme's “De signatura rerum” will, if he is honest, actually say today: he cannot do anything with it. For there are given very strange arguments that either have to be judged from a higher point of view – then they make sense – or that, from the point of view of a modern-thinking person, should actually be rejected as the unreasonable stuff of a layman who has gone a little crazy. All the fantastic talk that is often heard in immature theosophical circles about Jakob Böhme is actually harmful. Nevertheless, from a higher point of view, Jakob Böhme is reminiscent of modern science in his whole way of thinking, in the way he analyzes certain words, for example, when he breaks down words like sulfur and searches in the broken-down parts for something. We do not want to look at the material but on the way he proceeds in his work 'De Signatura rerum', he reminds us much more of a certain concrete connection of the human being with the entire spiritual world than any of the abstract sciences, which only exist in public today. He, Jakob Boehme, is much more immersed in this spiritual world. And this immersion in the spiritual world is characteristic of thinkers who lived before the 8th century BC, before our era. They did not think with the individual, separate reason with which we think today. We all think with our individual reason; they thought more with cosmic reason, with creative reason, with the reason that one must, I would like to say, still listen to in some of its creations if one wants to come upon it.

Today there is actually only one area in which one can perceive a little bit of how something like creative reason still pours into and works in human life. One can still perceive something of a realization of the ideal in one area; but, I would like to say, there is only a shadow of it left, and this shadow is mostly not taken into account. Today, there are a number of naturalistic anthropological theories about the origin of language and how it is thought to have developed. As you know, there are two main theories, as I have mentioned before. One is called the 'wauwau' theory, the other the 'bimbam' theory. The woof-woof theory is advocated more by continental scholars, while the Max Müller school of thought favors the ding-dong theory. The woof-woof theory is based on the idea that humans started out in a very primitive state and that their internal organic experiences barked out like a dog when it goes “woof woof.” Through a corresponding development evolution - everything develops, doesn't it, from the primitive to the perfect - the dog's “bow-wow”, which can still be seen in humans at its primitive level, has become human language. If you follow the development from the baying of the dog to today's speech, in a similar way to the theory of evolution, Darwin or Haeckel, starting with the simplest monera, that is, from the simplest, most inarticulate form to today's language, then that is just the baying theory. Another theory says that one can develop a certain feeling of kinship with the tones of the bell: ding dong; one would have a certain inner sound each time that one imitates. According to this, one would follow more of an evolutionary theory with the woof woof, and more of an adaptation theory with the ding dong, an adaptation of the human being to the inner nature of the material words. Then you can also combine things in a witty way, the Bim-Bam theory with the Bow-Wow theory, which is then something more perfect, then you have combined development with adaptation. Well, these things are more or less common practice today. There are also those who laugh at these two theories and have other theories; but in principle they are not much different either.

From a spiritual point of view, there can be no question of the development of language being as it has just been characterized. Rather, purely externally, the structure of language shows that real reason prevails in the formation and development of language. And it is interesting to trace the workings of reason precisely in language, for the simple reason that it is still in language that an ideational element lives most vividly, that is to say, that which is observed in the one current today, and because language does not merely address itself to the human mind, but has its own laws, so that the ideational is already realized in it in a certain way, even if only shadowily, in relation to natural laws. Take, for example, a word – I will only draw your attention to a few very elementary cases – where you can see how inner reason prevails in the emergence of language; take a word like: oratio, speech. It is remarkable when we take a word like oratio, speech, and then observe what becomes of this word in the life of man after death, for there is a remarkable similarity with what has been the work of nascent reason in the development of language. This gives us a certain certainty that today can hardly be gained in any other way. At best, we can only arrive at hypotheses by other means. The dead person will rarely, at least after a certain time has passed since death, still understand the word oratio; he will no longer understand it, he loses the understanding of it. On the other hand, he will still understand a contemplation, an imagination that leads back to what can be expressed by the words: Os, Oris, Mund, and: Ratio, Vernunft. The dead man breaks down the word oratio into os and ratio. And in evolution the reverse process has actually taken place: the word oratio has actually come into being through a synthesis of original words, os and ratio. Oratio is not as original a word as os, oris and ratio, but oratio is formed from os and ratio.

I would like to give you a few more examples of such elementary things. These things can be most vividly studied in the Latin language because they are most clearly evident there, but the laws that can be found are also important for other languages. Take, for example, three original words: Ne ego otior; that would mean, if taken as a word: I am not idle. Ego otior: I am idle; ne ego otior: I am not idle. These three words are composed through the ruling cosmic reason in Negotior, that is, doing business. There you have three words put together into one, and you see the structure of the words in a rational way. You see reason at work in the development of language.

I would not, as I said, assert this so strictly if the remarkable fact did not occur that the dead dissolve what has been put together here in the world. The dead dissolve something like negotior into: Ne ego otior, and he understands only these three words or ideas, which he combines from this trinity, and he forgets that which was created by the combination.

Another obvious example is: unus, the one, and alterque, the other; this is combined into the Latin word uterque, each of the two. We would be quite happy if we had a word in modern languages like Uterque, which gives that concept; the Frenchman can only express it by staying with the upper one: I'un ct l'autre; he doesn't have a single concept to express that. But Uterque expresses it much more precisely.

Take an example to illustrate the principle I am talking about. You all know the word “se”, the French word “se”: to oneself. You know the word “hors” (out): you could also say “hors de soi” (out of oneself), and “tirer” (to draw) – I'll just keep the “tir” – “tir”: to draw, to draw away. If you then combine these three things according to the same principle, you get “sortir”, to go away, which is nothing more than a combination of “se hors tir”; “tir” is the rest of the word “tirer”. So you can still see the same governing reason at work in a modern language. Or take an example where the matter is somewhat obscured by the fact that different levels of language are at work: “coeur, the heart; ‘rage’, that is the lively, the invigorating, the enthusiasm that comes from the heart; composed: ‘courage’. These are not just any inventions, but real events that really happened. That is how the words are formed.

But the possibility of forming words in this way no longer exists today. Today, man has stepped out of the living connection with cosmic reason, and therefore there may be a possibility at most in very sporadic cases of venturing to approach language in order to extract from it words that are, as it were, in the spirit of language. But the further back one goes, and especially the further back one goes behind the 8th century BC, also in the Greek and Latin languages, the more the principle is active in real life that language develops in this way. And what is significant here is that one has to point to this as if it were eurythmic, by discovering in the dead person: he pulls the words apart again, he breaks them down again into their parts. He has more feeling, the dead man, for these parts of the words than for the whole words. If you think about it consistently, you would break the words apart into the sounds, and if you then translate the sounds, not into movements in the air but into movements of the whole human being, then you have eurythmy. Eurythmy is therefore something that the dead can indeed understand very well when it is practised perfectly. And you can see that such things, like eurythmy, cannot be judged externally, but that one can only understand their place in the overall structure of human development if one is also able to enter into this overall development of the human being.

Much more could be said about what eurythmy actually aims to achieve, but there will be an opportunity to do so later. For now, I wanted to draw your attention to a field, however shadowy, where, even in ancient times, the ideal was still reflected in the real through the living activity of human beings themselves. I said at the beginning today: In today's world view, we no longer find the possibility of building a bridge between the ideal, the moral, and that which lives in nature. The bridge is missing. It is also quite natural for the bridge to be missing in the current cycle of human development. The ideal no longer creates. I wanted to show you an example in the human realm itself, even if, as I said, it is a shadowy one, where something ideal still exists in the human being himself. For in the composition of such words, it was not the agreement of people or the consideration of a single human individuality or personality that was at work, but reason, without the human being being really present. Today, people want to be present in everything they do: Now, if something as beautiful, great and meaningful as this were to be done – you should see what would come of today's human wisdom if language were to be formed today! But it was precisely in those times when man was not yet so self-aware that these great, wise, significant things happened in humanity, and they happened in such a way that in this event, a close coexistence of the ideal and the real interacted, namely, ideal, that is, rational becoming, and real movement of air through the human respiratory organs. Today we cannot build a bridge between the moral idea and, for my sake, the electrical force; but here a bridge is built between something that happens and something that is rational. Of course, this does not lead us to build the same bridge – I will elaborate on this tomorrow – it must be built in a completely different way today. But you can see from this that humanity has progressed to its present state from a different state: from being inside a living web that was close to what, in a certain way, takes place in reverse post mortem, that is, after the death of human beings. Today, after death, in order to find his way between death and a new birth, man must again take apart what has been so joined together by forces - we will speak of this again tomorrow - that this joining together can still be clearly seen if one goes back to the older stages of speech formation.

These are important things, things that we really must consider when we turn our attention to the question of how spiritual science can be integrated into the whole structure of contemporary spiritual life. We have often spoken about this, and it is something we must consider. And if we repeatedly speak of the importance of integrating spiritual science into the whole of evolution, then we must also think concretely in this field. In these lectures I would now like to contribute something to this concrete thinking. If it were possible for spiritual science to be carried by a certain movement in the present day, by a human movement, then this spiritual science would be able to have a fruitful effect in all fields. But above all, there would have to be the will to respond to such subtleties, as they are often emphasized here. For it is on these subtleties, which always relate to the relationship of our spiritual science to contemporary spiritual culture, that we must base what we can call our own engagement with the spiritual movement of the present day through spiritual science. It is truly the case that the sad, catastrophic events of the present should make people aware that old worldviews have gone bankrupt. Not from spiritual science alone, but from its relationship to these old worldviews, one could see what has to happen for us to emerge from the bankruptcy of the present time.

To do this, it would of course be necessary to finally address the intentions that I have often expressed as those of the spiritual scientific movement. It would truly be necessary to recognize the reasons why, for example, working on the building has become so fruitful within certain circles, while other endeavors of the Anthroposophical Society have remained equally fruitless, so to speak; why, if one disregards what it has really achieved, namely the Dornach building, the Society often fails. On the one hand, if it is not to evoke the opposite, such an achievement always requires that many other things happen. It is necessary that the Anthroposophical Society should not fail in other respects, as it has completely failed in during the years of its existence. This failure need not be emphasized again and again if the opinion were much more widely spread that one must reflect on why the Anthroposophical Society fails in so many other respects. If people would reflect more deeply, they would recognize, for example, why the opinion keeps spreading in the world that I only lead the Anthroposophical Society by the hand and give everything away; while there is hardly a society in the world where less happens that a so-called leader wants than in the Anthroposophical Society! As a rule, the opposite of what I actually intend happens. So, it is not true that the Anthroposophical Society in particular can show how far reality is from its so-called ideals in practice. But then one must also have the will to stand on the ground of reality. In a society, there are naturally personal issues; but one must also understand these personal issues as personal. If people in some branch are fighting for purely personal reasons, one should not make black out of white or white out of black, but one should calmly admit: We have personal reasons, we do not like so-and-so for personal reasons. Then one is speaking the truth; there is no need to distort reality into an ideal. It is therefore necessary to recognize that while on the one hand I am endeavoring to lift everything of an intellectual nature out of the sectarian, to strip away everything that is sectarian, the Anthroposophical Society is increasingly sinking into sectarianism and has a certain love for the sectarian. If there is anywhere an effort to get out of the sectarianism, then this very desire to get out of the sectarianism is hated.

Of course, I do not want to criticize anyone, nor do I want to be ungrateful for the beautiful aspirations that are everywhere, I fully recognize everything, but it is necessary to reflect a little on some things, otherwise things will arise again and again, and I have been told about them again in these days. Isn't it true that the personal is also intimately entwined with the matter? If some kind of disaster occurs in a country, the constitution of the Anthroposophical Society is such that I might say the Society has the sensation of quarreling a little, and from all this quarreling, I myself am personally insulted in the most disgraceful way. Yes, if this repeats itself over and over again, we will not get anywhere. If I am always insulted in the most vicious way because the others quarrel and I am played out, if it always comes down to me being played out, then of course I can no longer hold the anthroposophical movement in the world. It would be possible to work in a positive way if one wanted to focus more on the positive, which I am always hinting at enough. It would be possible to keep such things in the background, which are mostly based on terribly inferior things. But in many circles there is much more desire to quarrel, much more desire for dogmatic disputes, out of which personal quarrels often develop. And then it happens that the cursing usually turns against me – which of course leaves me personally highly indifferent, but the movement cannot continue if it is to go on like this. It is not that I am criticizing what the friends have done in such a case, but I would point out that they have not done something else, which is not for me to suggest in a blunt way, but which would much more surely prevent what is constantly happening than the way it is constantly being attempted. Today it is already the case that one can say: We have only given cycles to members of the Society, and I know how I myself am often strangely approached by this or that member of the Society when I am much more liberal than members on the fringes often want to be in giving cycles. Yes, what has been brought into the world through the cycles could never have fared worse through outsiders than it has through members of the Anthroposophical Society! This must also be taken into account. Today we have already reached the point where the cycles are being abused by members, by apostate members of the Anthroposophical Society, to such an extent that it may soon be said that we no longer set any limits, we sell the cycles to anyone who wants them. It cannot get much worse.

I am not saying that it will happen tomorrow, but I am merely hinting that society does not work as a society at all – always except for the building and except for individual circles – that it does not actually do what a society would otherwise do. As a result, society is of no help at all; it is not at all what a movement would result in.

Here it is so clear that I cannot mean anyone personally, that I can discuss this here quite impartially, for the simple reason that this is precisely the place where work is being done fruitfully out of society, namely on the building. This is already a real thing that has emerged out of society. And if other things that could be much cheaper than construction were to be worked on by such a social spirit as the workers on our construction site, then the Anthroposophical Society would be able to produce tremendous blessings. But then one must call white white and black black. One must also really say when personal matters are at hand: these are personal matters — and not inflate them into lofty idealism; otherwise one will just have to consider what needs to be put in the place of the Anthroposophical Society. A society could not be substituted, because it would be the same old misery all over again! Right? The society cannot be just a means to an end, a way of dealing with all kinds of inferior personalities. But it has become a means that forces you to take into account all kinds of inferior stuff.

Well, I don't want to bore you any longer with this matter today, but I just wanted to add it after the time was up. I finished the lecture beforehand; I only say such things when the lecture time is up, afterwards as an appendix.

To-day and in the next few days I should like to draw from our recent studies some conclusions about human life itself. I will first mention certain thoughts which are brought against Anthroposophy from outside, and will then show how with regard to these ideas we should lay hold of and emphasise certain conceptions.

Now in the life of nature, in the natural order, everyone to-day recognises—in terms of the natural order, certainly—the same kind of thing that we want to establish through Spiritual Science for the spiritual life, the spiritual order. The anthroposophical outlook would be wrongly interpreted if it were to infuse modern Spiritual Science with any kind of old errors or mystical ideas, bordering on superstition. We must accustom ourselves to use such terms as Ahrimanic, Luciferic—now familiar to us—for the spiritual order, in the same way, though certainly on a higher level, that a natural scientist speaks of positive and negative electricity, positive and negative magnetism, and so on. In contradistinction to the prejudices of present-day natural science, however, we must be clear that directly we rise to consideration of the spiritual order of the world, those concepts which in natural science have a fixed and highly abstract content, must be grasped in a more concrete and spiritual sense.

Now we know that during the life between birth and death man has what we are accustomed to call his physical body; beyond this is the etheric body or—to use the more workable expression I am trying to introduce—the body of formative forces; then comes the astral body which has a conscious character, but not yet that of our present-day consciousness. What many people to-day call the subconscious appertains to the astral body. Then comes what is called our ordinary consciousness, which alternates between the states of sleeping and waking. In the sleeping state it is represented only by chaotic dreams. In the waking state, not content with perceptions only, it has recourse to abstract judgments and concepts.

All these aspects of consciousness belong to the part of man's being we call the “I,” or ego. At the present time it is only in this last member of the human organism, in the ego itself, that man can find his bearings. The ego is mirrored for him in his consciousness. It is in this ego that are really enacted all the thinking, feeling and willing of the soul. Everything else—astral body, etheric body, and the physical body in its true form—lies outside his consciousness and also outside the ego. For all that is stated about the physical body in ordinary science, in anatomy, physiology and so forth, refers only to its outer aspect—to as much of it as enters our consciousness in the same way as other external objects are perceived. What we consciously perceive is an external picture of the physical body, not the physical body itself.

Thus the three members of man's being which, in accordance with their evolution, we call pre-earthly—you know about this evolution from my Occult Science—these three members are outside the field of normal human consciousness. Now you know that with regard to the spiritual order we speak of Beings who, as members of the various Hierarchies, are ranged above man, just as below him are ranged the three kingdoms of nature—the animal, plant and mineral kingdoms. As soon as we consider man in a spiritual sense, we can no longer speak only of those contents of the astral, etheric and physical bodies of which ordinary science or even Anthroposophy speak when they are concerned only with human life in the sense-perceptible world. Therefore in our earlier studies this autumn I mentioned that if we look at these lower members of man's nature (let us call them that) as they truly are, we find that Spirits of the individual Hierarchies are essentially connected with them.

In the sense of my recent remarks on Goethe's world-conception, we may say: In so far as through these three members man develops himself in the course of time, in so far as he goes through the evolution open to him between birth and death, he is connected with certain spiritual forces which lie behind his evolution. I tried to make this clear to you by saying: If we look upon this as man's present-day being

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

(diagram), we have to think of it as connected from its evolutionary past with the spiritual Powers whom we have recognised as belonging to the higher Hierarchies. As you know, in a normal man these spiritual Powers, with the exception of the Spirits of Form, the Exusiai, do not work directly within the ego. Thus, except for the Spirits of Form, the Powers who endow man with his original form, the remaining spiritual Powers do not work into his present consciousness.

We can get some idea of the Spirits of Form—a very meagre idea but in some degree relevant—if we look at one aspect of the human bodily form which is acquired during the earliest period of physical life. We are all born as more or less crawling beings, with no power to stand vertically. Now a great deal in the whole being of man is connected with his upright posture, or rather with the force which makes this posture the true one for him. And when we consider the merely outward features which distinguish man from the animals, we should not look at the things usually seen, the bones, muscles, and so on, which in essentials are common to both man and animal; we should focus our attention on this force of uprightness which gives the growing human being his form. It is only part of the difference, but it is an essential part. This force of uprightness that intervenes in our physical development is of the same nature as all the forces that bestow on earthly man his form. It is only forces of this kind that penetrate into our ego.

But there are also the forces of cosmic movement, cosmic wisdom, cosmic will—Dynamis, Kyriotetes and Thrones, if we use their ancient names while approaching them in a modern spirit. These forces intervene in the unconscious parts of man's being—those therefore that appertain to his astral body, his body of formative forces or etheric body, and his physical body. And so, when these members of man's nature are observed without the spiritual content to which I have referred, we are concerned with mere illusions, mere phantoms. In truth, we are not to be found in our outward appearance; our real being is in the aforesaid spiritual forces.

Now—as I said recently in connection with Goethe's world-conception—there are forces which work upon man for a time, without being directly involved in his evolution. These two forces we call the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic, the Luciferic working more spiritually (see red in diagram), the Ahrimanic more in the subconscious (lilac in diagram).

Hence we have a threefold cosmic intervention in human life. We can say: In man's nature there are certain spiritual

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

forces connected directly with the course of his evolution. And there are two other kinds of forces, the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic, not directly connected with his evolution; they work upon him for a time and are thus an addition to his inherent constitution.

Let us now consider life. When we consider life, we do not see only the stream of forces that actually belongs to us; we always see something flowing together out of the three streams. Whatever we survey, the outer world of the senses, or the historical life of man taking its course between pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow, action and inaction, we see it in such a way that the three streams are flowing into one another. In ordinary life we do not go in for what the chemist does when, instead of leaving water as the simple liquid it appears to be, he analyses it into hydrogen and oxygen. Spiritual science must undertake this analysis. Spiritual science must go in for spiritual chemistry; otherwise it will never be possible thoroughly to understand human life.

From various points of view we have described the special characteristics of the type of being we call Luciferic, and those of the type of being we call Ahrimanic. Our task now is to go into these things from yet another point of view, so as to relate them directly to human life. Where in man's life is the point at which Luciferic forces acquire particular influence, and where the point at which particular influence is acquired by the Ahrimanic forces?

Now if man could give himself up to the quiet development proper to his original being (you know from earlier studies that he would then be able to acquire self-knowledge only in the second half of life) he would not have been exposed to the periodic ingress of Luciferic and Ahrimanic powers. But in real life, as we have to live it, man is exposed to the periodic ingress of these powers—yes, he must indeed reckon with the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic. Now in all that belongs more to the sphere of the conscious in man, but in such a way that he does not strive after this consciousness through nature but by going beyond nature (we go beyond nature when, for example, we acquire self-knowledge during the first half of life)—in everything he strives for through consciousness there lies something we can describe only as super-consciousness. But for this element of super-consciousness, our consciousness would appear quite different. It is super-consciousness that enables man to introduce into historical life more than he could do if he had to depend solely on his physical development. At the present juncture in man's earthly evolution we should have a very different form of culture if this super-consciousness had not flowed in. With this super-consciousness, however, the possibility of ingress is quite definitely given to Luciferic powers.

We must recognise in the right way how these powers work into human consciousness. Without them, man would never be induced to develop a form of thinking different from that which I recently described to you as the ideal of the Goethean world-conception. With the aid of Luciferic powers, he forms hypotheses, builds imaginative pictures that transcend reality. He does not simply seize upon reality; with his consciousness he unites super-consciousness. He forms all manner of ideas about reality—ideas that enable him to come to closer grips with reality than he otherwise would do. And if we turn our gaze to the whole sphere of art, where the super-conscious plays so large a part, we must emphasise that if art is not to degenerate into mere naturalism, the highest possible degree of Luciferic activity must come in. It is no use saying—I have emphasised this again and again—that man should keep the Luciferic away from his life. If he could do so, he would be unable to lead a real life; he would have to become an arch-philistine. It is the Luciferic activity which like a leaven saves him over and over again—spurs him on to struggle out of Philistinism.

This Luciferic activity, however, is at the same time the cause of man's tendency to look at the world from the airy viewpoint of a bird, as it were. All that arises in the course of history as wonderful programmes, marvellously beautiful ideas, by which it is always believed that in some way or other a return can be made to the Golden Age—all this has its origin in the Luciferic tendencies which flow into man. Everything by which he tries to loosen his connection with reality, to soar above his actual circumstances—all this points to the Luciferic. So, too, does the impulse that is always tending to diminish the interest we take in our fellow-men. Were we to follow our original nature, in accordance with the evolutionary forces that truly belong to us, we should feel an interest in our fellow-men far beyond the usual measure. The Luciferic element in our nature produces a certain lack of interest in other people. And if we study the real being of man, we ought to lay great emphasis on the following point—that a great deal in the world would be different if we were to recognise in its reality this urge of ours towards an excessive interest in our own concoctions and a much too meagre interest in what other people think and feel and will. Knowledge of man in the right sense is acquired only if we permeate our approach with the question: What is it that impels me to lose interest in other people? It must be a future task of human culture to develop this knowledge of man. To-day, knowledge of man is often said to consist in what anyone may say about people in accordance with his own idea of what they are or what they should be. Taking people as they are and being quite clear that everyone is as he is, even the criminal—we must go as far as that—tells us more important things about the world than any personal fancies we may have about the being of man, however beautiful they may be. To say this to ourselves is to set up a counterpoise to the Luciferic element within us.

An endeavour to gain a knowledge of man in this way would reveal an endless amount. And a genuine interest in the real nature of man has never been further off than it is to-day. But what is meant here is not to be confused with a lack of critical attitude towards human beings. Anyone who starts out with the idea that all men must be looked upon as good and have to be given equal affection is dealing with the matter in a most comfortably Luciferic way, for all that is pure fantasy. This notion of regarding all men as equal is sheer Luciferic fantasy; the point is not to cherish a general idea but to penetrate to the actual character of every individual man and to develop for it a loving—or, perhaps better, an interested—undemanding.

Now you may ask: What is the object of the presence of this Luciferic force in us, if it prevents us from being tolerant towards human nature in a wise sense and from developing interest in it? What is this Luciferic force in us meant for? In the household of the spirit it is thoroughly justified. The Luciferic force has to be there because if we were only in the progressive stream of cosmic influence and were to develop a tendency to know each individual man in accordance with his nature and spirit, then we should be drowned in ail our knowledge about man. We should go under and never be able to find ourselves properly. A fact connected with many of the secrets of existence is that there is truly nothing in life which, if carried to an extreme conclusion, does not turn into something bad or unfortunate. That which rightly draws us to other people, and enables us to find the other man in ourselves, would have the effect of drowning us in our knowledge of man if the Luciferic goad were not always there, ready again and again to save us from drowning, to raise us to the surface, bringing us back to ourselves and kindling interest in our own being. It is just in our human relations that we live in a continuous fluctuation between our own original force and the Luciferic force. And anyone who says: Would it not show more intelligence if man were to follow his own original force without being touched by the Luciferic force?—anyone who maintains this ought also to maintain that if he had scales with two pans he would prefer to dispense with one pan and weigh simply with the other. Life runs its course in states of balance, not in absolutely fixed conditions. This is what can first of all be said of the Luciferic grip upon human life. It lays hold of human consciousness, but in such a way that super-consciousness intermingles with consciousness.

The Ahrimanic element, on the other hand, exerts its influence chiefly in the subconscious. In all the subconscious impulses in man's nature, often subtle impulses, the Ahrimanic fortes mingle. If we want to characterise Ahriman and Lucifer we might say: Lucifer is a proud Spirit who likes to soar away into the heights where lofty visions open out. Ahriman is a morally lonely Spirit who does not readily make his presence known; he sets his nature to work in man's subconscious, works upon man's subconscious, conjures judgments out of it. People then believe that they judge out of their own consciousness, whereas they often derive an opinion from subconscious instincts, out of subtle subconscious impulses, or they even allow it to be conjured forth by the Ahrimanic forces themselves.

Religious descriptions have, as we know, often sprung from old conceptions which have now been taken over by Spiritual Science. And Peter was not far wrong in calling Ahriman a “prowling lion seeking whom he might devour.” For Ahriman really does prowl in the hidden parts of man's nature, in his subconscious; he strives to reach his earthly goal by diverting man's subconscious force to himself, so as spiritually to attain different ends in world-evolution from those lying in the direct human stream.

Where historical life is concerned it is always Luciferic forces that lead us to hatch out far-reaching world-dreams which fail to reckon with the nature of man. In the course of human thought what a vast number of ideas have been devised for making the world happy! And in the firm opinion of those who devise them, the world can become happy only through these particular ideas. This is because such Luciferic thinking is of an airy kind, soaring aloft and taking no account of all that is swarming around below, and believing that the world can be organised on the lines of these airy notions. Such ideas of how to make the world happy, resting always upon a defective knowledge of man, are of a Luciferic nature; dreams of world power derived from particular realms of human activity are of an Ahrimanic kind. For these dreams are developed out of the subconscious. It is Ahrimanic to take a certain realm of human activity and to wish to bring the whole world under its aegis. All that is connected with man's lust for ruling over his fellows, all that is in opposition to healthy social impulses, is of an Ahrimanic nature. The man of whom it could be said—not in a superstitious way but in our own sense—that he is possessed by Lucifer, loses interest in his fellow-men. The man possessed by Ahriman would like to have as many men as possible in his power and then to proceed—if he is clever—to make use of human frailty in order to rule over men. It is Ahrimanic to seek in the sub-earthly, in the subconscious, for human weaknesses as a means of ruling men.

Now we must ask: Where does all this come from? That above all is the question which must interest us: Where does it all come from? We have to ask: Of what nature are such forces as the Ahrimanic and Luciferic in their true being? Now we know that our Earth is—to use a Goethean expression—a metamorphosis of previous cosmic world-bodies, the fourth metamorphosis. And in order to have names for them, we have said: The Earth was first incorporated as Saturn, then as Sun, then as Moon, and is now incorporated as Earth.¹ Thus we know that this Earth is the fourth incorporation of its cosmic being, the fourth metamorphosis; and it will go through further metamorphoses. We must take this into consideration if we now go on to ask: In the whole cosmic framework which embraces man, what significance have the forces of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic Beings? We know that with the formation assumed by that part of the cosmos most nearly concerning us—our Earth—the Spirits of Form are connected. And if we examine a particularly characteristic feature of this Earth-formation, we find it—as I said before—to be identical, though only in a limited respect, with the way in which we overcome gravity through our own power of standing upright. These Spirits of Form are in a certain sense the ruling forces in earthly existence—that is, in the present metamorphosis of our planet. As we know, however, these Spirits of Form work through other Spirits whom we call Archai, Archangeloi, Angeloi, using old names in a modern connotation.

Now, with regard to these Beings, we are interested above all in the Archai, the Primal Forces, Primal Beginnings. We know that in the ranks of spiritual Beings, the Spirits of Form come immediately above the Archai. Hence we find that in the course of man's original evolution the forces of the Archai are to a certain extent in the service of the Spirits of Form. Into the being of man there work Archai and Exusiai—the Spirits we also call Primal Forces and those we call Spirits of Form. Besides this, however, there are also certain Spirits of Form who are disguised as Archai. They can be Exusiai, but they act only as Archai; they take on that rôle. This is an essential fact we discover—how spiritual Beings can take on a certain rôle which differs from the actual stage of their own evolution.

This has a quite definite consequence. Earthly form can be just as dependent on those Primal Forces who are really Spirits of Form, as it is upon the ordinary Spirits of Form. But the important thing is that everything in our earthly existence which is connected with space through taking shape in space is shaped out of the non-spatial. We comprehend the spatial only if we trace it back in its picture-nature to primal pictures that are outside space. Naturally, one of the difficulties for Western thinking is to form a conception of the spaceless. Yet it is true that everything connected with our primeval manhood, everything proceeding from the Spirits of Form, when it takes shape in space, is an effect of the spaceless. To speak concretely, when as individual human beings, who first crawl on all-fours, we learn to stand upright and thus overcome gravity in our upright posture, we place ourselves into space. But the force that is fundamentally responsible for this makes its way into space out of the spaceless.

If therefore as men we were subject only to the Spirits of Form proper to us, we should in every way place ourselves into space, bring the spaceless to realisation in space, for the Spirits of Form do not live in space. Anyone who seeks the Divine in space will not find it ... that goes without saying. Anything which arises as form in space is a realisation of the spaceless.

Those Beings who are Spirits of Form but act as Archai, as Primal Forces, should really, according to their essential nature, belong to the spaceless. But they enter space, they work in space. And this is characteristic of the Ahrimanic—that spiritual Beings who in their true nature are intended to be spaceless have preferred to work in space. This enables forms to arise in space that do not ray in directly out of the spaceless. Thus the spatial is portrayed in the spatial, so that one spatial form reflects another.

Perhaps I may take a concrete case. We men are all different from one another because we are placed here out of the spaceless. Our archetypes are in the spaceless. Everything is different from everything else. You have heard the famous story of how, at the instigation of Leibniz, certain princesses—for sometimes princesses have nothing better to do—searched the garden for two leaves absolutely alike and did not find them, for there are no two identical leaves. We also are forms created out of the spaceless, in so far as we do not resemble each other. But from another aspect we are alike—especially when we are blood relations. We resemble one another because there are spiritual Beings who form the spatial according to the spatial, not merely the spatial according to the spaceless. We resemble each other because we are permeated by Ahrimanic forces. This must be recognised, or we shall merely inveigh against Ahrimanic and Luciferic forces without any wish to understand them.

This example illustrates very clearly how Ahriman plays into our life. In so far as you can venture to say to yourself, “According to my form I am individual man, different from any other,” you are in the direct line of evolution. And were this the only fact valid in the world, and if there were no Ahrimanic side-streams to it, a mother would not be able to rejoice that her little daughter resembles her so wonderfully, for it would strike her that each individual human being is a spatial image of something outside space, that nothing spatial is a replica of anything in space. The entry into space of certain Spirits of Form gives the Ahrimanic its opportunity. Naturally this Ahrimanic element is not confined to similarity among human beings—it extends to many other things; we have simply taken one example of it.

Now I will ask you to call to mind what I added—not for your comfort but as arising out of our subject—after having told you that man really becomes apt for self-knowledge only in the second half of life. I said: In so far as our life takes this course in time, and if nothing else worked upon us, we could, in fact, arrive at self-knowledge only in the second half of life. But—so I said at the time—in the first half of life Luciferic forces work on us and produce a self-knowledge that is not the result of our own original human nature. In contrast to human life as it would be if it followed its original pattern, I set what I have called the realm of duration. In regard to everything that belongs to our original human nature we are different persons at fifty from what we were at twenty; we develop. In regard to everything in us that we do not develop, we belong not to our bodily nature but to the realm of soul and spirit and are connected with the realm of duration, with that realm in which time plays no part. Just as the spaceless lies at the basis of everything spatial, so at the basis of everything temporal there is duration.

We should be quite different human beings if we were not connected with the realm of duration. As I said a short while ago, we should wake out of a certain life of dreams only at twenty-eight or twenty-nine years old. We live, however, in the realm of duration, and this gives balance to our dozing through the first half of life and the terrible intellectual brightness of the second half.

Now to this realm of duration belong, as we know, all the spiritual Beings of the higher Hierarchies, with the single exception of the Spirits of Form. They play into the kingdom of evolution in time. But because they live both spatially and spacelessly, because they pass their life between space and the spaceless, they call spatial forms into existence out of the spaceless. This admits of a time-process; their life plays into time. The other Beings, however, of a higher rank than the Spirits of Form among the Hierarchies, belong entirely to duration. It is only by way of comparison that they can be spoken of as Beings of time; if this is meant to correspond to reality, it is nonsense. It is most difficult to talk about these things for the simple reason that, at the present stage of evolution, so very few men have any lively sense of concepts and ideas developed outside space and outside time. Most people would explain away the spaceless as sheer fantasy; and it is the same with the timeless, the enduring, the imperishable, and even the immutable.

Beings above the rank of the Exusiai, accordingly, belong only to the realm of duration. But there are those among them who take on the role of Beings in time, who enter time. Just as those other Beings, the Ahrimanic Beings I have described, enter space, so there are Beings who enter time. These are Luciferic Beings, who really belong to the ranks of Spirits of Wisdom, but because they work in time they do so in the character of Spirits of Form. And that which would otherwise work timelessly in man's soul during life is brought into time by these Spirits. Hence it comes about that certain things which could always be in existence for us were we allowed to take our course according only to the realm of duration, succumb to time. For instance, we may forget them, or remember them either more or less well, and so on, and this remembrance depends only upon our bodily-soul nature, not upon our soul-spiritual nature.

Spirits of Duration, therefore, who act as Spirits of Time—they are Luciferic powers; in the cosmic order they are really of a much higher rank than those Powers of whom many clergymen, however highly educated in theology they may think themselves, speak when they talk of the divine. ... In reality they are referring to much less exalted Powers, as I have indeed said before.

These Luciferic Beings are able to transfer into time what would otherwise appear to our human perception as purely spiritual and timeless—they give it the semblance of running its course in time. And this temporal semblance, imparted to certain phenomena in ourselves, is the sole reason why people maintain that their spiritual activity has a material origin. Were we not permeated in our souls by Luciferic Beings, our spiritual activity would appear to us as coming directly from the spiritual. We should never imagine that spiritual activity could depend on the material. We should see that the image I often use is the only right one—that whoever believes his spiritual activity arises from the material is like a man who goes up to a mirror and thinks that the reflection arises from a being behind it. Certainly the image depends upon how the mirror is constructed, and so is our thinking dependent upon our bodily nature. The body, however, does nothing more than the mirror does; if the Luciferic semblance were absent, the mirror would directly reveal to human perception that spiritual activity is merely given its form by the material. In so far as Lucifer is implicated in our super-consciousness, he calls forth the semblance that leads us by the nose in the same way as if we were to go up to a mirror and break it in order to find out how whoever was behind it had managed to get a hold there.

This illusion that the spiritual can originate in the material is essentially Luciferic. And anyone who maintains that the spiritual is a product of the material is in fact declaring—though he may not say so—that Lucifer is his God. The assertion that the spiritual comes forth from the material, which is exactly the same as saying that a mirror produces a reflection, as if there were beings behind the mirror ... this assertion that the material produces the spiritual, the spiritual in man, is identical with declaring, even if not in words: Lucifer is God.

Now we can also seek knowledge about the opposite pole. A Luciferic misrepresentation is that the mirror, the material, drives out the spiritual from itself. The opposite pole is this—the illusion also exists among men that the content of the physical world of the senses has power to work upon the inner being of man. If the Ahrimanic illusion, which arises through forces entering space out of the spaceless were not present, man would perceive how no influence could ever be exercised upon his inner being by forces anchored in the material. The assertion that in the material there are forces, energies, which are able to work on further in man, is an entirely Ahrimanic assertion; whoever makes it, even without words, is declaring Ahriman to be his God.

Nevertheless man sways between these two illusions. First, the illusion that repeatedly deceives him—that the mirror itself produces pictures of real beings, as if the material were able to bring forth spiritual activities. And the other illusion—that in the external existence of the senses energies are contained which are somehow transformed so as to bring about human activities. The first is the Luciferic illusion; the other, the Ahrimanic.

What is so characteristic of our present time is that it has no inclination to go into the spiritual in the same way that it goes into the natural order. It is certainly easier to speak about the spirit from the standpoint of a nebulous mysticism, or in terms of abstract ideas, than to enter concretely into spiritual processes and spiritual impulses in a truly scientific way, as is done in the case of nature itself.

We live now in an age when man must consciously begin to make clear to himself what is working in his soul. We know why the time is past when man could draw from an unconscious source the impulses he needed to guide him further. To-day he must begin consciously to enter the realm in which lives his soul-nature, and this soul-nature is generated by consciousness.

Thus we are able to say that if man were to follow in his evolution only his original nature and the good spiritual forces in the world, he would be a very different being from what he now is, when he pursues this age-old development in conjunction with the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic forces working upon him in time.

The question now is this: How is a balance set up between these three forces? In order to set up this balance, or at least to recognise how it can be done, we must look at the following.

External natural science is quite content to judge in certain realms according to this principle: a knife has to do with eating, so one goes to the razor-case for a razor and cuts up the food. That is how many judgments in natural science are formed nowadays—for example, about death. Modern natural science does not go much further with its ready-made ideas about the phenomenon of death than to call it the cessation of an organism. That is easy, for then—as is done in a grotesque way to-day by many so-called scientists—we can speak of plant death, animal death, human death, all in the same sense. That, however, is really no different from speaking of a knife and putting a table-knife and a razor in the same category. In truth, what can be called death is different in plants, different in the animal, different in the case of human beings. But because in all three a cessation of organic functions is seen, people generalise.

When we study human death—and we have very often talked of it—then we find that it can be looked upon in a certain sense as the counterpoise for the Luciferic forces. Death, as you know, is not just a once-only phenomenon, for a man actually begins to die the moment he is born. The impulses of death are already laid in him and death itself comes about at a certain point of time. Everything in the way of impulses leading to death is at the same time a force which sets up a counterpoise to the Luciferic forces. For through death man is led out beyond the temporal into the realm of duration.

Now we know that the Luciferic forces really belong by nature to the realm of duration, and that what they are meant to do in the realm of duration they carry into the temporal. This would not be balanced if death, which leads man out of the temporal into the realm of duration, were not introduced into the kingdom of the temporal. Death balances the Luciferic. The Luciferic force carries duration into time; death carries time out into duration. There we have it in abstract words—but in this abstraction there is a very great amount of the concrete.

And what have we had to say of Ahriman? He is responsible for similarity. I have given you a concrete case of human similarity which is connected with Ahriman. And here, too, a counterpoise must be set up. But strangely enough, similarity is often related to this counterpoise through one of those confused concepts that arise when one does not enter into the deeper connections. The counterpoise to human similarity is the force of heredity; we are not alike merely in the shaping of our outward form, but we bear inner forces of heredity within us. Through these forces we actually work against similarity of form. It is only a confused science that identifies similarity with heredity. We look like our parents, but at the same time in our inner man we have certain forces inherited from them which strive to recapture the original image of the human being. These inherited forces do actually fight against similarity. A more subtle observation of man's life can show us this, without any supersensible powers, but solely through external observation. Just try to ask the question of life in the right way; try to observe men who in some outward characteristic particularly resemble their parents, grandparents and so on; and then look at the inherited moral impulses. You will soon see that these inherited moral impulses are, as a rule, working against similarity of outward appearance.

If in the case of distinguished personalities mentioned in history you are impressed by how much their pictures make them look like their forefathers, you will always notice that their biographies bring out attributes of soul—and these are precisely the inherited attributes—which are opposed to those from which the similarities of form have come. This is essentially one of the mysteries of life. Forebears would understand their descendants far better, and parents their children, if they were able to look this fact in the face completely without prejudice. If, for example, a mother has a little son who is very much like her, she can be pleased; but when it comes to education it might be useful for her to say: “What will happen if my son develops those qualities which are like the qualities that make for quarrels between my husband and me?” These concrete impulses have a tremendous importance in life and should be noticed. To know of them will be particularly necessary for the task of education, for the evolution of human beings in the future. For it will not be possible in the future to derive our education from abstract principles; we shall have to educate on an empirical, concrete basis. And we do not discover these empirical, concrete bases if we have no power to read life. We must be able to read life; but for that we must learn its alphabet. As you know, there is much more to it than that, but the most necessary alphabet that will suffice for the immediate future is to know three letters—normal evolution, Ahrimanic evolution, Luciferic evolution. Just as no-one can read a book without knowing his ABC, so anyone who is ignorant of these three letters cannot read—they are simply the letters through which one learns how to read life. Only by our learning to read life will the Utopian spirit so widespread among men be overcome. And people will then have to embark on a study of those forces which play into life.

Now naturally someone may say: “You have been talking here about the original being of man, but it is nowhere to be found.” That goes without saying; but as an objection it is no different from this: “You have been telling me here of how in the flowing water of a river there is hydrogen and oxygen, but I see nothing of all that.” It is indeed necessary to go into these things, above all to have a correct concept of what form is. I have previously used a comparison which I should now like to repeat.

One can arrive at Coblenz, or some other place, even at Basle, and admire the Rhine, perhaps feeling impelled to say: “This Rhine, it flows on, we don't know for how long it has done so but certainly for centuries, perhaps for an incalculable time. How old this Rhine is!”—What part of it is actually old? The water you look at will be at a quite different place in a few days; it will be far away; so it is certainly not old, for a few days ago it was not yet there, but somewhere quite else. What you see there is definitely not old; you have no right to call it centuries old. And when you speak of the Rhine, you probably do not mean its bed, the channel where its waters flow. In reality you are speaking of something not present before you. When you speak of reality, you cannot indeed refer to what you have before your eyes, for that is a confluence of forces working through the world and is merely a state of equilibrium. In whatever direction you may look, there is merely a state of equilibrium. You have to work through to the realities. And only by working through to the realities is it possible to learn the alphabet of life.

To-morrow I shall be speaking of the connection of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic impulses with the Christ-Jahve impulse, so that you may see how, in reality, the Christ-Jahve impulse flows into these streams.

• 1. Op. cit. Chapter IV of Occult Science—an Outline.

When I made some suggestions last Sunday for a renewal of our Christmas thinking, I spoke of the real, inner human being who comes from the spiritual world and unites with the body that is given to him from the stream of heredity. I described how this human being, when he enters the life he is to experience between birth and death, enters it with a certain sense of equality. I said that someone who observes a child with understanding will notice how he does not yet know of the distinctions that exist in the human social structure, due to all the relationships into which men's karma leads them. I said that if we observe clearly and without prejudice the forces residing in certain capacities and talents, even in genius, we shall be compelled to ascribe these in large measure to the impulses which affect mankind through the hereditary stream; that when such impulses appear clearly in the natural course of that stream, we must call them luciferic. Moreover, in our present epoch these impulses will only be fitted into the social structure properly if we recognize them as luciferic, if we are educated to strip off the luciferic element and, in a certain sense, to offer upon the altar of Christ what nature has bestowed upon us—in order to transform it.

There are two opposite points of view: one is concerned with the differences occurring in mankind through heredity and conditions of birth; the other with the fact that the real kernel of a man's being holds within it at the beginning of his earthly life the essential impulse for equality. This shows that the human being is only observed correctly when he is observed through the course of his whole life, when his development in time is really taken into account. We have pointed out in another connection that the developmental motif changes in the course of life. You will also find reference to this in an article I wrote called “The Ahrimanic and the Luciferic in Human Life,” where it is shown that the luciferic influence plays a certain role in the first half of life, the ahrirnanic in the second half; that both these impulses are active throughout life, but in different ways.

Along with the idea of equality, other ideas have recently been forced into prominence in a tumultuous fashion, in a certain sense precipitating what should have been a tranquil development in the future. They have been set beside the idea of equality, but they should really be worked out slowly in human evolution if they are to contribute to the well-being of humanity and not to disaster. They can only be rightly understood and their significance for life rightly estimated if they are given their proper place in the sequence of a man's life.

Side by side with the idea of equality, the idea of freedom resounds through the modern world. I spoke to you about the idea of freedom some time ago in connection with the new edition of my The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. We are therefore able to appreciate the full importance and range of this impulse in relation to the innermost kernel of man's being. Perhaps some of you know that it has frequently been necessary, from questions here and there, to point to the entirely unique character of the conception of freedom as it i is delineated in my The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. There is a certain fact that I have always found necessary to emphasize in this connection, namely, that the various modern philosophical conceptions of freedom have made the mistake (if you want to call it a mistake) of putting the question thus: Is the human being free or not free? Can we ascribe free will to man? or may we only say that he stands within a kind of absolute natural necessity, and out of this necessity accomplishes his deeds and the resolves of his will? This way of putting the question is incorrect. There is no “either-or.” One cannot say, man is either free or unfree. One has to say, man is in the process of development from unfreedom to freedom. And the way the impulse for freedom is conceived in my The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, shows you that man is becoming ever freer, that he is extricating himself from necessity, that more and more impulses are growing in him that make it possible for him to be a free being within the rest of the world order.

Thus the impulse for equality has its greater intensity at birth—even though not in consciousness, since the latter is not yet developed—and it then decreases. That is to say, the impulse for equality has a descending development. We may make a diagram thus:

At birth we find the height of the impulse for equality, and it moves in a descending curve. With the impulse for freedom the reverse is true. Freedom moves in an ascending curve and has its culmination at death. By that I do not mean to say that man reaches the summit of a freely-acting being when he passes through the gate of death; but relatively, with regard to human life, a man develops the impulse for freedom increasingly up to the moment of death, and he has achieved relatively the greatest possibility of becoming free at the moment he enters the spiritual world through the gate of death. That is to say: while at birth he brings with him out of the spiritual world the sense of equality which then declines during the course of physical life, it is just during his physical lifetime that he develops the impulse toward freedom, and he then enters the spiritual world through the gate of death with the largest measure of this impulse for freedom that he could attain in the course of his physical life.

You see again how one-sidedly the human being is often observed. One fails to take into account the time element in his being. He is spoken of in general terms, in abstracto, because people are not inclined today to consider realities. But man is not a static being; he is an evolving being. The more he develops and the more he makes it possible to develop, so much the more does he fulfill his true task here in the course of physical life. People who are inflexible, who are disinclined to undergo development, accomplish little of their real earthly mission. What you were yesterday you no longer are today, and what you are today you will no longer be tomorrow. These are indeed slight shades of differences; but happy is he in whom they exist at all—for standing still is ahrimanic! There should be shades of difference. No day should pass in a man's life without his receiving at least one thought that alters his nature a little, that enables him to develop instead of merely to exist. Thus we recognize man's true nature—not when we insist in an absolute sense that mankind has the right to freedom and equality in this world—but only when we know that the impulse for equality reaches its culmination at the beginning of life, and the impulse toward freedom at the end. We unravel the complexity of human development in the course of life here on earth only when we take such things into consideration. One cannot simply look abstractly at the whole man and say: he has the right to find freedom, equality, and so forth, within the social structure. These things must be brought to people's attention again through spiritual science, for they have been ignored by the recent developments that move toward abstract ideas and materialism.

The third impulse, fraternity, has its culmination, in a certain sense, in the middle of life. Its curve rises and then falls. (See diagram.) In the middle of life, when the human being is in his least rigid condition—that is, when he is vacillating in the relation of soul to body—then it is that he has the strongest tendency to develop brotherliness. He does not always do so, but at this time he has the predisposition to do so. The strongest prerequisites for the development of fraternity exist in middle life.

Thus these three impulses are distributed over an entire lifetime. In the times we are approaching it will be necessary for our understanding of other men, and also—as a matter of course—for our so-called self-knowledge, that we take such matters into account. We cannot arrive at correct ideas about community life unless we know how these impulses are distributed in the course of life. In a certain sense we Will be unable to live our lives usefully unless we are willing to gain this knowledge; for we will not know exactly what relation a young man bears to an old man, or an older person
to one in middle life, unless we keep in mind the special configuration of these inner impulses.

But now let us connect all this with lectures⁵ I gave here earlier about the whole human race gradually becoming younger. Perhaps you recall that I explained how the particular dependence of soul development upon the physical organism that a human being has today only during his very earliest years was experienced in ancient times up to old age. (We are speaking now only of post-Atlantean epochs.) I said that in the ancient Indian cultural epoch man was dependent upon his so-called physical development into his fifties, in the way that he is now dependent only in the earliest years. Now in the first years of life man is dependent upon his physical development. We know the kind of break the change of teeth causes, then puberty, and so on. In these early years we see a distinct parallel in the development of soul and of body; then this ceases, vanishes. I pointed out that in older cultural epochs of our post-Atlantean period that was not the case. The possibility of receiving wisdom from nature simply through being a human being—lofty wisdom which was venerated among the ancient Indians, and could still be venerated among the ancient Persians—that possibility existed because the conditions were not the same as they are now. Now a man becomes a finished product in his twenties; he is then no longer dependent upon his physical organism. Starting from his twenties, it gives him nothing more. This was not the case in ancient times. In ancient times the physical organism itself gave wisdom to man's soul into his fifties. It was possible for him in the second half of life, even without special occult training, to extract the forces from his physical organism in an elemental way, and thus attain a certain wisdom and a certain development of will. I pointed to the significance of this for the ancient Indian and Persian epochs, even for the Egypto-Chaldean epoch, when it was possible to say to a boy or girl, or young man or young woman: “When you are old you may expect that something will come into your life, will be bestowed upon you simply by your having become old, because one continues to develop up to the time of death.” Age was looked up to with reverence , because a man said to himself: With old age something will enter my life that I cannot know or cannot will while I am still young. That gave a certain structure to the entire social life which only ceased when during the Greco-Latin epoch this point of time fell back into the middle years of human life. In the ancient Indian civilization man was capable of development up to his fifties. Then during the ancient Persian epoch mankind grew younger: that is, the age of the human race, the capacity for development, fell back to the end of a man's forties. During the Egypto-Chaldean epoch it came between the thirty-fifth and the forty-second year. During the Greco-Latin epoch he was only capable of development up to a point of time between the twenty-eighth and the thirty-fifth year. When the Mystery of Golgotha occurred, he had this capability up to the thirty-third year. This is the wonderful fact we discover in the history of mankind's evolution: that the age of Christ Jesus when he passed through death on Golgotha coincides with the age to which humanity had fallen back at that time.

We pointed out that humanity is still becoming younger and younger; that is, the age at which it is no longer capable of development continues to decrease. This is significant, for example, when today a man enters public life at the particular age at which humanity now stands—twenty-seven years—without having received anything beside what he took in from the outside up to his twenty-seventh year. I mentioned that in this sense Lloyd-George⁶ is the representative man of our time. He entered public life at twenty-seven years. This had far-reaching consequences, which you can of course discover by reading his biography. These facts enable one to understand world conditions from within.

Now what strikes you as the most important fact when you connect what we have just been indicating—the increasing youthfulness of the human race—with the thoughts we have brought before our souls in these last days in relation to Christmas? The state of our development since the Mystery of Golgotha is this, that starting from our thirtieth year we can really gain nothing from our own organism, from what is bestowed upon us by nature. If the Mystery of Golgotha had not taken place, we would be going about here on earth after our 30th year saying to ourselves: Actually we live in the true sense only up to our thirty-second or thirty-third year at most. Up to that time our organism makes it possible for us to live; then we might just as well die. For from the course of nature, from the elemental occurrences of nature, we can gain nothing more for our soul development through the impulses of our organism. If the Mystery of Golgotha had not taken place, the earth would be filled with human beings lamenting thus: Of what use to me is life after my thirty-third year? Up to that time my organism can give me something. After that I might just as well be dead. I really go about here on earth like a living corpse. If the Mystery of Golgotha had not taken place, many people would feel that they are going about on earth like living corpses. But the Mystery of Golgotha, dear friends, has still to be made fruitful. We should not merely receive the Impulse of Golgotha unconsciously, as people now do: we should receive it consciously, in such a manner that through it we may remain youthful up to old age. And it can indeed keep us healthy and youthful if we receive it consciously in the right way. We shall then ' be conscious of its enlivening effect upon our life. This is important!

Thus you see that the Mystery of Golgotha can be regarded as something intensely alive during the course of our earthly life. I said earlier that people are most predisposed to brotherliness in the middle of life—around the thirty-third year, but they do not always develop it. You have the reason for this in what I just said. Those who fail to develop brotherliness, who lack something of brotherliness, simply are too little permeated by the Christ. Since the human being begins to die, in a certain sense, in middle age from the forces of nature, he cannot properly develop the impulse, the instinct, of brotherliness—and still less the impulse toward freedom, which is taken up so little today—unless he brings to life within himself thoughts that come directly from the Christ Impulse. When we turn to the Christ Impulse, it enkindles brotherliness in us directly. To the degree to which a man feels the necessity for brotherliness, he is permeated by Christ.

One is also unable alone to develop the impulse for freedom to full strength during the remainder of one's earthly life. (In future periods of evolution this will be different.) Something entered our earth evolution as human being and flowed forth at the death of Christ Jesus to unite Itself with the earthly evolution of humanity. Therefore Christ is the One who also leads present-day mankind to freedom. We become free in Christ when we are able to grasp the fact that the Christ could really not have become older, could not have lived longer, in a physical body than up to the age of thirty-three years. Suppose hypothetically that He had lived longer: then He would have lived on in a physical body into the years when according to our present earth evolution this body is destined for death. The Christ would have taken up the forces of death. Had he lived to be forty years old, He would have experienced the forces of death in His body. These He would not have wished to experience. He could only have wished to experience those forces that are still the freshening forces for a human being. He was active up to His thirty-third year, to the middle of life; as the Christ He enkindled brotherliness. Then He caused the spirit to flow into human evolution: He gave over to the Holy Spirit what was henceforth to be within the power of man. Through this Holy Spirit, this health-giving Spirit, a human being develops to freedom toward the end of his life. Thus is the Christ Impulse integrated into the concrete life of humanity.

This permeation of man's inner being by the Christ Principle must be incorporated into human knowledge as a new Christmas thought. Mankind must know that we bring equality with us out of the spiritual world. It comes, one might say, from God the Father, and is given to us to bring to earth. Then brotherliness reaches its proper culmination only through the help of the Son. And through the Christ united with the Spirit we can develop the impulse for freedom as we draw near to death.

This activity of the Christ Impulse in the concrete shaping of humanity is something that from now on must be accepted consciously by human souls. This alone will be really health-giving when people's demands for refashioning the social structure become more and more urgent and passionate. In this social structure there live children, youths, middle-aged and old people; and a social structure that embraces them all can only be achieved when it is realized that human beings are not simply abstract Man. The five-year-old child is Man, the twenty-year-old youth, the twenty-year-old young woman, the forty-year-old man—at the present time to undertake an actual observation of human beings, which would result in a consciousness of humanity in the concrete, human beings as they really are. When they are looked at concretely, the abstraction Man-Man-Man has no reality whatsoever. There can only be the fact of a specific human being of a specific age with specific impulses. Knowledge of Man must be acquired, but it can only be acquired by studying the development of the essential living kernel of the human being as he progresses from birth to death. That must come, my dear friends. And probably people will not be inclined to receive such things into their consciousness until they are again able to take a retrospective view of the evolution of mankind.

Yesterday I drew your attention to something that entered human evolution with Christianity. Christianity was born out of the Jewish soul, the Greek spirit, and the Roman body. These were the sheaths, so to speak, of Christianity. But within Christianity is the living Ego, and this can be separately observed when we look back to the birth of Christianity. For the external historian this birth of Christianity has become very chaotic. What is usually written today about the early centuries of Christianity, whether from a Roman Catholic or a Protestant point of view, is very confused wisdom. The essence of much that existed in those first Christian centuries is either entirely forgotten by present theologians or else it has become, may I say, an abomination for them. Just read and observe the strange convulsions of intellectualism—they almost become a kind of intellectual epilepsy—when people have to describe what lived in the first centuries of Christianity as the Gnosis.⁷ It is considered a sort of devil, this Gnosis, something so demonic that it should absolutely not be admitted into human life. And when such a theologian or other official representative of this or that denomination can accuse anthroposophy of having something in common with gnosticism, he believes he has made the worst possible charge.

Underlying all this is the fact that in the earliest centuries of Christianity gnosticism did indeed penetrate the spiritual life of European humanity—so far as this was of importance for the civilization of that time—and, moreover, much more significantly than is now supposed. There exists on the one hand, not the slightest idea of what this Gnosis actually was; on the other hand, I might say, there is a mysterious fear of it. To most of the present-day official representatives of any religious denomination the Gnosis is something horrible. But it can of course be looked at without sympathy or antipathy, purely objectively. Then it would best be studied from a spiritual scientific standpoint, for external history has little to offer. Western ecclesiastical development took care that all external remains of the Gnosis were properly eradicated, root and branch. There is very little left, as you know—only the Pistis Sophia and the like—and that gives only a vague idea of it. Otherwise the only passages from the Gnosis that are known are those refuted by the Church Fathers. That means really that the Gnosis is only known from the writings of opponents, while anything that might have given some idea of it from an external, historical point of view has been thoroughly rooted out.

An intellectual study of the development of Western theology would make people more critical on this point as well—but such study is rare. It would show them, for instance, that Christian dogma must surely have its foundation in something quite different from caprice or the like. Actually, it is all rooted in the Gnosis. But its living force has been stripped away and abstract thoughts, concepts, the mere hulls are left, so that one no longer recognizes in the doctrines their living origin. Nevertheless, it is really the Gnosis. If you study the Gnosis as far as it can be studied with spiritual scientific methods, you will find a certain light is thrown upon the few things that have been left to history by the opponents of gnosticism. And you will probably realize that this Gnosis points to the very widespread and concrete atavistic-clairvoyant world conception of ancient times. There were considerable remnants of this in the first post-Atlantean epoch, less in the second. In the third epoch the final remnants were worked upon and appeared as gnosticism in a remarkable system of concepts, concepts that are extraordinarily figurative. Anyone who studies gnosticism from this standpoint, who is able to go back, even just historically, to the meager remnants—they are brought to light more abundantly in the pagan Gnosis than in Christian literature—will find that, as a matter of fact, this Gnosis contained wonderful treasures of wisdom relating to a world with which people of our present age refuse to have any connection. So it is not at all surprising that even well-intentioned people can make little of the ancient Gnosis.

Well-intentioned people? I mean, for instance, people like Professor Jeremias of Leipzig, who would indeed be willing to study these things. But he can form no mental picture of what these ancient concepts refer to—when, for example, mention is made of a spiritual being Jaldabaoth, who is supposed with a sort of arrogance to have declared himself ruler of the world, then to have been reprimanded by his mother, and so on. Even from what has been historically preserved, such mighty images radiate to us as the following: Jaldabaoth said, “I am God the Father; there is no one above me.” And his mother answered, “Do not lie! Above thee is the Father of all, the first Man, and the Son of Man.” Then—it is further related—Jaldabaoth called his six co-workers and they said, “Let us make man in our image.” Such imaginations, quite self-explanatory, were numerous and extensive in what existed as the Gnosis. In the Old Testament we find only remnants of this pictorial wisdom preserved by Jewish tradition. It lived especially in the Orient, whence its rays reached the West; and only in the third or fourth century did these begin to fade in the West. But then there were still some after-effects among the Waldenses and Cathars⁸ that finally died out.

People of our time can hardly imagine the condition of the souls living in civilized Europe during the first Christian centuries, in whom there lived not merely mental pictures like those of present-day Roman Catholics, but in a supreme degree vivid, unmistakable echoes of this mighty world-picture of the Gnosis. What we see when we look back at those souls is vastly different from what we find in books that have been written about these centuries by ecclesiastical and secular theologians and other scholars. In the books there is nothing of all that lived in those great and powerful imaginative pictures describing a world of which, as I have said, people of our time have no conception. That is why a man possessing present-day scholarship can do nothing with such concepts—for instance, with Jaldabaoth, his mother, the six co-workers, and so on. He does not know what to do with them. They are words, word-husks; what they refer to, he does not know. Still less does he know how the people of that earlier age ever came to form such concepts. A modern person can only say, “Well, of course, the ancient Orientals had lively imaginations; they developed all that fantasy.” We ourselves must marvel that such a person has not the slightest idea how little imagination a primitive human being has, what a minor role it plays, for instance, among peasants. In this respect the mythologists have done wonders! They have invented the stories of simple people transforming the drifting clouds, the wind driving the clouds, and so on, into all sorts of beings. They have no idea how the earlier humanity to whom they attribute all this were really constituted in their souls, that they were as far removed as could possibly be from such poetic fashioning. The fantasy really exists in the circles of the mythologists, the scholars who think out such things. That is the real fantasy!

What people suppose to have been the origin of mythology is pure error. They do not know today to what its words and concepts refer. Certain, may I say, clear hints concerning their interpretation are therefore no longer given any serious attention. Plato pointed very precisely to the fact that a human being living here in a physical body has remembrance of something experienced in the spiritual world before this physical life. But present-day philosophers can make nothing of this Platonic memory-knowledge; for them it is something that Plato too had imagined. In reality, Plato still knew with certainty that the Greek soul was predisposed to unfold in itself what it had experienced in the spiritual world before birth, though it still possessed only the last residue of this ability. Anyone who between birth and death perceives only by means of his physical body and who works over his perceptions with a present-day intellect, cannot grant any rational meaning to observations that have not even been made in a physical body but were made between death and a new birth. Before birth human beings were in a world in which they could speak of Jaldabaoth who rose up in pride, whose mother admonished him, who summoned the six co-workers. That is a reality for the human being between death and a new birth, just as plants, animals, minerals, and other human beings are realities for him here in this world, about which he speaks when he is confined in a physical body. The Gnosis contained what was brought into this physical world at birth; and it was possible to a certain extent up to the Egypto-Chaldean epoch, that is, up to the eighth century before the Christian era, for human beings to bring very much with them from the time they had spent between death and a new birth. What was brought in those epochs from the spiritual world and clothed in concepts, in ideas, is the Gnosis. It continued to exist in the Greco-Latin epoch, but it was no longer directly perceived; it was a heritage existing now as ideas. Its origin was known only to select spirits such as Plato, in a lesser degree to Aristotle also. Socrates knew of it too, and indeed paid for this knowledge with his death.

Now what were the conditions in this Greco-Latin age in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch? Only meager recollections of time before birth could now be brought over into life, but something was brought over, and in this Greek period it was still distinct. People today are inordinately proud of their power of thinking, but actually they can grasp very little with it. The thinking power that the Greeks developed was of a different nature. When the Greeks entered earthly life through birth, the images of their experiences before birth were lost; but the thinking force that they had used before birth to give an intelligent meaning to the images still remained. Greek thinking differed completely from our so-called normal thinking, for the Greek thinking was the result of pondering over imaginations that had been experienced before birth. Of the imaginations themselves little was recalled; the essential thing that remained was the discernment that had helped a person before birth to find his way in the world about which imaginations had been formed. The waning of this thinking power was the important factor in the development of the fourth post-Atlantean period, which continued, as you know, into the fifteenth century of the Christian era.

Now in this fifth epoch the power to think must again be developed, out of our earthly culture. Slowly, haltingly, we must develop it out of the scientific world view. Today we are at the beginning of it. During the fourth post-Atlantean period, that is, from 747 B.C. to 1413 A.D.—the Event of Golgotha lies between—there was a continual decrease of thinking power. Only in the fifteenth century did it begin slowly to rise again; by the third millennium it will once more have reached a considerable height. Of our present-day power of thought mankind need not be especially proud; it has declined. The thinking power, still highly developed, that was the heritage of the Greeks shaped the thoughts with which the gnostic pictures were set in order and mastered. Although the pictures were no longer as clear as they had been for the Egyptians or the Babylonians, for example, the thinking power was still there. But it gradually faded. That is the extraordinary way things worked together in the earliest Christian centuries.

The Mystery of Golgotha breaks upon the world. Christianity is born. The waning thinking power, still very active in the Orient but also reaching over into Greece, tried to understand this event. The Romans had little understanding of it. This thinking power tried to understand the Event of Golgotha from the standpoint of the thinking used before birth, the thinking of the spiritual world. And now something significant occurred: this gnostic thinking came face to face with the Mystery of Golgotha. Now let us consider the gnostic teachings about the Mystery of Golgotha, which are such an abomination to present-day, especially Christian, theologians. Much is to be found in them from the ancient atavistic teachings, or from teachings that are permeated by the ancient thought-force; and many significant and impressive things are said in them about the Christ that today are termed heretical, shockingly heretical. Gradually this power of gnostic thought declined. We still see it in Manes⁹ in the third century, and we still see it as it passes over to the Cathars—downright heretics from the Catholic point of view: a great, forceful, grandiose interpretation of the Mystery of Golgotha. This ebbed away, strangely enough, in the early centuries, and people were little inclined to apply any effort toward an understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. These two things, you see, were engaged in a struggle: the gnostic teaching, wishing to comprehend the Mystery of Golgotha through powerful spiritual thinking; and the other teaching, that reckoned with what was to come, when thought would no longer have power, when it would lack the penetration needed to understand the Mystery of Golgotha, when it would be abstract and unfruitful. The Mystery of Golgotha, a cosmic mystery, was reduced to hardly more than a few sentences at the beginning of the Gospel of St. John, telling of the Logos, of His entrance into the world and His destiny in the world, using as few concepts as possible; for what had to be taken into account was the decreasing thinking power.

Thus the gnostic interpretation of Christianity gradually died out, and a different conception of it arose, using as few concepts as possible. But of course the one passed over into the other: concepts like the dogma of the Trinity were taken over from gnostic ideas and reduced to abstractions, mere husks of concepts.The really vital fact is this, that an inspired gnostic interpretation of the Mystery of Golgotha was engaged in a struggle with the other explanation, which worked with as few concepts as possible, estimating what humanity would be like by the fifteenth century with the ancient, hereditary, acute thinking power declining more and more. It was also reckoning that this would eventually have to be acquired again, in elementary fashion, through the scientific observation of nature. You can study it step by step. You can even perceive it as an inner soul-struggle if you observe St. Augustine,¹⁰ who in his youth became acquainted with gnostic Manichaeism, but could not digest that and so turned away to so-called “simplicity,” forming primitive concepts. These became more and more primitive. Even so, in Augustine there appeared the first dawning light of what had again to be acquired: knowledge starting from man, from the concrete human being. In ancient gnostic times one had tried to reach the human being by starting from the world. Now, henceforth, the start must be made from man: knowledge of the world must be acquired from knowledge of the human being. This must be the direction we take in the future. I explained this here some time ago and tried to point to the first dawning light in humanity. One finds it, for instance, in the Confessions of St. Augustine—but it was still thoroughly chaotic. The essential fact is that humanity became more and more incapable of taking in what streamed to it from the spiritual world, what had existed among the ancients as imaginative wisdom and then was active in the Gnosis, what had evoked the power of acute thinking that still existed among the Greeks. Thus the Greek wisdom, even though reduced to abstract concepts, still provided the ideas that allowed some understanding of the spiritual world. This then ceased; nothing of the spiritual world could any longer be understood through those dying ideas.

A man of the present day can easily feel that the Greek ideas are in fact applicable to something entirely different from that to which they were applied. This is a peculiarity of Hellenism. The Greeks still had the ideas but no longer the imaginations. Especially in Aristotle this is very striking. It is very singular. You know there are whole libraries about Aristotle, and everything concerning him is interpreted differently. People even dispute whether he accepted reincarnation or pre-existence. This has all come about because his words can be interpreted in various ways. It is because he worked with a system of concepts applicable to a supersensible world but he no longer had any perception of that world. Plato had much more understanding of it; therefore his system of concepts could be worked out better in that sense. Aristotle was already involved in abstract concepts and could no longer see that to which his thought-forms referred. It is a peculiar fact that in the early centuries there was a struggle between a conception of the Mystery of Golgotha that illuminated it with the light of the supersensible world, and the fanaticism that then developed to refute this. Not everyone saw through these things, but some did. Those who did see through them did not face them honestly. A primitive interpretation of the Mystery of Golgotha, an interpretation that was rabid about using only a few concepts, led to fanaticism.

Thus we see that supersensible thinking was eliminated more and more from the Christian world conception, from every world conception. It faded away and ceased. We can follow from century to century how the Mystery of Golgotha appeared to people as something tremendously significant that had entered earth evolution, and yet how the possibility of their comprehending it with any system of concepts vanished—or of comprehending the world cosmically at all. Look at that work from the ninth century, De Divisione Naturae by Scotus Erigena.¹¹ It still contains pictures of a world evolution, even though the pictures are abstract. Scotus Erigena indicates very beautifully four stages of a world evolution, but throughout with inadequate concepts. We can see that he is unable to spread out his net of concepts and make intelligible, plausible, what he wishes to gather together. Everywhere, one might say, the threads of his concepts break. It is very interesting that this becomes more noticeable from century to century, so that finally the lowest point in the spinning of concept-threads was reached in the fifteenth century. Then an ascent began again, but it did not get beyond the most elementary stage. It is interesting that on the one hand people cherished the Mystery of Golgotha and turned to it with their hearts, but declared that they could not understand it. Gradually there was a general feeling that it could not be understood. On the other hand the study of nature began at the very time when concepts vanished. Observation of nature entered the life of that time, but there were no concepts for actually grasping the phenomena that were being observed.

It is characteristic of this period, at the turn of the fourth to the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, halfway through the Middle Ages, that there were insufficient concepts both for the budding observation of nature and for the revelations of saving truths. Think how it was with Scholasticism in this respect: it had religious revelations, but no concepts out of the culture of the time that would enable it to work over these religious revelations. It had to employ Aristotelianism; this had to be revived. The Scholastics went back to Hellenism, to Aristotle, to find concepts with which to penetrate the religious revelations; and they elaborated these with the Greek intellect because the culture of their own time had no intellect of its own—if I may use such a paradox. So the very people who worked the most honestly, the Scholastics, did not use the intellect of their time, because there was none, none that belonged to their culture. It was characteristic of the period from the tenth to the fifteenth century that the most honest of the Scholastics made use of the ancient Aristotelian concepts to explain natural phenomena; they also employed them to formulate religious revelations. Only thereafter did there rise again, as from hoary depths of spirit, an independent mode of thinking—not very far developed, even to this day—the thinking of Copernicus and Galileo. This must be further developed in order to rise once more to supersensible regions.

Thus we are able to look into the soul, into the ego, so to speak, of Christianity, which had merely clothed itself with the Jewish soul, the Greek spirit, and the Roman body. This ego of Christianity had to take into account the dying-out of supersensible understanding, and therefore had to permit the comprehensive gnostic wisdom to shrink, as it were—one may even say, to shrink to the few words at the beginning of the Gospel of John. For the evolution of Christianity consists essentially of the victory of the words of St. John's Gospel over the content of the Gnosis. Then, of course, everything passed over into fanaticism, and gnosticism was exterminated, root and branch.

All these things are linked to the birth of Christianity. We must take them into consideration if we want to receive a real impulse for the consciousness of humanity that must be developed anew, and an impulse for the new Christmas thought. We must come again to a kind of knowledge that relates to the supersensible. To that end we must understand the supersensible force working into the being of man, so that we may be able to extend it to the cosmos. We must acquire anthroposophy, knowledge of the human being, which will be able to engender cosmic feeling again. That is the way. In ancient times man could survey the world, because he entered his body at birth with memories of the time before birth. This world, which is a likeness of the spiritual world, was an answer to questions he brought with him into this life. Now the human being confronts this world bringing nothing with him, and he must work with primitive concepts like those, for instance, of contemporary science. But he must work his way up again; he must now start from the human being and rise to the cosmos. Knowledge of the cosmos must be born in the human being. This too belongs to a conception of Christmas that must be developed in the present epoch, in order that it may be fruitful in the future.

• 5. Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, 11 Jan. 1918, Ancient Myths, Their Meaning and Connection with Evolution, GA 180 (Vancouver, Steiner Book Centre, 1971).
• 6. David Lloyd-George: 1863–1945. British statesman. Elected to Parliament 1890; Prime Minister during World War I. One of the “Big Four” statesmen at Paris Peace Conference 1919.
• 7. Gnosis: esoteric knowledge in Greco-Latin world of the 2nd century A.D.
• 8. Waldenses and Cathars: heretical Christian sects in western Europe, 12th and 13th centuries. They joined the Reformation movement during the 16th century.
• 9. Manes: 216–274 A.D. See Rudolf Steiner, Nurnberg, 25 June 1908, Apocalypse of St. John, GA 104 (London, Rudolf Steiner Press, 1977).
• 10. Augustine: 354–430 A.D. See Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, 22 May 1920, The Redemption of Thinking, GA 74 (Spring Valley, Anthroposophic Press, 1983).
• 11. Scotus Erigena: 810–877 A.D. See Rudolf Steiner, Riddles of Philosophy, GA 18 (Spring Valley, Anthroposophic Press, 1973).

You will have seen in the last lecture that efforts were directed towards presenting certain conceptions (which we can make our own out of Spiritual Science), in such a way that they can be of service to us in grasping what surrounds us, daily and hourly, in present-day civilisation. If We want to add yet another to these considerations, as a final one, it can be summed up only thus: significant characteristics of our present time have been selected and brought into connection in various ways with what has sounded forth as the keynote of these studies.

If we determine to keep in mind what seems to stand out particularly in our time, we shall find that of all the limiting and hindering factors to-day, the worst is that the mode of thought and comprehension evolved during the recent centuries leads men to have little foresight of coming events. This is shown by the fact that most events come as a surprise, in the most curious way, and it is quite impossible to gain credence for anything that is foreseen. It is considered inevitable that remarkable events should take people by surprise. Speak of what is to come, and people are astonished , or they make ironical remarks about the apparent longing for some sort of prophecy. Suppose that anyone wished to call attention to conclusions such as may result from hypotheses like those we have lately brought forward here—for instance, what now looms over the world from the Far East—he would at present encounter little understanding or belief, although the fact already throws its shadow all too clearly before it. Far too little need is felt for a clear view into things. Connected with this is man's disinclination to admit the truths which, within the only circles open to them, point to future events.

Of course there is no question here of any kind of “soothsaying”; or of any sort of prophecy in the bad sense, but always an earnest, scientific method of thought and conviction derived from Spiritual Science. If we wish to ruminate upon the causes of this trend of the present day characteristic just mentioned, we may perhaps have to go far afield for them. Man as a rule is absolutely unconscious how far the causes of the thing lie from what appears as its effects . He generally looks for the causes much too near at hand.

If we are to look for causes of what has just been described, they must be sought in a tendency deeply ingrained in the human soul at the present time—a tendency towards dead conceptions and ideas devoid of life and vigor. It should be comprehensible that to think of the future, the imminent, with the same ideas as on the past, the determined, is impossible; but at the present time, value is attached only to what, in the current phrase can be “proved” and this question of proof is tied down to the special kind of proof which is popular today. Anyone who rightly understands this kind of proof knows that it applies only to truths connected with things in the universe which are in the process of dying. Therefore the only science or knowledge desired in the present age is concerned with what is dying and perishing—especially so in the case of those who claim to be the most enlightened. They welcome only a will bent in that direction. If we are not conscious of this, we are really preferring—in the widest sense of the words—to deal only with what is passing away. We lack the courage to think in terms of growing, becoming, for what is growing refuses to be grasped with the narrow, limited conceptions capable of being “proved”, which are suitable for what is passing away. So people protect themselves against the reproaches which are really implicit in what I have just pointed out.

To speak against these things, as one must do, involves the danger of incurring the reproach of frightful fantasy, dilettantism, or perhaps even worse. Conceptions are sought which protect people from the obligation of thinking about anything fruitful, or endowed with seeds of life for the future. One idea, according to this view, must be received by those who hold themselves to be among the really intelligent leaders of thought: the idea of “the conservation of matter and energy” as understood at the present time. Quite comprehensibly, everyone is adjudged to be a duffer who does not admit this indestructibility of force and matter to be a truth underlying the whole of science. Yet it is a fact that if we sound the depths of a real view of the universe, what we call matter and force are perishable and transitory; and all science, all knowledge attainable on the subject, our investigations into the transitory. Because it is insisted that science has to be concerned with that, and that only, it is dogmatically asserted that something solid, something permanent and there must be: either matter—In spite of its being transitory—or energy. This law of the permanence of matter and energy plays a great part even for those who are not concerned to analyze it scientifically; such a part that is clothes everything with mystery. Our scientific education is such that the dregs of opinion on the subject of the conservation of matter and energy penetrate our popular literature and are treated by the ordinary reader as something obvious.

Now we know, through a cold science, of the Saturn, Sun, Moon and Earth-developments. Nothing of what is now called matter and energy will pass beyond the Venus evolution. Hence the most lasting kind of matter, that which reaches Venus, will then come to an end. We have just passed the middle of our world-evolution, as we view it, and are in the fifth period of the earth-evolution, beyond the middle of that; and we are already living in the setting.: that is, in the time of devolution, in which the vanishing of matter and energy comes to pass. The right you take as we studied physics and chemistry would be this—that the knowledge acquired through these sciences bears only upon the transitory, which at latest will disappear from the universe with the Venus-stage. In the whole purview the present-day science there is nothing which deals with the permanent; because by means of the ideas and concepts that can be “proved” in a manner favored today, it is impossible to discover only what in this sense is transitory. Man moves only in the transitory.

An essential reform is necessary in our ideas concerning this most essential sphere, and those who consider themselves particularly scientific have the most to learn before they can replace their current notions with correct ones.—Now why am I saying this, seeing that the matter in its general bearing may not perhaps seem particularly important?

It really is important, because according to the concepts which men assimilate in the way I have described, other concepts are formed in conformity with which they will; they direct their will-power. From the mode of thought thus acquired are begotten social and political concepts. These latter shape themselves in accordance with the characteristic use made of such forces—a use consisting in this, that only the transitory is dealt with in such conceptions, and this habit spreads into ideas concerned with the living. This crops up in a particularly striking way as we look at the main points of the programms put forth by many who confidently regard themselves as the very last word in advanced thought. For instance, the schemes of many Socialists, very much in the public eye nowadays, all more or less adopt the theory of Karl Marx as a starting-point. This theory is the calamity of Russia two-day, because—for reasons I explained last time—what happens there according to historical premises can ensue elsewhere from Marxism. This way of looking at things is an extreme form of the determination to deal only with transitory. Anyone who familiarizes himself with the ideas of this school knows that the fanatical adherents of Marxism imagine themselves to be possessed of the ideas of the future, whereas they have only such as are directed to the transitory. This stands out naïvely in the so-called socialist view of life, for throughout it refuses admittance to ideas with a fruitful bearing on the future. It preaches the blessing of having none! The formula is repeated in many different ways:—Get rid of everything at present existing; then, of itself, without any reflection on the matter, something will result from the welter. This is unequivocally stated. But although it comes from the looks of those who have been brought up in Church doctrines for centuries and who do nothing but trace the events of the last centuries according to the Church, they must nevertheless say the following.—In truth this view refuses to entertain ideas with any germ of life in them: the only ones it admits are concerned with what is passing away; and the only effect of these ideas is to complete the process of destruction. Men believe they possess productive thoughts; that is all to no purpose unless the concepts are rooted in reality. These ideas are useless for establishing anything new; all they can accomplish is to turn destruction into an institution. This Socialism seems to me like a lady (a bygone person to-day) who cannot endure a crinoline. She hates the wide skirt and wants to alter it. But what does she do? She pads it out; so that it looks just as before, but is a stuffed out with wadding inside. Just so these Socialists: they never think of fertilizing what history has achieved with new concepts; they leave it alone—and themselves take the place of the former administrators. They hang on to the crinoline, but stuff it out. Look even at extremist views—they are simply a longing to administer what is perishing and dying out! To what is this due?

It is due to the fact that with the concepts of present-day science, concerned merely with things of the senses, based on the intellect, taking account only of material perception, all that one can encounter is the transitory, not the living. Only what is already dying can be grasped; nothing that is seed-bearing, growing. For the germinating, growing element must be grasped at least through Imagination, the first stage of higher knowledge; as described, for instance, in the book, “Knowledge of Higher Worlds.” And to attain to still higher knowledge of the “becoming”—Inspiration and Intuition must be applied. Those who approach such things with the outfit of ideas held hitherto may talk as much as they wish—they are only talking of laws which apply to what is on the way to destruction, unless they let themselves admit what super-sensible knowledge alone can reveal as the “becoming”. Things too-they are on a razor's edge. It is impossible to know anything on certain subjects, and civilization must fall into chaos if we are satisfied to live in it without admitting any vision of the spiritual.

What we need, and what is striven for through Spiritual Science, is a sort of revival of the Mysteries, in a form adapted to the modern mind. Unless we understand the meaning of the ancient mysteries, we shall not fathom the meaning of the epoch which is intermediate between them and what must come as the new form of the Mysteries. Comprehension of all this is necessary. The most startling experience for the pupils of the old Mysteries was to be shown clearly how the old atavistic, clairvoyant, hidden knowledge was doomed to extinction. This could not be grasped by observation, it had to be revealed in the Mysteries, where people were shown that something different from the old clairvoyant vision into the Spiritual World's was destined to become man's possession. There it was disclosed to the pupils of the Mysteries that this old capacity of the human soul, this vision of cosmic expanses in Imaginations, was dedicated to death. This was made them somewhat in the following way.—What can be perceived by physical senses on earth is not the content of the genuine Mysteries of the earth-existence; this is revealed only when the human soul ascends in the clairvoyant contemplation to Mysteries of the cosmos, of the super-earthly, and the cosmic events beyond the sphere of earth, unfold before it.—The ancient seers grasped all that, but not what happened on earth. The pupils of the tapestries were shown depth knowledge of that type, ascending into the Cosmos, would no longer be possible; and still more was disclosed to those who were to penetrate into the Christ-Mystery.

Something like this conception came to them: “Although the old seers did not speak of ‘the Christ,’ their inspirations came from the world in which Christ always was, for He is a Cosmic Being. He dwells in everything Cosmic and universal, in the whole content of man's old atavistic clairvoyant vision; but from the time when the Mystery of Golgotha is due to be enacted, all this will be no longer accessible to mankind in the old way.”

What happened? The Christ descended from the world of the cosmos to the earth. Because the cosmos was no longer accessible to men as in ancient times, because Christ was no longer to be found in the old way, because the kind of knowledge and state of soul with which men had formerly looked at the world was dying out, but Christ had to come down to them. He came to the earth. Everything, therefore, which enlightened spirits had ever known of the spiritual world in ancient times through the pagan tapestries and through pagan Mystery-knowledge, was summed up in the Christ, and could be beheld in Him. The one all-important thing was to recognize the Cosmic Being, Who in Christ descended to the earth from the cosmos. That was one point.

The other was this. Remember that through the intellect and of the senses only the transitory can be observed in all the array of systems, whether of nature, of social structures or of civilizations, and that transitory knowledge will endure no farther than the Venus-existence. But learned men, believing that their ideas point to the future, are very often immersed in what is passing away. And what the senses perceive and the intellect grasps there is no seed of the future; all of it is doomed to perish. If the only knowledge were concerned with that, there would be nothing but knowledge of death; because the actuality which surrounds us is itself doomed to death. Where shall we find the “enduring”? Where is the imperishable which shall outlast this existence, apparently permanent but doomed to die? While Adamson forces, to which materialistic superstition attributes permanence, betray their impermanence and fall to ruin, where is the imperishable to be found?

In man alone! Amongst all the beings, animals, plants, minerals, air, water, and everything that perishes, there is but one thing which will outlast the Earth-evolution and the evolution to follow it—that which lives in man himself. Man alone on earth bears within him an enduring element. One cannot speak of the permanence of atoms, matter, force, but only of the permanence of something in Man. This, however, can be seen only through Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition. All else, perceived by our vision, is fleeting. The material, the physical, is entirely transient; the super-sensible, which outlives it, can be perceived only by super-sensible vision. In man, as he treads the earth, lies all that will be saved out of the entire Earth-existence. If we asked: “Where is the germ of something which will continue to grow on after the Earth, Jupiter, and Venus developments—from the present civilization into the future?” The answer must be: “In nothing external on earth; only in man”. In the part of his being accessible only to super-sensible knowledge, man is the cradle of the seed for the future. Only someone who is willing to include the super-sensible in his view is able to speak correctly of the future; otherwise he must err. Thus the Christ, dissenting from worlds becoming more and more inaccessible to human knowledge, had to unite Himself with Mankind—to take up His abode in Jesus of Nazareth and become Christ-Jesus, so that in a human body there might dwell that which bears within it the future of the Earth-development. So we have in Christ the Cosmic Being, that Cosmic Being whom ancient knowledge alone could grasp directly; and in the Jesus to whom the Christ came, we have what henceforth bears within it, in human will alone, the seed for the future. He cannot be comprehended purely as “Christ”, nor as “Jesus”. To speak of the “Christ” only, is not to comprehend Him; for the “Christ” of—for example—the old Docetics (a certain sect of Gnostics) belongs to the old atavistic clairvoyance and can no longer be laid hold of. And “Jesus” cannot be understood without taking into account the Christ Who drew into him. Unless we give due weight to this fact of the Christ in Jesus, we cannot grasp that only through the human seed on earth can the cosmic be saved for the future.

To understand how far Christ-Jesus is this double Being is a great task; but at the same time many have taken pains to create obstacles to such an understanding. In modern times it has been a question of inducing forgetfulness of indwelling of Christ in Jesus by all sorts of means. On one hand there is the extreme theological teaching which only and always speaks of “the simple man of Nazareth”, the man of physical nature, not of that Man who has in himself the seed for the future. Further, there is the Society founded to combat the Christ, and with that came to set up a false picture of Jesus: the Jesuit Society, which virtually aims at testing out the Christ-concept from the Christ-Jesus concept, and to install Jesus alone as an absolute ruler of developing humanity. We must see the connection of all this, for the different impulses here pointed out work and present-day life more than is supposed, and very intensely. Without open eyes and a longing to understand the concrete events around one, it is impossible not to be taken by surprise by what happens; a clearer view of such things as I have mentioned will be lacking. Our own time is in many respects too indolent to wish to achieve clarity; the concepts of Spiritual Science are too hard to compass, and are stigmatized status dilettante, unscientific, fantastic and the like. They are condemned for the reason, I have mentioned, because of the determination to take no account of what is really significant for the future.

Thus we see around us to-day this dreary waste in the midst of the chaos into which the old religious creeds and currents of thought have led. Within this chaos, which people with curious supposed to call “war” (a work which has ceased to be applicable for a long time now), we see an array of lifeless, barren thoughts and ideas, because fertile ones can come only from comprehension of the super-sensible, the spiritual. Man two-day has to choose between cultivating the vanishing, the dying, ending by becoming a pupil of Lenin—it's taking into account the super-sensible, wherein abides what has to come in the future. I am not referring simply to the London works his mischief now in Eastern Europe—I taken more as a symbol, for we have many such Lenins around us and the whole environment of our daily life, in one domain or another. Yet the world refuses to take in hand anything except what is dying.

Remember something I once pointed out here, ‘the plant lives,’ I said; it can be described as a living being. But what does ordinary science describe as the plant? Not what lives in it, for that of super-sensible; but the dead, literal part of it, which “fills out” the living element. We find nothing else described by modern science but the mineral filling of the living being, which brings death to it. Genuinely fruitful concepts regarding nature are consequently unattainable to-day. The concepts of present-day botany have no life. All that they describe as something filled out with a stony mineral substance, which circulates inside. That can be described equally well in the animal and in man. All three kingdoms become entirely different as soon as one gets away from this circulating mineral substance.

For instance, a certain Herr Uexküll has written an article on “The Controversy about the Animal Soul”. He is possessed by masochistic savagery as regards all knowledge of the soul, or anything that suggests it. I said “masochistic savagery” because in this article he writes: “It is impossible to decide whether a soul exists or not: all that can be decided is that science can settle nothing on the subject”—an ordinary savage kills; but anyone who is masochistically savage, like this Herr von Uexküll, only “probes” the dead and makes sneering remarks. That is thoroughly typical of modern science; but it is not noticed, because nobody wants to admit it. People refuse to breakthrough the dividing wall between themselves and their environment; hence they cannot reach the ideas they really need in order to learn once more how to understand their environment.

We know from spiritual science that the essential being of man, the kernel of his life, descends from the spiritual worlds, and unites itself with what surrounds him as a bodily-material chief between birth and death, or rather between conception and death. The problems of conception, of birth, of embryology, are investigated to-day; but they cannot be truly investigated, because the research is directed only to the dead part of man, which is embedded in the living. This path will never lead to a grasp of what alone can make the human being understandable. When Man the Suns in this way from the spiritual world, he is “received” by father and mother, and goes through all the stages of his embryonic development. Science two-day assumes that the parents give the child existence; and since father and mother are the center of the family, and the family is the foundation of the community, therefore the communities, which are extended families, consider men as their own property. Thus a galling idea is brought into modern life—but it is not really true.

What, then, does the act of conception bestow upon man? What does he gain? A Spiritual Science shows, what he receives is the possibility of becoming a mortal being—of dying. You will see, if you think of what is to be found in my various books, that it is the necessary consequence. With conception there is implanted in man what makes his death possible here on earth. The whole of life from birth is a development towards death, and the seed of death is implanted at conception. What man is as “man”, as a living being, is not by any means engendered at conception; but the possibility of death is thereby grafted onto what would otherwise be immortal. Parents are called to give death of a child! That is the paradox—they give it a opportunity of bearing a mortal body on earth. What lives in that body comes from the spiritual world. This is what makes the organism—the whole mechanism with which man is clothed and which was received by him with seed of death at conception—capable of life. We must learn to recognize man in his most concrete embodiment as a part of spiritual world-development. Then we shall learn not to stand before the loftiest problems with cowardly fear, past present-day science does, but to grasp them positively. If we shrink back from them, we shall fail to understand even our immediate environment.

Round about us to-day, live the most varied peoples. Just think of the incorrect ideas, for example, created by Woodrow Wilson out of his conception of nations and the peoples—a theme with which you are familiar. We must be quite clear that we cannot understand this conception of the people unless we take in the whole of earth-evolution. Whence comes, then, a division of humanity into “peoples”? We know from Spiritual Science of evolution proceeded through a Saturn-embodiment of the Earth, then the Sun-embodiment, with the ancient Moon following that, and then the present Earth-condition; afterwards will come a Jupiter-embodiment, and so forth. The course of evolution, however, was not so straightforward that the old Saturn-body simply changed into Sun, Moon, Earth; at one time a severance of the present Sun from the Earth took place, then a severance of the present Moon, so that we have a continuous evolution, and something which was cut off reunited, and once again severed. A connection with what I have just called “Cosmic Evolution” this severance plates part in the old clairvoyance. And for the old clairvoyance the human seed the future remained “chthonic”, as it was called in the old clairvoyance is, quite unconscious. For what comes from the universe was destined to decay; it was maintained only because it had come under the grip of the Luciferic power. In this way, out of the cosmos reform the many variations in the nations and peoples, but the cosmic forces were impregnated with Luciferic forces. Over against these diverse peoples stand something which was understood in a better time than this—universal humanity. It has a totally different origin. It may be discussed in the abstract, but can be truly spoken of only as one genuinely understands what the seed of the future in humanity is . It has no taint of Nation or peoples; for it is that which did not come down from the Cosmos but which the Christ came to find, and with which He indicted Himself. Christ, unlike the Jehovah-Deity, United Himself with no nation but with universal humanity. He was in the confraternity of those Gods from whom the nations took their rise, but He left that realm when it was ready to pass away; He came to earth and took up His abode in humanity at large. When we say, “Not I but Christ in us”, it is the greatest blasphemy against Christ-Jesus to invoke Him for any need other than that of universal humanity.

A grasp of this fact belongs to the most momentous concepts for the future. We must perceive the connection of Christ Jesus with humanity, and also how everything purely national lies outside the realm of Christ-Jesus, for it is the ancient remains of what was right for extinction at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. Yet, as we see withered fruit in the orchards, so do all things linger on after their right time. So we were bound to get the science which is concerned only with knowledge of what is on the way to extinction, and which—whether it be natural science or social science—deals and ideas that apply only to the transient, in nature or in cultural life. Often in the history of civilization one can see the conflict between the tendency to cling to what is passing away, and to present as important the dead, abstract ideas connected with it, and the wish to grasp that germinal essence of humanity which alone is pregnant of the future. I have often referred to the significant conversation between Goethe and Schiller when both were in Jena for a conference of a natural history society, at which Batsch the botanist had lectured on plants. As they left, Schiller said to Goethe, “The botanist's outlook dismembers everything; it ignores the connecting links”. Goethe, in a few descriptive sentences, put before Schiller his “Metamorphosis” of plants, but the latter said, “That is not an experience more observation—it is an idea.” To which Goethe answered “Then I see my ideas with my very eyes.” What he had been describing was visible to him, as real as a thing perceptible by physical senses. They confronted one another—Schiller, representative of the mind unable to look up to the spiritual, bemused by dead, abstract ideas; and Goethe, who wished to derive from knowledge of nature what is imperishable, vital for the future, the imperishable in humanity, of which all that is transient is merely an image. He wanted to unite the transient with its archetype, the real. He was not understood, for he looked on the super-sensible, the imperishable, as though it were perceptible to the senses. Thus the urgent need of our time is that Goethe's teaching should be more widely developed and further elaborated in its own sphere. Then things will become clearer, and we shall see that the particular creeds, whether Jewish, or more particularly the Catholic, are only the presuppositions of what is old and outworn, standing out in evolution as parched remnants, supported only from outside; and that side-by-side with these, interpenetrating them, stands Americanism, which wishes to carry the transient into the future. Therein lies the kinship between Americanism and Jesuitism, of which I spoke last time.

Standing in opposition to all this is Goetheanism. By this I do not mean anything dogmatically fixed, for we have to use names for things which far transcend them. By “Goetheanism” I do not mean what Goethe brought up to 1832, but what will perhaps be thought in the next millennium in the spirit of Goethe; which may develop out of Goethe's views, concepts and sentiments. It may be concluded, therefore, that in everything connected with Goetheanism, outworn beliefs sees its particular any. The most extreme paradoxes are to be found in this sphere. It really is a paradox to find that the cleverest book about Goethe whatever may be said to the contrary—has been written by Jesuit, Father Baumgarten. No details concerning him is neglected. The usual distinguishing mark of Jesuit work on the subject is hostility to Goethe: but this is a highly intelligent, painstaking book, not superficially written. Yet it has happened to Goethe to be portrayed as an ordinary citizen of the 18th century, born in 1749 at Frankfort-on-the-Main, who studied at Leipzig, was given a post in Weimar, traveled in Italy, live to be old, was incorrectly called it on both came good to “Johann Wolfgang Goethe;” this was how he was described in the work of a distinguished English Gentleman, Lewes—which was much admired. A book headed “Johann Wolfgang Goethe,” describing him as an ordinary 18th-century citizen, is no real book. A cultural paradox lies in the Jesuit's book on Goethe for the trend of opposing forces in modern times can be seen in it, and where the real ones are to be found.

A small way it shows itself amongst us. So long as we were reckoned a “hidden sect”, Anthroposophy was seldom attacked; but when it began to spread a little, virulent attacks began, especially from the Jesuits; and the Journal, “Voices from Maria Leach”, now called “Voices of the Time”, is not content with one article, but contains a whole series about what I've called Anthroposophy. I must warn you, again and again, attacks come from this side, not to believe that from the point of view of these writers, it is for our good when they say that we “speak of the Christ”, or that we “promote understanding of Christ”. They forbid that everything; it is exactly what must not be done; outside the doctrines of the Church, there must be no assertion about the Christ! No-one in our circles need be so naïve as to believe that by being a good Christian, he can propitiate the Church. Just because he is a good Christian, and does all in his power to advance Christianity, he arrays Catholicism against him as a supreme enemy. It becomes more and more necessary to take care that naïveté in these contemporary matters should disappear from amongst us. We must more and more firmly determined to realize what is active in the forces around us, whether they be in the ascendant or are declining. We must get beyond the longing, present among us in so many forms, simply to penetrate a little way into an imaginative world. I have often said that we must above all be able to place our Spiritual Science alongside modern concepts, and bring keen observation to bear on life as it is in the present age; because to gain true insight into this is possible only from the standpoint of Spiritual Science.

How many people come to me and say, “I have seen this or that”. Well they may well have done so. Imaginations are not so very distant. “Was that the Guardian of the Threshold?” many then ask. A simple yes and no does not answer questions on such matters, because the answers involve the whole of human development. But the answers are given. I am now correcting my Occult Science, for a new edition. I see that in it may be found everything necessary for the answering of such questions. Every precaution, every limitation to be observed is exactly described; the feelings to be developed, the experiences to be undergone, are all set forth. To elaborate the whole content of Spiritual Science would have required 30 volumes. This one must be read carefully, drawing the necessary conclusions—and it can be done. I do not like writing thick books. But read attentively and it will be found that this book indicates clearly that he endeavors to enter the super-sensible world strides towards meeting the Guardian of the Threshold; but the meeting is not so simple a matter as to have a dreamlike imagination. The latter, of course, is the easiest method of entering that world. The meeting with the Guardian of the Threshold is fraught with tragedy; it is a vital conflict as regards all intellectual concepts and laws, all man's connections with this virtual world and with Ahriman and Lucifer. This life-and-death struggle must be endured by him who would meet the Guardian of the Threshold. Should this experience come to a man merely as a dreamlike imagination, it means that, he wants to slip through comfortably, so as to have a dream out of the Guardian of the Threshold as a substitute—nowadays people are fond of substitutes the commission!—for the real thing.

We must think healthily on the subjects; and it will then become evident that healthy thinking can alone provide the basis of a remedy against all superstition, and against all the charges made by superficial opponents of Spiritual Science. Moreover, in this kind of thinking, in this raising oneself to experience on the spiritual, lie all the necessary seeds for finding the real way out of the present world-catastrophe.

The layout must be grasped—not in the realm of the earth and senses, not in institutions which are mismanaged and sucking the life out of what exists. The thing to be grasped does not exist! We must be stirred with burning zeal for the top attention of what does not yet exist!

This non-existent thing can be grasped only according to the pattern given by super-sensible knowledge. It cannot be grasped by looking into the past. Such men as Kautsky prefer to look back into the past, finding and “Anthropology” the ground-plan of mankind. They tried to study conditions at a time when man was hardly yet created in order to understand the social connections of to-day. These two sons of a misconceived Catholicism, such as Kautsky, want to have it so. But one cannot look back to the past, because in the past, those things which have extended into the very latest present, were created by means of atavistic forces, instinctively. In the future, nothing more will be achieved “instinctively”, and if man holds only to the products of ages of instinct, he will never attain to what bears the future within it, and can lead out of this catastrophe. An active, earnest understanding of the present depends entirely upon a right attitude to the spiritual world.

I should have to say much if, continuing in this strain, I were to speak to you about many things closely related to this present time. Yet if, in the weeks while we are separated, you will bring rightly be for your souls what has been said in these lectures, and which should culminate in realizing the necessity for knowledge of the twofold figure of Christ Jesus, you will go far this summer in meditative comprehension of the cosmic Christ and the earthly Jesus; remembering that the cosmic Christ descended from the spiritual worlds because these worlds were henceforth to be closed to man's view, and that man must apprehend what lies within him as the seed of the future. In the cosmic Christ and the earthly human Jesus and their union, lies much of the solution of the riddle of the world—at least of the riddle of humanity. In man lies the seed of future; but it must be fructified by Jesus. If it is not so fructified, it will assume an Ahrimanic form, and the earth will end in chaos. In short, in connection with the Mystery of Christ-Jesus we can find a solution of many, many questions to-day; that we must endeavor so to seek these solutions as not to be lightly contented with what is so often taken for “Theosophy” or “Mysticism”or the like—a “Union with a spiritual”, and “entire absorption in the all”—We must really visualize the true conditions surrounding us, and try to permit them with what we gain from Spiritual Science. We shall then say to ourselves over and over again, with regard to the answers to many questions: truly man today is seeking for something very practical, not merely theoretical; he will find himself in a blind alley in which he can go no further, if he does not go with the spirit. Everything which does not go forward with the spirit will wither away.

This is a weighty question for the future of mankind. Has man the will to journey with the spirit? I would fain impress this on your hearts today as the feeling which can arise from the reflections we have pursued.

Probably we are meeting to-day for the last time in this room, which we used so gladly for years as a place for our studies. It was one of the first to be arranged in keeping with our own taste, and one can only work according to the opportunities that exist. We fitted it up as we did because we were always convinced that endeavors on behalf of spiritual Science ought not to be mere theory but should be expressed in everything wherein we meet as human beings. The room is now to be taken from us and we must look for another. Obviously, under present conditions, we shall not be able to fit it up as we did this room, but we must be content with it. This room has become dear to us, for we have come to regard it as impossible to speak elsewhere of our relations with the spiritual as we can in this place, where in many ways we have tried to do the same things that are being attempted in Dornach on a larger scale. In times gone by we had to try all sorts of arrangements. Perhaps there are still a few here who were present when we had to speak in a beer-shop; I stood there, facing the audience, while behind me the landlord or landlady filled beer-mugs. Another time we were in a room like a stable: we had booked another, but that was all they gave us. In other towns I have lectured in places with no boards on the floor, and that too had to be put up with; it is not exactly what could be wished for as an outcome of our movement, and it would be a misunderstanding if it were said that we would just as soon speak of spiritual things in any surroundings. The spirit's task is to penetrate into matter, and to permeate it completely. That is the sense in which I have been speaking of social and scientific life to-day.

For all these reasons it will certainly be very hard part in a few weeks from this room, which was fitted up so devotedly with the help of our anthroposophical friends; but we must look upon such a parting in the right way, as a symbol. People will be obliged to part from much in the course of the next few decades. They will be taken by surprise, although they do not believe it. One thing will be deeply rooted in those who have grasped the deepest impulse of Spiritual Science. Whatever may be spoken, this cannot be shaken, and that is what we have grasped in the spirit, and what we have determined to do and accomplish in the spirit. No matter how chaotic everything looks, that will show itself to be the right thing.

So many leaving this place is symbol for us. We must move into another, but we carried away with us something of which we know that it is not simply our own deepest inner being, at the deepest inner being of the world, of which man must build if he would build a right. He who stands within Virtual Science is convinced that no one can take away, either from us or from humanity, what we have accomplished through it, and that it must lead to human affairs to a healthy condition ; this he knows, to this he clings. We may not as yet be able to say how we shall accomplish many things; but we may be sure that we shall accomplish them rightfully if we steep ourselves in the knowledge of what Goetheanism signifies for Spiritual Science, and if on the other hand we accept what has recently been mentioned here—that's the world stigmatizes and defames all that is connected with Mid-European civilization of the 18th and early 19th centuries, and that we, bringing all this before our souls, can nevertheless take our stand on our sure convictions: whatever happens, this Mid-European culture will be fruitful for the future of mankind, which indeed depends upon it. To save their own faces, because they have no wish for this feature of mankind, the opponents of this particular culture defame it; but let us grasp it in the spirit, recognize its inner spiritual content, knowing that we can build upon it. Then we shall be sure that though all devilish powers vow its destruction, yet it will not be destroyed! But only that can escape destruction which is united with the genuine spirit!

Today I would like to take a starting point that can lead us to an understanding of many things that surround us in the present time and that we face with questions. Our time demands to be understood in such a way that man places himself in it with a deeper, a spiritual understanding. On the other hand, however, there is a deep-seated aversion in the broadest circles to a spiritual understanding of human affairs; indeed, there is such an aversion that the attempt at spiritual understanding, the attempt to understand such impulses, which are capable of supporting human actions in our difficult times, is rejected from the outset as something fantastic, something impossible, something childish. Nevertheless, these reflections, which we are able to cultivate here together, should be devoted to what, though it does not speak directly of the circumstances of the time – as is easily understandable – cannot, as is well known, lead to some understanding for those who make an effort to arrive at such an understanding from truly deeper starting points.

In order to understand an age in which the deepest human forces are, as it were, being stirred up, in which the deepest human forces are at work, even if quite unconsciously for most people, it is necessary not just to talk about all kinds of ideals and all kinds of things, but to seek understanding from a broader view of human development in general. We have always tried to arrive at such a larger view of the development of mankind in our spiritual scientific considerations, and much has already been done in this respect. Today I would like to present some of it from a slightly different point of view.

We know that within the development of mankind there has been what we call the passage through the great Atlantic catastrophe. We know that what is now alive as humanity can be traced back to certain developmental states that took place before that Atlantic catastrophe, and that after this Atlantic catastrophe we can record the first post-Atlantic cultural period, which I usually call the ancient Indian, the second, which I usually call the old Persian, the third the Assyrian-Babylonian-Egyptian, the fourth the Greco-Roman; and in the fifth we live and have to look at how the fifth is to be replaced by a sixth.

Now, the fact of the matter is that, as inwardly, as spiritually, I might almost say, as humanly, as the development within humanity is now taking place, it could only have taken place after the Atlantic catastrophe. People today, who are generally reluctant to look at things in context, think: a person is a person, and the way in which the souls of people develop today is the way they have been since people have existed; and if we go back from what is regarded as humanity today, we do indeed arrive at primitive conditions, but then down to animality. This material interpretation of the history of development cannot, of course, stand up to spiritual scrutiny; for precisely when we go back and go further and further back in the development of humanity, we find that the basic impulses, the basic forces on which development is based, become ever more spiritual and ever more spiritual, although, if we want to understand the matter properly, we must first come to a proper understanding of the spiritual.

For our post-Atlantean time, the fourth period is above all a significant one, the most significant for the meaning of the whole evolution of the earth: it is the period in which the Mystery of Golgotha plays a role. And this calls upon us to understand the time before as a kind of preparation for the Mystery of Golgotha, and the time after as a kind of fulfillment of what came as an impulse through the Mystery of Golgotha. But if we go back in Atlantean evolution, we find that the fifth period within Atlantean evolution is the most important for this time between the Lemurian evolution and our own, because in this fifth period of Atlantean development within the Atlantean human life took place that was extraordinarily significant and incisive, because at that time, so to speak, the starting point was taken of something that we can call the more soulful development of the post-Atlantean time. If we go back to Atlantean times, we do not find the animalistic humanity that materialistic Darwinism so readily speaks of; we find a humanity that certainly had a life that was much duller than that of the post-Atlantean humanity , and when one speaks of the dullness of the soul life, one would indeed like to say — but the comparison remains a very external one — that this duller dream-like soul life of the Atlantean period resembles the dream-like soul life of the present higher animals. But this comparison, if made, would be a very inadequate one, because the present-day animals, in their dull, dream-like consciousness, do not experience what the Atlanteans experienced in their dream-like, dull consciousness almost up to the end of the fifth period.

What then is the most essential characteristic of this dream-like consciousness of the ancient Atlanteans? The most essential characteristic is that the people who lived at that time — forgive me if what I say seems materialistic; but you can only recognize the materialistic if you have mastered it, if you know about the impulses of the spiritual — lived in such a way that their nutritional and eating lives were very closely related to their spiritual lives. Of course, you may object: Well, there is already a sufficiently close relationship between the soul life of some people in the present and what they eat! — That is all true, we know that a large part of present-day humanity does not underestimate food at all. Nor does it need to be characterized as a reproach in itself. But there is a great difference between the inner experience of tasting a dish, the feeling of well-being that a modern person feels when they associate the dish with themselves physically, and the inner experience of Atlantean humanity in the time of which I am now speaking. The Atlantean ate, he ate this or that food; he thus took these or those substances into his body, and by connecting them with his physical existence, an awareness arose in his consciousness of which elemental spirits this substance is imbued with. He did not gulp down the food as the present-day man does, with a great lack of consciousness, but was aware of the elemental spiritualities he was uniting with himself by connecting the food with his bodily existence. Metabolism was then at the same time a change of mind, a change of elemental spirits.

It was the case that one could describe the substances as carriers of these or those elemental spiritual impulses or even entities, that one felt that spiritual forces entered one with the food, and that one felt that, by digesting, spiritual impulses were at work within one. Such a person did not just sit and digest like a present-day human being, but felt physically permeated by these or those elemental spirits, so that a materialism, as it prevails today, was actually not possible at that time. One could not say that one believed only in the mortality of existence, because one ate the spiritual impulses, they permeated one while one digested. To be an anti-materialist, one needed only to eat. And the descent into the dullness of the unconscious is essentially an achievement of this fifth Atlantean period. Eating and digesting became, so to speak, less spiritual; but something still remained in the sixth Atlantean period that was even more spiritual: that was breathing.

When a person breathes in or out today, they are aware that they are breathing in or out air; at least that is what the chemist tells them. In those days, however, it was not just in consciousness, but it was clear to man - this lasted for the whole of the sixth Atlantean period - that with the inhaled air he took in elemental spiritual forces, and with the exhaled air he breathed out elemental spiritual forces. From the very beginning, breathing was seen as a spiritual-soul process, not just as a physical-bodily process. And in the last Atlantean period, something that had remained until then, which later actually only lived in memory, then diminished: By hearing tones and seeing colors, one realized that spiritual life was in the tone one heard and in the color one saw, that spiritual forces penetrated the eye when one saw colors and spiritual forces penetrated the inner being when one “heard tones.” These things were all present in the dim consciousness of that time. People have conquered a brighter consciousness, but at the expense of their spiritual consciousness they have had to give up the spirituality of their interaction with the external world. Every epoch has its own special peculiarity. Just as the individual human being goes through different ages and these ages are different in terms of physical and mental constitution, so too does the whole of human development go through different states, and the later developmental states are different from the earlier ones. It would be foolish for a man between fifty and sixty years of age to believe that the nature of his physical and spiritual existence should recall his existence between the ages of ten and twenty, just as it would be foolish not to distinguish between the different ages of life in their qualities. It is foolish to believe that what is appropriate in a later period of life development was also so in an earlier one. Things never return, and they are more different in successive ages than one might think.

I have now made it a point to learn something about the ages of people in the post-Atlantic period. Those who proceed only from analogies can indeed look at the development of humanity and say: just as the individual human being goes through childhood, youth, manhood, old age, so will humanity. But if one goes into real observation, into the real facts of the situation, this is not true. You simply cannot use these analogies as a basis, and only if you are serious about spiritual research will you find what is actually at the root of it. And then it became clear to me that something quite different is at the root of it than what one might describe by saying that, like the individual human being, humanity also goes through youth, manhood and old age. — That is not correct. It has become clear to me that in the first post-Atlantean cultural period, the primeval Indian one, humanity did indeed live to a certain age, but one that cannot be compared to youth, but rather to the individual human age from fifty-six to forty-nine. So if you want to compare the age of yore for all of humanity with the age of the individual, you have to compare it not with the youth period, but with this more mature age. Then comes the primeval Persian cultural period. As humanity continues to develop, it passes through an age that, if you want to compare it with an age of the individual, corresponds to the age from forty-nine to forty-two. Man grows older, humanity grows younger. The Egyptian period must be compared with the age between thirty-five and forty-two in the individual. The Greco-Roman period can be compared to the age of the individual between thirty-five and twenty-eight years of age, and the present fifth post-Atlantic cultural period can be compared to the age of the human being from twenty-eight to twenty-one years. And if we ask: How old is present humanity? — we must answer: It has an age of about twenty-seven years. And only then can one understand everything that has taken place within humanity when one allows this remarkable secret of development to enter one's soul. For that is really how it is.

This, however, has very definite consequences and effects on the way people experience life. What does it mean: In the first post-Atlantic cultural period, all of humanity was between the ages of fifty-six and forty-nine? It means that the individual human being, of course, went through the fact that he first became one, two, three years old; but the fundamental aspect of humanity, in which the individual lived, which encompassed all of humanity, presented something that the individual human being first experienced between the ages of forty-nine and fifty-six. That is why so much of the original, elementary knowledge of humanity comes to light during this time, which we can admire because all of humanity was so old and because one grew into such an old humanity. As a young badger of twenty-five, one took in the human aura that which was full of wisdom as if it came from an older person. The wisdom was poured out over all of humanity. One also took in morally in this way, appreciating that into which one grew, as in the human aura, just as one appreciates a gray head because it has turned gray. And so a feeling of devotion and reverence was poured out over human cultural life that was taken for granted. It had the further consequence that one only outgrew what was common property of humanity with one's individual development after one had reached the age of fifty-six. Only then could one speak of one's own development; only then could one individually stand out from the background of what flowed to one from outside. However, at that time many people did not get to undergo an inner development corresponding to the period of life between the forty-ninth and fifty-sixth year of life. Then they were seen as children, and they also felt like children, sensing the spiritual content of the age of humanity around them.

The next period, the ancient Persian period, no longer brought the same high revelations and cultural impulses as those brought to humanity by the wise fathers in the first post-Atlantic period through their contact with spiritual beings. The whole of humanity showed only that maturity which can be compared to the individual human age between the forty-ninth and forty-second year of life. And if one wanted to, so to speak, grow beyond the general human aura individually, one could only do so at the age of forty-nine. But through individual development one grew into a maturity that could only occur at the age of forty-nine.

And so it was again in the Chaldean-Egyptian time. The aura into which one grew can be compared with the age of the individual human being between the forty-second and thirty-fifth year of life; in the Greek-Latin time with the age between the thirty-fifth and twenty-eighth year. That is the remarkable thing about this Greco-Latin period, that the individual middle age of man coincides with the middle age of general humanity, except that humanity runs down in the general stream, but man ascends. Hence the peculiar harmony of Greek culture, of which present humanity has so little conception. But when a Greek was thirty-five years old, he remained, so to speak, an average human being, always remaining thirty-five years old, if he did not develop something individual in himself that went beyond the general aura of humanity. In older times, care was taken to ensure that the individual could develop upwards.

Now we are living in the fifth post-Atlantic age. In this fifth post-Atlantic age, humanity will undergo an age comparable to the individual age between twenty-eight and twenty-one years. This means that a person who simply surrenders to the stream of existence, to that which simply enters into the soul life by being human, will not get older than twenty-eight years. If he does not ensure, through spiritual development, that he advances his soul individually, he will always remain twenty-eight years old, or rather, he will not get over twenty-seven years. Mankind in general cannot give us more than it brings us up to the age of twenty-seven. If we do not seek in our time a kindling and encouragement of the individual soul forces that carry us across the stream of general human existence, we will never be older than twenty-seven, even if we live to be a hundred years old. And whether we are manual laborers or professors, or whatever: if we do not seek a spiritual development that gives the soul concepts that outer humanity cannot give it, we will always remain twenty-seven years old. Of course, outwardly we grow older, of course; time cannot be stopped; but without its own development our soul attains no more than a maturity of twenty-seven years. One really does not understand our time unless one bears in mind this peculiarity, which has just been described. Over the years, I have really asked myself many characteristic questions of our time, questions about life, the development of culture, the plight of humanity, about what makes present-day humanity happy and what it suffers from: the key to understanding our time will only be given when we face the fact that I have just discussed. We cannot penetrate what our time lacks if we do not face this fact.

We are experiencing philosophies that amaze us because they get stuck in general declamations and show not the slightest ability to delve into concrete realities. Where does this come from? I have posed this question to a single personality. I found that the standard-bearer of Eucken's philosophy is a man who has all the fire of someone who cannot be older than twenty-seven years old. Of course, he continues to talk – because he has already reached a considerable age today – he speaks in a somewhat hoarse voice, moves with different gestures, and is still learning. But that doesn't mean anything; the whole manner is no older than twenty-seven years old. This twenty-seven-year-old manner is carried through the whole of life. This becomes particularly noticeable when people are supposed to introduce ideas into life, when they are supposed to cultivate ideas by which life is dominated.

Now we are entering somewhat dangerous territory; but let us proceed by seeking examples as far as possible. I have posed the question to myself as to how it is with various personalities of the present day who have the task of developing ideas that intervene in present life, so that the events of the time are to be dominated by these ideas. There is now a characteristic personality. I have taken great pains not to go wrong in this area, but it is of no use if one does not get to the bottom of things in their concrete manifestations. If you look for a personality that is such that it can never be older than twenty-seven years, can never have more mature ideas than a person of twenty-seven years, you will find it, strangely enough, as a particularly characteristic personality, for example, in the President of the United States of America. If you study the various programs he has developed, they bear the stamp of a person who cannot grow older than twenty-seven, because this soul has never absorbed anything that was not brought to souls from the outside. Of course, a person can be more or less talented. —Talent may be conceded to such a person — but the ideas he develops are twenty-seven years old in terms of the maturity of their outlook, their penetrating power and the practicality of their view of life, and will not get any older, even if the man lives to be a hundred years old, if he does not begin to deepen spiritually and to supply the soul with firepower from within.

We live in such an age today that we have to supply what goes beyond the twenty-seventh year from within the souls. In the twenty-seventh year, people are not yet practical in life; however much they think they are, they are not practical in life. That is why Wilson's various ideas are so impractical and erratic, and why they are so popular in the widest circles. They are met with the same enthusiasm with which youthful ideas are met, youthful ideas that result in all sorts of declamations about the freedom of nations and the like. That's all very well! But that is not how you rule the world today, which demands that ideas be forceful, that you make a grand declamation about peace and then unleash war all the more!

One would really like to evoke a sense of what ideas that have an impact on reality are, ideas that have clout, that can grow together with reality. Ideas that are mere declamations, beautiful ideas are indeed much uttered; young ideas in particular are beautiful. But we need ideas that connect people with reality. What wonderful idea it is when someone today stands up and says: the world must receive a new orientation! — Of this, the word itself has so far proved to be the most beautiful! That is the only beautiful thing: the word itself, because if you stand up and talk about it, it is certainly very beautiful. It is also very beautiful to say: the most capable must be placed in the right place. Wonderful ideas! But what if the nephew or son-in-law is the most capable? The beautiful idea does nothing at all, but the real knowledge of reality, the ability for what is real, what is really is.

This is one of the aspects involved when one wants to understand in a deeper sense what the culture of the present time is like. This peculiarity of the time makes it clear how necessary it is for people today to deepen their souls, to seek to attain through individual development for their later individual age that which general humanity no longer provides. Of course, it is easier to speak in a Euckenian way of the renewal of life, the grasping of the powers of life within, of all kinds of things that can be used to rise up in a beautifully youthful way, but which are suitable for nothing more than declamations. And if you make political programs with such ideas as Wilson, then that is of incalculable consequences! It is of course easier than in serious research, in serious deepening to seek out reality and to penetrate into the deeper impulses of life.

If our spiritual scientific movement is to have a truly deep meaning, then above all it must contain the will to penetrate into the concrete developmental impulses of humanity. It must be there to grasp these great interrelationships of life, because otherwise everything remains mere theory within our spiritual science as well. And mere theory is worth nothing, no matter how much one wants to associate feelings of self-importance with it. Only that which is able to be absorbed into life, which captures life, is truly valuable. All kinds of mysticism, where people strive to find this or that within themselves, can indeed produce very beautiful results, but we must be able to look beyond ourselves and at the great tasks of humanity, in order to understand, above all, what is needed, what one must actually understand, what one should understand. Otherwise, we will simply ignore the most important things in spiritual science. And over the years, since we have had our anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, important things in spiritual science have actually been ignored on a large scale.

If our dear friends would just remember what answer I have always given for many years when I have been asked how it is with reincarnation, since humanity is always increasing, if the friends would like to remember how the stereotypical typical answer has been given: It could be that people will very soon learn what decimation of humanity could take place, especially in Europe – then you will realize what was meant when you look back now and when you remember the tone in which this answer was given. When speaking of the increase of population, it was always said: There could very soon come a time when there could also be a decrease in population, and in a painful way! — In the field of spiritual science, it is really not a matter of accommodating the light-hearted needs of some people with theories, but of also answering the questions posed by the impulses of the time. And in accepting spiritual science, it is much more a matter of taking the weight of what is to be said and closing it in one's heart, than of satisfying curiosity, however high it may appear to be.

This, my dear friends, I wanted to share with you first as the first part of the reflections, which, if given due consideration, should lead to an understanding of our time, and which we want to cultivate more deeply in these days.

Since the time allotted to general reflections has expired, I may perhaps, without anyone being able to reproach me for cutting something off from the actual anthroposophical content, move on to something that must be hinted at with a few words. But I cannot proceed without also mentioning some souls who have passed from the physical plane into the spiritual life, who were close to some of those sitting here today. It is not possible to mention all of them by name. Our dear friends are well aware of the sincerity of our feelings towards all those who have passed from the physical to the spiritual plane. However, I cannot help but mention the name of one man in particular, who, after many obstacles, finally found such a beautiful and intimate union with spiritual science, oriented as it is towards anthroposophy, and who, especially in recent times, has done quite a significant and meaningful work for the external representation of this spiritual science. I am referring to our dear friend Ludwig Deinhard, at whose handover of the physical body to the physical elements and the passing away of the soul into the spiritual world our dear friend Sellin spoke such beautiful words. He was all the more to be esteemed because he did not come to our movement out of blind faith or blind allegiance, but rather after much resistance, and in the last, increasingly difficult times, he had unreservedly spared nothing to stand up for this spiritual movement with all his soul before the broader public. I am not afraid to say explicitly that I consider the way in which Ludwig Deinhard stood up for this movement in front of the general public to be one of the most valuable things.

Then I would also like to mention Professor Sachs, who passed away a few days ago, who pursued a great idea his whole life, a great idea in the field of music technology, and who always knew how to combine the modest work that an individual can be harnessed to with overarching ideas, and with whom it was truly uplifting to speak, because what he wanted as a person always led to great artistic will. We can count ourselves lucky to have such people at the center of our movement.

After these uplifting perspectives, I am obliged once again to cultivate some less uplifting perspectives, because what has happened forces me to take drastic measures in a certain respect, insofar as my part in the spiritual scientific movement, which is to be cultivated by the Anthroposophical Society, is concerned. Over time, something that should be a great blessing in the present cultural development, the anthroposophical movement, has, through many of its manifestations, more or less developed into a kind of obstacle for what I mean by the spiritual-scientific movement. And it is of no use to deceive ourselves about these things, especially when there is a danger that various things connected with the Anthroposophical Society could become obstacles, precisely for anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. Therefore, since we have worked together for many years, such things may be discussed without reservation, allow me to address these matters quite openly, as they lie close to my heart. It may be said that, in general, something has become habitual within the Anthroposophical Society that must not continue in this way, because the judgments of the present world about what Anthroposophy or spiritual science wants would have to be all too much clouded if it continued in the same way as it has done so far.

Let us take a single detail: It is often said in the outside world — and it has already become customary — that I am actually less attacked because of spiritual-scientific matters themselves, but very much because of what is connected with the Society. In particular, one of the accusations that is made is that a blind belief in authority prevails in the Society, a blind following, that much is done here out of pure devotion and the like. If I may also express my impression in response to this, I must say: for most things, what happens last of all is what I actually consider to be the right thing, what I consider to be what might be desirable. I do not believe that in any other society so little attention is paid to what might actually be the specific wishes of any individual active in it. Even if it looks different, that is how it is. But no one has to take offense at things. And to turn a blind eye, to bury one's head in the sand, that is only evil.

My dear friends, I have heard many things about the mood in the local Anthroposophical Society these days. I came here this evening, here into the vestibule, and the most pious incense aroma flowed towards me. Do not think that someone who is focused on the factual and the inner has any particular desire to have their speaking made difficult for the whole evening by resorting to this outwardness of the pious scent of incense, and that they has to carry a headache home because of the pious incense smell, and I am still completely ignoring how the truth is misunderstood when the incense smell - forgive me - smells out into the profane world. It may be unpleasant to mention such things, but they are symptomatic. Ask whether I have ever taken the initiative on such superficial matters. But that is only a side note.

What is most important to me, however, is how the membership feels connected to the spiritual life of the anthroposophically oriented spiritual scientific movement. As you know, various attacks have recently come to light, some of which have already been printed and some of which are still being printed. When the external world of today raises objections to spiritual science, we need neither be surprised nor feel particularly pained about it; it is only natural, self-evident. It can be countered. Spiritual science truly has no need to fear objective discussions. And perhaps one need not fear the reactions that are now arising from our own ranks. But the following does tremendous harm to what should be the real strength of our movement: It may be said that it is unique in this movement, in this society above all others, that the most benevolent intentions and measures, the most benevolent measures of conduct towards the members are here most of all immersed in poison and bile and also in the garment of slander, vilification, the most personal attack, all of which is aimed at a very well-known direction. The things that are done, perhaps out of a mystical need — I don't know —, the pure inventions, the pure untruths, are actually not so easily found anywhere else. But the will to behave correctly in relation to these things is not cultivated vigorously enough. Indeed, the will to see things truly impartially is not striven for vigorously enough either.

The seriousness that lies in the spiritual scientific movement, the special way in which it must be represented, should at least be studied. What the individual can do depends, of course, on the circumstances of life and on the most diverse factors; but one should still study what is, and not indulge in all sorts of delusions. Objectivity and impersonality are particularly necessary in our movement, which is devoted purely to spiritual things, and nothing is more harmful than when personal interests, vanity, ambition are brought into the ranks of our movement. Of course, things appear veiled and masked, but one should look at the true face of things, one should look at them in such a way that one comes to the truth of the matter. If someone writes a series of attacks and is well aware of what is behind the attacks, well aware of how precisely what he is attacking must be because of the peculiar character of spiritual science, then it is not enough to refute sentence by sentence. Much can be asserted and refuted, namely everything, but often it is not what is said that matters: the reasons lie in something quite different. If someone suggests a writing to the Philosophical-Anthroposophical Publishing House and it has to be rejected, and the person concerned then becomes an enemy, the reasons for this must be sought elsewhere than in the sentences that the person concerned twists. And one does not learn the truth when the most important thing, when the real reasons are pushed into the background.

If someone makes this or that attack about all kinds of foolish esoteric effects, the foolishness of which is obvious to anyone who is not blind, then one also misses the point if one does not trace such things, which are pure inventions, back to the whole situation. Then perhaps a person is behind it who once lived in a small town in central Germany and suddenly had the idea of becoming a great man. At first he tried to become a great man in a small way; he wrote to Dr. Steiner, asking what he should do to be freed from the narrow circumstances of the small town. Should he marry into a business, or bring this about in some other way? If it is then made clear to him that we do not concern ourselves with the decision of whether or not to marry into a family, he may still not be dissuaded. He will advance, come forward, take part in some events, and perhaps also stand before society at a large gathering and declaim a poem by Schiller with tremendous lung power, even though he has not the slightest idea of declamation. He is laughed at. That offends his sense of honor. Then he wants to be a great painter. The idea is even taken up to a certain extent. Everything is done to support the person in question so that he can learn something; concessions are made to him. But the person in question wants to be an artist, but finds it inconvenient to learn something. He doesn't really want to become an artist, he wants to be one, and when the others, out of their deepest conviction, can do nothing but advise him to learn something, then it is insulting. You are a genius after all, and they expect you to learn something first! They do everything they can to let him learn, but that is precisely what is insulting.

Well, a lot more could be said along these lines. These are the real reasons why one must become an enemy of such a detestable society. Then all kinds of stuff is written. What is written is of little consequence. Of course, something else could just as easily be written, because the real reasons are to be sought quite elsewhere. And so it can continue, and will continue, taking on completely different dimensions. All these things, however, have not the slightest thing to do with spiritual science as such. But they can develop with great intensity out of a society which tries to build itself not on the objective basis that spiritual science as such provides, but which seeks within it all kinds of cliquishness, all kinds of personal social relationships. You see, I am only hinting at one or the other. Perhaps one or the other can be said in the following days. But all this really does not go back to spiritual science, but goes back to the view that prevails in many quarters about what should happen in society. Precisely those for whom most has been provided are among those who are now most peddling calumnies, pure fabrications.

Therefore, my dear friends, I am obliged to take drastic measures. I ask you at least to always mention the two parts of these measures, so that no new defamations arise by only communicating one part. If this measure is hard for some, then please consider that it is as hard for me as it is for those affected by it, that I am just as sorry that it is necessary, and that you do not turn to me, but to those who have caused these measures. Look for the reasons there, but also look there to recognize what has to happen in the future by directing your attention to where the defamation originated. In many cases, this is what plays out as personal. Certainly, I have been of service to everyone with personal advice: for esoteric matters, this personal discussion was very often quite unnecessary and, as far as the esoteric is concerned, I will ensure that a good replacement can be found. But because the personal has led to this, it is necessary that in the future everything takes place in the full light of the public. I shall see to it that everyone can have their esoteric rights, but I shall no longer receive anyone from society for a so-called esoteric private meeting. I must stop these private visits without exception, so that the slander cannot be brought from these private visits. If this is hard for one or the other, then this measure must be taken for two reasons: firstly, because these things are not necessary for the operation of the esoteric life. I will prove this very soon. In a short time you will have a complete replacement, even though the private conversations, which often took place in such a way that the members approached me with things that had nothing to do with the esoteric life, have to be dropped. Secondly, because I thereby document how it is taken out of thin air that the esoteric life of one or the other is not taken care of. Just read “How to Know Higher Worlds”. Nobody needs to gain a personal impulse after so much time. The second thing that belongs to this measure and which I ask not to be forgotten is that I release everyone who has had private discussions so far from any promise, which was never given anyway, from any custom not to talk about such private discussions. As far as I am concerned, anyone can communicate as much as they like about what I have said to anyone, because I have nothing to hide. Anyone who wants to can tell everyone everything. Even the past can be placed in the full light of day. This is the best way to distinguish untruth from truth and to find a yardstick for measuring how much fibbing there is within our movement. But the two measures belong together. Once again, I repeat that anyone who only communicates the first part will not represent the matter in its true light; the other belongs to it.

I would also like to mention, my dear friends: Should it be difficult for some, then please turn to those places that you can easily find here in particular, turn to those who have made these things necessary. It is not acceptable that the spiritual scientific movement should be made impossible by the clique system within the Anthroposophical Society, because this exposes to misunderstanding in the outer world that which lives as the nerve of spiritual science. Do you believe that the things that have to be done in the interest of the Society are being done for my personal satisfaction? I have been reproached for withdrawing something from the Society in one direction or another because, for example, the Dornach building had to be undertaken. Do you believe that I personally care more about the Dornach building than any other member who is serious about our cause, that I have had any personal aspirations in this building? If the building had not been possible, I would have been the very last to have failed to comply with the necessity. That anything of what must be advocated should be advocated differently from such important matters as the Dornach building, other than it must be for the inner reasons of the matter, that should never happen.

The drastic measures just mentioned must be taken, especially for the reason that, after decades of my having spoken sufficiently about one thing and another, the seriousness of my words has never been felt. Perhaps this seriousness will be felt when this measure is introduced. There are, of course, other societies without them leading to the same things that have occurred in this society.

This, my dear friends, had to be said precisely because of our friendship, must not remain unsaid. Those who are serious about the anthroposophical movement will find the way, even if the seriousness of the situation makes such measures necessary. For the movement as such is too sacred to be extinguished by all kinds of personal aspirations, and enough has been done in this direction. Those of our dear members – and there are many who are just like that – who work in the movement, in society, in a devoted, self-sacrificing way, will be the last to complain about these measures; they will find them most meaningful. I do not think that I am misunderstood precisely by those who are really serious and sincere about our movement; they will agree with me. There will also be those who disagree with me; I gladly accept this disagreement.

Time has progressed. I will continue tomorrow with the considerations that I have undertaken today and perhaps also add some remarks about what I have said last about all kinds of things in society. It has often been quite hard to watch some things.

My dear Friends,

It is, as you know, my dear friends, our intention to work things out here from their foundations, in order then to pass on afterwards to the practical side. I called your attention yesterday to the fact that the ordinary, superficial life of soul has to be regarded as a complex of symptoms, and no more. It follows from this that, if we want to get at the real state of affairs that lies behind a so-called mental illness or mental weakness in some child, modern methods of approach are quite inadequate, for they can only describe how things are in this superficial soul-life, without being able to lead on to what lies deeper—that is to say, to the region where, as we saw yesterday, the real life of soul is working. We cannot here enter into the question of how mental illnesses in grown-up people should be dealt with (there are indeed always, as you know, problems of many kinds connected with that), but we do want, in this course, to make a thorough study of what it is possible to do with children.

Before going further into the subject, I would like to read you an article from this newspaper that gives a crude example of how misleading an observation of the superficial life of soul can be. (I use the word “superficial” in the sense of locality, not in a derogatory sense.) It is an example that will have special significance for you, in view of the tasks that you are undertaking.

A man of the name of Wulffen,¹ who was once Public Prosecutor, has made a study, from the standpoint of criminal psychology, of all kinds of mental abnormalities, and has written big books on the subject. How does he reach his conclusions? For he obviously does not take his start from professional medicine. In his capacity as Public Prosecutor he naturally became familiar with a wide field of abnormalities in the life of soul, and afterwards at a more mature age, he set out to acquire a somewhat miscellaneous knowledge of medicine. He then combined his experience in his profession with his subsequent reading, and evolved a theory which is nothing else than the inevitable outcome of the so-called “scientific” hypotheses of today. For either we take this modern scientific point of view seriously, in which case we are bound eventually to come to the conclusions arrived at by Wulffen, or we do not take it seriously, and then nothing remains but to take our start from Anthroposophy. An intermediate way can never be anything but a questionable compromise.

Wulffen recently gave a lecture in Zürich dealing with the subject of criminal psychology, in which he spoke about abnormality in the life of the soul. It is important that we should pay attention to what is said in such a lecture, for we are in fact in these days continually coming up against the very same kind of thing. If you set out to think about any knowledge you have gained from looking into some modern scientific book, or into any book that is based on the scientific way of thinking, you will find it full of the forms and modes of thought which this man Wulffen voices in a particularly radical way. And you really ought to know whither modern science must inevitably lead when it begins to investigate the field of abnormal soul-life. Before I read the press notice let me tell you that Wulffen himself is a much more able man, and much more correct in his statements, than the journalist who is reporting his lecture. The journalist can only make fun of it, which he is free to do, since he has still the public behind him—thanks be!—in his prejudice against psychiatry and criminal psychology. The tone in which the report is written need not therefore concern you; the journalist, as I said, is not a man of much ability and can do no more than ridicule the whole thing. He has, however, no idea that his jests are a hit at modern science rather than at Wulffen! For if the science upon which Wulffen takes his stand were honestly adhered to, its representatives in other fields of knowledge would have to speak in the very same way as he does. And now let us read this press notice—for it really does concern us. It is entitled: “Schiller according to the Psycho-Analysis of the Public Prosecutor”. It should rather be called: “Friedrich Schiller, according to the Psycho-Analysis of present-day Psychology or Psycho-pedagogy”.

Last Friday, 29th February, I924, the Public Prosecutor Dr. E. W. Wulffen, a man known and respected far outside his immediate profession, took severely to task the penniless Swabian, Fritz Schiller (at one time Professor of History in Jena and the author of several revolutionary writings) in a brilliantly constructed lecture on “Criminal Psychology and Friedrich Schiller”. He achieved among the large number of listeners belonging to the Zürich Lawyers' Union a success all the more lasting because, on account of death, the accused was unable to be present at the meeting; the utmost he could do was perhaps to point with an invisible hand to what he had written during his lifetime.

Wullfen's arguments were most effective. The proofs adduced were irrefutable. The lecturer had even confiscated—I mean, had read—Schiller's private correspondence. And, lo and behold, thanks to Dr. Wulffen's help, scales fell from the eyes of the audience. Our people's love for Schiller, youth's adoration for him, were laid bare in all their ugly roots. Schiller is popular, it seems, on account of his innate cruelty which makes wallowing in the gloomy splendor of the horrible come natural to him, and causes him to write ballads like “Die Kindesmörderin”, etc., which are evidence enough of a cruelty that is continually intensified by Schiller's struggle with his own sick body. And then his tragedies, which stimulate fear and compassion in the spectators why are they so effective on the stage? Because they appeal to latent criminal qualities in the public and enable the audience to enjoy a safe outlet for dangerous propensities ...

It is true that in spite of this overwhelming load of proof Wulffen concedes to Schiller certain redeeming features. There is his feeling for freedom, which, nursed by the suppression he laboured under in earlier years (associated, as it was in him, with an inferiority complex) suddenly flares up in “The Robbers”, and is then gradually purified and ennobled, until finally in “Wilhelm Tell” we have the glorification of a revolution that is founded on order. For the rest, Schiller's attitude to good and evil is seen to be the outcome of aesthetic points of view.

Thus are the arteries which feed Schiller's poetry quickly detected by Dr. Wulffen and defined; they are—cruelty and the urge for freedom. The struggle with these impulses, which Schiller lived out in his poetry—this it was, so we are assured, that led him along the path to perfection.²

So there was, then, in Schiller an “inferiority complex”—in his childhood. It is quite important to realise what the outcome would be if modern science were to enter the realm of pedagogy, and teachers were then to give lessons in the manner of this science—let us say, in a school where some young Schiller was among the pupils. You must envisage quite exactly what this would mean.

If you think of what was said yesterday, you will see that, just as we have to take, in other illnesses, the symptoms, that help us to find the right orientation, and then lead back from these to the real facts of the illness, so we must start in our present investigation from the manifestations of the life of soul, from thinking, feeling and willing, and trace our way back until we can “behold” the real condition of the patient. We saw that the origin, for example, of an abnormality of soul, which showed itself in the patient's being unable to pass from intention to deed, had to be sought in some subtle abnormality of the liver, and that the knowledge of this connection must form the starting point for our treatment, both educational and therapeutic.

And now, before we can pass on to consider the practical side in detail, we must look back once again at the life of soul of the child. We have seen how during the first seven years the body presents a model, and the individuality works out in accordance with this model the second body, which functions between the change of teeth and puberty. If the individuality is stronger than the inherited qualities, the child will overcome these—more or less—in the course of changing his teeth; his individuality will then be apparent in his whole life of soul, and will manifest also externally in his bodily nature. If, however, the individuality of the child is weak, it will be overcome by the inherited characteristics; it will give, as it were, such close attention to the model that a slavish copy of the same will be visible in the body. And then one can rightly speak of inherited characteristics. For between the change of teeth and puberty everything is as it results from the individuality; the reason why it can happen that inherited characteristics show themselves at all during this period, is because the individuality has been to that extent too weak to overcome them and follow its own line of direction in accordance with karma. What works in the individuality as the real impulse of karma shows itself overpowered in such a case by the inherited characteristics.

Now at this point we must observe—and it will also provide us with what I may describe as a symptomatology of more general application—we must observe how thinking is related in its development to the development of will, in the child. We saw yesterday that there is a certain sense in which we have to look upon thinking, feeling and willing as no more than symptoms. We saw that thinking, as it expresses itself in the superficial soul-life, has behind it a synthesizing activity which operates in the construction and organisation of the brain; and then we saw how behind expressions of will is an analytical activity which underlies the organs—underlies indeed our whole metabolism-and-limbs man, keeping the organs separate and distinct one from another.

To begin with, let us consider thinking, with the synthesizing activity of the brain, that underlies it. We must understand clearly what thoughts really are. Thoughts, as we know, enter the organism of the child, as it were, in snatches, bit by bit. Even the grown person has around him only in scattered fragments, so to speak, all that man is capable of thinking. One person will have a great wealth of thoughts, another will have less. But now, what are thoughts?

The modern view, which tends to degenerate into the conclusions you find in people like Wulffen, imagines that thoughts come into existence gradually in the human being, as he progresses in his development, and that when he succeeds in having thoughts that “answer” in the world, that fit in all right with the world, then these thoughts he has evolved, of course, out of himself. But if we investigate, with anthroposophical understanding, the being of man, we shall never succeed in discovering in him anything from which thoughts can arise. All investigations which set out to discover where thoughts could originate in man are, in the eyes of Spiritual Science, no more sensible than if someone who had a jug of milk given him every morning were to begin one day to ponder, in his cleverness, how the china of which the jug is made produces the milk. It might conceivably happen that he had never observed how the milk does get into the jug; but if he could start wondering how the milk manages to ooze out of the china, we should take him for a simpleton indeed. To assume such a possibility in regard to a milk jug is obviously to adopt a hypothesis which leads to an absurdity. And yet, in regard to thinking, science makes this very hypothesis; science is just as stupid, every bit as stupid as the fellow we have imagined. For when we set out to investigate with all the means afforded by Spiritual Science (and we have been speaking of these now for more than twenty years), we find nothing at all in the human organisation that could possibly produce thoughts. There is simply nothing there capable of doing it. Just as the milk must be poured into the jug in order to be in the jug, so for thought to be in man, they must come into him. And whence do they come—for the life we are considering, between birth and death? Where are thoughts? We can investigate the question of where milk comes from; we ought also to be able to discover where thoughts are. Where then shall we look for these thoughts.

We are surrounded by the physical world. But we have around us also the etheric world, from which, as you know, our own etheric body is taken, immediately before we descend to physical incarnation. The etheric body of man comes from the cosmic ether, which is all around us in every direction. Now it is this cosmic ether, my dear friends, that is the bearer of the thoughts. The cosmic ether, which is common to all, carries within it the thoughts; there they are within it, those living thoughts of which I have repeatedly spoken in our anthroposophical lectures, telling you how the human being participates in them in pre-earthly life before he comes down to Earth. There, in the cosmic ether, are contained all the living thoughts there are; and never are they received from the cosmic ether during the life between birth and death. No; the whole store of living thought that man holds within him, he receives at the moment when he comes down from the spiritual world—when, that is, he leaves his own living element, his own element of living thought, and descends and forms his ether body. Within this ether body, within that which is the building and organising force in man, are the living thoughts; there they are, there they still are.

If we have here the symptomatic life of soul—thinking, feeling and willing—and here behind, the real life of soul, then the thoughts constitute a part of this real life of soul: and these thoughts which we take from the universal cosmic ether build up in us, first of all, our brain, and then in the wider sense, our whole nerves-and-senses system. For it is the living thinking that forms our brain—forming it into an organ of demolition, an organ that deals with matter in a way we might describe somewhat as follows.

When we look out upon our environment, we have around us the world of earthly substance, in all its various processes and ways of working. These processes, which in Nature are living processes, are gradually broken down by the activity of the living thinking, so that here—in the brain—a continual demolition is going on; the processes—which are, as I said, Nature processes—are arrested. Thus, in the brain, a beginning is actually made in the direction of a stoppage of Nature processes; matter is continually being secreted and then falling away. The matter that has fallen away, the matter that has been excreted and become useless, is the nerves. And the nerves, arising in this way as a product of living thinking but with the life in them being perpetually killed all the time, become in consequence endowed with a faculty that resembles the faculty possessed by a mirror. They acquire the faculty of enabling the thoughts of the surrounding ether to be reflected in them; and this is the origin of subjective thinking, the superficial thinking which consists in reflected pictures, the thinking we carry within us between birth and death. Through the fact, therefore, that living thinking is active within us, we are enabled to hold up our nerves-and-senses system to the world like a mirror, and can then produce there pictures of the impressions that are living in the surrounding ether, and throw them back into our consciousness. This means that the thinking, and the forming of mental pictures, which belongs to the superficial life of soul is nothing else than the reflection of the thoughts that live in the cosmic ether.

When you compare yourself with your reflection in a mirror, you realise at once that you are something altogether different from that reflected picture. Similarly, you can compare thoughts with their reflections, and you will find that the latter are “dead” thinking, just as the picture of you in the mirror is dead, whilst you yourself, standing in front of it, are alive. There cannot ever be in the cosmic ether a distorted, an illogical or a deranged thought. Yet the thoughts that are contained in the ordinary, superficial life of soul are, as we have seen, reflections of the thoughts in the cosmic ether; how, then, does a deranged or senseless thought come about? How can it ever arise? The answer is, through the mirror not being in order. The whole process that originated in the structure of the brain has not succeeded in producing a perfect mirror. In order, therefore, to explain the presence of distorted thoughts, we have to go back to what takes place in the brain and the nerves-and-senses system, which the human being constructed for himself from the real living life of thought. It is most important to be clear from the outset that it is not the thoughts themselves that we can in any way assail; for the thought-content as such, the thoughts themselves, are in the cosmic ether in their full validity and truth.

We must make every endeavour to enable the pupil with whom we are dealing, who has been given into our charge, to find his right relation to this cosmic ether. We shall never do so unless we, as teachers, are permeated through and through with the feeling that the thoughts in all their rightness and in all the power of their livingness are contained in the cosmic ether, are present all the time in the cosmic ether. Without having ourselves this religious feeling towards the cosmos, we cannot possibly develop a right attitude towards the child. And the attitude, the whole relation that we bear to him, is what matters most of all. Let me explain why this is so.

What is it that is influencing the child, and what is it that is living in the child, when he gets distorted thoughts? And what is able then to work from the teacher upon the child? What can the teacher do? From all that I have said, you will be able to see that in such a child the etheric body has not been formed in the right way. When the human being is descending from pre-earthly existence, there are of course, at that moment, as always, only right and true thoughts in the cosmic ether; but these right thoughts have to be received by the being who is providing himself, clothing himself, with an ether body. And now let us go back to our milk jug. We cannot accuse the milk of having a wrong form or shape: it is obliged to take on the form that the jug can give it. If we have a sensible vessel, then our milk will be properly and sensibly “housed” in it. But suppose it occurred to an eccentric person to make a milk jug like an hour glass with the waist stopped up. [A drawing was made.] He pours in the milk and it cannot get down to the bottom. And yet, in reckoning up the cubic content of the jug, he reckons in all this part down below! I have given you an extreme case. All sorts of mistakes are, in fact, possible. One could, for example, make a jug that very easily tips over, and more often than not, the milk is spilt. The point is, of course, that the way in which the milk will be in the jug, will depend upon what the jug is like. And the way in which the ether body with all its livingness will be in the human being, will depend upon how the human being—as he arrives from pre-earthly existence, bringing with him his karma—is able to receive into himself the ether body. It is important to recognise this and have it in our consciousness.

It can actually happen that a human being, owing to his karma, arrives from pre-earthly existence with something that is not at all unlike this very inadequate milk jug. For his karma may not enable him, for instance, to permeate the metabolism-and-limbs system properly. This system will then be poorly provided with etheric body. The child will have in the region of the head a properly developed etheric body, and in the region of the abdomen and limbs, a poorly developed etheric body. In these parts he will lack the formative thoughts. It is actually most important for you to know that in very many cases of backward children we have to do with an imperfectly developed etheric body. And we teachers must ask ourselves the question: What is it that can influence the etheric body of a growing child?

Here we encounter a law, of the working of which we have abundant evidence throughout all education. It is as follows. Any one member of the being of man is influenced by the next higher member (from whatever quarter it approaches) and only under such influence can that member develop satisfactorily. Thus, whatever is to be effective for the development of the physical body must be living in the etheric body—in an etheric body. Whatever is to be effective for the development of an etheric body must be living in an astral body. Whatever is to be effective for the development of an astral body must be living in an ego; and an ego can be influenced only by what is living in a spirit-self. I could continue, and go beyond the spirit-self, but there we should be entering the field of esoteric instruction.

What does this mean in practice? If you find that the etheric body of a child is in some way weakened or deficient, you must form, you must modify, your own astral body in such a way that it can work upon the etheric body of the child, correcting and amending it. We could, in fact, make a diagram to demonstrate how this principle works in education:

The teacher's etheric body (and this should follow quite naturally as a result of his training) must be able to influence the physical body of the child, and the teacher's astral body the etheric body of the child. The ego of the teacher must be able to influence the astral body of the child. And now you will be rather taken aback, for we come next to the spirit-self of the teacher, and you will be thinking that surely the spirit-self is not yet developed. Nevertheless, such is the law. The spirit-self of the teacher must work upon the ego of the child. And I will show you how, not only in the ideal teacher, but often in the very worst possible teacher, the teacher's spirit-self—of which he is himself not yet in the least conscious—influences the child's ego. Education is indeed veiled in many mysteries.

What concerns us at the moment is that the weakened etheric body of the child must receive the influence of the teacher's health-giving astral body. How is the astral body of the educator to be “educated” for this purpose? Self-educated too, as it needs must be today! For Anthroposophy can at present do no more than give suggestion and stimulus; we cannot right away establish colleges and arrange courses for all the necessary branches of training. The astral body of the teacher must be of such a character and quality that he is able to have an instinctive understanding for whatever debilities there may be in the child's etheric body. Say, the child's etheric body is weak and deficient in the region of the liver. As a result, we shall notice that the child stops short at intention, he cannot get beyond it; it constantly happens that he has an impulse of will, but the impulse comes to a standstill before the actual deed. If the teacher can feel his way right into this situation (where the child's will ought to push through to deed), if he is able himself to feel the stoppage that the child feels, and able at the same time out of his own energy to evoke in his soul a deep compassion with the child's experience, then he will develop in his own astral body an understanding for the situation the child is in, and will gradually succeed in eliminating in himself all subjective reaction of feeling when faced with this phenomenon in the child. By ridding himself of every trace of subjective reaction, the teacher educates his own astral body.

Let us say, the child wants to walk, has the will to walk, but cannot. This can become a pathological condition, can become quite conspicuous; it may even happen that at last the child comes to be described as “incapable of learning to walk”. But we will suppose that the condition shows itself in only a slight degree. So long as the teacher meets the situation with any kind of bias, so long as it can arouse in him irritation or excitement—so long will he remain incapable of making any real progress with the child. Not until the point has been reached where such a phenomenon becomes an objective picture and can be taken with a certain calm and composure as an objective picture for which nothing but compassion is felt—not until then is the necessary mood of soul present in the astral body of the teacher. Once this has come about, the teacher is there by the side of the child in a true relation and will do all else that is needful more or less rightly. For you have no idea how unimportant is all that the teacher says or does not say on the surface, and how important what he himself is, as teacher.

How may one set about acquiring this kind of understanding? By developing greater and greater interest in the mystery of the human organisation. All sense of its mystery—in fact, any real interest in the organisation of man—is completely lacking in present-day civilisation; consequently, one thing present-day civilisation does not know ...³

Suppose someone is suffering from severe mental disease. How is that regarded in our time? For obviously whatever is done in such a case has to be done within the civilisation of the present day; there is no alternative. This will mean that while we must do our best to come to an understanding of such illnesses, we cannot expect to be able at once in each single case to use methods and treatment that accord with the picture we have in our understanding. It is, on this account, very important that there shall be no fanatics among you. It will not do for you to set out on this work of Curative Education in a fanatical spirit, not knowing how to judge the scope and bearing of some truth, when it is a question of applying esoteric knowledge in practical life. For this reason the circles within which these truths are communicated cannot be too carefully restricted; for people of the present day have not the insight to see why, in very many cases, it is quite impossible to follow at once some particular guidance that has been given. We must know the truth, and then try to act wisely and sensibly, applying the guidance where it can be applied, as in the education of backward children, within the given limits. In dealing with adult mental patients you will not be able to apply the guidance in the same way; for something extraneous comes in there—namely, the law. And the moment you have to reckon with factors other than those that arise out of the nature of the case, the moment you have to do with hard and fast laws, the thing becomes unworkable. For what the law lays down is general; it cannot be individual in its application, it has to be general. So far as treatment of abnormal human beings is concerned, the law is a veritable poison. It is there in the world, however, and you have to reckon with it. The things of which we are speaking here cannot be applied fanatically; you have to let them percolate into life, in ways that are possible and practicable.

Let us suppose then that you have this person who is said to be suffering from grave mental illness. You can, as is generally done nowadays, describe the case psychographically—that is, describe the symptoms. According to the view of the case that is certain to be adopted in our present-day civilisation, the person does the maddest possible things. But people do not stop to consider what they may have before them in this mad person! As a matter of fact, it may quite well be that the person who is now passing his life in complete insanity has had in earlier ages a very significant incarnation, he may at one time have been a genius. But suppose this manifestation of genius came two incarnations ago and then, in the intermediate incarnation, the man was imprisoned when comparatively young, and had from that moment on no contact with the world. He passed then through the gate of death, and lived on further in the spiritual world. Then he appeared again on Earth—insane. Because what he took in during that incarnation remained completely outside the field of experience of the physical and the etheric body, he had not the opportunity of elaborating it, and therefore returns to incarnation in entire ignorance of the interior of the human body. He cannot get into the physical body and ether body, he remains outside them all the time; and so, being unable to make use of the physical body, he is, you see, insane. His manner of life is such that we shall not be able to see him as he really is, until we look right away from his physical and his etheric body and give our attention to his astral body and ego.

Let us now imagine, we have such a person before us in childhood. There will be a constant effort on the part of the child to come into the physical and into the etheric body, and then again, he will experience a resistance, he will be pushed back. It may very well be that owing to the predetermined conditions some of the organs are not in order. Imagine you have here physical body and etheric body.⁴ The astral body and ego want to come in. And they do come in, everywhere, but here they do not enter in a proper and orderly manner. They have to make a special effort. Every time, they want, let us say, to penetrate liver and stomach, the astral body and ego have to make an effort. And now this effort works itself out—regulates itself, as it were, in a curious way. A kind of rhythm is set up, an abnormal rhythm. At one moment the ego strengthens itself, then it become feeble again. So that we find in the child this alternation—first, a strong liver-stomach feeling, and then, before this has come to consciousness, a weakened liver-stomach feeling. The child oscillates continually between the two. And the consequence is, he has not, as it were, time to make use of his body in the so-called normal way. For he could make use of the body only if this rhythm were not present and astral body and ego were able to take possession of the several organs quietly.

How can we learn to recognise and understand such a condition? It will help us to do so, if we look at the whole process in somewhat the following way.

Imagine you have before you a clever man, an exceedingly clever man—but a man who is definitely not a watchmaker. It happens one day that he is in the predicament of having to mend his watch, which has stopped. Instead of mending it, he completely ruins it. That does not gainsay the fact that he is an exceedingly clever man. He fails, not from lack of cleverness, but because he has not sufficient mastery of the situation. Similarly genius may, under certain circumstances, fail and come to grief, when descending from pre-earthly to earthly existence. Only, in this case the failure is not so quickly finished with, but lasts for the whole of that earthly life.

There is a real call to us here to look with love upon the soul-and-spirit nature that descends from the spiritual world, to look with love upon it, even where it comes to expression in so-called insanity—yes, to look with love upon the very details of the insanity. And then we shall feel impelled to go beyond the symptomatology that can furnish a psychography of the case, and look rather at the karmic connections into which this insane human being comes. We shall have to observe his relation with the outer world, and note carefully the situations of life into which he comes, for these are incredibly interesting. And then, watching all this objectively, we shall find that insanity is really something that can arouse our deepest interest. We shall see in it a distorted image of the highest wisdom; it will be for us like the opening of a door from the direction of the spiritual world—though the spiritual world has then to come in through a rather twisted and contorted passage of entry! And as our interest in the whole process grows—without of course becoming sensational—the particular abnormalities will become deeply and inwardly interesting to us. Suppose an abnormality gets hold of the physical and the ether body and a rhythm such as I have described is set up: first, a powerful development of astral and ego activity, so that physical body and etheric body are taken hold of strongly; then, that is all reversed, and the activity of astral and ego becomes weak again. Suppose there is this rhythm, and we come to the point of being able to observe what happens, first in the moment when firm hold is taken of the physical and etheric bodies, and then again in the moment when this hold is weakened. If we are able also to enter into the experience the child goes through inwardly, entering into it with a great capacity of love, it can come about that, as time goes on, the rhythm is overcome, and that then as a result of it all, liver and stomach are gripped with quite unusual intensity—and behold, the child begins to do things that are a manifestation of genius! Otherwise the condition has to remain as it is until these things can be adjusted in the further life between death and a new birth. For it is indeed true, and we must be conscious of the fact: in educating backward children we are intervening in a process which in the normal course of development—were there no intervention, or were there misguided intervention—would find its fulfilment only when the child had passed through the gate of death and come to birth again in the next life. We are making, that is to say, a deep intervention in karma. Whenever we give treatment to a backward child, we are intervening in karma. And it goes without saying, we must intervene in karma in this way. For there is such a thing as right intervention. Certain prejudices in these matters need to be overcome. How necessary that is, let me demonstrate to you from another example.

In the Agricultural Course at Koberwitz,⁵ at which one or two of those here were also present, I indicated guiding lines for agriculture. An elderly farmer attended the course, who is also an old member of the Society. Throughout the whole of the course he could not rid himself of a feeling of misgiving; it kept coming out in the discussions. Again and again he would say: “But if we do that, we shall be using occult means for practical ends; won't that be steering too close to the sphere of ethics? Could not these truths be applied also in a wrong way?” He was never able to get rid of this scruple; he was always suspicious of black magic in the application. Needless to say, these things do become black magic when they are not handled as they ought to be handled. And it was for this reason that I said once on that occasion quite explicitly: “A high standard of morality is absolutely essential in dealing with these matters; therefore I assume at the outset that those who attend this course attend it on purely ethical grounds, desirous only to serve humanity and help agriculture. The Agricultural Experimental Circle has accordingly to be regarded also as an ethical circle, which definitely sets itself the task of seeing that the truths are applied in the right and proper way.” The Gods use magic, and the difference between white and black magic consists only in this: in white magic one intervenes in a moral, selfless way, and in black magic in an immoral, selfish way. There is no other difference. And so, in the nature of the case, since all talk about education of backward children is mere talk and leads to nothing, obviously this education can only be effective when it uses measures which are capable also of immoral application. And that brings us once again to the imperative need for a deep sense of responsibility.

If only one could count upon a more serious sense of responsibility, one could at this time do a great deal. I must, however, frankly admit that silence has to be maintained today about many things, just because conscientiousness is not sufficiently developed. When people hear that this can be done, and that can be done—they want to do it! An eagerness to be doing something—that they have. But that is not enough. As soon as it comes to the doing of a real deed, and no mere continuation of some old impulse, as soon as it is a question of bringing in new impulses from the spiritual world—and that is what is needed, new impulses from the spiritual world!—then it becomes imperative to demand a high standard of conscientiousness and responsibility. And there is only one way in which these can be awakened in us, namely, that we have knowledge of what is really involved. Thus, we must know that in the education of backward children it is a matter of deep intervention in karmic activities which would otherwise come to fulfilment between death and the next birth. It is actually so: what is done by us now, intervenes in the work of God which would otherwise be brought to fulfilment at a later time. If we are not satisfied for this to remain merely a piece of theoretical knowledge, if we are ready to let it work powerfully upon our minds and hearts, then we shall find ourselves continually faced with the alternative of doing what has to be done or of leaving it undone. Let us never forget that every step taken at the prompting of the spiritual world leads us into a situation where we have to look right and left, and make a new decision—and these decisions that are continually facing us have to be made with courage, with inner courage of life.

In ordinary life, man is protected from the necessity of this inner courage, for in ordinary life he can simply continue doing what he has been accustomed to do. He can jog on in conformity with the motives and standards that are so deeply rooted in him, taking for granted that these are correct, and feeling no necessity to adopt new ones. This answers quite well for the life that proceeds merely in the physical world. But when we come to working out of spiritual sources, we are inevitably confronted, daily and hourly, with decisions; in regard to each single action, we stand face to face with the possibility of either doing it or leaving it undone—or else maintaining an entirely neutral attitude. And the decisions require courage. This inner courage is the very first thing needed, if we want to accomplish anything in the domain of Curative Education. And it can be aroused in us if we hold continually before our minds the greatness of that which we have undertaken. We must be constantly thinking: “I am doing something which generally God does in the life between death and new birth.” The fact that you know this is of untold significance. Receive it as a meditation. To be able to think it, is most important. If we bring it before us every day in meditation—as one says a prayer every day—if we place it there before our soul day by day, it will endow our astral body with the character and tone that we need to give it if we are to deal in the right way with backward children.

It is really only possible for us to go on in these lectures and speak together of further things, if we are ready to acknowledge that we must in this way prepare ourselves for the task before us. Therefore, let us resolve to take what has been said as a necessary introduction, providing the groundwork for what follows; and let us ponder it with all earnestness. For in approaching tasks like those of which we are speaking here, it is indeed a matter of undergoing preparation of mind and heart.

• 1. Erich Wulffen, b. 1862, author and criminologist.
• 2. From Neue Züricher Zeitung, No. 342, 7th March, 1924.
• 3. A gap occurs here in the text.
• 4. A drawing was made.
• 5. A course held at the Estate of Count Carl Keyserlink near Breslau, 7th – 16th June, 1924.

I should like to begin today by saying a few words about the boiler house attached to the Goetheanum and the architectural principle underlying it. If you want to study what motivated the architectural forms of this house, you must bear in mind that it is part of the whole Goetheanum building and belongs to it. This fact of it belonging to the building has to come to expression in the artistic conception of the building itself, if this conception is correct. It should not be an abstraction but has to be expressed in the artistic form.

Now let us have a look at the whole question of related artistic forms. We get closest to this if we do what human beings unfortunately do far too seldom, and think of the tremendous artistic creative activity we find exemplified if we are able to look at the spiritual aspect of nature and recognise natural creation as a product of the spirit. I would like to draw your attention to the forms of the bony system because it is easiest to see there. Man's bony system, especially, is less difficult to study than the forms of any other living organisms.

You will know that I have been trying for decades to arouse some understanding in the world for the significant discoveries Goethe made in the field of anatomy and physiology, which I should like to call his second major achievement in this realm. I will not touch on the first one today but only refer to the second. This second significant discovery owes its origin to what one might, in the external materialistic world, call the combination of chance and human genius. Goethe himself relates that one day when he was going for a walk in the Jewish cemetery in Venice he found a sheep's skull that had fallen apart at the seams. Picking it up and looking at the form of the bones the thought occurred to him, ‘When I look at these head bones, what actually are they? They are transformed dorsal vertebrae.'

You know, of course, that the spinal cord that encloses the spine marrow as a nerve cord is composed of rings which fit into one another, rings with a definite shape and processes (procesus vertebralis). And if you imagine one of these rings expanding so that the hole the marrow passes through—for the rings fit into one another—begins to get larger and the bone gets correspondingly thinner and expands like elastic, not only in a horizontal direction but also in other directions, then the form that arises out of this ring form is nothing else but the bone formation which forms our skullcap. Our skullcaps are transformed dorsal vertebrae.

On the basis of spiritual science we can develop this discovery of Goethe's even further and can say today that every bone man has is a transformation, a metamorphosis of a single form. The only reason we do not notice this is because we have very primitive views of what can arise through transformation. If you think of a bone of the upper arm—you know of course what it looks like—a tubular bone like that would not immediately strike you as being similar to a bone in our head. But that is only due to our not having developed the concept of transformation far enough.

The first idea you will have is that the tubular bone has to be puffed up until it is hollow inside, then you ought to arrive at the form of the head bone. But that is not the principle underlying the shapes of the bones. A tubular bone would first have to be turned round, and you would not see the similarity it has to the skullcap until you had turned it inside out like a glove. But when a person turns a glove inside out he expects it to look the same as it did before, doesn't he? This is because the glove is something dead. It is quite different with something living. If the glove were alive, the following would happen when it was turned inside out: changes would occur like the thumb and the little finger getting very long, the middle finger very short, and the palm contracting, and so on. The turning inside out and the varying elasticity of the material would bring all sorts of changes about, in fact, the glove would acquire a totally different form, although it would still be the glove. This is how you must imagine a tubular upper arm bone being turned inside out, and then a skullcap would emerge.

You will realise that the wise powers of the Godhead in the cosmos possessed a greater wisdom than arrogant man has today, to be able to set the forces of transformation in motion that are needed to form a skull.The inner unity in nature comes from the very fact that, fundamentally, even the most dissimilar forms are transformations of one archetypal form. There is nothing in the realm of life that could not arise as a metamorphosis of a primary form. In the course of this metamorphosis something else happens as well. Certain parts of the primary form become larger at the expense of others, and other parts become smaller; also various limbs expand, but not all to the same extent. This produces dissimilarities, although they are all transformations of the same primary form.

Now look at the primary form of our whole Goetheanum building. I can only give you a very sketchy account of what I want to tell you, and only mention one point of view. If you look at the Goetheanum you will see that it has double domes and that the domes rest on a cylindrical sub-structure. The fact that it is a building with double domes is vital, for these double domes are an expression of the living element. If there had only been one dome then in essence our building would have been dead. The living quality of our building is expressed in the fact that the consciousness of the one dome is reflected in the other, as it were, that the two domes mirror one another, just as the part of man that is in the external world is reflected in man's organs. The basic concept of the double dome must be borne in mind in relation to anything organically connected with the Goetheanum, for if it were not to contain the double dome form, however hard it was to recognise, it would not express the essential nature of the concept of the building. Therefore the annexe must also contain the concept of the double dome.

Now look at the double dome and its additional constructions. First of all we have the interpenetration of the two dome motifs, whose importance I have often referred to. They represent a kind of new innovation in architecture and, as you know, were done with the help of Herr Englert. The interpenetration of the two domes is of special importance in the main building because it expresses the inner connection of the two elements which mirror one another. I am giving you this concept of mirroring in an abstract way at the moment. A very great deal is contained in this interpenetration of the two dome motifs; an infinite amount of different aspects. The further stage of the building, the artistic stage, that expresses the image of the concept of spiritual science, can only come into being because we have succeeded in achieving this interpenetration of the double dome motifs. So we have this interpenetration in the main building. If we were to cancel the interpenetration and separate the dome motifs, we move towards the ahrimanic principle. If we bring them closer together or overlap them completely, by building one inside the other, we would approach the luciferic principle.

So the ahrimanic principle has to be taken out of the building. In the annexe the domes have to be pushed apart, for in the case of the annexe, too, the dome concept is vital. And now imagine the domes kept apart. Imagine that on one side, this side motif (south portal of the main building) has shrunk to nothing, so the dotted line has gone, and on the other side it has grown considerably larger (and become the chimney). With the main building in mind, imagine that here (south) you have the separated domes, here is a front structure, and here the whole thing has been pushed in (see a). There the whole thing has been pulled out instead of being pushed in (b) but here (a) it has shrunk to nothing instead of growing. Imagine that on the other side (the front structure of the north portal) it developed considerably, and you have the transformation motif for an annexe of our main building which has developed out of the primary forms. For if you imagine this getting smaller and smaller (the chimney), that coming out again and the whole thing pushed together, then the annexe would be transformed into the main building.

(Dr. Steiner was using a model of the boiler house as he spoke.)

The point is that this metamorphosis of our main building shall be suitable for its purpose. Just as a vertebra arises out of the same primary form as the human skull, and you can think of one changing into the other, you can also think of the main building and the annexe changing from one to the other. The concept of the form can pass from one form to the other, if it metamorphoses and becomes alive.

We really have to become apprentices of the creative hierarchies who created by means of metamorphosis, and learn to do the same thing ourselves.

Now imagine the kind of force necessary to enlarge this insignificant-looking part on this side (north portal of the main building which becomes the chimney). If you have a small rubber bag that you want to enlarge, you have to press it this way and that way from inside so that it gets bigger. A force has to be there that can enlarge things and develop them. So if one of these side wings really has to be puffed up, it would have to be done by a force working from inside, from here (see left diagram).

What kind of forces can they be, in there? You can study these forces in the forms of the architraves. If you imagine the forces in the architraves jumping into the side structure and pushing this up, you get this form (chimney and back wall). You have to try and slip inside these forms of the architraves with your formative artistic thinking and contract and expand them. Imagine, that because you have slipped inside, you enlarge what is small in there. Then this form arises (chimney and back wall). There is no other way of going about creating things that belong together, than by trying to get inside them.

This slipping into things and being inside them is another way of imitating the creative forces in nature, and unless modern industrial civilisation does this, it will not overcome its godforsakenness. It would be impossible to imagine the ordinary kind of chimney as a product of natural creation. It only exists because there is a denial of divine-spiritual forces in nature. There is hardly anything outside in nature that you could compare with an ordinary chimney except possibly the rather hideous-looking asparagus plant. But that is a kind of exception. Whatever grows with the forces of earth can never go straight upwards like a chimney. If you want to study the forces that work in an upward direction, a tree is the best example in which to find what corresponds to the hidden forces in the earth, for a tree does not only develop a trunk in the vertical, but also has to reach out with its branches. The point obviously is not to imitate this directly in the model, but to study those forces which radiate out from the earth and overcome the purely vertical direction of the tree trunk by reaching out breadthways and putting forth branches. This part here does justice to the centrifugal forces in space, in the cosmos, to what I would like to call the branchlike centrifugal forces (on the chimney).

Although I have only been able to show you the roughest principles, I could justify the principles behind this architectural form in minute detail in the case of every single plane, but it would take too long.

Now a form such as this is only complete when it is fulfilling its purpose. If you look at the form now it is not complete. It will only be complete when the heating is actually functioning inside and smoke is coming out; smoke belongs to it, it really belongs, and this has been included in the architectural form. One day when the rising of the smoke is observed clairvoyantly, and the smoke coming out of the chimney, the spiritual part of the rising smoke will also be taken into consideration—for we shall know, when we have really observed it clairvoyantly, that the physical also contains a spiritual element. For just as you have a physical, an etheric and an astral body, the smoke also has at least an etheric part. And this etheric part goes a different way from the physical: the physical part will go upwards, but the etheric part is really caught by these twigs that reach outwards. A time will come when people will see the physical part of the smoke rising while the etheric part wafts away. When this kind of thing is expressed in the form, a principle of all art is gradually being complied with, namely, the presenting of the inner essence in outer form, really making the inner essence the principle according to which the outer form is created.

As I said, I would have to do a lot of talking if I were to go into all the details on which these architectural forms are based, although these might be far more interesting than those we have already discussed. One of these interesting things is that it was possible to express everything that had to be expressed in this modern material, and build with concrete. For it will be possible to go a long way with form-making in this modern material, especially in the designing of buildings in this style that will serve modern ahrimanic civilisation. In fact it is essential to do so. There is no need for me to go into any further details, because I am more concerned with showing you the principle of this building and everything to do with it. This principle can he modified in many respects. For instance the dome can be modified so that it does not look like a dome any more, if it is looked at merely from the geometrical-mathematical point of view and not organically, and so on. But today I wanted to discuss the particular principle of inner metamorphosis and transformation, the life principle within these. I wanted to cite this to show you in what way real artistic creativity, when it has to do with our spiritual-scientific conception, has to differ from any kind of symbolic interpretation, for that is external. It is a matter of getting an inner grasp of what you are being shown here and following the process with your whole soul.

When the building is eventually finished we do not continually want to be asked, ‘What does this mean and that mean?', and have to witness people happily believing that they have discovered the meaning of some of these things. Regarding some of these interpretations, we have come into a strange position along some of the by-paths of theosophy, with respect to quite a number of poetic and literary works. For instance, people have explained plays by saying that one person means manas, another person buddhi and a third person atma, and so on. If you want to, you can of course explain everything like this. But we are not concerned with this kind of interpretation, but with entering into things and joining in the process of creativity that came from the higher hierarchies and fills and forms the whole of our world. There is no need to avoid doing this just because it is more difficult than symbolic or allegorical interpretation. For it leads into the spiritual world and is the very strongest incentive for really acquiring imagination, inspiration and intuition.

A vital part of the present-day impulses for change is that we acquire more and more understanding for the way the human soul rises into the realms that open up to imaginative, inspirational and intuitive observation. For these realms contain the elements that will make our world whole again, and which will lift us up out of mere maya and lead us to true reality.

It has to be stressed again and again that the new spiritual knowledge we are moving towards, cannot consist of repeating the results of earlier clairvoyance. There are certainly a lot of people striving to repeat earlier clairvoyance, but the time for this clairvoyance is over, and it is only atavistic echoes of ancient clairvoyance that can possibly occur in these few individuals. But the levels of human existence to which we must ascend will not open up to a repetition of ancient clairvoyance. Let us have another look at the essential basis of this new clairvoyance. We have often referred to the principle of the thing, and now we want to try and approach it from another angle.

Again we will start with something we all know, namely, that during waking day man lives with his ego and his astral body within his etheric and his physical body. But I have already emphasised during the past few days that, awake as he is between waking up and going to sleep, man is not fully awake, for something in him is still asleep. What we feel as our will is really only partly awake. Our thoughts are awake from when we wake up until we go to sleep, but willing is something we carry out completely in a dream. This is why all the pondering about freedom of will and about freedom altogether has been in vain, because people have failed to notice that what they know about the will during the daytime is actually only the dreaming of their will impulses. If you have an impulse of will and make a mental image of it you are certainly awake. But in waking life man only dreams with regard to how the will arises and goes over into action.

If you pick up a piece of chalk and make a mental image of picking it up, that is of course something you can have a mental image of. But with only your day consciousness and without clairvoyance you know no more about how the ego and astral body stream into your hand and how the will spreads out, than you know about a dream whilst you are dreaming. We can only dream about the actual will with ordinary waking consciousness, and where most things are concerned we do not even dream, we just sleep. You can clearly visualise putting a mouthful of food on your fork, and to a certain extent you can visualise chewing it, but you do not even dream about swallowing it. You are usually quite unconscious of it, as you are unconscious of your thoughts while you are asleep. So during waking life a major part of our will activity is carried out in waking day sleep.

If we did not sleep with regard to our desires and the feeling impulses bound up with them, something strange would begin to happen. We would follow the course of our actions right into our body; everything we do out of will impulse would be followed up inside us in our blood and throughout the whole circulation. That is, if you could follow the picking up of a piece of chalk from the point of view of the will impulse, you would follow what is going on in your hand right into the blood circulation; you would see the activity of the blood and the feelings that are bound up with this from inside. For instance, you would have an inner perception of the weight of the piece of chalk and become aware that you are seeing the nerve channels and the etheric fluid inside them. You would feel yourself moving through the activity of the blood and the nerves, which would amount to an inner enjoyment of your own blood and nerve activity. But we have to be free of this inner enjoyment of our own blood and nerve activity during earthly life, otherwise we would go through life wanting this inner enjoyment to accompany everything we do. Our enjoyment of self would increase enormously. But as man is now constituted he should not have this enjoyment. And the secret of why he should not have it can again be found in a passage of the Bible, for which we ought to feel greater and greater reverence.

After what had occurred in paradise and is told in the paradise myth, man was permitted to eat from the tree of knowledge but not from the tree of life. Now this inner enjoyment would be the enjoying of the tree of life, and man is not permitted to do this. I cannot develop this theme further today as it would lead too far, but through meditating on it yourselves you will be able to discover more about it. Another thing that can have special significance for us in connection with these present lectures and arises out of this, is the following: not being able to eat from the tree of life means not being able to enjoy the blood and nerve activity going on within us. Yet just because we know the outer world by means of our senses and our reason, something comes about that surely has something to do with this kind of enjoyment. Whenever we perceive anything in the outer world and whenever we think about it, we follow the course of our blood circulation in the region of the senses—eyes, ears, nose and taste nerves—and, in the case of thinking, the nerve channels. But we do not have the perception of what is going on in the blood circulation and nerve channels, for what we would have perceived in the blood is reflected and mirrored by the senses, thus causing the sense impressions to arise. And what is conducted through the nerve channels is also reflected and conducted back to the nerve ends, where it is then mirrored as thought.

Now imagine for a moment a human being who is in the following situation: he does not just follow the course of his blood as it responds to the outer world and then receive a mirror image of what his blood does, nor does he just follow the course of his nerves and receive a mirror image of what his nerves do, but he is in a position to experience within himself what is denied us with regard to our blood and our sense nerves; he experiences the blood moving towards the nerve and the eyes. If this were the case he would enjoy his own inner process, at least in the blood and the nerves in this area. This is how the inner pictures of atavistic clairvoyance arise. What we see reflected are only pictures, filtered pictures as it were of what is in the blood and the nerves. There are world secrets in the blood and nerves, but the kind of world secrets that have already given their substance to creating us. It is only ourselves we get to know when we acquire the imaginations resulting from experiencing the blood circulating to the senses, and it is only the inspirations which have the task of building up our bodily nature we get to know, when we experience ourselves in the nerves leading to our senses.

A whole inner world can arise in this manner, and this inner world can be a collection of imaginations. Yet although, when perceiving the outer physical world in a way that is proper for our earth evolution, we perceive reflections of our blood and nerve activities, we still cannot get beyond the senses when we indulge in inner enjoyment, but reach only to the point where the blood circulation flows into the senses. Then the experience of the imaginative world is comparable to swimming in blood like a fish in water. But this imaginative world is in reality not an outside world but a world living in our blood. If one lives in the nerves leading to the senses one experiences an inspirational world full of music of the spheres and inner pictures. This is cosmic again but it is nothing new. It has already fulfilled its task in that it has flowed into our nerve and blood systems.

The kind of clairvoyance arising in this way, and leading man further into himself instead of beyond himself, is self-enjoyment, veritable self-enjoyment. This is why a kind of refined voluptuousness is brought about in people who become clairvoyant in this way and experience a world which is new to them. And on the whole we must say that this kind of clairvoyance is a return to an earlier stage of evolution. For although this experiencing of a person's own sense organs and blood, as I have been describing to you, did not exist then in the form in which it does today, the nervous system was already there in a germinal state. This kind of perception was the normal one for man on ancient Moon, and what he had then in the way of the beginning of nerves served to give him an inner perception of himself. The blood had not yet taken form inside him. It was more like a warm breath coming towards him from outside, like we receive the rays of the sun. Therefore what is now, on the earth, a perception of the inner blood system was regular, normal perception of the outside world at the Moon stage.

You could say that if this is the borderline between man's inner and outer world (a diagram was drawn), then, what are now our nerves were already there, in germinal form, on the Moon. By following the course of the nerves he could perceive what was within him, as a world of inner imagination. He saw that he himself belonged in the cosmos. He also had an imaginative perception of what came to him as a breath from outside and not from inside. That has now ceased, and what was outside, on ancient Moon, has become internalised as the blood circulation in Earth evolution. So it is a regression to the old Moon evolution.

It is good to know of these things, because that kind of clairvoyance keeps on making its appearance. It does not need to be acquired along the hard path of meditation and concentration described in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. The kind of clairvoyance that arises as a result of learning to experience one's nerves and blood as an inner enjoyment is just a more refined development of organic life, a further development of the experience of eating and drinking. This is certainly not mankind's present task, but is a kind of hot-house plant which arises when self-enjoyment of things such as eating and drinking is developed to a fine art. Just as a wine connoisseur has an inner after-taste which is only an imagination of the taste and is not formative, some people have a subtle inner enjoyment which is their clairvoyance.

A lot of clairvoyance is nothing more than a subtle, refined, forced kind of after-taste of life. We must become aware of these things again in our time. For people have not known about these secrets nor referred to them in literature since the first half of the nineteenth century. Then the second half of the nineteenth century came, with all the discoveries that are considered so wonderful, and they certainly are wonderful from their point of view, and an understanding of these things and the finer connections of existence were lost. But what has not yet been lost—and this is said in parenthesis—is the enjoyment of the effects of the coarser things we imbibe. Mankind continues to be able to live in the after-enjoyment of eating and drinking, and, precisely in the materialistic age, has cultivated this to an extent.

But mankind lives in a rhythmic cycle where things like this are concerned. Of course, because it has eradicated the general feeling it used to have of indulging in self-enjoyment in the senses, nerves and blood circulation, which people had to a greater extent in the past, the materialistic age can devote itself even more strongly to the effects of eating and drinking. You can easily study the whole change and rapid development that has taken place in a relatively short time in this realm. You have only to compare a hotel menu of the 1870's with a present-day one (1915), and you will see the progress that has been made in the sphere of refined pleasures, in the self-enjoyment of one's own body. Yet things of this kind also move in cycles, and achievements are only carried to a certain level. Just as a pendulum can only swing to a certain point before it has to go back again, the indulgence in mere physical pleasure will also have to go in the other direction once it has reached a certain point. This will occur when the keenest epicureans, that is, people with the most longing for pleasures, will look at the choicest dainties and say, ‘Ugh! I don't feel like having that, that is just too much!' This moment will certainly come, for it is a necessary development. Everything moves in cycles.

Man experiences the other side of life during sleep. His thought life is asleep and quite different conditions prevail, of course. Now I said that it was chiefly the first half of the nineteenth century that had insight into these matters still; and the kind of clairvoyance that arises when one follows the course of one's own blood and nerve channels was still called pythian clairvoyance at that time, from certain memories the people had, and it is indeed related to the foundations of ancient pythian clairvoyance.

Other conditions prevail during sleep. Man is outside his physical and etheric body with his ego and astral body. In ordinary life thoughts are then suppressed and devitalised. But between falling asleep and waking up man lives continually with the longing for his physical body. This is precisely what sleep consists of, acquiring a longing for his physical body from the moment he falls asleep. This rises to a climax and then urges him more and more to return to his body. When he is asleep the longing to return to his own physical body becomes stronger and stronger. And because the longing pervades the ego and the astral body like a mist, the life of thought is dimmed. Just as we cannot see the trees any more when mist encloses them, we cannot experience our life of perception within us when the mist of our longing envelops us.

Now it can happen that this longing grows so strong during sleep, that man does not keep it outside his physical and etheric body, but that his greed grows to the extent that he partly takes hold of his physical and etheric body and comes into touch with the extreme ends of his blood and nerve channels; he penetrates from outside as it were through his senses into the extreme ends of his blood circulation and his nerve channels.

In ancient times, when man still had experiences like these with the help of the gods, as it were, it was a normal and healthy process. The old Hebrew prophets, who accomplished so much for their people, acquired their prophetic gifts through making use of the tremendous love they bore precisely for the blood and nerve composition of their own people, so that even during sleep they did not want to let go altogether of that which lived physically in their people. These prophets of Jewish antiquity were seized with such longing and filled with such love that even in sleep they wanted to remain bound to the blood of the people to whom they belonged. This is precisely what gave them their prophetic gifts.

This is the physiological origin of these prophetic gifts, and splendid achievements came about through this channel. This is precisely why the prophets of the various peoples had such significance for their people, because even when they were outside the body they maintained a contact with it in this way.

As I mentioned, there was still a certain awareness right up to the first half of the nineteenth century, of this connection in the life of humanity. Just as they called the other kind of clairvoyance pythian clairvoyance, this kind of clairvoyance, which came about through contact of the ego-astral nature of man with the blood and nerve channels of the physical body during sleep, was called prophetic clairvoyance.

If you look at the literature of the first half of the nineteenth century you will find descriptions of pythian and prophetic clairvoyance, even if they are not as precise as spiritual-scientific descriptions of them would be today. People do not know the difference between them any more, since they have no understanding for what they can read about them in the books of the first half of the nineteenth century. But neither of these kinds of clairvoyance can really help humanity forward today. Both of them were right for olden times. Modern clairvoyance, which has to develop further and further in the future, can come about neither through enjoying what is going on in our bodies while we are awake, nor by entering into the body from outside in a sleeplike state, urged on by love—even if it is not for ourselves, but for the part of mankind to which our body belongs. Both these levels have been superseded.

Modern clairvoyance must be a third way, neither a taking hold of the physical body from outside, in loving longing, nor an enjoying of the physical body from inside. Both these phenomena, that which lives within and floods the body with pleasure, and that which can seize hold of the body from outside, have to go out of the body, if modern clairvoyance is to occur; they may only have the sort of relationship with the body, during incarnation between birth and death, in which they neither enjoy nor love the blood and nerves, either from inside or from outside, but remain connected with the body whilst freely abstaining from such self-enjoyment or self-love. The connection with the body has to be maintained nevertheless, of course, otherwise it would mean a dying. Man must remain bound to the body that belongs to him in physical incarnation on earth, and this must be done by means of the organs which are remote, as it were, or at least relatively remote from the activity of blood and nerves. A detaching from the activity of blood and nerves must be achieved.

When a person no longer indulges in enjoyment of self along the channels leading to the senses, nor takes hold of himself, from outside, as far as the senses, but has the kind of relationship to himself, both from inside and from outside, in which he can actually take living hold of what symbolises the death of physical life, then the proper condition has been reached. For we actually die physiologically because we are able to develop the bony system. When we are capable of taking hold of the skeleton which folk wisdom recognises as the symbol of death, and which is as remote from the blood system as it is from the nervous system, then we come to what we can call spiritual-scientific clairvoyance, which is higher than either pythian or prophetic clairvoyance.

With spiritual-scientific clairvoyance we take hold of the whole and not just part of the human being, and it actually makes no difference whether we take hold of it from inside or outside, for this kind of clairvoyance can no longer be an act of enjoyment. Instead of being a subtle enjoyment it is an opening up and rising into the divine-spiritual forces of the All. It is a uniting with the world. It is no longer an experiencing of the human being and the mysteries that have been woven into him, but an experiencing of the deeds of the beings of the higher hierarchies, whereby one truly lifts oneself out of self-enjoyment and self-love. Man must become a thought as it were, an organ of the higher hierarchies, just as our thoughts are organs of our souls. To be thought of, pictured and perceived by the higher hierarchies, is the principle of spiritual-scientific clairvoyance. To be received, not to take oneself.

I would like to express the wish that what I have just been saying might become a real object for your meditation, for precisely that which I have been telling you today can bring many, many things to life in all of you and enliven the actual impulses of our spiritual-scientific movement to an ever greater extent. And how seriously we have to take the enlivening of our spiritual-scientific movement has often been spoken of during these days together. We could bring to realisation a further part—I will not say of what was intended—but of what ought to be intended within this spiritual-scientific movement, if as many people as possible would resolve to think about this threefold form of knowledge of higher worlds in a living way, so that our thoughts become clearer and clearer about what, at bottom, we all intend, and which can become so easily confused with what can be had much more comfortably.

Truly, it is not for nothing that we work from cycle to cycle to accumulate more and more concepts and ideas. It is not needless work studying these concepts and ideas, for it is precisely the way to prepare the soul impulses that will lead us to real spiritual-scientific clairvoyance. By snatching up one or two ideas given by anthroposophy you can sometimes make a chink in one or another part of the human organisation, causing fragments of pythian and prophetic clairvoyance to arise, enough to make people proud of themselves. If this is the case, we often hear statements like this, ‘I don't need to study everything in detail, and I don't need what the cycles say. I know all that, I knew it already.’ And so on. Many people are still satisfied with the principle of living in a few imaginations which we could call blood and nerve imaginations. A lot of people fancy they have something really special if they have a few blood and nerve imaginations. But this is not what can lead us to selfless co-operation in mankind's development. Indulging in blood and nerve imaginations actually leads to a heightening of self-enjoyment, to a more subtle form of egoism. Then, of course, the cultivation of spiritual science can be the very thing that breeds an even more subtle kind of egoism than you ever find in the outside world.

It is taken for granted that one is never referring to the present company nor to the Anthroposophical Society, which is, of course, here. But it should be permissible to mention that there are societies in which some people manage to turn the principles in their favour, and without really giving their unselfish support, make use of one or another thing, preferably those things which stimulate blood or nerve imaginations, and then imagine they can spare themselves the rest. As a result they acquire an atavistic clairvoyance, or perhaps not even that, but only the feelings that accompany that kind of imaginative clairvoyance. These feelings are not an overcoming of egoism, just a heightened form of it. You find in societies like this—the Anthroposophical Society excepted for politeness’ sake—that although it would be people's duty to develop love and harmony out of the depths of their hearts from one member to another, you find disharmony, quarrelsomeness, people telling tales about one another, and so on. I can say things like this, for as I said, I always make an exception of the members of the Anthroposophical Society.

This shows us that dark shadows are thrown just where a strong light is about to appear. I am not finding such faults because I imagine these things can be exterminated overnight. That cannot happen, because they come from nature. But at least each person can work on himself; and it is not a good thing if you are not made aware of these things.

It is thoroughly understandable that just because a particular movement has to be founded, the shadow sides also make themselves felt in these societies, and that what is rampant in outside life is far more rampant within them. Yet it always gives one a bitter feeling if this happens in societies which, by their very nature—otherwise there would be no point in having a society—should develop a certain brotherliness, a certain loyalty, but just because they come closer together, certain faults that are short-lived in the outside world develop all the more fiercely. As the present company, the Anthroposophical Society, is excepted, it will give us all the more opportunity to think and reflect about these things quite objectively and impartially, so that we really know what they are about. Then if we come across them somewhere, we shall know them for what they are, and not imagine that if someone thinks he has a particularly deep grasp of anthroposophy, that we cannot understand that faults which occur in the outside world appear much more strongly in him. We shall understand it, but we shall also know that we have to combat them. Sometimes we cannot combat them until we have really understood them.

This is another example showing how closely connected life is with the spiritual-scientific outlook; that this spiritual- scientific outlook cannot, in fact, achieve its aim unless it becomes an attitude to life, an art of life, and is brought into the whole of life. How wonderful it would be if in—let us now say the Anthroposophical Society—all the various human relationships proved to be as harmonious as we have tried to make the forms of our Goetheanum building, where they change from one to the other and each is in harmony with the other. If it could be the same in life as it is in the Goetheanum, and the whole life of our Society could be like the wonderful co-operation among the people engaged in building the Goetheanum, so that even this very building activity is a harmonious and noble image of what comes to expression in the building itself.

Thus, the inner significance of the life principle of our Goetheanum building and the inner significance of the co-operation among the souls—no, I would rather not say that—the inner significance of the harmony of the forms of our building, should find their way into all the various human relationships in our society, and their inner formative force should stand before us as a kind of ideal. I should just like to assure you that the wrong words did not slip out just now, when I stopped in mid-sentence. I stopped quite deliberately, and sometimes the thing is said without actually saying it.

To summarise the theme I have given in many variations over these days; what I want to recommend to you most warmly is not only to look at the thoughts and ideas of spiritual science, the results of spiritual research, with your intellect and reason, but to take what lives in spiritual science into your hearts. For the salvation of mankind's future progress really depends on this. This can be said without presumption, for anyone can see it if they try at all to study the impulses of our evolution and the signs of our times. With these thoughts I will close the series of lectures I ventured to give you at the turn of the year.

Now, my dear friends, it is still my duty to speak to you about the so-called last rites. The last rites are to be carried out in such a way that they follow a confession and communion. In such a case, where Communion is given outside of Mass, it is natural that the Priest connects this Communion with the thought of his own Communion and that it is celebrated in the same way as it is celebrated during Mass, but only in the thought of the Mass. After this Communion, therefore, the Anointing would have to take place, in the vestments that we already spoke about yesterday. It is of course the case that this sacrament of unction must be administered with the greatest delicacy, so that it does not upset the person to whom it is administered, does him no harm, and also so that he is not placed in a context that would inevitably evoke the realization on all sides: this is a dying person. For he may indeed recover.

So one connects with the distribution of Communion. The priest appears with his altar boy for the anointing and connects with Communion a number of sentences from the 17th chapter of the Gospel of John, which in the version you are to receive should read as follows from the original text. I note in parenthesis that a real translation of the gospel is only possible if this translation happens out of the world consciousness from which these sentences were once written or spoken, and that later translations suffered from the outset from the fact that the one who translated did not have this world consciousness within him, from which these sentences were written. It is a very superficial way of speaking when we say that the Gospel was translated in later times in a “plain” way, for this simplicity is an untruth, and we must do our utmost today to counteract it; so that this seventeenth chapter of the Gospel of John reads thus:

Jesus placed himself in the spiritual vision
and spoke: Fatherly ground of the world:
Let the works of Your Son be revealed,
so that through the works of thy Son, thou also mayst be made manifest.

You have made him a creator
in all human bodies of flesh,
that he may lead all who who came to him through you.

They will live in the future because
that their soul's eye is prepared
to behold You as the truly united foundation of the world
and the creative Christ Jesus, whom You have sent to them.

Through me You were again revealed in earthly existence,
when the earth clouded over Thy Revelation.
This was thy will, which worked through me.

So too, Fatherly Ground of the World,
now let the revelation shine,
which was already made through me
before You were revealed in the earthly world.

Through me, the word
that reveals you, was revealed in human souls,
who came to me through you.
You were in them, through You they came to me,
and they have taken in the knowledge of You.

They recognized that that what I spoke to them was spoken by You through me

was spoken to them by you.

Fatherly world-ground, I implore,
that they who have come to You through me may always live with You as I live with You, and that they may behold there Your revelation,
which you lovingly let shine before me,
before the earth was.

Through me was revealed the word
that reveals You,
and I will bear this word into human souls, so that the love with which You love me be preserved in them,
and so my eternal life
preserve their life eternally.

The altar server says, “Yes, Father, may it be according to your word.”

Then the oil is taken from a small capsule in which the oil was brought, with the thumb and index finger of the right hand, and the words are spoken:

In the healing oil
that is outside your body

— by this is meant the sick person — the spirit soars to the heights
Feel yourself living and vibrant

— make a sign of the cross over the right eye with the oil, the altar boy says:

Yes, so be it.

The ceremony continues:

Christ's blessing receive
as life-bearing power
In it lives, lives, which conquers all that is dead.

— make the sign of the cross over the left eye on the forehead, the altar server says:

Yes, so be it.

The words continue:

Christ's strong soul
Leads in the weak body ¹
From existence to existence

Through all the worlds.

The altar boy:

Yes, so be it.

A cross is made with the oil at the top of the forehead, between the eyes, but at the top. Each time after saying the four lines, the altar server says:

Yes, so be it.

That is the ceremony, and when it is properly performed in this manner, the ceremony has the delicacy that it must have if confusion is not to be caused, or at least some kind of agitation in the soul of the sick person. That such a ceremony can be performed without causing such agitation in the soul of the sick person, that would be the task of the ministry of souls for life, so that the sick person is sufficiently prepared to also receive such a ceremony in the right way in his thoughts. Now, in this context, my dear friends, there are still a few words to be said about the one question you asked me regarding the three ages of Peter, Paul and John. Yes, and then you also asked about the periods of church history after the twelve apostles. Now these things are such that they have always only formed the core of teachings that have been handed down and that can, of course, be expressed in the most diverse ways. The fact that they appear in Schelling's work is due to the fact that Schelling once read a writing from around the 13th century in which such things were still spoken of as something self-evident. In terms of content, this can be understood by saying the following: First of all, we are dealing with the appearance of Christ Jesus on earth, with his Passion story, with the Mystery of Golgotha, with the Resurrection and with the appearance of the Christ in the etheric body before those who could recognize him in such an etheric body. In this way the Mystery of Golgotha first affected the disciples who were close to Christ Jesus, so that it appeared to them as the conclusion of the old time. Above all, they saw in the first man, Adam, that which had become so within the physical organization of this Adam through the cosmic events - whereby the spiritual cosmos is meant here - with all its adversaries - that in the course of the evolution of the earth up to the Mystery of Golgotha, it had to become more and more fragile and diseased. And they saw in the Mystery of Golgotha, also according to the teaching that was given to them after the Resurrection, that which in turn heals man, so that his fragile body does not allow sins to fall into the earth, which would be corrupted by them, but that sins are kept for redemption. Thus they saw in the most eminent sense in Christ Jesus the man as he now appeared on earth, in order to raise up mankind again that part which man was bound to lose through the special manner of entering into earthly existence through Adam.

This was the most essential idea, and the teaching that can be attributed to Peter was nourished by it. Peter spoke in this sense, he understood this teaching in such a way that, in the esoteric sense, the Petrine Age can be said to have begun at the creation of the earth, when people were led, through the Mysteries, to see the Christ as a supermundane being, and which found its conclusion in the appearance of the Christ on earth. Thus Peter taught in a manner that was almost taken for granted, how the Christ descended to earth.

This was opposed by the teaching of Saul. The teaching of Saul begins with the fact that the Christ is indeed on his way down to earth from the supermundane worlds, but that this event could not be realized at all in the same way as it was realized as the Mystery of Golgotha in Palestine. For from the places of initiation that Saul had gone through came the view that the Christ would appear in the world in glory and not go through what appeared to the Jews to be a shameful death: the death on the cross. Saul balked at the crucifixion, and only came to profess the Christ after the event of Damascus, through which it became clear to him, in a way that was not earthly - and therefore also not from the mysteries - but from the etheric, that the mystery of Golgotha is really the appearance of the Christ on earth. From that time on, there arose the necessity to understand the event of Golgotha more and more with the human mind. However, during the time when Paul lived on earth, the human mind was still so developed that it could easily understand such things as we then find as the interpretation of the Mystery of Golgotha in all of Paul's letters, where the idea of the re-establishment of human nature, which had fallen as the Adamic nature, through Christ Jesus, also shines through.

The direct continuation of what is in the Pauline letters forms everything that then emerged as Western theology, through Augustine and the other church teachers, and continues up to our time; so that one can say that Protestant theology is also a continuation of Paulinism, even if Paulinism is already very much veiled there. Yes, well into the 19th century and into our time, of course, this Pauline interpretation prevailed; in our time, however, there was quite strong opposition to this Pauline view among Catholic priests, in that many Catholic priests, whose teaching is considered orthodox, contrast the original Petrine Christianity with the Pauline one. One can say: Petrinism ends with Peter himself, and then Paulinism begins to take effect. And Western Christianity now awaits Johannine Christianity, which will be a Christianity based on the spirit. This is how Schelling understood it in his mature years, at forty or fifty.

The other question was about the periods of Church history after the twelve apostles. Such a division is not only peculiar to Christianity, but is basically characteristic of all mystery religions. It is that the evolution of the world, in which the evolution of the earth is also included, proceeds in periods of twelve epochs each, that after a cycle of twelve epochs the first epoch is repeated and again twelve epochs are traversed on a higher, on a modified level. It can be said that at the time when the Mystery of Golgotha was to shine most intensely into physical earthly vision through its direct earthly presence in a certain way, there was a time of darkness for the outer world. And one can say: precisely in contrast to what was to shine as a light into the souls of the apostles, there was the darkness of Judas Iscariot. The cosmic aspect is the one that sees the most apostate spirit of this time as the ruler of the world, the apostate spirit that always follows a time of Michael. This cycle, which always takes up about three centuries, has arrived at the point in our time where the transition has taken place from a Gabrielic cosmic age, from the age of Gabriel, to the age of Michael, which in turn will last about three centuries. The development intertwines in many ways, so that if you express it in a calculation, nothing completely adequate comes out. (It is written on the board: 330 times 12 = 3,960.)

These are things that are also known within the Catholic Church as esoteric wisdom. But I do not think that at the present moment it would have any particular significance for you if anything were added to what I have said about some of the esotericism of the Catholic Church in the course of my lectures. Of course, there would be a lot to say about the esotericism of the Catholic Church, especially that the Catholic Church is well aware that when a new form of clairvoyance emerges today, it reveals something that it wants to conceal from its faithful, and that it has set itself the task, above all, of fighting this newly emerging clairvoyance. This is one of the teachings that the initiates among the Catholic priesthood are already receiving today.

Now, regarding the question you raised: music and chorales in worship, it would have been very nice if something like this could have been tackled already now. When the Mass is celebrated on solemn occasions, it is possible to introduce the Mass before the relay prayer is said, with appropriate choral music, with instrumental table music that may also include singing, which refers to the motif of the relay prayer, and that each individual part of the Mass can then be commented on in the appropriate way. Likewise, the mass can end with a composition of the “The Act of Human Consecration, that was it”. So it is that before Communion everything in the music should be preparatory, and after Communion there should be a dying away of the music, so that Communion would be introduced by a musical motif, which would then fade away, ending with the words “The Act of Consecration of Man, that was its purpose”.

This is something you can study. And those who are seeking to compose from the spirit of the Mass and are looking for a musical stimulus will find the most intense stimulus in Bruckner, who was stimulated by the motif of the Mass. His compositions of the Mass offer more than those of Beethoven and Brahms. You will also gain a great deal here if you follow older [composers], but you must be aware that in this direction, some things have to be done anew. In particular, it should be noted that Bruckner's compositions of the Mass were actually consciously composed for non-ecclesiastical purposes, so that one cannot see completely adequate models in them.

Then there is the question – the other questions, which are more practical in nature, will be best answered this evening – about the Bible: What can be said about textual corruption in the New Testament? How did it come about and with what intention, and how can the sources of error be eliminated?

You see best of all, whenever translations are given, including today's translation, how the consciousness of the connection between the human soul and the cosmic worlds has faded in humanity. Just as a blind person, if he does not hear about it from the outside, could not describe trees, rivers, clouds, so today's person, when he has a text in front of him, cannot interpret it with what he sees; he will interpret what he does not see. Thus, the powerlessness in the face of what lies in the Gospels has gradually led to the lack of translations. And since, in the intellectual age of the mid-15th century, an enormous arrogance and pride has asserted itself in the face of this lack, the view has arisen that it is a purely arrogant conceit to exclude what is cosmic in the gospel texts, that one should speak to the simplest of people.

Yes, my dear friends, in the time when one officially translated as you have it today in the Lutheran translation, in that time it was not this translation of the Gospels that spoke to the simplest people, but rather what Jakob Böhme or Paracelsus spoke. They translated the Gospels differently and understood them correctly, and they translated them for simple minds in the right way, quite unlike those who boast that they speak to simple minds. In Paracelsus, you have a personality for whom religion was something that had a much broader meaning than the religion that must be gained in the age of intellectualism by those who want to replace this intellectualism of the head with a very strong intellectualism of the mind by freeing the concept of God from everything, in contrast to which everything must also be freed... [here the stenographer marked a gap]. That is what has become most un-Christian in modern Christianity. Just consider that in Paracelsus there lived a personality for whom religion applied to such an extent that it included medicine. In Paracelsus there lived a conception of religion that enabled him to hold on to the spiritual so firmly that it could permeate him to the point of illness, so that the physician is the one who carries out the will of God on earth in relation to the sick person. For him, medical service was religious service. And that is what is absolutely necessary today: not just to talk endlessly about the eternal, but to bring this eternal into all of life and to make it active and effective in all that is alive.

Now here the synoptic question is also touched upon in relation to the well-known agreement of the first three Gospels down to the details and the contradictions to the fourth, the Gospel of John (second section of the sixth point of the question).

Now, you will understand that these circumstances must be so if you consider the following: Especially about the Mystery of Golgotha and everything connected with it, was spoken of as something secret in the first centuries of Christianity. You know how they dealt with mystery wisdom in ancient times. This mystery wisdom was not something that was taken directly onto the streets, but was considered something that was only given to someone who had been properly prepared with the whole person in the right way. Thus, even in the remnants of mystery wisdom, in which Christianity first appeared before the most intimate of its adherents in the first Christian centuries, the mystery of Golgotha itself was also taught. However, they did not proceed with all the facts in the way that today in external science, where one proceeds according to the so-called historical sources, but rather, great value was placed on determining the day of Jesus' death not from a historical source but from stellar wisdom, thus saying: at this and that stellar constellation, the death of Jesus occurs. Such was the form.

But this knowledge of the stars was no longer very much alive at the time when the Gospels were written down in the form in which they now exist, and so you can very easily find that one person saw it one way and another person saw it another way. As for the similarities, they mostly relate to the teaching content. The fact of the matter is that at that time, when this teaching content was passed down from personality to personality, people had a very different memory than they do today, and what they were told over and over again and continued to say was naturally continued into future times. This must be explained, otherwise we fall back into the old days, which must not be. We must seek to overcome what was customary in the old days on a higher level. In this day and age, it is necessary to write down everything that is said; even the listeners here sit and write, horribile dictu. One should not imagine that the sayings reported in the Gospels were recorded by a proud stenographer. That was not necessary even in those days, the development of memory was quite different, and people memorized everything much more faithfully than they can today. The human brain, the physical brain, is much more fragile today than it was in those times. In those times, the brain cells lived almost to a real life in certain hours of the day, to the life that only clouded consciousness – those cells that cloud consciousness, that underlie the will, those are the white blood cells – not only at night, but also during the day, and even weaker at night. The brain cells did not have such an intense life as the white blood cells, but they did have a certain life, and that caused a very different memory to be present than it is today, so that what had been learned and what should be learned was faithfully preserved. Those who know this fact also know that the synoptic question of the Gospels is answered by the faithful memory of ancient times.

These were the questions that required me to answer them in a way that was conducive to the lecture, insofar as the answer had not already been given in what had been said so far. The further questions should actually be developed in the discussion, so the discussion should really be started in such a way that it can still be continued during your stay here. It is better to develop the things that are still questions here in speech and counter-speech. I know very well, my dear friends, that a great deal more could be said about such questions as historical questions, questions about the Bible and so on, but here we must come to an end. Certainly, there are still many questions to be answered, which in the course of time can be answered on other occasions, but to those who are beginning to question, I would also like to advise them to engage in self-knowledge, which can be done in the right can be done in the right direction by the following little story, which I give without any allusion, but which, if used in the right way in self-knowledge, can lead one to expect the future with regard to certain questions.

Once upon a time there was a little boy who asked questions about everything, and his father was quite disconsolate about it and said one day: “I longingly await the day when my son stops asking questions, because otherwise I'll go crazy over all this questioning.” — Then another person came along, a family friend, who decided to answer the questions the little boy asked until the little boy himself would be in a position where he could no longer ask questions, that is, until no more questions occurred to him. That took a very long time, and the danger was already approaching that the little son would run out of questions, but he kept asking: Why is Friday noon before Friday evening? Why do the stars shine in the evening? And so on. Now, nevertheless, the danger was approaching that the little son would run out of questions, but he wanted to overcome this danger, and so he finally asked the terrible question: Why is the What? Well, we should incorporate such a narrative a little into our soul when we should be sad that in these days the time is approaching when questioning will no longer be possible for some time. But we still want to deal with the questions that are to be discussed in speech and counter-speech now. So from now on I will again be more of a listener and only occasionally interrupt you.

A participant: I would like to ask why Luke has the Risen One eat.

Rudolf Steiner: The matter is such that it can only be properly understood if one is clear about the fact that in order to interpret such things from the consciousness of the time in the right way, it is really necessary to reawaken the idea that was associated with the concept of eating at that time. Today, we simply imagine that we consume physical matter and that this physical matter passes into the human body. Now, as today's physiology tells us, the concept of eating was not always, but in the time when the Gospel of Luke was written down, the old wisdom was still valid in many ways, that man takes what he builds his body with from the etheric world, and that what he takes from the etheric world also appears in the image of eating when one sees the etheric body. So you also see in the image of the physical eating that which is the correlate for eating in the etheric world. If you base your interpretation on this, you will see that the passage could, of course, be expressed in a completely different way than it is expressed, but that it does not need to be eliminated. This is the case with many passages.

A participant asks a question about the marriage ritual [the wording of the question was not written down in shorthand].

Rudolf Steiner: Of course, this is about what marriage is as a sacrament. You have to bear in mind what the content of the church ritual of the sacrament of marriage means. The content of the church marriage sacrament is no more the consummation of the marriage than, for example, the blessing of the ripening of the fruit in the course of the year corresponds to the reality of the ripening of the fruit. The performance of the marriage sacrament in the Christian view is that which is performed by marriage in the civil sense, is elevated to the ecclesiastical, to the ceremonial. So that with regard to the dissolution or the indissolubility of marriage, nothing is given within the content of the sacrament, because what is elevated into the sacrament is what is considered to be the essence of marriage. The Catholic Church has also retained this; of course, originally it fully recognized the marriage performed by civil law and then blessed it in church. In more recent times, when the emancipation of [church from civil] marriage occurred... [larger gap marked by the stenographer in the transcript]. The Catholic Church regards what has been agreed between the spouses as the ecclesiastical and blesses that. With regard to this matter, the Church takes the most liberal position, only that it has been confused by the fact that it speaks out on marriage in all sorts of ways because, in recent times, it has presumed not to bless marriage but to perform it, that is, to assume the function of the secular power of the prince of this world... [further gap]. There the fact is that the church, by entering into the secular, has also secularized the sacraments, and then these secularized sacraments have been taken over by the state. With these explanations, you will also see the relevant passages of the testament in harmony.

A participant asks a question about emergency baptism (the wording was not noted).

Rudolf Steiner: As it stands, emergency baptism can be administered in any situation. It is different from baptism in the course of worship. It is performed when there is danger to the life of the person to be baptized, but a priest cannot be called in time. In this case, baptism can also be performed by a lay person. It does not matter how it is performed. It just has to be rectified by the priest and recognized by the community. What can happen in addition is that the priest includes baptism in the next communion, so to speak making it an ideal baptism if death has occurred; otherwise it is ritually reenacted.

Friedrich Rittelmeyer: We have a colleague who is Jewish. How should adult baptism be performed?

Rudolf Steiner: Actually no different from the baptism of a child. The ritual does not contradict this at all. He must first be baptized before he is ordained a priest.

A participant: Why is child baptism necessary for the time being and not adult baptism? In the past, it was the custom to baptize adults first.

Rudolf Steiner: I have said that this cannot be avoided in today's world. We cannot introduce the baptism of adults in today's world. You have to take that into account, otherwise you will either bang your head against a wall or smash your head. I believe that we must retain infant baptism, and once it has been performed, we cannot repeat it. We have to let baptism take effect before confirmation.

Friedrich Rittelmeyer: How does what is necessary today to bring healing facts to people differ from the proclamation that was possible a few centuries ago?

Rudolf Steiner: Bringing all the facts of salvation to people will have to take the course that you will first do what is possible in order to increasingly move on to what is necessary. The necessary has already been outlined, but it will really differ even in one and the same place, depending on whether you have one community or another there or there. Let us assume that one finds a community of nothing but socialists. He will have to proceed somewhat differently than the one who finds a community of old dethroned German princes. [The following remarks have only been recorded in fragments by the stenographer.] In scholasticism, this type of discussion occurs very frequently. That is something that clarifies the matter, if one says it radically. You must experience that. With what can result from it, one comes to differentiating.

[Questions are asked about the loyalty formula. Friedrich Rittelmeyer proposes an amendment. The stenographer did not write down the wording of the question and Rittelmeyer's vote. ]

Rudolf Steiner: What I consider necessary is this: At first, in a purely intellectual sense, some might believe that someone can separate [from the community] by simply continuing to do the same things within the community after the separation. Now this is against the tradition of the cult. The granting of the right to practise this cult and likewise the speaking out of the mediated Christ-power, which belongs to this cult, must be regarded as belonging to this community. Therefore, the community has the right to deny anyone the right to practise the cult or to teach in connection with this cult. He can, of course, teach, but not in connection with this cult. So he simply loses the right to continue to practise what he has taken on within the cult. The moral evaluation lies in the fact that the conference, the meeting, the community of leaders and senior leaders, has to pronounce on how his relationship to this community can now be understood in relation to real things, that is, that he loses the right to do this and that and so on. The natural connection with this community is such, and that is expressed [in the formula]. You can formulate it differently, you can grasp it more clearly if you are aware that it is so. The interpretation must also be passed on. So in this respect I could not object to this formulation, but it must be recognized not by me but by the community.

[The question was asked about the possibility of distributing it to individual cities. The questions were not noted by the stenographer.

Rudolf Steiner: There is no reason to exclude Vienna. Because it is geographically remote? Well, after all, Vienna is no further from Stuttgart geographically than Königsberg is. That is a question that is only related to whether you find the opportunity to occupy Vienna from the outset. That it is good to occupy it is something that I fully accept. Firstly, there is no reason not to occupy Vienna. Secondly, the situation in Austria is such that the configuration of religious life that you now find in Austria is actually only about fifty years old, and in the years before that, this religious life had a completely different configuration. Austria would have been an extraordinarily favorable ground for such a renewal of Christianity if it had been carefully implemented, because the orthodoxy of Catholic priests has become very alien to many people, not only to the laity but also to priests. Now, the completely untrue Christian-social element has taken over everything that existed in Austria until the 1980s – it is an embodied lie. It has also seized the religious element, and today the situation is such that one would think there was no receptivity at all for the renewal of Christianity in Austria. In Austria one could speak fairly freely about anthroposophy if one did not touch on anything that reminded one of Catholicism... [space in the text marked by the stenographer]. Then it was claimed that anthroposophy was just a form of Jesuitism in disguise. But in fact this earlier current is still there in latent form and, if approached in the right way, is good soil. [Another question is asked that was not noted by the stenographer.]

Rudolf Steiner: In such areas, the need for ritual often arises as a reaction. In the east and in the north, a great deal is suppressed that lives in people's minds. You are not justified in assuming that you would not find a yearning for ritual in the north and in the east.

A participant: I think Silesia is a very good field. I have heard from the people of the social work group that they are much more popular in Breslau, in Silesia, than in Berlin.

Rudolf Steiner: I am very surprised that you think that the Protestant spirit has had such a deep influence in northern and northeastern Germany. That is actually impossible. The influence only goes so far in the north and east because it has been and is being artificially generated. It is the Prussian state power that has worked so extraordinarily, that has brought about what is there and suppressed the religious inclination of the people. What basically holds it back is Prussian militarism and the assessoral spirit, and not the spirit of the people. It cannot be dismissed out of hand that precisely on the way to the East something of what made it possible to Christianize East Prussia in earlier centuries is reviving.

Marie Steiner: I think you should go to places like Essen and Bochum. I don't know of any places that need more spiritual life than these. I felt so sorry for these people from the factories.

Rudolf Steiner: This question is one whose answer depends on whether it is possible to fill these positions.

I must say that I sometimes heard the question: “Why don't you have a Swiss person in your class?” when I came up to you. The last time we were here, there were still Swiss people among you. So with the general process of elimination, all the Swiss left. What you have now is enclosed within the borders of the German Reich, and of course it cannot remain that way, otherwise you would found a German church. Christianity cannot be enclosed within national borders, nor within political national borders. We must think not narrower, but much further. It is something that weighs heavily on me that you have been left so alone by the members living outside the borders of the German Reich. Those of you who were already pastors are few in number. The Swiss pastors had to withdraw. This is very understandable given the special nature of these personalities. But there is a tendency that even the younger Swiss people do not approach this work, who, as Swiss, could found communities in Switzerland just as you can found communities in Germany. This is because there are not as many idealists among young Swiss people as there are among young Germans. They know that they will not receive their salaries in the same way on the new path they are about to take as they would on the old path. The mistake of Old Catholicism is that it has not accepted a new element in an entirely unbiased way, but essentially wants to go back to what was corrupted by ultramontanism. Old Catholicism suffers from its own negation; it is actually only anti-ultramontane.

Gertrud Spörri is Swiss, but initially prefers to work in Germany rather than Switzerland.

Rudolf Steiner: But the Swiss are not coming either. And you must not present it as an ideal that they should also have a war so that they can catch up on what the others went through [during the war]. It would be necessary to do something for the Swiss in particular. I just want to have said that. I realize that it cannot be done the way you are now. But national borders must not be the limits of our work.

Friedrich Rittelmeyer suggests going to the universities and trying to get students to participate.

Rudolf Steiner: Actually, the whole world comes into consideration, where today there is only that name Christianity. Where is true Christianity today? The whole world comes into consideration. When in earlier times such a movement as the present one is to be, was kindled, it necessarily had to have a completely different character: it is the Hussite movement; only it was cut off at that time. But the Hussite movement had, besides the negative elements mentioned in history, also its positive elements. The conditions already exist everywhere beneath an upper stratum that has become purely Ahrimanic.

The question concerns Thuringia and Erfurt. Is it important to start immediately or to think about Thuringia later?

Rudolf Steiner: Thuringia naturally has the one characteristic that the population is the most unintelligent in all of Germany. There is a lot of native wit in Thuringia with regard to everyday life, but in terms of understanding all higher questions, Thuringia is quite backward. That is why it is difficult to work there. But why not overcome these difficulties in this way? Thuringia does not need to be an exception. I could well imagine that a center can be created in Erfurt, for example. I cannot believe it in Weimar, because even today people there are blasé about religious matters. Weimar has the harmful after-effects of the fact that Goethe and Schiller lived there. The fact is that Goethe and Schiller, who are well known by name, are basically two plaster figures in Weimar. The people are satisfied with that. A participant: Is it time to start in Munich?

Rudolf Steiner: No, in Munich it is still the case, even today -— although today much is immersed in untruth -, that everything is still possible, as it was before the war, when Munich was the German city where everything was possible. In Munich you could really do anything. But in most cases, either a very open or at least a hidden path leads from everything to the Hofbräuhaus; of course to the republican Hofbräuhaus, just as in Vienna people were surprised to get the republican roll instead of the Kaiser roll. In Munich, everything leads to the Hofbräuhaus. That is the difficulty. And so in Munich the Catholic movement is also flooded by that standard life, that standard living, the mighty Hofbräuhaus. But I believe, on the other hand, that your movement is precisely about the necessary strength and energy. Other movements will have a much harder time of it than this one of yours. So it's not a matter of saying we can't occupy Munich, but rather of asking how to properly occupy Munich, or rather, who should be admitted as Mr. Klein's helper, because he will cause offense in Munich due to his excessive youthfulness. That will cause some difficulties. But he will be supported.

Emil Bock: This is our concern, especially with regard to the large cities. We are convinced that we do not have enough older personalities who could tackle a larger city in such a way that it would attract public attention. That is why we have the question of how we want to deal with Klein and Munich: Who would be best suited for the job? We are such a small group and, after all, we don't have so many different people among us that it seems possible for us to adequately serve these cities. Therefore, we have hesitated as to whether we want to leave out the big cities because we cannot properly staff them.

Rudolf Steiner: What were the difficulties? Objective difficulties? There were none. It is precisely in Catholic cities – both Munich and Cologne are Catholic cities, although Catholicism manifests itself quite differently in the two – that you meet people who initially have a high degree of neutral feeling. At first everything is more or less the same to them because they have become indifferent; then gradually they are seized. One can achieve a great deal there. I am counting on a great deal in Munich and Cologne, that people will gradually be seized. It could also happen in Vienna, for example, that a larger number of people will simply go there out of curiosity at first, which should not be the worst thing, but the best. It could be the same in Cologne. Catholicism prepares the ground for people to become dulled to the Church out of habit, but actually have a deep urge to experience something true. Among the old Catholic population, there are many who are striving for religious renewal. The only question is: do we have the necessary personalities, and if not, how do we get them?

[Another question is asked about the dangers of sectarianism.]

Rudolf Steiner: It depends on the spirit, on the seriousness, not on the appearance. Sectarianism will arise immediately if you see something in the seclusion that is a danger for the cause. Why should it be sectarian to spread higher insights among the people.

• 1. See note