The Rudolf Steiner Archive

In the course of years, considerations have been brought forward in the various groups in different lecture-cycles, for a great number of the anthroposophical friends sitting here, on the John Gospel, the Luke Gospel, the Matthew Gospel, and we have attempted in these considerations, on the three gospels, to let appear before our spiritual eye the great event of Palestine, the Mystery of Golgotha, from three different sides, as it were, in three varying ways. And perhaps these considerations have proved adapted to lay in our souls the foundations for an ever-increasing valuation of this unique event. We have already pointed out how the reason why we have four gospels is to be sought essentially in the fact that the writers of the gospels, as inspired occultists, wanted to represent this great event each from his own side, just as one copies or photographs something external from one standpoint. And if one takes photographs of a thing from different sides, so through a combination of what results, through bringing them together before the soul, one can come to the true reality. Each of the evangelists really gives us opportunity to consider the great event of Palestine from one special side. From a side which we can call at the same time the opening of the highest human, occult and other aims, and beside this highest human principle, also taking into account the highest world principle—from this side it is the John Gospel which gives us an insight into the great event of Palestine.

The Luke Gospel opens for us an insight into the secrets, which hover round the personality of Jesus of Nazareth, of the Solomon and Nathan Jesus, up to the moment where the great inspiration of Jesus of Nazareth is replaced by the Christ.

The Matthew Gospel, for those who have heard the lecture-cycle on it, or have read it later, has to show how from the people of ancient Hebraism, from the folk-secrets of the Hebrew people, the physical principle of life (as it were) was prepared, in which the Christ-Principle should incarnate for three years.

In a certain connection it is again the Mark Gospel which can lead us into the highest summits of the anthroposophical, Christian method of observation, and through the Mark Gospel opportunity is given us to look into many things which should be imparted to us through the gospels, but are not brought near to us in such a way by the other evangelists. And I have laid on myself the task of saying a few words because opportunity offers itself today to speak of the Mark Gospel.

If we speak of this, we must be quite clear how necessary it is to look into many things for which the superficial world of the present has no real inclination. If one is to understand the Mark Gospel and all its depths, one must become acquainted with the quite different method of expression among men at the time when Christ Jesus walked on earth. Do not take it amiss, if I attempt to say to you what I really intend, through a distinct shading, a distinct twilight.

We express through speech what we want to say. And what lives in our soul should in a certain way be made obvious in the words of speech. In this method of expressing through speech what lives in our soul, the various epochs of human development are very different from each other. If we went back to the epoch of the old Hebrew evolution, to that wonderful method of expression which was still possible in the old Hebraic temple-speech, we should find quite another method of clothing the secrets of our soul in words, than people today have any idea of. When a word sounded in the old Hebraic speech—only the consonants were written, the vowels were then added—then there did not merely sound in this word what sounds in it today; a more or less abstract idea... but a whole world. Because of this, the vowels were not really written, because he who spoke gave out his most inner being just through his way of vocalising, whereas in the consonants, there lay more the description, the portraying of what is outside. One can say that when, e.g., an ancient Hebrew drew a “B”—what corresponds today with our “B”—he always felt something like a portraying of external relationships, of something which formed a warm, hut-like enclosure. The letter “B” always evoked the picture of something which, house-like, could surround a being. One could not utter the “B” without that living in the soul. And if one vocalised an “A,” one could not do it without something of strength, of force, even of radiating power, living within it. Thus the soul lived further. The soul-content worked outwards with the words, soared into space and into other souls. Thus speech was then a far more living affair. It entered far more into the secrets of existence than our speech.

That is the light which I wanted to place before you. And the shadows I must represent in contrast; that we in our time have become to a high degree in this connection pedants. Our languages only express abstractions, generalities. One does not even feel that any more. Speech only expresses now pedantry, fundamentally. How should this be different in an age when people even begin to manipulate it in literary fashion long before they have a spiritual content; in an age when such an infinite amount goes into the broad masses as print, when each one thinks he must write something, when everything becomes an object for writing. I have had to experience that even in the founding of our society, authors turned up from curiosity, who had the intention of being able to extract perhaps a novel out of the matter: why should not forms exist there which one can have on tap and retail in a public writing shop? Thus we must be quite clear that we have a speech which has become abstract, empty, pedantic—in contrast to the way in which one formerly conceived it as something holy, to which one felt the responsibility that GOD should speak from out of it. Hence it is so infinitely difficult to squeeze into modern words those great, tremendous facts, which are imparted to us and which sound to us, for instance, in the gospels. Why should the man of today not also believe that one can give everything in our speech? He cannot understand that our speech says something empty with what even the Greek speech still meant with a word. And if we read the Bible today, we read something which, compared with its original content, has been sifted once, twice, three times, but so sifted, that there remains not the best but always the worst. Therefore it is naturally cheap in a certain way to appeal to the modern words of the Bible. But we go astray most of all if we appeal to the Bible in the case of the Mark Gospel, as it lies before us today. In any case we must not do that.

Now you know that the Mark Gospel had in its first lines as its basis the words which the translation by Weizsacker, regarded as exceptionally good (but it is conceivable that what is regarded today as so excellent, need not be so really), renders as follows: “As stands written in the prophet Isaiah; Behold, I send my messenger before thee, who shall prepare the way for thee; listen how it calls in the wilderness; prepare the way of the Lord; make straight his paths.”

Honest people must really say to themselves, if the Mark Gospel begins thus in this Weizsacker: I do not understand a single word of it all. Whoever will understand it must really resolve to do something. Whoever goes sincerely to work, cannot understand anything when it is said: “Behold, I send my messenger before thee, who shall prepare the way for thee; listen how it calls in the wilderness; prepare the way of the lord; make straight his paths.” For either a triviality is uttered, or something is said which one cannot understand. One must first bring together those ideas which make it possible to understand such an utterance as that of Isaiah's here. For Isaiah points to that great, mighty event, which should be the most significant event in human evolution. What is he really pointing to? Now from what we have already described, we can well indicate what Isaiah predicted. We can indicate it by saying: In ancient times, man had a kind of clairvoyance; he had the possibility of growing with his soul-forces into the divine spiritual world. What really happened with man when he grew thus into the divine spiritual world? Then it was the case that when he grew into the divine spiritual world he ceased to employ his Ego, so far as it was developed at that time. He used his astral body, in which were those forces which were the forces of vision, of seership, whereas all the forces rooted in the Ego were gradually awakened through the perception of the physical world. It is the Ego which employs the instruments of the senses. The ancient human being, however, when he sought illumination about the world, employed his astral body. The ancient human being saw, perceived in the astral body. Further evolution consisted in this, that the transition was found from the astral body to the use of the Ego. With reference to this Ego, the Christ-Impulse had to be the most intense impulse. If, now, the Christ is taken up into the Ego so that the phrase of Paul is true, “Not I, but the Christ in me,” then the Ego has the power of growing into the spiritual world through itself. Formerly, only the astral body could do this.

Thus we have an evolution of humanity before us of which we can say: Man employed his astral body as organ of knowledge, but he lost more and more the possibility of developing an organ of knowledge in his astral body. And the more one approached the Christ Event, that stage of evolution arose of which man must say: My astral body has less and less the possibility of looking into the spiritual world. Nothing arose through its union with the spiritual world, and the Ego was not yet forceful enough to get, from its side, any illumination from the world. That was the age when the Christ drew near.

Now in the real evolution of mankind, it is a question of certain great strides being gradually prepared, which then occur. This was the case with the Christ-Impulse. But a transition had to exist. Things could not so run their course that man saw how his astral body gradually became dull towards the spiritual world, so that he would have felt utter barrenness and desolation in himself, until the Ego was kindled through the Christ-Impulse. Things could not take this course. But in the case of a few it happened through an especial influence from the spiritual world, they saw something already in the astral body similar to the way one should later see and know through the Ego: The egoity (Ego-hood) was, as it were, prepared in the astral body. That was an anticipation of the egoity in the astral body. Man indeed first became earthly man through the Ego and its development. The astral body really belonged to the ancient moon. At that time, the angel, the angel-man, was at the human stage. The angel was man on the old moon. Man is man on the earth. We know that. On the old moon, it was man's task to use his astral body. Everything else was only preparation for the Ego-evolution. The beginning of our earth evolution was a repetition of the moon evolution. For man could never become fully man in the astral body; but on the moon, only the angel could become man in the astral body. Therefore—just as in the earth-man the Christ lived in order to inspire the Ego—so for the preparation of this Ego-hood the possibility had to be given, that from the angels of the moon—from the moon-men, the angels—prophets were so inspired in their human astral body, that the Ego could be prepared. There had thus to occur what a prophet could have characterised in the following way: There will come in human evolution a time when man will be ripe for the ego-evolution. In the astral body only the angels of the moon have raised themselves to the highest. But in order that man can be prepared for this egoity, certain human beings must be so inspired on earth, through grace, in exceptional conditions, that they work as angels, in spite of their being human; that they are angels in human form.

Here we come to an important occult idea, without which you cannot understand at all the evolution of humanity in the sense of occultism. Externally uttered, it is naturally easy if one simply says that all is Maya. Well, all right. But that is an abstraction. One must really take it earnestly. Therefore one must be able to say: There stands a man before me... that, however, is Maya! Who knows... is that, anyhow, a man? Perhaps the human existence is but the external veil, employed by quite another being than man is, just to bring about something which cannot yet be effected by man. I have indicated something of this in my Portal of Initiation.

In ancient times, such an event was actualised for humanity, when that individuality who lived in Elias was reborn in John the Baptist, and when, in the soul of John the Baptist, an angel entered for that incarnation, and employed the corporality, and also the soul-nature of John the Baptist, in order to effect what no human being would have been able to bring about. In John lived an angel, an angel who had to go before, and announce before, that which should live in Jesus of Nazareth, in the widest sense, as true Ego-hood [Ichheit]. It is extremely important to know that John the Baptist is a Maya (illusion), and in him there lives an angel, a messenger. This stands also in the Greek: “Behold, I send my messenger = Angel.” The German alone thinks no more of this, that in the Greek “Angel” stands in this place. “Behold I send my angel before him.” And so there is indicated a deep world-mystery which, preceded with the Baptist, was prophesied by Isaiah. He characterises John the Baptist as a Maya, as an illusion, he who in truth comprises the angel, who, as angel, has to announce what man really should become through the reception of the Christ-Impulse—because the angel has to announce beforehand—what man only later has to become. And so, at this place, there should be said: “Behold, that which gives the egoity to the world, sends the angel before thee, to whom the egoity should be given.”

Now we pass to the third sentence. What does it signify? Here one must call to mind the whole historic world-situation. How had things become in the human breast, since the astral body had gradually lost the power of stretching out its forces like tentacles, to look clairvoyantly into the divine spiritual world? Formerly, when the astral body was put in activity, it could see in the divine spiritual world. This possibility disappeared more and more, and it became dark in man. Man could formerly spread out his astral body over all the beings of the divine spiritual world. Now he was alone in himself—alone is the same as eremos [Greek ernmos] That which the soul was now, lived in the solitude. That also stands there in the Greek text: Behold, how it appears, how it there speaks in the solitude of the soul (or you could say “in the wilderness of the soul “)—when the astral body could no more spread itself out to the divine spiritual world. Give heed how it calls in thy soul-wilderness, in thy soul-loneliness.

What is it that announces itself beforehand? Here we must be clear as to the meaning of one quite definite word, when one uses it of soul-phenomena, or of spiritual phenomena in general, above all in the Hebrew, but also in the Greek: the word Kyrios. If one translates it by “the lord,” as generally happens, then one is translating truly absolute nonsense. What is meant by it? Everybody in ancient times, who had such an utterance on his tongue, knew that something was meant thereby which was connected with the soul-progress of the human race. He knew, therefore, that the word “Kyrios” pointed, indeed, to secrets of soul. We have in the soul, when we look to the astral body, various forces. We usually call them thinking, feeling, and willing. The soul thinks, feels, and wills. Those are the three forces that work in the soul. But they are the serving forces of the soul. As man progressed in evolution, these forces which formerly were the lords, to whom man was given over—(man had to wait whether his thinking, feeling, willing was called)—these single soul forces became subject to the Kyrios, the Lord of the soul forces, the “I.” Nothing else was understood by this word, when it referred to the soul, than the “I,” though it no longer held in the old sense: the divine spiritual thinks, feels, wills in me, but I think, I feel, I will: The Lord makes itself valid in the soul forces. Prepare yourselves, ye human souls, to go such soul paths, that ye let the strong “I” awaken in your souls: Kyrios, the Lord in your souls. “Listen, how it calls in the solitude of soul. Prepare the force or the direction of the soul—Lord, of the I. Make open his forces!” Thus one must translate it, approximately. “Make its forces open, so that it can come in, so that it is not the slave of thinking, feeling, and willing.” And if you translate these words: “Behold, that which is the ego, sends its angel before thee, who should give thee the possibility to understand how it calls in the solitude of the astral soul: prepare the directions of the I, make the forces open for it, for the I,” then you have a meaning in these significant words of the prophet Isaiah; then you have an indication of the greatest event in human evolution; thus you understand from this how Isaiah speaks of John the Baptist, how he points out thereby that man's soul-solitude longs for the approach of the Lord in the soul, of the “I.” Then the words get force and weight. Thus, we must grasp such words.

Why could John the Baptist be the bearer of the angel? He could be this, because he had had a quite special initiation, The various initiations are specialised. These initiations are not something general; they are specialised. With those individualities who have a quite special task, an initiation had to occur according to a quite special kind of secret. Now for everything which happens at all in the spiritual world, it is so provided that there is revealed in the heavens, in the starry script what spiritual facts there are. One can receive the sun-initiation, that means, enter the secrets of the spiritual world, which is the world of Ahura Mazdao, for which the sun is the external expression. But one can be initiated into the sun secrets in a twelve-fold way, and each initiation is in a certain connection a Sun-Initiation, but yet is differently constituted with reference to the other eleven. According as man has this or the other task for the whole of mankind, he receives a sun-initiation of which one can say: This is a sun-initiation but such that one must express by saying: The forces flow in so that the sun stands in the sign of Cancer. That is different from the initiation one receives which one must express by saying: The forces flow in as if the sun stands in the sign of the Balance or Scales. They are the expressions for different specialised initiations. And those individualities who have such a high task, a high mission, as characterised here for John the Baptist, they must be initiated in a quite special manner in a special initiation, because only from this can they get the strong force necessary to bring about this mission in the world, also, under conditions in a quite one-sided way. And so, John the Baptist, in order that he could become the bearer of the Angelos, had that sun-initiation, which one can call the initiation from the sign of the Waterman. As the sun stands in the sign of the Waterman, that is a symbol for that kind of initiation which John the Baptist received, in order to become the bearer of the angel, while he received the force of the sun, as it flows down when it stands in the sign of the Waterman, when it stands in such a relation to the other stars, that one designates it with the expression: It stands in the sign of the Waterman. That was the symbol that John had the Waterman-initiation. The sign indeed received this name Waterman, because he who had the Waterman-initiation received especially the power as a spiritual initiate, of effecting in human beings what John effected as the Waterman, as the Baptist: namely, to bring human beings to this, that with the immersion in water, they got their etheric bodies so free, that they came to such a self-knowledge, which made possible what was the most important thing at the time. Human beings were immersed, and the etheric body became free for a moment. Through the baptism in the Jordan, man could feel the quite especial importance of the world-historic epoch. Therefore John was initiated just in the Baptism Initiation. And because one must express that symbolically, with the flowing-down of the sunrays out of the sign in which the sun stands, so one called this sign also—the Waterman. Thus the name of the human power is carried over.

Today a whole number of learned ignoramuses make the attempt to interpret spiritual events by bringing down the heaven, as it were, to the earth. They say: Now, that signifies the prominence of the sun. All these learned people, who really do not know much, interpret human events from out of the heavens. The reverse was the case. What lives in man spiritually was carried over to the heavens, while one made use of the heavens as a means of expression. So that John the Baptist could say: I am he who baptises you with water. And that was the same as if he had said: I am endowed with the initiation of the Waterman. I baptise you with water, I am endowed with the initiation of the Waterman. That was the word which John would have been able to say to his intimate disciples. And just as the sun progresses in opposition to its sense-path: if you proceed in opposition to Waterman, there arises—Virgin; then it passes to Balance. If we have initiation in mind, we must consider the opposite path, on the other side: from Waterman to Fishes. Thus John could say: Something will come that no longer has to work as corresponds to the sun from out of the Waterman, but as corresponds to the working of the sun from out of the Fishes. One will come who will bring a higher baptism. When the spiritual sun mounts higher, then there arises from the Waterman-baptism, the baptism from spiritual water. The sun ascends in spirit from Waterman to the Fishes: hence the well-known fish-symbol for the bearer of the Christ, which is an ancient symbol. For just as in John through quite special spiritual influences a Waterman initiation took place, so the initiation, of which I have spoken here and there to you, which arose through all mysteries in a secret way which transpired around Jesus, a Fish-initiation—a progression of the sun by one constellation. That was what placed Jesus of Nazareth in his age, that he was first subject to a Fish-initiation.

This is, one might say, sufficiently indicated to us in the gospel of Mark. Yet such things can only be indicated in image form. Christ Jesus draws together all those who are seeking fish. Therefore all his first apostles are fishermen. And we can find obvious what I have said—the progress to the Fishes, when we are told: I have baptised you with water. He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit. And as he drew to the sea of Galilee—that means, when the sun was so far advanced, that one could see its counterpart from the Fishes—those are inspired who were called Simon, and Simon's brother, James, and James' brother, fishers—they are inspired in the corresponding way. How can we understand all that? We cannot understand it, unless we enter a little more closely into the means of expression of that time.

Our modern means of expression is pedantic. If a man stands before us, we say: there is a man. If a second stands before us, we say again: there is a man. A third—another one, etc. But we have merely Maya before us. If a being has two legs, and a human countenance, then in our pedantic way of expression we have but the one word: there is a man. But what is a man for occultism? Nothing but Maya! Really, as he stands there before us, man is—nothing. He is about as much as the rainbow which stands in the sky. How long is this anything? Only so long as the necessary conditions are given between rain and sunshine. If the sun and rain alter their relationship, it is gone. It is just the same with man. He is only a streaming together of forces of the macrocosm. We must seek the forces in heaven, here or there in the macrocosm. There, where one assumes perhaps a man somewhere on the earth, there is nothing for the occultist. But forces are streaming from above down, from below up, and they intersect. And as the peculiar constellation of rain and sunshine results in the rainbow, so forces streaming out of the macrocosm from above and below result in a phenomenon, and this appears as man. That is the man. Man is nothing as he stands before us. In truth, he is a schema, a Maya, an illusion. It is the cosmic forces which are real, which intersect there where our eyes think they see a man. Just try and take this expression earnestly: Man is nothing as he stands before us. He is but the shadow of many forces. The being, however, who reveals itself in man, can quite well be elsewhere, than at that point where this man is walking on two legs. There are three men: The one is an ancient Persian, who works at the plough in the old Persian agriculture. He looks like a man—in truth he is one of the souls, who are nourishing their forces out of this or that world from below or above. The second is perhaps an old Persian official. He is built through forces from another world which intersect in him. If we will know him, we must mount to these forces. All of you, as you are sitting here, are in your reality quite somewhere else. Only the forces from your own real being ray here.... Then stood a third Persian there, of whom one had to say: He is really utter deception—he is utterly a schema, which stands there. What was there in reality? One must go up to the sun, there are the forces which nourished this model. There above, among the secrets of the sun, one finds that which one can call the Gold Star—Zarathustra; that sends the rays down, and here below stands a model, which one calls Zarathustra. In truth, his being is not there at all. That is the third.

Now it is important that in ancient times one was aware of what was meant by such designations. One did not give names as one does today, but one named people according to what lived in them, not according to their external illusory appearance. We must be quite clear of this. So that one should have been able to say: An ancient human being at the time of Christ should have well understood when one pointed to John the Baptist, and said: Here is the angel of God. One would only have heeded that which had taken up the place. One spoke of the chief matter, not of the subsidiary ones. Now let us assume the same mode of expression was applied to Christ Jesus Himself. How must one have spoken of Christ Jesus if one understood such things? No man at that time would even have dreamt of naming that which then wandered over the earth, this wandering body in flesh, the Christ Jesus; but that was the sign, that what streamed down spiritually from out of the sun, was caught up in this point in a quite special manner. If this body, which was the body of Jesus, went from one place to another, that was the rendering visible of the sun-force which went from one place to another. This sun-force could also go alone. At times the expression was so used, that Christ Jesus was in his home in the flesh, but what was in him moved further, even without his body. Especially in the John Gospel the expression is so used, that under conditions, when this being moved purely spiritually, the writer of the gospel speaks quite exactly as if this sun-force dwelt in a fleshly body. Hence it is so important that the deeds of Christ Jesus are always brought into connection with the physical sun, which is the external expression for the spiritual world, which has been collected, been caught up, at that point where the fleshly body wanders. If thus the Christ Jesus heals, for instance, then it is the sun-force which heals there. This must stand, however, at the right place in the heavens. “When evening was come, as the sun went down, they brought to him all who were sick, diseased, etc.” It is important that one indicates that this healing power can flow down when the external sun has set, when the sun only still works spiritually. And as He needs a definite force in order to work, he had to take this out of the spiritual sun, not out of the physical visible sun. “And early in the morning, while it was still dark, he arose and went out.” The path of the sun, and the sun-force is expressly indicated to us: that this sun-force works, and that fundamentally Jesus is only the external sign: that this path of the sun-force could also be visible to the weak external eyes. And everywhere in the Mark Gospel where we have mention of the Christ, the sun-force is meant, which for that epoch of our earthly evolution was quite especially active on that part of the earth called Palestine. And one could see the sun-force. “At this or that time, Christ went from this place to that place.” One could just as well say: “At this time, the spiritual force of the sun, as if gathered into a focus, went from this to that place,” And the body of Jesus was the external sign which made visible to the eyes how the sun-force moved. The paths of Jesus in Palestine were the paths of the sun-force come down to earth. And if you draw the steps of Jesus as on a special map, then you have a cosmic event; the working of the sun-force out of the macrocosm in the land of Palestine. It is a question of this macrocosmic event. It is especially the writer of the Mark Gospel who points this to us; the writer of the Mark Gospel, who well knew that a body, which was the vehicle of such a principle as the Christ-Principle, must be subdued in a quite special way by his principle. It was the pointing to that world which Zarathustra had so powerfully announced behind the world of sense, the pointing to that world as it works into the human world. And so now there was indicated through Christ Jesus how the forces work on into the earth. Therefore a kind of repetition of the Zarathustra-events must occur in that body which, as we have seen, even if it was the body of the Nathan Jesus, was in a certain way influenced by the Zarathustra Individuality.

Now let us hear the great, beautiful legends of Zarathustra. As his mother gave him birth, the first wonder of Zarathustra showed itself as the famous Zarathustra smile. The second wonder was when the king of the district where Zarathustra was born, Durasrav, resolved to murder Zarathustra, of whom the decadent magicians had said special things. As the king appeared to stab the child, his arm was paralysed. That was the second miracle after the birth of Zarathustra. And then, the king who could not use his dagger against Zarathustra, had the child taken among the wild beasts of the desert. That is the expression for the fact that in earliest childhood, Zarathustra had to see what man sees when he appears impure. Instead of the noble group-souls, and the noble, higher spiritual beings, he sees the outflow of his wild fantasy. That is the exposure in the desert to the wild animals, among which Zarathustra remains unharmed. That is the third miracle. The fourth was again a miracle among the wild animals, etc. Always it was the good spirit of Ahura Mazdao who served Zarathustra.

We find these wonders again in the Mark Gospel repeated: “And then the Spirit drove him into the wilderness—(really it means solitude)—for forty days... and the angels ministered unto him.” Here we are shown that the body was prepared to take up, as it were, in a focus, that which transpired in the macrocosm. What happened with Zarathustra must happen again; being led to the wild beasts.... This body took up what came in from out of the macrocosm.

The Mark Gospel already in its first lines places us within the greatest cosmic connections. And I wanted to show you how basically, if one but first understands the words in the right sense—not as in our modern pedantic speech, but as in the ancient speech, where each word had living worlds behind it—when one understands it in the sense of this ancient speech, how then the Mark Gospel gets new life, new force. But one must say: Our modern speech can only find what was already laid in the words in these ancient speeches, after much paraphrase. What we utter when we say: “Man lives on the earth and develops his ego. Man formerly lived on the moon, then it was the angels who went through their human stage.” All of that lies behind, when it runs: “Behold, I send my angel before man.” And the words are not to be understood, without the presupposition of what is offered in spiritual science. And people in the present should be sincere, and say of the words at the beginning of the Mark Gospel: That is incomprehensible. Instead of doing this, they stand there in petty pride and explain spiritual science as fantasy, which puts all kinds of things into what they know in a simple way. But these people of today do not know it at all. And today one no longer has the principle that one had, for instance, in ancient Persia, where from epoch to epoch, the ancient holy documents were rewritten, in order to be clothed anew for each epoch. Thus the divine spiritual word as Zend-Avesta was transformed, and again transformed, and what exists today is the last form. Seven times the Persian Bible was written anew. And anthroposophy should teach men how necessary it is that books in which the holy secrets are written must be transformed from age to age. For especially when one will preserve the mighty style of old, one may not as it were attempt to remain as much as possible with the old words. One cannot do it, one understands them no more, but one must attempt to transform the ancient words into a direct understanding of the present. We have tried this summer to do that with Genesis.¹ You saw, then, how many of the words must be transformed. You have perhaps today got a little idea of how the words must also be transformed in the Gospel of Mark.

• 1. Secrets of Creation. A series of lectures on the Book of Genesis delivered by the author at Munich, August, 1910, now out of print, but to be reprinted shortly in a second and revised edition.

In the gathering held here just after the Christmas Course we turned our attention to things that can deepen medicine in an esoteric sense. And we tried—to the extent to which this is possible in such brief meetings—to penetrate into the esotericism of medicine, in the way that is suitable for younger medical aspirants today. In formulae for further contemplation and elaboration, we received things that can quicken the sense for medicine and emphasis was laid upon the necessity of having this sense for medicine.

I picture to myself that you have worked upon these things for a time, my dear friends. Naturally, my idea of this work is not that people sit down and ponder about such things theoretically, but that from time to time, when the inner need is felt, they let these things work upon and develop the soul. It was inevitable, from the very way in which these things came before us, that one perfectly definite fact should emerge—a fact which I believe to be of importance for our gathering now. Because of the very concentrated form in which the esoteric things were given at the first gathering, one or another, to a greater or lesser degree, must have realized that it was necessary to face certain inner difficulties. The purpose of esoteric teachings is not always to make life as easy as possible for us. In a certain respect the opposite is certainly the case. They are also there in order to make life more difficult, to make us realize the difficulties of understanding the world, of really getting to know the world and human beings. So that when we become alive to these difficulties, we take the opposite path of development from that which is so often taken in our civilization today. We take the opposite to a superficial path of development. It is only by becoming alive to the difficulties existing as between the outside world and the human being that a person can be deepened in soul. I think, therefore, the best way now will be if, bearing these inner difficulties in mind, you will bring them forward in the form of questions and we will then make matters that can really promote the development of our subject into the theme of our discussions. I would ask you, to begin with, to tell me what inner and outer difficulties have arisen in your own circle. Difficulties will have arisen both for the practitioner and for the student. There are a number among you who are now approaching the end of their studies; they will have found quite specific difficulties and we will try to find their solution. All of you have received the first circular letter and you will have realized that in connection with definite questions there is a very great deal to say. I would like to ask if any question, definite or indefinite, has arisen, for such questions will surely lead us further. In this way we shall get away more from theoretical study and reach matters which lie in the realm of actual experience.

Question: A participant asked about the course of the year, the Calendar of the Soul, definite constellations of the stars and whether one must be consciously aware of these.

That is not essential. You mean observation of the constellations as they are at a particular time. It is, of course, a help if one is able to look at the visible constellations. But if I have understood you aright you mean: How are things, really, if we allow the formulae we have been given to work upon the soul? These things work through their own inherent mantric power; orientation in the outer world according to the stars can, of course, be a help but you must remember the following. Take the most striking example of a human-cosmic relationship that can still be observed today, namely the menses. It is obvious that they are determined cosmically yet they are not so determined in the present epoch. They were cosmically determined in a much earlier phase of cosmic evolution in which our earth was also involved. Then, in the course of time, they became independent, were emancipated from the external cosmos, so that nowadays there is no direct dependence. Therefore, one cannot say nowadays that the phases of the moon are coincident with menstruation. This cannot be said. But it is certainly true to say that there was once a time when the one coincided with the other; then they separated. The moon phases exist on their own. Menstruation takes its own independent course. Here is one example of separation. The other that I will mention is not governed by the phases of the moon but by the daily phases of the moon. Ebb and flow were once coincident with certain influences of the moon. Again there was separation. The moon is on its own, ebb and flow on their own.

These things also hold good in the working of mantric power. Mantric power is certainly of such a nature that what happens in the human being as a result of it was at one time coincident with cosmic processes, but separation has now taken place, so that a proper orientation is necessary. If we want this help from the outside world we must say to ourselves first of all: What is to happen in the inner being is inscribed in the cosmos. But in contemplating this we must make ourselves inwardly independent and be able to experience inwardly and quite on our own, emancipated from the cosmic happenings. Therefore it is not unconditionally necessary to reckon with the constellations of the stars in the working of a mantram. Equally it cannot be a question of the menses being regulated according to the external phases of the moon, because the menses have become a process of the world of nature. Today it is the case that the whole of our inner life that is to be influenced by mantrams must take place in emancipation from the outer cosmos.

In connection with other subjects I have often had to speak of this as the difference between Eastern and Western esotericism. The whole standpoint of the oriental is this: the human being has come forth from the cosmos, he must return there, he must be united with the cosmos again. Think of the posture of the Buddha. It is a return to earlier conditions. This is shown by the Buddha's whole posture, the crossing of the legs one over the other, the elimination of the limb structures. The position of the arms, too, is such that the whole relationship to the earth is paralyzed. We see how the human being again members himself into the cosmos. He goes back again. So it is, in reality, with the whole of Eastern esotericism. It is a going backwards. Our Western esotericism can only be a going forward, an ever-increasing emancipation. For this reason it is not so inwardly comfortable and when applied in certain domains particularly it does not make for inner ease.

Of course, if you have some specific, pathological condition before you, and when you look at the constellations you find, for example, that the condition definitely set in when Saturn was in opposition to the moon, this naturally has a certain significance. For if you now come as a healer with Saturn and moon, that is to say, in earthly terms, with lead and silver, saying: I will apply the lead cosmically and the silver in the earthly form, trying to pulverize it, to dissolve it; I will change it into the earthly form, thereby producing the same constellation that is expressed in the heavens in the opposition to the moon, then you can heal in the sense of the cosmic forces. But at the same time you bring the human being into a condition which throws him back into earlier stages of evolution. Whereas if you take your start directly from the given earthly state—the connection of the human being with lead, with silver—then you are working in something that is in a process of emancipating itself within the human being and you are looking not into the past but into the future. In this case you will certainly be doing something similar, but you get at it from within, by getting to know the nature of the lead and the silver, realizing that the lead works as substance, the silver through what it actually becomes when it is broken into pieces, dissolved, resolved into atoms. But you are comparing it with the human nature that is already emancipated, not with the cosmos. This is the way in which one must proceed. Therefore it may certainly be a help to think about the actual constellations of the stars. But to begin with, we shall have to use all our power to lend ourselves to the inner activation of soul by the mantric formulae we have been given, and seek for everything more from within.

Question: What must I do out of the ego when I am meditating?

From out of the ego? Meditation consists, does it not, in the following. As a modern person you feel that you must understand every sentence. This is emphatically an activity of the ego in the present incarnation. Everything you do intellectually is an activity of the ego. In the present incarnation the intellect predominates and everything else is overshadowed by the ego, works upwards at the most like a dream, and is unconscious. In contrast with this, meditation means elimination of this intellectual striving and, to begin with, taking the content of the meditation just as it is given—purely according to the sounds of the words. When you approach the content of the meditation intellectually you bring your ego into movement before you absorb the meditation, for you think about the content; it is outside you. If you let the meditation be present in your consciousness just exactly as it is given, not cogitating over it at all but simply letting it be in your consciousness, then your ego is working in you not from the present incarnation but from the past. You hold the intellect still, simply transporting yourself into the word-content which you hear inwardly, not outwardly; you transport yourself into this word-content and as you do so your inner being works within the content of the meditation—the inner being which is not that of the present incarnation. But thereby the content of meditation becomes—not something for you to understand merely—but something that works within you in reality; so that finally you become aware of: Now I have experienced something I was unaware of earlier.

Take a simple meditation which I have often given: “Wisdom lives in the Light.” If we think about this we can extract many very clever things but equally frightfully stupid things from it. “Wisdom lives in the Light” is there in order to be heard inwardly. When you hear this inwardly that within you which listens does not come from your present incarnation but what you have brought with you from former earthly lives. It is this that thinks and experiences, and after some time there lights up within you something you did not know before, that you cannot think out with your own intellect. Inwardly you are much further than your intellect. Your intellect contains only a tiny extract of what is really there.

After all, you must take what is given in Anthroposophy absolutely concretely and objectively. Just think about the following: With the change of teeth the human being really renews his whole physical body. This must be taken as a fundamental fact. That the human being gets second teeth is really only the most external symptom of all, merely, a fragment of what is going on. Just as the so-called milk teeth are replaced, so is the whole human organism replaced. After the change of teeth, so far as his physical substance is

concerned, the human being is entirely new in comparison to what he was when he was born. The modern view which jumbles everything together is that the human being is born, passes through a metamorphosis with the change of teeth and then goes on developing. It is not like this. The truth is that when the human being comes physically into the world he has, as well as the so-called milk teeth, a body that is a product of hereditary development. He has received a body that is the product of what is contained in the whole line of ancestry. The physical body of the first seven years—if we express it in figures—comes from here. From the seventh to the fourteenth year the human being has a body, too, but this body has not been produced from the first by transformation. What the human being has brought with him to the earth has intervened here.

Picture it as follows: the human being has had his body. This body which has come to him from the line of heredity is a model; he has it as a model. Into this body he takes earthly substance. If he were to work only with the forces he brings with him from pre-earthly existence he would elaborate this earthly substance which he takes into his body in the first seven years into quite a different form. He would call forth quite a different form. He does not come at birth with the tendency to give form to a being with eyes, ears, nose, like the being who stands on the earth. He enters with the tendency to structure the human being in such a way that very little is structured by way of the head through his pre-earthly being; it is especially upon everything else that the greatest care is expended. What is stunted in the embryonic life is developed in the astral, in the ego organization. Of the physical embryo, therefore, we must say: Physical nature in the embryo is developed in a wonderful way but the pre-earthly human being has very little indeed to do with it. On the other hand the pre-earthly human being plays the very greatest part in all that lies around the embryo. It lives in what is demolished in the physical world, amnion, chorion, and so on. Within this lives the pre-earthly man.

You can picture it rather like this. To begin with, the cosmos is copied. This is what the human being wants, in reality, to do when he has come down from the pre-earthly into earthly existence. Why does he not do it? Because a model is already provided. And in accordance with this model, with the substances received, he transforms the pre-earthly during the first seven years of life. His inherent tendency would be to form a more spherical being, a being organized into a sphere. This is transformed in accordance with the model and so the pre-earthly forces work out this second physical man who is there from the seventh to the fourteenth years, but to begin with, by adhering to the model which comes from the forces of heredity.

There, you see, you have two, actually distinguishable entities of forces in the human being. How can you understand these force entities? Take, with the outlook and feeling of the physician, the book Occult Science and read where the earth's evolution is spoken of. At first there is a Saturn evolution, then a Sun evolution. If you follow the description of the Earth evolution you will find that until the separation of the sun, sun, moon and earth were one, combined together in one. Afterwards there is a separation of earth and sun, earth and moon. Up to the middle of this evolution, therefore, the human being lives in the cosmos. He lives in sun and moon just as he lives in the earth. After the separation of the sun he lives outside the sun; after the separation of the moon, outside the moon. Until the separation of the sun, therefore, the cosmic forces were working upon man's nature; those forces, too, which are today outside the earth in the moon and in the sun were working in the human being because he belonged to the world in which the sun and moon were still present. There followed for the human being an evolution during which sun and moon were outside.

There was a phase of evolution which contained within it all that today is both earthly and of the nature of sun and moon; later on, the extra-earthly emancipated itself from the earthly. The earthly went on along its own path, it dried up, hardened, became physical—and you find this today in the stream of heredity; it has densified within the stream of heredity. What the human being has received since the separation of the moon and sun lies in the forces working in from the cosmos. That is the point. So that in the model that is received in order that the second man may be elaborated, you have a model that really represents a primeval, artistic principle given by father and mother, originating when sun and moon were still united with the earth. It was then that the forces which really give the human being his earthly configuration were developed. For you will readily understand that the configuration of the human being is an earthly one. Try to think of the being of man entirely removed from the earth. What could be done with it? You would be extremely unhappy if after death you were to make use of anything like legs. Legs have purpose only when the earth's forces of attraction pass through them, when the legs are within the sphere of the earth's forces of attraction. Legs—and arms and hands, too—have meaning and purpose only on the earth. So that a whole section of the human organism, in the way it is developed, has purpose only when we are earthly man. What we are as Earthly man has no meaning so far as the cosmos is concerned. Therefore when we come to the earth as beings of spirit and soul, our wish, to begin with, is to form quite a different organization. We want to build a sphere and to generate all kinds of configurations within this sphere, but we have no wish for this being with whom the cosmos itself can do nothing. This being is given us as a model and we build up the second man in accordance with this model.

In the first life-period, therefore, there is a perpetual struggle between what comes from us out of the previous incarnation and what comes from hereditary development; the two elements fight with each other. The illnesses of childhood are the expression of this fight. Just think how intimately the whole inner being of soul and spirit is bound up with the physical organization during early childhood. When the second teeth appear you can see how they push up against the first, how they still have tussles with each other, and in this same way the whole second man has tussles with the first. But within the second man there is the super-earthly being; in the first a foreign, earthly model. These two work into one another and if you observe this inter-working truly you can see how, if the inner man, who as a being of soul and spirit was present in pre-earthly existence, has too much the upper hand for a time, working into the physical very strongly and having, willy nilly, to adjust itself by dint of effort to the model, that it damages the model by striking up against it everywhere, saying: I want to get this particular form out of you—then the fight expresses itself as scarlet fever. If the inner man is tender, so that there is a continual shrinking back, a wish to mold the in-taken substances more in accordance with their own nature, and resistance is put up to the model, the struggle comes out as measles. What is, in reality, a mutual struggle expresses itself in the illnesses of childhood. Moreover, it is only possible to understand truly what comes later if these things can be properly reckoned with.

It is, of course, very easy for the materialists to say that all this is stupid, because children still retain a likeness to their parents after the change of teeth and not only up till that time. Such talk is nonsense. The fact is that one being is weaker, directs himself more in accordance with the forces of heredity, builds up the second man with a greater resemblance to the model. This naturally comes out in the appearance, but the same thing has been going on when the being has adjusted itself more in accordance with the model. On the other hand, there are human beings who after the change of teeth become very unlike what they were before. In such cases what comes from the pre-earthly life of soul and spirit is strong and they adhere less to the model. We have therefore simply to see these things in their right connection.

The following, too, must be remembered. Everything that has to be taken in must, in the first place, be taken in by the child and elaborated inwardly in such a way that the ego and astral body enter into intimate contact with the foodstuffs. Later on this need not be the case any longer. The human being is never afterwards in the position of being so strongly compelled to work out, according to a model, something that is independent as is the case during the first seven years of life. During those years he must work up in his ego and astral body everything he takes in; he must work it up in such a way that it can be molded in accordance with the model. This process must be helped; and the world has arranged for it, inasmuch as milk is able to bear a very great resemblance indeed to an etheric structure. Milk is a substance which really still has an etheric body and because this substance, when it is taken by the child, still works up into the etheric, the astral body is able at once to take hold of the milk and then there can arise the close inner contact between what is thus taken in and the astral body and ego organization. For this reason there is an inward, intimate connection in the child between the external foodstuffs and the inner organization of spirit and soul.

In the whole way in which the child drinks milk you can actually see how his astral body and his ego are taking hold of the milk you can see it with your very eyes. And now, as a physician, you must realize the remarkable process of working up what is going on. On the one side, meditate in mantrams, letting the mantram work upon you, freeing your forces of soul on the one hand; and on the other hand, meditate simply upon the child. Picture to yourself how the being of spirit and soul comes down and makes its way to the physical foodstuff, ignoring the model to begin with, and then picture what is going on between the being of spirit and soul and the foodstuff—a process that is now directed in accordance with the forms contained in the model. If you form a true picture of an excessively strong working of the spirit and soul, the picture crystallizes into that of scarlet fever. A picture of a too feeble working of the spirit and soul which wavers in the face of the model and becomes the picture of measles.If you picture these things in meditation you carry over ordinary meditation into medical meditation. It is dreadful that people today want to grasp everything with the intellect. In medicine really nothing can be grasped with the intellect. With the intellect one could at the very most grasp the diseases of the minerals—and there it is not a question of curing. Everything medical must be grasped by direct perception and the faculty for this has to be developed.

You cannot notice this process in a grown-up person. The digestive tract takes over the foodstuffs—it is a process transacted inwardly; whereas in the child, astral body and ego take over the foodstuffs. Unfinished forms of human nature have there to be directed and fashioned in accordance with the model. When you meditate upon the child, you see a mighty metamorphosis going on. You see the spirit and soul lighting up, as it were, and the in-taken foodstuffs cast into darkness and shadows; you see there how the second man is formed out of light and darkness, in colors, as it were. You see how the pre-earthly in man is a brightness and how the external foodstuffs are a darkening. In the child a brightness comes upon the darkness, a brightness that comes from the pre-earthly. The milk goes in as darkness. The brightness and the darkness together give rise to manifold colors. What is white in the physical is black in the spiritual; always the opposite.

These things make it possible for the ego to be active in quite another way than is usual in life. What a feeble effort it is that we make in the act of ordinary, intellectual thinking. Intellectual activity is man's greatest weakness. He simply carries one concept to another. But if you observe the child in the way now described you will meditate in such a manner that your ego organization is thoroughly involved in the effort.

These things, in their further course, must also be heeded in our pedagogy. In a school like the Waldorf School we have children between the ages of seven and fourteen. At this age things have changed. The second man has been developed. The child before us has been molded out of pre-earthly existence according to the model that has been cast off; forces of heredity, naturally, have remained in the child. They have been brought into the model, into the imitation of the model. The child is now much too unearthly. For now the forces that come from beyond the earth have worked on the child with special strength and the swing of the pendulum has gone to the opposite side. Formerly, this was externally visible in the human being; he was entirely the product of heredity. Now that which is to be seen externally has arisen entirely from within. It is the external world that has now to be mastered. What has hitherto worked without consideration for the earthly world, with consideration only for the human model, must direct itself to the outer world. Between the seventh and fourteenth years, astral body and ego organization must work in such a way that this super-earthly being is again adjusted to the external conditions of earth existence. This process has its culmination at puberty. At that age the human being is placed wholly within earthly conditions; he enters into his relationships with earthly conditions; the earthly is membered into his being. Therefore the element of greatest importance in the generation of the second man between the seventh and fourteenth years is what the human being brings with him from pre-earthly existence. For this reason his own specific karma only begins to work after puberty. Then the earthly works in. A culmination is reached at puberty and the third man now begins to develop.

The second man—so far as the substance is concerned—is thrown off and the third man is developed. The process does not reach so far as actual form, it only gets as far as life. If it were to get to form, we should get third teeth, because the human being is now governed by external conditions. Within these outer conditions it is the case that the human being again takes in what is extra-human. When he was being governed by the model he was directed entirely in accordance with the human. So long as he was governed by the model he was governed by something passed on by heredity. But in this there lies, in reality, something that is dried up. Since the separation of the sun it has really broken off from the root of his being and is dried up, withered. Therefore the forces of heredity contain the most pathological forces and when he is governed by the model the human being really absorbs innumerable causes of illness. He absorbs few such causes during the period after the change of teeth because then he is governed by the external world; climate, everything contained in the outer air, etc., are less harmful. Between the seventh and fourteenth years the human being is healthy; then again there begins a period when he is again susceptible.

All these conditions must be observed in such a way that you have the picture of man in your mind. If you have this picture of man in mind, then you also meditate rightly. Then you will be able to combine what you learn with what you meditate upon and what you have learned does not remain theory but becomes practice, because you uncover the power that enables you to perceive these things. This is what is so urgently needed today. It is impossible to achieve anything in medicine so long as we persist in thinking that evolution goes forward in a straight line. The human being is in reality constituted from separate streams of development which take their course in periods of seven years; what comes later is linked to what is earlier; it is not a one-sided continuation but different conditions are always intervening. Continuous evolution in this sense, where the earlier alone is the cause of the later, is only to be found in the mineral kingdom, less in the plant kingdom and least of all in the human kingdom.

Let us try to picture the plants. How do people proceed today when they picture the plants? There is the soil of the earth. The seed is pictured as being laid into the soil and then the plant grows out of this. People are naive enough to think as follows: Hydrogen is a very simple molecule, consisting of two atoms. All kinds of things are imagined to form combinations. Alcohol is certainly a very complicated molecule. Carbon is there combined with hydrogen and oxygen and then one has something more complex. And now there come still more complicated substances with more and more complicated molecules. There was a period during the eighties and nineties of the last century when the titles of these were very complicated, consisting of more than three lines in length. Yes, the molecule has become terribly complicated! And now still more so. Then it becomes a seed, and a seed is a most highly complicated combination. Then the plant grows out of the seed. But all this is nonsense. The basis of the seed formation is, in reality, that earthly matter tears itself away from the principle of structure and passes over into chaos, becomes chaotic, contains no more forces of matter in itself. Then, when no earthly structure is present, what is working out of the cosmos can assert itself. The cosmic declares its readiness to mirror the cosmic structure in the minute. In the seed formation the “nothingness” asserts itself over against the earthly and the cosmos works into the nothingness.

Frau Dr. Kolisko could tell you an interesting fact which entirely confirms this. During investigations into the function of the spleen we took small rabbits and excised the spleen. In spite of this the rabbits were quite well. They did not die of the operation, but a long time afterwards, from colds. It was quite possible to see how the rabbits live on without the spleen. When one of the rabbits died, we were able to see what had happened and in the place of the spleen there had appeared tissue which had assumed a decidedly spherical form. What had really happened? We had excised the physical spleen and by doing this had artificially driven earthly substance into chaos, made it accessible to the cosmic forces, and something resembling a seed formation had come into being. There had arisen, in an extremely primitive form, something that resembled the structure of a seed—an image of the cosmos. This quite harmless vivisection, therefore, confirmed a matter of great significance, for this is what appears to spiritual-scientific observation.

Take a quartz crystal. It is an earthly thing. Why? Why is the quartz crystal an earthly thing, retaining its form really in a very pedantic, rigid way? The quartz gets its form from an inner force and if you break it apart with a hammer the single parts always retain the tendency to be six-sided prisms, self-contained, six-sided pyramids. This tendency is present. You can as little rid the quartz of this tendency as you can get pedantry out of a man who is pedantic by nature. You may atomize a pedantic person, but he will still remain pedantic. The quartz does not allow itself to come to the point where the cosmos can do anything with its forces. Therefore the quartz has no life. If the quartz could be pulverized to such a degree that in the single fragments it no longer had the tendency to be governed, in the single fragment, by its own forces, something living and cosmic would grow out of the quartz. This is what happens in the formation of a seed. In the seed, matter is driven out to such a degree that the cosmos can intervene with its etheric forces. The world must be seen as a perpetual entering into chaos and again an emergence from chaos. What is contained in quartz also came at one time from the cosmos, but it remained at a standstill, has become Ahrimanic. It no longer exposes itself to the cosmic forces. As soon as anything enters into the realm of the living it must always pass through chaos.

This again is something which will help you to meditate in the sense of medicine. And you can also picture the developed plant—how it grows from leaf to leaf, and so on. You come to the formation of the seed in the fruit. Whereas you otherwise picture the seed plant as brightness it now becomes dark, quite dark. Then again comes the light, when the forces from outside take hold. In this way, too, you can make an imaginative picture from the being of the plant. When you are aware of an object which you call “plant”—then it is an imaginative meditation. You should not remain in the sphere of the intellectual but in the sphere of the concrete, inner picture. The intellectual element is merely there for the purpose of presenting what is known, in the form of thoughts.

Suppose you write down the word Menschenkind. This word is taken from something that has been perceived. Very well. The word Menschenkind reminds you of a Menschenkind (a human child). But suppose you take the word and say: I like the i, so I will put that first, I like the n, so I will put that next, then the sch and so on. You can put the word together in a different way but nothing that you can make anything of will come out of it. This is what people are doing with concepts all the time. The concept is only the spiritual term for the perception. People separate and combine concepts and think in acts of thinking. They do this, too, when they are observing the external world. They cover up observation with thinking and so they live today outside reality. This is possible as long as one is working with the science that stands outside reality, with geometry and arithmetic. But if we want to go in for medicine we cannot stand outside reality. If we do, then we also stand outside reality in medical practice itself.

Dr. Steiner: Much knowledge is required really to answer a question like the one posed last time, and we have already considered it from a number of different angles. Because anything relating to reproduction of living beings must be thoroughly understood, I wish to make use of the time today to speak a bit more about this question from a completely different perspective.

There's something peculiar about a remark recently made by an American who came to the conclusion, based on statistics—a favorite innovation of our time that is increasingly pursued in America—that the people who acquire the greatest intelligence are always born in the winter months. Naturally, these statistics should not be taken to mean that a person born in the summer months would have to be stupid. The statistics refer only to the majority. In any case, this American made the statement that, according to statistics, those born between December and the middle of March grow up to be the smartest people.

Something is indicated here that is difficult to study in humans, because with human beings everything possible can interfere. It does indicate, however, that living beings in general—and man is first of all a living being—depend in a certain respect on the course of the year and its influence on them.

Statements like the one made by this American surprise people today only because they know far too little about the real processes of nature. Perhaps this American will meet the same fate as that of a certain professor who once measured human brains; he drew up statistics and found in every instance that women's brains are smaller than those of men. Since, in his opinion, a smaller brain indicates less intelligence, he concluded that all women have less intelligence than men—now he was a famous man! He became famous for finding that the brains of women are smaller than those of men. Now, sometimes autopsies are performed on famous people after death, just because they are famous, and this happened to the professor. His brain was removed, and it turned out that the brain of this man was much smaller than all the women's brains he had examined!

Similarly, if he were not embarrassed to make it known, it might turn out that this American was himself born in the summer. If he were born in the summer, one would have to say that according to his own theory he could not be too clever; therefore, his theory could not be particularly valuable. But you see, there is something behind all these matters after all, and this something can lead to the most significant issues when studied in the right way.

I wish to tell you something today that definitely pertains to the question posed by Mr. R. You see, the conditions relating to reproduction can actually be studied only in animals and plants, because in humans they depend on so many other factors that they cannot be studied properly. If you take what I told you the day before yesterday, that is, that humans, women as well as men, influence the egg cell or semen through drinking, you will see that this alone makes it impossible to study their reproduction correctly. Now, animals are rarely in the habit of getting drunk. In them, conditions thus remain much more pure, and one can study the matter more purely. The most important aspects of the problem are such that dissection of animals for the purpose of such study is quite unnecessary. Through dissection one really discovers the least of all. To begin with, I shall tell you something that is not based on dissection but on positive results that were obtained by men who did not work according to theories but with practical experience. What I will relate to you has to do especially with the beavers in Canada.

These beavers can be encountered around here only in zoos or, stuffed, in laboratories, and they actually appear to be rather clumsy. Such a beaver has a rather clumsy head and body, the front legs are quite thick, and the hind feet are webbed so he can swim. Its strangest feature is its tail, which looks almost like an instrument; it is quite flat and is, in fact, the beaver's most ingenious aspect. What he has behind him is his most ingenious tool. People who have observed beavers do not know at first what they use these tails for, and they have thought up all sorts of incorrect ways of explaining them.

The beaver is a most unusual animal. When one becomes acquainted with a beaver in his own habitat, it is found to be an extremely phlegmatic animal, something that is also evident in those in our zoos. It is so phlegmatic that one cannot really do anything with it. You can attack a beaver, grab for it, but it will not defend itself. The beaver itself will never attack no matter how much it is provoked. It is a completely phlegmatic creature.

These beavers live mainly in such areas as large swamps or short rivers, and they live in a most remarkable way. When spring arrives, a beaver looks for a spot near a lake or river, digs a burrow in the mud, and spends the entire summer living like a true recluse alone in this burrow. This beaver sits the whole summer in this reclusive summer dwelling like a phlegmatic monk passing the time in his summer house! It is only a hole that he digs in the earth, but he does it in total isolation.

When winter approaches—already when late fall comes—the beavers emerge from their burrows and congregate in groups of two to three hundred. They come in all their “phlegmatic-ness” (“Phlegmatischheit”) and form communities. Naturally, those that had mated earlier are among them. A female beaver had prepared her isolated home so that it was suitable for children; the male lived nearby in his own burrow. Now, all these families gather together.

In their slow, phlegmatic way, the beavers proceed to look for a suitable locality. Though it is sometimes difficult to observe because of their phlegmatic temperament, one group will prefer a lake, another a short river, which they follow downstream to a point that appears particularly suited to their purposes. After they have investigated the area, the whole group gathers together again. Near the lake or river, there are usually trees. It is really remarkable how these clumsy beavers now suddenly become extraordinarily skillful. They make use of their front feet—not their hind feet, which are webbed so they can swim—more cleverly than a man handles his tools. Using their front paws and sharp teeth, they gnaw branches off trees and even cut through tree trunks. Then, when a group of them has enough branches and felled trees, they drag them either into the lake they have chosen or into the river.

These animals then push the branches and trees in the lake to the selected spot. Those who have dragged their trees into the river know full well that the river itself will carry them. They only steer the branches so that they won't drift to the side. In this way, all the branches and trees are transported to the spot they have chosen either on the lake's shore or alongside the stream.

Having arrived there, those who have chosen a lake—having transported the trees to the shore—immediately begin constructing so-called lodges. The others, who have picked a river, do not begin with the building of lodges; they first proceed to construct a network of branches. These are interlaced with each other (sketching) until they form a proper network. When the beavers have built up such a wall, they add a second by fetching more branches, all of the same length; in this way, they make a wall two meters or more thick. Thus, you see, the animals dam up the river; the water must flow over it, and underneath it they have free space. Only now, having finished their dam, this wall, do they build their lodge into the wall so that the river flows over it.

When the beavers have accumulated enough branches, and their wall appears thick enough to them, they haul in other material such as ordinary chunks of earth. They fashion a kind of loam from it and putty up the dam on all sides. The beavers first erect a wall, just like real architects. Those who select the lake site, however, don't need a dam and therefore don't try to build one.

After this wall is built—in the case of those who choose the lake, it begins immediately—the beavers begin constructing little lodges from the same material. They look like clay barrels (sketching), but they are real little houses, constructed like braided mats. They are puttied up so well that the small amount of water that seeps into the space can do the beavers no harm. Such a beaver lodge is never constructed in a part of the stream where the water freezes. Imagine how ingenious this is! As you know, water only freezes on its surface; if one dives deep enough, one comes to still or flowing water, neither of which freezes at that depth. Precisely at the level where the water never freezes, these beavers build their dwellings.

Each of these lodges has two floors. There is a floor built in here (sketching), and below it is the entrance. The beavers can run up and down in the lodge; they live upstairs and keep their winter supplies downstairs. They haul in the food they need for the winter, and when it is all stored, the beaver family moves into this lodge, remaining always near the other families.

There the beaver families live until spring, when they once again move to their solitary dwellings. During the winter, the food supplies are brought up from the lower floor, and in this way the beavers sustain themselves. As I said, when summer comes, they seek out their solitary burrows, but during the winter they are together. They lead their social life in beaver villages on the bottom of lakes or in streams by the side of the dam they have so skillfully constructed.

From all that has been observed, even beavers in zoos work solely with their teeth and front paws, never with their tails. Although it is formed most ingeniously, the tail is never used for work. There are many descriptions that claim that beavers employ their tails in working on their constructions, but that is a delusion; it is simply not true. Beavers do possess especially well-developed front legs and teeth, and they use them more cleverly than a man uses his tools.

You know that natural history classifies the various animal species, and among the mammals are the beasts of prey, bats, the ruminants, and so forth. Among the mammals are also the so-called rodents. Our rats, for example, are rodents. The beaver's structure actually puts it in the rodent family.

In any book on natural history, you will find that the rodents are described as the most stupid of mammals; hence, the beaver as individual animal is reckoned among the least intelligent mammals. One can say that the beaver, when studied as a single animal, appears above all as a terribly phlegmatic little rascal. Its phlegmatic temperament is so great that it can appear about as clever as phlegmatic humans appear: they show no interest in anything. The beaver is therefore awfully stupid, but it also accomplishes all these extraordinarily clever feats! For beavers, then, one can say that Rosegger's saying concerning man does not apply: “One is a human being, two are folks, if there are more, they are dumb animals.”¹ Rosegger said this not about beavers but about human beings. He means that when many people meet together, they become stupid. There is something true in this. In a crowd, people become confused and do make stupid impressions, though there certainly are intelligent people among them!

We can say that the opposite is the case with beavers. One is stupid, but several are a little cleverer.² When two or three hundred gather together in the autumn, they become most clever, they become real architects. Though we humans do not tend to be particularly sensitive to the special beauty of the constructions of beavers, this is due to our human taste, but the beaver lodge is really as trim as the beaver is clumsy.

Now, much research can be done on why the beavers are so clever when they congregate. An important indication lies in the fact that the beavers begin their activity in the fall; by day, however, one sees little of this activity. The construction of such a dam and beaver village—it is really an entire village that they lay out—takes place very quickly and is often finished in a matter of days. They are seen doing little during the day, extraordinarily little, but they work feverishly at night. Thus, the beaver's cleverness is brought about first by winter and second by night. Here lie the real clues for the study of this whole matter.

When people study, however, the first principle should be to avoid too much speculative thinking. This might sound strange, but you will understand what I mean. Man does not become especially intelligent through speculation. As a rule, if he ponders over something that he has observed, nothing particularly clever will result. If one wishes to understand the phenomena of the world, therefore, one should not rely too much on speculation; one's speculation is not at all the important thing. Should the facts call for it, one should think, but one's main attention should not be directed toward brooding over something one has observed as a means of figuring it out. Instead, other facts should be looked at, compared with the problem at hand, and a connection sought between them. The more one connects various facts, the more one learns to recognize in nature. People who have only brooded over nature have really not discovered anything more weighty than what they knew in the first place.

When a person becomes a materialist, he speaks materialistically about nature, because that is what he is to begin with. He does not discover anything new. When a man speaks idealistically about nature, he does so because he is an idealist to begin with. In almost all instances, it can be proven that through speculation people discover only what is made evident through what they had already become. Correct thinking only results when one simply allows the facts to guide one.

Now I will add another group of facts to those concerning the beaver, facts that will lead you to the correct clues, not through speculation but simply through a comparison of the facts. I have already referred to the wasps and told you of an observation about wasps made by Darwin. Today, I would like to point this out again.

The wasps make ingenious nests for themselves. Though faintly resembling beehives, the walls of these wasps' nests do not consist of wax but of actual paper. Secondly, the whole process differs from that of the bees. There are wasps' nests, for example, that are built first by digging up the ground; then something resembling a pouch is made. It is constructed somewhat like a beaver lodge, but it is put together with tiny twigs or whatever wood the wasps can find, which they work and shape in the right way so that they end up with a covering, a pouch-like covering that is somewhat thick. It is in this that they build their little nest. There they build their different floors. The cells are hexagonal, just like the bee's honeycomb, and are enveloped by a paper covering. They are like the floors in a building, and there are sometimes many of them, one above the other.

Everything inside the nest is fashioned of paper. The pouch-like outer covering, however, is not made of paper but of other materials, that is, of tiny twigs or bits of wood that are first split before being used. All this is woven into a network and then puttied up. That is what the outer covering consists of, and it is either built in a hole in the ground or fastened with putty to something up in the air. Within the pouch are the individual cells, into each of which an egg will be laid.

This is the story, then, with wasps. You can imagine that wasps are extraordinarily susceptible to the weather. Only some of one year's wasps survive until the following spring, but it doesn't matter if the others don't survive as long as one or two females from a nest remain. In winter they seek out a sheltered little nook where they as females can live scantily, and they hibernate there. In spring, these females emerge from their hiding places and are ready to lay their eggs. Interestingly enough, a special variety of wasps hatches from all these eggs in spring. These wasps that are hatched in spring, growing very quickly and not yet having cells, proceed immediately to construct such cells. Flying around in whole swarms, they look everywhere for materials with which to build a nest properly. This work continues all summer long. These wasps construct the cells there.

The wasps that hatch from eggs laid in spring have a specific characteristic; that is, they are all sterile and cannot reproduce. With these wasps there is no reproduction. Their reproductive organs are so stunted that reproduction is out of the question. So, the first thing the wasp does in spring is to produce an army of workers for itself that are sexless and terrible drudges; they toil throughout the summer.

I have known natural scientists who considered it a goal worth striving for to manipulate humans so as to produce sexless individuals. They would not have families and would only toil, leaving reproduction to a select few as with the wasps.

Well, the fact is that the sexless wasps toil away all summer. When summer is over, the female begins to lay eggs that produce males and females. As a rule, it is the same female that laid the sexless eggs earlier. Now she lays eggs from which, in autumn, males and females emerge.

The males develop into rather puny creatures. By comparison, the sexless wasps are quite robust workers. The males turn out to be stunted and cannot do much of anything. They have just enough time to feed for a while, mate, and then die. Truly, these male wasps play a rather sorry role. They are hastily hatched in fall, they must feed a little, and then they impregnate the females; after that, having accomplished their goal, they die. That is the last thing they do.

Among some types of wasps, the males are a bit hardier. Here things are really curious. Though it is only an exception, it resembles the behavior of certain spiders. With certain spiders, something remarkable is the case. You see, the female spiders consider the males good for nothing but fertilizing them. The males are permitted to approach the females only when they are ready for fertilization, never before. Before, the females generally don't permit the males to come near them; first they must be mature enough for the fertilization. Now, as I said, the following also occurs occasionally, as an exception, among wasps. Among spiders, which are, after all, lower creatures, when a female notices a greedy little male approaching, she places herself in a spot that is not easily accessible to him and even more difficult for him to leave. There the female waits for him, lets fertilization occur, and then lets him try to leave. When he comes up against an obstacle, the female quickly pursues him and bites him until he's dead. Here, the female spider herself sees to it that the male dies. Such is the case with some spiders. Just imagine, when the male has carried out his function, he must be killed, because he no longer serves a purpose.

Among wasps, however, the males die as a rule by themselves, because they have expended so much energy during their mating activity that they have no strength left and so perish. The sexless wasps die at the same time. After toiling all summer, they all die in the fall. The sexless and the male wasps die, and only the females remain. Of these, many also succumb to the cold of winter. Only those few survive that have found a secure shelter. They make it through to spring, lay eggs, and the whole cycle starts anew. So, in spring and summer only sexless wasps are born. Not until late fall, approaching winter, can the sexually active wasps be born.

These are the facts, you see, that must be observed. It is very important to connect these with other facts, since this shows us how much the sex life of animals is connected with the seasons of the year. The sex life of animals is very strongly connected with the course of the year.

Let us assume that it is summer. The earth is extraordinarily exposed to the sun's effects. The sun sends down light and warmth to the earth. Direct exposure to sunlight causes one to sweat; one notices the sun's effects by one's own condition. Neither the beaver nor the female wasp expose themselves directly to sunlight; they are always in some cave-like dwelling. In their holes they benefit from the sun's light and heat only indirectly through the earth. Thereby, as winter approaches they receive quite definite qualities. Just think, toward winter the wasps receive a quality that makes them capable of producing sexually active offspring.

What does this signify? The female wasp is exposed throughout the summer to the sun's heat and light and produces sexless wasps. You can therefore say that the effects of the sun are such that they actually destroy the sexuality of the wasps. It is quite obvious from this fact that the sun with its light and heat, which are reflected by the earth, has the effect of destroying the reproductive tendencies. This is why, when spring comes and warmth and sunlight prevail, the wasps produce sexless offspring. Only when winter approaches, when therefore the sun's heat and light no longer have the same intensity, do the wasps gain the strength to produce offspring with reproductive organs. This clearly demonstrates that the seasons of the year have a definite influence.

Now, if we turn from the wasps to the beavers, we must say to ourselves, the beaver is an extremely stupid, phlegmatic animal! It is stupid and phlegmatic to the highest degree. Wonderful. But where does it spend the summer? It stays in the ground in its solitary burrow, allowing heat and light that comes into the burrow to penetrate its body, so that it actually absorbs all the summer sunlight and warmth. When this absorption is completed in the fall, the beaver begins to look for other beavers, and together they become clever. It employs a cleverness that it does not possess as a single animal. Now, suddenly, as they gather together, the beavers become clever. Naturally, as single animals they could never construct all those beaver villages. The first step of choosing a suitable site is already clever.

This clearly illustrates what I pointed out last time: the cleverness that is in a creature must first be gathered, just as water is collected in pitchers. What does the beaver do while as a single animal it lives like a hermit in its summer house? The beaver gathers sunlight and the sun's warmth for itself—or so we say, because all we can perceive is the sun's light and warmth. In truth, the beaver gathers its intelligence. Along with sunlight and warmth, intelligence streams from the cosmos down upon the earth, and the beaver gathers it for itself; now the beaver has it, and it builds. With the beaver you can see in reality what I recently presented to you as a picture.

Something else now becomes comprehensible: the beaver's tail. Compare it with what I said about the dog's tail, the dog's tail being its organ of pleasure and therefore the soul organ of the dog. The dog wags its tail when it is happy. In the beaver's case it is so that within its tail, which the animal does not use as a tool but which is formed most ingeniously, the beaver has its accumulated intelligence. With it the animal directs itself. This means that the beaver is really directed by the sun's warmth and light. They are contained in the tail and have become intelligence. This is really the communal brain of this beaver colony.

These tails are the means by which the sunlight and warmth produce cleverness. The beaver does not employ its tail as a physical instrument; it uses its front paws and teeth as physical instruments. The tail, however, is something that has an effect; it has an effect just as when a group is being driven forward by somebody from behind. In that case, it is somebody driving them. Here it is the sun, which, through the beavers' tails, still has an aftereffect in winter and constructs the beaver village. It is the intelligence that comes down from the sun to the earth with light and warmth that does the building.

Naturally, what descends here as soul and spirit from the universe affects all the other creatures, including the wasps. How does it affect the wasps? When the female is exposed to the sun—meaning the sun's earthly effect, which it enjoys in its earthen hole—the force in the wasp's offspring that can bring forth more offspring is destroyed. The wasp can produce only sexless insects under the sun's influence. Only when the wasp is not so strongly exposed to the sun's heat, in autumn, and is still full of vitality—not subdued as in winter—does the force develop in it to bring forth sexually active wasps. This once again demonstrates plainly that what comes from the earth produces the sexual forces, whereas that which comes from the universe produces intelligence and kills the sexual forces. In this way a balance is brought about. When the wasp is more exposed to the earth, it develops sexual forces; when the wasp is exposed more to heaven—if I may use this word here—it does not develop sexual forces but produces sexless wasps instead. These sexless insects have in themselves the cleverness to construct a whole wasps' nest. Who, in fact, builds this nest? The sun builds it through the sexless wasps!

This is a most important point, gentlemen. In truth, the wasps' nests, as well as all the beavers' construction, are built by the cleverness that flows to earth from the sun. This is plain to see when all the facts are brought together. That is why I said to you that all speculation indulged in after something has been observed doesn't do a bit of good. Only when facts are compared and related to each other is a sound opinion gained.

People simply look at the isolated facts; this is why there is so much that is not to the point. They think to themselves, “Now, when one observes beavers, one observes beavers, and afterward one speculates about beavers. When one observes beavers, what does one care about wasps?” But one discovers nothing if one fails to observe something that is seemingly so far removed from the beaver as the wasp. If one were to look at the wasp, one would see that wasps' nests are also constructed through the cleverness that comes to us from the sun.

The sun's effects can still be observed in a tame beaver in a cage, although the animal need not be tame, because it is so phlegmatic, but needs only to be in captivity. When the sun's effects cease to be so strong and instead the earth influences it, even the caged beaver begins its winter activities. It tries to bite through the wires of its cage. This is said to be the beaver's instinct. Anybody can say “instinct”; that is just a word. Such words are like empty containers into which everything is poured that one knows nothing about. If one wishes to explain something like instinct, however, one reaches the point where one must say: it is indeed the sun! Gentlemen, it really is so. In this manner, through the pure facts, one comes to recognize how the cosmic surroundings of the earth affect living beings.

Now it is no longer so surprising that some American comes to say that those humans born in the months from December to March most readily acquire intelligence. In the case of human beings, matters have become quite complicated. Everything in man tends toward his becoming independent from all that animals are still dependent upon. You must therefore consider the following. Persons born between December and March were conceived between March and May. Their births date back to conceptions that took place in the spring nine months earlier, between March and May, and hence to a time approaching summer. According to everything I have explained today, the sun's effects are always stronger then. So, what does the sun do? It subdues human sexual forces just a little—not completely, because man is more independent than the animals—and these subdued sexual forces become forces of intelligence. That is why such a person has an easier time of it, while those born in summer must work somewhat more at acquiring their cleverness. That can happen, but it is true that humans have different predispositions. Those conceived in spring and born the following winter tend to acquire forces of intelligence more easily than those born at other times.

All this must be known so that these differences can be compensated for through education. In man, this can be done. Wasps, however, cannot be educated to produce sexless offspring that build nests in winter, nor can beavers be educated to overcome nature, as we say, to a certain degree. You can see from this that to overcome something is different for man from what it is for animals. In the animals, the soul-spiritual element depends completely on cosmic development. It simply depends on the sun for wasps' nests and beaver lodges to be built.

Something else can be seen in the beaver. In fall, these beaver hermits that have spent the entire summer in seclusion come together in groups of two and three hundred, and only then, as groups, can they employ the intelligence bestowed by the sun. They can use it as groups, not individuals. Individually, they could never accomplish this; it must be the work of the group.

With human beings much can be accomplished by the individual that animals can only accomplish in groups. This is why in anthroposophy we say that with animals the soul life exists only in groups—hence, group souls. Man, however, has his individual soul.

Now, this is most interesting. I once told you what the human thigh bone looks like, for example. In the beaver, it really is not the same, but a human thigh bone looks like an extraordinarily delicate, beautiful work of art. In it there are beams, quite ingeniously constructed. A human being is actually built up in such a way that, when observing him correctly, one can say: he builds everything in himself that the beaver builds outwardly. By nature, he builds everything in himself that the beaver builds outwardly. The question then arises: where does all that is so wisely and ingeniously constructed within a human being originate? If the beaver construction originates from the sun and its surroundings, the human organization also originates from the sun. We are, indeed, not earthly beings but sun beings and have only been placed on the earth. What for? You can see when you consider this matter.

From the earth the wasps have the power to produce sexual offspring. Man must be on the earth in order to have his reproductive force. By comparison, he has another force that is more rational, which he gets from the cosmic surroundings. We can see quite clearly that man gets his intelligence from the cosmic surroundings, and the reproductive force he gets from the earth. One could go further and show how the moon is related to the earth, but there is no more time today. We can go into that another time. You can see, however, that if facts are viewed correctly they lead you to realize that the world is really a unity and that we are dependent also upon the earth's surroundings, which consist not merely of a shining, warming sun but also of a clever sun, an intelligent sun. This is extremely important, because the individual questions that you pose can be answered better in this way. You see that the reproductive force, which I described to you last time, is related to drinking. Why are they related in such a way that a little drinking does not make such a difference but heavy drinking does? You can figure this out from the following.

What is alcohol? Wine demonstrates what alcohol actually is, because wine, which only wealthy people can afford to drink, has the most harmful effect. Beer is less harmful for the reproductive organs than wine. Beer affects other organs more—the heart, kidneys, and so forth—but the alcohol in wine and, of course, especially the alcohol in hard liquor, affects the reproductive organs.

Where does the substance contained in wine and hard liquor originate? It originates through the influence of the sun's forces! This substance needs the whole summer to mature. Now you can see why it becomes harmful to the reproductive organs. When one drinks, the reproductive organs are subjected to what has been absorbed inwardly in the way food is, to what should be absorbed solely by way of the sun itself, the sun's shining. This takes its toll. Man drinks something that the sun produces outside of him. It becomes a poison through this. When the warmth of the sun is taken into the system in the right way, however, the organism itself produces the small quantity of alcohol it. needs, as I have explained. In drinking alcohol, man really admits an enemy into his system, because what is introduced in the right way from outside turns into a poison when it is consumed inwardly, and vice versa. I have demonstrated this to you in the case of phosphorus. So, what works in alcohol is what the sun has produced in it, because the sun has matured it. When the sun shines on us, it is the other way around; then we must absorb warmth and light from outside. When we consume alcohol, however, we warm ourselves inwardly. The same force that is our friend when we make use of it outwardly becomes our enemy when we use it internally.

The same is also true in nature. There are forces in nature that work beneficially from one direction, but when they work from the opposite direction they work as poisons. We can gain comprehension only when we examine this in the right way.

I wanted to add this so that you could understand better everything that relates to Mr. E's question. Now think all this over. Should you wish to ask further questions, I hope to be here next Saturday.

• 1. Note by translator: In the German text, this saying by the Austrian poet, Peter Rosegger, is rendered in untranslatable Austrian dialect: “Oaner is a Mensch, zwoa san Leit, san's mehra, san's Viecher.”
• 2. Here Rudolf Steiner mimics the same Austrian dialect and says, “Oaner is dumm, und mehra san a bissel gescheiter.”

Yesterday I tried to characterize the nature of the moment in human evolution at which we find ourselves. I tried to show you how, in the course of human evolution, humanity has now arrived at a point where it is absolutely dependent on what we call the science of initiation. This means that it is necessary, firstly, for the branches of knowledge of human cultural life to be permeated by this science of initiation, but secondly also for social thinking and social feeling to be permeated by those feelings and perceptions that result for the human soul from consciousness: there is a spiritual revelation, a supersensible revelation – one need only turn to it.

One can be convinced that many people come and say: Yes, but history has been conscientiously studied, and what is supposed to result from spiritual science about the character of the present period, and how it has developed from the preceding ones, is not spoken of in history.

Yes, it does not speak of it because, uninfluenced by real spiritual knowledge, it does not ask about its real impulses and forces. In order to know what speaks through history, one must first understand how to ask history in the right way.

Now, the three successive post-Atlantean periods, the primeval Indian, the primeval Persian, the Egyptian-Chaldean, are such that, in the sense sense, humanity has become younger and younger, that is to say, in the second period it did not remain capable of development into those years in which it was still capable of development in the first period, and so on. In the Graeco-Latin period, that is to say, in the period that began in the 8th century BC and ended in the 15th century, it was the case that human beings remained capable of development until the beginning of their thirties. When this period closed in the 15th century, human beings were clearly capable of development until well beyond the twenty-eighth year. Today, as we have emphasized, the ability to develop only extends to the twenty-seventh year and will descend more and more.

Now, simply due to their physical and bodily constitution, human beings can only come into contact with the spiritual world from their thirties onwards. Do not misunderstand me! Of course, if he turns to spiritual science, he can come into contact with the spiritual world earlier, even today; but if man, through his own development, which is bound to the physical body, is to receive spiritual forces from the universe, this can only happen if he remains capable of development well into his thirties. He does not. Therefore, from our point of view, there can be no question of human development progressing by natural means. It can only progress if humanity is fertilized by the science of initiation.

Now, as I have already indicated in one of the previous lectures, there are initiates in areas of Western civilization, especially in Anglo-American areas. But the peculiar thing about these initiates is that, from their point of view, they only intend to promote as a science of initiation that which British-American world domination can gradually bring about on earth. However strange it may sound, it is so. And it may be said that every single assertion that comes from this side bears a stamp that the knowledgeable person can recognize as being true. Above all, the various ways in which the science of initiation is handled in Western countries point to all these things.

You have seen that, within certain limits, certain truths of initiation are not withheld here. And if you look through what has been presented to you over the years, you will find in it, if you really follow things unsleeping, a whole series of important initiatory truths that are suitable for bringing not just a part of humanity, but all of humanity across the earth, beyond the current crisis and towards a real further development. But you will always find people, especially among Western initiates, who disapprove of and condemn the fact that so much of what has been communicated here is being made public today. This is due to a distorted conception of the science of initiation. In order to make you understand this distorted conception, I must first say the following.

The science of initiation always addresses the individual human being. Even if it speaks to a group of people, it is in reality addressing the individual human being. One cannot present the true science of initiation in the way it used to be presented to people in the past. The Catholic Church, for example, transplanted this kind of thing into the present day, and not only the Catholic Church, but certain political parties also still use the same method today. The way they worked was to use, if I may put it this way, the mass psyche, to appeal to what is instilled in a community of people in a certain, I would say hypnotic, way. You know that, as a rule, if you only use the appropriate means, you can teach a crowd things more easily than you can teach each individual to whom you wanted to speak. There is some truth to such mass hypnosis.

These methods, which are quite effective, cannot be used by a true wisdom of initiation. It must speak as though addressing each individual person and appeal to the powers of persuasion of each individual person. The way of speaking which the science of initiation, which today stands at the height of human development, must make use of, has not yet existed. Therefore, the way in which, for example, I speak here and in my books is still an abomination to some people today, because the way of speaking strictly adheres to the rule of appealing only to the power of persuasion of the individual individuality.

This also gives us an important social principle, which I have already mentioned in another context in recent days and which you will find systematically and in principle implemented in my book “The Philosophy of Freedom”. If you only want to appeal to the individual with ethical, moral impulses, then you cannot want to organize from general abstractions, then you cannot group people together like herd animals in order to give them some kind of common directive, but then one can only appeal to the individual and then wait for the right thing to happen in the whole, because each individual, in his standing in the whole, wants the right thing.

The social morality of the future cannot be based on any other principle than this principle of general human behavior. When I published my “Philosophy of Freedom”, for example, a review appeared in the “Athenaeum” in which it was said that such a view leads to a theoretical anarchism. But it only leads to anarchism if we do not succeed in making people into real people, that is, if people absolutely want to be subhuman, if they absolutely want to be kept together under such aspects as the members of a group of animals are kept together. Lions are held together as lions by their very shape, hyenas too, dogs too; but the development of humanity is such that in the future groups of people should not be organized either by blood ties or by ideological ties like flocks of sheep, but that what arises from the interaction of people should actually happen out of the power of individualities.

A few days ago I used a comparison here that may sound a little grotesque, but which I believe can shed light on the whole matter. I do not know whether there are not also people who would find it particularly liberating if they saw inscriptions everywhere: Decree of such and such an authority: The one who walks in this direction must give way to the other who walks in the other direction. Even in populous cities, people generally still get along with each other on the street, they pass each other; out of their reason, out of what they have as an impulse within them, they do not constantly push each other away. Humanity is moving towards this ideal. That it does not recognize this is its misfortune. It is important to have the directives of one's actions within oneself, even in important matters, so that the other can rely on them, without a common law that trains them to behave in such a way that the other can exist alongside them.

This work towards individuality is what is connected with the most important impulses of human development. Human individuality can never be brought to bear on something like this if it can only be conveyed through the current knowledge of nature or the current social science or the current social motives. Man only comes to such an individuality as I have just spoken of when a mass of thoughts is awakened in him that comes from the science of initiation. Only through his relation to the supersensible is man imbued with such thoughts as will make him a free individuality, but which can also function in the social order with the greatest possible freedom. Everything depends on humanity opening its heart and mind to what comes from the science of initiation.

Great trust must become the most important social motive of the future. People must be able to rely on each other. Otherwise things will not move forward. What I have told you now seems obvious to anyone who is serious about the whole of humanity, if they are sufficiently initiated into supersensible things, to the extent that they must say: either this happens or humanity goes into the abyss. There is no third way.

You can say that you cannot imagine that a social order is based on general trust. To that one can only answer: Fine, if you cannot imagine it, then you just have to imagine: Humanity must go into the swamp. – These things are serious, and they must be taken seriously as such.

To a certain degree of abstraction, the initiates of Western countries also know this. But they say the following: We have the science of initiation to a certain degree, we could publish it. They would, however, only publish a science of initiation that leads to the goals I have indicated; we are also now moving in an area that is just as applicable to the true science of initiation as it is to the one-sided one. The initiates of Western countries can therefore say: We have the science of initiation; we can publish it, but the fact is that it is only addressed to the individual. Now the great fear begins for these people, the terrible fear. They say, 'Yes, if we only speak to individuals in the future, then we will unleash a fight of everyone against everyone, because then people are not organized, then we rely on general trust, then people will enter into the fight of everyone against everyone. This fear stands before people. Therefore, they want to keep the most important truths of initiation, I would say, in the darkroom and let humanity walk towards the future in an apparent light, but asleep.

These things are indeed very topical, since the mid-19th century, when the peak of materialism in modern civilization was reached and since then people have had to ask themselves: How far do we go with the science of initiation? — They have not dared to communicate a real science of initiation to humanity beyond certain smaller circles until now.

Now, a certain education that humanity has undergone must not be allowed to break down, but it is already breaking down today thanks to a completely misguided theology. You can follow this education if you do not study that fable convenue which is usually called “history”, but if you study real history. Today, people do not really know how what is designated by certain words has changed over time. People talk about Catholicism, about emperorship, about aristocracy, about bourgeoisie, and believe that if they find the same words in the fourteenth century, they mean approximately the same thing, perhaps only a little nuance is different. As long as we do not realize that what Catholicism, emperorship, bourgeoisie and aristocracy meant in the 14th century has nothing at all in common with what we mean by these words today, we do not understand history. We must be quite clear about how the state of mind of human beings has really changed a great deal over the course of a few centuries.

What was it, then, that, until the 15th century, and in its after-effects even further, was the basis of what worked from general human education into the consciousness of the souls of the civilized world? All this was based on the fact that, during these centuries, human beings were able to assimilate supersensuous knowledge into their imaginative life, not in the way it is to be assimilated now through spiritual science, but in the way they were able to assimilate it at that time, according to their still atavistic states of consciousness. A fundamental fact filled human souls. It was the fundamental fact that is connected with the Mystery of Golgotha. In the way people thought at that time, they knew that the Christ-Being had descended from supermundane heights, had been embodied in the man Jesus of Nazareth, and that something had happened in the Mystery of Golgotha that could not have happened according to ordinary laws discoverable by the knowledge of nature. The concepts and ideas that people had of the Mystery of Golgotha had such ideas and such conceptions that went beyond the earthly sphere.

Such conceptions create very different thought forms than the ideas that the average person has today. The thoughts that people have today do not extend into the supersensible life at all. Thoughts that people formed with such a connection to the mystery of Golgotha, as I have just characterized it, were suitable for evoking thought forms that had a reality in the supersensible. Therefore, one can also characterize the present moment in time by saying that humanity has gradually lost the ability to form such thought forms that have a meaning in the supersensible. Thus, one cannot create social orders on Earth that will advance it. Therefore, everything that has been introduced into humanity in the way of social ideas since about the sixteenth century bears the character that can be described as follows: We encounter social institutions according to the thought forms that are the thought forms of modern times. All such social institutions are destined to break down. They have no inner power of further development. That is even the secret of the newer development. No matter how willingly people may create social institutions on the basis of the external world-building that has taken place since the 16th century, all these social institutions carry the seed of death within them as they arise, because they are not connected to thought-forms that have a reality in the supersensible. As long as there are no people in the present who understand this, there is no point in talking about social progress at all. It is not a matter of deriving social ideas in an abstract way, perhaps out of some spiritual web of thought. That is not important at all. In my “Key Points of the Social Question”, for example, there is no long chapter about spiritual science from which social laws are then deduced, but reality itself draws attention to what has to happen. What matters is not that one deduces the social life from some spiritual web or other, but that one is oneself imbued with such thoughts, which are rooted in the supersensible. For it is this state of being imbued that makes it possible for everything one thinks to have a reality in the supersensible.

It is a paradox, but the following is quite true: Imagine a person, I will say a “statesman” - a word that is currently said in quotation marks - who says all sorts of clever things, that is, things that people today call clever, but has never established a connection with the supersensible world. What he says, if realized in reality, would bear the germ of death. Another speaks. If one does not know that he is engaged in spiritual science, one does not even need to notice it from his speech; he just talks about things in a slightly different way. From what he says about social issues, for example, one does not even need to notice that he is engaged in spiritual science, but the fact that he is engaged in spiritual science gives his ideas the real impulse.

So the point is that today it is not enough to have an abstract logic, but that one must speak reality. Because today we are already at a stage in the development of humanity that, let's say, a journalist can write the most beautiful things that people admire because they say: Yes, when I read this, it is pure spiritual science! That is not the point! Today it is no longer about the wording, but about the basis of the soul, from which something like this comes. It is about what the human being carries within himself as substance!

If I am to draw a comparison from a completely different field, then let it be the one I have often used before: there are poets today who write poetry with extraordinary ease, who make beautiful verses that one can admire. Nevertheless, the same also applies: today, ninety-nine percent of poetry is overdone. But there are others whose verses are like a stammer; but these verses, which sound like a stammer, can come from a genuine human, that is, spiritual, source, while those that one admires because the languages are so simple that any fool can create something admirable out of language can be worthless sound.

Today it is absolutely necessary to go beyond the mere wording to the motive, that is, not to remain in the abstract, not to read according to the wording, but to place oneself in full life and judge the phenomena from the standpoint of life. And so it is a matter of spiritual science, as it is meant here, above all, having to have a fertilizing effect on the various branches of life, otherwise what must happen will not happen.

When two people talk to each other, they communicate through language. But in relatively recent times, language was quite different from what it is today. Today, when we communicate through language, we actually become more or less a slave to language. In the past, people learned a great deal through the genius of language, and they did not actually think very much themselves; they let language do the thinking for them. This only worked until the period I described to you yesterday. Today, people only get ahead if they can emancipate themselves from language with their thinking and feeling. Language today runs, as it were, like a mechanism in which we stand, and instead of us, Ahriman actually lives more and more in the development of language. Ahriman actually speaks today when people speak. And little by little people have to get used to understanding each other from something quite different than from the mere wording of languages. One must go much deeper into life in order to understand another person today than in the age when the wings of language still contained what people had exchanged with each other. Today this is no longer contained in the wings of language. Today one can basically be a person completely empty of real knowledge. But the fact that language – every civilized language today – has gradually developed sentence forms, sentences, and even entire theories that already lie in the language, you just need to change what is in the language a little, then you have something seemingly created by itself, in reality you have basically just mixed up a little what was already there.

It would be very easy today, as grotesque as it may sound to you, to do the following experiment. Take the pronouncements of good bourgeois professors, philosophy professors, natural science professors and the like, who are only slightly inclined towards materialism, towards one side or the other, take what these people have said over the past few decades, in the second half of the 19th century, and with a little rethinking, the following can be easily achieved. Take, I mean, any concoction of a fairly brave philosopher, a brave dozen philosophers from the second half of the 19th century, who has expressed himself on this or that social thing, you can now take away certain adjectives and replace them with others that are in another sentence. You can turn things around a bit – and out of it comes the life philosophy of Mr. Trotsky! In order to be a Trotskyist with a Weltanschauung today, one does not need to be able to think for oneself at all, but only to let language think within oneself in the way I have just described. But because language has emancipated itself from them in a certain way, it is not people who are at work here, but Ahrimanic powers in human culture.

What I have told you now can be experienced. One only has to have the inner soul eyes open to such things. For those who work not with words but with thoughts, language today is a truly dreadful instrument. It is indeed not easy for those who work with thoughts to write today. Because if you want to write a sentence, it will not do so because so and so many people have written similar sentences. The sentence always wants to form itself out of the collective psyche, but you must first become its enemy in order to truly shape what is in your soul into a sentence. Anyone who works for the public today and cannot feel this hostility of language always runs the risk of abandoning themselves to the thinking of language and devising beautiful programs out of language.

The necessity of enforcing one's thoughts must begin today with the struggle against language. Nothing is more dangerous than for a person to allow themselves to be carried by language, in the sense of: This is how you express it, that is how you express it. — Because by having a stereotyped way of expressing things, by being able to say: you can only say it that way – you actually go with the usual flow of speech and do not work from the original thought.

Our schools are terrible in this respect. The schoolmasters, who actually correct every seemingly clumsy but at least original thought in terms of convention, commit great crimes in school. One should search for every awkward but substantially individual sentence that any boy or girl writes at school. One should use it to start discussions at school and not use the cursed red ink to replace what comes out of youthful individuality with convention. For today it is most important to look at what comes out of youthful individualities. Perhaps it will reveal itself in a way that we do not always find comfortable, that we easily see as flawed. If one wanted to correct Goethe's youthful letters with the eye of a high school teacher, then many things would have to be corrected! The Austrian poet Robert Hamerling received the worst grade in the “German essay” in his teaching examination! And there is still some truth to what Hebbel wrote in his diary, as I have often mentioned: he wanted to write a drama with the motif that a high school teacher of the higher grades in particular has a student who is the reincarnation of Plato, with whom he reads Plato in class; then the teacher finds that this “reincarnation of Plato” does not understand the slightest thing about Plato! The poet Friedrich Hebbel noted down this motif for a drama that was then not carried out. But there is some truth to it.

Now we must be clear about the fact that at all times, seduced by the remaining Luciferic and Ahrimanic powers, people have resisted the normal progress of humanity. Today we are faced with the necessity of having to seek something completely new from spiritual life in order to save humanity. It is no wonder that people are violently opposed to all kinds of logical absurdities and immorality. And so, for a long time now, I have always had to talk about my own situation as a kind of prologue to our reflections.

About a week ago I told you about the defamatory and mean way in which a large number of German newspapers are currently reporting things that are known to be their source, but which could turn against everything that comes from anthroposophically oriented spiritual science and the related social issues. It is a very direct example, I might say, of what is happening “at the house” itself, how strongly the opposing forces are stirring. But there is a certain reason why I would like to characterize this matter for you in somewhat more detail today. To this end, I would like to draw attention once more to what has happened. It has come about that a defamatory report suddenly appeared in a number of German newspapers, which can be summarized in the following sentences. I have already read these sentences. However, we should bear them in mind once more, for they are actually worthy of being remembered as a characteristic example of certain cultural phenomena of the present day:

"Rudolf Steiner as political informer. The well-known Theosophical charlatan Dr. Rudolf Steiner, who influences millions of men and women, founded a league for the threefold social organism in Stuttgart in the spring of 1919, which was originally supposed to be only a religious-communist community, but then came into political contact with the Bolsheviks and communists and is now engaged in a very strange and repulsive political agitation. We learn the following about this from Dresden: “It is unequivocally clear from authentic reports” – please note this sentence, “it is unequivocally clear from authentic reports” – “that the League for Threefold Order is determining the names of all officers allegedly active in a reactionary sense and collecting evidence against them of acts contrary to international law based on witness statements, which is then to be sent to the Entente for extradition. Mr. Steiner and his comrades are completely unconcerned about the accuracy of such accusations, and the fact that they do not even shrink from deliberately false statements is proved by the passage of a letter which says: “Accusations of theft are to be avoided because it is easier to prove that they are untrue. Similarly, one should not make incredible accusations such as the mutilation of children.”

Now, of course, this most slanderous and most mendacious story, sentence by sentence, is going through a series of German newspapers! One can be amazed at the most diverse things in it, but let us single out one fact. There is talk of letters that are said to have been written and that are referred to as authentic documents. In the issue of “Dreigliederung” that has not yet appeared, I expressly pointed out that I am well aware of the dubious sources from which such things originate. Now, however, I will read you a charming document from which you will see what the authentic foundations are for those people who spread such things into the world.

After this flood of meanness had subsided, and after I had received confirmation from various other sides of what I had known anyway about the murky sources, I received the following letter from a friend. This letter only reached me now, but it was written – I ask you to bear this in mind – before these newspaper articles appeared. So what this letter contains has been established before the newspaper articles appeared. I ask you to bear this fact in mind. This letter states:

So you see, there are factories for forging letters! These letters really do circulate. It continues:

"The second letter makes the following suggestion: Since there are still many officers in the army who are monarchists, it would be absolutely necessary to neutralize them by the following shameless means. The members of the troop to which the officer in question belonged during the campaign should be searched for people who, under oath, are to testify to as many of the person's crimes as possible. It is also stated in more detail that these would only have to be credible offenses, not rape, infanticide, and similar things. This record of sins should then be transmitted by a Mr. Grelling” - that is the only name mentioned in the letter - ‘to the Entente, and they would then demand the immediate extradition of the persons concerned.’

Both letters were read by the person concerned with his own eyes.

So this is the letter referred to in the newspaper article, the letter that is probably circulating in countless copies and that is addressed to this and that office in Berlin! So first the letters are forged, fabricated, then the newspaper articles are made up. This is the method of fighting!

I would like to know if other things are needed to make it clear that it is necessary to wake up today! — From what has happened in recent years, a moral ground for humanity has emerged, which was rooted in the impossibilities that had already preceded it, and which is producing such flowers.

It is no longer acceptable to continue sleeping when we know the depths of the swamp we are in. It could easily be, if these things were not talked about openly, that there would still be people in our ranks who would say, for example: Shouldn't we rather write to all the fine gentlemen who forge letters and then use the forged letters to fabricate newspaper articles in order to change their minds? Today it is really a matter of opening our eyes and seeing what kind of people are walking around among us, people whom we would soil ourselves if we got seriously involved with them. These things must not be overlooked; this must be said again and again. The connections must be pointed out. Do you think that it can be with impunity that, for example, in those Jesuit publications, in which the false statements that I have already mentioned to you are printed, the story has been circulated for years that I am a runaway priest, and then simply to take back such a thing with the words: This is something that one heard, “but which could not be substantiated”? Do you think that one has the right to say to such a Jesuit priest: You have taken back what you spread? No, one has to say to him: You have violated your duty in the most irresponsible way by spreading a thing unchecked, and your retraction means nothing at all. Today, morality must be taken seriously by those people who still understand something about morality. During the past five years, we have heard almost nothing but lies from all over the civilized world, and we are still living under the effects of the lie. It is necessary to face these things seriously.

Here you can clearly see an example of how things are. When things are not brought home to us through karma, so that the individual is at the same time completely decisive for the general, then there will always be people who want to vote for compromises, who, for example, treat a Ferriere still as a human being, with whom one engages on equal terms, while he belongs to the scum of the human race, by writing something unscrupulously, which he accepts without verification. These things are no longer acceptable today for a person who wants to stand on sound ground.

If I did not have this example of the origin of a matter at hand, it would not be so easy to believe me that there are now factories for forging letters, on the basis of which “they” then treat people in public as they did in this newspaper article.

But that happens today over and over again, and a large part of what you read consists of nothing other than the blossoms of this moral swamp. Today it is simply part of a healthy, serious and honest world view to know these things and to treat them accordingly. Today people are not allowed to make compromises with people who work with defamation in this way. For it cannot be justified by saying: One must be benevolent towards all people — love towards all people! — Love towards such people means extreme unkindness towards those who are slandered, who are distorted. It is a matter of knowing where to direct one's love. For loving the crime can never lead to the recovery of humanity. That such things would come could be foreseen. But it could be foreseen not only from the way certain quarters have been working. You only have to open the Jesuit literature that has been unleashed since the Church's condemnation of the anthroposophical writings in July 1919. You only have to look at the people who write and examine their approach to the truth, and you will naturally see everything that ultimately leads into such swamps. I do not want to talk today about the very murky sources, which I know very well and through whose acquaintance I also know how all these things are connected and how they are just the beginning.

I only wish that as few people as possible would be naive enough to believe that refutations could achieve anything. For these people, it is not about asserting this or that, but only about asserting something juicy, whereby they disparage others. These people could not care less about what they assert.

But not only that we have to take into account the fact that today we have numerous such people among us who work in this way, but also that we have to take into account the fact that for decades now, due to drowsiness, we have had a broad tolerance among the general public for this kind of thing, a reluctance to look at how public opinion is actually made today. But that is the most important part of what can lead to improvement. As long as people of the caliber of the Jesuit Zimmermann or the university professor Dessoir are not treated in the appropriate way, there can be no recovery. The people who stand opposite them and do not give them the right treatment are even more guilty than these individuals. For these individuals conduct their business in these matters, albeit in such a dirty way as Professor Dessoir. I characterized this to you some time ago. But it is a matter of finally waking up. Because a Dessoir book or a Zimmermann critique leads straight to these swamps, which I was able to characterize for you. I had to mention this not only with the intention of showing the symptoms of the forces that are effective in our time to suppress every legitimate spiritual aspiration, And so I would also like to mention the fact that I was recently given an article here that was supposedly intended for the Brockhaus Conversations Encyclopedia, for which the infamous Dessoir — infamous only with us! — was supposed to write articles about anthroposophy; at the same time that he had these articles of mine written by an intermediary, he was writing his book, this disgrace. But now consider the case that this article would lie here in our local archives! It would later be found there as an article that is said to come from me. So someone might say: Yes, Steiner copied the article in the archives from Dessoir's article in the encyclopedia and claimed it for himself! - Such blossoms can be driven when one is not awake! First one's things can be stolen by literary thieves, and then they can appear in such a way somewhere that not the one who made them but the one who stole them is considered the author and the one who is the author is considered the thief!

The moral question must be approached today from many sides; but it will not be approached profitably by anyone who does not stand on the ground of a sound spiritual science. That is what I wanted to share with you in the appendix to today's lecture, based on contemporary history.

Automated Translation

The first theme proposed for your consideration would be: The great questions of the present and the threefold social organism. It is necessary that we choose these topics that you want to address in such a way that there is an opportunity to get to know as precisely as possible, firstly, what the present needs and, secondly, what the impulse for the threefolding of the social organism has to offer with regard to the great questions of the present. always have the opportunity to point out, on the one hand, that anthroposophically oriented spiritual science must provide the basis for this kind of social thinking, which is to be brought into the world through the threefold social order, and, on the other hand, that the opportunity should always be offered to advocate for the “day to come” and the like. Its activity will have to extend to our movement as a whole, both to the spiritual side and to practical institutions. On the one hand, you will have to make it plausible to the world that it is necessary in the present time to cultivate a truly productive spiritual life; on the other hand, you will have to take into account the practical side, that we simply, as a intervene as a movement in social and economic life, and that we must therefore be strengthened financially as much as possible, not for our own sake but for the sake of the progress of economic life.

Today, in particular, I would like to raise a few points regarding the necessary topics, to set the scene for our further deliberations. It might be best if we then choose a second topic along the lines of: The free system of education and teaching in its relation to the state and the economy. - And if we then choose the third topic: The economic association system and its relation to the state and to the free spiritual life. - By choosing these three topics, we will have the opportunity to present to the world in the next few weeks what really belongs to our movement as a whole in an effective way.

Now let us first talk about something fundamental regarding the first topic. Above all, it will be about showing people that threefolding is, so to speak, already there as a demand, that one is not doing anything other than shaping what is already there in the right way. There it is, but in a form different from what it should be and will be when it has been fully developed; there it is as a demand of three things, but today they are chaotically intermingled and precisely because of this they fight each other internally fight against each other like some kind of monstrosity, which might have come into being in something like this, as if the head of man were in his stomach and the digestive organs in the heart and the like, if the three systems of the organism were mixed up. So what is actually there, what wants to develop, should be given the right form.

To make this clear, let us start with the third link in the social organism, with economic life. This economic life can be characterized, as it exists today, by following its development over the last few centuries. In the last few centuries, economic life itself has only taken on the forms that exist today and out of which the whole social question has arisen. It has certainly been a somewhat longer process. Even if we go back as far as we want, the economic life that we face today does not go back further than the 14th or 13th century. That was the time when European economic life went through a kind of crisis, one might say a creeping crisis. That was the time when European economic life was thoroughly preparing for a change.

If we go back to earlier times, we find that European economic life was thoroughly influenced by the continental trade and traffic movement from Asia through Central Europe to Western Europe. And we find in those older times everywhere that economic life takes place with a certain matter-of-factness, and that traffic also takes place with a certain matter-of-factness. To a certain extent, economic conditions had not yet developed so intensely that it was necessary to restrict and organize the freedom of trade and commerce. But as the population of Central Europe became more and more dense, as economic life became more and more intense, the necessity arose to organize all kinds of things. And out of the freer economic life of the older times, a much more constrained economic life emerged. The freer economic life of earlier times is characterized by the fact that the individual economies, the individual households, which were more like household economies, were run by their private owners, with the help of servants and a population in bondage, according to the instincts of their private owners, and that an extensive trade, which was certainly conducted across from Asia, did not need to be regulated in any particular way either. It could be carried out quite freely, because economic life was not yet intensive.

But, as I said, with the increase in population, and with the development of other conditions, which we can mention in a moment, the intensity of economic life became greater and greater; and it became necessary to take certain protective measures that were not necessary before, protective measures that all had more or less the character of supporting the consumer. It is a curious fact that at the same time as economic life was going through a kind of creeping crisis, as it did in the 13th and 14th centuries, without much ado, a tendency to protect the consumer in some way emerged everywhere. What is it other than consumer protection when the cities through which trade had to pass, through which the trade routes ran, asserted the so-called staple right, so that the passing tradesman had to stay for a certain number of days and only then was he allowed to pass through with the goods he could not sell in the city during those days and then sell them freely? So it is about consumer protection, everywhere it is about consumer protection.

In particular, although it is not immediately apparent, something else in this period is definitely calculated for the protection of the consumer. I have just delved into this question and finally found out – if you approach it with an open mind, you cannot help but find out – that the establishment and development of the guilds, although they seemingly organized production, were basically undertaken to support the consumption of the products manufactured in the guilds. This was done indirectly by organizing the production system. Although the guilds were formed by combining similar trades, the main focus was not so much on organizing production in some way, but rather on ensuring that those who joined the guilds could sell their products at such a high price that their consumption was secured in the appropriate way. The guilds were in fact a protective device for consumption. If you simply take any manuals from the library and look up the data you can find there, you will be able to say to yourself, when you consider the guidelines I am giving you here, that the economic life of that time is characterized in a certain way by this.

And now this economic life developed under such protective measures for several centuries. But it always had a kind of creeping crisis in itself. It just became more and more intense. And that is the peculiar thing: an economic life that becomes more and more intense in a certain territory also makes more and more restrictions, protective measures, and organizations necessary. An economic life that is open in some way, that has access to inexhaustible sources on some side, namely agriculture, land, does not have the urge to organize itself. An economic life that is enclosed on all sides and becomes more and more intensive has the urge to organize itself.

Now, this European economic life would undoubtedly have faced a decadence of enormous significance over the course of the centuries if an event with which you are all familiar had not occurred. What initially saved us from this decadence was, on the one hand, the opening of sea routes and, on the other, the discovery of America. This opened up economic life again towards the West. It cannot be said, because the opening was too great, that an outlet was opened there. That would have been a very large outlet! But this is what in turn took economic life in a completely different direction. Now, of course, the advent of modern technology coincides with the impact of this path to the west. But this modern technology would never have been possible under any other circumstances than through the opening of the whole of economic life to the West. These things simply gave what gave the newer economic life its basic configuration. The most important political events that I mentioned yesterday then take place within this economic life.

Now, in this European economic life, we have two tendencies. One tendency developed under the compulsion of the intensive economy in the second half of the Middle Ages and even beyond, and subsequently took on the character of a certain economic way of thinking. People learned to think economically under the conditions that developed, say, from the 13th to the 16th, 17th century. That is when people absorbed the ideas of how to run a business. What became the driving economic ideas were developed in trade, and very slowly also in industry, and even in agriculture. They essentially took shape during this time. One could also say that those sections of the population who were primarily called upon to think economically in connection with the European territories have developed their economic ideas under the influence of these events. Such things then become deeply ingrained in people. It is precisely in these matters that human souls become conservative. And what sits within people as conservative ideas essentially stems from this period.

Now, on the other side, economic life opened up as I have described to you. And through this, something came into the whole concept of economic life, but it was not immediately incorporated into the way of thinking, but only gave this way of thinking a special economic impetus. It is the connection with the West, with America, with that which came from the opening of the sea routes. That gave economic life strength.

And so, I would say, on the one hand the concrete content of economic life emerged, and on the other hand the momentum. These facts were so strong that they initially gave the configuration to the newer social life in general, and also gave it its materialistic form. And this modern civilization took on more and more the character that must result from these two factors.

Now we have an economic life that simply predominates by the force of events, that makes a strong impression on people and on human development. This economic life also takes on the character that economic life alone can take on, because it is the case that each of the three areas of the social organism takes on its own legitimacy simply through its nature and essence: in economic life, the commodity and the price become the determining factors.

However, social conditions can be distorted by confusing economic life with the other two areas of the social organism. Then each individual area follows only its own laws in conflict with the others. And so it has come about that because economic life predominated, it drew other areas of life, other social areas, into its system of laws. And the conditions arose that then led to the modern social question.

For if we go back in historical development, the proletarian movement as a specific wage movement, as a movement against slavery of labor, does not exist. I explained yesterday that the division of labor, whether one was master or servant, was shaped in older times according to political considerations. Now economic life has been set up in such a way that everything is drawn into the character of a commodity. Everything became a commodity. And so it was only in this period that human labor power became a commodity. Before that it was service, devoted or forced service. But it only became a commodity in this most recent period. For it was gradually paid for in the same way as a commodity is paid for. And economic life cannot help but make a commodity out of everything that enters into its sphere. And in this sense, I believe we have actually always had the threefold social order. We just have to make it real, we just have to introduce into the world that which exists in a false form in its true form. For in the false form it causes mischief and leads to decline. If we are able to give it its true form, it must become the rising sun.

But it is not only that labor power has been turned into a commodity; materialistic intellectual life has also been turned into a commodity in the form of capital. Please take a look at the capital market and the utilization and application of capital in modern times and compare it with the utilization of capital in ancient Greece, for all I care! In ancient Greece, the person who was politically powerful was the one who had the power to carry out something; he had the power to build this or that. For political reasons, he found those who did the work, and his capital consisted simply of the fact that he was the master through his hereditary circumstances and could command a number of people. That was capital in ancient Greece. In the more recent times that we are now considering, essentially what leads to enterprises also becomes a commodity. What is it, after all, that you do when you buy or sell securities on the stock exchange? What are you trading in? You are basically trading in entrepreneurial spirit. What entrepreneurial spirit is essentially becomes a commodity on the stock exchange. You don't even have the specific, the particular entrepreneurial spirit in front of you, you don't even know what you are buying or selling; but in reality you are buying or selling entrepreneurial spirit. You can observe this particularly in the capital market environment. In short, everything becomes commoditized where economic life becomes predominant. Everything becomes a commodity: labor power becomes a commodity, intellect becomes a commodity. That has been the course of recent development.

Now, at the same time, something else is happening. The modern state is emerging for political reasons. First of all, we see, doesn't it, how this modern state is formed from certain earlier freer relationships of the surrounding rural population to the existing cities, which have emerged from ecclesiastical centers or the like in Italy, from a slightly different way of thinking in France and England. So what states are, that is what is emerging.

While the actual concept of the state is already emerging in the West, in Central and Eastern Europe we actually still see different conditions that are freer in this respect. We see how it arises from the old conditions that the former town, which had arisen for some ecclesiastical or similar reasons, becomes the center of the market. And as the old towns become markets, new towns arise in turn. It is interesting to see how cities really do arise under the influence of economic life in the 13th, 12th, 11th century. First of all, the cities arise in such a way that in today's southern Germany and in the west of Europe they arise at distances of five to six hours' travel. In the north and east, they arise at distances of seven to eight hours' travel. In older times, this is something that is taken for granted. Why? Because the farmers who work the surrounding land can get there and back with their products in a day. This arises out of inner necessity. But when something like this arises in history, then later, under the influence of the principle of imitation, something arises that is not connected with such necessity. At first there is the necessity to have towns that are five to six hours' journey apart, or seven to eight. Then the others realize that something can be done and imitate it. And so something arises that is not historically necessary. This affects the healthy thinking of some people about these things. The historians treat the one cities in the same way as the others, that is, those that did not arise out of economic necessity in the same way as the others that arose out of economic necessity. Then everything is mixed up and confused. But the right way to look at such things is to have a sense of distinction. People can very knowledgeably prove to you that this is not true, that this or that city arose out of economic necessity. Of course that is sometimes not true. Because this city did not arise out of economic necessity, but under the influence of the later principle of imitation. But the general truth is nevertheless correct. The development of cities as markets took much longer in Eastern Europe than in the West, where unified states were formed that then sought to incorporate everything into their framework.

Now, basically, historically speaking, as unpleasant as it may sometimes seem today, it is the case that in Italy, out of the spirit of a certain patriarchal togetherness between the peasant population and the urban population, the peculiar territorial areas arose and a certain federalist state system emerged, while another emerged in Spain, France and England. And even if, as I said, it is unpleasant for some to think about, it is nevertheless the case that, more towards Central Europe and the East, the formation of states, like the formation of cities in the past, even came about through imitation. And here we come to something that you cannot tell people today, because otherwise you would not be divided into three, but even into four. But the truth still exists because of that. It was, of course, an economic necessity, but it also came about because of the character of the peoples that the western states emerged as unified states. But the Central European states and the Eastern states actually only came into being through imitation. There was no historical necessity for them. Basically, Austria and the German Reich ultimately perished because there was no historical necessity for their internal centralization, but rather that it was actually an imitation. And the unified state of Italy is an imitation of the same principle, which came into being at about the same time as the unified German state. And North America is another purely external imitation, without having really arrived at the inner reality of what the Central European states are. It is completely dependent on flowing into economic association. Incidentally, anyone who properly considers the economic conditions of North America will be able to predict the course of events.

Now, you see, alongside all that had emerged, so to speak, from the original economy, the new configuration of trade then arose under such conditions as I have just described. And that was where the fusion of political and economic life first arose, not in the field of industry, but actually in the field of trade. The trades were only involved. It is fair to dispute what I am saying now. Because people just need to say: the trades must come first, and then you can act. But that is not the point. Even today, take very developed industries, they often have not grown beyond the commercial sphere. People only create their own products for the trade they do. We are not yet so far advanced that we have already made the transition from the primary production, which is based on nature and is integrated through trade into industry, to the point where industry would now set the tone. Because the moment industry starts to set the tone, association becomes a necessity. The structure of today's business life is still determined by the principles of commercial life; industry, too, is based on the principle of commerce. Basically, manufacturers are traders who merely create opportunities for themselves to trade. They also set up their industrial establishments according to commercial considerations; these are the decisive factors. Because the moment the industrial reaches into the commercial, then association becomes a necessity. The fusion of the state with economic life has actually happened indirectly through the commercial.

And on the other hand, each of the three limbs of the social organism has its own laws and fights against the other limb if it is not detached in the right way. You see, in fact the field of constitutional law has been fighting against the economic field in economic legislation, old-age insurance and so on, for a long time. What does this mean other than that they foolishly want to separate the worker from economic life? It would be sensible to separate them thoroughly right now! But the states are definitely on the march – if I may use the word, which, as you know, has been misused by Wissel – on the march to an independent legal existence. By creating labor protection legislation, old-age insurance legislation, and so on, they are bringing the organization of labor, the regulation of the type and time of labor, out of economic life anyway. Now we see that the second link of the social organism is also on the way to emancipation from economic life.

Now, the matter of intellectual life is somewhat more confused. All real intellectual life has grown out of the old theocracies in its inner essence. Please, you only need to study university life in the 12th and 13th centuries. This is entirely developed out of the ecclesiastical being. And this was an emancipated intellectual life. It only gradually grows into state life. A large part of the European struggles consists of nothing more than the transition of ecclesiastical institutions into the state. And for these ancient times, it must be said that the freedom of educational institutions was much greater in the old ecclesiastical system than it was in the later state system or than it is today. For things develop out of spiritual life with full consciousness. For example, in the year 869 at the Ecumenical Council of Constantinople, the Church consciously abolished the spirit, that is, it was elevated to a dogma that man does not consist of body, soul and spirit, but only of body and soul, and that the soul has some spiritual qualities. In those days, this was made conscious. Nowadays, philosophy professors preach that man consists of body and soul and do not know that they are only the executors of an ecclesiastical dogma. What we call philosophy has definitely grown out of the old ecclesiastical life, and Mr. Wundt in Leipzig is definitely only an offshoot of the old ecclesiastical dogmas, even if it no longer appears so in the way he presents it. But it is the same with the other things that have grown out of the old theocratic type of spiritual life. The theological faculties, well, look at them, they have grown out of the former spiritual life to such an extent that today they only present a kind of caricature, and the same applies to the law faculties. If you want to see, you will find the same old theocratic essence in modern civilization everywhere. I will not speak of medicine. It is quite obvious that it has outgrown other affiliations with the old intellectual life, which developed in an ecclesiastical, religious way. We have a current, a branch of intellectual life, that has completely outgrown the ecclesiastical life, which was free in relation to the state and which was the only intellectual life for the older times. Alongside this, I would say, not outgrowing it but standing alongside it, has come what modern science and technology is. There, spiritual life has arisen on its own soil and has only resembled that which grew out of the church in the past. That is why it looks so strange, what has been organized, I would say, spasmodically, in imitation of the old institutions. One after the other, technical colleges, commercial schools, agricultural schools and so on were built. All of this has been spasmodically shaped somewhat similar to what grew out of the earlier church life. And so we have the quite unnatural structure of our higher education system. On the one hand, something that is in many ways old-fashioned, the actual university system; after all, it carries its ancient ecclesiastical heritage with it. On the other hand, there is the modern agricultural school, the technical school, the mining academy and so on, which has been humorously added to the system, which has sought a similarity, even in the outward appearance, in the title system and the like, with the universities.

On the one hand, we have intellectual life as it arises from the old, free ecclesiastical life and is gradually absorbed by the state; and on the other hand, we have the pushing in, I would like to say, again out of a certain freedom, because the mind must indeed be free; the state cannot produce genius, of that intellectual life that in turn places itself in state life. It would have been in keeping with the ideal of many people to educate real artists at the art schools as well. But as you know, the teaching program does not yet exist by which one can educate genius or the real artist, although many people would like it to. So we see how the spiritual life is absorbed with inadequate means. Basically, only the outer form is absorbed. The content must always, if I may say so, creep away on the sly, most certainly creep away. Because, if someone is in the uncomfortable position of having some intellect at all, then, as far as possible, they have to get it through the terrible ordeals of exams and so on with as much secrecy as possible, so that it doesn't freeze during the whole procedure and so that they can still develop it afterwards. Yes, you have to secretly smuggle what the actual intellectual life is. That is just the way it is. And basically, this is nothing more than a kind of emancipation of intellectual life, a latent emancipation.

Here, too, we are facing a looming crisis. The ultimate consequence of the nationalization system is, of course, Marxism, and, radically, Bolshevism. Everything is nationalized; the entire state is turned into a large industrial establishment, into a giant enterprise, at least that is the initial ideal. Now, if you do that, then it is necessary to organize all the technical knowledge into this whole menagerie, machinery I wanted to say, of course, to organize all the machinery into this whole machinery, because without this technical knowledge you cannot make any progress. Modern technology is necessary. But all the Bolshevism and all the ways of introducing the Marxist principle into reality will lead to nothing but plundering in this area. That is, for a time, the technically gifted can be enslaved. But they will gradually disappear if we do not move on to an independent, emancipated, free, productive intellectual life. This is the crisis we face wherever the nationalization of intellectual life is making radical progress. For just as the other two limbs of the social organism have their own laws, the legal-political and the economic life, just as the economic life turns everything into a commodity, just as the state-legal life, after all, brings that which does not fit into the economic life under its organization and subject it to its laws, so too must intellectual life, following its own laws, emancipate itself from the other two.

These three spheres of the social organism are clearly defined: the spiritual, the juridical-political and the economic. Therefore, these are also the three great issues of the present day. The three great issues of the present day are precisely the issues of the proper shaping of spiritual life, the proper shaping of state-political life, and the proper shaping of economic life.

And this is evident wherever today's amateurish attempts arise. Look, for example, at what is happening within Central Europe, within Germany, in terms of religious denominations. In the attempts at a Protestant unity, in the Young Catholic efforts and so on, one tries to galvanize the old, to squeeze something viable out of the old in order to have some kind of spiritual life, because one does not have the courage to be productive in the spiritual life. Everywhere you look, you see amateurish attempts to give birth to a new spiritual life. Of course, the attempt to squeeze something out of the old lemon cannot lead to real spiritual creativity. Only the turn towards a productive spiritual life can lead to this. But we see amateurish attempts everywhere. We see how Americans appear to revive ancient Christianity because they believe that humanity cannot recover from the old principles of the state. But nowhere is there the insight that a spiritual life must be produced anew from its original sources. Everywhere, people are muddling through with what is already there. This shows that people are instinctively on the right path, but that they have not found the courage to really establish an independent spiritual life in its purity.

On the other hand, we see how the old principle of the state, which has developed in Europe since the 15th and 16th centuries, is dying away. For what else is it, what has been taking place since Brest-Litovsk and Versailles in the monsters called peace treaties and the like, what is it but a dying state principle that can no longer create something fruitful out of itself, that creates structures that cannot exist? Czechoslovakia, for example, will not be able to exist because it does not have what it needs to have. The Polish state structure, on the other hand, is to be re-established. It cannot be re-established, and so on. It is only possible for state life to recover if it is built on the democratic principle of equal human beings, that is, if it encompasses the affairs that are the affairs of each person who has come of age.

As long as today's life is chaotically thrown together, we will not get any further. There we see how, in fact, state life is withering away on the one hand, but on the other hand has already shown how it must take up the regulation of work. We see how it takes on new tasks. And then we can say: So we have the spiritual question, which is manifested in the faltering attempts that are expressed in the Protestant unification efforts and in the Young Catholic efforts; we have the constitutional question, which is evident, for example, in the peace treaties; but we also have economic life, which stands as the third great question of the present, from which, after all, the great war broke out towards the West, and which is discharging itself in the form of revolutionary and similar impulses.

This must be treated from the most diverse sides. Among the lectures I have given here, you will find one that deals with these matters. It is from this point of view of the three great contemporary issues that we must approach our first topic. We must show that the great questions are there today: the spiritual question, the constitutional-legal question and the economic question; that therefore the threefold social order is not something that has been invented, but that it is derived from the three great questions of our time; and that on the other hand, what has been prepared as anthroposophical spiritual science is precisely a foundation for a truly productive spiritual life.

What existed as a spiritual life from ancient times in the denominations, of which the university sciences of the present are only a branch, has lived itself out; the other has not yet been able to begin to live as a spiritual life, that is, that which has grown out of science and technology. It has not yet been able to spiritualize itself. It must be driven upwards with the same way of thinking from which the old spiritual life arose. Spiritual science will again be as productive as the earlier one was, which then came into decadence in the religions.

That is what gives spiritual life its content, its momentum. And then, when you see things in this way, when you realize that you can answer the question, “Yes, where should the free spiritual life come from?” with complete conviction: Yes, we not only have to talk about the demand for a free spiritual life, but we also have something that can be placed within the framework of the free spiritual life, that produces the spirit, that is living spirit. You will then be able to point to the anthroposophical source that belongs to it. You can develop something that, if you want to bring it to people, must be brought to them with a certain enthusiasm, so that, in a sense, the inner turns outwards, so that what you are as human beings, what you have grown together with, really goes out to the audience. That must be the one tone that you strike in your lectures. You must be clear about the fact that anthroposophy provides the content, the nourishment, for the free spiritual life.

On the other hand, you will find the other tone when you thoroughly feel that economic life turns everything into a commodity, that what must not be a commodity must be taken out of economic life. Then you will find the dry tone of sober reflection that must pervade your lectures when you speak of economic life. Because there you can speak soberly, dryly, there you must speak as if you had to do arithmetic.

And so you will find the two nuances you need for your lectures, and they will indeed be different from one another: the dry, sober tone of the dry economic commentator and the enthusiastic tone of the person who not only speaks of a political ideal as the free spiritual life, but speaks in such a way that he knows what wants to be included in it.

And then, moving rhythmically back and forth between the two, you will find the third tone, the tone you need for the treatment of the state-legal aspect.

But it is necessary that you, so to speak, are intensively threefolded in your own moods, so that you recognize correctly, that you relate to spiritual life in one way, to state-political life in another way, and to economic life in yet another way. One speaks about spiritual life out of inner strength and conviction; one speaks in such a way that one actually knows: every human being is a rightful participant in the harmonious spiritual life of humanity, in the harmony of the spiritual life of humanity. One speaks about the life of the state in such a way that one lets one's soul swing from one side of the scales to the other: duties - rights, duties - rights! One speaks with a certain cool superiority, which does not necessarily have to be the superior mendacity of the old statesmen; but it is done with a certain superiority, in that one allows one's right to be done to the other in the life of the state and in the life of the law. And one speaks about economic life as if one did not have one's own purse to manage; that leads to nothing sensible, but one speaks to the feeling as if one actually held the purses of other people in one's pocket and had to manage them. One speaks from feeling in this case, that one must proceed as cautiously as possible, that many things can turn out differently than one expects. The secure feeling one has about spiritual life – if one has grasped it correctly, nothing can ever go wrong in spiritual life – one cannot have this secure feeling about economic life. Something can go wrong there. That must also be in the tone with which you speak about the matter. That is why you will find it in the “key points”: intellectual life is spoken of with absolute certainty and certainty; economic conditions are only mentioned by way of example, so that one has the feeling that it could also be different.

This is what will give your speeches a certain inner strength: if you are inwardly intensely threefolded. And that is what I recommend to you, to take it to heart a little, so that you may perhaps strike this note. Since most of you are young, if your attention is drawn to this threefoldness of the human orator, it will be something like a kind of power source for your work.

Emil Bock opened the discussion hour and formulated the following questions:

1. Out of the previous lecture this morning, how can we take the power of formative speech to which we still need to gain access, and accomplish a new speech technique, perhaps new forms and a new gestural technique?
2. How do we actually now really speak of a new understanding of the Bible, of a new Bible text? Furthermore, we ask Dr Steiner on occasion to discuss in more detail the two chapters from the synoptic Gospels, Matthew 13 and Mark 13.
3. What is the reality behind the Apostolic succession, the tradition and the ordination of priests in the technical sense, and how can such a reality be made more accessible again in the future?

[ 1 ] Rudolf Steiner: With regards to the first question: You would already have seen, my dear friends, that out of what I said this morning, that in the illustration, the soul contents related to the supersensible and also what leads to the power of formative speech, must be searched for. Regarding the power of speech formation: we actually have no direct understanding of sound anymore today; we basically have no more understanding for words, so our words remain signs. Naturally our starting point needs to be out of the spiritual milieu of our time. Man must be responsible for these intimate things out of what currently is available. Precisely such a question brings us naturally into the area of the purely technical. First of all one has to make the understanding for the sound active again, within oneself. One doesn't easily manage the free use of speech when one isn't able to allow the sound as such, to stir within oneself. I would like to continue in such a way that I first draw your attention to certain examples.

[ 2 ] You see, when we say "head" (Kopf) in German, we hardly have anything else in mind than the total perception of what reaches us through the ear, which indicates the head. When we say "foot" (Fuss) it is hardly any different to what we experience in the tonality and sound content in relation to some foot. Now we only need, for instance, to refer to the Romance languages where head is testa, tête, foot is pedum, pied, and we get the feeling at the same time that the term is taken from something completely different. When we say the word Kopf in German, the term has come out of the form, from looking at the form. We are not aware of this any longer, yet it is so. When we say Fuss, it is taken from walking where furrows are drawn in the ground. Thus, it has come into existence out of a certain soul content and coined in a word. When we take a word formation like, let's say, "testament" and all other word formations which refer in Romance language terms to head, testa, then we will feel that the term Kopf in the Romantic languages originate through the substantiation and thus not out of the form, but through the human soul with the help of the head, and particularly activating the mouth organs. Pied didn't originate from walking or drawing furrows but from standing, pressing down while standing. Today we no longer question the motives which have come out of the soul and into speech formation. We can only discover what can be called, in the real sense, a feeling for the language when we follow the route of making language far more representational than it is currently, abstraction at most. When someone uses a Latin expression in terminology, some Latin expressions are even more representational, but some people use them to denote even more. For example, today one can hardly find the connection between "substance" and "subsist" while the concept of "subsist" has basically been lost. Someone who still has the original feeling for substance and subsistence would say of the Father-God, not that He "exists" but that he "subsists."

[ 3 ] Researching language in this way and in another way which I want to mention right now, in order to develop a lively feeling for language again, leads then to something I would like to call a linguistic conscience (Sprachgewissen). We need a linguistic conscience. We speak really so directly these days because as human beings we act more as automatons towards language than we do as living beings. Until we are capable of connecting language in a living way to ourselves, like our skin is connected to us, we will not come to the right symbolization. The skin experiences pain when it is pricked. Language even tolerates being maltreated. One must develop a feeling regarding language that it can be maltreated because it is a closed organism, just like our skin. We can gain much in this area, when we have a lively experience in some or other dialect.

Consider how often we have performed the Christmas Plays, and in these plays there is a sentence spoken by one or more of the innkeepers. When Joseph and Mary come to Bethlehem in search of lodging, they are refused by three innkeepers. Each one of the three innkeepers says: Ich als a wirt von meiner gstalt, hab in mein haus und ligament gwalt.—Just imagine what this means to a person today. He could hear: "I as a host of my stature ..."—and think that what the host is saying means he is an attractive man, or something like that, or a strong man who has stature within his hostel, in his house. This is certainly not meant. If we want to translate that into High German we'll have to say: "I as a host, who is placed in such a way as to have abundant comfort, I am not dependent on such poor people finding lodgings within, with me." This means: "I as a host in my social position, in my disposition." This shows them it is necessary not only to listen to him—words one often enough hears in speech—but to enter into the spirit of the language. We say Blitz" (lightening) in High German. In Styria a certain form of lightening is called 'heaven's lashers' (Himmlatzer). In the word "Blitz" there is quite another meaning than in the word Himmlatzer.

[ 4 ] So we start becoming aware of different things when we approach the sense of speech. You see, such an acquisition of the sense of language sometimes leads to something extraordinarily important. Goethe once uttered a sentence, when already in his late life, to the Chancellor von Müller, a statement which has often been quoted and is often used, to understand the entire way in which Faust, written by Goethe, originated. Goethe said that for him the conception of Faust had for 60 years been clear "from the beginning" (von vornherein); the other parts less extensively. Now commentary upon commentary have been written and this sentence was nearly always recalled, because it is psychologically extraordinarily important, and the commentators have it always understood like this: Goethe had a plan from the beginning for his Faust and in the 60 years of his life—since he was twenty or about eighteen—he used this plan, he had "from the start," to work from.

In Weimar I met August Fresenius who bemoaned the fact that it was a great misfortune, if I could use such an expression, which had entered into the entire Goethe research, and at the time I had urged an unusually thoughtful and slow philologist to publish this thing as soon as possible in order that it doesn't continue, otherwise one would have a few dozen more such Goethe commentaries. It is important to note that Goethe used the expression "from the start" in no other way than in a descriptive way, not in the sense of a priori but "from the beginning" in a very descriptive manner so that in the strictest sense one could refer to Goethe not having an overall plan, but that "at the beginning" he only wrote down the first pages (i.e. to begin with) and of the further sections, only single sentences. There can be no argument of an overall plan. It very much depends on how one really experiences words. Many people have, when they hear the word vornherein totally have no conscience that it has a vorn (in front) and a herein (in) and that one sees something spiritual when one pronounces it. This simple dismissal of a word without contemplation is something upon which a tremendous amount depends, if one wants to attain a symbolic manner of speech. Precisely about this direction there would be extraordinarily much to say.

[ 5 ] You see, we have the remarkable appearance of the Fritz Mauthner speaking technique where all knowledge and all wisdom is questioned, because all knowledge and wisdom is expressed though speech, and so Fritz Mauthner finds nothing expressed in speech because it does not point to some or other reality. [ 6 ] How harsh my little publication "The spiritual guidance of man and of mankind" has been judged in which I mention that in earlier times, all vowel formation expressed people's inner experiences, and all consonant unfolding comes from outer observed or seen events. All that man perceives is expressed in consonants, while vowels are formed by inner experiences, feelings, emotions and so on. With this is connected the peculiar manner in which the consonants are written differently to the vowels in Hebrew. This is also connected to areas where more primitive people used to dwell, where they have not strongly developed their inner life, so predominantly consonant languages occur, not languages based on vowels. This extends very far, this kind of in-consonant-action of language. Only think what African languages have from consonants to click sounds.

[ 7 ] So you see, in this way we gain an understanding for what sounds within language. One would be brought beyond the mere sign, which the word is today. Only with today's feeling for language which Fritz Mauthner believes in, can you believe that all knowledge actually depends on language and that language has no connection to some or other reality. A great deal can be accomplished when one enters into one's mother tongue and try to go back into the vernacular. In the vernacular one finds much, very much if you really behave like a human being, that is, respond to what you feel connected to the language. In the vernacular one has the rich opportunity to feel in speech and experience in sound, but also the tendency towards the descriptive, and you have to push it so far that you really, one could say, get into a kind of state of renunciation in regard to expressions that are supposed to phrase something completely separate from human experiences.

Something which thoroughly ruins our sense of language is physics, and in physics, as it is today, it only aspires to study objective processes and refrains from all subjective experience, there it should no longer be spoken at all. According to physics, when one body presses (stoßen) against another, for example in the theory of elasticity, then you are anthropomorphising, because the experience of pressure as soon as you sense sound, means you're only affected by the same kind of pressure as the pressure your own hand makes. Above all, one gets the feeling with the S-sound that nothing other can be described as something like this (a waved line is drawn on the blackboard). The word Stoß" (push/impacts—ß is the symbol for ss—translator) has two s's, at the end and beginning; it gives the entire word its colouring; so when the word Stoß or stoßen (to push/thrust) is pronounced one actually can feel how, when your ether body would move, it would not only move but be shoved forwards and continuously be kept up.

[ 8 ] Thus, there are already methods through which one comes to the power of speech formation, which is then no longer far from symbolizing, for the symbolum must be hacked out of the way so that one experiences language as a living organism, because much is to be experienced within language. Someone recently told me that there are certain things in language which only need to be pronounced and one is surprised at how they reveal themselves as self-evident.

The Greeks recited in hexameter. Why? Well, hexameter is an experience. A person produces speech, as I've already said, in his breathing. However, breathing is closely connected to other elements of rhythm in the human being; with the pulse, with blood circulation. On average, obviously not precisely, we have 18 breaths and 72 heat beats; 72 equals 4 times 18. Four times 18 heart beats gives a rhythm, a collective inner beat. In a time when man sensed in a more primordial and more elementary way according to what was taking place within him, man experienced, when he could, in uttering the relationship of the heart beat to the breathing, bring the totality of himself into expression. This relationship, not precisely according to time, this relationship can be brought to bear; you only have to add the turning point as the fourth foot (reference plate 3 ... not available In German text) then you have a Greek hexameter half-line, in the ration of 4 to 1 as a pulse beat to breathing rhythm. The hexameter was born out of the human structure, and other measures of verse were all born out of the rhythmic system of the human being. You can already feel, when you treat language artistically, how, in the process of treating human speech in an artistic way, language is alive. This makes it possible to acquire a far more inner relationship to language, yet also far more objectivity. The most varied chauvinistic feelings in relation to language stops, because the configurations of different languages stop, and one acquires an ear for the general sound. There are such things which are found on the way to gaining the power of creative speech. It does finally lead to listening to oneself when one speaks. In a certain way it's actually difficult but it can be supported. For various reasons it seems to me that for those who are affected by it, it is also necessary not to treat the Scripture in the way many people treat it today. You will soon see why I say these things.

[ 9 ] In relation to writing, there are two kinds of people. The majority learn to write as if it's a habit of staking out words. People are used to move their hands in a certain way and write like this: in the majority. The writing lesson is very often given in such a way that one just comes to it. The minority actually don't write in the sense of reality, but they draw (a word is written on the blackboard: Kann [meaning can; be able to]). They look at the signs of the letters simultaneously as being written, and as an artistic treatment of writing, it is far more an intimate involvement. I have met people who have been formally trained to write. For instance, once there was a writing method which consisted in people being trained to make circles and curves, to turn them and thus acquire a feeling of connecting them and so form letters out of them. Only in this way, out of these curves, could the letters come about. With a large number of them I have seen that they, before they start writing, make movements in the air with their pen. This is what brings writing into the unconsciousness of the body. However, our language comes out of the totality of the human being and when one spoils oneself by writing you also spoil yourself for the language. Precisely the one who is dependent on handling the language needs to get used to the meditation that writing should not be allowed to just flow out of his hand, but he should look at it, really look at what he is writing, when he writes.

[ 10 ] My dear friends, this is something which is extraordinarily important in our current culture, because we are on our way to dehumanizing ourselves. I have already received a large number of letters which have not been written with a pen but with the typewriter. Now you can imagine the difference between a letter written with a typewriter or written with a pen. I'm not campaigning against the typewriter, I consider it as an obvious necessity in civilization, but we do also need the counter pole. By us dehumanizing ourselves in this way, by us changing our relationship towards the outer world in an absolute mechanistic and dead manner, we need in turn to take up strong vital forces again. Today we need far greater vital forces than in the time in which man knew nothing yet about the typewriter.

[ 11 ] Therefore, for someone who handles words, he must also acquire an understanding for the continuous observation, while he is writing, that what he is writing pleases him, that he gets the impression that something hasn't just flowed out of a subject but that, by looking simultaneously at it, this thing lives as a totality in him. Mostly, the thing that is needed for the development of some capability is not arrived at in a direct but in an indirect way. I must explain this route because I have been asked how one establishes the power for speech formation. This is the way, as I have mentioned, which comes first of all. As an aside I stress that language originates in the totality of mankind, and the more mankind still senses the language, so much more will there be movement in his speech. It is extraordinary, how for instance in England, where the process of withdrawal of a connection with the surroundings is most advanced, it is regarded as a good custom to speak with their hands in their trouser pockets, held firmly inside so they don't enter the danger of movement. I have seen many English people talk in this way. Since then I've never had my pockets made in front again, but always at the back, for I have developed such disgust from this quite inhuman non-participation in what is being said. It is simply a materialistic criticism that speech only comes from the head; it originates out of the entire human being, above all from the arms, and we are—I say it here in one sentence which is obviously restricted—we are on this basis no ape or animal which needs its hands to climb or hold on to something, but we have them as free because with these free hands and arms we handle speech.

In grasping with our arms, creating with our fingers, we express something we need in order to model language. So it has a certain justification to return mankind to its connection with language, bringing the whole person into it, to train Eurythmy properly, which really exists in drawing out of the human organism what is not fulfilled in the human body, but is however fulfilled in the ether body, when we speak. The entire human being is in movement and we are simply transposing though the eurhythmic movements, the etheric body on to the physical body. That is the principle. It is really the eurythmization of something like a necessity which needs to be regularly brought out of the human being, like the spoken language itself. It must stand as a kind of opposite pole against all which rises in the present and alienate people towards the outer world, allowing no relationship to be possible between people and the outer world any more. The eurythmization enables people in any case to return to being present in the language and is on this basis, as I've often suggested, even an art. Well, if you take into account the things I've just proposed, then you arrive at the now commonplace speech technique basically under the scheme of pedantry.

The great importance given to teaching through recitation and that kind of thing, only supports the element of a materialistic world view. You see, just as one would in a school for sculpture or a school of painting not really get instructions of the hand movements but corrects them by life forces coming into them, so speech techniques must not be pedantically taught with all kinds of nose-, chest- and stomach resonances. These things may only be developed though living speech. When a person speaks, he might at most be made aware of one or the other element. In this respect extraordinary atrocities are being committed today and the various vocal and language schools can actually be disgusting, because it shows how little lives within the human being. The formation of speech happens when those things are considered which I mentioned. Now if the question needs to be answered even more precisely, I ask you to please call my attention to it.

[ 12 ] Now there is a question about new commentary regarding the Bible, in fact, how one can arrive at a new Bible text.

[ 13 ] You see, the thing is like this, one will first have to penetrate into an understanding of the Bible. Much needs to precede this. If you take everything which I have said about language, and then consider that the Bible text has originated out of quite another kind of experience of language than we have today, and also as it was experienced centuries before in Luther's time, you can hardly hope to somehow discover an understanding of the Bible through some small outer adjustment. To understand the Bible, a real penetration of Christianity is needed above all, and actually this can only emerge from a Bible text as something similar for us as the Gospels had once appeared for the first Christians. In the time of the first Christians one certainly had the feeling of sound and some of what can be experienced in the words in the beginning of St John's Gospel which was of course experienced quite differently in the first Christian centuries as one would be able to do today. "In the primal beginnings was the Word"—you see, today there doesn't seem to be much more than a sign in this line, I'd say. We come closer to an understanding when we substitute "Word," which is very obscure and abstract, with "Verb" and also really develop our sense of the verb as opposed to the noun. In the ancient beginnings it was a verb and not the noun. I would like to say something about this abstraction.

The verb is quite rightly related to time, to activity, and it is absurd to think of including a noun in the area which has been described as in "the primal beginning." It has sense to insert a verb, a word related to activity. What lies within the sentence regarding the primal origins is however not an activity brought about by human gestures or actions, because it is the activity which streams out of the verb, the active word. We are not transported back into the ancient mists of the nebular hypothesis by the Kant-Laplace theory, but we will be led back to the sound and loud prehistoric power. This returning into a prehistoric power is something which was experienced powerfully in the first Christian centuries, and it was also strongly felt that it deals with a verb, because it is an absurdity to say: In the prehistoric times there was a noun.—We call it "Word" which can be any part of speech. Of course, it can't be so in the case of St John's Gospel.

[ 14 ] In even further times in the past, things were even more different. They were so that for certain beings, for certain perceptions of beings one had the feeling that they should be treated with holy reserve, one couldn't just put them in your mouth and say them. For this reason, a different way had to be found regarding expression, and this detour I can express by saying something like the following. Think about a group of children living with their parents somewhere in an isolated house. Every couple of weeks the uncle comes, but the children don't say the uncle comes, but the "man" comes. They mean it is the uncle, but they generalise and say it is "the man." The father is not the "man"; they know him too well to call him "man." In this way earlier religious use of language hid some things which they didn't want to express outwardly because one had the inner reaction of profanity, and so it was stated as a generalization, like also in the first line of St John's Gospel, "in the beginning was the Word." However, one doesn't mean the word which actually stands there but one calls it something which has been picked out, a singular "Word." It was after all something extraordinary, this "Word." There are as many words as there are men, but children said, "the man," and so one didn't say what was meant in St John's Gospel, but instead one said, "the Word." The word in this case was Jahveh, so that St John's Gospel would say: "In the primal beginnings was Jahveh," so one doesn't say "God," but "the Word."

[ 15 ] Such things must be acquired again by living within Christianity and what Christianity has derived from the ritual practice of the Old Testament. There is no shortcut to understanding the Gospels; a lively participation in the ancient Christian times is necessary for Gospel understanding. Basically, this is what has again become enlivened through Anthroposophy, while such things have in fact only risen out of Anthroposophic research. We then have the following: In the primordial times was he word—in primordial time was Jahveh—and the word was with God—and Jahveh was with God. In the third line: And Jahveh was one of the Elohim.—This is actually the origin, the start of the St John Gospel which refers to the multiplicity of the Elohim, and Jahveh as one of them—in fact there were seven—as lifted out of the row of the Elohim. Further to this lies the basis of the relationship between Christ and Jahveh.

Take sunlight—moonlight is the same, it is also sunlight but only reflected by the moon—it doesn't come from some ancient being, it is a reflection. In primordial Christianity an understanding existed for the Christ-word, where Christ refers to his own being by saying: "Before Abraham was, I am" and many others. There certainly was an understanding for the following: Just as the sunlight streams out of itself and the moon reflects it back, so the Christ-being who only appeared later, streamed out in the Jahveh being. We have a fulfilment in the Jahveh-being preceding the Christ-being in time. Through this St John's Gospel becomes deepened through feeling from the first line to the line which says: "And the Word became flesh and lived among us." Even today we don't believe a childlike understanding suffices for the words of the Bible, when we research the Bible by translating it out of an ancient language until we penetrate what lies in the words. Of course, one can say, only through long, very long spiritual scientific studies can one approach the Bible text. That finally, is also my conviction.

[ 16 ] Basically, the Bible no longer exists; we have a derivative which we have put together more and more from our abstract language. We need a new starting point in order to try and find what really, in an enlivened way, is in the Bible. For this I have suggested an approach which I will speak about tomorrow, in the interpretation of Mathew 13 and Mark 13. You will have to state in any case that even commenting on the Bible makes it necessary to deal with the Bible impartially. If it is stated that something is mentioned which had only taken place in the year 70, therefore the relevant place could not have been mentioned before other than what had happened after this event, this could be said only if it is announced at the beginning of the Bible explanation that the Bible will be explained completely from a materialistic point of view; then it may be done like this. The Bible itself does not follow the idea that it should be explained materialistically. The Bible itself makes it necessary that the foreseeing of coming events is first and foremost ascribed to Christ Jesus himself, and also ascribed to the apostles. Thus, as I've said, this outlook is what I want to enter into tomorrow on the basis of Mathew 13 and Mark 13, by giving a little interpretation as it has been asked for.

[ 17 ] Another question asks about the reality behind the apostolic succession and the priest ordination. This question can hardly be answered briefly because it relates deeply to the abyss which exists between today's evangelist-protestant religious understanding and all nuances of Catholic understanding. It is important that in the moment when these things are spoken about, one must try to acquire a real understanding beyond the rational or rationalistic and beyond the intellectualistic. This is acquired even by those who have little right to live in the sense of such an understanding. In the past I have become acquainted with a large number of outstanding theosophical luminaries, Leadbeater also among them, about whom you would have heard, and some other people, who worked in the Theosophical Society. I have recently had the opportunity—otherwise I would not have worried about it again—to experience, that some of these people are Catholic bishops; it struck me as extraordinary that a part of them were Catholic priests. Leadbeater in any case had, after various things became known about him, not exactly the qualification to become a Catholic bishop. Still this interested me about how people become Catholic priests. One thing is observed with utmost severity, which is the succession. In order for me to see which people have the right to be Catholic bishops, I was given a document which revealed that in a certain year a Catholic bishop left the Catholic church, but one who was ordained, and he then ordained others—right up to Mr Leadbeater—and ordination proceeds in an actual continuation, in an absolutely correct progress; they actually have created a "family tree" by it. I don't want to talk about the start of the "family tree" but you must accept that if it would be a natural progression that there once was an ordained bishop in Rome who dropped away, who then however ordained all the others, so all these Theosophical luminaries would refer back to a real descent of their priesthood to that which once existed. Therefore, awareness of this succession is everywhere present and such things are, according to their understanding, taken completely as the reality.

[ 18 ] Something like this must be taken as a reality within the Roman Catholic Church. The old Catholic church more or less didn't have the feeling—but within the Roman Catholic church it is certain accepted this way—that the moment the priest crosses the stole he no longer represents a single personality or attitude but he is then only a member of the church and speaks as a representative, as a member of the church. The Roman Catholic Church considered itself certainly as a closed organism, where the individual loses his individuality through ordination; they see it this way increasingly.

[ 19 ] Now something else is in contrast to this. You may think about what I've said as you wish, but I can only speak from my point of view, from the viewpoint of my experience. I have seen much within the transubstantiation. Today in the Catholic Church there is quite a strict difference according to which priest would perform the transubstantiation, yet I have always seen how during the transformation, during the transubstantiation, the host takes on an aura. Therefore, I have come to recognise within the objective process, that when it is worthily accomplished, it is certainly fulfilled. I said, you may think about this as you wish, I say it to you as something which can be looked at from one hand, and on the other hand also as a basic conviction of the church being valid while it was still Catholic, when the evangelist church hadn't become a splintering off. We very soon come back to reality when we look at these things and it must even be said within the sacrament of mass being celebrated there is something like a true activity, which is not merely an outer sign but a real act. If you now take all the sacraments of mass together which had been celebrated, you will create an entirety, a whole, and this is something which stands there as a fact. It is something which certainly touches things, where the evangelical mind would say: Yes, there is something magical in the Catholic Mass.—This it does contain. It also contained within it the magical part, one can experience in the evangelist mind as something perhaps heathen. Good, talk to one another about this. In any case this underscores it as being a reality, which one can't without further ado, without approaching the bearer of this reality, celebrate a mass. I say celebrate; it can be demonstrated, one can show everything possible, but one can't celebrate with the claim that through the mass what should happen at the altar will only happen when it is read without any personal imprint, in absolute application.

You see, it is ever present there where one works with the mysteries; it is simply so, when one works with the mysteries. Just as no Masonic ceremony may be carried out by a non-Mason in the consciousness of the Freemason, nor may a non-ordained person in true Catholicism work from out of Catholicism and perform with full validity the ceremony in consciousness.

[ 20 ] This is where we are being directed and must consult. I want you to take note that in this case the Catholic rules were actually very strict. Please don't take things up in such a way as if I am saying this towards pro-Catholicism; I only want to point out the situation. It isn't important for us to be for, or opposed, to Catholicism, because it's about something quite different. Particular customs were very strictly adhered to in the Catholic Church—not at all what is today in Rome's mood and procedure. If a priest became so unworthy as to be excommunicated, then his skin would be ripped off, scraped off from his fingers where he had held the sacred host in his hands. His skin would be scraped off. Sometimes such things are referred to but legally it is so, and I know such processes quite well, that after the priest's excommunication the skin of the fingers which touched the host, were scraped off. You can certainly set the objective instead of the succession that goes from the apostles through the priesthood to the priest celebrating today. You can set that which goes through consecration and through the sacraments themselves. You can exclude priesthood, but you can only exclude that by taking things objectively, right to a certain degree, objectively, that the priest no longer may have skin on his fingers when he is no longer authorised to celebrate the sacrificial mass.

[ 21 ] Isn't it true, if you have Catholic feeling, it is something as definite to you as two plus two making four? It is something definite according to religious feeling. When you don't have that then you as modern people must have a certain piety, which says to you the Catholic church has also just preserved the celebration of mass and if this is carried outside the circle to which it had been entrusted—other circles have not preserved the sacrifice of mass—if it is being performed in other circles it is pure theft. Real theft. These things must also be understood from such concepts. I believe to some it appears very difficult to understand what I am saying but in conclusion it has as such a certain validity which needs to be achieved through understanding. We don't have to worry about it here because you can experience the mass according to what there is to experience. As far as the training of a new ritual is concerned, it would not be disturbed at all by this, that the Catholic mass regards the mass to be something so real that it may certainly not to be removed from the field of Catholicism.

[ 22 ] This is firstly something which I wanted to say during our limited time. When I speak about the mass itself, and I will do so, I will still have a few things to add.

Emil Bock: I would like to introduce today's discussion hour and assume I have your understanding when I ask that yesterday's questions which have remained open, will, where possible, be considered again today. I believe I have your support for this. If you want me to clarify this request on your behalf, it will be to deal with the complex of questions regarding the apostolic succession coming into the question in future, where the need for the establishment of a new tradition must be expected, so to speak. In relation to this the question is important, how we, who are mostly Protestants, would relate to the work and personality of Luther, and go back to Luther's stance on the sacraments and to the whole Mystery content of Christianity. If I'm properly informed, that was the question which now appears to us as the next one, and I would very much like Doctor Steiner to enter into these questions as far as he considers possible.

[ 1 ] Rudolf Steiner: My dear friends! I will try to continue with what was implied in this relationship started here yesterday in such a way that the many questions, which actually have to come out of such an examination, from the most varied sides, can then be considered further, because for this program of the Dornach course, it would be of the utmost necessity that as far as possible, no doubt and uncertainties would remain.

[ 2 ] I would endeavour to go into the actual complex of questions and through this we will perhaps reach what underlies them, for further discussion. In fact, everything that licentiate Bock has just said is actually connected, so I may say it is important what opinions rise up among you now, regarding the position of Protestantism and Catholicism. I believe I can accept that you have come here from quite a positive foundation, namely to find a way out of today's religious turmoil. I myself don't want to say that it is obviously my wish to influence this towards the one or other side. Indeed, it doesn't concern some or other knowledge, but is about decisions of will, and these must rise out of inner convictions, being able of course to be motivated in the most varied ways, so we must actually discuss the possible motivation of their willed decisions. For example, a lot will depend upon your decisions of intent with regard the abyss that gapes between Catholicism and evangelical Christianity, between Protestantism and so on. Isn't it true, your resolution will be substantially different—I am now referring to the resolution of the majority of those present here—if you take into account that the Christian impulse, considered as widely as possible, in for example community building, can become that which the Christ wills for the world. However, regarding Catholicism—where I now separate Catholicism strictly from the Roman—Catholic Church—you could not find in Catholicism a possibility to bridge the abyss to the evangelistic side, if you don't gain a mutual understanding about the sacramentalism anchored in the Catholic world.

Naturally you could also be of the opinion: we are not concerned at all, we want to create a life-filled church-based movement and then show how this viable church movement asserts itself in the world.—You could also take on this point of view: that doesn't require such a strict understanding of Catholicism as such. However, you could only gain support in the judgement regarding this direction, after you have found clarity in some historic foundations about the basis for the opening of this abyss. Today the situation is actually like this; if a person has remained within Catholicism, is standing within practical Catholicism, then he actually can't understand the evangelical mind. Neither will someone who has grown up in the evangelical-protestant tradition, who is really connected to the various nuances in modern views anchored in the Protestant churches, be able to find the way over the abyss easily. It is precisely the reason for this question that must be understood before a decision can be reached.

[ 3 ] Catholicism carries within it that view which has disappeared from modern consciousness, actual modern consciousness from which has disappeared, one could say if you want to be precise, since the 15th century. It was quite appropriate—but again connected with Roman political impulses, which then allowed the appropriate background to come in—it was quite appropriate, in a certain way, to keep Catholicism in mind and make it a duty for the Catholic clerics to return to the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, in other words, the philosophy promoting the culmination of philosophical thinking before the 15th century. One can say that to live without this philosophy, one can actually find no theory of knowledge for the justification of sacramentalism, as practiced in the Catholic Church. By contrast the protestant-evangelical consciousness lies within this development which was only imposed after the 15th century. If you want to live through the wrestling of these two currents you can look at the work of Nicolaus Cusanus, who already in the 15th century, one might say, with all intensity, raised the question for itself: How does the past and the future stand beside one another in my soul? Cusanus, by going back to certain soul experiences, connected with the name of Dionysius Areopagita, and was able to build a bridge for himself.

[ 4 ] I said yesterday that the Protestant quite rightly sees something magical in the way the Catholic performs Mass, and that is certainly correct. Because of our adaptation of the modern-day educational material, we are incapable of admitting to this magic. If you come with a modern consciousness you would not be able to find any difference between a sacrificial Mass as presented in the continuity of Christian evolution and a sacrificial Mass which is simply presented in words, symbols and gestures, perceptible by outer senses, as taking place in the Mass. Beyond the understanding of the content lies the understanding of that which is the sacrifice of Mass for the Catholic; this is connected with the unifying understanding of the world which has got lost for modern humanity, the unified understanding of the world which is understood on the one side by the spirit and on the other side from nature. I could say the route of knowledge has turned more to the side of nature while insight into the spiritual world has disappeared, and as a result of this, the possibilities to perceive certain mysteries. With this I don't want to say that in the consciousness of every Catholic priest there is also a substantial content about the sacrifice of the Mass. Still, in the Catholic community there is an awareness of this substantial content of the sacrifice of Mass to such a degree that one can still speak about the reality of it in the present.

[ 5 ] I can't make anything presented here, clearer to you in any other way, than through the view of knowledge. Everything, my dear friends, which is woven into our discussions during these days, what is presented in the Elaborat of Dr Rittelmeyer and the Elaborat of Dr Schairer, regarding the determination of the religious and the differentiation of the religious point of view from the point of view of knowledge, all this is incomprehensible to the Catholic. It basically doesn't exist for him. When he considers it as a modernist or someone like that, then he is basically already accepted by Protestantism even within Catholicism. For the Catholics none of these things give rise to some or other question; for them you can't formulate questions in this way. For true Catholicism, the assumption is that there should be a mere emotional human relationship to God, without a religious dogmatic content, something quite incomprehensible; the religious dogma should connect itself with the supersensible world. Certainly, you could say, the Scholastics do this, making a differentiation, as Protestantism adopts in a different way, regarding what one can know and what one should purely believe. However, the Scholastics don't make this differentiation in the same way. For the scholastic the difference lies between truths, acquired simply through human reason, and those truths which lie at the basis of revelation, basically only relate to the various ways people come to the content; but it is still not a fundamental difference. For scholasticism it is true that the Preambuli fidei are certainly there, acquired through ordinary reason, above which lies the truth of revelation, but the truth of revelation also has a real content with which one can have a thinking relationship, like the scientific truths, which also promote a relationship through thinking. Therefore, one's relationship to the revelations is the same kind of relationship one has to scientific truths. There is only a difference in relation to the way people arrive at the truth, not a fundamental difference as we have been discussing here, these days. There is something extraordinarily important here, and from it comes the basis of the abyss.

[ 6 ] You see, in order to clarify the sacramental and mass aspects to you here, I have to approach through the content of knowledge. If you look today at the two outer poles of human existence, the birth with the embryo and conception—I want to place these three in a unified term of "birth"—with birth on the one side and death on the other, so you understand what happens for the physical human being, even according to the order of scientific events. Today's human being, even if he is a theologian, speaks about birth and death as if they are scientific facts, involving physical man. That's exactly why in this day and age the wall between faith and knowledge has been so ruggedly erected, because one wants to keep something which has been taken away through purely scientific knowledge about birth and death, as one admittedly doesn't want for religion, to classify it in terms of knowledge.

How does a person regard birth today? It must seem a peculiar thing that I speak to you about birth, when I want to speak about Mass, but I would not be able to speak about Mass, without also speaking about birth. People see birth according to the study of embryology and ask: What happens to the embryonic germ through the fructification?—Then they ask: How is the male and how is the female substance of inheritance absorbed, and what actually goes on there, scientifically observable, from the forefathers to the child?—Today's man must, with all the antecedents of his scientific education, certainly take this point of view. This point of view exercises such a colossal suggestive view on modern man, that if this point of view is not according to science, it is regarded as nonsense. Everything which is brought up in the human being and is thereby entangled with his thinking habits, leads the human being to phrase his question in this way. Then he can, when he says: 'This question can be answered by science'—at least add: 'Faith remains the way in which the body and the soul may unite.' Yet, it is actually not so. Here lies one of the points where you can make yourself quite demonstrative; for Anthroposophy it is quite important to connect with science and develop it further. Through anthroposophic research it is shown that the concept of matter, as it exists in the human organism, becomes fully disabled in its mode of action. If one looks at a fertilized female egg and its further development, one actually is looking at something which through conception, has excluded itself from all possible earthly events. In the fertilized egg a chaos is created in which all processes available to science, are initially excluded. If I present it schematically it will end here. (A drawing is made on the blackboard.)

Through the fertilization, as far as it happens in the human being, a place is created within earth's processes, where everything stops which could be accessible to natural science. Through this exclusion the possibility is created, at this point, for cosmic activity to take place, peripheral cosmic processes. Within this place something happens which is not accessible to material science.

Here I'm drawing the earth, here is the realm of human beings, this is the periphery beyond which you can go, far beyond measure. While most of us, actually in the realm human beings have the earth's processes, also with the father and mother, we have here—in this circle which I'm drawing—effects from the periphery, from the immeasurable expanse, so that, what is happening here, may be transferred and enter into the scientifically given world. It is an imagination which is quite far away from modern man, because it has been lost since the 15th century.

[ 7 ] When you are in the proximity of Nepal and walk over the earth, you only need to put a flame to a piece of paper and light it, to see how it smokes out of the earth. Those of you who have travelled in Italy would have seen this: it smokes out of the earth. Why does this happen? It is because what would rise from within the earth is usually held by the air pressure; by lighting a piece of paper the air pressure is reduced and what is below, in the earth, now pushes out.

[ 8 ] Through the fertilization the earth processes are excluded, and this enables the heavenly processes to be active. The reverse is what you can demonstrate with a volcanic vent. While we just examine earthly phenomena we have mainly to do with centralized processes, in other words that which rays out from the earth's centre, basically in the direction of gravity, whereas when we consider embryonic processes it is in relation to peripheral processes, which to some extent come from out of immeasurable widths, working in towards the centre. They become effective the moment the earth's effectiveness is excluded. If we go into what is taking place here, then with human embryonic development we need to examine what the participation of the entire cosmos has in the origins of mankind, and not look at precursors which are earthly. Secondly it happens—and it happens further along the embryonic development—that it enters into a relationship with physical matter. Thirdly, what happens is that which has come to the human beings out of the spiritual world and entered the physical world and all that can be in its emerging, everything which had come from the cosmos as periphery-central, in contrast with central-peripheral, now comes into the centre. Through all of this, only now earthly processes come about, man's utilisation of the earthly. The fourth event, the last one, is the preparation for inner human love which only appears when the individual has learnt to speak. So we can say that the precursors which take place through birth are the following: the human being's descent from the spiritual community: if you like the word, it could be "excommunication," meaning the descent, the coming down. (He writes on the blackboard.)

1. Descent.
   The second is the entering of the relationship with matter. (Writes on the blackboard:)
2. Relationship with matter.
   The third is entitlement to the centralising forces of the earth: adaptation to the earthly. (Writes on the blackboard:)
3. Adaptation to the earth
   And the fourth is perceptibility, the ability to speak which however only emerges after the birth, to the extent of what embryonic activity took place. (Writes on the blackboard:)
4. Ability to speak.
   We come closer to the mystery of birth in quite another way if we look at it like this, my dear friends. How can we come closer to the mystery of death which is the other pole of human life? If we now go in reverse, and we begin with the Ability to Speak (Writes on the blackboard:)

Gospel 1.

[ 9 ] Then we create in contrast to the entitlement of the centralising earthly forces, the resurrection, the re-adaptation of the periphery: this happens in the sacrifice of smoke. The opposite of "three" is what we are doing by taking what we receive and adapting it to the earth, to the smoke counteracting the earth's centralizing forces. (Writes on the blackboard:)

Offering 2.

[ 10 ] In other words, what are we doing here? We first speak the Word in the Gospel, and we become conscious that we express this Word in such a way that it is not our word in the sense as I've said yesterday, but that it goes over into objectivity. We relinquish the Word to the smoke—smoke which is capable of adapting the form of the words. Certainly you may say it is suggestive, but still, only suggestive. The Offering consists in the expressed word, which creates waves, being trusted to the smoke, carried up in the smoke. Our word itself becomes carried up. If we turn the relationship to matter around, then we arrive at the dematerialization in the transubstantiation, in the transformation. (Writes on the blackboard:)

Transubstantiation 3.

[ 11 ] In our becoming a child out of the periphery of the cosmos and drawing in our 'I,' in death we withdraw, and we have for this the sign of the transubstantiation, the de-materialization. Where does this power come from? See, just as the peripheral forces work towards the centre when we speak about birth, these forces which we have called up in the offering, work outwards into the world. They work because we have entrusted our words into the smoke. They now work from out of the centre and they carry the dematerialised words through the power of the speaker and in this way, we come into the position, to fulfil the fourth, the opposite of the descent, the merging with the Above, the communion. (Writes on the blackboard:)

Communion 4.

[ 12 ] Now, however my dear friends, we are not only born in the beginning of our lives but forces active at birth continue to work in us. These forces, however, do decrease when we are separated from our mother's body into the outer air. They become subdued but continue working to a lesser extent. The most obvious continuation lies in the creation of languages from the embryonic forces, also in relation to the rest of the organism. Besides the forces creating language, embryonic forces continue to work and do so most strongly from the moment of going to sleep to that of waking up. Thus, embryonic forces work more strongly during sleep than when people are awake. It is only an extract which had been working during the time of being an embryo, yet during hours of restful sleep these embryonic forces continue to work. Forces of death also work in us continuously. Every moment we are born, and we die. Death forces are working. The reverse processes which had descended to work in the development of language continue to work in us; this process works in us, which come from the Gospel through to communion, from the speech up to the union with the Divine-spiritual. However, that which is a sacrament in the Mass, is fulfilled in an outer process which continuously counteracts what is being born in us. This is what amounts to the continuous perpetual forces of death in us.

----------------

[ 13 ] You see, this sacramental process would have been fulfilled in the old Mysteries. Why could they have been accomplished in the old Mysteries? They could have been fulfilled because a certain inherited spiritual perceptivity was available for them. The very moment when a person who lived before the Mystery of Golgotha, pronounced the corresponding words, therefore expressing what we have in the Gospels today, these words were taken into account by the Divine-spiritual. With the ceremony the people surrendered their continuous dying process to the Divine-spiritual forces. These Divine-spiritual forces left the earth during the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. It is only a historical prejudice to believe that the earth is in a continuous development. This is not so; it is certainly not. If the Mystery of Golgotha had not been fulfilled then we could not fulfil such a ceremony, then what dies is given over to the etheric and astral worlds and not, however, to the world where our 'I' belongs. It was not like that before the Mystery of Golgotha.

Here we touch on something, dear friends, which people with their intellectual education can't believe at all because they don't have the antecedents to it. They can't believe that fire, air, water and earth since the time of the Mystery of Golgotha are different from before. It only appears as determined by a time, not that the following could be answered: What would have happened to the earth if the Mystery of Golgotha had not taken place?—So let's just switch the Mystery of Golgotha off, and we can ask ourselves: What would have become of this ceremony if the event of the Mystery of Golgotha had not happened?

[ 14 ] It would be a procedure that, driven by the process of death, would only have conserved our being up to our astral body. The physical body would lose itself into the earth, the ether body would become indistinct in the etheric seas, and the astral body would enter into the astral world, but the I would be corrupted; the I would have to reach its end in some or other incorporation; the I could not go through the portal of death. That is the secret of earth evolution, that, before our time calculation began, the human being retained something which could have been redeemed by going through the gate of death, and which could be made clear through this ceremony. This ceremony, had the Mystery of Golgotha not intervened, would have become what it could have, if the last of the spiritual beings who still had a relationship to the human I, had departed from warmth, air, water, earth, and as in warmth, air, water and air only those beings remained, which still had a connection to our etheric, who have a further relationship to our astral, but no more with our human I.

[ 15 ] This, my dear friends, was the huge fear for the demons when they recognised Christ, who had descended on to the earth. They believed they could now take on the control and eradicate the human I from earth. It is clearly expressed in the Gospels, how the demons behaved when they recognised who had arrived. They knew their plan for the world was crossed out, they had hoped—from out of the spheres where they had originated, they could hope for it—to take the earth's rulership into their own hands. Christ stepped on to the earth and that which the Christ had brought down from the spiritual worlds into earthly events, gave the ceremony its new content, and in this ceremony the presence of the Christ Being took place.

[ 16 ] This is something which certainly can be accessed through spiritual science. You really need to take this up in yourselves, what I have, in a way, only drawn in threads, sketched, as if given in a little drawing. The human being needs to start arriving at a real understanding for the mystery of birth, which appears in nature as a sacrament itself, because it is supernatural, and an understanding must be created for the sacrament within the sacrifice of Mass, which becomes supernatural through the presence of Christ. For those who can't reason, as I've just spoken, for those who can't understand the actual process in the outcry of the lower demons when they saw the deeds of Christ, and only regard this outcry of the demons as a comparison, taking it as something exhausted in the meaning of words, don't understand anything about sacramental deeds, and in particular, the central sacramental ritual of the sacrifice of Mass.

[ 17 ] Unfortunately, humanity has forgotten that they could speak about these things since the first third of the 15th century. Today we are confronted with not only what is customary in the country, but also what has become customary on earth, to appear like a maniac when words are uttered considering the outcry of the demons as a real event when they saw the Christ. We often have the experience: What is wisdom before God, has become foolishness to the world. Then again what is foolishness before the world, in present times is so often wisdom before the gods.

[ 18 ] So the time has arrived when the sacramental element is not at all able to penetrate, because intellectualism is seizing all circles with such power—it works firstly on our religious and scientific areas—that it also seizes the religious and above all, things concerning theology. It's connected to external events, my dear friends, that took place, and you can see it resulted in what had actually developed out of church schools as a teaching for humanity, first preserved in the universities. If you want to continue taking this further you can study the way universities continued from the 14th century onwards, where the spiritual evolution gradually became removed from human evolution, how they gradually became secularized and how in due course what was within the spiritual led to the worldly. Make a study of how state waged war with the church, and how the state—because the church insisted on it—at most left the teaching content within it as an enclave but otherwise the spiritual has been taken out of humanity's evolution. This historical evolution you have to experience, you must even be able to feel it. We stand today in the presence of many cold hearts in historical development. We have completely stopped feeling religious at least as far as historical development is concerned. How can we gain from the Gospels at all, while they have emerged out of quite other states of evolution, when we have stopped feeling religious towards historical evolution?

[ 19 ] You see, here you have a real transition from out of the earthly life, into the spiritual life. Through birth a person descends in four steps into the earthly existence until the moment of speech, through the death process he ascends from speech up to communion. He would have died today, also his I, if he had not taken up what lies up to communion in the whole ceremonial process, if he has not taken up Christ, who redeemed from within the physical, the etheric, astral and conserving the I, so that he can retain his I even after death.

With the sacrifice of Mass people are snatched away from the power of the demons, from that power which entangles us in contradictions which are primarily shaped by intellectual concepts with sharp outlines. However, life is not made up of sharp outlines, life can only live within our consciousness in a conceptual way, if a concept organically evolves into another concept. With the inorganic, where we have detached concepts, they are merely clothed as dead in our consciousness. We need concepts which can evolve from one into another, which are alive and capable of metamorphosis; only these concept are not pushed away when we take them up inwardly, these concepts would be propagated and would be capable, through the offering, through transubstantiation up to communion, to become re-united with the Divine, through which we are released here on earth.

[ 20 ] Whoever adapts the standpoint of modern consciousness, my dear friends, takes on the standpoint which had to be accepted on the one side from the 15th century, if one goes with the progress of the human race. One actually has to simply go with progress; it gives a certain viewpoint of consciousness, by which we can't remain standing still. Even if we are to fall into an abyss, we would have to go with the progress of the human race, but we must simply find the possibility to return from the other side of the abyss so we may continue. What has been happening since the 15th century has of course been necessary. The evangelistic-protestant consciousness has permeated what had been necessary in the evolution of humanity since the 15th century. You can see how, as the point of this development approached humanity, the most varied discussions regarding the transubstantiation and the Last Supper came to the fore. As long as one takes the point of view of the sacramental, such discussions won't arise, because such discussions stem from the invasion of intellectualism in the sacramental way of thinking. From before the 15th century, we in Europe were at the same standpoint on which Hinduism stands today. When a Hindu participates in intellectual development, he is in this intellectual development as free as possible, in as far as he remains a true Brahman. The Hindu participates in the ceremony, in the ritual; it connects everyone, and those who participate in the ritual is a true Hindu believer; he can think about it as he wishes, in it he remains completely free. Dogma, which is captured by thoughts, or a content of teaching, basically doesn't exist. Schools can emerge that interpret things in a hundred different ways. All of this can exist in orthodox Hinduism, if only the ceremonies are recorded as something actual and real.

[ 21 ] Humanity in Europe also reached this standpoint before, around the time of the 15th century. At that time the invasion of intellectualism, which promoted sharp, outlined concepts, would simply not comply with sacramentalism, because with the commencement of discussions there was actually nothing to discuss. If there had been such a person as Scotus Eriugena, in other words a person who stood amidst the conception of the first Christian centuries presenting the discussion of later—one could even say that they were in front of him in a certain sense, it works that way ahead, it is after all in the others ...—(gap in notes). If you study this in Scotus Eriugena you could say he spoke out of the fullness of life, by contrast the later discussions can be compared to my experience with a school friend who had quite radically wriggled himself into materialism, and during our dialogue about one thing and another, he became quite angry and interrupted with the words: It is nonsense to speak about something other than brain processes, to say anything other than what moves in the brain are mere molecules and brain atoms, because those are the only things that happen in thinking and feeling.—So I answered: So, tell me, why are you lying? You are continuously lying when you say, "I feel" and "I think" and so on; you will have to say, "my brain feels," "my brain thinks"; in order for you to be correct, you have to say it like that.—Because he had developed completely into materialism, he criticized people one day in their very foundations. He said: A human being is a being who, instead of standing properly on a surface, moves by oscillating on two legs in a constant search for a position of equilibrium: it is simply nonsense to regard the way he moves, in any other way.—From his point of view, he spoke correctly because he criticized the living from the point of view of intellectualism. Somewhat in this way it would appear to an old confessor of sacramentalism, if one spoke from an intellectual critical viewpoint about sacramentalism and criticized religious life in this way. Since the 15th century it has become a matter of course and all of what is modern religious consciousness doesn't know just how much it has become entangled in it.

[ 22 ] So one can say: we have on the one side the Catholic Church, which, if it feels its living nerve rightly, does not allow intellectualism to enter into it, and we have on the other side the evangelist-protestant consciousness having developed in a cultural milieu which no longer experiences the reality of sacramentalism, as I've indicated today. That's why the abyss is so enormous. The Catholic has stopped in the human evolution presented in the impulses of the 15th century; he developed his religion only up to this point. Cardinal Newman's connection to Catholicism therefore was so difficult, because his approach was out of modern consciousness. For the Catholic, religious life has come to one side, while modern science took the outer side. You can't read a scientific work that has emerged from Catholicism without experiencing how the most learned priests and most learned Catholics work with science in such a way that it is regarded as outer phenomena, and only that which they bring in feeling, in fervour from their Catholicism, can give them strength. However, science is a different matter to what is done within the religious, and the scholasticism of Thomas Aquinas was the last product of intellectual development in that it still included the philosophy as organic in its world view. As a result, it basically had to be discussed again for the philosophical fortification of Catholicism. [ 23 ] The Protestant consciousness felt obliged to take up intellectualism, to process intellectualism. Thus, they became alienated from sacramentalism; as a result, it became necessary to take on an ethical character, it was necessary to relinquish everything which somehow formed foundations of knowledge for the religious life. It was for instance necessary to insist that, instead of adding a mystery to birth, to substitute it with the scientific mystery of birth which meant connecting the soul with the body, achieved without an opinion possibly gained from it. The Mass, the inverse ceremony of birth processes, which are dying processes, would be mindlessly given over to historical development, and abandoned. This all relates to the time of intellectualism when the human being could no longer directly find the spiritual within the physical. So it can be seen, that if religious content is to be saved at all, it would be to formulate it in such a way that it has nothing connecting it to a content of knowledge. This will always stand as a gaping contradiction for anyone who does not, in theory, want to ignore the practical impulses of the soul's life.

[ 24 ] However, humanity could never have entered into the age of experiencing freedom without having participated what had been brought to fruition in the 15th century, because freedom can only be gained within the culture of intellectualism. Only intellectually are we able to depend so much on ourselves that we may have the inner experience, which I have portrayed in my book The Philosophy of Freedom (later translations called The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity) regarding the experience of pure thinking as the foundation of freedom. All discussions prior to this regarding freedom, are only preparatory, because freedom is not to be discovered within a view which basically only contained necessity, like the view which had remained before the 15th century. So let's pose the fundamental question which can be solved in the present: How do we, despite recognising the blessings of intellectualism, rediscover the sacramental out of freedom?

[ 25 ] Without a deep grasp on this question, we will not be able to understand it. The help of historical evolution needs to be taken into account in order to understand these things. If you can't let go of what I've now come to terms with, if you don't understand Luther's soul struggle inwardly either, but only in a certain sense only outwardly, intellectually, you will see in the next few days that we have already, with what has been said today, started moving the building blocks together for the understanding of Luther's soul's struggle. With this I want to close today.

(Afterwards Rudolf Steiner admitted he would be willing to enter into eventual questions and Licentiate Bock asked him to shortly clarify again the connection between Mass and birth.)

[ 26 ] Rudolf Steiner: It concerns the ability of speech, therefore life through words, which is the last capability given through the powers of birth, come to the fore in this direction (reference to table 5—see outline below). Now, we develop the ability for language which we receive here, in the most comprehensive sense, which we apply in the Gospels, in that we proclaim the words of God, so that we are carried from birth up to the words which turn back again. So the way goes from "descent" up to the words, Logos, and then back again. I only wrote "Gospel" on the blackboard, to place the Mass as a reverse ritual in the ceremonial process. When we look at the sacrifice of Mass—I'm letting go of the introductory processes, they are all preparatory—so the first real action is reading the Gospel, the sounding out of words, that means all which is directed towards birth, we allow to sound initially in the sacrifice of Mass. The Gospel which is read, is actually the first process of the Mass, and sounds out as word. Now, after intermediate processes here again, which do not represent the essential, the offering begins. The altar is smoked. This has the meaning that the word, which is sounded, unites with the smoke and rises from the altar. Then a time follows in which the offering continues up to the transubstantiation, when we also come back to the final material. Finally, there's the communion, which is the reverse of the descent, which is to be taken upwards. If we have understood the totality of the processes, then we first have the word, then the offering with smoke, then the word is carried into it through the power of dematerialization in the transformation and to the unification through communion. Yes, so be it.

1. Descent—Communion 4.
2. Relationship with matter—Transubstantiation 3.
3. Adaptation to earth—Offering 2.
4. Ability to speak—Gospel 1.

[ 1 ] My dear friends! Yesterday we started by addressing a wish which licentiate Bock had expressed at the beginning of our course and we find that what we need to build on to what I said yesterday afternoon about sacramentalism relevant to today, can be discovered if we link the possible reflections, which are necessary, to the 13th chapter of the Gospel of St Mark. It is important for us to certainly try again, in all seriousness, to derive specific meaning from what is expressed in living words. To me it is impossible that pastoral care can be developed in the future, without yourself developing the application of living words and even experiencing living words. However, it is impossible for current mankind which is so strongly gripped by materialism, to be able to handle the living Word in itself, without a historical deepening. It is simply so, that in dealing with intellectualistic concepts and ideas we are only dealing with dead words, with the corpse of the Logos. We will only deal with the living Word when we penetrate through the layer in which man lives today, only, and alone, by penetrating through the layer of the dead, the corpse-like words.

[ 2 ] My dear friends, the Catholic Church has to a certain degree understood very well how to misplace and obstruct access to these living words for those who, in their opinion, should be the true believers. In pastoral care the Catholic Church in a certain sense considers these enlivening words already, but in an outward sense. All these things will only become understood when we take what I presented yesterday and think them through deeply, and, if we can still penetrate them further, to yield clarity. I'm saying that the Catholic Church understood very clearly in this regard, to exterminate the life of the Word, because it belonged to one of the most significant epochs of all human development, and which had contributed briefly before and some three centuries after the Mystery of Golgotha, just to the civilized part of humanity.

[ 3 ] When we ask our contemporaries about the essence of the Gnosis, for example the essence of the Montanistic heresy, then with the current soul constitution you basically can't understand anything correctly relating to it. That which would outwardly be informative in the becoming church has been carefully eradicated and the things that archaeologists, philosophers, researchers of antiquity discover from this characterised epoch, will indeed be deciphered word for word, but the decipherment does not mean reaching an understanding. All of this must actually be read differently, in order to enter the real soul content of olden times. It is for instance possible for modern humanity, to take the Deussen translation, which has exterminated all real meaning of the Orient, and, while thinking these translations are great, while mankind can't eradicate all understanding for what Deussen translated, devote yourself to such a Deussen translation. In order to understand, you need to penetrate the meaning of the first Christian centuries, more specifically the centuries before the Mystery of Golgotha happened.

[ 4 ] I would like to give you access, somewhat in the way I have out of Anthroposophy, by means of a presentation, which you can visualise as symptomatic of what history brings. One of the most extinct things belonging in the first Christian centuries was referred to as the Pistis, placed in contrast to the Gnosis. The Gnosis can't be understood if one doesn't know that in that time epoch, in which, let's say, you appeared in the form of a Basilides or Valentinus, people who lived in the spirituality of that time, were fighting a very terrible battle, which can be characterised by them asking a question: What do we poor people have to do on the one hand with the spirit that juts in our souls, and on the other hand our physical body into which our soul likewise juts into? In a terrifying manner this question played out in the soul battle among religious people. The two opposite poles, to a certain extent, of this battle was the Gnosis and Montanism sect.

[ 5 ] The Gnosis was, for people who wanted to become Gnostics, being aware that within a person, where the soul resides, the spirit can only be reached through knowledge, through clear, lucid, light-filled knowledge. However, it was already during a time in which intellectualism was being prepared in the dark, in a time when intellectualism was regarded as the enemy of the human soul's relation to the spirit. To a certain extent people prophetically saw how intellectualism would push in, in the future; this arrival of intellectualism was seen as stripping the world of spirituality, wanting to completely make the world void of the Divine, like I have characterised for you yesterday. People saw this and people experienced intellectualism as a danger. People wanted to hold on to something spiritual which didn't come from intellectualism. That's roughly the soul battle Basilides fought, the Gnostic who wanted to stick to what was revealed in the course of the year. He said to himself: When a person submits himself to his forthcoming intellect, then he separates himself from the Divine spirituality of the cosmos; he must connect to what lies in his environment, which has come into being through the Divine spiritual cosmos; he must adhere to that which has the venerable image of cosmic creation in the circling of the world and thus the Divine process in matter; he must adhere to the course of the year.—Basilides did the following: He looked up - but with him it was actually still only tradition, so no longer an inner imaginative perception as in older times, which I characterised as the reading of the movement of the stars—he looked up and said: Last but not least, the spiritual gaze is lost; when we feel, that when we become aware the spiritual gaze is lost, then we talk about the unknown God, the God who can't be grasped in words and concepts, from whom the fist aeon this unknown God manifests himself, revealing himself—this concept of manifestation which later unified things as with Basilides, will be totally misunderstood if compared with what we understand today under "manifestation"; one should not say "it manifests itself" but "it is formed out of," it is individually shaped—out of the unknown God is formed the Nous, which also appeared with Anaxagoras as the first creation of the unknown God.

That is the first principle, which exists in people as a copy, when the human mind, not the intellectual mind but the lively mind I've characterised for you during these days, still existed within Greek philosophy (up to Plato), and which then appeared in a weaker form still in Aristotle.

[ 6 ] What comes next is the Logos, in which from the Nous we descend further down. In human beings it is expressed by perceiving sound and tone. In the neck area we find five other principles which we need not characterise in detail now. With this we have what was first called the holy days of the year, which gives people, when they read the cosmos, an understanding of the human body, leading to the human head organisation.

[ 7 ] Besides these principles we find others in the human organization, 364 in total, which gives 364 + 1=365, the outer symbol which is expressed as the 365 days of the year. The word Day (Tag) originally was inwardly connected to God, so what Basilides, by speaking about 365 days, spoke about 365 gods which all partake in the creation of the human organism. As the last one of the gods—i.e. if you take one plus 364, and then take the last day of the year as a symbol for one God—Basilides saw the God who was worshipped by the Jews in the Old Testament. You see, this is what is extraordinary in the Gnosis, that it is in such a relationship to Jahve, the Jewish God, that he is not the unknown God connected to the Nous and Logos but with the Jewish God as the 365, as the last day of the year.

[ 8 ] By understanding the Gnosis in this way, the experience of the soul was to be permeated spiritually. If I were to give you a characteristic aspect of the Gnosis, in relation to inner human experience it is this: that the Gnostic aspired in everything to penetrate the Highest with knowledge, so that his gaze rose above the Logos up to the Nous. The Gnostic says: In Christ and in the Mystery of Golgotha the Nous is embodied in the human being; not the Logos, the Nous is embodied. This, my dear friends, if it is grasped in a lively way, has a distinct result for our inner soul life. If you consider these things abstractly, as is in our intellectual time presented to many people, well, then it is heard that people in olden times didn't speak about the Logos in which Jesus became flesh, but of the Nous, which became the flesh of Jesus. That's the thing then, if you have pegged such a term. For a person who spiritually lives within a lively experience of concepts, he would not be able to do otherwise, than to grasp such a soul's content, as to imagine sculpturally what the Nous becoming flesh is. The Nous having become flesh however, can't speak; this can't be the Christ, can't go through death and resurrection. The Christ of the Gnostic, which is actually the Nous, could only come as far as being embodied in people; it could not die or accomplish resurrection.

For Basilides, this darkened his observation. His gaze becomes clouded the moment he approaches the last acts of the Mystery of Golgotha with his inner gaze; it clouds his gaze when it comes to dying and resurrection. His gaze is drawn to the route towards Crucifixion, the route to Golgotha of Jesus Christ, but he couldn't accomplish, out of a lively imagination, that the Christ carried the cross to Golgotha, was killed on the cross and resurrected. He regards it in such a way that Simon of Cyrene took the cross from the Christ, that he carried it up to Golgotha, and instead of Christ, that Simon of Cyrene is crucified. This is the Christ imagination of the Gnostic in as far as the image of Basilides appears and is basically the historical expression of the Gnosis.

[ 9 ] So we see how the Christ in his final deed, is omitted by the Gnostic, how the Gnostic can't grasp the final result of Golgotha, how in their imagination the Christ is merely accomplished through the Nous, how it ends at the moment the Christ gives the cross away to Simon of Cyrene. On the one hand we have Gnosis, which is so strongly afraid of intellectualism that it did not let the legitimate power of intellectualism into human vision and as a result could not enter into the last act of the Mystery of Golgotha.

What did the Gnosis do? It stood in quite a lively way, I could say, in relation to the most extraordinary and powerful question of that current age: How does one penetrate the supersensible spirit from which the soul originated?—The Gnostic pointed away from that which somehow wanted to flow in from intellectualism and result in the image of Christ up to the point when he hands the cross to Simon of Cyrene. This is the one side of the human battle which at the time had the result of creating the influence of the great question, which I have set before you. What comes forth from this wrestling?

From all this wrestling another great question arises which became the crux for the Christian Gnostics. My dear friends, because the Gnostics regarded 365 as the Divine god of the Jews, they experienced the Fatherly and the Divine at the end of this row. When the Jews worshiped their god, they experienced it as Fatherly, while what later appeared as the Holy Ghost, they experienced the opposite pole, in the Nous. As a result, the Gnostics gave an answer to the primordial question in the first Christian centuries, an answer which is no longer valid today. Their answer was: The Christ is a far higher creation than the Father; the Christ is essentially equal to the Father. The Father, who finds his most outward, extreme expression in the Jewish god, is the creator of the world, but as the world creator he has, out of its foundations allowed things to be created simultaneously, the good and evil, the good and bad, simultaneously health and illness, the divine and the devilish. This world, which was not made out of love, because it contains evil, the Gnostics contrasted with the more elevated divine nature of the Christ who came from above, downward, carrying the Nous within, who can redeem this world that the creator had to leave un-liberated.

Christ is not essentially the Father, said the Gnostics, the Father essentially stood lower than the Son; the Son as Christ stood higher. This is the fundamental feeling permeating the Gnosis: however, it has been completely obstructed by what later occurred in the Roman Catholic continuation. Basically, we can't look back at what the big question was: How does one relate to the greater Christ in contrast to the less perfect Father? The Gnostic actually saw things in such a way that the Father of the worlds was still imperfect, and only by bringing forth his Son, he created perfection; that through the propagation of his Son, the act of procreation of his Son, He would complete the development of the world.

[ 10 ] In all these things you see exactly what lived in the Gnosis. If we now look at the opposite side, which comes into the strongest expression with Monatunus, already weaker but still clearly with Tertullian, then we look over to those who said to themselves: If we want to reach into the Gnosis, everything disappears; we can't through the outer world, not through the contemplation of the seasons, not through reading the stars, reach the divine, we must enter into man, we must immerse ourselves in man.—

While the Gnosis directed its gaze to the macrocosm, so Mantanismus dived into the microcosm, in the human being himself. Intellectualistic concepts were at that time only in its infancy and could not yet be fully expressed; theology in today's sense did not arise in this way. What existed in all the exercises, in particular those prescribed by Mantanus for his students, were inner stories, something which was enlivened within the students as visions. These atavistic visions for the Montanists were particularly indigenous. All those who were to separate themselves from belonging to the mere pastoral care of the Montanists were allowed to practice, and all of them were allowed to practice to the extent that they could answer the question: how does the soul-spiritual in man, in the microcosm, relate to the physical-bodily aspect?

[ 11 ] During ancient times, long before the Mystery of Golgotha, what I've just said was something obvious; had a self-evident answer. For those who lived in the time epoch of the Mystery of Golgotha, such an obvious answer didn't exist. People first had to dive into physicality. Because a fear existed of bringing intellectualism into this physicality, one entered the corporality with the power of the imagination and we get to know the descriptions of the forming of Montanist visions, which have also disappeared. In descriptions of Montanist visions—and this is characteristic—we always find the repetitive idea of the Christ soon returning in a physical body to the earth. One can't think of Montanism without thinking of the imminent return of the Christ to earthly corporeality. While the Montanist was familiar with the idea of finding the returning Christ, he strongly set before his soul what happened at the cross, what was accomplished through the death on the cross, what is involved in dying, what is involved in resurrection. The re-descent of the Christ, the physical-bodily immersion that takes place, was tinged by materialistic feelings in this view of the Montanists; they lived in the idea that Christ would come again and live in time and space. This was pronounced and those who believed this in the schools were only those who responded to the belief of the imminent coming of Christ Jesus to the earth, where he would stride along as if he is in a physical body.

[ 12 ] This is in contrast to the Gnosis, this is the other pole: it had a different danger, the danger that all historic development of humanity is to be imagined in space and time. The urge to imagine such an idea of the world is what Augustinus for instance experienced in his exchange with the Bishop Faustus. Through Faustus a method of imagination is introduced which is completely tinged with the senses as images presented to Augustinus, and this became a materialistic experience of the world for Augustinus, from where he approached the world. Augustinus' words are gripping: I search for God in the stars, and do not find Him. I search for God in the sun, in the moon, and don't find Him. I search for God in all the plants, in all the animals, and don't find Him. I search for God on the mountains, in the rivers; I don't find Him.—

He means that in all the images there is no inner experience of the Divine, as it is with the Montanists. Through this Augustinus learnt, as it happened in his exchange with Faustus, to recognise materialism. This created his soul battle, which he overcomes by turning to himself, to faith, towards believing what he doesn't know.

[ 13 ] We must let this rise out of history because the important things do not happen in a way, we can control it, by taking a document in hand which has lain in the archives, or by looking at the entire history of these fore-mentioned men from outside—that is an outer assessment of history. The most important part of history takes place in the human soul, in human hearts. We need to look into the soul of Basilides, into the soul of Montanus, into the soul of Faustus, into the soul of Augustinus, if we want to look into what really happened in the historic fields which one then can develop into what actually became a covering of Christianity in the Church of Constantine. The Constantine Church took on the outer life of worldly realms in which the spiritual no longer lived—in the sense of the 13th Chapter of the Mark Gospel—depicted as an already un-deified earth, a perished earth, into which the divine kingdom must again live as brought by him in its real spiritual soul form.

[ 14 ] You see, in the course of both these viewpoints, one on the side the Gnosis which only came up to the Nous, and on the other side Montanism, which remained stuck in a materialistic conception, you see, how in these contrasts present during the first Christian century, the writer of the St John Gospel was situated. He looked on one side to the Gnosis, which he recognised from his view as an error, because it said: In the primordial beginnings was the Nous and the Nous was with God, and God was the Nous, and the Nous became flesh and lived among us; and Simon of Cyrene took the cross from Christ and thus accomplished a human image of what happened on Golgotha, after Christ only went up to carrying the cross and then disappeared from the earthly plane.—For the gaze of the Gnostic Christ disappeared the moment Simon of Cyrene took over the cross. That was a mistake.

Where do you arrive if you succumb to all thought being human and having nothing to do with the spirit? No, this is not the way the writer of John's Gospel experienced it. It was not the Nous which was at the primordial beginnings, not the Nous with God and a veil covering everything which is related to the Christian Mystery, but: In the primordial beginnings was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and a God was the Logos and the Logos became flesh and lived among us.—So the first actions are connected to the final actions: a unity comes about when we understand it with the spirit. We wish for something which doesn't lift us above human heights, to where we must find the Nous, because that is only one perspective of the spiritual.

Just as much spirit is needed for the spiritual orientation to let people form the idea that Jesus and the Christ God is one, so much spirituality exists in the Logos. When we hold on to the Nous, we only reach Christ; when we hold on to a Montanistic vision we only reach Jesus who in an unbelievable way returns as Christ, but then again only as a physical Jesus. No, we should not turn ourselves to the Nous coming from humanity, we must turn to the Logos, in which the Christ became man and walked among us.

[ 15 ] The origin of the St John Gospel has really come about through an immense spiritual time context. I can't do otherwise, my dear friends, than to make a personal remark here, that I need to experience it as the greatest tragedy of our time, that theologians do not experience the majesty of the John Gospel at all, that out of a deep struggle preceding it, out of a struggle, the big question arose: How can mankind manage to, on the one hand, find a way to his soul-spiritual in the spiritual-supersensible where his own soul-spiritual nature originated from? On the other hand, how can mankind reach an understanding for how his soul is within the physical-bodily nature?

On the one hand the question could be answered by the Gnosis, and on the other hand it could be answered by an imagination towards the Pistis, which then came to Montanism in a visionary manner. The writer of the St John's Gospel was continuously placed in the middle, between these two, and we feel every word, every sentence only intimately if we do it in such a way as it flowed out of the course of the times, and in such a way that you feel the course of time during the Mystery of Golgotha as if it can be experienced forever in the human soul. With an anthroposophic gaze we can look back at the turning point in time, to the most important turning point in the earth, when one wanted to have this experience of adoration of the St John's Gospel. The day before yesterday I said to you, one has, and must, have an experience when one reads the Gospels with an anthroposophical approach, by reading them time and time again. This admiration of the reader is always renewed with each reading by the conviction that one can never learn everything from the Gospels because they go into immeasurable depths. In Gnosis, my dear friends, you can learn everything because it adheres to outer nature and cosmic symbols. In Montanism one can learn all about it because everyone who is familiar with such things knows what a tremendous suggestive persuasiveness all this has, that can be experienced through microcosmic visions, stronger than any outer impression. You must first learn, my dear friends, in order to be able to talk someone out of a vision, you first need to learn how to do it. You could, if you want to convince a person religiously, rather talk him out of what he has experienced with his outer senses, than anything he has experienced as visions, as atavistic clairvoyance, because atavistic visions are far deeper in a person. By allowing atavistic visions into a person, he is far more connected to them than to his sense impressions. It is far easier to determine an error in sense impressions than an error related to visions. Visions are deeply imbedded in the microcosm. Out of such depths everything originated which the writer of John's Gospel saw from the other side, the side of the Montanists.

Montanism was the side of the Charybdis while the Gnosis was the side of the Scylla. He had to get past them both. I feel it at once, as our current tragedy, that our time has been forced—really out of the very superficial honesty, which prevail in such areas—that the Gospel of St John has been completely eliminated and only the Synoptics accepted. If you experience the Gospels through ever greater wonderment at each renewed reading, and when you manage to delve ever deeper and deeper into the Gospels, then it gives you a harmony of the Gospels. You only reach the harmony of the Gospels when you have penetrated St John's Gospel because all together, they don't form a threefold but a fourfold harmony. You won't accomplish, my dear friends, what you have chosen to do in these meetings for the renewal of religion in present time, if you haven't managed to experience the entire depths, the immeasurable depths of the St John's Gospel. Out of the harmony of John's Gospel with the so-called synoptic Gospels something else must come about as had been established by theology. What can really be experienced inwardly as a harmony in the four Gospels must come about in a living way, as the living truth and therefore just life itself. Out of the experience, out of every experience which is deepened and warmed by the history of the origin of Christianity, out of this experience must flow the religious renewal. It can't be a result out of the intellect, nor theoretical exchanges about belief and knowledge, but only from the deepening of the felt, sensed, content which is able to be deepened in such a way as it was able to truly live in the souls of the first Christians.

[ 16 ] Then, my dear friends, we see how Christianity was submerged by all that Christ experienced in Romanism—as I've presented to you—in the downfall of the world. Those who still understand Christ today will have to feel that the downfall is contained in all that is held by the powers of Romanism. By allowing the powers of Romanism to be preserved by the peoples who lived in this Romanism—the Roman written language, the Latin language had long been active—by our preservation of Roman Law, in our conservation of the outer forms of the Roman State, by our even uprooting the northern regions which contained the most elementary Germanic feelings experienced out of quite a different social community, in the Roman State outstripping all that is from the north, we live right up to our present days in a Roman world of decay because in Christendom, as it was considered in the vicinity of Christ Jesus himself, no other site could be found. This is because the Christianity of Constantine, which found such a meaningful symbol in the crowning of Constantine the Great in Rome, was a Christianity which expressed itself in outer worldliness, in Roman legalities. Augustinus already experienced, as I characterised yesterday and today, the feeling in his soul: Oh, what will it be then, if that gets a grip on the world, that which streams out of godless intellectualism, out of godless Romanism into the world? The principle of civil government will become something terrible; the Civitas of people will be opposed by the Civitas Dei, the God State.—So we notice the rise—earlier the indications had already been there, my dear friends—we see an interest emerging that was just seized in the following times in its fullest power in religious fields, that a light is cast on all later religious battles in the soul, which has just felt these religious battles most deeply.

Already with Augustinus this question emerged: How do we save the morality in the face of outward forces of law? How can we save morality, the divinely permeated morality? Into Romanism it can't spread.—This is the striving for internalization we find in the commitments and confessions of Augustinus, if we penetrate them correctly.

[ 17 ] This occurs in the later striving in the most diverse forms. It appears in the tendency towards outer moral stateliness, which had to be developed according to Roman forms of the Roman Papal church, develop through the coronation of the kings becoming Roman emperors, in which the kings were accepted as instruments of the Roman Papal church, which itself was only fashioned out of ungodly Romanism. I speak in the Christian sense, in the sense of the first Christianity, which experienced Romanism as an enemy. How could one escape this which was being prepared? The first way one could get out was to not allow the internalised Christ to submit to the nationalization of morality, as it had evolved in the Roman Papal church. The nationalization, the outer national administration of morality was what Augustinus still accepted on the one hand, while, however, in the depths of his soul there were forces which he rebelled against.

[ 18 ] We see in this rebellion, one could call it, the tendency of morality to withdraw within, at least to save the divinity within morality, according to what one had lost in outer worldliness. We see this morality being turned inward, being searched for as the "little spark" mentioned by Meister Eckhard, by Tauler, by Suso and so on, and how in particular it profoundly, intimately appears in the booklet Theologia Deutch. This, my dear friends is the battle for the moral, which now came to the fore, not to be lost within the divine spirituality, when it has already been lost in outer world knowledge and administration of the world. However, for a long time one was not ready to use such force like Suso regarding morality and seize the divine to penetrate the moral.

[ 19 ] At first it was a question of arranging the whole in a kind of vague form, always envisioning the side of the outside world, for there had to be someone like a Carolus Magnus, who on the one hand was a worldly administrator, and who could transfer the state administration of morality to the crown of the emperor as an outward gesture, while the church worked in the background. It was imagined in such a way, I could say, that it became a kind of moral dilemma, a conscience that has become historical. This started in the 9th, 10th centuries and this inner conscience steered towards people looking at the world, and that man, because he stood in the middle of the search for the divine in the moral, didn't manage it in the world and searched for the enemies in the world which he felt within. Man looked in the world to find enemies. This resulted in the danger of Christians looking for enemies in the outer world, this led, my dear friends, to the mood of the crusades.

[ 20 ] The crusade mood stands in the middle of the quests for internalization, yet people still didn't reach that place within themselves where the divine was grasped through the moral. The crusade mood lived in two forms; it lived above all in the moral impact of Godfrey of Bouillon and his comrades. From them the call went out against Rome: Jerusalem against Rome! To Jerusalem! We want to replace Rome with Jerusalem because in Rome we have become acquainted with outwardness, and in Jerusalem we will perhaps find inwardness, when we relive the Mystery of Golgotha in its holy places.—This is how the imagination came to Godfrey of Bouillon who we may think of as finding the enemy inwardly, even though he still looked for it outwardly, looking for it in the Turks. The striving to turn more inward and there find the ruler of the world, but at the same time to crown a king of Jerusalem, all this expressed itself in the historic mood of the 10th, 11th, and 12th centuries. All this lived in the people. For once try to place yourself, in both the worldly and the spiritual reasons of the crusades and you will discover this historical mood everywhere.

[ 21 ] Rome saw this. Rome felt it indeed, something was happening in the north: Jerusalem against Rome. In Rome one felt the externalization, but Rome was careful. Rome already had its prophets; it was careful and looked into the future, seeing what people wanted: Jerusalem against Rome. So it did something which often happens in such cases, it introduced in its own way what the others first wanted, and the Pope allowed his creatures, Peter of Amiens and his supporters, to preach about the crusade in order to carry out from Rome what actually went against it. Study the history with understanding; take it as an impulse and you will see that already the first steps of the crusades took place in what Rome had anticipated and that which Godfrey of Bouillon and his supporters strived for.

[ 22 ] So we see in the historic mood how outer actions were searching for what lay within. I could say we can understand this historic mood in a spiritual way when we see how the Order of the Temple has grown out of the crusades, orders which are already further in their turning within. As a result of the crusades it brought an inwardness with it. It only takes things in such a way that it knows that one does not actually internalize them if one does not penetrate the exterior at the same time, when one doesn't, in order to save the moral, see it as an enemy in an exterior way. As paradoxical as this might appear, my dear friends, what Godfrey of Bouillon saw outwardly in the realm of the Turks, this is like Luther's battle at Wartburg Castle with its devils as an inner power. The struggle is directed inward.

[ 23 ] If you now look at all of this, what appears in programs about such people as Johannes Valentin Andrea, Comenius, what lives in the Bohemian brothers, then you will understand how in the later centuries of the crusades the pursuit of internalization has gone. I must at least mention the most symptomatic picture seemed to me always to be in a single place when I looked at this lonely thinker who lived in Bohemia, the contemporary of Leibniz, Franziskus Josephus von Hoditz und Wolframitz. For the first time, in all clarity—we don't only know this today—he stripped morality of legality. Everywhere in the early days of writing in the Roman spirit, the legal was bound to the moral. What lived in a religious way in most people, lived in a philosophic way in the contemporaries of Leibniz. He wanted the moral element to be purely philosophic. Just like Luther wanted to get the inner justification, because in his time it was no longer possible to get justification in the outer world, so Franziskus Josephus von Hoditz und Wolframitz as a lonely thinker, saw the task: How do I save, purely conceptually, morality from the encirclement and transformation of legality, with those poor philosophic concepts? How do I save the purely human-moral?—He didn't deepen the question religiously. The question was not one-sidedly, intellectually posed by Hoditz—Wolframitz. However, just because it is put philosophically, one notices how he struggles philosophically in the pure shaping of the substantial moral content living in the consciousness.

[ 24 ] In order to understand these times which after all form the foundation of ours, in which the feelings of our contemporaries live—without knowing it—you should, my dear friends, always look back at the deep soul battles experienced in the past, also when a modern person feels that he has "brought it so delightfully far"; by looking back at this time of the most terrible human soul battles, only one period of superstition is seen.

[ 25 ] So, I could say, the historic development of the struggle for morality came about. What was being experienced in this struggle shows up right into our present day, and it can be imposed on the spiritual search into religion, for religious behaviour, even into aberrations. Still, no balance has been found between Pistis and Sophia, between Pistis and Gnosis. This abyss is still gaping in contrast to the writer of the Gospel of St John who had infinite courage to stand above it and find the truth in between it all.

This summoning of strength in the search for the moral, in the will to save the divine, by applying it only to the moral, was felt in their simple, deep but imperfect way by those southern German religious people who are regarded as sectarians today, the Theosophists, who we find on the one hand in Bengel, and on the other, in Oetinger, but who are far more numerous than only in these two. They use all their might to strive, in complete earnestness, for attaining the divine in the moral, yet by trying to attain the divine in morality they realise: We need an eschatology, we need a prophecy, we need foresight into the course of the world's unfolding. This is still the unfulfilled striving of the Theosophists in the first half of the 19th century, started at the end of the 18th century when we must see the dawn of that which was completely buried at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, and which must, from all those who experience the necessity for religious renewal, be seen.

[ 26 ] For this reason, my answers to your wishes which are in pursuit of such religious renewal, can't turn out in any other way than they do. I would quite like to give you what I must believe you are actually looking for.

My dear friends! I have been meditating on the course of the year up to the time that would fall roughly on 21-23 July to 22-23 August, the time that I have called the time of ripening. If we permeate ourselves with the world during this time, let ourselves be permeated by the world, then we feel - after we have immersed ourselves in meditation in what I presented this morning - not only how the spirit works in what is becoming and, so to speak, towards the light, but we feel the becoming of the outside world itself as spirit. And I can then say for this time in the same sense as I did for the other times in the morning, that is, for the time erwa from July 22 to August 23: Firstly, becoming as spirit that fills. (It is written on the blackboard:)

1. Becoming as spirit that fills.

Secondly, I will try to feel how the light not only continues to work as I said during the transition from the time of St. John to this time, but how the light is born, as it were, in the darkness. So: the effect of light in darkness. (It is written on the blackboard:)

2. Effect of light in darkness

And when I can feel this, I will sense all around me the calm of the spirit weaving in nature. This morning I already pointed out how the whole, which matures there, appears to me as poured out calm, in which the light of the sun blows spiritually. So: the calm of the spirit weaving. (It is written on the board:)

3. The tranquility of weaving the spirit.

And fourthly, I feel myself indistinctly in the outer spiritual, as part of the spiritual, thus: the co-experiencing of the outer in the spirit. (It is written on the blackboard:)

4. The co-experiencing of the outer in the spirit.

This would be meditation, which can be developed by watching nature mature in August, and we will find that it is precisely during this time that Paul's writings can have such an effect on us if we approach them with understanding. While in previous periods the contrast between John and Paul should be placed before our souls or by us before the soul of the community, it becomes particularly significant for this time if we place the full significance of Paul before ourselves or before the community.

Then we come to the time when summer draws to a close and autumn sets in, when nature gives us that mood that can be called the expectation of the gifts of ripening, when we expect how that which has first worked on us as ripening will then fall to us. This is therefore the time from August 23 to September 23. As this ripening process unfolds, we will look to the spirit, in the dying away of the outward budding of nature, in the dying away of nature itself. (The following is written on the board:)

1. Look to the spirit

Secondly, we will have confidence in the power of that which lives in dying, since we see how these gifts are, as it were, brought to us by nature as it fades away. So (it is written on the blackboard:)

2. Confidence in the spirit

We will learn to revere the power that reveals itself to us in withering nature, in nature that fades away for our senses, from which the spirit confronts us, especially in view of what becomes of us from nature, in view of the harvest. We will learn to revere the power of the world in this nature.

3. Worship of the Power of the World.

Now we are ready to feel how what comes to us as gifts of the harvest does not confront us in images of the external world, but how the external world itself becomes increasingly darker, and we feel ourselves surrendered to what comes to us as a gift as the gifts of nature come to meet us. We can then feel our own inner radiance in the darkening external world. (It is written on the board:)

4. Radiant interior in the darkening outer world

And we will now condense the feelings we used to have towards the maturing into a grateful look at the radiant maturing of our own becoming. (It is written on the board:)

5. Grateful regard for the ripening of our own radiance.

These are the feelings that, as you can see, are, to a certain extent, much more abstract when they are expressed than those we have developed for Advent, for Christmas, for Easter and so on; but that is the given.

And now we come to the time from September 23 to October 23, when we experience the gifts we can receive and the harvest of the world. In beholding what is taking place there, where the world literally imposes a moral relationship on us, our feeling spiritualizes in beholding. It is impossible for man, when he feels in a fully human way, not to experience with gratitude what he can feel at the time of the harvest. (It is written on the board:)

1. The feelings spiritualize in beholding.

Our whole relationship to the world, even as it is a relationship to nature, acquires a moral character; we develop a moral view of the world. (It is written on the blackboard:)

2. Moral world view

But just as we are morally perceiving the world, it is as if the world would be forgotten as such with the approach of the harvest and as if it would become dark. (It is written on the blackboard:)

3. The world is forgotten and darkens

It is precisely in this world that is eluding us and darkening that we are compelled to withdraw into our inner selves. The luminous inner self can best learn a prayerful mood in this autumn meditation, or rather, in the meditation of the world moving towards winter. (It is written on the blackboard:)

4. The luminous inner self learns to pray.

Here meditation takes on the character that it very often, I might say as if by instinct, takes on in the case of deeper philosophical natures. By contemplating the world for a long time and forming their ideas, deeper philosophical natures very often have the feeling that all existence is only provisional because, as it presents itself to us, it does not contain seeds for the future, but because it fades away. In this mood, the mood for prayer best develops for meditation. In this mood, I would say, in this helpless mood, where the world has disappeared from our radiant inner being, it is also where we begin to pray while meditating, that is, we begin to turn to something. Here we best learn the necessity of the commandment or law. (It is written on the board:)

5. Feeling the necessity of the law.

But just by seeing the approach of the spirit, by experiencing the approach of the spirit inwardly in meditation, one feels something like a faintness in the spirit. We can say that the overabundance of the spirit can be felt there, this almost nightmare-like feeling of the spirit. (It is written on the blackboard)

6. The overabundance of the spirit is felt.

It is indeed an absolutely self-evident process that from Johanni onwards – where we have seen how only three stages of our inner meditative experience can come – through the following months, it so happens that in August there are four stages, then five stages, then six stages. This is something quite necessary. As we approach the Christmas season, the inner life of the spirit becomes more differentiated again, we live our way into a more differentiated life.

And now we come to the time from October 23 to about November 23 or 24. This is the time when everything can guide us through the following meditation: We have empathized deeply with the growth and maturation, but then also with what the decline of growth and maturation is and the approach of the gifts out of the decline. We have learned to apply all this to our own inner life. We are, to a certain extent, living with nature and can now, first of all, have the feeling of how a power such as that which brings us the harvest gifts wants to stir in us as well. But precisely now, when we still have a vivid echo, we can feel towards nature in decline how our will is without drive. (It is written on the blackboard:)

1. The will without impulse.

One feels that the moral should enter into the will. (It is written on the board:)

2. The moral wants to seize the will.

Now one can prepare oneself for the mood in which one actually finds Christ's will for the first time. You can say to yourself: I see the world around me, but what I see is not the world. I am seeking a real world. The world is a decayed world; what I see is not the world. You must have already mustered the courage to find the world somewhere else than in what you see and hear and perceive with the other senses. (It is written on the board:)

3. What I see is not the world.

You have to have the courage not to want to see the sun where it was in April, not to perceive the spirit where it sprouts and sprouts, but in the darkness, in death I must seek the sun. (It is written on the board:)

4. In darkness, in death, I must seek the sun.

But through this one will be able to feel oneself in darkness, (it is written on the board:)

5. Man is himself in darkness.

One feels, while one used to feel with the world, now the world is dying. (It is written on the board:)

6. In man the world dies

Everything can now come together in the question (it is written on the board:)

7. How does the world live again in man?

Then the Advent mood can come, which I characterized in the morning as the first one, which begins with the sensation of the word, with the sensation of the Logos. We have truly come through the moods of the year to be able to feel what the Logos is, and we can now develop the mood in the Advent season that is to lead up to the Christmas season.

May I read to you the experiment that I began this morning, such as how, by meditatively surrendering to what I have written on the board here, the meditation can be experienced inwardly in these words, how these words can be experienced in a breviary-like manner.

For the Advent season:

The word flows through heaven and earth
It spoke authoritatively to Moses on the mountain
It forms world beings, for the revelation to man
It weaves in the human interior, through itself to the hidden

It shines as the sun from the light into the darkness
It lives in Christ, bright out of the darkness, gentle in the brightness
It comes to earth in Jesus.

Now the Christmas season:

In the earthly man, He speaks from nature of the mystery of the world
In him, He works as the creative power of the world, full of light
In him, He speaks the word about his own nature
In his speaking, the gate of death and darkness opens.

In Him a new ancestor has appeared for man
Through Him reconciliation with the heights of the world is achieved
Through Him matter reveals spirit, spirit creates matter.

And in the time following Christmas, when we reflect for ourselves and with the community on those parts of the Gospel that deal with Jesus' youth until his preparation for death, when we meditate ourselves in the way I showed you this morning, we can summarize this meditation in the words:

And walking on earth, the power of wisdom grew in him
And he could not be reached by the tempter
The son of the lost human being
The healing power of the world
The disciple finds in his being
From it he taught
And founded the kingdom of the spirit in the sphere of the senses.

And the time of Lent:

The earth sinks from its original state
An abyss is destined for the good sense
Earthly man has lost the heritage of eternity
The sick require healing
A leader must arise for the directionless
The light must shine for him in the darkness
The power of the senses must turn spiritually.

And so, in the spirit of the meditations and Easter Gospels mentioned this morning, we come to the following Easter saying:

I see heaven's radiance
I feel the grave as a spiritual effect
Death comes to me as a physical fall
The resurrection is placed before my spirit
The resurrection lives in my prayers
The Risen One lives in me
My mind is directed towards Him.

Now the walk on earth after the resurrection, the time that follows Easter, before the time of Pentecost:

The supersensible has revealed itself
The meaning of good is the germ of existence
The sensory sphere is only appearance
Truth secretly rules being
I permeate myself with the power of the Risen One
I want to be a disciple of the Risen One
With Him, I want to be a being of another world.

Whitsun time, June:

Insight in the spirit can live,
In a new world, the meaning of good will take effect
In the spirit, truth carries itself
In the image of the mind, it reveals itself
It loosens my tongue
It frees my soul
It unites the divine with the human.

And we come to the time of St. John:

In the becoming of space and time, the spirit weaves
In the darkness of matter, the spirit is powerfully active, forming images
A being awakens in the sleep of the sensory world.

We come to the time of Paul, the time of ripening, July to August, the time after John:

The spirit rises from the world of becoming
In the darkness, light is born
The spirit rests in the web of the senses
The spirit lives in my life.

Toward September 23, in anticipation of the gifts of maturity:

My soul's eye looks at the spirit
And trust weaves into the gaze
Providence escapes the law of nature
What seems dark on the outside shines brightly on the inside
My gratitude flows to the peaceful spirit.

Now at the harvest of nature's gifts:

I look at the world with a spirit-filled feeling
The spirit feels my way of thinking
The world sinks into darkness
The inner being shines in prayer in the spiritual being
The inner being needs a ruler in the darkness of the world
Oh, the spirit takes a level head.

Now in the time leading up to November 23:

I lack the strength of my will
The sense of good wants to work
I see a world that destroys itself
In the destruction I must seek the light of becoming for myself
Darkness spreads in me
dying in the world in being human
How do I find the world in my darkness?

Next month, Advent will answer that.

In this way, we actually get the twelve stations of the breviary if we really get involved in the whole thing. And at the same time, you see something in what I have developed for you that is like an inner call for religious renewal. If you take the church year as it is in the traditional churches, once you have found your way through what has, of course, been corrupted in some ways, to the beauty of this church year, you have the significance of the Advent season, the wonderfully sweet intimacy of the Christmas season, and you can also shape all of this for the congregation in the sense of the Gospels. We then have everything we can do for ourselves and for the community in relation to Jesus, who in his youth grows ever wiser, develops until he cannot be tempted, and develops until he can appear as a teacher. We then have Lent, into which we can place everything that human self-knowledge can become so that the Easter event can be experienced in a dignified way. We also have the Gospel accounts, and these are particularly magnificent, of the events surrounding Easter; we also have the walk of the risen Christ with one or other of his apostles, which we can also gain from the Gospel; we then have the time of Pentecost with everything that follows the Feast of Ascension. But by developing the year in this way, we now lose touch with the world. The Old Catholic Church has now inserted the work of the apostles at this point, the feasts of the apostles, the feasts of the saints up to the feast of the dead for All Souls' Day and so on. But with that, the Pauline task in inner experience has actually been dropped. According to his commission, Paul had to go to those who had previously experienced the divine only as pagans in their souls. This mood, which we particularly need in the present time, which has taken away the religious from us – while we should give it back to the world – must also be in the human being. In this time, the religious feeling must find its way into nature, just as we have found it in the John mood, in the Paul mood of maturation. In the September mood, where we will see that we can very well experience what is given to us in the letters of Peter, we will be able to carry what we have developed in the harvest mood as the meditative life into the feeling of the [... gap in the postscript], without it falling prey to fantastic mysticism. During the time leading up to Advent, which I have just characterized as the time between now and November 23, we will be able to incorporate everything we have to say to the community and to ourselves, from the time of the Apostle's disciples, from the time of the Church Fathers.

If you take this concise month, August, you will be able to sense in its fourfold structure the indication of the structure of the month in weeks, while for the other months the weeks are effaced in their conciseness. A complete breviary will now have to be compiled in such a way that the fourfold division of the month and the twelvefold division of the year are included in meditations, or that the weekly meditations are included in the annual meditations. Then one can also proceed to the daily meditation in such a way that the meditation expressed in the breviary is a threefold one for each day. The weekly verses would follow on from the annual verses, which I have shared with you as they have emerged for me. However, the weekly verses would be repeated in each month, and these would be followed by the daily verses, which run each week from Saturday to the following Sunday. So we would have year-month verses, month-week verses, week-day verses, 21 lines, three times seven lines, except for the middle months, where we have four lines in August, three lines in the St. John season, five lines in the September season, and so on. Thus the breviary is also structured inwardly according to number, and one really experiences that into which we are subconsciously placed in the world. We bring the spirit up into consciousness in the experience of the year. I will speak more about this tomorrow. So tomorrow the formation of the breviary will take us a short time and then we will move on to discussing community building.

(The following is a response to questions submitted in writing by Rudolf Steiner)

Question: When it comes to the content of the breviary, should we also consider similar methods to those used in the Catholic breviary? Days of the Saints? Examination of Conscience?

Rudolf Steiner: I have tried to develop for you, as it were, the principle of the breviary as it arises directly out of the present time, and I cannot see that a religious renewal could be possible if a renewal of breviary prayer does not take place in this direction. The hours can be taken in such a way that we have the opportunity to delve into the content of the breviary meditation three times a day, in the morning, at noon and in the evening.

Question: What is the connection between the calendar of the soul and the weekly sayings of the breviary?

Rudolf Steiner: Well, the weekly sayings refer to the moods that are in the calendar of the soul. Isn't that right? The one who seeks these things out of the spirit, out of real supersensible experience, always has the very concrete situation before him; and in trying to research for your breviary, I had your minds before my soul. When I once formulated the twelve seasonal verses and the weekly verses, I had before me the very different moods of an anthroposophical context, within which no one could yet know that knowledge would arise somewhere, that a religious renewal was necessary. But you will feel that if you compare what we have in mind here with the moods of the annual week proverbs, the two will complement each other perfectly, and each will support and illuminate the other.

I will have to talk about the question of the consecration of holy water and the ordination of priests tomorrow when we come to the topic of community building. All of this is part of it. I will also talk about the place of the sermon in the service tomorrow.

Question: Should the traditional names or new names be used for the prayers and rituals? Wouldn't the latter be better?

Rudolf Steiner: I cannot understand what is meant by the question. So far I have spoken about the baptismal ritual and I do not know why this should not be mentioned by that name.

Questioner: With this question, I am mainly concerned about the names that could arouse suspicion on the part of the outside world, as if Catholicism were to be represented here, for example, the name for the new ritual, “Mass,” or here, “Breviary.” For us, these names are perfectly understandable, but I mean to the outside world.

Rudolf Steiner: I must confess that I am now using words that can make the matter understandable to you, and that will probably have been achieved. But everything that now has to do with putting it into the world should be done by you. Of course, this or that can be guessed here or there, but it is not really the anthroposophical task to intervene in the reality of community and church building.

Question: What is the significance of celibacy in the past and in the present?

Rudolf Steiner: Well, I have spoken about celibacy in relation to the Catholic Church. It serves the aims of the Catholic Church in a very consistent way, as we have seen in the context of the lectures. But now the question is that today, people must rather more strongly ask the question, that is, answer the question: How does the pastor achieve the mood that can sustain pastoral care, even though he is not subject to celibacy rules or at least cannot be required to observe them? In the time in which we live, the important thing is not to alienate ourselves from the world with religion, but to penetrate the world with religion; that is the important thing.

Question: How are the triangle and the square related to baptism?

Rudolf Steiner: The triangle and the square are only the preliminary stages of the cross. The cross is the one that underlies the whole of human development. Although the cross on Golgotha is thoroughly historical – the external reality, as it is often disputed, cannot be disputed in this way – on the other hand, in the sign of the cross we have the sign for the physical and etheric human being. But before we come to the sign of the cross, we have that which lives in the human being as an astral being. Isn't it true that what lives in the sign of the cross, the physical and etheric human being, is completely unconscious? What lives in the astral body is semi-conscious; it is best expressed in the square. It is truly expressed in the square, and what lives in the I is in the triangle. So we see: I – triangle, astral body – square, the whole human being as he lives as I and astral body in the physical and ether bodies – the cross. This is entirely connected with the feeling one has towards I and astral body and towards physical and ether body. (See Chart 18 above)

Question: What is the basis for the symbols of the lamb and the dove?

Rudolf Steiner: This is something that would lead extremely far if it were to be fully developed. It is absolutely the case that there is also a spiritual natural history, if I may use the paradoxical expression. Those who look at the world of birds with a spiritual eye see in the world of birds something in which, albeit in its Ahrimanic ramification, the spirit has worked more than, for example, in the human form. The being is not formed from the inside out, but from the outside in. We have here a formation out of the cosmos in the formation of the feathers, in the whole formation of the bird, which should not simply be represented as it is represented by our sensory natural science today, but should be represented in such a way that its bone structure corresponds to a reproduction of the human head, so that the bird is actually a head with the mouth, because the bird's head is merely a complicated mouth. One must learn to understand this whole design, and when one learns to understand it, then one already gets the necessity, not just the possibility, to see that which one wants to express as the healing spirit in the dove, and to see that which the sacrifice offers in the shape of the lamb. In the time when such symbols were conceived, the lamb or the ram was usually depicted as a recumbent lamb, looking backwards with its head. This form is even something essential; it means that one does not turn one's gaze towards the world, but turns one's gaze away from the world, so to speak, one tries to look into oneself.

Question: What is the Christ experience in the Gospels besides the Father experience? And to what extent does the Christ experience or the Christ mystery in the Mass seem to be only a Christ experience compared to, for example, Paul's Christ experience?

Rudolf Steiner: Well, the thing is that in the newer human being, the Christ experience and the Father experience cannot be distinguished from one another, because the newer human being perceives in nature only what grows and sprouts, and thus in nature actually perceives only that which does not carry death within itself, because the human being does not perceive the fruitfulness of death. The Christ experience only comes into confrontation with the Father experience when we can feel, for instance, that we – adding the experience of the Holy Spirit – make the negations [of the Christ experience and the Father experience] clear to ourselves in the following way. The Father-experience simply arises as the summary of the whole human nature out of the consciousness of the healthy human being. The healthy human being is organized in such a way that just as he must see and hear, so he must have the Father-experience. That is why I always said to my listeners when discussing these things: Not to have the Father-experience is an illness. Not to have the Christ-experience is a fate, because it cannot be acquired through what is merely in the blood, but because, as it were, through self-education, the encounter with the Christ in the outer world and within the human being must be experienced. That is an essential difference. And because today we cannot have the Father-experience as we did in pre-Christian times, arising from a healthy organism – I have discussed this – we have to have an inadequate Father-experience today. With our organism, which has now become such that it can no longer grasp the spiritual, we have to have the Father-experience as a memory. The Christ-experience must be a present experience. We must be able to make this clear distinction. If we wrestle with the question, where is the Father? —, then we are too weak with our present organism to find him. And if we then go to the Christ because we cannot find the Father and seek the Christ through the inner in the outer, then we experience the Christ-experience as a destiny, while one can experience the Father-experience as health. And when we wrestle with the questions: Does the Christ also give us what the Father has given? Is the Christ in what He gives us only similar to the Father or is He equal to Him? — when these questions of Arianism, of Athanasianism, take on a living form again, as we still see, for example, in Eastern philosophers such as Solowjow, then the differentiation between the experience of the Father and the experience of Christ and also the experience of the Holy Spirit in man comes to life again quite clearly, because not to recognize the Spirit is folly. Not recognizing the Father is illness, not recognizing the Christ is fate, not recognizing the Spirit is folly. And we must fight our illness in order to come to the Father, we must bring about our fate in order to come to the Christ, we must fight our 'folly' in order to come to the Spirit. This, of course, only hints at the beginning; what is at issue here is the extraordinarily differentiated experience of the Father and of the Christ. I cannot find that these two experiences are differentiated in the modern Protestant feeling; there is even something strongly Theistic or Deistic about it. One could say that one person feels more what can be achieved in the mind, he feels more Christ, but it is just only an undifferentiated feeling, and the other feels more the Father, but here too it is undifferentiated again; no Christianity comes out of this experience.

Question: What is the position of anthroposophy regarding the supersensible of the universe outside our solar system, including Uranus and Neptune? Are there beings outside the earth that are similar to humanity, and is there also a Christ impulse for them? Do they also need to be redeemed?

Rudolf Steiner: Well, my dear friends, why should we concern ourselves with this question? We get to know the world as a sensual world, and we arrive at the supersensible insofar as our own being is placed in this supersensible. Such questions do not actually arise in this abstraction for the spiritual researcher, because he stands in concrete life. I am often asked what the ultimate goal of the world is, because: If I do not know the ultimate goal, some people say, then I will not set myself in motion with regard to the course of the world and its development. — I always had to answer: If I want to go to Rome and someone only knows the timetable to Bern, there is bound to be someone who knows the route to Ticino and there will be someone else who knows the route to Milan and so on. So I can rest assured with my timetable to Bern. Likewise, I can be reassured if I know the present and what the near future holds, because I will first have to perfect myself in order to recognize the path to the next stage at the next stage. So it is really a matter of seeking living knowledge, knowledge that one can experience, and not of pushing intellectualism to its very limits. In doing so, we lose ourselves completely in the formless.

Question: How can we explain cruelty in the animal kingdom?

Rudolf Steiner: Of course one could answer such questions, but one is misunderstood if one answers them in short sentences. One has to go into everything that is a real force in nature. One has to start at a seemingly completely different end to arrive at an explanation of these things. Start where you are confronted with the spawning of fish, with the release of milt into the sea, and how countless of them perish and only a few become fish. But this is only an outward appearance, because it is actually not known what happens to the undeveloped fish spawn from the aspect of a world that lies immediately behind our sensory world, which is also there. It also undergoes its development. That which is deprived of development in the sense undergoes development in the spiritual. It is destroyed in appearance, but it is preserved in its inner becoming. And in the situation of this fish spawn, which becomes a fish, are also all those wheat grains in the field that are used for sowing again, that is, that turn into wheat again. But all the grains you consume with the bread are capable of becoming fish spawn, because they do not reach the goal that is set for them in the sense world. Just ask what would become of the world if all those beings who do not achieve their goal in the sense world were to withdraw from their other goal, which is not similar to the goal that can be seen in the sense world. The world is indeed very complicated. It is certainly deeply true that the lamb and the one who feels with the lamb must find it cruel when the lamb is eaten by the wolf, but it would be terribly cruel for the wolf if there were no lambs. It is just that what the wolf feels is important for a completely different world than the one in which we live with our senses. One must already have a sense of the world's unfathomability and of the possibility that the world presents itself quite differently from other sides than from the side from which we look at it here. Therefore, our combinative mind, which is actually only intended for the sensory world, fails when faced with some questions, and if we want to use it to explain cruelty in the animal kingdom or other things in the way we are accustomed to explaining [with the combinative mind], we cannot understand these things.

Well, that's what I can answer today. I'll maybe prepare the next two questions, including the one about holy water, for tomorrow.