The Rudolf Steiner Archive

If anyone who has a background of Spiritual Science, and has absorbed something of its teaching about the evolution of the world, then goes on to study those tremendous opening words of our Bible, an entirely new world should dawn upon him.

There is probably no account of human evolution so open to misinterpretation as this record known as Genesis, the description of the creation of the world in six or seven days. When the man of today calls to life in his soul, in any language familiar to him, the words In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, they convey to him scarcely a faint reflection of what lived in the soul of an ancient Hebrew who allowed the words to work upon him. It is not in the least a question of being able to replace the old words by modern ones; it is much more important that we should have been prepared by Anthroposophy to feel at least something of the mood which lived in the heart and mind of the Hebrew pupil of old when he brought to life within himself the words: B'reschit bara elohim et haschamayim v'et ha'aretz. A whole world lived while such words were vibrating through his soul.

What was it like—this inner world which lived in the soul of the pupil? We can only compare it with what can take place in the soul of a man to whom a seer has described the pictures he experienced on looking into the spiritual world. For what in the last resort is Spiritual Science but the outcome of seership, of the living intuitions which the seer receives when, having freed himself from the conditions of sense-perception and of the intellect bound up with the physical body, he looks with spiritual organs into the spiritual worlds? If he wishes to translate what he sees there into the language of the physical world, he can only do so in pictures, but if his descriptive powers suffice, he will do it in pictures which are able to awaken in his hearers a mental image corresponding with what he himself sees in the spiritual worlds. Thereby something comes into existence which must not be mistaken for a description of things and events in the physical sense-world; something comes into existence which we must never forget belongs to an entirely different world—a world which does indeed underlie and maintain the ordinary sense-world of our ideas, impressions and perceptions, yet in no way coincides with that world.

If we want to portray the origin of this our sense-world, including the origin of man himself, our ideas cannot be confined to that world itself. No science equipped only with ideas borrowed from the world of the senses can reach the origin of sense-existence. For sense-existence is rooted in the super-sensible, and although we can go a long way back historically, or geologically, we must realise that, if we are to reach to actual origins, there is a certain point in the far distant past at which we must leave the field of the sense-perceptible and penetrate into regions that can only be grasped super-sensibly. What we call Genesis does not begin with the description of anything perceptible by the senses, anything which the eye could see in the physical world. In the course of these lectures we shall become thoroughly convinced that it would be quite wrong to take the opening words of Genesis as referring to events which can be seen with the outward eye. So long as one connects the words “heaven and earth” with any residue of the sensuously visible one has not reached the stage to which the first part of the Genesis account points us back. Today there is practically no way of obtaining light upon the world it describes except through Spiritual Science. Through Spiritual Science we may indeed hope to approach the mystery of the archetypal words with which the Bible opens, and to get some inkling of their content.

Wherein lies their peculiar secret? It lies in the fact that they are written in the Hebrew tongue, a language which works upon the soul quite differently from any modern language. Although the Hebrew of these early chapters may not perhaps have the same effect today, at one time it did work in such a way that when a letter was sounded it called up in the soul a picture. Pictures arose in the soul of anyone who entered with lively sympathy into the words, and allowed them to work upon him—pictures harmoniously arranged, organic pictures, pictures which may be compared with what the seer can still see today when he rises from the sensible to the super-sensible. The Hebrew language, or, better said, the language of the first chapters of the Bible, enabled the soul to call up imaginal pictures which were not wholly unlike those that are presented to the seer when, freed from his body, he is able to look into super-sensible regions of existence.

In order to realise in some measure the power of these archetypal words we must disregard the pale and shadowy impressions which any modern language makes upon the soul, and try to get some idea of the creative power inherent in sound-sequences in this ancient tongue. It is of immense importance that in the course of these lectures we too should seek to place before our souls the very pictures which arose in the Hebrew pupil of old when these sounds worked creatively in him. In fact we must find a method of penetrating the primeval record entirely different from those used by modern research.

I have now given you an indication of our line of approach. We shall only slowly and gradually learn to comprehend what lived in the ancient Hebrew sage when he allowed those most powerful words to work upon him, words which we do at least still possess. So our next task will be to free ourselves as far as possible from the familiar, and from the ideas and images of “heaven and earth,” of “Gods,” of “creation,” of “in the beginning,” which we have hitherto held. The more thoroughly we can do this the better we shall be able to penetrate into the spirit of a document which arose out of psychic conditions quite different from those of today.

First of all we must be quite clear as to the point of time in evolution we are speaking of, when we deal with the opening words of the Bible. You know of course that contemporary clairvoyant investigation makes it possible to describe to some extent the origin and development of our earth and of human existence. In my book Occult Science, I tried to describe the gradual growth of our earth as the planetary scene of human existence, through the three preliminary stages of Saturn, Sun and Moon.¹ Today you will have in mind, at least in broad outline, what I described there. At what point then in the spiritual scientific account should we place what draws near to our souls in the mighty word B'reschit? Where does it belong?

If we look back for a moment to ancient Saturn, we picture it as a cosmic body having as yet nothing of the material existence to which we are accustomed. Of all that we find in our own environment it has nothing but heat. No air or water or solid earth is as yet to be found upon ancient Saturn; even where it is densest, there is only fire—living, weaving warmth. Then, to this living, weaving warmth, a kind of air or gaseous element is added; and we have a true picture of the Sun existence if we think of it as an interweaving, an interpenetration, of a gaseous, airy element and a warmth element. Then comes the third condition, which we call the Moon evolution. There the watery element is added to the warmth and the air. There is as yet nothing of what in our present earth we call solid. But the old Moon evolution has a peculiar characteristic. It divides into two parts. If we look back upon old Saturn, we see it as a single whole of weaving warmth; and the old Sun we still see as a mingling of gaseous and warmth elements. During the Moon existence there takes place this separation into a part which is Sun and a part which retains the Moon nature. It is only when we come to the fourth stage of our planetary evolution that the earth element is added to the earlier warmth, gaseous and watery elements. In order that this solid element could come into existence, the division which had taken place previously during the Moon evolution had first to repeat itself. Once again the sun had to withdraw. Thus there is a certain moment in the evolution of our planet when, out of the universal complication of fire and air and water, the denser, more earthy element separates from the finer, gaseous element of the sun; and it is only in this earthy element that what we today call solid is able to form.

Let us concentrate on this moment, when the sun withdraws from its former state of union with the rest of the planet and begins to send its forces to the earth from without. Let us bear in mind that this was what made it possible, within the earth, for the solid element—what we today call matter—to begin to condense. If we fix this moment firmly in our minds we have the point of time at which Genesis, the creation story, begins. This is what it is describing. We should not associate with the opening words of Genesis the abstract, shadowy idea we get when we say “In the beginning,” which is something unspeakably poverty-stricken compared with what the ancient Hebrew sage felt. If we would bring the sound B'reschit before our souls in the right way, there must arise before us—in the only way it can do so, in mental images—all that happened through the severance of sun and earth, all that was to be found at the actual moment when the separation into two had just taken place. Furthermore we must be aware that throughout the whole of the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions, spiritual Beings were its leaders and its bearers; and that warmth, air, water are only the outer expressions, the outer garments of spiritual Beings who are the reality. Thus when we contemplate the condition which obtained at the moment of separation of sun and earth, and picture it to ourselves in thoughts full of material images, we must also be conscious that the elementary “water,” “air,” “fire,” which we have in our mind's eye, is still only the means of expression for moving, weaving spirit which, during the course of the preceding Saturn, Sun and Moon stages has advanced, has progressed, and at the time now being described has reached a certain stage in its evolution.

Let us place before us the picture of an immense cosmic globe, composed of weaving elements of water, air or gas and fire, a globe which splits apart into a solar and a telluric element; but let us conceive too that this elementary substance is only the expression of a spiritual. Let us imagine that from this substantial habitation, woven of the elements of water, air and heat, the countenances of spiritual Beings, weaving within it, look out upon us, spiritual Beings who reveal themselves in this element which we have had to represent to ourselves through material images. Let us imagine that we have before us spiritual Beings, turning their countenances towards us, as it were, using their own soul-spiritual forces to organise cosmic bodies with the help of warmth, air and water. Let us try to imagine this!

There we have a picture of an elementary sheath, which, to give a very rough sensuous image of it, we may perhaps liken to a snail-shell, but a shell woven not of solid matter, like the snail's, but from the forest elements of water, air and fire. Let us think of spirit, in the form of countenances, within this sheath, gazing upon us, using this sheath as a means of manifestation, a force of very revelation which, as it were, pricks outward into manifestation from what lies hidden in the super-sensible.

Call up before your souls this picture which I have just tried to paint for you, this image of the living weaving of spirit in a kind of matter; imagine too the inner soul-force which causes it to happen; concentrate for a moment on this to the exclusion of all else, and you will then have something approximating to what lived in an ancient Hebrew sage when the sounds B'reschit penetrated his soul. Bet^*, the first letter, called forth the weaving of the habitation in substance; Resch^†, the second sound, summoned up the countenances of the spiritual Beings who wove within this dwelling, and Schin^‡, the third sound, the prickly, stinging force which worked its way out from within to manifestation.

Now the underlying principle behind such a description is dawning upon us. And when we have grasped that, we are able to appreciate something of the spirit of this language; it had a creativeness of which the modern man with his abstract speech has no inkling.

Now let us place ourselves at the moment immediately preceding the physical coagulation, the physical densification of our earth. Let us imagine it as vividly as possible. We shall have to admit that in describing what was taking place at that moment we cannot make use of any of the ideas which we use today to describe processes in the external sense-world. Hence you will see that it is utterly inadequate to associate any external deed with the second word we meet in Genesis—bara—however closely that deed might resemble what we understand today as creation. We do not thus get near to the meaning of that word. Where can we turn for help? The word implies something which lies very near the boundary where the sensible passes over directly into the super-sensible, into pure spirit. And anyone who wishes to grasp the meaning of the word bara, which is usually translated “created” (In the beginning God created ...), must in no wise associate it with any productive activity which can be seen with physical eyes.

Take a look into your own inner being! Imagine yourselves as having been asleep for a while, then waking up, and, without opening your eyes to things around you, calling up in your souls by inner activity certain images. Bring home vividly to yourselves this inner activity, this productive meditation, this cogitation, which calls forth a soul-content from the depths of the soul as if by magic. If you like you can use the word “excogitate” for this conjuring up of a soul-content out of the depths into the field of consciousness; think of this activity, which man can only perform with his mental images, but think of it now as a real, cosmic, creative activity. Instead of your own meditation, your own inward experience in thinking, try to imagine cosmic thinking-then you have the content of the second word of Genesis, bara. However spiritually you may think it, you can only liken it to the thought-life you are able to bring before yourselves in your own musing, you cannot get nearer to it than that!

And now imagine that during your musing two kinds of images come before your souls. Suppose there is a man to whom on awakening two different kinds of thought occur, a man who muses about two different kinds of thing. Suppose that one kind of thought is the picture either of some activity, or of some external thing or of some being; it does not come about through external sight, through perception, but through reflection, through the creative activity of his soul in the field of his consciousness. Suppose that the second complex of ideas which arises in this awakening man is a desire, something which the man's whole disposition and constitution of soul can prompt him to will. We have elements both of thought and of desire coming up in our souls through inner reflection. Now imagine, instead of the human soul, the Beings called in Genesis the Elohim, reflecting within themselves. Instead of one human soul, think of a multiplicity of reflecting spiritual Beings, who, however, in a similar way—save that their musing is cosmic—call forth by reflection from within themselves two complexes which might be compared with what I have just been describing—a pure thought-element and an element of desire. Thus instead of thinking of the musing' human soul, we think of a group of cosmic Beings who awaken in themselves two complexes; one of the nature of thought or ideation, that is, one which manifests something, expresses itself outwardly, phenomenally; and another of the nature of desire, which lives in inner movement, inner stimulation, which is permeated with inner activity. Let us think of these cosmic Beings, who are called in Genesis the Elohim, musing in this way. The word bara, “created,” brings their musing home to us. Then let us think that through this creative musing two complexes arise, one tending towards external revelation, external manifestation, and another consisting of an inward stimulus, an inward life; then we have the two complexes which arose in the soul of the ancient Hebrew sage when the words haschamayim and ha'aretz—represented for the modern man by “heaven” and “earth”—sounded through his soul. Let us try to forget the modern man's conception of “heaven and earth.” Let us try to bring the two complexes before the soul, the one which tends more to disclose itself, tends to outward manifestation, is disposed to call forth some outside effect; and the other complex, the complex of inner stimulation, of something which would experience itself inwardly, something which quickens itself inwardly; then we have what expresses the meaning of the two words haschamayim and ha'aretz.

As for the Elohim themselves, what kind of Beings are they? In the course of these lectures we shall learn to know them better, and to describe them in terms of Spiritual Science; but for the present let us try to reach in some measure the meaning of this archetypal word “Elohim.” Whoever wishes to get an idea of what lived in the soul of the ancient Hebrew sage when he used this word should clearly understand that in those days there was a lively comprehension of the fact that our earth evolution had a definite meaning and a definite goal. What was this meaning and this goal?

Our earth evolution can only have a meaning, if during its course something arises which was not there before. A perpetual repetition of what was already there would be a meaningless existence, and unless the Hebrew sage of old had known that our earth, after having passed through its preliminary stages, had to bring something new into existence, he would have regarded its genesis as meaningless. Through the coming into existence of the earth something new became possible, it became possible for man to become man as we know him. In none of the earlier stages of evolution was man present as the being he is today, the being that he will more and more become in the future; that was not possible in earlier stages. And those spiritual Beings who directed the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions were of a different nature from man—for the moment we will not enter into the question whether they were higher or lower. Those Beings who wove in the fiery, gaseous and watery stages of elementary existence, who wove a Saturn, Sun and Moon existence, who at the beginning of earth existence were weaving its fabric—how best do we come to know them? ... How can we draw near to them?

We should have to go into very many things to get anywhere near an understanding of these Beings. To begin with, however, we can come to know one aspect of them, and that will suffice to bring us at least one step nearer to the potent meaning of the ancient Bible words. Let us consider those Beings for a moment—the Beings who stood nearest to man at the time when he was created from what had developed out of the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions. Let us ask those Beings what they really wanted. Let us ask them what was their will, their purpose. Then we shall be able to get at least some idea of their nature. They had great ability; in the course of their evolution they had acquired capacities in various directions. One of them could do this, another that. But we understand the nature of these Beings best if we realise that at the time we are now considering they were working as a group towards a common goal; they were moved by a common aim. Although at a higher level, it is as if a group of men, each with his own special skill, were to co-operate today. Each of them can do something, and now they say to each other: “You can do this, I can do that, the third among us can do something else. We will unite our activities to produce a work in common in which each of our capacities can be used.” Let us then imagine such a group of men, a group each of whom practises a different craft, but which is united by a common aim. What they intend to bring into existence is not yet there. The unit at which they are working lives to begin with only as an aim. What is there is a multiplicity. The unit lives, to begin with, only as an ideal. Now think of a group of spiritual Beings who have passed through the evolutions of Saturn, Sun and Moon, each one of whom has a specific ability, and who all at the moment I have indicated make the decision: “We will combine our activities for a common end, we will all work in the same direction.” And the picture of this goal arose before each of them. What was this goal? It was man, earthly man!

Thus earthly man lived as the ultimate goal in a group of spiritual Beings who had resolved to combine their several skills in order to arrive at something which they themselves did not possess at all, something which did not belong to them, but which they were able to achieve by combined effort. If you accept all that I have described to you—the elementary sheath, the cosmic, meditative spiritual Beings working within it, the two complexes, one of desire quickening inwardly, and another manifesting outwardly—and then ascribe the common purpose I have just mentioned to those spiritual Beings whose countenances gaze out of the elementary sheath, then you have what lived in the heart of the Hebrew sage of old in the word Elohim.

Now we have brought before us in picture form what lives in these all-powerful archetypal words. Then let us forget all that a man of today can think and feel when he utters the words: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. Bearing in mind all that I have told you today, try to put this picture before you. There is the sphere in which fiery, gaseous and watery elements weave. Within this active, weaving elementary sphere a group of pondering spiritual Beings live. They are engaged in productive pondering, their pondering is penetrated through and through by their intention to direct their whole operation towards the form of man. And the first-fruits of their musing is the idea of something manifesting itself outwardly, announcing itself, and something else inwardly active, inwardly animated.

“In the elementary sheath the primeval Spirits pondered the outwardly manifesting and the inwardly mobile.” Try to bring before yourselves in these terms what is said in the first lines of the Bible, then you will have a foundation for all that is to come before our souls in the next few days as the true meaning of those all-powerful archetypal words which contain such a sublime revelation for mankind—the revelation of its own origin.

• 1. To avoid any ambiguity, capital letters will be used throughout this book for the words Sun and Moon, when they refer to the planetary evolutions preceding that of our earth.

For anyone who has a background of Spiritual Science, and has absorbed something of its teaching about the evolution of the world, then goes on to study those tremendous opening words of our Bible, an entirely new world should dawn upon him.

There is probably no account of human evolution so open to misinterpretation as this record known as Genesis, the description of the creation of the world in six or seven days. When the man of today calls to life in his soul, in any language familiar to him, the words In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, they convey to him scarcely a faint reflection of what lived in the soul of an ancient Hebrew who allowed the words to work upon him. It is not in the least a question of being able to replace the old words by modern ones; it is much more important that we should have been prepared by Anthroposophy to feel at least something of the mood which lived in the heart and mind of the Hebrew pupil of old when he brought to life within himself the words: B'reschit bara elohim et haschamayim v'et ha'aretz.¹ A whole world lived while such words were vibrating through his soul.

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What was it like—this inner world which lived in the soul of the pupil? We can only compare it with what can take place in the soul of a man to whom a seer has described the pictures he experienced on looking into the spiritual world. For what in the last resort is Spiritual Science but the outcome of seership, of the living intuitions which the seer receives when, having freed himself from the conditions of sense-perception and of the intellect bound up with the physical body, he looks with spiritual organs into the spiritual worlds? If he wishes to translate what he sees there into the language of the physical world, he can only do so in pictures, but if his descriptive powers suffice, he will do it in pictures which are able to awaken in his hearers a mental image corresponding with what he himself sees in the spiritual worlds. Thereby something comes into existence which must not be mistaken for a description of things and events in the physical sense-world; something comes into existence which we must never forget belongs to an entirely different world—a world which does indeed underlie and maintain the ordinary sense-world of our ideas, impressions and perceptions, yet in no way coincides with that world.

If we want to portray the origin of this our sense-world, including the origin of man himself, our ideas cannot be confined to that world itself. No science equipped only with ideas borrowed from the world of the senses can reach the origin of sense-existence. For sense-existence is rooted in the supersensible, and although we can go a long way back historically, or geologically, we must realise that, if we are to reach to actual origins, there is a certain point in the far distant past at which we must leave the field of the sense-perceptible and penetrate into regions that can only be grasped super-sensibly. What we call Genesis does not begin with the description of anything perceptible by the senses, anything which the eye could see in the physical world. In the course of these lectures we shall become thoroughly convinced that it would be quite wrong to take the opening words of Genesis as referring to events which can be seen with the outward eye. So long as one connects the words “heaven and earth” with any residue of the sensuously visible one has not reached the stage to which the first part of the Genesis account points us back. Today there is practically no way of obtaining light upon the world it describes except through Spiritual Science. Through Spiritual Science we may indeed hope to approach the mystery of the archetypal words with which the Bible opens, and to get some inkling of their content.

Wherein lies their peculiar secret? It lies in the fact that they are written in the Hebrew tongue, a language which works upon the soul quite differently from any modern language. Although the Hebrew of these early chapters may not perhaps have the same effect today, at one time it did work in such a way that when a letter was sounded it called up in the soul a picture. Pictures arose in the soul of anyone who entered with lively sympathy into the words, and allowed them to work upon him—pictures harmoniously arranged, organic pictures, pictures which may be compared with what the seer can still see today when he rises from the sensible to the supersensible. The Hebrew language, or, better said, the language of the first chapters of the Bible, enabled the soul to call up imaginal pictures which were not wholly unlike those that are presented to the seer when, freed from his body, he is able to look into supersensible regions of existence.

In order to realise in some measure the power of these archetypal words we must disregard the pale and shadowy impressions which any modern language makes upon the soul, and try to get some idea of the creative power inherent in sound-sequences in this ancient tongue. It is of immense importance that in the course of these lectures we too should seek to place before our souls the very pictures which arose in the Hebrew pupil of old when these sounds worked creatively in him. In fact we must find a method of penetrating the primeval record entirely different from those used by modern research.

I have now given you an indication of our line of approach. We shall only slowly and gradually learn to comprehend what lived in the ancient Hebrew sage when he allowed those most powerful words to work upon him, words which we do at least still possess. So our next task will be to free ourselves as far as possible from the familiar, and from the ideas and images of “heaven and earth,” of “Gods,” of “creation,” of “in the beginning,” which we have hitherto held. The more thoroughly we can do this the better we shall be able to penetrate into the spirit of a document which arose out of psychic conditions quite different from those of today.

First of all we must be quite clear as to the point of time in evolution we are speaking of, when we deal with the opening words of the Bible. You know of course that contemporary clairvoyant investigation makes it possible to describe to some extent the origin and development of our earth and of human existence. In my book Occult Science I tried to describe the gradual growth of our earth as the planetary scene of human existence, through the three preliminary stages of Saturn, Sun and Moon.² Today you will have in mind, at least in broad outline, what I described there. At what point then in the spiritual scientific account should we place what draws near to our souls in the mighty word B'reschit? Where does it belong?

If we look back for a moment to ancient Saturn, we picture it as a cosmic body having as yet nothing of the material existence to which we are accustomed. Of all that we find in our own environment it has nothing but heat. No air or water or solid earth is as yet to be found upon ancient Saturn; even where it is densest, there is only fire—living, weaving warmth. Then, to this living, weaving warmth, a kind of air or gaseous element is added; and we have a true picture of the Sun existence if we think of it as an interweaving, an interpenetration, of a gaseous, airy element and a warmth element. Then comes the third condition, which we call the Moon evolution. There the watery element is added to the warmth and the air. There is as yet nothing of what in our present earth we call solid. But the old Moon evolution has a peculiar characteristic. It divides into two parts. If we look back upon old Saturn, we see it as a single whole of weaving warmth; and the old Sun we still see as a mingling of gaseous and warmth elements. During the Moon existence there takes place this separation into a part which is Sun and a part which retains the Moon nature. It is only when we come to the fourth stage of our planetary evolution that the earth element is added to the earlier warmth, gaseous and watery elements. In order that this solid element could come into existence, the division which had taken place previously during the Moon evolution had first to repeat itself. Once again the sun had to withdraw. Thus there is a certain moment in the evolution of our planet when, out of the universal complication of fire and air and water, the denser, more earthy element separates from the finer, gaseous element of the sun; and it is only in this earthy element that what we today call solid is able to form.

Let us concentrate on this moment, when the sun withdraws from its former state of union with the rest of the planet and begins to send its forces to the earth from without. Let us bear in mind that this was what made it possible, within the earth, for the solid element—what we today call matter—to begin to condense. If we fix this moment firmly in our minds we have the point of time at which Genesis, the creation story, begins. This is what it is describing. We should not associate with the opening words of Genesis the abstract, shadowy idea we get when we say “In the beginning,” which is something unspeakably poverty-stricken compared with what the ancient Hebrew sage felt. If we would bring the sound B'reschit before our souls in the right way, there must arise before us—in the only way it can do so, in mental images—all that happened through the severance of sun and earth, all that was to be found at the actual moment when the separation into two had just taken place. Furthermore we must be aware that throughout the whole of the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions, spiritual Beings were its leaders and its bearers; and that warmth, air, water are only the outer expressions, the outer garments of spiritual Beings who are the reality. Thus when we contemplate the condition which obtained at the moment of separation of sun and earth, and picture it to ourselves in thoughts full of material images, we must also be conscious that the elementary “water,” “air,” “fire,” which we have in our mind's eye, is still only the means of expression for moving, weaving spirit which, during the course of the preceding Saturn, Sun and Moon stages has advanced, has progressed, and at the time now being described has reached a certain stage in its evolution.

Let us place before us the picture of an immense cosmic globe, composed of weaving elements of water, air or gas and fire, a globe which splits apart into a solar and a telluric element; but let us conceive too that this elementary substance is only the expression of a spiritual. Let us imagine that from this substantial habitation, woven of the elements of water, air and heat, the countenances of spiritual Beings, weaving within it, look out upon us, spiritual Beings who reveal themselves in this element which we have had to represent to ourselves through material images. Let us imagine that we have before us spiritual Beings, turning their countenances towards us, as it were, using their own soul-spiritual forces to organise cosmic bodies with the help of warmth, air and water. Let us try to imagine this!

There we have a picture of an elementary sheath, which, to give a very rough sensuous image of it, we may perhaps liken to a snail-shell, but a shell woven not of solid matter, like the snail's, but from the forest elements of water, air and fire. Let us think of spirit, in the form of countenances, within this sheath, gazing upon us, using this sheath as a means of manifestation, a force of very revelation which, as it were, pricks outward into manifestation from what lies hidden in the supersensible.

Call up before your souls this picture which I have just tried to paint for you, this image of the living weaving of spirit in a kind of matter; imagine too the inner soul-force which causes it to happen; concentrate for a moment on this to the exclusion of all else, and you will then have something approximating to what lived in an ancient Hebrew sage when the sounds B'reschit penetrated his soul. Bet the first letter, called forth the weaving of the habitation in substance; Resch the second sound, summoned up the countenances of the spiritual Beings who wove within this dwelling, and Schin the third sound, the prickly, stinging force which worked its way out from within to manifestation.

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Now the underlying principle behind such a description is dawning upon us. And when we have grasped that, we are able to appreciate something of the spirit of this language; it had a creativeness of which the modern man with his abstract speech has no inkling.

Now let us place ourselves at the moment immediately preceding the physical coagulation, the physical densification of our earth. Let us imagine it as vividly as possible. We shall have to admit that in describing what was taking place at that moment we cannot make use of any of the ideas which we use today to describe processes in the external sense-world. Hence you will see that it is utterly inadequate to associate any external deed with the second word we meet in Genesis—bara—however closely that deed might resemble what we understand today as creation. We do not thus get near to the meaning of that word. Where can we turn for help? The word implies something which lies very near the boundary where the sensible passes over directly into the supersensible, into pure spirit. And anyone who wishes to grasp the meaning of the word bara, which is usually translated “created” (In the beginning God created ...), must in no wise associate it with any productive activity which can be seen with physical eyes.

Take a look into your own inner being! Imagine yourselves as having been asleep for a while, then waking up, and, without opening your eyes to things around you, calling up in your souls by inner activity certain images. Bring home vividly to yourselves this inner activity, this productive meditation, this cogitation, which calls forth a soul-content from the depths of the soul as if by magic. If you like you can use the word “excogitate” for this conjuring up of a soul-content out of the depths into the field of consciousness; think of this activity, which man can only perform with his mental images, but think of it now as a real, cosmic, creative activity. Instead of your own meditation, your own inward experience in thinking, try to imagine cosmic thinking-then you have the content of the second word of Genesis, bara. However spiritually you may think it, you can only liken it to the thought-life you are able to bring before yourselves in your own musing, you cannot get nearer to it than that!

And now imagine that during your musing two kinds of images come before your souls. Suppose there is a man to whom on awakening two different kinds of thought occur, a man who muses about two different kinds of thing. Suppose that one kind of thought is the picture either of some activity, or of some external thing or of some being; it does not come about through external sight, through perception, but through reflection, through the creative activity of his soul in the field of his consciousness. Suppose that the second complex of ideas which arises in this awakening man is a desire, something which the man's whole disposition and constitution of soul can prompt him to will. We have elements both of thought and of desire coming up in our souls through inner reflection. Now imagine, instead of the human soul, the Beings called in Genesis the Elohim, reflecting within themselves. Instead of one human soul, think of a multiplicity of reflecting spiritual Beings, who, however, in a similar way—save that their musing is cosmic—call forth by reflection from within themselves two complexes which might be compared with what I have just been describing—a pure thought-element and an element of desire. Thus instead of thinking of the musing' human soul, we think of a group of cosmic Beings who awaken in themselves two complexes; one of the nature of thought or ideation, that is, one which manifests something, expresses itself outwardly, phenomenally; and another of the nature of desire, which lives in inner movement, inner stimulation, which is permeated with inner activity. Let us think of these cosmic Beings, who are called in Genesis the Elohim, musing in this way. The word bara, “created,” brings their musing home to us. Then let us think that through this creative musing two complexes arise, one tending towards external revelation, external manifestation, and another consisting of an inward stimulus, an inward life; then we have the two complexes which arose in the soul of the ancient Hebrew sage when the words haschamayim and ha'aretz—represented for the modern man by “heaven” and “earth”—sounded through his soul. Let us try to forget the modern man's conception of “heaven and earth.” Let us try to bring the two complexes before the soul, the one which tends more to disclose itself, tends to outward manifestation, is disposed to call forth some outside effect; and the other complex, the complex of inner stimulation, of something which would experience itself inwardly, something which quickens itself inwardly; then we have what expresses the meaning of the two words haschamayim and ha'aretz.

As for the Elohim themselves, what kind of Beings are they?

In the course of these lectures we shall learn to know them better, and to describe them in terms of Spiritual Science; but for the present let us try to reach in some measure the meaning of this archetypal word “Elohim.” Whoever wishes to get an idea of what lived in the soul of the ancient Hebrew sage when he used this word should clearly understand that in those days there was a lively comprehension of the fact that our earth evolution had a definite meaning and a definite goal. What was this meaning and this goal?

Our earth evolution can only have a meaning, if during its course something arises which was not there before. A perpetual repetition of what was already there would be a meaningless existence, and unless the Hebrew sage of old had known that our earth, after having passed through its preliminary stages, had to bring something new into existence, he would have regarded its genesis as meaningless. Through the coming into existence of the earth something new became possible, it became possible for man to become man as we know him. In none of the earlier stages of evolution was man present as the being he is today, the being that he will more and more become in the future; that was not possible in earlier stages. And those spiritual Beings who directed the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions were of a different nature from man—for the moment we will not enter into the question whether they were higher or lower. Those Beings who wove in the fiery, gaseous and watery stages of elementary existence, who wove a Saturn, Sun and Moon existence, who at the beginning of earth existence were weaving its fabric—how best do we come to know them? ... How can we draw near to them?

We should have to go into very many things to get anywhere near an understanding of these Beings. To begin with, however, we can come to know one aspect of them, and that will suffice to bring us at least one step nearer to the potent meaning of the ancient Bible words. Let us consider those Beings for a moment—the Beings who stood nearest to man at the time when he was created from what had developed out of the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions. Let us ask those Beings what they really wanted. Let us ask them what was their will, their purpose. Then we shall be able to get at least some idea of their nature. They had great ability; in the course of their evolution they had acquired capacities in various directions. One of them could do this, another that. But we understand the nature of these Beings best if we realise that at the time we are now considering they were working as a group towards a common goal; they were moved by a common aim. Although at a higher level, it is as if a group of men, each with his own special skill, were to co-operate today. Each of them can do something, and now they say to each other: “You can do this, I can do that, the third among us can do something else. We will unite our activities to produce a work in common in which each of our capacities can be used.” Let us then imagine such p. group of men, a group each of whom practises a different craft, but which is united by a common aim. What they intend to bring into existence is not yet there. The unit at which they are working lives to begin with only as an aim. What is there is a multiplicity. The unit lives, to begin with, only as an ideal. Now think of a group of spiritual Beings who have passed through the evolutions of Saturn, Sun and Moon, each one of whom has a specific ability, and who all at the moment I have indicated make the decision: “We will combine our activities for a common end, we will all work in the same direction.” And the picture of this goal arose before each of them. What was this goal? It was man, earthly man!

Thus earthly man lived as the ultimate goal in a group of spiritual Beings who had resolved to combine their several skills in order to arrive at something which they themselves did not possess at all, something which did not belong to them, but which they were able to achieve by combined effort. If you accept all that I have described to you—the elementary sheath, the cosmic, meditative spiritual Beings working within it, the two complexes, one of desire quickening inwardly, and another manifesting outwardly—and then ascribe the common purpose I have just mentioned to those spiritual Beings whose countenances gaze out of the elementary sheath, then you have what lived in the heart of the Hebrew sage of old in the word Elohim.

Now we have brought before us in picture form what lives in these all-powerful archetypal words. Then let us forget all that a man of today can think and feel when he utters the words: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. Bearing in mind all that I have told you today, try to put this picture before you. There is the sphere in which fiery, gaseous and watery elements weave. Within this active, weaving elementary sphere a group of pondering spiritual Beings live. They are engaged in productive pondering, their pondering is penetrated through and through by their intention to direct their whole operation towards the form of man. And the first-fruits of their musing is the idea of something manifesting itself outwardly, announcing itself, and something else inwardly active, inwardly animated.

“In the elementary sheath the primeval Spirits pondered the outwardly manifesting and the inwardly mobile.” Try to bring before yourselves in these terms what is said in the first lines of the Bible, then you will have a foundation for all that is to come before our souls in the next few days as the true meaning of those all-powerful archetypal words which contain such a sublime revelation for mankind—the revelation of its own origin.

• 1. See Figure 1, below.
• 2. To avoid any ambiguity, capital letters will be used throughout this book for the words Sun and Moon, when they refer to the planetary evolutions preceding that of our earth.

If in this whole lecture course we are to concentrate our efforts on gaining a deeper understanding of the words “Father and Mother of Jesus,” and consequently of the essence of Christianity in general according to the Gospel of St. John, we must first acquire the material for an understanding of the concept, Mother and Father, in its spiritual sense, as it is intended in this Gospel and at the same time in its actual meaning. For it is not a question of an allegorical or a symbolic explanation.

We must first understand what it means to unite oneself with the higher spiritual worlds, to prepare oneself to receive the higher worlds. We must at the same time consider the nature of initiation, especially in regard to the Gospel of St. John. Let us ask: What is an initiate?

In all ages of the post-Atlantean human evolution, an initiate has been a person who could lift himself above the outer physical sense-world and have his own personal experiences in the spiritual worlds, a person who could experience the spiritual worlds just as the ordinary human being experiences the physical sense-world through the outer senses, eyes, ears, etc. Such an initiate becomes then a witness of those worlds and their truths. That is one aspect. But there is also something else very essential which every initiate acquires as a very special characteristic during his initiation, that is, he lifts himself above the feelings and sensations which are not only justified but also very necessary within the physical world, but which cannot, however, exist in the same way in the spiritual world.

Do not misunderstand what is said here and imagine that anyone who is able, as an initiate, to experience the spiritual world as well as the physical world must give up all other human feelings and sensations which are of value here in the physical world and exchange them for those of the higher worlds. This is not so. He does not exchange one for the other, but he acquires one in addition to the other. If, on the one hand, he has to spiritualize his feelings, he must, on the other, strengthen much more those feelings which are of use for working in the physical world. In this way we must interpret those words used in connection with an initiate, namely, that he must, in a certain sense, become a homeless person. It is not meant that in any sense he must become estranged from his home and his family as long as he lives in the physical world, but these words have at least this much significance, that by acquiring the corresponding feelings in the spiritual world, the feelings for the physical world will experience a finer, more beautiful development. What does it mean to be homeless? It means that one without this designation cannot, in the true sense of the word, attain initiation. To be a homeless man, means that he must develop no special sympathies in the spiritual world similar to those he possesses here in the physical world for special regions or relationships. The individual human being in the physical world belongs to some particular folk or to some particular family, to this or that community of the state. That is all quite proper. He does not need to lose this; he needs it here. If, however, he wished to employ these feelings in the spiritual world, he would bring a very bad dowry to that world. There, it is not a question of developing sympathy for anything, but of allowing everything to work upon him objectively, according to its inherent worth. It could also be said, were this generally understood, that an initiate must be, in the fullest sense of the word, an objective human being.

It is just through its evolution upon the earth that humanity has emerged out of a former homeless state connected with the ancient dreamy, clairvoyant consciousness. We have seen how mankind has descended out of the spiritual spheres into the physical world. In the primal spiritual spheres, patriotism and such things did not exist. When humanity descended from the spiritual spheres, one part peopled the earth in one region and another part in another region, and thus the individual groups of human beings of different regions became stereotype copies of those regions. Do not imagine that the negro became black solely from inner reasons; he became black also through adapting himself to the region of the earth in which he lived. And so it was also with the white people. Just as the great differences of colour and race came into existence because human beings have acquired something through their connection with their environment, so is it also true in respect of the smaller differences in folk individuality. But this has again to do with the specialization of love upon the earth. Because men became dissimilar, love was at first established in small communities. Only gradually will humanity be able to evolve out of the small communities into a large community of love which will develop concretely through the very implanting of the Spirit-Self. The initiate had to anticipate whither human evolution is tending in order to overcome and bridge over all barriers and bring about great peace, great harmony and brotherhood. In his homelessness, he must always, at the very beginning, receive the same rudiments of great brotherly love. This was symbolically expressed in ancient times in the descriptions of the wanderings experienced by the initiate, such as those, for example, of Pythagoras. Why was this described? In order that the initiate might become objective toward every thing in the feelings he had developed within the heart of the community. It is the task of Christianity to bring to the whole of humanity the Impulse of this Brotherhood which the initiate always possessed as an individual impulse.

Let us hold clearly in mind that most profound idea of Christianity, that the Christ is the Spirit of the earth and that the earth is His body or vesture. And let us take it literally, for we have said that we must weigh in the balance each separate word of such a document as the Gospel of St. John. What do we learn with respect to the “vesture of the earth” when we make a survey of evolution? We learn, first of all, the fact that the vesture of the earth—that is, the solid parts of it—was divided. One person took possession of this part, another of that part. This part belonged to one person, that part to another. Possession, i.e. the extension of the personality through the acquisition of property, is in a certain sense that into which the garment worn by the Christ, the Spirit of the earth, has, in the course of time, been divided. One thing alone could not be divided, but belonged to all; this was the airy envelope surrounding the earth. And from this airy covering, the breath of life was breathed into the human being, as we are shown in the myths of Paradise. Here we have the first rudiments of the ego in the physical body. The air cannot be divided. Let us try to find out whether the one who described Christianity most profoundly in the Gospel of St. John has anywhere indicated this:

And they parted His garments; but His coat they did not divide.

Here you have the words which give you an explanation of how the earth as a whole, together with its airy envelope, is the body or garment, and the coat of the Christ. The garments of the Christ were divided into continents and regions; but not the coat. The air has not been divided; it remains a common possession of all. It is the external, material symbol for the love which is hovering about the earthly globe, which will later be realized.

And in many other connections, Christianity must bring mankind to an acceptance of some of the ancient principles of initiation. If we wish to understand this, we must now characterize initiation. It will suffice, if we consider especially the three main types of initiation; the ancient Yoga, the really specific Christian initiation, and that initiation which is entirely appropriate for men of the present day, the Christian-Rosicrucian initiation. We intend now to describe what course initiation, in general, takes in all three of these forms; what it is and what it represents.

How does a human being become capable of perception in spiritual worlds? First, let me ask, how have you become capable of observing in the physical world? The physical body has sense-organs that make this possible. If you trace human evolution very far back, you will find that in primeval times, the human creature did not yet possess eyes for seeing and ears for hearing in the physical world, but that, as Goethe says, all organs were still undifferentiated. As proof of this, just recall how certain lower animals today still have these undifferentiated organs. Certain lower animals have points through which they can distinguish only light and darkness, and out of these undifferentiated organs, eyes and ears have been moulded and formed. They have been worked into the plastic substance of the physical body. Because your eye has been moulded, there exists for you a world of colour, and because your ear has been sculptured, a world of tone is audible to you. No one has the right to say that a world does not really exist; he may only say, “I do not perceive it.” For to see the world in the true sense of the word, means that I have the organs with which to perceive it. One may say: “I know only this or that world,” but one may not say: “I do not admit of the existence of a world that someone else perceives.” A person who speaks in this manner demands that others too should perceive only just what he himself perceives, but nothing else; he claims authoritatively that only what he perceives is true. When at present someone appears and says: That is all Anthroposophical imagining, what Anthroposophists declare exists, does not exist,” he only proves that he and those like him do not perceive these worlds. We take the positive standpoint. Whoever grants only the existence of what he himself perceives, demands not only that we acknowledge what he knows, but he wishes to make an authoritative decision about something of which he knows nothing. There is no greater intolerance than that shown by official science toward Spiritual Science, and it will become even worse than it has ever been before! It appears in the most varied forms. People are not at all conscious of saying something which they should not allow themselves to say. In many gatherings of very good Christians, one can hear it said: "Anthroposophists talk of some kind of an esoteric Christian teaching, but Christianity needs no esoteric teaching; for only that can be true which a simple, unpretentious mind can perceive and understand," which means, of course, only what the speaker can perceive and understand. He therefore requires that no one should perceive and understand anything different from what he himself perceives and understands. The infallibility of the Pope is quite properly not acknowledged in such Christian assemblies, but the infallibility of the individual is claimed today in the widest circles even by the Christians. Anthroposophy is attacked as a result of this papal standpoint in consequence of which each individual sets himself up as a kind of little pope.

If we consider that the physical sense-world exists for us because the individual organs have been carved into the physical body, it will no longer seem extraordinary when it is said that perception in a higher world rests upon the fact that higher organs have been formed in the higher members of the human organism, in the ether and astral bodies. The physical body is, in this way, already provided with its sense-organs, but the ether and astral bodies are not yet so provided; these have still to be carved into them. When this has been done, there exists what is called perception in the higher worlds.

We shall now speak of the way in which these organs are built into the ether and astral bodies. We have said that in anyone who aspires to initiation and has attained it, higher organs have been developed. How is this accomplished? It is a matter of understanding the human astral body in the state in which it exists in its purity. During the day this astral body is immersed in the physical body. There the forces of the physical body act upon it; it is not then free. It carries out the demands of the physical body; hence it is impossible to begin the development of these higher organs during the day. It can be begun when the astral body is out of the physical body, in sleep; only then can the astral body be moulded. The human astral body can only have its higher sense organs developed when they are carved into it during sleep, while outside the physical body. But we cannot manipulate a sleeping human being; that would not be possible for the modern man, if he wishes to perceive what is happening to him in sleep. If you have him in an unconscious condition, then he cannot observe this. Here there seems to be a contradiction, for the astral body is not conscious of its connection with the physical body during sleep. But indirectly it is possible that during the day the physical body is acted upon and the impressions which it then receives remain within the astral body when this is withdrawn at night. Just as the impressions which the astral body receives from the surrounding physical world have been impressed upon it, so in like manner we must do something quite specific with the physical body, in order that this something be imprinted upon the astral body and then be formed in it in the proper manner. This happens when the human being ceases to live in his customary way during the day, allowing random impressions to enter his consciousness, and takes his inner life in hand by means of a methodical schooling in the manner described. This is called Meditation, Concentration or Contemplation. These are exercises which are as strictly prescribed in the schools for the purpose, as microscopy is prescribed in the laboratories. If a person carries out these exercises, they act so intensely upon him that the astral body is plastically re-shaped when it withdraws during sleep. Just as this sponge adapts itself to the form of my hand as long as I hold it there, but forms itself again according to the forces inherent in it as soon as I release it, so in like manner is it with the astral body; when in sleep it withdraws from the corporality, it follows the astral forces invested in it. Thus it is during the day that we must undertake those spiritual activities by means of which the astral body, during the night, is plastically formed so that organs of higher perception are developed in it.

Meditation can be regulated in a threefold manner. 1. There can be more consideration given to the thought-matter, to the so-called elements of Wisdom, the pure element of thought. This is the Yoga training which deals especially with the element of thought, Contemplation. 2. One can work more upon the feeling through its special cultivation. This is the specifically Christian course. 3. Again one can work through a combination of feeling and will. This is the Christian-Rosicrucian method. To consider the Yoga practice would carry us too far, and it would also have no relationship to the Gospel of St. John. We shall consider the specifically Christian initiation and explain its basis. You must think of this form of initiation as one which a person belonging to the present social order could hardly undergo. It demands a temporary isolation. The Rosicrucian method, however, is the method by which we can work ourselves into the higher worlds without interfering with our duties. What, however, is applicable in principle, we can also fully explain by means of Christian initiation.

This method of initiation has to do exclusively with the feelings, and I shall now have to enumerate seven experiences of the feeling-life; seven stages of feeling, through the experiencing of which the astral body is actually so affected that it develops its organs during the night. Let us describe how the Christian neophyte must live in order that he may pass through these stages. The first stage is what is called “Washing the Feet.” Here the teacher says to the pupil: “Observe the plants. They have their roots in the ground; the mineral earth is a lower being than the plant. If the plant were able to contemplate its own nature, it would have to say to the earth; it is true I am a higher being, but if thou wert not there, I could not exist; for from thee, O earth, I draw most of my sustenance. If the plant were able to translate this into feeling, it would then bow itself down to the stone and say:—I bow myself before thee, O stone, thou humbler being, for I am indebted to thee for my very existence! Then if we ascend to the animal, it would have to behave in a similar manner toward the plant and say: Indeed it is true, I am higher than the plant, but to the lower kingdoms I owe my existence! If in this manner we mount higher and reach the human being, then each individual who stands somewhat higher in the social scale must incline himself to the lower and say: To those on the lower social level I owe my existence! This continues on up to Christ-Jesus. The Twelve who are about Him are at a level lower than Christ-Jesus; but as the plant develops out of the stone, so does the Christ grow out of the Twelve. He bows down to the Twelve and says: I owe you My existence.”

When the teacher had explained this to the pupil, he then said to him: "For weeks must thou surrender thyself to this cosmic feeling of how the superior should incline to the inferior and when thou hast thoroughly developed this feeling within thee, then wilt thou experience an inner and an outer symptom!" These are not the essential things, they only indicate that the pupil has practiced sufficiently. When the physical body was sufficiently influenced by the soul, this was indicated to him by an external symptom in which he feels as though water were lapping over his feet. That is a very real feeling! And he has another very real feeling in which the “Washing of the Feet” appears to him as in a mighty vision in the astral, the inclining of the Higher Self to the lower. Thus the occult student experiences in the astral world what is found depicted in the Gospel of St. John as an historical fact.

At the second stage, the pupil is told: "Thou must develop within thyself yet another feeling. Thou must picture how it would be were all the suffering and sorrow possible in the world to come upon thee; thou must feel how it would be wert thou exposed to the piling up of all possible hindrances, and thou must enter into the feeling that thou must stand erect even though all the adversity of the world were to bear down upon thee!" Then when the pupil has practised this exercise for a sufficient length of time, there are again two symptoms; in the first he has the feeling of being beaten from all sides, and in the second he has an astral vision of the “Scourging.” I am relating what hundreds of people have experienced whereby they have acquired the ability to mount into the higher worlds.

In the third exercise, the pupil had to imagine that the holiest thing that he possesses, which he defends with his whole ego-being, is subjected to jeers and gibes. He must say to himself:—“Come what may, I must hold myself erect and defend what is holy to me.” When he had accustomed himself to this, he felt something like pricking upon his head, and he experienced the “Crown of Thorns” as an astral vision. Again it must be said that the important thing is not the symptoms; they appear as a result of the exercises. Care was also taken that there was no question of suggestion and auto-suggestion.

In the fourth exercise, the pupil's body must become as foreign to his feelings as any external object—a stick of wood for example—and he must not say “I” to his body. This experience must become so much a part of his feelings that he says: “I carry my body about with me as I do my coat.” He connects his ego no longer with his body. Then something occurs which is called the Stigmata. What in many cases might be a condition of sickness is in this case a result of Meditation, because all sickness must be eliminated. On the feet and hands and on the right side of the breast appear the so-called Stigmata; and as an inner symptom, he beholds the “Crucifixion” in an astral vision.

The fifth, sixth and seventh grades of feeling, we can only briefly describe. The fifth grade consists of what is called “The Mystical Death.” Through feelings which the pupil is permitted to experience at this stage, he feels as though, in an instant, a black curtain were drawn before the whole physical, visible world and as though everything had disappeared. This moment is important because of something else that must be experienced, if one wishes to push on into Christian initiation, in the true sense of the word. The pupil then feels that he can plunge into the primal causes of evil, pain, affliction and sorrow. And he can suffer all the evil that exists in the depths of the human soul, when he descends into Hell. That is the “Descent into Hell.” When this has been experienced, it is as though the black curtain had been rent asunder and he looks into the spiritual world.

The sixth step is what is called the “Interment and Resurrection.” This is the stage at which the pupil feels himself one with the entire earth-body. He feels as though he were laid within and belonged to the whole earth planet. His life has been extended into a planetary existence.

The seventh experience cannot be described in words; only one could describe it who is able to think without the physical brain instrument—and for that there is no language, because our language has only designations for the physical plane. Therefore, only a reference can be made to this stage. It surpasses anything that the human being can possibly conceive. This is called the “Ascension” or the complete absorption into the spiritual world.

This completes the gamut of feelings into which the pupil, during waking day-consciousness, must place himself with complete inner equanimity. When the pupil has surrendered himself to these experiences, they act so strongly upon the astral body that, in the night, inner sense-organs are developed, are plastically formed. These seven steps of feeling are not practiced in the Rosicrucian initiation, but the result is the same as that of which we have just spoken.

Thus you see that the important thing in initiation is to influence the astral body in such a way by the indirect means of the day-experiences, that it may, when it is wholly free during the night, take on a new plastic form. When the human being in this manner, as an astral being, has given himself a plastic form, the astral body has become actually a new member of the human organism. He is then wholly permeated by Manas or Spirit-Self.

When the astral body is thus divided, that part which has in this way been plastically formed is brought over into the ether body. And just as you press the seal upon the sealing-wax, and the name on the seal appears not only on the seal, but on the wax as well, so too must the astral body dip down into the ether body and impress upon it whatever it may now possess. The inner process, the working over of the astral body, is the same in all methods of initiation. Only in the method of transmission into the ether body do the individual methods differ. We shall speak tomorrow of these differences and show how the three methods of initiation, which have proved to be the most profound evolutionary impulses in the course of the post-Atlantean age, differ from each other and what significance initiation, in general, has for human evolution. Then these parts of the Gospel of St. John upon which we have not yet been able to touch will also become clear.

Emil Grosheintz: The third extraordinary General Assembly of the Association of the Goetheanum in Dornach is now in session. I request Dr. Steiner to take the chair for the day.

Rudolf Steiner: Dr. Grosheintz, as chairman of the Goetheanum Association, kindly asks me to take over the chairmanship of this extraordinary general assembly. I hereby accept it with thanks and warmly greet all the friends who have gathered and also the representative of the authorities.

The extraordinary General Assembly is hereby opened, and we will discuss the matters that have become necessary for the organization of the Association of the Goetheanum as a result of last year's Christmas Conference here at the Goetheanum in Dornach.

This Christmas Conference, my dear friends, was intended to bring a new direction into the whole anthroposophical movement, and above all, with this new direction, it should be avoided in the future that things in our movement drift apart, and it should be ensured that in the future they are actually led out of the anthroposophical movement.

As you know, a board of directors was appointed at the Goetheanum during this Christmas Conference, which now, as an initiative board, feels fully responsible for what happens in the Anthroposophical Society. And this intention can only be realized if the Anthroposophical Society in future stands before the whole of public life as the body that really does the work, that really feels fully responsible for everything that exists. This can only be achieved if we now also bring about a unified constitution in the mutual relationship of the individual activities. And so it was agreed between the previous chairman, Dr. Grosheintz, and myself for the Association of the Goetheanum Dornach that, firstly, because the organization of affairs has fallen to me, especially since the painful Goetheanum catastrophe, it must therefore also be possible for me in the future to take full responsibility for what happens here.

I had to lead the negotiations, which lasted almost half a year, about the accident in Dornach, insofar as it was related to the measures of the various insurance companies, with all that interested the authorities in this accident at the time. Then, after that was settled, we had to think about how to rebuild the Goetheanum. Of course, it couldn't be done in a day. It took some time to consider and develop possible plans for the reconstruction. We had to deliberate with ourselves in the most diverse ways.

We are dealing with a completely new material that is being used, because of course we do not want to create the possibility of such an easy fire again. It goes without saying that the building, since it is now to be constructed out of the completely fireproof material of reinforced concrete, must be thought of in a completely different way than it was thought of as a wooden structure. The style, the whole attitude of the building had to change as a result, and when the relevant negotiations with the authorities are concluded, we will indeed have a significantly different building in front of us in the new Goetheanum than the old wooden structure.

But work has continued, and we are now at the stage where, once we have cleared away the rubble on one side, and once we have received the official approval on the other, which will not be long now, and which we hope will be favorable when we have this official approval to build, we will also start building. And it would indeed be my wish to promote this construction as quickly as possible, so that – I am still thinking about it, even if perhaps our architect is overcome by a slight palpitation when I say these words, but despite all that – our architect is a very accommodating man, and he will have to consider how things will turn out, which will then be met by me in the course of the next activity – I am still thinking that meetings could be held in the new building as early as Christmas if the permit comes quickly and we can use the favorable construction period for this.

But please do not take this as a promise, just as a wish on my part, which of course may be opposed by many obstacles, of course. But as a rule, it is primarily the prejudices that are difficult for me in such matters. Then, of course, there may be external obstacles that are sometimes beyond one's control to overcome. But in any case, we will make every effort to overcome the matter.

So you see that there is no other way in the near future than for what has been agreed between Emil Grosheintz and me to actually be carried out, that I myself be entrusted with the presidency of the Goetheanum Association. Of course, I can only do this on condition that Emil Grosheintz, who has led the Goetheanum Association in such a beautiful and self-sacrificing way, is then the second chairperson, and that we can work together. That would be one thing.

But then it will be necessary, out of the whole spirit of the Anthroposophical Society as it now exists, for this Anthroposophical Society to function as the actual registered association, i.e. to be outwardly the institution that represents everything here in Dornach. It will therefore be necessary for the General Anthroposophical Society to exist as a registered association. Within this Anthroposophical Society, four subdivisions will have to be established. These four subdivisions are planned by me in such a way that I take into account only purely real things, and not programmatic matters. We have worked a lot with the programmatic since 1919, but from the moment I took over the chairmanship of the Anthroposophical Society at Christmas, I myself cannot work responsibly with the programmatic, for the simple reason that I am really quite opposed to everything programmatic, everything theoretical, everything that works with paragraphs, not for a personal reason, but for the whole reason of our anthroposophical movement. One can only work from the real.

We have four, I would say four, currents of real institutions that have been active in living, organic activity from the very beginning: firstly, the Anthroposophical Society itself, which, even when the programmatic things began, was was often challenged; so it will continue to exist as the Anthroposophical Society in the narrower sense – I will now proceed historically by listing the facts – as the first subdivision. It is, of course, completely independent of all the programmatic developments since 1919.

Secondly, within our movement, we have the Philosophisch-Anthroposophischer Verlag, which has now moved to Dornach and cannot be treated differently [because] as an integral part of the Anthroposophical movement itself.

Again and again, efforts were made to thwart this view, which is actually the essence of the matter, from here or there. Again and again, the opinion arose that the Philosophical-Anthroposophical Publishing House was the institution that needed help most of all because it was not being properly managed, and the like. But when I wanted to substantiate one thing or another in the field of political economy with something that was actually working, and not something programmatic, I could only ever cite the Philosophisch-Anthroposophischer Verlag, which did not develop from a grand program but from small beginnings, starting with two books and then working very slowly, so that it was always grounded in reality and never received any subsidy from any quarter other than that which arose from the matter at hand and which had absolutely real possibilities for covering costs. So that in terms of economic leadership, this Philosophical-Anthroposophical Publishing House could even be cited as an example to follow if one wants to base economics on life. That would be the second subdivision.

The third subdivision – as I said, I am listing historically – would be the Association of the Goetheanum in Dornach itself, which emerged as the third institution and also worked only out of anthroposophical principles, untouched by any side currents. It would therefore also be able to form a subdivision of the General Anthroposophical Society.

And fourthly, the Clinical Therapeutic Institute, which was founded by Dr. Ita Wegman on the basis of anthroposophical principles, would then be integrated. And since I have to justify what it is all about - that it is really a real anthroposophical thing - if I want to explain it, I have to do it in the following way. I have to explain to you that there is an enormous difference between this Clinical Therapeutic Institute and other similar institutes. Many things have come into being since 1919 under the influence of the fact that at that time it was possible, more or less justifiably, to believe that certain things could be carried from some side into our movement, carried better than they could be carried from within the anthroposophical movement itself.

If we consider some institutions, we can say that they would not be there today if it were not for these movements, which emerged at the time in connection with the threefold social order movement, and if these movements had not emerged, the institutions would have been created by them. This is not the case with Dr. Wegman's Clinical Therapeutic Institute. One could say, and this is absolutely correct, that if none of the programmatic institutions had come into being – this Clinical Therapeutic Institute, which emerged from the intentions of anthroposophy, and of course from medical intentions – this Clinical Therapeutic Institute would then be there.

Let us imagine away everything that has been created since 1919. Not only has the Clinical Therapeutic Institute never had any need to take any of this into account, but on the contrary, it has even filled in for the other things to a very considerable extent at a crucial moment, so that here we have an institution that differs in its entire development and in its entire existence, also in the way it presents itself. It is a fruitful institution, one that is self-supporting, economically viable in itself, and promisingly economically viable.

So this institution definitely belongs to those that are now to be subdivisions of the General Anthroposophical Society. Therefore, the clinic is being acquired by the Anthroposophical Society through the Association of the Goetheanum in Dornach, and will form an integral part of the general Anthroposophical movement in the future.

These are the facts that arise purely from the matter itself. I would like to say that one cannot think differently about the further development of things here if one wants to put the matter on a healthy footing for the future. All other measures arise as necessary consequences.

We will have to negotiate the further composition of the Executive Council of the Goetheanum Association; we will have to negotiate the minor changes to the statutes that are necessary. All of this will arise as a consequence of the conditions just stated.

It is still the case that, if this reconstitution occurs, the board of the Anthroposophical Society will of course be on the board of the Goetheanum Association in the future: The President of the General Anthroposophical Society will also be President of the Association of the Goetheanum, the Secretary of the General Anthroposophical Society will also be Secretary of the Association of the Goetheanum, and the entire Executive Council of the Anthroposophical Society will be part of the Executive Council of the Association of the Goetheanum. This is a rough outline of what should form the basis for the organization of this extraordinary General Assembly. Perhaps Mr. Emil Grosheintz would like to say something?

Emil Grosheintz: I would just like to add that the Executive Council of the Goetheanum Society had a meeting this morning and that at this meeting Dr. Steiner was asked to take over the chairmanship of the Goetheanum Society and the previous Executive Council resigned. This board, the previous board, is therefore resigning, and the new board will be constituted in such a way that the new members of the board of the Goetheanum Association will be chosen by cooption by the chair.

Rudolf Steiner: So the previous board has decided to resign as such, and the composition of the board would result from what will be laid down in the statutes immediately afterwards – should it be done beforehand? [Representative of the authority:] No. That the Executive Council of the General Anthroposophical Society, as I have stated, is on the Executive Council of the Goetheanum Association, and that then – Dr. Grosheintz will work by my side as the second chairperson – the remaining members of the Executive Council are appointed by this Executive Council. And it will be a matter of course that the previous members of the board of the Goetheanum Association will be re-admitted to the new board. I believe that all of you who are concerned will agree that the previous members of the board should be re-admitted to the board as such. Should it then become necessary to supplement the board in some other direction, this addition could be made over time.

We would then have a board consisting of the board of the General Anthroposophical Society, which includes the chair and the secretary, and then the other board members of this General Anthroposophical Society, as well as Dr. Grosheintz as second chair, [in addition to] the personalities Mr. Molt, Dr. Peipers, Count Lerchenfeld, Mr. Geering, Dr. Unger, Mrs. Schieb, Mrs. Hirter, and Professor Bürgi. These would then be the board members who should be there in the future.

I think that those personalities I have proposed will agree. I then ask to open their opinions.

If that is not the case, I would like to open the discussion about what I have set out. But I would like to proceed with the adoption of the new statutes, which, after all, show no changes other than those that have become necessary as a result of the proposals made. Perhaps Mr. Emil Grosheintz could read out the original paragraph, and I will then read the amended one.

So we have: “Association of the Goetheanum of the Free University for Spiritual Science in Dornach (Switzerland), registered in the commercial register of the Canton of Solothurn.”

[1. Typescript:]

This would be changed to read at the top: General Anthroposophical Society, sub-division Association of the Goetheanum of the Free University for Spiritual Science in Dornach (Switzerland).

[2. Handwritten entry by Rudolf Steiner:]

Strikethrough: That would... would be above... Sub-division of the Goetheanum of the School of Spiritual Science.

Added: Its name would be changed to

[3rd reconstruction of the altered text:] Its name would be changed to “General Anthroposophical Society in Dornach [schaft in] (Switzerland).”

The following would be omitted: “registered in the commercial register of the Canton of Solothurn”, because the Anthroposophical Society is [then already] registered. Then would come: “Articles of Incorporation of June 26, 1924”.

Emil Grosheintz: Now §1: “Under the name 'Verein des Goetheanum, der Freien Hochschule für Geisteswissenschafo, there exists an association in the sense of Art. 6Off. of the Swiss Civil Code; the seat of the association is Dornach (Canton Solothurn, Switzerland).”

[1st typescript:]

Rudolf Steiner: The amended paragraph would read: “Under the name Verein des Goetheanum, der Freien Hochschule für Geisteswissenschaft, there exists an association as a member of the General Anthroposophical Society with its seat in Dornach, Canton Solothurn, Switzerland.”

[2. handwritten entry by Rudolf Steiner:]

Strikethrough: the Goetheanum; the School of Spiritual Science

Added in the margin: the General Anthroposophical Society has an association in the sense of [with reference arrow]

3. Reconstruction of the handwritten amended paragraph:] “Under the name of the General Anthroposophical Society, there exists an association in the sense of Art. 60ff. of the Swiss Civil Code. The seat of the association is Dornach (Canton Solothurn, Switzerland).”

[4. Official Protocol:] An association exists under the name “Association of the Goetheanum, the School of Spiritual Science” as a member of the General Anthroposophical Society. The registered office of the association is Dornach (Canton Solothurn, Switzerland).

Emil Grosheintz: [§2:] “The purpose of the association is to cultivate artistic and scientific endeavors.

Rudolf Steiner: Unchanged.

Emil Grosheintz: “§3: The organs of the association are: a) the association assembly (general assembly of members), b) the board, c) the auditors”

Rudolf Steiner: To be changed to read: “The organs of the association are: a) the board of directors, which includes the entire board of directors of the General Anthroposophical Society.

[Official protocol] b) the board, which includes the entire board of the Anthroposophical Society.

Emil Grosheintz: “§4: The members of the association are: a) ordinary, b) extraordinary, c) contributing members”

Rudolf Steiner: Remains unchanged.

Emil Grosheintz: “§ 5: Ordinary membership is acquired by appointment by the board. §6: The application for admission as an extraordinary or contributing member must be submitted in writing to one of the two chairpersons. Admission is granted by resolution of the board.

Rudolf Steiner: Remains unchanged.

Emil Grosheintz: Ҥ7: A member's resignation must be submitted in writing to one of the two chairpersons. The resignation must be submitted at least three months before the end of the financial year. The board of directors may decide to expel a member from the association without giving reasons.

Rudolf Steiner: No changes.

[Official protocol:] Resignation can only be made to the [protocol incomplete]

Emil Grosheintz: §8: “Ordinary and extraordinary members shall pay an annual contribution of at least 100 Swiss francs at the beginning of the financial year, and contributing members shall pay at least 50 Swiss francs or, upon application and with the approval of the board, the same number of units of the corresponding national currency.”

Rudolf Steiner: Unchanged.

Emil Grosheintz: Ҥ9: The Association Assembly is the supreme body of the Association. The ordinary Association Assembly (the General Assembly) is to be convened each time after the end of the financial year in the following first half of the year. Extraordinary Association Assemblies may be convened by decision of the Board.

The General Assembly is convened by written invitation from one of the two chairpersons to the members. The invitation must include the agenda for the General Assembly. The invitation must be posted at least five days before the scheduled date of the General Assembly.

Rudolf Steiner: Unchanged.

Emil Grosheintz: Ҥ10: Only full and associate members are entitled to participate in the association meetings. The associate members have an advisory vote at these meetings. The resolutions are passed by the full members. One of the two chairpersons chairs the association meeting. He has the casting vote in the event of a tie.

Rudolf Steiner: Unchanged.

Emil Grosheintz: “§11: Requests for items to be added to the agenda of the General Assembly must be submitted in writing to one of the chairpersons at least 14 days before the General Assembly.”

Rudolf Steiner: Unchanged.

Emil Grosheintz: “§12: The Executive Council shall be elected by the General Assembly of full members from among the full members for a term of seven years. If a member of the Executive Council resigns during his term of office, the full members shall hold a by-election for the remainder of the term of office of the resigning member.”

Rudolf Steiner: §12 will be amended to include a sentence. It will read: “The Executive Council, with the exception of the Executive Council of the Anthroposophical Society – which is included by default – is elected by the Assembly of Full Members for a period of seven years. Should a member of the executive council resign during his term of office, the full members shall elect a replacement for the remainder of the term of office of the resigning member.

Emil Grosheintz: Ҥ13: The members' meeting shall elect two auditors to examine the accounts and cash management. These may not be taken from among the full members.

Rudolf Steiner: Unchanged.

Emil Grosheintz: “§14: The Executive Council elects two of its members to serve as co-chairs, one to serve as secretary, and also hires the executive director.”

Rudolf Steiner: This §14 will be worded as follows: “The Executive Council constitutes the office in such a way that the chairperson and secretary of the General Anthroposophical Society are at the same time the chairperson and secretary of the Association of the Goetheanum. The second chairperson is elected by the first chairperson.

[Official Protocol] “The Executive Council constitutes the office in the sense that the chairperson and secretary of the General Anthroposophical Society also serve as chairperson and secretary of the Goetheanum Association. The second chairperson is designated by the first chairperson.”

Emil Grosheintz: “§15: The two chairmen are each individually authorized to represent the association independently.”

Rudolf Steiner: No change.

Emil Grosheintz: “§16: The management of the executive council is regulated by the council itself.”

Rudolf Steiner: Unchanged.

Emil Grosheintz: “§17: At the regular association meeting, the board of directors must report on the past administrative period and present the accounts. The auditors' report must be enclosed with this report and the accounts. The association's administrative period is set at one year; it runs from January 1 to December 31.”

Rudolf Steiner: Unchanged.

Emil Grosheintz: Ҥ18: The association's liabilities are covered by its assets. Personal liability of members is excluded.

Rudolf Steiner: Unchanged.

Emil Grosheintz: “§19: The association is to be entered in the commercial register in accordance with Art. 61 of the Swiss Civil Code.”

Rudolf Steiner: Deleted.

Official protocol: “§19: The association is to be entered in the commercial register in accordance with Art. 61 of the Z.G.B.”

Emil Grosheintz: Ҥ20: In the event of the dissolution of the association, the general meeting must decide on the use of the association's assets and the method of liquidation. The association's assets are to be used in line with the purpose of the association.

Rudolf Steiner: Remains unchanged.

These would be the amended statutes. I would like to make one further comment, to avoid any misunderstanding regarding the Philosophisch-Anthroposophischer Verlag. When I said that it had never received a subsidy that was not derived from the matter itself, this means that it has never received any subsidy from outside at all, but that when work began on the two books, a small Schiller work and the Philosophy of Freedom, it was supported only by Dr. Steiner herself, and that everything that happened economically happened within the publishing house itself. So this publishing house has never received any external funding and has never been supported by capital from outside.

I would now like to open the discussion about what has been presented to you here.

Of course, it is also possible for friends who are not full members of the Goetheanum Association to take part in the discussion. Does anyone wish to speak?

Dr. Unger believes that we can be extremely grateful that the Executive Council of the Goetheanum Association and the new council have undertaken the regulation of the matter in this way, which is desirable and gratifying from all points of view, and would like to recommend that the amended statutes and everything connected with them be accepted en bloc.

Rudolf Steiner: A proposal has been made to accept the amended statutes and everything related to them en bloc. Does anyone wish to speak?

Since no one does, we will proceed to the vote. I would ask those members of the Goetheanum Association who are entitled to vote and who are in favor of this proposal to raise their hands.

It has been unanimously adopted.

It would then only be a matter of leaving the execution of the whole matter, which I believe is clear, to the future board of the Goetheanum Association. Is there anything to be said about this?

Then I also ask those members who are entitled to vote and who are in favor of leaving the execution of what has been decided to the future board to raise their hands.

This is also adopted.

Does anyone have anything to say about anything else?

In this case, we have reached the end of our extraordinary general assembly. I would like to thank the representative of the authority for attending our meeting.

Do you [the representative of the authority] have anything to add regarding the election of the board?

Representative of the authority: No.

Then we have come to the end of the proceedings, and I declare the third extraordinary general meeting closed.

For the correctness of the protocol
The 1st Chairman:
The 2nd Chairman:

Note on the Back of the Typescript with the Minutes of the Meetings of June 29, 1924

After the welcoming address by the chairman, the report on the technical work, the statement of accounts and an exchange of views between the members, Dr. Steiner takes the floor.

Now, if no one else wishes to speak, I would just like to add a few aphoristic comments in connection with the meeting of the Goetheanum Association.

I would like to touch on the moral side of our cause. First of all, following on from what has been said, I would like to emphasize that those who see it as their task to work on the completion of the Goetheanum are, as is basically self-evident, also of gratitude to the leading personalities of the Executive Council, who for many years have devoted themselves to the task in often quite difficult circumstances, providing the foundation for the entire undertaking with their personalities and their work. I believe that it is not always considered what it means that here, for example, in Dr. Grosheintz himself and all that belongs to him, we have a personality who, already connected with the area on which the Johannesbau stands, , has become connected with the idea of creating the Johannesbau here, which then transformed into the Goetheanum, and which has devoted itself to this work in such a self-sacrificing way for many years, which must stand behind everything. And so I would like to express my gratitude to him and to all those who, in a similar way to him, selflessly devote their strength and time to this work in a board-related and connected way, and to express my thanks to them, which certainly comes from all of your hearts. Above all, I would like to emphasize the hope that we can continue to find such noble and understanding support from this quarter in particular. [Applause]

When our artistic work here is discussed, it would always be of particular importance not to lose sight of the way in which the artistic work of the Goetheanum in particular is to relate to the world today. Whenever I have the opportunity to guide any outside visitors through the building, I repeat over and over again, almost at every point where something is said and explained to people, that with regard to everything that is artistically and otherwise considered for the building, it is first and foremost a transition, an intention that should be thought of as a continuation.

It is particularly important that we see ourselves as a beginning for many things related to our movement. It is also particularly important to always teach the world, which is so hard of hearing today, so that judgments can be formed from this point of view about this Goetheanum and everything related to it.

Our spiritual scientific endeavor is itself a beginning. And if this is misunderstood, false judgments will be formed in the world over and over again. Therefore, it is important to me that this be emphasized in all its details: It is intention, beginning, and the intentions that are to find further expression and independent development in the world that matters. I tried to somehow represent this in every detail.

I would like to mention one of the last details, one of the details that unfortunately came to grief. When we were in the very satisfactory position of being able to organize a public eurythmy performance in Zurich, the question arose as to whether — well, how should I put it, it's always on the tip of my tongue, to say something disrespectful — for the philistines who were to be invited, introductory words that could then be printed. And I also wanted to emphasize for this matter of eurythmy, which will certainly be extraordinarily important for the world one day, that with what is now to be presented to the public, one has a beginning, an intention, which is to be worked out, which is to undergo its development, which is to progress. Criticism of beginnings can only be directed in this direction if we always remain aware that they are beginnings.

And so I believe that much of the gossip that is spread about our movement could be replaced if our dear friends were to thoroughly impress upon the world, which is so hard of hearing today, that we are not at all foolish enough to bring anything even remotely perfect into the world in any direction, but that we just want to give a start, something that is an intention, which is not at all regarded by us as something perfect. In more recent times, as I said, when I have the opportunity to show people around, I repeatedly emphasize that now that the matter has progressed so far, I recognize the errors most precisely, and that a second time such a building is erected, it would not be done as it has been done now, and as it must now, of course, be continued accordingly, since one cannot build on top of each other contradictory things.

Above all, however, something else is also necessary in connection with this. Isn't it true that I must emphasize it again and again, because it should lead to the understanding that is to be conveyed, on the one hand, by the members of the Anthroposophical Society, but, on the other hand, by all those friends who are interested in the building. The point is that the inner structure of the building, the artistic inner structure of the building, in a certain respect – why should we not speak quite freely when we are among ourselves? – that the artistic structure could actually only be brought to the stage it has reached today through a kind of struggle.

We must not forget that, due to a peculiar karma, which I will perhaps talk about in these days, the Anthroposophical Society — not Anthroposophy, but the Anthroposophical Society — grew out of the Theosophical Society. Time and again during the years when we were still a “Theosophical Society”, artists made certain objections to the Society, and I emphasize that I still value their judgment particularly valuable to me now, for the reason that artists themselves are only in a few cases, let me say – I want to be polite for once – in a few cases, completely seized by the general philistinism, philistrosity of the world.

The artist, in so far as he is an artist, always retains – I won't say anything about in so far as he is a human being – he always retains something of a certain still freer judgment, which is now one of the rarities in the world. And so it may be said that especially in the last decades of the 19th century and in what has passed so far in the 20th century, in an age of the most widespread philistinism with regard to public judgment in all areas, he has already developed a somewhat – or much – freer, more independent judgment that is more closely related to the intellectual. This still existed in the world of artists. And in the artistic field there are still phenomena of a literary, scientific or critical nature that one likes to follow; while even the most proficient work in the technical, especially the scientific, field, which one must of course recognize as a great achievement of the time, is almost enough to make one sick to death of it, due to the way in which it presents itself to the world in a philistine manner. Because even the most accomplished work in these fields, what must necessarily be accomplished in these fields, in the fields of science and technology, is presented to the world in such a philistine way, in such a way of thinking, that it can really get on one's nerves if one is forced to follow it.

It is different with regard to much of what comes from the world of art. It is connected with this that it has always pained me when, during the years of our affiliation with the Theosophical Society, artists repeatedly and repeatedly tried, sometimes with great goodwill, to look at what was hanging on the walls as such stuff, not true, such huge rose crosses with the correct seven roses, where the question was always: How should these roses be attached? How should one do this and that? What is the right symbolism? and so on. When they had looked at these things and seen what had actually been achieved, artistic natures naturally always came and said: Yes, of course, one cannot object to this spiritual movement of Theosophy, one is interested in it; but one is so taken aback when such artistic Botokudentum prevails precisely within the Theosophical Society. And of course it was painful, because I was the last person who could be inclined to contradict such a judgment. Because such a judgment was entirely justified in the broadest sense with regard to the artistic impulses that lived in the Theosophists.

Of course, it was only possible to fight against it – not theoretically, not through teaching, since you can't achieve anything in these areas through teaching – but slowly and gradually. Of course, we could only achieve something by having truly artistic natures in our midst. I need only think of one personality who must be remembered again and again, who must remain unforgettable for all those things that have been and are being undertaken as vital things in certain areas within our movement. I need only remind you of Fräulein Stinde, but I could also remind you of others. I will only say that by combining what was there from the artistic side, it was possible to take up the fight against all the symbolizing, all the abstract, idealistic stuff in the shaping of our things. And of course, today there is still the need to turn against it when people come again and again and ask: What does that mean? What does this mean? In the sense in which people ask, “What does this mean?” nothing means anything to us! What matters at the Goetheanum – even if it is only a beginning and a rather incomplete one – is to really bring something into the world that is truly artistic in color, form, and so on.

What matters is not where artistic feeling is concerned. I say it again and again, and when people come and see our [sculptural] group over there [under construction], that at the center stands the Christ, and above is Lucifer and below is Ahriman. That is a private feeling, and basically has nothing to do with the artistic feeling and the whole work. Of course, it can be seen as a discussion drawn from the artistic to further explain the matter itself; but it has nothing to do with the matter as a work of art. The line that was added to express the falling Lucifer, the line that breaks away in its harmony with the whole structure in its organism, is infinitely more meaningful than the artistically actually boring explanation: This is Lucifer, this is Ahriman, and so on and so on. What is important is a line that goes from right to left and is felt as a line!

I could, of course, go on in this direction for a long time and draw attention to many things that actually occur in the assessment of these things, but I do not want to put anyone off. Of course, everything is heard with love, no matter what is said, even if it happens that someone holds the raised hand of Ahriman over his head because he thinks Ahriman is a snake and so on: that is even in some circumstances quite interesting in itself; but it does show that with regard to what is actually to be achieved here through the building, there is a lot to be done. And what it comes down to is – I have expressed it for one area in my first mystery drama, for example, that the form of the color is the work and so on.

Of course, saying such things has no particular value, but it does have value if the opportunity is really given to implement such things in reality, in fact.

But that is what I would like to emphasize. I have actually had a great deal of experience in this field, not only in the artistic field, but also, for example, in the field of individual scientific achievements. My aim has always been to introduce spiritual science, but as a living force, not as something dead, into the various branches of life.

If you express any spiritual-scientific idea in an external form, you kill the idea. What is at stake is that, through the intensity of spiritual-scientific inner attainments, one becomes a different person who, in relation to everything in him, learns to feel differently than one can learn anywhere else today. Then, in the particular field in which he is working, he abandons himself to the impulse that has been placed within him, and a different art arises from the roots of spiritual science, but always indirectly through the human soul, so on the detour through the human soul, that all the idealism of spiritual science first disappears, is transformed in the human soul and only in the transformation does art become art. If you still see any forms that are created, anything of what must be given as an idea in spiritual science, then it is artistic nonsense, it is not real art.

That is what I would like to emphasize. And that is why my ideal in this area would be – as I said, I want to emphasize the moral side of our meeting today – my ideal would be if, by everyone reflecting on: What is intended here? What has not been achieved? How could we achieve what we actually want? if, above all, there were a truly fruitful effect on artistic judgment, if there were a real intention to educate oneself artistically through what this Goetheanum wants. This is something that has so far been rejected by the minds of many of our friends — my dear friends, I have to say it. And there is a danger that people will ask: Why are there seven pillars, why exactly seven pillars? And so on. All of this should really be secondary to how one should feel. And then one must also feel the initial intention behind it.

My dear friends, what our very dear Mr. Linde said about my contribution to the small dome is not something I myself value particularly highly, and I also stand by the fact that it is quite a beginning, a beginning that is a bit of picturesque scribble, but a beginning that may perhaps show what is actually wanted, perhaps better in this than in anything else. And I may well make the confession to you that I would perhaps achieve what I want if I were not fifty-eight years old today, but if I could still learn for thirty-five years, in order to then carry out approximately what I would like to carry out and what I would like to see in the small dome. This will also make it clear to you that I myself do not have such an enormous desire to do something in the great dome either.

Of course, I will do whatever is desirable in the given case for each individual part of the building, whatever I consider to be my duty, and I will lend a hand wherever possible. But I also want everyone to know how I myself think about these things, which I view with a fair amount of modesty on the one hand, but on the other hand with a bit of immodesty: because I do believe that what could be achieved by people after a long period of independent work, after a long time when we ourselves can no longer be there, in a way that is fruitful for the future, as intended by this building, inaugurated, initiated. So that one could get a great deal out of what is wanted here, if one understood it in precisely this way. Whether there are external possibilities to intervene in the large dome as well, depends on powers that I am not inclined to call the wise world powers, but which currently force one to live from day to day, in whose goings-on – well, I just don't call them the wise world powers – in whose goings-on one cannot intervene so directly. I will, of course, do everything I can to be on site as much as possible; but one cannot even know whether one might not be prevented from doing so in the coming weeks due to current events and have to be absent for a while. Well, somehow it may be possible that the dawn of a new era will bring greater freedom here as well. But for the time being, precisely for this reason, one cannot say anything particularly definite. I can only say that I will do everything that is necessary to make this building what it should be and what it can become after what has been started.

Then I would like to say a few words about the trust company, which I welcome with such great joy, my dear friends. The first thought of this trust company occurred to me through a conversation that Mr. Molt, on his own initiative, had with me in Stuttgart at the beginning of this year. I do not need to share the content of this conversation with you, because the content was then practically included in the actual reasoning of the trust and in what has been shared with you today. I will just say that at the time I welcomed the establishment of this trust with tremendous satisfaction, for the following reason.

Please understand me correctly, my dear friends. I welcome it with deep joy when there are many idealists and spiritualists in the best sense of the word within our society – even if many of them are quite impractical people who do not always carry so-called practice, especially not business practice, on their noses – when there are many people within this society who get their intentions from a certain idealistic point of view. But if you just look at this financial account, you will understand that the Johannesbau, which has now become the “Goetheanum”, is something that also requires quite a strong intervention of practical impulses. Our friends who initially turned to the Johannesbau out of their idealism cannot always bear this in mind. And I would be the very last person to want to introduce even the slightest discord into the very deep, honest gratitude that I feel for those who, as I said at the beginning of my words, have dedicated themselves to the Johannesbau in the background, so to speak, in the role of directors.

However, my dear friends, the progress of the work over the years has shown that the intervention of a certain practice is necessary. It is so difficult to bring together idealism and practice in an individual. As I said, I don't want to introduce the slightest discordant note. But the esteemed and dear chairmanship will not take it amiss if I now, for example, mention a small but truly kindly intended damper that I felt during the meeting. This does not in any way affect my deep, honest gratitude. But isn't it true that I, who am accustomed to seeing meetings go in the way they should, winced inwardly at the failure to touch on the very first necessary point on the agenda and to request that the minutes of the previous general assembly be read or at least that a vote be taken on whether or not they should be read. These formalities must not be omitted. And so there are many things that must be considered. Right? You have to be a stickler at the right moments, and you won't hold it against me if I say such things. It's just a personal problem, and it really doesn't do any harm in practice today. But that's the way it is with these and other things.

Well, my dear friends, in February of this year, the idea of the trust company approached me, and I will now tell you quite frankly why I welcomed it with particular joy. You see, all that is said there, interest on loans and so on, is certainly very nice, but that actually goes without saying when you set up a trust company; what else could you do if you didn't do that? But that is not what impressed me about the idea of the trust company back then, my dear friends. I believe that it will be realized and could perhaps be particularly important for our time. What was important to me was that precisely those personalities in our society who are somehow involved in the rest of the world, who are involved in it through one or other social aspect, should come together under a certain aspect.

A cause such as ours, when it is as tangible to the world as the Johannesbau, can only flourish if the members do not just pursue it in the way that many do. I am not criticizing them, that's just the way it is; they are members of the Anthroposophical Society or the Johannesbau Association in secret, so to speak, but they don't want it to be known, do they? I believe that there are some who even like to come to the lectures of the Anthroposophical Society, but are very reluctant to have it known at their bank office that they are members, and so on. Well, there are such things. But you can't get anywhere with that. Of course you can have an ideal society, but you won't get anywhere with it if you want to create something like the Goetheanum, which has to be run in a business-like manner. You can only make progress if the personalities who belong to it also really make use of the other social affinities they have in the outside world, in other words, if someone is this or that, they use the respect they have in their circle to create a foundation, a real foundation, for what is to be created there for the good of humanity.

So I welcomed the trust company as a collaboration between personalities who have a position in the rest of the world and who use this position in the interest of the Goetheanum. Therefore, my dear friends, it was immediately plausible to me that the name “Goetheanum” emerged precisely in connection with our society. There will be many idealists in our Society who do not like the fact that the beautiful biblical name, or whatever it is, 'Johannesbau' is being changed to the name 'Goetheanum'. But, my dear friends, everyone can carry in their hearts what is actually being achieved here for humanity. The matter is to be presented to the world in such a way that the world understands it as simply as possible. And to attach importance to something happening differently, so that the world understands it, I think that is very damaging to our cause. Therefore, it was quite right for the trust company to say to itself: if we call ourselves 'Johannesbau', everyone thinks: well, that's just something, well, 'something'! And if we call ourselves “Goetheanum”, then that connects with something [recognized], and those people who would say about “Johannesbau”: well, that's just “something”, would at least be embarrassed not to acknowledge Goethe.

I am certainly not overestimating our contemporaneity, because, after all, they may well think of the “Goetheanum” as “something” in their hearts, but then they feel a little embarrassed. And we also have to be aware of such impulses from our revered contemporaries. All kinds of things come together. As for why one should say 'Goetheanum' for spiritual and intellectual reasons, I have dealt with this sufficiently in my lectures. But I wanted to mention the example of the trust company to show that there is also a very practical reason for doing so. And if, in the present difficult times, when we are heading towards such chaos, everyone in the trust company uses what they have to stand in the world, to connect with it and to bring it into the building of St. John, which will certainly also have a difficult position in the world, then the trust company will do something good. Otherwise, it would, of course, be necessary to set up a super-trust company for the trust company at a later date, so that the super-trust company would relate to the trust company in the same way that the Johannesbau relates to the trust company, and so on.

Emil Grosheintz: Does anyone else wish to speak? - If not, I would like to close today's meeting.

Yesterday I tried to characterize the spiritual life at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries; to describe it as I experienced it, and as it led to the writing of my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity (The Philosophy of Freedom).

The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity was to point to moral intuitions as that within man which, in the evolution of the world, should lead to the founding of the moral life of the future. In other words, through my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, I wanted to show that the time has come, if morality is to continue in the evolution of mankind, to make an appeal to what the individual is able to call forth from his inmost nature. I mentioned that the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity was published at a time when it was universally said that at last it had been recognized that moral intuitions were an impossibility and that any discussion about moral intuitions must once and for all be silenced. I therefore considered it essential to establish the reality of moral intuition. Thus there was a distinct cleft between what the age, among many of its most eminent minds considered to be truth, and what I was obliged to maintain as truth out of the principles of human evolution.

But on what is this difference really based? Let us look into the depths of man's life of soul, as we see it today in the West. In earlier times people also spoke of moral intuitions, that is to say, it was said that, as an individual entity, man could call forth from within himself independently of external life the impetus to action. But when the new age dawned, in the first third of the fifteenth century and more powerfully in subsequent centuries, what had been said about moral intuitions was no longer quite true. It was said: Morality cannot be established by the observation of external facts; men were no longer aware of a real light when they looked into their inner being. So they declared that moral intuitions were there, but that actually nothing more was known about them. For centuries statements were such that one might say: The thinking, which had been natural before the fifteenth century, moved onwards automatically and facts formerly justified had ceased to be so.

Traditions, of which I have spoken, persisted through the centuries and contributed towards such statements. Before the fifteenth century, men did not speak in indefinite terms as was current later, and this very indefiniteness was untruthful. When speaking of intuitions, of moral intuitions he spoke of that which rose up in his inner being, of which he had a picture as real as the world of Nature when he opened his eyes in the morning. Outside he saw Nature around him, the plants and the clouds; when he looked into his inner being, there arose the Spiritual, the Moral as it was given to him. The further we go back in evolution the more we find that the rising tip of an inner realm into human experience was a matter of course. These facts, as I have explained them to you, are the outcome of Spiritual Science; they may also be studied historically by considering external symptoms. In the days when speech, from being an inner reality was lapsing into untruthfulness, proof for the existence of God came into evidence.

Had anyone during the first centuries of Christianity spoken about proofs for the existence of God, as Anselm of Canterbury, people would not have known what was meant. In earlier times they would have known still less! For in the second or third century before Christ, to speak of proofs for the existence of God would have been as if someone sitting there in the first row were to stand up and I were to say: “Mr. X stands there,” and someone in the room were to assert “No, that must first be proved!” What man experienced as the divine was a Being of full reality standing before his soul. He was endowed with the faculty of perception for what he called divine; this God appears primitive and incomplete in the eyes of modern man. They could not get beyond the point they were then capable of reaching. But the men of that age had no desire to hear about proofs, for that would have seemed absurd. Man began to “prove” the existence of the divine when he had lost it, when it was no longer perceived by inner, spiritual perception. The introduction of proofs for the existence of God shows, if one looks at the facts impartially, that direct perception of the divine had been lost. But the moral impulses of that time were bound up with what was divine. Moral impulses of that time can no longer be regarded as moral impulses for today. When in the first third of the fifteenth century the faculty of perception of the divine-spiritual in the old sense was exhausted, perception of the moral also faded and all that remained was the traditional dogma of morals which men called “conscience.” But the term was always applied in the vaguest manner.

When, therefore, at the end of the nineteenth century it was said that all talk about moral intuitions must be silenced, it was the final consequence of a historical development. Until then human beings had a feeling, however dim, that such intuitions had once existed. But now they began to put themselves to the test. Intelligence had at least brought them to the point of being able to do this; they discovered that with the methods they were accustomed to use to think scientifically, they were unable to approach moral intuitions.

Let us consider the moral intuitions of olden times. History has become very threadbare in this respect. We have a history of outer events and in the nineteenth century a history of culture was established. But this age has been incapable of producing a history which takes man's inner life of soul into account; there is no knowledge of how the life of soul developed from the earliest times until the first third of the fifteenth century. But if we go back in time and consider what was spoken of as moral intuition, we find that it did not arise as a result of inner effort. For this reason the Old Testament, for instance, is right not to feel what figured then as moral intuition as begotten from within, but as divine commandments, coming to the soul from outside. And the further back we go the more the human being felt what he saw when he beheld the moral, to be a gift to his inner nature from some living divine being outside him. Moral intuitions held good as divine commands—not in a figurative or symbolic sense, but in an absolutely real sense.

There is a good deal of truth in contemporary religious philosophies when they allude to a primal revelation preceding the historical age on earth. External science cannot get much beyond, shall I say, a paleontology of the soul. Just as in the earth we find fossils, indicating an earlier form of life, so in fossilized moral ideas we find forms pointing back to the once living, God-given moral ideas. Thus we can get to the concept of primal revelation and say: This primal revelation faded out. Human beings lost the faculty for being conscious of primal revelation. And this loss reached its culminating point in the first third of the fifteenth century. Human beings perceived nothing when they looked within themselves. They preserved only the tradition of what they had once beheld. Religious communities gradually seized upon this tradition and turned its externalized content, this purely traditional content, into dogmas which people were expected merely to believe, whereas formerly they had living experience of their truth, though as coming from outside man.

This was the very significant situation at the end of the nineteenth century: Certain circles realized that the old intuitions, the God-given intuitions, were no longer there; that if a man wants to prove with his head the ideas of the people of old, moral intuitions simply disappear; science has silenced them. Human beings even when receptive are no longer capable of receiving moral intuitions. To be consistent, one would have had to become a kind of Spengler, and to say:—There are no moral intuitions; man in future will have no alternative but gradually to wither up—perhaps asking one's grandfather: “Have you heard that there were once moral intuitions, moral influences?” And the grandfather would answer: “One would have to search the libraries; at second or third-hand one might still glean some knowledge of moral intuitions but no longer from actual experience.” So there is no alternative but to wither up and become senile, not to have youth any more.—That would have been consistent. But people did not dare, for consistency was not an outstanding quality of the dawning age of the intellect.

Indeed, there were many things that one did not dare! If a judgment were pronounced it was only half given, as in the case of du Bois-Reymond [a leading German physiologist at the turn of the nineteenth century] who delivered a speech about the boundaries to the knowledge of Nature. He said that supernaturalism could not be mentioned in connection with natural science, for supernaturalism was faith and not knowledge. Science stops short at the supernatural—and nothing further was said by him on the subject. If mentioned, people got excited and said that this was no longer science; consistency was not a characteristic of the century then ending.

So, on one hand, there was the alternative of withering. The Spiritual passes over gradually into the life of soul, the life of soul into the physical. As a result, after some decades, souls would only have been able to ferret out antiquated moral impulses. After some years, not only the thirty-year-olds but also the twenty-year-olds would have been going about with bald heads, and the fifteen-year-olds with grey hair! This is a figurative way of speaking, but Spenglerism would have become an impulse carried into practice. That was one alternative.

The other alternative was to become fully conscious of the following: With the loss of the old intuitions we are facing Nothingness. What can be done? In this Nothingness to seek the “All”! Out of this very Nothingness try to find something that is not given, but which we ourselves must strenuously work for. This was no longer possible with passive powers of the past, but only with the strongest powers of cognition of this age: with the cognitional powers of pure thinking. For in acts of pure thinking, this thinking goes straight over into the will. You can observe and think, without exerting your will. You can carry out experiments and think: it does not pass right over into the will. You can do this without much effort. Pure thinking, by which I mean the unfolding of primary, original activity, requires energy. There the lightning-flash of will must strike directly into the thinking itself. But the lightning-flash of will must come from each single individual. Courage was needed to call upon this pure thinking which becomes pure will; it arises as a new faculty—the faculty of drawing out of the human individuality moral impulses which have to be worked for and are no longer given in the form of the old impulses. Intuitions must be called up that are strenuously worked for. Today what man works for in his inner being is called “phantasy.” Thus in this present age which has, apart from this, silenced inner work, moral impulses for the future must be produced out of moral phantasy, moral Imagination; the human being had to be shown the way from merely poetical, artistic phantasy, to a creative moral Imagination.

The old intuitions were always given to groups. There is a mysterious connection between primal revelation and human groups. It was always to groups of human beings in association that the old intuitions were given. The new intuitions must be produced in the sphere of each single, individual human soul; in other words, each single human being must be made the source of his own morality. This must be brought forth through the intuitions out of the Nothingness by which man is confronted.

That was the only possibility left, if as an honest man one was not willing to turn to a kind of Spenglerism—and to work in the Spengler way is far from alive. It was a question of finding a living reality out of the Nothingness which confronted men, and it goes without saying that at first one could only make a beginning. For a creative power in the human being had to be called upon, the creation, as it were, of an inner man within the outer man. In earlier times the outer man received moral impulses from outside. Now the human being has to create an inner man and with this inner man there came, or will come, the new moral intuition. So, out of the times themselves there had to be born a kind of Philosophy of Spiritual Activity—something that must inevitably be in sharp opposition to the times.

Let us complete this survey of the condition of the soul of modern man by considering another aspect. You see, as a preparation for intellectualism in western civilization, the consciousness of man's pre-earthly existence had for a long time been wiped out. Western civilization had lost it in very early times. So that in the West there was not this consciousness: “When I issue from the embryonic state of physical development something unites itself with me, something that descends from the heights of spirit and soul and permeates this physical earth-being.”

Now in this connection the following presents itself quite clearly to our vision. I have already given you a picture to elucidate it. I said that when we look at a corpse we know that it cannot have its form through the forces of nature, but must be the remains of a living human being. It would be foolish to speak about the human form as if it were itself something living. We must go back to what was the living human being. In the same way, looked at impartially, man's intellectual thinking presents itself as dead. People naturally will say: “Prove this for us.” It proves itself in the very beholding and the kind of proofs necessary for the side issues are indeed available. But to demonstrate it I would have to go into a good deal of philosophy and this lies outside the scope of our present task. To anyone looking at it without prejudice, intellectual thinking, out of which our whole modern civilization flows, bears the same relation to living thinking as the corpse to the living human being. Just as the corpse is derived from the living man, so the thinking we have today is derived from the living thinking of an earlier time. But upon sound reflection I must say to myself: “This dead thinking must have originated in a living thinking which was there before birth. The physical organism is the tomb of the living thinking, and the receptacle of dead thinking.”

But the strange fact is that during the first two periods of human life, up to the sixth, seventh or eighth years, to the end of the change of teeth, and then further, up to the thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth years—that is to say, to the age of puberty—the human being has a thinking not yet entirely dead; but in process of dying. It was only living thinking in pre-earthly existence. During the first two periods of life it comes to the point of dying, and for modern man, since the first third of the fifteenth century, thinking is quite dead by the time of puberty. It is then the corpse of living thinking. It was not always so in the evolution of mankind. If we go back before the fifteenth century, it becomes evident that thinking still was something living. There existed livingly the kind of thinking which human beings today do not like because they feel as if ants were swarming in their brain. They do not like it when something is really alive within them. They want their head to behave in a quiet and comfortable way.

And the thinking in it, too, should take a peaceful course so that all one needs is to help things along with the laws of logic. But pure thinking—that is just as if an ant-heap were let loose in one's head, and that, people say, is not as it should be. At the beginning of the fifteenth century the human being was still able to endure living thinking. I am not saying this in order to criticize; that would be out-of-place, just as out-of-place as to criticize a cow because she is no longer a calf. It would have been the greatest disaster for humanity if this had not happened. There had to be human beings who could not endure having an ant-heap in their head! For what was dead had to be brought to life again in a different way.

And so it came about after the middle of the fifteenth century that human beings inwardly experienced a dead thinking once puberty was passed. They were filled out with the corpse of thinking. Go really deeply and seriously into this idea and you will understand that it is only since that time that an inorganic natural science could arise, because the human being began to grasp purely inorganic laws. Now for the first time man could grasp what is dead in the way striven for since Galileo and Copernicus. The living had first to die inwardly. When man was still inwardly alive in his thinking, he could not grasp the dead in an external way for the living kind of knowledge imparted itself to what was external. Natural science became increasingly pure science and nothing more, and this continued until, at the end of the nineteenth century, it was well-nigh only mathematics. That was the ideal towards which it strove—it strove to be Phoronomy, a kind of system of pure mechanics.

So, in the modern age, man began more and more to make what is dead into the actual object of knowledge. That was the whole aim. This lasted for some centuries; evolution took this direction. Men of genius like de Lamettrie, for example, anticipated the idea that the human being was really a machine. Yes, the human being who only wants to grasp what is dead avails himself of what is merely a machine within him, of what is dead within him. And this makes the development of natural science easy for modern man. For his thinking is dead by the time of puberty, whereas in earlier days he had God-given intuitions; thinking preserved the forces of growth within itself far beyond puberty. In later times, living thinking was lost; human beings in later life learnt nothing more; they simply repeated mechanically what they had assimilated in earlier youth.

You see, this suited the old, who held the control of culture in their hands: to comprehend a dead world with their dead thinking. On this dead thinking, science can be founded, but with it the young can never be taught and educated. And why? Because up to puberty the young preserve the livingness of thinking, in an unconscious way. And so, in spite of all the thought given today to principles of education, if rigidified objective science which comprehends only what is dead becomes the teacher of the living, the youthful feel it like a thorn in the flesh. This thorn enters their heart and they have to tear out from their heart what is living. Many still overlook what has had to come about out of the depths of human evolution: a definite cleavage between young and old. And this cleavage is due to the fact that the young cannot allow the dead thorn to be thrust into their living heart—the thorn which the head produces out of intellectualism. The young demand the livingness that can only come out of the Spirit as the result of strenuous effort by the individual. We are making a beginning in the sphere of moral intuitions.

A beginning has been made in what I have tried to present in my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity in regard to this purely spiritual matter—for such are moral intuitions, striven for by the human individuality. Because one has dared to open one's mouth while others were saying that nothing should be said—the powers which ordained that one should be stopped from speaking of moral intuitions will themselves be silenced. And so I called upon the living, the purely Spiritual Science is dead. Science cannot make what is living flow from the mouth. And without this one cannot build on it. One must appeal to an inner livingness, and so begin to seek in the right way. The divine lies precisely in the appeal to the original, moral, spiritual intuitions. But if one has once grasped the spiritual then one can unfold the forces which enable one to grasp the Spiritual in wider spheres of cosmic existence. And that is the straight path from moral intuitions to other spiritual contents.

In my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, I have tried to show that knowledge of the super-sensible worlds is built up gradually out of Imaginative, Inspired and Intuitive experience. If we look at outer Nature, we reach first Imagination, then Inspiration, and lastly Intuition. In the moral world it is different. If in that world we reach picture-consciousness, Imaginations as such, then with Imaginations of Nature we have at the same time developed the faculty for moral intuitions. Already at the first stage we acquire what, in the other sphere, is not attained until the third stage. In the moral world, intuition follows immediately upon outer perception. In the world of Nature, however, there are two intermediate stages. So that if, in the moral world one speaks of intuitions not in mere phrases but honestly, truthfully, one simply cannot do otherwise than recognize these intuitions as being purely spiritual. But then one must work on to discover other realms of the Spirit. For qualitatively one has grasped in moral Intuition the same as the evolution of the natural world, filled with content by a book such as Occult Science.

But, my dear friends, we must proceed as follows. On the one hand, we must acknowledge that outer science by its very nature can only comprehend what is material; hence perception of the material is not only materialism but also phenomenalism. On the other, we must work to bring back life into what has been made into dead thinking by natural science.

Thus certain Bible words become alive on a higher level. I do not want to intersperse what I say in a sentimental way with words from the Bible but only to elucidate things for our better mutual understanding.

Why is it that today we no longer have any real philosophies? It is because thinking, as I have described it, has died; when based merely upon dead thinking, philosophies are dead from the very outset. They are not alive. And if like Bergson one seeks in philosophy for something living, nothing comes of it because, although spasmodic efforts are made, one cannot lay hold of the living. To grasp the living means first to attain vision. What we need to reach the living is what after our fifteenth year we can add to what has worked within us before our fifteenth year. This is not disturbed by our intellect. What works within us, a spontaneous, living wisdom—we must learn to carry this over into the dead thinking. Dead thinking must be permeated with forces of growth and with reality. For this reason—not out of sentimentality—I want to refer to the words. from the Bible: “Except ye become as little children ye cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”

For it is always the Kingdom of Heaven that one is seeking. But if one does not become like the child before puberty, one cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Childlikeness, youthfulness, must be brought into dead thinking. Thereby it becomes alive, it comes once more to intuitions; thus we learn to speak out of the primal wisdom of the child. Out of a science of language such as Fritz Mauthner has written, moral intuitions not only become dumb, but actually all talk about the world is silenced. People ought to stop talking about the world because Mauthner proves that all talk about the world consists only of words and words are incapable of expressing reality!

Such thinking has made its appearance only since the first third of the nineteenth century. But supposing our words and concepts not only meant something but had real existence. Then indeed they would not be transparent; then, like clouded lenses before our eyes, they would conceal what is material; because they are realities they would hide the world from us. Something splendid would be made of man had he concepts and words which signify something in themselves! He would have been held fast by them. But concepts and words must be transparent so that we may reach things through them. It is imperative when the desire is almost universal to silence all talk about reality, that we learn to speak a new language.

In this sense we must return to childhood and learn a new language. The language we learn in the first years of childhood gradually becomes dead, because it is permeated by dead intellectual concepts. We must quicken it to new life. We must find something that strikes into what we are thinking, just as when we learnt to speak an impulse arose in us out of the unconscious. We must find a science that is alive. We should consider it a matter of course that the thinking which reached its apex in the last third of the nineteenth century silences our moral intuitions. We must learn to open our mouth by letting our lips be moved by the Spirit. Then we shall become children again, that is to say, we shall carry childhood on into our later years. And that we must do. If a youth movement wants to have truth and not only phraseology, then such a movement is imbued of necessity with the longing for the human mouth to be opened by the Spirit, a longing for the quickening of human speech by the Spirit which wells forth from the individual. As a first step, individual moral intuitions must be brought out of the human individuality; we shall see how as a result, the true Science of the Spirit, which makes all Anthropology into Anthroposophy, is born.

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It has frequently been emphasized that man's greatest riddle is himself. Both natural and spiritual science ultimately try to solve this riddle—the former by understanding the natural laws that govern our outer being, the latter by seeking the essence and purpose inherent in our existence. Now as correct as it may be that man's greatest riddle is himself, it must also be emphasized that each individual human being is a riddle, often even to himself. Every one of us experiences this in encounters with other people.

Today we shall be dealing not with general riddles, but rather with those posed to us by every human being in every encounter, and these are just as important. For how endlessly varied people are! We need only consider temperament, the subject of today's lecture, in order to realize that there are as many riddles as there are people. Even within the basic types known as the temperaments, such variety exists among people that the very mystery of existence seems to express itself within these types. Temperament, that fundamental coloring of the human personality, plays a role in all manifestations of individuality that are of concern to practical life. We sense something of this basic mood whenever we encounter another human being. Thus we can only hope that spiritual science will tell us what we need to know about the temperaments.

Our first impression of the temperaments is that they are external, for although they can be said to flow from within, they manifest themselves in everything we can observe from without. However, this does not mean that the human riddle can be solved by means of natural science and observation. Only when we hear what spiritual science has to say can we come closer to understanding these peculiar colorations of the human personality.

Spiritual science tells us first of all that the human being is part of a line of heredity. He displays the characteristics he has inherited from father, mother, grandparents, and so on. These characteristics he then passes on to his progeny. The human being thus possesses certain traits by virtue of being part of a succession of generations.

However, this inheritance gives us only one side of his nature. Joined to that is the individuality he brings with him out of the spiritual world. This he adds to what his father and mother, his ancestors, are able to give him. Something that proceeds from life to life, from existence to existence, connects itself with the generational stream. Certain characteristics we can attribute to heredity; on the other hand, as a person develops from childhood on, we can see unfolding out of the center of his being something that must be the fruit of preceding lives, something he could never have inherited from his ancestors. We come to know the law of reincarnation, of the succession of earthly lives and this is but a special case of an all-encompassing cosmic law.

An illustration will make this seem less paradoxical. Consider a lifeless mineral, say, a rock crystal. Should the crystal be destroyed, it leaves nothing of its form that could be passed on to other crystals.¹ A new crystal receives nothing of the old one's particular form. When we move on to the world of plants, we notice that a plant cannot develop according to the same laws as does the crystal. It can only originate from another, earlier plant. Form is here preserved and passed on.

Moving on to the animal kingdom, we find an evolution of the species taking place. We begin to appreciate why the nineteenth century held the discovery of evolution to be its greatest achievement. In animals, not only does one being proceed from another, but each young animal during the embryo phase recapitulates the earlier phases of its species' evolutionary development. The species itself undergoes an enhancement.

In human beings not only does the species evolve, but so does the individual. What a human being acquires in a lifetime through education and experience is preserved, just as surely as are the evolutionary achievements of an animal's ancestral line. It will someday be commonplace to trace a person's inner core to a previous existence. The human being will come to be known as the product of an earlier life. The views that stand in the way of this doctrine will be overcome, just as was the scholarly opinion of an earlier century, which held that living organisms could arise from nonliving substances. As recently as three hundred years ago, scholars believed that animals could evolve from river mud, that is, from nonliving matter. Francesco Redi, an Italian scientist, was the first to assert that living things could develop only from other living things.² For this he was attacked and came close to suffering the fate of Giordano Bruno.³ Today, burning people at the stake is no longer fashionable. When someone attempts to teach a new truth, for example, that psycho-spiritual entities must be traced back to earlier psycho-spiritual entities, he won't exactly be burned at the stake, but he will be dismissed as a fool. But the time will come when the real foolishness will be to believe that the human being lives only once, that there is no enduring entity that unites itself with a person's inherited traits.

Now the important question arises: How can something originating in a completely different world, that must seek a father and a mother, unite itself with physical corporeality? How can it clothe itself in the bodily features that link human beings to a hereditary chain? How does the spiritual-psychic stream, of which man forms a part through reincarnation, unite itself with the physical stream of heredity? The answer is that a synthesis must be achieved. When the two streams combine, each imparts something of its own quality to the other. In much the same way that blue and yellow combine to give green, the two streams in the human being combine to yield what is commonly known as temperament. Our inner self and our inherited traits both appear in it. Temperament stands between the things that connect a human being to an ancestral line, and those the human being brings with him out of earlier incarnations. Temperament strikes a balance between the eternal and the ephemeral. And it does so in such a way that the essential members of the human being, which we have come to know in other contexts, enter into a very specific relationship with one another.

Human beings as we know them in this life are beings of four members. The first, the physical body, they have in common with the mineral world. The first super-sensible member, the etheric body, is integrated into the physical and separates from it only at death. There follows as third member the astral body, the bearer of instincts, drives, passions, desires, and of the ever-changing content of sensation and thought. Our highest member, which places us above all other earthly beings, is the bearer of the human ego, which endows us in such a curious and yet undeniable fashion with the power of self-awareness. These four members we have come to know as the essential constituents of a human being.

The way the four members combine is determined by the flowing together of the two streams upon a person's entry into the physical world. In every case, one of the four members achieves predominance over the others, and gives them its own peculiar stamp. Where the bearer of the ego predominates, a choleric temperament results. Where the astral body predominates, we find a sanguine temperament. Where the etheric or life-body predominates, we speak of a phlegmatic temperament. And where the physical body predominates, we have to deal with a melancholic temperament. The specific way in which the eternal and the ephemeral combine determines what relationship the four members will enter into with one another.

The way the four members find their expression in the physical body has also frequently been mentioned. The ego expresses itself in the circulation of the blood. For this reason, in the choleric the predominant system is that of the blood. The astral body expresses itself physically in the nervous system; thus in the sanguine, the nervous system holds sway. The etheric body expresses itself in the glandular system; hence the phlegmatic is dominated physically by his glands. The physical body as such expresses itself only in itself; thus the outwardly most important feature in the melancholic is his physical body. This can be observed in all phenomena connected with these temperaments.

In the choleric, the ego and the blood system predominate. The choleric thus comes across as someone who must always have his way. His aggressiveness, everything connected with his forcefulness of will, derives from his blood circulation.

In the nervous system and astral body, sensations and feelings constantly fluctuate. Any harmony or order results solely from the restraining influence of the ego. People who do not exercise that influence appear to have no control over their thoughts and sensations. They are totally absorbed by the sensations, pictures, and ideas that ebb and flow within them. Something like this occurs whenever the astral body predominates, as, for example, in the sanguine. Sanguines surrender themselves in a certain sense to the constant and varied flow of images, sensations, and ideas since in them the astral body and nervous system predominate.

The nervous system's activity is restrained only by the circulation of the blood. That this is so becomes clear when we consider what happens when a person lacks blood or is anaemic, in other words, when the blood's restraining influence is absent. Mental images fluctuate wildly, often leading to illusions and hallucinations.

A touch of this is present in sanguines. Sanguines are incapable of lingering over an impression. They cannot fix their attention on a particular image nor sustain their interest in an impression. Instead, they rush from experience to experience, from percept to percept. This is especially noticeable in sanguine children, where it can be a source of concern. The sanguine child's interest is easily kindled, a picture will easily impress, but the impression quickly vanishes.

We proceed now to the phlegmatic temperament. We observed that this temperament develops when the etheric or life-body, as we call it, which regulates growth and metabolism, is predominant. The result is a sense of inner well-being. The more a human being lives in his etheric body, the more is he preoccupied with his internal processes. He lets external events run their course while his attention is directed inward.

In the melancholic we have seen that the physical body, the coarsest member of the human organization, becomes master over the others. As a result, the melancholic feels he is not master over his body, that he cannot bend it to his will. His physical body, which is intended to be an instrument of the higher members, is itself in control, and frustrates the others. This the melancholic experiences as pain, as a feeling of despondency. Pain continually wells up within him. This is because his physical body resists his etheric body's inner sense of well-being, his astral body's liveliness, and his ego's purposeful striving.

The varying combinations of the four members also manifest themselves quite clearly in external appearance. People in whom the ego predominates seek to triumph over all obstacles, to make their presence known. Accordingly their ego stunts the growth of the other members; it withholds from the astral and etheric bodies their due portion. This reveals itself outwardly in a very clear fashion. Johann Gottlieb Fichte, that famous German choleric, was recognizable as such purely externally.⁴ His build revealed clearly that the lower essential members had been held back in their growth. Napoleon, another classic example of the choleric, was so short because his ego had held the other members back.⁵ Of course, one cannot generalize that all cholerics are short and all sanguines tall. It is a question of proportion. What matters is the relation of size to overall form.

In the sanguine the nervous system and astral body predominate. The astral body's inner liveliness animates the other members, and makes the external form as mobile as possible. Whereas the choleric has sharply chiseled facial features, the sanguine's are mobile, expressive, changeable. We see the astral body's inner liveliness manifested in every outer detail, for example, in a slender form, a delicate bone structure, or lean muscles. The same thing can be observed in details of behavior. Even a non-clairvoyant can tell from behind whether someone is a choleric or a sanguine; one does not need to be a spiritual scientist for that. If you observe the gait of a choleric, you will notice that he plants each foot so solidly that he would seem to want to bore down into the ground. By contrast, the sanguine has a light, springy step. Even subtler external traits can be found. The inwardness of the ego, the choleric's self-contained inwardness, express themselves in eyes that are dark and smoldering. The sanguine, whose ego has not taken such deep root, who is filled with the liveliness of his astral body, tends by contrast to have blue eyes. Many more such distinctive traits of these temperaments could be cited.

The phlegmatic temperament manifests itself in a static, indifferent physiognomy, as well as in plumpness, for fat is due largely to the activity of the etheric body. In all this the phlegmatic's inner sense of comfort is expressed. His gait is loose-jointed and shambling, and his manner timid. He seems somehow to be not entirely in touch with his surroundings.

The melancholic is distinguished by a hanging head, as if he lacked the strength necessary to straighten his neck. His eyes are dull, not shining like the choleric's; his gait is firm, but in a leaden rather than a resolute sort of way.

Thus you see how significantly spiritual science can contribute to the solution of this riddle. Only when one seeks to encompass reality in its entirety, which includes the spiritual, can knowledge bear practical fruit. Accordingly, only spiritual science can give us knowledge that will benefit the individual and all mankind. In education, very close attention must be paid to the individual temperaments, for it is especially important to be able to guide and direct them as they develop in the child. But the temperaments are also important to our efforts to improve ourselves later in life. We do well to attend to what expresses itself through them if we wish to further our personal development.

The four fundamental types I have outlined here for you naturally never manifest themselves in such pure form. Every human being has one basic temperament, with varying degrees of the other three mixed in. Napoleon, for example, although a choleric, had much of the phlegmatic in him. To truly master life, it is important that we open our souls to what manifests itself as typical. When we consider that the temperaments, each of which represents a mild imbalance, can degenerate into unhealthy extremes, we realize just how important this is.

Yet, without the temperaments the world would be an exceedingly dull place, not only ethically, but also in a higher sense. The temperaments alone make all multiplicity, beauty, and fullness of life possible. Thus in education it would be senseless to want to homogenize or eliminate them, but an effort should be made to direct each into the proper track, for in every temperament there lie two dangers of aberration, one great, one small. One danger for the young choleric is that he will never learn to control his temper as he develops into maturity. That is the small danger. The greater is that he will become foolishly single-minded. For the sanguine the lesser danger is flightiness; the greater is mania, induced by a constant stream of sensations. The small danger for the phlegmatic is apathy; the greater is stupidity, dullness. For the melancholic, insensitivity to anything other than his own personal pain is the small danger; the greater is insanity.

In light of all this it is clear that to guide and direct the temperaments is one of life's significant tasks. If this task is to be properly carried out, however, one basic principle must be observed, which is always to reckon with what is given, and not with what is not there. For example, if a child has a sanguine temperament, he will not be helped if his elders try to flog interest into him. His temperament simply will not allow it. Instead of asking what the child lacks, in order that we might beat it into him, we must focus on what he has, and base ourselves on that. And as a rule, there is one thing we can always stimulate the sanguine child's interest in. However flighty the child might be, we can always stimulate his interest in a particular personality. If we ourselves are that personality, or if we bring the child together with someone who is, the child cannot but develop an interest. Only through the medium of love for a personality can the interest of the sanguine child be awakened. More than children of any other temperament, the sanguine needs someone to admire. Admiration is here a kind of magic word, and we must do everything we can to awaken it.

We must reckon with what we have. We should see to it that the sanguine child is exposed to a variety of things in which he has shown a deeper interest. These things should be allowed to speak to him, to have an effect upon him. They should then be withdrawn, so that the child's interest in them will intensify; then they may be restored. In other words, we must fashion the sanguine's environment so that it is in keeping with his temperament.

The choleric child is also susceptible of being led in a special way. The key to his education is respect and esteem for a natural authority. Instead of winning affection by means of personal qualities, as one does with the sanguine child, one should see to it that the child's belief in his teacher's ability remains unshaken. The teacher must demonstrate an understanding of what goes on around the child. Any showing of incompetence should be avoided. The child must persist in the belief that his teacher is competent, or all authority will be lost. The magic potion for the choleric child is respect and esteem for a person's worth, just as for the sanguine child it was love for a personality. Outwardly, the choleric child must be confronted with challenging situations. He must encounter resistance and difficulty, lest his life become too easy.

The melancholic child is not easy to lead. With him, however, a different magic formula may be applied. For the sanguine child this formula was love for a personality; for the choleric, it was respect and esteem for a teacher's worth. By contrast, the important thing for the melancholic is for his teachers to be people who have in a certain sense been tried by life, who act and speak on the basis of past trials. The child must feel that the teacher has known real pain. Let your treatment of all of life's little details be an occasion for the child to appreciate what you have suffered. Sympathy with the fates of those around him furthers the melancholic's development. Here too one must reckon with what the child has. The melancholic has a capacity for suffering, for discomfort, which is firmly rooted in his being; it cannot be disciplined out of him. However, it can be redirected. We should expose the child to legitimate external pain and suffering, so that he learns there are things other than himself that can engage his capacity for experiencing pain. This is the essential thing. We should not try to divert or amuse the melancholic, for to do so only intensifies his despondency and inner suffering; instead, he must be made to see that objective occasions for suffering exist in life. Although we mustn't carry it too far, redirecting the child's suffering to outside objects is what is called for.

The phlegmatic child should not be allowed to grow up alone. Although naturally all children should have play-mates, for phlegmatics it is especially important that they have them. Their playmates should have the most varied interests. Phlegmatic children learn by sharing in the interests, the more numerous the better, of others. Their playmates' enthusiasms will overcome their native indifference towards the world. Whereas the important thing for the melancholic is to experience another person's fate, for the phlegmatic child it is to experience the whole range of his playmates' interests. The phlegmatic is not moved by things as such, but an interest arises when he sees things reflected in others, and these interests are then reflected in the soul of the phlegmatic child. We should bring into the phlegmatic's environment objects and events toward which “phlegm” is an appropriate reaction. Impassivity must be directed toward the right objects, objects toward which one may be phlegmatic.

From the examples of these pedagogical principles, we see how spiritual science can address practical problems. These principles can also be applied to oneself, for purposes of self-improvement. For example, a sanguine gains little by reproaching himself for his temperament. Our minds are in such questions frequently an obstacle. When pitted directly against stronger forces such as the temperaments, they can accomplish little. Indirectly, however, they can accomplish much. The sanguine, for example, can take his sanguinity into account, abandoning self-exhortation as fruitless. The important thing is to display sanguinity under the right circumstances. Experiences suited to his short attention span can be brought about through thoughtful planning. Using thought in this way, even on the smallest scale, will produce the requisite effect.

Persons of a choleric temperament should purposely put themselves in situations where rage is of no use, but rather only makes them look ridiculous. Melancholics should not close their eyes to life's pain, but rather seek it out; through compassion they redirect their suffering outward toward appropriate objects and events. If we are phlegmatics, having no particular interests, then we should occupy ourselves as much as possible with uninteresting things, surround ourselves with numerous sources of tedium, so that we become thoroughly bored. We will then be thoroughly cured of our “phlegm;” we will have gotten it out of our system. Thus does one reckon with what one has, and not with what one does not have.

By filling ourselves with practical wisdom such as this, we learn to solve that basic riddle of life, the other person. It is solved not by postulating abstract ideas and concepts, but by means of pictures. Instead of arbitrarily theorizing, we should seek an immediate understanding of every individual human being. We can do this, however, only by knowing what lies in the depths of the soul. Slowly and gradually, spiritual science illuminates our minds, making us receptive not only to the big picture, but also to subtle details. Spiritual science makes it possible that when two souls meet and one demands love, the other offers it. If something else is demanded, that other thing is given. Through such true, living wisdom do we create the basis for society. This is what we mean when we say we must solve a riddle every moment.

Anthroposophy acts not by means of sermons, exhortations, or catechisms, but by creating a social groundwork, upon which human beings can come to know each other. Spiritual science is the ground of life, and love is the blossom and fruit of a life enhanced by it. Thus spiritual science may claim to lay the foundation for humankind's most beautiful goal—a true, genuine love for man.

• 1. Translator's note: The reader may conclude from this remark—for it was, after all, a remark, not a published claim—that Steiner was ignorant of the concept of seed crystals. However, a likelier explanation is that Steiner, whose audience was very likely not a scientifically knowledgeable one, was simply indulging in a bit of rhetorical hyperbole. He doubtless knew that a seed crystal will hasten the crystallization process in a saturated salt solution, but this fact is not really relevant to his point, which comes out only gradually in this paragraph. His point is not that a newly-forming crystal cannot receive some contribution from a previously existing one, only that it need not; this is in contrast to living things, which require a progenitor.
• 2. Francesco Redi, 1626-1697. Refuted spontaneous generation of living beings out of mud.
• 3. Giordano Bruno, 1548-1600. Italian philosopher, Dominican monk, burned at the stake as heretic. Taught that the world is infinite in space and time and filled with innumerable suns.
• 4. Johann Gottlieb Fichte, 1762-1814. German Idealist philosopher.
• 5. Napoleon Bonaparte, 1769-1821. French ruler and emperor 1804-1814 and 1815.

1.

In the history of recent Western philosophy, Rudolf Steiner appears as a unique personality because his whole philosophical work is not the result of a thinking effort, but is based on spiritual experiences. In the world of the East it goes without saying that a great thinker is at the same time a great initiate; in the West, however, it never before occurred that a whole philosophical system was based on immediate spiritual experience. For this reason Steiner had to face the greatest mistrust from the world of the “official” philosophers.

It was Eduard von Hartmann whose works Steiner carefully studied, who influenced his early writings, and to whom he dedicated his doctoral thesis, Truth and Knowledge, published in 1892; and that despite the wide difference in their views. Following Kant, Hartmann believed that true reality can never be grasped by means of our consciousness, and that the experiences of our consciousness are nothing but an unreal reflection of reality. In contrast, there was no doubt for Steiner that “the experiences of our consciousness can enter the true realities by means of strengthening of our soul forces, and that the divine spiritual principle manifests itself in man if he makes this manifestation possible by his soul life.” (See Steiner's autobiography, The Course of My Life.) The unconscious realities of the world which, according to Hartmann, are veiled forever from our knowledge, “can be brought to our consciousness again and again, by means of the efforts of our soul lives,” as Steiner expressed it in the book quoted above. We are by no means separated from the realities of the world forever, but only so long as we are perceiving by means of the senses exclusively. Actually, the world of the senses is spiritual. If by enhancing our soul life, we succeed in experiencing the ideas working in the world of the senses, then we are able to experience the world in its reality. Steiner calls his philosophical system, “concrete” or “objective idealism.”

From his early youth on, Steiner felt the kinship between this kind of idealism and Goethe's world conception. In contrast to almost all philosophers, his education was not a classical, but a technical one-as if this were a kind of presentiment of the world in which, and into which, Steiner wanted to work later. He graduated from the Institute of Technology in Vienna where he was strongly influenced by his personal connection with the famous Goethe researcher, Karl Julius Schröer. Upon Schröer's warm recommendation, Steiner was invited to edit, in 1884, the natural scientific writings of Goethe in the great Goethe edition of Kürschner's Nationalliteratur. Four years later he was invited to join the work at the Goethe Archives in Weimar. Here Steiner lived from 1889 to 1897.

As a fruit of this research work, his book, A Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception, Fundamental Outlines with Special Reference to Schiller, was published already as early as 1886. (Further editions appeared in 1924, 1936, 1949 and 1960 respectively.) Up to then, Goethe's scientific endeavors had been considered as mere poetic presentiments of the truth. It was Steiner who proved that all of Goethe's various individual discoveries and presentiments had their origin in a total view, and that this is what matters.

2.

Goethe's understanding of nature brought him in opposition to Kant. The problem here is the limitation of our knowledge. In this difference of views, Steiner in his interpretation of Goethe took the side of the latter, in opposition to Kant, and thus put himself in opposition to the Neo-Kantians, whose views were taught in all German universities at that time. Otto Liebmann who renewed Kantianism in the second half of the nineteenth century, had proclaimed that the human consciousness cannot be enhanced. The same line of thought was the foundation upon which Johannes Volkelt had based his thesis that the world known to man has to be separated sharply from the other world, that of the “things in themselves” which, as such, is unknown to man. Thus, the follower of Kant believed that man's knowledge is limited, and that man can never cross this limit; however, in his Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, Steiner makes the statement that with his thinking, man lives in the reality of the world as a spiritual world, and that the world of the senses is, in truth, a manifestation of the spiritual principle.

In this, Steiner was in full agreement with Goethe. Goethe had conceived the great idea of metamorphosis. According to the latter, the world is a manifestation of ideal forces in the world of the senses. All plants, for example, are nothing but materializations of the one, ideal archetypal plant. The archetypal plant is the fundamental design of all plants: the knot and the leaf. We have to think of this fundamental design as a living, working idea which cannot be seen by means of our sense organs but which manifests itself in the world of the senses. Whenever this fundamental design materializes physically, it varies in a manifold manner, and in accordance with any of these variations, the different plants are formed, following the living archetypal pattern. The archetypal plant is the Proteus who hides himself and manifests himself in all these various forms and whoever is able truly to imagine this archetypal plant, can somehow invent new plants which do not, or do not yet, exist in the world of the senses.

Time and again, Steiner pointed to a conversation between Goethe and Schiller which took place in the summer of 1794 during which Goethe claimed to look at nature in such a way that nature is to be thought of as “working and living, and having the tendency from the whole into the single parts.” In the course of this conversation, Goethe drew a sketch of the “archetypal plant” as a physical super-physical form according to which all existing plants are shaped. Schiller, the follower of Kant, answered that this “archetypal plant” is nothing more than an idea which man builds up in order to understand the particulars. Goethe did not agree with this. He said that in the spirit, he saw the whole in the same way as physically he saw the particulars; there was no fundamental difference between the spiritual and the physical view. To him both were parts of the reality. Whereupon Schiller answered, “This is not an experience; this is an idea.” To this Goethe replied, “I am very happy about this, that I do have ideas without my knowledge, and that I even see them with my very eyes.”

This conversation reveals two typical approaches to the problem of the relationship between a spiritual and a sense experience. Schiller, on the one hand, emphasizes the contrast: the two experiences can never be united. In Goethe's view, on the other hand, the idea and the sense perception complete each other, forming two means of knowledge by working together. Man has to let things speak to him in a twofold way: one part of their reality is given him without his cooperation, if only he opens his senses; the other part, however, can be grasped by him by means of his thinking only, and if he is blessed as was Goethe, he is able to see it with his very eyes. However, together the two parts form the complete whole of the object itself.

Schiller considers the ideal part as a subjective addition on the part of man. Though Kant had realized that we have to use the concept of the inner functionality if we really want to understand the various products of nature, and that we cannot grasp the reality without this concept, he still allotted it to the “reflective power of judgment” of man only; or, in other words, he considered this concept to be nothing but an invention of man, though an indispensable one. In contrast to this, the young Schelling in 1797, exclaimed, entirely following Goethe's ideas, “No longer is there any reason to be afraid of statements!” And consistently, he wanted nature explained from the side of the idea. And here are Goethe's words: “By looking at ever-creative nature, we become worthy of spiritually participating in her productions. Didn't I, first unconsciously, and only following an inner urge, time and again insist upon that archetypal, typical principle? I even succeeded in building up a description which follows the formative forces of nature; and nothing was able any longer to prevent me from courageously undergoing the adventure of the reason, as the Old Man from Konigsberg himself calls it.” But for Kant, the “Old Man from Konigsberg,” the postulation of an objectively existent idea still remained an “adventure of the reason.”

But how is man able to grasp this idea which, of its own nature is non-physical, yet working in the physical world of the senses? Goethe considered himself as possessing a power of judgment by looking at an object (an “anschauende Urteilskraft”); he says that the thinking itself must be metamorphosed, must be enhanced, in order to experience the idea of metamorphosis; a spiritual activity is needed, a dynamic thinking.

3.

By adopting Goethe's theory of knowledge, Steiner also answers the question as to what meaning man's activity of knowledge has in the cosmos. The positivistic thinkers consider knowledge nothing but a mere comprising of individual objects into groups; and these groups are for us, then, abstract concepts or names. Thinking as such serves economic purposes exclusively, but it will never create anything new, although the latter might be of great importance for man. In contrast to this, Steiner states that Science is by no means a mere repetition of what is presented to us by our senses, in some abbreviated form, but rather it adds to it something fundamentally new, something which can never be found in the mere perception, or in the experience. This fundamentally new principle, however, is by no means something of a subjective nature which, according to Kant, man projects on the given perception, or on nature, but rather the true essence of the world of the senses itself. The physical phenomena are riddles which the thinking solves; but what this thinking thus brings about, is the objective world itself. For the world is presented to us by two means: by sense perception and by spiritual knowledge. Both are parts of the objective world. According to Kant, the unity of the objects as it is expressed in concepts, is merely loaned to them by man's I; every connection, he says, originates in our “transcendental apperception.” Steiner, on the other hand, says that just the opposite is true: that objects have their ideal content within themselves. The objects, however, are not presented to our senses in their completeness. By thinking about the objects, we develop the ideas which are working in the specific objects, thus adding to the perception what has been missing from it. This missing, however, is not an objective fact but only the consequence of the fact that by means of our senses we perceive the world in a fragmentary manner only.

Consequentially, the idea is, and works objectively; however it is not presented to our sense organs but appears, in our own thinking, on the subjective stage of our consciousness. This is the reason why it seems to us to be subjective only. Man, by means of his thinking, reveals the ideal nucleus of the world. If it were supposed that man's spirit did not exist, the ideas as expressed in natural laws would be working, but they would not be expressed, not grasped as such. Thus, our intellect does not create order in the objective outer world, but restores the order and the unity of this objective world, which has been interfered with by its own means of understanding, subject to two ways of knowledge. This, however, entitles him to grasp the concept as such, thus adding to the already existing form of existence, a completely new form. (Here the question arises as to whether or not Peter Wust was influenced by Steiner when in the former's Dialektik des Geistes, Dialectic of the Spirit, page 293 in the original German edition, he expresses almost the same lines of thought.)

Human thinking frees the ideal pure form as such; thus, man becomes a creator. Without him, thinking would not exist.

4.

Steiner's Anthroposophy—with which we are not dealing here—differs from the “mystical” schools in the extremely high value it accords to thinking. This high evaluation of thinking originates here, in Steiner's philosophy: man has his right place in the cosmos as a thinking being.

Thinking, on the one hand, and perception, on the other, belong together; however, we experience them as separated. Perceptions are presented to us; facing them, we are merely passive; thoughts, again, have to be brought about by the effort of our soul forces. The world insofar as it is perceived, cannot solve any riddles; there, dreams and hallucinations are presented to us in exactly the same way as is the world of the senses. Thoughts, however, are completely familiar to us, and—fundamentally, at least—are transparent. If we wish to find relationships within the world of sense perception, we have to use our thinking forces.

However, what is added to the perception by our thinking is by no means of a merely subjective nature. For it is not we who “have” the thinking, but rather it is the thinking which “has” us. We cannot combine contents of thoughts arbitrarily, but we have to follow their laws. The thinking does not produce the thoughts; it merely receives them, as does the eye the light, and the ear the sound. The only difference is that the senses work automatically while we remain passive, while, insofar as thinking is concerned, we have to activate it ourselves. Perceptions are given to us; concepts we ourselves have to work out.

Let us imagine a spirit to whom the concept is given together with the perception; such a spirit would never achieve the idea that the concept is not an integral part of the subject, but something of a “subjective” nature. Steiner suggests that in earlier times, as a matter of fact, all mankind experienced things in this way.

Therefore it is not the fault of the objects that we first confront them without the corresponding concepts, but of our own spiritual-physical organization. The abyss between perception and concept opens only at the moment when I, the perceiving subject, confront the objects. To explain the object by means of thinking means nothing other than to restore the connection which man's organization has broken up. It is up to man to gain knowledge. The objects themselves require no explanation. We are the ones who ask questions because we face the cleavage between perception and concept.

In this way Steiner has succeeded in building up a truly objective idealism, from Kant back to Plato, or forward to Schelling. What is new in Kant's philosophy—his idealism in contrast to dogmatism—remains in Steiner's world conception. Steiner, however, refuses to accept the subjective nature of this idealism, and with it, the disastrous division of the world into that of human experience and that of the objects in themselves. For Steiner, thinking is neither a mere subjective activity nor a shadowy imitation of the perception, but an independent spiritual reality.

5.

By considering from the outset the nature of the transcendental principle to be conceptual-spiritual, Steiner rejects the dogma of the modern theory of knowledge since Kant: that man is never able to grasp reality. In the thinking process, he himself participates in the transcendental order of laws of the objects. What here leads us constantly in the wrong direction is the fact that we think our I to be somewhere within our physical organization, and that impressions are given to it by the “outside.” The truth however is that our I is living within the order of laws of the objects themselves; but this life of the I in the region of the transcendental principle is not consciously experienced by man. It is rather his physical organization by which he experiences himself.

Steiner frequently uses the example of a mirror which reflects outer events; and this “mirror” is our physical body. The activity of the body represents the living mirror which reflects the life of the I, which in turn is of a transcendental nature. Thus the human I is able to enter the transcendental principle without “forgetting” itself. But the content of our ordinary, empiric, every-day consciousness is to what our I experiences in reality, as the reflection of the mirror is to the original.

This difference between our true life and that which is only “mirrored,” enables Steiner to settle the conflict between natural science tending toward materialism, and spiritual research presupposing the spiritual principle. Natural science studies nothing but the “mirrored reflection” of the reality which is bound to the brain; this “reflection,” of course, depends on the “mirror,” or in other words, on our nervous system. Man's illusion—though necessary for his every-day life—of thinking of his I as an entity living within his physical organization, is relatively justified here. However, the true innermost being of man will never be found within this physical organization, but rather in the transcendental field.

Thus man has to be considered as a being who, on the one hand is living in the spiritual world itself, and on the other, is receiving its experiences “mirrored” by its physical organization. The world of the senses is, in reality, a spiritual world, but it does not appear to us as such.

The training indicated by Steiner in his various anthroposophical books seeks to stimulate man's soul development to the point where he is able to experience this spiritual world consciously; and this training consists of laborious spiritual exercises which require, above all, a great deal of patience and perseverance.

For those of us who are not—or are not yet—in the position to come to spiritual experiences, Rudolf Steiner's philosophy will still be a highly important contribution toward man's understanding of himself and of the world in which he lives—even though this philosophy can be used only to guide the student on his own right way. However, this whole philosophy is by no means meant to be a mere theoretical line of thought; rather does it find its true completion in the realms of its practical effects. Steiner had good reasons for giving his book—in the original German at least—the title, Die Philosophie der Freiheit, that is, literally, The Philosophy of Freedom, and he poses the question: When is an action free? And he answers this question by stating that it is free when it has its origin in pure thinking. At first glance, Steiner's philosophy of ethics may appear intellectualistic. As in the theory of cognition we have to differentiate between subjective perception on the one hand and the objective concept on the other, in the same way, in the realm of ethics we have to differentiate between motives which originate in the perception and those having their origin in pure thinking. In the first instance we cannot call the deed a free one, since this kind of action is prompted by our surroundings, by our feelings and our will, as well as by our personal nature. None of these is truly free. Only the action motivated by our thinking is truly free. For this kind of action is objective; it is not in the least connected with our I; the world of thinking is common to all of us.

Spinoza, the great Dutch philosopher of the 17th century, objected to the doctrine that man's actions are free by saying that if a stone thrown by someone were endowed with consciousness, it would also make the statement that it flies “freely.” To this Steiner replied that it is not the consciousness as such that builds up in people's minds the belief that they are free; rather it is the fact that man is capable of comprehending the rationality of his motives—provided they are rational. Only that action can be called free which has been determined by the rationality of its ideas.

But how does man materialize his rational motives? The answer is, By means of his moral imagination, which enables him to obtain his motives from the world of ideas. The unfree man is determined passively by the motives of his surroundings which also include his innate nature. The free man, on the other hand, acts according to his moral intuition which, though his own, nevertheless lifts him from the level of his limited I to the objective world of thinking.

Now the problem arises, How can objective morality be united with personal initiative? Steiner strongly rejects Kant's ethics which claim his “categorical imperative” to be a general law which extinguishes the personality. He claims just the opposite, namely a purely individual ethic, expressing it thus: “I do not ask anybody, no man and no law; I perform my action according to the idea which guides me. In so doing, my action is my own, and not the execution of the will of an authority. The urging of my desires means nothing to me, nor does that of moral laws; I want simply to do what seems right to me.” In strict opposition to Kant, any action dictated by a general law appears to him as unfree, heteronomous, while only those actions are autonomous which originate in a law given by man's own self. In a letter dated December 5, 1893, addressed to John Henry Mackay, the follower of Max Stirner, Steiner expressly laid stress on the full agreement of his own philosophy of ethics with that of Stirner, presented in the latter's book, Der Einzige und sein Eigentum, The Individual and His Property.

The moral imagination must, out of necessity, be individual. This is the point which counts. However, here we find no opposition between individuality and the general law; we all share in the world of thinking, we all live in one spiritual world. Thus, despite the fact that every single human being draws from his own personal world of ideas, there cannot be any conflict. People are living together, not there is one spiritual cosmos, common to all. This is one of the most important aspects of the picture of Man. For the idea of man is that of a free being. However, we are still rather far from this goal, which belongs to the future. Man's evolution toward this highest goal is far from completed; Man has not yet become a reality. There is something very special in relation to the idea of Man: while all other ideas have materialized, have become one with their perception, as we have seen above, that of Man is still waiting for its materialization, its incorporation. It is Man alone who is able to complete this. While nature performs the task of completion in the case of the plant and animal, so far as Man is concerned nature can do no more than pave the way toward this completion. But it is only and exclusively Man himself who is able to take the last and the decisive step. Books have been written on the question whether or not Man is free, but the manner of asking the question is wrong, for it can never be answered objectively-theoretically. The answer is given by a process of self-liberation.

Rudolf Steiner enthusiastically follows the theory of evolution as it was developed by Darwin and Haeckel. However, he goes far beyond its mere biological aspect. The moral life of man is the continuation of his biological development. Creating new moral ideas out of our “moral imagination”—as, for instance, Gandhi's “non-violence,” or Albert Schweitzer's “reverence for life”—is a “jump” in evolution comparable to the “jump” which creates a new species in the plant or animal kingdom. In a letter dated August 26, 1902, addressed to Wilhelm Hübbe-Schleiden, Steiner wrote, “Nature achieves the most important moments in evolution every time she makes her typical jumps.”

The evolution of mankind as a whole within the hierarchy of the Spiritual Beings is a process of cosmic importance.

HUGO S. BERGMAN
The Hebrew University,
Jerusalem, 1961

Translated by Stephen Michael Engel

[ 1 ] The decision to give public expression to the esoteric from my own inner experience impelled me to write for the Magazine for August 28, 1899, on the occasion of the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Goethe's birth, an article on Goethe's fairy-tale of The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily, under the title Goethes Geheime Offenbarung.¹ This article was, of course, only slightly esoteric. But I could not expect more of my public than I there gave. In my own mind the content of the fairy-tale lived as something wholly esoteric, and it was out of an esoteric mood that the article was written.

[ 2 ] Since the 'eighties I had been occupied with imaginations which were associated in my thought with this fairy-tale. I saw set forth in the fairy-tale Goethe's way from the observation of external nature into the interior of the human mind as he placed this before himself, not in concepts, but in pictures of the spirit. Concepts seemed to Goethe far too poor, too dead, to be capable of representing the living and working forces of the mind.

[ 3 ] Now in Schiller's letters concerning education in aesthetics, Goethe saw an endeavour to grasp this living and working by means of concepts. Schiller sought to show how the life of man is under subjection to natural necessity by reason of his corporeal aspect and to mental necessity through his reason. And he thought the soul must establish an inner equilibrium between the two. Then in this equilibrium man lives in freedom a life really worthy of humanity.

This is clever, but for the real life of the soul it is far too simple. The soul causes its forces, which are rooted in the depths, to shine into consciousness, but to disappear again in the very act of shining forth after they have influenced other forces just as fleeting. These are occurrences which even in arising also pass away; but abstract concepts can be linked only to that which continues for a longer or shorter time.

[ 4 ] All this Goethe knew through experience; he placed his picture-knowledge in a fairy-tale over against Schiller's conceptual knowledge.

[ 5 ] In experiencing this creation of Goethe's, one had entered the outer court of the esoteric.

[ 6] This was the time when I was invited by Count and Countess Brockdorff to deliver a lecture at one of their weekly gatherings. At these meetings there came together seekers from all sorts of circles. The lectures there delivered had to do with all aspects of life and knowledge. I knew nothing of all this until I was invited to deliver a lecture; nor did I know the Brockdorffs, but heard of them then for the first time. The theme proposed was an article about Nietzsche. This lecture I gave. Then I observed that among the hearers there were persons with a great interest in the spiritual world. Therefore, when I was invited to give a second lecture, I proposed the subject “Goethe's Secret Revelation,” and in this lecture I became entirely esoteric in relation to the fairy-tale. It was an important experience for me to be able to speak in words coined from the world of spirit after having been forced by circumstances throughout my Berlin period up to that time only to let the spiritual shine through my presentation.

[ 7 ] The Brockdorffs were leaders of a branch of the Theosophical Society founded by Blavatsky. What I had said in connection with Goethe's fairy-tale led to my being invited by the Brockdorffs to deliver lectures regularly before those members of the Theosophical Society who were associated with them. I explained, however, that I could speak only about that which I vitally experienced within me as spiritual knowledge.

[ 8 ] In truth, I could speak of nothing else. For very little of the literature issued by the Theosophical Society was known to me. I had known theosophists while living in Vienna, and I later became acquainted with others. These acquaintance ships led me to write in the Magazine the adverse review dealing with the theosophists in connection with the appearance of a publication of Franz Hartmann. What I knew otherwise of the literature was for the most part entirely uncongenial to me in method and approach; I could not by any possibility have linked my discussions with this literature.

[ 9 ] So I then gave the lectures in which I established a connection with the mysticism of the Middle Ages. By means of the ideas of the mystics from Master Eckhard to Jakob Böhme, I found expression for the spiritual conceptions which in reality I had determined beforehand to set forth. I published the series of lectures in the book Die Mystik im Aufgange des neuzeitlichen Geisteslebens.²

[ 10 ] At these lectures there appeared one day in the audience Marie von Sievers, who was chosen by destiny at that time to take into strong hands the German section of the Theosophical Society, founded soon after the beginning of my lecturing. Within this section I was then able to develop my anthroposophic activity before a constantly increasing audience.

[ 11 ] No one was left in uncertainty of the fact that I would bring forward in the Theosophical Society only the results of my own research through perception. For I stated this on all appropriate occasions. When, in the presence of Annie Besant, the German section of the Theosophical Society was founded in Berlin and I was chosen its General Secretary, I had to leave the foundation sessions because I had to give before a non-theosophical audience one of the lectures in which I dealt with the spiritual evolution of humanity, and to the title of which I expressly united the phrase “Eine Anthroposophie.”³ Annie Besant also knew that I was then giving out in lectures under this title what I had to say about the spiritual world.

[ 12 ] When I went to London to attend a theosophical congress, one of the leading personalities said to me that true theosophy was to be found in my book Mysticism ..., I had reason to be satisfied. For I had given only the results of my spiritual vision, and this was accepted in the Theosophical Society.

There was now no longer any reason why I should not bring forward this spiritual knowledge in my own way before the theosophical public, which was at first the only audience that entered without restriction into a knowledge of the spirit. I subscribed to no sectarian dogmatics; I remained a man who uttered what he believed he was able to utter entirely according to what he himself experienced in the spiritual world.

[ 13 ] Prior to the founding of the section belongs a series of lectures – which I gave before Die Kommenden, entitled Von Buddha zu Christus.⁴ In these discussions I sought to show what a mighty stride the mystery of Golgotha signifies in comparison with the Buddha event, and how the evolution of humanity, as it strives toward the Christ event, approaches its culmination. [ 14 ] In this circle I spoke also of the nature of the mysteries.

[ 15 ] All this was accepted by my hearers. It was not felt to be contradictory to lectures which I had given earlier. Only after the section was founded – and I then appeared to be stamped as a “theosophist” – did any objection arise. It was really not the thing itself; it was the name and the association with the Society that no one wished to have.

[ 16 ] On the other hand, my non-theosophical hearers would have been inclined to permit themselves merely to be “stimulated” by my discussions, to accept these only in a “literary” way. What lay upon my heart was to introduce into life the impulse from the spiritual world; for this there was no understanding. This understanding, however, I could gradually find among men interested theosophically.

[ 17 ] Before the Brockdorff circle, where I had spoken on Nietzsche and the on Goethe's secret revelation, I gave at this time a lecture on Goethe's Faust, from an esoteric point of view.⁵

[ 18 ] The lectures on mysticism led to an invitation during the winter from the same theosophical circle to speak there again on this subject. I then gave the series of lectures which I later collected into the volume Christianity as Mystical Fact.

[ 19 ] From the very beginning I have let it be known that the choice of the expression “as Mystical Fact” is important. For I did not wish to set forth merely the mystical bearing of Christianity. My object was to set forth the evolution from the ancient mysteries to the mystery of Golgotha in such a way that in this evolution there should be seen to be active, not merely earthly historic forces, but spiritual supramundane influences. And I wished to show that in the ancient mysteries cult-pictures were given of cosmic events, which were then fulfilled in the mystery of Golgotha as facts transferred from the cosmos to the earth of the historic plane.

[ 20 ] This was by no means taught in the Theosophical Society. In this view I was in direct opposition to the theosophical dogmatics of the time, before I was invited to work in the Theosophical Society. For this invitation followed immediately after the cycle of lectures on Christ here described.

[ 21 ] Between the two cycles of lectures that I gave before the Theosophical Society, Marie von Sievers was in Italy, at Bologna, working on behalf of the Theosophical Society in the branch established there.

[ 22 ] Thus the thing evolved up to the time of my first attendance at a theosophical congress, in London, in the year 1902. At this congress, in which Marie von Sievers also took part, it was already a foregone conclusion that a German section of the Society would be founded with myself – shortly before invited to become a member – as the general secretary.

[ 23 ] The visit to London was of great interest to me. I there became acquainted with important leaders of the Theosophical Society. I had the privilege of staying at the home of Mr. Bertram Keightley, one of these leaders. We became great friends. I became acquainted with Mr. Mead, the very diligent secretary of the Theosophical Movement. The most interesting conversations imaginable took place at the home of Mr. Keightley in regard to the forms of spiritual knowledge alive within the Theosophical Society.

[ 24 ] Especially intimate were these conversations with Bertram Keightley himself. H. P. Blavatsky seemed to live again in these conversations. Her whole personality, with its wealth of spiritual content, was described with the utmost vividness before me and Marie von Sievers by my dear host, who had been so long associated with her.

[ 25 ] I became slightly acquainted with Annie Besant and also Sinnett, author of Esoteric Buddhism. Mr. Leadbeater I did not meet, but only heard him speak from the platform. He made no special impression on me.

[ 26 ] All that was interesting in what I heard stirred me deeply, but it had no influence upon the content of my own views.

[ 27 ] The intervals left over between sessions of the congress I sought to employ in hurried visits to the natural-scientific and artistic collections of London. I dare say that many an idea concerning the evolution of nature and of man came to me from the natural-scientific and the historical collections.

[ 28 ] Thus I went through an event very important for me in this visit to London. I went away with the most manifold impressions, which stirred my mind profoundly.

[ 29 ] In the first number of the Magazine for 1899 there appears an article by me entitled Neujahrsbetractung eines Ketzers.⁶ The meaning there is a scepticism, not in reference to religious knowledge, but in reference to the orientation of culture which the time had taken on.

[ 30 ] Men were standing before the portals of a new century. The closing century had brought forth great attainments in the realm of external life and knowledge.

[ 31 ] In reference to this the thought forced itself upon me: “In spite of all this and many other attainments – for example, in the sphere of art – no one with any depth of vision can rejoice greatly over the cultural content of the time. Our highest spiritual needs strive for something which the time affords only in meagre measure.” And reflecting upon the emptiness of contemporary culture, I glanced back to the time of scholasticism in which, at least in concepts, men's minds lived with the spirit. “One need not be surprised if, in the presence of such phenomena, men with deeper intellectual needs find the proud structure of thought of the scholastics more satisfying than the ideal content of our own time. Otto Willmann has written a noteworthy book, his Geschichte des Idealismus⁷ in which he appears as the eulogist of the world-conception of past centuries. It must be admitted that the human mind craves those proud comprehensive illuminations through thought which human knowledge experienced in the philosophical systems of the scholastics ... Discouragement is a characteristic of the intellectual life at the turn of the century. It disturbs our joy in the attainments of the youngest of the ages now past.”

[ 32 ] And in contrast to those persons who insisted that it was just “true knowledge” itself which showed the impossibility of a philosophy comprising under a single conception the totality of existence, I had to say: “If matters were as they appear to the persons who give currency to such voices, then it would suffice one to measure, weigh, and compare things and phenomena and investigate them by means of the available apparatus, but never would the question be raised as to the higher meaning of things and phenomena.”

[ 33 ] This is the temper of my mind which must furnish an explanation of those facts that brought about my anthroposophic activity within the Theosophical Society. When I had entered into the culture of the time in order to find a spiritual background for the editing of the Magazine, I felt after this a great need to recover my mind in such reading as Willmann's History of Idealism. Even though there was an abyss between my perception of spirit and the form of Willmann's ideas, yet I felt that these ideas were near to the spirit.

[ 34 ] At the end of September 1900, I was able to leave the Magazine in other hands.

[ 35 ] The facts narrated above show that the purpose of imparting the content of the spiritual world had become a necessity growing out of my temper of mind before I gave up the Magazine; that it has no connection with the impossibility of continuing further with the Magazine.

[ 36 ] As into the very element suited to my mind, I entered upon an activity having its impulse in spiritual knowledge.

[ 37 ] But I still have to-day the feeling that, even apart from the hindrance here described, my endeavour to lead through natural-scientific knowledge to the world of spirit would have succeeded in finding an outlet. I look back upon what I expressed from 1897 to 1900 as upon something which at one time or another had to be uttered in opposition to the way of thinking of the time; and on the other hand I look back upon this as upon something in which I passed through my most intense spiritual test. I learned fundamentally to know where lay the forces of the time striving away from the spirit, disintegrating and destructive of culture. And from this knowledge came a great access of the force that I later needed in order to work outward from the spirit.

[ 38 ] It was still before the time of my activity within the Theosophical Society, and before I ceased to edit the Magazine, that I composed my two-volume book Conceptions of the World and of Life in the Nineteenth Century, which from the second edition on was extended to include a survey of the evolution of world-conceptions from the Greek period to the nineteenth century, and then appeared under the title Rätsel der Philosophie.⁸

[ 39 ] The external occasion for the production of this book is to be considered wholly secondary. It grew out of the fact that Cronbach, the publisher of the Magazine, planned a collection of writings which were to deal with the various realms of knowledge and life in their evolution during the nineteenth century. He wished to include in this collection an exposition of the conceptions of the world and of life, and this he entrusted to me.

[ 40 ] I had for a long time held all the substance of this book in my mind. My consideration of the world-conceptions had a personal point of departure in that of Goethe. The opposition which I had to set up between Goethe's way of thinking and that of Kant, the new philosophical beginning at the turning-point between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Fichte, Schelling, Hegel – all this was to me the beginning of an epoch in the evolution of world-conceptions. The brilliant books of Richard Wahle, which show the dissolution of all endeavour after a world-conception at the end of the nineteenth century, closed this epoch. Thus the attempt of the nineteenth century after a world-conception rounded itself into a whole which was vitally alive in my view, and I gladly seized the opportunity to set this forth.

[ 41] When I look back to this book the course of my life seems to me symptomatically expressed in it. I did not concern myself, as many suppose, with anticipating contradictions. If this were the case, I should gladly admit it. Only it was not the reality in my spiritual course. I concerned myself in anticipation to find new spheres for what was alive in my mind. And an especially stimulating discovery in the spiritual sphere occurred soon after the composition of the Conceptions of the World and of Life.

[ 42 ] Besides, I never by any means penetrated into the spiritual sphere in a mystical, emotional way, but desired always to go by way of crystal-clear concepts. Experiencing of concepts, of ideas, led me out of the ideal into the spiritual-real.

[ 43 ] The real evolution of the organic from primeval times to the present stood out before my imagination for the first time after the composition of Conceptions of the World and of Life.

[ 44 ] During the writing of this book I had before my eyes only the natural-scientific view which had been derived from the Darwinian mode of thought. But this I considered only as a succession of sensible facts present in nature. Within this succession of facts there were active for me spiritual impulses, as these hovered before Goethe in his idea of metamorphosis.

[ 45 ] Thus the natural-scientific evolutionary succession, as represented by Haeckel, never constituted for me something wherein mechanical or merely organic laws controlled, but as something wherein the spirit led the living being from the simple through the complex up to man. I saw in Darwinism a mode of thinking which is on the way to that of Goethe, but which remains behind this.

[ 46 ] All this was still thought by me in ideal content ; only later did I work through to imaginative perception. This perception first brought me the knowledge that in reality quite other beings than the most simple organisms were present in primeval times. That man as a spiritual being is older than all other living beings, and that in order to assume his present physical form he had to cease to be a member of a world-being which comprised him and the other organisms. These latter are rejected elements in human evolution; not something out of which man has come, but something which he has left behind, from which he severed himself, in order to take on his physical form as the image of one that was spiritual. Man is a microcosmic being who bore within him all the rest of the terrestrial world and who has become a microcosm by separating from all the rest – this for me was a knowledge to which I first attained in the earliest years of the new century.

[ 47 ] And so this knowledge could not be in any way an active impulse in Conceptions of the World and of Life. Indeed, I so conceived the second volume of this book that a point of departure for a deepening knowledge of the world mystery might be found in a spiritualized form of Darwinism and Haeckelism viewed in the light of Goethe's world-conception.

[ 48 ] When I prepared later the second edition of the book, there was already present in my mind a knowledge of the true evolution. All through I held fast to the point of view I had assumed in the first edition as being that which is derived from thinking without spiritual perception, yet I found it necessary to make slight changes in the form of expression. These were necessary, first because the book by undertaking a general survey of the totality of philosophy had become an entirely different composition, and secondly because this second edition appeared after my discussions of the true evolution were already before the world.

[ 49 ] In all this the form taken by my Riddles of Philosophy had not only a subjective justification, as the point of view firmly held from the time of a certain phase in my mental evolution, but also a justification entirely objective. This consists in the fact that a thought, when spiritually experienced as thought, can conceive the evolution of living beings only as this is set forth in my book; and that the further step must be made by means of spiritual perception.

[ 50 ] Thus my book represents quite objectively the pre-anthroposophic point of view into which one must submerge oneself, and which one must experience in this submersion, in order to rise to the higher point of view. This point of view, as a stage in the way of knowledge, meets those learners who seek the spiritual world, not in a mystical blurred form, but in a form intellectually clear. In setting forth that which results from this point of view there is also present something which the learner uses as a preliminary stage leading to the higher.

[ 51 ] Then for the first time I saw in Haeckel the person who placed himself courageously at the thinker's point of view in natural science, while all other researchers excluded thought and admitted only the results of sense-observation. The fact that Haeckel placed value upon creative thought in laying the foundation for reality drew me again and again to him. And so I dedicated my book to him, in spite of the fact that its content – even in that form – was not conceived in his sense. But Haeckel was not in the least a philosophical nature. His relation to philosophy was wholly that of a layman. For this very reason I considered the attack of the philosophers that was just then raging around Haeckel as quite undeserved. In opposition to them, I dedicated my book to Haeckel, as I had already written in opposition to them my essay Haeckel und seine Gegner.⁹ Haeckel, in all simplicity as regards philosophy, had employed thought as the means for setting forth biological reality; a philosophical attack was directed against him which rested upon an intellectual sphere quite foreign to him. I believe he never knew what the philosophers wished from him. This was my impression from a conversation I had with him in Leipzig after the appearance of his Riddle of the Universe, on the occasion of a presentation of Borngräber's play Giordano Bruno. He then said: “People say I deny the spirit. I wish they could see how materials shape themselves through their forces; then they would perceive ‘spirit’ in everything that happens in a retort. Everywhere there is spirit.” Haeckel, in fact, knew nothing whatever of the real Spirit. The very forces of nature were for him the “spirit,” and he could rest content with this.

[ 52 ] One must not critically attack such blindness to the spirit with philosophically dead concepts, but must see how far the age is removed from the experience of the spirit, and must seek, on the foundation which the age affords – the natural biological explanation – to strike the spiritual sparks.

[ 53 ] Such was then my opinion. On that basis I wrote my Conceptions of the World and of Life in the Nineteenth Century.

• 1. Goethe's Secret Revelation.
• 2. Mysticism at the Beginning of the Modern Spiritual Life.
• 3. “An anthroposophy.”
• 4. From Buddha to Christ.
• 5. This was the lecture which was later published, together with my discussions of Goethe's fairy-tale, by the Philosophische-Anthroposophische Verlag.
• 6. New Year Reflections of a Sceptic.
• 7. History of Idealism.
• 8. Riddles of Philosophy.
• 9. Haeckel and His Opponents.

When the candles are lit on the Christmas Tree, the human soul feels as though the symbol of an eternal reality were standing there, and that this must always have been the symbol of the Christmas Festival, even in a far distant past. For in the autumn, when outer Nature fades, when the sun's creations fall as it were into slumber and man's organs of outer perception must turn away from the phenomena of the physical world, the soul has the opportunity—nay not only the opportunity but the urge—to withdraw into its innermost depths, in order to feel and to experience: Now, when the light of the outer sun is faintest and its warmth feeblest, now is the time when the soul withdraws into the darkness but can find within itself the inner, spiritual Light. The lights on the Christmas Tree stand there before us as a symbol of the inner, spiritual Light that is kindled in the outer darkness. And because what we feel to be the spirit-light of the soul shining into the darkness of Nature seems to be an eternal reality, we imagine that the lighted fir-tree shining out to us on Christmas Night must have been shining ever since our earthly incarnations began.

And yet it is not so. It is only one or at most two centuries ago that the Christmas Tree became a symbol of the thoughts and feelings which arise in man at the Christmas season. The Christmas Tree is a recent symbol but each year anew it reveals to man a great, eternal truth. That is why we imagine that it must always have existed, even in the remote past. It is as if from the Christmas Tree itself there resounded the proclamation of the Divine in the cosmic expanse, in the heavenly heights. The human being can feel this to be the unfailing source of those forces of peace in his soul which spring from good-will. And thus, according to the Christmas Legend, did the proclamation also resound when the shepherds visited the birthplace of the Child whose festival we celebrate on Christmas Day. To the shepherds there rang forth from the clouds: From the cosmic expanse, from the heavenly heights, the Divine Powers are revealing themselves, bringing peace to the human soul that is filled with good-will.

For centuries and centuries men could not bring themselves to believe that the symbol presented to the world in the Christmas Festival ever had a beginning. They felt in it the hallmark of eternity. Christian ritual has for this reason clothed the intimation of eternity in what takes place symbolically on Christmas Night, in the words: ‘To us Christ is born anew!’ It is as though every year the soul is called upon to feel anew a reality of which it is thought that it could happen once and once only. The eternity of this symbolic happening is brought home to us with infinite power if we have the true conception of the symbol itself. Yet as late as 353 A.D., 353 years after Christ Jesus had appeared on earth, the birth of Jesus was not celebrated, even in Rome. The Festival of Jesus' birth was celebrated for the first time in Rome in the year A.D. 354. Before then this Festival was not celebrated between the 24th and 25th December; the day of supreme commemoration for those who understood something of the deep wisdom relating to the Mystery of Golgotha, was the 6th of January. The Epiphany was celebrated as a kind of Birth-Festival of the Christ during the first three centuries of our era. It was the Festival which was meant to revive in human souls the remembrance of the descent of the Christ Spirit into the body of Jesus of Nazareth at the Baptism by John in the Jordan. Until the year A.D. 353 the happening which men conceived to have taken place at the Baptism was commemorated on the 6th of January as the Festival of Christ's birth. For during the first centuries of Christendom an inkling still survived of the mystery that is of all mysteries the most difficult for mankind to grasp, namely, the descent of the Christ Being into the body of Jesus of Nazareth.

What were the feelings of men who had some inkling of the secrets of Christianity during those early centuries? They said to themselves: The Christ Spirit weaves through the world that is revealed through the senses and through the human spirit. In the far distant past this Christ Spirit revealed Himself to Moses. The secret of the human ‘ I ’ resounded to Moses as it resounds to us from the symbol on the Christmas Tree from the sounds I A O—the Alpha and the Omega, preceded by the I. This was what resounded in the soul of Moses when the Christ Spirit appeared to him in the burning bush. And this same Christ Spirit led Moses to the place where He was to recognise Him in His true being. This is described in the Old Testament where it is said that the Lord led Moses to Mount Nebo ‘over against Jericho’ and showed him what must still come to pass before the Christ Spirit could incarnate in the body of a man. To Moses on Mount Nebo, this Spirit said: But thou to whom I revealed myself in advance, mayest not bear what thou hast in thy soul into the evolution of thy people; for they have first to prepare what is to come to pass when the time is fulfilled.

And when, through many centuries, the evolutionary preparation had been completed, the same Spirit by Whom Moses had been held back, did indeed reveal Himself—by becoming Flesh, by taking on a human body, the body of Jesus of Nazareth. Therewith mankind as a whole was led from the stage of Initiation signified by the word ‘Jericho’ to that indicated by the crossing of the Jordan.

The hearts and minds of those who in the early centuries of our era understood the true import of Christianity turned to the Baptism in the Jordan of Jesus of Nazareth into whom Christ descended, Christ the Sun-Earth-Spirit. It was this—the birth of Christ—that was celebrated as a Mystery in the early Christian centuries. The insight for which we prepare ourselves to-day through Anthroposophy, through the wisdom belonging to the fifth Post-Atlantean epoch of civilisation, flashed up in the form of vision from the vestiges of ancient clairvoyance still surviving during the age when the Mystery of Golgotha took place; it flashed up in the Gnostics, those remarkable, enlightened men who lived at the turning-point of the old and the new eras, whose conception of the Christ Mystery differed in respect of form but not in respect of content, from our own. What the Gnostics were able to teach trickled through into the world and although what had actually come to pass in the event indicated symbolically by the Baptism in the Jordan was not widely understood, there was nevertheless an inkling that the Sun Spirit had been born at that time as the Spirit of the Earth, that a cosmic Power had dwelt in the body of a man of earth. And so in the early centuries of Christendom the festival of the birth of Christ in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, the festival of Christ's Epiphany, was celebrated on the 6th of January.

But insight, even dim, uncertain insight into this deep Mystery faded away more and more as time went by. The age came when men could no longer comprehend that the Being called Christ had been present in a physical human body for three years only. More and more it will be realised that what was accomplished for the whole of earth-evolution during those three years in the physical body of a man is one of the very deepest and most difficult Mysteries to understand. From the fourth century onwards, with the approach of the materialistic age, the powers of the human soul—then still at the stage of preparation—were not strong enough to grasp the deep Mystery which from our time on will be understood in ever greater measure. And so it came about that to the same extent to which the outer power of Christianity increased, inner understanding of the Christ Mystery decreased and the festival of the 6th of January ceased to have any essential meaning. The birth of Christ was placed thirteen days earlier and envisaged as coincident with the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. But in this very fact we are confronted by something that must always be a source of inspiration and thanksgiving. Actually, the 24th/25th of December was fixed as the day of Christ's Nativity because a great truth had been lost, as we have heard. And yet ... although the error would seem to point to the loss of a great truth, such profound meaning lay behind it that—although the men responsible knew nothing of it—we cannot but marvel at the subconscious wisdom with which the festival of Christmas Day was instituted.

Verily, the working of Divine wisdom can be seen in the fixing of this festival. Just as Divine wisdom can be perceived in outer nature if we know how to decipher what reveals itself there, so we can perceive Divine wisdom working in the unconscious soul of man when the following is borne in mind. In the Calendar, the 24th of December is the day dedicated to Adam and Eve, the following day being the Festival of Christ's Nativity. Thus the loss of an ancient truth caused the date of Christ's birth to be placed thirteen days earlier and to be identified with the birth of Jesus of Nazareth—but in a most wonderful way the birth of Jesus of Nazareth was linked with the thought of man's origin in earth-evolution, his origin in Adam and Eve. All the dim feelings and experiences connected with this festival of Jesus' birth which were alive in the human soul—although in their upper consciousness, men had no knowledge of what lay behind—all these feelings that were astir in the depths of the soul speak a wondrous language.

When understanding was lost of what had streamed from cosmic worlds in the event which would rightly have been celebrated on the 6th of January, forces working in hidden depths of the soul caused the picture to be presented of man as a being of soul-and-spirit before physical embodiment, at the starting-point of evolution as a physical human being. The picture is of the new-born child whose soul is as yet untouched by the effects of contact with the physical body, of the child at the beginning of physical evolution on earth. But this is not a human child in the ordinary sense; it is the child who was there before human beings had reached the point of the first physical embodiment in earth-evolution. This is the being known in the Kabbala as Adam Kadmon—Man who descended from divine-spiritual heights, with all that he had acquired during the periods of Saturn, Sun and Moon. The human being in his spiritual state at the very beginning of earth-evolution, born in the Jesus Child—this was presented to mankind by a Divine wisdom in the festival of Jesus' birth. At a time when it was no longer possible to understand what had descended from cosmic worlds, from heavenly spheres, to the earth, remembrance of their origin, of their state before the advent of the Luciferic forces in earth-evolution was engraved into the souls of men. And when it was no longer realised that in the highest and truest sense it could be said of the Baptism by John in the Jordan: From cosmic worlds there has come into human souls the power of the self-revealed Godhead, in order that peace may reign among men who are of goodwill—when understanding of how this picture could be presented as a sacred festival was lost, another affirmation was presented in its place, the affirmation that at the beginning of earth revolution, before the Luciferic forces began their work, man had a nature, an entelechy that can inspire him with undying hope.

The Jesus of the Gospel of St. Luke—not the Jesus described in the Gospel of St. Matthew—is the Child before whom the shepherds worship. To them the proclamation rang forth: Now is the Divine revealed from the heavenly heights, bringing peace to the souls of men who are of good-will. And so for the centuries when the higher reality was beyond man's grasp, the festival was instituted which every year brings to his remembrance: Although you cannot gaze into the heavenly heights and there recognise the great Sun-Spirit, you bear within you, from the time of your earthly beginning, the Child-Soul in its state of purity, unsullied by the effects of physical incarnation; and the forces of this Child-Soul can give you the firm confidence that you can be victorious over the lower nature which clings to you as the result of Lucifer's temptation. The linking of the festival of Jesus' birth with remembrance of Adam and Eve gave emphasis to the thought that at the place visited by the shepherds a human soul had been born in the state of innocence in which the soul existed before the first incarnation on earth.

At this time of festival, therefore, since the birth of the God was no longer understood, the birth of a human being was commemorated. For however greatly man's forces threaten to decline and his sufferings to take the upper hand, there are two unfailing sources of peace, harmony and strength. We are led to the first source when we look out into cosmic space, knowing it to be pervaded by the weaving lift, movement and warmth of the Divine Spirit. And if we hold fast to the conviction that this Divine-Spiritual Power weaving through the universe can permeate our being provided only that our forces do not flag—there we have the Easter thought, equally a source of hope and confidence flowing from the cosmic spheres. And the second source can spring from the dim inkling that as a being of soul-and-spirit, before he became the prey of the Luciferic forces at the beginning of his earthly evolution, man was still part of the same Spirit now awaited from cosmic worlds as in the Easter thought. Turning to the source to be found in man's own, original being, before the onset of the Luciferic influence, we can say to ourselves: Whatever may befall you, whatever may torment you and draw you down from the shining spheres of the spirit, your divine origin is an eternal reality, hidden though it be in the depths of the soul. Recognition of this innermost power of the soul will give birth to the firm assurance that the heights are within your reach. And if you conjure before your soul all that is innocent, childlike, free from life's temptations, free from all that has already befallen human souls through the many incarnations since the beginning of earthly evolution, then you will have a picture of the human soul as it was before these earthly incarnations began.

But one soul—one soul only—remained in this condition, namely the soul of the Jesus Child described in the Gospel of St. Luke. This soul was kept back in the spiritual life when the other human souls began to pass through their incarnations on the earth. This soul remained in the guardianship of the holiest Mysteries through the Atlantean and Post-Atlantean epochs until the time of the events in Palestine. Then it was sent forth into the body predestined to receive it and became one of the two Jesus children—the Child described in the Gospel of St. Luke.

Thus did the festival of Christ's Nativity become the festival of the Birth of Jesus.

If we rightly understand this festival we must say: That which we believe to be born anew symbolically every Christmas Night, is the human soul in its original nature, the childhood-spirit of man as it was at the beginning of earth-evolution; then it descended as a revelation from the heavenly heights. And when the human heart can become conscious of this reality, the soul is filled with the unshakable peace that can bear us to our lofty goals, if we are of goodwill. Mighty indeed is the word that can resound to us on Christmas Night, do we but understand its import.

Why was it that the festival of Christ's birth was set back thirteen days and became the festival of the birth of Jesus? To understand this we must penetrate into deep mysteries of human existence. Of outer nature, man believes, because he sees it with his eyes, that what the rays of the sun charm forth from the depths of the earth, unfolding into beauty through the spring and summer, withdraws into those same depths at the time when the outer sun-sphere is darkest, and that what will spring forth again the following year is being prepared in the seeds within the depths of the earth. Because his eyes bear witness, man believes that the seed of the plant passes through a yearly cycle, that it must go down into the earth's depths in order to unfold again under the warmth and light of the sun in spring. But to begin with, man has no notion that the human soul too passes through such a cycle. Nor is this revealed until he is initiated into the great mysteries of existence. Just as the force contained in the seed of every plant is bound up with the physical forces of the earth, so is the inmost being of the human soul bound up with the spiritual forces of the earth. And just as the seed of the plant sinks into the depths of the earth at the time we know as Christmas, so does the soul of man descend at that time into deep, deep spirit-realms, drawing strength from these depths as does the seed of the plant for its blossoming in spring. What the soul undergoes in these spirit-depths of the earth is entirely hidden from the ordinary consciousness. But for one whose eyes of spirit are opened the Thirteen Days and Thirteen Nights between the 24th of December and the 6th of January are a time of deep spiritual experience.

Parallel with the experience of the plant-seed in the depths of the natural earth, there is a spiritual experience in the earth's spirit-depths—verily a parallel experience. And the seer for whom this experience is possible either as the result of training or through inherited clairvoyant faculties, can feel himself penetrating into these spiritual depths. During this period of the Thirteen Days and Nights, the seer can behold what must come upon man because he has passed through incarnations which have been under the influence of the forces of Lucifer since the beginning of earthly evolution. The sufferings in Kamaloca that man must endure in the spiritual world because Lucifer has been at his side since he began to incarnate on the earth—the dearest vision of all this is presented in the mighty Imaginations which can come before the soul during the Thirteen Days and Nights between the Christmas Festival and the Festival of the 6th of January, the Epiphany. At the time when the seed of the plant is passing through its most crucial period in the depths below, the human soul is passing through its deepest experiences. The soul gazes at a vista of all that man must experience in the spiritual worlds because, under Lucifer's influence, he alienated himself from the Powers by whom the world was created. This vision is clearest to the soul during these Thirteen Days and Nights. Hence there is no better preparation for the revelation of that Imagination which may be called the Christ Imagination and which makes us aware that by gaining the victory over Lucifer, Christ Himself becomes the Judge of the deeds of men during the incarnations affected by Lucifer's influence. The soul of the seer lives on from the festival of Jesus' birth to that of the Epiphany in such a way that the Christ Mystery is revealed. It is during these Thirteen Holy Days and Nights that the soul can grasp most deeply of all, the import and meaning of the Baptism by John in the Jordan.

It is remarkable that during the centuries of Christendom, wherever powers of spiritual sight developed in the right way, it was known to seers that vision penetrated most deeply during the period of the Thirteen Holy Nights at the time of the winter solstice. Many a seer—either schooled in the mysteries of the modern age or possessing inherited powers of clairvoyance—makes it evident to us that at the darkest point of the winter solstice the soul can have vision of all that man must undergo because of his alienation from the Christ Spirit, how adjustment and catharsis were made possible through the Mystery enacted in the Baptism by John in the Jordan and then through the Mystery of Golgotha, and how the visions during the Thirteen Nights are crowned on the 6th of January by the Christ Imagination. Thus it is correct to name the 6th of January as the day of Christ's birth and these Thirteen Nights as the time during which the powers of seership in the human soul discern and perceive what man must undergo through his life in the incarnations from Adam and Eve to the Mystery of Golgotha.

During my visit to Christiania last year¹ it was interesting to me to find the thought which in rather different words has been expressed in so many lectures on the Christ Mystery, embodied in a beautiful saga known as ‘The Dream Legend.’ Strange to say, it has come to the fore in Norway during the last ten to fifteen years and has become familiar to the people, although its origin is, of course, very much earlier. It is the legend which in a wonderfully beautiful way relates how Olaf Åsteson is initiated, as it were by natural forces, in that he falls asleep on Christmas Eve, sleeps through the Thirteen Days and Nights until the 6th of January, and lives through all the terrors which the human being must experience through the incarnations from the earth's beginning until the Mystery of Golgotha. And it relates how when the 6th of January has come, Olaf Åsteson has the vision of the intervention of the Christ Spirit in humanity, the Michael-Spirit being His forerunner. I hope that on some other occasion we shall be able to present this poem in its entirety, for then you will realise that consciousness of vision during the Thirteen Days and Nights survives even to-day, and is in fact, being revivified. A few characteristic lines only will now be quoted. The poem begins:

Come listen to me and hear my song
The song of a wonderful youth,
I'll sing you of Olaf Åsteson
Who slept many days—'tis the truth.

'Twas Christmas Eve when down he lay
And slept so long all unknowing,
He never woke till the thirteenth day
When to Church the people were going.
Yes, it was Olaf Åsteson
Who lay so long a-sleeping.

(Translated from a German version
of The Dream Legend, by E.C.M.)

And so the poem goes on, relating how in his dream during the Thirteen Days and Nights, Olaf Åsteson is led through all that man must experience on account of Lucifer's temptation. A vivid picture is given of Olaf Åsteson's journey through the spheres where human beings have the experiences so often described in connection with Kamaloca, and of how the Christ Spirit, preceded by Michael, streams into this vision.

Thus with the coming of Christ in the Spirit, it will become more and more possible for men to know how the spiritual forces weave and hold sway and that the festivals have not been instituted by arbitrary opinions but by the cosmic wisdom which so often lies beyond the reach of men's consciousness yet works and reigns throughout history. This cosmic wisdom has placed the festival of the birth of Jesus at the beginning of the Thirteen Days. While the Easter Festival can always be a reminder that contemplation of the cosmic worlds will help us to find within ourselves the strength to conquer all that is lower, the Christmas thought—if we understand the festival which commemorates man's divine origin and the symbol before us on Christmas Day in the form of the Jesus Child—says to us ever and again that the powers which bring peace to the soul can be found within ourselves. True peace of soul is present only when that peace has sure foundations, that is to say, when it is a force enabling man to know: In thee lives something which, if truly brought to birth, can, nay must, lead thee to divine Heights, to divine Powers.—The lights on this tree are symbols of the light which shines in our own souls when we grasp the reality of what is proclaimed to us symbolically on Christmas Night by the Jesus Child in its state of innocence: the inmost being of the human soul itself, strong, innocent, tranquil, leading us along our life's path to the highest goals of existence. May these lights on the Christmas Tree say to us: If ever thy soul is weak, if ever thou believest that the goals of earth-existence are beyond thy reach, think of man's divine origin and become aware of those forces within thee which are also the forces of supreme Love. Become inwardly conscious of the forces which give thee confidence and certainty in all thy works, through all thy life, now and in all ages of time to come.

• 1. 7th-17th June, 1910, when the Lecture Course on The Mission of the Folk-Souls was given.